Blogging the Canon

Book #50 - Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck)

2011-11-27T16:56:00.000-08:00

It's a beer night tonight, in this case Humming Ale made by my local Anchor Steam Brewery here in San Francisco. It's a nice ale, with a bold strong taste, and since it's made locally it fits in with this book, which takes place within a couple of hundred miles of here, right in the Great State of California, in what is often referred to as "Steinbeck Country". How many other authors can you name that have a geographical region that is named for themselves? I mean, Dickens had England and Dumas had France, but no one refers to Great Britain as "Dickens Country" or France as "Dumas Country". So what am I getting at? That John Steinbeck was a badass, and one of my homies, so back off motherfucker.

By the way, I love using the word "motherfucker" when discussing the great literature treasures of western civilization.

Anyway, I just finished John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men" which took me all of two days because it's a short novel...probably the shortest on my list. It was a quick read, and a powerful story, although I could tell after reading the first page or two that things were going to end very, very badly, and I certainly was correct in that assumption. The story concerns two migrant ranch workers living in California during the Great Depression. George is a crafty, wiry, and small man, and his sidekick Lennie is a huge man of great physical strength, but who is mentally handicapped. He's not bright at all, and he loves to pet soft things, like puppies and rabbits and mice. He doesn't care if they're alive or dead, which is for the best since he doesn't know his own strength and usually ends up killing whatever he is petting. In fact when the story opens, Lennie is petting a dead mouse that he keeps in his pocket. At the opening, George and Lennie are on their way to a new ranch near Soledad, California in the Central Valley. They had to leave their last job in Weed when Lennie petted a woman's dress because it was soft, and when she started to get mad he got scared and wouldn't let go, so naturally everyone assumed he was trying to rape her. Which he wasn't, because he wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone, he just wanted to pet her soft dress. This is how it goes with Lennie.

George and Lennie have a dream of saving up enough money to buy a small farm and live off the land. This would also give Lennie the chance to raise rabbits to help satisfy his urge to pet soft things. Lennie constantly asks George to tell and retell the story of how they will live on this farm, and it's clearly a powerful dream for both of them.

Anyway, at their new job there are two threats. One is the boss's son, Curly, who is a former prizefighter, and a very mean and belligerent man. The other is Curly's wife, who interestingly is never given a name in the novel. Curly's wife is young and beautiful, and she's also bored and lonely living on the ranch, and so she endlessly flirts (and maybe does more) with the ranch hands. George's goal is to keep Lennie away from any troublesome situations, because he knows Lennie cannot control his strength. We meet other characters too. Candy is an old one-armed ranch hand, who has to endured his dog being shot because he is old and useless. When Candy hears George telling the story to Lennie of how they will get their land and farm it, Candy tells them he wants in too, and offers his entire life savings if it will help them buy a place. It will help, in fact, and the dream seemingly moves closer to reality. We also meet Crooks, the crippled black ranch hand who is befriended by Lennie (since he's the only one to not understand that you shouldn't go into the black man's sleeping quarters to hang out). Crooks at first scoffs at Lennie's land-owning dreams, but soon he too is caught up in the dream and is asking if he can come work on their farm when they get it.

But of course, trouble does ensue. Lennie is teased by Curly who wants to draw him into a fight. When he does, Lennie crushes Curly's hand, not so much because he wants to harm him, but because when he gets scared he can't let go of things, like Curly's hand. And then Curly's wife comes in to talk to Lennie in the barn as he's petting a dead puppy (sigh...yes Lennie accidently killed the puppy). When she tells Lennie he can pet her hair he does so, and then when she tells him to let go he gets scared, and when she starts to scream he shakes her and accidently breaks her neck. This is not good for Lennie. Anyway, when she's found everyone knows Lennie is the one who killed her, so the ranch hands set out to look for Lennie and lynch him. Fortunately George finds him first, and as he once more tells Lennie the story of the farm they will have, he puts a bullet through the back of Lennie's head, so that Lennie won't have to suffer. Now that's friendship. Yep, a happy story.

There was something I thought about when I read this story, aside from pondering what I would be drinking as I wrote my blog entry. Oh crap, which reminds me, my beer glass is empty. Hold on a second. Ahhh, OK, I switched from beer to an ice old nightcap of Limoncello. I dunno why, I just felt like something sweet, and actually it's tasting really good after that beer. I'll have to remember this pairing.

Crap, where was I? Oh yeah...what I really noticed about the story was how everyone in the book is lonely. I mean, really lonely and isolated. George and Lennie are the only ones who have someone else they can lean on, but we all know how that turns out for them. The crippled misfits, Candy and Crooks, are lonely too, and this is probably why they latch on so strongly to George and Lennie's dream of a farm, and want to be a part of it. But also Curly's wife is lonely, which is what sets everyone's downfall up to begin with because it causes her to end up talking to Lennie in the barn. The book is actually pretty bleak this way...no one is really happy and everyone is lonely and only their dreams keep them looking to the future. Of course, this book was written during the depression, so that was probably the overall ethos at the time. But I think it also speaks to the human condition in general.

The friendship between George and Lennie was also interesting to ponder in light of when the story was written (i.e. the Great Depression years). There's something about their relationship that stuck me as an idealized, almost political version of male-male friendship. It political in almost a socialist way, as in "workers of the world unite". George and Lennie paired up because they could look out for each other (well, at least George could look out for Lennie), much as workers in labor unions look after each other. In 1934, Sinclair Lewis, a writer and socialist, won the Democratic nomination for governor of California, and communists were active in California during the 1930s. Radical (at least in today's views) notions of labor and the plight of the working man were rampant in California and seem to me to have infused themselves into Steinbeck's portrayal of George and Lennie. Yet the story is still read today, even in an America gone almost radically conservative. This speaks to Steinbeck's ability to transcend his time and place (the Great Depression in Steinbeck Country) and speak to universal themes that we all struggle with...loneliness, isolation, the futility of many of our dreams, and the sweet, sweet softness of a dead mouse.

Book #49 - The House of the Seven Gables (Nathaniel Hawthorne)

2011-11-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

Sometimes it's hard to start these blog posts. Whiskey can help, beer can help, martinis can help, but this time all of the above fails me for unknown reasons. If I were a younger man maybe I'd try some "shrooms" or "e" or whatever these crazy kids are taking these days, but that's never been my style and I'm too old to change now. Nope, when good old American booze fails me for inspiration then I'm pretty much fucked, and so are you dear reader, because you have to read this drivel. Anyway, inspiration or not, I've gotta give it a shot, because I have a blog to run here.

I just finished Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables". This was one odd book. Not odd in a bad way (actually odd is never bad in my book), although parts of the book were a bit hard to get through. The writing could get very moody and impressionistic, and there were points where page after page would go by with nothing happening plot-wise. But that was OK because the moodiness of the writing would draw me in, at least for awhile. OK, at some points it got to be a little much, but hey, I'm a modern reader with internet access and cable television, so my attention span to moodiness is probably much shorter than a man living in Hawthorne's time, whose idea of a fast-paced evening would have been sitting in silence in an armchair for hours on end, poking at the fire once in awhile, and watching his wife knit a scarf.

The story concerns the Pyncheon family, a wealthy family that built and lives in a large drafty old house with seven gables, located in a small New England town (probably based on Salem, Massachusetts). The land the house was built on was previously owned by a small-time farmer named Matthew Maule. When Colonel Pyncheon decided he wanted Maule's land to build his house on, and when Maule stubbornly refused to sell, the Colonel had Maule accused of witchcraft, resulting in his execution by hanging. But on the gallows, Maule points to the Colonel, and says "God will give him blood to drink". After the Colonel takes over Maule's land and builds his seven-gabled house, he is found mysteriously dead in his easy chair on the night of his housewarming party, with blood in his throat. From there on in the family's fortunes are troubled...they loose a huge part of their wealth as a land grant they purchased from Native Americans gets taken from them in the north, and when one of the Pyncheon descendants asks one of the Maule descendants to help him find the deed to the lost land, the Maule man puts the Pyncheon daughter, Alice, into a hypnotic trance, which allows him to control her at will. This inadvertantly causes her death, much to Maule's dismay, but nonetheless, the curse against the Pyncheons seems to go on. And we learn other Pyncheons over the years die mysteriously, with blood gurgling in their throats.

The bulk of the novel takes place about 200 years after Colonel Pyncheon's death, when the house of seven gables is inhabited solely by Hepzibah Pyncheon. Now there's an old-timey name for you! That's actually one of the cool things about this book...there are flashbacks in the book that take place 200 years earlier, and yet nowadays the whole book is about 150 years old. It makes the events and descriptions in the book seem like they are from the distant past...as though the whole story is musty and distant, which adds to the general moodiness and creepiness and sense of decay in the novel. And that's a good thing.

Anyway, where was I...oh yes, at the book's start Hepzibah lives alone in the house except for a lodger who has an apartment in a remote corner of the house. Then a distant cousin comes to visit, Phoebe, who is an innocent young girl from the country, and one of the few Pyncheon descendants still remaining. Phoebe immediately brightens up the musty dark old house, and helps out Hepzibah with the general store she's opened in part of the house, because while Hepzibah would prefer to remain a hermit, she is almost out of money. Soon Hepizbah's brother Clifford comes to join them. Clifford, we slowly learn, is just out of prison, having been sent away years ago for murder. In jail he has pretty much lost his mind, and is now very much out of it. But Hepzibah loves him dearly, and Phoebe helps to take care of him.

Complications ensue...well, sort of. And they ensue slowly, because that's the way this novel flows. There's an evil relative, Judge Pyncheon, who wants information from Clifford. We eventually learn just exactly how evil Judge Pyncheon really is, and it's pretty evil. It turns out that Clifford and not the Judge was supposed to inherit the family fortune, and that he had Clifford framed for the murder of an Uncle who actually died from the family curse. And then there's the mysterious lodger, who is a dauggereotypist, and who we eventually learn is a descendent of the Maule family. I won't say what happens to all these characters at the novel's end, since I don't want to completely spoil things, except that the novel has a surprisingly upbeat ending for such a moody and meditative book. That upbeatness really took me by surprise actually, since it was quite unexpected.

One of the things Hawthorne seems to be saying in this book, at least according to this half-senile middle-aged white guy, is that immoral deeds done by family members get passed down to haunt succeeding generations. It's almost Darwinian; bad traits get passed down to screw up the offspring, although in this case the traits are evil deeds and not inherited random mutations. Still, it's a bit of a weird concept...that the sins of the father will forever taint his descendants. At least until the end of the novel, where all pretty much seems to be resolved.

And it's also interesting that while Maule casts this curse on the Pyncheon family, and they seem to suffer under it, there also are non-supernatural ways of explaining the curse and its effects. The mysterious bloody deaths of the Pyncheons could be a hereditary condition in the family, like apoplexy or something like that, that Maule recognized. And the Maule family has seemed to have inherited a propensity to be able to hypnotize people, which while seemingly supernatural today, may have not seemed so otherworldly in Hawthorne's day, when Mesmerism was in vogue. The book is a supernatural story with a rational explanation behind it. Which is pretty refreshing, actually, when compared with the current outpouring of vampire and supernatural movies, books, and shows. In any case, "The House of the Seven Gables" may seem strange and supernatural at times and a bit gothic, but the slow, brooding pace of it, while perhaps difficult for the modern reader to get used to, really pays off if one sticks to it and listens to the story Hawthorne tells.

Book #48 - Emma (Jane Austen)

2011-10-16T15:15:00.000-07:00

Once again a long void has passed since my last blog post. Speculation has run rampant on the interwebs over the possible death of this slowly aging blogger...was it too much whiskey and fast driving, or did he finally hook up with Chloe Sevigny only to find that she was too much for his middle-aged heart to handle? No, the answer is none of the above...he was just slacking off, busy with work and life, and not focusing on the important things like fine rye whiskey and the greatest literature ever fucking written. And speaking of rye whiskey I'm drinking a glass of the new Bulleit rye on the rocks. I paid $20 for this bottle and it's pretty damn good. It's not Van Winkle rye, but then what else is? For $20, this is a pretty awesome value...quite drinkable and bloggable!

Anyway, where was I before I got distracted by talking about the booze? Oh yeah, I was drinking the booze. Wait no, I just finished Jane Austen's "Emma". Yes that was it. "Emma", Jane Austen. Man, things were different back in Jane's day. Aside from the lack of $20 rye whiskey (adjusted for inflation), people had manners, and society had all these classes that people had to deal with. The upper class ignored the middle classes who turned down their noses at the lower classes. At least in England. And Jane Austen is all about England.

The only other Jane Austen novel I've ever read previously was "Pride and Prejudice". I remember I read this when I first moved to San Francisco about 20 years ago. I was riding on BART (the subway) waiting in a station for a train, and reading the book when an old homeless guy came up to me and asked me what I was reading. I replied "Pride and Prejudice", and he then asked what the book was about. I told him it was about some aristocratic English sisters who were trying to marry eligible bachelors. He replied "Oh, I get it...goldiggers!"

In "Emma" the title character Emma Woodhouse decidedly does NOT want to get married at the novel's outset. Emma is 21 years old, and "handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition". She lives with her father, who is perhaps one of the funniest characters I've come across recently. He's the quintessential English eccentric. He hates change of any kind, and when his oldest daughter (Emma's sister) and Emma's governess both get married and move out of the house he's convinced they've ruined their (and his) lives. Emma loves her father dearly, and wants to protect him, and as a result she has determined that she will never get married. Emma is smart, opinionated, and often wrong in her interpretations about other people.

At the novel's opening, Emma's best friend is Harriet Smith, a middle class girl, daughter of a tradesman, whom Emma takes it upon herself to marry into upper class society. Harriet has an offer to marry a local farmer, but Emma convinces her that this just won't do, and then tries to set up Harriet with the local clergyman. She fails miserably when the clergyman first asks Emma to marry him, and then goes and marries someone else. This is typical of Emma at the novel's outset...she has good intentions, but she doesn't read people that well, and often ends up in misguided interactions with others. Later on in the novel she ends up screwing over Harriet again by trying to fix her up with Mr. Knightley, only to find out that he is in love with Emma. Poor Harriet.

And who is this Mr. Knightley? He's the brother of the man who married Emma's older sister. He's also one of Emma's best friends, and has known her since she was little (he's older than her). He's the model of common sense and good judgement, and for the most part is very good at understanding people and their motivations and their character. He serves as a guide and mentor to Emma, and admonishes her when she's thoughtless or mistaken. She doesn't always appreciate this right away, but in the end Knightley always seems to be right. Of course, in the end Knightley marries Emma, after he confesses he's always been in love with her. I suppose this is a case of the times changing, but for me it's a little creepy that an older man who watches someone grow up would then fall in love with her. But hey, Emma is smart and hot, and I'm sure the pickings of women among the local landed gentry in England was not so big.

There are other characters in the book who are central to the novel's romantic intrigues, mistakes, and schemings. Frank Churchill is the son of the husband of Emma's former governess, who has recently come back into the community after being raised by an aunt and uncle. Frank is somewhat of a snake...he's very charming and dashing, and always seems to have the right word for everyone. At first I thought he was going to turn out to be some kind of grifter, but that never comes to pass. Everyone is taken in by him, except for Knightley, who sees through him and doesn't like him at all. We eventually learn that Frank is secretly engaged to Jane Fairfax, another main character. Jane is a smart woman, and an incredibly talented pianist, but she is very reserved and so Emma doesn't really like her at first, thinking that she is aloof. However, we eventually learn about the secret engagement between her and Frank, and we come to feel for both of them a bit, because they've had to suffer by hiding their love (there's a legitimate reason why they had to hide their love away for most of the book, so it's not just whim).

This all leads to what I think is the great talent of Jane Austen...she has a real mastery of character and human behavior. Her characters are so very life-like...their motivations are as clear and as screwed up as people in real life, and I think this is one big reason why she has stayed in the canon. Her characters are just so damn plausible, and human. And she makes us realize that despite the very different world these characters live in from our own, people are people and their foibles are no different now than they were 200 years ago in the English countryside.

Having made that last point, though, I have to say I was a bit disappointed with the novel's end. Emma marries Mr. Knightley, and a spark seems to have gone out of her. Where is that tempestuous girl who vowed she would never marry? She and Mr. Knightley also decide to live with her father, so he doesn't get upset about losing the last female household member (Dad even balks at this at first, but he likes Knightley and eventually is able to be convinced of the advantage in this situation). And she and Knightley aren't the only ones to get married...everything is tied up in a neat little package of marriages and everyone presumably lives happily ever after. Maybe it's just me but after such a rich landscape of the misguided behaviors and human error, to have it all tied up in such an almost fairy-tale ending seems a bit less than satisfying. Still, I'll let that go because the rest of the book IS so damn satisfying. I'm definitely happy I have more Jane Austen on my list.

I Am Charlotte Simmons - Tom Wolfe

2011-05-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Everyone needs a break now and then, and after reading through 47 of my top 105 books, with only a few short diversions, I decided to read a novel that wasn't on my list...something that I thought would be fun and interesting and a bit lighter than Tolstoy or James Joyce. So after having let this book sit on my shelf unread for the seven years since it was published, I finally read Tom Wolfe's latest novel "I Am Charlotte Simmons".

Tom Wolfe (no relation to Thomas Wolfe) was one of the influential "new journalists" of the 1960s, probably best known for his book about Ken Kesey and his followers, "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". At the age of 56 he wrote his first novel "Bonfire of the Vanities", which I read when it came out in 1987. This book was a social satire about New York City in the 1980s, and I remember finding it fun and insightful and a real page turner. His second novel "A Man in Full" (1998) takes place in Atlanta, and tackles the real estate boom of the 1990s, race relations, and Atlanta society. I read this book too, and again thoroughly enjoyed it, although I didn't think it was as good as his first novel. "I Am Charlotte Simmons" came out in 2004, and as I said, it's sat on my shelf unread since then. It didn't get great reviews, which is why I held off, but I needed a break from the canon and so I finally picked it up.

I have to say this book was very much a mixed bag. On one hand, like Wolfe's other novels it was a fairly quick read, even at 670 pages...a real page turner, in fact. It's always enjoyable to read a book like that...a fun read that pulls you along. That said, this is not a great work of literature. In fact, the book has some pretty major faults. Wolfe is known for extensively researching his subject matter before writing his novels...that's his journalism training coming through. But I think he really misses the mark in this one. The story is about Charlotte Simmons, a country girl from a small town in the remote hills of western North Carolina. She's innocent (really innocent) but smart as a whip, and totally excels academically. She gets a scholarship to go to Dupont University, which in Wolfe's fictional world is on par with Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and Stanford. At college, she's a fish out of water, and doesn't readily fit into the three main social groups: the jocks, the frat/sorority crowd, and the left-wing intellectual geeks. She also doesn't drink to excess (or at all, actually), stay out all night every night, and have casual "hookups" with guys. This is where the first of the major faults of this novel lies: the university Wolfe depicts is nothing like Harvard/Yale/Stanford/etc. (I did my graduate work at Yale, so I have some experience here). At Dupont, athletics rule everything, and the athletes all take the easiest courses possible, live in their own special dorms, and are treated like heroes and superstars at all times. This is not simply the way it is at places like Harvard and Yale...maybe at Ohio State, or some university with a huge athletic program, but the top academic schools don't have this. And the amount of sex and booze and debauchery at Dupont University is too over the top to be believed. I mean, students have always partied in college since the 1300's, at pretty much every college, but Wolfe depicts a place where many students stay out every night, and stay drunk in frat houses at all times, and again this just wouldn't happen at one of the very top colleges in the country. These students would have terrible grades, and the majority of students who have gotten into Harvard or Yale or Dupont are going to be pretty motivated academically. This depiction of college as a four-year bacchanal just doesn't cut it.

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The post (above) was written about a month ago. It is unfinished, and I was going to write more about this book, but time and circumstances intervened, and I never got around to it. Alas. And now when I look back, I just don't have the motivation or quantities of booze necessary to get me to continue writing about this book. So it is what it is...the great unfinished post of this blog so far. But I can sum up: this wasn't that spectacular of a book.

Book #47 - A Room with a View (E.M. Forster)

2011-04-17T22:51:00.000-07:00

For the first time since I started with this blog, I find myself somewhat at a loss for words to discuss a book. I just pounded down an ice cold Modelo Especial with a slice of lime, and yet the inspiration has not welled up within me. Perhaps I need another...

Nope, that didn't work. All it did was make me a little loopy and cause me to surf the web for 37 minutes, looking at videos of beagles howling on YouTube. But now I must focus, and write about this book. OK, focusing. Still focusing. Any minute now. Damn.

Part of the problem may be that it took me a month to read this book. Normally that wouldn't be an issue, but this book is not very long...just over 200 pages. And during those 200 pages I traveled to Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando, and Cincinnati. So my mind was focused on my sojourn through the American South and Heartland rather than on "A Room with a View". But I digress. Again.

Seriously, though, beagles are damn cute when they howl, especially beagle puppies, and they can really let those howls rip. And it seems like every beagle owner on the North American landmass has posted at least one video of their beagle howling away. And speaking of beagles, if you haven't seen this video of a beagle performing a seemingly impossible escape from his cage, then you're in for a treat:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnBjQDeZPag

Please note that there are absolutely no beagles whatsoever in E.M. Forster's "A Room with a View". None. Zero. But I digress. "A Room with a View" is the story of Edwardian England society. The main character, Lucy Honeychurch, is an upper middle class single woman who travels to Florence with her older, straight-laced cousin Charlotte Bartlett. In Florence they meet George Emerson and his father. George is a lower middle class free-thinker, an atheist, a veritable hippie on the scale of Edwardian England society. Lucy is thrown together with George on several occasions, and she unwillingly falls in love with him. Thinking George is beneath her station (and in the powerful eyes of Edwardian society he definitely is) she returns home and becomes engaged to Cecil Vyse, a rich dude and a consummate boor. Cecil ends up boring Lucy, and she finally realizes the error of her ways and admits her love for George. They go back to Florence and are happily in love, despite the fact that almost everyone they know is totally against their getting together, since George is beneath Lucy's station. The End.

So why is it so hard for me to write about this book? Mainly because I kept reading passages and thinking that I just didn't get it. There were passages that I thought were clearly meant to be humorous...in fact, I would read them and think "Wow, this is probably hilariously funny", and yet I felt like I wasn't in on the joke, because I didn't know what the hell the joke was referring too. At other times, the characters would act in a way that seemed absurd, and I had no idea what their motivation was. And then there were times where one of the characters would say something and I would think "I have no idea what that means. Is that even English?". Is this the boozing and blogging finally getting to me? Is my middle-aged brain becoming ravaged by early onset Alzheimer's? Possibly. But it's also possible that this book is too much of its time and place for me to understand all of its nuances. And that's too bad. It was like trying to read a book through a layer of fog. I'm thinking I need to check out the 1986 Merchant Ivory film version, which may make everything plainer for me.

However, despite my bitching and moaning, there was the basic theme that cut through the occasional obtuseness of the writing. Forster is clearly supporting Lucy in her ultimate breakthrough against Edwardian society conventions. She loves George, but is hindered in her acceptance of this (to put it mildly) because society is vehemently telling her this is not an appropriate match. Lucy goes along with society until the very end, when she has her epiphany, and finally realizes she loves George, and has the courage to act on her feelings. Love, in the end, triumphs over all...although the lives of the two lovers will not be easy because they have been shunned by some of their friends and family. While the writing in this novel, I think, suffers a bit too much from time and place, at least for me to enjoy it fully, this theme of love is timeless. We all know, or have experienced, romances that have died, love that has faded or been cast aside, because of external or internal forces...society doesn't approve, the family doesn't approve, one of the lovers feels guilty or overwhelmed, etc. etc., and these forces thus act on one or both of the lovers to keep them apart. Relationships are hard enough without forces acting against them. Yet some people manage to persevere, accept their love, and prosper in their relationship. Forster applauds them, and so do I. Love really can conquer all, if two people have the strength and courage to see it through. Where there's a will, there's a way. Maybe I'm just an optimist at heart, but I believe if two people really want to make it work, then it can be made to work, even if it seems like it should be impossible. I think that beagle who escapes from his cage would agree.

Book #46 - Native Son (Richard Wright)

2011-03-13T18:05:00.000-07:00

Holy fuck, what did I just read? I found myself saying that at several points in this book. The past two books I've read..."McTeague" and "Germinal"...have been pretty intense, but "Native Son" by far and away blows them away in the intensity department. Holy fuck!

"Native Son" was Richard Wright's first novel, published in 1940. I can see where it would have had a profound impact on American society at that time. The novel is all about race, and race relations, in late 1930s America (specifically Chicago). This was the era of Jim Crow, a generation before the civil rights era, before black troops could serve with white troops in the army, and a decade before Jackie Robinson. In short, things were bad for blacks in America at that time, and Wright wrote this book to highlight their plight.

I think the subtitle of "Native Son" should be "The World's Worst First-Day-on-the-Job Ever". The story opens, symbolically enough, with an alarm clock going off, which is followed quickly by a scene where a rat terrorizes the Thomas family in their one room tenement apartment. Bigger Thomas, a 20 year old black man, lives there with his brother and sister and their mother. Bigger is thoroughly unlikable. He's tough, he's mean, he's unfeeling, he's totally angry...in short, he's pretty much of an asshole. And it's probably not a coincidence that his name rhymes with the "N" word. After killing the rat with a frying pan, Bigger goes down to hang with his friends, with whom he is planning a robbery of a store run by a white man...something he and his thug friends have not attempted before. Now, one of the things I loved about this book is that there are several places where the plot goes off in totally unexpected directions, and this was one of them. At this point I expected the book to be about Bigger and his gang of thugs committing robberies and other crimes. But no...the heist plan falls apart when Bigger gets in a fight with one of his fellow toughs. And then the welfare office finds a job for Bigger as a chauffeur for a rich white family. Bigger reluctantly accepts the job, much to his mother's relief.

So it's Bigger's fateful first day on the job. His boss, Mr. Dalton, lives in the rich section of town. And as an irony, Mr. Dalton also happens to own the slum building in which Bigger and his family live (and for which they are charged an exorbitant rent, because the slumlords keep housing for blacks in short supply so they can jack up the price). But the pay he offers Bigger is generous, and he offers Bigger a little extra "pocket money" as well. Bigger will have his own room in the basement, and get his meals too. Mrs. Dalton, a blind woman who is always dressed in white (Wright is not subtle in his symbolism), even tells Bigger she will help him get an education if he wants. All this confuses Bigger, and makes him very uncomfortable, since he's not used to white people, especially white people being nice to him. The fact that they don't understand why this might make him uncomfortable makes him more uncomfortable...and angry.

Bigger's first job as chauffer is to drive the Dalton's daughter Mary to a class that evening. Once in the car she tells him she doesn't want to go to class, but wants to go see her boyfriend instead. So he takes her there, and they pick up her boyfriend Jan, who is a communist. Jan and Mary try to talk to Bigger, to get his story, because they are sympathetic to the plight of the Negro, and want to hear what it's like to be black. This confuses Bigger, and makes him more uncomfortable and angry. They insist on riding up in the front seat with Bigger. Jan asks Bigger to take them to an "authentic" black restaurant, and so he does. Then they insist that Bigger come in with them to eat, and share a bottle of rum. Jan tries to shake Bigger's hand. All this freaks Bigger out, and makes him very uncomfortable. Mary and Jan mean well, but they don't understand the conditioning that Bigger has been through. A handshake just ain't gonna wipe away all that shit. So now they're drunk on rum and Bigger drops Jan off at a streetcar stop and then takes Mary home. Uh oh, but now Mary is so drunk from all the rum that she can't really get out of the car and into the house and up to her bed on her own. Bigger is not sure what to do, but decides he ought to carry her inside, which he does, and then up to her bedroom, which he does. Remember, this is 1938, and a black man in a white woman's bedroom is clearly a rapist. He cannot afford to be seen there. Bigger puts Mary into bed and actually does get aroused and thinks about molesting her...but then the door to the bedroom opens and Mary's blind mother walks in. Oh shit!! The mother walks over near the bed and asks Mary if she's alright. Mary mutters incoherently. Bigger is standing there, and freaking out because he doesn't want Mary to spill the beans that he's there in the bedroom, so he covers Mary's face with a pillow. She mumbles something again, and he pushes down harder, and then she mumbles again and he pushes down harder, and...oops, she's dead. Oh, fuck. The blind mother, unaware of Bigger's presence, smells the alcohol on Mary's breath, thinks she's drunk, and walks out of the room to let her sleep it off. BIgger stands there, wondering what to do, and then decides to drag Mary's body down to the furnace, where he can burn the evidence. So he puts her in a trunk, carries her body downstairs, and shoves it in the furnace. But wait...it won't all fit, the head is sticking out and won't go in! So Bigger finds an axe, chops off her head, and throws it into the furnace. Yep, worst first day on the job EVER. And the book isn't even 1/3 over yet.

It's hard to tell how this reads as a blog, but this is all really intense in the book. And it just keeps on...the family thinks the girl has run off, and then Bigger gets the idea to fake a kidnapping so he can get some money out of all this, so he writes a ransom note, and it all just continues downhill from there. It's the kind of book that was painful to read, but I couldn't stop turning the page. At least for awhile. Bigger gets into even more trouble, becomes even more unlikable, and then he finally gets caught. And that's where the book runs into some trouble. The last third or so of the book deals with Bigger awaiting trial, and then the trial itself, and it's here that Wright gets up on a soapbox, and through the words of Bigger's lawyer, a Jewish communist named Max, makes a long speech about the injustice done towards blacks in America. Max's defense of Bigger is mainly that he couldn't help himself, given all the prejudice and hard times he grew up with. He (and Wright) argue Bigger is a product of his environment, and society had better change that environment or there will be lots more Biggers coming along. It's interesting reading, especially from a historical perspective of what it was like for blacks in America in the late 1930s, but it's not the page turning novel that the first 2/3 of the book was. In fact, it gets somewhat bombastic. On the other hand, Wright had a lot to be pissed about, so you have to give him a pass to some extent.

The very last page of the story has a subtle but meaningful (I think ) twist, where Bigger finally makes a small signal that he recognizes one of the white people as a friend (or if not a friend, at least as a fellow human). Wright makes Bigger so unsympathetic that this small, subtle hint at a change in Bigger's attitude, this small gesture of actual human feeling, becomes quite poignant.

But there's an overall question I had about this book: Is it dated? Times have changed SO much in the last 71 years since this book was written. Is this book, as good as it is, relegated to being merely a historical document, describing the terrible past of blacks in America? Sure, there is still prejudice in abundance, but so much has changed and improved since "Native Son" was published...I mean, Jesus, we have a black president now (although the calls from some that he's not American and that he's a socialist who "hates America" seem to hint at a thinly-veiled racist prejudice by not just a few). Yet all one has to do is watch a few episodes of "The Wire" to see that not everything is so different as it was 70 years ago. Many inner city blacks have as few opportunities in life as Bigger did. Things may be better overall, but the problem is not completely fixed yet. Race relations in America is a work in progress. And while it is, society can still produce Bigger Thomases, making "Native Son" still relevant 71 years later. And even if it isn't, it's still a page-turner.

Book #45 - Germinal (Emile Zola)

2011-03-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

For this blog I'm reading some of the most famous books ever written, so you'd think they would all be utterly enjoyable and fabulous. If that were indeed true, then this blog would be an obsequeous brown-nose fest where I raved on and on about how the book I just read was best thing ever written since sliced bread, except for maybe the book that I read before the one I just read. I'd go on and on about how the prose incited me to rapture, much like the taste of Van Winkle's 13 year old Family Reserve Rye, which, by the way, does indeed incite me to rapture as it's the best rye whiskey on the market in my opinion, and I'm somewhat of an expert if I say so myself. But for those of you poor souls who regularly read this blog, you'll know from my reviews that while indeed I have enjoyed most of the books I've read here so far, there are very few I rave about to the extent that I say something like "Woah, this was an incredibly goddamn awesome book, and calls for another sip of that sweet, sweet Van Winkle rye". But the last two books I have read now are indeed stuplendiferously awesome, and deserve to be toasted with the finest rye on the planet. Yes, I'm talking about "McTeague", reviewed last time, and now Emile Zola's "Germinal".

Who is this Emile Zola dude? First of all, as you can see from his picture above he's ridiculously French. In fact, he's one of those great and weirdly prolific French authors of the 19th century, along with Hugo and Balzac. Zola wrote a series of twenty novels called The Rougon-Macquart cycle, of which "Germinal" is a part. These novels follow the members of a single family, and paint a picture of their lives in France under Louis Napoleon's second empire. But "Germinal" can be read as a novel unto itself, which is what I did. But having done so it makes me want to read more of this twenty novel series, because I totally was blown away by it.

"Germinal" is the story of coal miners in a small French town, and their eventual strike against the mining company. Zola is known as one of the founders of "naturalism", a school which seems like it should include Frank Norris ("McTeague") and Theodore Dreiser ("Sister Carrie"), so it's interesting that I've read all these books recently. Naturalism, according to Wikipedia, the source of all true knowledge, is "a literary movement that seeks to replicate a believable everyday reality, as opposed to such movements as Romanticism or Surrealism, in which subjects may receive highly symbolic, idealistic, or even supernatural treatment...Naturalistic works exposed the dark harshness of life, including poverty, racism, sex, violence, prejudice, disease, corruption, prostitution, and filth." Well, call me a lover of sex, disease, and filth, but this naturalism stuff rocks.

"Germinal" begins with the arrival of Etienne Lantier to the town of Montsou in the north of France. Etienne is poor and looking for work, having been tossed off his last job for assaulting a supervisor. He soon gets a job in one of the local coal mines, and the antics begin. He befriends a woman named Catherine who works down in the mines, a 15 year old whose puberty has been delayed due to the hard subterranean labor. Etienne is attracted to Catherine, but before he can do anything about it, she takes up with a belligerent asshole of a miner named Chaval. Chaval hits her and abuses her verbally, and is an all around dick-head, but Catherine doesn't seem to care, presumably because her life is bleak and she feels she has no other options. Etienne is bummed about this, and he and Chaval instantly dislike one another.

And indeed the lives of the miners are all bleak. The first third or so of the book introduces us to a number of miners and their families. They are all struggling to make enough money to feed their families, and to suffer through their very laborious and bleak existence. Oh, and they have sex. A LOT of sex. Their only amusement seems to be taking a member of the opposite sex out behind a haystack and getting it on. And sex is everywhere...there's even the owner of a local grocery store who will extend credit to families only if they let him "party" with their daughters. The subject matter of "Germinal" is reminiscent of Dickens...the lives of poor miners...but Zola is clearly not Charles Dickens. I think the Victorian Dickens would have been a little freaked out by Zola's naturalism and frankness. But to me, it makes Zola seem much more modern, and closer to the present day. There's sex everywhere and he's very frank and clear about it.

Anyway, Etienne is taken in as a boarder by Catherine's family, who always need extra money just to get by, even though their children work in the mines. And then the mining company decides to change the pay structure of the miners' wages. Instead of just getting paid for the coal they mine, they will also get paid to reinforce the mine with timber as they go along. They previously did not get paid for this, and so skimped on the work, leading to cave-ins. This might sound like a good deal at first, but the miners soon realized that it was actually a pay cut, because they would now get less money for the coal mined, and this would not be completely made up for by the money they now got for timbering. This pushes the miners over the edge. They were starving before, and this will now make it worse. Etienne, who has been talking to a Russian anarchist Souvarine who also works for the mining company, decides the workers must go on strike, and he helps lead a strike against the mining company.

