Necessary Acts of Devotion

Time Capsules

2011-03-12T16:05:00.000-08:00

Books are time capsules. They store messages for a potentially endless period of time, and capture, like a photograph, the precise moment in time when they were created. And so, too, are they time machines. They wait upon the shelf for future generations to open them and receive the message. When they are opened, they transport the reader back to the time when they were created, as well as the time they depict.

The Good Book

2009-10-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

The digital signal on the television froze just as our favorite team scored the winning points in the final seconds of the game. The browser suffered some unexpected failure and had to shut down. We found a radio station that plays all our favorite songs, but the transmission only reaches us on cloudless nights when we hold the tip of the antenna. Equipment needs to be repaired or replaced, or becomes so outdated as to be almost useless. We couldn't help but feel frustrated. Thankfully, comfort is near at hand.

A book is both the information on the printed pages, and the mechanism that delivers the information to us. Though printing was invented by the Sumerians, and the basic codex first appeared in the third century BCE, modern technology has not improved either form or function.

The information we receive in a book doesn't come with commercial interruptions or advertisements that pop up from the pages. We can easily navigate through the book using the table of contents or the index. Even without a pricey gadget, the information is available to us on demand, always appearing quicker than even the fastest download speeds. We can start or stop reading at any time, and page backward to reread or forward to skip ahead. We can even record our thoughts in the margins and highlight the critical parts. Best of all, these functions are right at our fingertips -- no remote necessary.

A book doesn't require any installation or set-up. There is no user's manual. Batteries, electricity, and gasoline are not needed; nor is an extended warranty to protect it against mechanical breakdown. Books are completely portable, without ever having connectivity issues or reception trouble. A bookworm might eat a tiny hole through some pages, but the book will never catch a virus that causes a loss of information or performance. And if a book does lose its cover, or if a few pages come lose, the information can still be accessed and used. A reader never need take a book back to the dealer for regular maintenance, or have a serviceman come to perform repairs.

More than just a container or infotainment, books have a pleasing aesthetic that just can't be found in a radio, television, or computer. Those things have their advantages, but none can touch the soul like a good book. What will we read tonight?

Let's Roll! Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage

2009-09-12T10:14:00.000-07:00

Marking September 11 seemed as good a reason as any to read Let's Roll! Ordinary People, Extraordinary Courage, written by Lisa Beamer. Her husband Todd was one of the passengers who fought back against the hijackers of the United Airlines flight that crashed in Pennsylvania on that terror-filled day. This book, written in 2002, is their story.

Mrs. Beamer comes across as honest and unpretentious, simply "a mom and a housewife from a small town in New Jersey." Though this is her first-hand account, much of the success of the book must go to the co-author Ken Abraham. It is structured well and presented in easily digestable chapters. Despite knowing the outcome, we wanted to keep turning the pages. We read the whole thing in just a day and a half.

The book opens with the events of September 11, 2001. The narrative then shifts to the early life of Todd Beamer. The early life of Lisa follows. Their life together leads back to the opening of the book. The rest is Mrs. Beamer's experience following the death of her husband.

Though she reveals as much as she knows about Flight 93, and the role her husband and several others played in bringing the terrorists down, there are other books that give more-detailed accounts. To our surprise, this book was rather a story of inspiration. This is an account of Mrs. Beamer's strength in dealing with the tragedy.

Thanks certainly to Mr. Abraham's guidance, this turns out to be a story of how God operates throughout Mrs. Beamer's life. She did not discover faith as a way of coping. Her faith was the foundation that helped her weather the storm. She had always found God present in her life, and by her actions, just as her husband did, she honored that presence.

Fewer than three months after Todd's death, Lisa faced his birthday without him. Even while she tried to carry on for her children, she struggled with pain and grief. Her oldest son was concerned.

I attempted to explain. "Mommy is sad because Daddy isn't with us on his birthday," I said, wiping the tears from my eyes.

In his inimitable innocence, David looked up at me and asked, "But, Mom, we can still have cake, can't we?"

In many ways, this book is like another we read earlier in the year, Leap of Faith, by Queen Noor. They both are biographies of a sort about a deceased husband. The work of God is a strong theme in both. And though each deals with tragic events, the message of both Lisa Beamer and Queen Noor is one of hope, inspiration, and strength.

Another special woman noted recently that we have to look forward to all the good things that we have right here with us and around us, not look back and think about what we might be missing. These stories teach us that life doesn't begin when we see each other, or when our debts are finally settled, or when we are home again. Life is what we make it right now.

Let's all go enjoy a piece of cake.

The President Goes to School

2009-09-08T08:36:00.000-07:00

Why are many people upset that President Obama will be addressing public school children today?

Many supporters of Obama claim that this negative reaction is personal. They note that in the past, Presidents Reagan and Bush also spoke to school children. They recall no opposition to those speeches at the time, and so believe that people are not affording Obama with fair treatment.

The answer for us is simple. We have found ourself paying more attention to political matters this year than in past years. The reason for this is that we have the distinct sense that the federal government is encroaching too far on our life, on our liberty. C.S. Lewis said, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." This is what many people fear today.

Conservative voters naturally involve themselves as little as possible in politics. Government, for them, should be in the background. When government becomes too apparent, conservatives become suspicious. We have begun to question things boldly.

We listened to the speeches of Reagan and Bush today. We read the text of Obama's speech, which can be found on the White House website. For us, the speeches all sounded remarkably similar. And we found almost nothing political, or objectionable, to Obama's speech. And we expect his presentation will outshine that of his predecessors.

Obama suggests children use their critical thinking skills. We don't believe critical thinking is something which is being taught in grade schools, but which should be. It is these skills which allow people to weigh information and make judgements about that information, rather than simply accepting and digesting. Part of the uproar over the speech is the lesson plan that was initially produced by the Department of Education, asking children to think about how they could help the President. This, unfortunately, is not critical thinking. The lesson plan has since been withdrawn from teachers, although it can still be found online.

Our only quibble with the speech is, at the end, the comment that the President is trying to get more computers and things for schools. The problem with this is that the Constitution grants no authority over education to the federal government. This is an example of how the federal government is encroaching on our lives.

Aside from that one small complaint, we think this speech from President Obama to students is appropriate. And even if one doesn't agree, if one thinks Obama ought not address their children, this strikes us as one of those teaching moments. If this speech is not appropriate, lets allow the children to hear it and then figure out what makes it inappropriate. This is what a balanced lesson plan, with a focus on critical thinking, would involve.

President Obama should get an A- today. We will continue to pay attention and be wary of government involvement in the future, as everyone should.

Sorry For the Inconvenience

2009-09-04T08:43:00.000-07:00

After sending a private message to the Administrators of Critique Circle in response to them shutting down a thread and attacking me publicly, the website returned this message:

This user account has been closed.
Your user account no longer has access to Critique Circle. We are sorry for the inconvenience.
If you have any questions please contact support@critiquecircle.com.

Reaction

2009-09-04T08:12:00.000-07:00

For fun, we posted several threads on the Critique Circle forums concerning free speech and censorship, ranging from quotes from the Wizard of Oz to Milton's Areopagitica. The Moderators placed them all into a single thread, explaining that it was our intent to spam the forums. Apparently they know us better than we know ourselves.

This morning the Administrators closed that single thread, with their own reply:

As to the content — it was very sad for us to see that a member would try to hurt our other members here at CC by trying to stage a "crit strike" in retaliation for a short-term forum ban he received over a month ago when he specifically chose to ignore CC rules and requests from the CC team to stop stirring up trouble.

This is a supportive writing and critiquing site, where people should feel free to post on the forums without being attacked, and to critique as they wish—not to sacrifice credits they need or feel pressured to conform to a minority mob mentality over personal agendas. This is not a place where personal vendettas should be allowed to hurt members' chances to get feedback on their work—that goes against what CC is about.

Anyone who can't live with CC's rules and style of administration is free to leave our site. They are in fact encouraged to so at their earliest convenience, rather than keep disturbing the peace for the rest of us. Anyone wishing to leave, just let us know, and we'll close your account and refund your membership.

The thread they replied to had nothing to do with another thread they characterise as a retaliatory "crit strike". They were posted in two separate forums. We never chose to ignore rules over a month ago; we asked for clarification, in a private message as directed, and were never given any. We only knew we had violated the rules when we were told we were banned.

Now we have been banned again, this time without any notification.

Our heart goes out to the saddened Administrator.

Fanning the Flames

2009-09-03T18:20:00.000-07:00

We are an active member of the writing website Critique Circle. Recently the admins of the website sent messages to other members threatening them with expulsion if they did not refrain from voicing negative opinions on other sites like Facebook, Twitter, and personal weblogs. We believe admins have no business with what happens on another website. They are counting on people wanting their membership on CC more than on wanting what is right.

We posted the following quote from a film in the public forums on Critique Circle:

There were those who understood what was happening, who knew it was wrong but who kept silent. And in the vacuum of that silence, order was imposed.

It was removed and we were immediately banned from the forums, without any warning. When we questioned why we were banned for what we had posted, they told us that we know why. When we questioned their omniscience, they did not reply.

On top of the censorship issue, what bothers us is that they refuse to discuss this, or allow discussion. Their rules say to send a private message to admins if one doesn't agree with something. We did this, several times. We asked for clarification of their new rule that "what happens on CC stays on CC". They said we know what the rule means. We asked for further clarification. They said they will not discuss it further. We asked what the guidelines for forum posts are. They did not respond.

They have no cohesive plan. They don't consider how one decision effects the other. They don't apply their rules evenly. Their rules and judgements are purely subjective and arbitrary. They worry that members will be afraid to post things if they think those things will be ridiculed or quoted elsewhere. Well, members will be afraid to post things if they think those things will be monitored, censored, and possibly lead to their expulsion. But the admins can do no wrong.

In one message, they let us know that they wanted the website to be "pink, fuzzy, and full of bunnies". We placed that phrase in the signature line of all our forum posts. They deleted it, and immediately told us to remove the words from our signature. Such action clearly indicates they now have a personal gripe against us, and that everything we do, like several other members, is being closely watched.

They claim CC is supposed to be more than a critique site; it is supposed to be a community of writers. Our plight has generated much support from others. Why, then, if we have so much support within my community, are we being ostracized and even threatened with expulsion? What are the admins afraid of? Why can't they accept criticism of a critique website they constructed? These and other actions they have taken show they are not interested in the issues that real writers face and need help with; they are interested only in attracting and keeping hobby writers who find affirmation in purchasing a membership on a so-called writer's website.

We are sure our membership will be revoked before we ever find the answers.

Last Thoughts on the Last Frontier

2009-09-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

Alaska.

We always imagined some day taking a cruise to Alaska. This was no cruise; we were not tourists for a day. Five weeks is a great way to experience a place. With the surrounding wildlife, Sitka is not the same from one day to the next. Come and leave on a rainy day, and never see the amazing colors in the sun. Come and leave on a sunny day and miss the clouds coming down from the sky and hiding the mountains. Be looking in the wrong direction and miss the breaching whale or the hungry sea lion. Stop to read an educational sign in a national park and miss seeing a bear crossing the path around the bend.

The name of the state comes from the Aleut word alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed". Alaska covers the same area as seven midwestern states combined. We saw only a tiny portion of the state's wonders, and all of it was coastland. What the interior offers we can only imagine.

Sitka and the southeast panhandle is the warmest and wettest part of Alaska. The coldest recorded temperature in Sitka was zero, making it much warmer than Chicago in winter. And while Chicago's temperatures fluctuated between the fifties and the nineties, with lots of humidity, the temperature in Sitka hovered just above and below the sixties, with a mix of rain and sun.

In our mind, Alaska represents not only a beautiful place, but also a way of life, a sense of self-reliance. Subsistence hunting and gathering remains a way of life for many. When we moved from the suburbs out to the country, we noticed that people seemed friendlier. When we arrived in Alaska, we felt that people seemed even more friendlier than in the country. And people showed more pride and ownership in their city and their state than those in the country or suburbs.

In many ways, the state is still the last frontier. Fifty years ago, Alaska joined the American Union. Most people understand it is the northernmost state, but it also extends further west than Hawaii, as well as (technically) further east than Maine. In many ways, it will never be conquered or tamed. But even if one doesn't have a pick axe, or a rifle, Alaska is still open to being experienced and enjoyed and appreciated for its raw beauty.

Thanks to everyone who helped make this amazing trip possible. And Alaska, thank you. We hope to meet you again.

Free Day

2009-09-01T17:21:00.000-07:00

Friday we enjoyed an unexpected free day. Let's walk down to the dock and see what's happening.

We saw a couple kids had crawled out across the breakwater rocks, so we decided to do the same. Halfway to the end we stopped and sat down to look for some wildlife outside the harbor. Then behind us, between the breakwaters, we heard some water slosh. Spinning around we spotted a sea lion less than fifty feet away. As we watched he popped out of the water again with a fish in his mouth. Then we followed as he bobbed up and down on his way back out to sea.

He appeared and disappeared so fast that all the pictures we took captured only the ripples on the surface of the water where he had just submerged. He can be seen in the water directly below the center of the three mountain peaks.

We walked out to the dock under the bridge to watch the tourists arrive. A bald eagle greeted them all as they came ashore. We kept an eye on the sea and saw several more seals and sea lions. From atop the bridge we saw hundreds of jellyfish floating just under the surface. We also spotted several starfish and an octopus clinging to a rock under water.

Then the sea lion (or another one) appeared again almost directly below us. He swam under the bridge, and we ran across the street to follow him on the other side. He did some spins and floats and then took a deep dive and disappeared again.

For the rest of the day the sea lions appeared and disappeared. The tourists slowly went away. We went home with the joy and satisfaction of having seen more marine wildlife up close, and not in captivity or on a tour, but all by our own luck and observations.

Sitka Conservation Society

2009-08-28T10:51:00.000-07:00

Before heading to the Raptor Center on Tuesday, we checked the weather forecast. Rain was predicted for every hour through Thursday morning. If we wanted to go to the Raptor Center, we couldn't wait for clear skies. And the marine tour we had scheduled for Wednesday evening promised to be wet.

Wednesday morning dawned with continued rain. When we set out for Whale Park, the rain had stopped, but the skies remained overcast. We wanted to looked for marine wildlife once more, but apparently the whales and friends didn't want to be seen. We saw lots of trees in the surrounding wilderness, some little ducks, and starfish.

Thursday morning brought strong winds that rattled the cottage, followed by steady rains. Somehow, though, when we walked down to the dock on Wednesday evening, the clouds had cleared out and the sun had emerged, as if on schedule. The air was cool, and the winds would be whipping on the boat, but at least we would be dry.

The three-hour tour had been originally scheduled for two weeks earlier. For some reason it had been postponed. This was the last tour of the season given by the Sitka Conservation Society. We had heard about the tour from a local bus driver, and at $30 per person, it was much more affordable than any of the offers from the tour companies we had researched. Most of the thirty or so participants were locals, and many of them had taken the tour before. We were thankful to still be in town to enjoy it.

We boarded the two-deck boat and found our spot along the rail outside on the upper deck. The boat offered warm beverages and snacks, along with binoculars for use, and educational materials. Of course, there was also merchandise for sale, to help fund the Conservation Society in its mission to protect the temperate rainforest of southeast Alaska and Sitka's quality of life. Off to sea we went.

Almost as soon as we were out among the islands, the boat slowed down and turned around. A small group of otters had been spotted, and the captain chugged back to give us a better look. They were difficult to see as they were among a patch of floating kelp, and they like to float on their backs. At one point, a harbor seal popped its head up and then disappeared.

The boat moved in and out around the islands. The views were similar to the ones from the ferry, but with a smaller vessel our captain had the ability to navigate into much tighter passages. The naturalist aboard provided an informational narrative about the features we saw along the way. Everyone was on lookout for wildlife. On a grassy beach in the distance we were lucky enough to spot through the binoculars a deer standing and observing her surroundings. Her colors matched the surroundings so well that we couldn't catch sight of her with our naked eye.

The water in the sound and channel leading away from Sitka had what we would call a light chop. The boat was not greatly affected. The water grew calm through the interior passages. Then as we turned to head back into open waters, the sea began to roll. At high speeds, the boat bounced along. We clung to the rail to get down to the lower deck and sit in the front. Out the window the water rose and fell around us in great but smooth peaks and valleys.

Back on the upper deck, we continued to scan the horizon for wildlife. We happened to be near one of the tour lookouts, who directed us to look in the direction she had spotted something. And sure enough, we saw the spout of a whale. After another moment, the captain cut the engines and turned the boat to move in closer. Another smaller boat had spotted the whale, and also pursued from the other direction. The naturalist counted six minutes, and then the whale resurfaced further to the left. Again the captain idled the boat closer. Everyone watched and waited for another six minutes to pass.

We continued to look all around for the appearance of other wildlife. While gazing out to the right, we heard the spout of the whale close on our left. We turned to see its back almost right beside the boat. The first attempt at a photograph was a failure. We recovered just in time to capture its fluke on the dive down.

The naturalist proclaimed that to be a final wave goodbye from the whale, and the captain turned the boat back toward Sitka. To the stern, the sun was setting behind Mt. Edgecumbe. As we watched the view, the whale made another sudden appearance. They are unpredictable and instantaneous, but once again we were able to capture its fluke as it took another deep dive.

We turned into the harbor. Just before crossing the breakwaters, we spotted another more active group of large otters. We watched them frollicking. After disembarking, we walked around to the closest point overlooking the harbor to continue watching the otters as they twisted and twirled and dove and flipped around in the dusk.

Like us, several other people climbed the bridge to admire the sunset. The great Raven had given us perfect weather for what had been a one-of-a-kind experience. Thinking back to the Raptor Center, we believe that it is not so much seeing the birds that people report is the highlight of their vacation; it is the up-close experience of any wildlife. Seeing the whales on the tour, and the ferry, even for just a few seconds, was the highlight of our vacation. The best had truly been saved for last.

Tomorrow, we will have some final thoughts about our Alaskan adventure.

Boat Etiquette

2009-08-27T16:50:00.000-07:00

I learned that the polite thing to do is to allow the locals to dock their smaller boats closer to land. I parked my ship out beyond the breaker, where it won't get all dinged up.

Raptor Center

2009-08-27T11:19:00.000-07:00

In the middle of a downpour we set off on foot for the Alaska Raptor Center. It is the only full-service avian hospital and educational facility in the state. Thankfully, we didn't have to walk more than a few blocks.

There are several pens outside where the birds are kept, some in groups and some in isolation. Many of the paths through the forest where the birds are kept were closed due to bear activity.

Inside we saw four or five birds sitting around the flight center. This is a large enclosed open-air space where the birds are left to stretch their wings. A few of them had lost parts of their wings and would never regain the ability to fly. These are the permanent residents, for they would never be able to hunt and survive in the wild. A couple were recovering from unfortunate encounters with automobiles and power lines, and these would soon be set free.

We had seen more eagles in the evenings outside our inn at Eagle Bay. They perched at the tops of trees, hopped along the ground with the gulls during low tide, and floated in the breeze. Many were obviously large. Despite their injuries, the variety of birds at the Raptor Center are healthier and longer lived, thanks to regular feedings and medical care.

The other main function of the facility is to provide education about the birds. We sat in a room to view a short video that showed active raptors in the wild. Then calmly we sat and watched as a young woman walked in and sat down with a bald eagle on her arm. The eagle, even when hunched on its human perch, stood half as tall as the woman. On stage, the eagle sat alert and watchful of every movement of the audience. The woman told us a little about this eagle's history, fed her some fresh snacks from a pouch, and answered questions. A few times the eagle spread her wings, but usually remained calm and still.

The informational pages published by the Raptor Center say that many visitors report "that seeing live birds close up is the highlight of their Alaskan vacation." We enjoyed it as well.

Riding the bus home the next day, we talked with someone who works at the Fortress of the Bear. In our mind, the two places are easy to compare. The price of admissions is similar. People are on hand to give information about both creatures. Birds and bears are kept in captivity among natural habitat. But seeing the eagles was much more satisfying than seeing the bears. Somehow the experience of the Fortress was more like being at a zoo. Seeing the eagle handled directly in front of us was much more impressive.

Mendenhall Glacier

2009-08-22T14:03:00.000-07:00

Previously on the Juneau junket: Juneau

Welcome to another part of the largest forest in the United States, the Tongass National Forest. Among these 17 million acres of temperate rain forest, we discovered the awesome Mendenhall Glacier.

The ice was originally know as Sitaantaagu or Aak'wtaaksit by the Tlingits. It has been steadily retreating, over two miles, since 1500, and is predicted to continue its retreat in the near future.

The ice first came into view as the ferry pulled into Auke Bay. Then as we approached along the road, around the bend the ice reappeared from behind the trees.

At the base of the glacier, chunks of ice are calved off and go floating in Mendenhall Lake. Also a small waterfall at the bottom right corner spews into the lake. Further off to the right, emerging from the surrounding mountains, pours a large waterfall.

The water is cold to the touch. The air temperature at the rocky point facing the glacier is noticeably cooler than near the visitor center, as cold air rushes down from the mountains and replaces the warmer air. We sat at the point for quite a while, waiting to witness some live calving, but the ice didn't oblige.

Many of the creeks in the area are full of salmon. The beavers have also been busy with their dam building projects.

While heading back to the bus, we followed a trail along the road, through the forest and over the creek, and were pleasantly surprised to see a bear cub fishing for dinner. He followed the creek further into the forest, and we headed out, not keen on encountering the mother who we assumed must be nearby.

The newspapers and oral reports have been full of bear sightings, and we had begun to wonder if we would see one in the wild. Our Juneau junket not only resulted in the bear sighting, but also several whale sightings, and an up-close experience of a glacier. Despite the drawbacks of the city itself, the trip was great. Seeing Alaska by water is wonderful and definitely one of those things not to be missed.

Juneau

2009-08-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

Previously on the Juneau junket: Alaska Marine Highway

We stayed at The Breakwater Inn right near downtown. The room was large with a king-size bed, a table and chairs, a desk, a television inside a cabinet, an easy chair, matching nightstands, and a full-size bathroom. The walk-out balcony provided a view out across one of the boat harbors. Rooms on the other side of the hotel lacked balconies and looked back into the residential areas and beyond to the numerous streams of water running straight down the sides of the hills.

Several blocks away on the other side of downtown the cruise ships were docked. That was also the main tourist area of the city. We didn't explore that area, not because we weren't tourists, but because we ran out of time.

The city had many large buildings, comparable in size to those in some suburbs of Chicago, but most appeared to be older 1950s-style construction. With the glacier over ten miles from downtown, the city has a sense of suburban sprawl. Malls and major big-box retailers are spread out along the route between those two focal points.

The portion of the city we saw lacked the charm of Sitka. And the scale of Sitka is more appealing.

Before we arrived, The Breakwater Inn did not respond to any of our emails inquiring about shuttle service to and from the ferry terminal. As it turned out they do offer this service, by appointment only -- if either of our two readers decide to stay there in the future, call ahead and make an appointment. You will save a lot of time, money, and frustration.

The newspaper in Sitka prints all the calls that come in to the local police department every day. Recently half of those calls have been about bears. We had not seen any bears in the wild, which was disappointing, though good for our safety. But in Juneau we saw an interesting sign that seemed to confirm the bears were out there: Bear Xing.

Next on the Juneau junket: Mendenhall Glacier

Alaska Marine Highway

2009-08-20T15:34:00.000-07:00

Previously on the Juneau junket: Transportation Terror

Route 66 may have nostalgia, but the Alaska Marine Highway beats it for sights and the sheer joy of travel. The highway system has been in operation since 1963 and provides safe, reliable, and efficient transportation of people, goods, and vehicles among thirty Alaska communities, Canada, and the Lower 48.

Our trip to Juneau began just after midnight on the MV Taku. The vessel was built in 1963 and renovated in 1981. It had three passenger decks -- cabin, boat, and sun -- and one vehicle deck. We hung out on the boat deck, that had a recliner lounge, writing lounge, cafeteria, and a viewing area. While riding through the darkness, we curled up on the floor and tried to sleep. Once the sun started to appear, we sat in the viewing area to take in the sights. The sunrise was partially hidden by clouds, but the colors were wonderful. After breakfast at 7:00am, we sat back to relax.

After a while we began to see the evidence of whales -- spraying and spouting of water in the distance. Watching closely, we could see the backside of several. They would alternate several times, spraying and then showing their backs, and at the end we would see the tail as it dove back down. In a stretch of ten minutes we saw about ten whales, and the spouting of many more. Never knowing when or where they would appear made photographing difficult. Later one appeared almost directly in front of the vessel and we saw it close along the side.

As we approached Juneau, the first thing we noticed was the Mendenhall Glacier nestled among the mountains in the background. The photograph doesn't really do justice to the view, especially the color, even in overcast skies. The ice is directly in the center of this image. We docked after a nine-hour journey, about thirty minutes ahead of schedule.

The next morning we rode the FVF Fairweather back to Sitka. This vessel was built in 2004. Though it was smaller, with only one vehicle deck and one passenger deck, it offered more modern conveniences. A playroom for children also showed movies. Seating was arranged in areas with tables, bistro-style settings around the food nook, and airline-style seats in the viewing area. Throughout the deck a series of screens showed a map of our journey with accompanying information and statistics.

Again we were able to spot the evidence of many whales spouting in the distance, but only saw the backs of two up close. But what was in the dark on the leg out we could now see: lots of pretty views through the tight straights and channels. We crossed lots of other leisure and fishing vessels, as well as passing one barge. At one point the mountains and islands parted and the highway opened directly to the Pacific Ocean.

It was pleasing to us to see that there are still a lot
of wild places that man hasn't yet conquered with concrete. And it was great to be back to our own little home away from home in Alaska.

Next on the Juneau junket: Juneau.

Transportation Terror

2009-08-20T12:03:00.000-07:00

We are going to recap our Juneau junket in parts. The first part will cover the disappointments.

Warning: Terror Alert for this blog story is Red. The likelihood of a terrible experience is guaranteed.

As the ferry pulled into the dock, we spotted numerous busses pulling in and out of another dock just up the road. The map had shown the bus terminal to be near, but not at, the ferry terminal. We walked there and discovered it was a private dock for tours. We kept walking up the road. When we are walking, everything in Alaska seems to be just around the bend.

