tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-66948805854915907882024-03-17T23:00:15.963-04:00Typingsreesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.comBlogger676125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-17515431852828992852024-03-14T19:36:00.002-04:002024-03-14T19:40:28.245-04:00Upon The Death of George Santayana (#poem)<div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwMWCi-3cVJuT0g24VjCLR1osnJMjlQJbseRbBg5kDopbTuE2CVdbBnhPwm73WZigwWqci8gem2mbsdfp4Zpq49ILd7VL-RCyN_hXdQEwgU56hxj6zb_XKn-FUkT_-xLsE7H2Q8stWy1_sbcEHfJzluRlNWjOHYniXxOJfzPZclFIYkJokxaPZ9rrn-IQ/s1532/HechtHardHours.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1532" data-original-width="1185" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwMWCi-3cVJuT0g24VjCLR1osnJMjlQJbseRbBg5kDopbTuE2CVdbBnhPwm73WZigwWqci8gem2mbsdfp4Zpq49ILd7VL-RCyN_hXdQEwgU56hxj6zb_XKn-FUkT_-xLsE7H2Q8stWy1_sbcEHfJzluRlNWjOHYniXxOJfzPZclFIYkJokxaPZ9rrn-IQ/s320/HechtHardHours.jpg" width="248" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Upon The Death of George Santayana</b></p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Down every passage of the cloister hung</div><div style="text-align: left;">A dark wood cross on a white plaster wall;</div><div style="text-align: left;">But in the court were roses, not as tongue</div><div style="text-align: left;">Might have them, something of Christ's blood grown small,</div><div style="text-align: left;">But just as roses, and at three o'clock</div><div style="text-align: left;">Their essences, inseparably bouqueted,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Seemed more than Christ's last breath, and rose to mock</div><div style="text-align: left;">An elderly man for whom the Sisters prayed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What heart can know itself? The Sibyl speaks</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mirthless and unbedizened things, but who</div><div style="text-align: left;">Can fathom her intent? Loving the Greeks,</div><div style="text-align: left;">He whispered to a nun who strove to woo</div><div style="text-align: left;">His spirit unto God by prayer and fast,</div><div style="text-align: left;">"Pray that I go to Limbo, if it please</div><div style="text-align: left;">Heaven to let my soul regard at last</div><div style="text-align: left;">Democritus, Plato and Socrates."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And so it was. The river, as foretold,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Ran darkly by; under his tongue he found</div><div style="text-align: left;">Coin for the passage; the ferry tossed and rolled;</div><div style="text-align: left;">The sages stood on their appointed ground,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sighing, all as foretold. The mind was tasked;</div><div style="text-align: left;">He had not dreamed that so many had died.</div><div style="text-align: left;">"But where is Alcibiades," he asked,</div><div style="text-align: left;">"The golden roisterer, the animal pride?"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Those sages who had spoken of the love</div><div style="text-align: left;">And enmity of all things, how all things flow,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Stood in a light no life is witness of,</div><div style="text-align: left;">And Socrates, whose wisdom was to know </div><div style="text-align: left;">He did not know, spoke with a solemn mien,</div><div style="text-align: left;">And all his wonderful ugliness was lit,</div><div style="text-align: left;">"He whom I loved for what he might have been</div><div style="text-align: left;">Freezes with traitors in the ultimate pit."</div></blockquote><p style="text-align: right;">-Anthony Hecht</p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Santayana">George Santayana</a> (1863-1952) was a Spanish-American philosopher, poet, novelist. Perhaps his most famous work is <i>The Sense of Beauty: Being an Outline of Aesthetic Theory</i>. He was born a Catholic in Spain, lived most of life in the U.S. He lost his faith somewhere along the way and did not wish to regain it. But he lived out the end of his life by choice in a Catholic hospital in Rome.<br /></p><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Hecht">Anthony Hecht</a> (1923-2004) was an American poet. There was an <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/161844/more-light-659ec46913f0a">article</a> I read recently by A. E. Stallings about Hecht, lamenting (a bit--her feelings are mostly positive, but occasionally mixed) how he isn't as well-known as he once was. There is a new collected poems volume as well as a new biography that she reviews.</p><p>She mentions several of Hecht's better-known poems, but not this one, which is a favourite of mine. She does mention Hecht's sometimes rococo vocabulary, which you can possibly find in evidence here. (Unbedizened, any one? 😉)</p><p> I do think Hecht (or Socrates) is a little hard on <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/p/alkibiades.html">Alcibiades</a>, though. <br /></p><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-56651648738208847212024-03-03T19:06:00.004-05:002024-03-05T21:28:26.124-05:00Konstantin Stanislavski's My Life In Art (#CCSpin)<blockquote><p>"...we donned all sorts of costumes, footgear, stuffing, to feel the image of the body; we glued on noses, beards, moustaches, we put on wigs, hoping to strike accidentally on the things that we did not as yet know and for which we were painfully searching."</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_-8ANHhH3NKLmI4_OKUcuyppsCj-W3TBTOoAHlzd6Tagf7ufITApgsalGnCi4SQFT9NGAKE4G_OJ61z4T0Mh-bOe79bbkxlVok9_atbsgcSaXy-vLjC_mjJpR5wbULNpIPQWE-6XqBc5bMRkg2OxRQ9CaR7La7kjj5ww0-faR0ItJsgGZx-0olvfAg0/s2016/StanislavskyMyLifeInArt.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgV_-8ANHhH3NKLmI4_OKUcuyppsCj-W3TBTOoAHlzd6Tagf7ufITApgsalGnCi4SQFT9NGAKE4G_OJ61z4T0Mh-bOe79bbkxlVok9_atbsgcSaXy-vLjC_mjJpR5wbULNpIPQWE-6XqBc5bMRkg2OxRQ9CaR7La7kjj5ww0-faR0ItJsgGZx-0olvfAg0/s320/StanislavskyMyLifeInArt.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Konstantin Stanislavski (1863-1938) was a Russian actor, stage director, and teacher of acting. <i>My Life in Art </i>is his autobiography of 1924.<div><br /></div><div>Stanislavski was born Konstantin Andreyev to a wealthy family with an estate near Moscow. He was one of many children in a happy family; his parents were interested in the arts and indulged the children's enthusiasms. Young Konstantin quickly caught the theater bug, playing in masquerades, watching a visiting puppet theater troupe, engaging in amateur theatricals with his cousins. </div><div><br /></div><div>But his father's supportiveness only went so far; he was expected to have a more respectable career. In his twenties Konstantin takes a part in a racy French comedy and adopts Stanislavski--Polish-sounding so it should fool people, right?--as his stage name, but nevertheless his parents come to see the production, and are appalled to see their son in such a thing. His father tells him to set up an amateur society and limit their productions to 'decent' scripts. So that's what he does.</div><div><br /></div><div>Until he's thirty-three. Then with Vladimir Nemirovich-Danchenko. in 1897, after an epic luncheon--it began at ten AM on one day and ends at 3 AM the next--he founds the Moscow Art Theater. They sell shares in their new corporation and decide to open their season with Tsar Feodor, a play by A. N. Tolstoy (cousin to Leo).</div><div><br /></div><div>But Nemirovich really wants to bring in Anton Chekhov. Chekhov's first play was <i>The Seagull. </i>Nemirovich and Chekhov had shared a prize for the best play of the year in 1896, but Nemirovich refused his half of the prize and insisted it be given to Chekhov, as author of the far superior play. Still the first production of <i>The Seagull </i>in St. Petersburg was not a success--Chekhov famously fled town after opening night--and had refused to write anything else for the stage or to allow <i>The Seagull </i>to be played again. That is, until 1898, when it became the fourth play in Moscow Art Theater's opening season. It was such a hit, the Moscow Art Theater adopted the seagull as their emblem.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFwvJeUhZygdtsVjdO8TuuBkGo-qip2Ch2S2-w7ksZWIHEievV5dtMlGMoHnWv-VLrhqWrjj91Th6S8gzKl6KSJBopXP9FDPYDxVq4TiGNTNuUc1DTuQFVSFJYTodDLcUcql6YpzCMBoYqjtljWvMT5_dcdft3ehGQaxqDpqnUK_Vl9SKe-htJ5NtO2Y/s1024/chekhov-1024x333.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="1024" height="130" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvFwvJeUhZygdtsVjdO8TuuBkGo-qip2Ch2S2-w7ksZWIHEievV5dtMlGMoHnWv-VLrhqWrjj91Th6S8gzKl6KSJBopXP9FDPYDxVq4TiGNTNuUc1DTuQFVSFJYTodDLcUcql6YpzCMBoYqjtljWvMT5_dcdft3ehGQaxqDpqnUK_Vl9SKe-htJ5NtO2Y/w400-h130/chekhov-1024x333.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div><br /></div>That's Chekhov reading in the center, Stanislavski seated at his right, and Olga Knipper, Chekhov's future wife in profile next to Stanislavski. <div><br /></div><div>Stanislavski directed all four plays of Chekhov, jointly in the case of <i>The Seagull</i> with Nemirovich, and acted in them as well, as Trigorin (<i>The Seagull)</i>, then originating the roles of Astrov (<i>Uncle Vanya), </i>Vershinin (<i>The Three Sisters</i>), and Gaev (<i>The Cherry Orchard</i>). Chekhov's sister told Stanislavski his production of <i>Uncle Vanya </i>had better be a success, because Chekhov had had an attack of tuberculosis, and a failure would kill him. Yikes! Pressure. By the time of <i>The Cherry Orchard </i>it was clear Chekhov was dying and they hastened the production so he could see it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Apparently the group reading was a standard feature of Moscow Art Theater productions. I was amused that for <i>The Three Sisters</i>, none of the troupe's member understood it was meant to be a comedy. I read Chekhov before I saw him played, and I certainly didn't understand he could be hilarious.</div><div><br /></div><div>Moscow Art Theater also originated productions of Gorky, as well as classic plays, particularly Ibsen and Shakespeare. This is Stanislavski and his future wife Maria Lilina in Schiller's <i>Love and Villainy</i> (more commonly translated now as <i>Intrigue and Love</i>).</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzavfD-gneI5QHHLLrXXWGHx0ii6oOBYcNEVugzQt-UXzibhl-tOEZFCET0VXiUa2nK_sfoSC7t4HEmOvNL3jXuozGWSLclQ5CVqebR98tSLsVXHKvzm8j6nryBa5PivaIKVrip1bBmMPrsnwWXUE2YDektIpqz-_zoC_VOLXcsIGw9XsIYY2a7ea4Us/s1163/StanAndWife.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1163" data-original-width="799" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZzavfD-gneI5QHHLLrXXWGHx0ii6oOBYcNEVugzQt-UXzibhl-tOEZFCET0VXiUa2nK_sfoSC7t4HEmOvNL3jXuozGWSLclQ5CVqebR98tSLsVXHKvzm8j6nryBa5PivaIKVrip1bBmMPrsnwWXUE2YDektIpqz-_zoC_VOLXcsIGw9XsIYY2a7ea4Us/s320/StanAndWife.jpg" width="220" /></a></div><br /><div>The company made their first tour abroad in 1906, starting in Berlin. 1906 was a troubled year in Russia, and they couldn't play at home. It was a success, but their real international reputation started with the production of <i>Hamlet</i> of 1911-12, which Stanislavski discusses in detail.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now the book is called <i>My Life in Art</i>, not <i>My Life in Business </i>or <i>My Life in History </i>or <i>My Married Life</i>, so I guess it shouldn't be a surprise...but though he lived in interesting times, there's almost no discussion of it. There's no discussion of what the family business was or what his part was in his 20s while he was still involved. We learn about 1906 because the company has to go abroad. The Russian Revolution features largely as free tickets handed out to workers. The Russian Civil War is important because half their crew (including Olga Knipper, Chekhov's widow) are trapped on the other side of the white Russian general Denikin's lines. Even his wife and kids--theirs seems to have been a happy marriage--we learn about mostly in relationship to the theater. Maria Lilina is pregnant? Oh, no, she can't act!</div><div><br /></div><div>Is this because he feels he shouldn't say anything about Soviet politics, or because he's genuinely apolitical? A bit of both, I suspect, but probably more the latter. Lenin was supposed to be a fan. <br /><div><br /></div><div>The book was came out in 1924 after a successful U.S. tour and had been commissioned by a U.S. publisher. Wikipedia tells me Stanislavski would have preferred to have written about his teaching methods, but there was no interest in such a book at that time, so he smuggled in his ideas about how to become an actor in this autobiography. He later went on to write the books more directly discussing his ideas. In English, they're: <i>An Actor Prepares, Building a Character, </i>and<i> Creating a Role, </i>the last from his notes. They were all first published in English.</div><div><br /></div><div>After the book: in 1926, he directs Bulgakov's <i>The Day of the Turbins</i>, a success and a play that Stalin was supposed to be fond of. When I read <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Bulgakov">Bulgakov</a> a while back, something suggested that it was <i>The Day of the Turbins </i>that kept Stalin from executing Bulgakov. Maybe that good feeling extended to Stanislavski. </div><div> </div><div>In 1928 Stanislavski had a heart attack--on stage, but kept playing until the curtain fell. But that's the end of his acting career. He still directs, but now mostly works on his teaching system. Maybe he's too famous for Stalin to kill, but Stanislavski is also living quietly at this point. Stanislavski announces his true heir in the theater is Vsevolod Meyerhold, who had played Treplev in that production of <i>The Seagull</i>, and gone on to direct, but Meyerhold is executed by Stalin in 1939, shortly after Stanislavski's death. His widow Maria Lilina dies in 1943 at the age of 77.</div><div><br /></div><div>All in all a pretty fascinating book and a successful spin choice!</div></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-1356832481242654402024-02-28T20:48:00.005-05:002024-02-29T11:12:25.265-05:00Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfDCnlzev_2dwvnVNg2ED0LTtRrIGm1swFxhn-rKg2dQccDyuLvz5H0iFMxSIRYakCjSJ-ufa9cM0FlAnGxbsvWEjcZT3Zd-1_IPyzDWx0vxXG-K75Rr3KED-WO_k84uuqjI-dOMWB-hkAPvupe7PdiAk2V6CLgy8MSbHhfP2mhDx3yLGm2f5Ek64y1SM/s2016/GoetheMeister.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfDCnlzev_2dwvnVNg2ED0LTtRrIGm1swFxhn-rKg2dQccDyuLvz5H0iFMxSIRYakCjSJ-ufa9cM0FlAnGxbsvWEjcZT3Zd-1_IPyzDWx0vxXG-K75Rr3KED-WO_k84uuqjI-dOMWB-hkAPvupe7PdiAk2V6CLgy8MSbHhfP2mhDx3yLGm2f5Ek64y1SM/s320/GoetheMeister.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>What an odd thing the novel was.<div><br /></div><div>Goethe's second novel <i>Wilhelm Meister's Years of Apprenticeship </i>came out in 1795. It's a <i>Bildungsroman, </i>a novel of education, maybe the very first. Young Wilhelm is the son of a successful upper-middle-class merchant; his father expects him to join the family business. But Wilhelm has caught the theater bug, from a traveling puppet show that played at his house when he was a kid.</div><div><br /></div><div>When the novel starts Wilhelm is having an affair with the actress Mariane. He's maybe twenty. (We learn about the puppets when Wilhelm bores Mariane with his backstory, when all she wants is to hop in the sack. Our man Goethe is capable of irony, as it turns out.) Mariane is genuinely fond of Wilhelm, but she's got somebody else, somebody richer, on a string, too. What will Mariane do? Will it be Wilhelm or Norberg? </div><div><br /></div><div>Mariane doesn't entirely get to decide. She's guided by her maid/procuress Barbara; Wilhelm is led by his friend Werner, who's sure all actresses are unfaithful; the lovers' relationship wasn't meant to be. Mariane flees and the heartbroken Wilhelm takes to his bed. Eventually Wilhelm rouses himself and decides to renounce all artistic aspirations. Those poems he'd written for Mariane? Burned.</div><div><br /></div><div>Really, renunciation? Ha! Wilhelm sets off on a commercial trip pursuing his father's interests with the intent of putting art behind him. He manages to complete a few business visits, but soon falls in with actors, decides to act himself, writes plays and adaptations of plays. He pays little attention to the business he was supposed to be transacting. (Somewhat improbably it seemed to me, but that's the way it was.) He takes the money he has, and finances an acting troupe, but the sets and costumes are destroyed when they are attacked by bandits. Wilhelm manages to wangle them jobs with another impresario.</div><div><br /></div><div>What should be the nature of a German national theater? Wilhelm knows the French classics, Molière and Racine, but then one of the characters introduces him to Shakespeare. In real life much of Shakespeare had just appeared for the first time in German in a prose translation by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christoph_Martin_Wieland">Christoph Martin Wieland</a>; Wilhelm and crew decide to do Hamlet, with Wilhelm playing the title role. There's much discussion of what's a proper production. (The manager Serlo suggests that the audience would like the play much better if Hamlet didn't die at the end...Wilhelm vetoes that.)</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Der_junge_Goethe%2C_gemalt_von_Angelica_Kauffmann_1787.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="603" height="320" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Der_junge_Goethe%2C_gemalt_von_Angelica_Kauffmann_1787.JPG" width="241" /></a></div>Wilhelm has a habit of falling in love repeatedly; that's OK, because the girls fall in love with him in return. (That's a young Goethe painted by Angelica Kaufman to the left. Rather dashing, don't you think? Maybe a little autobiography here?) Should he stay with that second actress, lively and fun? The practical housekeeper? The Countess? (Already married, though.) Natalie the Amazon? (As he thinks of her.) At least some of these relationships aren't chaste because by the end of the novel Wilhelm learns he has two children by different women. Somebody slips into his bed the night of a cast party and he's not sure who.<div><br /></div><div>That's most of the novel, but then there are some very odd twists. We get a couple of embedded stories, one the story of a woman who becomes a pietistic <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moravian_Church">Moravian Brethren</a>; this story provides comfort to the dying sister of an actor. The other embedded story involves characters in the present whom we've met in other contexts, an incest plot, and more Moravian Brethren. Wilhelm feels bad when he learns he may have unintentionally driven some of the characters into this rather ascetic religious practice. </div><div><br /></div><div>And then! We get a secret society, which has been guiding Wilhelm's actions all along. Which I'm not sure I really comprehended at all.