This is where the story, already a good one, becomes a page turner. The miners go on strike, the company holds out, and the miners begin to starve. Things look grim. And then things start to get violent, as the miners start to go around sabotaging the mine they work for as well as other local mines, to prevent scabs from working there. In one very explicit scene, the grocer who has been extorting the miners to sleep with their daughters falls off a roof escaping the crowd, and splits his head open and dies. The women in the mob then pull down his pants, rip off his genitals, and parade around with them stuck up on a pole. Like I said, this ain't Dickens. Zola is great with these crowd scenes, and really knows how to build up the tension.

Of course, the strike eventually escalates into real bloodshed, as troops brought out by the mining company to protect the mines from more vandalism fire into an unarmed crowd of striking miners, killing some of them. Everyone is appalled, and the company decides to "settle"...they say people can come back to work and they'll then "re-evaluate" their pay structure. Which means that the miners get some cover for going back to work, which they need to do because they are starving, and the company can then eventually just sort of forget about the "re-evaluation", and continue paying their newly lower wages. Not a very happy ending to the strike.

Bu things get worse when Souvarine, appalled that the miners are all going back to work, sabotages the mine so that it will cave in, which it does when many miners are all at the bottom. This is the climax to the novel, and in the interest of not irresponsibly spewing out spoilers, I won't say exactly what happens, except that some miners survive and are trapped...including Catherine, Etienne, and Caval. Thus their love triangle can play out...to the death! It's all very dramatic and very well done. And only one person survives.

And then, rather oddly enough, the novel ends on a surprisingly upbeat note. Zola says, as narrator, that while the miners may be working again, the deaths of their comrades has energized them, and the mining companies will eventually have to fall, or at least become more responsible employers, because next time the miners go out on strike they will be more energized and ready.

This novel is not only a page-turner and a great read, but it's also very relevant to the news in the past few weeks. The protests in Wisconsin, about trying to take away collective bargaining rights from state government workers, made my reading of "Germnal" seem very apropos. It seems like the struggle of the worker versus the owner, of the rich and powerful versus the weak and poor, has yet to be played out completely, and probably will be forever ongoing. Thus the ideas of "Germinal" will remain relevant for many years to come.

McTeague (Frank Norris)

2011-02-06T22:40:00.000-08:00

So you're surfing the web one night, half-bored, half-naked, and maybe a little tipsy, when you decide to go over to "Blogging the Canon" and see if that middle-aged guy has read another one of his "Top 105" books yet or not. So you pull up the page and see a new entry: "McTeague" by Frank Norris. Immediately something strikes you as a little off, and sure enough, when you go over his top 105 reading list you see that "McTeague" is not on it. You immediately entertain one of three possibilities...that (1) the dude has finally started to develop dementia, a common thing among the soon-to-be-dead-and-buried crowd, that (2) the guy was probably totally shitfaced on grain alcohol and rainwater and didn't even know the book wasn't on his list when he picked it up, or (3) it's some sort of monstrous communist conspiracy involving space aliens and bat guano which is so complicated that one person alone could never fully understand it. Either way, you just decide to go with it and see what he has to say about this "McDonalds" book, or whatever it's called.

Well, the truth is, dear reader, that since compiling my list of 105 books that I really need to read before I die, which means quickly because I'm now at the age where I always have at least one ache or pain going on somewhere in my body which is only partially relieved by sipping on a Corpse Reviver #2, I've compiled a separate list of other books that I really should read, and want to read, that are not in the original 105. I debated whether to just add them to the list, making a top 200 or whatever, but then I realized that I just could keep adding things to the list in order to never have to get around to reading "Ulysses" or Henry James. So I decided to keep the original 105 "must read" list intact, but also to throw in an off-list book every now and then. Thus, I find myself blogging about Frank Norris's "McTeague", which was not on my original list. But of course you don't care in the slightest about any of this..."Yeah, yeah, yeah...dude, just get on to the "McTeague" review, because I heard you're old and might croak at any time, and no Corpse Reviver, #2 or otherwise, could pull a review of "McTeague" out of you at that point". Well, OK then, I will.

"McTeague" is a classic American novel, but one that most people probably have never heard of. This is most likely because the author, San Francisco writer Frank Norris, died at the age of 32 of appendicitis. "McTeague" was published in 1899, one year before the publication of Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie". The timing is not insignificant, because Norris's novel reminds me in many ways of Dreiser's. One thing is their prose, which could be characterized as "no nonsense", realistic, and naturalistic. Both books also deal with the urban poor, and feature characters that fall from the middle class into abject poverty. But while I liked "Sister Carrie", I liked this book even more. In fact, I absolutely loved this book...for a number of reasons which I will now attempt to explicate.

The book's main character is McTeague (we never learn his first name), a man who is not very smart, but very big and strong. When the story opens he's a dentist living on Polk Street in San Francisco. He was born in a small mining town in gold country, and learned the dental trade not through school, but by being apprenticed to a traveling dentist who also had never been to dental school. The reader gets the feeling that McTeague's dental skills are adequate, but not much more. He has a business called "Dental Parlors" on Polk Street in San Francisco. He's happy with his life, which is fairly simple...doing his dental work, hanging with his friend Marcus, and drinking beer and falling asleep in his dental chair. His one dream is to have a sign with a huge gold molar hanging out in front of his office. This is symbolic, because gold ends up being the undoing of almost everyone in this novel.

McTeague lives in an apartment building where he knows all about the lives of his neighbors...the Mexican cleaning lady Maria, his best and only friend and neighbor Marcus, the two elderly people Grannis and Miss Baker (who are in love with one another but have never spoken), and the crazy Polish junk dealer Zerkow. All of these characters are a bit crazy (at least)...in fact everyone in the book has their own craziness, but hey, don't we all?

One day Marcus brings his cousin Trina Sieppe, who he is also dating, into McTeague's "Dental Parlors". Trina was in an accident and has broken a couple of teeth, and Marcus brings her to McTeague for dental work. McTeague agrees to treat her, although her case is complex, and she'll need a bridge that will take many sessions to construct. So McTeague starts to treat Trina every few days or so. McTeague has never had any particular fancy for women, and in fact feels uneasy around them, but he soon develops a simple rapport with Trina, and soon starts to fall for the diminutive woman. One day in the chair she is feeling a lot of pain, so McTeague gives her ether to knock her out. Then...

For some time he stood watching her as she lay there, unconscious and helpless, and very pretty. He was alone with her, and she was absolutely without defense.
Suddenly the animal in the man stirred and woke; the evil instincts that in him were so close to the surface leaped to life, shouting and clamoring.
It was a crisis--a crisis that had arisen all in an instant; a crisis for which he was totally unprepared. Blindly, and without knowing why, McTeague fought against it, moved by an unreasoned instinct of resistance. Within him, a certain second self, another better McTeague rose with the brute; both were strong, with the huge crude strength of the man himself. The two were at grapples. There in that cheap and shabby "Dental Parlor" a dreaded struggle began. It was the old battle, old as the world, wide as the world--the sudden panther leap of the animal, lips drawn, fangs aflash, hideous, monstrous, not to be resisted, and the simultaneous arousing of the other man, the better self that cries, "Down, down," without knowing why; that grips the monster; that fights to strangle it, to thrust it down and back.

This passage reveals one of the book's themes...man as a complex creature with civilized aspects and brutish, animal aspects. These two aspects are often at war. In this case, McTeague gives in to sin and kisses Trina while she is unconscious. When she awakes he asks her to marry him. She freaks out and leaves hurriedly.

However, soon McTeague begins to court Trina properly, by visiting her family and going on outings with them. Marcus quickly finds out McTeague is in love with the woman he himself is courting, but when he realizes McTeague loves Trina more than he does, he nobly tells McTeague that he should have her. He will come to regret this decision.

So McTeague courts Trina, and they are to be married. Then Trina wins $5,000 in the lottery. WOOHOO! So the couple gets married and Trina puts the money away, saving it for the future and collecting the interest income monthly to supplement their own income. Little does anyone know that the money will destroy them all.

But wait, $5,000...that's not much money, or is it? Well, I tried to look this up, but for some reason all inflation calculators I could find begin in 1913, which is 14 years after this novel was published. But even so, $5,000 in 1913 money would be worth $110,000 in 2010 currency. That's a lot of money for blue collar people.

The book has a curious structure. The first half or so of the novel deals with McTeague, Marcus, Trina and her family, and the other characters that live in the building. At about halfway through the novel I thought "Gee, this novel is really fun because these characters are all so wonderful, and their lives and struggles are comical and quaint". Sure, McTeague is not totally sympathetic (he's not very smart, and he can be brutish and mean when aroused), but his story is fun to watch and his faults are more comical than anything. But there are hints of trouble when Marcus and McTeague have a falling out. Marcus is jealous of McTeague's happiness with Trina, and he's also jealous of the $5000 she won in the lottery, claiming that that money should really be his if only he hadn't given up the girl. Anyway, this book reminds me of one of those Friday the 13th movies, or any other teen horror movie, in that a long time is spent developing the characters and making us love them and their crazy lives. And then...The Shit Storm. In Friday the 13th it's a guy with a hockey mask, but here McTeague has a terrible fight with Marcus, who is still pissed off that he didn't get the girl or the $5000, and in the fight McTeague ends up breaking Marcus's arm. Marcus then decides to leave town, but before he does he goes to city hall and informs them that McTeague is practicing dentistry without having been to dental college. The city forces him to shut down his dental business, and he has to take down his gold tooth. From here, McTeague and Trina descend into poverty. One might think that the $5,000 might help, but Trina has become an incredible miser, and will not part with a dime of the money...in fact she makes enough money for them to live on fairly comfortably, but because she feels compelled to compulsively hoard away a huge chunk of it, they slip further down. She has become overwhelmed with avarice. Her gold is weighing her down.

From here I am not going to discuss the rest of the plot of this book in detail because it is so good that I don't want to spoil it. Suffice to say that it doesn't end happily...in fact, every character of importance in this book dies, except for two...the two elderly people Old Grannis and Miss Baker. They have the one happy ending in this book, as they finally get up the courage to speak to one another and profess their love. Everyone else dies, and dies horribly, some not before they're threatened, beaten and abused. I mean, this book goes from funny and almost quaint to brutal scenes of horrific murder. And it's all in one way or another caused by greed over gold and money, specifically the $5,000 lottery winnings. Frank Norris wants you to know that money is bad, and the root of all evil, etc. etc. Greed is bad. He would not like Gordon Gekko.

I also have to say that the final scene of this book, and especially the final sentence, are totally awesome (that's the literary term). Very dramatic, very captivating, very cinematic. Well done, Frank. I will say no more than that.

One side note: in 1924 Erich von Strohein directed a silent movie version of "McTeague". The movie was originally 9 1/2 hours long, but the studio made Stroheim cut the hell out of it, so that in the end it is not cohesive and a lot of characters are missing. But from the cut version and what is known of the long version, it's clear the film was a masterpiece. Unfortunately the cut footage was destroyed, and the movie is considered one of the great lost masterpieces of film. So the movie was lost, and Norris died tragically young. But the book "McTeague" is still out there, and is still a great read, and if you're looking for a book recommendation, consider this to be one. And just pray you don't win the lottery.

Book #44 - Tess of the d'Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy)

2011-02-02T20:29:00.000-08:00

Let's get one thing straight right off the bat: Thomas Hardy gets the award for most awesome mustache of any writer read during the course of this blog so far. I mean this dude looks like he played for the 1973 Oakland A's. He could have been down there in the bullpen with Rollie Fingers and no one would have batted an eye. Seriously. But no, Hardy was no ballplayer. Instead he was a bad-ass writer, cranking out some killer prose. That's one of the things that really struck me about this book...that Hardy could write like crazy. He was also a poet, and it shows in many passages, where he'll wax on poetically about the English countryside where the novel takes place. Some might find his style boring, digressing into languid description at certain points, but I loved it. It set the mood for me. I mean, between his writing and his mustache this guy would be a total chick magnet...if he weren't dead.

The novel's plot is sad and tragic, and it takes a bit of understanding for the modern reader like myself not to just think that the people in the story are complete idiots. The story opens when John Durbeyfield, a drunken farmer, finds out he is descended from an old family named d'Urberville who used to be strong and powerful in the English countryside...although the money and power are long gone and the line is almost extinct. Durbeyfield decides this discovery of his ancestry is just the break his family needs, so he sends his oldest daughter, Tess, to meet and possibly get money from a family named d'Urberville, presumably related, who live on an estate in a nearby town. Durbeyfield needs the money because he's too busy drinking to make his own. Tess doesn't really want to go, but does so out of love and duty for the family. Once there, she learns that they aren't really cousins, as they have adopted the d'Urberville name to give them prestige. And she meets Alec d'Urberville, a young man and a scoundrel, who convinces her to come live on the family's estate so he can try to woo her, and when that is unsuccessful he rapes her. Tess goes home, and is of course pregnant. She has the baby, but the baby gets sick and dies soon after. Tess does not get any breaks.

So Tess, now a scandalized woman for having had a baby out of wedlock, even though she was freaking raped, leaves town and goes to work on a dairy farm where she meets the love of her life, Angel Clare, the son of a preacher man. They fall for each other and get married, even though Tess is horrified of her secret past, and has been tortured about whether she should tell him or not. On their wedding night Angel tells her he has a secret and he feels bad for not telling her. Seems like at some point in his past he got horny and fucked someone. He hopes Tess can forgive him. Of course she can, and then Tess feels safe and tells him her secret...that she was raped and had a baby that died. Angel Clare is mortified and shocked and says how can he love her now that he knows she's not a virgin. So he leaves her and goes abroad to seek his fortune in Brazil.

At this point, the modern reader, like myself, is going "WTF is WRONG with this dude? He's got a beautiful wife he loves, and he's going all ape shit over her having been raped?" But that's the way it was back in those days, and we are all products of our environment. It's pretty clear Hardy doesn't agree with Angel's viewpoint, since it brings tragedy to everyone (oops, sorry for the spoiler). And the book's subtitle is "A Pure Woman" in case we don't get it. Victorian morality was harsh and Hardy clearly condemns it. And meanwhile Tess is all forgiving of Angel, and says she understands how he feels and that he just needs to take some time off and think about how much she loves him and then he'll come around and yes, it's all her fault. It's not her fault, of course, and she's a little self-sacrificing...well, OK, not just a little. It's all greatly annoying to the modern reader (I've used that phrase three times now and I hate it, but I can't think of another one...and that's not the booze talking because I've only had one beer tonight, a delicious Christian Moerlein "Over the Rhine" Ale, from Cincinnati, Ohio) but the people in this novel were Victorians, and they had a whole 'nother way of looking at things than we do. It's easy for us to condemn their behavior, although, actually, as I said that's what Hardy wanted the reader to do. So I guess his job just got unintentionally easier over the years.

Anyway, Tess goes to work on another farm, and on her way there she runs into...wait for it...yes, Alec d'Urberville. He's now recanted his former evil ways and is a traveling preacher. But when Tess talks to him, he seems really creepy still, especially after he makes Tess promise never to "tempt him" again. What a dick. Anyway, soon he decides he wasn't really born again, and gives up preaching so he can stalk Tess. He comes and visits her while she's working her ass off in the fields, telling her if she comes with him she can live in luxury and he'll take care of her beloved family as well. He tells her Angel isn't coming back, so why not just come with him since he loves her. It's creepy. He's creepy. He's a fucking Victorian stalker. But then Tess's father dies, and her mother and brothers and sisters are now all in deep financial trouble. So after lots more angst Tess goes with d'Urberville, who gives money to her family and puts her in fancy clothes and has her live in a fancy hotel with him. Presumably he gets what he wants out of the deal too, if you know what I mean and I think you do.

Then Angel Clare, who FINALLY gets over it, has a change of heart and comes back from Brazil for Tess. He finds her at the hotel. "Too late", she says, and turns away. And then...but hey, I don't want to spoil it for you. Let's just say there's suddenly a murder, and fugitives on the run, and a posse, and an execution. Oh, and Stonehenge. All in the last 20 pages or so. Yes, the ending seems oddly rushed. There are some other odd things in the plot of this book...some weird coincidences, like Tess happening to run into Alec d'Urberville when he's become a preacher...that also seem forced. The language in the book may be beautiful at times, but the plotting can be awkward. Hardy wasn't perfect. Just sayin'.

As a biologist, I couldn't help but see not-so-subtle Darwinian references in this book, which is not surprising, because Hardy was a contemporary of Darwin. Hardy talks about the d'Urberville line as going extinct, and seems to indicate that they had some kind of tragic flaw that lead to their eradication from the land. And Tess's downfall simply reinforces this notion that the family is doomed by forces beyond their control (like natural selection). All that remains of the d'Ubervilles, aside from Tess, are fossils...old mansions in the countryside once owned by the family, and dead d'Urbervilles buried in church crypts. Very eerie, and Victorian gothic, and Darwinian.

So did I like this book? Yes. Despite getting frustrated with the characters and their damn Victorian morality, I found myself not wanting to put the book down. And Alec d'Urberville, that rouge and scoundrel and rapist and stalker, is creepy and evil and vile...and it's always unnerving when he turns up. Which kept me entertained. As does the author's mustache.

Book #43 - The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas)

2011-01-17T19:56:00.000-08:00

If you stopped the average man in the street and asked him about some of the books I read last year for this blog, such as "The Good Soldier" and "Sister Carrie", you'd probably be met with some blank stares before he slowly became convinced you were one of those "elites" and began to beat the living crap out of you. But "The Three Musketeers"...now pretty much everyone has heard of this book, and pretty much everyone has an idea of what it's about. Of course, it helps that this is perhaps the only work of literature with a candy bar named after it (and a good thing too, because "Bleak House Nougat Roll" doesn't have such an appealing name). Yet despite everyone knowing about this book, and maybe having seen one of the movie versions, I'm not sure how many people have actually read the book. Well, now you can count me among those who have. And I suggest you do to, if you haven't already, because this book is a lot of fun.

Note that I said this book is "a lot of fun", not "pregnant with symbolism and character development and deep insights into the human condition". Dumas is not Flaubert. Which isn't to say that he's not a great novelist (note the use of the double negative here, no doubt facilitated by the Little King's Cream Ale I'm drinking...a tasty beer from Cincinnati, Ohio which comes in 7 ounce bottles, thus allowing high schoolers to brag that they "drank a six pack last night". But in my case I can brag that the beer name is fitting for someone blogging about a novel of royal intrigue. But I digress...a lot. Sorry about that.), it's just that he's great for a different reason. The greatness of this book is the plot and the writing...it's like the greatest pot-boiler and page turner ever. It's funny, it's exciting, it's fun. But, as I said, it's not Flaubert.

When the novel starts, we meet the protagonist, D'Artagnon, who at first glance is similar to Julien Sorel of "The Red and the Black" and Frederic Moreau of "A Sentimental Education", in that all three are young men from the boonies who come to the big city to seek their fame and fortune. But Julien and Frederic are complex, richly drawn characters, while D'Artagnan is not. D'Artagnan comes from the countryside ready to kick some ass, and he proceeds to do so. He gets into swordfights, fights duels, joins the King's guards, saves the queen's honor, and later becomes a musketeer. He's a character, and lots of stuff happens to him, but there's no development. This is not a bildungsroman. In Dumas everything is about the plot. And that's not a bad thing, because in this book Dumas is the master of plot.

After joining the King's guard, D'Artagnan quickly befriends three members of the King's musketeers: Athos, Aramis, and Porthos. Well, that is, after he challenges them all to duels. The three of them are brave, honorable men, and expert swordsmen and musketeers. They are loyal to the king, and are thus enemies of Cardinal Richelieu, who is the power behind the throne. And they are fiercely loyal not just to the king, but to each other as well. If one of them gets in a fight, they all get in a fight. They've got each others' backs. Oh, and they seriously like to party. Seriously. Yes, they eat and drink in abundance, gamble to reckless excess, and chase after/pine over women. They're honorable, sword fighting, partying slackers. If they had dope back then they'd probably be stoners too. They get along famously with D'Artagnon, who rapidly becomes the fourth member of their circle, but he's a bit of an odd fit because he's more uptight than the others. He's younger and he has ambition. The others don't...well, at least they don't have ambitions to get ahead in the military...they do have ambitions to marry rich (Porthos) or to go into the priesthood (Aramis).

The novel quickly throws these four characters together and then they start to have adventures. And it's here that it becomes a bit obvious that this novel was published serially. I say that because the novel's structure becomes a bit meandering. That's not to say that it isn't fun and exciting, because it's both of those things, but when the reader takes a step back it's clear that the novel has two main parts, both of which are rather independent of each other. It's like Dumas was making it up as he went along. The first part of the novel revolves around a plot by Cardinal Richelieu to trap the queen into revealing she's been having an adulterous affair with the Duke of Buckingham. The details of the politics are a bit obscure, but the queen is a foreigner and the Cardinal doesn't like her. So when he finds out she's having an affair with Buckingham and that she's given him two diamond tags that the King gave to her, he convinces the hapless King to have a ball and to ask the Queen to wear the diamond tags he gave her. Since she doesn't have them, she'll be trapped and the Cardinal can tell the King of her adultery. The Cardinal insures his plan will succeed by having an accomplice who lives in England, Lady de Winter, to steal two tags from the Duke. The musketeers get wind of all this, and D'Artagnon saves the day by going to England and informing the Duke of the situation. The Duke has new tags made and sends them with D'Artagnon to the Queen, who is very grateful. She wears the tags to the ball, the day is saved, and the Cardinal is freaking pissed. So is Lady de Winter, who becomes the main villain in the second part of the novel.

When the tags episode is over, a new adventure begins. It's not unrelated to the first part of the novel, but it really could stand alone. Basically, D'Artagnon sees Lady de Winter, also known as Milady, in a church and falls in love with her. After dueling her brother-in-law but sparing his life (long story) the brother-in-law introduces them. Soon D'Artagnan tricks her into sleeping with him when it's dark and she thinks he's her lover, the Count de Wardes. After they "do the nasty" she's so satisfied that she tells him to kill D'Artagnon (it's still dark so she still thinks she's with de Wardes). This pisses off D'Artagnon for some reason, who gets his revenge by forging a nasty letter to her and signing it with Count de Wardes' name. Lady de Winter, never one to suffer an insult, is furious and she asks D'Artagnon to kill de Wardes and he agrees to but only if she sleeps with him. So she does and then D'Artagnon, like an idiot, tells her it wasn't the first time he slept with her. Ha Ha! This REALLY pisses her off and she then tries repeatedly to have D'Artagnon killed.

The character of Milady, or Lady de Winter, is pretty awesome. She's SO evil that it's almost a caricature. I won't say what happens, for fear of spoiling the book for anyone who might not have read it, but she's bad bad bad, and kills, or has killed, a number of people before the book ends. She reminds me a bit of a 19th century female version of Lex Luther. She's so evil, and so powerful, and yet so irresistibly uses her feminine wiles to seduce, manipulate, and often kill men, that she's practically a comic book character. In real life no one could be that terrifically bad. Yet Dumas pulls it off. There's a reason this book has been continually read for over 100 years.

As the book progresses towards its conclusion, it gets progressively darker and darker. Again, I won't spoil the plot, but several characters unexpectedly are murdered, causing the reader to think "WTF? Isn't this supposed to be a fun, chivalrous novel?". By the end the novel becomes quite black and frankly somewhat disturbing. And when all is finally resolved, and the bad are brought to justice, the other musketeers eventually retire and D'Artagnon gets a promotion and becomes loyal to the Cardinal. Seriously? The Cardinal? Well, I guess it makes sense, because D'Artagnon and his friends are really just loyal to adventure and chivalrous values. Who they are officially fighting for probably doesn't make all that much difference. Still, the ending is bleak and one raises an eyelid. D'Artagnon has been turned and all innocence is lost.

Dumas wrote two sequels to "The Three Musketeers": "Twenty Years After" and another one that's like 5000 pages long. I probably won't be reading these. But despite that, I highly recommend this book, especially if you're just in the mood for some swashbuckling escapism. It may end darkly, but it never fails to entertain. Maybe that's why it's a classic.

Book #42 - The Good Soldier (Ford Madox Ford)

2010-11-30T00:29:00.000-08:00

On a trip to Washington state over the Thanksgiving weekend I stopped at the Olive Pit in Corning, California, the olive capital of the world. It was there that I met my downfall: chipotle pepper-stuffed olives. Holy Mother of Pearl these things are amazing, especially when strategically placed in a gin martini made with Plymouth Gin. Just saying.

Why am I rambling on about this? Well, because not only am I totally enjoying a martini made with Plymouth Gin and laced with a chipotle pepper-stuffed olive as I write this, but also because I'm a bit stymied about what to say about this book. I somehow remember when I was in college that my roommate, who is now a raging right-winger living in Texas, had to read this book for one of his classes and described it as "putrid". Well, I wouldn't say that. It's an interesting book, and is clearly very well written. But is it one of the great books of the 20th century, as Jane Smiley would have us believe? Maybe, but I'm not convinced. Oh it's good, alright, but it seems a bit dated and emotionally distant.

The book is in first person, and the narrator, an American named Dowell, is clearly shown to be unreliable near the beginning of the book. In fact, he's a frickin' idiot who was unaware that his wife was having an affair with the husband of an English couple with whom he and his wife were best friends. He's unaware of a lot of things, which made me not like him...he's an idiot and after awhile I just didn't care any more. If I were his wife I'd be fucking someone else too, because he's so clueless. I think if I read this book in 1920 I might not have this criticism, but after having read Nabakov's "Pale Fire", which has the best and most cynically funny unreliable narrator EVER, this book was probably a bit ruined for me. The narrator is a jerk and I just couldn't deal with him. If he was crazy, in an interesting way, then I'd cut him some slack, but he's just a dolt.

Having said that, I have to admire this book's craft. It's the story of two couples, the narrator (Dowell) and his wife Florence, and their pals Edward and Leonora. Dowell and Florence are Americans and Edward and Leonora are British, but they're all living in other countries when they meet up. Both couples are wealthy and they become friends. Then Edward starts an affair with Florence. Dowell doesn't find out about this until they are both dead. Leonora tries to tell him but he's a clueless idiot. We learn that Edward can't keep it in his pants, and has affairs with other women too. Leonora knows all about his wanderings, and keeps hoping the new one will be the last one. We learn that Dowell never has sex with is wife because she claims she has a heart condition and can't "do it". We learn all of this in a haphazard order, because Dowell the narrator doesn't really know how to tell the story. And he says so at the beginning of the book. But really he does know how to tell a story because reading this book and finding out about the inner lives of these two couples is like peeling back the skin of an onion...layer after layer is exposed and it all gets deeper and deeper as the story moves along. That part is incredibly well done (although it's so well done that it belies a bit the stupidity of the narrator). But Dowell is still an idiot, and for me the emotion of this story never hits home...as I said it's well crafted but maybe it's just too British for my tastes...I never feel in my heart the emotion and the tragedy of these characters. And I couldn't get past the fact that the narrator is an idiot.

But who am I to criticize a book that's been deemed one of the 100 great books of the 20th century? Maybe more chipotle-stuffed olive laced martinis would help.

Aeneas: The Original Gangsta!

2010-11-13T22:33:00.000-08:00

OK, let's just get this out of the way at the start: Aeneas is one bad ass motherf*cker! If he had access to a gun, he'd pop a cap in yo ass! As it is, he chops off heads, runs people through with his sword and/or spear, hacks off limbs, gouges eyes out...well, you get the idea, which is basically: Don't Fuck with Aeneas. Unless you want your skull split open, your torso impaled, and/or head cut clean off.

I finished The Aeneid last night, and I'm a bit humbled to try to blog about it. I mean, good God, this is one of the all-time literature classics, read by about 800 billion people over the last 2000 years. What hasn't been said about this epic poem? Critics for the past two millennia have analyzed every line ad nauseam (note my use of Latin...how appropriate!), so what is there that I could possibly add? Well, I'll give a few impressions, derivative and trivial as they might be, and then slink slowly back into my whiskey clouded haze.

First of all, as I hinted to in the opening paragraph, this book gets really bloody towards the end. The poem is divided into two halves, with the first half detailing the wanderings of Aeneas and his fellow Trojan refugees as they try to make it to the promised land of Italy. This half of the poem reminds one of Homer's Odyssey. Once in Italy, the second half of the poem details their strife with the native Italians, who are friendly and welcoming at first. But because of misunderstandings, and interference from the Gods (mostly the latter, actually), things quickly fall apart and the Trojans and the Latins soon go to war. And a vicious war it is, described in very bloody and gory detail. This half of the poem is reminiscent of Homer's Iliad. Just to give you a flavor of the bloodiness, let me quote a couple of lines (this from the Robert Fitzgerald translation) from Book XI, where a woman warrior joins the side of the Latins and goes on a bloody rampage against the Trojans on the battlefield:

Then running as Orsilochus gave chase
In a wide circuit, tricking him, she closed
A narrowing ring till she became a pursuer;
Then to her full height risen drove her axe
Repeatedly through helmet and through bone
As the man begged and begged her to show mercy.
Warm brains from his head-wound wetted his face.

Ah, the joys of poetry. And there are many passages like this, describing in gory detail decapitations and impalements and bloody killings on the battlefield. I mean, this poem is like the Roman version of "Grand Theft Auto III". It's pretty impressive, actually. And parents today worry that video games and movie violence will turn their children into psychopathic killing machines, when in actuality, this kind of stuff has been around for the past 2000 years, even in "classic" literature. And as we all know, there have been no incidents of violent behavior over that span of time. Oh, wait...

In addition to sword slashing, skull smashing, and Latin bashing, lots of other stuff happens in the rest of the Aeneid. One pretty cool part is where Aeneas goes into the underworld, where the dead reside, in order to hang out with his dead father. The descriptions of the different parts of the world of the dead are quite fascinating. We learn there are special areas where dead babies hang out, where suicides gather, where criminals are punished, etc. And worst is the people whose bodies were not buried and given funeral rites...these people can't even get across the River Styx until they've hung out on its banks for 100 years. Makes me wonder if Virgil was maybe paid off by some folks in the Roman undertaking business so he'd throw this bit in. Aeneas meets his father, who died a year earlier, and they hang out, have a few beers, and discuss the glory that will be Rome and why Aeneas therefore must continue with his journey, since he's got a lot of founding to do. But perhaps the saddest part of his voyage to the underworld is that he meets Dido, the Carthaginian Queen, who unbeknownst to Aeneas has committed suicide. Some backstory here: Dido was made to fall in love with Aeneas through the meddling of Venus and Juno, for their usual complex reasons. She falls deeply in love with him, and they end up having a torrid affair while the Trojans are in Carthage repairing their fleet. But when Aeneas starts to linger and think about just settling down in Carthage and getting his fill of the royal booty, instead of heading off to found Rome, the Gods send down a messenger who tells him to get off his ass and get going. Aeneas, being full of piety, listens and sails off, leaving Dido so despondant that she builds a huge funeral pyre and throws herself on it. So when Aeneas sees her in the underworld he's taken aback because he hadn't realized she was dead, and feels terrible that she killed herself over him (well, who wouldn't?). He calls to her, and asks for forgiveness, but Dido totally gives him the cold shoulder and doesn't look at him or respond to him in any way...instead she walks on and joins up with her dead husband. Damn girl, that's harsh.

As I said, when Aeneas and his fellow Trojans land in Italy they are initially greeted by the local king with a warm welcome. The king has heard a prophesy that his daughter Lavinia will marry a handsome stranger from another land, and when he sees Aeneas he realizes that he's the dude, and so decides to marry her off to him. But there's just a slight problem: she's already betrothed to guy named Turnus. When Turnus hears of all this, he's pissed, as is the girl's mother. With a little needling from the Gods, this quickly devolves into a full scale war between the Latins (the native Italians) and the Trojans. This is where all the skull splitting, decapitating, etc. comes into play. The fighting goes back and forth, and I don't have the time or the energy or the whiskey to go into all the twist and turns, but it's clear that the final showdown will be a battle between Turnus and Aeneas. Not only are they fighting over a dame (hmmm, just like in the Trojan War) but they are both leading their respective armies. In addition, Turnus killed a young man named Pallas, the son of another local king. This king agreed to an alliance with the Trojans, and sent his soldiers, including Pallas, to join the fighting on Aeneas's side. Aeneas took Pallas under his wing, and became his mentor. Unfortunately for Pallas, Turnus kills him on the battlefield, and then takes his belt to wear as a trophy because he knows Aeneas loves Pallas and he wants to fuck with Aeneas. This turns out to be not a good move. When the final showdown between the two men finally does occur, Aeneas spears Turnus through the thigh. When Aeneas goes over to finish him off, Turnus admits defeat and asks for mercy. Aeneas thinks about it, and begins to think that he doesn't really need to kill Turnus. But then he sees him wearing Pallas's belt and, well, you can guess the rest. Don't Fuck With Aeneas. The End.

A theme I mentioned in my last post on The Aeneid remains through the rest of the book, and that is the relationship of the Gods to events on Earth. Venus is Aeneas's mother, and does everything she can to help him. Juno, for reasons dating back to the Trojan War (see my previous post) hates Aeneas because he's a Trojan. The two conspire to manipulate events either for or against the Trojans, but Jupiter has already told them that it's fated that Aeneas and his fellow Trojan refugees will settle in Italy and found the Roman race. Yet Juno is so damn petulant that she just has to make the Trojans suffer in every way possible. Finally, at the end, Jupiter has had enough, and tells her to just let it go...that she knows Aeneas will kill Turnus and maybe she just needs to take a chill pill. Juno finally relents, but says she wants the Trojans to lose their Trojan identity when they marry the locals and to adopt the local Latin language. Jupiter says sure, fine, whatever, and so Juno steps back and doesn't help Turnus in his final battle. I found it interesting that the Gods can do all kinds of things but they can't ultimately stop what's fated to be. And only Jupiter seems to be able to keep this in mind. Why are the Gods so short-sighted, and what is it that determines fate if it's not the Gods? Doesn't sound very God-like to me on both counts. In fact they don't sound so much like Gods as like cranky Superfriends. Anyway, I don't have the answers to all this, because the whiskey is really kicking in now.

Finally, I did a web search on The Aeneid and learned that St. Augustine read The Aeneid as a child and wept at the death of Dido. I find it utterly mind boggling to think that St. Augustine and I read the same book. I dunno, maybe that's part of the reason that reading the classics is so cool. And yes, St. Augustine's Confessions are on my list, so he and I will have something else in common, in addition to knowing not to fuck with Aeneas.

Book #41 - The Aeneid (Virgil)

2010-10-30T12:16:00.000-07:00

Sing in me, O muse, and let me tell the story of that heroic Trojan warrior, Aeneas, who flees from his fallen city, wanders the Mediterranean, and ends up founding the great city of Rome. Let me sing this story without the use of copious amounts of alcohol, because it's only 1pm and that's way too early to be boozing it up. And this decaf coffee just ain't cutting it, if you know what I mean, O muse. It tastes good, like coffee should, and it's from Ritual Roasters in San Francisco, who make awesome coffee, but the lack of caffeine is always a bit of a letdown when it comes to coffee. Yet that's what a middle aged guy like me is relegated to these days, O muse, because caffeine gets me too wired out and nervous and then I can't get to sleep for days on end and that's just no good, especially when I have to focus at work, which can be hard to do when you've been up for 52 hours straight. Dammit, muse, I've digressed.

Anyway, after finishing up Gilgamesh, I decided to move forward in time about 1000 years to ancient Rome, where the poet Virgil decided to write an epic poem in the spirit of Homer. In The Aeneid he describes the fall of Troy and the subsequent wanderings of Aeneas who will eventually found Rome, the city that Virgil lives in and which is ruled by Augustus Caesar, a very powerful man whom Virgil wants to suck up to, thus giving Virgil the motivation to write his epic poem in the first place. Well, Augustus and Virgil are long dead, but The Aeneid lives on, and it's my job to support its continued existence by reading it and blogging about it.