The bus terminal was probably about a mile away. We had to wait thirty minutes. The express bus, which went directly downtown, was supposed to arrive two minutes before the normal bus. We boarded the first bus, and then found out it was not the express. So we tried to enjoy the ride, and all the stops along the way.

The first thing about the stops is that they are not all marked on the route map or the schedule. The second thing is that, unlike the community ride in Sitka, the driver doesn't stop if no one is waiting to board, unless a rider rings the bell. The third thing about the stops is our young lady driver really enjoyed using the gas and brake to their fullest extent. All the violent starting and stopping churned our stomach and made us sick.

The stop nearest our hotel was about half a mile away. We missed the stop right in front of our hotel, because it was not indicated on the map or schedule. We had to walk back to the hotel, even passing an additional stop along the way.

Once we were settled, the task of reaching our destination began. The cab fare from hotel to ice was $35. The bus fare to the nearest stop was $1.50. So, experienced walker that we had already become, we boarded the bus. It was crowded outbound from downtown. At each stop along the way it became more crowded, until all the seats were filled and the aisle was unpassable with people standing. In order for others to get off, people in the aisles had to get off and then back on. Finally, at the transfer stop at one of the malls, the bus decongested. We continued our ride and then got off at the stop on the map that was closest to the ice. Of course, as we walked the rest of the way, we found that two more stops -- not indicated on the map or schedule -- were much closer to where we wanted to go.

On the way back from the ice, we had to run the last half-mile to the bus, because at that time of day the next service did not come for another three hours. We successfully navigated our way back to the hotel.

Our search for dinner began. We skipped the hotel restaurant to find another establishment we had seen earlier in the day. We walked into town where we thought it was, and didn't find it. We asked, and followed directions downtown for several more blocks, and didn't find it. We circled around and found no places to eat. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at a local sandwich shop. It was closed. We returned to the hotel tireder and hungrier than before. We settled for the restaurant after all, which had good food at a relatively inexpensive price.

At the hotel, we discovered they offered shuttle service to the ferry terminal, but only by appointment. We immediately made an appointment for the next morning. We were glad not to have to ride the bus again. We were even more thankful we don't have to rely on mass transit in our daily lives.

We had been up at midnight to catch the ferry, and it was now after 10:00pm. So ended our longest Tuesday ever.

Next on the Juneau junket: Alaska Marine Highway.

Novoarkhangelsk

2009-08-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

This is the name of the city established on the Tlingit site claimed and seized by the Russian-American Company in the early 1800s. The company was instructed to exploit everything they found in order to increase the wealth of the empire. With rain yesterday, we decided to explore inside some of the old buildings that have survived from the era when the city was the capital of colonial Russia.

First we found open one of the local shops that had been closed every other time we passed by. It was inside one of the huge log buildings built by the Russians. Each timber measured about eighteen inches across, notched at the ends, and stacked horizontally. Most of the exterior of the building is covered with modern siding, but inside this store, and on the outside behind plexiglass, the original logs can be seen.

The Russian bishop's house is a similarly-constructed log building. Here there are even more insights into the method of building. Spaces between the ceilings and upper floors was filled with sawdust for insulation. Floors likewise had dead space above the foundation for insulation. Walls and ceilings were covered with cloth and painted. The stove walls were constructed with brick to radiate the heat to other rooms. A few spots on the walls show the writing of former students who were bored with their lessons. Another large model reconstruction shows Sitka in Russian times. The guided tour of the upper floors cost four dollars. We skipped it and were satisfied by the displays offered on the ground floor for free.

We also visited another Russian landmark that charged a two dollar entrance fee. St. Michael's cathedral in the center of town is a reconstruction based on the original which burned in a fire in 1966. Inside are numerous icons on the wall. While we were there, a small service was taking place on the right side of the cathedral. Very little of the cathedral was open to visitors. One could also purchase candles inside, to light and place inside in veneration. Odd that this place of Christian worship should be collecting money, when Jesus tossed the moneychangers out of the temple. The iconography also is interesting, but makes the Orthodox worship seem a little comical or cut-and-paste, more artistic than holy. The example below is not a flat panel, but an image enhanced with surrounding elaborate multi-dimensional metalwork known as rizas.

Now You See It

2009-08-13T14:50:00.000-07:00

In a little over one hour last night, the clouds rolled in...

...and the city across the sound completely disappeared.

It Pays to Live in Alaska

2009-08-12T15:09:00.000-07:00

Here is something interesting I discovered here in Alaska.

Alaska is the only state that does not collect state sales tax or levy an individual income tax. In fact, living in this state pays dividends. Last year the state paid over $2000 to every single citizen. On top of that, each person received a one-time energy dividend of over $1000. These are not tax rebates, or tax cuts, or economic stimuli -- they are distribution payments of the state's earnings.

Illinois income tax rate is 3%. That means $990 of earned income for the average citizen will be taken and given to the state. And the governor next wants to increase the state's tax rate by 50%.

Admittedly, the dividend in Alaska is expected to be less this year than last year. But any payment seems better than a debit.

The Genius and the Goddess, by Aldous Huxley

2009-08-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

The Genius and the Goddess: A Novel (P.S.)

Written in 1955, this is advertised as the "unforgetable novel of a beautiful, amoral woman, her brilliant husband -- and the man she loved."

We were not familiar with Huxley's work beyond Brave New World and Point Counter Point. The content and style of this novel reminded us a little of Graham Greene's End of the Affair. The beauty of both books is the way they describe love, through the affair of a married woman, and its effects.

The author/narrator listens to "a little orgy of reminiscence:" a story of a friend, nearing the end of his life, who, many years earlier, was employed by a genius -- a moronic baby with a giant intellect. While this friend handled the affairs of the genius, and tutored the children of the genius, he also fell in love with the wife of the genius, who he considered a goddess. What he did not predict and could never have imagined is the effect his actions would have on the genius.

Since that experience, the friend has learned that wallowing in the past makes for good literature, but poor wisdom. "If you want to live every moment as it presents itself," he says, "you've got to die to every other moment." But this is a lesson he seems not to have learned. Or perhaps he has since forgotten. For it is in the recounted moments of the past that he comes alive again in the novel.

The blurb above, though, does a poor job of describing the novel. The longer description on the rear wrapper does a better job. The titular goddess is actually a matchless woman, a well-spring of life and a wealth of tenderness. She doesn't seem to be amoral, nor in love with another man. Perhaps that is the essence of the friend's self-deception. Or maybe the story he tells is meant to be deceptive. As he notes in the beginning: "I'd rather entrust my daughters to Casanova than my secrets to a novelist."

The Age published a rather beige review of the novelette. They found it both lacking and derivative of his earlier works. Over fifty years removed from the novel, and more from the novelist's heyday, we thought the novel quite pleasing, and an easy read. It has a strong literary style, and deals with its subject with a 1950's restraint. There is little politics or social commentary. The Genius and the Goddess was a pleasant surprise from what we expected from Huxley.

Inspired Thoughts

2009-08-10T08:47:00.000-07:00

How great is Alaska?

This experience is difficult for us to put into words. We are lucky for this opportunity. We are blessed not to be tied down to a job. We are grateful to our loving family. We are thankful for a few true friends.

We looked around yesterday and tried to figure out what makes this place seem special. Walking across the bridge, looking at the downtown, the channel full of boats in the foreground, tree-trimmed hills and snow-capped mountains in the background, we realised that the views play a large part. There are no picturesque views of a town in the middle of a cornfield. Here, everywhere we turn, the view is spectacular.

Perhaps an anecdote will better convey our feelings. We woke up one day to find clouds, fog, and mist running in strands around and between the mountains, like garland decorating large, snow-topped trees. The next day we woke and the mountains were gone, the clouds had hunkered down to the tops of the trees. We could jump up and touch the bottom of the clouds. Almost like being in heaven.

Cottages on Monastery

2009-08-09T14:09:00.000-07:00

New views for us in Alaska, out the front door and down the street. On Friday we packed up and moved everything from the inn to a tiny cottage only one block from the dock and downtown.

There are some advantages and some disadvantages. First, the space is smaller than the hotel room. There is no service to bring in fresh towels every day. The view of the school playground is not as pleasing as the bay with cruise ships and eagles. There is only a twin bed, with a trundle bed underneath. There are no dressers, only a few shelves in a wall nook. And there is no bathroom sink.

On the positive side, the location is much more convenient to everything. The market and laundry are each a block away. There is not the regular noise of trucks outside the window. There is a complete kitchen, with sink and stove. Tableware and cookware are provided. Internet access is available and reliable. And the walk to the hospital is only twenty-five minutes, without the need to pass through the bear-infested national park.

Grin and Bear It

2009-08-07T22:25:00.000-07:00

The community ride driver on Wednesday morning told us she awoke to find a bear relaxing in her drive. He disappeared long enough for her to leave for work. But he reappeared and prevented the children from being taken to their sitter. Little did we know that we would have our own close encounter later in the day.

We rode to the far side of the island, out beyond Thimbleberry trail where the most recent bear attack had occurred. Reports in the newspaper said that last Friday's event involved a biker who was surprised by a bear from behind. After rolling on the ground in an odd ball of human, bike, and bear, she was able to stand with the bike between her and the bear, stare at him and scream, which prompted the bear to slip away into the woods, and people to come to her rescue. She suffered scratches on her back, and was out the next morning at the Farmer's Market.

Our stop was the end of the bus line: Whale Park. It was deserted when we arrived. There are two viewing spots that overlook the bay. Information there says everything from whales to sea lions to sharks can be seen. At this time of year, we saw nothing but waves and a couple boats. Just to be safe, we sprayed ourselves with Bear-B-Gone -- wait: there is no such thing. So we just set off on foot for the two-mile hike to the end of the road. Along the road that wound back and forth through the hills, the water always at our side, we whistled and sang off key so as not to startle any bears. We saw a big pile of fur at the side of the road and wondered if a bear had been scratching itself there. Eventually we came to another trail head, then a fishery, and finally our destination: Fortress of the Bear.

This is a non-profit operation constructed on the site of an old city works. Two old water reservoirs have been converted and built upon with all donated and reused junk, to create a habitat for chickens, rabbits, pigs, ducks, sheep, goats, and, of course, bears.

The bears are brothers who were abandoned by their mother two years earlier. They share one of the reservoirs as their permanent home. This is the best and safest way to encounter a bear. We also were able to pet the sheep and the jealous goat, as well as feed the pigs what they had gluttonously shoved out of reach under the fence. The entire setting is literally pieced together out of reused stuff, like an under-budget Mad Max film set. Entry fee per person was $10. The experience was not really worth the money or the two-mile walk. But the project is only two years old, and the efforts are admirable.

Meanwhile, updating a previous story, the fish are making their way upstream. We still have not received any rain, and meteorologists have declared Sitka to be suffering a mild drought. The past couple days the sun has been filtered through a haze of smoke from Canadian wildfires. But the indomitable salmon have nevertheless made it from the bay, through the estuary zone, to mass below the bridge over the Indian River. In the photo below they are the large splotch of black shaped vaguely like the Big Dipper. And several intrepid ones can be seen making their way among the rocks toward their happy spawning grounds. Each day we take a few minutes to watch and cheer them onward.

Dance Fever

2009-08-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

We had Tuesday's events planned in advance, and we were looking forward to them. So in the late morning we walked to Harrigan Centennial Hall to see the Russian dancers perform.

This troupe of six ladies performed Russian folk dances in period costume that research suggested would probably have been popular during Sitka's period as New Archangel, the imperial capital of Russia in the new world. They danced to pre-recorded music and some lyrics. Three dances were followed by a short interlude about the Alaska state flag, and then three more dances. The moves involved lots of stomping of heels and leg kicks that would inspire break dancers. A serene and regal circle dance was done completely on their toes.

None of the dancers were professionals, and none were Russian.

After passing a few hours, eating Chinese takeout for lunch, we arrived at the Sheet'ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi Community House for the next dance troupe. This was the native Tlingit dancers.

Perhaps a dozen members of various clans performed native dances in tribal costume that have been passed down through the generations of Sitka's native population. They danced to the beat of their own drums, and chanted lyrics in their native tongue. The dancer who portrayed Raven, and the young woman who led the dances and related their significance to the audience both performed well. The final dance allowed members of the audience to step out and join in mimicking Raven. The dancers ranged in age from a young child to an old woman, all native Tlingit.

While we enjoyed the emotion and genuineness of the tribal dance more than the folk dance, we were impressed that both types conveyed stories. While we are not versed in the art form, we are not aware of any stories being told by the Charleston or the Sprinkler.

Being Green

2009-08-06T21:40:00.000-07:00

How easy is it being green? Let us tell you a few things we have done in Alaska to reduce, reuse, and recycle. Our intent was not to be more eco-conscious, but our choices have been made as a way to cut many expenses.

First, we traveled without a car. The reasons were due more to time constraints (the long drive and the wait for passports) than to cost. When we arrived at the airport, we hired a taxi, because we had no idea where our inn was located, and none of the complimentary transports went there. We have used the taxi only two other times since then: our first day of work, again because we had no idea where we were going, and to get to work on the weekend when the community ride did not operate. The other days we have worked we used the community ride in the morning, and walked back to the inn in the evening. We also used the community ride twice to do grocery shopping. For everything else we have walked. Even if one could not do so much walking, the community ride operates during the week from morning to evening. Taxis are always available and quick to respond since the city has so few roads. Bikes can be rented, most of the roads have designated bike lanes, and there are bike racks almost everywhere.

Second, we traveled without any tablewear or cookwear. The inn has a microwave oven and a mini fridge. Since the cost of dining is so expensive, we would have to eat most meals at the inn. We bought fruits and vegetables, but we would need to prepare some meals as well. Our first meal was a microwaveable dinner which came in a plastic tray. Washed and reused, these trays have been used to warm, cook, and serve everything else. The inn provided two pastic cups, from which we have drank, and bottles of water which we have refilled. We also added larger cups from a lunch at the local fast food restaurant. Though we purchased a small box of plastic utensils, we also have acquired those from the lunch. A package of napkins serves all purposes of wrapping and wiping. The meat and fruit we needed were packaged in containers and bags that we emptied and reused to store foods in and carry them to work.

Third, we traveled with several canvas bags. These serve as our tote bags to carry groceries, but also on our walks to bring along water, sandwiches, camera and binoculars, and anything else we might want to have with us.

Go Fish

2009-08-03T08:43:00.000-07:00

No photos today. Just an update on the fish situation. We have still had no rain. We haven't seen the fish jumping out in the bay to any extent. But on the walk home from the hospital yesterday, we paused on the bridge over Indian Creek and directly belwo saw an overcrowded school of fish. Just a huge dark wriggling mass of salmon in a fishjam, in fresh water but unable to move further upstream at this point. We don't know if this is their spawning ground, or if they still need to move further upstream. We do know there is great feeding opportunities for the bear whose presence has been confirmed in the national park.

Buying Local

2009-08-02T08:27:00.000-07:00

Dawn begins around 3:00am. The sky is noticaebly light by 4:00am. Though the day broke with clouds, by mid-morning the sun had once again claimed the sky. Though the weather is marvelous for humans from north central Illinois, it has not been so favorable to salmon. The river levels are reportedly low, too low for the fish to navigate and reach their spawning grounds. Their time is limited, and if rain doesn't come soon, next year's supply of fish will suffer.

The pleasant weather has also encouraged the bears to come out. There is a good crop of berries this year. The lack of fish is also forcing the bears to look for other sources of food. And this morning as we set off through the national park, there was a sign posted that bears had been confirmed within the park. We met a ranger along the way who said a bear had been sighted the night before where the river empties into the sound. They had also found evidence, such as droppings and markings, earlier in the morning. The bus driver claimed there are eight bears for every one person in the city. Bear in mind (no pun intended) that the city encompasses large expanses of national forest. We hope not to see one up close.

Our first goal today was to shop the White Elephant, a popular resale shop. We arrived shortly after opening. They had a good selection of books, from which we found about a dozen worth purchasing. We also found an inexpensive sweatshirt, which is a far more economical way to buy a souvenir than from a main street shop.

Next we headed to the local farmer's market. This was located inside and outside the building of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. There were lots of tables with jewelry, some photography and other crafts, a few with plants, and many with fish. Not really the baskets of produce we are accustomed to seeing in the midwest. We purchased a jar of jelly.

After dropping off the books, with more sunlight to be enjoyed, we headed south beyond our inn for the first time. We did not hike far, and decided against exploring the nearest trail, mostly because it was a steep uphill climb, and after ten days of hiking through the city we needed a rest. We harvested some wild berries along the way, and had a view of the other side of the bay.

Discovering Our Sitka

2009-08-02T08:13:00.000-07:00

We have been plagued by connectivity issues for the last few days. Not sure if it is the network, or a dead zone, or a computer problem. We are trying to compose our updates ahead of time and post them when possible.

The city of Sitka offers a little guidebook with advertisements and articles and information about the various activities. They include a map and the major points of interest. They are great for the tourist to get a quick overview and develop a sightseeing plan. Thursday, during the walk to the hospital, we found the sidewalks crowded with tourists from the cruise ship. We felt like they were clogging our city, and so after only one week we are officially no longer tourists ourselves, but residents, albeit temporary. That did not stop us from using the list in the guide to lead our explorations on Friday.

With another sunny day, we decided to focus on outdoor activities. Our first stop was Castle Hill. This is a high promontory overlooking the sound that has been the site of local rule throughout Sitka's history, from native Tlingit, to Imperial Russia, to United States. It is the place where the official flag-raising ceremony took place to mark the purchase of Alaska, commemorated every year on Alaska Day. It is amazing how rich in history this small city is, what an important place it once was.

We visited a reconstruction of a Russian blockade, as well as the burial spot of a Russian princess. We also took a long walk toward the far northern dock. We didn't make it all the way, but we did find another perspective on Mount Edgecumbe.

We also got another perspective on the entire city at the historical museum. In addition to numerous artifacts, there was a large collection of old photographs of people and places. The history is a strong mix of both Tlingit and Russian. From narrative and images a local artist also created a model of the city as it once was.

We did some shopping at the largest market in town, then took the community bus back to the inn. Along the way we heard the first report that another bear mauling had taken place on a trail on the south side of the city. A woman on a bicycle had startled a bear, who swiped at her as she passed. She was knocked down and reportedly screamed at the bear, looking directly at it, which frightened it away. Authorities were unable to locate the bear.

Another Day, Another Ship

2009-08-02T08:02:00.000-07:00

We were surprised Thursday morning on the hike to the hospital, emerging from the forest there was a grand cruiser in the channel as near as we have seen one yet. In addition, the morning sun made possible the clearest view of the volcano so far.

We explored a bit more of the city today. Having forgotten to bring any headgear on our journey, and dealing either with sun and rain every day, we purchased an inexpensive cap which will also serve as a souvenir. We also scouted out a few other native souvenir items. But window shopping and wandering without any solid goals makes us tire quickly. On top of this, walking more than six miles each of the last three days has started to weigh on us.

During a break on the docks, we saw a jellyfish moving slowly through the water. Also watched a group of three couples unload twenty or so bags of groceries and supplies from a van, and haul them down to their boat, then motor away to their island. Because of the steep prices, locals with the means often take the ferry to Juneau, the state's capital, where they can shop the major chains, such as Costco, and stock up on staples, buying in bulk at much lower prices.

Despite being tired at 8pm, the sun is still up in the sky, the temperature is still inviting, and we are in Alaska. The urge to go out for more is strong.

Reruns

2009-07-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Not of "Ice Road Truckers". Of the sun!

We don't know what the record is, but we have now had two full days of sun. Someone mentioned that this time of year is typically the sunny season. We also suspect that the unseasonably warm weather in the northwestern 48 has some effect here. The proprietress of the inn commented yesterday, "It's going to be a really hot one." The temperature here topped at 68 degrees.

This morning it is 60 degrees, and another clear sunny day. Across the bay we just watched a seaplane take off. Yesterday as we trekked across the bridge, another plane circled over our head and then swooped down between the bridge pylons to land in the Channel. Mount Edgecumbe also appeared larger to us, but once again the setting sun inteferred with our photographs. We will make an earlier attempt today. We did manage one shot from further away:

While some local children played at fishing from the rocks, our wife stripped her aching feet and let the waves wash up her legs. We were content to dip our fingers in the chilly water, to rinse off a pretty shell.

Below we see what a parking lot in Sitka, Alaska looks like:

The Unscratchables, by Cornelius Kane

2009-07-29T15:52:00.000-07:00

A month in Alaska affords a book-fancier lots of time to read. The Unscratchables is a new July release from Scribner, published under the pseudonym of Anthony O'Neill, who has penned several other genre-crossing novels.

The tagline on the cover calls this a new breed of crime novel. The subtle wordplay is suggestive of what is to come. The characters live in Kathattan, their guns woof, and the North Siamese threaten a world already embroiled in the Afghan-Persian war. Like the Planet of the Apes, things are just as we recognise them, with one critical difference. This isn't meant to be a comedy, but there is amusement in the substitution of dogs and cats for humans.

We follow Max McNash, a bulldog detective who is called in on a murder case. Against his better instincts, he is teamed with Cassius Lap, an agent from the FBI (Feline Bureau of Investigation). McNash first has to learn to trust Lap, and by the end he develops a fondness for the Siamese cat. They form a partnership that will surely lead to further adventures.

A whole range of scents from popular culture can be detected in this novel, including television, film, government, and advertising. More than just a police procedural, murder mystery, or who-dun-it, McNash and Lap discover an underworld of conspiracy and societal conditioning whose lessons can be applied to our own times.

If you have an itch for a quick, uncomplicated novel, this novel will scratch it. The Unscratchables is simple entertainment that is well-written and published with only one apparent typo. You'll beg for more.

Sunny Days

2009-07-29T09:43:00.000-07:00

By noon, the clouds had burned and blown away, and all that remained was clear skies and lots of sun. We set off for the three-mile hike to the hospital, and found lots of nice photo opportunities.

The lighthouse is across the Eastern Channel. And in the channel were two cruiseships, preparing to depart. The one in the distance is in the bay directly outside our inn. The one in the foreground was gone by the time we returned, and could be seen beyond the islands heading northwest.

Nothing to tell about a few of these photos, other than the view struck us. How beautiful to look out across the sound where ships are anchored, and a seaplane comes in for a landing, with snow-capped mountains in the background, and a ghostly half-moon above it all, clear skies and cool temperatures and the smell of the sea in the air.

Up the bridge we voyaged. For the first time in the distance we could see Mount Edgecumbe, the distinctive volcanoe. Even on this clear day, it was still ringed with low clouds.

Finally on Japonski Island we reached the hospital. Total elapsed time about fifty minutes. Half a block further and situated right along the edge of the channel is one of the high schools. Imagine canoeing to school every day. Or perhaps fishing during lunch period. From the top fifth floor of the hospital the view back across the Eastern Channel is beautiful. And the pace at the hospital is laid way back.

We begin the walk back to the inn. Most of the day tourists are gone, and the city center is quiet. We make a stop in the grocery for a few items, then finish the journey. After dinner the moon begins to shine brighter over the bay.

By 10:00pm, dusk had arrived. There is still over eighteen hours of daylight right now. According to charts, nearly two hours have been given back since the summer soltice. Not only are the daylight hours longer, but the day feels longer, or slower, here. It is late, night really, yet it feels like afternoon has just passed. The photograph gives a little bit of the sense of what the day looks and feels like at this hour.

A great way to end the day, the last cruise ship slipping behind the islands out to sea, and the moon shining brightly across the bay.

PS. In case you don't know, you can click on any image to see it enlarged. Enjoy!

Inside a Cloud

2009-07-28T07:28:00.000-07:00

After dropping off our nurse at the hospital, this is the walk we face, back "off the rock" as they say. The O'Connell Bridge is the only ground link between the main city center on Baranof Island and the hospital, university, and airport on Japonski Island. We are walking and talking, and when we pause to take this photo, we drop our phone. So when we reach the top of the bridge, and want to take another picture, we worry about dropping our phone again, because this time it will fall far down, irretrievable in the water.

Carefully, this is the view of Sitka Channel, looking northwest from the bridge. In the opposite direction, we can see the cruise ship that is docked in the sound across from our inn. Consulting a map, we can see that the most direct route to the hospital from our inn would be by boat. But we walk, and at least ten people pass either also walking or biking the bridge. This is a berry foot- and bike-friendly town.

The town also wakes slowly, or more accurately, according to the cruise ship schedules. Without the tourists, there is little reason for most of the shops to open early. Our ultimate destination -- the local library -- doesn't open until 10am, so we have ninety minutes to pass in town. After a short trek, we can take another picture looking back across Sitka Channel at the bridge we just crossed.

A mist rolled into the city while we waited. Nothing seemed to get wet, yet the droplets could be seen floating through the air. Later in the day, the mist came a little heavier. The weather condition was not really rain as much as it was wet. The driver of the public transit called it being inside a cloud. And so it is. When we returned to the inn, we couldn't even see the water in the sound, for all of the cloudy mist.

Sitka National Park

2009-07-26T17:48:00.000-07:00

This 113-acre park is the smallest national park in the state. But it is the site of some of the most important events in Alaskan history. And the back entrance is only about one block from our inn, so it is a convenient place to visit.

To the locals, the site is known as Totem Park, because there are many totem poles along the trails in the northern side of the park. Along the bay is a clearing and a grand pole that marks the spot where stood the fort of the native Sheey At'iká tribe of Tlingit who fought and eventually gave way to the Russians in 1804.

We next visited the hatchery and saw numerous indigenous invertebrates, including the sunburst fish and octopus. And just offshore the fish were jumping! Down on the rocks people were casting their lines. Even though our home town is surrounded by a cornfield, we had the distinct feeling that life here was lived more in line with nature.

On we ventured toward the other side of the city. Stopped to look at some bicycles for sale. That may be a purchase we make soon. The walk from our inn was about three miles, and back about two miles. The road along the harbor was noticeably cooler than the more inland roads. And the crows were the size of small bear cubs. Along the way we paused to rest and admire Swan Lake, where we saw four ducks but no swans.

The Tide Is Turning

2009-07-26T11:35:00.000-07:00

Once again, the sun came out from the clouds around 7:00pm last night. This is just about the best view of the mountains across the bay that we have seen. And the snow-capped mountains to our immediate south revealed their summits as well.

