StevenTX's 2013 Reading Log - Vol. IV

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StevenTX's 2013 Reading Log - Vol. IV

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1StevenTX
Modificato: Dic 28, 2013, 10:03 am

On my Reading Shelf
(much simplified as I reassess plans and priorities for the coming year)

       

2StevenTX
Modificato: Dic 28, 2013, 11:29 am

Index to My 2013 Reading
(Book titles are touchstones that link to the work page. The date read is a link to my Club Read post.)

anonymous - Njál's Saga - February 10
  - Lazarillo de Tormes - June 25
  - The Homeric Hymns - August 23
  - A Voyage to Cacklogallinia (as by Captain Samuel Brunt) - October 25
  - The Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel (as by Ralph Morris) - November 8

Ackroyd, Peter - Hawksmoor - February 26
  - London: The Biography - August 18
Antoni, Robert - As Flies to Whatless Boys - August 17
Arbuthnot, John et al. - Memoirs of the Extraordinary Life, Works, and Discoveries of Martinus Scriblerus - May 13
Bâ, Mariama - So Long a Letter - July 31
Bacon, Francis - New Atlantis - September 14
Balzac, Honoré de - Eugénie Grandet - March 9
  - The Girl with the Golden Eyes - March 11
  - A Harlot High and Low - February 21
Baxter, Stephen - The Time Ships - July 1
Bergerac, Cyrano de - Voyage to the Moon - September 22
Bernhard, Thomas - Correction - March 22
Blanchot, Maurice - Death Sentence - July 14
Brontë, Charlotte - Shirley - July 21
Burney, Fanny - Evelina - May 6
Campanella, Tommaso - The City of the Sun - September 13
Camus, Albert - The Myth of Sisyphus - July 7
  - The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt - October 31
Carpentier, Alejo - The Lost Steps - August 16
Cavendish, Margaret - The Blazing World - September 25
Cazotte, Jacques - The Devil in Love - December 6
Coetzee, J. M. - Life & Times of Michael K - July 25
Conrad, Joseph - Under Western Eyes - March 17
Csáth, Géza - Opium and Other Stories - January 3
Dabija, Nicolae - Mierla Domesticita: Blackbird Once Wild, Now Tame - January 4
Davies, Norman - The Isles: A History - February 23
Defoe, Daniel - The Consolidator - October 16
Deloney, Thomas - The Pleasant History of Thomas of Reading - May 6
De Quincey, Thomas - Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and Other Writings - September 8
Dickens, Charles - Hard Times - June 14
Diderot, Denis - The Nun - March 24
  - The Indiscreet Jewels - October 2
  - Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream - October 10
Duong Thu Huong - Paradise of the Blind - April 8
Duras, Marguerite - The Sea Wall - July 10
  - Hiroshima Mon Amour - July 11
  - The Sailor from Gibraltar - August 4
  - India Song - August 13
Esquivel, Laura - Like Water for Chocolate - March 18
Ferguson, Will - 419 - July 28
Finley, Karen - Shock Treatment - August 23
Flude, Kevin - Divorced, Beheaded, Died... The History of Britain's Kings and Queens in Bite-Sized Chunks - May 25
Foigny, Gabriel de - The Southern Land, Known - September 29
France, Anatole - Thaïs - December 24
Franzen, Jonathan - Freedom - July 20
Frayn, Michael - Skios - March 30
Galeano, Eduardo - Memory of Fire - October 3
Gaskell, Elizabeth - Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life - March 13
Godwin, Francis - The Man in the Moone - September 15
Gombrowicz, Witold - Ferdydurke - March 29
Grabinski, Stefan - The Dark Domain - March 19
Hernández, José - The Gaucho Martín Fierro - January 21
Hodgson, William Hope - The House on the Borderland - March 21
Holberg, Ludvig - Niels Klim's Journey Under the Ground - October 19
Hugo, Victor - The Toilers of the Sea - January 29
Jerome, Jerome K. - Three Men in a Boat - February 8
Johnson, Samuel - The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia - June 28
Kingsley, Charles - The Water-Babies - March 20
Kosmac, Ciril - A Day in Spring - March 17
Lee, Laurie - Cider with Rosie - April 23
Learner, Tobsha - Yearn: Tales of Lust and Longing - November 30
L'Engle, Madeleine - A Wrinkle in Time - March 16
Leppin, Paul - The Road to Darkness - February 4
Lewis, Saunders - Monica - March 21
Lewis, Wyndham - Tarr - June 29
Lispector, Clarice - The Passion According to G. H. - December 28
Lottman, Herbert R. - Albert Camus: A Biography - August 28
Lunch, Lydia - Paradoxia: A Predator's Diary - May 15 (no review)
MacDonald, George - Phantastes - September 7
Machado de Assis, Joachim Maria - The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas - October 29
Mackenzie, Henry - The Man of Feeling - July 30
Martorell, Joanot - Tirant lo Blanc - December 15
Maupassant, Guy de - A Life: The Humble Truth - March 31
  - Bel-Ami - May 27
  - Pierre et Jean - May 28
Miéville, China - Iron Council - April 24
More, Thomas - Utopia - September 13
Morgan, Kenneth O. - The Oxford History of Britain - April 9
Munro, Alice - Lives of Girls and Women - October 17
Ondaatje, Michael - The English Patient - January 7
  - The Cat's Table - April 16
Orwell, George - Animal Farm August 5
Paltock, Robert - The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins - November 24
Pályi, András - Out of Oneself - January 9
Pasolini, Pier Paolo - The Ragazzi - December 4
Pelevin, Viktor - Omon Ra - May 4
Pindar - Odes and Selected Fragments - October 19
Poe, Edgar Allan - Complete Short Stories of Edgar Allan Poe - August 14
  - The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket - August 20
Reeve, Clara - The Old English Baron - December 16
Richardson, Dorothy M. - Pointed Roofs - May 7
  - Backwater - May 30
  - Honeycomb - July 4
  - The Tunnel - September 18
  - Interim - September 30
  - Deadlock - October 24
  - Revolving Lights - November 1
  - The Trap - November 3
  - Oberland - November 19
  - Dawn's Left Hand - December 2
  - Clear Horizon - December 7
  - Dimple Hill - December 9
  - March Moonlight - December 10
Roncagliolo, Santiago - Hi, This Is Conchita and Other Stories - April 6
Royle, Trevor - The Wars of the Roses: England's First Civil War - May 23
Russen, David - Iter Lunaire; or, A Voyage to the Moon - October 4
Saer, Juan José - The Witness - October 11
Sarduy, Severo - Firefly - January 13
Schnitzler, Arthur - Lieutenant Gustl - July 15
Scholder, Amy, et al. - Lust for Life: On the Writings of Kathy Acker - September 19
Scott, Sir Walter - Rob Roy - April 21
Stevenson, Robert Louis - Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde - August 6
Stewart, George R. - Earth Abides - April 29
Strindberg, August - The Ghost Sonata - April 18
Tolstaya, Tatyana - The Slynx - January 21
Verne, Jules - A Journey to the Centre of the Earth - May 26
Voltaire - Micromegas - November 10
Wang Anyi - The Song of Everlasting Sorrow - January 9
Waterfield, Robin - The First Philosophers: The Presocratics and the Sophists - September 20
Wells, H. G. - The Time Machine - May 9
  - The War of the Worlds - June 21
Zola, Émile - The Kill - March 5
  - The Dream - March 23
  - Pot Luck - April 22
  - The Ladies' Paradise - August 18
  - The Sin of Father Mouret - November 18

3StevenTX
Modificato: Dic 28, 2013, 11:30 am

2013 Statistics

Summary of Books Read
137 - books read
108 - novels
3 - plays and screenplays
8 - short story collections
3 - poetry collections
1 - mixed prose and verse collections
1 - epic verse
6 - history
1 - biography
2 - autobiography
2 - essay collections
3 - philosophy
1 - science

Authors
101 - different authors
69 - authors new to me
95 - books by male authors
34 - books by female authors
6 - books by anonymous or unknown authors
4 - anthologies and books by multiple authors

Books Read by Author's Nationality
52 - English
28 - French
12 - American
5 - Scottish
4 - Canadian
3 - Polish
3 - Greek
2 - Hungarian
2 - Russian
2 - Austrian
2 - Cuban
2 - Argentine
2 - Italian
2 - Brazilian
1 - Moldovan
1 - Chinese
1 - Czech
1 - Icelandic
1 - Slovenian
1 - Welsh
1 - Mexican
1 - Peruvian
1 - Vietnamese
1 - Swedish
1 - Spanish
1 - South African
1 - Senegalese
1 - Trinidadian
1 - Uruguayan
1 - Danish
1 - Catalan

Books Read by Original Language
75 - English
29 - French
8 - Spanish
3 - German
3 - Greek
3 - Latin
2 - Hungarian
2 - Polish
2 - Russian
2 - Italian
2 - Portuguese
1 - Romanian
1 - Chinese
1 - Icelandic
1 - Slovenian
1 - Welsh
1 - Vietnamese
1 - Swedish
1 - Catalan

Books Read by Decade of First Publication
3 - classical era
1 - 13th century
1 - 15th century
3 - 16th century
6 - 17th century
2 - 1700s
1 - 1720s
3 - 1740s
4 - 1750s
1 - 1760s
4 - 1770s
1 - 1790s
1 - 1810s
1 - 1820s
3 - 1830s
4 - 1840s
2 - 1850s
3 - 1860s
3 - 1870s
9 - 1880s
4 - 1890s
4 - 1900s
7 - 1910s
7 - 1920s
5 - 1930s
4 - 1940s
7 - 1950s
5 - 1960s
3 - 1970s
8 - 1980s
13 - 1990s
7 - 2000s
9 - 2010s

4StevenTX
Ott 1, 2013, 11:12 am

New quarter, new thread.

I'm continuing to tinker around with the Reading Shelf in Msg 1 above, so there may be more changes to the content and format.

It'll take a while to fix all the touchstones in Msg 2. Is this index useful to anyone besides myself? I've used it just a couple of times to find a discussion from earlier in the year.

Keeping the stats is fun. They show that my reading isn't as diverse as I would like it except when it comes to time period. But it's interesting that my own country comes up a distant third in the list of nationalities.

5labfs39
Ott 1, 2013, 11:53 am

You do read an amazing array of books, Steven. I admire your ability to stick to a chronological reading schedule. I am much too swayed by the moment to plan my reading. Reading your reviews is almost like reading synopses for a class. I feel that I'm getting an education. :-)

I like stats too. It will be nice when you get closer to the present and start reading more women authors. I think I'm skewed toward the male this year too for some reason.

6mkboylan
Ott 2, 2013, 12:57 am

Yes I also like having your lists here. and stats are fun!

7SassyLassy
Ott 2, 2013, 10:50 am

I always like it when someone provides an index, especially when they do as much reading as you. It helps to show where the next book came from and where it may go. It's really great when the indexer takes me off in unexpected but related directions. Keep it up.

The stats are a must, especially looking back.

8StevenTX
Ott 2, 2013, 9:40 pm

The Indiscreet Jewels by Denis Diderot
First published 1748 as Les Bijoux indiscrets
English translation 1993 by Sophie Hawkes

 

Denis Diderot was 34 years old and working on his famous Encyclopédie when he published, anonymously and illegally, his first work of fiction The Indiscreet Jewels. It is a bawdy satire of manners and morals of the French court under Louis XV, and attacks many of the arts and institutions of the time. King Louis is not, of course, mentioned by name in the novel, or we might never have heard from Diderot again. Instead the novel is set in the Congo in the year 1,500,000,003,200,001, and tells the story of the great sultan Mangogul and his magic ring.

Mangogul (Louis XV) is married to Manimonbanda (Queen Marie), but like many diplomatic marriages it is without affection. Instead Mangogul bestows his love and attention on his mistress Mirzoza (Madame de Pompadour). One day he confesses that he is bored. He suspects the ladies of his court are up to all sorts of romantic intrigues, and he would love to hear the details, but he knows they'll never be honest about such things. Mirzoza suggests that the genie Cucufa may have a way to learn their secrets. Mangogul summons Cucufa with a clap.

The genie appears and, on hearing Mangogul's request, presents him with a magic ring. It can make the wearer invisible and take him instantly to any place he wants to go. But more importantly, when pointed in the direction of a woman and turned a particular way, it can make the lady's jewel speak. And her jewel--that second set of lips beneath her petticoats--will always speak the truth about its experiences.

Mangogul wastes no time in putting the ring to the test, both in private and in public, but even he--who expected to be scandalized--is shocked by what he hears. Could it by that not a single woman in the Congo is faithful to her husband or betrothed? Is there anyone who doesn't entertain a regiment of lovers? Mirzoza accepts Mangogul's bet that there is not a single example of fidelity and pure love in the kingdom (Mirzoza herself excepted).

Meanwhile, the mysterious talking jewels have all the Congo astir. The Academy of Sciences debates the matter and concludes that is a phenomenon of celestial origin like the tides. Tests are conducted and demonstrations attempted, but to no avail. Nonetheless rumors take flight, and jewels that Mangogul hasn't even been near are accused of the most outlandish speeches. Nervous women flee the capital, and a brisk trade arises in devices their inventors claim will muzzle the voice of even the most loquacious jewel.

While this is going on, Diderot inserts comments on a number of topics. The theater, he says, has degenerated to the point where everything is artificial and stylized. Actors can no longer adapt their meager talents to a role, and instead "there was little hope that a play would be performed with any measure of success unless the characters were tailored to the defects of the actors." This leads to a discussion of whether the arts, like the sciences, can build on the work of the past. There follows a debate on whether the arts are obliged to imitate nature, or whether obvious and intentional artificiality is acceptable.

Like most satires, The Indiscreet Jewels has lost some of its bite over time, and many of the personalities and issues are unrecognizable by modern readers and must be explained by footnotes. Louis XV is depicted as a good-natured but mischievous overgrown adolescent easily bored by matters of state or intellectual topics. The heroine of the piece is Madame de Pompadour, wise beyond her tender years, compassionate but firm, and a brilliant patroness of the arts and sciences. Women in general--despite being ruthlessly humiliated by Mongogul and his ring--come off favorably in the novel as persons with their own identity, ideas and sexuality.

This is a delightfully funny, offbeat and racy novel that both shows us life in the decadent French royal court and previews some of the ideas of one the Enlightenment's most important thinkers.

Other works I have read by Denis Diderot:
Jacques the Fatalist and His Master
The Nun

 

Mangogul (Louis XV) and Mirzoza (Madame de Pompadour), both by Maurice Quentin de la Tour

9edwinbcn
Ott 2, 2013, 9:53 pm

Great review of a book I hope to read before the end of the year.

10labfs39
Ott 2, 2013, 10:03 pm

Very inventive! Despite his subterfuge, I would have thought that he would have gotten in trouble with the royals. Everyone must have been snickering. I wonder how widely this was read?

11StevenTX
Ott 2, 2013, 10:08 pm

Denis Diderot's 300th birthday is this coming Saturday. In the Literary Centennials group I've started a topic for this novel and, in addition to my review, have posted a small gallery of some rather uninhibited illustrations from the original 18th century edition and later versions.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/159713

12StevenTX
Ott 2, 2013, 10:21 pm

#10 - Aram Vartanian, who wrote the introduction to the 1993 translation, was just as surprised that Diderot wasn't immediately arrested. He had the book printed in Holland and smuggled into Paris. The police banned and confiscated it as pornography, but couldn't stop copies from circulating. It was well known that Diderot was the author. Yet he wasn't arrested until almost two years later and for a different political writing titled "Letter on the Blind."

What's even more astounding is that Diderot would take the risk of publishing something like The Indiscreet Jewels at a time when he was seeking official permission for his Encyclopédie. Some theorize that he was simply hard up for cash. But Vartanian's theory is that Diderot slyly sought to obtain Madame de Pompadour's patronage for the Encyclopédie, and portraying her so generously in The Indiscreet Jewels was a way to get her attention and win her support. So it may have been the king's mistress who protected him from prosecution.

13labfs39
Ott 2, 2013, 10:27 pm

Fascinating. Thank you for the back story.

14dchaikin
Ott 2, 2013, 11:24 pm

What a book. Enjoyed the review and the ideas in post #12.

I love that you have an index.

15mkboylan
Ott 2, 2013, 11:30 pm

and really the Jewels just sounds FUN!

16lyzard
Ott 2, 2013, 11:31 pm

Louis, like Charles II, may have felt that certain kinds of writing weren't worth getting (officially) worked up about.

17baswood
Ott 3, 2013, 4:28 am

That settles it. The indiscreet jewels will be my Diderot read for this his centennial year. Great review and intriguing stuff on the history of it's publication.

18baswood
Ott 3, 2013, 4:35 am

Denis Diderot's 300th birthday is this coming Saturday. In the Literary Centennials group I've started a topic for this novel and, in addition to my review, have posted a small gallery of some rather uninhibited illustrations from the original 18th century edition and later versions.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/159713

I now expect to see the centennials group thread top of the hot thread lists here on LT.

19NanaCC
Ott 3, 2013, 7:55 am

>8 StevenTX: Great review, Steven. It really is a wonder that he wasn't arrested for writing it.

20StevenTX
Ott 4, 2013, 12:20 am

Memory of Fire by Eduardo Galeano
A trilogy consisting of:
  - Genesis (1982)
  - Faces and Masks (1984)
  - Century of the Wind (1986)
English translation by Cedric Belfrage 1988

 

Eduardo Galeano best describes the nature and scope of this work in his own words:

"It is not an anthology, but a literary creation, based on solid documentation but moving with complete freedom. The author does not know to what literary form the book belongs: narrative, essay, epic poem, chronicle, testimony . . . Perhaps it belongs to all or none. The author relates what has happened, the history of America, and above all, the history of Latin America; and he has sought to do it in such a way that the reader should feel that what has happened happens again when the author tells it."

Though published in three installments, Memory of Fire is a single continuous work and should be read as such. It consists of over 1000 vignettes, most about a half page in length. The earliest ones relate the various creation myths of the Native American peoples, from Tierra del Fuego to the Bering Strait. From that we jump to 1492 and the voyage of Christopher Columbus to the New World. Each vignette is given a year and a location, and it is footnoted to show the source. They are in chronological order from 1492 to 1984, but the locations jump from place to place. The perspective is sometimes that of a conquistador, a churchman or a political leader, but more often we see history through the eyes of the Indians, the peasants, the guerrilla fighters, and the slum dwellers. Occasionally the narrative jumps across oceans for a bit of context: the Gutenberg Bible, the invention of the electric light, or the stardom of Marilyn Monroe.

Galeano's sympathies are clearly with the downtrodden and the disenfranchised: the Indians, the slaves, the poor, and women. With only a few breaks, the book is a chronicle of conquest, oppression, racial prejudice, exploitation and heroic resistance. The villains are Spain, the Catholic Church, Britain, the United States, and corporate capitalism. What would otherwise be a story of unrelenting horror and despair is elevated to the sublime by Galeano's language and humanity. Each vignette is a poem in prose, uplifting in its beauty and nobility even while describing scenes of murder and torture.