The poem consists of 12 books, which today we would call chapters. I have finished the first three so far. I was a little bit daunted by reading this one. I read the Homeric epics, The Iliad and The Odyssey, in college and high school respectively, and while I enjoyed them very much, and while the stories have really stuck with me through the years, I remember that parts of them were a little hard to get through. Well, parts of The Iliad anyway. But I'm happy to report that The Aeneid has been a great read so far. The story really moves along, and is quite poignant and moving in parts, even after 2000 years. The only problem I've encountered is that one really needs to know their Greek and Roman mythology to understand everything that goes on in this story. In particular, I wouldn't recommend reading this unless you've already read The Iliad and The Odyssey because so much of what happens in the Aeneid is related to what happens in those epics. And also because Virgil is consciously invoking those works, which were written down maybe some 700 years previously to his writing of the Aeneid.

The story so far: In Book I we meet Aeneas, a Trojan warrior fleeing the fallen city with a ragtag band of fellow Trojans, seeking the promised land called "Italy" where it is prophesied that he will found a new city called Rome, which will eventually rule the known universe. Yes, I know, it's just like Battlestar Galactica, except that the cylons are Greeks. Aeneas has the goddess Venus on his side, because she's his mother, but he has an enemy in Juno, who is pissed off because he's Trojan, and the Trojan prince Paris voted Venus more beautiful than Juno or Minerva in a beauty contest. Yep, there's a lot of back story here, as there is in most other parts of the Aeneid. But all you really need to know is this: don't fuck with the Gods because they will get pissed off and come after you relentlessly. In fact, even if you don't piss them off, but someone from your city once pissed them off, even a little bit a long time ago, then you're still probably fucked because that's the way the Gods roll. But here's the rub: it has been prophesied that Aeneas will found Rome and so nothing that he does, or that any of the Gods do, can really stop this. They can delay it, and make his life a living hell, but there seems to be some part of fate that is beyond even the Gods control.

But I've digressed again. So in Book I Aeneas and his ragtag team are at sea, fleeing Troy, when Juno makes a big storm and tries to kill them all. She fails, and they shipwreck near the new city of Carthage, which it turns out is run by a friendly queen named Dido, who takes the Trojans in and asks to hear their story. Books II and III are Aeneas's retelling of the fall of Troy and their subsequent wanderings to her. Book II in particular tells the story of how the Greeks defeat the Trojans using the famous Trojan horse, and it includes vivid descriptions of the subsequent sacking of Troy. When the Greeks break into the city at night and start the sacking, Aeneas wakes up and is determined to fight them to the death. He fights a bit, but then Venus, his mother, comes to him and tells him that he must flee...that he is fated to found Rome and he thus needs to escape and fulfill his destiny. She then allows him to see what mortals normally cannot see...he sees the Gods helping the Greeks defeat Troy, which makes him realize that fighting the Greeks is futile. Mortals can't beat Gods in warfare. So he packs up some heirlooms, grabs his kid, carries his elderly father on his back, and with his wife following they run away (conveniently illustrated in the picture at the top of this post). But Aeneas makes a mistake by telling his wife to follow them, because she lags behind and is cut down in the streets. Oops. But seriously, the whole scenes of the sack of Troy are both very moving and very exciting. And there's lots of bloodshed. This could make a good movie...maybe with Brad Pitt? Oh wait...

Book III recounts the wanderings of Aeneas and his Trojan refugees from Troy up to the point of their shipwreck in Carthage (which was on the shores of what today is Tunisia). One interesting part of this chapter is that they find a survivor of Odysseus's crew, who is trapped on the island of the cyclops. They take this man on board and he joins up with them, as they escape from the cyclops unscathed. It's kind of fun that Virgil weaves his story in with that of Homer's Odyssey. Too bad he didn't go in for some kind of merchandising tie-in as well.

Now it's onward to Book IV...and because I've had no alcohol of caffeine today, I'm not too tipsy or wired out to prevent me from continuing.

Book #40 - The Epic of Gilgamesh (Anonymous)

2010-10-18T22:19:00.000-07:00

The manuscript you see above was not written by Charles Dickens. Not even remotely. Book #40 is not only the oldest book on my list, but it's also the oldest frickin' book in existence. Seriously dude, it's old. It was written in the days when people chiseled their books on rocks instead of penning them on paper. Yep, I'm talking Flintstones old. The historical Gilgamesh, and there apparently was one, lived around 2750 BC, and this epic was written sometime around 1000 B.C. That can start to boggle your mind if you think about it; the time between Gilgamesh's death and the birth of Christ was longer than the time from Christ's birth to the present day. That's a long time. The geologists I know (and I do know a few) would argue that this is really just a short bit of time, but almost everyone else would not.

The Epic of Gilgamesh as we know it is incomplete. It was discovered in the mid-1800s by a British archaeologist and wasn't translated for years. The "manuscript" was carved onto 12 stone tablets, and is not always 100% legible. Tablet #12 seems out of place narratively, and is assumed to have been added later. Also, there seem to have been many versions of this epic during ancient times, as well as many poems written about the life and adventures of Gilgamesh. The 12 stone tablets are clearly not the first version of this story. The edition I read was by Stephen Mitchell, who filled in the blanks from the writing on the tablets with phrases from other versions of the epic and added lines and transitions as necessary. So while not a literal word-for-word translation, it is probably a better version to read if one wants a literary experience rather than a primarily archaeological one.

The story is not long; I read it in an evening. But it's a good story, and fun to read...all the more so for being over two billion years old. Turns out people back then worried about the same things we do: how to avoid death, the suckiness of growing old, and who can I sex it up with tonight. When the story opens, Gilgamesh is king of the Mesopotamian city of Uruk. He's strong and powerful, and is described as 2/3 god, 1/3 human. But not only is he king, he's a total asshole as well. In particular he makes sure he gets to take the bride's virginity before any couple in the city can get married. Yep, that's gonna win the people over. Plus he "crushes" the young men of the city, whatever that means. So the people call up to the Gods, who take pity on them and decide to create a man of equal strength and courage to Gilgamesh. The plan is that this man, Enkidu, will balance out Gilgamesh. And it actually works.

Enkidu is a wild man living in the woods with the animals after the Gods first send him down to Earth. A hunter discovers Enkidu, and send word to Gilgamesh, who decides to send out a prostitute from the temple to "tame" Enkidu. The prostitute comes to the forest and she and Enkidu get it on. I mean REALLY get it on. For seven days straight. I have to say that this is one of the sexiest passages I've read in quite awhile...and it's quite explicit. It's nice to know that some things have not changed with time. Anyway, after Enkidu is exhausted from all the ancient Sumerian nookie he realizes he's no longer an animal, and decides to come to the city. He's been civilized by sex. He hears of Gilgamesh from the prostitute, and he longs to both challenge Gilgamesh to feats of strength as well as to befriend him, because he's lonely and needs a friend. It's interesting that sexual intimacy with a woman still finds him lonely and wanting friendship. He needs a guy friend with whom he can hang out, drink beer, watch some football, and slay savage dragons (more on that later). And so does Gilgamesh.

So Enkidu heads for the big city lights. Along the way he hears how Gilgamesh treats new brides, and this pisses Enkidu off. So when he gets to Uruk he goes to a wedding and blocks Gilgamesh from entering the bridal chamber. Gilgamesh is not happy about this. No he's not happy at all. So they have a big long homoerotic fight, and Gilgamesh eventually pins Enkidu down, who then admits that Gilgamesh is stronger. This makes Gilgamesh happy, and they are now officially BFFs. Gilgamesh is so excited about having a new friend he suggests they go risk their lives and try to kill Humbaba, a crazy monster out in some distant holy forest where mortals are forbidden to go. Enkidu is clearly not as stoked about this idea as Gilgamesh, but he soon caves and they prepare for their adventure. The city's elders are not too convinced that their adventure is a good plan, but now that Gilgamesh has found his new buddy he's totally into going out and getting some serious glory, rather than staying home and raping more brides, so that's that. He and Enkidu make a bunch of weapons in preparation for their adventure.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu set out on their journey, and they travel way faster than mere mortal men. And they don't even use jet-packs! Along the way Gilgamesh starts to chicken out, but Enkidu talks him back down, and then awhile later Enkidu freaks out and Gilgamesh has to talk HIM back down. Gilgamesh has as series of bad dreams but Enkidu keeps cheering him up by putting an almost laughably optimistic spin on their interpretation. So with their mutual support they finally make it to the forest where Humbaba lives.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu proceed to chop down some of the sacred trees in the forest, and a very annoyed Humbaba suddenly appears. They fight! Things aren't looking so good for the BFFs when Gilgamesh appeals to the god Shamash for help. Shamash hears his plea and sends down some storms to attack Humbaba. Humbaba falls under the onslaught, and Gilgamesh moves in for the kill. Humbaba reminds Gilgamesh that he's working for the god Enlil, and Enlil will be really pissed if Humbaba turns up dead. Gilgamesh starts to get all merciful when Enkidu speaks up and tells him just to kill Humbaba and then they can leave before Enlil even finds out. Gilgamesh listens to his buddy and kills Humbaba, and they travel back to Uruk with a pile of new lumber from the sacred forest they cut down, along with Humbaba's head as a trophy. When they return they build a huge city gate with the lumber from the forest.

Now that our two friends have thoroughly insulted the God Enlil, they continue on their hubris ways by insulting the god Ishtar, who wants Gilgamesh to become her lover. After Gilgamesh points out that Ishtar got tired of all her previous lovers and punished them terribly, she gets very angry and tries to kill Gilgamesh and Enkidu with a sacred bull. But the two BFFs kill the sacred bull and openly taunt Ishtar. Never a good thing to do with a God. Now all the Gods are getting pissed at them. So the gods have a meeting, and they decide to cause Enkidu to fall ill and start to slowly die from disease. Enkidu is really bummed out about this, but when Shamash tells him on his sickbed that Gilgamesh will be inconsolable after he dies Enkidu cheers up a bit. And then he dies.

Gilgamesh is indeed inconsolable upon Enkidu's death. He like totally loses it. He goes into denial and refuses to bury Enkidu until he sees a worm crawl out of his nose, which seems to jolt him back to reality for a minute. But Enkidu's death has made Gilgamesh totally freaked out about death. So he puts on animal skins and goes out to wander in the wilderness, trying to find Utnapishtim, who managed to survive the great flood that almost destroyed humanity, and who is the only person upon whom the gods have granted immortality. His search won't be easy as Utnapishtim lives in the place where the sun rises, where no mortal has ever been. Gilgamesh travels a long time to a double-peaked mountain and then to the entrance of the tunnel where the sun travels every night to get to the other side of the Earth. Gilgamesh has only 12 hours to cross through the pitch-black tunnel before the sun comes through and burns him to a crisp. So he runs and runs through the pitch black tunnel, and yes, he makes it on time...otherwise there wouldn't be a story, really. On the other side of the tunnel is a lush land from where the sun rises. After some more adventures and trials Gilgamesh finally meets Utnapishtim and asks him how he too can become immortal. Utnapishtim tells him to chill out, that nothing lives forever. He explains that when the gods bring someone into the world, they also decide the day of death. Death is certain, so get over it.

Utnapishtim then tells Gilgamesh his story, which is one of the most interesting parts of the book, because his story is remarkably like Noah's, even though The Epic of Gilgamesh was written before the Old Testament. The god Enlil once decided to destroy all of humanity with a flood (he certainly seems like a peevish God), but fortunately another god tipped off Utnapishtim, who was a king, and told him to build a huge boat and take two of every living thing on it. Sound familiar? So Utnapishtim builds the boat and there's a huge flood and everyone else dies except for Utnapishtim and his wife. Utnapishtim and his boat come to land first on a mountain, and he releases a series of birds to see if they can find land. The third bird returns, and Utnapishtim eventually reaches shore. When Enlil finds out humans have survived he's royally pissed, but the the other gods tell him he's a jerkwad for killing everyone indiscriminately and he should be ashamed of himself. He sees their point, and so he makes Utnapishtim and his wife immortal to make up for killing everyone else. Um, perhaps too little too late, Mr. Enlil.

Utnapishtim finishes his story and tells Gilgamesh to get the f#&k out of there, that he won't ever be immortal and he needs to go home. But at his wife's urging, he relents a bit and tells Gilgamesh of a magical plant that grows at the bottom of the sea, which will make old people young again if they eat a little bit of it. This satisfies Gilgamesh's urge for immortality, even if it involves eating part of what's probably a nasty-tasting plant every once in awhile, and so Gilgamesh dives to the bottom of the sea (with the help of rocks tied to his feet) where he grabs one of the plants. Then Utnapishtim sends Gilgamesh off across the sea towards home, piloted by Utnapishtim's private boatman. Gilgamesh is feeling pretty good about everything. Until he fucks it all up. One evening, as he and the boatman are camping, Gilgamesh decides to go for a swim, leaving the precious plant unattended. No, Gilgamesh, what are you thinking?!? So the inevitable happens: a snake crawls and eats it. Yep, now there's a really young snake and the magic plant is gone along with Gilgamesh's dream of a new youth. Oops. Dude, NEVER leave a precious plant unattended! How did you get to be king anyway? When Gilgamesh sees what's happened, he sits down and cries like a little girl. Then he goes home to Uruk. In the final scene, he shows off the great city to the boatman, who is still accompanying him, pointing out the great walls and marvels of the city.

At first glance the ending seems like a WTF ending...as in "WTF, that's it?". But then, upon thinking about it, it all makes sense to me. Gilgamesh has given up the search for immortality, given up his epic struggles with the gods and monsters. He has come to live in this world, and can now appreciate how beautiful his city is. It's never stated outright, but one knows that he will be a good king from now on, building his city and being good to his people. The bride raping won't be continuing. And we know that the legend of the good and great king Gilgamesh has been passed down, verifying this interpretation. His hubris was punished, but he has learned his lesson. Even though he is 2/3 god, 1/3 human, one senses that he has become all human by the end of the story. In a way, this is a very odd bildungsroman (now there's a word, like weltanschauung, that's only used by graduates of a liberal arts college).

I found this story fascinating. I can imagine reading it again in a few years (it's short, so that's not that big a commitment). The parallels to Biblical stories (Noah, the snake and the fall from Eden) are really interesting...where did these stories originally come from?...how were they passed along through different societies? The fact that the story of Gilgamesh is so old, that it's the first recorded story humanity ever told, is captivating in and of itself, but the fact that it has so much symbolism and allegory and humanity...so much that we can still relate to 3000 years later...makes it all the more incredible. The world has completely changed since the days of Gilgamesh, yet people are still the same. Maybe the geologists are right...3000 years is really only the blink of an eye.

Money for Nothing

2010-10-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

Today I finished up the last 100 pages of "Sister Carrie". Man, it was painful in places. I was surprised how it ended, in that it wasn't as totally bleak as I thought it would be...just 3/4 bleak. But the 3/4 bleakness was pretty damn bleak. And yet it was almost impossible to put down, for as depressing as the final third of the book was, it was the best part of the book for me...it became a total page turner.

Hurstwood keeps looking for a job, but never finds one. Why not? Well, at first it's because he feels that all the jobs that might be available are beneath him. I don't think he quite realizes his predicament. And if you'll remember, as Dreiser points out, he's now in his mid-40s and so is obviously washed up and totally over-the-hill. Week after week go by with no money coming in, and thus his savings dwindle away. Then he simply becomes totally apathetic and resigned. And then he gambles some of his remaining money away trying to score big in poker games (never a good idea, by the way). Carrie is worried, but doesn't do anything about it except to nag Hurstwood to get a job from time to time. Finally Hurstwood gets a job as a scab streetcar conductor during a strike. This makes for one of the more gripping chapters of the book. Work conditions are terrible (it's mid winter), and strikers are attacking the trains and the scab operators. Police and guards ride on the trains, but there's only so much they can do. On his second day at work, when a bullet from a striker grazes Hurstwood's shoulder, he decides to call it quits and goes home. And that seems to have completed the breakdown process for Hurstwood. He never seriously looks for work after that.

Meanwhile Carrie has had enough and gets motivated herself. When she was in Chicago she acted in an amateur play put on by the local chapter of the Elks. The play was terrible, but she loved to be in it, and it was clear she had a natural talent for acting...as the narrator says at one point, she had a very high emotional intelligence, and was very evocative onstage. Plus she was a hottie. The crowd loved her. So she goes looking for theatrical work on Broadway, but having no real experience it's almost impossible for her to break into the business. Still she manages to land a job as a girl in a chorus line. She does well, and one night, emboldened by her talent, she improvs and speaks a line in response to the main actor, even though she wasn't supposed to ever speak onstage. The crowd roars in laughter and the actor improvs a line in response, which gets even more laughter. The director tells her to keep doing that in subsequent performances. She gets a slight raise to her meager wages, which are all needed for household expenses. Hurstwood is still just sitting around, hoping something will turn up as he stares into space sitting in his rocking chair all day. Good plan, Hurstwood.

The book gets increasingly painful as Carrie's life begins to take off while Hurstwood's falls off the cliff. The contrast between the two makes everything so much more poignant. Carries gets a larger speaking part, draws rave reviews, and gets another raise. She starts appearing in advertising posters for the theatre. Her parts get bigger and bigger, and her beauty and talent are winning her numerous fans. Disgusted by Hurstwood, who has finally run out of money, she moves out, putting $20 in an envelope on the table as she leaves him. This motivates Hurstwood to do...nothing! He's a broken man. He begins begging on the street. He moves into a flophouse to save money, and then moves out onto the street, sleeping in homeless shelters and going to soup kitchens for food. Remember, this was before the days of welfare, so he has no real options. Meanwhile Carrie gets a huge raise, becomes a huge star, and now can afford anything she wants. It's all her materialistic dreams come true! She has enough money to buy all the clothes she desires, and then still has a bunch of money left over! She has male admirers! Former friends come out of the woodwork to see her! But despite all the admirers and "friends" she's made lonely by her fame and fortune. She doesn't get close to anyone. Hurstwood approaches her for money a couple of times, and she gives it to him, but he has enough pride not to keep begging from her. Plus she's a star and is hard for him to get to (I should study this carefully because no doubt that's what will happen to me when this blog takes off).

Finally the inevitable happens to each: Hurstwood gets tired of begging and scraping by, so he rents a room in a flophouse, turns on the gas, and kills himself. Meanwhile Carrie never even hears of his death. Instead she's now a rich and famous star but realizes now that she has all the money she could ever need and more, that she's still unhappy. Perhaps just as unhappy as ever. All the nice clothes and jewelry she always longed for are now in her possession and yet she's just as unhappy as before. This seems to be Dreiser's indictment of our materialistic society: be careful what you wish for, because when you get it you'll still be unhappy as ever. Longing for material goods will never make you happy, because you're doomed either to be always longing for enough money to buy them, or else having enough money to buy them and then finding out that you're still completely unsatisfied once you have them. Money can't buy happiness. Money can't buy me love. Hmm, OK, but at least she's not DEAD and buried in a pauper's grave like Hurstwood. I dunno, I'd rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy. Is that so wrong?

I went online and found some rather scathing reviews of this novel, including one by Garrison Keillor. He and others complain about Dreiser's writing style, which can be clunky, moralizing, melodramatic, and overly philosophical. Yeah, I can see this, but for me the story itself overwhelms any bluntness in the writing style. The fact that I can find a book that's a page turner and yet incredibly painful to read shows that it had an effect on me. I hated parts of it, and couldn't put it down at the same time. I so wish I could find more books like that.

Book #39 - Sister Carrie (Theodore Dreiser)

2010-10-11T22:26:00.000-07:00

I'm about 2/3 of the way through Theodore Dreiser's "Sister Carrie" and I have to say this book is scaring the living hell out of me. Not only is it depressing, and seems like it will clearly not end well, but the problems the characters face seem eerily relevant to today's harsh economic climate. Allow me to explain...

The novel opens with Carrie Meeber, an 18 year old from some hick town in Minnesota or some such place, boarding a train to seek her fortune in Chicago. The eternal lure of the big city has captivated her and she's off to live with her older sister and her husband, find a job, and live the life that we have all enjoyed watching on "Sex and the City". Well, as it turns out, the 1889 version of "Sex and the City" features single women working in sweatshops and not having any money to hang out with friends and drink cosmopolitans, which is just as well because they won't be invented for another 100 years. Oh, and the sister and her husband are poor themselves, never go out because they have no money, and just want to use Carrie as a source of rent, which she must pay out of the meager wages she receives, leaving her with almost nothing. Fortunately for Carrie she was totally hit on by a traveling salesman who sat next to her on the train to Chicago. The salesman, Charlie Drouet, meets up with Carrie in Chicago. When she tells him she's leaving Chicago to go back home because she can't stand living at her sister's place and because she lost her job in the sweatshop because she got sick and couldn't work for a few days he tells her "No problem, I'll put you up in an apartment and you can be my mistress...um, I mean fiance". Carrie thinks about this for about 3 seconds and then accepts the offer, although to her credit she feels a bit guilty...at first. But then Drouet puts her up in an apartment, and buys her nice clothes and all kinds of bling and she's like "Oh yeah, bring it on Mr. Salesman. When are we getting married?"

Drouet soon moves in with her and promises her they'll get married as soon as this big business deal he's working on comes through, but deep down she knows that's not likely, and besides she's just not all that into him. But she's definitely into the things he can buy for her. In fact, a big theme of the book seems to be economics and material consumption. Carrie would fit right in in the early 21st century shopping malls of California. She loves clothes, and material things, and the latest fashions, and wants them all. Drouet buys her some things, and she's grateful for that, but she clearly wants more. Well, don't we all. Welcome to America.

Then Drouet introduces Carrie to his buddy Hurstwood who manages an upscale bar. Hurstwood's a stout man in his early 40s who's well-dressed and very sociable, which he needs to be for his job. Hurstwood is totally smitten by Carrie, and when he learns that she's not married to Drouet he decides to go for it. So he starts hanging out with Carrie when Drouet is out of town on sales calls. He soon tells Carrie he loves her and wants to marry her, but she says she'll have to think about it because even though she doesn't love Drouet, he's been awfully nice to her and has put her up in an apartment and she hasn't had to hit the sweatshops anymore, etc. What Hurstwood hasn't told Carrie is that he's already married. Oh yeah, he's a scumbag alright. Unfortunately for him, his wife soon figures out that he's seeing someone on the side, and she tells him she's getting divorced and is taking everything. D'OH! Meanwhile Drouet also gets wind of their romance and confronts Carrie, who admits it. Drouet tells her Hurstwood is married, and she is totally pissed off...in fact, she's more upset over that than by the fight she's having with Drouet. Drouet storms out, although he'd like to make up with her. Carrie doesn't know what to do, and neither does Hurstwood. But then Hurstwood gets an opportunity one night when the safe in the bar gets left unlocked, and he finds $10,000 dollars inside. He pulls it out an stares at it, and wonders if he should take it or not...when suddenly the safe door locks itself, and he's holding the money! Damn, I hate it when that happens. So he puts the money in his bag and runs off.

Hurstwood goes to Carrie, who tells him to fuck off, but he says "No, you gotta come with me, Drouet is hurt and in the hospital". Carries is freaked out and goes with him to the train station, but when she slowly realizes they're on a train to Detroit and not the hospital she gets suspicious, and he admits that he lied and that he and his wife broke up and he wants to run away with her. Oh man is she pissed, but she goes along with Hurstwood. They go to Montreal, where a detective corners Hurstwood and says that while he can't be arrested in Canada, the detective will ruin his reputation and make his life a living hell. So Hurstwood writes the bar owner from whom he stole the money, apologizes, and sends the money back. All is forgiven, except that Hurstwood now only has $1000 to his name. He and Carrie decide to go to New York City to live. Hurstwood buys part ownership in a bar, and all goes well for awhile, even though the bar is not up to the standards of the one he managed in Chicago. Poor Hurstwood is now a small fish in a big pond, but still he manages to scrape by. But then some new neighbors move into the flat next door and Carrie befriends the wife. Seems the new people have lots of money, and the wife tells Carrie that she needs to buy all the latest fashions and Carrie is like totally into that. Hurstwood is not, but he puts up with it until his bar loses his lease and he's forced out, meaning he's lost his source of income. So Carrie has to stop buying new cloths and they have to move downtown to a cheaper apartment.

Hurstwood begins to look for work, but it looks bleak. And this is the part that just kills me. Dreiser keeps going on and on about how Hurstwood is totally over the hill, and no one wants to hire him because he's too old, and he's in all this pain because he has to walk all day looking for a job and his aged body can't take it...and he's 42 YEARS OLD! That's younger than me. Let me repeat that...he's YOUNGER than me. Well, fuck you Dreiser. That cocksucker was 29 when he wrote this book. And look what he wrote: Hurstwood is totally fucked and he's younger than me. So what happens if I, the middle-aged scientist/musician, lose my job in this economy? It looks like the tenements of New York will be my fate, and a slow downward spiral, according to the famous writer Theodore Dreiser. Yeah, fuck you, Dreiser. I suppose things could look up in this book, as I haven't finished the novel yet, but Dreiser is painting a bleak picture and somehow I think this whole thing will end horribly. Just what I frickin' need. Sigh. Where's my martini? Hey, bartender, the old blogger guy needs his martini!! Quick, before he dies!

Book #38 - All the King's Men (Robert Penn Warren)

2010-09-21T17:46:00.000-07:00

After reading the first paragraph of "All the King's Men" I thought to myself "Man, can this guy write". I mean, check it out:

Mason City. To get there you follow Highway 58 going northeast out of the city, and it is a good highway and new. Or was new, that day we went up it. You look up the highway and it is straight for miles, coming at you, with the black line down the center coming at you and at you, black and slick and tarry-shining against the white of the slab, and the heat dazzles up from the white slab so that only the black line is clear, coming at you with the whine of the tires, and if you don't quit staring at that line and don't take a few deep breaths and slap yourself hard on the back of the neck you'll hypnotize yourself and you'll come to just at the moment when the right front wheel hooks over into the black dirt shoulder off the slab, and you'll try to jerk her back on, but you can't because the slab is high like a curb, and maybe you'll try to turn off the ignition just as she starts to dive. But you won't make it, of course. Then a nigger chopping cotton a mile away, he'll look up and see the little column of black smoke standing above the vitriolic, arsenical green of the cotton rows and up against the violent, metallic, throbbing blue of the sky and he'll say, "Lawd God, hit's a-nudder one done done hit!" And the next nigger down the row, he'll say, "Lawd God," and the first nigger will giggle, and the hoe will lift again and the blade will flash in the sun like a heliograph. Then a few days later the boys from the Highway Department will mark the spot with a little metal square on a metal rod stuck in the black dirt off the shoulder, the metal square painted white and on it in black a skull and crossbones. Later on love vine will climb up it, out of the weeds.

Now that's just damn good writing. The whole paragraph not only tells a tragic story all in one paragraph, but is so evocative of a time and place, in this case the deep south of the 1930s. There were lots of passages in this book where the writing was so good I had to stop and say "Woah", sip some bourbon, and then go back and read the paragraph again, just to savor the words more carefully.

But it's not just the writing, but the story itself which also makes this a great and enjoyable book. When I started this book, I knew it was about a politician similar to Louisiana's Huey Long. Willie Stark is the governor of a southern state, and the book follows his rise from a poor country lawyer to a powerful governor who runs a vicious but effective political machine. The story is told by Jack Burden, a former reporter who goes to work for Willie at the beginning of his political career, and moves up with him as his right hand man. But this novel has so much in it than just the political story of Willie Stark. In fact, the novel is much more about Jack Burden than it is about Willie Stark.

At the beginning of the novel we find that Willie is running for re-election, and a prominent judge, Judge Irwin, has thrown his support to Willie's opponent. Willie and Jack go to visit Judge Irwin, unannounced and late in the evening, and Willie tries to coerce the Judge into supporting him. It fails, and the attempt is very uncomfortable to Jack, because Judge Irwin was a good family friend, who treated Jack like a son after Jacks' own father left the family. After they leave, Willie tells Jack to dig up some dirt on Judge Irwin, so that Willie can blackmail him to get his support. Jack tells Willie that the judge is an upstanding citizen, and that he can't believe there'd be any dirt on the judge. Willie tells Jack to find the dirt because "There's always something", and that "Man is conceived in sin and born in corruption, and he passeth from the stink of the didie to the stench of the shroud. There is always something." He also tells him to "make it stick". So Jack searches to see if there's anything in the judge's background that can be used against him. And he finds it, and makes it stick.

The story jumps back and forth in time. The part I just described occurs in the first chapter. The story then goes back and tells Willie Stark's tale of rising up from a hick farmer's son to a political powerhouse. And it tells the story of Jack Burden, and his background as well. Jack's family was not only friends with Judge Irwin, but with the family of a former Governor, Governor Stanton, whose children, Adam and Anne, Jack is close childhood friends with. In fact, Anne Stanton was Jack's first love. The whole story is a slow unfolding of what Jack finds out about Judge Irwin, and how this becomes a huge tragedy for Jack, the judge, Anne and Adam Stanton, and Willie Stark himself. It's tragedy on a Greek scale, although at the very end the story has a moderately happy ending. There is some redemption after all.

One of the big themes of the book is that actions have consequences. Jack's digging up the dirt on Judge Irwin has huge consequences, as do may other actions in the book (the deep south in the 1930s was apparently rife with political corruption. Fortunately that kind of thing would never happen in our day and age). For a long time, Jack is fairly amoral himself, and formulates a theory that people do what they do because they are biological machines made of bone and muscle and that they can't help themselves. Their actions are just the results of biological organisms "twitching". As the tragic events of the novel unfold, Jack finally realizes that people need to take responsibility for their actions, and that his actions and the actions of others are not just the results of biological twitches.

If you've noticed, I haven't given any spoilers as to what Jack finds out, and how it affects the characters. That's because I want you to read the book and learn these things on your own. This is a really great book, one of my favorites so far on my list, and it deserves to be read and savored. The author is great at building up tension, and pulling off plot twists and surprises, and I'd hate to spoil it. So read the book...it's a great one.

Around the Horn

2010-08-30T20:57:00.001-07:00

If I were to write a book about my adventures as a biochemist ("Twenty Years Before the Microscope") then you might read sentences like this: "I raised up the pipetteman and delivered the restriction enzyme into the Eppendorf tube. I knew that after vortexing, and a stay in the 37C water bath, there would be agarose gel electrophoresis." If you haven't been trained in molecular biology, then that quote probably sounds like gibberish. Which is why I would laugh in "Two Years Before the Mast" when confronted with passages like this:

The wind was now due southwest and blowing a gale to which a vessel close-hauled could have shown no more than a single close-reefed sail, but as we were going before it, we could carry on. Accordingly, hands were sent aloft and a reef shaken out of the topsails and the reefed foresail set...We sprang aloft into the top, lowered a girtline down by which we hauled up the rigging, rove the tacks and halyards, ran out the boom and lashed it fast, and sent down the lower halyards as a preventer.

Excuse me, but WTF? Sounds like sailors were climbing up into the sails and doing all sorts of things, but exactly what I'm not sure. Still, does it really matter? The language is all crazy nautical, and makes me feel like I'm being sprayed by waves breaking over the bow, so finally I decided maybe I just needed to go along with it and that's what I did. I'll never be a sailor shipping out before the mast, but at least now after having finished the book I can talk like one. "Man the jib and reef up those tackles and halyards men! Ahoy maties! Don't be a soger!" See, I'm pretty convincing, right?

In the latter part of this book, the author describes the voyage home to Boston from California, two years after he shipped out. The eventful part is sailing around Cape Horn at the tip of South America in June, which is winter down there. Needless to say, it's tough going...lots of storms and snow and ice and rain and days that are five hours long before the sun sets. Frostbite was a real threat, but the sailors couldn't wear gloves because they couldn't hold on to the ropes very well when wearing them. And the author describes how their clothes were basically wet for a couple of months straight. It sounds pretty miserable, and it certainly was. It's kind of amazing that anyone survived these journeys. It makes one thankful for the Panama Canal.

Once around the Horn, several of the sailors get scurvy. This was in 1838, and it wasn't until 1932 that Vitamin C was discovered and the cause of scurvy (the lack of Vitamin C) was known. At the time of this voyage all that was known was that "fresh food" could cure scurvy (which meant plants, which contain Vitamin C). Meals on board the ship consisted of a piece of salted meat and some biscuit. Every meal, every day. Mmmmm. Fortunately, right before one of the sailors was about to die, they came across another sailing ship, who gave them onions and potatoes. Every sailor was given these daily, and all were cured. The author describes how they would just eat the onions like apples, and I'm thinking that that must have been one smelly ship.

Finally the ship makes it home to Boston, the sailors leave the boat, and the author goes back to Harvard to get his degree. The end. But wait...there's more! For the second to last chapter, the author goes into lawyer mode (he got a law degree) and starts going on and on about the rights of sailors, and the legal limits to a captain's authority, etc. And I have to say this was a pretty dull chapter, and out of character with the rest of the book. But then, there's one final chapter, added as a postscript 24 years after the book was initially published. This chapter tells of the author's trip, made in his mid-40s, back to California 24 years after his sailing days. He is blown away by what he sees...especially in San Francisco. When he was there in the 1830s there was no town, just an old broken down Mission. When he returns it's thriving metropolis, and there are other cities along the bay as well (Oakland, San Jose, Santa Clara), not to mention cities inland like Sacramento. The author is treated as a celebrity in San Francisco, his arrival being announced in the papers, because his was the only account of California written by an American before the Gold Rush days, so all the original pioneers read his book to get an idea of what it was like. He hangs out in San Francisco for awhile, no doubt going to dance clubs and cocktail lounges....maybe checking out the Museum of Modern Art He then takes a steamship down the California coast, visiting Santa Barbara and San Diego, before coming back to San Francisco and then heading to Hawaii. This chapter, written 24 years after the rest of the book is much more sentimental. He meets a lot of his old shipmates and acquaintances from his shipping days, and he's obviously very nostalgic for the past as are the people he meets. And I get the feeling it's not just the 24 years of time, but also the massive changes that occurred in California during that time that probably makes the past seem even more distant than it was, enriching and enhancing the nostalgia. At any rate it's a very moving chapter, and a fitting and poignant end to the book. This book is an American classic, and while it might not be for everyone, if you're interested in what the early 19th century sailing life was like, or if you're interested in California history, then this is well worth reading.

Book #37 - Two Years Before the Mast (Richard Henry Dana)

2010-08-15T22:55:00.000-07:00

Aye, maties! Tonight I'm drinking a Mexican beer (Modelo) with lime, which seems appropriate for the book I'm currently reading. Leaving behind the 1848 France in "A Sentimental Education" I decided to step back 16 years earlier, and to another continent. I also left behind dithering young French people who talk a lot but never really do anything, in exchange for hard working, manly sea-faring men.

I'm about half way through "Two Years Before the Mast" by Richard Henry Dana. It's another American autobiography, of which I've read three others so far for this project (by Ben Franklin, Booker T. Washington, and Frederick Douglass). This book is about a two year period on the author's life. He was an undergraduate at Harvard when he contracted measles, which caused his eyesight to weaken so that he could not continue his studies. He decided that "hard work, plain food, and open air", and a lack of books, could possibly cure him, so he shipped out of Boston on a merchant sailing vessel bound for the California coast. The vessel carried goods for the white settlers in California, which they would both sell and trade for cow hides which they would then transport back to Boston. The whole trip was to take an estimated 2-3 years. You have to admit, this guy had some balls...his eyesight sucks so this young, seemingly well-to-do guy signs up for a couple of hard years as a sailor, which he seems to have had absolutely no experience in, instead of traveling to France and lounging around with the characters in "A Sentimental Education".

So he sets sail. Interestingly we never hear anything else about his eyesight, so he seems to have done alright on that score. They leave Boston and sail down the coast of North and South America (remember it's 1834 so there's no Panama Canal yet). At one point they're chased by what seems to be a pirate ship (it's painted black and has no flags, and pursues them relentlessly) but they manage to escape. Then they sail through Cape Horn at the foot of South America, enduring its terrible storms and weather, and then sail northward for California.