For this white suburban boy, the secrets of the tides were a mystery. We knew of their existence, but never directly experienced them. Last night we stepped out to the bay to view the high tide. Our initial reaction was amazement. Because the area that we had walked along the night before was gone, all under water. Intrigued, we checked the tide tables and set out this morning to view the low tide. Our findings are displayed below, both images taken from the same location.

If you don't know, the tides come basically twice a day. From the charts, it appears that the levels of high and low tide fluctuate over days in a gentle wave of higher and lower depths. And from unscientific observation, the eagles seem to prefer low tide, probably when whatever goodies the tide brings in are left exposed, and easy pickings. The fishermen are out at all hours, and seem not to have any preference at all. And the fish we have seen that are caught are big, twelve to sixteen inches at least. Must be what makes the eagles and other birds so big, too.

Sights of Sitka

2009-07-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

Our first full day in Alaska was spent exploring the city. And this was the first thing we saw out the door: the cruise ship. The walk into town was about two miles. The first place we located (and visited most throughout the day) was the public bathroom. The visitor center did not offer the information we sought about public transportation. Every Community Ride vehicle we saw was going the other direction. Across the street we found the bike rental shop. We decided $20 for two hours per person was too expensive.

The shop owner talked to us about hiking trails. From him we learned that one of the trail heads had been closed, because a bear had just killed a deer and cached it nearby. With the bear guarding his kill, the area was considered especially dangerous. There were three other areas higher in the mountains where he said bears had recently been spotted.

All we saw today were berries. Along the road and throughout the state park we found wild salmon berries. We were told they are especially abundant this season. The one we ate was slightly tart. We also sampled a chocolate chip cookie from two local children who had a dockside table displaying their goods.

After an expensive lunch in one of the two downtown hotels, we strolled the main streets and visited a few shops. Though Sitka has only about twenty miles of roads, and a single traffic light, it has the second largest total area of any incorporated area in the United States, nearly six times the size of the largest city in the lower states, Jacksonville, Florida.

Of course, a book fancier can not resist a visit to the local bookshop. This one offered a small assortment of new books, including a lovely selection of local interest, as well as a small cafe in the rear.

We ventured next down to the docks. All the bays are fully stocked with boats. Here we saw the cruise ship shuttle loading and unloading tourists. Also a family bringing their groceries down from town to their docked houseboat. A different route home led us into the national park. We followed the trails and found lots of berries, dense forest, and a memorial to Russian soldiers who died fighting natives in the early 1800s.
Now, at 7:00pm, the sun has finally emerged from the clouds. We are headed out to the bay again to look for bald eagles.

They are everywhere. Four of them in the trees above our head. Three of them across the bay on the tree tops. A man in the bay caught a fish about fourteen inches long. The eagles are huge and amazing.

Until tomorrow, goodnight from Alaska!

North of Expectations

2009-07-23T18:18:00.000-07:00

The trip begins with eight hours of air travel.

Alaska Air makes it all easy. The website is quick and simple. From there, we made reservations, checked our bags, and selected our seats. At the airport, all we had to do was get our bags tagged. And all this at the best price we could find.

North of expectations is the newest marketing tagline for Alaska Air. The flight and service was as expected for us, but did not exceed our expectations. Neither did it disappoint. And the plane we had for the first leg of the trip was one of their newest. Drinks and a cookie were complimentary; everything else (from snacks to personal digEplayers) cost $6, credit or debit only.

Our ninety minute layover was in Seattle. It might well have been any metropolitan city for all we knew. One major airport looks like another. The terminal in Sitka, however, was strictly a single building the size of a small primary school.

Our lodgings are brand new, and don't have a complimentary shuttle. We had to call a local taxi. The woman who picked us up was the owner of the business, and wonderfully kind. She gave us lots of information while taking us to our inn. Since we don't have a car, she will likely get more of our business.

Our room has a small refrigerator and microwave. After settling in, we decided our first order of business was to go hunting. Thank goodness for Google, whose maps we used to find our location and directions to the nearest grocery. So we packed our umbrella and reusable bags and set off for food.

Weather at landing was cool, in the sixties, with rain. The rain quickly ended, but the clouds have stayed. We strolled the one mile to the small grocery, past the post office, trailer park, raptor center, national park, and rows of homes. Prices were expensive, and we had to lug everything, so we purchased only the basics.

But we are in Alaska! So far, we have seen a lot of trees, a lot of people on bicycles, and a lot of water. Tomorrow after a good night's rest we intend to check out some of the city, including the public transit, and investigate bicycle and car rental options. Probably four or more hours of daylight remain today, but we are going to rest and read up on some of the local activites. A full day of travel and brand new experiences have left us weary.

But we are in Alaska!

Turning the Page

2009-07-20T11:32:00.000-07:00

We had a great four years, but the time had come to sell the bookshop. Thankfully, we found a buyer. And what is even better, even though he is from out of town, he will be keeping the shop open in our community. That is a big win for local lovers of books.

What new adventures await this book fancier? We will be using this blog to do some feature writing that goes beyond the cover of a book. A big part of the reason for selling the bookshop was to enable us to do some traveling. So we are proud to announce our first trip begins Wednesday.

Destination: Sitka, Alaska.

We have never been to Alaska, so this will be an exciting new chapter in our life. We hope you will come back to join us as we recount our experience. Bon voyage!

Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis

2009-02-01T08:14:00.000-08:00

The illuminated signs outside the bus window all said the same thing -- 'You do not understand.'

This is the essence of the experience of Inspector Ma Jian, a Chinese policeman searching for his troubled daughter in England, in the new thriller Bad Traffic, by Simon Lewis.

In the middle of the night, Jian receives a call from his daughter, pleading for help. She is abruptly cut off, and her phone rendered inoperable. With no other information available, Jian sets off to find her. All he knows is her address at university, but he quickly discovers she had dropped her classes and moved out three months earlier. He has no idea where else to look for her, or how to reach her. Unable to speak, read, write, or even understand English, Jian faces an impossible task.

His experience as a police officer helps him discover a cold trail. But his troubles multiply. He finds his daughter's phone, on which is saved a brief video of her being stabbed to death. The images give him a clue to identifying her killer, and revenge becomes his goal. He must summon all his wits and experience to overcome an endless series of pitfalls and setbacks, and then just to survive.

Merging into this storyline is a subplot involving Ding Ming, a young Chinese peasant who has been smuggled into England to work as little more than an indentured slave. The promise of a wage incomparable in China lures him and others into this illegal bargain. But the exorbitant fee for smuggling, and the expenses for food and lodging, mean he will be working for twenty years before paying off his debt.

Ding Ming has studied English, but his language skill is a crude utility. His path crosses with Jian, who uses Ding Ming as a translator and guide. Ding Ming's confusion increases, as he is unable to tell who is the good guy and who is the bad guy. At times he thinks Jian will help him, and at other times he thinks he would be better off with his gang master. Whatever situation he finds himself in, he soon worries that the other is preferable.

Though the signs at the beginning of the novel tell Jian that he does not understand, he has no doubts. He knows what crimes have been committed, and he knows what he must do. He does not struggle with questions of morality, or even legality. He struggles with himself, the realisation that he did not have a close relationship with his daughter, and therefore has failed her. Ding Ming, however, is never clear about what is right or what is wrong. The place where he is taken to work was known in China as Gold Mountain, but all he sees is mud. This mud comes to symbolise his outlook on events. In his desire to make things work, he rationalises everything. Ding Ming is the one who does not understand.

This is the spot of our disappointment with the novel. Though the story begins and ends with Jian, much of the middle is given over to Ding Ming. Even when the two characters are together, events are often related through Ding Ming. Jian has 37 scenes totaling 145 pages; Ding Ming has 26 scenes totaling 115 pages; and three other characters combine for 19 scenes totaling 90 pages. The result is that Jian narrates only 45% of the scenes in the novel, or 41% of the pages. The book cover states "An Inspector Jian Novel" but there is simply not enough of Inspector Jian to justify this for us. It is that subtitle that creates unfulfilled expectations for us, and ultimately disappoints.

Inspector Jian is an interesting character more than capable of carrying an entire novel. A jian is an ancient Chinese double-edged straight sword, and this weapon captures the inspector's personality. He is no supercop, but a flawed man who has superficial relationships with his daughter and his lovers, who believes the end justifies the means, and who has a tarnished past. Fully exploring the costs of knowledge, instead of displaying the foibles of naivete, could have resulted in a much richer story.

This is a minor flaw in an otherwise compelling novel. Mr. Lewis has written a very accessible book. Short, declarative sentences make the writing clear and concise. Combined with scenes that average no more than five pages, the pace is swift. The lead characters can be thoughtful and reflective, yet they are always active, never captured in a dull moment. Any of us could find ourselves faced with similar situations, making up for failures, or compensating for inadequacies. The universal threats lend an immediacy to the story, and give the reader reason to cheer for the compromised protagonists.

Near the end, as Ding Ming blames himself for all the troubles that have occurred, he decides the reason for his suffering is so that others might benefit. He was a poor man and the lot of a poor man was the consumption of bitterness.... This echoes throughout the novel, in all of the characters. They all have ambitions that exceed their abilities. The nefarious characters prey upon these ambitions. In Ding Ming, and Jian's daughter, and several of the minor characters, we see how easily they become victims, how thin the line is that separates good from evil, and what a slippery slope to doom lies on the other side of that line. It is often too easy to take advantage of what is foreign to us, but that is only because we do not understand.

Inaugural Poetry

2009-01-20T10:46:00.000-08:00

Elizabeth Alexander is the American poet who was chosen to solemnize the Presidential Inauguration. A spokesman for President Obama called her "incredibly gifted." Before an estimated crowd of 2 million people, she delivered her poem, composed for the event, entitled Praise Song For The Day.

Jim Fisher, of Salon.com, predicted Ms. Alexander would be “skillful in tone, bold in emotion, deeply rhythmic in delivery.” Unfortunately, the honored poet was none of these things. She spoke every word as if it stood alone, enunciated every syllable as if speaking to a group of preschoolers. What might have been a moving work turned out to be an exercise in proper speaking.

More than anything, a poem is about rhythm. Her delivery was devoid of rhythm. Instead of allowing us to feel the power of her words, we were forced to consider each one of them on its own merits. She read like a conceited poet who believes each one of her words is golden. She failed to allow that only taken together, as a single poem, not as a string of 336 words, did her writing have meaning.

She would have done well to hire a professional speaker.

Compare her delivery to that of Reverend Rick Warren, the evangelical pastor who was chosen to give the invocation. He did not set out to compose a poem, yet the prayer he read to the crowd was poetry. His prose had rhythm. He did not assume his audience consisted of preschoolers who needed to be presented with each word one by one. His words flowed together to form a coherent whole, giving his message precedence over his words.

To some, this inaugural poem sent a signal that poetry would resume its formerly important role in celebrating special events. Sadly, Ms. Alexander instead embarrassed herself today, and showed millions of people just how dry and boring poems can be. Rev. Warren showed a better part of religion: the soaring poetry of its language.

An Open Letter to Nancy Pelosi

2008-11-22T15:32:00.000-08:00

Madame Speaker,

I am the owner of Mad About Books (www.madaboutbooksonline.com), a used bookshop in Oglesby, Illinois. My business has been clobbered by lackluster sales and choked credit, and could go under before year's end. Such a collapse would be a severe blow to our local economy -- and to the view of the nation's economic strength -- and deal a crippling blow to the ability of many Americans to afford quality books for education and pleasure in these trying financial times. In addition, the loss of our online international sales will further undermine an already unstable world economy, and the export of American ideals.

In order to prevent the failure of my business, I would like Congress and the Bush Administration to take action to provide immediate, targeted assistance to allow my business time to develop a plan to assure its long-term viability. I understand such emergency assistance would be conditioned on compensation restrictions, a prohibition on golden parachutes, rigorous independent oversight, and other taxpayer protections to ensure that my company -- and not the taxpayers -- bears the full burden of repaying any costs that are incurred.

I am sure you will agree that books will continue to play a crucial role in the expansion of our nation's knowledge, culture, and leisure, at home and in the global marketplace. I am willing to work with Congress to meet all conditions, and provide a plan for long-term viability and competitiveness, in order to receive short-term assistance through the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) recently authorized by Congress.

Thank you.

It Takes a Village to Raise an Idiot

2008-04-26T16:35:00.000-07:00

I remember the formative years of my childhood. I learned so much from my father. I worked with him in the yard. He taught me how to paint. We washed and waxed cars together. He took me to his jobs, where first I could only watch, but later could assist. He taught me how to drive a car.

Our time together was not all spent in work, though. He taught me billiards. We played catch together. He took me golfing. On sunny afternoons we swam in the pool together. He taught me how to ride a bicycle and roller skate. And, of course, he took me to my first major league baseball game.

He constructed an electric train set for me. He built an orange crate scooter for me. He took me to Cape Canaveral, Disney World, the World's Fair, sites of American history, the zoo, and the ice cream parlor. I acquired from him an appreciation for Big Band music, old movies, and redheads. Needless to say, he clothed, fed, and sheltered me.

Some things he just didn't do. He didn't ask the neighbors to supervise me. He never expected them to pick up my toys. I wasn't left after school to the care of the television. I wasn't allowed to venture beyond the sight of my house. He never raised his voice or his hand to me. And there was never a time that he didn't know where I was.

When I grew older, he gave me advice. He bought me my first car, and later we bought an antique car together. We became golf partners. I knew that no matter where either of us were, or whatever our circumstances, he always kept one eye on me, ever alert to my well-being. And one day our roles even reversed, when I taught him how to use a computer.

Maybe the most important thing about my father was I could go to him if I needed comfort, or assistance, or rescue, or when I experienced one of childhood's inevitable cataclysmic disappointments. He would answer my questions with understanding. He would teach me with patience. Perhaps without even knowing, he was a role model for me. And I always knew where I could find him. And it was never in the neighbor's garage drinking beer.

The Celebration of Christ, or When in Rome

2008-03-22T01:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Good Friday.

We just finished two outstanding books about early Christianity. The first, called The Magdalene Legacy by Laurence Gardner, meticulously detailed the development of the Christian faith, from before the time of its central figurehead up to the time it was adopted as the official religion of Rome. If you want to know why a certain rite is performed today, or how the canonical Gospel of Mark differs from the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, or how to reconcile the various contradictions in the New Testament, this is the book for you. The second, called Jesus and the Goddess by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, exposes the similarities between Jesus Christ and the dying-and-resurrecting gods of every other ancient culture. If you want to decode the earliest religious texts and learn the mystery that formed the foundation of the modern Christian faiths, this is the book for you.

We were utterly convinced by the first book, which accepted, argued, and explained the historical facts of the nascent church, including everything in the New Testament. Then we were utterly convinced by the second book, which accepted, argued, and explained the myths that revealed the secret mysteries of the nascent church, including everything in the New Testament. Finally we realised that anyone with enough time and resources could find supporting texts for almost any theory they proposed. The unknowable and undeniable truth of that past time is almost certainly to be found somewhere in the middle of those two positions, taking parts of each.

Today is an important day for people of the Christian faiths, the day several years ago when God decided it would be a good thing to crucify His only Son. These events are reenacted all over the world, in some cases with the full compliment of brutality. Church-appointed leaders will speak to millions of people and tell them what it all means, why it all matters. Believers will kneel prayerfully before a cross, perform certain rites of commemoration, celebrate the triumph of Jehovah and His Son.

A few thousand years ago Rome ruled the western world. Most citizens of the empire did not recognize any monotheistic, revealed religion. There was a whole pantheon of gods who were worshipped and believed to play an active part in people's lives. Romans daily honoroued, celebrated, and sacrificed to their gods. They carried charms and amulets, said prayers, and generally tried to propitiate their gods. Today scholars have clearly identified cults of Jupiter, legends of Marius, superstitions of Robigo, and myths of Mithras, to name just a few of the popular beliefs. There was even a national day of prayer to the goddess Salus.

That modern civilization is far more sophisticated in its belief systems is a fallacy. Today television stations are showing choirs singing praise to a convicted criminal. Big box retailers are selling chocolate bunnies and plastic eggs at a discounted price. Income at the florist shops is blooming. Half the banking institutions are closed, or all of them are half-closed. Schoolchildren are on holiday. Many businesses have either given employees the day off, or granted employees the day off. There is a noticeably fishy smell in the air. Indeed, if Jesus were to appear today, a jury of his peers would find he had a rough childhood, he was abandoned by his parents, everyone made fun of him, and so would pronounce him not guilty by reason of insanity. The Resurrection would have to be canceled.

In ancient times, Jerusalem was located prominently in the center of every map of the known world. But the world no longer revolves around the city and the religions that sprung from it. Grant for one moment the possibility that the Christian faiths--indeed all faiths--are based on myth: we are suddenly painfully aware how like the Romans we really are. When we laugh at their silly beliefs, we laugh at ourselves, we laugh at all of mankind. The sole cause of the perceived difference between them and us, then and now, is hubris. Christians know their God is the one and only God, and warn us that if we don't believe and obey this God, we will be welcomed in hell.

We are secure in the belief God favors the humble, the meek, the pure of heart.

Disposables, or Throwing It All Away

2008-02-29T15:46:00.000-08:00

We have in our hands an encyclopedia from 1909 which has an article about flying machines. The encyclopedia has been constantly updated and revised, so within a few decades the bulk of that original material on flying machines has been replaced. And if the encyclopedias themselves have been replaced and destroyed, then that knowledge is lost.

Perhaps a book on flying machines has not been checked out from the local library for over ten years. At the same time the library's patrons are demanding more copies of Tuesdays With Morrie. The library decides to remove the books that have not been checked out in some time, to make room for the books in demand. And perhaps the government won't let the library give these books away without lots of red tape, or a threat to the future budget. The library simply tosses the books in the dumpster. Gone forever is the earliest, detailed, first-hand history of flying machines.

This may seem an extreme example, but it occurs all over the world. John Warnock, the father of Adobe Systems, owns a 1543 edition of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium. This is not simply an artifact to him, he has read the work and was amazed by Copernicus.

His argument for the earth's rotating around the sun, considering the tools he had and the observations he made, was absolutely compelling. He did it masterfully. In a modern textbook, you don't get that. You get, "Copernicus suggested that the planets rotate around the sun."

Even if the pure knowledge Copernicus possessed is no longer of use, even if his tools are long outdated, we can still learn something that seems to be diminishing in our modern society: critical thinking. Knowledge only of the end result will prevent a child from following the process of discovery, from replicating the experiments, from learning, not about the world itself, but how to think about the world.

The ancient Egyptians possessed knowledge which is no longer with us. So did the Mayans, and probably any other lost civilization. What could we do with that knowledge? How would that knowledge affect our way of living? Adaptation to change has made man the most successful animal on the planet. If we continue to dispose of knowledge that no longer seems useful, will changes present ever greater challenges? Might we regress and have to start over, as surely as those who succeeded the Egyptians and Mayans did? Fantastical as it may seem to us now, could a Planet of the Apes scenario threaten our future?

Sacred Sunday Mornings, or Waking Up With Proust

2008-02-17T05:50:00.000-08:00

One of the reasons we so look forward to Sunday is the quiet of the early morning. We are conditioned to wake before dawn, and with no other commitments on this day we can indulge those unsullied hours in reading Proust. Much of our reading time occurs in the evening, in bed before falling asleep. Inevitably we can read but two or three pages before drifting off. In such a short span it is difficult to really appreciate Proust. In those two pages he might have described only one small thing, like meeting an old friend on the street. To get a strong feel for the fullness of his work, one is best to consume much larger chunks at one sitting. Ninety minutes and thirty pages pass as if in an instant, and we are immersed in his world. And then, though we must rise and deal with feeding dogs and cleaning bathrooms and plotting acts of anarchy, we know there exists in life a privileged moment by which we may be exalted, if only we should take note--like sacred Sunday mornings.

A Literary Event, or the Festival of the Book

2008-02-02T13:46:00.000-08:00

There is such a diverse community of literary bloggers and readers of litblogs, we thought we would put to you some questions concerning one of the ideas spawned in the scintillating Chapter One Hundred Four.

Though more book sales are occuring through the internet (and some predict a further doubling within the next five years), established book festivals still draw tens and hundreds of thousands of visitors. These are usually considered high-end affairs, and geared more toward the collector than the consumer. But they involve more than just the purchase of rare and antiquarian books, and this is how they trump the internet.

For all the hype surrounding the internet as a tool which helps bring people together and form a community, by its very nature there is a disconnect and isolation. Book festivals bring book-fanciers together to share a love of all things literary. They allow one to form a network of friends, colleagues, and connections, to bond. Just as there is a profound difference between the experience of reading a book in hand and reading one on the computer screen, so is there a difference between meeting someone through an electronic greeting and actually shaking someone's hand. Readers seem to love this sort of thing, as they turn out in droves to meet their favorite authors face to face, to get to know the person behind the words. Collectors distribute their want lists to hundreds of dealers quickly and easily. And dealers get a better feel for the market and the trends, and put their best book forward. Quite simply, a book festival is an event, like the World Series, or a traveling circus, The Ring cycle, or an art exhibition, something which the internet has yet to replicate.

So to the questions: If you have attended a book festival, what are the top three things you went for, to meet that special author, and perhaps have a book signed; to hunt through a huge selection of books for the elusive quarry; to hear a talk given by a publisher or writer; just to hang around with other book-fanciers; or something completely different? What three things are offered at a book festival that you could do without? The ubiquitous coffee bar, perhaps? And what three things do you wish were offered but aren't?

Interview From the Reading Room

2008-01-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

Litlove is a lecturer in French literature whose blog, Tales From the Reading Room, explores the strange and beautiful links between life and art. Now she has taken a bold step outside the insular room with the publication of her first book, The Best of Tales From the Reading Room. Though a collection of essays that one may have already read on her blog, there is a tactile satisfaction reading a book which one holds in one’s hand that doesn’t exist when reading from a computer screen. And there is some connective tissue between the essays gathered in the book that forms an outline of the author that is more apparent than on the blog.

Recently, we were privileged to join Litlove in her Reading Room, and in front of the fire with a strong pot of tea we probed her to fill in those outlines. Here she comments on modern culture, the nature of fantasies, the blogger’s connection to Surrealists, and why her popular literary salon may soon be moving to southern France. She does go on a bit, but with enough good will you can almost see that as charming in its way. Enjoy!

First of all, is the Reading Room a real place, and can you describe it for us?

The Reading Room is so lined and insulated with books that even the door is disguised as a bookcase. It contains a sofa of supreme comfiness on which I lie, and a fire that blazes at night or on winter days. In the summertime its one picture window looks over a gently sloping Swiss meadow. It doesn’t have an external reality, but as the place I go to in my head when I’m mentally preparing myself for research or writing, it feels more necessary than any of my actual rooms.

You describe becoming a writer, and explain part of your process as taking the text inside of you and listening "to all it couldn't or wouldn't say." Please describe this further, and share how this act in particular helped you to write.

Just recently I read Kate Sutherland’s collection of short stories, All In Together Girls, and as I was making my way through them I realized that there were structural similarities that weren’t immediately obvious from the content. And so I watched my own internal reactions closer and found myself wincing, time and again, and I thought, ‘this writer is fascinated by vulnerability’. It’s hard to explain, but as a younger literary critic I kept too much distance from what I read, and so I just brought my own expectations to bear on stories. Once I’d learned to pay better attention to what happened to that story when it was inside me, I felt I was doing more justice to it, to its own unique character. There’s a huge temptation as a critic to try to be clever with what you read, and I just wanted to be truthful to the heart of the fiction.

You write about two inviolable regulations in fiction: bad mothers are unforgivable and loved husbands are untouchable. These seem more like the response of readers than the intention of writers. Tell us how deeply these ideas are ingrained in our culture.

I wouldn’t want to impose on culture at large a neat axiom that might just belong in my own warped mind, but bad mothers get a terrible press across the ages; we can forgive Emma Bovary all her sexual and financial excesses, but not her neglect of little Berthe, just as the media insist that no matter how she suffers, we must condemn Britney Spears for her perceived inability to nurture her sons. As for loved husbands, it seems to me that the love of a good woman is so redemptive in the masculine imagination that it frequently exerts the protective charm of a talisman. But that’s probably showing up the limits of my reading; I’ll bet there are male protagonists in works by 19th century Russian novelists who fulfill their death wish, regardless.

You suggest that "men fear that they will lead only muffled lives." What connections do you make to the modern cults of celebrity and voyeurism?

Good question. I remember about fifteen or so years ago the ‘docu-soap’ filled our television schedules. It’s premise was to take an ordinary workplace that could nevertheless produce anecdotal interest, like an airport or a driving school, and followed the lives of ‘normal’ people under pressure at work. I think that was the start of a trend to glamourise the everyday and bring celebrity to ordinary folk. It always struck me as a bit regressive, like the way that children are precociously aware of themselves acting in their own internal cinema. It also said, no matter who you are, you can be famous. That trend has gone completely over the top now; I keep waiting for something else to come and replace it, but it’s remarkably tenacious.

You describe a crush you once had on the writer Julian Barnes, and your inability to pick him up at his own book signing. I think fiction is at its best when it explores everything that otherwise cannot be. So tell us the story of Julian Barnes coming to pick you up at your first signing of The Best of Tales From the Reading Room.

It’s best I don’t say how long I’ve spent thinking about this question! First of all we’re so deep in fantasy that this could be science fiction, but anyhow. The only scenario that actually works in my mind is where he comes up to me and says: ‘I’ve been wondering why your face is familiar and aren’t you the woman who bored me rigid at that literary reading in Highgate back in 1993?’ This really brings back the experience of fiction writing, where I could only ever write failed encounters. Still, with a big effort I can imagine us having a laugh making up reviews of our books by famous authors (Flaubert: ‘Litlove, c’est moi’, Sartre: ‘This woman has some interesting ideas but they are spoiled by her essentially foolish disposition’) and as we’re busy talking, so we leave the bookshop behind, and find a taxi and then a train station, and hardly perceiving the changing landscape, we contrive to end up in the South of France. If this all sounds lame, it’s because in love I’m captivated when the other person surprises me, and in writing, I’m much better at analysis.