There is no attempt on Galeano's part to give a balanced account or to analyze what he describes. Dictators have no virtues; socialist revolutionaries have no vices and are forgiven their failings. When a liberal government fails to live up to its promises, the blame is always placed on foreign or corporate interference. Some may object to this black and white presentation of history, but one might argue that the privileged have had their say for centuries, so it's only fair to give the disenfranchised a turn at the podium. Given the author's emphasis on the cultural heritage of the American Natives, it's surprising that he omits any pre-Columbian history except for the creation myths--perhaps he felt that stories of Inca, Maya and Aztec conquests would weaken the reader's sympathy for them. But I found the biggest weakness in the work was the lack of an index. The stories of some persons and places are often told in vignettes dozens of pages apart, and it would be nice to be able to locate an earlier piece for review.

Memory of Fire is a magnificent and incredibly moving account of Latin American history and culture. It is rich in detail and human interest, but ties together themes from all over the hemisphere to give the reader a sense of context and perspective. This would be an excellent place to begin a study of the history of the Americas.

21baswood
Ott 4, 2013, 5:47 am

Memories of Fire sounds an extraordinary book

22Linda92007
Ott 4, 2013, 9:16 am

Taken as a whole, your 2013 reading has been incredible, Steven. And I agree with Barry on Memories of Fire. I have always thought that having a better understanding of history would enhance my appreciation of Latin American literature.

23mkboylan
Ott 4, 2013, 9:57 am

That sounds amazing!

24StevenTX
Ott 4, 2013, 10:48 am

Thanks bas, Linda and mk. The book is actually much better than I make it sound. I struggle to write reviews of books I really like. I don't know how many times I broke down while reading it or how often I read and re-read passages until I had memorized them.

You may recall that at a conference several years ago the late President Hugo Chavez gave Obama a copy of an earlier and shorter book by Eduardo Galeano titled Open Veins of Latin America. Apparently Obushma either didn't read it or didn't take it to heart, because our NSA and CIA are still mucking around with other countries' governments in their mission to protect the profits of Exxon and Haliburton.

One of the things that I was most surprised to learn was how much interference there was in the 19th century by the British and American governments, often working in tandem to keep Latin America as undeveloped as possible. They sabotaged Simón Bolívar's attempt to form a United States of South America, and they backed with money and arms the dictatorships that gave them trade concessions, vast amounts of land, and cheap labor. The British plundered Bolivia's tin and Chile's nitrates just as the Spaniards had plundered Peru's gold. What we were taught in school about the benevolent Monroe Doctrine was pure bunk.

25mkboylan
Ott 4, 2013, 10:53 am

That is some sad, sad, stuff. Well, except for "Obushma" that is laugh out loud funny. Except it's sad too.

26rebeccanyc
Ott 4, 2013, 11:09 am

Just catching up after the second of two very busy weeks, and I can only echo a lot of what everyone has already said about the diversity of your reading, the discipline of your reading, the excellent reviews, and the humor of The Indiscreet Jewels, another book which I probably won't read but which I greatly appreciate knowing about.

I've had the Memory of Fire trilogy on the TBR for several years now and your review certainly encourages me to push it nearer the top. I'm looking forward to reading more South American literature with this quarter's Reading Globally theme read, but the books I've already read have given me a feeling for the exploitation of the continent by the Europeans and the Americans.

27StevenTX
Ott 4, 2013, 11:46 am

Okay, I can't resist sharing one of the chapters from this book. Galeano uses italics whenever he is quoting directly from his source.

1976: Liberty
FORBIDDEN BIRDS

The Uruguayan political prisoners may not talk without permission, or whistle, smile, sing, walk fast, or greet other prisoners; nor may they make or receive drawings of pregnant women, couples, butterflies, stars, or birds.

One Sunday, Didaskó Pérez, school teacher, tortured and jailed for having ideological ideas, is visited by his daughter Milay, age five. She brings him a drawing of birds. The guards destroy it at the entrance to the jail.

On the following Sunday, Milay brings him a drawing of trees. Trees are not forbidden, and the drawing gets through. Didaskó praises her work and asks about the colored circles scattered in the treetops, many small circles half-hidden among the branches: "Are they oranges? What fruit is it?"

The child puts a finger on his mouth. "Ssssshhh."

And she whispers in his ear: "Silly. Don't you see they're eyes? They're the eyes of the birds that I've smuggled in for you."

28mkboylan
Ott 4, 2013, 12:09 pm

That is a wonderful story!
Well....kind of.....

29labfs39
Ott 4, 2013, 2:59 pm

If your review hadn't persuaded me that I need to read Memory of Fire, the chapter you quoted did.

30NanaCC
Ott 4, 2013, 3:33 pm

Memory of Fire is another book for my wish list.

31StevenTX
Ott 4, 2013, 3:42 pm

Iter Lunaire; or, A Voyage to the Moon by David Russen
First published 1703



Iter Lunaire is not a novel, but rather an extended critical review of Cyrano de Bergerac's novel Voyage to the Moon, first published almost a half century earlier. Francis Godwin's 1638 novel The Man in the Moone is also discussed. We know very little about David Russen except that he was a teacher, but apparently he took Cyrano de Bergerac's work as a serious scientific proposal and set about analyzing it almost page-by-page. That Cyrano intended his work to be taken so seriously is highly doubtful.

Russen takes a very methodical approach to the problem of spaceflight. "Two things seem to impede our Journey thither, the propensity of all Earthly Bodies composed of Matter to tend downwards, which causeth in them an Ineptitude to ascend, and the Medium through which they are to pass, which is unfit for Animals of this Earth to breathe in." He aptly considers that it will take considerable force to overcome the Earth's gravity, and that the bigger your vehicle, and the more provisions you take with you, the more propulsive power you will need.

The author rejects Cyrano's ideas of ascending by means of dew-filled bottles or smearing oneself with bone marrow--but he shows himself a true scientist by saying that these theories should at least be tested before being abandoned altogether. Russen fixates on the notion that for a body to be set in motion, it has to have something to push against. He therefore rejects all types of free-flying apparatuses.

Russen's own plan for reaching the surface of the moon--one he admits can never be put into practice--is to build a giant spring which would carry a man on its very tip. Released at exactly the right moment considering the rotation of the earth and the moon's revolution around it, the spring, while still attached firmly to the earth, would reach exactly the right distance to deposit its passenger on the moon.

Cyrano's traveler finally makes his successful ascent from earth's surface, quite accidentally, by means of banks of fireworks which we would now describe as a multi-stage rocket. Strangely, Russen all but ignores this method. And he finally dismisses the possibility of space flight altogether because the aether of interplanetary space is unbreathable. It's a sensible conclusion, but an unimaginative one since the use of diving bells in his own day should have given him the idea of taking your air along with you in an enclosed vehicle.

Russen goes on to debate the nature of the civilization Cyrano's traveler finds on the moon, again completely missing the point that Cyrano's purpose was satire, not science. Russen's analysis consistently shows him to be methodical, open-minded, but lacking in imagination.

A couple of Russen's theories are entertaining enough to be worth a mention. One is that the Americas must have risen up from the sea only shortly before Columbus stumbled upon them; otherwise our wiser ancestors, the Greeks and Romans, would surely have known about them. His other amusing notion is that the small spheres we see rising in a glass of beer or champagne are not bubbles of air, as some fools insist, but tiny animals. It is their vitality which makes these drinks so refreshing. Flat beer, on the other hand, isn't good because "dead insipid Liquors do not inebriate or heat the Body, because those Animals are dead in the Liquor, and corrupted."

Iter Lunaire is one of a number of titles included in a new series of ebooks edited by Ron Miller and published by Baen Books. Unfortunately the formatting and proofreading of this particular title were very poor. There were obvious scanning errors on almost every screen, and a couple of passages were completely unintelligible. Miller's afterward pertained to the series as a whole, not this title, and his few end notes were not linked to the text, so it was awkward to get to them. I'll be cautious about purchasing any more ebooks in this series.

Altogether, Iter Lunaire is a curiosity of minor importance. Anyone interested in it should definitely read Cyrano de Bergerac's and Francis Godwin's novels first, but I can't say that Iter Lunaire added to my appreciation or understanding of them. It would be more valuable as part of an historical study of the idea of spaceflight.

32NanaCC
Ott 4, 2013, 3:47 pm

That would have to be one monster spring. :)

33baswood
Ott 5, 2013, 4:16 am

Enjoyed your review of Iter Lunaire Steven. Poor old unimaginative David Russen, although I will think of him when I drink my next glass of champagne and can bore friends with his anecdote.

I agree with your thoughts on the Ron Miller series as it would seem very little work has been done to make it kindle friendly. The only attraction for me of the series is the availability of the books, some of which are not easily available elsewhere, although it pays to carry out a search in the first instance.

34StevenTX
Ott 10, 2013, 9:38 pm

Rameau's Nephew and D'Alembert's Dream by Denis Diderot
La nevue de Rameau written circa 1761, published posthumously 1805
Le rêve de d'Alembert first published 1769
English translation by Leonard Tancock 1966

 

These two philosophical dialogues by Diderot may originally have been written for the author's amusement with no publication in mind. Both of them use the philosopher's personal friends as characters, and they both promote atheism and an open-minded attitude towards sexuality--dangerous ideas in the 18th century.

In Rameau's Nephew the debate is between an unnamed philosopher (not necessarily Diderot himself) and Jean-François Rameau, the nephew of the famous composer Jean-Philippe Rameau. The core of the debate is the question of how one should live if one does not believe in God or in any external system of morality. The philosopher's answer is that one should be virtuous, industrious, patriotic and generous. Rameau's response is to proclaim a philosophical life "devilishly dull," and to assert that you should simply "drink good wine, blow yourself out with luscious food, have a tumble with lovely women, lie on soft beds. Apart from that the rest is vanity." Rameau goes so far as to say that he bears no responsibility for the support or oversight of his offspring, and he feels no remorse that he lives at the expense of others by begging, borrowing and trickery.

There is also much discussion of music and other arts, with many references to contemporary composers and performers. It comes out that Rameau is prodigiously talented and would be considered a man of genius if he chose to put his talents to work. The two debate whether a person so gifted has an obligation or not to develop and display his gifts.

D'Alembert's Dream is a dialogue in three parts featuring four different characters, one of whom is Diderot himself. Again atheism is central to the discussion, only this time in a scientific vein. The basic question is how to explain the existence of life and human consciousness if there is no such thing as a Creator or a soul. Diderot's approach is first to remove the absolute distinctions between human and animal--as well as between animal, vegetable and mineral--by showing that the inanimate atoms in the soil are absorbed into plants, then assimilated into humans when we eat fruits and vegetables. We are the same material as a block of marble, only with a higher degree of organization. Diderot goes on to give mechanical explanations for the senses, thought, memory, dreams and imagination. He even sets forth a theory of evolution, suggesting that "the imperceptible worm wriggling in the mire is probably on its way to becoming a large animal," and theorizing that in the distant future humans may evolve into huge, disembodied brains.

Diderot's writing is lively and irreverent, and these two dialogues show us the mind of one of the greatest geniuses of the Enlightenment at work.

35dchaikin
Ott 10, 2013, 10:42 pm

Interesting on Diderot and curious about David Russen. Memory of Fire sounds fascinating - that is one I will keep in mind.

36baswood
Ott 11, 2013, 10:42 am

More Diderot, great stuff

37StevenTX
Ott 11, 2013, 11:08 pm

The Witness by Juan José Saer
First published 1983 as El Entenado
English translation by Margaret Jull Costa 1990

 

Some twenty years after the first voyage of Christopher Columbus, a 15-year-old Spanish orphan and wharf rat signs on to a ship as cabin boy, not knowing or caring where the ship is bound. It turns out the vessel is bound westward across the Atlantic, hoping to find a southern passage to the East Indies. Instead they find only primitive, forbidding lands. Going ashore, the sailors are ambushed, and all but the cabin boy are killed.

The cabin boy is taken prisoner, but treated with a strange degree of kindness and deference, even as he watches the Indians butcher and eat his shipmates. He lives among the cannibals for ten years, but it is only sixty years later as he his writing his memoirs that he begins to understand why he was treated the way he was.

The Witness is a meditation upon reality as we perceive it, memory, death, and the role of language in shaping our view of the universe. The novel opens with the narrator's lament that we are but insignificant motes in the vastness of the universe, and our lives but an ephemeral glimmer on the earth. And all we know of our lives are fleeting, fragile memories. Each culture finds its own ways of coping with these harsh truths. In piecing together his memories and what he understood of their language, the former cabin boy gradually begins to form a notion of the Indians' world view, one that is radically different from the Europeans', but with just as much claim to validity.

The Witness is a novel that is both thoughtful and suspenseful, both brutal and lyrical. There are many memorable scenes, many passages worth re-reading, and many ideas worth contemplation.

38labfs39
Ott 12, 2013, 12:12 pm

The Witness is a meditation upon reality as we perceive it, memory, death, and the role of language in shaping our view of the universe.

This sentence alone makes me think this is a book I would like. My only reservation is the brutality you mention.

39StevenTX
Ott 12, 2013, 1:01 pm

My only reservation is the brutality...

Yes, there are some pretty detailed (but emotionally detached) descriptions of people being killed, butchered and eaten. The sexual practices of the tribe are described in some detail as well. These subjects are important to the theme of the novel, but they don't dominate it.

40mkboylan
Ott 12, 2013, 1:50 pm

That sounds fascinating. It is the same sentence that caught my interest.

41mkboylan
Ott 12, 2013, 1:58 pm

Seriously? My library doesn't have that?

42baswood
Ott 13, 2013, 5:57 pm

Excellent review of The Witness, Juan Jose Saer

43rebeccanyc
Ott 14, 2013, 12:28 pm

Sounds great. I have Scars by the same author, which I got through my Open Letter subscription, and I'm hoping to read that soon.

44SassyLassy
Ott 15, 2013, 4:47 pm

Sounds right up my alley: memory, death, and the role of language. The world summed up so well.

45StevenTX
Modificato: Ott 16, 2013, 9:59 pm

The Consolidator; or, Memoirs of Sundry Transactions from the World in the Moon by Daniel Defoe
First published 1705

 

The Consolidator, Daniel Defoe's first novel, is a satire that has been characterized as a work of science fiction because it takes place on the moon, but it is really just an overgrown political tract. The narrator journeys across our globe, ending up in China where he finds a kingdom scientifically far in advance of his native England. They even have a machine that can fly to the moon. It is called the Consolidator, but the details of its construction reveals that it is just a strange metaphor for the English Parliament.

The traveler goes to the moon and finds that it is almost an exact replica of the Earth. He goes to a "northern country," which seems to bear an eerie resemblance to England (though the narrator insists it is different). There he meets a philosopher who recounts in considerable detail--and with strong opinions--the last 60 years or so of his country's history.

The first quarter of the novel, while Defoe is describing the lunar society, is full of witty remarks such as: "Also you have here a Muse calcin'd, a little of the Powder of which given to a Woman big with Child, if it be a Boy it will be a Poet, if a Girl she'll be a Whore."

He also recommends that all "Statesmen, P----t-men, Convocation-men, Phylosophers, Physicians, Quacks, Mountebanks, Stock-jobbers, and all the Mob of the Nation's Civil or Ecclesiastical Bone-setters, together with some Men of the Law, some of the Sword, and all of the Pen" should go to the moon. "But above all, how much more beneficial it would be to them that stay'd behind."

But the remaining three quarters of the novel--an opinionated recitation of English history from Cromwell to Queen Anne but calling nothing and no one by its proper name--is tedious and unrewarding. Defoe had been imprisoned a few years earlier for political pamphlets deemed seditious, so that's probably why he felt he had to "disguise" his opinions as lunar history. The opinions seem to be largely in favor of religious tolerance, but it would take a reader fairly well versed in 17th century English history to understand most of his references and ideas. Unfortunately Defoe did not give his novel a plot or characters, so there's little to entertain a reader who doesn't have extensive background in that era.

Other works I have read by Daniel Defoe:
Robinson Crusoe
A Journal of the Plague Year
Moll Flanders (long ago--need to re-read)

46edwinbcn
Ott 17, 2013, 12:33 am

Nice to review such a rarely read book. Tempted to locate my copy which must be buried somewhere.

47StevenTX
Ott 19, 2013, 6:20 pm

Odes and Selected Fragments by Pindar
Composed in Greek early 5th century BCE
Odes translated by G. S. Conway 1972
Paeans, fragments and other poems translated by Richard Stoneman 1997
Introduction, commentary and notes by Richard Stoneman 1997

 

Pindar's work is the largest surviving body of Greek lyric poetry. He was also one of the earliest known professional poets, composing his work on commission. The only works of his to have survived largely intact are his odes celebrating athletic victories at the Olympics and other similar games. These odes would have been sung to the accompaniment of a lyre at celebratory banquets or processions, usually in the victor's home city several months after the games. Some were commissioned by the athlete himself, others by a relative or by the city's ruler.

So I too, for the men who honour
The athletes' field, proffer this draught of flowing nectar,
The Muses' gift, the sweet fruit of the mind,
Paying my homage due
To those who at Olympia,
And at Pytho have won the victor's crown.


The odes are usually around 2-3 pages long and contain three elements. First there is a greeting that praises the gods and extols the virtues of the host city. The odes close with a reference to the victor himself and the attributes which enabled him to win the race or match. In the middle there is usually a story from Greek mythology, though sometimes it is a tale from the history of the city or the honoree's family. The story either honors the victor's heritage or features some heroic deed displaying the same virtues as those that won the laurels for the victor. For example, a wrestler who won by guile rather than brute strength might be honored by a tale of Odysseus doing the same.

The other selections in this volume include Paeans--songs of praise or thanksgiving commissioned to honor a particular city--and fragments of other processional works. Each work is proceeded by its own introduction by Richard Stoneman and followed by notes explaining the many references to historical and mythological figures. These introductions are quite helpful. Stoneman's overall introduction to the volume, however, I found to be overly long and technical in its discussion of metrical forms that only someone familiar with the Greek language could fully appreciate. The translations, as shown in the sample above, are literal and lack the musical quality that must have been present in the originals. Sentences often carry forward awkwardly from one stanza to another, and I found it easier just to try to read the odes as prose rather than verse.

Pindar's odes are probably more valuable to us for what they can tell us about Greek culture, athletics, values and beliefs than for their poetic qualities (at least in this translation). The most interesting odes are those composed for victors in the chariot races, because the laurels went to the owner of the chariot and team, not to the driver, and the owner was quite often the ruler of a city or one of his powerful relatives. These odes carry references to the political themes and issues of the day. And of Pindar himself we can see by these lines that he had something of a rock star's ego:

But for the task in hand, let me now pay
The debt to you, son, for this latest deed of glory
And by my art raise it on spreading wings.



"Daphnephoria" by Frederic Leighton depicts a typical procession at which Pindar's verses would be sung.

48baswood
Ott 19, 2013, 7:37 pm

Thanks for reading and reviewing The Consolidator. I think I can safely skip that one. Enjoyed your review of Odes and Selected fragments I don't think I will go there either.

49StevenTX
Ott 24, 2013, 10:36 am

Deadlock by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1921
Sixth novel in the Pilgrimage sequence

In the previous novels of Richardson's autobiographical series her protagonist, Miriam Henderson, has been largely concerned with establishing her own identity as a single and independent woman in a world where this was still a novelty for a woman of her age and class. She develops curious blends of nationalism and cosmopolitanism, Christianity and agnosticism, science and spirituality. The one area where her attitudes are unmixed is her resentful and largely homegrown feminism.

At age twenty-five, Miriam now has her first serious relationship with a man. He is a Russian Jew named Michael Shatov. Every attribute of his being seems destined to expose and inflame Miriam's inner contradictions while being irresistibly appealing to her both intellectually and sexually.