Once they reach California, they then start to endlessly sail up and down the coast, from San Diego to Santa Barbara to Monterey to San Francisco, and back and forth from one port to another, each time trading goods and stocking up on cow hides to take back. California at that time was owned by Mexico, and the small settlements were all built around a Catholic Mission and a Presidio (fort). The white population was mostly Spanish and very sparse. Numerous Indians lived in the towns, and these people tended to work for the white people. As someone who has lived in California for almost 20 years now, it's fascinating to read the author's descriptions of the small towns and settlements that grew up to be the major cities of this state. He describes sailing into San Francisco Bay and stopping in San Francisco, which was only a few shanties at the time, apart from the Mission Dolores, which is still standing and is about a mile from where I'm writing this. It's incredible that this state has become what it currently is in just 175 years after this was written. Keep in mind too that the author sailed to California 15 years before the gold rush and it's influx of people.

The book is also interesting as a description of the life of a common sailor. However, Dana really gets in to describing some of the details of sailing, and some of this is almost incomprehensible to a landlubber like me. For example, here's a sentence about a time they were sailing in a storm:

"All hands were now employed in setting up the lee rigging, fishing the spritsail yard, lashing the galley, and getting tackles upon the martingale to bowse it to windward."

Uh, say what? Or this one:

"At this instant the chief mate, who was standing on the top of the windlass, at the foot of the spenser mast, called out "Lay out there and furl the jib!""

Clearly this is dangerous and complicated work, and the writing conveys a sense of action and movement, but it would be nice to find an annotated version with diagrams or something so I had at least a faint idea of what was going on.

Dana is very good at depicting how hard the sailors' lives were back then. They basically shipped out on these merchant vessels with only a vague idea of when they were returning. In Dana's case his boat must collect a certain number of cow hides to bring back, and they can't return until they've collected this amount (he actually ends up changing ships because his original ship was going to stay way to long in California). There's only one day off, Sunday, and this is at the mercy of the captain, who can decide that they need to keep working. And the captain has total rule in every other way over these men's lives. There's one striking (no pun intended) episode where the captain is in a bad mood, and ends up brutally flogging two men for the flimsiest of reasons. The crew is not happy about this, but they can't do anything. Even if they mutinied they'd be hunted down, and could never work as sailer again. Ah, the good old days.

Unsentimentally Uneducated

2010-08-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

When I finished up graduate school and my postdoc, and actually started working at a real job, I began to have a 401(K). When learning about how to invest the money in my 401(K) I would read in financial magazines and articles that stocks were the best investment for the long term, because over the long haul they had a return of 10% a year. And every time I read that it blew me away. Not because I thought that stocks must be pretty amazing things, but because I thought these guys writing these articles must be total idiots. Is there some law of science that says stocks must return 10% a year? Can one write an equation that proves that stock returns always revert to the mean, and that mean is 10% a year? No, of course not. Whoever came up with the "stocks return 10% a year" maxim had decided that historical events and trends of the 20th century would continue forever, and there would never be any sort of instabilities in our economic and/or political systems that would change the way businesses operate and prevent stocks from returning any more or less than 10% a year, over the long run. Reading "A Sentimental Education" should remind the reader that things are not always as stable over the long run as we would like to believe. Because as I see it, and I am an expert in 19th century French literature because I have a PhD in biochemistry, there are two main themes in this book. The first is a very cynical view of how trivial, irrational, unthoughtful, and downright ridiculous many peoples' lives are. And the second is how peoples' lives are affected by, and caught up in history. It's easy for us today, I think, to lose sight of that second theme, as our government and society have been relatively stable, at least in my lifetime. But this was not the case in France around the year 1848, when the novel takes place. In 1848 the monarchy of King Louis-Philippe was overthrown, and the Second Republic was formed. The year was full of all types of rebellion and political turmoil, and at the end of the year Louis Napoleon was elected president. A couple of years later he ended the republic in a coup and became Emperor Napoleon III. It is against all this turmoil that the action (if it can be called that) of the novel takes place, and the characters' lives are all impacted by current events. Indeed, I was fortunate that my edition of the book had footnotes explaining what all the historical references were about, since events of the French revolution of 1848 are not all that well known to most modern readers, myself included.

Anyway, it is against this backdrop that the main character of this novel, Frederic Moreau, lives his dithering life. This guy, the novel's hero, is someone you want to meet in person so you can kick him in the pants. He doesn't know what he wants to do with his life, and frankly never seems to quite figure it out. He starts out as a law student, then wants to be an artist, and later on a politician, etc. etc. but he doesn't seem to have much ambition or aptitude for anything. He manages to inherit a fortune, but blows a big chunk of it on his romantic affairs, and at the end of the novel is solidly middle class. He hangs out with people who have strong convictions about the political events, and he listens to all of them rant and rave, but he seems to comprehend little of it, and really doesn't care all that much when it comes down to it. Of course, his friends who espouse their ideas are all pretty much buffoons anyway, and many of them don't really know what they're talking about. Here's a passage which perfectly illustrates Frederic's interest in politics. He decides that he will try to run to be a member of the Constituent Assembly (the legislature):

"It was time to hurl oneself into the fray and perhaps help events along; he was also greatly attracted to the clothes which, it was said, the Deputies would be having. He could already see himself wearing a tricolour sash and a waistcoat with lapels."

That characterization is both darkly cynical and hilariously funny, and this dichotomy pervades the novel. The characters lives and motivations are all trivial, banal, and/or venal.

But the centerpiece of the novel is not just the revolution and the politics, it's the love life of Frederic Moreau. At the beginning of the novel Frederic falls in love with Madame Arnoux, the wife of a man who runs an art magazine. Of course, he doesn't have the balls to act on this. He befriends the husband, and gets to know Madame after being invited to their house and insinuating himself into their lives. But it takes a long time before he can profess his love to Mrs. Arnoux, and when he does they don't get very far. She loves him too, but is a God-fearing woman and doesn't pursue the affair, although one has the feeling that if Frederic pressed the issue he would have gotten into bed with her. But he doesn't because he's always indecisive, fearful, and dithering. He starts an affair with Arnoux's mistress, a woman named Rosanette. They become more attached, and Frederic seems to love her, at times, but then gets distracted again by Madame Arnoux. Near the end of the novel he has an affair with a third woman, Madame Dambreuse, a high-society figure married to a very wealthy man. After the husband dies, he agrees to marry her, even though he's still seeing Rosanette, who has just had his baby. Oh, and then there's the daughter of the man who lives next to his mother in his rural hometown, and that daughter is obsessed with Frederic. He thinks about marrying her too. So there's lots of intrigue, and jumping from bed to bed, and stringing people along, and betraying people, and tiring of lovers, etc. And in the end Frederic misplays all of his hands and ends up alone. I guess that's a hazard of juggling...all the balls can come crashing to the floor. In a way he seeks an idealized romance, and can't deal with the faults of real of human beings. And most importantly he can't even see how his own faults affect his relationships and their outcomes. It never even occurs to him to think about this. Too bad for him that therapy hadn't been invented yet.

In the movie "Manhattan", Woody Allen's character famously compiles a list of things that make life worth living. One of them is Flaubert's "A Sentimental Education". Is this book really that good? Upon finishing it my impression was that it is both hilariously funny and deeply disturbing and cynical in the way it points out the foibles and shallowness of most peoples' lives. People don't end up living happily ever after in this book, but you can see that coming from the beginning. Everyone is ridiculous. Everyone is flawed. Everyone is doomed. Which reminds me of a line from They Might be Giants: "Everybody dies frustrated and sad, and that is beautiful". Maybe they, and Woody, were right.

Book #36 - A Sentimental Education (Gustave Flaubert)

2010-07-11T23:57:00.001-07:00

With my reading of the 35th book on the list, Toni Morrison's "Beloved", I realize that I am now 1/3 of the way through my 105 books! Woohoo! I raise my glass of English ale to salute this achievement. And yet, I cannot rest, for death is breathing down my neck and I have lots of reading to go. And admittedly, slacker that I am, I am not reading at the pace I was two years ago. Although who knows what reading pace the future may hold.

I am in England right now. I spent a few days in London, wandering around aimlessly, checking out a few museums, and drinking some delicious real ales. Now I'm just south of Cambridge, attending a conference for work, and wondering what I'm doing in the English countryside reading a book by a Frenchman. But it's OK, because Britain and France have historically been the best of friends for thousands of years. Well, except for the Hundred Years War. And for most of the rest of pre-20th century recorded history.

I started reading Flaubert's "A Sentimental Education" on the flight over to England. The only other Flaubert I've read is "Madame Bovary", which I read freshman year in college. That's a great book, but one which can definitely be characterized as "a downer". "A Sentimental Education", however, is a whole new ballgame. I mean, is it me or is this book seriously funny? The book so far, and I'm 150 pages (of 450 pages total) into it, is about a young French dude in the 1840s named Frederic Moreau, who has just graduated from college and decides to live in Paris and be hip. And in the first third of the novel, there's not much plot. Moreau falls in love with a rich man's wife, but dares not say anything to her. He does terrible on his initial try at the law school's exams. He hangs out with his friends, who discuss politics and what should be done to stave off the revolution, but all they do is talk talk talk with no action. Frickin' French pussies. Yet, although it's easy to laugh at the characters for their big words and pretensions, it's a bit sad when they don't follow through on their words and don't even really try. I dunno, reminds me of a lot of dorm conversations I had in college, beer in hand. We'd argue politics, and sports, and art, and philosophy, but in reality we didn't know what the f#*$% we were talking about. Time wises up everyone, I guess. As some Bob Dylan once said "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now".

Anyway, I'm enjoying this book, and I'm looking forward to continue reading it on the flight home. Will Flaubert's characters wise up and start getting their act together? Or will they just keep drifting through life, and their conversations espousing their ideals but not acting upon them? Stay tuned...

Book #35 - Beloved (Toni Morrison)

2010-06-28T21:30:00.000-07:00

Tonight I have forsaken my traditional fine American whiskey, and have chosen to blog with a martini in one hand. I can think of nothing more inappropriate to drink while blogging about Toni Morrison's "Beloved". When one thinks of a martini, one thinks of sophistication, maybe the roaring 20's, of elegant bars, and FDR and flappers. That is so not the world of "Beloved". At all.

Where do I start with this one? About 20 years ago, I went through a period where I read a lot of books by black women authors. I was thinking that I should read some books that would let me see the world through eyes that gave a distinctly different viewpoint from my own, and I knew from growing up in suburban Ohio that I definitely was not a black woman. So I read books by Alice Walker, Gloria Naylor, Maya Angelou, Zora Neale Hurston, Terry McMillan, and one by Toni Morrisson. My favorite book off all the ones I read by these authors was Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God"...that book was brilliant, and if you haven't read it, by all means you should do so. I also liked "The Color Purple" by Alice Walker (which I read before it became a Steven Spielberg blockbuster film), although I felt the ending was wrapped up a bit too neatly and happily. The Toni Morrison book I read was "Sula" and frankly it didn't really stick with me. I'd heard "Beloved" was a good book, but I'm not sure if I was expecting all that much.

So I read it and wow, this is one helluva book. "Beloved" won a Pulitzer Prize in 1988 (it was published in 1987) and Morrison won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993. In May 2006, the New York Times named "Beloved" as the best American novel to be published in the previous 25 years. That's a pretty good track record. And reading the novel, even through the haze of a martini or three, I can see what all the hype is about. It's complex, it's thought-provoking, and it's incredibly moving. Plus the writing itself is great. I cried at the end, although that's not saying much since I also cried at the end of the movie "You've Got Mail".

The book is very loosely based on the life of Margaret Garner. Margaret was a slave from Kentucky who fled north to Ohio in 1856 along with her husband and four children. However, slave catchers caught up with them in Cincinnati and surrounded the house they were hiding in. Margaret then killed her two year old daughter with a knife rather than see her returned to slavery. She would have killed her other children and herself as well, but the posse caught her before she could carry this out. In "Beloved", the main character is Sethe, a former slave from Kentucky who escaped to Cincinnati, and kills her infant daughter Beloved when their former master rides into town, corners them, and prepares to take them back to slavery. In Sethe's case, she is jailed for murder, and is eventually released (in real life, Margaret Garner was taken back to slavery). The story is told in flashbacks, and veers back and forth between character's memories and the present. At first this was a bit confusing, but it rapidly becomes clear.

Sethe lives in a house with her daughter Denver (her other two surviving sons fled and never returned, fearing that their mother would one day kill them, as they had witnessed her kill her infant daughter). When the novel opens, the house is haunted, with what is believed to be the ghost of the murdered child. Eventually a 20-year old woman appears on the porch and comes to live in the house, and we quickly realize that this is probably the ghost of Beloved (the characters realize this too). I could go on and summarize the plot, but I hate to spoil the book for those who might not have read it already, because it's a great book and I heartily recommend it. But I think it's worthwhile to tell why I think it's a great book, and I can do that without summarizing the plot (although the plot itself is good, as is the writing).

The thing that I really loved about the book is that it really made me think about slavery and it's effects in a whole new light. I mean, everyone knows that slavery was terrible and degrading and inhuman and horrible...that seems to be commonly accepted by everyone in this day and age (as opposed to the mid-1800s when the novel takes place). But the novel, in dealing with a group of black people who escaped from slavery and are living across the river from a former slave state just after the Civil War, really gets into the mind of these characters and shows the reader how damaged they are from having to endured slavery, even long after they are freed from it. In today's world, we know so much more about psychology and things like post traumatic stress. It's insightful to take this knowledge and look at the characters in that regard. Slavery left people horribly damaged, both black and white, and Morrison seems to be making the case that we need to think about this and remember this, and look at ourselves even in today's world at the legacy of this horror, because it's effects still decidedly linger.

In "Beloved" the whites are not totally and all bad, and the blacks are not totally innocent victims and only good. Life is not like that and the book is not like that. It's a white girl who helps Sethe deliver her baby while she is escaping from slavery, and it's a white man who helps prevent Sethe from being hanged after she is found guilty of murdering her child (he also employed Sethe's mother-in-law and daughter). In slavery Sethe has a "good" master, who treats the slaves with respect, listens to their opinions, and lets them carry guns. However after he dies the new master is mean and cruel, and it's from him that Sethe escapes. Likewise, while there are black characters who help Sethe, and who love Sethe, it is also the black community who is partly responsible for the tragedy, because they fail to warn Sethe that her old master has come to town and is hunting her down (they do not warn her because they felt that she and her mother-in-law, who was a lay preacher, were getting to be too proud). The world is full of good and bad people, of all sexes and races. But a horrifically dysfunctional institution like slavery just warps and magnifies everything, so that things like murdering one's own child can become act of love. The aftermath of this for Sethe, as it would be for anyone, is brutal and damaging. And of course it doesn't help matters if the dead baby's ghost comes back to haunt you. In today's society, we could put Sethe on Wellbutrin and get her into extensive therapy to help get her over the ravages of her past traumas. But those options were not available then. Plus, I'm not sure you could find a therapist today who specializes in treating former slaves.

Anyway I feel like I'm rambling a bit, and I blame the martini. But my head is clear enough to know that this is a great book and beautifully written, full of poetry and symbolism and wisdom, and it deserves its acclaim. Yeah, it's hard to read at points, but that's how life can be sometimes, and besides the ending is surprisingly optimistic. So have a martini and a Paxil and go for it!

Samuel Johnson and the Comfort of Wisdom

2010-05-26T07:00:00.000-07:00

"He that outlives a wife whom he has long loved, sees himself disjoined from the only mind that has the same hopes, and fears, and interest; from the only companion with whom he has shared much good and evil; and with whom he could set his mind at liberty, to retrace the past or anticipate the future. The continuity of being is lacerated; the settled course of sentiment and action is stopped; and life stands suspended and motionless, till it is driven by external causes into a new channel. But the time of suspense is dreadful." Samuel Johnson, 1780.

Two and a half years ago, right before I began this blog, I read "The Life of Samuel Johnson" by James Boswell. Johnson was a brilliant though eccentric man, one of the great English writers, a lexicographer, and apparently one of the greatest conversationalists and wits to ever walk the earth. We know this because he was trailed by his biographer and sycophant James Boswell, a genius in his own right, who basically followed Johnson around and wrote down everything he said. It's a very long book, but one of the most wonderfully rewarding ones if one takes the time to read it and enjoy Johnson's wit and wisdom. It's a rare book that can both stick with one, and comfort one, and illuminate one's mind well after having read it, and I find this book to be one of those. Recent events in my life have caused me to remember the above quote by Samuel Johnson, which was written in a letter to a friend whose wife of many years had just passed away. The quote is about the loss of a spouse, and the experience of the resulting grief. And yet, I think it's also more generally applicable to the loss of any romantic partner you truly love, no matter what the means of separation.

I've been thinking a lot about lost love and heartbreak recently. I've never experienced the loss of a lover and companion through death, thankfully, but I certainly have in other ways. Losing a lover to death would seem so final…there’s no choice involved. But losing a love through a breakup…well, then choice is involved in many cases, which has the potential to add an element of regret. And regret can be a dismal feeling in its own right, in addition to the dreadful suspense that Johnson describes.

It’s called “heartbreak” for a reason, and that’s because one can feel it in one’s chest, right behind the sternum. It lingers there, pulsing and throbbing alongside the heart, reminding you continually of what once was. It reminds one that there’s an empty space inside now, where once resided the dreams one held inside the deepest recesses of one’s body, dreams that spread from the heart down into the bones. “The continuity of being is lacerated” indeed. What had seemed like a swift current into the future, full of rapids and waves and adventure, has suddenly stopped flowing, and one is left to aimlessly drift on a shallow and tepid sea gently seasoned with ones own tears, like bitters in a martini. It is a sad and lonely and dreadful place. And in a place like that, one of the few comforts available is to read things like this quote from Samuel Johnson, so wise and profoundly knowing, so that one realizes that others have been here as well, that others have sailed on these forlorn and gloomy seas and lived to tell the tale. Some have reached the shores after being “driven by external forces into a new channel”. Others, I think, find the shore after being driven by internal forces, because separation from a lover by breakup, unlike Johnson’s death of a spouse, allows the possibility of reflection and contemplation and a new course of action. Sometimes a period of separation is itself the external force that forces one to muse and meditate on the meaning of a relationship, and on the meaning and value of another’s love and their love for another. This can force one to discover truths within themselves that they weren’t aware of before, which causes a re-evaluation of all they presumed about a relationship. That is not an easy feat, but it can lead to the recovery of a love thought lost or diminished, to a rekindling of an ardor that had dampened from flames to embers. But whether the final course is a final separation, or a glorious reconciliation, the path is not an easy one, and the heartbreak will not be mitigated easily. As Johnson says “The time of suspense is dreadful”.

The amount of people that one truly loves and is loved by is not a large number when viewed in the full span of most people’s lives, and it’s hard to often remember that and keep that in perspective. It’s too easy to focus on the flaws of a relationship, or to unrealizingly get caught up in one’s own shortfalls and not see the big picture of exactly how truly precious love is. For love is rare, and life is short and brutal, and if one doesn’t do all they can to hold on to those who one loves and who loves them back, then what’s the point of doing anything at all? True and deep connections in life should be treasured and nurtured, because they hold back the dark. If you love someone, hold on to them and hold their love close. Do all you can to make it work, even if that means struggling with one's own flaws and assumptions and limitations. For the end result can be a bright and glorious love, a shot down the rapids into a radiant future with another’s hand in yours...a rewarding and magnificent and abiding joy, rather than Johnson’s dreadful suspense.

Book #34 - Animal Farm (George Orwell)

2010-05-16T15:22:00.000-07:00

How many adjectives are named after authors? I can think of two: Orwellian and Dickensian. Oh sure, you can argue there's "Shakespearean" as well, but that refers to the author himself, so that a "Shakespearean" actor is an actor who performs in plays by Shakespeare. So old George Orwell seems to have done pretty well for himself, I have to say.

Today I read "Animal Farm". Yes, I read the whole thing in a day, which isn't saying much because it's only 97 pages long. And for some reason I keep wanting to call it "Animal House", but as we know, that was an entirely different story altogether.

So is "Animal Farm" Orwellian? Well, yes. To me, the epitome of Orwellian is in "1984" (a book I read in high school) which features a dystopian future where citizens are under the control of a total dictatorship, and all aspects of their lives are monitored and controlled. And that's similar to the way things end up in "Animal Farm", although there are differences.

"Animal Farm" is a book that most of my friends seem to have read in high school, and after reading it I can understand why. The book is an allegory for the Communist revolution and the evolution of the Soviet Union under Stalin. The symbolism is obvious and straightforward, which makes it a good book to teach concepts like symbolism and allegory, assuming the students know the history of the Soviet Union. But I'm actually really glad I didn't read the book in high school, because I think I appreciate it a lot more than I would have then. The book is very dark, painting a dim view of human nature, as symbolized by animal nature. The book tells the tale of a farm in England, where the animals take over. The revolution, where the animals overthrow the drunken farmer who runs the farm, is at first idealistic, democratic, and socialist. The animals are all equal and all comrades in arms who stand united against their common enemy, the humans. But then things go awry. The pigs, who are by far the smartest of the animals, assume leadership roles, with two pigs, Napoleon and Snowball, duking it out for supremacy. Napoleon clearly represents Stalin, and Snowball is Trotsky. We all know who wins that one. Napoleon raises some dogs from puppies, who become his vicious thugs. They attack Snowball, forcing him to flee, and a reign of terror more or less begins, albeit slowly enough so that the animals never really realize what is happening. Napoleon consolidates his rule with a number of show trials, resulting in a death sentence for those who confess to crimes they haven't committed. The initial ideals of the revolution are long gone, and the seven commandments that were written down at the beginning of the revolution (such as "No animal shall drink alcohol" and "No animal shall sleep in a bed") are modified to suit the pigs' needs ("No animal shall drink alcohol to excess" and "No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets"). Eventually all the commandments are overwritten with one commandment, the famous "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others". In the end, the pigs and the dogs live like princes, while the other animals are slave labor to them. The pigs eventually start to walk on two legs, and put on clothes, and become indistinguishable from the humans, whom they have now allied themselves with. And so the glorious revolution leaves the animals having substituted one terrible set of masters for another.

Very bleak, indeed. But I can appreciate now, much more than I would have in high school, just how truthfully this story rings. Power corrupts, and in any society, those in power tend to gain more power, and those at the bottom find it terribly difficult to escape their class. It makes one wonder whether a true socialist society can really exist. It seems that in all societies that have ever existed there's been a social hierarchy, with powerful families and groups, and the vast majority under their rule, either directly or indirectly. Maybe that's my age talking...the triumph of cynicism and cold reality over the idealism of youth. But it's not just me..."Animal Farm" clearly presents a similar take on human nature. One that's positively Orwellian.

Eyre-Head

2010-04-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in a bit, but that doesn't mean I haven't been reading. It's more of a reflection that my life has been hectic and traumatic and full of emotional upheaval which as caused me to question my very sanity and well being. Plus I was in Washington, DC for a week. At any rate, despite the soul-crushing last few weeks I managed finish "Jane Eyre". I raise my glass of 15 year old Kentucky bourbon to Jane and her creator Charlotte Bronte! Here's my highly intellectual literary criticism: This was a really good book. Talk about your plot twists: There's a crazy woman in the attic! Holy crap, it's Mr. Rochester's wife! Oh no, she's burned down the house and wounded Mr. Rochester and took a face plant off the building! Oh yeah, sorry about the spoilers, in case you're the one other person on this planet who's never read this book.

There's a lot of stuff in this book that I, as a scientist, didn't quite get, as I was probably too busy trying to comprehend the molecular structure of Mr. Rochester's hair. For example, what's with the crazy wife in the attic? Is that a commentary on the sad state of marriage in 19th century England? Is there some larger symbolism? Or is it just that Mr. Rochester is a dick, and keeps his looney wife locked up there against her own will while he's putting the moves on the young governess and asking her to marry him even though he knows damn good and well that he's got that crazy wife in the attic and how could Jane not find out? Indeed she does find out and she runs off, and she should because of the dick-like bigamy moves that Rochester is trying to pull. So then she escapes to another part of the country where she is taken in by a poor family who, SURPRISE, happen to be her cousins. Why does this always happen in Victorian novels: there's some big plot twist that hinges around the most improbable of events. One example from the top of my head is Ham dying to rescue Steerforth in "David Copperfield". Anyway, where was I in my rambling? Oh yeah, so one of the cousins starts hitting on Jane and asking her to marry him, because he thinks Jane would make a good missionary wife. Jane says "No" several times, mainly because he loves someone else and because he's an even bigger dick than Rochester. He doesn't really care about Jane, he just wants a missionary wife/companion. Anyway, Jane finally hears the ghostly voice of Rochester calling her through some spiritual ghostly connection they have, so she seeks him out. He's now blind and gimpy from when the ex-wife burned down the house, but Jane loves him anyway and forgives him and marries him, because in the end, true love conquers all and allows for forgiveness, just as Jesus loves us all and forgives us our trespasses. There's a lesson to be learned there. This is an odd and sweet book. True love conquers all. Is that true in real life? Stay tuned...

Book #33 - Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)

2010-03-27T22:52:00.000-07:00

I have blogged on whiskey before...both bourbon and rye. And in fact that's my normal blogging state. I've also blogged on rum, for "Treasure Island" and "Robinson Crusoe" in particular. And I seem to hazily remember blogging on absinthe as well (gee, why would that memory be hazy?). But tonight we're in unknown territory...I'm blogging on Vicodin! Woohoo! What's up with that? Well, I went to the dentist earlier this week because I needed a crown on one of my molars. So he put a temporary one on while I wait for the permanent crown to be made, and he said the tooth might hurt a bit. Well, that's the understatement of the frickin' year. The past few days it's been aching and throbbing worse and worse, which according to the dentist means I may have to get a root canal on the tooth. Oh yeah, that is so awesome. I've been taking Advil, which has so far warded off the pain for a few hours at a pop, but tonight the throbbing seems to have launched into a whole new order of magnitude. So I was faced with a choice...suffer, drink lots of booze, or take a Vicodin. I opted for the Vicodin. And guess what...this stuff works! An hour after taking it the pain has largely subsided. But of course, now I feel all lightheaded and a bit loopy, so I thought "Hey, it's the perfect time to blog!". Hopefully I won't lapse into gibberish...although come to think of it, that might make this blog a bit more interesting. Nah, but that won't happen, I'm fine. In fact I could blogsh miffleplix skjri theurkst, gs. zzzz

Woops. Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, "Jane Eyre". I started this book last weekend, and I'm almost a third of the way into it. I read Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights" in high school, and of course I've seen Monty Python's semaphore version of "Wuthering Heights". But that's been my only Bronte experience until I picked up "Jane Eyre" last week.

My immediate thought after just a few pages was that Charlotte Bronte is a really good writer. This book moves along snappily, and keeps me pulled in. I found when reading Dickens I would sometimes suddenly realize I had no idea what was happening, and I'd have to read over the last paragraph or page very carefully to try to parse out what the heck Dickens was talking about. There's something about the density of his wording and his use of colloquialisms that can make certain passages a bit rough going at first. But Bronte's writing just moves along, and I've had no such incidents of confusion.

And it's not just the writing style...I love the character of Jane. When we meet her, Jane is an orphan living with the Reed family. Mr. Reed had been Jane's uncle, and he took her in when her parents died of typhus. But then Mr. Reed died, and Mrs. Reed has no liking for Jane, to put it mildly. Neither do the three Reed children, who are all raving assholes. So Jane is miserable, and gets taunted and beaten by the children, and blamed for everything by Mrs. Reed. Yet Jane is not a passive victim. She's bold and assertive and independent. She's a survivor. And she can be sassy...in fact, there's one scene where she confronts Mrs. Reed, standing up to her and calling her on her shit, and I immediately thought of Holden Caufield...Jane can pick out the phonies. But my favorite quote from Jane, at least so far, occurs when Mrs. Reed decides to ship Jane off to boarding school to get rid of her. The headmaster of the school comes to their home and is quizzing Jane. The conversation goes like this:

Headmaster: "No sight so sad as that of a naughty child...especially a naughty little girl. Do you know where the wicked go after death?"

Jane: "They go to hell."

Headmaster: "And what is hell? Can you tell me that?"

Jane: "A pit full of fire."

Headmaster: "And should you like to fall into that pit, and to be burning there for ever?"

Jane: "No, sir."

Headmaster: "What must you do to avoid it?"

Jane: "I must keep in good health and not die."

God, that's funny. In that passage Jane reminds me a bit of Maggie in "The Mill on the Floss" (although Maggie was a bit crazier than Jane). These Victorian women writers can write some strong women characters, that's for sure.

Anyway, Jane goes to boarding school, where conditions are bad...Dickensian, in fact. That changes when typhus sweeps through the school, killing off many of the students, and the locals then realize how bad things are there, and thus they force improvements. So the school gets better, and Jane gets her education. She eventually becomes a teacher at the school, but soon gets bored and longs to see more of the world, so she gets a job as a governess to a girl living on an estate called Thornfield. The owner of the estate, Mr. Rochester (no, he's not from upstate New York) is rarely present. But as Jane gets settled in, Mr. Rochester suddenly makes an appearance. And that's as far as I've gotten. But I'm eagerly waiting to read more...as soon as this Vicodin wears off and the toothache is resolved.

All You Need is Love

2010-03-21T17:03:00.001-07:00

Fuck you, Charles Dickens! Yeah, you heard me. I am so through with you...you've made me cry more than any man since the second grade, when Tommy Bottomsworth (note: name changed to prevent a libel suit) pushed me down on the sidewalk. Yes, I bawled my eyes out at the end of Silas Marner, but that was written by George Eliot, A GIRL, and as we all know girls are supposed to make the boys cry. But you're a MAN, and clearly you didn't read the part of the Man Code where it says that real men don't make other men cry. NO, first you came close to making me cry in "Bleak House" when little Jo the orphan dies. But then you had to push the limits in "Hard Times", first when Stephen Blackpool dies after falling down an abandoned mine shaft, and then at the end when you omnisciently predict the future of all the characters in the novel. First you suck me in, and then you manipulate me into crying my eyes out over the plight of the poor as symbolized by a martyr. Damn you!

Whew, OK, that's out of the way. This was a good book. Just like in "Bleak House", Dickens has a number of characters whose stories intertwine, and all the stories get tied up nicely in the end. A bit too nicely, perhaps...even the old circus dog "Merrylegs" makes a reappearance. I don't think a modern novelist would tie up everything as neatly as Dickens does, assuming they had his skill. Why is that? Maybe the modern writer thinks that life is too complex and random, and that they just can't depict life as neat as that seen in a Dickens novel...? Yet people like myself still read and enjoy Dickens just the same...perhaps just because "real life" is not as neat as this and so it's satisfying to see everything wrapped up for once, even if it's just a novel.

This novel was way shorter than "Bleak House". It wasn't as sprawling as that book, and didn't have as many characters. "Hard Times" is quite good, and certainly enjoyable, but "Bleak House" is a masterpiece, and I'm not sure I'd call "Hard Times" that.

Like "Bleak House" this novel has a relationship between an old man and a very young woman, in this case Bounderby and Gradgrind's daughter Louisa. But unlike "Bleak House", where the marriage never occurs and the whole thing seems half hearted, in this case Bounderby marries Louisa. It doesn't go well to say the least. Louisa is miserable, and after a failed attempt at seduction by a young cad, she runs back home to her father. This is a pivotal moment in the book, because it's then she tells her father that the way she was raised and educated by him, which was to only go with the facts and ignore emotion and sentiment, has failed her miserably and that she is terribly unhappy. Mr. Gradgrind, who had seemed an ominous and unsympathetic character early in the book, has a total change of heart due to his love for his daughter, and realizes he's made a terrible mistake. He works to right his wrongs, as best he can, and comes to realize the importance of love and caring. In fact, this seems to be one of the big, if not THE big, take-home lessons of the book: that we need to love people more and care about them more and help one another rather than treat each other, especially the poor, like dirt. Love is all you need. Love reign o'er me. Ah, the classic rock references are everywhere...Dickens was very prescient! Somehow this all seems like a bit of a cop out, though. Dickens describes the plight of the working poor, "The Hands" as they're called in the novel, quite well, and the two Hands that we get to know best, Rachel and Stephen Blackpool, are virtuous almost to the point of sainthood. But then at the end the lesson seems to be "Love the poor" or "Love your fellow man" or "Listen to your heart and not just your head". Well, OK, but isn't that what Jesus said 2000 years ago? I mean, what's new here? I dunno, maybe as a scientist I was hoping to see a little more practical advice on how to deal with England's social woes in the industrial revolution. And speaking of which, Dickens definitely doesn't see unions as the answer. The workers are trying to form a union, but they ostracize Stephen Blackpool, and the union leader who spearheads their movement is not at all sympathetic.

Finally, let's get back to the ending that I talked about earlier. At the conclusion of the novel, not only do all the ends get wrapped up neatly, but Dickens pulls an "American Graffiti" on the last two pages and tells what happens to all the main characters after the novel ends. And basically everyone gets their just desserts. The bad guys get screwed over and/or die, the really good people get rewarded, and the people on the fence get some good and bad. The only exception is Rachel, the poor saintly factory worker, who gets to keep on working in the factory. Dickens just can't give the poor factory workers a break. But then, maybe that's the whole point.

Book #32 - Hard Times (Charles Dickens)

2010-03-13T11:14:00.000-08:00

I'm back in the reading and blogging groove and it feels great! Immediately after finishing "The Decameron" I picked up "Hard Times" and I'm about half way through the book already. Granted it's not so long a book (280 pages) but after reading and blogging for the past year at the rate of one book per year, I'll brag about it anyway. Too bad the book isn't as upbeat as my blogging mood. But with a title like "Hard Times" what do you expect? In "Good Times" we got Jimmie JJ Walker, and in "Hard Times' we get Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind. Mr. Bounderby (a play on the derogatory term "bounder"?) owns the local bank, is very well-to-do, and is a self-made man, having worked himself up from poverty. This last fact he never fails to remind everyone of, every chance he gets. He is not a good or kind person. Mr. Gradgrind is the local schoolmaster, who believes children should only learn facts, and that imagination and fancy can only lead to no good, and should thus be rigorously discouraged in every possible instance. Needless to say, Mr. Gradgrind's (again with the suggestive names!) students are not very happy, and his own children even less so. His daughter has the imagination browbeaten out of her, and she is betrothed to Mr. Bounderby at a young age. Her father asks her if she wants to marry Mr. Bounderby after his proposal, and she says it makes no difference. "Like, whatever" would be her words if she were alive today. And Gradgrind's son grows up to be a n'er do well. Of course. Kids today, I swear...you try to help them by berating the imagination out of them and look what happens. Goddamn punks...

There's a lot going on in "Hard Times", despite its being a much shorter book than "Bleak House". Dickens really knows how to work plots with multiple characters and multiple threads. The characters drift in and out, but you know they'll come back because Dickens knows what he's doing. As an example, Mr. Gradgrind adopts a young girl named Sissy Jupe, whose father worked in the circus but who skipped town, abandoning his daughter, because he is physically unable to perform in the circus like he used to (he also takes with him their circus dog "Merrylegs", one of the best dog names I've ever heard). Sissy is good hearted but does not do well in school, most likely because she is too fanciful and cannot abide by just the cold, hard facts, as Mr. Gradgrind would like. Anyway, as of the middle of the book, the reader hasn't heard about Sissy in the last hundred pages or so, but knowing how Dickens is so adept at juggling his characters and plot threads, I have no doubt she'll turn up again.