</div><div><br /></div><div>I read most of the novel in Thomas Carlyle's translation from the 1800s, <a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/36483">available</a> at Project Gutenberg, then started over and read the whole thing in H. M. Waidson's translation from the late 1970s. (Waidson was a British professor of German at Swansea University.) I can't say that either translation amazed me. Carlyle is Carlyle, perhaps overly rhetorical. The Waidson felt flat in places, though my reprint at least was marred by typos. (For example, 'natter' where 'flatter' was meant; I had to look up the German, also <a href="https://gutenberg.org/ebooks/2409">available</a> on Gutenberg, to figure out what was meant. The German word was schmeicheln.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Goethe wrote a sequel, Wilhelm Meister's Years of Wandering, which came out in installments in the 1820s.</div><div><br /></div><div>The book--it is Goethe, after all--includes poetry, verse from plays or songs sung by various characters. Some of them are famous: '<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nur_wer_die_Sehnsucht_kennt">Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt</a>' has been set to music by Beethoven, by Tchaikovsky, by Schubert (multiple times) and that's not the whole list. Here's one of the Schubert versions, one of a collection of songs that all come from Wilhelm Meister:</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/YXmonb33vNk" width="320" youtube-src-id="YXmonb33vNk"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>One from my Classics Club <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/p/classics-club-list.html">list</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcnpBPwgYLMgJhx7YrB2HSiKOBDLNqtca5y9lsCUS0tNZL4FisL5QqA9oCT2koZtUKe183XUVo24uyZ0ERvKBvN2pzZLTVXv1DgCivl9OLZttA1zmH2uFOkMnIlWGMfAAu7JXrJQwRO7Hp3HCrEDPRbzjhM5pvcCVFZOGmi750s7hHlBRzTS3fvWWXB78/s200/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcnpBPwgYLMgJhx7YrB2HSiKOBDLNqtca5y9lsCUS0tNZL4FisL5QqA9oCT2koZtUKe183XUVo24uyZ0ERvKBvN2pzZLTVXv1DgCivl9OLZttA1zmH2uFOkMnIlWGMfAAu7JXrJQwRO7Hp3HCrEDPRbzjhM5pvcCVFZOGmi750s7hHlBRzTS3fvWWXB78/s1600/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /><div><br /></div></div></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-1203043346114007772024-01-25T00:14:00.002-05:002024-01-25T00:17:04.376-05:00Journey to the Edge of Reason<div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>"That he is an important man is shown again and again, but he is a little crazy."</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: right;">-Oskar Morganstern</div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiklNK6UzKL52fO-c_BcD7BfP_LhPJkTWWgYOK7TtRAu2VRsDRpePXHL3VFYD8yurKtXrF31Fwpw3RdRWomYb6xA4hkhIIeC96PpP8A-M-CBPgNgADaaRTpUgfLU4XHkdjKb79bgL49TEqZLOdpXTjd3Ug3R8Hirc-G9bNjsqgj5CQ8Pvwm05pFBfsaKEQ/s466/BudianskyGoedel.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="466" data-original-width="309" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiklNK6UzKL52fO-c_BcD7BfP_LhPJkTWWgYOK7TtRAu2VRsDRpePXHL3VFYD8yurKtXrF31Fwpw3RdRWomYb6xA4hkhIIeC96PpP8A-M-CBPgNgADaaRTpUgfLU4XHkdjKb79bgL49TEqZLOdpXTjd3Ug3R8Hirc-G9bNjsqgj5CQ8Pvwm05pFBfsaKEQ/s320/BudianskyGoedel.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>Kurt Gödel (1906-1978) is famous as the mathematician who proved that mathematics doesn't quite work. The result is known as the Incompleteness Theorem, and before Gödel's proof, mathematicians assumed anything you could say with elementary mathematics (from 2+2=4, e.g., and on up) could be proven either true or false. It might be hard, it might be impossible for me or you, but it could be done. In 1930 Gödel demonstrated it can't. <div><br /></div><div>You can create mathematical statements, using math no more complicated than addition and equality, whose truth is unprovable.</div><div><br /></div><div>Gödel was born in Brno, now in the Czech Republic, but then the largely German-speaking town of Brünn in Austria-Hungary. His father owned a textile factory and was reasonably well off. After the breakup of Austria-Hungary at the end of World War I, financially the Gödels were better off with their money in Czechoslovakia, but when it came time for young Kurt to go to college, in 1924, he went to Vienna, the old imperial capital, which still had the best universities. (It was also becoming uncomfortable in Czechoslovakia for German speakers). </div><div><br /></div><div>Budiansky is clearly in love with Vienna. (Understandable.) He spends quite a lot of time on the atmosphere in Vienna, citing figures whose connection to Gödel is pretty non-existent--Joseph Roth, Robert Musil--but whose interest to readers is large. Vienna was Gödel's home for roughly fifteen years, and a large portion of his important work was done there, so it's appropriate enough.</div><div><br /></div><div>But Vienna was becoming problematic. Gödel wasn't Jewish, but his friends were; as things got worse, the sort of mathematics that Gödel did got labeled 'Jewish mathematics' (What's that?) and after Anschluss, the university wasn't going to allow that sort of math any more. Gödel did a semester as a fellow at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study when it opened in 1933--Einstein was one of their first hires--and though Gödel didn't much like Princeton, his friends there kept suggesting he come back.</div><div><br /></div><div>He was subject to paranoid fantasies (though one of his mathematical colleagues was assassinated by a right-wing student, so maybe not entirely paranoid). His girlfriend Adele was married and under Catholic Austrian law she couldn't get divorced, so the two of them couldn't leave the country as married. Also he was inclined to be apolitical, and was politically naive. </div><div><br /></div><div>But after Anschluss in 1938, German law applied in Austria, allowing divorce and remarriage. Kurt and Adele married. Gödel was still sluggish about the need to leave, but after much prodding he did, ultimately taking a full-time position at the Institute for Advanced Study.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAQSdu9VnlIBU3q1nCiI2tyCraiKKV3axFFETuZXAjYiaWo5ahELmXU_h5Jusv6N3S123_QaIz5gNWh0iZNcbVw4JLzJuzAb-Lr6d0nWadYj1FmwKgTZg59Q2aaZ_qwNbvOBStysj94lTTSFpXZ7giV7T9mPa1ivmPhUEkMzlMJfOKxaz16Rr6_xp3JNY/s1280/GodelEinstein.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="902" data-original-width="1280" height="226" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAQSdu9VnlIBU3q1nCiI2tyCraiKKV3axFFETuZXAjYiaWo5ahELmXU_h5Jusv6N3S123_QaIz5gNWh0iZNcbVw4JLzJuzAb-Lr6d0nWadYj1FmwKgTZg59Q2aaZ_qwNbvOBStysj94lTTSFpXZ7giV7T9mPa1ivmPhUEkMzlMJfOKxaz16Rr6_xp3JNY/s320/GodelEinstein.jpeg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">And became close friends with Einstein</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Through the forties, he continued to do mathematics, working with Oskar Morganstern and John von Neumann. The later years he taught (though he was a terribly shy teacher) and continued to suffer periods of paranoia.<br /><div><br /></div><div>And why was I interested in a biography of Kurt Gödel you might ask?</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHg9TY91kYmFFEV5w6_r1bFMFCkUnb4bSRDNa4KJEYd1MXdH9A6lTlPV8KjxH29yx6ByDFGFiqcU7hDJ3oQoQid9aNqzK1kaighjvpu5pmYTPMwvJTHaDbrg7iV_2PYPQHlRsSBESl8UhDl0LYT6hCZF2bP8JtugVujFqydJo1WU0PV_GJFKlcK-AF9Lk/s2016/GodelBooks.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHg9TY91kYmFFEV5w6_r1bFMFCkUnb4bSRDNa4KJEYd1MXdH9A6lTlPV8KjxH29yx6ByDFGFiqcU7hDJ3oQoQid9aNqzK1kaighjvpu5pmYTPMwvJTHaDbrg7iV_2PYPQHlRsSBESl8UhDl0LYT6hCZF2bP8JtugVujFqydJo1WU0PV_GJFKlcK-AF9Lk/s320/GodelBooks.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>I read Hofstadter's <i>Gödel, Escher, Bach </i>around when it came out, devoured it more like. It was probably the first serious non-fiction book I read on my own. There were various essays in 2019 for the fortieth anniversary of the book, and I thought about rereading it then, but didn't, but when I saw about the new biography of Kurt Gödel, I was primed to be interested. The biography was well done. The proof of the Incompleteness Theorem is relatively (...?) easy to understand, but Budiansky saves the explanation of that for an appendix, where he does a pretty good job, and otherwise you can read the biography without math.</div><div><br /></div><div>And am I about to reread Hofstadter? Well, if you look closely you can see a purple bookmark there...</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7ggiYnIa9XOLyVAQDf-C1y24tx5JS9dBNlJlvIyvD3FadhznpeC4R19TiTWRvOv5XqhtuH_jG4K4sK06NYyB3WYQtoHWAEjw6w9pJijBjBB26pjhT70QUXmgVRNftruJEZ7AXpqCntydQ0vR6mYBhsAhskfLz61an3mz0P37dh4UieOHtDE-RXn57hw/s320/ERC%202024.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="320" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjy7ggiYnIa9XOLyVAQDf-C1y24tx5JS9dBNlJlvIyvD3FadhznpeC4R19TiTWRvOv5XqhtuH_jG4K4sK06NYyB3WYQtoHWAEjw6w9pJijBjBB26pjhT70QUXmgVRNftruJEZ7AXpqCntydQ0vR6mYBhsAhskfLz61an3mz0P37dh4UieOHtDE-RXn57hw/s1600/ERC%202024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><b>Austria</b>. Could be the Czech Republic, I suppose, but no, not really. Vienna is where it happens. Last year's Austria book for the challenge was another <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/03/victor-gruens-shopping-town.html">biography</a> of an intellectual who left in the 30s and came to the U.S., Victor Gruen.</div><div><p><br /></p></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-34528708469363070992024-01-22T13:03:00.001-05:002024-01-22T13:03:39.885-05:00And the winner is... (CC Spin #36)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHnDxTPpn5-rWLOcImuod5qFSPGz_YBJsHoxhq8W_X571TqJV1PaAucMuH8oMRlmAw4aPlLI5FEuVDNZpBG0EfLGQaJSFuDGblMavs2mj5h6cidhEUW3cBX7NaFM7-ZfGE0HRGUvlIkicv6t9lVXZZuL_qoRD5HBzpfYbt72x7vagxioSHgbTqFHH0kw/s652/Twenty.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="295" data-original-width="652" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFHnDxTPpn5-rWLOcImuod5qFSPGz_YBJsHoxhq8W_X571TqJV1PaAucMuH8oMRlmAw4aPlLI5FEuVDNZpBG0EfLGQaJSFuDGblMavs2mj5h6cidhEUW3cBX7NaFM7-ZfGE0HRGUvlIkicv6t9lVXZZuL_qoRD5HBzpfYbt72x7vagxioSHgbTqFHH0kw/s320/Twenty.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>That means Konstantin Stanislavski's autobiography <i>My Life In Art. </i>Though not what I expected--it's gotta be a number more in the middle, doesn't it?...😉--it should be a good read. </p><p>Stanislavski (1863-1938) was an actor, director, and co-founder of the Moscow Art Theatre. He acted in and directed many (all? but I didn't look) of the premieres of Anton Chekhov's plays, such as <i>The Seagull </i>and <i>Uncle Vanya</i>. He lived through the Russian Revolution and on into the Stalin years, though his autobiography comes out in 1924 and so misses the worst part. He's also the inventor of the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_acting">Method</a> acting system.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDOXnoxZeIdgtRcEsohc_KOLlBhzqKNgYp9FjB-EtrOumwLgvlLOICM6-ZgQxvDpL_hkpZLK7HK86MoKs-TTt7ywGHrenxsEbZAMXN3F8NQXipLPIQfBZ4rhUjZAIuP-I4sKmLF1wQV-nsVS57C8rjp7FObq9sP6-0GVhQJn0sSAQjg5CXMRINwAltwGc/s2016/StanislavskyMyLifeInArt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDOXnoxZeIdgtRcEsohc_KOLlBhzqKNgYp9FjB-EtrOumwLgvlLOICM6-ZgQxvDpL_hkpZLK7HK86MoKs-TTt7ywGHrenxsEbZAMXN3F8NQXipLPIQfBZ4rhUjZAIuP-I4sKmLF1wQV-nsVS57C8rjp7FObq9sP6-0GVhQJn0sSAQjg5CXMRINwAltwGc/s320/StanislavskyMyLifeInArt.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>Did you spin? What are you reading?</p><p><br /></p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-10139293637624717702024-01-17T22:09:00.000-05:002024-01-17T22:09:10.462-05:00Classics Club Spin #36<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNBH5bx3W_jXWr1-IwlEeyRB6DkboQr7cqSaGhLzgNdAt5pwzXyYusAhtx3YJ2i-rhGpFjdcVphD21_YVEuIx4490AQnwpr9qTq4hdrMh1N1pUSfO3oyyRWCiij1gu63n45hP33keHV6XkLeAa0VZzj1tivef5xa3LqcfRFl5gou35KKhUrY1kLf9Yth8/s200/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNBH5bx3W_jXWr1-IwlEeyRB6DkboQr7cqSaGhLzgNdAt5pwzXyYusAhtx3YJ2i-rhGpFjdcVphD21_YVEuIx4490AQnwpr9qTq4hdrMh1N1pUSfO3oyyRWCiij1gu63n45hP33keHV6XkLeAa0VZzj1tivef5xa3LqcfRFl5gou35KKhUrY1kLf9Yth8/s1600/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>It's time for the latest Classics Club spin. You likely know the <a href="https://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/15/cc-spin-36/">rules</a>. A list of twenty books and next Sunday reveals the book we should read over the next month and a bit. So let's go straight to the list of twenty books.</p><p>I'm even nearer to the end of my <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/p/classics-club-list.html">list</a> than I was at the last spin, so I'm going to concentrate on the books I need to finish my first Classics Club list. </p><p>The First Quatrain:</p><div style="text-align: left;">1.) James Baldwin/<i>Giovanni's Room</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">2.) Goethe/<i>Wilhelm Meister</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">3.) George Bernard Shaw/<i>Major Barbara</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">4.) Virginia Woolf<i>/The Waves</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A Second Quatrain:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div>5.) James Baldwin/<i>Giovanni's Room</i></div><div>6.) Goethe/<i>Wilhelm Meister</i></div><div>7.) George Bernard Shaw/<i>Major Barbara</i></div><div>8.) Virginia Woolf<i>/The Waves</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>Quatrain the Third:</div><div><br /></div><div><div>9.) James Baldwin/<i>Giovanni's Room</i></div><div>10.) Goethe/<i>Wilhelm Meister</i></div><div>11.) George Bernard Shaw/<i>Major Barbara</i></div><div>12.) Virginia Woolf<i>/The Waves</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>And now, for the Quatrain of quatrains!</div><div><br /></div><div><div>13.) James Baldwin/<i>Giovanni's Room</i></div><div>14.) Goethe/<i>Wilhelm Meister</i></div><div>15.) George Bernard Shaw/<i>Major Barbara</i></div><div>16.) Virginia Woolf<i>/The Waves</i></div></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_9QaEqmMv0Hp55VyNMPIaXwnBUyt28bCAlqCDcV-ZqmRwdMSMOW61V9ZDfP4FehyzNCIVZrGoTBWnJM6m9XKIgrn8NuEoTye2ybLXwX7PnlqMtWHg05gvT1WWFd81S3J0tXPiLgkWLyHYQStw3YnM93kFJTtxgtsRSbFHfN1RDn0z9foVlCV6ilWUnko/s2016/CCSpin36Stack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_9QaEqmMv0Hp55VyNMPIaXwnBUyt28bCAlqCDcV-ZqmRwdMSMOW61V9ZDfP4FehyzNCIVZrGoTBWnJM6m9XKIgrn8NuEoTye2ybLXwX7PnlqMtWHg05gvT1WWFd81S3J0tXPiLgkWLyHYQStw3YnM93kFJTtxgtsRSbFHfN1RDn0z9foVlCV6ilWUnko/s320/CCSpin36Stack.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The pirates say, Just finish the danged books already.</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div><div>Only one of those is long (the Goethe) and as I've already read two of the others (<i>Giovanni's Room </i>and <i>Major Barbara) </i>but didn't manage to blog about them. (Which I would do if they spin machine chose them.) I really should just finish the stack over the course of the month. </div><div><br /></div><div>But as that repetition is looking a little dull, and who doesn't want a bit of danger (?) in a spin, here's a few books from a potential new Classics Club list I've been thinking about:</div><div><br /></div><div>17.) Luis Vaz de Camões/<i>The Lusiads</i></div><div>18.) Harald Laxness/<i>The Fish Can Sing</i></div><div>19.) Benito Perez Galdos/<i>That Bringas Woman</i></div><div>20.) Konstantin Stanislavsky<i>/My Life in Art</i></div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>The Stanislavski would be the long one in that last quatrain.</div><div><br /></div><div>Which look good to you? Are you spinning this time out?</div></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-58862171029714370592024-01-16T15:06:00.000-05:002024-01-16T15:06:18.486-05:00European Reading Challenge 2024 Signup<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiND0qt0h4mKKC65k08fcA64feaeLLwrrkH5EuuT8gnmo6rOSxIrISIUVRdmEfLyX44OCVCJOm4m49Hj2yy6JT9jqPYrvKX0kpW-iEHHP61A41i_etGtpw6nF99Hki8_duaWLYIED-hId0bGRjP_-PYWeuIlJngy-TuYlU4M2fCin9ysMm_1JymiYT-iCE/s320/ERC%202024.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="288" data-original-width="320" height="288" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiND0qt0h4mKKC65k08fcA64feaeLLwrrkH5EuuT8gnmo6rOSxIrISIUVRdmEfLyX44OCVCJOm4m49Hj2yy6JT9jqPYrvKX0kpW-iEHHP61A41i_etGtpw6nF99Hki8_duaWLYIED-hId0bGRjP_-PYWeuIlJngy-TuYlU4M2fCin9ysMm_1JymiYT-iCE/s1600/ERC%202024.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Time to sign up for the new year for Gilion's <a href="https://www.rosecityreader.com/p/the-2024-european-reading-challenge.html">European Reading Challenge</a>. The idea is to visit European countries by reading books set there. It's one of my favorite challenges and I'll again be signing up at the maximum, five-star level, which means five unique European countries, but I hope to do better than that again. No idea what countries I'll be visiting or via which books I'll be visiting them, but I do know that the first this year will be Austria because I only have a few pages left in Stephen Budiansky's biography of Kurt Gödel.</p><p>While, as an Illinois native I'm happy to see its outline everywhere, it is a little surprising to see it just to the southwest of Iceland. (Though based on today's temperatures...) Does that mean I get to count that next <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Chicago">Chicago</a> book as part of my European tour? 😉</p><p>Thanks to Gilion for hosting this great challenge once again. Full details (and your chance to signup!) can be found <a href="https://www.rosecityreader.com/p/the-2024-european-reading-challenge.html">here</a>.</p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-72997169980943844672024-01-01T18:56:00.003-05:002024-01-03T20:19:28.118-05:002023 Reading Highlights<p>Some reading highlights from last year:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWbdoF4Tgll6NOs5TMKXXaDcOcnQnSk0KwtWgrjHf9azKkynmRgZ8Vogr6Dm4rxvxGg2xWwNxEI3BzmyIhTg6az7_ESCc-pbJrlM1csFD7GXP7Qc5bP3w3u7AAZi5y556BIqCG95fIzs6CvfIE4X3zhda3yYVpWGQhIsFcPEN_O437mOf3B6eoWmsvVY/s1745/HazzardTransit.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1745" data-original-width="1108" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisWbdoF4Tgll6NOs5TMKXXaDcOcnQnSk0KwtWgrjHf9azKkynmRgZ8Vogr6Dm4rxvxGg2xWwNxEI3BzmyIhTg6az7_ESCc-pbJrlM1csFD7GXP7Qc5bP3w3u7AAZi5y556BIqCG95fIzs6CvfIE4X3zhda3yYVpWGQhIsFcPEN_O437mOf3B6eoWmsvVY/w127-h200/HazzardTransit.jpeg" width="127" /></a></div><div><b>Shirley Hazzard/<i>The Transit of Venus</i></b></div><div><br /></div>After reading Brigitta Olubas' biography of Shirley Hazzard (also pretty great!) I reread Hazzard's <i>The Transit of Venus. </i>I had some idle thoughts about blogging about it, but never did. But it is definitely her masterpiece and it was just as good reading it the second time as the first.