I found about about these books by reading the author’s obituary in the New York Times on June 11, 2011. He had died at the age of 96. The two books are parts one and two of the author’s account of his journey, mostly on foot, southeastward across the continent of Europe, from Holland to Istanbul, in 1934. He was 19 at the time. The books were published in 1977 and 1986, respectively, so a lot of time elapsed between the walking and the writing. In fact, the two books only cover the first two thirds of the author’s journey, getting him as far as the border between Romania and Bulgaria. (He’s only averaging about two miles a page!) According to the Times, “his biographer Artemis Cooper told the British newspaper The Guardian that Mr. Leigh Fermor had completed a draft [of the third and concluding volume], and that it would be published.”
If I had the opportunity to change lives with another person (or at least to take part in a parlor game with that premise) I would have to give serious consideration to choosing Patrick Leigh Fermor. Besides exploring and getting to know many remote corners in the world, Fermor was also a war hero, who kidnapped a Nazi general on Crete in 1942. This exploit was made into a film, “Ill Met by Moonlight,” directed by Michael Powell and starring Dirk Bogarde. Of course, it is always possible that someone having an interesting and full life is for one reason or another not able to fully enjoy that life, but having read these books, I don’t sense that this was the case with Patrick Leigh Fermor.
When I was 19 and under the spell of Jack Kerouac I found myself with no job and nothing to do during the summer. So I decided to go hitchhiking. Here are two key differences between my excursion and Patrick Leigh Fermor’s: One, walking is a lot more open-ended than hitchhiking. I may have been looking for experience, but most people in cars, as it turns out, are looking to get somewhere, so hitchhiking turns out to be about transportational assist more than adventure. People take you into their cars to keep them awake, to complain, or just to fend off boredom. I covered 33 states and several thousand miles in a little over three weeks before finding myself back in New York City again. It was a bold and probably dangerous journey in its way, but nobody would ever suggest that there was a book to be written about it.
The other key difference is that I lacked Fermor’s gregariousness and his ability to enter into the fabric of peoples’ lives. I met some nice people and had some minor adventures, but it would have been better had I been able to “stick” in a few more places for a few more days. Fermor not only makes friends, he gets invited to stay in a series of sumptuous ancestral manses across Middeleuropa. To quote Jan Morris in the preface to Between the Woods and the Water, “[F]riends had passed him on to friends, a count here had recommended him to a baron there, and by the time we join him he is almost as often being picked up in a limousine, or riding a borrowed thoroughbred, as he is plodding along a highway.”
These differences are closely related—to travel on foot is to be a kind of pilgrim, to qualify for a traditional form of charity. For centuries religious pilgrims had crisscrossed Europe depending on just this kind of charity. It is odd, though, that after hundreds of kilometers—and pages—Fermor has not one rude or hostile encounter to report. My luck as a hitchhiker was not nearly as good.
In Patrick Leigh Fermor’s memoirs, as in Karen Blixen’s, the authors present accounts of their lives that are essentially free of elements like self-doubt, envy, fear, and resentment. Is this because these elements were lacking from their lives? I don’t think that’s the case. I think it’s that these authors are writing about the times and places in which they lived, as much as they are writing about their own lives. In writing of this type, it is appropriate to filter out certain psychological frequencies that would otherwise obscure the view of the world outside. As an example of an entirely different kind of autobiographical writing, consider Dave Egger’s A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, which dwells on the author’s suffering and personal development more than on its author’s times and places. Do memoirs and autobiographies generally fall into one of the other category, or is there more of an even distribution across the spectrum? Are more personal accounts becoming more common? These are matters to consider.
On the foundation of his personal experiences, Fermor has built an impressive edifice of erudition. After taking his walk, he spent a half century studying, revisiting, and considering the significance of those times and places. His art is in making the personal experience and the added learning blend so well. We are not often reminded that he is commenting on and looking back at a former self. Somehow, he has invested that former self with the knowledge and perspective of the older man. The books do not feel particularly elegiac or nostalgic.
Fermor’s command of information is evident from the precise and extensive vocabulary he uses to describe his experiences. There is hardly a paragraph in these books that does not contain a word that I did not know. Once in a while I would look one up—for example, incunabula, a word that describes a category of early printed books, or aurochs, a type of wild Eurasian cattle that became extinct in the 17th century. Occasionally, Fermor’s precision goes a bit too far, as when he spends 10 pages describing the architecture of a single building in Prague—lintels, ashlars, cusps, ogees; even if I was familiar with these architectural terms, there is no way I could reassemble the images that Fermor is trying to capture in words. I would gladly visit such structures with such a knowing and enthusiastic guide, but the words alone will not suffice.
I am glad to finally know something about the geography and the history of places like Hungary and Transylvania and Romania: of the procession of peoples over the plains and mountains of southeastern Europe over the past 20 centuries. Of the Dacians who made war against Rome and were ultimately subdued by Trajan’s legions. Of the Turks who pushed up the Danube as far as Vienna before slowly being pushed back to Asia Minor. And of the Tatars of central Asia who were still raiding Hungary as late as the 1780s. Few places on Earth have been as fought over as southeastern Europe.
But Fermor’s books are more than a collection of wikipedia entries. There is warmth and charm in his accounts. I felt a bit sad when I finished the second book, because I liked hanging out with Paddy. I look forward to meeting up with him again.
Friday, November 25, 2011
Sunday, November 6, 2011
#9 Middlemarch, George Eliot
Every former English major knows that Middlemarch is one of the great novels in the English language. It’s the Victorian novel to end all Victorian novels. I just searched online for “greatest novels of all time”; the first list I found has Middlemarch in eighth place, between Madame Bovary and The Magic Mountain. If Middlemarch were a baseball player, it would be Ted Williams.
I read Middlemarch in grad school, and I remember that I asked the professor, whose name was Felicia Bonaparte, if I could write my master’s thesis on it. She recommended that I take on Eliot’s next and final novel, Daniel Deronda, instead. I produced a 36-page paper, which seemed at the time almost as epic as the 900-page book it was about. I worked at it most of one summer—1982, perhaps—and I truly enjoyed it. Daniel Deronda spoke to me. I thought I’d produced a masterpiece, and I got an A. If I read it today I’d probably be appalled, but if nothing else I’m sure it was bursting with enthusiasm.
I wonder how clear an idea I had, back in 1982, about what I would have wanted to say about Middlemarch—what it said to me back then.
Middlemarch is about two marriages, both unhappy. All four principals marry an idea of the other person, and all four find afterward that the reality does not match the idea. The psychological insight is wonderful and it all seems very real and nuanced. What little I remembered from my first encounter with Middlemarch had to do with these two marriages.
Middlemarch is also the story of various citizens of a country town. They all struggle and scheme; some come out well and some do not. Invariably, though, everybody seems to get according to their desserts. George Eliot is a just god and moral law is strictly enforced in her universe. I’ve sort of lost my taste for this sort of moral exactitude—it doesn’t tally with the world I live in.
There’s really only one character in Middlemarch who has the ability to surprise us—or her author. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman who marries a dry and dreary scholar, imagining that she will help him illuminate the universe with his wisdom. In the Prelude to Middlemarch, Eliot invokes St. Teresa of Avila:
Dorothea is a modern-day St. Teresa. You might imagine that such a character would be insufferable, but in fact the scenes with Dorothea are luminous—and sometimes even a bit funny. She’s exalted, but she’s not particularly shrewd. She provides an interesting mirror in which other characters can see themselves. Inherently good characters see their goodness in her and are sustained by that vision. Bad or tedious characters see their deficiences, or see nothing.
But I am just saying the obvious things about this book—these comments are like snapshots of the Eiffel Tower. Proof that I’ve been there—not much more. I don’t seem to have any way to “warm up” Middlemarch. I am not generally attracted to the idea of book clubs, because I’m pretty sure I would find my own opinions more interesting than everybody else’s, and therefore would find myself engaged in an exercise in patience (or, failing that, rudeness). But with Middlemarch, it might be interesting to hear how different people reacted to and assessed the different characters. Each so perfectly framed by circumstances and by other characters. Each facing a moral dilemma or difficult choice. Each bathed in the light irony of the author’s prose, with thoughts and feelings presented in a detached way that provides the necessary clues to each character’s flaws. To talk about Middlemarch is to consider how one might live better.
I read Middlemarch in grad school, and I remember that I asked the professor, whose name was Felicia Bonaparte, if I could write my master’s thesis on it. She recommended that I take on Eliot’s next and final novel, Daniel Deronda, instead. I produced a 36-page paper, which seemed at the time almost as epic as the 900-page book it was about. I worked at it most of one summer—1982, perhaps—and I truly enjoyed it. Daniel Deronda spoke to me. I thought I’d produced a masterpiece, and I got an A. If I read it today I’d probably be appalled, but if nothing else I’m sure it was bursting with enthusiasm.
I wonder how clear an idea I had, back in 1982, about what I would have wanted to say about Middlemarch—what it said to me back then.
Middlemarch is about two marriages, both unhappy. All four principals marry an idea of the other person, and all four find afterward that the reality does not match the idea. The psychological insight is wonderful and it all seems very real and nuanced. What little I remembered from my first encounter with Middlemarch had to do with these two marriages.