"Hard Times" takes place in the town of Coketown (coke is the by-product of burning coal). The England depicted in the novel is that of the industrial revolution before the advent of effective labor unions...polluted, horrible working conditions, horrible poverty, people used up and spat out as broken shells by their factory jobs. One of the themes of the book seems to be this dehumanization of the poor factory workers, and Mr. Gradgrind's vision of teaching children cold, hard facts and killing any tendencies towards imagination, dreams, and fantasy fits right in with this. We can't have those factory workers daydreaming over their machines now can we? No, of course not. Reading this book makes me ponder that it's rather amazing that society actually came through the industrial revolution, but we did, and thankfully the working conditions of the factories in the 1800s would be completely unacceptable today. Well, unless the factories are in some third world country...

The Renaissance is Over!

2010-03-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

Brace yourself, dear reader...I finally finished The Decameron! Woohoo, break out the whiskey! It took me almost (but not quite) a year to read. Not a very good pace for a so-called book blogger. One year closer to death and only one book read and blogged. Maybe I need to start "Blogging the Web", in which I blog about all the time I waste surfing the internet. Of course, that would then mean I would end up spending even more time on the internet. Damn, life is complex.

Once I put my mind to it, and got back into the book reading groove, the Decameron went pretty quickly. Funny, when I started the book A YEAR AGO I wasn't really into it, but in the last few weeks I enjoyed it much more. Well, let me qualify that: I enjoyed most of the stories, but not all of them. The book is divided up into ten sections of ten stories each, with each section representing one day of stories (see my first Decameron post) and with each section having a different theme. In some of the sections I found all the stories to be quite enjoyable. As an example, the stories from Day 8 all have the theme of tricks that men and women play on each other. These range from practical jokes to inspired ways of seeking revenge to ways of getting someone to sleep with someone else (although that was apparently not so difficult in the Renaissance). One of the stories is a great example of the ribald nature of many of the Decameron stories. In the eighth story from the eighth day, there are two great friends, Spinelloccio and Zeppa, who are both married to beautiful women. Spinelloccio starts having an affair with Zeppa's wife. One day Zeppa comes home early and finds out what's going on. He confronts his wife after Spinelloccio leaves, and tells her to invite Spinelloccio over the next day when he's not there. Zeppa will then come home, and when his wife hears him enter the house she is to lock Spinelloccio in a large chest so as to hide from Zeppa. She does so, and when Spinelloccio is locked in the chest Zeppa suggests to his wife that they invite Spinelloccio's wife over to visit. She comes over and Zeppa leads her to the bedroom where he tells her of her husband's affair, and says his revenge will be to make love to her as a form of "compensation". She is reluctant at first, but goes along with it, and they have sex on top of the chest that Spinelloccio is hiding in. When they're done, he tells her she will get a jewel as her reward, and then Zeppa has his wife come in and open the chest. Spinelloccio comes out, and he and his wife are embarrassed, but he admits he had it coming, and they suggest that they all just forgive and forget. So Spinelloccio and Zeppa become even better friends than before, and having already shared their wives they decide to continue to do so. So all four of them happily spouse swap from that day forward. Party in the Renaissance!

That story seems very ribald even to this day, and has stood up well over the past 650 years. But as a contrast, on the tenth day the stories are all about people who perform some kind of munificent or magnanimous deed, and these stories just didn't hold my interest as much as the others. And that's not just because there was not any sex in them. Well, OK, maybe it was partly because there wasn't any sex in them. But also there is something about the theme that just doesn't seem to hold up as well over the centuries. Or at least for me, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Perhaps we're just more cynical these days, and the stories from the tenth day, tales of generous knights and landowners, just aren't very in synch with these days of robber baron CEOs.

Finally, in the epilogue of the book, Boccaccio addresses the reader directly, and it is here that he explains something I wondered about in my last blog post. As I commented on, he starts off each story with a short paragraph that summarizes the story. In other words, each story begins with a complete spoiler. In the epilogue, Boccaccio explains that he put the summaries in front of each story so that the reader may read only the ones that please him or her, and not those stories which that particular reader might find offensive. The epilogue as a whole is a bit weird...Boccaccio spends his time defending his work...defending his treatment of friars, and his use of humor and wordplay, among other things. I don't know why he does this. Was he afraid of censorship, or condemnation by the clergy? Hmmm. All I know is that after ALMOST A YEAR I have finally put this one to bed. I'm ready to buckle down and read my next book much more quickly. Will I manage to do so, or will I remain a whiskey-sipping blogging slacker? Stay tuned.

The Never-Ending Book of Stories

2010-02-23T21:31:00.000-08:00

Jesus H., I write some bold blog post claiming I'm "back" and ready to kick blogospheric ass, and then I disappear back in my hole for three months. This is not any way to have a successful blog with avid readers who log in every day to see if my latest post is up. Nor is it the way to finish the project I started, namely to read the top 105 books I've never read before and do it before I die a horrible, miserable death, or any other kind of death. I looked it up today - I started reading "The Decameron" on March 16, 2009. Now it's February 23, 2010, and I have 200 pages left to go. If I assume this project will continue at the pace of 1 book per year, that means I will get done in, uh, NEVER. I will NEVER get done at this pace. I will die long before I've read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations", meaning I will never have that cathartic moment when I'm reading page 576 and realize that I'm a complete idiot for putting this book on my list because it's boring me to tears. Oh, the humanity!

No, the only way I can get back on this project is to get back up on the horse and "git 'er done" as they say in the hills of Georgia, near Kennesaw Mountain. So I vow I will finish 'The Decameron" in the next 21 days, so as not to have said it took me over a year to read the thing. I have some pride, after all...although those who know me well might disagree.

I don't want to give the impression that it's the fault of "The Decameron" for my snail's pace of progression. No, the fault lies in my own laziness and distraction. Indeed, I've actually warmed up to the book, and find it quite delightful. Many of these stories are really bawdy! Is this what the Renaissance was really all about: the rediscovery of wanton sex? I mean, many of these stories are about married women having affairs and how they hide them from their husbands (who are usually none too bright), or about how priests and friars have affairs and then hide them from their church elders. Reading this book, one can quickly get the impression that living in the Renaissance was one big pork-fest. Which makes me wonder how scandalous this book was in its own time. I mean, it sure doesn't paint a very holy picture of the church, to say the least. Was this a commonly held opinion at the time, or was this portrayal of hypocritical priests and monks a shock to contemporary readers? Somehow I suspect the former. After all, these were the plague years, and religion didn't seem to do much good in fighting the epidemic. I would be natural for people to get cynical, and also to seek solace in the pleasures of the flesh.

One odd thing about this book: each story begins with a short synopsis of the story. In other words, there's a spoiler at the beginning of each story that tells you exactly what will happen and what the outcome will be. I find this curious. Why is this here? Did Boccaccio have no sense of suspense? Or were these introductions used as sort of an index, so people could look through the book and find the story they wanted quickly. I dunno...but it seems odd to our modern sensibilities.

But enough. I have 21 days to finish this book. I just poured myself a delicious glass of rye whiskey, and I must go settle down with another tale or two. I will report back...soon!

Whither the Blogger?

2009-11-27T18:06:00.000-08:00

It’s been over seven months since I posted to this blog. Seven frickin’ months. In cyber years, that’s about a century. I’m sure that anyone who ever read or followed this blog has long thought “Fuck, that guy was totally old, like over 40, so he probably keeled over after his liver melted from one too many rye Manhattans. Too bad he never got to read the rest of those books.” Well, the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated, although the cause of my absence was perhaps almost as bad…marital separation and impending divorce. Nothing kills the desire to blog the canon like trying to find an apartment, and moving all your stuff while trying not to break or scratch it, and buying furniture and silverware, and cursing the Gods while standing in the rain, or in my case, the foggy mist, because the rainy season has yet to hit San Francisco. No, book blogging has had to take a back burner to what is profoundly known as “real life”. Divorce before The Decameron. Breaking up before Boccaccio. My reading had pretty much stopped for months on end, except for the web and scientific journals. And with that my blogging material dried up.

But now as the dust is settling, and the rainy season has begun in San Francisco, my literary life has started showing signs of life once again. A few weeks ago I picked up “The Decameron” and started reading again. And surprisingly, I’m finding it more interesting than I did seven months ago when I dropped off the face of this planet known as the blogosphere. That’s not to say it’s fast going. I’ve been trying to read one story a day, a rate at which I won’t finish the thing for three months. But that's faster progress than I was making just staring at the TV with the remote in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other.

I’m not sure why I can better appreciate these stories now. When I stopped blogging my life was in full flux…I was subletting an apartment, and trying to figure out where to go with my life and my possessions, so that was pretty distracting. That could be part of the reason. “Winesburg, Ohio” was perfect for that moment in time, but "The Decameron" wasn't, so I just stopped reading. But now I've started again, and “The Decameron” has come into focus. I can appreciate the stories more as allegory, as simple storytelling…much like as a kid when I appreciated “The Arabian Nights”. And it also doesn't hurt that I’ve reached a section where the tales have gotten randier. The Decameron is laid out as 100 stories: ten stories told on each of ten days, with each day having a particular theme. Day three, where I am now, is all about stories where people by dint of their own efforts have achieved an object they greatly desired, or recovered a thing previously lost. And what did people at the beginning of the Renaissance greatly desire? Sex with hot people, regardless of whether the hotties are married, or nuns in a convent, or whatever. I guess after the bubonic plague, people had the attitude that “life is short, so let’s get in on”. Marvin Gaye would have made it big even back then. Woohoo, party in the Renaissance!

There was one story that seemed particularly relevant to me, at least to my mood at the moment. This story was from the second day, where the stories are all tales of people who suffer a series of misfortunes, but end up in a state of unexpected happiness. The story involves the daughter of the Sultan of Babylon, who was believed to be the most beautiful woman on Earth. She was to be married to the King of Algarve (southern Portugal…I looked it up). So the sultan shipped her off to Algarve with a ship laden with noblemen and treasures. But a series of storms caused the crew to abandon ship and the lady was left aboard the floundering craft. The lady is rescued by a Christian nobleman, and through a series of adventures and misfortunes, she falls into the hands of eight men in four years. Finally she is returned to her father, the Sultan, who is told she is still a virgin, despite her having had a lot of wild sex with the eight men. So everyone is convinced of her purity and virginity and she gets married to the King of Algarve as previously planned, living happily ever after. The story ends with the phrase “A kissed mouth doesn’t lose its freshness, for like the moon it always renews itself”. Somehow I find that comforting, in a general sense. Lives can renew themselves, despite the past. Hope springs eternal. Life goes on. Keep on keepin’ on. I’m back and blogging, baby!

Book #31 - The Decameron (Giovanni Boccaccio)

2009-04-02T22:10:00.000-07:00

Busy, busy, busy. Sometimes life is like that, and as a result the poor book blogger can't even find time to frickin' read, let alone babble on semi-coherently about whatever he's not reading, all the while hopped up on whiskey and black coffee, just like a member of congress. Between work and my immunology class (I had to file for an extension..what a slacker I am!) and other things, I've had precious little time to read the great books and ponder the meaning of it all. Funny, though, I've still managed time to sneak in the odd martini or two. Hmmm.

Anyway, books. Yep, started a new one, right after "Winesburg, Ohio". Winesburg was such an awesome reading experience, and perfect for the mood I was in at the moment. So on a wave of optimism fueled by the depressing isolation of Anderson's Winesburg, I decided to take my reading back to the late middle ages and tackle Giovanni Boccaccio's "Decameron". Now here's a classic that definitely fits the definition of "stood the test of time". Can't lose, right? The thing was written 650-something years ago...even before I was born! So if it's stuck around that long, it's gotta be the quintessential reading experience...like all the books I've read so far put together into one huge volume of awesomeness! Woohoo!

Well, uh, fuck, maybe not. I can't seem to get into this book. I've read about 100 pages out of 750, and it's taken me two weeks. I read it, and I think "Hmmm, I should go do something fun...like work on my immunology term paper". Well, actually, it's not that bad...it's not Henry James after all, but still, I just can't seem to get it. Allow me to explain.

"The Decameron" takes place in Florence, Italy (before it was Italy) during the bubonic plague. The plague comes to town and is killing everybody, so a group of 7 young women and 3 young men decide to escape town to a villa in the country and hang out until the plague has passed. So when they get there, they need something to do, and since it's the 1300s and TV won't be invented for another ten thousand years, they decide to tell stories to pass the time. They tell ten days worth of stories, and each of the 10 people tells one story per day, so the book is composed of 100 stories framed within the narrative. "Well", you might say, "stories are cool. What could possibly be so bad about reading a book of stories?" Well, I wouldn't say they were bad, it's just they seem, um, not all that engaging to me. And I know that's blasphemy because this is a book that has "stood the test of time". Until my time, that is.

For example: one of the shorter stories is about a guy that has a lot of money, but who is a penny-pinching miser. He's painting his house, and a guest comes over. He says to the guest "I'd like to paint something on this wall that no one's ever seen". The guest says "OK, paint generosity." Ooooh, snap! So the guy feels bad and stops being a miser. And that's it...that's the whole story. Yes, allegorical I suppose, and teaches the lesson "Don't be a penny-pinching miser or people will cut you down". But it's not all that much of a story. Where are the light sabers? The evil overlords? The dramatic car chases? Seems like the standards of what constitutes entertainment have changed a lot since the late middle ages. Sigh. Nonetheless, I continue on, hoping the book will grow on me. And hoping Boccaccio throws in a few alien invasions in upcoming stories, just to pick up the pace a bit.

Last Train to Winesburg

2009-03-15T13:43:00.000-07:00

Back in the cafe on a cloudy afternoon. Even more laptops today than last time...in fact, every frickin' table in the place, save two, has someone clicking away on a laptop. And my table, clearly, is no exception. And except for the music playing in the background, no one in here is talking. Everyone is locked away inside their own little cyberworld. Is this what technology has brought to us: a better way to be isolated and lonely, while maintaining the illusion of connectedness through Facebook, and MySpace, and e-mail, and, yes, blogs? Are people now more isolated and remote than ever? Possibly, for otherwise they'd come to cafes to chat and socialize, rather than stare into the shallow glow of their laptop screen. But then again, "Winesburg, Ohio" makes a good argument for the case that loneliness and isolation is endemic to the human condition, with or without technology.

This is one of the most depressing books I've read in quite awhile, maybe ever. All the characters, save for one or two, are lonely, isolated, odd, misunderstood, unhappy...or, more usually, a combination of two or more from this list. I thoroughly enjoyed the book. The writing is very realistic, thoughtful, beautiful. I've never read any Sherwood Anderson before, but I'd like to read some more. He really gets inside the characters, yet continually leaves them understated. And the sparseness of his writing style lends itself beautifully to the sense of isolation and alienation that envelopes the characters. Its sad and poignant, but in a subtle understated way, never even remotely over the top.

It's interesting to think about "Winesburg, Ohio" in relation to two other books I've read for this project so far: Sinclair Lewis's "Main Street" and Thomas Wolfe's "Look Homeward, Angel". "Main Street" also deals with the isolation of living in a small, rural town in the early 1900s, but here the loneliness is most prominent in the town's newcomer...the townspeople themselves don't have the solitude of the characters in Winesburg. And in "Winesburg, Ohio" we observe the one character that returns in most of the stories, George Willard, grow up and become a man, and eventually leave the confines of the town for the larger world, with a sense that he will not be returning. This is similar to Eugene Gant's story in "Look Homeward, Angel", although the latter book has more of a southern gothic twinge running through it.

Would the characters in Winesburg exist in today's world? Would they all be online, but as isolated as ever? Or would they all be on Prozac, in therapy, and surrounded by self-help books? And if so, would any of that help? Or is it all just wallpaper, thinly applied to cover up the barren walls of the human condition. "We live as we dream, alone" wrote the Gang of Four. Sherwood Anderson would agree.

Read this book. It's great!

Book #30 - Winesburg, Ohio (Sherwood Anderson)

2009-03-01T16:17:00.000-08:00

As previously noted in this blog (and perhaps I've even somewhat beaten this point into the ground), I'm now officially a middle-aged fucker. I mean, I'm in my forties, and if that's not middle-aged then what is? Some would claim that your 40s are the new 30s, but those people are dreaming, and clearly do not need to take as much Advil as I do just to keep moving comfortably. Anyway, I'm feeling a little old today because I'm doing for the first time what all the young hipsters are doing here in San Francisco, and probably all over the world...sitting in a cafe, typing this blog on my laptop. In my younger days I did quite my share of caffeination in coffehouses, but back in the day we either read books or the newspaper, or wrote in our journals, or in my case wrote song lyrics into spiral-bound notebooks. The only home electronic device used in a cafe would have been a Walkman (I can't speak for the generation before me who reportedly used 8-track tape players in cafes, although that would have been quite cumbersome, so I think that could just be an urban legend). Anyway, as I look around the cafe now, I would estimate that 50% of the people here are clicking away on their laptops. No doubt sharpening up their resumes, or surfing the web, or launching their new start-up. Everyone else on a laptop looks 20-something. And then there's me, the old fucker with his cappuccino, blogging about books. Do 20-somethings even read books these days? Or do they just download files onto their Kindle? Strange days indeed. Damn, I'm sounding more and more like a cranky old person every day. Why when I was young, I used to have to walk 20 miles in the snow, often in blizzard conditions, for a cappucino, etc. etc.

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes, books. Sometimes when you read a book you think, "This is good, but it's not the right book for me at this time". I think "Scaramouche" was like that for me. Now I'm about halfway through Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio", and I'm finding this is the perfect book at this time for me. Just perfect. I love this book. Maybe I'll feel differently in a few months when I'm in a different place, but I'm having a true book/life convergence here. And I'm relishing it.

First, let's get the truely important issue out of the way right at the top, so it doesn't sit here on this blog like the pink elephant in the chat room. Yes, Sherwood Anderson was killed by a martini. Really. He swallowed a martini olive containing a piece of a toothpick, which pierced his peritoneum, and killed him while he was visiting the Panama Canal Zone. So for all you amateurs out there who might get some ideas about drinking from this blog, please leave it to us more experienced folks. Actually I could use a martini right now, just as a refresher course on martini consumption safety. Damn, all they have here in this cafe is coffee and espresso. I'm so fucked.

Anyway, where was I before I started distracting msyelf with martini fantasies? Oh yeah, "Winesburg, Ohio". This is an odd book; it reads like a collection of short stories, each one a vignette of a person or family living in the small rural town of Winesburg, Ohio. Yet, characters from one story reappear in others, and one character, Geroge Willard, a young reporter for the Winseburg Eagle, occurs in most of the stories so far. He's a young, rather shallow youth, who aspires to be a writer. Many of the other characters seem to take a shine to him and confide their secrets, such as they are, in him. It's not clear why. Anyway, what is this book...a collection of stories? A novel? I dunno, and who cares. The stories themselves are great. Almost all of the characters we meet in Winesburg are peculiar in their own way, and all of them seem to be lonely and isolated, and exist in their own small world, even though Winesburg itself is its own small world. This would be a great book to read back-to-back with "Main Street".

One of the stories, or chapters, or whatever they are, is called "Hands" and deals with the story of Wing Biddlebaum, a man who lives on the outskirts of Winesburg and has no friends, except for George Willard, who visits him on occasion. Wing's unique feature is his hands, which are always in motion, and are one of the town's prides. His hands are like a birds wings, they move so much and with such dexterity, and hence his nickname. We learn that Wing used to be a schoolteacher in Pennsylvania, and his hands would innocently caress young boys hair. When one boy falsely accuses him of molestation, the men of the town come after him and almost hang him, but end up running him out of town instead. So he takes on an assumed name (Biddlebaum) and flees to his aunt, who lives in Winesburg. And that's the story...a man falsely accused, with an odd quirk, who is now alone and isolated. Par for the course in Winesburg.

One of my other favorite stories so far, and the only one which could be described as remotely happy, is called "A Man of Ideas". The main character in this story is Joe Welling, a salesman for Standard Oil. He's a normal affable man, until he gets some crazy idea in his head, at which point he goes into a frenzy, almost seizure-like, as he rants like a volcano about his strange ideas to whoever happens to be close by. While the townsfolk like him when he's his regular self, they are wary of him because they're not sure when he'll start spouting his ideas off at them...and his ideas, while crazy, are also fascinating, so the townsfolk are usually held captive while he goes off on his rant. Anyway, he gains the respect of the townsfolk by organizing a baseball team for Winesburg, and his crazy, ranting energy so transfixes his team and distracts opposing teams that they become huge winners, which of course the town loves. But then he starts seeing Sarah King, a woman in town who lives with her father and brother, both of whom seem to be criminals and possibly murderers, and who are feared by the townsfolk for their violent behavior. One night Joe comes back to his room in the boarding house and the two men are waiting for him, to beat him up, or worse, for seeing their sister. But he is thrown into one of his frenzy of ideas, and starts spouting off to them about vegetables, and what would happen if all the current food vegetables were destroyed, and what new vegetables could possibly be developed to replace the ones that were lost. Well, like everyone else, the father and brother are transfixed in spite of themselves, and instead of hurting or killing Joe, they are swept up by his tidal wave of words and are won over, and all go off to their house together to tell Sarah about his crazy ideas about vegetables.

I just love this book...the combination of the sadness, the loneliness, the quiet despair of the characters, and the humanity of it all really speaks to me. Plus I like Anderson's writing style...it's very straightforward, for lack of a better word. Simple, to the point, no confusing phrases, nothing buried in long sentances and odd wording. The style totally fits the subject matter. I'm looking forward to the rest of the book. But now it's time to leave this coffeehouse and embark on a search for that martini, sans toothpick...

Le Fin de Scaramouche

2009-02-23T22:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes life just rolls merrily along, and other times it's frickin' hard. Right now, for me, it's hard. I'm still struggling with this damn immunology class; four weeks to go, and I have so much to do. And on top of that, there's going to be layoffs at work, as there will be in a lot of workplaces this year, I suppose. So everyone at work is freaking out, and consequently not getting much work done. Hmmm, seems like there's a business lesson there somewhere. Of course, if I did get laid off there would be lots more time for blogging the canon...but then again, there would be less money for fine whiskey to wash down the canon chunks with. I'd have to switch to Old Grand Dad, which actually isn't a bad whiskey at all. But I digress...

So here I am whining and bitching about how hard life is while I sit here in my comfortable abode, typing on my awesome mac laptop, and sipping on some fine Guatemalan rum; meanwhile other people have way more troubles than I do. Like, for instance, Andre-Louis Moreau, the hero of "Scaramouche", who had to go on the lam from the law for murder and inciting riots. He flees to Paris, where he takes a job at a fencing school. Naturally, he becomes quite good at fencing, and eventually takes over the school when the headmaster is killed in the opening salvos of the French Revolution. So now we have all the ingredients here for a rollicking good story...sword fighting! Revolution! Vengeance! WOOHOO! And yes, the story basically comes down to all that. I could go on and describe all the plot details, but I'm going to refrain, for the simple reason that this book is mostly plot. If I walked you through the plot and said what happens, there'd be no reason for you ever to read this book. There aren't any big themes, or intellectual ideas, or really deep thoughts of any kind at work here. This book is really just an action novel...a damn good one, but it's just not really any deeper than that. Not that there's anything wrong with that...the swords come out, and the revolutionary mobs draw close, and there are opportunities for vengeance, and you just wanna read the next chapter to see what happens next. But it's a plot-driven vehicle, much like a Hollywood action blockbuster.

However, there was one downside to the plot, and I can't figure out if this is due to my having seen too many movies which has made me able to predict this kind of thing, or if it would have also been obvious in the 1920s when this was published. The downside is that there are two big plot twists in the novel, having to do with the identity of Andre-Louis' parents (he's a bastard child, raised by his Godfather, who he always assumed was his real father), and I could totally see both of these twists coming for a long time ahead, which naturally made them a lot less fun than they otherwise would have been. Plot twists are best when they really do twist, but these were fairly predictable. It was fun to see how they would turn out, but they weren't really surprises. No, a real surprise would have been if Andre-Louis was suddenly teleported ahead in time and forced to take an immunology class. Would he have used his wit and cunning to pass the course with flying colors, or would he have become rapidly exasperated by the pressures of time and work, forcing him to resort to pulling out his sword and threatening to run the instructor through before leaping out the nearest window and fighting his way through oncoming traffic, resulting in a grade of "incomplete"? Hmmm, now THAT would be a plot twist.

Book #29 - Scaramouche (Rafael Sabatini)

2009-02-01T01:03:00.001-08:00

If I were a professional blogger I'd blog like 20 books a week, finish my list in a couple of months, and be dead of liver failure from the liquid "inspiration". Fortunately, or perhaps not, I'm doing this blog as a hobby, and a long-term project, so my reading and alcohol consumption will remain in moderation...well, mostly anyway. Things in my real life happen (as opposed to my reading life) which will sometimes draw me away from my reading schedule, and indeed this has happened lately. And what, Dear God, could have possibly drawn me away from the classics of world literature? After all, I could die any day, so I need to hurry up and read these books! Answer: the immune system. No, I'm not sick or dying or anything. Instead, for my work, I'm taking a class on immunology on my off-work hours. I had thought that hey, I know biology pretty well, since I'm a biologist, so how much work could a class on the immune system be? Well, a lot, as it turns out. I won't go into the gory details, but take it from me there's a hell of a lot going on with the immune system...more, in fact, than either you or I want to know. Anyway, the damn class is killing me, and it runs through March 22, so my canon blogging may be sorely limited between now and then, as I try to remember the differences between Th1 and Th2 cells, and what cytokine activates what type of cell, etc.

Of course, if I were Andre-Louis Moreau, the hero of "Scaramouche", I'd think of some clever disguise and have someone else take the class for me. Or perhaps threaten the professor with a sword, or snow him with my awesome oratory. I'd never heard of "Scaramouche" or had any knowledge of it when I put it on the list...I think I found it on some "greatest books" list and put it on when it was described as one of the greatest romances ever. I thought "Cool, a love story from the Renaissance". Well, nope. It was, to my surprise, written in English in 1921. It's a swashbuckler novel, although I haven't gotten to the deep sword-play parts yet. I'm actually only about 1/2 way through, due to the aforementioned immune system woes. The main character, Andre-Louis Moreau, is a lawyer in the provinces of France, before the French Revolution. As described in the first two lines of the book (which I love),

He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. And that was all his patrimony.

He becomes incensed when a local aristocrat, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, kills a friend of his, a friend who's in the priesthood, over a trivial dispute. And it doesn't help that the aristocrat is also engaged to his cousin, who Andre-Louis secretly loves. He vows to take down the aristocrat, and his kind, by adopting the oratory of the impending revolution, even though he doesn't really believe a word of it. Nonetheless, his stirring speeches rouse the rabble against the aristocrats. Complications ensue, and he's forced to flee. Fortunately, his skill, luck, and cunning land him in a traveling theatrical troupe. He soon becomes the main writer and plays a stock character called Scaramouche. The theatrical company begins to play larger and larger venues due to Andre-Louis's writing, and eventually make it to Nantes. It is here that the aristocrat, M. de La Tour d'Azyr, appears in the audience. He's still engaged to Andre-Louis's beloved cousin, but he also has a liason with the female actress in the troupe, who Andre-Louis was going to marry. So, to take revenge, during the play one night when M. de La Tour d'Azyr is present, Andre-Louis makes an unexpected monologue condemning aristocrats, and the crowd is whipped into a frenzy. Andre-Louis ends up shooting a man, though, and has to flee for his life.

This is a fun book, and a quick read if you're not having attention span problems due to constantly thinking about the baroque architecture of the immune system. Lots of action and excitement. But it's not a real "deep" novel. It is what it is...good reading entertainment, but I'm not sure if I would have put it on a "greatest books" list. Although, as I said, I'm only halfway through so far, so maybe this thing will turn into "War and Peace" during the second half. And of course, I'll be sure to let you know. Or I can discuss the fine points of immunoglobulin gene recombination. Nah, screw that, the former goes much better with a glass of fine whiskey.

R.I.P. Edson Chick

2009-01-12T22:40:00.000-08:00

I just learned that one of my college professors died. Herr Professor Dr. Edson Chick was head of the German department at my college, and even though I never learned a word of German, he was one of my favorite professors. I took a class freshman year called "Literature in Translation" where six different professors, each one of whom taught a different language, came in and lectured on a book written in the language they taught. So the Spanish professor from Spain taught "Don Quixote", the Spanish professor from South America taught "One Hundred Years of Solitude", the Russian professor taught "Oblomov", the French professor taught 'Madame Bovary", one German professor taught "The Sorrows of Young Werther", and Herr Chick taught Thomas Mann's "The Magic Mountain". I loved this class...all the professors were great, and they made all the books come alive. But Herr Chick stood out even in that crowd. He looked the part of a German...tall, blonde hair in a crew cut, muscular build, and blue eyes, although I later learned he was a native of California. And he taught the hell out of "The Magic Mountain". His enthusiasm for the book was infectious, at least to me, and I ended up reading the book twice. The next year I took a course he taught called "German Theatre in Translation". I had no knowledge of German theatre, nor any special interest in the subject matter when I signed up for the class...I just figured the reading would be interesting with him teaching it. And it was. There were only four students in the class, and we basically just sat around a table reading plays, with Herr Chick often bursting out in hearty laughter at the humorous parts. The sheer joy he found in the plays was a total delight, and made the class incredibly fun. Great teachers are rare, as perhaps are students who can appreciate them, but when you have one and can open your heart and mind to the experience, it can make the rest of your life much richer. Thanks for everything, Herr Chick. I owe you one.

Mississippi Yearning

2009-01-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

I spent New Year's Eve in Cincinnati, getting ready for the return road trip back across the US. And as befits this old river town, I finished "Life on the Mississippi" yesterday.

I've noticed that there are several book bloggers that I follow who seem to read more than one book at once (at least they have more than one book in their "currently reading" list). I used to do that as a kid, but I no longer have the requisite mental facility to leap back and forth between books and keep it all straight. But for people that do, "Life on the Mississippi" would make a great book to read while reading others, as the book's chapters are short, and each one reads (for the most part) like an independent story or anecdote. The book kind of meanders, much like the course of the Mississippi itself, and I'm not sure that plowing straight through it, as I did, is the best way to experience it. It might work better read more slowly and taking short side trips away from the book on occasion. Which, of course, is the same thing that makes road trips fun (see previous post).

I said in my last post that the first part of the book is wistful and nostalgic in numerous places, and the second half of the book does not vary from this. In the first 1/3 of the book Twain recounts his days as a steamboat pilot in training, while the last 2/3 of the book jumps ahead a couple of decades and recounts Twain's return to the river. At this point he's a famous writer, and wants to travel down the river to see how it's changed, and to see if he can find his old pilot friends. Well, it turns out the river has changed greatly. The steamship trade seems to be dying out when Twain returns, due to increased use of tugboats and barges, rather than steamships, as well as to the rise of the railroads as an alternative means of transportation. There are still a few steamboats, though, and Twain makes his away along the river in several of them, meeting some of his acquaintances from his riverboat days. The US government has also dredged channels and installed lighting and buoys at dangerous shoals, so the more dangerous days of riverboating have past. And furthermore, the piloting profession has changed in a number of ways as well, most notably with unionization of the pilots. And of course this all makes Twain nostalgic.

In addition to the wistful air, Twain writes with a sense of history, which I think many Americans no longer have. The combination really helps make this book into a story of the conquering of the American frontier. In addition to describing the changes in life on the river, Twain also repeatedly describes how old, small towns along the river have grown into large cities, and new towns have sprung up where none had been before. Many other towns, once thriving, have died when the railroads passed them by, or when the river changed it's course and left them far from the water. The river, and the American society that grew up along it, are both constantly changing. And Twain himself has changed along with it all, growing from an adolescent river pilot into a famous writer, and indeed an American icon. It's a portrait of a young nation in constant change, growing into the modern era.

And speaking of history, one recurring theme of the book is the Civil War. The Mississippi and its tributaries run from the north to the south, from free states to slave states, and some notable battles of the Civil War were fought on the river's shores. In one chapter Twain gives an account of the battle at Vicksburg. But more interestingly, at least to me, were Twain's occasional pontifications on the Civil War. The most interesting of these was when he blames the Civil War on Sir Walter Scott. In Twain's estimation, Scott's novels inflamed the south's sense of romance and chivalry, leading to an unwinnable, disastrous war. Hmm, well, OK, that's something that wouldn't have occurred to me. Twain also discusses how at the time of his travels down the Mississippi (I'm guessing about 1880), that if the topic of the Civial War was raised in conversation in the north, the topic would fade out as people had moved on and had little interest in rehashing the war. In contrast, any conversation that one had in the south, no matter how far afield, would seem to turn to some aspect of the Civil War after a minute or two. Twain accounts this to the fact that the south, and not the north, was invaded, and the civilian population suffered greatly, which added bitterness and trauma to their loss. Indeed, I think even to this day, over 140 years later, the war's wounds in the south are not entirely healed. Some southerners still refer to the war as "The War of the Northern Aggression". I think time (and immigration) will eventually heal this wound, but it's remarkable that even today that reverberations of the effects Twain noted 120 years ago still occasionally echo in the American psyche.

Book #28 - Life on the Mississippi (Mark Twain)

2008-12-21T18:27:00.001-08:00

For the holidays, I'm driving across the US to visit relatives in both Atlanta and Cincinnati. Since I live in San Francisco, this entails a lot of driving. Thousands and thousands of miles worth in fact. And isn't this a fundamental part of who we are as Americans? I'm talking about one of the inalienable rights our founding fathers gave their lives for...the right to load up our cars with suitcases and bourbon, and drive across the endless landscape with our sunglasses on and the radio blaring.

Tonight I'm staying in Meridian, Mississippi, having crossed the great Mississippi River about 150 miles ago. And thus it's fitting that I'm currently reading Mark Twain's "Life on the Mississippi". This book, at least so far, is also about travel, about that American restlessness to move across the landscape. Twain was born in the river town of Hannibal, Missouri in 1835. At the time of his childhood this must have been a remote location indeed, except for the river. Near the book's beginning he tells of how the highlight of each day in his childhood Hannibal was when the riverboat came in. Otherwise the town was slow and sleepy. No wonder an intellectually gifted and curious child like himself grew up fascinated by the river. The same pull of adventure and the outside world that has lured countless of generations of young people also beckoned to Twain, and drew him to seek his adventures on the river. He fled Hannibal and apprenticed to become a steamboat pilot, and much of the rest of what I've read so far describes, humorously, his beginnings as a cub riverboat pilot. It's hard to tell what is the truth and what is exaggeration, as Twain describes how a pilot must know every bit of the river from St. Louis to New Orleans, lest he run his steamboat aground, or worse, especially when piloting at night when he can't see the way. Is this really true? I've had the same 35 mile commute each day for 12 years, and yet I'm not sure I could drive in the dark without headlights.

There is a wistful mood to this book. Clearly by the time he wrote it his river days were long past, and he describes how when he started to train as a riverboat pilot, the old days of rafts and flatboats on the river were long past, replaced by the steam boats. Thus in just the first 50 pages, Twain delves deep into two very American themes...the road trip (as mentioned above) and the nostalgia for a mythical American past. And perhaps the two really go together. For wasn't the movement of early Americans from the east coast out into the frontier really the ultimate American road trip? Yep, just like "On the Road", except the pioneers took all their worldly possessions with them and often died on their way, and didn't do nearly as many drugs. OK, maybe not. It's hard to tell after driving for 12 hours and then quaffing a couple of shots of bourbon. And I gotta hit the road again early tomorrow morning. It's the American way!

Book #27 - Lord of the Flies (William Golding)

2008-12-14T10:56:00.000-08:00

Dark, darker, darkest. That seems to be my path by reading "Vanity Fair", "Pere Goriot", and "Lord of the Flies" all in a row. Because while Thackeray and Balzac have cynical, bleak views of humanity in their respective novels, Golding tops them all in "Lord of the Flies". The premise of his novel is that beneath a shallow layer of civilization lies a bloody pool of savagery in us all. Or as Margaret Thatcher once said "The veneer of civilization is very thin".