<div><br /></div><div>Two Australian sisters get to London after World War II...and live their lives. And once again I'm not really going to manage say anything about it. It's great.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUiSIivUULzllBGhONciF7GgDg_I_o4AENqvixb0BWuQpjn5tZ277-tp9N2ftRbiF9GY0FFtY3NZiDiQIUNkZiItyCmCicovkq8jhHSSUgpvHBQivJYgWNgNonkr8BVl7Jp4eqkATGfxkhUuftajLuj1r_wEH63aj8X63NYYygd59O2KTr46rh7OBlWw/s450/JamesWotDModLib.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="290" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIUiSIivUULzllBGhONciF7GgDg_I_o4AENqvixb0BWuQpjn5tZ277-tp9N2ftRbiF9GY0FFtY3NZiDiQIUNkZiItyCmCicovkq8jhHSSUgpvHBQivJYgWNgNonkr8BVl7Jp4eqkATGfxkhUuftajLuj1r_wEH63aj8X63NYYygd59O2KTr46rh7OBlWw/w129-h200/JamesWotDModLib.jpeg" width="129" /></a></div><div><b>Henry James/<i>The Wings of the Dove</i></b></div><div><br /></div>I a bit dread the late Henry James novels for their difficult prose style, and while I've had a copy of <i>The Wings of the Dove </i>for years, I had never read it. Until the awesome power of the Classics Club Spin Machine™strongly suggested I read it in January. It knew whereof it spun. Four young people, with the occasional interfering elders, and different possibilities of lovers. <div><br /></div><div>The prose is challenging, but maybe, just maybe, Henry knew what he was doing, and wasn't just doing it to be difficult. 😉<br /><div><br /></div><div>It got its own post <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/henry-james-wings-of-dove-ccspin.html">here</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHXAmLTAZli4Gd6Ua7iSFLri9Hg-fcOQ0U6-HGcxdPtMOAuoK7e_C4NR6XxX7WezdYidhOpnzfVN3rLdV1gqvfdN0M6T1TxIyApPfhiIQExLVa3UFViuPYVj-g8DGEfPj-3s384tEww3uZsB7oswfXcjInd_GeJVVCXPCExyL8m9H2eSPu2VzNLu8huCg/s400/HafezFacesOfLove.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="265" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHXAmLTAZli4Gd6Ua7iSFLri9Hg-fcOQ0U6-HGcxdPtMOAuoK7e_C4NR6XxX7WezdYidhOpnzfVN3rLdV1gqvfdN0M6T1TxIyApPfhiIQExLVa3UFViuPYVj-g8DGEfPj-3s384tEww3uZsB7oswfXcjInd_GeJVVCXPCExyL8m9H2eSPu2VzNLu8huCg/w133-h200/HafezFacesOfLove.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><b>Hafez/<i>Faces of Love and the Poets of Shiraz </i>(tr. Dick Davis)<br /><br /></b>Hafez is the best-known poet in this volume of Shirazi (Iranian) poets of the 1300s, but the other two (Jahan Malek Khatun and Obayd-e Zakani) were no slouches. I've read some Hafez before, but never the other two. I thought the translations, by Dick Davis, were lovely. </div><div><br /></div><div>I <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Shirazi">drew</a> it out for quite a while to savor the pleasure.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Come here a moment, sit with me, don't sleep tonight."</div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oS06H_xXVCaMmI8zOWWdg3cF8OOwrXpNO29BCerKwENLQxYEJUROc5-gbe6AYQLT0zmvk9SU_qi3WDkzExZoZOjbIhv62hTa2MBygJ-ZCimSi6O2DjZzRpHBFiUWbUVvXscZgSpyTh00zHg4cNBnaScGLLXvIbrhjDGhM0eRcKdTGd9a5Nzwjqj2j-w/s400/TokarczukJacobSimple.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="263" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0oS06H_xXVCaMmI8zOWWdg3cF8OOwrXpNO29BCerKwENLQxYEJUROc5-gbe6AYQLT0zmvk9SU_qi3WDkzExZoZOjbIhv62hTa2MBygJ-ZCimSi6O2DjZzRpHBFiUWbUVvXscZgSpyTh00zHg4cNBnaScGLLXvIbrhjDGhM0eRcKdTGd9a5Nzwjqj2j-w/w131-h200/TokarczukJacobSimple.jpg" width="131" /></a></div><div><b>Olga Tokarczuk/<i>The Books of Jacob</i></b></div><div><br /></div>Jacob Frank (1726-1791) was a Polish-Jewish mystic who proclaimed himself the Messiah, and this is a 900+ historical novel about him and his circle. Tokarczuk, of course, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2018. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's nice when something so large and so heralded actually turns out to be so <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/07/olga-tokarczuks-books-of-jacob.html">good</a>, too.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Nevertheless it is written that any person who toils over matters of Messiahs, even failed ones, even just to tell their stories, will be treated just the same as he who studies the eternal mysteries of light." Even just to write blog posts about them?</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJxEQ-lMHFoc4IMtAWVdQdp_6xVsD-NhZ3P1IAy_-mZplXQZMxq_QxSJ1gOPNS5GazJbcLw8NHmyx6j2MqYNoHkBHTb4KlsHqW4q494SWuj7OSQmaCLNkMGtwP8-5SSegULRnuSo_BA7G-VJMI_AIKUiT7XvaKQ-raLV5_qpN-EpB_GvNzqpeaAXuFAM/s1783/SolnitOrwellsRoses.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1783" data-original-width="1180" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRJxEQ-lMHFoc4IMtAWVdQdp_6xVsD-NhZ3P1IAy_-mZplXQZMxq_QxSJ1gOPNS5GazJbcLw8NHmyx6j2MqYNoHkBHTb4KlsHqW4q494SWuj7OSQmaCLNkMGtwP8-5SSegULRnuSo_BA7G-VJMI_AIKUiT7XvaKQ-raLV5_qpN-EpB_GvNzqpeaAXuFAM/w133-h200/SolnitOrwellsRoses.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><b>Rebecca Solnit/<i>Orwell's Roses</i></b></div><div><i><b><br /></b></i></div><div>(Though I read her <i>Faraway Nearby</i> this year as well and it was just about as good, but <i>Orwell's Roses, </i>still the most recent of her books, was the one that got the <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Shirazi#:~:text=Rebecca%20Solnit/Orwell%27s%20Roses%20(%23NonficNov)">post</a>.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Solnit goes to see the cottage where Orwell lived, as cheaply as he could, with his first wife in the 1930s. She goes, because Orwell had written in his journals that he'd planted some fruit trees and some rose bushes, and she wondered if they were still there. The roses were.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's about Orwell and roses and political writing then and now, and why so politically committed a writer as Orwell would even think of planting roses and climate change and volcanoes in Iceland and rose-factory-farming in Columbia and Mexican Marxist painters and probably a few other things I'm forgetting about at the moment. And it's not very long. So much fascination and so much insight.</div><div><br /></div><div>A bunch of pretty fun mysteries made it on to the <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Mystery2023">blog</a>, too.</div><div><br /></div><div><div>Happy New Year to you! May your 2024 provide great reading and lots of other great things, too!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /><p><br /></p></div></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-59292943873350457302023-12-31T13:34:00.000-05:002023-12-31T13:34:00.486-05:00European Reading Challenge Wrapup 2023<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxpGCfGQ1NrZkaJO8fFRErrR6lztbiLSMI2-i7l7hNuQFndTJ8AvQ9fRbFA1tq9IqQFe2AchROaVRyQkn2eVGzlJfEP9sknwe-VMfgzq3dg-r4kjVE_4XodjzUUJfHRtGWshgWvA8AfZ2wcUhs_-0bY0qXjAKWVFNIvAKw25t4lfJBP7LOZh6dLj0w68/s320/ERC%202023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="320" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguxpGCfGQ1NrZkaJO8fFRErrR6lztbiLSMI2-i7l7hNuQFndTJ8AvQ9fRbFA1tq9IqQFe2AchROaVRyQkn2eVGzlJfEP9sknwe-VMfgzq3dg-r4kjVE_4XodjzUUJfHRtGWshgWvA8AfZ2wcUhs_-0bY0qXjAKWVFNIvAKw25t4lfJBP7LOZh6dLj0w68/s1600/ERC%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>Well, I squeezed in one last book <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/12/herta-mullers-fox-was-ever-hunter.html">review</a> just yesterday, but there will be no more squeezing in, and my bookish travels in Europe are done for the year. The final list:</p><div style="text-align: left;">1.) Henry James/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/henry-james-wings-of-dove-ccspin.html">The Wings of the Dove</a> </i>(Italy)</div><div style="text-align: left;">2.) Robert Gerwarth/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/robert-gerwarths-november-1918.html">November 1918</a> </i>(Germany)</div><div style="text-align: left;">3.) Eric Ambler/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/eric-amblers-levanter.html">The Levanter</a> </i>(Cyprus)</div><div style="text-align: left;">4.) Samuel Butler/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/03/samuel-butlers-way-of-all-flesh.html">The Way of All Flesh</a> </i>(UK)</div><div style="text-align: left;">5.) Victor Gruen/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/03/victor-gruens-shopping-town.html">Shopping Town</a> </i>(Austria)</div><div style="text-align: left;">6.) Honoré de Balzac<i>/<a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/06/balzacs-cousin-bette.html">Cousin Bette</a> </i>(France)</div><div style="text-align: left;">7.) Georgi Gospodinov/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/07/time-shelter.html">Time Shelter</a> </i>(Bulgaria)</div><div style="text-align: left;">8.) Robert Aickman/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/07/robert-aickmans-go-back-at-once.html">Go Back At Once</a> </i>(Croatia)</div><div style="text-align: left;">9.) Olga Tokarczuk/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/07/olga-tokarczuks-books-of-jacob.html">The Books of Jacob</a> </i>(Poland)</div><div style="text-align: left;">10.) Ivo Andrić/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/08/ivo-andrics-omer-pasha-latas.html">Omer Pasha Latas</a> </i>(Bosnia)</div><div style="text-align: left;">11.) Owen Matthews/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/08/owen-matthews-overreach.html">Overreach</a> </i>(Russia)</div><div style="text-align: left;">12.) Anna Comnena/<i><a href="http://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-alexiad-of-anna-comnena.html">The Alexiad</a> </i>(Turkey)</div><div style="text-align: left;">13.) Josef <span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Škvorecky/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/09/josef-skvoreckys-sins-for-father-knox.html">Sins For Father Knox</a> </i>(Czech Republic)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">14.) Janwillem van de Wetering/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/10/janwillem-van-de-weterings-outsider-in.html">Outsider in Amsterdam</a> </i>(Netherlands)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">15.) Homer/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/12/homers-iliad-tr-emily-wilson.html">The Iliad</a> </i>(tr. Emily Wilson) (Greece)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">16.) Leah Horlick/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/12/leah-horlick-poem.html">Moldovan Hotel</a> </i>(Moldova)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;">17.) Herta Müller/<i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/12/herta-mullers-fox-was-ever-hunter.html">The Fox Was Ever the Hunter</a> </i>(Romania)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Seventeen isn't my best ever number for this challenge, but is pretty good for me, and is in any case well over the five I pledged for. </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">There are two new countries I haven't previously visited for this challenge: Cyprus and Moldova. There continue to be six I've visited every year: Italy, Germany, the UK, Austria, France, and Romania. This year's best visits were Poland and Italy, though Croatia was fun and quirky, too.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="background-color: white;">Thanks again to <a href="https://www.rosecityreader.com/">Gilion</a> for hosting!</span></span></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-9623365639920770732023-12-29T22:42:00.001-05:002023-12-30T11:33:46.060-05:00Herta Müller's The Fox Was Ever the Hunter<blockquote><p> "Where does it come from, he asked, this sympathy?"</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD6_dAGjeOoHxco_wMNTHXnF4yf9CF2cz2mQ5u4XOVfLqOyC9GYsK5wyj8EO9CQqI9pbOsmwLcUOlS4HDas30Md9s_Z94yYgSVjL2eeSRm8gl2J23XMtBgjY0JUVr7PMjYUz-D9TNd4JT6qfSE4_1hYqu8rqA4uH3iweuaFeGlQYBNTAzv1musJMoHTRw/s475/MullerHunter.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="314" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgD6_dAGjeOoHxco_wMNTHXnF4yf9CF2cz2mQ5u4XOVfLqOyC9GYsK5wyj8EO9CQqI9pbOsmwLcUOlS4HDas30Md9s_Z94yYgSVjL2eeSRm8gl2J23XMtBgjY0JUVr7PMjYUz-D9TNd4JT6qfSE4_1hYqu8rqA4uH3iweuaFeGlQYBNTAzv1musJMoHTRw/s320/MullerHunter.jpeg" width="212" /></a></div>Adina is a schoolteacher in the late years of Communist Romania. Her circle of friends include Paul, a musician, and Clara, who works in a factory. Paul's band gets in trouble with the secret police because some apparatchik thinks their latest song is about the dictator Ceauşescu, and so Paul, even though he's not the lyricist, ends up in trouble dragging down Adina and the others.<div><br /></div><div>Then somebody, surely the Securitate, start to invade Adina's apartment and cut off the tail and then one by one the legs of a fox fur she's sentimentally attached to. She and Paul decide to flee to a more remote part of the countryside. Do they dare to flee the country? Escapees are frequently shot at the border. </div><div><br /></div><div>But they're saved by the bell as it were: 1989 happens, and it's of pictures of the dead Ceauşescus that the question I opened with is asked. Sympathy is hard to imagine.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the second novel of Herta Müller's I've read, and the setup is somewhat similar to <i>The Land of Green Plums, </i>which I read <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2018/07/herta-mullers-land-of-green-plums.html">earlier</a>: a group of young people in the late years of Communist Romania, potentially intellectuals, oppressed by the secret police. Cooperate? Escape? Lie low? <i>The Land of Green Plums </i>takes place a few years earlier than this and there's no rescue in sight.<br /><p>I thought this was good, but I was more impressed by <i>The Land of Green Plums </i>(1994 in German)<i>. </i> I felt the characters were better differentiated in that novel, which made the choices feel more poignant. This is a shorter book, only 220 pages, with fairly large margins, practically a novella in length. The opening started with quite a lot of folkloric elements: gypsies who are afraid of hares, the tooth fairy, who's a mouse in Romania, it seems:</p><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div><blockquote><div><div style="text-align: left;">"Mouse O mouse bring me a brand new tooth</div></div><div style="text-align: left;">and you can have my old one."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">This felt a little odd at first, like it was more anthropological documentation than dramatically necessary, though in the end I did feel it helped set up the fairly folkloric bit about attacking Adina's fox fur. The novel got better as it went on. Still. The wisdom of the Internet suggests that <i>The Land of Green Plums, The Appointment, </i>and <i>The Hunger Angel </i>are her best works. I'll probably try one of the two of those I haven't read next, but I will try them. She's good.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Müller was born in 1953 to the German-speaking minority in Romania, got out of the country in 1987 and settled in Germany where she still lives. She won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2009.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I was (grimly) amused by this joke one of the characters tells in the novel: a Romanian who's led a bad life is whisked off to Hell after his death where he's buried up to his neck in boiling mud. Once he's settled in, he looks around and sees <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolae_Ceau%C8%99escu">Nicolae Ceauşescu</a> in the boiling mud, but only up to his shins. Our anonymous Romanian complains to the demon in charge of the boiling mud department, What's up with that? The demon replies, What can you do? He's standing on the shoulders of his wife.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This came out in German in 1992, was translated into English by Philip Boehm in 2016, and is my visit to Romania for 2023.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbAJimYb6BDTwmwSUakC7YxCFmGPp8wmIMCjQHHs3QsUXsLrRW9jva0aGXitG-IrS_ku7Ia77ydIMucXSXgsAiBM2kbw-oUhM3fJ5tGHyDDKYJlJ9ktG5K0HxlWGZnY8RHTkF1yR35GzGpT9JKKgbot4-KGi6yYm0ZhOCyrZdSDXMVpZBMaqjsbPCmExQ/s320/ERC%202023.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="278" data-original-width="320" height="278" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbAJimYb6BDTwmwSUakC7YxCFmGPp8wmIMCjQHHs3QsUXsLrRW9jva0aGXitG-IrS_ku7Ia77ydIMucXSXgsAiBM2kbw-oUhM3fJ5tGHyDDKYJlJ9ktG5K0HxlWGZnY8RHTkF1yR35GzGpT9JKKgbot4-KGi6yYm0ZhOCyrZdSDXMVpZBMaqjsbPCmExQ/s1600/ERC%202023.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-31616774951411312692023-12-28T22:37:00.001-05:002023-12-28T22:37:31.755-05:00Boccaccio's The Decameron (Classics Club Spin)<blockquote>"...if what young people do in the name of love should be called a sin..." [435]</blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTfCLHQS6NKv_2YrdZqcJDEbxdORBESG8PnVxqhCH_iDZO5l_5t8kO17EwKmpD8IdM43zGfV6U7hzxw5qrrggszKOLU0qvcPnv-3Z9WmW5KBBelfIfeVNe_RV0f7HKjOo8O8WlAc112dlrlovktG3sIcPwE9Nuw5hjo1cMMt4XVjMQ5NYkQz7-OQvY0zo/s2016/BoccaccioDecameron.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTfCLHQS6NKv_2YrdZqcJDEbxdORBESG8PnVxqhCH_iDZO5l_5t8kO17EwKmpD8IdM43zGfV6U7hzxw5qrrggszKOLU0qvcPnv-3Z9WmW5KBBelfIfeVNe_RV0f7HKjOo8O8WlAc112dlrlovktG3sIcPwE9Nuw5hjo1cMMt4XVjMQ5NYkQz7-OQvY0zo/s320/BoccaccioDecameron.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>...then this is is not the book for you.<br /><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Boccaccio">Giovanni Boccaccio</a> started writing his <i>The Decameron </i>some time shortly after the Black Death of 1348, and finished it in 1352. Ten young people (Fiammetta, Lauretta, Panfilo, etc.)</div><div>are left rootless by the plague and decide to leave Florence and live in the countryside to escape. There they spend their time in dancing, singing, eating well, and most importantly telling stories, quite often about what young people do in the name of love. These ten (seven girls and three boys) each tell a story a day for ten days (over a period of two weeks) making a hundred stories. Dioneo claims the privilege of telling the last story on each day, and his are pretty reliably the extra-bawdy ones.</div><div><br /></div><div>Eight of the ten days have a theme assigned--magnanimity, trickery, or tragedy, for example. Most of my favorite stories came on the day where the theme was love, dogged by troubles, comes a happy end, (Day 5) but maybe that was just the mood I was in. '...where he lived with her in peace and prosperity for a great many years to come.' [429] There were a bunch of stories that day ending like that and I liked 'em. 😉</div><blockquote><div>"Now, since the reason we are here is to enjoy ourselves and have some fun,..." [715]</div></blockquote><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lauretta-by-jules-joseph-lefebvre.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" title="Jules Lefebvre
, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons"><img alt="Lauretta-by-jules-joseph-lefebvre" src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/75/Lauretta-by-jules-joseph-lefebvre.jpg/256px-Lauretta-by-jules-joseph-lefebvre.jpg" width="256" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lauretta, as imagined by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Joseph_Lefebvre">Jules Lefebvre</a></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div>Boccaccio gathered his stories from earlier collections in Latin or other languages; though influenced by Dante's <i>Divine Comedy,</i> he also tells stories of real people. Maybe he's telling those for the first time? Though it's also possible he's slotting historical people into traditional stories. Generally characters are new in each story, though some reappear. Calandrino, a not very bright painter, who is a historical figure, appears in several stories, together with his (?) friends Bruno and Buffalmacco, always suckering poor Calandrino into some gaffe. You can go see the paintings of all three even today (albeit in lesser-known Italian churches).</div><div><br /></div><div>Did I mention the sex? One of the most famous stories is where a priest teaches a naive young woman how he's going to put the devil in hell. Do I need to explain? Probably not and anyway, I'm not going to. </div><div><br /></div><div>Boccaccio is mostly OK with religion, but he's pretty anti-clerical:</div><div><blockquote>"a friar who was, without doubt, some gluttonous soup-swilling pie muncher" [259]</blockquote></div><div>A bit ahead of the curve, but I kept thinking he'd made a fine Protestant. </div><div><br /></div><div>The stories went on to be reused by others. Chaucer is clearly swiping from Boccaccio in several places. I hadn't realized (and anyway it may not be true) but some consider that Chaucer met Boccaccio (and Petrarch) on one of Chaucer's trips to Italy on royal diplomatic business. Two of Shakespeare's plays have a story from the <i>Decameron </i>as a clear antecedent, though the the line of influence may not be direct, even in the form of translation. (Shakespeare had little Latin, less Greek, and even less Italian.) But the ninth story of Day 2 is the <i>Cymbeline, </i>and the ninth story of Day 3 is <i>All's Well That Ends Well. </i>Another of Boccaccio's stories suggested to me <i>The Winter's Tale</i>, though neither the notes in this volume, nor the Internets in general seemed to see what I saw. </div><div><i><br /></i></div><div>After I finished it I reread Poe's <i>Masque of the Red Death, </i>whose connection to the <i>Decameron </i>in the end is pretty slight, I thought, but also Keats' long poem 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil', which was based on a fairly Gothic story from that day of tragedies. I don't think it was Keats at his finest, and it was the day of tragic stories, my least favorite day, but another example of Boccaccio's influence.</div><div><br /></div><div>Anyway, a substantial tome...</div><blockquote><div>"Nothing will seem long to those who read in order to pass the time." [858]</div></blockquote><div>...off my Classics Club list that I've been hemming and hawing over for a while. I'd started it once years ago in the Penguin translation before I even started blogging, but didn't finish it; for this reading I used the Wayne Rebhorn translation in a Norton paperback (shown above) that first came out in 2013. (The page numbers are to that version.) It won some awards and is pretty readable, I thought, though the Other Reader (who read it before I did) was put off by the use of Amurrican to represent what must have been a regional dialect in Italian. Well, translating dialect is always tricky.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, the <i>Decameron </i>is a work that can usefully have notes, and the notes didn't strike me as very good in this, which was too bad. Oh, well. I did finish this version, even if I started skipping the notes after a while, which is more than I can say of the Penguin.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was my Classics Club spin book, and I finished it a while ago (though not quite on time) but there have been things to do, movies to see, parties to attend or host, <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/12/happy-holidays.html">cookies</a> to bake, etc., so it's only gotten its blog post now... 😉</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkljLql0i6IjjBi4UlnIGPd3qWukv1LfadwKyiBuzGODWauvr2lEHi5otDuW5Vi876epIjs8UzaVtIdVYXkC7iiAifsKIZVyT8JOw8WEQ27As20qoepTHYfwuctdlB4zRL7DgYXfkusZYj9ePArC46JsSiAhZCHrBhZ7xALxbstwTre5Z2hr5rnKbZbbs/s200/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkljLql0i6IjjBi4UlnIGPd3qWukv1LfadwKyiBuzGODWauvr2lEHi5otDuW5Vi876epIjs8UzaVtIdVYXkC7iiAifsKIZVyT8JOw8WEQ27As20qoepTHYfwuctdlB4zRL7DgYXfkusZYj9ePArC46JsSiAhZCHrBhZ7xALxbstwTre5Z2hr5rnKbZbbs/s1600/classics%20club%20logo.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>
<blockquote><br /></blockquote>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-716769158757627612023-12-25T13:40:00.006-05:002023-12-25T13:40:56.923-05:00Happy Holidays!<p></p><div style="text-align: center;"> Have a cookie!</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Zrdt5Xdj6m_e7WSz49ISx7PuFV7nZNM-vUHWLgp9jGp9jfzr33IX3-EUclcRtCwWA25frwLusrIMvNlG0tlI3gK3i5ezKxFJB2PdVwlRXslqRkBhDgiVpKTGWiBPhBQ5DvT_-62UMry6MMkzL25SxuFkzsxqGji3VWzg0ZK4TSxGbsEY9CEq9Sxty9w/s2016/Cookies2023.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-Zrdt5Xdj6m_e7WSz49ISx7PuFV7nZNM-vUHWLgp9jGp9jfzr33IX3-EUclcRtCwWA25frwLusrIMvNlG0tlI3gK3i5ezKxFJB2PdVwlRXslqRkBhDgiVpKTGWiBPhBQ5DvT_-62UMry6MMkzL25SxuFkzsxqGji3VWzg0ZK4TSxGbsEY9CEq9Sxty9w/s320/Cookies2023.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">Happy Holidays to all! Thanks for reading.</p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-33965254808853086632023-12-21T13:00:00.018-05:002024-03-05T21:42:44.154-05:00Leah Horlick (#poem)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu-R32LZPV1DUoXzZvH4CPk-WjUO8D66jdwha3BMtNoz_NpA4rL4ETbxgtqHMwPKnphz3Qocs8GDn3xnNeqCs0ltwmFnAWp8rA0m-8avxMQ-QLkxTfwrENjPsHIGg2ZShsdnQ-sYOwhcKfJo12sTAGeIAj1LKA1tm1BC3GGu-UxdHQ0U5L9i3nz6qPriE/s2016/HorlickMoldovanHotel.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu-R32LZPV1DUoXzZvH4CPk-WjUO8D66jdwha3BMtNoz_NpA4rL4ETbxgtqHMwPKnphz3Qocs8GDn3xnNeqCs0ltwmFnAWp8rA0m-8avxMQ-QLkxTfwrENjPsHIGg2ZShsdnQ-sYOwhcKfJo12sTAGeIAj1LKA1tm1BC3GGu-UxdHQ0U5L9i3nz6qPriE/s320/HorlickMoldovanHotel.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p style="text-align: center;"><b>Guilt</b></p><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"></div><blockquote><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">At first, like a head cold--then, three glasses of wine--no five.</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">Hour twelve, a low-grade fever. Hour fourteen, your whole body is</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">on fire --</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">each joint snaps open, heat coiled inside your knees. A reaction to</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">the measles booster, days before the trip. Fades like a hangover,</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">then rears</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">its host of heads again. We chose not</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">to go to <span style="font-family: times;">Chișinău -- <i>We have no business</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i>being here anymore. </i>Reroute to Iași. It's the heat,</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">driving stick, a last hiss,<div style="text-align: left;"><br /><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">writing to the chief rabbi</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i>I'm sorry we're not going to make it--</i></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i>the GPS, the roads, Russian, the car</i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="text-align: left;">which really means</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i>I'm sorry we are afraid</i></div></div></div></blockquote><p style="text-align: right;">-Leah Horlick</p><p style="text-align: left;">I've never had a measles booster, but I had the shingles one not too long ago. That's about how it was.</p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://www.leahhorlick.com/">Leah Horlick's</a> book <i>Moldovan Hotel </i>came out from Brick Books, a small Canadian press, in 2021. It's her third book of poetry. (I haven't read either of the earlier ones.) She'd gotten a fellowship to go to Romania and Moldova in 2017 to attempt to come to terms with the tragic history of her Jewish family in the region.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Ritual Instructions for Transnistria</b></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Avoid all travel to Transnistria in northeast Moldova.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">-travel advisory from the Government of Canada, December 2017</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">In your right hand, take the ten-hour tourist visa. Form a window with</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">your left, frame the last functioning hammer and sickle flag. Walk six</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">times around the last twenty thousand</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">tonnes of Soviet ammunition. A tanker spills cigarettes out of its side</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">like a whale and so we say <i>May the memory of this whale be a blessing.</i></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">Wash your hands before you dunk your head</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">beneath the x-ray at the checkpoint, the x-ray that pretends not to notice </div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">you. Rabbi, is there</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">a blessing for the border?</div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><br /></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i>A blessing for the border--</i></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="padding-text: 33px; text-indent: -11px;">May God bless and keep the borders, seen and unseen, far away from us.</div></blockquote><p style="text-align: right;">-Leah Horlick</p><p style="text-align: left;">Transnistria is that breakaway region in Moldova (across the Dniester River) that's propped up by Russia. </p><p style="text-align: left;">She says in an afterword she lifted that final line from <i>Fiddler on the Roof, </i>but I knew that. 😉("Is there a proper blessing for the Tsar?" "May God bless and keep the Tsar...far away from us.")</p><p style="text-align: left;">The title poem is probably the best, but too long to quote. Interesting stuff.</p><p style="text-align: left;"><br /></p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i></i></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-86307036973740060932023-12-08T21:28:00.000-05:002023-12-08T21:28:57.877-05:00Patricia Wentworth's Who Pays the Piper? (Mystery, DeanStreetDecember)<blockquote><p>"I always get what I want," said Lucas Dale.</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcJ7uwSx6OMUsTHzM_Kb3gK6XWpFMPZ5ywxWYEr365CIKLUVNYoCxg_DZEnXSs0UpP21lY6IiPSe2t15FL8QX9BErK7V7YdjlKk1fRg7agLT_t-SNQ4ZeMTiuOAa1mr30Q1pZMM30bcBT3SbEkb32i_0lk9HxctLKsbPLI7a4oRfnnRUZS9D8TZEFXug/s445/WentworthPiper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="288" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIcJ7uwSx6OMUsTHzM_Kb3gK6XWpFMPZ5ywxWYEr365CIKLUVNYoCxg_DZEnXSs0UpP21lY6IiPSe2t15FL8QX9BErK7V7YdjlKk1fRg7agLT_t-SNQ4ZeMTiuOAa1mr30Q1pZMM30bcBT3SbEkb32i_0lk9HxctLKsbPLI7a4oRfnnRUZS9D8TZEFXug/s320/WentworthPiper.jpg" width="207" /></a></div>That's the opening line of <i>Who Pays the Piper? </i>and it's Lucas Dale who ends up dead. He didn't get what he wanted that time! (And ever is such hubris rewarded?)<div><br /></div><div>Lucas Dale is a Brit who went to the U.S. and made a pile of money, in likely dodgy ways, and returned to England. He's just bought King's Bourne, an old country manor from the nearly bankrupt estate of James Bourne. Bourne is survived by one of his twin sisters, Millicent O'Hara, Mrs. O'Hara's daughter Catherine and Catherine's cousin Susan Lenox. </div><div><br /></div><div>Dale falls in love with Susan Lenox--she's one of the things he wants--but she's already in love with Bill Carrick, the son of the local doctor, who's still got his way to make (as an architect).</div><div><br /></div><div>Dale also comes with a private secretary, an ex-wife who's on the stage, and an American business partner with a grievance. Plenty of suspects, especially after Dale starts using strong-arm tactics to get Susan to marry him.</div><div><br /></div><div>Some pearls appear to be stolen, then reappear where they're not supposed to be, and then Lucas Dale is found dead, shot in the back of his head. Scotland Yard is called in, in the person of Chief Inspector Lamb, who brings along his dashing sergeant, Frank Abbott.</div><div><br /></div><div>Now if you know anything about Patricia Wentworth, you'll know the evidence will look bad for Susan and Bill at first, but that it won't be either of them who committed the murder. And it's not.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is the second (1940) of the Ernest Lamb series, and he's fine form here, curmudgeonly, sexist, and tender:</div><blockquote><div>"He had three daughters of his own, and was sometimes put to it to conceal a most obstinate softness of heart where girls were concerned."</div></blockquote><div>but at the same time quite observant. Later, after Lamb and Abbott are absorbed into Wentworth's most famous detective series, that of Miss Silver, his curmudgeonly is played up, and his observational skills are less used, and he's mostly that useful thing for a PI, a friend on the force, but in this one he and Abbott are on top of all the needed clues. A completely enjoyable entry, though the witness who has the one crucial clue keeps silent until the very end for reasons that seem a little improbable. (Other than the needs of a mystery novel...)</div><div><br /></div><div>The first Ernest Lamb novel on the blog is <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2022/12/patricia-wentworths-blind-side.html">here</a>. I've also got the third and final one, <i>Pursuit of a Parcel, </i>as an eBook, and hope to read it this month. </div><div><br /></div><div>It's Dean Street December, and <a href="https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/">Liz</a> is hosting an <a href="https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2023/12/01/dean-street-press-december-2023-main-post/">event</a>.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZub5Q5mWH23FLL2IxwbxZc_mcQjm6_bsOt8-b-QgcBMhpJQpNAhE9bqorzKQFx4FpMRvQc0EDEUz-sv0Ly2TqlPr_ciXjxEiv3fLwXJl_wOrLDqowwiRCdY5ax1jqHe7aZyoRAdoi7xHpnKd5a4o0ARqV0nqpHVZP4DoupjQNOpyNNldJfRr3CCLtmtw/s500/dean-street-december-2023.webp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="262" data-original-width="500" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZub5Q5mWH23FLL2IxwbxZc_mcQjm6_bsOt8-b-QgcBMhpJQpNAhE9bqorzKQFx4FpMRvQc0EDEUz-sv0Ly2TqlPr_ciXjxEiv3fLwXJl_wOrLDqowwiRCdY5ax1jqHe7aZyoRAdoi7xHpnKd5a4o0ARqV0nqpHVZP4DoupjQNOpyNNldJfRr3CCLtmtw/s320/dean-street-december-2023.webp" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div>Also, though I'm already a bit over the top on this challenge, it also fits My Reader's Block Vintage Mystery <a href="https://myreadersblock.blogspot.com/2022/11/vintage-scavenger-hunt-2023.html">Scavenger Hunt</a>:</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ6lo5XUky7yoZuaRJ5gG-axCZRaO16bZQyKHauxxSGeCPn91XBSC5d5ff4yG1rwRExlObOiNDylRphbTjsi2hHMGIO8nD_MR3iDhy-TdIeEr2nyWiwNJhyphenhyphen7XihXejLAzOfq3_ty5cv60dcM15b2HrG-y_0EekQ7nqZMJINeZCsxLli-IHdQdNRTMqYNk/s320/Vintage%20Scavenger%20Hunt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="320" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ6lo5XUky7yoZuaRJ5gG-axCZRaO16bZQyKHauxxSGeCPn91XBSC5d5ff4yG1rwRExlObOiNDylRphbTjsi2hHMGIO8nD_MR3iDhy-TdIeEr2nyWiwNJhyphenhyphen7XihXejLAzOfq3_ty5cv60dcM15b2HrG-y_0EekQ7nqZMJINeZCsxLli-IHdQdNRTMqYNk/s1600/Vintage%20Scavenger%20Hunt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><b>Vintage Mystery, Gold, Hat. </b>Those are some stylish hats, even if I'm not quite sure who the people under them are. Bill and Susan, I guess, though Susan is supposed to be blonde.</div><div><p><br /></p></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-76555575023499204192023-12-01T00:25:00.003-05:002023-12-17T02:52:08.296-05:00Homer's Iliad (tr. Emily Wilson)<p> </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWQtTg0rn_TVTFRuydWZ-xRLgqgFIKYAmHT2mx4QZ1HnVG0q_zUHZUtKHYaE_XcIKskl5msJXJoajoWy1RT3gEujJOJuUfu7xSQ494VgF7xbwi2lp7YrtA9OrW8EWPxd-Dgkib1_4l-BA8LnpKLPl50NhUe_ioKZOp5xOg9Tfz0dOtE1I_8RB0joNaI8/s2016/IliadStack.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1134" data-original-width="2016" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvWQtTg0rn_TVTFRuydWZ-xRLgqgFIKYAmHT2mx4QZ1HnVG0q_zUHZUtKHYaE_XcIKskl5msJXJoajoWy1RT3gEujJOJuUfu7xSQ494VgF7xbwi2lp7YrtA9OrW8EWPxd-Dgkib1_4l-BA8LnpKLPl50NhUe_ioKZOp5xOg9Tfz0dOtE1I_8RB0joNaI8/w400-h225/IliadStack.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erechtheion">Erechtheum</a> the Owl says, This is important stuff. Get obsessed!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p></p><div style="text-align: center;"><b>from The Iliad</b></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Bk. XV, ll. 82 ff)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Let Hector turn the Greeks around again</div><div style="text-align: left;">and make them panic, lose their will to fight,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and run away until at last they fall</div><div style="text-align: left;">amid the mighty galleys of Achilles,</div><div style="text-align: left;">the son of Peleus. He will send forth</div><div style="text-align: left;">his friend Patroclus, who will slaughter many,</div><div style="text-align: left;">including my own noble son, Sarpedon.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Then glorious Hector, out in front of Troy,</div><div style="text-align: left;">will kill Patroclus with his spear, and then,</div><div style="text-align: left;">enraged at this, Achilles will kill Hector.