Middlemarch is also the story of various citizens of a country town. They all struggle and scheme; some come out well and some do not. Invariably, though, everybody seems to get according to their desserts. George Eliot is a just god and moral law is strictly enforced in her universe. I’ve sort of lost my taste for this sort of moral exactitude—it doesn’t tally with the world I live in.
There’s really only one character in Middlemarch who has the ability to surprise us—or her author. Dorothea Brooke is a young woman who marries a dry and dreary scholar, imagining that she will help him illuminate the universe with his wisdom. In the Prelude to Middlemarch, Eliot invokes St. Teresa of Avila:
Teresa’s passionate, ideal nature demanded an epic life: what were many-volumed romances of chivalry and the social conquests of a brilliant girl to her? Her flame quickly burned up that light fuel; and fed, from within, soared after some illimitable satisfaction…
Dorothea is a modern-day St. Teresa. You might imagine that such a character would be insufferable, but in fact the scenes with Dorothea are luminous—and sometimes even a bit funny. She’s exalted, but she’s not particularly shrewd. She provides an interesting mirror in which other characters can see themselves. Inherently good characters see their goodness in her and are sustained by that vision. Bad or tedious characters see their deficiences, or see nothing.
But I am just saying the obvious things about this book—these comments are like snapshots of the Eiffel Tower. Proof that I’ve been there—not much more. I don’t seem to have any way to “warm up” Middlemarch. I am not generally attracted to the idea of book clubs, because I’m pretty sure I would find my own opinions more interesting than everybody else’s, and therefore would find myself engaged in an exercise in patience (or, failing that, rudeness). But with Middlemarch, it might be interesting to hear how different people reacted to and assessed the different characters. Each so perfectly framed by circumstances and by other characters. Each facing a moral dilemma or difficult choice. Each bathed in the light irony of the author’s prose, with thoughts and feelings presented in a detached way that provides the necessary clues to each character’s flaws. To talk about Middlemarch is to consider how one might live better.
Saturday, October 8, 2011
#8 Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell
I was about two-thirds of the way through Winter’s Bone when I realized it wasn’t the book I was expecting it to be. So when I finished, I decided I had better read it again right away (it’s less than 200 pages). I had it on my radar in the first place because it was made into a movie that got a 2010 best picture nomination (with the implicit stipulation that it wasn’t going to win). The movie was featured on a couple of the NPR programs that I listen to, including Fresh Air and Studio 360. I heard how this fine, fine movie was based on a fine, fine book, so I thought I might try both. Haven’t found the movie yet at a reasonable price—it might be time to sign up for Netflix again.
So I’m blaming NPR for my faulty expectations. Yes, there was the feisty 16-year-old heroine, as promised. But the other angle I kept hearing about was the unflinching depiction of the harrowing socioeconomic conditions in the Ozark backcountry of southern Missouri. I was expecting an expose, social realism, a story about the devastation wrought by lack of opportunity and methamphetamine. A book that would bring important matters to my attention that I had no right to ignore, etc.
It’s not that you couldn’t read the book that way, I just don’t think that’s the book that Daniel Woodrell was writing. The poverty and the meth are the setting, but they are not the story. Woodrell’s wikipedia article starts this way: “Woodrell coined the phrase ‘country noir’ to describe his 1996 novel Give Us a Kiss. Reviewers have frequently since used the term to categorize his writing.” Winter’s Bone actually does have a lot more in common with The Big Sleep than it does with, say, The Grapes of Wrath. (I have not actually read either, but I have seen the movies.)
The plot is this: Ree Dolly’s father Jessup has disappeared, leaving her in charge of her eight- and ten-year-old brothers and her mentally broken-down mother. They are poor, and it’s the middle of a cold, snowy winter. An officer comes to their house one day and informs them Jessup has a court appearance the following week and that if he fails to show, the house and property will be confiscated to pay his bond. Ree assures the policeman that she will find her father, since if there is no house then there can be no family.
The real story begins to be told as Ree begins her search for “Dad.” This story could be called “The Dolly clan and how they got to be the way they are.” The hills are alive with Dollys—they seem to constitute the majority of the population in the area. Dolly men are almost all given one of four first names: Milton, Jessup, Arthur or Haslam.
What is the exact nature of those expectations? We can easily infer that it is a kind of outlaw life. We also know that Ree and her mother lobbied hard to prevent either of her brothers from being named Milton. (It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to imagine Ree being quite so aware of such larger implications when her brothers were born—she would have been six and eight.)
When you have twenty men within a few square miles named Milton Dolly you have to come up with a system for telling them apart. When Ree is waiting patiently to see one of the many Miltons one day, she passes the time thusly:
Then there is Ree’s uncle Teardrop (ne Haslam), Jessup’s brother. He has three teardrops tattooed on his cheek, one for each man he has killed in prison. Has also has had half his face melted away in a meth lab accident: “There wasn’t enough ear nub remaining to hang sunglasses on.”
Ree understands that she must put her case to one Dolly man after another until she finds the one who can tell her how to find Jessup. Woodrell does not explain the protocols that dictate Ree’s course of action, but despite the lack of nice manners these folk are as formal and precise as Japanese diplomats. In Winter’s Bone, on three separate occasions, Ree approaches the home of a Dolly man, submits her request to a woman who meets her before she enters, and, if necessary, identifies the nature of her kinship to the lord of the manor. Sometimes that’s enough to get her an audience, sometimes not.
She works her way up some sort of ladder of importance, starting with Uncle Teardrop, then going to a cousin named Little Arthur. These men treat her with a hint of avuncular solicitation, but they also threaten to knock her around for not following their advice, which is to abandon her effort to find Jessup. Both keep firearms at hand; both offer a hit of “crank,” which she declines.
The third and final Dolly man that Ree petitions is Thump Milton, who is clearly the top Milton. The exact nature of his authority is never stated, but Ree’s attempts to get in to see him remind me of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her allies first attempt to see the wizard. Except that Thump is no humbug—his power is as absolute as it is mysterious. He is almost like a god—Ree never actually gets a clear look at Thump, as though looking at him were taboo, at least to a young unmarried woman who has no official business with him.
The Dollys, in the end, seem to resemble a biblical tribe more than an Appalachian clan. They may live in a place called Missouri and drive pickup trucks, but they respect no law and known no history but their own. It isn’t that the Dollys have decided to separate themselves from the United States, it’s more that they share a time and a place with us without really being in the same universe. As I read Winter’s Bone, I was struck by the almost complete lack of references to politics, media, name brands, or proper nouns of any kind. When cultural references do occur, they are as if seen through smoked glass:
For a few pages about midway through the book Woodrell provides a glimpse of the Dolly back story. It happens as Ree passes the stone ruins of an early Dolly settlement:
Later she repasses them and recalls what she knows about what happened in the distant past:
No allusions to Christianity—the Dolly cult is a from-scratch religion, with Haslam as its Abraham or Muhammad. In fact, the name Haslam has a middle-eastern sound to it, though google tells me that the current governor of Tennessee is named Bill Haslam. Scramble the letters around and you almost get salaam or lamas. It’s a very suggestive name.
There are a few more paragraphs of Ree ruminating on the Dolly creation story as she holes up in a cave to wait out a storm. But once she gets back on task we hear little more about Dolly deep time, except for the occasional reference to “Fist of Gods” or “Fruit of Belief.” But we now realize, as Ree pursues her quest to its harrowing conclusion, that these people aren’t merely ignorant depraved hillbillies, they are a failed nation, a seed that fell on stony soil, and did not flourish. The events that transpire are more than just one young woman’s quest to save her house and family, they are a glimpse into a world that has collapsed, but that has resisted, for better or worse, dissolving into the wider American culture.
Are there really such pockets of archaic culture in America? We have more successful cults, like the Mormons, and we have groups like the Scientologists and the People’s Temple, but I’m not aware we have any such mouldering tribe of Israel as the Dollys in our midst. Maybe Daniel Woodrell knows otherwise.
My second pass through Winter’s Bone was quite a bit more interesting than my first. Woodrell requires the reader to think and work, and that’s why I mentioned The Big Sleep earlier. Ree isn’t really sleuthing, but the reader must take pains to notice and consider the numerous anomalies and stray details that keep cropping. What of Aunt Bernadette that got swept off a bridge in a flood? What exactly happens between Ree and her friend Gail? When I was paging through the book looking for the Yellow Submarine reference mentioned above, I discovered that the word yellow appears on almost every other page in Winter’s Bone. What’s up with that? I have no idea. Maybe I need to read the book again.
So I’m blaming NPR for my faulty expectations. Yes, there was the feisty 16-year-old heroine, as promised. But the other angle I kept hearing about was the unflinching depiction of the harrowing socioeconomic conditions in the Ozark backcountry of southern Missouri. I was expecting an expose, social realism, a story about the devastation wrought by lack of opportunity and methamphetamine. A book that would bring important matters to my attention that I had no right to ignore, etc.
It’s not that you couldn’t read the book that way, I just don’t think that’s the book that Daniel Woodrell was writing. The poverty and the meth are the setting, but they are not the story. Woodrell’s wikipedia article starts this way: “Woodrell coined the phrase ‘country noir’ to describe his 1996 novel Give Us a Kiss. Reviewers have frequently since used the term to categorize his writing.” Winter’s Bone actually does have a lot more in common with The Big Sleep than it does with, say, The Grapes of Wrath. (I have not actually read either, but I have seen the movies.)