Miriam hungers for foreign culture and contact with foreigners, yet she can't help wanting to prove Englishness superior to all foreign values. "London is heaven and can't be explained. To be sent away is to be sent out of heaven." Yet Shatov exposes her to ideas and feelings that she simply can't find in her English experience.

Race and religion are intertwined in Miriam's mind, as they were in general at that time. Shatov's Jewishness is more alien to her than his Russianness or his masculinity. Underneath her facade of intellectual curiosity and open-mindedness she finds a core of bigotry. Rather than directly face and challenge her values, Miriam looks for an escape. She projects her internal conflict as resentment against the one who exposes it. One moment she is craving Shatov's companionship, the next moment she is unable to stand the sight of him. She takes a smug pride in her association with someone so exotic, yet she is embarrassed to be seen in public with him.

Sexually Miriam is prepared from the beginning to resent Shatov and distance herself from him simply because he is a man. But here again he disarms her by declaring himself a feminist (a word she had never heard before), by agreeing with her on most gender issues, and by being almost effeminate himself. Yet here he exposes a conflict she would not have anticipated: intellectually she adores his androgynous makeup, but sexually she is repulsed by it. She wants him to be more of a man to her, even though she would hate him for it. Sexual feelings she has never experienced before come suddenly up against the feminism that she has considered unshakable.

So this is the multi-dimensional deadlock in which Miriam Henderson finds herself. It is a condition strongly representative of her time--perhaps most times--perhaps in the development of most thinking individuals--when abstract thought runs afoul of traditional cultural values and the desires of the body defy those of the mind.

50NanaCC
Ott 24, 2013, 10:47 am

I am really intrigued by your reviews of the Pilgrimage series. They will make it to my shelves at some point.

51baswood
Ott 24, 2013, 11:37 am

Another fine review from Dorothy Richardson's pilgrimage series, it is a long series of books have you managed to get them all?

The pilgrimage series are I believe largely autobiographical in content and I was wondering in what time period was Deadlocked set: before or after the first world war. The relatively slow progress through Richardson's life must give a pretty good insight to the thoughts and feeling of an intellectual woman of her times and also a vivid portrayal of life in London. Fascinating and you may well be the first person to review all the books.

52StevenTX
Ott 24, 2013, 12:25 pm

#51 - Yes, I have the entire series. I wouldn't have started reading it if I hadn't been sure I could finish it, but it took some time and effort to scrounge up a complete set (albeit mixed editions) at prices I could afford. The first eleven of the thirteen novels were published individually, but in 1938 the full series (12 novels at that time) was published in a four-volume compilation. In 1967 it was published again in four volumes, but with a new, posthumous thirteenth novel added to the final volume. There were two more editions, both paperback, in 1976 and 1979 (the feminist theme obviously being attractive to '70s readers). I wound up with two volumes from 1979 and one each from 1967 and 1976.

From the point where I am now, the novels get shorter and further apart in publication date. Richardson rattled off six novels in seven years between 1915 and 1921, but then slowed to a pace of one book every two-three years, despite their being shorter. I suspect they will be even denser than what I've read to this point.

There are few direct clues to chronology in Pilgrimage. If Miriam Henderson was born the same year as Dorothy Richardson (1873) then Deadlock takes place in 1898. But I seem to recall something in an earlier volume that suggested Miriam was actually as much as three years younger than her author, which would place the novel as late as 1901. I'll look for more time clues as I go. From what I've read, the series will end at the point in Richardson's life when the writing of the series itself begins, which will be 1915 or earlier. It will encompass her affair with H. G. Wells, but not her marriage to Alan Odle.

53mkboylan
Ott 24, 2013, 12:39 pm

Deadlock sounds absolutely fascinating. Could I read it as a standalone? Just love all the contradictions. Wonderful review.

54StevenTX
Ott 24, 2013, 1:17 pm

Could I read it as a standalone?

I think you would miss too much of Miriam's character and situation by taking it independently. Her feelings on religion and her strident feminism in particular are things you have to carry over from previous episodes. Besides, the preceding volumes are just as good, if not better, even if my reviews may not have hit upon the right note.

The first novel of Pilgrimage, Pointed Roofs, is available in the US as a free ebook if you want to get a sample of Richardson's writing.

55mkboylan
Ott 24, 2013, 3:47 pm

Ah thanks Steven. I downloaded Pointed Roofs.

56StevenTX
Ott 25, 2013, 11:13 am

A Voyage to Cacklogallinia, with a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of that Country as by Captain Samuel Brunt
First published 1727
Author's real identity unknown

 

By the early 18th century there had been many published satires and utopian novels featuring imaginary voyages that discover and describe strange races and civilizations. Some of them went to previously unexplored parts of our world, while others went instead to the moon. A Voyage to Cacklogallinia is perhaps unique in that it does both. Its narrator, Captain Samuel Brunt, first discovers the Empire of Cacklogallinia somewhere in South America, then he accompanies the Cacklogallinians on their first flight to the moon, discovering yet another strange culture.

The authorship of this novel remains a mystery. Jonathan Swift is a possibility, as are Daniel Defoe, John Arbuthnot, and other like-thinking and imaginative English writers of the period.

Samuel Brunt begins his story with his arrival in Jamaica as a merchant seaman on an English slave ship. He is with a group of sailors who are attacked by a band of fugitive slaves. The others are killed, but Brunt's life is spared because of a kindness he had once shown to one of the slaves. He is held prisoner by the group, which eventually puts to sea in in canoes to escape pursuit. There they encounter a pirate ship and join up as crewmen, promising to put Brunt ashore at the earliest opportunity. But what ensues are sea battles, a mutiny, an epic storm and a shipwreck--all standard plot elements since Greek times for leaving a person helpless, alone, and irretrievably lost.

Brunt is now in Cacklogallinia, a country peopled by giant, intelligent chickens. Here begins the satirical phase of the novel. Once Brunt learns to speak the locals' language, they exchange information about their respective countries. Brunt describes England in glowing terms, saying that the politicians are all honest and self-sacrificing, that physicians treat all patients equally regardless of their ability to pay, and that lawyers are few and devoted to justice. The Cacklogallinians admit that all is not as it should be in their country, and what follows is the satirist's parody of the real England of his time.

After Brunt has lived among the Cacklogallinians for five years and risen to a position of trust in the Emperor's court, he is asked to participate in a flight to the moon. A rooster scientist has theorized that there is gold in abundance on the moon's surface, and before long shares are being sold in the venture. The reports Brunt sends back from the team's mountain-top launch point are used to manipulate the share prices. Fortunes are made and lost before they even leave the ground. This is an obvious reference to the South Sea Bubble venture which created a scandal in England in the 1720s.

Brunt travels to the moon in a streamlined capsule towed by his chicken companions. Aside from the issue of an interplanetary atmosphere, the author's assumptions on gravity, weightlessness, the distance to the moon, and travel time are fairly accurate. Brunt may be have been history's first space-walker, when he emerges from his capsule in mid-flight to float alongside it. Once Brunt is on the moon the novel loses its satirical character and becomes a spiritual and moral fable. Brunt and the chickens are treated to a series of visions resembling those that Scrooge would see a century later in A Christmas Carol.

A Voyage to Cacklogallinia is a well-written and often entertaining satire that is neither obscure nor overlong. The author's description of a chicken civilization--including their wars with the owls and the magpies--is clever and funny. Nor is his sympathetic account of escaped slaves in Jamaica to be overlooked.

57NanaCC
Ott 25, 2013, 11:50 am

Great review, Steven. It seems to be a very interesting concept for its time.

58mkboylan
Ott 25, 2013, 11:51 am

Oh my what a great review!

59mkboylan
Ott 25, 2013, 11:55 am

Just grabbed the free Kindle edition on Amazon. For some reason the link from the book page to Amazon didn't work but when I went to Amazon and searched it the free copy came up.

60baswood
Ott 25, 2013, 4:39 pm

A voyage to Cacklogallinia sounds a good one.

61dchaikin
Modificato: Ott 25, 2013, 8:44 pm

Entertaining stuff in Cacklogallinia. Great review. Also interesting to see a Jewish element in the Pilgrimage series.

62labfs39
Ott 26, 2013, 7:21 pm

Brunt is now in Cacklogallinia, a country peopled by giant, intelligent chickens. Here begins the satirical phase of the novel.

No, really? And here I was thinking the chickens were real! Ha, ha. Anyway, as I sit here listening to my idiotic hens, two of which are trying to crow like roosters, I was thinking that sending them to the moon would be a good idea, before my neighbors make soup.

Excellent two reviews, Steven. I had the same question as Merrikay, so something about your review of Deadlock must be particularly appealing. I think the contrasts you describe. I'm not sure I'm ready to commit to a 13 volume series at the moment though.

63StevenTX
Ott 26, 2013, 8:08 pm

#59 - I read the free edition too. I just used the cover image from the $3.99 Ron Miller edition because it was cute. The free edition is perfectly readable and relatively free from typos. It has a very useful introduction as well.

#60 - I hope I didn't oversell it. I may even have been generous with 3 stars. It was just such an improvement over the mind-numbing Consolidator.

#61 - This was, of course, the time of the Dreyfus Affair in France, though it isn't mentioned in the novel. I've found documents on the web that suggest Richardson herself was anti-Semitic. I couldn't come to that conclusion from what I've read so far. Her character is proud of England's record of tolerance of Jews, but gets cold feet about the idea of marrying one herself. She is definitely racist (at least at that age), though. When she sees a black man in a restaurant she gets upset and wants to leave.

#62 - As a kid I lived on an egg farm where we had 400+ of the silly creatures, so I found the idea of a chicken civilization especially amusing. The author does a great job of depicting courtly mannerisms and obsequiousness in terms of natural chicken behavior. Whoever he (or she) was, he knew his fowl.

something about your review of Deadlock must be particularly appealing

At first I wasn't even going to write a review of this and successive volumes because they're getting shorter. Then I decided to do so for consistency's sake, but didn't spend more than 20 minutes on it compared to the 1-2 hours I normally spend sweating over a review. I guess that's why it's more appealing :-)

64labfs39
Ott 26, 2013, 8:27 pm

We never have more than six hens at a time, and they are my daughter's pets, so are particularly tame. They are silly, but amusing, and I was surprised at how different their personalities can be. Ours come when called, consent to riding on swings and being pulled in wagons, and come watch us through the sliding glass doors if they are let out of their pen. I fret, however, that our neighbors won't be so amused by this bout of loud complaining that two of them are currently engaging in. We have another who always crows when laying, but fortunately that is of short duration, and frankly I would have something to say too if I had to lay an egg every day.

Your reviews are so good, Steven, that it is a relief to hear that you too struggle to write them. I was afraid they just popped fully formed from your brilliant mind, which is quite discouraging. Although if this is an example of a hastily written review, I'm still in dispirited awe!

65Linda92007
Ott 27, 2013, 8:05 am

I fully agree with Lisa's comments about your reviews!

66StevenTX
Ott 27, 2013, 9:46 pm

Thank, Lisa & Linda.

Lisa, I can't help thinking of Mark Twain's line: "Noise proves nothing. Often a hen who has merely laid an egg cackles as if she laid an asteroid."

Now to lay another book review...

67mkboylan
Ott 27, 2013, 10:15 pm

If Twain were still alive I would wish him to give birth to 22 children, all with 12 months gestation each.

Your reviews rock!

68StevenTX
Ott 27, 2013, 10:23 pm

Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
First published 1971

 

Lives of Girls and Women is the loosely autobiographical story of a girl's coming of age in a small Canadian town in the 1940s. Each chapter is a separate episode almost like a short story, but the stories are linked and meant to be read as a novel. The narrator, Della Jordan, is from a lower middle class family. Her father farms silver foxes; her mother sells encyclopedias.

Della is a keen observer, and through her eyes we see many sides of life in the town of Jubilee. Each chapter focuses on a different character, and a different facet of life until, in the end, it is Della herself who becomes the focus. Acceptance, rejection, and conformity--those perennial small-town concerns--are the overriding themes. The attitudes of others, even the language that they use around you, "stripped away the freedom to be what you wanted." Della's blossoming intellectual interests are frowned upon. "Reading books was something like chewing gum, a habit to be abandoned when the seriousness and satisfactions of adult life took over. It persisted mainly in unmarried ladies, would have been shameful in a man."

The role of women is a major theme as well. Della's mother defies convention by becoming a wage-earning wife and mother. She is also an agnostic in an age of faith, and a feminist. She lectures her daughter: "There is a change coming I think in the lives of girls and women. Yes. But it is up to us to make it come. All women have had up till now has been their connection with men. All we have had. No more lives of our own, really, than domestic animals." Della defies and disappoints her mother on occasion, but the echo of these words will help point her down the road to independence.

"People's lives, in Jubille as elsewhere, were dull, simple, amazing and unfathomable--deep caves paved with kitchen linoleum." Lives of Girls and Women is an earthy, gritty, deceptively simple but profound descent into those depths.

69NanaCC
Ott 27, 2013, 10:31 pm

Nice review, Steven. I've never read Munro, but you and Joyce have made me think that I should.

70mkboylan
Ott 28, 2013, 12:09 am

ok that does it. I'm going for the Munro.

71rebeccanyc
Ott 28, 2013, 7:37 am

I've only read Munro's stories, but a friend gave me this book a while ago (although LT doesn't seem to think I have it) and I will read it eventually. Nice review.

72baswood
Ott 28, 2013, 3:25 pm

Enjoyed your review of Lives of Girls and Women, but my first Munro book won't be this one.

Always interested to see what new books appear on your reading shelves.

73labfs39
Ott 29, 2013, 5:06 pm

LOL! I love Twain. The Diaries of Adam and Eve is one of the funniest things I've ever read.

I have never read anything by Alice Munro, and I'm wondering where to begin. Is this the first book you've read by her? Why did you start here?

Why won't you start here, Barry?

74StevenTX
Ott 29, 2013, 5:08 pm

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
First published in Portuguese 1881
English translation by Gregory Rabassa 1997

 

The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas is a playful, metafictional novel that immediately brings to mind Laurence Sterne's Tristam Shandy. It is "Posthumous" for the simple reason that to write his whole life's story, a man must wait until he is dead so the story is complete. He begins by telling us of his death in his native Brazil, in 1869, at the age of 64--a childless bachelor, so we know ahead of time the fruitless outcome of the love affairs which will dominate his memoirs.

Going back to his beginnings, Brás Cubas describes his ancestry--how he manages to be rich enough never to have to work in his life--and his spoiled childhood. Brás is barely grown before he is squandering a fortune on trinkets for a favorite prostitute. His indulgent father, finally losing patience with him, sends Brás to Europe to finish his education. Returning after having barely eked out a degree, he refuses a career in politics and the marriage his father has arranged to the beautiful Virgília. But then, as soon as Virgília has been wed to someone else, Brás falls madly in love with her.

Brás Cubas, in short, is a no-account dandy whose life is noteworthy only for the trouble he causes those who persistently care for him. His life history would be a dreary novel, except that the novel isn't so much about Brás as about the story itself. The narrator regularly steps back from the narrative to address the reader as audience, accomplice, or adversary. At one point he laments:

"I'm beginning to regret this book. Not that it bores me, I have nothing to do and, really, putting together a few meager chapters for that other world is always a task that distracts me from eternity a little. But the book is tedious, it has the smell of the grave about it; it has a certain cadaveric contraction about it, a serious fault, insignificant to boot because the main defect of the book is you, reader. You're in a hurry to grow old and the book moves slowly. You love direct and continuous narration, a regular and fluid style, and this book and my style are like drunkards, they stagger left and right, they walk and stop, mumble, yell, cackle, shake their fists at the sky, stumble and fall..."

He describes his book very well. There are chapters with typographical flourishes such as dialogue consisting of nothing but punctuation marks, a chapter with a title and no text, and chapters that are simply brief soliloquies. Sometimes Brás pats himself on the back, saying things like "By God, that's a good way to end a chapter!" At another point he suddenly interrupts himself to go back and clarify something from several chapters earlier, closing with "Good Lord! Do I have to explain everything?"

The result is a delightful little satirical novel with all its moving parts fully exposed and vividly painted so reader and author can have a good laugh at one another.

75StevenTX
Ott 29, 2013, 5:29 pm

Is this the first book you've read by her? Why did you start here?

Yes, it was the first. I own several of her books, all unread, because a group I belonged to once was going to do a quarterly focus on Munro, but the group folded before we got there, and I never got around to reading any of them. I read Lives of Girls and Women simply because it was the first published of those I own. Even though she is better known for her stories, this novel might not be a bad place to start anyway because of its autobiographical elements.

Mark Twain was probably my favorite author when I was in my teens and early 20s, and I read everything of his I could get my hands on. The Diaries of Adam and Eve (published in a book called Letters from the Earth) was one of my favorites along with The Innocents Abroad.

76labfs39
Ott 29, 2013, 7:17 pm

Another fun review, Steven. I just finished reading HHhH, in which the author comments on the writing process and the book, and I agree that the technique involves the reader in the story in a way that feels like a conversation. Binet's book was rather funny in parts too, despite the theme of the narrative (the assassination of Heydrich and the fate of the accomplices). Despite being classified as fiction, some readers call it nonfiction, because they take the author narrator at his word. That is always a dangerous proposition in my mind, but Binet does a remarkable job at describing his supposed emotions as he is writing the book. Very interesting.

77StevenTX
Ott 29, 2013, 10:45 pm

Niels Klim's Journey Under the Ground by Ludvig Holberg
First published in Latin 1741
Translated to Danish by Hans Hagerup in 1742
English translation from the Danish by John Gierlow 1845

 

In 1665 Niels Klim returns from school in Copenhagen to his native Bergen. He is approached by a pair of local scientists who ask him to explore a remarkable cave, they being too old and infirm to do so themselves. Niels agrees, and before long he is being lowered into the apparently bottomless cave. Then the rope breaks, and Niels is plunged alone into the darkness. He falls for a quarter of an hour before emerging into the hollow center of the earth. There he sees a miniature sun and planet. Niels drifts for days in orbit near this planet, until he is attacked by a giant bird and brought to the surface before driving off the bird. Next he is threatened by a large bull, so he attempts to climb the nearest tree. Much to Niels's astonishment, the tree screams that she is being raped and slaps him in the face.

Of course Niels doesn't know at the time what the tree is saying; it takes him a few months to learn the language of the intelligent trees who inhabit the planet Nazar. Once he has done so, he is put on trial for attempted rape. The wise trees acquit him of any crime, then find a job for him as courier (he being much faster on two feet than they are on roots) as he learns their laws and customs.

Niels soon journeys all over the surface of the small planet, finding that each species of tree has its own nation and its own characteristics. Eventually he will travel up to the "Firmament," the underside of the earth's crust, where he finds nations of intelligent monkeys, tigers, magpies, chickens, and even musical instruments. His fortunes will rise and fall. He will be, at times, a courier, explorer, adviser, inventor, wig-maker, porter, galley slave, fugitive, general and emperor. He will be threatened with dissection by doctors, pissed on by philosophers, and propositioned by lovesick trees, sows, monkeys, and a lioness. And, of course, he will learn many lessons about human nature from these non-humans.