What happened to your thesis on Mr. Barnes?

It went the way of all beautiful and much-wanted dreams, in that translating it into reality altered it beyond all recognition. I do wonder what my life would have been if I had moved into an English department, but for better or for worse I will always be a European modernist now.

What happened to your crush?

It ended up as a kind of literary marriage. I have a deep, residual loving appreciation of Julian Barnes, so that when I read a book like Love, Etc, I think, Julian, you are such a delight to my intellect you still occupy a privileged place in my heart. But it’s tempered by the distance of a little cautious criticism, so I read Arthur and George and think, you had my undivided attention for the best part of twenty hours and this was the best you could think of to do with it?

I see in your inability to pick up Mr. Barnes when given the opportunity a streak of Romanticism. I see glimpses of this throughout your book, in particular when you describe your whole-hearted acceptance of "the vision of life peddled by The Thorn Birds." Do you think the Romantic outlook is endemic to readers of fiction?

You have no idea of the civil warfare that rages in my soul between my Romantic leanings and my analytical capacities. Literature is the only place where I can comfortably deal with them both at once. The classic Romantic is someone who wants to joy-ride with their soul, who wants to explore their emotions to the limit-point. I think if you love stories, you have to have a little bit of that, because voracious reading is about greedily hoovering up all the virtual experiences you can have.

You write that the books we like reflect the qualities of our best selves. What book reflects the qualities of your best self?

Proust. The marriage of analysis with transitory experience for the benefit of each, the reclaiming of all that is lost in beautiful stories, a lengthy, humble appreciation in the lessons of art, love as generosity and gift, endlessly given. He does go on a bit, but with enough good will you can almost see that as charming in its way.

You reveal a great deal about yourself in the essay "Things I Wish Books Hadn't Taught Me." You describe how we write and read fiction in order to make sense of our lives, and also how we live our lives in a fictional way in order to provide them with meaning. Do you think fiction is better suited to ground us or to realise unreal expectations?

That opening sentence makes me nervous. Fiction is very good at both. All narrative expectations – around resolution and meaning – are fundamentally unrealistic in life, but equally fiction is skilled at showing us what’s real and authentic and true. Hanna Segal says that art is effectively about breaking things, creating destruction and despair and chaos, and then putting the pieces back together to make something new and beautiful. Suffering is inevitable, art says, but equally reparation (in our own minds at least) is always possible. I think it’s going through that emotional journey in a work of fiction that’s the point.

What is a "three-hour one-off exam" and how does it favor males?

In arts subjects at my university there is no option to retake an exam if you fail it. You get one shot and that’s it. Most exams are three hours long and candidates are asked to write up to four essays. It’s a marked tendency amongst talented women students to try to remember everything they have read and learned. This is a disaster. No way can they reproduce everything in a scant 45 minutes and inevitably they fall prey to the temptation to regurgitate information in an undifferentiated, shapeless splurge. It’s not pretty. Male candidates have a marked tendency to make the most of the limited amount of material they have committed to memory, and make it relevant to the question posed. It’s not fair, but it’s a far better strategy.

In the essay "A Mini Guide to Surrealism" you write "Despite the fact that copious quantities of drink and drugs gave the Surrealists that delightful sensation of being the funniest, most inventive group of people on the earth...." Are you suggesting that Surrealists are not the funniest, most inventive group of people on earth?

Inventive, yes, without doubt. But some of those jokes are really showing their age now. The title of funniest, most inventive group of people on earth must surely pass now to book bloggers, don’t you agree?

Describe how you came to write "A Mini Guide to Surrealism."

This came about at a point when I was going through a blogging dip and feeling that I ought to try to restrain my verbose style. It occurred to me that I could write a series of mini-guides to various literary and artistic movements of the modern age. Surrealism came straight to mind because it’s full of good anecdotal stories about the artists, their relationships with one another and to the art they produced. Once I’d written it, and failed entirely to curb my word count, I felt back in the groove again, and went on to write other things.

Though you provide a broad outline of Surrealism and its influence on many different forms of art, you offer only a few lines about writing. What further insights can you give us into Surrealist fiction?

One of the elements of Surrealist fiction that has always enchanted me is ‘le hasard objectif’, or objective chance. What this means is that the random and arbitrary are in fact deeply significant; chance is in fact a product of our deepest desires. So, for instance, Breton wanders the streets of Paris, having fallen in love with his flaky muse, Nadja, and lo and behold he runs into her every time he thinks of her. According to Breton, it’s inevitable he should bump into Nadja because he wants her so. This is magically, supernaturally, delightfully mad, and oddly convincing despite its implausibility. But it also shows that for Breton at least, Surrealism was about extending the power of the mind beyond all constraints of reason, not celebrating madness.

How does the prevalence of the Rescue Fantasy correspond to a general erosion of personal responsibility in today's society?

I think we live in a world where we are increasingly encouraged to behave like children: our desires have to be instantly gratified, our narcissistic fantasies of power and glorification are taken seriously, and the legal system continually encourages us to place blame on other people’s shoulders. To be fair, I think the rescue fantasy has been around since the dawn of time, but if it’s more prevalent today, it’s because we are ever more alienated from our capacities to solve problems, tolerate suffering and take responsibility for ourselves. You know, I write that and I have to admit that I am appalling at tolerating suffering; I’m the least stoic person I know.

Describe the appeal of the powerful love affair between two artists.

I think there are two emotional strands in love, one that comforts and offers stability and security, and another that provokes dramatic change, alteration and creativity (although it can also be destructive, too). It’s probably a fantasy of my own, but in the stories I’ve been reading of artists in love, it’s fascinating to see how they take that latter strand and feed it into the work they produce in the heat of passion. Something extraordinary almost always results in both life and art, and I find myself drawn again and again to writing about it.

What essay elicited the most comments on your blog, and to what do you attribute the strong response?

The most comments for one post came when I had to take a lengthy blogging break last autumn after gastric ‘flu brought on a bad relapse of ME. I’ve always thought blogging was fundamentally about community, and I was so very grateful for those messages of support at that time. The post that caused the most immediate and engaged response from fellow bloggers was the one in which I wondered what to do about a graduate student who was pressing me for a lunch date. In both cases, I felt that my friends wanted to look out for me, and their protectiveness gave me the most immense feeling of tenderness and gratitude. The silly sneering from mainstream media about angry, attention-seeking bloggers just astounds me, as I’ve only ever encountered intelligent, generous and enlightened people in cyberspace.

What lies at the point of perfection in your heart?

A perfect act of communication: a sentence that is eloquent, elegant and meaningful and heard in its full and flawless richness. I don’t expect ever to experience it, but I’m prepared to spend my best years trying.

Finally, may we take you to lunch tomorrow?

The Death of Outrage, or Are You Smarter Than an American Idol?

2008-01-28T09:05:00.000-08:00

Today we bring you another in what has become a series of laments about the sad state of learning in our modern society. Though this isn't strictly about books, it does have some bearing on reading, or the failure to read. This may come to either of my readers as old news, but last night was our first exposure to what we are about to describe: Kellie Pickler appeared on the television show "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?"

Wikipedia tells us that Kellie Dawn Pickler, age 21, is an American pop country music singer-songwriter who finished sixth on the fifth season of the Fox television series "American Idol". She has since been signed to BNA Records as a recording artist, with her debut album Small Town Girl being released in late 2006. The album has been certified gold in the United States for sales exceeding 500,000 copies, and it has produced three singles on the U.S. Billboard Hot Country Songs charts. Ms. Pickler graduated in 2004 from North Stanly High School in New London, North Carolina.

We have watched "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth-Grader?" several times. It is a fine quiz show, vastly superior to "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" because the questions do not revolve around pop culture, and because the show involves children. We also watched because we found first-year student Marki Ann Meyer to be adorable.

On the television show, Ms. Pickler was asked, "Budapest is the capital of what European country?" She replied, "This might be a stupid question, but I thought Europe was a country." She thought it might be France, and then was confused if France really was a country or not. When told the answer was Hungary, she did not believe the host. She said, "Hungry [sic]? That's a country? I've heard of Turkey, but Hungry? I've never heard of it." The video can be seen here:

That's good for a laugh, right? "It is her innocent ignorance that makes her so cute and likable," as someone commented on the television show message boards. But look at her face, and one can see she is completely overwhelmed, she is not acting the part of a ditzy blonde for commercial appeal.

Okay, so she's not a geography major. But since she is a musician, one would expect her to know about music. When she was asked what family of instruments the piccolo belonged to, she was still lost. She had no idea what a piccolo was, and it sounded as if she didn't know what percussion, woodwind, or strings was either. So she used her critical thinking skills and decided that the piccolo was from the percussion family because they both started with a P. She also determined that Franklin Pierce was a United States President because his last name began with a P, just as hers did.

Sadly, the audience found her answers funny. According to her website, when she appeared on "American Idol", her vibrant vocals, boundless energy, bubbly personality and refreshing honesty not only won over the judges, but endeared her to viewers as well. She is not stupid, she is quirky. She is not troubling, she is charming. Incredibly, Ms. Pickler has received numerous awards from local and statewide government officials praising her accomplishments as a contestant on the American Idol television show. Why hasn't she received numerous condemnations for her astounding lack of basic knowledge as supposedly taught in our schools? This is the death of outrage.

Ms. Pickler stands out as a perfect example of many. As far as we know, every contestant on the show has either flunked out or dropped out of the game before winning. The gentleman who followed Ms. Pickler answered the very first question wrong: how many e's are in the word mathematics? Something we are supposed to be taught in first-grade spelling.

Ms. Pickler undoubtedly possesses appealing features, including many of the attributes prized by the superficial male. She certainly has a pleasant singing voice. Her website calls her life a "fairy tale". What we are being told is that one needn't be smarter than a fifth-grader to be successful, one needs only smarts; happily ever after is equated with celebrity; looks will take you further than knowledge; all our heroes are whores.

The Cost of Reading, or Be Like John Bardeen

2008-01-23T08:36:00.000-08:00

On Saturday a woman came into the bookshop with her husband and two children. She looked at a first edition hard cover of Jeffrey Archer and declared the price of $10.80 to be too expensive. She returned the book to the shelf, looked down another aisle, then said a curt "Thank you" and led her family out the door. Her husband proceeded to unload his golf clubs from the back of their van and head into the Golf and Pub, while she drove off with the children to visit the nearby amusement and water park where she will have no qualms about charging $200 or so to her VISA.

We recall an episode of The Simpsons in which Marge laments she never had the opportunity to apply the things taught in calculus class to her everyday life situations. The joke, of course, is that unless you are an engineer building the space shuttle, calculus will never apply to your everyday life situations. For many, calculus is studied in order to graduate, but never really learned, and then promptly forgotten. As our society becomes more visual, and more focused on the end user, learning is more often done by trial and error. See how a child learns to operate the remote control and the computer. Or how quickly he learns and masters a video game. Is it any wonder children study without learning and then forget how to read and write as well as do arithmetic?

The Golf and Pub is down the street from our store, and we watch people lug their clubs in all day long, far more in number than those who come into the bookshop. Americans have become brainwashed into equating the spending of money with being entertained. We wonder why other countries are performing better in academics. In a culture where the emphasis is on sports and celebrity, few children say "When I grow up, I want to be just like John Bardeen." They want to be like Tiger Woods or Paris Hilton. Why doesn't Random House turn to Tiger Woods to promote reading? Just as he raves about driving a Fusion, or shaving with a Tahoe, he can enthuse about the excitement, drama, and mystery of a Random House novel, or how he learned all about his idol Sam Snead by reading a Random House biography.

How will golf change the world? In 500 years, who will remember Paris Hilton? Few enter the bookshop while many enter the Golf and Pub; yet golf is the elite activity, requiring the expense of equipment as well as the precise maintenance of large amounts of land in an unnatural state. Only voting is more emblematic of democracy than reading. The Church used to put people to death for publishing the Bible in the vernacular, because they knew the consequences. Reading the Bible changed the world. Reading the Ninety-five Theses changed the world. The lasting value of books is so great as to make their cost negligible.

A man entered the shop today. "How much," he said as he strode by at a brisk pace, "do you want for..." and he quickly returned to place upon the counter a Stephen King book he had pulled from the shelf. $10.80. He already had his notes in hand, and without hesitation he peeled off two and handed them to me. My hope for mankind lingers on.

Afternoon Delight, or Reading The Best Of

2008-01-22T17:23:00.000-08:00

Well, I wasn't quite as lucky as Bloglily, who enjoyed her in the flesh, but it did feel like I spent the entire afternoon with Litlove on Saturday. In between selling books at the shop, I read her new book The Best of Tales From The Reading Room. Though I have visited her salon often, I found I had never read much of her best. If you haven't already been, go check out the salon now. And when you discover you enjoy what you read, then go buy the book. Do this all in preparation for an impending wide-ranging interview with Litlove in this webspace. We promise to expose all her secrets!

Storylines, or Beyond One Dimension

2008-01-21T09:14:00.000-08:00

Narrative irons everything out flat, linear, and one-way. It is what we use and how we are able to make sense of multidimensional experience. Today's question is, how can we overcome the flat, linear, one-way nature of fiction? How do we capture the messy, paradoxical simultaneous life? And if the essence of narrative makes such a thing impossible, what form of art can achieve it?

We Need More Slaves, or Let's Read Together

2008-01-21T09:01:00.000-08:00

Danielle has dusted out some of the cobwebs at The Slaves of Golconda and the next book to read and discuss is The Stone Angel by Margaret Laurence. There is still over a month left to read and digest it. The group continues to grow and more invitations have been sent out. If you would like to join in the mining, or know someone who might, let us know.

Short Stories, or How the Universe Works

2008-01-12T15:17:00.000-08:00

Short stories have never interested us much. Perhaps it goes back to literature classes that forced us to answer twelve questions about every short story we read to show we understood its meaning and whatever.

A few months ago we were emboldened by Litlove's post about a story by Maupassant to pick up our volume of his short stories and read. We all tell stories every day of our lives, and many of Maupassant's stories struck us as being just like that. We had never thought of or regarded short stories in such a way, and soon the previously conceived possibility of writing some of our own transformed into a present probability.

Just when we start to consider writing short stories, we also follow a suggestion to read short stories. We do not intentionally do one because of the other. Reading the stories, however, reveals things to us that help us to understand the writing of them. This is all to set up the first of a series of questions we pose to either of our readers: what is the cause and what is the effect? Do we find the answer and then discover the question? Or do we know the question but don't ask it until we have stumbled upon the answer? Do we subconsciously mold one to fit the other? What is it that brings question and answer together? Does a person or thing uncover a hidden need, or create a new need? Or does a hidden need seek out the person or thing to uncover it?

You may discuss among yourselves for the next five minutes, and then please share your answers with the rest of us.

Possibilities

2008-01-11T12:55:00.000-08:00

Three months.

I don't blame you if you didn't wait for me.

For those who pop your head back in, I will be generating some thoughts in the near future. Until then, you can read my column From The Bookshop, as well as the works of many other fine writers, in the new January issue of ...

Book Thirty-Six

2007-10-03T05:29:00.000-07:00

The thirty-sixth book we read this year is The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ, by Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince. The book originally came out in 1998, but received a recent surge in popularity after mention by Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code. We, of course, obtained our copy through BookMooch.

As we have already seen in The Jesus Mysteries, Christianity is but paganism reshaped. J.M. Robertson declared in 1903:

There is not a conception associated with Christ that is not common to some or all of the Savior cults of antiquity.

But The Templar Revelation ventures beyond that premise, finding a strong current of Egyptian religion and myth in the actions of Jesus. They cite the Jewish Talmud, which states that Jesus came not from Nazareth or Galilee, but from Egypt. They believe Mary Magdalene functioned as a high priestess who christened Jesus by her anointing (the words messiah and christ meaning "the anointed one"), thereby bestowing upon him the attributes of the god-king, just as Isis had done for Osiris. We found it most interesting that the gospel of Mark has Jesus comment on this:

Verily I say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her.

To us, this statement carries the same weight as Jesus command at the Last Supper to "do this in remembrance of me," yet when does Christianity offer a memorial to Mary Magdalene? In addition to her anointing, she also served not as the wife of Jesus, but as his consort in the practices of sacred sexuality.

The authors investigate Leonardo's works and find numerous references to John the Baptist. (One of their previous books showed that Leonardo was the creator of the Shroud of Turin.) They follow the reverence for John and Mary Magdalene throughout southern France. They trace the history of the shadow groups--Templars, Rosicrucians, Priory of Sion--that Leonardo was connected with. Secrets and hidden knowledge abound.

The strength of the book comes in the minute analysis of the canonical gospels, not so much what the evangelists say as why they say it. The authors present a persuasive case, although it is admittedly easy to fall under the spell of any argument when surrounded by it, and there have been countless theories about the real Jesus:

... [he] was a divorced father of three, a Freemason, a Buddhist, a conjurer, a hypnotist, the progenitor of a line of French kings, a Cynic philosopher, an hallucinogenic mushroom--and even a woman!

The authors set out to question every piece of accepted knowledge and view Jesus without preconceptions.

The authors suggest the raising of Lazarus was an initiatory rite, a symbolic death and rebirth into a new living that preceded the final revelation of secret knowledge to the adept. This also is probably what was recorded in the gospels as the resurrection of Jesus.

The authors find that Jesus' cry from the cross in Mark and Matthew has been misinterpreted. What was recorded as "eloi" and "eli" and thought to be "Elias" by some bystanders was not "My God," which should have been "ilahi" in Jesus' native Aramaic. As a follower of Egyptian mysteries, Jesus' cry was actually to the sun god Helios.

Finally, the authors state what they have been hinting at all along, and what they believe is the secret that the Templars and others have kept: Christianity's true message as preached by John the Baptist was hijacked and perverted by Jesus. John the Baptist was revered as the King of Light, while according to the gospel written by John the Beloved Disciple, Jesus was handed over to Pilate as "a doer of evil" which in Roman law defined a sorcerer. The two were rivals, until John was killed and Jesus assumed his leadership. What began as a mission of repentance and baptism was turned into a cult of personality.

What bothered us most was the tendency of the authors to declare certain conclusions based on weak evidence, often highlighted by their narrative assertion, "as we have already seen," and then build on those conclusions. At times it even felt like they would cast doubt on a clue, and then immediately use that clue as if beyond doubt to support their argument. But to complain that the authors make leaps to reach the conclusions they desire misses the point of the facts they reveal. What those facts mean may be open to interpretation, but what they are they are. To explain away anomalies in the gospels as the mysterious works of God is at best to deny the truth, and at worst to bury it.

We are certainly not experts in Gnosticism or even Christianity, but for the last ten years we have made a hobby of exploring the beginnings of the organised church--this is the first time we have heard the rivals theory. This book is stunning in what it reveals, and overfull with information. Our brief review does not begin to suggest the wealth of details presented by the authors. The material they cover ranges far beyond what the book title hints at, though it's all related. What we wished the authors had done was tie it all together much more tightly and neatly. We were left rather unsure of how everything fit together. Perhaps they were overcome by the depth and breadth of their material and became similarly lost. However, the completed puzzle is not what makes The Templar Revelation interesting, it is the unraveling of dogma and the formation of theories.

Book Thirty-Five

2007-09-30T14:05:00.000-07:00

We read our thirty-fifth book this year, The Woman Who Waited, by Andrei Makine, for the Slaves of Golconda, and were quite pleased.

Life, the narrator tells us, is a constant mixture of genres. He is writing an anti-Soviet satire while simultaneously recording legends and myths of village life, and this novel is an autobiographical product of it all. From the first page of this book, we were reminded of the fiction of Milan Kundera, whose novels are less about characters and events than they are about the author writing the novel about those characters and events. The Woman Who Waited purports to be about a woman who's been waiting thirty years for the man she loves to return from the war; it is more about the narrator who writes about her.

Vera waits for the man she loves because she is convinced he will return; otherwise, love will mean nothing more than the satisfaction of a carnal instinct. She sits at the end of a bench in her house where she can look out the window across the fields to the crossroads where she could see anyone approaching. She waits for the man she loves, and she watches for him too, and at times a dark figure appears and then disappears again. She waits for him and sees him in her mind the way Heathcliff did Cathy.

Here is what Makine does best, writing what the narrator calls "luminous moments rescued from time," something very similar to Proust's privileged moment:

A very thin layer of ice had formed at the bottom of the well. (I had just caught up with Vera, who was drawing water.) As the ice broke, it sounded like a harpsichord. We looked at one another. We were each about to remark on the beauty of this tinkling sound, then thought better of it. The resonance of the harpsichord had faded into the radiance of the air, it blended with the wistfully repeated notes of an oriole, with the scent of a wood fire coming from the nearby izba. The beauty of that moment was quite simply becoming our life.

The narrator and Vera are drawn to one another by the sharing of these moments. She finally gives herself to him, and their encounter ends abruptly at the sound of a door or window. She rushes to the window to watch outside for the man she loves, perhaps fearful that she has waited for thirty years and now, when she finally allows herself the embrace of another, the man she loves returns to find she has stopped waiting for him.

First the narrator feels pride at being able to seduce this woman so intent on waiting for another. Then he feels shame. Finally, he fears that he will now be the center of Vera's life, that she will cling to him, and that he will owe it to her. And then she shows him the way out of town. He has not taken the place of the man she loves, and he has not released her from waiting. Instead, Vera has learned that the emotion between them was an illusion of love, and that the ghostly figure she sees outside, the dream she waits for, is the reality of love. The narrator has renewed her ability to wait once more, forever more, for the man she loves.

There is great emphasis in this novel on time. In the village of Mirnoe, the narrator discovers a floating, suspended time. There is a collective forgetting of the past. Vera, however, remembers the past exclusively--it is the present and the future that she forgets. And each evening the narrator prepares to leave the village, but each morning he stays, as if replaying the same day over and over. He finds time is completely absent from the village, history has been eradicated, and all that remains is the essence of things.

The only thing more historically founded than Soviet life is Christianity. The ten days that shook the world, the rise of the proletariat, the dissolution of the state all happen, or were meant to happen, in historical time. Vera lives, physically and emotionally, in a place beyond time. And even though thirty years pass while she waits, the essence of life remains. The Woman Who Waited is the narrator's satire, ridiculing the historical failure that is Soviet life.

This was our first experience reading Makine, and it was enjoyable. To the comparisons with Kundera and Proust, we can add Nabokov and Kadare. Indeed, there seems to be an impressive strain running through eastern European fiction of illuminating a privileged moment, of uncovering the essence of life that most American fiction lacks. We would certainly recommend The Woman Who Waited. It doesn't matter if you already know the plot, the enjoyment comes in sharing the experience of the luminous moments.

...cross-posted at Slaves of Golconda.

Book Thirty-Four

2007-09-23T04:51:00.000-07:00

The thirty-fourth book we read this year is To Renew America, by Newt Gingrich. This book is now twelve years old, but much of what Mr. Gingrich has to say is still valid. We are not really politically conscious, so we chose this book mostly because we wanted to expand our understanding of Mr. Gingrich, and because it was available on Bookmooch and we have lots of extra points.

Mr. Gingrich had a high profile in 1994 and 1995, when he and the Republican party took control of Congress and in the first one hundred days passed the ten-point Contract With America. That is already more than we knew about him at the time. However, there was an inconspicuous program on public television, called "Ethics in America", that had captured us as a devoted viewer. In each episode a panel of noteworthy people from all disciplines would debate an ethical issue. Mr. Gingrich appeared on the panel in at least one of those episodes, and he impressed us as an intelligent, moral representative of the people. This impression holds up in his book.

The book is divided in three major parts. To begin, Mr. Gingrich explains in detail what he believes to be the six major challenges that America faces. Next he presents the story behind the Contract With America, and how it was accomplished. Finally, he addresses numerous critical issues that have a direct impact on his vision of a renewed, recommitted American future.

The one challenge that resonated most with us was Balancing the Budget and Saving Social Security and Medicare. He describes the runaway national debt as "an extremely regressive form of income redistribution." The taxes the average American pays are ultimately going to the wealthy bondholders. When viewed in this way, it seems obvious to us that liberals enrage the public over tax cuts and loopholes for the wealthy, while it is the very big government they endorse that is doing the most to make the wealthy wealthier. In addition, the extensive borrowing of the government drives up the interest rates for other borrowers, namely us. The importance of the debt is evident when we think what could be done without it. If we are paying thirteen percent interest on the national debt, or even on our own credit cards, that is money spent on absolutely nothing. What could you afford with thirteen percent more buying power? If the money the government spends on interest alone could be spent on something else, how many more schools, or police, or energy research grants could there be?

One of Mr. Gingrich's basic beliefs is that less government is best government:

... what we really want to do is to devolve power all the way out of government and back to working American families. We want to leave choices and resources in the hands of individuals and let them decide if they prefer government, the profit-making sector, the nonprofit sector, or even no solution at all to their problems. It is important to remember that freedom ultimately includes the right to say no. If you must say yes to something--or everything--then you are not free.

In his reflections on national defense, Mr. Gingrich examined the responsibility that America had accepted in opposing the Soviet Union and communism in the Cold War. He noted that once the Soviet Union collapsed, and victory could be claimed, America's responsibility actually increased. We see the same situation today in Iraq where America took on the responsibility of bringing about a change in the government, and now is faced with even greater responsibilities in more places requiring firmer resolve and larger resources.

This book covers a wide range of issues, from education to immigration, from taxes to drugs, from language to health care. It is clear and concise, a quick read, although we did become mildly confused at the profusion of numbers in the chapter about the budget. In the chapter concerning Violent Crime, Freedom from Fear, and the Right to Bear Arms, Mr. Gingrich says the key to making America safer and free from fear is not to ban guns, but

... to focus our attention on violent people and not be drawn off into emotionally satisfying detours that harass the honest citizen but have no impact on crime.

Somehow people seem to have forgotten that freedom must be protected, and though we hire others, like police, to protect us, it is still ultimately our own responsibility. We assume a right to bear arms means not only guns, but swords or knives or other weapons by which we are able to defend our life, liberty, and happiness against the next King George, be he a Hanover or a Bush.