The plot is this: Ree Dolly’s father Jessup has disappeared, leaving her in charge of her eight- and ten-year-old brothers and her mentally broken-down mother. They are poor, and it’s the middle of a cold, snowy winter. An officer comes to their house one day and informs them Jessup has a court appearance the following week and that if he fails to show, the house and property will be confiscated to pay his bond. Ree assures the policeman that she will find her father, since if there is no house then there can be no family.
The real story begins to be told as Ree begins her search for “Dad.” This story could be called “The Dolly clan and how they got to be the way they are.” The hills are alive with Dollys—they seem to constitute the majority of the population in the area. Dolly men are almost all given one of four first names: Milton, Jessup, Arthur or Haslam.
To have but a few male names in use was a holdover from the olden knacker ways…. Let any sheriff or similar nabob try to keep accounts on the Dolly men when so many were named Milton, Haslam, Arthur or Jessup. The Arthurs and the Jessups were the fewest, no more than five apiece, and the Haslams amounted to double the Arthurs or Jessups. But the great name of the Dollys was Milton, and at least two dozen Miltons moved about in Ree’s world. If you named a son Milton it was a decision that attempted to chart the life he’d live before he even stepped into it, for among Dollys the name carried expectations and history.
What is the exact nature of those expectations? We can easily infer that it is a kind of outlaw life. We also know that Ree and her mother lobbied hard to prevent either of her brothers from being named Milton. (It is perhaps a bit of a stretch to imagine Ree being quite so aware of such larger implications when her brothers were born—she would have been six and eight.)
When you have twenty men within a few square miles named Milton Dolly you have to come up with a system for telling them apart. When Ree is waiting patiently to see one of the many Miltons one day, she passes the time thusly:
To occupy her mind, she decided to name all the Miltons: Thump, Blond, Catfish, Spider, Whoop, Rooster, Scrap . . . . Lefty, Dog, Punch, Pinkeye, Momsy . . . . Cotton, Hog-jaw, Ten Penny, Peashot . . . . enough. Enough Miltons.
Then there is Ree’s uncle Teardrop (ne Haslam), Jessup’s brother. He has three teardrops tattooed on his cheek, one for each man he has killed in prison. Has also has had half his face melted away in a meth lab accident: “There wasn’t enough ear nub remaining to hang sunglasses on.”
Ree understands that she must put her case to one Dolly man after another until she finds the one who can tell her how to find Jessup. Woodrell does not explain the protocols that dictate Ree’s course of action, but despite the lack of nice manners these folk are as formal and precise as Japanese diplomats. In Winter’s Bone, on three separate occasions, Ree approaches the home of a Dolly man, submits her request to a woman who meets her before she enters, and, if necessary, identifies the nature of her kinship to the lord of the manor. Sometimes that’s enough to get her an audience, sometimes not.
She works her way up some sort of ladder of importance, starting with Uncle Teardrop, then going to a cousin named Little Arthur. These men treat her with a hint of avuncular solicitation, but they also threaten to knock her around for not following their advice, which is to abandon her effort to find Jessup. Both keep firearms at hand; both offer a hit of “crank,” which she declines.
The third and final Dolly man that Ree petitions is Thump Milton, who is clearly the top Milton. The exact nature of his authority is never stated, but Ree’s attempts to get in to see him remind me of the Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy and her allies first attempt to see the wizard. Except that Thump is no humbug—his power is as absolute as it is mysterious. He is almost like a god—Ree never actually gets a clear look at Thump, as though looking at him were taboo, at least to a young unmarried woman who has no official business with him.
The Dollys, in the end, seem to resemble a biblical tribe more than an Appalachian clan. They may live in a place called Missouri and drive pickup trucks, but they respect no law and known no history but their own. It isn’t that the Dollys have decided to separate themselves from the United States, it’s more that they share a time and a place with us without really being in the same universe. As I read Winter’s Bone, I was struck by the almost complete lack of references to politics, media, name brands, or proper nouns of any kind. When cultural references do occur, they are as if seen through smoked glass:
She parted her lips and snapped her teeth in step with that happy silly old song they sang in grade school about the submarine that was yellow and had everybody living in it.
For a few pages about midway through the book Woodrell provides a glimpse of the Dolly back story. It happens as Ree passes the stone ruins of an early Dolly settlement:
The walls of the old places had been pulled apart, the stones tossed asunder and tossed furiously about the meadow during the bitter reckoning of long ago.
Later she repasses them and recalls what she knows about what happened in the distant past:
She knew few details of the old bitter reckoning that erupted inside those once holy walls, but suddenly understood to her marrow how such angers between blood could come about and last forever. Like most fights that never finished it had to’ve started with a lie. A big man and a lie.
The big man and prophet who’d found messages from the Fist of Gods written on the entrails of a sparkling golden fish lured with prayer from a black river way east near the sea was Haslam, Fruit of Belief. The sparkling fish had revealed signs unto him and him alone, and he’d followed the map etched tiny on the golden guts and led them all across thousands of testing miles until he hailed these lonely rugged hollows of tired rocky soil as a perfect garden spot, paradise as ordained by the map of guts sent to his eyes from the Fist of Gods.
No allusions to Christianity—the Dolly cult is a from-scratch religion, with Haslam as its Abraham or Muhammad. In fact, the name Haslam has a middle-eastern sound to it, though google tells me that the current governor of Tennessee is named Bill Haslam. Scramble the letters around and you almost get salaam or lamas. It’s a very suggestive name.
There are a few more paragraphs of Ree ruminating on the Dolly creation story as she holes up in a cave to wait out a storm. But once she gets back on task we hear little more about Dolly deep time, except for the occasional reference to “Fist of Gods” or “Fruit of Belief.” But we now realize, as Ree pursues her quest to its harrowing conclusion, that these people aren’t merely ignorant depraved hillbillies, they are a failed nation, a seed that fell on stony soil, and did not flourish. The events that transpire are more than just one young woman’s quest to save her house and family, they are a glimpse into a world that has collapsed, but that has resisted, for better or worse, dissolving into the wider American culture.
Are there really such pockets of archaic culture in America? We have more successful cults, like the Mormons, and we have groups like the Scientologists and the People’s Temple, but I’m not aware we have any such mouldering tribe of Israel as the Dollys in our midst. Maybe Daniel Woodrell knows otherwise.
My second pass through Winter’s Bone was quite a bit more interesting than my first. Woodrell requires the reader to think and work, and that’s why I mentioned The Big Sleep earlier. Ree isn’t really sleuthing, but the reader must take pains to notice and consider the numerous anomalies and stray details that keep cropping. What of Aunt Bernadette that got swept off a bridge in a flood? What exactly happens between Ree and her friend Gail? When I was paging through the book looking for the Yellow Submarine reference mentioned above, I discovered that the word yellow appears on almost every other page in Winter’s Bone. What’s up with that? I have no idea. Maybe I need to read the book again.
Sunday, September 11, 2011
#6 and #7: In Ruins, by Christopher Woodward, and Crazy U, by Andrew Ferguson
I read these books in tandem. Each is about 250 pages, and each describes a particular aspect of its author’s experience.
I was pretty certain I would like In Ruins. It name checked books and places and things that I already knew and liked—the peculiar buildings and history of the tidelands of east England, as described in W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, the ruins of Rome through the centuries, the fate of the monasteries and abbeys of England after Henry VIII seized them for the crown, Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln Inn Fields, London (which I had visited last year), and the life and work of Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa and author of The Leopard. Plus, it had lots of pictures! The author even manages to work in former world middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler, who, after losing a title bout, came to Rome and put his life in perspective: “I was angry as hell when they took away my title. But when you stand in the Pincio Gardens at sunset looking down at the whole of Rome, across centuries, it sorta puts things in perspective.” Hagler still lives in Italy, where he appears in television and films.
The book is about (spoiler alert!) ruins—how people have seen them through the centuries, what ruins tell us about ourselves and the past, etc. About half the ruins the author discusses are in Italy, and half are in England. You would think that once a building was ruined, that would be more or less the end of the story. But modern, excavated, groomed and managed ruins of the kind available to 21st century tourists are much less interesting than the haphazard, untended, overgrown ruins of the 18th century. In 18th century Rome, the colliseum had small forests growing in its grandstands, and Christian shrines—and even a small building, a hermitage—on its floor. In those days you could ride a horse into the colliseum under the moonlight. A 19th century botanist collected seeds from plants growing in the colliseum and determined that many of them were exotics from Africa and the Middle East. His only guess as to how those plants could have gotten there is that they grew from seeds that had been excreted by lions and other exotic fauna brought to the colliseum in its heyday to munch on Christians and other dainties.
Crazy U is a brisk and perfunctory piece of extended journalism by one Andrew Ferguson, “a senior editor at the Weekly Standard.” Ferguson has a 17-year-old son who was getting ready to apply to college. Since I have a 15-year-old son who might be getting ready to apply to college in about two years, I thought the book might provide some useful insights. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but after about 50 pages I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be getting it. I can’t say that I didn’t pick up a few useful tidbits—for example, I told my son he should start thinking about which teachers might be good for a reference now rather than two years from now when his freshman teachers will be just a dim memory—but my overall impression was that this was a stale piece of hackwork.