</div><div style="text-align: left;">And after that has happened, I shall cause</div><div style="text-align: left;">the Greeks to drive the Trojans from the ships,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and force them to retreat continuously</div><div style="text-align: left;">until, through great Athena's strategies,</div><div style="text-align: left;">the Greeks have seized the lofty town of Troy.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Until that time, my anger will not cease.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">-Homer (tr. Emily Wilson)</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That's Zeus announcing the program of the second half of the Iliad. Hector eventually foresees his death:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Bk. XXII, 398ff)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Then Hector understood inside his heart,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and said, "The gods have called me to my death,</div><div style="text-align: left;">I thought Deiphobus was at my side.</div><div style="text-align: left;">But he is on the wall. Athena tricked me.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The horror of my death is near me now,</div><div style="text-align: left;">not far away, and there is no way out."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">-Homer (tr. Emily Wilson)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And does eventually die:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">(Bk. XXIV, ll. 997ff, the very end of the poem)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">After the mound was built, they went back home,</div><div style="text-align: left;">then came together for a glorious banquet</div><div style="text-align: left;">inside divine King Priam's house. And so</div><div style="text-align: left;">they held the funeral for horse-lord Hector.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: right;">-Homer (tr. Emily Wilson)</div><div style="text-align: right;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Line numbers are those of Emily Wilson's translation, and not those of the Greek. She's translating it into blank verse in English, a nice choice, but you can't get as much into a line, so it's a bit longer. Though comparisons of this sort are a little suspect, an English blank verse line has ten or eleven syllables; a line of Greek dactylic hexameter, the original meter, has twelve to seventeen syllables. (And lines of twelve syllables are very rare.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The Iliad is a major poem, a foundational work of Western literature, a classic. If you haven't read it recently, or know it only by repute, it might surprise: it's more cleverly structured than you might think, and 'Homer' left out many of the most famous episodes (there's no Trojan horse, no death of Achilles, no several other things) in order to produce a tighter story and poem. But I'm not going to say anything about the greatness of the Iliad. It just is. I want to think about Emily Wilson's new translation, out a month or so ago.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I was very much looking forward to this. I <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2018/01/homers-odyssey-tr-by-emily-wilson.html">loved</a> her translation of the Odyssey. Ever since I read that earlier translation, I assumed, I hoped! she would carry on and translate the Iliad. Maybe that enthusiasm was too much. Sadly I don't think this is as good. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">What should a translation of Homer look like? Let's go to the most famous commentator on the subject, Matthew Arnold in his <i>On Translating Homer: </i></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"...the translator of Homer should above all be penetrated by a sense of four qualities of his author;--that he is eminently rapid; that he is eminently plain and direct, both in the evolution of his thought and in the expression of it, that is both in his syntax and his words; that he is plain and direct in the substance of his thought, that is, in his matter and ideas; and, finally, that he is eminently noble;..."</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">Arnold goes on to say, "I probably seem to be saying what is too general to be of much service to anybody." 😉 But in fact Arnold is considered kind of an expert.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">My favorite of the passages I quoted above is the middle one. If one is judging for 'plain and direct', I think Wilson succeeds pretty well on both counts, that is in syntax and in ideas. Here's Richard Lattimore (1951) for comparison:</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">And Hektor knew the truth inside his heart, and spoke aloud:</div><div style="text-align: left;">"No use. Here at last the gods have summoned me deathward.</div><div style="text-align: left;">I thought Deiphobus the hero was here close beside me,</div><div style="text-align: left;">but he is behind the wall and it was Athena cheating me,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and now evil death is close to me, and no longer far away,</div><div style="text-align: left;">and there is no way out.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Lattimore is pretty good himself here on plain and direct, but Wilson feels to me more rapid. And her use of blank verse adds a nobility that feels lacking in Lattimore's free verse. (Lattimore's line is loosely six beat, like Homer, but not rigorous in its versification.)</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But I wouldn't always say that. Here's Lattimore's final line to the whole poem:<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><blockquote>Such was their burial of Hektor, breaker of horses.</blockquote></div><div style="text-align: left;">I prefer Lattimore here; the double alliteration on B and H, which correspond across the caesura (that break, the breath you take in pronouncing the line, at the comma). It reminds me of that other great verse form for English epic, that of Beowulf. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">There are places where Wilson is just flat (this is part of the description of the newly-forged shield of Achilles, Bk. XVIII, ll. 681-2):</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">The earth grew black behind them as if plowed,</div><div style="text-align: left;">though it was made of gold. It was amazing.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Homer does not sound like a breathless teenager. I feel we have fallen short of nobility here.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Or, this (Bk. XVI, ll.23-4):</div><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"> Speak up! Do not</div><div style="text-align: left;">conceal your thoughts. We ought to share our knowledge.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Lattimore:</div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Tell me, do not hide it in your mind, and so we shall both know.</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">Now this is not Homer at his rapidest either, but Homer <i>is</i> swifter than either, and Lattimore is swifter than Wilson. 'So we shall both know' in Lattimore is '<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ἵνα εἶδομεν ἄμφω' in Greek, a mere three words in Homer, and is a much more ordinary expression than either translation in English.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now why did I like her Odyssey so much better than her Iliad? My library remains messed up, so I can't get a copy of her Odyssey to tell you exactly.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But here's one thing that occurred to me.You probably know that the first word in each epic is important. It's 'wrath' (<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Μῆνιν</span>) in the Iliad, and 'man' (<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Ἄνδρα</span>) in the Odyssey. Vergil announces his intention to combine both epics by beginning his Aeneid, 'Arma virumque', which Shaw turns into English as 'Arms and the Man'. But almost as important is the adjective that describes that initial noun. The wrath is described as <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">ούλομένην and the man is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">πολύτροπον</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">In her translation, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Wilson makes Odysseus, the man, 'complicated', and I loved that. To call a person complicated, well, we can all think of a bunch of things that might suggest, and of Odysseus, they're all true. The very word implies a new and interesting interpretation. The Greek means something more like 'of many turns', which is what it usually gets translated as. That's suggestive, but not as interesting here as 'complicated.' (The Latin root of 'complicated' suggests 'with folds', which isn't a bad change.)</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">She translates the adjective describing wrath as cataclysmic, not for me as interesting a word, one that suggests a flood, which isn't really quite right. (The Greek word means something closer to accursed.) So:</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><blockquote>Tell me about a complicated man</blockquote></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">hooked me from the start. But: </span></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">Goddess, sing of the cataclysmic wrath</span></div></blockquote><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">put me off a bit.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";">I don't know. It might also just be the case I like the Odyssey better. You might, too. Wilson says in her introduction she's always been more drawn to the Iliad, and this is a common enough opinion. The Iliad is men and war and tragedy, while the Odyssey is mixed company and romance and adventure, and so the Iliad has historically been considered the greater poem. But is it? That's not really an argument I want to get into. (The Oscars are the same. Should Julia Roberts have won her Oscar for Erin Brokovich or for one of her great romantic comedies? Or think about best picture Oscars.) I've read both poems multiple times and in Greek. But I do mention that as it might have colored my interpretation.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">Anyway, it's a fine translation, should you want to read the Iliad. (And you should!) But after reading her Odyssey, I was ready to throw out all my other translations and get hers in its place. (I didn't quite do that.) I did not have that reaction after reading her Iliad. </span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-39967970956537773982023-11-27T23:42:00.002-05:002023-11-27T23:42:38.305-05:00November challenges wrapup (new to the TBR)<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7LZN08Iric8UGlzYAaw2MTfVjUoO05KnfTyN9OZIXiiRz_cJKLv-cSaE2qkucsMQO5fHXnBLeGvO92ZVkDuaWFVQ7y8IXnWaLX0JdzaEpue6Xl1AlW9H5G_q1mJdIjyQf5S7CfQ-veHLFboF0dShI4MKrU9ddImI5GCI4j338s7VOo3Upnskmnupbn6k/s683/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="683" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7LZN08Iric8UGlzYAaw2MTfVjUoO05KnfTyN9OZIXiiRz_cJKLv-cSaE2qkucsMQO5fHXnBLeGvO92ZVkDuaWFVQ7y8IXnWaLX0JdzaEpue6Xl1AlW9H5G_q1mJdIjyQf5S7CfQ-veHLFboF0dShI4MKrU9ddImI5GCI4j338s7VOo3Upnskmnupbn6k/s320/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-5YxWS9cz-bSj-dbDXkPLVwKclSA1WI24flJVnLy8lf_O_RfQJfFXTq3A-EYvYTcKK5F051ygXj5i2_cth01k-U6rVaMKubKfibarLSiuA5D1GUJ3XinZahD8UVabbwzBLNbu9n_SAVlqPhXsk0i4Z08bllybqfXPQoVNeutjqy9hO-zeXuvfoh9hRY/s320/NonfictionNovember23.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="180" data-original-width="320" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJ-5YxWS9cz-bSj-dbDXkPLVwKclSA1WI24flJVnLy8lf_O_RfQJfFXTq3A-EYvYTcKK5F051ygXj5i2_cth01k-U6rVaMKubKfibarLSiuA5D1GUJ3XinZahD8UVabbwzBLNbu9n_SAVlqPhXsk0i4Z08bllybqfXPQoVNeutjqy9hO-zeXuvfoh9hRY/s1600/NonfictionNovember23.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p>The prompt for the last week for both these challenges is the same: What new books did you learn about and add to your TBR? I'm going to be lazy and lump them both in to one post... 😉</p><div style="text-align: left;">Walter Lord/A Night to Remember </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>(<a href="https://readerbuzz.blogspot.com/">Readerbuzz</a>, non-fiction)</div><div style="text-align: left;">François Mauriac/The Kiss of the Leper </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>(<a href="https://nancyelin.wordpress.com/">NancyLN</a>, novella)</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mike Harris/Mike Nichols: A Life </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>(NancyLN, non-fiction)</div><div style="text-align: left;">Philip Larkin/Letters to Monica </div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>(<a href="https://intrepidangeleno.wordpress.com/">Intrepid Angeleno</a>, non-fiction)</div><div style="text-align: left;">Charles Montgomery/The Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design</div><div style="text-align: left;"> (<a href="https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/">Adventures in Reading</a>, non-fiction)<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span>Travis Elborough/Atlas of Vanishing Places</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> (<a href="https://volatilerune.blog/">Volatile Rune</a>, non-fiction)<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span>Louisa May Alcott/Behind a Mask</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span> (<a href="https://klasikfanda.blogspot.com/">KlasikFanda</a>, novella)<br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span>Patrick Modiano/Sundays in August</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><span><span> (NancyLN, novella)</span><br /></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span><span><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now if only my <a href="https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/tpl_maintenance/">library</a> would start working again...but they say not until January. Yikes!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Fortunately I've got a few Dean Street Press mysteries lined up for next <a href="https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2023/11/23/dean-street-december-is-coming/">month</a>.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Thanks to all our hosts!</div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-13233334017360953182023-11-25T23:15:00.001-05:002023-11-25T23:22:28.483-05:00Two by Patrick Modiano (#NovNov)<p><i><b>So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood</b></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh210oLfJZYk6dB2C4XZhHJawi1SbRqJyybEOXWiNo_cX44KVr_2h1yAxGTg4wnw5wlPJ99-_fDwBWKMS0jU9ozLpxBK32tUXZOJ75Tsj3bEnMYSbfHJd0pq7gyBLQ1HoIjE1b6lxxZcCiYoiIidfXUL0HMBJCkMv9NTihRvFg729GRfiatELfpB416ARk/s500/ModianoNeighborhood.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="333" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh210oLfJZYk6dB2C4XZhHJawi1SbRqJyybEOXWiNo_cX44KVr_2h1yAxGTg4wnw5wlPJ99-_fDwBWKMS0jU9ozLpxBK32tUXZOJ75Tsj3bEnMYSbfHJd0pq7gyBLQ1HoIjE1b6lxxZcCiYoiIidfXUL0HMBJCkMv9NTihRvFg729GRfiatELfpB416ARk/w133-h200/ModianoNeighborhood.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>Jean Daragane is an elderly man living on his own, suspicious and irritable. Then a stranger Gilles Ottolini calls up to say that he's found Daragane's address book: could he bring it by? (Daragane had written his phone number and address in the book in the space supplied after 'If found please return to...'). Daragane doesn't want this stranger to come to his house, but they arrange to meet at a café the next day.<div><br /></div><div>Daragane is a well-known writer, famous for his book <i>Le Noir de l'Eté</i> about the Paris demimonde. He has genuinely lost his address book and, despite his suspicions, supposes he should get it back. Ottolini shows up the next day with a 'friend', Chantal Grippay, and it's clear Ottolini knows quite a bit about Daragane. Ottolini has read through the address book and he's interested in a name from it, Guy Torstel, which was also a name that Daragane had used in that famous novel. Who is Torstel? Daragane claims he can barely remember the actual Torstel, and that he remembers nothing about the novel he wrote so many years ago. But he agrees to try to remember something and to meet again with Ottolini when Ottolini's back in town. </div><div><br /></div><div>But before that Chantal Grippay comes by and warns him not to trust Ottolini. Daragane tries to work out the connections between Torstel and his mother and the woman (not his mother) who raised him and the other figures from that novel. And what do they have to do with Ottolini and Grippay? And just what has he got himself into? </div><div><br /></div><div>Interesting and evocative, but in retrospect not the one to have started with. In the real world, Modiano's first novel was <i>La Place de l'Etoile</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>155p. And with rather wide spacing and margins. Translated by Euan Cameron.</div><div><br /></div><div><b><i>In the Café of Lost Youth</i></b></div><div><b><i><br /></i></b></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXs7tj1dOG2fDwJWvf4e5NC3Up9SOcEHhNBp1qYp0F-1bxipKlacwh6o6H2LmwmI9njCHMD-qR9sMTx9bJv__CTiercziMuwd3PysxRIYFwzBd_y-zBrKExB0SV6OxD-RN4ZLXXWrOSvDC4XPnGCd8fMZe-Vn52EPALuNWM7tv64fnX6FThSIFUqugFS0/s1600/ModianoCafe.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1000" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXs7tj1dOG2fDwJWvf4e5NC3Up9SOcEHhNBp1qYp0F-1bxipKlacwh6o6H2LmwmI9njCHMD-qR9sMTx9bJv__CTiercziMuwd3PysxRIYFwzBd_y-zBrKExB0SV6OxD-RN4ZLXXWrOSvDC4XPnGCd8fMZe-Vn52EPALuNWM7tv64fnX6FThSIFUqugFS0/w125-h200/ModianoCafe.jpg" width="125" /></a></div>Louki is an <i>habituée</i> of the café Condé. The place is a little downmarket even for students, with a somewhat rough clientele of youths, with a few dodgy elders mixed in. Louki seems just a bit more glamorous than the rest of the crowd. But Louki is just a nickname. Who is she?</div><div><br /></div><div>The novella is structured as four different narrators telling us what they know (or what they want to tell us) about Louki. The first is an actual student: he studies at the <i>École Supérieure des Mines</i>; because he's a student, though one perhaps not entirely committed to his studies, he feels isolated from the core crowd at the café. Still he observes Louki without ever knowing her real name.