While reading we noticed how one-sided most public officials are portrayed by the media. Mr. Gingrich reveals that good qualities exist in many people, conservatives and liberals, Democrats and Republicans. No one in the government wants to bring about the ruin of American society. However, we need to take a hard look at certain of our experiments, such as welfare, and realise the results are not what we had intended. When, in 1994, Speaker of the House Tom Foley filed a lawsuit against a successful referendum in favor of term limits in his home state, it was clear that some politicians had become so drunk on their power that they had forgotten they are elected by the people to represent the people, not to sue them. America needs critical thinking and an eye on the future. We need people like Mr. Gingrich who are willing to take risks, to question everything, and to engage people in level-headed debate of the issues.

Book Thirty-Three

2007-09-14T15:51:00.000-07:00

The thirty-third book we read this year is New York: Then and Now, by Annette Witheridge. This is one in a series of photography books that compares city views of the past with the present.

We chose this book because we enjoy viewing old photographs, and because it was available on Bookmooch. There actually wasn't much to read, only the captions to about 150 photographs. Although the book does tell a very interesting story.

In over 100 years the city of New York has changed most notably in scale. Buildings have risen to the clouds, and streets have spread into a huge metropolitan area. This has changed the appearance of the city from afar, as well as from within. In many of the old photographs, the East River or the Hudson River can be seen in the background. Any such panoramic views in the modern photographs are completely blocked by skyscrapers. In some of the photographs one can see the same buildings still standing. But they are identifiable almost exclusively by their exterior features, because in most cases their use has changed, as well as their surroundings. Shanties along the river have been replaced by ritzy mansions. Railroads have been pushed underground. Swampland is now park. Saint Patrick's Cathedral was built on the outskirts of town, and is now nearly lost amid towering neighbors. The change of scale makes some buildings difficult to recognise at first. Church towers that once soared above all other buildings are now dwarfed by giants.

The turn of the last century was a grand time for architecture. Every building was resplendent, decorative, distinctive, classical. Modern buildings in comparison are dull and unimaginative: the cell-block look of the United Nations, great walls of glass lining Times Square, the utilitarian design of the World Trade Towers. This record of New York's progress is less triumphant than sad. Much of the city's most beautiful works of architecture have been demolished and replaced by buildings. All the old photographs are in black and white, but they have a certain warmth and comfort; the modern color photographs show a cold, sterile, impoverished urbanization.

For us, the climax of the book is an episode of shame. Pennsylvania Station was a masterpiece of the Beaux-Arts, and a sparkling jewel of New York. It was the largest building ever erected for rail travel.

The Main Waiting Room:

The Concourse:

The jewel was replaced by this slab:

This was necessary because the second Madison Square Garden had been demolished for the headquarters of the New York Life Insurance Company. The new train station was forced completely underground:

No wonder travelers are weary. No wonder the modern station is kept hidden underground. No wonder a New York Times editorial lamented, "And we will probably be judged not by the monuments we build but by those we have destroyed."

This book was enjoyable, despite the lesson we learned from it, that progress can sometimes be a step backward.

Confessions

2007-09-14T05:25:00.000-07:00

If you haven't already done so, go read the September issue.

Book Thirty-Two

2007-09-13T17:50:00.000-07:00

The thirty-second book we read this year is The Jesus Mysteries: Was the "Original Jesus" a Pagan God?, by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy.

This is an intriguing book that explores the beginnings of Christianity. Since the publication of the Nag Hammadi texts, there has been a wealth of new theories concerning Jesus and the religion he is said to have founded. In the Information Age it has become impossible for any organization to suppress knowledge and opinion and dissent. Writings that had for centuries been denied, hidden, and destroyed by the Church present quite a different view of the Christian religion and its tradition.

The major thrust of the authors' premise is that of a Gnostic foundation of Christianity. The Catholic and Protestant religions are offshoots of Christianity that have been most successful in appealing to the masses. Though they have been forced nearly out of existence, the Gnostics comprised a majority of believers at the time the religion was being formed. They did, and still do, understand that the New Testament was simply a rewriting of ancient pagan myths. The Jesus Mysteries Thesis is that Christianity is not a new and unique revelation, but a Jewish adaptation of the perennial Pagan mystery religion. Each tradition consisted of Outer Mysteries, which were myths and rituals of common knowledge, and Inner Mysteries, which were sacred secrets known only to initiates. At the heart of the Mysteries has always been a dying and resurrecting godman, variously known as Osiris, Dionysus, Attis, Adonis, Bacchus, Mithras, and, of course, Jesus.

The first chapter makes explicit the commonality of each of these myths. The composite Osiris-Dionysus was regarded as God made flesh, the savior, and the Son of God. His father was God and his mother was a mortal virgin. He was born in a cave on December 25 before three shepherds. He offered his followers the chance to be born again through the rites of baptism. He turned water into wine at a marriage ceremony. He rode into town on a donkey as people honored him with palm leaves. He died at Eastertime as a sacrifice for the sins of the world. After his death, he descended to hell, and three days later rose from the dead to ascend to heaven. His followers awaited his return as the judge during the Last Days. His death and resurrection were celebrated by a ritual meal of bread and wine, which symbolized his body and blood. The historical biblical accounts of Jesus sound strikingly similar to the myths of Osiris-Dionysus.

The authors rely heavily on various texts that were never canonized by the fledgling Church such as alternative gospels, ancient Greek and Roman works, Egyptian and Jewish texts. They follow each point back in time, examining the ancient classics, the formative Gnostics, the early Church fathers, and early Church philosophers and critics who were on the scene as the religion was being born. They rearrange the books of the New Testament in the order they were written and demonstrate that it is not so much a history of actual events as a history of the evolution of Christian mythology. The four canonical gospels contain so many contradictions and inconsistencies that we are hard pressed to believe they are each historical accounts of actual events, or that they are the Divine Word, for what God would be so confused and confusing?

What, one might wonder, is the Inner Mystery? If one is looking for a concrete explanation, it will not be found in this book. Perhaps one of the best places for an answer to this question is the Apocryphon Iohannis, the preeminent Gnostic Gospel. In general terms, the mysteries lead one to the revelation of an eternal light indwelling life, a divine image of the soul, a salvific experience of transcendence. Though it is universal, it is also highly personal, and therefore has always been a threat to organized religion.

This book has changed our outlook on western religion. We had always felt that the Bible, and in particular the New Testament, was filled with stories that, though not eye-witness accounts meant to be taken literally, had a basis in historical events. Any number of books offer a convincing picture of the historical Jesus, stripping the gospels down to their most basic units of truth. Now we see that it is more likely the Bible is pure myth in the tradition of the beliefs of man since belief began. Instead of a divine experience that begins in history with the life of one man, we can now experience the divine presence that has been known to man since before history. And, somewhat surprisingly, the myth of Jesus makes belief easier than the literal truth of Jesus.

We would highly recommend this book to anyone with an open mind about religion, anyone who is a believer of critical thinking, anyone who has ever felt at all uncomfortable with a top-down religion. This book contains copious notes, so one may examine for oneself the evidence for the authors' claims. A loving God desires us to know and experience divinity on our own, not simply accept what we are told. Only a despotic God would demand us to accept Him on faith alone.

Mark Your Calendar

2007-08-31T17:35:00.000-07:00

Book Thirty-One

2007-08-24T15:11:00.000-07:00

Can a play show the very truth and nature of love?

The thirty-first book we read this year is the screenplay Shakespeare in Love, by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard. We chose this book because we have seen the film, which moves so fast, and we wanted the opportunity to take more time with the lines, to understand and appreciate them better.

For those who do not know the story, it purports to tell how William Shakespeare came to write Romeo and Juliet. It is full of Shakespearean references, wit, and wordplay that can be more fully appreciated for themselves by a leisured reading. And those who have studied Shakespeare closely and know all his work will probably find even more delight than do we who are merely acquainted with Shakespeare. The film is fantastic, so we read this screenplay not so much for the story as to understand how the story was constructed. Our purpose was perhaps a writer's, or screen-writer's, but a reader will not be disappointed. A quote on the rear wrapper of the book summarizes Shakespeare in Love perfectly: "One of the ... funniest, most enchanting, most romantic ... and best written tales ever spun from the vast legend of Shakespeare."

Young Will is fighting writers' block in order to produce his newest comedy, Romeo and Ethel, the Pirate's Daughter. He claims the play is all in his head, and he needs only to find his muse for it all to pour out on paper.

The story is filled with rivalries. There are two competing theatres, the Curtain and the Rose. A Puritan preacher rails against them both, saying, "And the Rose smells thusly rank by any name! I say a plague on both their houses!" In one scene Will meets his most serious competitor, Christopher Marlowe, and they discuss their work. Marlowe has a new play already written, and has a better title than Will has for his. Marlowe helps Will brainstorm the story, suggesting Romeo is Italian, always in and out of love, meets the daughter of his enemy, whose brother kills Romeo's friend in a duel. Marlowe becomes confused about who Will's play is meant for, and says "I thought your play was for Burbage." Will replies, "This is a different one." To which Marlowe asks, "A different one you haven't written?"

When Will finally feels inspired to write the first scene of his play, he is thinking about a woman named Rosaline with whom he is having a serious affair. He would immortalize her in words, but he catches her with another man. When he delivers the scene, the theatre owner is confused because it involves Romeo and Rosaline instead of Ethel. When Will writes about his play in a letter, he describes it thus:

A comedy of quarrelling families reconciled in the discovery of Romeo to be the very same Capulet cousin stolen from the cradle and fostered to manhood by his Montague mother that was robbed of her own child by the Pirate King!

Will disguises himself among a troupe of musicians in order to gain entrance to a posh gathering. During a changing-partners dance (the very same one you get in every Romeo and Juliet), he sees for the first time Viola, and falls madly in love. Viola is a well-born lady thrilled by the theatre and who dreams of being in a company of players. Her favorite playwright is William Shakespeare, and she knows all his works by heart. While disguised as a young man auditioning for the part of Romeo, she has already met Will. Now they are attracted to one another, Will visits below her balcony, where their conversation is regularly interrupted by Viola's nurse. Will is immediately inspired to write another scene, in which the character of the Pirate King is transformed into a lady's nurse.

At one rehearsal, Will berates Viola as Romeo for using too much emotion at the beginning of the play. During this conversation, he conceives of Juliet, which again confuses the owner of the theatre, who is still expecting Ethel. Will asks Viola as Romeo what she will do in the second act when Romeo meets the love of his life. "I am very sorry, sir," she replies, "I have not seen Act Two." "Of course you have not!" he replies. "I have not written it!" Will leaves this encounter inspired again. When he announces his need to write a sonnet, the theatre owner is confused again, for he is expecting a play.

Will is heartbroken to learn that Viola has been given to another man to wed. But the love of Will and Viola is ungovernable and overthrows their lives. After they spend the night together, they debate whether Will should stay or go, whether it is day or night. He has found his muse, and he continues to pour out his play, basing his scenes on everything that happens between him and Viola. Lovemaking follows Viola's private rehearsal of Will's newest scene, which follows the actual recital of the play at the theatre, which follows Will's inspired writing following another night of lovemaking--until we no longer can be sure if what is happening is real or acted, spontaneous or scripted. It has all become the same.

The Queen enters the story. She has a discussion with Viola about theatre, and proclaims, "But playwrights teach nothing about love, they make it pretty, they make it comical, or they make it lust. They cannot make it true." To which Viola haughtily replies, "Oh, but they can!" So the Queen suggests a wager to see whether a play can show the very truth and nature of love.

Marlowe is killed offstage in a bar fight. Viola's husband-to-be has mistaken Will for Marlowe, so the news he brings to Viola is only that a great playwright she knew has been killed. She believes it was Will. When the truth is revealed, Will finds the inspiration for the final twists to his play, conceived as a comedy and completed as a tragedy. Though ostensibly written for the theatre, what Will has really produced is an erotic gift meant for one. This is symbolized by Will presenting to Viola a complete hand-written copy.

Viola is inevitably married, and on the same day the first performance of Romeo and Juliet is scheduled. Viola escapes her new husband and goes to the theatre. The law of the land has forbidden her, as a woman, to perform on stage, so she is banned from acting the role of Romeo for which she had been rehearsing. Will takes on the role himself. And on this fateful day the young man who plays the role of Juliet has had his voice change. Viola knows the play by heart and accepts the risk of the role of Juliet, despite the law. The play that was based on their real love becomes reality played, and a show of the very truth and nature of love. And this marvelous screenplay does the same.

There are probably few facts in this play which concern the conception and creation of Romeo and Juliet. But this is a wonderful story, and perfectly plausible. We want to believe it. And that is, in part, because this screenplay has also shown the very truth and nature of artistic creation. So read the book and see the film, both will charm and delight.

Book Thirty

2007-08-18T14:34:00.000-07:00

Why do we choose a certain book to read?

We wanted to find out about a gentleman from the sixteenth century called Chastelard. His most noteworthy achievement was that he paid for an unsuccessful amorous adventure with his own death. Before his untimely demise, he was among the retinue that accompanied Mary Stuart from France to Scotland. We found some information about her and the voyage that referenced another of her retinue, Brantome. Brantome was a major chronicler of the courts of France, and the account in his memoirs of Mary's adventures would have interested us if we had found it. We didn't, but another of his books, Lives of Fair and Gallant Ladies, we found at BookMooch, and as soon as it arrived it became our thirtieth read of the year.

Brantome's real name was Pierre de Bourdeille. The historical accuracy of his writing is often suspect. His knowledge of the personal lives of royalty, particularly among the Valois, was great. Most of his writing fell under just two subject headings: men and women. It is these intimacies of women which he records in this book.

In what I say of women, I do speak of some, not of all; and of these, I do use only false names and garbled descriptions. I do keep their identity so carefully hid, none may discover it, and never a breath of scandal can come on them but by mere conjecture and vague suspicion, never by certain inference.

Brantome makes this type of assertion in a few places. Yet are there thirty-one pages of notes included in this book which give the identities of those Brantome mentions. He was correct that his writing could never bring scandal upon any of his subjects, for none of his work was ever published during his lifetime, or the lifetime of most of his contemporaries.

This book is divided into seven discourses: Of Ladies Which Do Make Love, and Their Husbands Cuckolds; On the Question Which Doth Give the More Content in Love, Whether Touching, Seeing, or Speaking; Concerning the Beauty of a Fine Leg, and the Virtue the Same Doth Possess; Concerning Old Dames as Fond to Practise Love as Ever the Young Ones Be; Telling How Fair and Honourable Ladies Do Love Brave and Valiant Men, and Brave Men Courageous Women; Of How We Should Never Speak Ill of Ladies, and of the Consequences of So Doing; and Concerning Married Women, Widows and Maids: to Wit, Which of These Same Be Better Than the Other to Love. Each discourse is comprised mostly of anecdotes strung together without much purpose other than to illustrate the general theme.

A Spanish dame, escorted one day by a gallant cavalier through the rooms of the King's Palace and happening to pass by a particular dark and secret recess, the gentleman, piquing himself on his respect for women and his Spanish discretion, saith to her: "A good place, my lady, if it were another than your ladyship." To this the lady merely answered the very same words back again, "Yes, Sir, a good place, if it were another than your lordship." Thus did she imply his cowardliness, and rebuke the same, for that he had not taken of her in so good a place what she did wish and desire to lose, as another and a bolder man would have done in like case.

We found such anecdotes of the First Discourse to be highly entertaining. As the book proceded, the discourses became less interesting. At times Brantome seemed to stray from his theme and merely recount the machinations of royalty and succession. The final discourse begins with an interesting theory, but the particulars which follow don't really expand or prove it.

The biographical and historical essays included in the book all suggest that Brantome wrote with a highly moral tone. This is not something we caught on to. Often his tone is playful, conveyed with a wry sense of humor. No matter what the subjects of his anecdotes do, he has high regard for them so long as they are highborn. He also seemed to have great respect for all the ladies he wrote about. Indeed, in his first discourse, nearly every single one of the ladies who has cuckolded her husband is described by Brantome as "fair and honourable." Perhaps times were different then.

This was an interesting book to read, though we probably would not have read much of it at all if it didn't fall within the scope of our research. For some light enjoyment, we would highly recommend the first discourse. If one avoids the remainder of the book, not much will be missed, unless one has some specialised interests.

Bibliohome

2007-08-16T07:43:00.000-07:00

Check out this amazing house created by Livio de Marchi. That's my retirement home! (Or at least I'd like to have the roof for my retirement.) There's even more inside. For a tour, visit his website.

Book Twenty-Nine

2007-07-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

The twenty-ninth book we read this year is The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, by Alexander McCall Smith. This book was selected for our Literary Salon book club. We have also had several people who have asked for it in the shop. And Doppelganger seemed to have enjoyed it.

In our reading we employed a free sample of the new Dog-Ear© Pagemark, a product of Magenta Enterprises. This is a small square piece of colored plastic similar to the flap on a pocket protector. This slides over the corner of the page you want to mark. A small sliver is left sticking up over the top and out beyond the side of the book. The benefits over a bookmark are that they do not weaken the binding. The benefits over a dart is that it is bigger and therefore easier not to lose, as well as soft, so if one does lose it while reading in bed, one does not get poked in the middle of the night by a metal point.

We can't say what exactly we were expecting of this novel, but it was not a story about a fat woman in Botswana who decides to open a detective agency. Precious Ramotswe is characterized as a traditional African woman possessing all the best qualities, which includes her size. She is practical and good-natured and a person one would enjoy having for a friend. Though some have labeled the book a mystery, it is not one in the sense of uncovering clues and figuring out whodunit. This is really a book about a woman whom the blurb calls "delightfully cunning and enormously engaging" and who spends her days as a private investigator as a way to help others.

Mma Ramotswe has several cases which she solves quickly and sensibly. The thread that seems to run through the whole book is her attractive qualities. She has been married before, and swears she does not need a husband now, yet nearly every man she encounters finds her to be the perfect candidate for a wife. The book closes with her facing another proposal, from a man who has already been rejected and will not give up. We will not reveal the outcome, but it is true to Mma Ramotswe's nature.

The cases she accepts are all intersting and engaging, and for the most part they are tame compared with those faced by Kay Scarpetta or the Woman's Murder Club. The book is refreshing in this way. There are also descriptions and details which convey the sense of place and some of its history, but no travelogues or political dissertations. The one thing that bothered us about the writing (which should come as no surprise to those who have read several of our reviews) was the shifts in point-of-view. Though this is Mma Ramotswe's story, there often suddenly appear paragraphs that are from the viewpoint of another character. Without even a scene break, such shifts serve more to interrupt the spell of the story than to shine new light on a character or plot development.

We would probably not pick up any other books in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency widely acclaimed and highly popular series. The characters of this book often serve bush tea, and this is just not our cup of tea. There really is nothing wrong with the book, though. If one is looking for some light reading, something free of sex and slaughter, this book should serve well. It makes the perfect familiar summer reading.

Book Twenty-Eight

2007-07-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

The twenty-eighth book we read this year is The Lost Constitution, by William Martin. This part-historical, part-detective novel follows a rare book hunter on his search through the past and present to find an original draft of the Constitution. You can read our review of the book at Estella's Revenge.

Be sure to also check out our column, this month about book donations.

The July theme for Estella's Revenge is Young At Heart, and this issue is bulging with interesting writing. Don't miss it!

Book Twenty-Seven

2007-06-25T18:14:00.000-07:00

The twenty-seventh book we read this year is Bram Stoker's Dracula: The Film and the Legend, by Francis Ford Coppola and James V. Hart. It is what the publisher calls a Pictorial Moviebook, and contains the complete shooting script of the 1992 film, excerpts from the original novel, and more than 160 photographs of the film production. And it was another book we acquired free through BookMooch!

Stoker's book is one of our favorite novels; Mr. Coppola's adaptation is one of our favorite films. It is the version most faithful to the original novel, and incorporates styles and techniques from previous film versions, notably F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922), itself a classic. Our interest in this book was not so much for the script as for the literary and historical essays. Also included are revealing excerpts from Mr. Coppola's journal as he worked on the film, as well as behind-the-scenes details about the production.

The script closely follows the plot of the novel and adds a firm historical background. Some of the dialogue is new, anchored by direct passages from the novel done predominantly in voice-over. The script by itself doesn't make a successful story. A good script is the foundation upon which all films are built, but it makes little sense alone. The director becomes a sort of visual chef, envisioning a final product, gathering the necessary ingredients, and then mixing them just right. This book contains information about Mr. Coppola's methods as a director, the costumes, the film-making techniques, the casting, the editing process, and the importance, though subtle in its effects, of thematic cohesion. What we found most interesting is the extent to which verisimilitude is pursued. Every detail necessary--from coins, to letters, to actual sets--is mocked up and then produced, so they are no longer mere props, but assume a reality of their own. Seeing is believing, and film has become a far more effective medium for suspending the disbelief of an audience.

Though there are literary tidbits throughout, this book is geared toward film fans. The wonderful images from the film by themselves are worth a look. It is also easy to read, and if you have never sunk your teeth into the novel, this book will give you a thorough overview of the story and its history.

Book Twenty-Six

2007-06-09T14:48:00.000-07:00

The twenty-sixth book we read this year is Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated and with a biographical chronicle by M.D. Herter Norton. We picked this up at a sale on a whim, because once upon a dark and yearning time we had read and enjoyed some of Rilke's poetry and The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.

This is a collection of ten letters written by Rilke in response to a young aspiring poet who had sent him a letter and a poem for critique. We are shown only this side of the correspondence, though there is a brief introduction written by the aspiring poet. Rilke carefully and justifiably avoids any criticism of the poem, and instead goes on to explain why he does it, and how the poet should live and work.

There is little of a personal nature in his letters. The second half of the book consists of a chronicle that explains some of the things that were happening in Rilke's life during the time he wrote the letters, as well as gives some biographical background. This is a brief book, and easily could be read in one sitting.

We would recommend this book to writers, or anyone with creative intent. It provides a good outline of Rilke's theories on, among other things, poetry, life, God, and, with particular emphasis, the importance of solitude. Rilke did not have an easy life. Though faced often with difficulties, and intent on maintaining his principles, he does not seem to have pitied himself, or stopped pushing toward his goal of artistic creation. He appreciated both sides of everything.

And in fact artistic experience lies so incredibly close to that of sex, to its pain and its ecstasy, that the two manifestations are indeed but different forms of one and the same yearning and delight.

Though the subject is not addressed in these letters, Rilke even made a conscious effort to embrace death.

In these letters, as in his poetry, Rilke wrote in a manner that Norton describes as

uncompromising and courageous and truthful, charming and kind....

Rilke strikes us as one of the most honest writers, and one who is wholly original in his observations. His description in later life of his experience writing prose in The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge provides a nice example of his style:

In writing poetry, one is always aided and even carried away by the rhythm of exterior things; for the lyric cadence is that of nature: of the waters, the wind, the night. But to write rhythmic prose one must go deep into oneself and find the anonymous and multiple rhythm of the blood. Prose needs to be built like a cathedral; there one is truly without a name, without ambition, without help: on scaffoldings, alone with one's consciousness.

We believe there is a place in art for criticism; Rilke did not. He shares the most basic part of his reasoning in this quote, which we read more significantly as the reason art transcends all:

With nothing can one approach a work of art so little as with critical words: ... most events are inexpressible, taking place in a realm which no word has ever entered, and more inexpressible than all else are works of art, mysterious experiences, the life of which, while ours passes away, endures.

Book Twenty-Five

2007-06-08T05:47:00.000-07:00

The twenty-fifth book we read this year is The Footnote: A Curious History, by Anthony Grafton. We picked it up because it sounded like an interesting subject, what the publisher describes as the weapon of pedants and the scourge of undergraduates.

Mr. Grafton places the origin, and current standard, of the modern footnote with Pierre Bayle in his Historical and Critical Dictionary of 1696. Mr. Grafton finds the form of citation expanded by Leopold von Ranke, and then polished by Edward Gibbon. The narrative of this book follows these authors, and a handful of others, through their classic works to highlight the development in style and purpose of footnotes.

Mr. Grafton likens footnotes to anthills, swarming with constructive and combative activity. Their purpose, he says, is to offer the empirical support for stories told and arguments presented. A text persuades, and the footnotes prove. As would be expected, this curious history stands upon a firm foundation of footnotes. Unfortunately, most of the footnotes in this book are dry, and Mr. Grafton's prose is usually abstruse, as in this sample:

But the glacial history of practice challenges the dramatic tale of seismic disciplinary changes traditionally proclaimed in prefaces and manifestos and later retold in many histories of historiography.

Can anyone dispute that? Such sentences make it clear this book grew out of a dissertation, and would be better appreciated in an ivory tower than in our comfy chair. Noel Coward spoke for many an average reader who feels like footnotes are an interruption of the narrative when he said,

having to read a footnote resembles having to go downstairs to answer the door while in the midst of making love.

Other critics contend that a text with extensive footnotes does not offer the reader the results of research so much as the paraphernalia of learning, producing a display meant to make the scholar appear learned. Voltaire, in particular, often expressed a strong distaste for scholarly details. In 1743, Gottlieb Wilhelm Rabener published a book which consisted entirely of footnotes, because he admittedly sought only fame and fortune:

one wins these not by writing one's own text but by commenting on those of others.

While footnotes force scholars to dig deep into primary sources, there is no guarantee of the veracity of those sources. The history of a king written by a contemporary was as likely to contain myriad inaccuracies, since the author probably lacked insight into the motives of the king. Evidence, particularly in the history of the church, was regularly manipulated, as when Roman scholars, to meet the popular demand for the bones of martyrs, assembled skeletons from the remains in the catacombs, assigned them identities, and produced official documents to verify them. Often, as with the Donation of Constantine or the Letter of Aristeas, footnotes and the direct insertion of source material were put in the service of outright fraud. The most valuable research always includes a comparison of a variety of sources.

The demand for footnotes produces a paradox: one must write an original sentence and at the same time prove it has a source. Though detailed citations may be of extreme value in academic writing, we believe bibliographical references would serve in a work meant for public consumption. We can even appreciate the footnote that

retains obdurate nuggets of source material that refuse to be refined down.

We prefer above all footnotes that are fun and broaden the main text, as those in Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Mr. Grafton's best footnote comes on the last page of his book. It is a quote from Harry Belafonte's story of self-education, and leaves us with a laugh. He discovers footnotes while reading W.E.B. Du Bois, and wants to pursue the references.