I remember seeing part of the movie version of this novel with my brother when I was very young, and it scared me to death. I had forgotten most of the movie, so it was fun to read the book. And I have to say the book is a real page turner. The story, which has really become a part of our cultural canon, is simple. A planeload of young boys is being evacuated from England because of war. It's not clear if this is World War II or some other fictitious war, although the "Reds" are mentioned at some point. Seems weird that children would be evacuated by plane to somewhere that they'd have to fly over the tropics to get to. Regardless, for some unmentioned reason, the plane crashes onto a deserted tropical island and the pilot(s) are killed. Only the boys are alive. Under the leadership of one of the older boys, Ralph, and advised by a smart but fat and sickly kid, Piggy, the boys form a rudimentary democracy. Ralph tells the boys they must build and maintain a signal fire, and they need to build shelter.

But things soon go awry. Another one of the boys, Jack, wants to be the leader. He takes up hunting, and leads a small group of boys who used to be his choir mates to become hunters of feral pigs found on the island. The kids quickly revert to savagery, in part driven on by their fear of "the beast", a monsterous creature they're convinced is out on the island somewhere. Jack and his hunters rebel and form their own tribe, and things quickly go downhill. Simon, a boy who is a saintly and wise, is killed in a ritualistic frenzy by the boys after they've eaten some freshly killed pig. He had come out of the jungle to tell the boys that what they thought was the beast was actually a dead parachutist. But he surprised the boys and they started to kill him with their spears, and even when they realized who he was they kept on stabbing him, due to their frenzy and blood-lust.

Piggy gets killed as well, buy a huge boulder pushed by Roger, the most sadistic of the kids. Finally all the boys on the island are in Jack's tribe except Ralph, and the kids start hunting for Ralph to finish him off. They set fire to the jungle to smoke him out, and so he runs to the beach, where he finds that British soldiers with machine guns have landed because they saw the huge jungle fire. Ralph tells them what's happened and the head solider says "But you kids are British, we expect better from you". Ralph cries with sadness and relief, and the boys are rescued. The End.

As I said, this was a great read, even with that deus ex machina ending. The language is taught and tense, and as the situation spirals downhill I really wanted to keep turning the page to see what happens. But I have to say, this book is not as complicated as the past few I've read. There is a lot of symbolism, but it's all pretty obvious...the pig's head (The Lord of the Flies) represents the beast within us all, Piggy's glasses represent knowledge and rationality, the conch represents the order, etc. And the main characters...Ralph, Roger, Jack, Simon, Piggy...all stand for specific types. Piggy is the intellectual, Ralph is the good, practical politician, Jack is the power hungry dictator, etc. It's a well written book, and fun to read, but maybe best read in high school, because the symbolism and allegory and characterization are all pretty black and white. But I don't mean for that to come off as an insult.

Still, the overall theme of this book is fascinating to think about. What WOULD happen in this situation? Are we really all just savages underneath? How dark is human nature? I can certainly see how Golding would have a dark view of the human psyche just after World War II when this was written. And in this age of terrorism the darkness continues. But nevertheless, society survives, as does civilization. We have laws, which are usually obeyed. Life on Earth is not the war of all against all of Thomas Hobbes. I can't argue that there isn't darkness in the human soul, but there's light in there as well, which has, over the centuries, triumphed over the darkness more often than the reverse. At least in the long run. So maybe Golding is a bit bleaker than is warranted. But ask me whether I still feel that way after the nuclear holocaust.

Blogging the Canon - Year One

2008-12-10T21:52:00.000-08:00

Happy anniversary...to me! Yes, it's hard to believe, but it's been one year since I first started this blogging project! Woohoo, break out the absinthe! Actually, I'm sipping on some now, prepared in the traditional manner with sugar and water. I picked up a bottle when I was in London last spring, at the duty-free shop in Heathrow. It's pretty good...tastes like licorice, and has evil green color. And fortunately it hasn't driven me mad...yet. Ha, ha...wait, why are the walls moving?

This blogging project has been a great ride so far...26 books read in the year, out of my original 105, plus 76 blog posts, and countless cocktails while reading and blogging. So does that mean I'll finish up in three more years? Well, no, for two reasons. First, there are some remaining "books" on the list that are going to be incredibly long...like all of Plutarch's "Lives", and all of Proust's "In Search of Lost Time", which is actually something like a series of 18 novels or so. Second, during this past year, I've come across more books that should have been on the original "greatest hits of all time but have yet to read" list. In fact, I have 126 of these books. So why not add them to the list then, you may ask? Well, my fear is that I'll keep adding books in order to avoid some of the ones on my original 105 that I'm rather dreading, like "Ulysses" and "The Ambassadors". No, I think at least for now I'll keep plugging away at the original 105 books on my list, and hold off on the others for awhile.

It's fun to look back on the year and think of the books I've read. My favorite so far? Hmm, hard to say, but I think it might be...drum roll, please...George Eliot's "Silas Marner". I dunno, I guess I'm just a sentimentalist, but that book made me cry. Although parts of "Anna Karenina" and "My Antonia" made me cry too. My second favorite may have been "Moll Flanders"...that book is seriously funny! My least favorite? Hard to say, because I really liked them all. In fact, that's one of the surprising things to me...I liked them all! No clunkers out of the first 26! But I haven't read any Henry James yet, either.

I was thinking in my last blog post of common themes in several of the books I've read so far. The character of Moll Flanders reminded me a bit of Becky Sharp...both were intelligent, street-smart women who used their wiles to work their way up from poverty. But they were different, too. Moll was more of a good woman who did what she had to do to survive. Becky also did what she had to do to survive, but she definitely had a mean streak that Moll didn't have, and she aimed higher than just surviving. And Moll may have become an inveterate thief, but she would never have cheated on any of her men.

And then there's the similarities between Becky Sharp, Rastignac from "Pere Goriot", and Julien Sorel from "The Red and the Black". All three are intelligent, ambitious characters who escape from their impoverished, lower class beginnings by using their intelligence and cunning to move up the social ladder. Rastignac and Julien don't really know what they're doing, at least at first, but their ambition and drive allow them to overcome their naivity...at least for awhile (in Julien's case). We sympathize with all three, but all three definitely have their faults. But what's really fascinating is to compare these three characters to the lives of the authors of the three autobiographies I read this year: Benjamin Franklin, Frederick Douglass, and Booker T. Washington. All three of these men were also born impoverished and lower class...and in the case of Frederick Douglass and Booker Washington they were born slaves, which is pretty much as low in society as you can be. Like Becky and Rastignac and Julien, all three of the real life characters used their natural intelligence and incredible drive to escape from poverty and move up in the world. But where Becky and Rastignac and Julien used sex and trickery to move up the ladder, Franklin, Douglass, and Washington used hard work, and when that failed, more hard work. And when they reached the top, they worked to improve the lives of their fellow citizens, rather than simply kicking back and enjoying the comforts of high society. Does this reflect the difference between fiction and real life? Or does it just mean that real life Becky Sharps would not write an autobiography? Or does it mean that people who write their own autobiographies can leave out all traces of their duplicitous, cunning natures? The latter seems the least likely, since other historical sources would have revealed the truth if Benjamin Franklin or Booker T. Washington had slept their ways to the top. Hmm, well, let me sip my absinthe and ponder this mystery, as I pick up book #27 and begin my second year of blogging the canon.

Book #26 - Pere Goriot (Honore de Balzac)

2008-12-08T20:29:00.001-08:00

Amateur Reader over at Wuthering Expectations recently celebrated a Big Balzac Blowout. This got me interested in checking the Frenchman out, so when I finished "Vanity Fair" I immediately dove into the one Balzac novel on my list, "Pere Goriot". And after reading "Vanity Fair" and "Pere Goriot" back-to-back, I immediately asked the question "Who has the more cynical and bleak view of human nature, Thackeray or Balzac?" Answer: yes.

"Pere Goriot" takes place in Paris, during the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, following the fall of Napoleon (coincidentally the same time period in which "Vanity Fair" takes place). The novel opens up at a rundown boarding house in Paris. Among the boarders is an impoverished old man named Goriot. As the novel opens, the other boarders single him out to be picked on for no real reason except he's old and quiet and shabby. They call him Pere Goriot, "Pere", of course, meaning "father" in French (Yes! I FINALLY can make use of that two years of high school French I took three decades ago! I knew it would eventually pay off!). It is rumored Pere Goriot was once a wealthy macaroni manufacturer, but no one really knows. That is, until he is befriended by another boarder, Eugene de Rastignac. Rastignac is a law student who is, shall we say, not the most motivated of law students. He pays a call on a rich but distant cousin of his who lives in Paris, Madame de Beauséant, and that's that. After seeing how the rich live, that's all he wants...to be filthy, stinking rich, and to pal around with other rich aristocrats. Oh, and without studying this boring law stuff. He soon learns that Goriot has two daughters who are rich Parisians, having married wealthy men. He visits them to try to make inroads into Parisian society. Balzac's descriptions of Rastignac's initial visits to his wealthy cousin and to one of Goriot's daughters, the countess Anastasie de Restaud, are both very comical and quite painful to read. Rastignac is from the south of France, and seems to be what we might call today a "country bumpkin", or a "hick". He doesn't know the rules of society and totally puts his foot in his mouth, among other things. But he's determined to learn the rules of aristocratic society, and slowly becomes more adept at the game. Eventually he becomes the lover of Goriot's other daughter, Delphine de Nuncigen.

Meanwhile, we learn more about Pere Goriot. He was indeed once a wealthy macaroni manufacturer, but he has given all his money to his daughters, first as a dowry, and later to help pay debts incurred by their lovers. In fact, Goriot is obsessed by his daughters...all he can talk about is how much he loves them, and how he'd do anything to help them, including, as it turns out, selling all he has and going broke for them. And how do the daughters feel about him? They take his money and never visit. Kids today, I tell you.

In a twist, which never really goes as far as the reader thinks it will, there's another boarder at the house, Vautrin, who befriends Rastignac. It's pretty clear there's something going on with Vautrin, because his character seems quite sinister, although for awhile it's unclear why. Vautrin tries to convince Rastignac that if it's riches he wants, he should court another woman that lives at the boarding house, Victorine Taillefer. Victorine is a daughter of a rich man who has disinherited Victorine and her mother. Vautrin tells Rastignac to court Victorine, and meanwhile he will arrange for her father's son and only heir to meet with an unfortunate accident, which will cause the father to make amends with Victorine since he has no other heirs. Rastignac actually toys with this idea, briefly, and flirts with Victorine, but then goes back to Goriot's daughter. To make a long story short, Vautrin has the son killed anyway (oops) but Rastignac doesn't go along and the Vautrin is exposed as some kind of master criminal who the cops have been after for years. He's arrested and hauled off by the police. Melodramatic? Yeah, you think? Balzac is great with descriptions, sometimes going off on the smallest details, but he pulls it off because it's always interesting. But his plot twists can be pretty melodramatic, and sometimes a bit over the top.

Anyway, I won't go into all the details, but Rastignac works it so that Delphine gets him his own furnished apartment so she can have access to him whenever she wants. But soon Goriot, who it turns out is paying for the apartment (of course) because that's what his daughter wants, becomes ill, and appears to have a stroke or something, brought on because his other daughter, Anastasie, is in trouble since she had to pawn her husband's family diamonds to pay off the gambling debts of her lover. Goriot, finally tapped out, has a stroke because he is powerless help his daughter. On his deathbed, his daughters are called, but neither of them can come, due to, well, some lame excuses. Goriot finally realizes that maybe he's loved his daughters too much and that actually they are scumbags. Anastasie finally comes to his deathbed, but it's too late as he's already in a coma and fading fast. And so he dies. Only Rastignac and a medical student friend come to his burial. This whole experience has made Rastignac realize how shallow both the daughters and Parisian high society are. For a brief instant the reader thinks that maybe Rastignac will reform his goldigger gigilo ways...but no. After Goriot is buried, Rastignac faces the Parisian skyline from a hilltop in the cemetary and says something like "It's between you and me now!", or "Henceforth there is war between us", depending on the translation. Then he goes and dines with Delphine, who's just blown off her father's burial. The end. So although he's given in to temptation, it's an adversarial relationship between him and the society on which he is looking to build his ambitions.

Cynical? You bet! It's fun to compare this book to "Vanity Fair" in that way. Both have dark views of human motivations and behavior. It's also interesting to compare this story to "The Red and the Black". The writing styles of Balzac and Stendhal couldn't be more different, but the stories are both about ambitious, poor young men who use their charms with the ladies to (1) get laid and (2) move up in society to gain status and riches. Sigh...if only I had thought of that plan myself 25 or 30 years ago. But no, instead I had to go to grad school.

Anyway, this was a fun, quick read, and Balzac is a great writer with, as I said, a flair for description. I'd like to read more of him eventually. Apparently most of the characters in "Pere Goriot" recur in other parts of Balzac's works. It would be fun to revisit them. And who knows...maybe they get nicer, more generous, and more unselfish in their old age. Nah, just kidding.

Vanity Fair's Conclusion (Spoiler Alert!), plus More Alcohol!

2008-11-27T21:52:00.000-08:00

I finished "Vanity Fair" today, and to celebrate I'm drinking a glass of rack punch, the drink that did in Joseph Sedley. More on this rack punch in a bit. But first, then end of "Vanity Fair"!

To start, I have to say that Thackeray is one hell of a writer. I just needed make that clear. There's a lot going on at the book's end and I'll just comment on a few things. First, old Dobbin finally grows a pair! Trying to warn Amelia of Becky's nature, Amelia gets pissed at him, and he says, basically, "I'm over it" and leaves Amelia. He gives up on the woman he's been trying to woo for years, realizing that it's hopeless and he's just wasting his time. And so what happens? Of course, Amelia starts realizing how great he's been to her. Yep, it's the old "they want what they can't have", also known as "playing hard to get". As soon as Dobbin tells her off and leaves, Amelia now wants him. Funny how that works. So finally Amelia writes Dobbin and tells him to come back and marry her. And at the same time, Becky actually shows some real emotion and tells Amelia that Dobbin is a great guy and she should go after him, and by the way, her (Amelia's) husband had wanted to run away with Becky and here's the note he wrote to her that proves it and maybe Amelia shouldn't be idolizing him so. Oooh, snap! So Dobbin returns, and Amelia is grateful and they get married and have a daughter and live happily ever after. Well, except Thackeray throws this little tidbit in:

Good-bye, Colonel - God bless you, honest William! - Farewell, dear Amelia - Grow green again, tender little parasite, round the rugged old oak to which you cling!

Parasite!?! OUCH! And yet, it's so true. Dobbin got what he always wanted, and maybe that's not so great. "Which of us has his desire? or, having it, is satisfied?" God, I love this book.

And then there's Becky. Oh, Becky. I touched upon previously the question of whether she was guilty of not in having an affair with Lord Steyne. While this is an open question, she seems to get more and more evil as the book ends. Or at least, it's implied that she's evil, although again it's mostly hearsay. But something very curious happens at the end of the novel. Becky has taken up with old Joseph Sedley, not in a sexual way, but she has worked the situation so that Sedley is supporting her. Dobbin comes to Sedley's room and tells him he should just leave and not tell Becky, and Joseph says:

He would go back to India. He would do anything; only he must have time: they musn't say anything to Mrs. Crawley: - she'd - she'd kill me if she knew it. You don't know what a terrible woman she is.

Now here's the interesting part: Becky is not in the room, nor is she eavesdropping, when Joseph says all this to Dobbin. At least, that's not mentioned in the text. But Thackeray has an illustration called "Becky's second appearance in the character of Clytemnestra" where she's apparently hiding behind a curtain listening in to this conversation. And several months later Joseph Sedley is dead, and hey, that's a coincidence, Becky gets half the money from his life insurance. So are we to assume Becky killed Joseph? Clytemnestra, for those of you who might not remember their Greek mythology so well, was the wife of Agamenon who murdered him after he returned from the Trojan War. The illustrations (drawn by Thackeray himself) have so far been just illustrations of the scenes in the novel, and yet this one differs from the text. What are we to make of that?

And another curious thing, which, in order to really understand, I'd have to reread the novel, paying close attention to this, is the narrator. I find the narrator of this book quite fascinating. At the novel's beginning, Thackeray talks about being a puppet master, and makes his narrator seem like the all knowing guy who made this shit up. Yet, as the novel moves along, the narrator's voice changes, or maybe just becomes more complex. There are times when the narrator says he doesn't know what happens either inside someone's head, or behind closed doors (and damn it, I didn't write these instances down, so I can't cite them here). And then there's this passage, in Chapter 62, where Dobbin, Amelia, Sedley, and Georgey all go traveling to Germany, and to the town of Pumpernickle. The narrator states:

It was on this very tour that I, the present writer of a history of which every word is true, had the pleasure to see them first, and to make their acquaintance.

Huh? If the narrator is the omniscient puppet master, how can he just make their acquaintance in an obscure German town? And how can he say every word is true when he's belied that before? I dunno. Maybe he's speaking in more metaphysical terms. Maybe "every word is true" means that his picture of humanity is all true. Or something like that. Or not. My powers of analysis fail me here. Or maybe that's just the rack punch kicking in.

And speaking of rack punch, in honor of this awesome novel I have recreated the drink that kicked Joseph Sedley's ass. First, as I previously posted rack punch refers to Arrack punch, and a recipe for that can be found here. This recipe is from the classic cocktail book "How to Mix Drinks" by Jerry Thomas, written in 1862. It's basically the original bartender's guide. Since it's written just 14 years after "Vanity Fair", we can hopefully assume that the rack punch recipe in the book is the same as the one Thackeray had in mind. Anyway, to make this drink, I first had to find some Arrack. Fortunately, arrack is still available, although hard to find, and I managed to procure a bottle from my local BevMo. The arrack I bought, called Batavia-Arrack, is distilled from sugar cane (98%) and Java red rice (2%). It was distilled in Java, blended in Amsterdam (Java was the Dutch East Indies), and produced in Austria (not sure what "produced" means). It's 50% alcohol (100 proof). I tasted some neat, and it tastes very similar to rum, which you might expect since rum is generally distilled from sugar cane, but there's a definite non-rum taste in there as well, presumably from the rice. The rack punch recipe calls for mixing the Arrack with rum, lemon juice, simple syrup, and water, which I did. I shook the punch in a shaker with ice, and poured into a cocktail glass. The results are shown here:

The verdict: not bad. In fact, I can see how Joseph might have enjoyed a full bowl of this. It's lemony, and sweet but not too sweet, and you can definitely taste the rum and Arrack. But since it's cut with water, it's only about 20% alcohol, so it's pretty smooth and could be drunk at a quick pace. And it packs, no pun intended, a punch. Mmmmm.

One more alcohol obscurity pops up towards the end of "Vanity Fair". When the characters are in the town of Pumpernickle, they and the townspeople are noted at several points to be drinking "small beer". Fortunately, because I am living in San Francisco, I not only know what small beer is, but I have tasted it as well. Small beer is an English invention, dating from the 1700s. When a brewer made a batch of a strongly-flavored beer, they would use lots of malt, hops, and grains. After the beer was made, they would pour off the new batch of beer, and then add more water and yeast to the wort, or grain residue, and then brew a second batch of beer without adding new grain. Because the first batch of beer used up much of the flavorings and sugars in the grain, this second batch, called small beer, would be a more mildly-flavored beer, and would have less alcohol, since there was now less sugar for the yeast to ferment. There is only one small beer I know of that is still made today, and it's produced by the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. I've only ever seen the beer sold here in San Francisco, but I have had it a few times, and I love it. Anchor Small Beer is very light, and also very bitter, but bitter in that great beer way. It reminds me of a bitter cask ale that one might find on tap in an English pub. Definitely worth seeking out and picking up a bottle or two. And in case you haven't figured it out by now, "Vanity Fair" is definitely worth picking up as well.

A Fair Fight

2008-11-24T22:23:00.000-08:00

Unbelievably, I am nearing the end of "Vanity Fair"! Just about 70 pages to go, so I should finish it this week. Oh yeah! I'm still enjoying it, but also still having a hard time trying to fit reading into my recent schedule. Ah well. Here are a few of the thoughts I've had while reading the last 100 pages or so:

1. There's a pivotal moment in the plot when Rawdon finds his wife Becky with Lord Steyne. Steyne has carefully gotten rid of everyone around Becky...shipping her son off to a good school, and getting rid of her housekeeper. He then arranges to have Rawdon detained in jail over his debts. Rawdon manages to get out, and comes home to find Becky alone with Lord Steyne. And then...The Smackdown!! Rawdon gives Lord Steyne a taste of his fist, knocking him down, leaving a scar, and acting all manly. And what's Becky's reaction...she's into it! She gets all hot over Rawdon, who she's been scorning for the last 200 pages. Unfortunately he leaves her, because he suspects, with good reason, that she's been going at it with Lord Steyne. But it's weird, her reaction. I guess she likes a good show of testosterone.

2. And another thing about that pivotal moment...was Becky really getting it on with Lord Steyne? Were they having sex or not? It's never clear. Naturally, we are inclined to think the worst of Becky. I said previously that I didn't think she was really evil, but her behavior was getting worse and worse. The other ambiguous thing was the final outcome of the Rawdon/Steyne conflagration. Rawdon is so angry at Steyne for putting the moves on his wife that he challenges him to a duel. Or at least he tries to, but is thwarted by a smooth talking second. And then Steyne makes Rawdon governor of some tropical colony. It's not clear to me if he planned this before The Smackdown or after. Either way, Rawdon ends up taking the position (which has a nice salary and perks) and seems mollifed by arguments suggesting Becky did not sleep with Steyne. Which seems kinda wimpy to me. Rawdon, after a ballsy show of manliness, ends up letting himself be bought out. Par for the course in "Vanity Fair", I suppose.

3. In reading "Vanity Fair" and reflecting back on "The Red and the Black", one realizes just what a big deal Napoleon was for Europe in the early 1800s. After World Wars I and II the Napoleonic wars can seem a little quaint. But they weren't.

4. I really want Amelia and Dobbin to get together. Even though Amelia is an idiot for pining her life away over George and for not appreciating Dobbin, and Dobbin really should have let go of Amelia a long time ago and moved on. But they better hurry...there's only 70 more pages to make it happen.

Still Here!

2008-11-16T21:12:00.000-08:00

I am a bad, bad book blogger. I mean, the whole point of this blog is to plow through the greatest literature EVER, with occasional sips of whiskey and a full report of my activities. But unfortunately, my life lately has been mostly work and little literature, albeit still with the occasional sips of whiskey. I'm now a little over 2/3 of the way through "Vanity Fair". Reading a book this slowly is not as great an experience as reading a book quickly. The continuity of the book gets a bit lost; when I pick up the book after not reading for a few days it can take me a few pages to remember what the heck is going on. And this is a long book, so it's getting stretched out even longer. Ah well. I'm hoping my current slow progress through the canon will pick up its pace in the coming weeks, but we'll see.

Anyway, enough self-pitying and whining! Let's talk f$&king literature! Here are a few random thoughts I'm having while continuing my way through "Vanity Fair":

1. What kind of a guy was Thackeray anyway, I wonder? Did people like hanging out with him? Was he ripped off by a bunch of grifters at an early age? I mean, from this book it's clear he's a brilliant writer, and a sharp observer of human nature, and he's got a wicked sense of humor, but he's also got a way cynical view of humankind. It reminds me of the line from an Elvis Costello song: "I used to be disgusted, but now I'm just amused".

2. Finally in Chapter 50, we had an incident that I would describe as poignant. Amelia and her beloved son are living at her parents' house. Actually it's not her parents' house because the parents, since her father's bankruptcy, are living in someone else's house as renters, although they can't make their rent payments since their father is continually losing money through failed business schemes. Amelia realizes her son is not going to get ahead in life by living in poverty. Her dead husband's wealthy father, who hates Amelia's father, has suggested that he should raise the son in order to give him an advantage in life. Amelia is initially repelled by this idea, because her son is all she has left in the world to love since her beloved husband's death. (The husband was kind of a dick, by the way, who never really appreciated her). But as finances get tighter and tighter, she finally decides she has to do what is best for the son, and she lets him go live with his paternal grandfather. This is very touching, because not only is she completely devastated over her sacrifice, but her little boy is pretty psyched about it. He goes away happily, and is looking forward to living as a rich person. The child still has some good nature...he gives away money to a poor begging child who the adults tried to shoo away...but he's also part greedy money-grubber, just like many of the adults in the book. Vanity Fair starts at a young age, I suppose. Perhaps it's even genetic. I'll look into that.

3. Are we supposed to hate Becky Sharp? She cracks me up. There are two full chapters dedicated to explaining how she and her husband can live on no income. You go girl! Currently she's hanging out with Lord Steyne, who is helping her climb the social rungs into the highest levels of society. Becky has her faults, to say the least...she's manipulative, cold, doesn't seem to care at all for her son...but you also have to admire her spunk, her social intelligence, her wits. Her climb in society depends a lot on her natural beauty and talents. She would do quite well in contemporary America, where the class of one's birth matters far less than in Victorian England. If she were alive today I could see her being a major player in Hollywood.

4. This is a great book, and fun to read, so I hate to complain...and maybe it's just me taking way too long to read this book...but there are times I think Thackeray seems to ramble a bit. Of course, it was a serialized novel, so maybe he was just padding it out to fill each installment.

5. Some of the characters in the book drink alcohol mixed with water, as in gin-and-water and rum-and-water. I can't quite figure that out. It reminds me of General Jack Ripper in "Dr. Strangelove" who would only drink grain alcohol and rainwater. Are the characters drinking alcohol diluted with tap water? Or is it carbonated water like club soda, or tonic water, both of which would seem like more tasty options, at least to the modern palate? And did they have ice in the household in England in the very early 1800s? Or were the drinks all at room temperature? I need to look into this.

A Fair Question

2008-11-03T07:35:00.000-08:00

I hate it when I'm reading along in a book and I read a chapter and suddenly realize I have no idea what the f@#k is going on. This happened to me in chapter 29 of "Vanity Fair" entitled "Brussels". Our cast of characters, Becky and her husband Rawden Crawley, George and his wife Amelia, Captain Dobbin, and Amelia's brother Joseph all go to Belgium, since Napolean is back in France and it's clear a final battle will be coming. This in itself made me laugh...man, war has sure changed in the past 200 years. All the soldiers were responsible for shipping themselves to Belgium, and many took their wives and families, with other hangers on, like Joseph Sedley, just dressing up in any makeshift uniform they could find and going along just for the parties. And party they did...arriving at Belgium, everyone hangs out drinking and going to fancy balls until the orders to march come down.

But here's the part I didn't understand. The two couples, Rawden and Becky, and Joseph and Amelia, have been good friends. It's true, Rawden and Jopseph gamble together, which usually results in Rawden taking Joseph's money, but still. But then there's this scene at a ball in chapter 29 where Becky and Joseph flirt massively, and Amelia is ignored, except when Becky comes up to Amelia and totally rags all over her. I don't understand where this is coming from. Why is Becky doing this? Is it simple lust? Not likely, because Becky is too calculating for that. Why does Becky turn on her friend like this? There has to be an angle, but I didn't catch it while I was reading.

Nonetheless, this new behavior of Becky's is quite evil, more than we've seen so far, so I take away some of my more benign assessment of her that I proclaimed in my last post.

Fairly Slow Going

2008-11-01T22:07:00.000-07:00

The corner convenience store at the end of my block closed its doors today. Apparently the landlord wants to put in an art gallery or something, so the store where I buy my newspapers, saltines, and beer got the boot. Yesterday I saw a sign in their window that announced a closing sale with 50% off on all their remaining liquor stock. Naturally, that caught my eye. But when I went in and looked at the shelf, I saw that all they had left were a few bottles of blackberry brandy, butterscotch schnapps, and Hennessy. Not being able to resist a good deal, but not wanting to make myself sick either, I sprung for a bottle of the Hennessy. At 50% off of the usual corner store inflated prices, I figure I probably got the equivalent of a 10% discount off the regular price at any discount liquor store. Nonetheless, as I blog tonight, I'm in a mellow mood, sipping on some fine cognac. Of course, I know nothing at all about cognac, and I don't know if Hennessy is actually considered a fine one or not. I mean, the ads look convincing, and all the hip hop artists drink it, so it has to be pretty good, right? Back me up here, because I really have no idea.

"What's the point of all this rambling?", you may be asking. "Why doesn't he stop this blathering on about store closings and booze and get back to the discussion of "Vanity Fair". He's distracting us from the issue at hand!"

Well, that's correct, and that seems to be my problem at the moment. You see, I've been reading "Vanity Fair" for like what, a month now? And I'm only 250 pages into this 678 page book. Why is that? Well, partly because I've been busy scouring the neighborhood like a vulture looking for boozy bargains at businesses that are going belly up. But partly because I seem to find myself getting distracted when I read this book. I'll sit down to read, and get 2-3 pages into it, and then my mind begins to wander. The next thing I know I'm leaping up off the couch to check on the latest election polls, or to google the name of that song that's running through my head to see who wrote it. And I'm not sure why this is happening, although as a scientist I have several possible hypotheses: (1) I'm losing it, probably due to early onset Alzheimer's, (2) I've got a lot going on in my life, and finding it hard to focus at the moment so just GET OFF MY BACK DAMMIT, (3) the book is boring me silly, or (4) something else. Upon reflection, aided by the Hennessy VS, a cognac which may or may cause cognac connoisseurs everywhere to laugh when they hear that I'm drinking it, I have to say that none of these hypotheses seem accurate except for #4, "something else". I like the novel, and I don't find it boring...not at all, in fact. I think it's more that the language that the book is written in, and by that I mean the sentence structure and the vocabulary, as well as the subtlety and sophistication of the thought, makes this the type of writing that has to be read slowly, and rolled around on the tongue and enjoyed like a fine cognac, in order to be appreciated. This book needs to be savored as well as read, and that takes time. It also tends to make my mind wander, though that's my fault and not Thackeray's. Anyway, it's slow going.

And what about the story? Well, just a couple of notes. First, the humor has changed since the first few pages. It's become more subtle, and frankly more biting. I have to wonder if Thackeray really likes any of his characters. They're all conniving, or money-grubbing, or just silly and oblivious. The only one who's close to being a good and admirable character is Captain Dobbin, who's secretly in love with his best friend George's girl, and convinces George to marry her when he sees that the girl is pining away for him. So he's noble, but he's also somewhat of a milquetoast. I find it interesting to think about the contrast between Thackeray's characters in "Vanity Fair" and Dickens' characters in "Bleak House". Dickens certainly lampooned some of his characters, and made some of them almost cartoon-like, which Thackeray does not do...Thackeray's humor towards his characters has more bite to it...to say his humor is meaner is too strong, but it is more cutting...it feels to me like there's a hint of darkness to it. Also, in "Bleak House" you have a sentimentality that is lacking, at least so far, in "Vanity Fair" (I'm particularly thinking of Jo's death scene...I can't imagine Thackeray writing that).

Having said all that, none of the characters in "Vanity Fair" are really evil, or anything like that. They're just more like buffoons. Except Becky, who is very cunning. But I can't even say she is evil, because she's merely opportunistic. She's smart and attractive, and she knows it, so she goes about using what she has to better her lot in life. Seems fair to me. Anyway, I seem to be rambling and distracted, so I might as well go back to my reading.

Whiskey Punch Update

2008-10-21T18:13:00.000-07:00

Since nothing is more important to my enjoyment of classic literature than alcoholic accuracy, I decided to pursue the question of what might have been in that bowl of whiskey punch that Joseph Sedley drank, much to his disadvantage, in Chapter 6 ("Vauxhall") of "Vanity Fair". I contacted my friend and internationally known vintage cocktail expert Erik Ellestad. Mr. Ellestad got his start in the world of vintage cocktails by his continuing efforts to make every cocktail in the Savoy Cocktail Book, a classic and comprehensive cocktail recipe book published just after Prohibition. I contacted Erik and asked him what might have been in a whiskey punch made in England in 1847-1848 (the years "Vanity Fair" was published). He pointed me to this recipe which is basically whiskey (either Scotch or Irish), hot water, lemon peel, and sugar, with maybe a little nutmeg. Sounds pretty good to me. But alas, then I reread the passage in "Vanity Fair" and found that Thackeray describes the drink as "rack punch", rather than whiskey punch! Oops, was I drunk on punch when reading that passage?? Odd, I could have sworn I read "whiskey punch". Further inspection revealed that the reference to whiskey punch that I remembered was in Chapter 8, when Osborne and his men are singing songs in their barracks over a whiskey punch:

All things considered, I think it was as well the gates were shut, and the sentry allowed no one to pass; so that the poor little white-robed angel (Amelia) could not hear the songs those young fellows were roaring over the whiskey-punch.

Interesting. In the Vauxhall chapter, Joseph Sedley orders his rack punch, and Thackeray says that Osborne didn't like it. This seems like that the rack punch is then a different drink, as Osborne is clearly enjoying whiskey punch with his men two chapters alter. So what could "rack punch" be? With the help of google, I found this gem:

I must close with two familiar words which have been so long with us that few who use them ever suspect that they came from the East—namely, Punch and Toddy. The Rev. J. Ovington, who sailed to Bombay in 1689, in the ship that carried the glad news of the coronation of William and Mary, tells us that, in the East India Company's chief factory at Surat, the common table was supplied with "plenty of generous Sherash (Shiraz) wine and arak Punch," Arrack (properly "Urk"), sometimes abbreviated to Rack, means any distilled spirit, or essence, but is commonly used to distinguish country liquor from imported spirits. The Company's factors drank it because European wines and beer were at that time very expensive in India, and to reconcile it to their palates they made it into a brew called Punch, from the Indian word "panch," meaning five, because it contained five ingredients—viz. arrack, hot water, limes, sugar and spice. This was the ordinary drink of poor Englishmen in India for a longtime, and public "Punch-houses" existed in every settlement of the East India Company.

Now, one of the principal substances from which country liquor is distilled is palm juice, the native name for which, "tadee," has been perverted into "toddy" (as in the case of "cot" above-mentioned), and "toddy punch" meant the same thing as "arrack punch," Returning Anglo-Indians brought the receipt for making this brew to England, and lovers of Vanity Fair will remember how the whole course of that story was changed by the bowl of "rack punch" which Joseph Sedley ordered at Vauxhall, where "everybody had rack punch." How soon both the brew and its Indian name took firm root and spread among us appears from the fact that, at the Holy Fair described by Burns in the century before last, the lads and lasses sit round a table and "steer about the toddy."

Sounds like the same drink as whiskey punch, but made with Arrack (see here as well). Since Joseph had lived in India this makes total sense. I found these recipes for Arrack Punch, which are in line with the other punch recipes (booze, lemons, sugar, water) although the drink can include rum as well as the Arrack. But I think we at least have the gist of the drink that got Joseph Sedley so drunk, and then painfully hung over. But why didn't Osborne like it? Or was he just on his best behavior because of Amelia?

It's also interesting that Arrack can be made from palm juice, since Okonkwo and his tribe all drank palm wine in "Things Fall Apart".

Whew, that was some detective work. I think I need a drink now! One bowl of rack punch, please!