I think years of reading New Yorker articles has spoiled me for mainstream journalism. Ferguson does a very professional job of interweaving his son’s story with sections on things like the SAT and the U.S. News college rankings. These expository sections are a bit dry, so the author spices them up a bit with witty asides: “That something so dull [as the SAT] could have an effect so pyrotechnical is hard to credit. It’s as if the Trojan War had been fought over Bette Midler.” This is humor intended to provide respite for the reader who might be beginning to fidget after all the “heavy” information. Jay Leno humor.
Ferguson pretends to be appalled at how excruciatingly careful the people who create the SAT have to be to avoid the faintest hint of political incorrectness, but his book is similarly scrubbed of anything that might align it with one faction or another in the culture wars.
The author’s son is a good student but not exceptional. It could hardly be otherwise, though, since if he were too bright his experience would not generalize well, and if he were not bright enough, it would be cruel to expose him.
Overall, Crazy U felt less like a book and more like a seminar presentation minus the PowerPoint. Written with the discipline of the professional who wants to get the maximum financial return on his time and effort. No wasted speculation, no risky digressions, no stepping off the path for even a second. Crazy like a fox.
I was pretty certain I would like In Ruins. It name checked books and places and things that I already knew and liked—the peculiar buildings and history of the tidelands of east England, as described in W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, the ruins of Rome through the centuries, the fate of the monasteries and abbeys of England after Henry VIII seized them for the crown, Sir John Soane’s Museum in Lincoln Inn Fields, London (which I had visited last year), and the life and work of Giuseppe Tomasi, 11th Prince of Lampedusa and author of The Leopard. Plus, it had lots of pictures! The author even manages to work in former world middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler, who, after losing a title bout, came to Rome and put his life in perspective: “I was angry as hell when they took away my title. But when you stand in the Pincio Gardens at sunset looking down at the whole of Rome, across centuries, it sorta puts things in perspective.” Hagler still lives in Italy, where he appears in television and films.
The book is about (spoiler alert!) ruins—how people have seen them through the centuries, what ruins tell us about ourselves and the past, etc. About half the ruins the author discusses are in Italy, and half are in England. You would think that once a building was ruined, that would be more or less the end of the story. But modern, excavated, groomed and managed ruins of the kind available to 21st century tourists are much less interesting than the haphazard, untended, overgrown ruins of the 18th century. In 18th century Rome, the colliseum had small forests growing in its grandstands, and Christian shrines—and even a small building, a hermitage—on its floor. In those days you could ride a horse into the colliseum under the moonlight. A 19th century botanist collected seeds from plants growing in the colliseum and determined that many of them were exotics from Africa and the Middle East. His only guess as to how those plants could have gotten there is that they grew from seeds that had been excreted by lions and other exotic fauna brought to the colliseum in its heyday to munch on Christians and other dainties.
Crazy U is a brisk and perfunctory piece of extended journalism by one Andrew Ferguson, “a senior editor at the Weekly Standard.” Ferguson has a 17-year-old son who was getting ready to apply to college. Since I have a 15-year-old son who might be getting ready to apply to college in about two years, I thought the book might provide some useful insights. I don’t know exactly what I was expecting, but after about 50 pages I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to be getting it. I can’t say that I didn’t pick up a few useful tidbits—for example, I told my son he should start thinking about which teachers might be good for a reference now rather than two years from now when his freshman teachers will be just a dim memory—but my overall impression was that this was a stale piece of hackwork.
I think years of reading New Yorker articles has spoiled me for mainstream journalism. Ferguson does a very professional job of interweaving his son’s story with sections on things like the SAT and the U.S. News college rankings. These expository sections are a bit dry, so the author spices them up a bit with witty asides: “That something so dull [as the SAT] could have an effect so pyrotechnical is hard to credit. It’s as if the Trojan War had been fought over Bette Midler.” This is humor intended to provide respite for the reader who might be beginning to fidget after all the “heavy” information. Jay Leno humor.
Ferguson pretends to be appalled at how excruciatingly careful the people who create the SAT have to be to avoid the faintest hint of political incorrectness, but his book is similarly scrubbed of anything that might align it with one faction or another in the culture wars.
The author’s son is a good student but not exceptional. It could hardly be otherwise, though, since if he were too bright his experience would not generalize well, and if he were not bright enough, it would be cruel to expose him.
Overall, Crazy U felt less like a book and more like a seminar presentation minus the PowerPoint. Written with the discipline of the professional who wants to get the maximum financial return on his time and effort. No wasted speculation, no risky digressions, no stepping off the path for even a second. Crazy like a fox.
Sunday, August 21, 2011
#5: The Pickwick Papers, by Charles Dickens
This is one of the most popular books of all time, as big in its day (1836) as Harry Potter is in ours.
But who would want to read it today? A massive Victorian novel without sex, violence, or vampires. Even among Dickens novels, I don’t think it would be in many “top five” lists. I wasn’t really hankering to read it myself, but I had an old Penguin paperback that I had picked up. I liked the cover illustration, I liked the heft of it, and so I started reading, sort of on a self-dare.
I work harder than most people at deciding what books I should read, what movies I should see, and what music I should listen to. For that very reason, I think it’s good idea every so often to “take a flyer.” Taste can be confining, a groove we wear in what the world has to offer. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to have too much faith in your own taste. Have you heard of “desert island discs”?—this is a genre of music writing where people are asked what five records they would want to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. (Or rather, they answer without actually being asked.) I realize the real question behind this conceit is merely “What are your favorite records?”, but I can’t help trying to imagine what it would be like if you really were forced to spend the rest of your life under a cocoanut tree with a record player and five records. Maybe one of those wind-up grammaphones with a speaker like a big lily. I suspect that after a few weeks it would not matter what the discs were—or rather, it would matter in ways that we could not imagine in advance. Maybe we’d just want happy music, or singable music, or music that told a story. Would we want Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon? I might be just as happy with Celine Dion, Tom Jones, and The Beegees as I would be with the Beatles, Bach, and Charlie Parker. Because taste is an extravagance, a way of coping with surplus. Music is music.
So am I comparing The Pickwick Papers with Celine Dion? Not exactly—but both have sustained and entertained a lot of people. Given the choice, though, I’ll take Pickwick. (Unless I’m in Vegas and I get a good deal on tickets.)
I was somewhat indifferently entertained while reading Pickwick. I didn’t work at it, as I would have if I’d owed somebody a term paper afterwards. There were some good bits of comedy and lots of great period detail about coaches and inns and servants. After finishing the book I went back and read the introduction, and began to understand how to “value” Pickwick. I felt a little guilty for not having recognized all the virtues of the book, all the things that make it remarkable. Pickwick was just a country I was passing through—I dipped a little into what it had to offer, as I would try a few Portuguese dishes if I were staying in Lisbon. Or maybe Dickens is the country, and Pickwick is a small coastal port. In any case, I’m not going to try to be your guide to the Pickwick experience, or to suggest for a moment that this is a trip you should put at the top of your list. Which puts me in mind of those “1000 X’s to See/Do/Hear Before You Die” books—another consumer trope that I am rather inclined to look at too literally. Whenever I see one of those books I am more amazed that some cheap trade paperback has the nerve to remind me of my mortality, than I am interested in the list of items. (OK, yes, I am interested in the list too.) But since I am going to die, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the best thing to do might be to dispense with lists and collections altogether. I suspect these books are for twenty-five year olds, who have trouble imagining their own mortality.
Dickens was a hot young journalist when he was offered the Pickwick project. A popular illustrator wanted a pretext for publishing a series of illustrations, and the publisher was looking for someone to supply some narrative to fill in around the pictures. The pictures were to be of a “sporting club,” and they were to be satirical—people in extravagant hunting costumes discharging their pieces ineptly, and so forth. The first few chapters did little to transcend this flimsy concept, but as he wrote, Dickens began to realize that he was, in fact, Charles Dickens. Characters, descriptions and themes began to pour forth. The sporting club gave way to intrigue, adventure, and romance. A star was born. As monthly installments were published, Dickens took note of “what worked,” and promptly supplied more of those commodities. Sam Weller, the shrewd and practical cockney manservant, introduced as a peripheral character in one episode, was brought back and made a key cast member. It wasn’t “reality” novel-writing, but it had that element of audience interaction that keeps shows like American Idol on everyone’s lips.
After the fourth installment, the illustrator shot himself. A new illustrator was found, but the ratio of text to illustrations was increased. Advantage: Dickens. For the modern reader, reading Pickwick is somewhat like watching a sitcom without the laugh track. Or like watching the performers on American Idol without the judges and the audience. You’re seeing only one half of a dialogue between artist and audience.