I went to a library with a long list of books. The librarian said, 'That's too many, young man. You're going to have to cut it down.' I said, 'I can make it very easy. Just give me everything you got by Ibid.'

Book Twenty-Four

2007-06-07T06:19:00.000-07:00

The twenty-fourth book we read this year is Old Books in the Old World: Reminiscences of Book Buying Abroad, by Leona Rostenberg and Madeleine B. Stern.

The dust jacket calls these two formidable women the "Holmes and Watson" of antiquarian books. Ms. Rostenberg's experience began with an interest in history, and included a five-year apprenticeship in New York with a knowledgeable European dealer. In 1944 she entered the rare book business under her own name. Ms. Stern's experience began with an interest in literature. In 1945, she joined her friend as partner and protege.

Ms. Rostenberg's knowledge was gained mainly in apprenticeship, and she passed this on to Ms. Stern in the same way. This was the traditional method of learning and becoming expert in the business.

We observed too that many French firms were family affairs. ... When we first ventured overseas for books, we dealt, for example, with Clavreuil Pere and with Chamonal Pere. As the years passed, the sons took over. And now, alas, we find that many of the sons have gone, replaced in France by their sons--the grandsons of those who started us on our way.

It is a tradition that is slowly fading away. Peter B. Howard, owner of Serendipity Books and proud father of two nurses who are uninterested in antiquarian books, says that bookstores today are fragile things, and are almost always one-generational.

After the war, Europe offered many treasures to the intrepid book dealer.

The Old World might have been low on food and minus many of the comforts of life, but during the decade of 1947 to 1957 early printed books were available en masse.

Their focus began on the sixteenth century, and as years passed, and such books became harder to find, their focused shifted forward into the seventeenth century, and eventually into the eighteenth century. They were one of the few firms that traveled overseas right after the end of the war, and they became quite well known. Though they still venture abroad, they used diaries and correspondence on their trips during that first decade only. After that, travel and family had changed, and they were no longer alone among book dealers crossing the ocean in search of treasures.

The book is full of the characters of those European bookstores. The women record their impressions of the cities, and their excitement over their acquisitions. They did not record many specifics about the books, but this book includes retrospective narratives that embellish and detail their original writings. One of their diary entries offers a wonderful description of hunting through a bookshop:

The bated breath with which one glances at the shelves--the expectancy of taking down a vellum- or English calfback, the thrill of opening to a Renaissance titlepage with a charming woodcut or floral border--these are so inherent a part of the booktrade & such a pleasant concomitant of it that it is really a pity to buy just from catalogues.

Or, today, just from the internet.

Though they enjoyed the actual hunt, many of their own sales have been done by catalogue. And what they sell they first examine, absorb, and add to their wealth of knowledge, so they know much more than just books. Most sales of such antiquarian items are to institutions, not private collectors, and so with each sale the market becomes thinner and thinner. Many of the best books are now in permanent holdings. Though a thriving antiquarian market still exists, no longer is there the huge opportunity that Ms. Rostenberg and Ms. Stern enjoyed.

This book leaves us with the impression that these women were far more interested in the knowledge they could gain from old books than they profit they could make, though they were certainly able to earn a living at the business. They used that knowledge to write several other historical, biographical, and critical books on a variety of subjects that grew out of their original interests in history and literature. Just as importantly, they valued the knowledge and the friendliness of the dealers they visited, many of them year after year. An excursion to a single shop often lasted for two days and included exclusive access to special books, a guided tour of the bookshop, the owner's residence, the city, or all of them, and the sharing of a meal. The importance of these experiences are emphasized in the final sentence of this book:

The need and the love of books implies the need and the love of booksellers. They were--and, we add gratefully, they still are--inextricably bound one with the other.

Second Anniversary

2007-06-06T05:34:00.000-07:00

Today begins the week-long celebration of the second anniversary of Mad About Books in its present incarnation. This has not been a profitable experience, but we are still open for business, and plans are to continue.

Bookselling is a lesson in patience. Some days sales are good, some not so good at all. What is interesting is when a book that has been languishing on the shelf for so many years, passed over by so many readers, can, at any time, become the one book for which someone has been searching for years. There is no way to tell when that time will come. Nor is there any way to induce that time. And one can prepare for that moment as best as possible, read up on all the popular books, know the market, probe the patrons for their preferences, and there will be absolutely no way to tell which will be the next book to be happily discovered.

There is continual discovery when surrounded by 20,000 books. At times someone will ask for a certain title, and we will look for it on the shelf, and to our surprise it will be there. Some titles, 1984 for instance, we have sold several times. We have specially ordered books for special patrons. We have donated hundreds of books to numerous places throughout the community. We have met interesting people and listened to hours of personal stories. We have known success and failure. We have considered relocating the business, selling the business, and expanding the business.

Our hope for the third year is that not only our own patrons but everyone incorporate books more fully into life. That doesn't even have to mean reading more: A. Edward Newton wrote,

I know no greater pleasure than to light a good cigar, throw myself in an easy chair, and let my eyes range over a wall covered with books.

Some people will spend three dollars a day on a cafe latte yet complain they can't afford the price of a new book. We say, skip a day and spend that three dollars on a used book that can be enjoyed longer than fifteen minutes--and in our shop get that coffee for free! Keep your old shoes for a while longer and buy a new book instead. Turn off the television and read. Make a habit of buying one book a week. Simply visit a bookshop and marvel at the world at your fingertips. Practise more often the necessary acts of devotion.

We look forward to our third anniversary. Nothing makes owning or visiting a bookshop more worth while than the excuse to go out and hunt for more books.

Heat

2007-06-01T07:13:00.000-07:00

The June issue is now online, and it's BIGGER than ever. Go read up, and don't forget to check out our column From the Bookshop.

Book Twenty-Three

2007-05-31T07:33:00.000-07:00

The twenty-third book we read (along with the other Slaves of Golconda) was The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford.

This book reminded us of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie in the way it shifts back and forth in time to tell the story. At several points in the book the narrator Mr. Dowell remarks that he has brought his story up to a point that he has already referenced. In the introduction, Mark Schorer likens the style to a hall of mirrors. The beginning of Part Four makes this explicit:

I have, I am aware, told this story in a very rambling way so that it may be difficult for anyone to find his path through what may be a sort of maze. I cannot help it. I have stuck to my idea of being in a country cottage with a silent listener, hearing between the gusts of the wind and amidst the noises of the distant sea the story as it comes. And, when one discusses an affair--a long, sad affair--one goes back, one goes forward. One remembers points that one has forgotten and one explains them all the more minutely since one recognizes that one has forgotten to mention them in their proper places and that one may have given, by omitting them, a false impression.

We don't quite know what to make of this book. It was certainly not as smashing as we had expected. The story concerns two conventional, mostly sterile, marriages, and an affair between one of the women and the other man. Dowell does not find out his wife has been involved with his friend until after she dies. Through it all Dowell takes pains to assure his silent listener that the other man, Mr. Ashburnham, is a fine gentleman, a good soldier. Mrs. Dowell, however, is only one in a line of women with whom Ashburnham dallies.

The four major characters all seem as if they are wandering without moral compass. All that seems to matter is the pretence of happiness. Perhaps today, with the rampant popularity of divorce, we look back at such marriages differently. In order to find Ashburnham "the model of humanity," Dowell must have suspended certain standards. In spite of everything, he says,

It is impossible for me to think of Edward Ashburnham as anything but straight, upright, and honourable.

Yet we must take Dowell's word for it, because he never describes any of the innumerable wonderful deeds Ashburnham performs.

Dowell idolizes Ashburnham, wants to be like him, and indeed, he even comes to mimic Ashburnham's desire for a young lady. Perhaps he harbors a secret love for Ashburnham. His unwavering esteem for Ashburnham makes his judgement suspect. And he certainly relates many details about his wife's affair for having been oblivious to it until her death. These things make him seem an unreliable narrator. This begs the question: What is the point of an unreliable narrator? Without the balance of another point-of-view, how is the reader to understand the degree of the narrator's delusions? Or the reason?

Mr. Ford thought this his best work. We have not read anything else by him, so we cannot offer any comparison. This book is certainly well-written, with correct grammar and sentence structure and punctuation. This book also presents us with another narrator who feels nothing, and so the reader feels nothing as well.

Since the book began at the time of the ending, the ending seemed to come all at once. The characters lived on, but there was simply no more story to tell. All the change and lessons learned had come along the way, and all that remained was anticlimax. We have a decided preference for stories that end dramatically, with a conclusion that we suddenly realise has been pointed to from the very beginning. Though this novel is subtitled "A Tale of Passion," it could be better described as reserved. And though the narrator calls it the saddest story he has ever heard, there is more consolation than sadness.

...cross-posted at Slaves of Golconda.

Book Twenty-Two

2007-05-30T17:02:00.000-07:00

The twenty-second book we read this year was The World According to Garp, by John Irving, for the Literary Salon at the bookshop. Mr. Irving had published three previous novels, and this was the one that made him a best-selling author. It was first published in select parts, and then complete, between 1976 and 1979. We were first made aware of it some summers later by an enticing young neighbor, and we were enticed into reading it. This is one of those books that is good enough to read again, whether enticed a second time or not.

The story begins with Garp's mother, who will continue to play a major role in the plot. One of our old literature professors allowed her class to choose a modern book to read, and this was the book chosen. However, after reading the first chapter, she disallowed it. Why? We can only speculate that she took offense to Mr. Irving's serious but humorous treatment of sexuality and women's rights. Perhaps the character didn't espouse the professor's particular brand of feminism. It was her loss, and to her discredit: who can teach literature that refuses to read certain, well, literature?

The book starts with a jolt and carries that intensely serious humor right through to the finish. We follow the entire life of Garp, from conception to after death, from an omniscient viewpoint that allows Mr. Irving to flash-back as well as flash-forward to present his protagonist in full. Everything makes sense, and there is nothing that is not somehow connected to something else in the novel. Garp is a fiction writer, so we are also privy to many of his autobiographical comments. The close of the first scene, which introduces his mother, establishes the manner of citation which will punctuate the book:

"My mother," Garp wrote, "was a lone wolf."

We get to read Garp's first novella in its entirety, from which some of the ideas Mr. Irving will use in his next book, The Hotel New Hampshire. A good example of the omniscient style concerns this story:

Helen would later say that it is in the conclusion of "The Pension Grillparzer" that
we can glimpse what the world according to Garp would be like.

In this way the storyline follows a thematic thread rather than a chronological one. This facilitates the flash-forward technique, as when we are shown a rejection letter Garp receives from a publisher, after which:

Almost fifteen years later, when Garp published his third novel, that same editor at Tinch's favorite magazine would write Garp a letter. The letter would be very flattering to Garp, and to his work, and it would ask Garp to submit anything new he might have written to Tinch's favorite magazine. But T.S. Garp had a tenacious memory and the indignation of a badger. He found the old rejection note that had called his Grillparzer story "only mildly interesting"; the note was crusty with coffee stains and had been folded so many times that it was torn at the creases, but Garp enclosed it with a letter to the editor at Tinch's favorite magazine. Garp's letter said:
I am only mildly interested in your magazine, and I am still doing nothing new with language or with form. Thanks for asking me, though.

Garp responds with exactly the same wording as in his rejection letter, and Mr. Irving wins the appreciation of every writer who has ever received a rejection letter.

We also get a synopsis of Garp's second novel, and see some of the correspondence between Garp and his editor, as well as Garp and his readers. Then later we get to read the first chapter of his third novel, which is followed immediately by:

"What do you mean, 'This is Chapter One'?" Garp's editor, John Wolf, wrote him. "How can there be any more of this? There is entirely too much as it stands! How can you possibly go on?"

The book is characterized by the editor as an X-rated soap opera, with the hope that the visceral reality of the language and the intensity of the characters justifies it. And, of course, this is the book that makes Garp a best-selling author. One of those intense characters is a husband and father who is overprotective of his family, and especially his children, just as Garp is. Garp makes a practise of chasing down drivers who speed through his neighborhood and then asking them, if they must speed, to do it somewhere else. It was this that made a young man realise that breaking the speed limit in anyone's neighborhood is not only against the law, it is also disrespectful to the people who live there. Along with his joy for living, it is this overprotectiveness that goes the furthest in making Garp a sympathetic character.

Mr. Irving's plot borders on being over the top, yet, much like Garp's third novel, it is redeemed by his style and characterisation. The World According to Garp is at once absurd and brutally real. There is a film adaptation of the novel which, having seen it, makes difficult reading the book without imagining Robin Williams. All the major events in the novel stuck with us from that first reading, though they seemed somehow bigger. The novel is sizeable, at 609 pages in paperback, yet the incidents pass quickly. And though they pass quickly, they are never meaningless or forgotten, for they accumulate until they reach a critical mass. And the point, though not the details, of the climax has already been alluded to and foreshadowed, so what happens may be a surprise, but we are not surprised that something happens. But this novel is not about building up to a climax, it is about creating an entire world, and showing that world through the eyes of one character, and forming an incredible fiction which makes one close the book and sigh, and marvel at such a life as Garp's.

Book Twenty-One

2007-05-24T16:55:00.000-07:00

The twenty-first book we have read this year is Circles: Fifty Round Trips Through History, Technology, Science, Culture, by James Burke.

We were first introduced to Mr. Burke in 1979 on his television documentary Connections. In each episode of the show, the scientific historian began with a modern object and then reached back in time to show how it came to be: one discovery would lead to a new invention that would provoke a theory that would inspire an experiment that would produce an unforeseen byproduct that would become the essential ingredient for the modern object. An amazing journey.

Circles offers a slight variation on this formula. The dust jacket says each essay follows

a chain of consequential events that ends precisely where it began.

We find this statement to be somewhat misleading, because the events are rarely consequential, one resulting from another. Rather the essays follow the connections that take place in Mr. Burke's knowledgeable mind. A good example of this is the connection between an ancient Indian language and identification of the elements: Baron Jon Jacob Berzelius, who established modern chemical symbology, was a "fan" of Karl Gauss, whose method of least squares could accurately predict a planetary orbit, and who had been "affected" by the German enthusiasm for Sanskrit. Another example is the path that leads from Copernicus' De Revolutionibus to Andreas Vesalius' On the Structure of the Body: the editor of Copernicus' book was also the editor of a book by Girolamo Cardano who once cast Vesalius' horoscope. The underlying scheme seems more like "six degrees of separation" than "one thing leads to another."

At times Mr. Burke does shows us how one breakthrough or scientific advance results only from so many previous discoveries: Karl Landsteiner discovered the four blood groups in 1909; in the same year Alexis Carrel developed a new suturing technique; a few years later Charles Lindburgh developed a perfusion pump for Carrel's use in maintaining a body's circulation during a heart operation--all of which helped make possible, and without any one would make impossible, advanced modern surgery. Mr. Burke also makes the point again and again that the first person reputed to have discovered or invented something was usually not, that it had been previously done and forgotten, or the idea was appropriated. The best example of this: Einstein's theory of relativity followed Ernst Mach's, then known as Positivism. And

Mach got Positivism from Comte who got it from St. Simon who got it from Condillac who got it from Locke, who....

The book is bursting with interesting facts in nearly every sentence, among them: Francis Scott Key wrote "The Star Spangled Banner" to the tune of Londoner John Smith's song "Anacreon in Heaven;" weather forecasting was generally unscientific and based on myth and magic until French emperor Napoleon III called for the establishment of forecasting services in 1854 (though it sometimes seems forecasts are still no more accurate); in 1946 John Mauchly used vacuum valves to automate calculations in a machine called ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator), the world's first electronic computer; there are now eighteen holes on a golf course because in the 1850s the sport became so popular that Royal St. Andrew's split their fairways lengthwise to allow simultaneous play in both directions.

Mr. Burke's style is full of humor and wordplay, making the reading lively. Each essay is only a few pages in length, so the accumulation of facts never becomes tedious. Many times, as in the case of Robert Owen, a person or discovery shows up in several different essays. Of another such person, author Prosper Merimee, Mr. Burke says,

you can't cross the French nineteenth century without bumping into him, since he made it his business to know everybody who was anybody.

In this way this book is similar to The Knowledge Web, in which Mr. Burke created a sort of hypertext in print, so that every reference of a person or subject points to the others, allowing the reader to follow his own path through the book.

In his 1985 book The Day the Universe Changed, Mr. Burke presents the theory that when man's views of reality are changed by knowledge, reality itself changes.

Since the structure of reality changes over time, science can only answer contemporary questions about a reality defined in contemporary terms and investigated with contemporary tools. ... There is no metaphysical, super-ordinary, final, absolute reality. There is no special direction to events. The universe is what we say it is.

He suggests such a relativist view

might well use the new electronic data systems to provide a structure unlike any which has gone before.

Mr. Burke closed his book with this prophetic sentence:

It is time that knowledge became more accessible to those to whom it properly belongs.

At the time of his writing, the only TCP/IP network was little more than a university network. The internet did not offer a truly public gateway until 1991. And today, the James Burke Institute for Innovation in Education makes use of this new structure to map the landscape of historical and scientific knowledge. The Institute's Knowledge Web provides an online portal for the exploration of information that allows for an almost infinite number of paths among people, places, things, and events.

Circles and his other books are not to be missed.

Folly in Don Quixote

2007-05-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

We just finished reading the Praise of Folly by Erasmus. We chose the book because the author was quoted from it in Carlos Fuentes' introduction to our edition of Don Quixote:

The reality of things depends solely on opinion. Everything in life is so diverse, so opposed, so obscure, that we cannot be assured of any truth.

The first sentence of the quote is what intrigued us, because we have spent a good deal of time exploring the dichotomies between reality and fantasy, or truth and fiction. And it turns out that much of what Erasmus has to say about Folly speaks directly to Don Quixote.

To start with, everyone accepts the truth of the well-known saying "Where fact is lacking, fiction is best", and so children are properly taught from the start the line "To play the fool in season is the height of wisdom". You can see now for yourselves what a great blessing Folly is....

We have read the first four chapters of the classic Tobias Smollett translation. We must ask ourselves, Is Don Quixote truly mad?

So eager and intangled was our Hidalgo in this kind of history, that he would often read from morning to night, and from night to morning again, without interruption; till at last, the moisture of his brain being quite exhausted with indefatigable watching and study, he fairly lost his wits: all that he had read of quarrels, enchantments, battles, challenges, wounds, tortures, amorous complaints, and other improbable conceits, took full possession of his fancy; and he believed all those romantic exploits so implicitly, that in his opinion, the holy scripture was not more true.

Granting the assumption that the holy scripture is true, we see Don Quixote interpreting his world precisely as Erasmus described. Early on there is a perfect example of how this works: Don Quixote approaches an inn, which he fancies a castle, expecting his arrival to be announced by a trumpet. Just then a local swine-herd

chanced to blow his horn, in order to collect his scattered subjects: immediately the knight's expectation was fulfilled, and concluding that now the dwarf had given the signal of his approach, he rode towards the inn with infinite satisfaction.

Wonderful! Pure folly, which Erasmus tells us is the key to happiness. How much brighter would be the life of Aldonza Lorenco if she imagined herself, as does Don Quixote, the princess Dulcinea del Toboso? Who is mad, those who fail to find beauty at every turn, or the man who adorns himself and his concerns with music, romance, and expression? Folly is Don Quixote's salvation. Indeed, when we imagine things to be what we want them to be, we can live with nothing less than infinite satisfaction.

Join in the reading and discussion of Don Quixote at Tilting at Windmills.

Book Twenty

2007-05-22T14:46:00.000-07:00

The twentieth book we have read this year is Vermeer's Camera: Uncovering the Truth Behind the Masterpieces, by Philip Steadman. Taking The Music Lesson as the foundation of his theory, Mr. Steadman presents a convincing argument that the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer employed a camera obscura in his work.

Almost all Vermeer has left to explain his style and himself are the paintings. This book goes a long way to logically filling in the gaps in our knowledge of the painter. The tiled floors Vermeer rendered in many of his scenes provided Mr. Steadman with a guide to physically reconstruct eleven paintings. In six of these eleven, when a camera obscura is placed at the point of view, the image produced is the exact same size as the actual painting.

A contemporary of Vermeer noted in his diary that "the most extraordinary and curious aspect" of Vermeer's works was the perspective. It is this mathematically precise perspective that causes our modern eye to find in Vermeer's paintings such a likeness to photography. That many areas of Vermeer's paintings appear to the eye as if out of focus also points to the use of the camera obscura. The reconstructions show remarkably similar effects.

Mr. Steadman tries to discover where Vermeer's room might have been, who might have taught the painter about optics, and the history of the camera obscura. He also addresses the possibilities of other methods for such precise painting, as well as those theories which argue against the use of the camera obscura. The book is full of diagrams, photographic reproductions of some paintings, as well as the paintings themselves. The mathematical results of his research are gathered in charts at the end of the book.

The Music Lesson is unique in that Vermeer revealed his working method, if not himself, in the painting. Above the head of the woman is a mirror which shows us the reflection of the painter's stool, easel, and the bottom of the wall to Vermeer's back. The arrangement of stool and easel is just as the artist in The Art of Painting has arranged his. From the appearance of the rear wall, Mr. Steadman is able to figure the precise measurements of the room. From there the approximate measurements of the props are deduced. All of these calculations verify the accuracy of Vermeer's perspective.

Before someone suggests the use of such an instrument makes Vermeer little more than a painter-by-number, or who merely traces his scenes, x-rays reveal no line drawings or sketches beneath the paint. A camera obscura would be an aid to capturing the precise ratios found in the paintings, but need not dictate the subject or the arrangement of the paintings. There are also many variations, such as several styles of floor tiles in what is apparently the same room, which shows Vermeer did not paint everything precisely as he saw it. In those eleven paintings shines his skill in choosing and arranging a subject, and then rendering it in a special style.

In the end Mr. Steadman reveals what he finds to be that special style: Vermeer was not so much a painter of a scene, like many of his Dutch contemporaries, as he was a painter of light. He exercizes great control over the lighting of his paintings through windows and shutters and curtains. He also has a tendency to leave the outlines of an object undefined, which the mind accounts for. The most obvious example is the nose of the Girl With a Pearl Earring (displayed and further examined with our seventeenth book), which is rendered in the same tone as the cheek, leaving the nose, upon close inspection, without form. Mr. Steadman explains,

Vermeer starts to paint patches of light and colour, not fingers or bodices or violas.

There is an excellent website that is a companion to the book, called Vermeer's Camera. There one will find a detailed synopsis of the book, many of the drawings and reconstructions, including some that are not in the book. Mr. Steadman also offers an additional essay similar in style and tone as the rest of the book on The Little Street. Whether or not you believe Mr. Steadman's hypothesis, the book and website provide an astounding wealth of surrounding information and detail concerning Vermeer and his works that anyone interested in the painter or the art would be well advised to read.

Book Nineteen

2007-05-20T08:14:00.000-07:00

We had a good old-fashioned small town garage sale this weekend, featuring 10,000 books, during which we read our nineteenth book this year, the Praise of Folly, by Erasmus.

Moriae Encomium was written with Thomas More as the intended audience. Folly, a woman, addresses a crowded assembly with a eulogy in praise of herself. The first half of the book celebrates in a bantering tone drunkeness, ignorance, self-love, flattery, forgetfulness, idleness, pleasure, madness, sensuality, revelry, and sound sleep. Folly says

I am the one--and indeed, the only one--whose divine powers can gladden the hearts of gods and men.

Erasmus then turns to satire in Folly's criticism of the politics of the time:

Picture the prince, such as some of them are today: a man ignorant of the law, well nigh an enemy to his people's advantage while intent on his personal convenience, a dedicated voluptuary, a hater of learning, freedom, and truth, without a thought for the interests of his country, and measuring everything in terms of his own profit and desires. Then give him a gold chain, symbol of the concord between all the virtues, a crown studded with precious stones to remind him that he must exceed all others in every heroic quality. Add a sceptre to symbolize justice and a wholly uncorrupted heart, and finally, the purple as an emblem of his overwhelming devotion to his people. If the prince were to compare these insignia with his way of life, I'm sure he would blush to be thus adorned, and fear that some satirist would turn all these trappings into a subject for mockery and derision.

Most of the remainder of the second half of the book is devoted to a fierce critique of organized religion. Folly's attack reaches monks, popes, and commoners, and she reveals what she believes to be the genuine message and mission of Jesus, offering proofs of Jesus' own folly. Her most pointed admonishments are aimed at religious officials, and she frequently reminds us that ecclesiastical titles denote a function in the church, not power or status.

Perhaps the guise of Folly served as a shield behind which Erasmus could hide from authorities while he launched his attacks. Though the first part of the book is (certainly from Folly's point of view) just as serious as the rest, the light-hearted tone makes one question the sincerity of all the praises. It is in the satire and criticism that Erasmus makes arguments most convincing, and most threatening to those in power. There Folly proves to be unexpectedly earnest. Indeed, at the end she notes

I've long been forgetting who I am, and I've 'overshot the mark'.

But then isn't that one of the best aspects of Folly?

Local Man in Despair Over Present State of Journalism

2007-05-14T18:21:00.000-07:00

In "Why Don’t Journalists Get Religion? A Tenuous Bridge to Believers," Gal Beckerman writes

“Religious issues, issues of faith, issues of moral choice, those burdens and struggles that all human beings undergo — those issues deeply interest me,” {New York Times reporter Chris] Hedges says. “Death, birth, love, alienation, sin. This is the real news of people’s lives.”

Yet those are the stories we almost never see.

Later in the same essay, Steve Waldman, co-founder of Beliefnet, says, “In the life of an individual, the big news event is not who came in second in the Iowa caucus. It’s the death of their parents, the birth of their child.”

This afternoon, the local television news opened with a shooting, a fire, a car crash, a missing person, a trial concerning a recent homicide, and a trial concerning a murder over ten years old. None of it has any bearing on us.

What news did the travelers of medieval times bear? Probably such news was meant to convey information, expand knowledge and understanding of the world, and so covered political and economic issues, and inventions or other changes. Events like a gallop-by slaying, the burning of someone's hut, a nightsoil cart crash, a disappeared magician, and a witch-trial, meant to captivate, titilate, and entertain an audience, probably fell to the troubadour to relate. Though they might have been true, they were correctly presented as stories. So the tease on television today goes, "These and other stories coming up at ten." Such is the state of modern local news, feeding us stories.