Book #25 - Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray)

2008-10-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

I've been a bad, bad blogger. I haven't posted in two weeks. Did I finish "Vanity Fair"? Was I too convulsed on the floor with laughter to write up my thoughts? Or was I just too drunk on whiskey punch, like Joseph Sedley? No, I've merely been busy with work, and with travel for work. As a result, I've only read 140 pages of "Vanity Fair", out of 688 pages in the edition I'm reading. Which means at this rate I won't finish the book for three more months. I still hold the opinion of my last post...that the book is great, and quite humorous. I love the concept of Thackeray's narrator, who is Thackeray himself, and who comes out from the pages to constantly remind you that this is a novel and that he's made up the plot and the characters. No, my slow pace is not due to the book, but due to my hectic work schedule of late, and my travels to the midwest (to visit family) and now to suburban Maryland, near Washington, DC (for work). Turns out the area around Washington, DC is a huge suburb/exurb. Well, at least where I am. I'm surrounded by chain hotels, office parks, and shopping malls. Granted, the malls are pretty upscale, and the landscape is lush with green, and deer everywhere, even by the side of busy highways. It's a wonder there's not more deer carnage on the roads around here. But I digress...big time...

The novel is subtitled "A novel without a hero" and even after 140 pages it's clear that will be true. The novel's characters are all flawed in some way, usually deeply flawed. Some are ruthless and some are clueless, but none of them are like the idyllic or angelic characters you'll occasionally find in Dickens (I'm talking to you, Esther Summerson). But isn't that how life is...who among us knows anyone without flaws? I rest my case.

The story is rambling at times...much like this particular blog post. It's hard to see how Thackeray is going to milk this puppy for another 548 pages. Well, scratch that...yes, from the story's rambling nature so far it is indeed clear how this is going to happen. But I don't care. It's funny, it's a good read, and it's not at all clear how it's going to end up. But I'm keeping a close eye on Becky Sharp. I'm guessing that more antics will ensue, and she'll be at the center of it all. Stay tuned.

Holy F#&k!!

2008-10-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Ok, here's the deal. Normally I wouldn't comment on a book when I'm only nine pages into it, but here I have to make an exception. I started reading "Vanity Fair" (William Makepeace Thackeray) tonight, and got through the first chapter plus intro, and I am dumbstruck...with laughter! If this book can keep this up, then I'm gonna be totally blown away. It's hilarious! First of all there's the introduction which strikes me as almost "postmodern"...and I use that word in quotes because frankly, as a scientist, I believe that no one really knows that the word means. In the introduction, the author says, basically, "Check this story out, you huddled mass of humanity...I made it all up! It's nothing but a puppet show...weee, here we go, mother f#%ers! Ha, ha! No, but seriously...".

In Chapter 1, we learn that Miss Amelia Sedley and Miss Becky Tharp are graduating from Miss Pinkerton's academy for young ladies. Actually, Miss Sedley is graduating, and Miss Tharp is leaving for reasons as yet unclear, but graduation does not seem to be one of them. The chapter describes the scene of the two leaving the school. Both are given copies of Dr. Johnson's dictionary, since Miss Pinkerton seems to have met the good doctor at some point, and has held on to this as her claim to fame. Becky ends up throwing her copy out of the coach as they drive away from the school. Hmm, I think I'll like her. But what really cracked me up is that Thackeray writes this in the third person, but comes out from behind the narrator's voice to play the puppet master. First of all, he rags on the characters, calling Miss Pinkerton a "pompous old Minerva of a woman". I'm not quite sure what that means (and yes I looked up Minerva on Wikipedia), but the point is clear. And then, after describing in detail the students' reaction to Amelia's farewell, he writes:

All which details, I have no doubt, JONES, who reads this book at his Club, will pronounce to be excessively foolish, trivial, twaddling, and ultra-sentimental. Yes; I can see Jones at this minute (rather flushed with his joint of mutton and half-pint of wine), taking out his pencil and scoring under the words "foolish, twaddling," &c., and adding to them his own remark "quite true." Well, he is a lofty man of genius, and admires the great and heroic in life and novels; and so had better take warning and go elsewhere.

Woah! This is so awesome!! First of all, I love how JONES is capitalized! WTF? Then, in a couple of sentences, he manages to not only rag on Jones, but to rag on his own book as well. If that isn't postmodern, what is? Hmm, who thought Victorian literature was postmodern? And don't tell me I don't know what postmodernism is, because you don't either! But we already discussed that point.

Anyway, I don't plan on blogging after EVERY chapter of this book, but if it continues to be so awesome I may have little choice.

Book #24 - Up From Slavery (Booker T. Washington)

2008-10-05T16:52:00.000-07:00

"Up from Slavery" is a classic piece of Americana that I suspect is not read as much as it used to be. It is the autobiography of Booker T. Washington, who rose from being a slave to becoming arguably the most dominant black spokesperson at the beginning of the twentieth century.

He was born around 1858, although he is not sure of the exact year or date. His mother was a plantation worker in Virginia. His father was a white man who lived nearby. He says his owners were not especially cruel compared to others, but since he refuses to speak badly of anyone in this book, that may be taken with a grain of salt. He was six or seven when the Civil War ended and he and his family were freed. This was one of the more interesting anecdotes in the book. He writes that all the slaves knew the war was going badly for the south, which meant they would soon be free. Deserting soldiers were a common sight along the roads. One day an announcement came that all the slaves should gather at the plantation house. The master and his family were all there, as was a uniformed officer. The officer read a long paper, presumably the Emancipation Proclamation, and then announced that all the slaves were free and could go when and where they pleased. Everyone rejoiced, and there were "wild scenes of ecstasy". But that didn't last...by the time the slaves returned to their cabins, it began to dawn on them that they suddenly had responsibility for their lives, and didn't really know what to do. All that evening, many of the former slaves quietly went back to the plantation house to have whispered conversations with their former owner. Booker even writes that the slaves felt sorry for their former owner and his family. Again, though, I have a hard time believing this. One of the problems I had with this book is that it is relentlessly, almost painfully optimistic. Clearly Booker wants peace and harmony between the races, and he takes great pains to disparage no one. To the modern ear this seems to ring a bit false. But was it? Was he really this optimistic and altruistic? Surely he must have encountered terrible prejudice at times, yet he doesn't report this, and throughout the book goes to great lengths to explain how white people have helped him, his cause (we'll get to that), and his race throughout his life.

But I digress. After being freed, Booker's mother got married and the family moved to Malden, West Virginia, where Booker's stepfather worked in the coal mines. Booker himself started working in the mines, but that didn't last for more than a few years. He had an almost insatiable thirst for education and learning, and studied as much as he could on his own at night. Booker was the exact opposite of a slacker. His relentless drive to work, learn, and succeed were unbelievable. He eventually made his way to the Hampton Institute in Virginia, which had been set up as a school for freed slaves. He convinced the school to let him in, agreeing to do janitorial work full time to pay for his schooling. He eventually graduated, winning the admiration of the school's white president, Samuel Armstrong. After attending Wayland Seminary to learn to become a teacher, Booker was recommended by Samuel Armstrong to head up a new school for freed slaves in Tuskegee, Alabama. While these posts were usually held by whites, the school's founders took Armstrong up on his recommendation, and asked Booker to head up the school at the age of 25. He would head the Tuskegee Institute (now Tuskegee University) for the rest of his life.

The first third of the book details Booker's childhood and education, while the second third or so details his work in building up Tuskegee from a shack into a major educational institution. Two things stand out. First, he firmly believed that not only should students learn in the usual sense (classes, books) but that they should also work themselves through school, and learn a trade. Unbelievably, most of the buildings erected at Tuskegee over the years were built by the students. The students also made the bricks for the buildings, and ran a farm that grew the food for the school. Booker believed that black people needed to learn trades to be able to support themselves, and that if whites could see that blacks were hard-working assets to their communities, they would be more accepted into American society. This became somewhat controversial within the African American community (and this is not mentioned in the book). Prominent write W.E. DuBois argued that blacks should get the same liberal arts education as whites, and that a well-educated black vanguard would help push the cause for civil rights. In DuBois's mind, focusing an education on the industrial arts was holding blacks to a limited set of options.

The second thing that stands out about Washington's work at Tuskegee is that much of his time was spent in soliciting funds for the school. He starts out in the local community, asking for money from both blacks and whites. He works hard to build up relationships with the local white people so that they will look upon the school with pride, and thus be more likely to donate to it. And he starts traveling to the northeast, seeking donations from philanthropists. He must have been an extremely persuasive and charming person, because he totally succeeds. He builds up a large network of donors, and hobnobs with the likes of Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and others.

The last third of the book details Washington's accounts of traveling to visit donors, and giving speeches. He became quite famous as an orator, and delivered one of America's most famous speeches at an exhibition in Atlanta in 1895. The "Atlanta Compromise" speech encouraged whites to hire black workers and accept them into local communities. He also argues that agitating for social equality is "extremist folly". Other would disagree with this, but white people were soothed, and the speech was a turning point in Washington's ability to raise more money for Tuskegee and black education. This last part of the book I found not nearly as interesting as the first 2/3 of the book...Booker's struggles for success have ended, so it's just not as interesting. Plus, there's that relentless optimism, praising this person and that person as the greatest person ever to walk the earth. He sounds like he's plugging something, which I guess, in effect, he was. After all, you can't expect donations from people if you put them or their friends down in your autobiography. Because of this relentless optimism, it's clear this book was written at the beginning, rather than the end, of the twentieth century...the mood and tone seem a bit dated now. Regardless, it offers a unique glimpse into the years when African Americans were recently released from slavery...at least for the first 2/3 of the book.

Next on my list...it's back to Victorian England!

Book #23 - Things Fall Apart (Chinua Achebe)

2008-09-27T22:18:00.000-07:00

When I was compiling the list of the greatest books I'd never read, I found this one on a lot of "top 100 novels ever" lists. And yet I'd never heard of it, nor the author. So right away I was looking forward to it. And it didn't disappoint. This is a great book, a disturbing book, a tragic story, and an important book for anyone wanting to understand Africa before and after its colonization by Europeans. This is a book that I'll want to read again at some point. The language of the book is deceptively simple, but the ideas it presents are complex and multifaceted, which is a tribute to Achebe's talent.

The book tells the story of Okonkwo, a member of the Igbo tribe in the village of Umuofia in pre-colonial Nigeria. Okonkwo is a bitter, angry man, full of rage. His father was a lazy man, who preferred to play his flute rather than repay his many debts. Okonkwo grew up ashamed of his father, and vows to become the opposite of his father: a strong man, a leader respected by his entire tribe. He works hard, and through his hard work and his athletic prowess he indeed becomes a respected member of the community. Of course, he also has a lot of repressed anger, which means he cannot show his feelings towards his children and he sometimes beats his three wives. This repressed anger will prove to be his downfall.

The structure of this book is interesting. The first two thirds or so of the story deal with Okonkwo and his life in the tribal village of Umuofia. The customs and religion of the Igbo tribe are described in detail. Despite no written language, they have a sophisticated culture of complex beliefs, many of which are directed towards resolving conflicts peacefully. They also have a rich folklore, through which wisdom is passed down to their children. Then, in the last third of the book, the missionaries arrive, followed soon by the white man's colonial government. And things then do fall apart. The native culture and way of life is changed and destroyed. And Okonkwo meets his downfall, although the seeds of his downfall were sown way before the white people arrived.

At first, the villagers just thought the missionaries were crazy...spouting weird ideas about their one God, who seemed much less powerful than the Igbo gods. But some of the members of the tribe were attracted to the religion the missionaries preached. Some, like one of Okonkwo's sons, found something in the religious preachings of the missionaries that filled gaps in their spiritual lives. Others were outsiders and outcasts in the village culture, and they found in the Christian church that they were all equals, and that, naturally, appealed to them. And so the church grew. Once the Igbo people were divided into those that accepted the new religion, and those that did not, the tribe was fatally weakened. After the missionaries settled in, other white people arrived, who brought schools and medicine, and the Igbo people could see the value in these. They also learned that if they resisted, they would be wiped out, which happened to one of the first villages to make contact with the white people. Thus, the tribe adjusted to the new ways, and lost their old. The new technology and knowledge brought by the Europeans was simply too powerful to resist.

Okonkwo is a man strongly rooted in his tribe's tradition. He seeks status, and manliness, in the traditional sense of his community. He is forced into several terrible circumstances by the tribe's laws and religion. Yet he obeys the tribe's rules and gods because he wants the respect of his fellow tribesmen. When the local priest tells Okonkwo that his adopted son, who was taken from a neighboring tribe as settlement for a dispute several year earlier, must be killed, Okonkwo not only agrees but ends up killing the boy himself so as not to look unmanly (This act ultimately helps push his oldest son away and into the arms of the missionary church, since he was quite attached to his adopted brother and could never forgive his father). When Okonkwo accidently kills a tribesmen, he accepts the tribe's traditional punishment of seven years exile. And after he returns from exile he urges his tribe to go to war with the white man, because to not do so would be unmanly and weak. Yet Okonkwo seems more interested in his own status and perceived manhood than he is in the welfare of his village as a whole. The white people threaten the place in tribe's society that he has worked all his life for. So he urges his fellow tribesmen to resist the white people, to fight back, even though they have learned that accommodation is the best way to survive in the changed world. I won't give a spoiler here and say what happens to Okonkwo except that, well, it's dark result.

This book was written in 1959, at a time when the stories of the colonization of Africa were told by Europeans like Joseph Conrad. This book tells the story from the opposite perspective, from the African's point of view. It's a complex perspective that Achebe presents, however. He does not take a black and white view...the white people aren't all bad and the black people all good. He pokes fun, at times, of the Igbo culture and customs, and there is one white missionary minister who is a very sympathetic character...and as I mention above, some of the tribes people found great comfort in the new religion. But overall, the devastation of the Igbo culture by the whites is made clear, and the Achebe pulls no punches in the last paragraph of the book. Okonkwo is a man with a tragic flaw, which leads him to tragedy, but his personal tragedy is only one part of a larger cultural tragedy.

Book #22 - Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh)

2008-09-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

"Brideshead Revisited" has been made into about five movies over the past decade or so, apparently all of them starring Jeremy Irons. Or so it seems. Fortunately I have not seen any of these, so I had no idea what this book was about when I picked it up, which is generally the way I like it. Here's what it turned out to be about: booze, rich people, and religion, specifically Catholicism.

The narrator and main character of the book is Charles Ryder. The novel opens with Ryder an officer in England during World War II. In the book's prologue, his company is sent to a new camp in the English countryside, and it turns out to be on an estate of the Flyte family, whom he knows quite well. The story of the novel is then told in flashback form. And that story is all about Charles's relationships with the Flyte family. The Flytes are an old, aristocratic family, with a huge estate (Brideshead) and a lot of money, although we learn in the course of the novel that that money is diminishing. The Flytes are Catholic, not the norm in Protestant England, and their relationship to Catholicism forms one of the cruxes of the novel.

As the story opens, Charles is a freshman at Oxford University. One evening, as he's hanging out with friends in his room (or suite of rooms...the characters in the novel all lived in style), a drunken student sticks his head in Charles's first floor window and, as students would say, ralphs. Charles is understandably a bit put off by this, but the student, Sebastian Flyte, is profusely apologetic, sends flowers, and invites Charles to lunch. They are soon inseparable. Sebastian is incredibly charming, loves to party, and carries a stuffed bear named Aloysius with him everywhere. He introduces Charles to his small circle of friends, all hedonistic wits and heavy drinkers. In other words, the kind of people we all wish we'd hung out with in college. Charles and Sebastian become very close, and it's a mystery as to exactly how close. Is their relationship platonic only, or is there a physical element? We never really know, although I don't think it's critical that we do know. Their relationship is close, and they bond intensely. It's what kids today would call a "bromance".

Sebastian brings Charles to Brideshead where he meets the rest of the Flyte family. Well, most of it anyway. Sebastian's parents are separated, with the father, Lord Marchmain, living in Venice with his mistress, while the mother, Lady Marchmain, lives at Brideshead with her older son, Brideshead, and her two daughters, Julia and Cordelia. The family are all oddballs, in their own way. The mother is fiercely Catholic, which causes Sebastian to rebel (i.e. reject Catholicism). Julia is engaged to Rex Mottram, a Canadian who is clearly a pompous and empty buffoon, albeit a wealthy one. Julia is not religious, having given up the Catholic church like Sebastian. Cordelia, the youngest, is fiercely Catholic like her mother. And Brideshead (the son, not the estate) is just odd...somewhat shy, not totally comfortable in social situations. In the later part of the novel he becomes an avid collector of matchboxes.

The summer before school Sebastian and Charles travel to Venice to see Sebastian's father. While they are there, the father's mistress says privately to Charles that even though he and Sebastian both love to drink, she can tell that it's different with Sebastian, that he can't control it. She proves to be quite prescient. As they enter their second year at Oxford, Sebastian's drinking indeed becomes a problem. He's failing his school work, staying out late, and drunk most of the time. He and Charles visit the Flytes at Brideshead over the holidays and things are really falling apart...Sebastian is always drunk, and makes a few scenes. The family tries to keep the booze away from him, but it doesn't work. He drops out of Oxford and takes off. Charles only sees him again once or twice. He eventually makes his way to Morocco, sick and drunk, and ends up living in a monastery. We don't hear from him again.

Sebastian's drinking problem is tragic and sad, especially given his wonderful personality and his youthful promise at the story's start. But his story rings true. I knew many heavy drinkers in college (after all, isn't that the definition of a college student?), and there were a few that were clearly destined for problems. Somehow you could tell them apart...they had a deeper need for drinking than most people, and were clearly marked for trouble. Who knows why some are touched but not others.

Perhaps it's ironic that I'm sipping on some Guatemalan rum as I write this.

Charles ends up dropping out of Oxford to go to art school, and becomes a painter. He's an architectural painter, painting portraits of houses of wealthy aristocrats for commissions. We're lead to believe he has talent, but is by no means a great artist. He marries, and has a couple of kids, and takes off to South America to paint for two years after his wife has an affair. Despite the affair, it doesn't seem like he was ever close to his wife (of course the affair was probably a symptom that it was mutual). On his return to Europe he meets Julia Flyte on the ship. Julia is now separated from Rex, who she can't stand anymore...a year or two of marriage to him was enough for her to realize how empty he was. She and Charles begin to have an affair. Charles was always attracted to Julia, not in the least because she looked like Sebastian. They fall in love, and make plans to marry after they both get divorced. Could this novel end up ending happily? Yeah, right...the tone is way too bittersweet for that to happen.

So here's what happens: Lady Flyte has died, which allows Lord Flyte to come back to Brideshead (he couldn't come while she was alive because he absolutely could not stand her anymore). When he returns, he's quite ill and is slowly dying with heart failure. This produces a conflict between the children (Julia, Brideshead, and Cordelia). Should they bring in a priest to give the father his last rites? The father had been Anglican, but converted to Catholicism to satisfy his wife. But when they separated (25 years earlier) he left the church, and felt no attachment to it. The children decide they want a priest to come and see the father (even Julia, who had been a lapsed Catholic). Charles is against this, but what can he do? So a priest comes, and the father throws him out. But then the father gets sicker and is finally very close to death. This sets up the most poignant scene of the novel. The children bring in the priest again, and he gives their father his last rites. They pray that the father will give them some sign, and the father crosses himself. A few hours later he dies. Both Julia and Charles are deeply affected. Charles, who had been totally against the priest giving their father his last rites, on the grounds that the father did not want it, seems to have a religious experience while they're around the deathbed. He fervently prays for God to forgive the father's sins, and he is deeply moved when the father crosses himself. This is the first time in the novel that he's shown any religious inkling at all. After the father dies, Julia comes to Charles and says she cannot marry him. Charles says he understands. They part ways. End of story...well, not quite, as there's an epilogue back in the "present" World War II days.

Upon first reading this I was like "What the f&#$ just happened? Why won't Julia marry him?". But the I realized it was all about religion. Charles was divorced, and she had been having an affair with him, both really bad things in the eyes of the Catholic church. Julia, newly repentant and a Catholic again, had to reject him. Charles, having had his religious experience, recognizes and accepts this. While intellectually I can understand where they're coming from, it's hard for me to emotionally relate to this. I'm not from a religious family, so taking ones religion so seriously as to not marry the person you love because the church doesn't like that they were divorced...well, it makes a good story, I guess, but it's definitely outside the realm of my emotional comprehension.

This book reminded me, ever so slightly, of Thomas Mann's "Buddenbrooks", which I read years ago. That book is about the decline of a German upper middle class family. This book is also about a family in decline, in it's own peculiar way. The days of aristocracy are waning, and the family members all lead saddened lives (some sadder than others). And in fact, one of the things that attracts Charles to Julia is her sadness. None of the family members faces a particularly prosperous future. At the end, each of them in their own way finds solace in their religion, but in the end, their lives are still sad. As is Charles's. Not tragic, or catastrophic, just sad and wistful. Sigh...if only they had kept Aloysius around...

Book #21 - Moll Flanders (Daniel Defoe)

2008-09-11T22:33:00.000-07:00

My reading for this project has so far been pretty scattershot, rambling from one author to another in no order whatsoever, just flowing along wherever the streams of whiskey may take me. But I enjoyed "Robinson Crusoe" and "Journal of the Plague Year" so much, that I decided to immediately tackle the last Defoe novel on my list, "Moll Flanders". And I'm glad I did! Of all the three Defoe novels, I have to say I enjoyed this one the most.

The full title of "Moll Flanders" is "The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders, who was born in Newgate, and during a life of continu'd variety of threescore years, besides her childhood, was twelve years a whore, five times a wife (whereof once to her own brother), twelve year a thief, eight year a transported felon in Virginia, at last grew rich, liv'd honest, and died a penitent". Damn...they certainly didn't leave anything out of the title in those days. I guess the title back then was the equivalent to the modern day dust jacket...something to get you interested enough to buy the book. Certainly the full title here caught my interest. Of course, it also gives away the entire plot of the book.

I have to give Defoe tremendous kudos for coming up with great ideas for his books. Stranded on a deserted island, watching while all around half of a major city's population dies of a horrible epidemic, and the close-up and personal life story of a woman who is, well, see the full title above. These are all such great ideas...how could anyone not want to read these books, especially in olden times before the invention of the PlayStation distracted everyone?

As the title says, the narrator and main character of this novel is Moll Flanders (not her real name), who is born in Newgate prison as her mother is a convicted criminal. After Moll is born, mom is shipped off to Virginia, and Moll has to fend for herself. After living with gypsies for awhile, she's taken in by some local women, and eventually lives with a family as a maid. She grows to be quite beautiful, and one of the brothers of the house seduces her. They have a fling, and he promises to marry her, but he also always leaves her money after they have sex. Soon the younger brother falls in love with her, even though Moll scorns his advances, and eventually proposes to her. When Moll asks the older brother what to do, he tells her that he wasn't really serious about marrying her, and she should marry the younger brother. Moll's pretty ticked off about this, but eventually relents and marries the younger brother. They have a couple of kids, and five years later he dies. The two kids are sent to live with the husband's parents, and Moll takes off. This is not the last time in the book that she has children and then abandons them. In fact, I lost count of how many children she had, and then abandoned.

Anyway, Moll's adventures in men continue. She marries a draper (I'm guessing that's someone who makes drapes??), but after spending them into poverty, he gets arrested and flees abroad. He tells her she should pretend that she's not married because he'll never be back. Ah well. Moll then meets another man, who's wealthy, and she tricks him into believing that she's wealthy too. They marry, and then she breaks the news to him. Fortunately he loves her, and he takes her to Virginia where he has a plantation. They have children, and live with his mom, and they're happy, That is until Moll discovers that his mom is also her mom, and thus she's married her half brother. Oops. So, she flees back to England, with her husband/brother and her both agreeing to pretend the other one has died and they're no longer married (remember, this was in the days before the IRS had everyone in their database). Back in England, Moll has an affair with a married man whose wife has gone insane, and has several children by him (who are, that's right, are eventually abandoned by Moll with little fanfare).

After the married man affair falls through, Moll is courted by a married banker, who tells her he'll get a divorce to be with her, as his wife cheated on him. Moll says she'll think about it once he's actually divorced. Then Moll goes to the country where she meets and is courted by a wealthy gentleman, whom she deceives into thinking she's wealthy as well (hmm, seems to be a pattern with her). They marry, and then both discover that neither one is rich, and that they were both deceiving one another. They have a good laugh and get along famously. They are indeed two of a kind. But soon the husband, Jemy, runs away to Ireland to seek his fortune, and Moll doubts she'll see him again. So she decides to marry the banker, who's now divorced, but since she's pregnant again, she must wait to have her baby. Her landlord turns her on to a woman ("the governess") who runs a boarding house for ladies in trouble. This lady helps out Moll, and pays a woman to take away her baby once it's born (I didn't quite understand this part. Didn't they have adoption back then? Moll was quite worried the child would come to harm, but to her credit she follows up and makes sure it's OK with the new family). So Moll is now free to marry the banker, which she does. They live happily for a few years, until he loses all his money in speculation and then dies. Damn, Moll can't catch a break!

That's when Moll turns to crime. She commits a theft, and rather enjoys it, so she does it again. And again. She finds out her old friend "the governess" can help her fence the stolen goods. In fact the governess totally enables Moll's life of crime, and turns her onto this whole underworld of petty criminals. Moll becomes a very successful and legendary criminal. This section of the book goes on for a long while, and Defoe describes the details of her many crimes, which were especially enjoyable to read. My favorite was the time she stole a horse (she wasn't planning to, but the opportunity arose), but then she and the governess couldn't figure out how to fence a horse, so Moll had to return it.

Eventually Moll is caught, sent to Newgate prison, and is sentenced to death for theft (they didn't mess around in those days!). But she repents to a preacher who is sympathetic, and he helps get her sentence commuted to banishment to Virginia (along with the help of a bribe). She also discovers her not-really-ex-husband Jemy in prison, himself caught for theft, but since there's not enough evidence to hang him, he plea bargains his sentence to exile to Virginia as well. So they go to Virginia together and start a plantation. Moll quite accidently finds her son and her brother/husband, who's grown old and senile. She is reconciled with her son, who gives her her inheritance from her own mother, the income from a working plantation. Moll and Jemy grow rich, are penitent, and finally move back to England when they're too old to work on the plantation. And they all live happily until death, having repented over their former lives. Or not. This is one of the interesting points about the book...Moll seems all penitent at the end, and repeatedly says she is. However, in the introduction, where Defoe claims he's merely "cleaning up" Moll's autobiographical text that she herself has written, he explains that he had to rewrite her manuscript because:

...the copy which came first to hand having been written in language more like one still in Newgate than one grown penitent and humble, as she afterwards pretends to be.

So call me crazy, but that sounds like Defoe is saying she's not really penitent. Which frankly is not surprising to me, and I suspect to the modern reader as well. In Defoe's day, it would be hard write a moral story about a whore and thief without the character being reformed at the end. But it's clear that Moll did what she did because she really had no choice. In those days, women were at the mercy of their husbands and their husband's fortunes. When luck ran out, as it did with Moll so many times, the women were thrust into dire circumstances. Moll proves herself quite clever and resourceful, and can thus deal with her setbacks. Which makes this story complex...is Defoe saying "Don't be like this woman, she's a thief and whore and a bad person"? Or is he merely seeming to say that on the surface, while he's really sympathizing with Moll, who is merely being resourceful in the face of unbounded adversity? Moll certainly is a devious trickster (don't trust her with your wallet) but she also seems to have a good heart. But does she really repent? I dunno, she seemed to enjoy much of it a little too much.

All three of the narrators in the three Defoe novels I just read (Robinson Crusoe, the unnamed narrator of "Plague Year", and Moll Flanders) all have a number of similar traits. They're all quite intelligent, they're all quite resourceful, and they all have to be resourceful to stave off death! They're all phenomenal observers of what's going on around them. And they're all basically loners; Robinson Crusoe obviously so, but also the "Plague Year" narrator, who lives alone as the plague hits and seems to have no friends, and Moll, who is continually abandoned by men, and who leaves all her children. Her only true friend in the book is the governess. It's only at the end when she's reunited with Jemy that she has a stable marriage.

Anyway, this is one of those books I was sad to see end. I really liked Moll, and I heartily recommend this novel. Defoe is great. Of all the authors I've read so far in the course of this blog, he's the one I'd most like to sit down and get drunk with...he seems like the type of guy a scientist could relate to: an observer at heart, with an eye for detail. The three books I've read are his best known works...If anyone has any other Defoe books they'd recommend, I'd love to hear about them.

Book #20 - A Journal of the Plague Year (Daniel Defoe)

2008-09-02T22:17:00.000-07:00

In 1918 my grandfather was a young, newly-married pharmacy student when he caught the Spanish Flu. Fortunately (especially for me) he did not die, but he was ill for a long time and had to go to his wife's parent's farm to recover. He eventually did, but he had a perpetual hacking cough afterwards. As he recovered, he began to work on the farm, and he and his wife ended up staying there all their lives; my grandfather thus became a farmer, taking the farm over after his parents-in-law died. Flash forward thirty years to 1948...he's working on the farm one day and cuts himself very badly on a piece of farm equipment. The wound gets infected and he goes to the doctor. The doctor gives him a new medicine that has recently come out...penicillin. My grandfather takes the antibiotic, and not only does his wound quickly get better, but within two days the hacking cough he'd had for the last thirty years went away and never returned.

We are so used to modern medicine today that we take it for granted. Bacterial infections which would have been fatal before World War II, or at least caused lifelong chronic complaints like my grandfather's cough, are now just nuisances that can be easily cured with a dose of antibiotics. Until the emergence of AIDS, death from infectious diseases became like an odd curiosity, only imaginable in some third world backwater. But with the emergence of new viral infections, like AIDS and SARS and (maybe) bird flu, and the increasing resistance of many bacterial strains to even the strongest antibiotics available, we are again entering an era where the threat of death or disability from infectious disease looms large over our lives. And there's no better reminder of what life can be like in the middle of a raging epidemic than Daniel Defoe's "A Journal of the Plague Year", which describes the 1665 epidemic of bubonic plague in London.

This was a book I found grimly fascinating and rather odd. I say odd because the book is a fictional account of one London resident's observations of the great London plague of 1665. It's fiction, but it's hard to call it a novel. It seems incredibly historically accurate, and the writing style is very journalistic. If we didn't know anything about the author, we would immediately assume it really was a journal written in 1665 by a plague survivor. Defoe is really good...it takes a lot of talent to pull it off and make this narrative seem so authentic. Defoe himself did live in London during 1665, but he was only five years old. I've read that the nameless narrator (we only learn that his initials are H.F.) may be based on Defoe's uncle, Henry Foe, and many of the details may be from his uncle's journals. I don't know if that's true or not, but Defoe has clearly done a lot of research to get all his details...no one could make this stuff up.

The book has no plot. It loosely follows the course of the plague, from a few isolated cases in early 1665, to the epidemic's climax in September/October of 1665, when thousands were dying every week. The book rambles...the narrator makes an observation, and then follows up with it for a paragraph, or a few pages, then goes on to some other observation. Many pages later he may come back to the same observation and add more to it. If the subject matter wasn't so morbidly intriguing, this rambling style might put the reader off. But the narrator's observations of the plague, his descriptions of the behavior of the victims and the survivors, and his religious and scientific (such as they are) musings keep the reader hooked. The narrator describes the city's attempts to stop the epidemic, which involve, among other things, locking up any house where someone falls victim to the plague. Anyone living there aside from the victim was also locked in the house, and a guard was posted outside. This may have helped prevent the disease from spreading as rapidly as it might have, but it also condemned anyone trapped inside to an almost certain death. In this way whole families were wiped out. The narrator describes how the rich and well-to-do fled London as soon as the plague appeared. Poorer people tried to flee London once the epidemic spread, but by that time neighboring towns were turning folks away, often with force. Quacks selling patent medicines to prevent the plague made lots of money deceiving people, before they themselves succumbed to the disease. People fled to the church for salvation, where clergymen died in large numbers due to their exposure to so many people. Interestingly, the narrator tells how when the Church of England clergy died, preachers from dissenting churches were often the only ones who were left to take their place, and they did so to much acclaim...the plague doing more for religious tolerance than anything previously attempted. Of course, once the plague passed, the persecution of dissenting sects began anew. Carts came through the streets on a daily basis, the drivers calling out "Bring out your dead" (yes, just like in Monty Python). The dead bodies were stacked in the cart and taken to the churchyard where they were dumped for mass burials in large pits. When people went to the store, they would not hand money directly to the shopkeepers, but instead would dump their change in a bucket of vinegar on the counter, which was thought to disinfect the money.

The book goes on and on with observations similar to these, all equally though-provoking. And that's the whole book. We learn almost nothing of the narrator...we know he's a saddler, and that his brother and his family have left the city for safety, and that he himself never catches the plague, but that's it. However, he does venture his opinions on things he sees (for example, he's very much against the locking up of houses of people who have the plague), so he's not just an impartial reporter of the events. But the main character of this book is really the city of London and its beleaguered population.

Perhaps the most fascinating thing in the book is the response of people to the plague as it reaches its terrible climax and then begins to wane. When the plague is at its height, and thousands are dying each week, the narrator makes the despair eerily palpable. Everyone has given up hope and just assumes that they'll all be dead soon. And then, the plague starts to abate. Not only do the number of deaths begin to decline, but more people who come down with the disease begin to recover completely; the disease has become less virulent. When people realize this is happening they are overwhelmed with joy, and lose all the caution they had...people talk to one another in the streets again, and touch one another, and do business. Many people die as a result, for the epidemic is not over, but people just don't care...the glimmer of hope has caused them to give in to the universal need for human contact. Humanity returns.

A final historical note, and one which the narrator of the book mentions: The summer after the great plague of London came the great fire of London, and most of the city burned down. What was perhaps not so appreciated then was that this was probably a blessing, in that large parts of London were effectively sterilized, and rid of the rats and their fleas which spread the plague. When the city was rebuilt, under the auspices of Sir Christopher Wren, the streets were made wider, and a better sewage system was put in. Ironically London's great fire may have helped prevent future epidemics and their miseries. This book serves as a vivid reminder of what we're missing, and what we may yet experience again some day.

Book #19 - Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave (By Himself)

2008-08-30T14:16:00.000-07:00

My mother grew up on a farm in southeastern Indiana. The farm had been in her family since the early 1800s, and apparently the original land deed (which is still around somewhere) was signed by James Madison. Her ancestors were congregationalists and Quakers, as was much of the population of that area in the 1800s. The Quakers were strident abolitionists, and that part of southern Indiana had numerous stops on the Underground Railroad where slaves hid while coming up from the south. When my mother was a child, her cousin lived in an old farmhouse nearby which contained concealed passageways and staircases where runaway slaves were hidden. My mother also remembers that in the back part of the family farm, way deep in the woods next to a small pond, there was an old fallen down shack where fleeing slaves were also hidden. It's easy today to think of slavery as something of the distant past, maybe more of legend than reality, so I find it fascinating to hear these distant echoes of it in my mother's childhood memories.

And speaking of abolitionists, one of the most famous, and rightly so, was Frederick Douglass. Douglass had been born a slave in Maryland, around 1818. He was a slave until the age of 20, when he managed to escape, and moved to New Bedford, Massachusetts. Soon afterwards he became a speaker for the abolitionist movement. Apparently a brilliant and charismatic speaker, he moved audiences with his stories of his life as a slave. But soon, his fame and his great intelligence and articulateness caused some to wonder if he was telling the truth about having been a slave. His response was to write his autobiography, which was published in 1845 and was an immediate success. And having read the book in one sitting I can understand why...it's totally engrossing!