You’re also lacking the cultural perspective of the early Victorian English audience. The knowledge of current events, the gentle satire regarding master/servant relationships, etc. Humor can either be “of the moment,” full of satire and parodies of people and events in the news, or more what I would call, for lack of a better word, universal. When they rebroadcast ancient Saturday Night Live episodes, I suspect they edit out skits making fun of Edmund Muskie, Billy Carter and the like—the fact that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is “still dead” isn’t nearly as funny as it was 35 years ago, when the audience knew that the Spanish dictator had clung to life for months before finally expiring. Monty Python skits, in contrast, seem mostly free of such cultural specifics, and so have aged better.
Of course the ultimate challenge in this regard is Shakespeare. Consider “Romeo and Juliet”—there are parts of that play that are chock full of cultural references and topical jokes that nobody today can appreciate—unless they read the footnotes carefully. Yet they assign this play to high schoolers. Of course, the play does work on other levels at the same time. It’s interesting when you watch a Shakespeare comedy performed—especially a low-budget production without famous actors. Productions that cannot rely on opulence and acting skill to blow you away. The actors always make sure they give the audience plenty to laugh at. I always wonder—how much of this humor was put there by Shakespeare (and typically missed by me as I read the play and tried to navigate the iambic pentameter), and how much is part of the cultural inheritance of the play—gestures and effects handed down through the centuries as younger performers absorbed the tricks and gambits of their predecessors. Not unlike magicians. There is a third possibility—that actors and directors can invent humorous readings, gestures, and “bits” without any guidance from either the bard or their mentors. I suspect that when you watch a Shakespearean comedy you’re seeing a blend of all three of these potential sources of humor: what Shakespeare put in, theatrical traditions, and new inventions.
In any case, there is no way for us today to recapture the excitement that would have been felt by the original readers of The Pickwick Papers. We can only admire it the way we admire surviving Roman ampitheaters, with only perhaps 60% of the rock still in place.
But who would want to read it today? A massive Victorian novel without sex, violence, or vampires. Even among Dickens novels, I don’t think it would be in many “top five” lists. I wasn’t really hankering to read it myself, but I had an old Penguin paperback that I had picked up. I liked the cover illustration, I liked the heft of it, and so I started reading, sort of on a self-dare.
I work harder than most people at deciding what books I should read, what movies I should see, and what music I should listen to. For that very reason, I think it’s good idea every so often to “take a flyer.” Taste can be confining, a groove we wear in what the world has to offer. I don’t think it’s necessarily a good thing to have too much faith in your own taste. Have you heard of “desert island discs”?—this is a genre of music writing where people are asked what five records they would want to have with them if they were stranded on a desert island. (Or rather, they answer without actually being asked.) I realize the real question behind this conceit is merely “What are your favorite records?”, but I can’t help trying to imagine what it would be like if you really were forced to spend the rest of your life under a cocoanut tree with a record player and five records. Maybe one of those wind-up grammaphones with a speaker like a big lily. I suspect that after a few weeks it would not matter what the discs were—or rather, it would matter in ways that we could not imagine in advance. Maybe we’d just want happy music, or singable music, or music that told a story. Would we want Sgt. Peppers or Dark Side of the Moon? I might be just as happy with Celine Dion, Tom Jones, and The Beegees as I would be with the Beatles, Bach, and Charlie Parker. Because taste is an extravagance, a way of coping with surplus. Music is music.
So am I comparing The Pickwick Papers with Celine Dion? Not exactly—but both have sustained and entertained a lot of people. Given the choice, though, I’ll take Pickwick. (Unless I’m in Vegas and I get a good deal on tickets.)
I was somewhat indifferently entertained while reading Pickwick. I didn’t work at it, as I would have if I’d owed somebody a term paper afterwards. There were some good bits of comedy and lots of great period detail about coaches and inns and servants. After finishing the book I went back and read the introduction, and began to understand how to “value” Pickwick. I felt a little guilty for not having recognized all the virtues of the book, all the things that make it remarkable. Pickwick was just a country I was passing through—I dipped a little into what it had to offer, as I would try a few Portuguese dishes if I were staying in Lisbon. Or maybe Dickens is the country, and Pickwick is a small coastal port. In any case, I’m not going to try to be your guide to the Pickwick experience, or to suggest for a moment that this is a trip you should put at the top of your list. Which puts me in mind of those “1000 X’s to See/Do/Hear Before You Die” books—another consumer trope that I am rather inclined to look at too literally. Whenever I see one of those books I am more amazed that some cheap trade paperback has the nerve to remind me of my mortality, than I am interested in the list of items. (OK, yes, I am interested in the list too.) But since I am going to die, and perhaps in the not-too-distant future, the best thing to do might be to dispense with lists and collections altogether. I suspect these books are for twenty-five year olds, who have trouble imagining their own mortality.
Dickens was a hot young journalist when he was offered the Pickwick project. A popular illustrator wanted a pretext for publishing a series of illustrations, and the publisher was looking for someone to supply some narrative to fill in around the pictures. The pictures were to be of a “sporting club,” and they were to be satirical—people in extravagant hunting costumes discharging their pieces ineptly, and so forth. The first few chapters did little to transcend this flimsy concept, but as he wrote, Dickens began to realize that he was, in fact, Charles Dickens. Characters, descriptions and themes began to pour forth. The sporting club gave way to intrigue, adventure, and romance. A star was born. As monthly installments were published, Dickens took note of “what worked,” and promptly supplied more of those commodities. Sam Weller, the shrewd and practical cockney manservant, introduced as a peripheral character in one episode, was brought back and made a key cast member. It wasn’t “reality” novel-writing, but it had that element of audience interaction that keeps shows like American Idol on everyone’s lips.
After the fourth installment, the illustrator shot himself. A new illustrator was found, but the ratio of text to illustrations was increased. Advantage: Dickens. For the modern reader, reading Pickwick is somewhat like watching a sitcom without the laugh track. Or like watching the performers on American Idol without the judges and the audience. You’re seeing only one half of a dialogue between artist and audience.
You’re also lacking the cultural perspective of the early Victorian English audience. The knowledge of current events, the gentle satire regarding master/servant relationships, etc. Humor can either be “of the moment,” full of satire and parodies of people and events in the news, or more what I would call, for lack of a better word, universal. When they rebroadcast ancient Saturday Night Live episodes, I suspect they edit out skits making fun of Edmund Muskie, Billy Carter and the like—the fact that Generalissimo Francisco Franco is “still dead” isn’t nearly as funny as it was 35 years ago, when the audience knew that the Spanish dictator had clung to life for months before finally expiring. Monty Python skits, in contrast, seem mostly free of such cultural specifics, and so have aged better.
Of course the ultimate challenge in this regard is Shakespeare. Consider “Romeo and Juliet”—there are parts of that play that are chock full of cultural references and topical jokes that nobody today can appreciate—unless they read the footnotes carefully. Yet they assign this play to high schoolers. Of course, the play does work on other levels at the same time. It’s interesting when you watch a Shakespeare comedy performed—especially a low-budget production without famous actors. Productions that cannot rely on opulence and acting skill to blow you away. The actors always make sure they give the audience plenty to laugh at. I always wonder—how much of this humor was put there by Shakespeare (and typically missed by me as I read the play and tried to navigate the iambic pentameter), and how much is part of the cultural inheritance of the play—gestures and effects handed down through the centuries as younger performers absorbed the tricks and gambits of their predecessors. Not unlike magicians. There is a third possibility—that actors and directors can invent humorous readings, gestures, and “bits” without any guidance from either the bard or their mentors. I suspect that when you watch a Shakespearean comedy you’re seeing a blend of all three of these potential sources of humor: what Shakespeare put in, theatrical traditions, and new inventions.
In any case, there is no way for us today to recapture the excitement that would have been felt by the original readers of The Pickwick Papers. We can only admire it the way we admire surviving Roman ampitheaters, with only perhaps 60% of the rock still in place.
Saturday, August 6, 2011
#4: Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen
I found two Isak Dinesen books at a yard sale a couple of months ago for ten cents each—Seven Gothic Tales and Out of Africa. I read the former first and just finished the latter. The two books are very different—the former is a collection of highly stylized and intricately weird romantic tales, the latter a factual account of the author’s experiences running a sort of plantation in Kenya. But what unites them for me is the strength of the author’s personality, as expressed in her writing. This was a person who wrote confidently and boldly, and I get the definite sense that she would have showed those traits in other aspects of her life as well. I don’t think she was a timid person.
Seven Gothic Tales has a spooky Scandinavian feel, it's an orchestration of effects and sleights and nuances. She chooses the role of artificer, a maker of illusions and effects. Some of the stories are thrilling and exotic, others are a bit vague and dream-like.
In Out of Africa, the sense of power comes from the way the author so capably puts across her personal understanding of her experience managing a large coffee plantation in Kenya. The book is neither modest nor grandiose; the author has a cool, supple, and poised intelligence which can be philosophical, analytical, or sympathetic as the occasion requires. She presents her 17 years in Africa exactly as she wishes us to see them, selecting people and events to give her experience resonance and coherence.
Reading the book in 2011, though, it’s difficult not to wonder about certain things. Dinesen runs a 6000-acre farm, staffed by hundreds or perhaps thousands of Africans, primarily of the Kikuyu tribe. She is friendly with many of her so-called natives and tells us of the lives and tribulations of several of them, but never without a certain paternalistic distance. Indeed, she writes of favorite horses and dogs, as well, and in much the same way—they are noble, they endure, they die. Dinesen’s natives are being run off the land as systematically as the Indians of the American west were—at one point she explains why her people will have to relocate after she sells the farm: “The natives cannot, according to the law, themselves buy any land…” If this fact caused Dinesen any dismay, it is not evident from this book. Perhaps she is just extending her own personal stoicism to those around her.