</div><div><br /></div><div>The second figure is a private detective who's looking for Louki on behalf of her abandoned husband; he learns Louki is actually Jacqueline Choureau née Delanque, that she'd been in minor trouble with the law as a teenager, that her mother was a dancer at the Moulin Rouge. He has to decide what exactly to report to the abandoned husband.</div><div><br /></div><div>The third chapter is from the point of view of Louki herself; the last chapter is that of a writer from years later who had hung out with this crowd at the time. We learn Louki's fate.</div><div><br /></div><div>Wikipedia says the novel is loosely about the circle around the Situationist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Debord">Guy Debord</a>, philosopher, Marxist, provocateur. In any case, the novella begins with an epigraph from Debord:</div><div><blockquote>"At the halfway point of the journey making up real life, we were surrounded by a gloomy melancholy, one expressed by so very many derisive and sorrowful words in the café of lost youth."</blockquote></div><div>Also evocative, and less dependent on a familiarity with the Modiano oeuvre. Pretty good, I thought and it would have been a better start. (Though as you can see I didn't stop after the first that I did read.)</div><div><br /></div><div>118p. Translated by Chris Clarke.</div><div><br /></div><div>Modiano won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2014, and I've been meaning to try him out since then. That's all the Modiano I've read, but I liked them both and it made me curious to read more. I'll probably go next to the beginning and read <i>La Place de l'Etoile.</i> (Same title in English.) It's the first in a trilogy, it seems. Do you know Modiano? Is that a good plan? Any others to be sure not to miss?</div><div><i style="font-weight: bold;"><br /></i><div>November is Novellas month!</div></div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7ZJUMVPP5r8u0OxPH46JAZl_eqicdSW47Mj5uVD1CTnL-PwS_-vaIVJOU1C37hHHT-9kgJ2-G8g374GHsv6nG7Dji04aGWRSumgDUEThR9JDqz91acDS__DbLki2_zz4WTtZCmLrcZen4E4Lk8W-n_6iVYsZ6oSdxrpTEkuf_jGWkY3xjaJeZMexK5Y/s683/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="683" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgW7ZJUMVPP5r8u0OxPH46JAZl_eqicdSW47Mj5uVD1CTnL-PwS_-vaIVJOU1C37hHHT-9kgJ2-G8g374GHsv6nG7Dji04aGWRSumgDUEThR9JDqz91acDS__DbLki2_zz4WTtZCmLrcZen4E4Lk8W-n_6iVYsZ6oSdxrpTEkuf_jGWkY3xjaJeZMexK5Y/s320/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><br /></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-91329657591347618352023-11-21T15:39:00.003-05:002023-11-21T15:47:15.008-05:00Tony Hillerman's The Blessing Way (#Mystery)<blockquote><p>"I asked around some in re your inquiry about witchcraft cases and it looks only moderately promising."</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuLwhnms7ykiDhlgi5OrwexsxQllv-4TzzxlzULXib5A0sAHqXwsDKV2uqv3WRp7NT_7nVgncAJXoeTZW2BtTdqoavbQpvbe1exaPyCSyuyjJO2ApNym0Zf3Y0PyTjB-ibkV2IwB-_UixQDhyphenhyphenf1jwkXNJTzBdSIJ5h3U99WdwWl1LGif5phvTvyfk6gj4/s1362/HillermanBlessingWay.jpeg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1362" data-original-width="838" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuLwhnms7ykiDhlgi5OrwexsxQllv-4TzzxlzULXib5A0sAHqXwsDKV2uqv3WRp7NT_7nVgncAJXoeTZW2BtTdqoavbQpvbe1exaPyCSyuyjJO2ApNym0Zf3Y0PyTjB-ibkV2IwB-_UixQDhyphenhyphenf1jwkXNJTzBdSIJ5h3U99WdwWl1LGif5phvTvyfk6gj4/s320/HillermanBlessingWay.jpeg" width="197" /></a></div>But if you're looking for a mystery, it's very promising.<div><br /></div><div>Luis Horeseman is a young Navajo who has just injured a man in a drunken knife fight. But he's worried he's killed his opponent, and so is living rough in an uninhabited canyon. Or so he thinks.</div><div><br /></div><div>Joe Leaphorn is a detective with the Navajo police and he's pretty sure he knows where Horseman is, but rather than go hunting him, he drops hints among Horseman's relatives that young Luis won't be guilty of murder after all and should just turn himself in.</div><div><br /></div><div>Bergen McKee is a professor of anthropology at the University of New Mexico and he's interested in Navajo witch stories. He's also an old college chum of Joe Leaphorn, and that's from Leaphorn's letter to McKee above. Even though Leaphorn's not very encouraging about the research, he still would like McKee to come visit, and anyway there just happens to be one report of a witch, otherwise unexplained.</div><div><br /></div><div>Then Horseman is found dead, far from where Leaphorn expected him to be hiding out. At first glance the death looks accidental, but Leaphorn sees through that right away.</div><div><br /></div><div>There are three more deaths before it's done and a good thriller scene in backcountry Arizona.</div><div><br /></div><div>It's the first entry (1970) in Hillerman's series of mysteries set in Navajo lands, and the series started well, I thought. I've read most of them (and maybe this one before? But it felt new.) As it's the first neither Jim Chee or Bernadette Manuelito are on the scene and it's all up to the (not yet) Legendary Joe Leaphorn.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJAar0nmR5pwQqDAR17pJEleiSDHHK84G2TsnUn9Q2I5VNpEsYo59X9SpnoRTVG-nq-8jgJ2luJ7GjTlR76MRLdO6oV3RzO5IZZ59trD0bHjk5hMySUIREZaUd_WrXBWCJqtiCGv0-dO81h3ueRNFv31ouWpDNIhQP4CPXIqHtaErr2sMZGmBW0l2ukf8/s320/Vintage%20Scavenger%20Hunt.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="261" data-original-width="320" height="261" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJAar0nmR5pwQqDAR17pJEleiSDHHK84G2TsnUn9Q2I5VNpEsYo59X9SpnoRTVG-nq-8jgJ2luJ7GjTlR76MRLdO6oV3RzO5IZZ59trD0bHjk5hMySUIREZaUd_WrXBWCJqtiCGv0-dO81h3ueRNFv31ouWpDNIhQP4CPXIqHtaErr2sMZGmBW0l2ukf8/s1600/Vintage%20Scavenger%20Hunt.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div><b>Vintage Mystery, Silver, Any Other Animal</b>: That's a wolf shadow on the cover. Unless it's a witch (Navajo witches are either gender and take the shape of animals, most commonly wolves). Or, just possibly, a murderer in a wolf mask...</div><div><br /></div><div>That completes Silver Age Vintage Mystery challenge for me, though who knows? I could very well read another mystery or two yet this year written between 1960 and 1989...</div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-64862437007878856112023-11-13T20:52:00.001-05:002023-11-21T15:47:26.510-05:00Two Novellas (Elizabeth Smart, Boris Pasternak) #NovNov<p><b>Elizabeth Smart's <i>By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept</i></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgyoxRismzt8AI7QL8Kmh50WN7xOGS_DCRdSnBVxZxpOVenvCwI1hv-4G-wQTMSd__X41eWSaysCUIubgrpHdw0gV8sqcY2ANDuB4-unL9u4gnhghhspEbq4pJhT-bwiB6B1FKPqb1C8gFfiQg-UYXMw3RaeACFORNKs1vxDOdxtO2O4WS9KQee1I1f50/s1462/SmartGCSClipped.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1462" data-original-width="994" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgyoxRismzt8AI7QL8Kmh50WN7xOGS_DCRdSnBVxZxpOVenvCwI1hv-4G-wQTMSd__X41eWSaysCUIubgrpHdw0gV8sqcY2ANDuB4-unL9u4gnhghhspEbq4pJhT-bwiB6B1FKPqb1C8gFfiQg-UYXMw3RaeACFORNKs1vxDOdxtO2O4WS9KQee1I1f50/w136-h200/SmartGCSClipped.jpg" width="136" /></a></div>The narrator has fallen in love with the poet on the basis of his poems. She invites the poet and his wife to Monterey, California, where she's living, to meet him. She's just as enthralled by the poet in person as she was when she only knew him through his poetry. But can she do this to his wife?<p></p><p>Oh, yes she can.</p><p>The narrator is Elizabeth Smart and the poet is George Barker; his wife is Jessica Barker, and the events more or less follow actual events. So, auto-fiction, <i>avant la lettre</i>?</p><p>Yes, but. The prose definitely makes this. You see the Psalms there in the title: is that Grand Central Station or the rivers of Babylon? The Song of Solomon is all over the book. So are the Latin and Greek classics, slyly grandiose: "Jupiter has been with Leda, and now nothing can avert the Trojan Wars."</p><p>There's also interesting things happening with metaphors from the natural world. The main events take place in the late 30s, but Smart is writing the book during World War II in England. Comparisons to natural features from North America--the Mississippi, Niagara Falls--are inundating, but positive as a rule; those of Europe--the pools in Epping Forest, e.g.--smaller, withdrawn. All mostly involve water, or its absence: the Mojave Desert makes a metaphorical appearance.</p><p>But the occasional funny pinprick from outside the bubble lets us see another side. A policeman (and yes, the police do get involved): "'What a cad,' he said, 'And the girl's a religious maniac.'" Why, now you mention it, quite possibly yes... "Are all Americans chaste? All, by law." "Like Macbeth, I keep remembering that I am their host."</p><p>The book was first published in England in 1945. Smart came from a well-to-do Ottawa family, and her mother, appalled Elizabeth was publishing her shame (as she saw it) bought up as many copies of the book as she could get her hands on. It was also the end of the war, so, between those things, not much happened with the book at the time. But when it was reissued in the 60s, its reputation took off. Smart continued her bohemian life, bearing four children to Barker, but never marrying him. (Barker continued his caddishness.) She wrote other works (which I haven't read) but this is considered her masterpiece. She died in 1986.</p><p>Weird and wonderful. "Girls in love, be harlots, it hurts less."</p><p>112p. including an introduction by Brigid Brophy.</p><p><b>Boris Pasternak's <i>The Last Summer</i></b></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5shs5Jp3NSC_kWg4NRVxCGg7BRQv6D4L0Tk6VLYvG7Ggsg5J_9CtlyY4zH85vdyDXo9wvaxDaDLvz1z39Du6P0wMqPwj8QPcxBlEwfjFnDeykhTGHjXS5L_0VU2WeiqakuZrbl2SzVVMGUpQhPZEnU7B1tj1Dcce_ECBLUKU3lPmoDvdonZQ56lJvayE/s1694/PasternakLastSummerClipped.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1694" data-original-width="1171" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5shs5Jp3NSC_kWg4NRVxCGg7BRQv6D4L0Tk6VLYvG7Ggsg5J_9CtlyY4zH85vdyDXo9wvaxDaDLvz1z39Du6P0wMqPwj8QPcxBlEwfjFnDeykhTGHjXS5L_0VU2WeiqakuZrbl2SzVVMGUpQhPZEnU7B1tj1Dcce_ECBLUKU3lPmoDvdonZQ56lJvayE/w138-h200/PasternakLastSummerClipped.jpg" width="138" /></a></div>Serezha has just finished his exams, and takes a job as tutor to the eleven-year-old Harry Fresteln. The Fresteln estate is in the Ural Mountains, well away from Moscow or Saint Petersburg. Serezha finds his duties light, writes and gallivants at night.<p></p><p>Mrs. Anna Tjornskold is the widow of a Danish pastor who died young. Suddenly near destitution she takes a job as paid companion to Mrs. Fresteln, but once she's stuck in the remote Ural Mountain region, she discovers her role is more maid than companion. She feels denigrated and trapped and unhappy.</p><p>There's a frame set in 1916, but the main events take place in the summer of 1914, the last summer before everything goes to pieces.</p><p>Then Serezha proposes to Anna.</p><p>It's a promising enough premise for a story, but I can't recommend it, at least in this form. (Penguin, 1960, reprinted many times.) There's an introduction by Pasternak's younger sister Lydia, interesting, though it doesn't tell you what you want or need to know. </p><p>But the main problem is the translation. I guess I'll credit the translator (George Reavey) with trying to reproduce things he found in the original, but it just doesn't read well in English. There's undigested bits of Russian: <i>izvoschik </i>(a cabman, it seems), <i>mahorka </i>(a coarse tobacco), <i>calatch </i>(still not perfectly sure about this one. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolach_(bread)">Kolach</a>? Maybe.) I don't know how you would have sorted those before the Internet. There's awkward bits of English: 'a tent of tremblingly-moist, sultry-laurel birch trees.' And extravagant words, even if they are English. Canicularly? Know that one? <i>Canicular</i>: having to do with the dog days of summer. -<i>ly</i>, adverb. In retrospect, you can probably see the can- of canine in it, but it's certainly a long ways from Basic English. Is the Russian word in Pasternak equally obscure?</p><p>Anyway, it needs notes or a new translation or likely both. I don't know if those things exist.</p><p>92p, including Lydia Pasternak Slater's introduction.</p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-13114477193573857462023-11-12T23:08:00.002-05:002023-11-21T15:47:39.920-05:00Sunday Salon<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB2ysF0kVFAUJSME6vn-bWKEZQGJnyla_PVZP1rKMBPjQuuZUYYvf0a61jsBrFAAu84Ha3dTKzpWmAi-T194-hw3sAcARRL3PLKxB-ZKvdP2z97NAAPVHh3flxviiXRoPW2N5hBgITPQmaXPkUSOPtzveZWH0l3Nk7fV6HSyR2Nn4Lcw_So2G-ljbS-mM/s200/SundaySalon.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="200" data-original-width="200" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB2ysF0kVFAUJSME6vn-bWKEZQGJnyla_PVZP1rKMBPjQuuZUYYvf0a61jsBrFAAu84Ha3dTKzpWmAi-T194-hw3sAcARRL3PLKxB-ZKvdP2z97NAAPVHh3flxviiXRoPW2N5hBgITPQmaXPkUSOPtzveZWH0l3Nk7fV6HSyR2Nn4Lcw_So2G-ljbS-mM/s1600/SundaySalon.png" width="200" /></a></div><br /><p></p><p><b>Book-ish</b></p><p>A <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/11/will-hermes-lou-reed-king-of-new-york.html">post</a> on the new biography of Lou Reed by Will Hermes. The skinny: if you like Lou Reed, you'll probably be interested in the biography. If not, not...</p><p>That sent me to rereading Delmore Schwartz, who was Reed's teacher when he was an undergraduate. One of Schwartz's poems <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/11/delmore-schwartz-poem.html">here</a>.</p><p>Then Rebecca Solnit's most recent <i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/11/rebecca-solnitorwells-roses-nonficnov.html">Orwell's Roses</a>. </i>Pretty great, I thought. </p><p>I read (The third time? I think.) Rex Stout's <i>Fer-de-Lance, </i>the first Nero Wolfe mystery, because...does one really need a reason? It was there. I could blog about it, but I've already finished that <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/p/2023-challenge-headquarters.html#:~:text=My%20challenge-,signup,-It%27s%20a%20scavenger">challenge</a>. It's a good one.</p><p>Two novellas from my list of novella <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/11/my-year-in-novellas-novnov23.html">candidates</a>. They should get their own post soon.</p><p><b>Where I Am</b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6yEx5-h1oKIVHYDrFuoLG4zCYZN50lADCwY2OSU8EaisPyxVUGq-k2JBJfwt46w2bGlQx7N0zlt1WWxbz81v3zuKW6BZMcFJL6afej7tX8NJUZCLtode-pfinnU05UIlyxS2qw4mQ10csfCVD0bTxjcuB_umcrVD8UD2sU3ZA_oJMBcb9DL2o-s9CvAY/s2016/HawkInYard.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6yEx5-h1oKIVHYDrFuoLG4zCYZN50lADCwY2OSU8EaisPyxVUGq-k2JBJfwt46w2bGlQx7N0zlt1WWxbz81v3zuKW6BZMcFJL6afej7tX8NJUZCLtode-pfinnU05UIlyxS2qw4mQ10csfCVD0bTxjcuB_umcrVD8UD2sU3ZA_oJMBcb9DL2o-s9CvAY/s320/HawkInYard.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><br /><p>This guy showed up. (It doesn't look like the same hawk as <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/10/sunday-salon_15.html">previously</a>.) We have seen hawks with their pigeon kills in the back yard before, but lately they've been peaceable enough...though this one doesn't seem to be underfed. (Does the photo make me look fat? Yes, yes, it does!)</p><p><b>But!...The Horror!</b></p><p>The Toronto Public Library has been hit by a ransomware attack, and the website has been down for two weeks (as of tomorrow). </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rA-sG8ail6p6V2BZ_gJF7NhsHNJCLI5D9UOb7c9tLs_13P6EGjoyn1SreEpTkUIKGo42gtpMeAXB-EPundzotm42lbF2QN1T46-STOgGPX_2DCvusleKUMBi3_1S6Nrv8EoS0jP7Dmd449hfCXEwr7QwSODjzLUwrh-q2DFd4L68hPMBZE3S_vTDm4M/s1102/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-11%20at%201.07.29%20PM.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="1102" height="145" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8rA-sG8ail6p6V2BZ_gJF7NhsHNJCLI5D9UOb7c9tLs_13P6EGjoyn1SreEpTkUIKGo42gtpMeAXB-EPundzotm42lbF2QN1T46-STOgGPX_2DCvusleKUMBi3_1S6Nrv8EoS0jP7Dmd449hfCXEwr7QwSODjzLUwrh-q2DFd4L68hPMBZE3S_vTDm4M/s320/Screen%20Shot%202023-11-11%20at%201.07.29%20PM.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>Library branches are open, but my local branch is quite small and was originally built as a children's library. The books I want almost never come from there, but I go to the website and request they're sent to my local branch. Under normal circumstances that works beautifully. But now I'm not likely to go hunt them down elsewhere, and, in any case, I don't have any clue where to find them without the website. (TPL has a lot of branches.) So I'm limited to the books I have.</p><p>For myself, I'm not too worried about the data breach. I'm good about passwords, and my PIN for the library is different from every other PIN. My address and phone number wouldn't be that hard to come by anyway, and if they can figure out how to monetize the knowledge that I read a lot of books, well, God bless... It's the fact I can't get more books that's driving me nuts.</p><p>The <a href="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/toronto-public-library-outages-caused-by-black-basta-ransomware-attack/">poop</a> on the Internets is it's some outfit calling itself Black Basta. They're shadowy, of course, that's the point, but they seem to be Russian and quite possibly state-adjacent. Not that I didn't already have enough reasons to dislike Putin, but if now he (or his minions) have taken down my library, it's...time for Regime Change!</p><p>But it's the rare cloud that doesn't have at least a little silver on the inside... 😉 I read the New York Times via the library. The way it works for us is that you get a three day subscription, and then you have to renew. Maybe you can renew and maybe you get an 'All of your institution's passes are currently in use. Try again later' message. I can play Wordle without the NYT subscription, but I can't use the WordleBot to find out how my guesses stacked up unless I'm connected. But with everything frozen in place at TPL, my three-day subscription has now lasted two weeks. The Other Reader and various friends are locked out of the newspaper, but the WordleBot (and any of the awful news I want...hmm) I can get to.</p><p>Hope your week has been good. (And your library is working!) </p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-43014584024042442842023-11-11T23:23:00.001-05:002023-11-12T00:07:03.019-05:00Rebecca Solnit/Orwell's Roses (#NonficNov)<blockquote><p>"In the spring of 1936, a writer planted roses."</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYwZvIgjV147zf0gDcqEUeasdqeWNZKjff-Vd8pibC8Ddnn9KXF0yBMQUtGEr__NVju3-6Eon0LdpwNJcxAWU_IXhcecpOsun0omdf0SzQk4uYn_UjYGJidzt7hd4ziOMB3GmMqufV7YywNe-p5XDoLUxOqSiO-zSvkxhUFIzxE9dSRZapf83EQudTbJ8/s1783/SolnitOrwellsRoses.