Holberg mixes moral lessons with satire. He observes that adversity and hard work make us better people, while wealth and ease produce sloth, misery, and lax morals. He examines the roles of the sexes and shows that the wisest nations are those where the females and males are the most equal. Much of his satire is directed at the Catholic Church, though he also pokes fun at each European nation in turn. He ridicules all the higher professions and government institutions as well. One nation of trees, for example, is unfortunate enough to have a portion of its saplings born without heads. "On account of this natural defect, they are generally excluded from offices where brains are thought to be useful," but "Occasionally one of them is taken up into the senate."

Niels Klim's Journey Under the Ground is an amusing example of the "fantastic voyage" utopian and satirical novels that were common in the 17th and 18th centuries. It is superior to some of the others I've read in that there is a continuous plot, not just a few pages of adventure followed by nothing but description. There is also great variety, and the reader doesn't need to know a lot about the history and politics of the era to understand the satire.

78kidzdoc
Ott 30, 2013, 5:09 am

Great reviews, Steven. I'm glad that you enjoyed Lives of Girls and Women, as I plan to read it next year.

79SassyLassy
Ott 30, 2013, 11:25 am

Regarding Alice Munro and her subject matter,..an earthy, gritty, deceptively simple but profound descent into those depths nails it perfectly. I currently live in Alice Munro country and believe it or not, little seems to have changed since the times she describes. Who Do You Think You Are? could come out of the mouth of just about anyone born and raised in these parts, even though they may have replaced the kitchen linoleum with something more fashionable.
I can only imagine what Munro might say about a group that folded before it really got going.

Love the sound of Niels Klims Journey under the Ground. I'm picturing a Linnaeus sort of person engaging in flights of fancy and then being brought down to earth by his more civic self. I will have to look for this one.

Machado is on my TBR pile for the fourth quarter and moving up.

Intriguing reviews as always.

80rebeccanyc
Ott 30, 2013, 12:45 pm

I'm skipping your Bras Cubas review, Steven, because that's one of the books I recently started but have "paused" on; I'm still planning to get back to it, though, as I enjoyed Machado de Assis's Don Casmurro when I read it some years ago.

Enjoyed your other reviews, though.

81mkboylan
Ott 30, 2013, 12:51 pm

Wonderful reviews as always.

82baswood
Ott 30, 2013, 7:44 pm

Great reviews Steven. The Posthumous memoirs of Bras Cubas sounds like a book that you will either like or one that you will lose patience with. I usually like author interventions especially when it is done in a satirical way. It sounds like a lot of fun.

Neils Klim's Journey Underground is a discovery. I presume it is free in the public domain.

83StevenTX
Nov 1, 2013, 12:39 pm

The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt by Albert Camus
First published 1951
English translation by Anthony Bower 1956

 

The Rebel is Albert Camus's response to the idea that European leftists are obligated to follow the lead of the Soviet Union under Stalin. In this essay he discusses the various themes of revolutionary thought in a post-religious world, going back to Jacobins and the French Revolution. He also develops the idea of rebellion as distinct from revolution, and concludes with an argument that in a highly polarized era of extreme ideologies, to be a moderate is to be a rebel.

"Is it possible to find a rule of conduct outside the realm of religion and its absolute values? That is the question raised by rebellion." In the first section of the book, Camus looks at those who have proposed an answer to this question, starting with the negation of all values as proposed by the Marquis de Sade. He looks in more detail, though, at the ideas of Nietzsche, followed by those of the Romantics and other literary movements.

The longest section of the book is an examination of historical rebellion, starting with the Jacobins and continuing through the 20th century. The sharpest focus is on Marxism and, in particular, the idea embodied in the "dictatorship of the proletariat" that Marxism "aims at liberating all men by provisionally enslaving them all." This leads to the mandate that we murder men for the sake of mankind, and the grotesque idea that the victims must exalt their executioner. Camus counters this with the argument that "instead of killing and dying in order to produce the being that we are not, we have to live and let live in order to create what we are."

The problem with much of Camus's writing, as baswood aptly put it in his recent review, is that "he loved a well turned sentence more than the thought within it and he cannot resist an aphorism especially where it includes a play on words. His penchant for short punchy sentences is also not conducive when explaining complicated ideas." Instead of the methodical arguments used by most philosophers, Camus leaps from one bold assertion and generalization to the next. It's possible, however, that someone with more background than I have in the ideas of philosophers such as Hegel, Marx and Nietzsche may find some of Camus's comments more digestible.

It's also unfortunate that when Camus finally comes to his concluding remarks on moderation, he resorts more to poetic metaphors than concrete ideas and recommendations. France at that time in history seemed poised between the influence of Soviet communism and American corporate capitalism. Camus rejected both, but in The Rebel he barely mentions the latter, saying only that, like Marxism, it is a society based on industrial production and that any society based on production is "only productive, not creative."

The Rebel is obviously an important work, and there are many ideas within it which any reader can appreciate. But to understand and judge the book as a whole it is probably best to approach it with a strong background in the writers and ideas on which Camus built his thesis.

84kidzdoc
Nov 1, 2013, 7:52 pm

Great review of The Rebel, Steven.

85rebeccanyc
Nov 2, 2013, 8:24 am

Very interesting, as usual.

86StevenTX
Nov 2, 2013, 12:03 pm

Revolving Lights by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1923
Seventh novel of Pilgrimage

"But all the things of the mind that had come her way had come unsought; yet finding her prepared; so that they seemed not only her rightful property, but also in some way, herself.... Still it was strange, she reflected, with a consulting glance at the returning brilliance, that without any effort of her own, so many different kinds of people and thoughts should have come, one after the other, as if in an ordered sequence into the little backwater of her life. What for? To what end was her life working by some sort of inner arrangement? To turn, into a beautiful distance outspread behind her as she moved on? What then?"

What a remarkable thing that a woman in her late twenties, living more than a century ago entirely alone on a salary of a mere £100 a year, should see her own future in terms of unlimited intellectual opportunity. That is how Dorothy Richardson envisioned her own past in the the thoughts of Miriam Henderson, her alter ego in Pilgrimage. Without the ties and obligations of family, career or debt, Miriam is not only completely free and independent, but, despite the lack of a college education, has full access to the cultural resources and leading minds of the greatest city on earth. And she means to use them to the fullest.

Not without sacrifice, however. In this beautiful passage, Miriam decides she must reject the marriage proposal of a man she loves because she loves her freedom more:

"...to-night the long street they were in shone brightly towards the movement of her thought. Some hidden barrier to their separation had been removed. She waited curbed, incredulous of her freedom to breathe the wide air; unable to close her ears to the morning sounds of the world opening before her as the burden slipped away. Drawing back, she paused to try upon herself the effect of his keenly imagined absence. She was dismantled, chill and empty-handed, returning unchanged to loneliness. But no thrill of pain followed this final test; the unbelievable severance was already made. Even whilst looking for words that would break the shock, she felt she had spoken."

Revolving Lights (the title refers to the stars) is a short novel consisting of snapshots from a year or more of Miriam's life; an hour here, two days there, with no connecting narrative. With her decision to assert her independence, Miriam's feminism, somewhat latent in the previous volume, returns full force with vicious remarks such as: "It's amazing the blindness in men... All that men have done, since the beginning of the world, is to find out and give names to and do, the things that were in women from the beginning, and that the best of them have been doing all the time."

And: "Is the absence of personality original in men? Or only the result of their occupations? Original. Otherwise environment is more than the human soul. It is original. Belonging to maleness; to Adam with his spade; lonely in a universe of things. It causes them to be moulded by their occupations, taking shape, and status, from what they do. A barrister, a waiter, recognizable. Men have no natural rank. A woman can become a waitress and remain herself. Yet men pity women, and think them hard because they do not pity each other. It is man, puzzled, astray, always playing with breakable toys, lonely and terrified in his universe of chaotic forces, who is pitiful."

H. G. Wells plays a major part in this novel in an odd dual role. His real name is mentioned in connection with his writings, but he appears also at length as the character Hypo Wilson, Miriam's mentor and intellectual sparring partner. His socialist ideas enter into the discussion, but political ideas are secondary in the novel to the theme of Miriam's spiritual and mental blossoming as she asserts her independence.

87labfs39
Nov 2, 2013, 11:50 pm

...the absence of personality...causes them to be moulded by their occupations, taking shape, and status, from what they do. A barrister, a waiter, recognizable. Men have no natural rank. A woman can become a waitress and remain herself.

wow, that resonates with a conversation I had this week. Although I doubt I will ever read this series of novels, I am quite fascinated by your reviews.

88baswood
Nov 3, 2013, 4:26 am

Excellent review of Revolving lights and I loved the short extracts that you quoted. it is quite difficult to understand why this series of books is so neglected today. The battle for independence fought by Richardson through her novels would have resonated with many women and men today I would have thought. You are uncovering a real gold mine with this series of readings and who knows you might encourage others to read them

Hypo is a great christian name for H G Wells.

89NanaCC
Nov 3, 2013, 6:25 am

Loved your review of Revolving Lights, Steven. I am determined to read this series at some point in my life.

90mkboylan
Nov 3, 2013, 2:30 pm

Oh I need more reading time!

91kidzdoc
Nov 3, 2013, 4:31 pm

Nice review of Revolving Lights, Steven.

92StevenTX
Nov 3, 2013, 10:30 pm

The Trap by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1925
Eighth novel of Pilgrimage

Descending from the cerebral to the domestic and social, The Trap is the shortest and least eventful novel so far in the Pilgrimage series. Miriam Henderson is now 28 years old. While her intellectual aspirations are unchanged, her new living arrangements and wider circle of acquaintances have brought her into contact with people whose ideas and expectations are more conventional and commonplace. Considering her new boyfriend, she reflects: "The strange thing was that seeming to value her for what he called the intellectual heights that had kept her uncorrupted by petty social life, he yet wanted her to come down from them and join the crowd." To become and succumb to what society wants and expects of a woman is the trap into which Miriam must not fall.

Her response is to develop a new hardness that lets her move among the pitfalls of love and friendship untouched. "She was growing worldly now, capable of concealments in the interest of social joys, worse, capable of assumed cynicism for the sake of advertising her readiness for larks she was not quite sure of wishing to share. And thought was there, a guilty secret, quiet as a rule."

The Trap is a novel of transition as Miriam fortifies herself emotionally for the solitary life she has chosen for herself.

93mkboylan
Nov 3, 2013, 11:23 pm

Your reviews are killing me! I need to get through 3 ERs and a couple of library books before I get to Richardson but.they.sound so interesting.

94StevenTX
Nov 4, 2013, 10:10 am

...it is quite difficult to understand why this series of books is so neglected today.

Apparently Pilgrimage never took off much in popularity when it first appeared during the First World War because of its pro-German tone (culturally, not politically). There were, however, three complete editions published during the "Women's Lib" era of 1967 to 1979. After that, though, Richardson seems to have fallen back into obscurity, except for being mentioned in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, which is how I heard of her. Perhaps the idea of 2000+ pages of "stream of consciousness" scares people off, but I'm finding her easier to read than Proust, only more serious in tone. She deserves to be considered his female counterpart.

95mkboylan
Nov 4, 2013, 10:19 am

That is very interesting info Steven.

96StevenTX
Modificato: Nov 7, 2013, 12:48 pm

I haven't had anything to post for a few days, so here's something to think about. During recent months I've read about a dozen utopian and proto-science fiction novels from the 16th-18th centuries. I've noticed some common themes and motifs:

Size matters - In virtually all cases where a traveler encounters a lost civilization or a race of beings on the moon or inside the earth, they are bigger than he is. (Gulliver's Lilliputians being an exception.) And in some of these societies height itself is a matter of distinction. In one case tall people are automatically chosen as leaders. In another case, conversely, being chosen for special distinction makes the honoree immediately grow several inches taller.

Religion and clothing - Most of these utopian societies, like Thomas More's Utopia, pride themselves on freedom of religion and the absence of religious strife. (This is a natural attitude for a writer to have after centuries of religious war in Europe.) Their egalitarian values are also reflected in the fact that everyone dresses alike or, in some cases, not at all. The exception in both cases is Bacon's New Atlantis, which is a Christian theocracy in which those of higher standing are denoted by sumptuous clothing.

Heavenly nourishment - One pervasive idea in every one of the celestial journeys (whether to the moon or the center of the earth) is that while in empty space the human body requires no food or drink (and therefore has no need for excretion). This probably originates in the Christian notion that in Heaven everyone subsists on spiritual nourishment alone. It's also a common theme that the more advanced terrestrial and lunar societies require less food than the Europeans--the extreme case being Cyrano de Bergerac's moon men who live on smell alone.

Gender - In most, if not all of the utopian and lunar societies there is more equality between men and women than in the traveler's native land. The extreme case is Foigny's The Southern Land, Known where the inhabitants are all hermaphrodites.

Miscegenation and bestiality - Bawdiness is a common element in 17th and 18th century novels, but these science fiction romances add the extra spice of sex with other species, including those which are intelligent forms of terrestrial animals. In most cases the European is propositioned and refuses either on moral grounds or because the lady in question is simply repulsive to him.

Incest - The idea of incestuous relations among members of another race or European survivors of a shipwreck isn't as common, but does come up more than you would expect. In each case traditional taboos are dismissed as invalid or impractical, with the children of Adam and Eve being cited as a biblical sanction.

It seems to me that these themes reflect an odd combination of intellectual open-mindedness and European conceit. Economic egalitarianism, religious freedom, gender parity, and the relaxation of sexual taboos are ideals which intellectual leaders of all eras have tended to hold. But this was also a time when European explorers were encountering other races and cultures across the globe, and perhaps the notion of "taller is better" reflects the fact that the Europeans were generally taller than the peoples they encountered. Also the idea that the earthly traveler is sexually appealing to Lunarian ladies, but not the other way around, demonstrates a conceited attitude toward European standards of beauty relative to the rest of the world.

How do we stand with these ideas today? In today's world we still have a strong prejudice for height. No mother wants her son to grow up short.

The situation with regards to religion and clothing, however, is almost reversed. Religious fundamentalists are the ones who enforce uniformity of dress. And emphasizing your economic superiority through your manner of dress is considered acceptable or even laudable.

We tend to praise those who eat less, but for reasons of aesthetics rather than spirituality. The skinny supermodel remains the standard of beauty for most of the world.

Sexual attitudes seem to have polarized such that those things that were perhaps the subject of debate in the 18th century are now either perfectly acceptable (intermarriage of races) or considered too horrible for serious contemplation (bestiality, incest). And, for better or worse, the white European ideal of beauty has prevailed thanks to the cultural dominance of American and European media.

97labfs39
Nov 7, 2013, 1:35 pm

Your synthesis of your reading is fascinating, Steven. The themes you identify and the conclusions you draw are worthy of a lecture hall. And reading your posts is more entertaining than many of the lectures I've attended in the past. The idea of not needing nourishment in space is also a practical one for an author, I would think. Something about the emptiness of space being reflected in our bodies as well. I find the tension between these stories being a parody of or reaction against religious control, and yet at the same time reflecting some of those same religious arguments is interesting. I'm also thinking of evolution and fashion. Why is it that valuing height in men, probably an admirable trait per evolution, is retained; yet fat in women, also a good thing in an evolutionary sense (or at least in the past, see MJ's discussion of her latest read), is not?

98mkboylan
Modificato: Nov 7, 2013, 5:17 pm

Steven once again I especially enjoyed your post and found it very thought provoking. Thanks.

99rebeccanyc
Modificato: Nov 8, 2013, 9:53 am

What Lisa and Merrikay said! I especially enjoyed reading your thoughts because I'm highly unlikely to read any of the books you've been reviewing (although I enjoy your reviews), and it is certainly fascinating to think about the themes of early utopian thinking.

100baswood
Nov 8, 2013, 1:27 pm

Perhaps it wouldn't be an Utopia if there was no religious freedom or sexual equality. Thank goodness these books were written by the intellectuals of the time. What is surprising when you read the 17th and 18th century utopia books is that for the most part I would be happy about living in those societies; there are plenty of worse ones that have occurred here on earth since those times.

Where I live in South West France I am taller than most of the native population who seem to be mostly under 5ft 6 inches. I am still trying to work out if this gives me any advantages, apart from being able to see better in a crowd.

101StevenTX
Modificato: Nov 8, 2013, 10:34 pm

The Life and Astonishing Adventures of John Daniel as by Ralph Morris
Author's real identity is unknown
First published 1751

   

John Daniel is a young Englishman happily apprenticed to his father, the town smith, when his widowed father turns John's life upside down by marrying a beautiful young girl who is John's own age. John's new stepmother soon falls in love with him, leaving John no choice but to run away from home rather than fall to temptation and dishonor his father. He signs aboard a ship bound for the East Indies, but his bad luck continues. The ship is driven far off course by a mighty storm, and finally wrecked. Only John and a young crewman named Thomas survive, crawling ashore on a deserted tropical island.

The first half of the novel revisits Robinson Crusoe, only with two castaways instead of one. But this story of survival and improvisation takes a turn for the fantastic when, after many years, the marooned Englishmen salvage enough supplies and equipment from another wrecked ship to build a flying machine, which they name the Eagle. A test flight goes awry, and soon John and his companion are hopelessly lost in the stratosphere, so high they can see nothing but the sun in a strangely endless day. Eventually they spot an orb beneath them and finally touch down on a mountain top. They don't realize it at the time, but instead of England as they had hoped, they have landed on the moon (anticipating by about 250 years the landing of another "Eagle"). Even when they meet the copper-colored moon men, they only assume they are the inhabitants of another earthly continent. Finding Lunar food lacking in nourishment, they soon take off again, eventually blundering back to the earth and into the lair of a family of English-speaking sea monsters.

John Daniel is an entertaining adventure novel, and appears to have been written only for that purpose. The strange races the hero encounters aren't described in enough detail to make the novel either utopian or satirical. Though published in 1751, it takes place roughly 1640 to 1711, but other than mentioning the date on a tombstone there are no historical references. "Ralph Morris" is a character in a framing narrative. The author's actual identity remains unknown, though an entry in the Science Fiction Encyclopedia speculates that it may be Robert Paltock, who published a very similar novel the same year.

This isn't an important novel, but it is a good example of a work that banks on the popularity of Robinson Crusoe while titillating readers with even more exotic locations and scandalous goings on. The survival story is well done and quite believable (up until the moon flight, of course), and the novel has another dimension I can't reveal without spoiling a major surprise. John Daniel was made available only recently as part of a series of ebooks edited by Ron Miller. A previous title I read in the series was marred by a disconcerting number of typographical errors, but happily that was not the case with John Daniel, as there were only three or four minor errors in the book, and the addition of illustrations from the original edition was a very nice touch.

102baswood
Nov 8, 2013, 7:35 pm

Happy days with the The Life and astonishing Adventures of John Daniel and I am pleased that this Ron Miller production fares better than the previous one. Enjoyed your review and I suppose I will just have to read the thing to find out about the surprise.

103rebeccanyc
Nov 8, 2013, 9:33 pm

You do read the most interesting and unknown books, Steven!

104StevenTX
Nov 10, 2013, 10:35 am

Micromegas by Voltaire
First published 1752
Undated English translation by Peter Phalen

 

The title character of Micromegas is a being from a planet orbiting the star Sirius. It is an immense planet, so its inhabitants are large too: Micromegas is about 23 miles tall. Their lives are proportionately long as well, so when Micromegas finds himself banished from court for 800 years for holding an unpopular scientific opinion, he decides to spend it visiting other planets in the galaxy, hopping "from globe to globe like a bird vaulting itself from branch to branch."