We read of the blue peaks of the Ngong Hills, of safaris down into the Masai Reserve. We read of the slaughter of several lions, and of a plague of locusts. We read of the ways of the hardworking Kikuyu, of the warlike Masai, and of the Somali, with their fierce Islam religion and their sequestered wives. Somalis served as loyal major domos to the white landowners, aristocrats among the Africans, and you wonder how their homeland could have come to the awful state it is in today. Reading Out of Africa makes me want to visit Kenya, to walk the cool uplands of the west country and to see the stars and the moon and the sky as Dinesen describes them. Of course, today her property is within the suburbs of Nairobi, so I doubt if the walk would be quite as exhilarating as in her day.
I would like to someday read Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen to learn about everything that she has left out. Even just a few minutes of browsing in wikipedia provides all sorts of surprises—What of the husband who gave her syphilis and whom she divorced in 1921? What of the brother who came out to help her run the plantation for four years? What of her love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton (or is it Hatton-Finch), which is the main substance of the 1985 film made from Out of Africa? It is odd to think that the movie, using the same title, tells of events that are barely hinted at in the book. Dinesen is a ruthless editor of her own life, throwing out whatever doesn’t suit her purpose. I haven’t decided if I think this is quite honest.
Was Kenya in the 30s really so idyllic? Perhaps not. But I do not think it was any the worse for Karen Blixen’s having been there.
Seven Gothic Tales has a spooky Scandinavian feel, it's an orchestration of effects and sleights and nuances. She chooses the role of artificer, a maker of illusions and effects. Some of the stories are thrilling and exotic, others are a bit vague and dream-like.
In Out of Africa, the sense of power comes from the way the author so capably puts across her personal understanding of her experience managing a large coffee plantation in Kenya. The book is neither modest nor grandiose; the author has a cool, supple, and poised intelligence which can be philosophical, analytical, or sympathetic as the occasion requires. She presents her 17 years in Africa exactly as she wishes us to see them, selecting people and events to give her experience resonance and coherence.
Reading the book in 2011, though, it’s difficult not to wonder about certain things. Dinesen runs a 6000-acre farm, staffed by hundreds or perhaps thousands of Africans, primarily of the Kikuyu tribe. She is friendly with many of her so-called natives and tells us of the lives and tribulations of several of them, but never without a certain paternalistic distance. Indeed, she writes of favorite horses and dogs, as well, and in much the same way—they are noble, they endure, they die. Dinesen’s natives are being run off the land as systematically as the Indians of the American west were—at one point she explains why her people will have to relocate after she sells the farm: “The natives cannot, according to the law, themselves buy any land…” If this fact caused Dinesen any dismay, it is not evident from this book. Perhaps she is just extending her own personal stoicism to those around her.
We read of the blue peaks of the Ngong Hills, of safaris down into the Masai Reserve. We read of the slaughter of several lions, and of a plague of locusts. We read of the ways of the hardworking Kikuyu, of the warlike Masai, and of the Somali, with their fierce Islam religion and their sequestered wives. Somalis served as loyal major domos to the white landowners, aristocrats among the Africans, and you wonder how their homeland could have come to the awful state it is in today. Reading Out of Africa makes me want to visit Kenya, to walk the cool uplands of the west country and to see the stars and the moon and the sky as Dinesen describes them. Of course, today her property is within the suburbs of Nairobi, so I doubt if the walk would be quite as exhilarating as in her day.
I would like to someday read Judith Thurman’s biography of Blixen to learn about everything that she has left out. Even just a few minutes of browsing in wikipedia provides all sorts of surprises—What of the husband who gave her syphilis and whom she divorced in 1921? What of the brother who came out to help her run the plantation for four years? What of her love affair with Denys Finch-Hatton (or is it Hatton-Finch), which is the main substance of the 1985 film made from Out of Africa? It is odd to think that the movie, using the same title, tells of events that are barely hinted at in the book. Dinesen is a ruthless editor of her own life, throwing out whatever doesn’t suit her purpose. I haven’t decided if I think this is quite honest.
Was Kenya in the 30s really so idyllic? Perhaps not. But I do not think it was any the worse for Karen Blixen’s having been there.
Monday, July 4, 2011
#3: Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone: The Carter Family and Their Legacy in American Music, by Mark Zwonitzer with Charles Hirshberg
I had a great time reading this book. For one thing, I am a big fan of popular music and this book filled in a big gap in my knowledge. For another, this was the kind of book you come across every once in a while where you feel like you’ve been invited to a party where you get to meet all sorts of wonderful and interesting people and make friends with all of them. The authors say in their acknowledgements that “the Original Carter Family … gave few interviews, kept no diaries, wrote few letters, and saved almost no correspondence.” But there are plenty of people still alive who knew the original Carters, and their children and grandchildren continue (to various degrees) the family business that the originals—A.P. Carter, his wife Sara Carter, and his sister-in-law, Maybelle Carter—started. My theory is that the authors talked to so many people who were quite glad to remember and cherish their famous ancestors that the gracious and warm tone of these many conversations permeates the book itself. It’s a happy book.
Having said that, I would imagine that the lives of those original Carters were probably no happier than the average person’s. For one thing, A.P. and Sara Carter divorced in 1936 when he was 45 and she 35. She had fallen in love with a cousin whom A.P. had asked to chauffeur her around. The original Carters continued to tour and occasionally perform together for another seven years—the book does make clear that the cash flow the Carters realized from their music put them way beyond what their neighbors and relatives in Maces Spring, Virginia, could ever hope for. After 1943 A.P. and Sara dropped out—he returned to Virginia to putter around for the remaining 17 years of his life, and she moved to California to live with her second husband. The remaining third of the original trio, Maybelle, brought her daughters Helen, June, and Anita into the group and kept the act going another 15 years or so. The final manifestation of the Carters was as part of the cast of the Johnny Cash show from 1968-1971. June Carter, as most readers will know, had married Johnny Cash in 1968.
It was interesting to read how A.P. Carter, after finding that there was money to be had for songs, set about scouring the hamlets and farms of Appalachia in the 1930s to find new material to record. A.P. and the other Carters wrote plenty of songs on their own, but they didn’t have the concept of “originality” about their music that people have today. A good song was a like a good chest of drawers—it was much more important that it answer to its intended purpose than that it be the unique and indubitable work of a particular artist.
There is something really cool about reading a book about a group of performers and then being able to go onto YouTube and watch them perform. June, who I had only ever known as a slightly daffy and rather devout senior citizen, began her career as a kind of Grand Old Opry commedienne—here she is at the top of her form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLFfHRTA9mc&feature=related
I dig that crazy dancing.
June was considered the least talented of the sisters, at least musically. Anita was considered a fine singer—an opinion I share, based on these samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4e700oABl4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRnZT438Mk
The Carters in the 1950s knew and were very involved in the careers of Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, and of course Johnny Cash. They were nationally famous. And yet they remained very unspoiled, still working hard to make a living, still driving themselves to gigs all over the country, and still very much a family dealing with all the strife and stress of relationships, money, fixing dinner. When they weren’t working they would return to houses and communities in southwest Virginia where indoor plumbing was considered a luxury.
The music that the original Carters made sounds a bit odd to my ears—the performances seem stiff and the women sing quite a bit lower than is fashionable today. But after a couple of listens it begins to work on me. I begin to recognize how much Carter music I’ve been listening to second-hand for all these years—Bob Dylan’s great rendition of “The Girl from the Greenbriar Shore,” for example.
The connecting thread from the original trio’s first performances in 1927 through to the Johnny Cash days is Maybelle Carter—generally referred to as Mother Maybelle Carter. I’ve always found this moniker a bit offputting. It suggests a parochialism and a kind of emotional claustrophobia—“mother” is a term that I think should be used sparingly in professional situations. But, having read this book, Maybelle Carter is now OK with me. A consummate professional musician who just happened to be in business with her in-laws and then with her children, in the 1960s Maybelle took a job in a hospital sitting up with patients through the night. Why? To supplement her income. It would never have occurred to her that such work was beneath her. There’s a wonderful bit in the book where Johnny Cash recalls convincing Maybelle that she should give up this second career:
In her final decade Maybelle was lionized, cheered vigorously at folk festivals around the country by dope-smoking hoardes. Singing “Wildwood Flower” and playing her distinctive guitar style--the Carter scratch, it was called. I wonder what she thought of The Beverly Hillbillies.
Having said that, I would imagine that the lives of those original Carters were probably no happier than the average person’s. For one thing, A.P. and Sara Carter divorced in 1936 when he was 45 and she 35. She had fallen in love with a cousin whom A.P. had asked to chauffeur her around. The original Carters continued to tour and occasionally perform together for another seven years—the book does make clear that the cash flow the Carters realized from their music put them way beyond what their neighbors and relatives in Maces Spring, Virginia, could ever hope for. After 1943 A.P. and Sara dropped out—he returned to Virginia to putter around for the remaining 17 years of his life, and she moved to California to live with her second husband. The remaining third of the original trio, Maybelle, brought her daughters Helen, June, and Anita into the group and kept the act going another 15 years or so. The final manifestation of the Carters was as part of the cast of the Johnny Cash show from 1968-1971. June Carter, as most readers will know, had married Johnny Cash in 1968.