A regular feature of this news is the bad thing that someone did because they read it in a book, or saw it in a movie. The news is usually purported to be the uproar after, when angry book-hating parents demand that Setting Free the Bears be banned before another child decides to let all the animals out of the zoo; or Interview With a Vampire be removed from the shelves because it has glamorized the sucking of blood and the sleeping in coffins, and there is an epidemic of troubled Goth teens. The blame on books is nothing new, though, as even in the 1830s a defendant claimed he never would have comitted murder if he had not read about the crime in William Harrison Ainsworth's novel Jack Sheppard. Surely this can't be the only news there ever is? Why don't we ever hear about someone inspired by a book to do something good?

The Bible is said to contain the Good News. Though one can easily argue the cons of religious tomes such as the Bible or the Koran, these books have certainly inspired millions of people to be good and do good, especially in charity. How many people have been charmed by Walden into becoming a naturalist? How many people would ever fall in love if they had not read of it in books? How different would the American Revolution have progressed if the colonials had not been inspired by the writing of Thomas Paine? Not everyone wants to rule the universe; some, if not more, want to save it.

Though The Onion is meant as parody, often they feature wonderful stories about simple good things, like "Local Homemaker Fights To Overcome Rubbermaid™ Addiction." Isn't this something we all must face at some time in our life? What has happened that the presentation of some good act or useful information is found merely humorous?

Novelist Gena Showalter encourages her readers to share their news. Never is it my husband left me, or my son failed his algebra test, or my boyfriend just ran over my cat.

Local news could stand being turned on its head. Fill up the first ten minutes or so with those feel-good stories that are usually relegated to the end, and save the murder story for the closing seconds (if the weatherbabe doesn't go long).

The Great Space Coaster had a character that was a talking gnu. Gary Gnu hosted a segment that was called The No Gnews Is Good Gnews Show. We think Gary had the right idea.

On Apprenticeships

2007-05-04T18:09:00.000-07:00

Callie bristles at the bold assertion that all bloggers are in it for the money. She doesn't make money blogging. We don't make money blogging. I suspect few bloggers make any money at blogging. So why do it?

The question assumes that money is the reason for everything. We would not be surprised if 90% of all writers don't make money writing, or have to supplement their writing income in order to pay the rent. Before Vermeer's time, artists lived the high life on their art, having wealthy patrons for their support. Beginning in Vermeer's time, artists produced art for themselves, and if they wanted to make money at it, they had to find a way to sell their art to the public. Today, patrons of the arts primarily build museums, or make donations to charitable funds, or throw lavish champagne parties for other wealthy patrons to coincide with the opening of an exhibition. No longer do they pay artists to live and produce art.

So, taking the assumption that money is the reason for everything, and tweaking it, one wonders what is the payoff in blogging for nothing. Again, the reward has been lost in history. Knowledge is something which fewer and fewer people have today. More and more people have specialized skills--that is not the same as knowledge. The old way of gaining knowledge, or learning a subject, and probably the best way, was apprenticeships.

Often beginning in youth, people became apprentices to a master in a guild. In the guild, one learned far more than just how to cobble a shoe, or fire a brick, or paint a portrait. Apprentices worked their way from the ground up, doing all the menial tasks for the master, and thereby learning every detail of the craft, including the work involved. More importantly, apprentices learned critical thinking, how to analyze, accept, reject, improve, and codify knowledge. They made no money, but they acquired intellectual capital.

Following this period of apprenticeship, which typically lasted for seven years, one attained the level of a journeyman. Journeymen were day laborers in possession of documents from their master or guild which certified them and entitled them to travel in practise of their craft or art. When they finally produced and presented to their master what was deemed a Great Work, they attained the level of master, at which time they became members of the guild. And so the process would be repeated.

Stefanie tangentially laments the things taught in today's schools. What is offered to prospective students these days is not so much knowledge--intellectual capital--but image. Too many students aren't interested in the best teaching, they are interested in the best college. Commercials don't entice one with the reality of learning, they lure with the final goal, upward social mobility, the making of money, the high-paying cushy job (though your results may vary). Schools do not teach critical thinking, they teach capitalist skills, such as balancing a checkbook, or producing a spreadsheet. Details and context are left out of education. The goal of all this is not to produce individuals in possession of intellectual capital, but to produce good consumers.

Once again, when we look back to previous centuries, the finishing touch to any good education was a grand tour of Europe. This was equivalent to the work of the journeyman, traveling, learning, acquiring additional intellectual capital, and honing one's ability to think critically. Once this was achieved, the person was ready to produce a Great Work. Today, four years of partying in college is seen as the final inevitable step in an education. Students learn what they are told, see what they are shown, and more often than not feel they are entitled to whatever they want, because they are paying for it--they don't learn, they purchase an education. Only the few who move on to a doctorate fully follow the path of apprenticeship, a thesis being the equivalent of a Great Work.

Some bloggers aren't trying to make money at blogging. Some recognise their efforts as an honing of their critical thinking abilities, an accumulation of intellectual capital, or an apprenticeship to a career in writing. Knowledge is its own reward. Critical thinking exposes the fallacy that money is the reason for everything.

Book Eighteen

2007-05-03T17:21:00.000-07:00

Daniel J. Boorstin wrote the eighteenth book we have read this year, The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination. This is billed as a companion to his previous work The Discoverers. We chose to read the second title first, because it is creativity that interests us more than discovery. This order also allowed us to know we enjoyed Mr. Boorstin's writing enough to read another of his books.

Mr. Boorstin calls this book a kind of biography, in that it is filled with essays concerning the lives and works of many great artists and other pioneers of creativity. Through over 700 pages of text, we are taken on a roughly chronological survey of man's cultural history, beginning with the world's various stories of Creation itself, and ending with modern film. The text is grouped in Books, which are divided by Parts, which are further divided by Chapters which treat individuals or small groups of a particular type of creation. This structure gives an interesting view of the progression of culture, and especially the arts, through the ages. We always had the feeling that pioneering works happened quite randomly. In the author's personal note, Mr. Boorstin says, "We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination." And so his book strongly suggests that different types of creativity occur in clumps, or, better, in great leaps of advancement, and lead to other types.

Broadly speaking, this book covers both eastern and western cultures, treating religion, philosophy, ancient and modern architecture, all forms of images, music and dance, and a good amount of literature. There are interesting profiles on Isadora Duncan, Cervantes, Herman Melville, and Edward Gibbon. We never knew what a prolific artist Pablo Picasso was: the assessors of his estate inventoried over 50,000 works in a variety of media, and there is no telling how many works he sold, gave away, and destroyed while alive. There were chapters on things that little interested us, like the Japanese use of wood in building, or the philosophy of Boethius. In every essay Mr. Boorstin stays true to his theme and explains the background of the creative leap and its importance. Our two favorite chapters explored the genius of Proust and Goethe.

This is a long book but each chapter is easily read in short sittings. There is a wealth of information, and at times it seemed as if certain facts were repeated within the same essay, as if Mr. Boorstin ocassionally lost track of what he included and where. The book is fleshed out with many notes, and the whole is indexed. Though Mr. Boorstin doesn't seem to make any spectacular revelations or provocative assertions, the writing is simple, clear, and digestable. We enjoyed our reading, and will most likely pick up The Discoverers, too.

We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.

"I've never heard of that."

2007-05-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

One thing we have been surprised to learn from the bookshop and from litblogs is that so many people are blissfully unaware of so many great books. Undoubtedly, we are, too.

Tiresias has joined our Literary Salon book club. To his disappointment, the first book he read with us was The Road. Among the members it was not universally disliked. Without knowing what the author has to say about his own book, it is impossible to know if it is a success or not. Some things are clear, though: The Road is a superbly successful product, and it is plainly unliterate. Tiresias was actually turned away from reading for a couple weeks by this book.

As the group set to select the next book, someone pulled from the shelf The World According to Garp, by John Irving. We were the only one to have read it, and we praised it highly. It was not nominated, but when the votes were cast, it won. And now Tiresias has had his faith in books renewed.

Today he wondered how he had never heard of the book, or the author. Did the book win any awards, and if not, why, because clearly it is more well-written than The Road? The way Irving puts the novel together is masterful. And then, to his surprise, Tiresias learned something about the structure of a novel, the in medias res beginning, the heightening conflicts, the black moment, the climax, and the denouement. He has been a voracious reader, but never noticed in the books he read these elements for what they were.

Throughout the blogosphere we find ourselves repeating in disbelief: never read Midnight's Children? is Jude the Obscure sad? Alice in Wonderland for children? who is Garcia Marquez? is Dracula as good as Interview With a Vampire? wasn't The Tin Drum a movie? How we always thought we had read so few of the essential books, and come to find that so many others have read fewer than we have.

The greatest thing is that we haven't read all the great literature yet either. We are always looking for someone to turn us on to new books, truly great works, as opposed to simply an entertaining story. Just today we had an interest in Erasmus kindled. There is always something new to be learned, and it is all out there, in books.

Book Seventeen

2007-04-29T07:11:00.000-07:00

The seventeenth book we almost read this year was The Greatest Book in the World and Other Papers, by A. Edward Newton. We took this book through the interlibrary loan system because Newton is a famed book collector and writer about books. In the past, we have enjoyed other books written by him. The title comes from the first essay, and the book so designated is the Bible. Newton describes in much detail the printing history of the Bible. Then follows the Other Papers, which have almost nothing to do with books. As with these older literary titles, there is a great deal of information that has been otherwise lost or forgotten in the grand scope of history. We read the next nine essays and finally gave up the rest of the book. Unfortunately, the final few essays were about books, though upon skimming them nothing of keen interest was obvious. And we ran out of time on our loan.

So to the next book that we read completely: Vermeer: A View of Delft, by Anthony Bailey. Yes, our interests run beyond books, to other arts like painting (Vermeer and Modigliani), and music (Texas and Beatles), and photography (Steiglitz and Cameron), and sculpture (Claudel and Rodin). Mr. Bailey has an extensive background in Dutch history, and he uses it to flesh out this biography of a man of whom so little is known.

Many details about the life of Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) that have come down to us today are from business records. His activities can be traced through the history of the Guild of St. Luke, recorded births and deaths, and a great deal of financial transactions. About the inner man, though, almost no evidence has been found beyond the thirty-five paintings attributed to him. Though the quantity of his work is small for a master, his achievements raise him in stature. As this is not a book about painting, the examinations of his works are mostly limited to what they might tell us about the artist.

In Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time, Albertine is asked whether or not she saw the Vermeers when she was in The Hague. She thinks they are a family, and replies that she did not. Though our two dear readers may not know it, you likely have seen some of the Vermeers, without ever having visited The Hague. Have you played the classic Parker art auction game Masterpiece? Have you seen or read any of the recent film and fiction treatments by Peter Webber or Tracy Chevalier, among others? Have you drank Vermeer Dutch Chocolate Cream Liqueur? We had seen some of his work without really knowing, and our first explicit introduction to the artist came from the 1990 Jon Jost film All the Vermeers in New York.

The Girl With a Pearl Earring is our favorite. Mr. Webber used Scarlett Johansson to reproduce this painting marvelously. Along with Study of a Young Woman, these are the only portraits Vermeer made, the subject extracted from the scenes Vermeer executed so well, and this the superior of the two. His control of light is suggested here with the back of the dress fading away, as well as the highlights on the earring, eyes, and lips. The blue, red, and gold are his standard colors. To single out one painting above all is difficult, though, for Vermeer achieves greatness in so many of his details: the reflections in A Girl Reading a Letter by an Open Window, and The Music Lesson; the milk and bread of The Milkmaid; the delicacy of the Woman Holding a Balance; the accuracy of the maps and the lustre of the lion's head finials; the threads of The Lacemaker; the Delft tiles.

Another of our favorites is The Art of Painting, which may give us all the information we need about how Vermeer worked. Hitler "liberated" this painting during the war and stored it away with the rest of his ill-gotten collection in a salt mine near Salzburg. One of his final orders from the Berlin bunker was to destroy the repository of paintings, which, thankfully, was disobeyed.

We enjoyed this book, and it opens the way for further examinations of the painter and his paintings. We will share other books on the subject in the future. A wonderful and amazingly detailed reference on Vermeer and his work can be found at Essential Vermeer.

The last trip Marcel Proust made out of his apartment was to see three Vermeers on display at a museum in the Tuileries. In his early years he also traveled to Delft and saw View of Delft. Though we are never told any details about the essay on Vermeer that Charles Swann is ocassionally writing, likely it would have included the epiphany described by the narrator and incorporated with Proust's own experiences in the sixth part of his novel. As in Mr. Jost's film, we quote in conclusion a passage from Proust that sends shivers down our spine:

All that we can say is that everything is arranged in this life as though we entered it carrying a burden of obligations contracted in a former life; there is no reason inherent in the conditions of life on this earth that can make us consider ourselves obliged to do good, to be kind and thoughtful, even to be polite, nor for an atheist artist to consider himself obliged to begin over again a score of times a piece of work the admiration aroused by which will matter little to his worm-eaten body, like the patch of yellow wall painted with so much skill and refinement by an artist destined to be forever unknown and barely identified under the name Vermeer.

"Rare Books and Manuscripts"

2007-04-28T06:50:00.000-07:00

Here is a short film we found via Textual Tangents. Romance in the stacks. What a wonderful little story! What we wouldn't give to spend our days researching and courting in the Reading Room. View it here and then come back to tell us what you think.

In a world where punctuation barely survives...

2007-04-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

The sixteenth book we have read this year is Cormac McCarthy's The Road. We chose to read this because it was the next selection for the Literary Salon book club at our shop, not because it was one of Oprah's selections. We otherwise probably would never have picked it up.

The front wrapper of our Vintage trade edition offers this quote from the San Francisco Chronicle:

His tale of survival and the miracle of goodness only adds to McCarthy's stature as a living master. It's gripping, frightening and, ultimately, beautiful. It might very well be the best book of the year, period.

So, let us first take note that, according to the praise of the Chronicle, this book does no other thing except add to Mr. McCarthy's stature--it does not entertain, it does not enlighten, it does not sadden, it does not brighten. There is no mention of any literary merits. It is all about the glory of the author. If Joe the Unpublished Genius submitted this manuscript to Knopf, would they have accepted it for publication? I can't imagine so.

We have heard other readers wonder what befell civilization? For us, it didn't matter. We give Mr. McCarthy credit for not trying to explain too much, for leaving the past to the imagination of the reader. What should be interesting, after all, is not what happened, but what happens. Here, though, nothing much happens. A man and his son wander around just surviving. What are they trying to accomplish? Apparently just survival. The boy is smart enough to say he doesn't know what they are doing, and to realise without something to do, they might as well not survive. Papa, however, insists that his son go on, because they must "carry the fire." It seems evident, though, that they don't have the fire.

Does this novel show the miracle of goodness? Papa is intent on protecting his son from the "bad guys," and shoots one man dead and forces another to an inevitable death, yet neither men show evidence of threat. Such behavior is not a miracle of goodness. Telling his son to leave him to die is not a miracle of goodness. And if in an apocalyptic world such distinctions are no longer valid, then goodness doesn't exist. Survival is not goodness. Papa seems to have developed a messiah complex. Without giving away the end, Mr. McCarthy seems to suggest that Papa has all along stood in the way of his and his son's quest to find the other "good guys" still alive in the world.

The worst thing about this novel is the writing. If Mr. McCarthy is a living master, he ought to have been able to write evocatively, lushly, triumphantly. Instead the novel reads as if he merely transcribed his scribbled thoughts:

He lay listening to the water drip in the woods. Bedrock, this. The cold and the silence. The ashes of the late world carried on the bleak and temporal winds to and fro in the void. Carried forth and scattered and carried forth again. Everything uncoupled from its shoring. Unsupported in the ashen air. Sustained by a breath, trembling and brief. If only my heart were stone.

There are no chapters, and there are rather few complete scenes. This excerpt, which flourishes with two complete sentences, is one unit among many others just like it. We would expect a living master to take these thoughts about the events, or the emotion, or whatever the scene is meant to convey, and show it, develop it, use his skills to write several sentences into a paragraph, and then string several of those together in logical succession to form a scene or a chapter. Bedrock, this? Lazy, that.

Should anyone think Mr. McCarthy has limited range, he stretches himself to the other extreme of run-on sentences, as if he had sudden bouts of diarhhea of the ands. He also has a limited supply of apostrophes, which might be expected of a Grub Street hack, but an experienced bestselling author ought to have a larger stash, or be able to get a hold of a few more should he need them. We could have lent him some. Or perhaps he has imagined this world in which only a few humans survive as a place where only a few apostrophes have survived as well. If one intends to rekindle civilization, one ought to value communication, use apostrophes when one ought to, and avoid empty verbs like "got" which communicates nothing. Or maybe this is all just part of what the New York Times Book Review called Mr. McCarthy's consistently brilliant imagining of the posthumous condition of nature and civilization. But when one writes about nothing, and conveys nothingness is one's writing, what is there for the reader to experience and to take with her? Nothing.

Almost the entire book is written in third person omniscient point of view. At times we are inside the boy's head, at other times the man's. There are maybe three of those little units that mentions a "me," and one about a third of the way through which has a few sentences concerning "I." So who exactly is this first person who only briefly appears? Perhaps God? There are also apparent flashbacks now and again. And the final bit of confusion would be the shunning of all quotation marks. Again we have to wonder, did whatever fires that left the rest of the world in ashes also burn away all critical punctuation marks? Does Mr. McCarthy mean to suggest that these are the weakest of the punctuation marks, and were not even fit enough to survive the world's destruction like the other more robust question mark, or period? No, we do not think there is a set rule that a writer must make use of these marks. They are, however, all meant to improve comprehension and understanding, so why leave them out? I happened to flip through another of Mr. McCarthy's books and noticed a similar lack of quotation marks, so one is left to conclude either he is above them, or it is the one key that is broken on his typewriter. Or perhaps the missing punctuation explains everything: earth was hit by a giant meteor from space with brought about the near-total extinction of punctuation, and only a few stragglers hang on, and the good guys don't bother with it any more because they realise it is hardly essential to their survival, but the bad guys are punctuation bullies who demand that all surviving punctuation be put on the endangered species list, and who force others to use punctuation in unnatural ways.

After putting down our thoughts about the book, we spent some time reading the thoughts of others. The worst review we could find was from a woman who complained that there was little female involvement in the story. With every review we read, our bafflement turned to frustration, and that quickly hardened into anger. The most glaring habit of the worshipful reviewers was reading into the book more than was written in it. We will follow with a few quotes, and our observations.

"We follow our unnamed protagonist and his son on their journey through a post-apocalyptic Appalachia, hunted by butchers."
--This statement is a perfect example of how so many reviews read things into this novel. And yet this same reviewer later claims that Mr. McCarthy has written everything necessary to understanding the novel. Though Papa knows of butchers and roadagents, and perhaps has even witnessed their acts or the evidence of them, we know the "bad guys" that Papa and son encounter are bad because Papa claims they are. In other words, we don't know for sure. Nothing but pap's paranoia indicates they are being hunted. Papa sees everyone else as the "bad guys" because he sees in others what is inside himself. The end of the book bears witness to this: Papa and son don't meet any of the "good guys" until after Papa dies, because the other "good guys" know he is a "bad guy" who they are avoiding. You take Papa at his word and your life will be filled with loneliness and mistrust.

"Theirs is a burden to carry the fire, that essential goodness of our common humanity, so easy to maintain in the day-to-day, but which finds itself tested when other avenues offer simpler means to live another hour."
--Essential goodness is not at all easy to maintain in the day-to-day. People constantly take the simpler means to live. Just turn on the six o'clock news for fresh proof. The miracle is that people ever choose essential goodness.

"The freshness he brings to this end-of-the-world narrative is quite stunning."
--There seems little freshness here. We have seen this world and these behaviors from other writers before. One reviewer hailed the novel as an accomplished pastiche. Another reviewer noted with pleasure that Mr. McCarthy had returned to his own familiar subjects of cannibals and dead babies. What is stunning is how anyone can think rehashing one's own work is fresh.

"I have no doubt that Oprah's audience is going to have a violently negative reaction to The Road."
--We will be surprised if this is the case. We suspect her audience might feel a little uncomfortable, but still heap high praise upon the novel and claim revelations after reading it.

Reading all these reviews drove home for us just how much a reader brings to a novel. Either we are lacking something essential for understanding The Road, or others are reading into it far more than is there. And so many of these reviews are better written and more evocative than the novel itself. For a well-written review that (no surprise) praises the novel, read Michael Chabon's "After the Apocalypse".

This is not a bad novel. With the short chunks of writing, it was quick to read. Like with much other modern fiction, we weren't gripped, and we weren't frightened. We certainly believe it could have been better. In this post-apocalyptic world we are shown the utter meaninglessness of every day events, and when the book contains little else, we are left with a meaningless book. We are willing to accept the possibility that we missed something in our reading, a critical element that would make sense of all the liberties taken by the author, something which his target audience--the Chronicle, Oprah--obviously grasps. But... winner of the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life? We are not willing to accept the judgement that this novel is worthy above all others for such an award. This is a signal that there is something seriously wrong with the literary community as a whole, from authors who presume to write poorly, to publishers who think such writing is worthy of publication over more well-written and original manuscripts, to critics who heap praise with nary a dissenting voice, and to readers who lap up any tripe that is set before them. Modern American fiction is in a sad state, and Oprah's judgement is once again proven erroneous.

UPDATE: By coincidence, last night we watched the 1998 film Six-String Samurai, in which a man and boy travel along a road in a post-apocalyptic America. Though it riffs off other films (Wizard of Oz, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, Mad Max)--or perhaps spoofs them--it is also full of creativity. Mr. McCarthy could use a Spinach Monster in his book.

Book Fifteen

2007-04-10T16:51:00.000-07:00

The fifteenth novel we have read is Saints and Sinners: Being the Lives of the Pilgrim Fathers and Their Families, with Their Friends and Foes; and an Account of Their Posthumous Wanderings in Limbo, Their Final Resurrection and Rise to Glory, and the Strange Pilgrimages of Plymouth Rock, written by George Findlay Willison in 1945 to a reception of wide praise from critics and historians. During his research for another work, he discovered that much of what he thought he knew about the Pilgrims was in fact not true, so this book was borne of the desire to know them as they truly were. The title of the book comes from the names by which the Pilgrims referred to themselves: the Saints being those who had left England early to seek religious freedom in Leyden in the Netherlands; the Strangers being those hired by English merchants and fortune seekers to establish a fishing colony in the new world.

The majority of the account is taken directly from the first-hand writings of William Bradford and Edward Winslow, along with a host of personal letters of others. Mr. Willison organises the events and offers a much broader perspective than the participants ever could have had, but much of the story is given in their own words, as they lived and recorded it. Mr. Willison begins at Plymouth Rock with an overview of the history, and ends with the interesting history of the legendary Rock itself. In between, we get to know the Forefathers in ways that time and myth has otherwise clouded over.

There were many surprises for us. Back in the seventeenth century, colleges used to be conservative bastions of the status quo. During the reigns of Elizabeth and Charles I, any one who missed orthodox service for more than a month, who persuaded others to do the same, or who participated in any meetings of other religions faced imprisonement, banishment, and execution. The Pilgrims escaped this oppression and enjoyed religious freedom in Holland for twelve years, but, oddly enough, upon establishing their Old Colony at Plymouth, they enacted the same kind of regulations. The decision to leave Leyden came not in seeking religious freedom, but first, fearful of being absorbed by the Dutch, in maintaining their English identity, and second, burdened by extreme poverty, in finding a place where they could live comfortably. After several negotiations with different colonial companies, both English and Dutch, a group of about seventy London merchants, seeking quick and easy profits, offered free passage to the group if they would help establish a town in the new world. The experience was frought with difficulty through its entirety, and the Pilgrims probably suffered more hardship than had they remained in Leyden.

The fanciful rendering of the landing by Henry Sargent is far from reality. First landfall occured at the cape, and women were not brought ashore until the site at Plymouth was secured. The Indians were evidently present but remained hidden, and from the start the Pilgrims were wary of those whose lands they were invading. Though the Saints went through the motions of friendship, they remained distrustful and soon became belligerent to the people who generally tried to help them, or at the least leave them alone. One trader later commented, "I have found the Massachusetts Indians more full of humanitie than the Christians." Certainly the Indians seemed to give greater support and assistance to the colonials than did the merchants in London who were financing the venture, and to whom the Pilgrims regularly petitioned unsuccessfully for aid.

The Pilgrims and Puritans have often been confused, but they were distinct groups. Though the Saints were far less strict than the Puritans, they still regularly sinned against the basic concepts of their faith. More than ten years passed before Roger Williams, a "teacher" at Plymouth, declared that no one in England or New England could validly dispose by patent, charter, or sale, lands that belonged to the Indians, for which he was banished. Many townsfolk spent time in the stocks for fornication. Even the Reverend John Cotton, Jr. had a fondness for women parishioners and committed "Notorious" adulteries among his flock. Indian leaders often had their heads displayed on pikes above the town as a friendly welcome. Despite their personal pasts, and contrary to popular opinion, the Saints were nearly as intolerant of others (of race or religion) as the Puritans, Queen Elizabeth, and King Charles I.

The editor of the book calls the Pilgrims an inept group of immigrants. Of the 359 Mr. Willison accounts as Pilgrims, only 104 were Saints, the remainder being Strangers, hired hands, and servants. They were not the first colonials to settle the new world--the Dutch already had established New Amsterdam--nor were they the most successful--the Puritans in Boston and Salem eventually gained a charter which included New Plimoth and made them the dominant group in America for a long time to come. The Old Colony lasted only seventy-three years and was survived by two members of the original Mayflower group. The Pilgrims can be credited with establishing the town meeting. Also, the Mayflower Compact perhaps was the first document of self-government ever enacted, promising equal laws for all, though it was meant essentially to insure the rule of the minority elders among the Saints. Thankfully, some of the names they gave to their children--Remember, Love, Wrestling, Mehitable, Fear, Patience--are no longer popular.