Eventually Micromegas comes to Saturn, where he is amused to find the inhabitants only 6,000 feet tall, but being open-minded Micromegas does not disparage their intelligence just because they are dwarfs. He strikes up a friendship with a Saturnian philosopher, and the two set out to explore the other worlds of the solar system. "Carried by the tail of a comet, and finding an aurora borealis at the ready, they started towards it, and arrived at Earth on the northern coast of the Baltic sea, July 5, 1737, new style. After resting for some time they ate two mountains for lunch..."

Micromegas and his diminutive companion circle the Earth on foot in 36 hours, looking for any signs of life. They are about to give up their search, when they spot a tiny form on the ocean--a whale--and this leads to the discovery of a nearby ship. Using their microscopes they see that it is crewed by minuscule men. After listening to their speech for a few minutes, Micromegas and his companion have learned enough French to converse with them and are delighted to discover that there are a number of fellow philosophers on board.

The Frenchmen regale the visiting aliens with the theories of various earthly philosophers, and Locke is found particularly pleasing. But when a cleric steps up to assert with Thomas Aquinas that "their people, their worlds, their suns, their stars, had all been made uniquely for mankind" Micromegas concludes that "the infinitely small had an almost infinitely great pride."

Voltaire's short, brisk satire is not so much directed at any particular government or institution as against close-mindedness, bigotry, nationalism and cultural arrogance. It has lost none of its relevance and is a delight to read.

105labfs39
Nov 10, 2013, 11:43 am

I scrolled back up to remind myself of how you were finding these stories, but I didn't see a number. About how many titles are you planning to read in this theme, Steven? Are you reading all the ones listed, or those of most interest?

106StevenTX
Nov 10, 2013, 12:38 pm

Lisa, my plans are fluid and probably totally unrealistic as usual. I've compiled a composite list, sorted by publication date, of the works cited in the companion references Anatomy of Wonder and Fantasy and Horror. There are over 3000 works, but there's no way I will try to read them all. I'm focusing on those that are marked "Key" or that particularly interest me and that I either already own or can be obtained cheaply. But I'll also be adding to the list works that interest me from the writings of decadents, symbolists and surrealists that could be considered borderline fantasy (e.g. works by Rachilde, J. K. Huysmans, Alfred Jarry, Pierre Louÿs, etc.). I'm trying not to face up to the fact that at my current pace it could be years before I even reach the 20th century. (The same is true for my "Classics of Western Civilization" scheme. I'll be lucky to make it out of Ancient Greece in my lifetime.)

107baswood
Nov 10, 2013, 5:22 pm

#106 I know that feeling well Steven.

Micromegas sounds excellent I shall look forward to that one and it fits with your theory that size matters.

108kidzdoc
Modificato: Nov 11, 2013, 12:04 am

Very interesting review of Micromegas, Steven; I'll be on the lookout for it.

109StevenTX
Nov 13, 2013, 11:23 pm

 

I'm sure you have already noticed the difference between these two book covers. The one on the left is from the ebook I purchased of The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins, a novel first published in 1752 and recently reissued as part of a series of vintage science fiction by Ron Miller (who I believe is also the cover artist). I was searching online for any engravings that might have appeared in earlier editions, when I came upon the second cover from a self-publishing web site, which is probably where the book first appeared. Apparently the company, Baen Books, which released it as an ebook insisted upon the change for, as Jargoneer recently reminded us on baswood's thread, "the fabric of American society could unravel if a naked breast is seen."

Here are some other images of the winged maiden, whose name is Youwarkee. I found these and more on Russian, Spanish, French and Italian websites, so apparently Robert Paltock's novel is better known in translation than in the English-speaking world.

       

110baswood
Nov 14, 2013, 3:54 am

Love the images Steven and its good to see that you are doing your bit to unravel the fabric of America.

111StevenTX
Nov 14, 2013, 10:15 am

...its good to see that you are doing your bit to unravel the fabric of America.

One's life must have a purpose.

112labfs39
Nov 15, 2013, 1:02 pm

LOL!

113StevenTX
Nov 18, 2013, 10:37 pm

The Sin of Father Mouret by Émile Zola
First published 1875
English translation by Sandy Petrey 1969

 

This volume in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series examines the conflict between man's animal nature and the moral strictures imposed by religion. Father Serge Mouret is a young priest in a small French village where religion, if it is practiced at all, is taken very casually. The villagers live close to the land and enjoy its bounty and sensuousness. Father Mouret responds to this, not with resentment, but with fervid asceticism and self-mortification. He worships the Virgin Mary with a passion that is almost sexual, even as he prays to be released from the temptations of the flesh.

After a night of rapturous worship in front of Mary's image, Father Mouret collapses in a fever. He awakens in a strange room, utterly debilitated, and with no memory. The local doctor, his uncle, has arranged for him to be nursed by Albine, a half-wild teenage girl, the niece of the caretaker of an immense and overgrown garden called Paradou. Albine nurses the priest gradually back to health by taking walks in the garden. Slowly they fall in love and finally have sex under the garden's largest and oldest tree. Only minutes later, the priest catches a glimpse of the world outside the garden, sees his church, and his memories come flooding back.

Zola describes the landscape, and Paradou in particular, in feminine, sensual, and often overtly sexual terms:

"At night, this ardent country assumed the tortured arch of a woman consumed by lust. She slept, but the covers had been thrown aside; she swayed, twisted, passionately spread her legs, exhaled in great warm breaths the powerful smell of a beautiful sleeping woman dripping with sweat. It was like some strong Cybele fallen on her back, her breasts outthrust, her belly under the moon, drunk with the sun's heat, forever dreaming of impregnation."

Everything Father Mouret sees outside the church is tempting him away from the church. A spray of flowers becomes "a swooning young giantess thrusting her head backwards in the convulsions of her orgasm." And water cascades "in a waterfall whose soft curve seemed to be the fair torso of a woman's body." He is also subject to elaborate and fantastical dreams and hallucinations in which he sees his crumbling church struggling to repel the invading forces of nature.

The garden of Paradou is also a more conventional metaphor for the Garden of Eden, complete with the Tree of Knowledge where the lovers consummate their sin. Immediately afterward a breach appears in the garden's wall, symbolizing their mutual loss of virginity.

Zola's approach to the subject is impartial enough that those who wish to may actually see it as an affirmation of the evils of carnality, but most readers are likely to find the sensuous world of Serge and Albine in Paradou more compelling than the chaste, abstemious world of Father Mouret and his church. The plot of the novel is actually quite simple, and at times it seems overextended as the author seems determined to catalog every variety of plant life in Paradou. But Zola's powers of description and metaphor are breathtaking as he slowly builds the sexual chemistry between Serge and Albine and the internal tension between Father Mouret's physical and spiritual selves.

114RidgewayGirl
Nov 19, 2013, 4:53 am

I look forward to your reviews and this one was very satisfying.

115baswood
Nov 19, 2013, 5:05 am

Ah! the temptations in the life of a celibate man. Too awful to countenance and a wonderful subject for Zola to get his teeth into. Great review of The sin of father Mouret which is one of Zola's more popular books I think.

116rebeccanyc
Nov 19, 2013, 7:05 am

I enjoyed your review, Steven, although I must say I almost put down The Sin of Father Mouret several times when I was reading it, and probably only finished it because it was by Zola. It did make me think, though. Barry, I would be surprised if this is one of Zola's most popular books, in English anyway -- the most recent English translation I could find was from 1969 and it is out of print.

117StevenTX
Nov 19, 2013, 9:43 am

There is much in The Sin of Father Mouret that is atypical of Zola, and I had to make myself forget who was writing it to let the novel go where it wanted. The heavy symbolism is one example. The breach in the wall of the garden Paradou, for example, is guarded by a friar named Brother Archangias--obviously the archangel guarding the Garden of Eden. His misogyny is another interesting aspect to Zola's portrait of the church. He can't wait for little girls to misbehave so he can punish them. Then there is Mouret's sister Desirée as the pagan Earth-mother who immerses herself in blood and excrement, procreation and death, with the innocence and delight of a child.

Another unexpected aspect to the novel is the element of the fantastic. I have seen it listed on a reading list of recommended works of fantasy, and "fantasy" is not a word you expect to see associated with Émile Zola. Not only Father Mouret's dreams and hallucinations, but the entire episode of the garden are far beyond reality. Time passes slower in the garden--there are "weeks" doing this and "weeks" doing that, yet when it's over we learn that the priest was only absent for a month. And the garden must have its own climate, for everything is dry and barren in the surrounding lands.

Reading this novel is like watching Wagner's Tristan and Isolde--it is light on events but heavy on mood, and builds slowly and inexorably to the love-death finale. It's hard sometimes to be patient with it--at times it's like reading a gardening catalog without pictures--but I thought it was worth the effort.

118StevenTX
Nov 19, 2013, 10:57 am

As I was reading the garden scenes in The Sin of Father Mouret I kept picturing Claude Monet's garden at Giverny which I visited several years ago. On my return I made a short video using the photos I took there, but never had an occasion to share it until now. This is my first experience with YouTube, so please let me know if this link works:

http://youtu.be/E-1-LOVJp-o

119baswood
Modificato: Nov 19, 2013, 12:17 pm

Lovely pictures Steven and set perfectly to the music. You must have visited in late spring or early summer judging from the flowers on display. My only visit was about fourteen years ago in late summer, the wisteria was not so much in bloom, but the arch of nasturtiums were fantastic. It is a magical place. Thank you for sharing.

Any resemblance to the garden Paradou?

120rebeccanyc
Nov 19, 2013, 12:43 pm

I have to say I always enjoyed the scenes with Desiree because she was such a breath of -- I can't say "fresh" -- air; she was the most real of the characters for me. I realize there was a lot of Garden of Eden/fall of man symbolism in it, but I do feel there was more to it than that, something about the power of nature (both plant-wise and sexuality-wise) and about the inevitability of death (which is, after all, one part of nature). But maybe I was trying too hard to read things into it because I was somewhat mystified by it.

121StevenTX
Nov 19, 2013, 6:21 pm

#119 - I visited Giverny in early May seven years ago. Paradou is described by Zola as "immense," and is so large that even in weeks the two lovers haven't explored all of it. It seems to have a bit of everything: forests, flower gardens, rocks, cacti, grassy fields, and a large river. It may be a composite of places and seasons that couldn't exist in one place and time. I assume it is in Provence as that is where the Rougon-Macquart familiy originates, so the climate must be different from Giverny too. I wish I were more familiar with all the flowers named, but our climate is sub-tropical, so most them wouldn't grow here or, if they do, like pansies they bloom in the winter instead of the summer.

#120 - I don't disagree at all with your reading of it, and I loved Desirée as a character too. There's only so much you can say before a review becomes a thesis. It would be interesting, for example, to contrast Desirée and Albine: both children of nature and the outdoors, but so very different.

122StevenTX
Nov 19, 2013, 6:39 pm

Oberland by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1927
Ninth volume of Pilgrimage

In each of the preceding volumes of Pilgrimage the character of Miriam Henderson develops or broadens her experiences in some significant way. That doesn't seem to happen in Oberland, so I would rate it as the least important novel to this point in the series. Miriam chiefly seems to be storing up memories and characters for later reference, as when the author says "For a moment she was aware, far away in the future, of one of whom he was the forerunner, coming into her life for mortal combat."

The novel encompasses Miriam's two-week winter vacation in Switzerland at an Alpine village named Oberland. She meets and converses with guests from other countries and goes tobogganing. She sees that single men find her attractive, but are disarmed by her intelligence and strong opinions. And she must deal with the fact that she is a poor working girl mingling with wealthy travelers whose expensive adventures she cannot share. And while Miriam finds the beauty of Switzerland breathtaking, she is more than content to return to the intellectually stimulating atmosphere of London.

123edwinbcn
Nov 19, 2013, 8:55 pm

I have read all your reviews about Dorothy M. Richardson so far with interest. I had never heard about this author before. You've definitely put her on my radar. I will most likely pick up a book by this author, when it comes along.

124rebeccanyc
Nov 20, 2013, 7:25 am

#121 I don't think all the plants described by Zola would grow in any one location; I think there was such a profusion to suggest that Paradou was in some ways unreal (and to give Zola a chance to show off his knowledge of plants -- who knew?). And I found Albine very confusing in the sense that I couldn't figure out how "real" and how "symbolic" she was.

125SassyLassy
Nov 20, 2013, 12:34 pm

Stunning video Steven and as bas says, the Debussy adds that extra element to it. Even the smallest flowers show beautifully.

rebecca, steven's review had already put this book on my radar, but now your plant comment has given me a sense of mission... to read it from a floral perspective as well as a literary work! Sounds like a great project for those February blizzards.

126rebeccanyc
Nov 20, 2013, 3:06 pm

Sassy, if anyone can appreciate the endless cataloging of plants that at times made me want to tear my hair out, it's you!

127StevenTX
Nov 20, 2013, 6:07 pm

Maybe we should have a "Describe Your Garden Like Zola" contest.

E.g. The crape myrtle lofted its bare limbs like a languorous woman, her arms naked in the heat, raising her hands to the sun and dipping the startlingly red flowers of her fingernails in the summer breeze to beckon her lover.

128baswood
Nov 20, 2013, 8:02 pm

"Describe Your Garden Like Zola" I have never thought of my garden like that, but perhaps I could......................

129rebeccanyc
Nov 20, 2013, 9:31 pm

#127. Oy, it's hard to believe you could out-Zola Zola!

130mkboylan
Nov 21, 2013, 10:33 pm

BEST review and discussion!

and......great......now my husband and I are going crazy trying to remember where we were last summer there is a trail or a road that quickly moves through several ecological zones and is amazing. Just not quite amazing enough for us to remember it - but both of us are having memory issues so.........We're thinking maybe the road up to the bristlecone pines in eastern California, bristlecones being the oldest still living trees on earth I believe but I could be mistaken.

http://sonic.net/bristlecone/WhiteMts.html#Visiting%20&%20camping

131mkboylan
Nov 21, 2013, 10:35 pm

by the way interesting comment that you had to make yourself forget who the author was....

132SassyLassy
Nov 22, 2013, 3:08 pm

mk, thanks for the virtual trip to eastern California. It took me some time to come back.

I think the bristlecone is among the oldest trees on earth in the sense that individual trees have lived the longest (claims for 5,000 years in some cases), but I think the oldest tree in the sense that the species evolved earliest and is still with us is the Ginkgo biloba, a beautiful tree related to fossils from 270m years ago. Looking forward to other input.

133dchaikin
Nov 23, 2013, 10:56 am

I haven't read Zola, but you have me tempted to characterize my garden in that way - well yard - and I probably would need to actually look at it some time - but I could go places with the loblolly pines...

Catching up on numerous reviews. The Richardson reviews leave me curious as always.

134StevenTX
Nov 23, 2013, 11:51 am

but I could go places with the loblolly pines...

Please do! Not that this is necessarily what you had in mind, but while Zola doesn't go in much for male body metaphors he does comment on trees being "stout and erect" at appropriately suggestive moments.

135StevenTX
Modificato: Nov 24, 2013, 10:50 pm

The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins by Robert Paltock
First published 1751

 

Peter Wilkins is a rather spoiled upper middle class English teenager when his widowed mother remarries. His new stepfather wants him out of the way, so he sends Peter to boarding school. Three years later Peter discovers that his mother has died and the stepfather has disinherited him. So he leaves the young servant girl whom he has impregnated and secretly married to shift for herself and puts to sea to make his fortune. Through a sequence of pirate attacks and shipwrecks, Peter winds up a slave in Angola. There he learns to despise the institution of slavery and to respect the Africans and their culture. With some Portuguese prisoners he manages to escape and hijack a small ship. They steer far to the south to evade pursuit, then more mishaps bring them deep into unexplored Antarctic territory. Peter, the last survivor, winds up in a small boat sucked down a subterranean river and deposited in a lagoon surrounded by a small strip of jungle which is, in turn, encased within unscalable cliffs.

For several years Peter lives alone, Robinson Crusoe style, and prospers. He discovers how to make use of the strange flora and fauna around him with no more tool than his pocket knife. His new home is in perpetual twilight, with the degree of light varying with the seasons. (It's possible that this is a subterranean world, but it seems more likely that the author simply assumed that the sun is never visible at the poles.)

One day Peter hears voices coming from the sky. He can't determine their source, but soon something comes crashing through the trees. He discovers a beautiful, unconscious young woman. He nurses her patiently back to health, teaches her his language and learns some of hers, and, of course, falls in love with her. Her name is Youwarkee. Peter has proposed marriage to her before he learns that the sleek, tight-fitting garment she never removes is actually a type of wing that folds about her otherwise naked body at rest, but opens like a giant umbrella to allow her to fly.

Yourwarkee is utterly devoted to Peter and bears him several children before even suggesting that she might fly back home to visit her family. This leads to Peter's introduction to the nation of winged humans called Normnbdsgrsutt. They have managed fairly well for themselves despite being ignorant of agriculture, fire, weaving, metals, and writing. But Peter soon corrects these deficiencies, as he becomes embroiled in the political, military and commercial affairs of his new home.

This is not a utopian novel. Instead it is a celebration of the virtues of England and her economic, political and religious institutions. Peter's campaign against the natives' practice of idolatry perhaps represents the Protestant triumph over Catholicism in England. He rapidly sets about empire-building with peaceful and profitable trade being his principle objective. He is most progressive, however, in his relentless attack on the institution of slavery. He preaches "do to another, what you, in his place, would have him do to you; dismiss your slaves, let all men be what {God} made them, free."

The first two thirds of this novel, recounting Peter's nautical adventures, his survival, and his first years with Youwarkee, are a delight to read. But once Peter turns missionary, general, imperialist, merchant, matchmaker, educator, you-name-it, the charm wears off rapidly. The characters and plot cease to be interesting, and the novel just becomes a mirror of the attitudes and ideals of its time.

136dchaikin
Nov 24, 2013, 10:46 pm

#134 - But the things that could be expressed about suburban life...Ok, I admit, I'm disturbing myself here too.

I'll have to add The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins to this list of books I'm really glad Steven read and reviewed so nicely so that I can know something interesting about them without ever reading them myself. Enjoyed your review.

137baswood
Nov 25, 2013, 8:59 am

His new home is in perpetual twilight, with the degree of light varying with the seasons. (It's possible that this is a subterranean world, but it seems more likely that the author simply assumed that the sun is never visible at the poles.)

The above quote taken from your excellent (and stunningly bare breasted) review of The life and adventures of Peter Wilkins. It sounds like another hollow earth theory to me. Captain Adam Seaborn in Symzonia points out that because of the suns limited appearance in the sky through the hole in the Pole, much of the light in Symzonia was refracted light that resulted in a sort of twilight.

Edmond Halley of Halley comet fame put forward his theory of a hollow earth in 1691 and so Robert Paltock may well have been a follower.

I won't be able to resist reading The Life and adventures of Peter Wilkins

138StevenTX
Nov 25, 2013, 2:40 pm

Unfortunately Paltock doesn't theorize much about the where's and why's of the land of winged men. Peter Wilkins was neither a mariner by vocation nor an especially astute scholar, so it would have been out of character for him to have speculated on such matters. My first assumption was that it was a hollow earth, since Peter enters a cavern by boat and goes rushing downstream into an enclosed lagoon. But then he mentions that during the darker hours he sees the familiar stars. And flying men are easily able to visit Peter's wrecked ship, which makes it seem more like just a polar continent. The warmth of Antarctica may be explained by volcanic activity.