It was interesting to read how A.P. Carter, after finding that there was money to be had for songs, set about scouring the hamlets and farms of Appalachia in the 1930s to find new material to record. A.P. and the other Carters wrote plenty of songs on their own, but they didn’t have the concept of “originality” about their music that people have today. A good song was a like a good chest of drawers—it was much more important that it answer to its intended purpose than that it be the unique and indubitable work of a particular artist.
There is something really cool about reading a book about a group of performers and then being able to go onto YouTube and watch them perform. June, who I had only ever known as a slightly daffy and rather devout senior citizen, began her career as a kind of Grand Old Opry commedienne—here she is at the top of her form:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLFfHRTA9mc&feature=related
I dig that crazy dancing.
June was considered the least talented of the sisters, at least musically. Anita was considered a fine singer—an opinion I share, based on these samples:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4e700oABl4&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=flRnZT438Mk
The Carters in the 1950s knew and were very involved in the careers of Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, and of course Johnny Cash. They were nationally famous. And yet they remained very unspoiled, still working hard to make a living, still driving themselves to gigs all over the country, and still very much a family dealing with all the strife and stress of relationships, money, fixing dinner. When they weren’t working they would return to houses and communities in southwest Virginia where indoor plumbing was considered a luxury.
The music that the original Carters made sounds a bit odd to my ears—the performances seem stiff and the women sing quite a bit lower than is fashionable today. But after a couple of listens it begins to work on me. I begin to recognize how much Carter music I’ve been listening to second-hand for all these years—Bob Dylan’s great rendition of “The Girl from the Greenbriar Shore,” for example.
The connecting thread from the original trio’s first performances in 1927 through to the Johnny Cash days is Maybelle Carter—generally referred to as Mother Maybelle Carter. I’ve always found this moniker a bit offputting. It suggests a parochialism and a kind of emotional claustrophobia—“mother” is a term that I think should be used sparingly in professional situations. But, having read this book, Maybelle Carter is now OK with me. A consummate professional musician who just happened to be in business with her in-laws and then with her children, in the 1960s Maybelle took a job in a hospital sitting up with patients through the night. Why? To supplement her income. It would never have occurred to her that such work was beneath her. There’s a wonderful bit in the book where Johnny Cash recalls convincing Maybelle that she should give up this second career:
Johnny finally sat down one day to have a talk about her life. “Maybelle, you’re not going to work at the hospital anymore.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I want you to go on the road with me.”
“I’ll go,” she said, “but you know I don’t mind working in the hospital.”
Cash was silent for a moment and stared hard at her; he always did that when he wanted people to listen. Maybelle’s concern for her patients was unquestionable, but Cash felt she had a greater responsibility. “Mother, don’t you think your music’s more important?”
“Of course I do.”
Years later, Johnny would proudly recall that day. “She never worked at the hospital again.”
In her final decade Maybelle was lionized, cheered vigorously at folk festivals around the country by dope-smoking hoardes. Singing “Wildwood Flower” and playing her distinctive guitar style--the Carter scratch, it was called. I wonder what she thought of The Beverly Hillbillies.
#2: Freedom, by Jonathan Franzen
I read this on the Kindle I received as a Christmas present. Took it with me on a business trip to Denmark.
Freedom was fun to read. It’s about characters who come from backgrounds a lot like mine, and it’s set in the present. It was easy to appreciate the socio-economic anxieties of the main characters, and to catch all the cultural references—to Wilco, to Garrison Keillor, to everything that pertains to being a well-read, over-educated, slightly affluent liberal American in the last half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. When a minor working-class character in the book sneers about tofu-eating Volvo-driving liberals I think “What’s wrong with that?” I’ve owned a Volvo and I like tofu. But I’ve never felt like I was marginalizing myself with these tastes. But I guess someone like Sarah Palin would find it all pretty damning. The other night I was cooking with some Vietnamese fried onion-flavored tofu. It was really tasty. Not at all like the soft wet stuff you get in supermarkets. But I digress.
Early on Freedom was very impressive. College athlete Patty Emerson comes west to Minnesota for college to escape her striving, pretentious and unwholesomely ironic family. Patty falls in with Eliza, who is a bit of a psycho—spectacularly co-dependent, dishonest, what I think is known is some circles as a “borderline” personality.
Patty and Eliza meet up with Richard, an aspiring musician, and Walter, his highly ethical best friend, and, after Eliza drops out, the remaining three form the core of the plot for the remaining few hundred pages. Patty and Walter marry and have two children. Patty has an affair with Richard. No way this book does not eventually become a movie.
The second half of the book was conspicuously less satisfying. Franzen seemed to recall his obligations as a cultural critic, and a complicated machinery of diabolical environmental cynicism was introduced. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but so what? Walter and his beautiful young assistant create a non-profit dedicated to fighting overpopulation. He and the beautiful young assistant begin a passionate love affair. The beautiful young assistant is killed. I lost my ability to connect to the characters as everything became more heightened, more melodramatic. It’s like when a reasonably interesting crime movie devolves to car chases and gun battles for the final 40 minutes. Is any one car chase really different from any other car chase?
I think back to Franzen’s little dispute with Oprah Winfrey. She had decided to select his previous novel, The Corrections, for her book club, and he decided he would prefer not. I can understand Franzen’s reluctance to be branded a women’s novelist, a brand that is built into the Oprah endorsement. Which is not to say that Oprah exclusively picks books with flowing script and gauzy photographs on the cover. She’s chosen Faulkner as well, though I don’t suppose her endorsement would do much to alter his reputation. Still, it was a misstep on Franzen’s part, indicative of a desire to steer his book to a desired audience and to decide for himself what sorts of categories he belongs in. I feel something of that anxiety in Freedom—a sense of calculation.
Freedom was fun to read. It’s about characters who come from backgrounds a lot like mine, and it’s set in the present. It was easy to appreciate the socio-economic anxieties of the main characters, and to catch all the cultural references—to Wilco, to Garrison Keillor, to everything that pertains to being a well-read, over-educated, slightly affluent liberal American in the last half of the first decade of the twenty-first century. When a minor working-class character in the book sneers about tofu-eating Volvo-driving liberals I think “What’s wrong with that?” I’ve owned a Volvo and I like tofu. But I’ve never felt like I was marginalizing myself with these tastes. But I guess someone like Sarah Palin would find it all pretty damning. The other night I was cooking with some Vietnamese fried onion-flavored tofu. It was really tasty. Not at all like the soft wet stuff you get in supermarkets. But I digress.
Early on Freedom was very impressive. College athlete Patty Emerson comes west to Minnesota for college to escape her striving, pretentious and unwholesomely ironic family. Patty falls in with Eliza, who is a bit of a psycho—spectacularly co-dependent, dishonest, what I think is known is some circles as a “borderline” personality.
Patty and Eliza meet up with Richard, an aspiring musician, and Walter, his highly ethical best friend, and, after Eliza drops out, the remaining three form the core of the plot for the remaining few hundred pages. Patty and Walter marry and have two children. Patty has an affair with Richard. No way this book does not eventually become a movie.
The second half of the book was conspicuously less satisfying. Franzen seemed to recall his obligations as a cultural critic, and a complicated machinery of diabolical environmental cynicism was introduced. Yes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, but so what? Walter and his beautiful young assistant create a non-profit dedicated to fighting overpopulation. He and the beautiful young assistant begin a passionate love affair. The beautiful young assistant is killed. I lost my ability to connect to the characters as everything became more heightened, more melodramatic. It’s like when a reasonably interesting crime movie devolves to car chases and gun battles for the final 40 minutes. Is any one car chase really different from any other car chase?
I think back to Franzen’s little dispute with Oprah Winfrey. She had decided to select his previous novel, The Corrections, for her book club, and he decided he would prefer not. I can understand Franzen’s reluctance to be branded a women’s novelist, a brand that is built into the Oprah endorsement. Which is not to say that Oprah exclusively picks books with flowing script and gauzy photographs on the cover. She’s chosen Faulkner as well, though I don’t suppose her endorsement would do much to alter his reputation. Still, it was a misstep on Franzen’s part, indicative of a desire to steer his book to a desired audience and to decide for himself what sorts of categories he belongs in. I feel something of that anxiety in Freedom—a sense of calculation.
#1: The Possessed, by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Sometime in June of 1972, a few weeks after my 16th birthday, I purchased a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Possessed in a bookstore a few blocks away from my house in Flushing, Queens, New York.
I was already a voracious reader when I picked up The Possessed, but also a rather indiscriminate one. In the months and years before June 1972 I remember reading things like the adventure novels of Alaistair MacLean and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I read a lot of science fiction—H.P. Lovecraft was a favorite. I’d also read a biography of Houdini, and waded through the unsavory murk of The Boston Strangler (which I think had a tie-in to the movie starring Tony Curtis). When I started reading The Possessed, I was about halfway through A Canticle for Liebowitz, a well-regarded dystopian science fiction novel. I never returned to Liebowitz—it’s the Wally Pipp of my bookshelf.