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1783" data-original-width="1180" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYwZvIgjV147zf0gDcqEUeasdqeWNZKjff-Vd8pibC8Ddnn9KXF0yBMQUtGEr__NVju3-6Eon0LdpwNJcxAWU_IXhcecpOsun0omdf0SzQk4uYn_UjYGJidzt7hd4ziOMB3GmMqufV7YywNe-p5XDoLUxOqSiO-zSvkxhUFIzxE9dSRZapf83EQudTbJ8/w133-h200/SolnitOrwellsRoses.jpg" width="133" /></a></div>That's the opening line of Rebecca Solnit's most recent book <i>Orwell's Roses</i>, and the writer-slash-gardener is George Orwell. Orwell wrote about the roses (and also the fruit trees and gooseberries he planted) in his essay 'A Good Word for the Vicar of Bray' of 1946. Solnit calls it 'a triumph of meandering that begins by describing a yew tree in a Berkshire churchyard.' It takes one to know one: Solnit is a champion of the meandering essay herself.<div><br /></div><div>Back to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vicar_of_Bray_%28song%29">Vicar of Bray</a> for a moment. He's not a hero: what he's famous for is the slipperiness of his politics:<div><div></div><blockquote><div>And this is law, I will maintain,</div><div>Until my Dying Day, sir,</div><div>That whatsoever King may reign,</div><div>I will be the Vicar of Bray, sir! </div></blockquote><p>Still, the Vicar planted that yew tree. Orwell:</p><blockquote><p>"An oak or a beech may live for hundreds of years and be a pleasure to thousands or tens of thousands of people before it is finally sawn up into timber. I am not suggesting that one can discharge all all one's obligations towards society by means of a private re-afforestation scheme. Still, it might not be a bad idea, every time you commit an antisocial act, to make a note of it in your diary, and then, at an appropriate season, push an acorn into the ground."</p></blockquote><p>Or roses. </p><p>Solnit was in England for a book tour and was interested to see what was left of Orwell's plantings. Only the roses survived.</p><p></p><blockquote>"There are many biographies of Orwell, and they've served me well for this book, which is not an addition to that shelf. It is instead a series of forays from one starting point, that gesture whereby one writer planted several roses. As such, it's a book about roses..."</blockquote><p></p><p>An interesting topic for a meander.</p><p>So many fascinating things: Emma Goldman, the photographer Tina Modotti, Stalin and lemon trees. Columbia is the source for 90% of North America's commercial cut roses and is infamous for its terrible labor practices. Solnit manages to visit a rose farm there. It's not a long book, but it's fascinating and I won't even try to tell you all the things in it.</p><p>One of her main themes is the frequent puritanism of the left. Orwell is sometimes absorbed into this. Is he a dour political writer who can only tell us the terrible things are going to happen, the terrible things that are happening? Maybe not just. Turns out nature is important in <i>1984 </i>and is written about well. This leads her to Emma Goldman, the anarchist, and Tina Modotti, the photographer and Communist. </p><p>It is also about what a political essayist can and should do: in Solnit's case in this book, feminism, labor issues, the creeping return of totalitarianism, climate change.</p><p>Pretty great stuff. It's the fourth I've read of her twenty-five or so books. (<i>River of Shadows, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby </i>and now this.)<i> </i>Right now it's my favorite, and is likely to stay so at least until I read the next one. </p><div style="text-align: left;"></div></div></div><blockquote><div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>"Orwell's signal achievement was to name and describe as no one else had the way that totalitarianism was a threat not just to liberty and human rights but to language and consciousness, and he did it in so compelling a way that his last book casts a shadow--or a beacon's light--into the present. But the achievement is enriched and deepened by the commitment and idealism that fueled it, the things he valued and desired, and his valuation of desire itself, and pleasure and joy, and his recognition that these can be forces of opposition to the authoritarian state and its soul-destroying intrusions.</div></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span> </span>The work he did is everyone's job now. It always was."</div></blockquote><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6wcoAjMu1fgWXMihkKNxSmyGGE2QTBBOi_CD2f85byNhZeeuQNbYhFrWu6hR5qTFtRbYtg56hDT-tBWGNkYjWyPI_Osa-lU0OwvTrR_SL-buFCJdF7DhR6OMUl47K2GUL8wXZaJNLbpyqITv1rUvBo8_VzCZi_UMlS4oZKfijvn9O84IX5dhxOxI01c/s2016/SolnitOrwellStack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEif6wcoAjMu1fgWXMihkKNxSmyGGE2QTBBOi_CD2f85byNhZeeuQNbYhFrWu6hR5qTFtRbYtg56hDT-tBWGNkYjWyPI_Osa-lU0OwvTrR_SL-buFCJdF7DhR6OMUl47K2GUL8wXZaJNLbpyqITv1rUvBo8_VzCZi_UMlS4oZKfijvn9O84IX5dhxOxI01c/s320/SolnitOrwellStack.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-90030829024773085232023-11-09T17:32:00.000-05:002023-11-09T17:32:56.724-05:00Delmore Schwartz (#poem)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeric2da2qyGt97jtOJ6oSpF4VgumhyVfbgi3-ButmYSOuGaJWJcPfu7GTRYAm_0n_i2LCFy8L7dDyioGAeny5NqAdAeaVzeCUDVveQcWEqheq9ocrTJSGfKVwaltZGvIszzWxl6VGMRu_5JfK94igTrBgBQdDBZ48qgnFhc3q1HU0JwXAKeLGPbIlR04/s2016/SchwartzSelected.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2016" data-original-width="1512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjeric2da2qyGt97jtOJ6oSpF4VgumhyVfbgi3-ButmYSOuGaJWJcPfu7GTRYAm_0n_i2LCFy8L7dDyioGAeny5NqAdAeaVzeCUDVveQcWEqheq9ocrTJSGfKVwaltZGvIszzWxl6VGMRu_5JfK94igTrBgBQdDBZ48qgnFhc3q1HU0JwXAKeLGPbIlR04/s320/SchwartzSelected.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><p><br /></p><b><div style="text-align: center;"><b>"I Am Cherry Alive," the Little Girl Sang</b></div></b><p></p><p style="text-align: center;">For Miss Kathleen Hanlon</p><div style="text-align: left;"></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: left;">"I am cherry alive," the little girl sang,</div><div style="text-align: left;">"Each morning I am something new:</div><div style="text-align: left;">I am apple, I am plum, I am just as excited</div><div style="text-align: left;">As the boys who made the Hallowe'en bang:</div><div style="text-align: left;">I am tree, I am cat, I am blossom too:</div><div style="text-align: left;">When I like, if I like, I can be someone new,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Someone very old, a witch in a zoo:</div><div style="text-align: left;">I can be someone else whenever I think who,</div><div style="text-align: left;">And I want to be everything sometimes too:</div><div style="text-align: left;">And the peach has a pit and I know that too,</div><div style="text-align: left;">And I put it in along with everything</div><div style="text-align: left;">To make the grown-ups laugh whenever I sing:</div><div style="text-align: left;">And I sing: <i>It is true; It is untrue;</i></div><div style="text-align: left;">I know, I know, the true is untrue,</div><div style="text-align: left;">The peach has a pit, the pit has a peach:</div><div style="text-align: left;">And both may be wrong when I sing my song,</div><div style="text-align: left;">But I don't tell the grown-ups: because it is sad,</div><div style="text-align: left;">And I want them to laugh just like I do</div><div style="text-align: left;">Because they grew up and forgot what they knew</div><div style="text-align: left;">And they are sure I will forget it some day too.</div><div style="text-align: left;">They are wrong. They are wrong. When I sang my song, I knew, I knew!</div><div style="text-align: left;">I am red, I am gold, I am green, I am blue,</div><div style="text-align: left;">I will always be me, I will always be new!"</div></blockquote><div style="text-align: right;">-Delmore Schwartz</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">After I finished the Lou Reed <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/11/will-hermes-lou-reed-king-of-new-york.html">biography</a>, I pulled the Delmore Schwartz off the shelf, which I probably haven't opened in years. I'm pretty sure I bought the book years ago, because I knew he'd been Lou Reed's teacher. There's a bunch of good things in it! </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The first edition <i>Summer Knowledge: Selected Poems</i> came out in 1959, and went on to win the Bollingen Prize in Poetry, as well as other prizes. Schwartz was already falling apart by then, though, and went on to die in poverty in 1966, at the age of fifty-two.</div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-72257472626328193432023-11-06T21:16:00.001-05:002023-11-06T21:16:36.395-05:00Will Hermes' Lou Reed: The King of New York (#NovNonFiction)<blockquote><p>"A hustle here and a hustle there/New York City is the place where..."</p></blockquote><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK_ecWwlgE5GmHJryP1PirwW_fpL50S5dSmstJyD6SlJ4kYGCLgBhcsSud9DeuoRB0npElHqnRFp6zB8zpBaZ1fImTNlwfXvutpeOW7xJ8gebY90kC0z8REtSmxILvJ9_a2QRw7locushhpTuAbpdQe2muAB3WglA7m22ewdpabt33Jd8rsoPr97BMmdM/s445/HermesReed.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="296" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK_ecWwlgE5GmHJryP1PirwW_fpL50S5dSmstJyD6SlJ4kYGCLgBhcsSud9DeuoRB0npElHqnRFp6zB8zpBaZ1fImTNlwfXvutpeOW7xJ8gebY90kC0z8REtSmxILvJ9_a2QRw7locushhpTuAbpdQe2muAB3WglA7m22ewdpabt33Jd8rsoPr97BMmdM/s320/HermesReed.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>Lewis Allan Reed was born in Brooklyn in 1942, but mostly grew up further out on Long Island. He went on to, you know, make a bunch of records.<div><br /></div><div>And take a lot of drugs. </div><div><br /></div><div>Will Hermes' biography <i>Lou Reed: The King of New York </i>was released at the beginning of last month.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reed grew up in a practicing Jewish family; his father was a successful accountant. His mother stayed at home; he had a sister five years younger. He cut his first record, a single ("So Blue/Leave Her for Me") in high school, at age sixteen, with a band called the Jades. It had some local success, got played on Murray the K's radio show, but quickly faded. But not a bad beginning.</div><div><br /></div><div>He may have had a troubled childhood--he often said so himself, though little that Lou Reed says about his life can be trusted: he told the musician Lenny Kaye once, "I created Lou Reed. I have nothing even faintly in common with that guy, but I can play him pretty well." His sister said that while Lou was a bit fragile as a child, theirs was a quite normal household.</div><div><br /></div><div>In any case something went a bit off the rails. He wanted to be in Manhattan for college, but at the end of his first semester at NYU, he had a nervous breakdown, or something, and moved back with his parents, where he underwent a course of electroconvulsive therapy. Was it anxiety, depression? Or was it--as Reed sometimes said--his homosexual impulses? (Though his sister says that was not the cause for his ECT.) Though it seems astonishing now, ECT was considered an ordinary enough treatment at the time. After those horrors, he started college again at Syracuse in upstate New York.</div><div><br /></div><div>There he met <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delmore_Schwartz">Delmore Schwartz</a>, once a poetic <i>enfant terrible, </i>but by then a drunk, and mostly just terrible. Still he was impressive to the young Lou Reed, who was interested in doo wop, R&B, rock, and popular music in general, but also in literature and poetry. Schwartz became the first of Reed's great mentors.</div><div><br /></div><div>After Reed graduated from college, he worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records in NYC, a sort of Brill Building outfit, where his biggest success was a dance track 'The Ostrich'. He also met the avant-garde violist John Cale. The two of them became the core of the Velvet Underground; the classic lineup was completed with Sterling Morrison on guitar and Maureen ('Moe') Tucker on drums. The band caught the eye of Andy Warhol, who was--ahem!--a famous enough guy, though maybe not the best music promoter. In any case Warhol goes on to become the second of Reed's great mentors. In the late 60s, the Velvet Underground made some great records, famous now, but they hardly sold at the time. </div><div><br /></div><div>The commercial breakthrough, <i>Transformer</i>, with 'Walk on the Wild Side', came out in 1972, his second solo album.</div><div><br /></div><div>Did I mention drugs? Reed was probably already injecting in high school. Somewhere early on he caught hepatitis from shared needles. Heroin was an early favorite, one he shared with John Cale, and the topic of several early VU songs. Later he did mostly amphetamines. This was partly the influence of Warhol, who famously emphasized work ethic and did speed to keep going. There were various reasons why Reed and Cale couldn't get along--Reed's ferocious difficulty as a person being the main one--and that version of the VU ended in 1968. But Cale also suggests that while he was still doing heroin, Reed was then on speed. A cultural difference.</div><div><br /></div><div>Reed also seemed to be genuinely bisexual. He had long term relationships with both men and women. He may have slept with Warhol--some say yes and some say no--though Hermes thinks not on the whole. Reed's longest homosexual relationship was with the trans woman Rachel Humphries, and went for about 5 years in the late 70s. It fell apart when Reed decided he finally had to get clean of drugs. (He meant also to get free of alcohol, but doesn't seem to have ever succeeded entirely with that.)</div><div><br /></div><div>Hermes' book speeds up after the 70s. His previous book was about NYC music in the 70s, so that's his main period of interest. But it's also the case that established success in an artist can be a little dull in a biography, so he may have chosen to spend less time on that. His second marriage--to Sylvia Morales Reed--helped him sober up and was the inspiration for a number of his 80s solo albums (the period I was hearing him). But it broke up when she wanted a kid and he didn't. He later married the avant-garde musician Laurie Anderson, who survived him. </div><div><br /></div><div>There's enough testimony that Lou Reed could be sweet and caring that it's probably even true, but it certainly wasn't always, and he could be terribly difficult. Insecurity? Amphetamines? Alcohol? Perfectionism? Rockstar entitlement? Who knows? Something could make him turn nasty. Reed between the hepatitis, the drugs, and the alcohol did enough damage to his liver he needed a transplant, which he got in 2013. It seemed to have worked for a couple of months, but then his body rejected it, and he was dead in October of that year. Hermes quotes a hilarious <a href="https://www.theonion.com/new-liver-complains-of-difficulty-working-with-lou-reed-1819575068">bit</a> from the Onion that was true even when it appeared in the optimistic months, but then sadly was even more true:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b></b></div><blockquote><div style="text-align: center;"><b>New Liver Complains of Difficulty Working with Lou Reed</b></div><div><br /></div><div>"It's really hard to get along with Lou--one minute he's your best friend and the next he's outright abusive,' said the vital organ, describing his collaboration with the former Velvet Underground frontman as "strained at best." "He just has this way of making you feel completely inadequate."</div></blockquote><div></div><div>Anyway, Hermes' biography was solid, better on some periods than others (of course,) best of all on the late sixties through the seventies. I don't know that it will make any new converts, but if you were already a fan...</div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnPXb9KnAHyLqHZ_7nMtAcwF00FSbHS42j0Q4Sd21GnHb2vpjQQUAO9y8Lj6mT0GAPvFijnAH5eXQcW3NUdzQGpoTtnmjL0ID30yq10VvJqx276TSwslN8BFwgJ6dX_k44w9CMU6tfXEQCX5cI3g8g4bNn_Up3zELDXcRIApuXYkuI3HqvL7JuZn7Dns/s1949/LouReedTixClipped.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="929" data-original-width="1949" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZnPXb9KnAHyLqHZ_7nMtAcwF00FSbHS42j0Q4Sd21GnHb2vpjQQUAO9y8Lj6mT0GAPvFijnAH5eXQcW3NUdzQGpoTtnmjL0ID30yq10VvJqx276TSwslN8BFwgJ6dX_k44w9CMU6tfXEQCX5cI3g8g4bNn_Up3zELDXcRIApuXYkuI3HqvL7JuZn7Dns/s320/LouReedTixClipped.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />...I think you'll enjoy it.</div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZJjHkSHqt9bjQmVkWPnfjWQp1bLy3khxptZeMlzXtatRwsQlBub8yyBAr7ugzBjZ5CckubIOLc2SwluyqshE-Q_Bxdy-epu-GtiQhs0xFCFdrE7YQDdX7zptY5EZ7WuJ5l4RoQFcDTWjytlfysSUyJapvmmkyHX0v8Cg-YG7V8S0-brzpfdDT6HlxDo/s640/nonficnov23%20week%202.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="640" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOZJjHkSHqt9bjQmVkWPnfjWQp1bLy3khxptZeMlzXtatRwsQlBub8yyBAr7ugzBjZ5CckubIOLc2SwluyqshE-Q_Bxdy-epu-GtiQhs0xFCFdrE7YQDdX7zptY5EZ7WuJ5l4RoQFcDTWjytlfysSUyJapvmmkyHX0v8Cg-YG7V8S0-brzpfdDT6HlxDo/s320/nonficnov23%20week%202.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><p>It's the second week of Nonfiction November and the prompt is, How do I choose which non-fiction to read? I'd say it's generally by topic, as was this. I don't remember where I first saw mention of the biography, but since that review wasn't a pan, and I knew was interested in the subject, I put it on my library holdlist. I've read a few other music biographies, though it's not a large category for me. General-audience literary criticism is a perennial for me, history--a lot of <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Ukraine">Ukraine</a> and eastern Europe lately, alas--regularly appears by my reading chair, some (non-technical) philosophy. Some books related to professional concerns: computers, finance, containerized shipping. Cookbooks.</p><p>I also then to fix on particular authors. I read Robert Gerwarth's most recent, <i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/robert-gerwarths-november-1918.html">November 1918</a></i>, because I'd enjoyed his earlier book. I'm likely to read the new Christopher Clark soon. I might also read that earlier Will Hermes. And the next book non-fiction book I'll read will score in two categories: it's the latest by <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/Rebecca%20Solnit">Rebecca Solnit</a>, whom I quite like, and it's about her engagement with George Orwell, so literary criticism.</p><p>Project Gutenberg also has some interesting things, and I sometimes just read from there, mostly because it's so simple to come by, and I want something for the eReader.</p><p>I'm not completely opposed to judging a book by its cover 😉 though I certainly wouldn't call the cover of this Lou Reed biography much of an enticement...but it *has* gotten harder to browse bookstores: it's a pretty good ways now for me to get to a good new bookstore, when ten years ago there was one a block away. (I should be buying fewer books anyway...) In any case more books in general, and non-fiction in particular, is likely to come from the library where I just order it up from the website and it appears at my local branch magically, after I've just read about it at somebody's blog. I'm expecting to request a whole bunch of books at the end of this month...