Mr. Willison includes biographical sketches of the members of the Pilgrim Company, as well as the officers of their church, a summary chart that categorizes the group in various ways, extensive notes, bibliographical references, and an index. He does a good job of ordering the historical events and ellucidating them with the actual words of the participants, in all their varied spellings and odd phrasings. Any one interested in this early colonial history should enjoy this book for all its information and revelations. Any one pleased with the tidy, hopeful myths that accompany the Pilgrims today would probably rather leave this book on the shelf.

We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.

Decision 2007

2007-04-08T07:57:00.000-07:00

Well, the votes have been tallied. Though the election judges feel there may have been some tampering with the results from Florida, and one dead blogger from Chicago cast a vote, the results would appear to be unaffacted. So we are pleased to announce the next book up for discussion is The Good Soldier, by Ford Madox Ford. Do whatever you can to acquire it, read it, and be ready to post your thoughts on Thursday 31 May. You will find additional links and information at Slaves of Golconda.

Next book of the Slaves

2007-04-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

If either of my two devoted readers would like to join the Slaves of Golconda for the next book, here is your chance to make yourself heard. For the next couple days we will be accepting votes on books from a list of nominees posted here. Leave a comment with your preference, and the official selection will be announced before the start of next week. Come join the fun!

Book Fourteen

2007-04-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

The fourteenth book we have read this year is the 1873 classic, A History of Booksellers, the Old and the New, by Henry Curwen.

Chances are one won't find this book lying around in a dollar bin. We found it at another library, and had our friendly librarian order it for us. We have obtained access by inter-library loan to numerous books otherwise beyond our reach. It is sort of a manual version of using the internet to access information on the other side of the world.

Mr. Curwen was a publisher, translator, author of several novels, short stories, and poems, and a newspaper editor. This book is a wide-ranging multiple biography of the leading figures of bookselling in England during the nineteenth century, when they held a dual role as publisher. The introduction tells us that this book is a valuable follow-up (chronologically) to The Earlier History of English Bookselling, by W. Roberts. Below is the frontispiece.

There is a lot of information about a lot of people that have mostly been forgotten. The writing isn't particularly entertaining, and the reading gets rather trying as the pages add up. Every story sounds the same, with only the particulars changing. Mr. Curwen gives a brief background of each publisher/bookseller and then follows his career until death. The first part of the book focuses on individual men during the formative years of the business; the second part of the book focuses on various families who led the business into the twentieth century. There are a few anecdotes scattered about, but not enough to keep this account interesting. In the preface, Mr. Curwen notes that

No work of the kind has ever previously been attempted, and this fact must be an apology for some, at least, of our shortcomings.

If one is interested in writing a Wikipedia article, this book could probably provide one with a lot of information that is not easily found elsewhere. We were surprised to learn just how popular literary periodicals were in those days. Almost every bookseller/publisher had at least one periodical that they started, and many of them regularly sold well. The quantities of certain books sold was also often impressive. Quite a few pages involve Walter Scott and his rise to become the most popular novelist of his day. Copyrights were also bought and sold regularly, as well as shares in them, much as men might purchase a stake in a new company today. The background and formation of lending libraries is also covered.

Mr. Curwen was at pains to parse and focus his material into a cheap and popular form. While it is not poorly conceived or written, it is dry. For information that has probably been otherwise lost or forgotten, this book is the reference one wants. For entertainment, this book is noteworthy for its monotony.

We give it two (out of five) pipefuls.

Estella's Revenge | April

2007-03-31T19:39:00.000-07:00

Readers, writers, and bibliomanes of all sorts should click over and enjoy the new issue of Estella's Revenge. The theme for April is "mysteries." Be sure to check out our column, From the Bookshop....

Book Thirteen

2007-03-30T18:40:00.000-07:00

The first novel we have read that was written by Jane Austen is the thirteenth novel we have read this year.

We were slow to sort out who was who, when characters had the same last names, and relations by marriage are referred to as blood. Even once this was fairly sorted out in our mind, we had to pause at the start of each letter and think who exactly is writing to whom?

The epistolary novel is a form that is rather pleasing to us. We often marvel at how much story can be conveyed, and here we felt Ms. Austen did a good job. She is clearly in control of this story, evidenced first by her selection of letters--not all of the correspondence is shown--and her conclusion at the end. Despite the letters that are not included, the events are still easy to follow, showing a skillful composition of the others. What we did not learn--and perhaps we simply missed this information somewhere in our reading--is what happened in Lady Susan's past. If we understand, she has lost her husband and seduced another woman's husband. When characters allude to what happened, though, we do not recall any details being given. The good thing is this does not leave anything out of the story for us. What is interesting and important is not what happens, but how characters react and respond. Ms. Austen has done this, to her great credit.

The letters tend to sound similar in tone and style; if each character had a more distinctive voice, the novel may have been improved. We required an eclaircissement to understand the word eclaircissement. Never heard of the word before, and it seemed to come in this story completely out of left field.

Lady Susan began as sympathetic for us. Through all she remains strong, and never a victim. By the end, when her plots and cabals have been revealed, we feel no malice toward her, but the initial sympathy has bled away. She remains a most interesting character. The novel does not stand like a rock in the middle of nowhere, but gives us one adventure in the life of Lady Susan, and we are convinced that there are many others. Had Ms. Austen lived in these times, we are sure her publishers would have begged for a sequel, and even a prequel.

The novel reminded us of Choderlos de Laclos' Les Liaisons dangereuses. Obviously the form is the same, but the way Lady Susan plotted and tricked and used her wiles to influence and control others is, in a more subdued manner, exactly what the Marquise de Merteuil does. These two characters are absolutely fascinating, and it is a wonder to witness their talents in action, and try to understand how they are able to wield such power over others.

We were not looking forward to reading this, yet were pleasantly surprised, and enjoyed it.
We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.

[this review is cross-posted in a slightly different form at Slaves of Golconda]

Book Ten

2007-03-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

We skipped over describing the tenth book we read so our thoughts would not come out before this month's meeting of the Literary Salon. Now that it has been fully discussed, we will catch up on Mitch Albom's For One More Day.

If you have read any of his other books, you know what to expect: a bittersweet tug at the heartstrings and an enhanced appreciation for living. Again, this is explicitly noted as based on true events, which seems superfluous, for what author's writing isn't?

A failed son, father, and baseball player decides it is time to kill himself. To no one's surprise, he also fails at suicide. But in his post-trauma delirium his dead mother returns, and they get to spend one more day together. He tags along as she meets three people, each one revealing to our failure something he had never known about his mother. Interspersed between these scenes are recollections of childhood, letters from his mother, times his mother stood up for him, and times he failed to stand up for her. He comes to understand that he chased after the love of a father who withheld it, and took for granted the love of a mother who gave it freely. He returns to life and with his newly acquired perspective is able to reconcile with his daughter and redeem himself.

This is the second book to be discussed at the Salon, and it is many times better than the Nora Roberts book. Mr. Albom writes well, controls his point-of-view, and uses excellent details to provide his story with verisimilitude unmatched by Ms. Roberts, discounting her elements of fantasy. He fully supports his premise that there is no love as pure as a mother's. We come away with a few vague possibilities as to the meaning of his statement that every family is a ghost story, but ultimately are left to wonder precisely what is meant.

The wrap-up at the end is kind of flat. One person in the Salon was mostly unmoved by the book, and wouldn't recommend it, although he would recommend The Five People You Meet in Heaven. If you fight with your mother and don't care to see her ever, you might not appreciate the sentiments in this book. If you get along well with your mother, and if you have already lost a beloved parent, you may find yourself having to pause every few chapters to wipe away the tears. For One More Day is a book that seems to do exactly what the author wanted, no more and no less. If one wants a break from A la recherche du temps perdu, this book can easily be enjoyed in one sitting, with little intellectual strain.

We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.

Book Twelve

2007-03-21T15:18:00.000-07:00

The twelfth book we have read is the 2000 translation of Pierre Boulle's Planet of the Apes, the original 1963 novel that inspired the classic movie starring Charlton Heston.

The book begins with a couple out for a leisure cruise through space, and they come upon a message in a bottle. The manuscript inside is what constitutes the story, and most of the novel. The manuscript has been written by Ulysse Merou, a journalist in the year 2500. He is part of a three-man mission to Alpha Orionis, three hundred light years away from Earth. While the astronauts age two years during their voyage, Earth ages three and a half centuries. In the solar system of their destination, they land on a planet with attributes much like Earth's, which they dub Soror.

If you have never seen the movie, or the remake, the basic premise is that on Soror apes are the "kings of creation," with all of our modern civilization and culture, while humans are speechless animals running around naked in the forest and kept in zoos for amusement. Merou is at pains to prove he is intelligent, and gradually develops a savior complex. At the same time, some chimp scientists are trying to shine light on their civilization's shrouded emergence.

Merou and his spacemates first encounter only humans. Mr. Boulle does a fine job of describing the animalisms of these humanoids, Merou noting they watched as if from "a sort of void, an absence of expression, reminding me of a wretched mad girl I had once known."

Whenever we had discussed, during the voyage, our eventual encounter with living beings, we saw in our mind's eye monstrous, misshapen creatures of a physical aspect very different from ours, but we always implicitly imagined the presence in them of a mind. On the planet Soror reality appeared to be quite the reverse: we had to do with inhabitants resembling us in every way from the physical point of view but who appeared to be completely devoid of the power of reason. This indeed was the meaning of the expression I had found so disturbing in Nova and that I now saw in all the others: a lack of conscious thought; the absence of intelligence.

When the apes appear, their humanisms exactly replicate our own behaviors today.

The novel has a decidedly different tone, and follows a different path, than the movie. Though Merou is initially hunted, in the way men today hunt deer or fox, there is not really a violent antagonism between him and the apes as there is in the movie. Some oppose him, but when he presents his case at the annual biological conference of apes, he achieves the status of a diplomatic emissary, and he is eventually permitted to assist the chimp scientists in their research. He never loses his capacity for speech--precluding one of the movie's best scenes--though there is an initial language barrier between Ape and French that he must overcome. He learns the truth of much ape prehistory by means of an experiment run by the chimps on a human, a sort of electrically induced hypnosis. This leads him to consider the possibility apes had overtaken a human civilization, in a particularly interesting passage that considers imitation in the place of evolution:

Of what is our literature made? Masterpieces? Again, no. But once an original book has been written--and no more than one or two appear in a century--men of letters imitate it, in other words, they copy it so that hundreds of thousands of books are published on exactly the same theme, with slightly different titles and modified phraseology. This should be able to be achieved by apes, who are essentially imitators....

Only when Merou fathers a child is he considered dangerous. He is able to escape the monkey planet by deception with his female companion and their son, and return to Earth. This conclusion also precludes the most powerful scene in the movie, though it does provide the book with a final twist.

The novel contains the basic elements of both the original movie and one of its sequels. It is a quick read, and fits comfortably into the science fiction genre. What kind of impact must it have had when first published? Was the subject shocking? Were the surprises telegraphed? Given our foreknowledge of the movie, we cannot say, and this presented us with the greatest difficulty in enjoying the novel (though well-written within its conventions) and appreciating it for itself.

We give it three (out of five) pipefuls.

Library as Autobiography

2007-03-20T15:28:00.000-07:00

A bookshop functions not just as a controlled environment from which books may be sold. Some shops also offer events with local authors, or host book clubs or writing groups. In some one may find a place to snack, or sip coffee, while relaxing with a good book. In this way and others bookshops serve as meeting places, and by their very nature inspire discussion of all things. Because a bookshop is also a storehouse of ideas old and new, a place to think and research and explore possibilities.

So in thought we sat, browsing an issue of the defunct Biblio magazine, where we encountered a quote from Richard Le Gallienne: "The catalogue of a man's library is a form of autobiography." This brought to mind a recent post from Litlove about the way a blog and the words a writer uses reveals much of her personality, in spite of a refrain from writing anything personal. This brought to mind a post from Doppelganger about books a man gave her that made her swear never to go on another date with him ever again. At the intersection of these three items sprouted the idea of LibraryThing as dating service.

Long ago, when the computer was still just a grain of sand lying oceans away from the rest of the world, our grandfather had a small notebook in which he carefully recorded details about every book he owned: bibliographic information, when he purchased it, how much it cost, when he read it, where it could be found on the shelf. Though his notebook served as a catalogue of his collection, it also formed his literary autobiography and a cultural history from his lifetime. How we wish we had that notebook today; how we wish we had kept track of our own book acquisitions in the same manner.

LibraryThing takes the idea of our grandfather's notebook online, as a digital database for individual users. The data from each book must still be recorded manually, but the digital nature allows the information to be instantly manipulated in ways that would have taken countless hours with the notebook. A keystroke can now display a book collection from every conceivable angle. We own seventeen copies of Parnassus on Wheels. Why do we own so many titles by Scott Fitzgerald and have read only one, five times? Here is our French literature period. With what else were we occupied the year we read so few books? We must be on the lookout to upgrade our Robert Anton Wilson titles from paperback to hardback. Why do we own more non-fiction than fiction books, but have read more fiction than non-fiction?

The true power in LibraryThing is the connection with others. Now we can see who else owns Endurance, and what else they have beside it on their shelf--a virtual tour of the personal collection of any other user. This insight, then, gives us a sort of autobiography of each person. We can take heart in the fact that more people own The Count of Monte Cristo than do The Da Vinci Code. We can cast aspersions on any person who owns The Bridges of Madison County. Someone who owns Jude the Obscure, on the other hand, might be someone we'd like to talk to. To go even further, the woman whose books are a 96% match of our own might be a perfect candidate for our shortlist of backup spouses.

So what autobiographical information might one have gleaned from this? That we are pretentious? That we are foolish? That we are solitary? That tragedy makes us happy? That we are old-fashioned? That we are always planning for the future? That we buy more books than we could ever possibly read? That Doppelganger places on our shortlist?

Last year we won a year's subscription to LibraryThing. We proceeded to enter about seven books to our online catalogue. Maybe we haven't found the time to add any more. Maybe it is too labor-intensive, as the books must be brought to the site of the computer. Probably we haven't identified a function of the database that would truly be useful to us right now. It is a great idea, a wonderful tool, and full of possibilities. Future additions will likely make LibraryThing even more functional. This old-fashioned book-fancier will probably just make the effort from now on to record his new acquisitions in a little lined notebook.

Book Eleven

2007-03-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

We have a grand To Be Read pile of books, and a wish list on a major book-selling website, and of course plenty of space to add books we don't know we want until we actually see them. One of the interesting things about such piles and lists is that during the interval between deciding we want a certain book and actually reading the book we might well forget our initial interest in the book.

The eleventh book we have read is an Oxford World Classic by Charlotte Dacre titled Zofloya, or The Moor. At some point we read something that mentioned this book, and either the subject or the summary or the recommendation drew our interest. The book was added to our wish list, and received last Christmas. Now coming to read it, we have forgotten precisely why we wanted to read it in the first place. Well, in general, who wouldn't be interested in reading a tale of lust, betrayal, and multiple murder set in Venice in the last days of the fifteenth century? Beyond this, though, what did we want to read it for?

This is an early gothic romance that follows in the footsteps of classics by Ann Radcliffe and Matthew Lewis, and then steps beyond their boundaries to become something unexpected and shocking for its time. Never before had a woman been shown to venture so far down the "alarming paths of sin." Today, many of the main ingredients of the novel provoke little distress in us as they must have in one of our previous lives. Issues such as class and race and nature versus nurture are deftly explored in the novel, yet they did not stand out as issues to us until after we finished reading the novel, when we read the introduction. We are told that upon publication, the Library Journal dismissed Ms. Dacre as "being afflicted with the dismal malady of maggots in the brain." The novel is reported to have enraptured Percy Shelley, and Ann Williams believes Zofloya and other gothic works provide critical keys to understanding the works of Mr. Shelley, Lord Byron, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and John Keats. Instead of being hailed as groundbreaking and influential, the novel and its author have been mostly consigned to oblivion. In her introduction, Kim Ian Michasiw writes,

A mother-hating triple murderess who dreams of sexual congress with a demon of colour has not been judged a proper model for the young reader either in the last century or in this.

For the first half of the novel, the protagonist Victoria suffers abuse at every turn. There is a digression to follow another character, and we wondered what purpose this served the novel, until everything was brought together at the end. Zofloya does not appear until about the halfway mark, at which point Victoria believes things have begun to go her way. Of course we come to realise that she is under the influence of Satan in the gorgeous guise of Zofloya. Everything she wants she gets by his evil ways, but nothing turns out as she expects. The further she treads down the paths of sin, the more she must turn to Zofloya for help. He is a consumate seducer, and by the last page the only thing Victoria thinks about and desires is giving herself completely to Zofloya. She remains ever self-absorbed and unrepentant.

We enjoyed this book. Ms. Dacre writes in an old-fashioned manner, with words and phrases that provide an appropriate literary flavor to the novel. She even employs shifts in point-of-view, but does so with control and purpose, rendering them natural and unobtrusive. The book took longer to read than we might have expected, though it was not difficult, confusing, or boring. We now suspect our initial interest in the novel was the masterful seduction of both Victoria and her mother, as already mentioned, superbly illustrated. We would recommend this to any fan of classic gothic fiction. When you put it on your wish list, just remember to note why.

We give it four (out of five) pipefuls.

The Literary Salon

2007-03-13T23:52:00.000-07:00

One of the things we have been working on at the shop is starting a book club. The impetus for this is from a friend. We had a practise run at the end of February, and are taking it to the public this month. Though space is at a premium in the shop, we should be able to sqeeze everybody in cozily.

Wednesday 28 March will be the inaugural meeting of the Illinois Valley Literary Salon. The first book to be discussed is For One More Day, the newest release from Mitch Albom, who also wrote Tuesdays With Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. Though the discussion will center around the novel, one need not have read it to join. The club will meet monthly, with books chosen by vote from member nominations. Interested readers should muster at 4:45pm for introductions and refreshments. Discussion will begin promptly at 5:00pm. The complete press release can be read here.

If you are in the area and decide to come, parking directly across the street is plentiful. Members of the book club can also take advantage of a 25% discount offered on any books purchased that evening.

The Best of Booklore

2007-03-13T07:15:00.000-07:00

from...
There's Pippins and Cheese To Come, by Charles S. Brooks, 1917

On Buying Old Books

By some slim chance, reader, you may be the kind of person who, on a visit to a strange city, makes for a bookshop. Of course your slight temporal business may detain you in the earlier hours of the day. You sit with committees and stroke your profound chin, or you spend your talent in the market, or run to and fro and wag your tongue in persuasion. Or, if you be on a holiday, you strain yourself on the sights of the city, against being caught in an omission. The bolder features of a cathedral must be grasped to satisfy a quizzing neighbor lest he shame you later on your hearth, a building must be stuffed inside your memory, or your pilgrim feet must wear the pavement of an ancient shrine. However, these duties being done and the afternoon having not yet declined, do you not seek a bookshop to regale yourself?
Doubtless, we have met. As you have scrunched against the shelf not to block the passage, but with your head thrown back to see the titles up above, you have noticed at the corner of your eye--unless it was one of your blinder moments when you were fixed wholly on the shelf--a man in a slightly faded overcoat of mixed black and white, a man just past the nimbleness of youth, whose head is plucked of its full commodity of hair. It was myself. I admit the portrait, though modesty has curbed me short of justice.

Doubtless, we have met. It was your umbrella--which you held villainously beneath your arm--that took me in the ribs when you lighted on a set of Fuller's Worthies. You recall my sour looks, but it was because I had myself lingered on the volumes but cooled at the price. How you smoothed and fingered them! With what triumph you bore them off! I bid you--for I see you in a slippered state, eased and unbuttoned after dinner--I bid you turn the pages with a slow thumb, not to miss the slightest tang of their humor. You will of course go first, because of its broad fame, to the page on Shakespeare and Ben Jonson and their wet-combats at the Mermaid. But before the night is too far gone and while yet you can hold yourself from nodding, you will please read about Captain John Smith of Virginia and his "strange performances, the scene whereof is laid at such a distance, they are cheaper credited than confuted."

In no proper sense am I a buyer of old books. I admit a bookish quirk maybe, a love of the shelf, a weakness for morocco, especially if it is stained with age. I will, indeed, shirk a wedding for a bookshop. I'll go in "just to look about a bit, to see what the fellow has," and on an occasion I pick up a volume. But I am innocent of first editions. It is a stiff courtesy, as becomes a democrat, that I bestow on this form of primogeniture. Of course, I have nosed my way with pleasure along aristocratic shelves and flipped out volumes here and there to ask their price, but for the greater part, it is the plainer shops that engage me. If a rack of books is offered cheap before the door, with a fixed price upon a card, I come at a trot. And if a brown dust lies on them, I bow and sniff upon the rack, as though the past like an ancient fop in peruke and buckle were giving me the courtesy of its snuff box. If I take the dust in my nostrils and chance to sneeze, it is the fit and intended observance toward the manners of a former century.

I have in mind such a bookshop in Bath, England. It presents to the street no more than a decent front, but opens up behind like a swollen bottle. There are twenty rooms at least, piled together with such confusion of black passages and winding steps, that one might think that the owner himself must hold a thread when he visits the remoter rooms. Indeed, such are the obscurities and dim turnings of the place, that, were the legend of the Minotaur but English, you might fancy that the creature still lived in this labyrinth, to nip you between his toothless gums--for the beast grows old--at some darker corner. There is a story of the place, that once a raw clerk having been sent to rummage in the basement, his candle tipped off the shelf. He was left in so complete darkness that his fears overcame his judgment and for two hours he roamed and babbled among the barrels. Nor was his absence discovered until the end of the day when, as was the custom, the clerks counted noses at the door. When they found him, he bolted up the steps, nor did he cease his whimper until he had reached the comforting twilight of the outer world. He served thereafter in the shop a full two years and had a beard coming--so the story runs--before he would again venture beyond the third turning of the passage; to the stunting of his scholarship, for the deeper books lay in the farther windings.

Or it may appear credible that in ages past a jealous builder contrived the place. Having no learning himself and being at odds with those of better opportunity, he twisted the pattern of the house. Such was his evil temper, that he set the steps at a dangerous hazard in the dark, in order that scholars--whose eyes are bleared at best--might risk their legs to the end of time. Those of strict orthodoxy have even suspected the builder to have been an atheist, for they have observed what double joints and steps and turnings confuse the passage to the devouter books--the Early Fathers in particular being up a winding stair where even the soberest reader might break his neck. Be these things as they may, leather bindings in sets of "grenadier uniformity" ornament the upper and lighter rooms. Biography straggles down a hallway, with a candle needed at the farther end. A room of dingy plays--Wycherley, Congreve and their crew--looks out through an area grating. It was through even so foul an eye, that when alive, they looked upon the world. As for theology, except for the before-mentioned Fathers, it sits in general and dusty convention on the landing to the basement, its snuffy sermons, by a sad misplacement--or is there an ironical intention?--pointing the way to the eternal abyss below.

For the buying of books, it is the cheaper shops where I most often prowl. There is in London a district around Charing Cross Road where almost every shop has books for sale. There is a continuous rack along the sidewalk, each title beckoning for your attention. You recall the class of street-readers of whom Charles Lamb wrote--"poor gentry, who, not having wherewithal to buy or hire a book, filch a little learning at the open stalls." It was on some such street that these folk practiced their innocent larceny. If one shopkeeper frowned at the diligence with which they read Clarissa, they would continue her distressing adventures across the way. By a lingering progress up the street, Sir Charles Grandison might be nibbled down--by such as had the stomach--without the outlay of a single penny. As for Gibbon and the bulbous historians, though a whole perusal would outlast the summer and stretch to the colder months, yet with patience they could be got through. However, before the end was even a hasty reader whose eye was nimble on the would be blowing on his nails and pulling his tails between him and the November wind.

But the habit of reading at the open stalls was not only with the poor. You will remember that Mr. Brownlow was addicted. Really, had not the Artful Dodger stolen his pocket handkerchief as he was thus engaged upon his book, the whole history of Oliver Twist must have been quite different. And Pepys himself, Samuel Pepys, F.R.S., was guilty. "To Paul's Church Yard," he writes, "and there looked upon the second part of Hudibras, which I buy not, but borrow to read." Such parsimony is the curse of authors. To thumb a volume cheaply around a neighborhood is what keeps them in their garrets. It is a less offence to steal peanuts from a stand. Also, it is recorded in the life of Beau Nash that the persons of fashion of his time, to pass a tedious morning "did divert themselves with reading in the booksellers' shops." We may conceive Mr. Fanciful Fopling in the sleepy blink of those early hours before the pleasures of the day have made a start, inquiring between his yawns what latest novels have come down from London, or whether a new part of Pamela is offered yet. If the post be in, he will prop himself against the shelf and--unless he glaze and nod--he will read cheaply for an hour. Or my Lady Betty, having taken the waters in the pump-room and lent her ear to such gossip as is abroad so early, is now handed to her chair and goes round by Gregory's to read a bit. She is flounced to the width of the passage. Indeed, until the fashion shall abate, those more solid authors that are set up in the rear of the shop, must remain during her visits in general neglect. Though she hold herself against the shelf and tilt her hoops, it would not be possible to pass. She is absorbed in a book of the softer sort, and she flips its pages against her lap-dog's nose.

But now behold the student coming up the street! He is clad in shining black. He is thin of shank as becomes a scholar. He sags with knowledge. He hungers after wisdom. He comes opposite the bookshop. It is but coquetry that his eyes seek the window of the tobacconist. His heart, you may be sure, looks through the buttons at his back. At last he turns. He pauses on the curb. Now desire has clutched him. He jiggles his trousered shillings. He treads the gutter. He squints upon the rack. He lights upon a treasure. He plucks it forth. He is unresolved whether to buy it or to spend the extra shilling on his dinner. Now all you cooks together, to save your business, rattle your pans to rouse him! If within these ancient buildings there are onions ready peeled--quick!--throw them in the skillet that the whiff may come beneath his nose! Chance trembles and casts its vote—eenie meenie--down goes the shilling--he has bought the book. Tonight he will spread it beneath his candle. Feet may beat a snare of pleasure on the pavement, glad cries may pipe across the darkness, a fiddle may scratch its invitation--all the rumbling notes of midnight traffic will tap in vain their summons upon his window.