139rebeccanyc
Nov 25, 2013, 6:11 pm

Dan wrote: I'll have to add The Life and Adventures of Peter Wilkins to this list of books I'm really glad Steven read and reviewed so nicely so that I can know something interesting about them without ever reading them myself.

Ditto.

140labfs39
Dic 2, 2013, 12:19 pm

Catching up: loved the Zola discussion of Father Mouret and Paradou; enjoyed the springtime view of Monet's Gardens (we were there in August. My daughter looked over my shoulder and said "We took that picture too!"); sorry the latest Dorothy Richardson wasn't up to snuff; and thoroughly enjoyed the Wilkins review.

141StevenTX
Modificato: Dic 3, 2013, 10:30 am

Thanks for visiting, Lisa. I've got a lot of catching up on everyone else's threads to do as well.

142StevenTX
Dic 3, 2013, 2:16 pm

Dawn's Left Hand by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1931
Tenth volume of Pilgrimage

There was a four year span (1927 to 1931) between the publication of the previous volume of Pilgrimage, titled Oberland, and Dawn’s Left Hand, yet the latter resumes the story of Miriam Henderson almost at the moment Oberland leaves off. Stylistically, however, the two novels are quite different. Oberland is a gathering of experiences with a relatively conventional narration. Dawn’s Left Hand, however, is a novel of introspection and revelation. Most of the narrative is interior monologue, shifting occasionally from third to first person. Some chapters begin with dialog by unidentified speakers. The result is a much greater sense of being inside Miriam’s head rather than watching her from afar.

The events in the novel—and they are few—take place around 1910. Miriam returns from her vacation in Switzerland and commences an affair with her friend’s husband and her mentor, Hypo Wilson. (In Dorothy Richardson’s real life this was H. G. Wells.) But in her love affair, as in every other aspect of her life, Miriam won’t commit her whole person. She continues to be involved in causes, intellectual movements, and relationships, but more as an observer than a participant, never dedicating herself irrevocably to anything. She views her life as a continually advancing horizon of possibilities: All roads are equally open to her, but she takes none of them. Hypo chides her for this, saying she is wasting her potential by not becoming a writer as he has urged her to be. “But that would mean taking sides,” she argues, and a sacrifice of the freedom she has cherished.

On the dark side there is the event which clouds all of Richardson’s writing and is sometimes inferred but never described: her mother’s insanity and suicide. Occasionally, out of nowhere, there will come almost a shriek of despair as in this jarring note in Dawn’s Left Hand when Miriam passes by the street where her mother evidently killed herself and the sight “forced me to gaze into the darkest moment of my life and to remember that I had forfeited my share in humanity for ever and must go quietly and alone until the end.”

Dawn’s Left Hand is the most thoughtful and one of the best novels yet of the Pilgrimage series. It raises important issues such as how much of ourselves we should put at risk by committing to careers or relationships, speaking out, taking sides, and teaching rather than learning. For those of us who live in the world of books these are provocative questions. Having fed on the wisdom and experiences of others, do we have an obligation to put what we have learned to a better use than just our own gratification?

143baswood
Dic 3, 2013, 4:48 pm

Great review of Dawn's left hand. There is no way that I am going to find the time to read all the books in the pilgrimage series, but I will read this one - it goes straight to the top of my to buy list.

144StevenTX
Dic 3, 2013, 6:23 pm

Barry you might find a copy of the 1931 edition of Dawn's Left Hand in the UK, but it will be more easily (and affordably) found as part of the omnibus volume Pilgrimage 4. Still I wouldn't recommend reading any volume in the series on its own except the very first one. There are too many references back to earlier events, ideas and attitudes that you would miss. The 13 novels are best read as a single work or not at all.

Of course if you're just interesting in what she has to say about Hypo Wilson/H. G. Wells with and without his clothes on, that's a different matter. You could skim the novel in an hour and pick up a few juicy quotes.

145NanaCC
Dic 3, 2013, 6:29 pm

I am determined to read this series some day. I really do like the sound of it.

146mkboylan
Dic 3, 2013, 8:18 pm

142 Amazing review. I bet I wouldn't have gotten half of what you got from it - one of the ones to read with notes.

147edwinbcn
Dic 3, 2013, 11:09 pm

The Old English Baron looks like an interesting find.

148labfs39
Dic 4, 2013, 12:40 pm

It raises important issues such as how much of ourselves we should put at risk by committing to careers or relationships, speaking out, taking sides, and teaching rather than learning. For those of us who live in the world of books these are provocative questions. Having fed on the wisdom and experiences of others, do we have an obligation to put what we have learned to a better use than just our own gratification?

Interesting. I, like Barry, would like to read this one as a stand alone, if it were possible.

149StevenTX
Dic 4, 2013, 6:06 pm

The Ragazzi by Pier Paolo Pasolini
First published in Italian 1955
English translation by Emile Capouye 1968

 

The Ragazzi is a bleak picture of life in Rome during the final months of World War II and for several years thereafter. It follows the city's boys as they come of age in the rubble of war, impoverished, undernourished, largely fatherless, and with scant hope of employment. They spend their days on the streets living by scavenging, begging, and stealing. For recreation they swim in heavily polluted streams or, when they have the cash, visit the local bordello. Their families live, a half-dozen to a room or more, in filthy, dilapidated and bombed out apartments without running water.

The novel is actually a series of linked stories with a single character, Riccetto, appearing in each chapter. Riccetto is cocky and clever, often cruel, and lives by his wits largely at the expense of others. But he is also prone to spontaneous moments of charity and humanity, such as when he goes out of his way to save a tiny bird that is in danger of drowning.

In its depiction of a society of boys with its own cruel social order, The Ragazzi is a kind of urban version of Lord of the Flies. There is only a glimmer of optimism in Pasolini's portrait of a world that was the legacy of Italy's fascists. It is a grim but memorable work.

150labfs39
Dic 4, 2013, 9:56 pm

Wow, that's one that I actually might read! Thanks, Steven.

151NanaCC
Dic 5, 2013, 1:21 pm

The Ragazzi sounds good. I will add to my wishlist. The effects of the war lived on long after the fighting ended.

152baswood
Dic 5, 2013, 2:24 pm

Pier Paolo Pasolini I think his films are excellent, didn't know he was an author as well. The bleak picture of life in Rome after the war that you describe fits in well with the subjects of his movies. He is the sort of person that one might want to read a biography of.

153SassyLassy
Dic 5, 2013, 4:02 pm

I too always liked his films and didn't know he was an author either. It would certainly have been difficult to have any optimism after living through the war in Rome.

154rebeccanyc
Dic 5, 2013, 5:44 pm

Agreeing with the others that this sounds like an interesting read and that I didn't know Pasolini was an author.

155StevenTX
Dic 5, 2013, 7:29 pm

Well, I guess it just shows how out of touch I am with the world of cinema that I didn't know he was a filmmaker until after I had bought the novel. I haven't seen any of his films, but I've read the books that half of them were based on.

It's almost a year since I last saw a movie in the theater, and probably longer than that since I watched one on television, but I'm suddenly seeing a lot of movies at a cardiovascular clinic where I'm taking treatments 1-2 hours per day, 5 days a week. It's impossible to read during the treatment, but they have individual TV monitors with access to a limited number of movies from Netflix. I wish I had the expertise some of you obviously have in picking movies from this list, as there are only a few that I've ever heard of. I did finally get to see the 1968 "Romeo and Juliet." Two of the films I've seen, "Timeline" and "Congo," turned out to be based on Michael Crichton novels. Most of the movies they offer seem to be of the "B" variety--at least to judge from titles like "Nude Nuns with Big Guns." (I'm not brazen enough to watch that in a room full of old geezers and young nurses.) But, anyway, spending several hours a day doing this and driving to and from the clinic is why my reading and LT participation have slowed down in recent weeks. It'll be finished by Christmas and hopefully back to full speed.

(I'll get a day off tomorrow, though, as we have an ice storm coming and everything will be closed. I'm just hoping we don't lose electricity.)

156labfs39
Dic 5, 2013, 10:40 pm

Good luck, Steven, with your treatments and with your weather. Perhaps if the clinic has a list of movies available, you could post it and we could let you know if we see any good ones. Otherwise, could you bring an audio book and headset? Our library has gadgets you can check out that come preset with a book. Just press go, that kind of thing. Might help pass the time...

157StevenTX
Dic 5, 2013, 11:41 pm

Thanks, Lisa. I thought about audio books, but I'm just not wired to follow the spoken word as well as the written word. It's also kind of noisy and distracting. The headphones they use are supposed to block out the noise. They don't have a list of movies--I suppose it changes all the time--or I would already be looking them up on IMDB. So I'll just treat this as a learning experience.

The weather is certainly weird--a warm autumn changing to winter in a few hours. Last night I was outside grilling steaks, and neighbors were walking their dogs in shorts and t-shirts (the neighbors, not the dogs). Now everything is coated in ice, included trees with green leaves and summer flowers still blooming.

158NanaCC
Dic 6, 2013, 8:16 am

Good luck with your treatments, Steven. I hope everything works out ok. They were showing clips of the ice storms in your area on the Today Show this morning. Very dangerous for driving. Mother nature has been very strange lately. We have had 60 degrees here in NJ, which is very warm for this time of year. Of course it is dipping back into the 30's later today.

159rebeccanyc
Dic 6, 2013, 9:13 am

What Colleen said! Good luck with the treatments and the ice.

160labfs39
Dic 6, 2013, 9:34 am

We've had unusually cold weather too. For the last few days it's rarely been above freezing. Right now it's 17. Supposed to stay like this all weekend.

161StevenTX
Dic 6, 2013, 9:52 am

Everything is okay here so far--and just as I'm typing this I hear a tree branch breaking somewhere. We had freezing rain all night that left about a quarter inch of ice on everything. Our power went off last night, and just as I was trying to figure out how I was going to make coffee on the stove top, it came back on. I've had only minor tree damage as far as I can tell, but some of my neighbors haven't been so fortunate. (And I just heard another large branch break somewhere.)

162labfs39
Dic 6, 2013, 12:17 pm

Yikes. Stay safe. Do you have heat?

163StevenTX
Dic 6, 2013, 12:39 pm

Yes, we have heat as long as we have gas and electricity. And if the power goes out we still have a fireplace. I've just been outside, and it looks like most of the trees in the neighborhood have been disfigured or destroyed, including some of mine. But one of my cypress trees has just decided to rest its head on my neighbor's roof.

164baswood
Dic 6, 2013, 2:51 pm

Oh that's a shame when trees are lost and its not easy to dislodge ice from trees.

Hope your treatment continues to go well, best wishes from Europe.

165rebeccanyc
Modificato: Dic 7, 2013, 11:25 am

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

166StevenTX
Dic 7, 2013, 10:37 am

The Devil in Love by Jacques Cuzotte
First published 1772 as Le Diable amoureux
English translation by Judith Landry

 

The narrator of this tale of demonic seduction is a twenty-five-year-old Spanish soldier named Alvaro Maravillas who is a captain in the king's guard in Naples. He admits that his chief occupations, when he can afford them, are gambling and womanizing. One evening after he and his fellow officers had been sitting and drinking, an old Dutch soldier confides in Alvaro that he is a practitioner of the occult arts and has been able to summon an infernal spirit to be his personal servant. Of course Alvaro wants to try it himself.

In the ruins of an ancient temple, standing inside an inscribed pentagram, Alvaro repeats the incantation he has been taught to summon Beelzebub. A horrible and threatening visage appears, but Alvaro stands his ground and commands the demon to submit to him and prepare a feast for his companions, complete with a servant in livery. All is done as Alvaro has ordered, but the servant, a youth of striking beauty, looks at Alvaro in the most unsettling way. After the dinner the servant refuses to be dismissed or even leave Alvaro's side, and insists on becoming his page.

It isn't long before Alvaro confirms his suspicions that his page is actually a woman. He calls her Biondetta. She claims to by a sylph, an air-spirit, who fell in love with Alvaro and seized the opportunity to take human form to become his lover. She sets out patiently to seduce Alvaro who is naturally wary of such a being. Is she really a spirit become mortal as she claims to be? Or is she Beelzebub himself in disguise? Can Alvaro trust anything his senses tell him, or is everything he sees and feels just a grand illusion?

Cazotte's writing is remarkably fluid and concise for its time, more reminiscent of Poe than other 18th century authors. His handling of the apparent gender shifting of Biondetta--"she" in one guise, "he" in another--is subtle and eerie, as are the growing erotic tension and the uncertainty over Biondetta's true nature. The weakest part of the story, however, is its ending, which is abrupt and unsatisfying. According to Brian Stableford's introduction, Cazotte has originally planned (and perhaps wrote) a work twice as long, and the ending was rewritten because early readers rejected the author's first version. The Devil in Love is a captivating story that, with a better ending, would have become a classic.

167StevenTX
Dic 7, 2013, 2:14 pm

Is this how you feel when that package from Amazon (or other bookseller) arrives?

From Clear Horizon by Dorothy Richardson, 1935:

When the new volume arrives in its parcel, one has to endure the pang of farewell to current life that comes at the moment of going away on a visit. Everything in one's surroundings becomes attractive and precious. In their midst, threatening like a packet of explosives, lies the new book. The next moment, everything is obliterated by the stream of suggestions flowing from the read title, bringing the desire immediately to note down the various possible methods of approach busily competing for choice. To open the book is to begin life anew, with eternity in hand.

Richardson was a book reviewer at the stage in her life being depicted, and she goes on to describe the difficulty of remembering sometimes to evaluate a book while caught up in enjoying it. She also mentions how one's opinion of a book can be changed days later by a chance remark or random thought that suddenly opens a new and different perspective on the work.

168baswood
Dic 7, 2013, 2:34 pm

Nice quote from Clear Horizon. I enjoy reviewing books, but only those I choose to read I would hate to have to earn my living reading books that were sent to me to review.

The devils in Love sounds good, but would you describe it as Gothic fiction. At the moment I am struggling to read Melmoth the Wanderer one of the supposed high points of the genre. I know that you have read it and enjoyed it recently, but it is boring me rigid.

169rebeccanyc
Dic 7, 2013, 6:16 pm

The Devil in Love sounds like fun, despite the unsatisfactory ending. But there are probably too many other books I want to read first, so I'm glad to have enjoyed your review.

170StevenTX
Dic 7, 2013, 8:02 pm

Clear Horizon by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1935
Eleventh volume of Pilgrimage

Clear Horizon is the strangest, darkest, and most difficult volume to this point in the autobiographical series Pilgrimage. It is difficult in two respects: first, the prose style. Instead of the short, choppy sentences and fragments of interior monologue that characterized earlier volumes, now we encounter huge comma-laden sentences that wrap all around the unspoken subject in the mode of Henry James's final novels. The second difficulty is that what Richardson chooses to tell us does not complete the story. The novel is a puzzle with missing pieces that can't be inferred from what we have. I read many paragraphs three or more times, and scanned back over previous chapters several times to understand what the author was saying and to look for information I thought I must have missed. Richardson apparently isn't telling us a story at all, but just giving us impressions and ideas from fragments of a life.

In the previous volume, Dawn's Left Hand, Miriam Henderson emphasizes her personal and intellectual freedom by refusing to be drawn into causes, relationships, and commitments. In Clear Horizon she systematically severs all of her current ties, even to the point of burning her bridges with completely unexpected brutality and selfishness. But first comes a revelation: she is pregnant. Hypo Wilson (in Richardson's life H. G. Wells), we infer but are never told, is the father. She spurns his offer to set her up in "green seclusion." Her Russian Jewish friend Michael then repeats a marriage proposal he made years earlier, which she quickly rejects with "amusement over his failure to recognize that the refuge he offered from what indeed might be a temporary embarrassment as well as a triumphant social gesture, was a permanent prison."

When the well-intentioned but overbearing Hypo Wilson sends Miriam a note of advice, she puts and end to their friendship by sending his letter back to him annotated only: "I have no waste paper basket. Yours, I know, is capacious. M." Miriam's erratic and self-destructive behavior begins to remind us that her mother went insane and committed suicide.

Amid the darkness and chaos of this novel there are Richardson's usual brilliant, sometimes beautiful but now more often acerbic, observations on people, manners, language, literature, and the sights and sounds of life.

171StevenTX
Dic 7, 2013, 8:21 pm

#168 - Barry, The Devil in Love probably influenced gothic fiction, as it was apparently popular in its day, but it doesn't have most of the key elements: damsel in distress, castles, evil clergy, etc., and the supernatural is a much larger element than in most gothic works. I would classify it more in the horror genre as a precursor of such writers as Poe, E. T. A. Hoffmann, and Sheridan Le Fanu. It's also obviously Faustian, but not deeply so as Alvaro isn't so much making a bargain with the devil as blundering into a situation he can't control, though the author slips in a conventional moral lesson in the end.

I guess I was lukewarm on Melmoth the Wanderer (3.5 stars) as it was one of those novels you are more happy to have read than happy to be reading. Maturin does rattle on. Cazotte is a huge contrast: brisk and to the point. (Of course some of that may come more from the translator than the author.)

172NanaCC
Dic 7, 2013, 10:00 pm

Your quote from Clear Horizon is very good. It is certainly how I feel. :)

173StevenTX
Dic 9, 2013, 8:50 pm

Dimple Hill by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published 1938
Twelfth volume of Pilgrimage

Miriam Henderson has fled London in the wake of a mental or emotional breakdown of some sort. She travels first to the English coast with friends, but then receives a letter telling her of a room to rent on a farm in Sussex called Dimple Hill. The farmers are Quakers, and Miriam has been fascinated by the Quaker religion since attending a Society of Friends meeting in London some years earlier.

The Quakers turn out to be everything Miriam hopes for, and she is completely enchanted by their values, their pace of life, and their spirituality. She never seems to accept fully their theology; she never prays or speaks directly of God or Jesus. But she "felt nothing of her old desire to smash their complacency, to make them realize the unfoundedness of most of their assumptions... Only a blind longing for admission into the changeless centre of their enclosed world..." She does not appear to be seeking religion out of conviction so much as a desire for the calm comfort of belonging.

As for her long-espoused socialism and humanism, "No one henceforth could show her the socialist mind...as anything but a desert, offering a fine view of a mirage, a promised land that, in its turn, would be revealed as desert too." Her feminism is much muted in this novel, though she doesn't entirely reject it as she does socialism. Yet Miriam realizes that her life will still be centered around books, music and ideas, things that the warmhearted but simple people with whom she is living could never understand or accept. She is not destined to spend the rest of her life on Dimple Hill.

Dimple Hill was the last novel published by Dorothy Richardson in her lifetime. A final installment of Pilgrimage would be published posthumously almost three decades later. Her prose style continued to change, becoming simpler and calmer in this novel, perhaps to reflect its mood and subject. It is quite disappointing to see Miriam back away from the challenges of the 20th century into a mode of life and belief that you feel she finds more comforting than convincing, but it ends with her plans still unresolved and one final episode to come.

174baswood
Modificato: Dic 10, 2013, 4:55 am

Your reviews are a fine testament to Dorothy M Richardson, which I have enjoyed reading. No doubt you will be reading the final instalment before the end of the year. I am looking forward to finding out where her thoughts took her after Dimple Hill

175labfs39
Dic 10, 2013, 10:56 pm

Interesting that such a firebrand became enamored of the Quakers. How old was she at this point? Do you think part of the dampening could have been simply growing older and less youthfully optimistic and idealistic?