</p><p>Thanks to Frances at <a href="https://volatilerune.blog/">Volatile Rune</a> for hosting this week!</p></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-51743190712167881502023-11-02T01:22:00.003-04:002023-11-02T01:24:18.736-04:00My Year in Novellas (#NovNov23)<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjniCUCMzo4ysJHwRZ9jP3JS7nxnSbwMYHNveeAEzRuBS-omMQR_ecwgsQ8Hnp24WyrjqAGHSHKcq8ANtQaHvdeEpHfChf99yMCnv29EvAQ74x_gK2ciPgDoN0R2UJob-8togXG3J2x3bDadh1VEfqRQe5XuTDgigfpgnY3k8xZGI_-KE8Jzta2A_FAXPY/s683/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="683" height="215" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjniCUCMzo4ysJHwRZ9jP3JS7nxnSbwMYHNveeAEzRuBS-omMQR_ecwgsQ8Hnp24WyrjqAGHSHKcq8ANtQaHvdeEpHfChf99yMCnv29EvAQ74x_gK2ciPgDoN0R2UJob-8togXG3J2x3bDadh1VEfqRQe5XuTDgigfpgnY3k8xZGI_-KE8Jzta2A_FAXPY/s320/Novellas%20in%20November23.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><p></p><p>Another of the great November challenges is Novellas in November. The first prompt is an overview of novella-reading from the last year. So, on with a few highlights!</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3yJ4Uenb0Uz60Pk-jziTw7SuCnVY8mcMPBd5z4LI997sssdZaPqx9Wp5BE3uEy5u7nYrMFE5VXrLMIpjt2UUs1F5yKRoeCxqn18Y6BPcPuh9H19hRfPUYxtjDV7c5Xbvqqq0T-lBnGZPeYbs6OQlRrK_ZL7PP3Wz-FLB-8BA_OiE8YHPqihbDr0et3Mk/s707/ChestertonThursday1.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="707" data-original-width="432" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3yJ4Uenb0Uz60Pk-jziTw7SuCnVY8mcMPBd5z4LI997sssdZaPqx9Wp5BE3uEy5u7nYrMFE5VXrLMIpjt2UUs1F5yKRoeCxqn18Y6BPcPuh9H19hRfPUYxtjDV7c5Xbvqqq0T-lBnGZPeYbs6OQlRrK_ZL7PP3Wz-FLB-8BA_OiE8YHPqihbDr0et3Mk/w123-h200/ChestertonThursday1.jpg" width="123" /></a></div><i>The Man Who Was Thursday </i>is G. K. Chesterton's mystery-ish novella of 1908, well before his Father Brown stories. Gabriel Syme, a Scotland Yard agent, becomes Thursday in a circle of anarchists; the mysterious Sunday is the leader. Syme is out to expose Sunday and does so in the end, but what does that signify? Was there really ever a plot? It's both thriller, but also a bit of an allegorical Piers-Plowman style of story. Entertaining and very Chestertonian. I gave it a fuller review <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/the-man-who-was-thursday-nightmare.html">here</a>.<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCFXILDFmRnLYmUqrpYkKtgSTjWfyVZ8qL263fmtf4bc54KgsFJS1XTpMKp8o2_MVAhhX_tZXAdSu9M_M2qdJvt8qerlML0xGE17Qk-z7OzzrfB4ZXxK2RtpcR7_T5XKsXwyG3HJjR7OhLdJFX4AeeoVumDBLxYqwO3FVLpR_Taf-aWV_IYNC7Ll1WppM/s488/WilsonHettyDorval.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="488" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCFXILDFmRnLYmUqrpYkKtgSTjWfyVZ8qL263fmtf4bc54KgsFJS1XTpMKp8o2_MVAhhX_tZXAdSu9M_M2qdJvt8qerlML0xGE17Qk-z7OzzrfB4ZXxK2RtpcR7_T5XKsXwyG3HJjR7OhLdJFX4AeeoVumDBLxYqwO3FVLpR_Taf-aWV_IYNC7Ll1WppM/w123-h200/WilsonHettyDorval.jpg" width="123" /></a></div>Ethel Wilson's <i>Hetty Dorval </i>of 1947 is Wilson's first book, and a CanLit classic. The teenaged girl Frankie Burnaby is fascinated by the mysterious Mrs. Dorval after she moves to their small town in British Columbia. Mrs. Dorval seems sophisticated--maybe she's too sophisticated? (She is given the first name Hetty/Hester; think <i>The Scarlet Letter </i>or <i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2018/08/george-eliots-adam-bede.html">Adam Bede</a>.</i>) I'd sort of long known of the book, but read it this spring for the first time, because Alexandra Oliver's most recent volume of poetry, <i>Hail, The Invisible Watchmen</i>, includes a sonnet sequence based on <i>Hetty Dorval. </i>The novella is pretty great. (And well worth a sonnet sequence.)<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb9UTKgfqXuWAem5EIYU_2yyfMHh11nFQh4p-KlFcKCvJiij5vi5mZ5Z1WCm1kuQ_lGqVRQZUYwsi4x4ds_cUHKtsndPjRo8cdOtEedCTsshlZlCrzmyMoHvc80zNr4XGy4auBbDKfd2CZ8xBDKdLFJMqYZYguigOeQT6gHkAZnIt204b8vQNVLFL3EiY/s400/MillnerCouplets.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="260" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb9UTKgfqXuWAem5EIYU_2yyfMHh11nFQh4p-KlFcKCvJiij5vi5mZ5Z1WCm1kuQ_lGqVRQZUYwsi4x4ds_cUHKtsndPjRo8cdOtEedCTsshlZlCrzmyMoHvc80zNr4XGy4auBbDKfd2CZ8xBDKdLFJMqYZYguigOeQT6gHkAZnIt204b8vQNVLFL3EiY/w130-h200/MillnerCouplets.jpeg" width="130" /></a></div>Maggie Millner's <i>Couplets: A Love Story </i>is a verse novella that came out earlier this year. Our (female) artsy NYC heroine has a steady boyfriend, but then falls in love with an older woman. I don't know that I thought the story was astonishing, but it was entertaining enough, and I quite enjoyed the poetry, which is written in a series of (Heroic? Un?) couplets, appropriately enough. I quoted a stanza and discussed it at more length <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/08/maggie-millners-couplets.html">here</a>.<div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho3U0OHj_g58VjjwCt0QKxBIzdR1D4kug9-spOo8qL32chC-25maj42B3LjcSU220u8j9g8jVgVVHpeHxNZctLzdbVhEGFSAhYh5IwXfArGm_CgGRWgBSJ0YepIFpEN3a9tYm2ko7Lh_reMT4LHaUQOgyirsHgst5sHYv8GQxGv3g7vyLEcTsuJ-3Ql6Y/s445/ZangwillBigBow.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="445" data-original-width="323" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho3U0OHj_g58VjjwCt0QKxBIzdR1D4kug9-spOo8qL32chC-25maj42B3LjcSU220u8j9g8jVgVVHpeHxNZctLzdbVhEGFSAhYh5IwXfArGm_CgGRWgBSJ0YepIFpEN3a9tYm2ko7Lh_reMT4LHaUQOgyirsHgst5sHYv8GQxGv3g7vyLEcTsuJ-3Ql6Y/w145-h200/ZangwillBigBow.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>Lots of Golden Age mysteries are probably effectively novellas; certainly Israel Zangwill's <i>The Big Bow Mystery </i>is. I read the text from Project Gutenberg, and just now copied it and subjected it to a word count. Approximately 43000 words. It came out in 1892 and is a very early locked-room mystery, one of the <a href="http://www.classiccrimefiction.com/haycraftqueen.htm">classics</a> of the genre. It got its own post <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/09/israel-zangwills-big-bow-mystery.html">here</a>.</div><div><br /><div style="text-align: center;">-o-</div><div><br /><p>But, hey! how about a couple of short non-fiction works, too?</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT7-0IMSKEtf24n3PWw1BEWXO0vSVbhu5znWKrKE8fHJcW6on5IokcdT1MDgV1gBySAVYBCTYIVGN3W48-5OO-MIIX7zUagrgHVsGoXANE35oYaWKnpbbUMuthmi7ykiCSGsVJgRQzcAwLpADm6atP4SXJL6KmZA4sv3Rt_Apk5V86TOzlMUh1gsYn6Mw/s500/SontagIllness.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="296" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhT7-0IMSKEtf24n3PWw1BEWXO0vSVbhu5znWKrKE8fHJcW6on5IokcdT1MDgV1gBySAVYBCTYIVGN3W48-5OO-MIIX7zUagrgHVsGoXANE35oYaWKnpbbUMuthmi7ykiCSGsVJgRQzcAwLpADm6atP4SXJL6KmZA4sv3Rt_Apk5V86TOzlMUh1gsYn6Mw/w118-h200/SontagIllness.jpg" width="118" /></a></div>I've read it a few times, but once more didn't seem to hurt. And it is short. Susan Sontag's <i>Illness as Metaphor </i>is about tuberculosis and cancer (she wrote a sequel about AIDS) and the way we make metaphors out of diseases--things that are really not metaphors--but bacteria, or viruses, or cellular malfunctions. It's also a very hidden autobiography--she wrote this after being diagnosed with the breast cancer that went on to kill her some years later, but doesn't mention it at all in the book. One of her main examples of illness as metaphor is Henry James' <i>The Wings of the Dove, </i>whose Milly Theale dies of tuberculosis<i>. </i>I reread Sontag after reading the James, and discussed both (and a few other odds and ends) <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/02/henry-james-wings-of-dove-ccspin.html">here</a>.<div><br /><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzaw0TDiJkvMk8ZCA8zK3oamBH2K2eVWDd963-RRF6e65We-3g85gVBYoOI_MvJz_V2MRefSDt1tIpG31hkyzWDvn-U0x3xp3RciuBMOy8IYO3JwpaHcQ5dIW49r1m3bdMEB9M8uZFtfh9MQI4k8nlEkm4ubhoKNUsNr_pARYMtKZcrX34lX4YLDX969w/s1170/MuldoonToIrelandI.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1170" data-original-width="741" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzaw0TDiJkvMk8ZCA8zK3oamBH2K2eVWDd963-RRF6e65We-3g85gVBYoOI_MvJz_V2MRefSDt1tIpG31hkyzWDvn-U0x3xp3RciuBMOy8IYO3JwpaHcQ5dIW49r1m3bdMEB9M8uZFtfh9MQI4k8nlEkm4ubhoKNUsNr_pARYMtKZcrX34lX4YLDX969w/w127-h200/MuldoonToIrelandI.jpg" width="127" /></a></div>Paul Muldoon's <i>To Ireland, I </i>originated as the Clarendon lectures of 1998, and is an abecedary of Irish literary criticism. I read it before we went to Ireland in the spring, then read a bunch of Irish literature, and have been thinking I could reread it and maybe (maybe!) then say something about it. But it was quirky, opinionated, and fascinating. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div style="text-align: center;">-o-</div><p>But what's past is prologue (as the master says...) What novellas might I read this month? We have a picture for that, of course!</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKK1HVWHzletQ3bgW4b5DotEWtpg-aXcPmH35MDLV2HifqZFV_-OYtuUlPynotMwSgmfVWPhEgrthyphenhyphenbJesw0NeBlHE-vh8JTRpUOHL2-1-6ELfRTcbvx-ZwIRfyZKT2Bi2JhRdkyUMKk8QbsoJaid749Q__RxQC21kIRq7wQMbdcyeoaZXmsUVWw3Z_wI/s2016/Stack2023.11.01Novellas.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKK1HVWHzletQ3bgW4b5DotEWtpg-aXcPmH35MDLV2HifqZFV_-OYtuUlPynotMwSgmfVWPhEgrthyphenhyphenbJesw0NeBlHE-vh8JTRpUOHL2-1-6ELfRTcbvx-ZwIRfyZKT2Bi2JhRdkyUMKk8QbsoJaid749Q__RxQC21kIRq7wQMbdcyeoaZXmsUVWw3Z_wI/s320/Stack2023.11.01Novellas.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mr. Dickens says, But these books are all so short!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>Elizabeth Smart/<i>By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept</i></p><p>Another classic CanLit novella. About her long-term affair with the British poet George Barker. (I believe.)</p><p>Cesare Pavese/<i>The Moon and the Bonfires</i></p><p>Our hero leaves Italy for the U. S. early in the Fascist era and returns only after the war is over. What's changed?</p><p>Boris Pasternak/<i>The Last Summer</i></p><p>Don't know much. 😉 The back of the book says, "Set in the winter of 1916, <i>The Last Summer </i>has an autobiographical basis." That, and it's shorter than <i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2017/10/boris-pasternaks-doctor-zhivago.html">Doctor Zhivago</a></i>. </p><p>Patrick Modiano/<i>So You Don't Get Lost in the Neighborhood</i></p><p>That makes two Nobel prize winners on this list. Hmm...</p><p>Which look good to you? Are you taking part in Novellas in November?</p></div></div></div></div></div></div>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6694880585491590788.post-82085126738818595042023-10-30T23:03:00.000-04:002023-10-30T23:03:15.491-04:00My Year in Non-Fiction<p>One of the great November challenges is November Nonfiction:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin48gTBdErWrcGnlcqdTGEPd94ILlxAFSwe2novZXKCswx8O6G_b93p9oa_xD3S0dAtg_wV-3yanovlUaCL-AcLUYFz6pAIawXnXnWdR7IMcS4_mpfwjMYpMQd2IDJr0_0Igbgt8H9SWRvG6Ial7Q4VSRECCsiWVUh4-ooQIXVIhI2pYBXUSgu9k5_Oks/s744/NonfictionNovember23.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="418" data-original-width="744" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEin48gTBdErWrcGnlcqdTGEPd94ILlxAFSwe2novZXKCswx8O6G_b93p9oa_xD3S0dAtg_wV-3yanovlUaCL-AcLUYFz6pAIawXnXnWdR7IMcS4_mpfwjMYpMQd2IDJr0_0Igbgt8H9SWRvG6Ial7Q4VSRECCsiWVUh4-ooQIXVIhI2pYBXUSgu9k5_Oks/s320/NonfictionNovember23.png" width="320" /></a></div><p>This week's prompt, My Year in Nonfiction, is hosted by <a href="https://www.spiritblog.net/my-year-in-nonfiction-2023/">Heather</a>.</p><p><b>Past</b></p><p>Readers, let me tell you, the state of our Non-Fiction reading is sound. 😉 I seem to have hit a fairly high (for me) 20% of my reading this year as non-fiction. Some highlights (in the chronological order I read them):</p><p>Brigitta Olubas/<i>Shirley Hazzard</i></p><p>This new biography (2022) of Shirley Hazzard was the first book of the year for me. It was a superb literary biography, but I didn't manage to blog about it. I'm a big fan of Shirley Hazzard's novels (<i>The Transit of Venus</i> especially, of course) and when I saw this came out and was getting glowing reviews I had to read it. If you care at all about Shirley Hazzard you will want to read it. (If you haven't already.)</p><p>Michael Hingston/<i>Try to be Strange</i></p><p>A history of the notional <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Redonda">Kingdom of Redonda</a>, which is a literary in-joke. It didn't get a full review, but it did get a somewhat substantial mention in a Sunday Salon post <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/01/sunday-salon.html">here</a>. This led to a bit of a reading project, which also included:</p><p>Javier Marias/<i>Dark Back of Time</i></p><p>Pretty great, though I am rather a Marias fan. Another book I didn't manage to blog about. It's Marias writing about the reception of his novel <i>All Souls</i>, his history with John Gawsworth, the king of Redonda somewhat before Marias was, and a bunch of other things... I trust some of it was fictional, but I couldn't quite tell you what. The novel <i>A Heart So White </i>remains Marias' masterpiece, but this is one of his better ones.</p><p>Victor Gruen/<i>Shopping Town</i></p><p>An autobiography by the Jewish Austrian emigré architect who designed the first shopping mall (outside Detroit). Pretty fascinating. It got a full review <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/03/victor-gruens-shopping-town.html">here</a>.</p><p>James Baldwin/<i>Notes of a Native Son</i></p><p>His first volume of non-fiction. It came out in 1955, and reprints essays he'd written over the previous ten years or so. Fascinating. Literary criticism, what it meant to be Black in the U.S., life in Paris in the 50s. From my Classics Club list, it deserved (and got) a full <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/07/james-baldwins-notes-of-native-son.html">review</a>.</p><p>Anna Comnena/<i>The Alexiad</i></p><p>Anna Comnena's history of her father's reign in Byzantium from 1081 to 1118. A primary source for the place and period, but also, I was a bit surprised to discover, a pretty great <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/09/the-alexiad-of-anna-comnena.html">read</a>.</p><p>Harvey Sachs/<i>Schoenberg: Why He Matters</i></p><p>Another new release. This one's about the 20th Century composer Arnold Schoenberg. There was a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/28/books/review/schoenberg-why-he-matters-harvey-sachs.html">review</a> in the New York Times that made me want to read it. The review suggests it's pretty readable and so it was, no technical knowledge of music required. I'm not especially knowledgeable about serious music--my interest in this was because of Schoenberg's importance to Thomas Mann's novel <i><a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2019/12/manns-doctor-faustus-and-its-story.html">Doctor Faustus</a>. </i>But I did go off afterwards and listen to a bunch of Schoenberg's pieces on YouTube and actually enjoyed them.</p><p>There were others, some quite fascinating, that also got blogged about, listed <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/search/label/NonFic2023">here</a>.</p><p><b>Future</b></p><p>So what's to come for the rest of the year? I couldn't provide a picture of a stack of all those books (because who doesn't want that?) since almost all of those came from the library. But I can provide a picture of the non-fiction books likeliest to get read in the near future (and one ringer...)</p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhovW4NYDoLg7ygd_YLRe8a_SHhHisWhyQlkkYMKfCkqUrxqfTmhJl1RtY5hTTVkym0cBBQ5yyo8O462jnwfV8bco2wVQKJz1MJTim0FCAcPWbrKTHCn7WAOAbjjGqEbCM33ngF0_R8MSkS7O68YJsk-o4N5HNA3KuAfoRUyAzXbwaPmjFHWw0NzL055k/s2016/Stack2023.10.30.NF.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1512" data-original-width="2016" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhovW4NYDoLg7ygd_YLRe8a_SHhHisWhyQlkkYMKfCkqUrxqfTmhJl1RtY5hTTVkym0cBBQ5yyo8O462jnwfV8bco2wVQKJz1MJTim0FCAcPWbrKTHCn7WAOAbjjGqEbCM33ngF0_R8MSkS7O68YJsk-o4N5HNA3KuAfoRUyAzXbwaPmjFHWw0NzL055k/s320/Stack2023.10.30.NF.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Once again it's Chuck and a stack of books!</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p>The library has provided Rebecca Solnit's <i>Orwell's Roses, </i>and I'm a fan of hers. One great essayist engaging with another.</p><p>Tilar Mazzeo's <i>The Widow Clicquot. </i>She took over the champagne house after her husband died and now it's named for her. I've been interested since I saw the <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2023/09/sunday-salon_18.html">movie</a>. </p><p>Will Hermes' new biography <i>Lou Reed: The King of New York</i>. This is the one that will have to be returned the soonest.</p><p>Robin Lane Fox' <i>Homer and His Iliad. </i>Lane Fox is a serious classical scholar and an emeritus professor. (At least I think he's emeritus. He's getting up there.) This volume came out earlier this year and is supposed to be for a fairly general audience. I was a classics major, I'm rusty now, but I do try to keep up a bit.</p><p>And then the ringer in the pile: Emily Wilson's new translation of <i>The Iliad. </i> I <a href="https://reesewarner.blogspot.com/2018/01/homers-odyssey-tr-by-emily-wilson.html">loved</a> her translation of <i>The Odyssey </i>that came out a few years ago, and I've been looking forward to this one. We'll call it the ringer, because I assume it's basically fiction--though Heinrich Schliemann managed to find the original location of Troy by assuming it was true. But I hope to read both the Fox and the Wilson by the week where the prompt is to pair up a non-fiction book with a fiction book.</p><p>There are a few other things from the library around here as well...Plus, well maybe, I could read a book I already own...</p><p><b>Present</b></p><p>I'm currently in the middle of a translation of Georg Christoph Lichtenberg's commentary on Hogarth's series of prints <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage_A-la-Mode_(Hogarth)">Marriage A-la-Mode</a>. </i>Will I blog about it? Maybe! Lichtenberg was a professor of physics at Göttingen in Germany, roughly contemporaneous with (and friends with) Goethe. Lichtenberg is better-known as an author of epigrams, like La Rouchefoucauld, and that was what I more interested in, but this was what my library could produce on short notice.</p><p>Which look good to you? Are you taking part in November Nonfiction?</p>reesehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15818057262934008241noreply@blogger.com20