I still have my original copy of The Possessed, a Signet Classic ($1.25). The cover shows stiff, shadowy figures in blue and green suggestive of a Russian icon or of a stained-glass window. In those early days I felt attached as much to the books as physical objects as to the words inside—cover pictures, typeface, even the feel of the pages. This is still true to some extent—a book to me is more than just words. This is why I could never warm up to the idea of a Kindle (though I do now own one, which is another story).
I loved the cover of my Penguin Crime and Punishment, with its outline of two characters facing each other, silhouetted dark blue against a black background. What books made me feel all those years ago comes back to me immediately when I look at their covers. Which is why I have trouble whittling down my collection of mouldering paperbacks.
When I decided to re-read The Possessed for the first time in almost 40 years, I didn’t think the old paperback would hold up, so I decided to read a new translation, by the celebrated husband/wife translation team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The book has a new title now—Demons. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the sinister characters in the book are doing the possessing in addition to (or perhaps instead of?) being themselves possessed.
The first 200 pages are a bit of a slog—lots of characters, lots of names, oblique references to things that happened in Switzerland before the beginning of the current action. (An aside: I read recently about somebody who had the idea of replacing the names of characters in Russian novels with the names of current celebrities, so that instead of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Ivanovna Stavrogin you could have—Charlie Sheen and Miley Cyrus. It might work.)
Anyway, after about page 200, things start to pick up. Dostoyevsky novels are constructed almost exclusively from accounts of the activities of people in highly stimulated and distressed states of consciousness. There must be 10 different characters in The Possessed who experience an excruciating and overwhelming crisis of some sort of another. Two commit suicide. Events transpire to bring windfalls of anguish to characters, often to several characters simultaneously.
But the presentation is as neat and clear as the action is chaotic. The characters in The Possessed are portrayed with both sympathy and psychological insight. Imagine if half a dozen tragic heroes from Shakespeare had to share the same stage—Othello and King Lear and Macbeth all inhabiting a single provincial town and mixing their miseries and manias.
I think in 1972 I was thrilled by the sheer emotional heat of The Possessed. It was like standing in front of an open oven door. It was the first time I was really transported by a book, and I proceeded to blow through a dozen other fat Russian novels as well as every other kind of “classic” I could find. No more sci-fi, no more Alaistair MacLean.
As any introduction or synopsis can tell you, the characters in The Possessed embody various political and philosophical trends in 1870s Russia. Some are based on actual troublemakers or agents provocateur. It seems that revolutionary politics in Russia has always been plagued by cynics, opportunists, and just plain nasty people. Nihilists. I imagine that Dostoyevsky would select for this kind of revolutionary, given his religious and conservative orientation, but still I wonder why it is that that country gets Lenins and Stalins instead of Washingtons and Jeffersons.
This political dimension of The Possessed is more apparent to me now than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still largely beside the point as far as what I get from reading the book.
The episode that made the strongest impression this time is where the character Shatov, a noble but inarticulate idealist who has fallen in with a gang of violent revolutionaries, is suddenly reunited with his wife, whom he has not seen in years and with whom he had only lived once, for a couple of weeks. She is pregnant with another man’s child and goes into labor in the tiny dark cramped apartment where Shatov lives. Shatov is overwhelmed with gratitude and tenderness for this long-lost wife, and she in turn is overcome with joy at the evidence of his devotion. Shatov goes out to summon the town midwife, who as it happens is married to one of the conspirators who have resolved the next night to murder Shatov. I wonder if on first reading I thought there was any hope for Shatov at this point—any chance that he could escape the tightening noose of his fate, as he goes through his day with his newly kindled hope? This time, though I had no recollection of this specific episode, I knew there was no hope. That’s not how things work in Dostoyevsky novels. Dostoyevsky describes the ensuing 24 hours meticulously—the calm efficiency of the midwife, the careful preparations of the conspirators, Shatov’s solicitude. The night comes and Shatov is duly murdered. Afterwards his wife and child die as well—from disease, exposure, hunger.
So anyway, I have to admit that I wasn’t able to rekindle the excitement I felt when I first read this book. I can understand why it excited me, but I don’t feel that excitement all over again. It was a good read and a profound and moving story, but this time, it didn’t change my life. No drug like a new drug.
I was already a voracious reader when I picked up The Possessed, but also a rather indiscriminate one. In the months and years before June 1972 I remember reading things like the adventure novels of Alaistair MacLean and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I read a lot of science fiction—H.P. Lovecraft was a favorite. I’d also read a biography of Houdini, and waded through the unsavory murk of The Boston Strangler (which I think had a tie-in to the movie starring Tony Curtis). When I started reading The Possessed, I was about halfway through A Canticle for Liebowitz, a well-regarded dystopian science fiction novel. I never returned to Liebowitz—it’s the Wally Pipp of my bookshelf.
I still have my original copy of The Possessed, a Signet Classic ($1.25). The cover shows stiff, shadowy figures in blue and green suggestive of a Russian icon or of a stained-glass window. In those early days I felt attached as much to the books as physical objects as to the words inside—cover pictures, typeface, even the feel of the pages. This is still true to some extent—a book to me is more than just words. This is why I could never warm up to the idea of a Kindle (though I do now own one, which is another story).
I loved the cover of my Penguin Crime and Punishment, with its outline of two characters facing each other, silhouetted dark blue against a black background. What books made me feel all those years ago comes back to me immediately when I look at their covers. Which is why I have trouble whittling down my collection of mouldering paperbacks.
When I decided to re-read The Possessed for the first time in almost 40 years, I didn’t think the old paperback would hold up, so I decided to read a new translation, by the celebrated husband/wife translation team of Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. The book has a new title now—Demons. Apparently it has something to do with the fact that the sinister characters in the book are doing the possessing in addition to (or perhaps instead of?) being themselves possessed.
The first 200 pages are a bit of a slog—lots of characters, lots of names, oblique references to things that happened in Switzerland before the beginning of the current action. (An aside: I read recently about somebody who had the idea of replacing the names of characters in Russian novels with the names of current celebrities, so that instead of Pyotr Stepanovich Verkhovensky and Varvara Ivanovna Stavrogin you could have—Charlie Sheen and Miley Cyrus. It might work.)
Anyway, after about page 200, things start to pick up. Dostoyevsky novels are constructed almost exclusively from accounts of the activities of people in highly stimulated and distressed states of consciousness. There must be 10 different characters in The Possessed who experience an excruciating and overwhelming crisis of some sort of another. Two commit suicide. Events transpire to bring windfalls of anguish to characters, often to several characters simultaneously.
But the presentation is as neat and clear as the action is chaotic. The characters in The Possessed are portrayed with both sympathy and psychological insight. Imagine if half a dozen tragic heroes from Shakespeare had to share the same stage—Othello and King Lear and Macbeth all inhabiting a single provincial town and mixing their miseries and manias.
I think in 1972 I was thrilled by the sheer emotional heat of The Possessed. It was like standing in front of an open oven door. It was the first time I was really transported by a book, and I proceeded to blow through a dozen other fat Russian novels as well as every other kind of “classic” I could find. No more sci-fi, no more Alaistair MacLean.
As any introduction or synopsis can tell you, the characters in The Possessed embody various political and philosophical trends in 1870s Russia. Some are based on actual troublemakers or agents provocateur. It seems that revolutionary politics in Russia has always been plagued by cynics, opportunists, and just plain nasty people. Nihilists. I imagine that Dostoyevsky would select for this kind of revolutionary, given his religious and conservative orientation, but still I wonder why it is that that country gets Lenins and Stalins instead of Washingtons and Jeffersons.
This political dimension of The Possessed is more apparent to me now than it was 40 years ago, but it’s still largely beside the point as far as what I get from reading the book.
The episode that made the strongest impression this time is where the character Shatov, a noble but inarticulate idealist who has fallen in with a gang of violent revolutionaries, is suddenly reunited with his wife, whom he has not seen in years and with whom he had only lived once, for a couple of weeks. She is pregnant with another man’s child and goes into labor in the tiny dark cramped apartment where Shatov lives. Shatov is overwhelmed with gratitude and tenderness for this long-lost wife, and she in turn is overcome with joy at the evidence of his devotion. Shatov goes out to summon the town midwife, who as it happens is married to one of the conspirators who have resolved the next night to murder Shatov. I wonder if on first reading I thought there was any hope for Shatov at this point—any chance that he could escape the tightening noose of his fate, as he goes through his day with his newly kindled hope? This time, though I had no recollection of this specific episode, I knew there was no hope. That’s not how things work in Dostoyevsky novels. Dostoyevsky describes the ensuing 24 hours meticulously—the calm efficiency of the midwife, the careful preparations of the conspirators, Shatov’s solicitude. The night comes and Shatov is duly murdered. Afterwards his wife and child die as well—from disease, exposure, hunger.
So anyway, I have to admit that I wasn’t able to rekindle the excitement I felt when I first read this book. I can understand why it excited me, but I don’t feel that excitement all over again. It was a good read and a profound and moving story, but this time, it didn’t change my life. No drug like a new drug.
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