176StevenTX
Dic 10, 2013, 11:57 pm

March Moonlight by Dorothy M. Richardson
First published posthumously 1967
Thirteenth and final volume of Pilgrimage



March Moonlight is the thirteenth and final installment of Dorothy Richardson’s lifetime project Pilgrimage. Parts of it were published in journals in the 1940s, but it was not completed until about 1953, and was first published in full in 1967, ten years after the author’s death, as part of the omnibus volume titled Pilgrimage 4.

The short novel begins with perhaps the most difficult chapter in the entire series, a cacophony of voices and unfamiliar names relating incidents, fragments of dialogue, and passages from letters, all pertaining to Miriam Henderson’s winter excursion to Switzerland after leaving the Quaker farm at Dimple Hill. In previous volumes the author has switched occasionally from third to first person, but only at clearly defined breaks in the narrative. Now she goes back and forth mid-paragraph, but only for this first chapter.

The remainder of the novel is less chaotic, for Miriam’s life has acquired a focus. She has been given an endowment by a friend to permit her to spend six months just writing. She decides she can stretch it to a year by moving back to the farm at Dimple Hill, but there are complications in her relationships and secrets from her past. Realizing that the Quakers will never fully approve of her, no more than she can fully accept their beliefs, Miriam distances herself from them just as she has backed away from all of her other ties and relationships. She moves back to London on her own, renting a small attic room.

“To write is to forsake life. Every time I know this, in advance. Yet whenever something comes that sets the tips of my fingers tingling to record it, I forget the price; eagerly face the strange journey down and down to the centre of being.”

It is now 1915 and Miriam is finally the writer she was destined to become. The novel is now being told entirely in the first person, for the character created by the author has now become the author herself. Everything has come full circle. Miriam’s pilgrimage has come to an end, for the writing of Pilgrimage has begun.

177StevenTX
Dic 11, 2013, 12:15 am

In addition to the reviews I have posted for each of the thirteen volumes of Pilgrimage I offer the following observations on the work as a whole for those who may be interested.



“I felt all about me an awareness, conscious in the few, shared, like an infection, to some extent by all, of the strangeness of the adventure of being, of the fact of the existence, anywhere, of anything at all.”

Overview

Pilgrimage is a series of thirteen autobiographical novels, a novel in thirteen parts, or not a novel at all depending on how you choose to define it. It is the fictionalized story of the author’s life from the early 1890s to 1915, which is the year she published the first volume of the Pilgrimage itself. Miriam Henderson is the name Richardson uses as her alter ego. A well-educated middle-class girl, Miriam is forced out into the world on her own as a teenager after her father loses everything he owns by speculating on the stock market. She goes first to Germany to be a tutor at a girls’ school, then takes a variety of teaching and governess jobs before settling down for more than ten years as a dentist’s secretary in London.

Through her school friends and other acquaintances, Miriam makes a variety of contacts in the intellectual world of London, the most notable being a friend’s husband named Hypo Wilson. (In real life this was H. G. Wells.) Though doing menial work and living barely above poverty, Miriam is fully engaged in the arts, sciences, and political movements of the day. She becomes a socialist and joins a local club. A voracious reader, she supplements her income by writing book reviews, but for a time rejects Hypo Wilson’s urging that she become a journalist or novelist herself. She meets people from all over the world, and has a prolonged relationship with a Russian political refugee, but eventually rejects his marriage proposal. She also becomes Hypo Wilson’s mistress, and becomes pregnant by him.

Declining Hypo’s offer of support, Miriam has a nervous breakdown and a miscarriage. She flees London, taking a room at a farm house. The family are Quakers, a religion that has exerted for some time an attraction for Miriam. She considers becoming a member, but difficult relationships, the problem of her past, and other issues eventually drive her back to London, on her own, where she embarks on a career as a full-time writer.

The thirteen chapter/novels tell Miriam’s story in scenes that are months and sometimes years apart. There is no attempt at a complete or cohesive narrative. Major events are omitted or alluded to only indirectly. Characters appear without introduction and disappear without explanation. Most of the novels have each a predominate theme, but many of them end abruptly without resolution.

Style

Richardson’s writing has been compared to that of James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Marcel Proust, and William Faulkner. The term “stream of consciousness” is often used, but Richardson herself preferred “interior monologue.” But Pilgrimage does not have a single consistent style or form. It changes from paragraph to paragraph, chapter to chapter, and novel to novel. Some parts are traditional third person narrative. Some are first person. At times we are inside Miriam’s head with random thoughts and sensations coming rapid fire as sentence fragments. In other passages the sentences may be half a page long. The punctuation is, at times, irregular. German and French phrases and dialogue are occasionally included without translation. Some dialogue is unattributed, and some is lacking quotation marks.

None of these unorthodoxies or inconsistencies of style is so extreme as to make the text unintelligible or more than moderately challenging. But they do constantly remind us that everything we read is an artifact of perception, memory and interpretation.

Feminism

Pilgrimage has rightly been called one of the great feminist novels. Miriam’s feminism is a dominant and powerful message in every installment except the final two where she is being influenced by Quakerism. Her comments about men are often scathing, her point being that women are men’s superiors in many ways, not merely their equals, especially when it comes to perceiving and understanding other people. Her relationships with men are usually tainted by her disdain for male attitudes and behavior. She never has a successful or fulfilling relationship with a man.

Even though one of her closest friends in the novels is a suffragist who goes to gaol for participating in a demonstration, Miriam herself is never politically active in feminist causes. She does, however, seize upon the various freedoms which were considered symbolic of feminine independence: she smokes, she goes to restaurants alone, she wears knickers, and she rides a bicycle.

Socialism

Miriam becomes a socialist largely through her acquaintance with Hypo Wilson, though she holds strong differences of opinion with him on some issues. She joins a club called the Lycurgans and attends regular meetings and lectures. But, just as in so many other areas of her life, she is never active in her beliefs other than to bring up the topic in conversation.

Knowing that Miriam is a socialist, though, is about as far as we go. There are no discussions of principles or issues. There are no descriptions of the social conditions or other factors that may have motivated her convictions. This is not a novel that will enlighten you on socialism in turn-of-the-century England.

Sexuality

Miriam has much closer relationships with women than she does with men, both physically and emotionally. She grew up in a household with three sisters and no brothers where the father was a remote and despised failure. She attended a girls’ school, taught at girls’ schools, and lived in homes and boarding houses run by women. At times she mentions a physical attraction to women (but never to men) and a yearning to touch them. On more than one occasion she pushes back in relationships with other women who she feels are becoming dangerously obsessed with her.

Is Miriam a lesbian, perhaps fighting her natural sexuality? Or is Richardson disguising the true nature of her relationships for the sake of propriety? Some critics have called for reading Pilgrimage as a work of lesbian fiction just as it is a work of feminist literature. It is certainly open to that interpretation, and it is hard to believe the author would have left it so if her feelings for other women were entirely asexual. Still we must avoid labeling Miriam a lesbian, as some would, just because she is aggressively a feminist.

Religion and Spirituality

As with Miriam’s political beliefs, her spiritual beliefs are important to her but appear deliberately to be left vaguely defined. She is never at any time a member of a church. Yet she rejects Hypo Wilson’s scientific socialism because he denies the existence of a soul. At one early phase in her life she reads the Bible and prays, but whether she does this out of faith or a form of meditational self-therapy is unclear. Likewise her attraction to the Quaker church appears to have more to do with their practice of silent communion than with a belief in God. She never, in fact, speaks of God, only of one human soul reaching out to other human souls.

H. G. Wells

Most of the major characters in Pilgrimage are no doubt based on real and identifiable individuals, but H. G. Wells, as Hypo Wilson, is the only prominent public figure among them. Wells is also mentioned by name as an author whom Miriam reads. (One of the few bits of humor in the novel, in fact, comes when Hypo Wilson dismissively mentions H. G. Wells.)

Wells is presented as a person with an overbearing personality and intellectual arrogance. He knows what is best for everyone else and tells them so. But he is so charismatic, and his interest in others so sincere, that Miriam can’t help being fascinated with him and eventually attracted to him. She never agrees, however, with his scientific socialism. Wells is a complete Darwinian who sees people as organisms operating under scientific principles. They can be understood by science, and their lives can be bettered by science. Miriam cannot accept the absence of spirituality.

Wells’s essays are noted several times in passing, but the only novel of his that is mentioned is The Sea Lady, a story about a mermaid who comes ashore and lives for a time disguised as an invalid. “Perhaps there are better dreams,” one of the characters quotes to Miriam in reference to suicide. And elsewhere Miriam suggests that she, herself, is a form of Sea Lady, a creature where she doesn’t belong and whose love would prove destructive to the beloved.

Why isn’t Pilgrimage read?

If Richardson is ranked by experts along with Joyce, Woolf, Proust and Faulkner, why is Pilgrimage relatively unknown? The work was never popular during the author’s lifetime, and wasn’t published in full until 1967, a decade after her death. Two more editions followed during the heyday of feminist activism in the 1970s, with a reprint following in 1989, but it has now been out of print for more than 20 years.

First of all, it is, to be honest, long and hard. Not as hard as Ulysses, but at over 2100 pages it is three times as long. Not quite as long as In Search of Lost Time, but more challenging to read. And it is serious from start to finish, with scarcely a speck of humor.

Richardson was also guilty of some bad timing when she came out with the first volumes, smack in the middle of World War I, that go into raptures of admiration for the German people and their culture. So Pilgrimage did not get off to a fast start. There are also passages that can be taken as anti-Semitic or racist, and the work’s ambivalence on politics and religion is likely to be troublesome for those who want to see a clear position on one or the other.

Perhaps another reason people don’t read Pilgrimage is that Miriam doesn’t let us follow her through the ups and downs of her life that would be the focus of other novels. We are with her chiefly during quiet conversations or moments of reflection. Her refusal to share her more dramatic moments—most of which we can only infer—is frustrating. What we have, though, are intervals in an intensely self-examined life through which we can share the feelings and attitudes—most particularly a woman’s attitudes—of a woman who was remarkably alive and aware of herself and the world around her .

Pilgrimage has been published in four editions of four volumes each: in 1967 by A. Knopf (hardcover), in 1976 by Popular Library (mass market paperback), in 1979 by Virago (mass market paperback), and in 1989 by the University of Illinois Press (mass market paperback). The four editions are identically configured, so it is possible, as I did, to assemble a set consisting of one volume from each edition and still have the complete work.

A new edition from Oxford University Press is in preparation. It is projected to be published in six volumes from 2018 to 2020.

178edwinbcn
Dic 11, 2013, 1:12 am

Great review and a great post-script, Steven. How awful that we have to wait till 2018 - 2020 to wait for a new edition. I suppose I will have to look for 2nd-hand copies on my next visit to Europe.

179NanaCC
Dic 11, 2013, 7:34 am

Wonderful reviews and recap, Steven.

180paruline
Dic 11, 2013, 8:07 am

Thanks for the thoughtful reviews of Pilgrimage, Steven. I do want to get to it eventually but I think I'll wait until 2018-2020.

181baswood
Dic 11, 2013, 11:45 am

And so after Dimple Hill she became a writer and stopped living.

It sounds a fascinating document of one woman's views and thoughts at the end of the nineteenth century and the early years of the 20thy century. The fact that those thoughts are not gathered together into some sort of whole makes it feel like a slice of (intellectual) life of the period written in a modernist style.

I still cannot understand the series relative neglect, if the writing really is that good, as there appears nothing like it in the early modernist canon. Perhaps it is as you suggest because of her diffidence about other people and her failure to get involved, that stops people from starting the journey with her.

Anyway Steven a great years read for you.

182labfs39
Dic 11, 2013, 2:26 pm

Bravo. Excellent analysis, and I have enjoyed vicariously reading along with you. Thanks for sharing it with us.

183SassyLassy
Dic 11, 2013, 2:27 pm

Congratulations on a wonderful individual themed read. 2018 seems like a long way away. Virago's current website does not recognize Richardson and neither does Persephone Books which I thought might be another possibility. I had ordered the first three from amazon.ca after reading your reviews, but after several months they told me the books were not available and now they only appear as expensive used. amazon.uk does have them though, so something to think about for the new year.

I hope you "discover" someone else for next year.

184dchaikin
Dic 11, 2013, 10:28 pm

Congrats on finishing pilgrimages, and terrific summary. Wondering how her series got lost. Someday I need to read Woolf, and Joyce and try Proust again, and maybe then I will add Richardson into that.

185mkboylan
Dic 15, 2013, 1:33 pm

157 altho anyone can go on netflix.com and see what is available I believe. Just for the record, is is their streaming movies that are more B grade. The "better" ones are only on DVD for awhile. This is all changing of course. Maybe if you looked at netflix while you were home, by category, you could find some better ones to watch at the clinic.

167 the only pang I get is the one that says I have to wait to start reading. Hmmm don't want to think about what that says about my life! LOL

170 I have GOT to get started on Richardson!

175 I'm going with hormones!

I really appreciate your Richardson reviews and summary.

186StevenTX
Dic 15, 2013, 2:21 pm

#175 - Sorry, Lisa, I completely overlooked your message until I saw Merrikay's comment.

Dorothy Richardson (both in real life and as Miriam Henderson) was in her early 30s when she went to live with the Quaker family. She had always had a spiritual side to her life, and for a while had read the Bible and prayed nightly, but never--even while attending Quaker services--accepted religious dogma. Her beliefs were, I would guess, more pantheistic. She liked the long periods of contemplative silence that were a feature of Quaker meetings. Her prayers were meditations, not supplications.

I suspect that if she had been exposed to Buddhism or a similar Asian religion she would have taken to it eagerly.

As for the conflict between her feminism and religion--it did bother her that Quakers, in their daily lives, channeled women and men into traditional roles. But she was pleased with the fact that men and women worshiped on an equal footing at Quaker meetings, and women could become elders and leaders.

One thing Miriam realized about her emotional attachment to the Quaker family was that it was tied to the environment. Take the man she began to love and put him anywhere else, especially in a place like London, and he would just become awkward and unremarkable. I think she began to realize that this was the case with her feelings, her values, and her beliefs in general. They were all tied to a place. Take socialism out of London, for example, and it made no sense. The sense of joy and empowerment she felt in Switzerland did not follow her back to England. It is no coincidence that she refers to the periods in her life, her friends, and her job by the names of places. So her attachment to Quakerism was linked, not so much to a time in her life, as to a place in her life.

187StevenTX
Dic 15, 2013, 5:51 pm

Tirant lo Blanc by Joanot Martorell and Martí Joan de Galba
First published in Valencian (a dialect of Catalan) in 1490
English translation by David H. Rosenthal 1984

   

Tirant lo Blanc is a romance of chivalry. That term evokes images of the knights of King Arthur's Round Table riding lonely forest trails, jousting with other knights, rescuing damsels, battling the occasional dragon, and questing for love, glory and the Holy Grail. But Tirant lo Blanc depicts a later period and is a pseudo-historical epic of a much, much grander scale.

As a form of prologue, the story begins with the exploits of William of Warwick, the knight who will become Tirant's mentor. Some time in the early fifteenth century, Sir William returns from a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Overcome with piety, he allows his family to think he is dead as he takes up the rags of a hermit and moves into a cave not far from his castle. But his repose is disturbed when the Saracens invade England, sack London (I did say this was pseudo-history), and besiege Warwick. William doffs his rags for his old suit of armor, takes up his sword, gets King Henry to abdicate in his favor, and runs the Saracens out of England. He then resumes his rags, gives the crown back to Henry, and retires to his cave where he will soon encounter a young Breton and would-be knight named Tirant.

Tirant lo Blanc (Tirant the White) is on his way to the festivities celebrating the marriage of young King Henry to a French princess. There he participates in a full year of jousting, feasting and dancing. What is remarkable about the jousting is how bloody it is. Many of the battles are fought until death or dismemberment. Any knight who yields would be committed to a lifetime of shame and chastity in the nearest monastery. Dukes, princes and even kings are killed right and left, but nothing dampens the festive spirits of the celebrants. Tirant slays four opponents in a single day, two dukes and the kings of Friesland and Poland. This wins him top honors for the tournament, and when King Henry creates the Order of the Garter he makes Tirant its first member.

After the festivities in England, Tirant--who now seems to have amassed a vast amount of wealth and powerful allies--decides his first chivalric deed will be to raise the Turkish siege of the island of Rhodes. This he does, having forged an alliance along the way with the Kingdom of Sicily. Next he is called upon to defend Constantinople itself from the Saracen hordes. (The author uses the terms Turk, Saracen, Mohammedan and pagan almost interchangeably.) Tirant takes command of the Byzantine forces along with the substantial forces he has brought with him, and in a series of brilliant maneuvers pushes back the much larger Turkish armies.

But then Tirant catches sight of Carmesina, the Byzantine emperor's beautiful daughter and the heir to his throne. Despite countless allurements, Tirant has never before shown the slightest interest in the opposite sex. But one look at the princess changes everything. "Having forgotten about the war, he only wished to have his way with her, while someone else fretted about military matters. Thus does excessive love often turn wise knights into fools." The narrative becomes surprisingly bawdy as Tirant begs the princess for her favors. At one point he refuses to go fight the Turks unless she lets him put his hand up her skirt. Before long he demands her virginity, but she teases and demurs. Carmesina's lady-in-waiting even urges Tirant to get it over with and rape her: "Tirant, Tirant, never will you be feared in battle if you refuse to use a little force with reluctant damsels! Since your wishes are honorable and your beloved is worthy, go to her bed when she is naked or in her nightshirt and attack bravely.... Oh God, what a wonderful thing it is to hold a soft, naked, fourteen-year-old damsel in one's arms!"

The machinations of a jealous widow, as well as Tirant's gullibility and prickly pride, keep him from achieving his goal before he has to return by ship to the battlefield. But a storm blows him off course and wrecks his ship at the opposite end of the Mediterranean on the shores of Barbary. In four years Tirant then goes from being a naked, unconscious castaway on a hostile shore to being the conqueror and Christianizer of a vast territory stretching from the Atlantic to the Ganges. But, of course, all this time the territory he most wants to conquer is Carmesina's bed.

Joanot Martorell, a Valencian knight, wrote the first three-fourths of the epic. After he died in 1468, his friend Martí Joan de Galba finished the work. There are some noticeable but not egregious changes in style, tempo and attitude when the authorship changes hands, as well as a few inconsistencies in the plot. Both authors borrowed heavily from other sources such as Boccacio's Decameron and The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. The most unappealing part of the work is that none of the characters can do much of anything--fight, make love, sign a treaty, propose marriage--without first quoting at length from Aristotle, Seneca, and other ancients to justify his or her actions. But aside from that, Tirant lo Blanc is a rollicking, blood-drenched, sexy epic of a history that never was.

188dchaikin
Dic 15, 2013, 6:08 pm

It's just not literature if someone isn't provokes to rape of a 14-yr-old. Sounds like a crazy story.

I've heard on LT how Cervantes borrowed from Islamic literature. But it doesn't mean anything to me because I don't know anything about that literature. Still, I wonder how that applies here.

189dchaikin
Modificato: Dic 15, 2013, 6:11 pm

Questo messaggio è stato cancellato dall'autore.