Douglass was born on a plantation in Maryland. The conditions he describes are pretty terrible...beatings, near starvation...but at age 8 he is shipped off to live with his master's son-in-law and his wife, who lived in Baltimore. The couple, Hugh and Sophia Auld, have never had a slave before, and Douglass is shocked by how kindly he is treated, especially by Sophia. When she realizes Douglass cannot read or write, she begins to teach him. But soon the husband finds out and freaks out, telling her she'll ruin Douglass as a slave and make it so he'll never be content. And soon, her attitude towards young Douglass changes. She becomes strict, a harsh mistress. As Douglass writes:

My mistress was, as I have said, a kind and tenderhearted woman; and in the simplicity of her soul she commenced, when I first went to live with her, to treat me as she supposed one human being ought to treat another. In entering upon the duties of a slaveholder, she did not seem to perceive that I sustained to her the relation of a mere chattel, and that for her to treat me as a human being was not only wrong, but dangerously so. Slavery proved as injurious to her as it did to me. When I went there, she was a pious, warm, and tender-hearted woman. There was no sorrow or suffering for which she had not a tear. She had bread for the hungry, clothes for the naked, and comfort for every mourner that came within her reach. Slavery soon proved its ability to divest her of these heavenly qualities. Under its influence, the tender heart became stone, and the lamb-like disposition gave way to one of tiger-like fierceness. The first step in her downwards course was to cease to instruct me. She now commenced to practice her husband's precepts. She finally became more violent in her opposition than her husband himself.

That's a fascinating and profound observation, and one that has never occurred to me. Slavery was clearly dehumanizing to those who are slaves, but it was also damaging to the slaveholders as well. It's easy to read about slaveholders beating and mistreating slaves and think that perhaps people were different back then, that it all seems uncomprehendingly cruel and that no one would do that nowadays if put into that situation, but Douglass shows that the institution of slavery has a pernicious effect on the humanity of anyone who participates in it.

Several years later, Douglass is sent back to the plantation, and he is then rented out to a poor farmer named Covey to be "broken". Covey has a reputation for breaking the spirit of unruly and contrary slaves. The conditions are horrendous, and at one point Douglass runs back to his old master's farm to complain of the conditions. The master says things can't be that bad and sends Douglass back to Covey. When Douglass returns, Covey sets out to beat him, but Douglass fights back. They go at it for over two hours. Douglass writes:

I considered him as getting the worst end of the bargain; for he had drawn no blood from me, but I had from him. The whole six months afterwards, that I spent with Mr. Covey, he never laid the weight of his finger upon me in anger...This battle with Mr. Covey was the turning-point in my career as a slave. It rekindled in me the few expiring embers of freedom, and revived within me a sense of my own manhood

Douglass eventually is sent back to Baltimore to live again with Hugh and Sophia Auld. He becomes a caulker in the shipyards, and earns a decent living, which he must turn over to the Aulds at the end of the week. But he is able to save a little money on the side, which allows him to eventually make his escape, first to New York City, where abolitionists give him some money and send him on to New Bedford, where he lives until the book's end. Interestingly, Douglass does not describe in the book how he made his escape. He says that he doesn't want to compromise the route for other slaves wanting to follow the same path to freedom. This odd quirk I found oddly touching...it really brought the point home that this book was written when slavery was still a thriving institution. After the civil war (years after this book was published), Douglass spilled the beans: he got some forged papers and took the train from Baltimore to New York.

Religion was a theme in "Robinson Crusoe" and it returned in this book. Douglass rails against the Southern slaveholders who professed to be devout Christians, but who held, beat, starved, raped, killed, and mistreated slaves. He even added an appendix to the book where he explains that he doesn't mean to sound like an opponent of all religion. He's just opposed to the religion of the land that allows slavery, which he doesn't even recognize as Christianity. In his own words:

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.

He's not mincing words there, but he has a point. It's been years since I read it, but it reminds me of a scene from "Huckleberry Finn" where (as I recall) two Southern families are feuding and killing one another, but stop to go to church to hear a sermon on brotherly love, while keeping their guns at their sides.

Anyway, this book is very moving, and a great and quick read, and should be required reading for anyone living in America. Slavery was a huge part of the history of the United States, and its after effects, in the form of racism and bigotry, are still being struggled with in the 21st century. If only there were more men as brave and articulate as Frederick Douglass, maybe this country would even be further along today.

Book #18 - Robinson Crusoe (Daniel Defoe)

2008-08-28T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have a friend who owns a tiki bar. I was talking to him about rum one day, and got an earful. To say he's into rum would be putting it quite mildly; he probably forgets more about rum every day than I ever knew, or will know. One of the rums we discussed was Rhum Barbancourt. This 15 year old rum is from Haiti, and apparently is the only rum currently made in Haiti. My friend told me the distillery is notoriously mysterious...his distributor never knows when another shipment of rum is coming in because he's never told ahead of time, because apparently they never know how much of the shipment of rum will make it past the gauntlet of thieves and robbers lurking on the muddy roads of the remote parts of Haiti where the distillery is located. Anyway, I'm sipping some of this rum now...on the rocks, not straight up in a wine glass like Sam Spade would have done. Nonetheless, it's a fitting drink to sip while writing about the book I just finished, "Robinson Crusoe" by Daniel Defoe.

When I was making the list of the top 105 books I haven't yet read, I first skipped over "Robinson Crusoe", thinking that I had read it. I mean, come on, we all know this book...a guy is stranded on a deserted island, and lives alone for years until he finds a native he names Friday. It's not just a story, it's a cultural icon. Who doesn't know about Robinson Crusoe? But then when I really thought about it, I realized that I'd never actually read the book. So it made the list, and now I've read it. And I have to say it was somewhat different from what I'd imagined. I was thinking it would be more of an adventure story, like "Treasure Island". And it certainly was, in parts. But the book was also surprisingly reflective, and was clearly on a whole different level than "Treasure Island".

Possibly the biggest example of this is the book's discussion of religion. Robinson Crusoe leaves home at a young age, eager to explore the world. He's got wanderlust, much to the horror of his common sense father, who tells him that traveling the world to seek adventure and fortune is for men of desperate ambition or men of superior ambition. The best course of all is the middle road...not exposed to the miseries and hardships of desperation, or to the pride, luxury, ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. No, peace and plenty were the rewards of the middle station in life, so he should stay at home and not raise a ruckus (Damn, sounds like something MY parents would have said). Anyway, Crusoe can't help himself, and he goes a-wandering, eventually winding up in Brazil where he starts a plantation. Within a couple of years he's doing pretty well, when a friend of him suggests he travel on a trade ship to Africa to pick up some slaves, as they need more plantation labor. So Crusoe sets sail, the ship sinks in a storm, and he's cast away on the deserted island where he'll spend the next 28 years. When he survives the shipwreck, he thanks God for saving his life, but he doesn't seem all that sincere about it. He's bummed out about being alone on the island, and curses his luck. Then he has this weird dream, which strikes me as almost some kind of religious conversion. He is ill with a fever and dreams that a man descends from heaven surrounded by fire, and tells Crusoe he must repent. When Crusoe awakes from the dream, he gets serious about religion, and remains so from then onwards. He reads the bible, he repents for his sins (which he believes are greed and not listening to his father's wise counsel), and, most interestingly, he becomes thankful for being on the island. Instead of bemoaning all the things he lacks, he praises God and is genuinely thankful for all the things he has. After all, he has adequate food (he's learned to plant corn and barley, and raises herds of goats) and shelter, and had managed to save enough things from the boat, like rum and guns, to make his life easier than it might have been. This is a big change in Crusoe, and Defoe's point is clear...work hard, be thankful for what you have, and praise God (just like a good English protestant). Actually, this is an interesting point to reflect on in such a wealthy and materialistic culture as early 21st century America...this book may have beem written almost 300 years ago, but it still seems quite relevant in many ways.

Religion crops up again when Crusoe meets Friday. Cannibals come to the island, camp on the beach, and are going to sacrifice and eat Friday, but Crusoe kills the cannibals and saves him. Crusoe befriends Friday, and teaches him not only English, but Christianity as well. But when explaining to Friday about the devil, Friday asks why God, if he's all powerful, doesn't just kill the devil and be done with it. Crusoe is stumped, and admits as much. I got a laugh out of that.

Crusoe's relation to Friday is problematic for the modern reader, I think. Crusoe instructs Friday to call him "master". While Crusoe obviously cares a great deal for Friday, and vice versa, the portrayal of Friday seems dated. He's almost like the happy, innocent savage, who will blindly follow Crusoe everywhere, and even goes back to Europe with Crusoe when they leave the island. I kept thinking "Doesn't he have any wife and kids he wants to get back to? Doesn't Friday want to get laid??" There's no consideration by Crusoe to treat Friday as an equal. He may care for him deeply, and be his friend, but Crusoe is the master and Friday the servant.

And the end of the novel is just kinda whacked. I felt like Defoe didn't know how to end it, and could have used an editor. After helping an English captain recover his vessel after his crew mutinied and tried to maroon him on the island, Crusoe and Friday go back to Europe. They end up in Lisbon, where they decide to travel over the Pyrenees to get back to France and eventually England. It's getting to be winter, and so this is a dangerous trip by land, but Crusoe has no stomach for another sea voyage. So they travel across the Pyrenees where they are attacked by hundreds of hungry wolves, plus a bear, which Friday kills. Then Defoe goes into lots of detail about Crusoe managing his affairs, and getting 20 gold pieces for this, and 37 gold pieces for that, and I'm like "Dude, the story's over, let's put a fork in it". Then Crusoe gets married and has kids, although this is all mentioned in passing, and two paragraphs and many years later the wife dies and Crusoe decides to go back and check on his island, where he left a couple of the mutineers, along with some Spaniards who were also shipwrecked. They're all doing fine, and Crusoe gets them some more supplies, and women too, and Crusoe is pleased to see that the island is now prospering, just like a good English colony should. The End. And everything I describe in this last paragraph all happens in the last 30 pages or so of the book. It's like a weird discontinuous coda. I can see why Crusoe wants to return to the island, because after 28 years, things seem pretty empty in England, and he doesn't seem to be too attached to his wife, given that we don't learn a single thing about her. Ironic, because when he was on the island, all he longed for was to get off of it. Still, this ending seems like it was all just tacked on to an otherwise great story.

But here's my biggest beef: among the things Crusoe salvages from the wreck of his ship is a few barrels of rum. And 28 years later, when he's rescued, HE STILL HAS SOME LEFT!?! WTF?!? What was he thinking?

Ah well...this is a good book, and there's a lot more to it than I have room to discuss here. It's an adventure story, but definitely a more sophisticated one than "Treasure Island", or "Swiss Family Robinson". Hmm, which makes me wonder, is the name Robinson in "Swiss Family Robinson" a tribute to Robinson Crusoe. Never thought of that before. Must be the rum talking...

Book #17 - The Maltese Falcon (Dashiell Hammett)

2008-08-20T22:00:00.000-07:00

We've all seen the movie. I saw it years ago, and I remember little of it. In fact, it seems to blend in in my mind with all the other Humphrey Bogart movies I've ever seen. I remember it's got a bird statue, Peter Lorre, Sidney Greenstreet, Mary Astor, and Bogey. Bogey, as always, is cool and tough. So I picked up this book thinking "yeah, this should be pretty good". But I was wrong. This book is great! Oh man, Sam Spade is a Bad Ass. He's like Bogey and Clint Eastwood all rolled up into one. He's cool in a hot situation, he's always thinking, always one step ahead of everyone. You never know where he really stands...is he gonna work for the bad guys and take a cut of the action, or is he gonna turn everyone over to the law? At one point, he takes on two people as clients who are both working at cross purposes to one another. He can hold his liquor (and oddly enough, he drinks rum, straight, from a wine glass. I would have taken him for a whiskey man). I've heard the phrase "hard-boiled" before, in reference to detective fiction, and now I know what it means. Damn! I like it!

The dialog in this book is superb. Terse, bold, to the point. In fact, a large part of this book is dialog. There are three murders in the book, and they all occur "offstage". There are only a couple of scenes involving any sort of violence. The suspense is achieved mostly through threats, and intimidation, and the possibility of violence. And there are some quotes in the book that are so bad-ass and hard-boiled that I had to laugh. Here's one:

Cairo, speaking with difficulty because of the fingers on his throat, said: "This is the second time you've put your hands on me." His eyes, though the throttling pressure on his throat made them buldge, were cold and menacing.

"Yes," Spade growled. "And when you're slapped you'll take it and like it."

Oooh, SNAP! Actually, Quentin Tarantino must have had that line in mind in his film Reservoir Dogs, when the crime gang leader looks at Steve Buscemi's character, who's complaining that his code name is "Mr. Pink", and says "You'll be Mr. Pink and you'll like it."

Then there's this line, when one of the criminals, Mr. Gutman, agrees with Sam Spade to turn in one of his accomplices (Wilmer) as a fall guy for some murders, in exchange for Sam giving him the Maltese Falcon. Gutman says to Wilmer:

"Well, Wilmer, I'm sorry indeed to lose you, and I want you to know that I couldn't be any fonder of you if you were my own son; but - well, by Gad! - if you lose a son it's possible to get another - and there's only one Maltese Falcon."

Even Sam Spade laughs at that one.

And Sam's good with The Ladies too. His client, Brigid O'Shaughnessey, is a classic femme fatale, and can never be trusted. So Sam sleeps with her and then turns her over to the cops at the end for committing a murder. He explains to her:

"The chances are you'll get off with life. That means you'll be out again in twenty years. You're an angel. I'll wait for you." He cleared his throat. "If they hang you I'll always remember you."

Oh yeah. Sam was also sleeping with the wife of his murdered partner. It's not clear to me why, since he obviously didn't like either his partner or his partner's wife. That's just the way he rolls.

The narration style of this story is quite interesting. There are a lot of scenes where Sam is talking to someone and it's remarked that his face is blank, or gives no traces of what he's thinking, or is expressionless, or something like that. The narrator never reveals what the characters are thinking. So it's not an omniscient narrator, or even a really human one. It's more like the events are described as an observer would see them, and that's that. It reminded me of watching a movie. Hopefully that's not just because I saw the movie.

Anyway, this book is totally a page turner, and if you're looking for a few hours of entertainment, you could hardly do better. I heartily recommend it. I plowed through it in all the spare moments I could muster over the course of three days. Now I miss it. So get out your whiskey, or a wine glass full of rum, and go for it!

Book #16 - Eugene Onegin (Alexander Pushkin)

2008-08-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

I'm now in this pattern of reading books that have nothing to do with the previous book I just read. With this latest book I've gone from the deep south at the turn of the 20th century to the frozen hinterlands of Russia at the turn of the 18th century. Time to break out the ice cold vodka! I mean, reading a Russian novel is a good enough excuse, right? Well, too late anyway...

Alexander Pushkin is considered the father of modern Russian literature (I read that on Wikipedia, so you know it has to be true). His "Eugene Onegin" is a novel in verse. In other words, it's a really long poem that tells a story. From what I've read, translating Russian poetry into English is not so easy, and that makes sense to me...I mean, you have to translate the meaning and all the nuance, as well as make it rhyme, in order to capture the full effect of the original. And frankly, this is probably just not possible in many cases. The translation I read is by Charles Johnston, and it follows Pushkin's rhyme scheme. Vladimir Nabokov famously translated "Eugene Onegin" into English when he became disgusted with the other translations available at the time. He focused on getting the exact meaning right, and decided to ditch the rhyme scheme and translate it as free verse. I read a bit of Nabakov's translation just to see what it was like, and I have to say I liked the effect of reading the Johnston translation better, precisely because of the fact that it rhymed. I mean, if I'm gonna read a novel in verse, then WTF, let's at least have some rhyming action! And I really enjoyed the effect of reading page after page of rhyming verse...it creates a certain rhythm that propels the reader forward through the work. It's like the words are dancing on the page (or is that the vodka talking?). Anyway, since I can't read Russian, I have no idea how faithful either of these translations is to the original, so I just decided to pretend the version I read was close enough and went with it.

Anyway, the plot (spoiler alert!): "Eugene Onegin" is the story of a young Russian aristocrat dandy coincidentally named Eugene Onegin. He's young, well off, and bored with his frivolous lifestyle. He inherits a country estate from an uncle, so he decides to go and live there. He quickly befriends a young Russian poet named Lensky who lives on a nearby estate. One day Lensky invites him over to dinner at Olga's house, a girl Lensky is courting. At dinner Olga's sister, Tatyana, a brooding young woman, falls totally in love with Eugene. She writes Eugene a letter confessing her love. Eugene meets with her, and tries to let her down gently. He's a nice guy, I think, but wants to cat about with the ladies and not be tied down to some country gal. Tatyana is crushed, and still pines for Eugene. A long time later, Lensky again invites Eugene to Olga's house, for a small dinner party. Eugene reluctantly goes, and is pissed off when he finds it's not a small dinner party, but a huge social extravaganza of the type Eugene hates. Eugene's angry at Lensky and seeks payback by dancing and flirting with Olga at the party. Lensky is outraged, and challenges Eugene to a duel. Eugene, instead of apologizing and telling his friend he didn't mean anything by all this (he really didn't), just says "Yeah, like whatever" and agrees to the duel. Well, of course, Eugene, without trying, ends up killing Lensky. Oops. Eugene feels bad, and leaves the countryside for Moscow. This gives Tatyana, who's still in love with Eugene, the opportunity to go over to Eugene's estate and look through his library to see what kind of man he really is. When she reads his books, and notes the passages he's commented on or underlined, she realizes he's perhaps not all that clever after all. Flash forward two years...Tatyana has moved to Moscow because her mom wants her to find a husband. She meets a general and marries him. She becomes a socialite and host. Then she runs into Eugene at a party, and he's like "Woah, you're not the same old country girl any more! I was an idiot!" He sends her letters telling her he loves her now and he can't be without her. And in the final climactic scene, she tells him that he had his chance, and that while she's not all that into being the married society lady and she still loves Eugene, she's not going to leave her husband or cheat on him, and why the hell is Eugene writing these letters anyway, because they're not doing her any good. The end.

This is a great story in a number of ways, but one thing I particularly enjoyed was how the power structure of the relationship between Eugene and Tatyana changes. When he first meets her and blows her off, he appears as the sophisticated, worldly man, spurning the advances of an innocent country woman. But at the end, Tatyana is now a sophisticated society woman, spurning the rather desperate and pathetic advances of a washed up jerk. I had the sense that while she maybe does really still love Eugene, that she doesn't like or respect him anymore.

This is the first book I've read in this project where I really felt I'd love to sit in a class and listen to lectures about this work, and discuss it with other readers. There are notes in the back of the version I read which, among other things, discuss all the literary works that Pushkin is referring to in the poem. I feel like there's loads of stuff in here that I'm probably not getting...literary references, historical references, etc. And this gave me an idea...why doesn't someone write/publish a series of guidebooks to classic works of literature written for intelligent adults? Yeah, there are Cliff Notes and Spark Notes, but I'm thinking of something that goes into more depth...college level discussions of literary works that are written with intelligent readers in mind who are not academics or even necessarily former English majors. I dunno, maybe it's just my vodka-addled brain going on a tangent here, but it seems like there might be a market for this kind of thing. Well, maybe. I'm a scientist...what do I know about business?

One final question for any readers out there: does anyone know how "Onegin" is pronounced? Is it oh-nay-gin or oh-nuh-gin? Is the g in "gin" pronounced like the alcohol, or as in the word "beginning"? Let me know if you have a clue!

Nature Vs. Nurture, or Lack Thereof...

2008-08-10T21:31:00.000-07:00

I finished "Look Homeward, Angel" this weekend, polishing off the last 250 pages. I have to say that this book kept growing on me, and it really wasn't until the last few pages that I felt like I really "got" this book...but when I did, it all made sense, and I loved it. The last section of the book details Eugene's time at college at a state school in North Carolina (Pulpit Hill, clearly meant to be Chapel Hill), a summer he spent working in the shipyards of Virginia during WWI, the death of one of his brothers, his graduation from college, and his decision to go on to Harvard to continue his studies.

Eugene really comes into his own as a person in the last part of the book. His love of reading and learning, and his intellectual brilliance, become clear at college, as do his eccentricities. He's a "big man on campus" and excels at his studies and extracurricular activities, but he's awkward, a loner, and somewhat of an oddball. Still, he's admired by his classmates, when they're not making fun of him. What is really brought out in the last part of the book, as Eugene matures into a fully-formed adult, is how much his family background has influenced him. He's always been introspective, and has loved reading, but the craziness of his family has also affected him, and, I think, isolated him more than he might be otherwise. His family is quite unique. They're totally dysfunctional...hard drinking, screaming at one another one moment, then crying the next, then laughing soon afterwards. Their personalities are huge. They throw harsh words at one another like tire irons to the head. Blame is tossed liberally, then guilt and remorse is felt. Sometimes the brothers get into fist fights. All is lubricated with liquor and the heat of the hot Southern nights. I love this family! They are so totally opposite of mine...a family of two rational, scientist parents who raised two kids who became scientists. No, the Gant family is a crazy, sordidly dysfunctional brood, and of the five children alive at the end, Eugene is the only one destined for any kind of "success" in this world. He's the most normal, but he's an oddball.

The family's dysfunction is perhaps most apparent during the death of Ben, the brother Eugene is closest too. Ben is a bitter cynic, but he and Eugene have a closer bond than any of the other siblings. Ben, who has always had lung problems, comes down with the Spanish flu, which turns into pneumonia, and he dies in a very poignant scene. But his deathbed is quite Gant-ian. Blame is cast, feelings are crushed, yelling, crying, fighting, and laughing ensue. These people are crazy, and I love them.

Intriguing to me, the biologist, is that Wolfe talks a lot about issues that touch on genetics. When Eugene first tries alcohol, he finds that he loves it, and he gets really drunk. His family is concerned, because they realize this love of alcohol runs in the family, and they hope Eugene won't fall into it...he's their best hope. The father feels remorse that he might have passed on his intrinsic love for alcohol to his son. There's also a scene at Ben's funeral, where all the relatives come to pay their respects, and Eugene looks on them with horrific fascination:

"There they were, each with the familiar marking of the clan - broad nose, full lips, deep flat cheeks, deliberate pursed mouths, flat drawling voice, flat complacent laughter. There they were, with their enormous vitality, their tainted blood, their meaty health, their sanity, their insanity, their humor, their superstition, their meanness, their generosity, their fanatic idealism, their unyielding materialism. There they were, smelling of the earth and Parnassus - that strange clan which met only at weddings and funerals, but which was forever true to itself, indissoluble and forever apart, with its melancholia, its madness, its mirth: more enduring than life, more strong than death.

And as Eugene looked, he felt again the nightmare horror of destiny. He was one of them - there was no escape. Their lust, their weakness, their sensuality, their fanaticism, their strength, their rich taint, were rooted in the marrow of his bones."

I just love that. That may be the best description of genetics, and of the power and kinship of families, that I've ever read. There's an argument in genetics about how much of a person's personality, intelligence, and character is genetic (nature), and how much is environmental (nurture), but this paragraph, and this book makes me think that perhaps the two are not separable. We are who we are because of our genes, which we get from our family, and from our environment, which is determined by our families, who are what they are because of their genes. There is no escape.

This book gets really wistful and sentimental towards the end, which made me reflect and realize that it was actually wistful and sentimental the whole time, it's just that I wasn't quite tuned into that (but I should have been, because Wolfe uses the phrase "Oh, lost!" in about every chapter). This is a book about a young man (which we know is Wolfe, because the book is famously autobiographical...he took a lot of heat for the closeness of some of the characters in the novel to folks in the town he was from (Asheville, NC)) looking back on his childhood and college years, his town and family. At the end, Eugene decides to go on to Harvard for graduate school, though he's not sure really why or what he'll study. But he realizes he's reached an end and must leave his town and family behind. He's quite wistful about this, and even discusses it with Ben's ghost, who he sees in the town square, on the porch of his father's old gravestone-carving shop, the night before he is to leave (Ben's ghost is great...a cynical, chain-smoking ghost who insists he's not a ghost). When morning comes and the ghost disappears Eugene looks over the town:

"Yet, as he stood for the last time by the angels of his father's porch, it seemed as if the Square already were far and lost; or, should I say, he was like a man who stands upon a hill above the town he has left, yet does not say "The town is near", but turns his eyes upon the distant soaring ranges"

O, lost!

It's interesting to compare this book to "Of Human Bondage" which I read earlier this year. Both novels could be classified as bildungsroman, and the two novels were written about 14 years apart (1915 for Maugham's, 1929 for Wolfe's), but they are light years different in writing style, in emotional style, in content. Maugham's book seems very British, and very 19th century, compared to Wolfe's very 20th century American book...how times change, and how quickly...O, Lost!

Still Looking Homeward

2008-08-05T23:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm about 450 pages and 12 glasses of bourbon into "Look Homeward, Angel". And bourbon is the perfect drink for this book...sweet, southern, and packing a punch. Several characters in this book know how to drink their liquor, although they can't handle it very well.

Of all the books I've read so far, this is perhaps the hardest one to blog about. Reading this book is great, because it seems to put me in a trance...I'm transported into another world and carried along by the rhythms and phrasings of the language, and the hazy imagery, and the colorful characters. But the world of the novel is very dreamlike...you know how you'll have a dream that seems really vivid, and then you'll wake up and you'll try to remember all the details, but they all quickly fade away, and you're left with only a general impression of the dream, and just a hint at all the details that you know you just dreamed abut. Well, that's what reading this book is like...I love it, and it seems so wonderful and vivid, but then when I try to remember exactly what's happened, it all seems very murky. Wolfe's writing is perhaps almost too good...one can get lost in it, and the details of the novel swim by almost without notice because the language is so distracting. Maybe. It's also that there really is no plot to this book. It's the "story" of the Gant family, and in particular Eugene Gant, who is clearly modeled after the author. He's a talented, sensitive, artistic kid, growing up in a small town in North Carolina in the early 1900s. Eugene is awkward growing up, both physically and socially, and gets laughed at a lot. When he hits adolescence, he has some nervous, awkward sexually-charged encounters with women. He has a paper route, he loves books and reading (which seems to puzzle his family), he goes to a private school, and then to college. His father drinks a lot, and his mother has serious issues with financial security...she does quite well for herself, working hard to run a boarding house, and investing in real estate. Yet she constantly complains of lack of money, and can't spend any on her family. And that's pretty much the plot of the book. But don't get me wrong...it's a great, enjoyable book so far, whose language is to be savored...especially with bourbon!

Scientists Peruse the Odyssey!

2008-07-27T11:32:00.000-07:00

This post is a bit of a break from my cocktail-enhanced analysis of the great works of literature. But as a scientist, I had to report this latest breaking research for all you literature fans out there. As part of my job, I have to keep up with the scientific literature, which is a bit like drinking from a fire hose these days. So recently when I was looking over the table of contents to a recent issue of "The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" I came across an article titled "Is an eclipse described in the Odyssey". Despite this being far afield from my area of research (mostly things DNA-related), I had to check this paper out. The authors are a physicist and an astronomer. Here's the abstract of the article, which provides a good summary:

"Plutarch and Heraclitus believed a certain passage in the 20th book of the Odyssey ("Theoclymenus's prophecy") to be a poetic description of a total solar eclipse. In the late 1920s, Schoch and Neugebauer computed that the solar eclipse of 16 April 1178 B.C.E. was total over the Ionian Islands and was the only suitable eclipse in more than a century to agree with classical estimates of the decade-earlier sack of Troy around 1192–1184 B.C.E. However, much skepticism remains about whether the verses refer to this, or any, eclipse. To contribute to the issue independently of the disputed eclipse reference, we analyze other astronomical references in the Epic, without assuming the existence of an eclipse, and search for dates matching the astronomical phenomena we believe they describe. We use three overt astronomical references in the epic: to Boötes and the Pleiades, Venus, and the New Moon; we supplement them with a conjectural identification of Hermes's trip to Ogygia as relating to the motion of planet Mercury. Performing an exhaustive search of all possible dates in the span 1250–1115 B.C., we looked to match these phenomena in the order and manner that the text describes. In that period, a single date closely matches our references: 16 April 1178 B.C.E. We speculate that these references, plus the disputed eclipse reference, may refer to that specific eclipse."

So basically, they wanted to see if the date of an eclipse that may or may not have been described in the Odyssey correlated with any other astronomical references noted in that work, and indeed they found that everything points to the same time in history, namely April 16, 1178 BC. This corresponds to a date that is approximately ten years after the historic sack of Troy, which totally fits the timeline of the Odyssey. My scientific take on this is: "Woah, that's kinda cool"!

The eclipse incident in the Odyssey is described as this in the paper:

"In the 20th book of the Odyssey, as the suitors are sitting down for their noontime meal, Athena "confounds their minds" (Od. xx.345) so that they start laughing uncontrollably and see their food spattered with blood. Then, the seer Theoclymenus makes a most remarkable speech foreseeing the death of the suitors and their entrance into Hades, ending in the phrase (xx.356) "The Sun has been obliterated from the sky, and an unlucky darkness invades the world." The word that we have translated as "invades,"had a connotation of "attacking suddenly or by surprise," the modus operandi of an eclipse"

There's a rub, though, which is how the heck could Homer have known not just about the eclipse, but about the correlating astronomical phenomenon, when the Odyssey was written centuries after the events. As the authors themselves state:

"...our conjectural Homer would have had to be aware that there was an eclipse on a certain date and what the planets did on nearby dates. This is problematic enough, because the dates were centuries before his time; how this knowledge was acquired—we dare not conjecture, for all possibilities sound equally outlandish. Much research is needed before we can move beyond such speculations; we can only modestly hope to convince other scholars...to ponder if the remarkable coincidence described in this paper may in fact not be coincidental at all."

So in other words: "Woah, that's kinda cool. But maybe a coincidence". Still I find this exercise in the scientific method quite refreshing,thought provoking, and just plain fun.

Book #15 - Look Homeward, Angel (Thomas Wolfe)

2008-07-22T22:25:00.000-07:00

After finishing "Kim" I wanted to move on to something very different, and I got it. I'm now 100 pages into Thomas Wolfe's novel "Look Homeward, Angel". Wow. This is a big and sprawling 700 page book, with an emphasis on BIG! The novel, so far, chronicles the history of the Gant family. The father, Oliver Gant, is one hell of a character. In my blog I may discuss the finer points of sipping whiskey, but Oliver Gant is not a sipper, he's a gulper. He's an alcoholic who goes on benders every now and then, before pulling out of it and returning to his family. He also has a huge, outsized personality...much like the novel itself. He screams, yells, and curses, sometimes with malice, sometimes with humor. He's a force of nature. He moves to the hills of western North Carolina, and raises a big family. His son, Eugene, is clearly going to be the focus of the book. I've often heard the phrase "Southern Gothic", and didn't really know what it meant, but I'm guessing the Gant family meets the description.

Wolfe's writing style is quite fascinating. He'll write a few paragraphs, or pages, in straightforward, easy to follow, "story-telling" style. Then he'll lapse into what I would call "impressionistic" writing...a more poetic, free-form style of writing. I quite enjoy the contrast...The poetic parts are nice, and very visual sometimes, but if that was all there was, the book would be impenetrable. I think this book will continue to be fun to read...

Kim's Conclusion

2008-07-14T23:20:00.000-07:00

After a hard week at work I was finally able to return to "Kim" this weekend and finish off the last 50 pages. I usually issue a "spoiler alert" for the discussion of the ends of books, but there really isn't anything to spoil here. Kim and his lama buddy travel to the Himalayas so the lama can continue his search for enlightenment and Kim can help stop some Russian spies. They encounter the Russian spies, and through a cultural misunderstanding one of them punches the lama in the face. An uproar ensues, allowing Kim and another spy friend to take the Russian's maps and secret papers from them. A spy success worthy of 007 himself! The lama becomes ill from his wounds and they must take him down the mountains back to the flatlands, where he gets better (well, somewhat) and eventually finds the river of enlightenment that he seeks, and vows to enlighten his pupil Kim. The End.

Now, if you're like me, your saying...huh? I enjoyed this book for the most part, but there was just a lot I did not get. And I mean two different things by this. First, as I mentioned in previous posts, there is the language and writing...I just found some of Kipling's passages incomprehensible. These were usually passages of dialog, where I could not tell who was talking, or what the heck they were trying to convey. Second, there's the book as a whole. It seems to me that Kim probably symbolizes India...He knows the way of all types of Indian folks, from whites to Hindus to Buddhists, and can pass for any of them. He is the "friend of all the world". He plays "The Great Game" of imperial politics, yet earnestly follows his lama to seek enlightenment...He combines the worldly with the spiritual to an ultimate extent (just like India!). But when I finished the book I thought "that's it"? I dunno. It was a fun read, and I would not discourage anyone from reading it, but I guess that ultimately I didn't get that much out of it...which is a first for this reading project!

So it's on to the next book! I've read a streak of Victorian novels lately, and I have a lot more in that vein I want to read this summer, but I'm thinking for the next book I'll take a break from that genre just to mix things up a bit. As to which book that will be, I haven't decided yet. One of the hardest parts of this project is picking the next book, because I really want to read them all at once. An embarrassment of riches!

Kim Continued

2008-07-06T21:58:00.000-07:00

Tonight I'm sipping on some Bernheim Wheat Whiskey...an odd, exotic whiskey that tastes nothing like bourbon, or Irish, or Scotch whiskey; instead it has some qualities of each. Which makes it a good pairing with "Kim", a novel of exotic India, which I thought was going to be a road trip story but has turned into a a spy novel. And a road trip story. When I last posted, Kim and his friend an old buddhist monk (lama) were traveling the countryside of 19th century British India, looking for a magical healing river which the lama says was created when Buddha split the ground with an arrow. Kim was going along for the ride, but all that changed when they came across a regiment of Irish soldiers. The regiment had as their flag a red bull on a green field, which matched a prophesy made by Kim's father before he died...that Kim would some day be attended to by hundreds of men lead by a red bull on a green field. Turns out this was Kim's father's regiment, and when they figure out who Kim is, they take him from the lama and decide to raise him as an Irish kid, instead of the somewhat feral Indian child he thinks he is. Well, Kim's not too happy about this, because he just wants to hang with the lama. Naturally, complications ensue, and the commanders of the regiment figure out just how wily and street-smart Kim is, which makes them realize he'd be a great spy! So they send him to a good school, paid for by his friend the lama, and he gets to travel India with the lama during holidays. He learns to read and write, and eventually graduates and can become a spy. Kim digs this...he gets to use his acting and "people skills", he can still travel around with his lama buddy, and he quickly becomes good at what he does. He and his fellow spies refer to their endeavors as "The Great Game".

I find this a curious book. First, as I mentioned previously, I sometimes find it hard to follow. Sometimes there will be a conversation, and I'll think "Woah...is it the whiskey or do I just have no idea what these people are trying to say to one another". Then I'll realize I haven't even had any whiskey. And then, a page or two later, everything is clear again. Not sure if this is due to Kipling's style, or whether it's just ADD kicking in. Regardless. it's disconcerting. Then there's the problem of a lot of vernacular in the book. There are a bunch of different types of people, English (white), Hindus, Muslims, Buddhists, and each of them seems to have their own nickname...pahari, faquir, sahib, pathan, etc. While exotic and colorful, it's also hard to follow. An annotated version of this book would be an excellent help. There's also the issue of politics...just who is spying on who in "The Great Game"? We all know Britian ruled India in the 1800s, but who were they spying on? We get some clues...rebellious kings, Russians, but the historical background is unknown to me.

The joys of this book, though, for me are two-fold: the character of Kim, and his friendship with the lama. Kim is incredibly likeable...young, smart, sassy, clever, often irreverent, wise beyond his years. People in the book like him a lot too, and his nickname is "Friend of all the World". The lama is old, innocent, pure at heart. Kim is very much of this world, while the lama is mostly on a more spiritual plane and is usually quite naive in dealings with other people. So far Kim can travel with the lama and work as a spy on occasion, and the lama is none the wiser. But Kim totally loves the lama, and vice versa...their bond, as master and pupil, as well as two companions, is deep and moving, despite (or perhaps because of) the great differences between the two. Kim definitely has an issue with his identity, or lack thereof...although he's technically white (a sahib), he doesn't relate to any one ethnicity or caste. He's ambiguous, which, of course, makes him great spy material.

Anyway, I have about 60 pages left. I'm quite curious to see how this all ends up. Of course, I'll be sure to let you know.