190StevenTX
Dic 15, 2013, 9:00 pm

#188 - Cervantes mentions Tirant lo Blanc in Don Quixote, but if he used Islamic sources I see little evidence in Tirant lo Blanc that Martorell and Galba did. Martorell traveled to England and probably to Portugal and Italy, but he seems never to have come into direct contact with Islam as Cervantes did. His view is very simplistic, equating Muslims with pagans and making no cultural distinction between Turks, Arabs, Berbers, Persians, etc. Nor, for that matter, does he make much distinction between Christians. Every Christian is Catholic, even the Byzantine emperor. And everybody in the book speaks good Latin and knows his Aristotle and Seneca--African princesses and Ethiopian kings as well as Byzantine damsels and Breton knights. Culture appears to be completely homogeneous, with religion being the only distinguishing factor. The Saracens of North Africa, the Middle East and Ethiopia all have the same notions of chivalry as the Europeans and fight their wars the same way. The only distinction made among nations is that the Ethiopians are black, but once they convert to Christianity they are treated no different than Europeans, and when Tirant engineers a marriage between the black king of Ethiopia and the blonde queen of Tlacmen, not a word is said by anyone about race.

Regarding the "rape," Martorell seems to be making a point that the 15th century was a sexually liberated era when a men and women could speak openly about their desires, and virginity was not the all-important matter it had once been. At one point in the story Carmesina gives a knight three hairs from her head to take to Tirant as a token of her love. The knight scornfully replies, "Really, my lady! Does Your Highness think these are the old days, when people followed the laws of grace and a damsel who loved some suitor in extreme degree would give him a well-perfumed bouquet of flowers or a hair or two from her head, whereupon he considered himself exceedingly fortunate? No, my lady, no. That time is past. I know quite well what my lord Tirant desires: to see you in bed, either naked or in your nightdress, and if the bed is not perfumed he will be just as pleased." But it should also be pointed out that Tirant only attempted to depucilate Carmesina after she had agreed to marry him if her father would consent.

Of course 14 was a marriageable age at that time (Shakespeare's Juliet was 13), so we shouldn't raise our hackles over Carmesina's youth.

Much of the work appears to be written with tongue in cheek, and it's not unlikely that it was meant to be as much a work of satire as one of moral and religious enlightenment.

191lyzard
Dic 15, 2013, 9:35 pm

Haven't read this one but recall that it was name-checked in The Monk, where Matthew Lewis has his characters reading the same books that drove Don Quixote mad.

192baswood
Dic 16, 2013, 5:14 am

Great Review of Tirant Lo Blanc. and another must read for me, although I will be prepared as it is a bit of a doorstop I think.

Did your edition of the book have an introduction or any notes about the text. As it was published in 1490 there was precious little chivalry around at that time, but I can imagine that reading romances about chivalry would have been very popular. perhaps there other similar books?

193StevenTX
Dic 16, 2013, 9:01 am

#192 - Yes, there is a nice introduction by the translator, David H. Rosenthal. He gives biographical information on the two authors and talks about the ways in which this work was different from what came before and reflection of the times (e.g. sexual attitudes). He also discusses various lives that may have been an inspiration for Tirant's exploits, most notably the Hungarian general János Hunyadi. There are some end notes as well, chiefly discussing the authors' sources.

The frequent quotes from Seneca convinced me I need to have him in my classics reading list.

Stories of chivalry were immensely popular in Spain and Portugal in the 15th century. Amadis of Gaul was foremost, at least in Don Quixote's mind. It was roughly contemporary to Tirant lo Blanc. From what I can tell of it, Amadis is more the traditional romance with an earlier setting and lots of magical elements. Tirant lo Blanc is virtually devoid of anything supernatural except for a couple of short, bizarre interludes having nothing to do with the main story and possibly inserted by someone other than the principal authors.

Amadis of Gaul will be one of my major reading projects for 2014. It is much longer, about 1400 pages compared to Tirant's 600. I'll be reading the first four volumes, which are those attributed to Garci Rodríguez de Montalvo. Amadis became something of a franchise, with dozens of sequels written by various Spanish, French and Portuguese authors.

Both Tirant lo Blanc and Amadis of Gaul are Iberian romances that purport to be translations of English manuscripts. Both knights, though from modern-day France, owe allegiance to the English king. The Spanish, etc., obviously thought of England as an exotic and mysterious place. Three hundred years later, English authors of Gothic romances would return the favor by setting many of their stories in Spain.

194rebeccanyc
Dic 16, 2013, 5:54 pm

Sounds like a fun read! It always interests me how much more open people were about sex way back when, before they got so repressed about it; I find this especially interesting when talking to people who believe interest in sex began in the 60s!

Like much of your reading, I'll probably never read this book, but I always enjoy following your reviews and learning about these earlier works of literature.

195StevenTX
Dic 16, 2013, 11:29 pm

The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve
First published 1777

 

The author's preface calls The Old English Baron the "literary offspring of The Castle of Otranto, written upon the same plan, with a design to unite the most interesting and attractive circumstances of the ancient Romance and the modern Novel." What follows is a rather pale and lifeless imitation of Horace Walpole's novel.

The story is set entirely in England during the reign of Henry VI in the mid-15th century. In the Castle of Lovel lives the family of Baron Fitz-Owen, a righteous gentleman. He purchased the castle when his brother-in-law unexpectedly inherited it after the mysterious death of Lord Lovel and the disappearance of Lovel's pregnant wife. The brother-in-law, now Lord Lovel, had only just settled in to the castle when he abruptly decided to sell it and move a great distance away. Rumors among the servants said the castle was haunted. Indeed, one wing of it had been sealed off entirely.

The good Baron, in addition to his three sons and lovely daughter, had taken into his household a young man named Edmund who was only a peasant, but who had displayed remarkable character and intelligence despite being cruelly abused by his father. Edmund's success in his every endeavor earned the devotion of some members of the Baron's family, but the envious enmity of others. It would fall to Edmund to be the one to enter the haunted chamber, endure its terrors, and discover its secrets.

There is no suspense in this novel. A few pages into it you know exactly what's going to happen. The climax occurs barely halfway through the story, leaving a long denouement chiefly concerned with the distribution of estates and marriageable daughters. The book's principal message is that noble blood will always prevail and earn its due. Perhaps its strongest point is in its depiction of examples friendship, generosity and devotion. I would recommend The Old English Baron chiefly to those looking for specimens of the early Gothic novel.

196baswood
Dic 17, 2013, 9:57 am

Good, I am not in the market for specimens of the early Gothic novel and so I can miss The Old English Baron

197StevenTX
Dic 24, 2013, 11:50 pm

Thaïs by Anatole France
First published 1890
English translation by Basia Gulati 1976

 

Thaïs is a story set in Egypt during the 4th century under the reign of Constantine the Great. The principal character is Paphnutius, a Christian anchorite living in a tiny hut in the desert. He is the abbot of a monastery consisting of hermits living in similar huts around him. Paphnutius spends much of his time in prayer and self-mortification to atone for the sinful life he led in his youth before becoming a Christian. In particular he recalls the beautiful courtesan and actress named Thaïs whom he idolized, though his poverty kept him from ever seeing her except on the stage. Overcome with restlessness and spiritual turbulence, Paphnutius decides to seek out Thaïs in Alexandria and make it his life's work to redeem her soul. An older friend and mentor questions his motives and warns Paphnutius that Thaïs could be his undoing, but that only strengthens his resolve.

With the help of a philosopher friend, Paphnutius gains access to Thaïs. She is now the most celebrated courtesan in Egypt and reputed to be the reincarnation of Helen of Troy and the most beautiful woman in history. All the great leaders, thinkers and artists pay her homage. But she is in an emotional crisis herself as her mirror tells her that her beauty is beginning to fade. She is receptive to Paphnutius's message and agrees to burn all her luxurious belongings and retire to a convent. There her piety and good works will earn her sainthood. Paphnutius, meanwhile, returns to the desert only to be tormented by dreams, visions, and the memory of Thaïs. He ends up shamed and despised, groveling in the sand, rejecting Christ and lamenting the life of love and companionship he could have enjoyed.

Many readers have no doubt taken Thaïs as an ironic but pious novel demonstrating that even the most wicked (Thaïs) can be redeemed by faith and good works, and even the most devout (Paphnutius) can fall victim to temptation and pride. But France really seems to be satirizing all dogmas and systems of belief, especially Christianity. The novel features a series of debates between people representing various philosophies, religions, and views of life. We hear from a stoic, a cynic, an Epicurean, a pagan, an Arian Christian, a military leader who worships only the state, and others. At a dinner party which is the centerpiece of the novel, they debate the nature of good and evil. France's satirical voice is especially obvious in this segment.

Even before he suffers the torments of temptation, Paphnutius is a hypocritical and despicable individual. Finding a man living a hermit's life similar to his own but ignorant of Christianity, Paphnutius is dumbfounded that someone would put up with such a life if he weren't promised salvation in return. "Why are you virtuous if you don't believe in Christ? Why have you given up worldly goods, if you are not expecting a reward in heaven?" he asks. And later he says if it weren't for the promise of an eternal reward, "I would go immediately into the world, force myself to amass enough wealth to live as indolently as fortunate men do, and I would say to the Delights: 'Come, my sweets, come, my maidens...'" So the teachings of his religion have no value to him except as the price of a ticket into heaven. And Paphnutius's foul character is displayed when, at the very moment Thaïs is at her most repentant and submissive, "He sprang up and stood before her, pale, terrible, full of God, looked straight into her soul, and spat in her face."

At one point in his travels Paphnutius is given a glimpse into Hell. There he sees sinners and non-believers going cheerfully about their business just as they did in life, utterly unaffected by the fiery lashes of the demons that surround them. His guide explains that even God can't make them suffer because "He cannot do what is absurd." In a curious catch-22 "In order to be punished they would have to see the truth about themselves, but if they could learn the truth, they would be like the elect."

Later Paphnutius admits to himself that the foundation of faith is the absurd. "'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.' I firmly believe that, and if what I believe is absurd, then I must believe it more firmly still; I should say it must be absurd. If it were not, I would not believe it, I would know it. Now, knowledge does not give life; faith alone saves." But other observers see it in different terms, saying that the forces which unfortunately are "infinitely more powerful than reason and science" are called simply "ignorance and folly."

In the end I think we can assume that Anatole France agrees with Paphnutius when he laments: "Listen, my Thaïs. I deceived you, I was only a miserable fool. God and heaven, all are nothing. The only truth is in life on earth and human love."

Other works I have read by Anatole France:
Penguin Island

198baswood
Modificato: Dic 25, 2013, 5:49 am

I enjoyed that excellent review of Thais. I have not read any Anatole France, I must put that right soon.

The more absurd something is, then the more faith you need to believe in it. That would account for a lot.

199dchaikin
Dic 25, 2013, 9:31 am

Thanks for post #190 (well, and 193, also fascinating)

200dchaikin
Dic 25, 2013, 9:40 am

Think I'll skip The Old English Baron. Great and fascinating review of Thais.

#198 Bas - Amen, Bas.

201Linda92007
Dic 26, 2013, 5:41 pm

Wonderful review of Thais, Steven. I have it, Penguin Island and The Revolt of the Angels all waiting.

202avaland
Dic 26, 2013, 8:25 pm

Sorry to have been absent in CR and missed your reading of Pelevin's Omon Ra. Have caught up with it now. That was the first Pelevin I read quite a while ago now. My 2nd was either The Life of Insects (some parts still make me laugh when I think about them) or The Blue Lantern. Michael (dukedom) has read the newer Pelevins, so between us we have the author covered :-)

Oh, and you read Iron Council also. Must get over and see what you have to say about that. It's the one Miéville I didn't finish (for no particular reason, just set it down and forgot about it. It broke the spell).

203JDHomrighausen
Dic 27, 2013, 2:28 am

Fascinating review of Thais. I'm not sure if there was a preface to the novel that mentioned it, but Thais was the subject of an early Christian hagiography. You can find it in Benedicta Ward's Harlots in the Desert if you are curious.

204StevenTX
Dic 28, 2013, 12:00 am

#203 - Actually the introducer, Wayne C. Booth, has very little to say about Thaïs herself, historical or otherwise. He is chiefly concerned, first, with reviving interest in Anatole France and his works, and, second, with refuting an analysis of the novel Thaïs by E. M. Forster.

In Aspects of the Novel, Forster uses Thaïs as an example of a symmetrical story where the salvation of Thaïs is balanced by the damnation of Paphnutius, which he says could be graphed mathematically in the form of an hourglass. Booth says this is a ridiculous way to look at the novel, first because Thaïs is only a secondary character even though the novel bears her name. She appears in barely a third of the book and is mostly an idea in Paphnutius's head. He is the sole focus of the novel, and he is never pure to begin with, only unrevealed. Booth's analysis makes sense, but he goes on for page after page refuting an argument Forster made in only a paragraph or two.

A better example for Forster might have been Thomas Hardy's novel Jude the Obscure. The two principal characters, Jude and Sue, start at opposite poles on issues such as religion, social reforms, and lifestyle philosophy. By the end of the novel they have exactly switched places. Of course this has nothing to do with Thaïs, but Jude the Obscure is one of my favorite novels, and I recently watched the movie "Jude" so it was fresh in my mind.

205rebeccanyc
Dic 28, 2013, 7:31 am

I didn't know there was a movie of Jude the Obscure. I had very mixed feelings about the book, but I would still be interested in seeing the movie.

206StevenTX
Dic 28, 2013, 10:00 am

Yes, it is "Jude," 1996, with Christopher Eccleston and Kate Winslet. It was quite faithful to the book.

207StevenTX
Dic 28, 2013, 11:26 am

The Passion According to G. H. by Clarice Lispector
First published in Portuguese 1964
English translation by Idra Novey 2012

 

"I'm searching, I'm searching. I'm trying to understand."

A woman whom we know only as "G. H." spends the day alone in her penthouse apartment above Rio de Janeiro. Her maid has quit, so she enters the maid's room thinking to spend the day cleaning and organizing. She finds everything barren, clean, sterile, like a desert. But opening the door of a wardrobe she sees a cockroach. G. H. is frozen with fear. From a childhood spent in poverty in vermin-infested buildings, she has a phobia for cockroaches.

"I saw. I know I saw because I didn't give my meaning to what I saw. I know I saw because--I don't understand. I know I saw because--there's no point to what I saw. Listen, I'm going to have to speak because I don't know what to do with having lived.... Sorry for giving you this, I'd much rather have seen something better."

She starts to scream,...

"Everything could be fiercely summed up in never emitting a first scream--a first scream unleashes all the others, the first scream at birth unleashes a life, if I screamed I would awaken thousands of screaming beings who would loosen upon the rooftops a chorus of screams and horror. If I screamed I would unleash the existence--the existence of what? the existence of the world."

...but summons the courage instead to slam the door, trapping and partially crushing the insect as it emerges from the wardrobe. The sight of the dying cockroach transfixes her.

"It was right now. For the first time in my life it was fully about now. This was the greatest brutality I had ever received."

The sight of the insect's cold, unfeeling tearless eyes carries G. H. back to a primordial age, millions of years before mankind, when these same eyes looked upon dinosaurs. In a maelstrom of ideas, images and metaphors she crosses trackless deserts, gazes out the window upon empires of antiquity, and adds words to the language to express the inexpressible.

Unable to move, G. H. spends the afternoon in silent introspection, examining every corner of her life.

"...for my so-called inner life I'd unconsciously adopted my reputation: I treat myself as others treat me, I am whatever others see of me.... An abyss of nothing. Just that great and empty thing: an abyss."

"I am so afraid that I can only accept that I got lost if I imagine that someone is holding my hand."


What G. H. sees, and begins to accept, is that life isn't composed of answers, but of neutralities, contradictions and uncertainties.

"I was seeing something that would only make sense later--I mean, something that only later would profoundly not make sense. Only later would I understand: what seems like a lack of meaning--that's the meaning."

"The hell I had gone through--how can I explain it to you?--had been the hell that comes from love. Ah, people put the idea of sin in sex. But how innocent and childish that sin is. The real hell is that of love."


A final, unthinkable act of communion will complete her metamorphosis...

"I want to find the redemption in today, in right now, in the reality that is being, and not in the promise, I want to find joy in this instant--I want the God in whatever comes out of the roach's belly--even if that, in my former human terms, means the worst, and, in human terms, the infernal."

"And I don't want the kingdom of heaven, I don't want it, all I can stand is the promise of it! The news I am getting from myself sounds cataclysmic to me, and once again nearly demonic. But it is only out of fear. It is fear. Since relinquishing hope means that I shall have to start living, and not just promise myself life. And this is the greatest fright I can have. I used to hope. But the God is today: his kingdom has already begun."

"Deheroization is the great failure of a life. Not everyone manages to fail because it is so laborious, one must first climb painfully until finally reaching high enough to be able to fall--I can only reach the depersonality of muteness if I have first constructed an entire voice.... It is exactly through the failure of the voice that one comes to hear for the first time one's own muteness and that of others and accepts it as a possible language. Only then is my nature accepted, accepted with its frightening torture, where pain is not something that happens to us, but what we are. And our condition is accepted as the only one possible, since it is what exists, and not another. And since living it is our passion. The human condition is the passion of Christ."


...and her rebirth.

"And now I am not taking your hand for myself. I am the one giving you my hand."

208kidzdoc
Dic 28, 2013, 5:00 pm

> 207 Great review, Steven! I'll add this to my wish list.

209baswood
Dic 30, 2013, 5:26 am

Your review with all the quotes from the book gives an excellent impression of what one might find between the covers. I think I might enjoy The Passion According to G H as much as you did.

210StevenTX
Dic 30, 2013, 10:44 am

You would probably like it, bas. Clarice Lispector has been described as a female Camus.

Of course there are those who will just throw the book down and cry "Good grief, lady, it's just a bug!" But I put just about all her remaining works on my wishlist.

I didn't mention the Kafka connection, but it should be obvious that any reference to a cockroach in conjunction with a personal transfiguration is a reference to The Metamorphosis.

I don't know, however, if there is any significance to the initials "G. H." The book's introducer, Caetano Veloso, didn't know either.

The translator, Idra Novey, said she read this novel in its original English translation as an undergraduate, and decided to learn Portuguese so she could read it in its original language. She also translates Spanish and has published her own poetry.

211StevenTX
Dic 30, 2013, 12:03 pm

My favorite book cover of 2014:



(I was going to do a "top 5," but the other four all had naked women, so I decided I better not.)

212baswood
Dic 30, 2013, 8:31 pm

The book's introducer, Caetano Veloso, didn't know either. Not the Caetano Veloso

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vo12usv6BWM

213NanaCC
Dic 31, 2013, 7:23 am

Happy New Year, Steven. I'm looking forward to more of your informative reviews in the new year.

214StevenTX
Dic 31, 2013, 10:08 am

#212 - The back cover says "Caetano Veloso is one of Brazil's foremost musicians," so I assume it's the same. I had not heard of him before, but I did enjoy the song. Thanks for the link.

#213 - Thanks, Colleen, and a Happy New Year to you and all Club Readers!

215dchaikin
Dic 31, 2013, 11:16 am

Wonderfully done review. I think I'm more horrified by the bug then the narrator is. Every time she mentioned it, I cringed.

Novey sounds like a perfect translator for that work.

216StevenTX
Dic 31, 2013, 12:00 pm

Dan, I don't know if Brazilian cockroaches are as big as Texas cockroaches, but I cringe at them too. My childhood experiences were similar to the narrator's and left the same phobia. I probably couldn't sleep now if I thought there was a cockroach somewhere in my house. I deliberately avoided reading this book at night just to be safe, but before long the insect becomes more of an abstraction.