"Please, sir, I want some more." I had never read or otherwise encountered Oliver Twist before this month, but I immediately recognized that quote. Something about little Oliver sticks in the minds of other readers, just as it stuck in the mind of many characters who encountered him. Oliver Twist is the story of an orphan who seems to escape and again from the clutches of uncaring or malicious adults, only to find himself right back in trouble. It was trouble that started before his birth, for as this narrative follows young Oliver's birth until he is about eleven or twelve, its happenings eventually reveal a more elaborate family drama. While Oliver is passing in and out of the hands of hostile adults -- first uncaring taskmasters, then criminals, who capture him after he escapes -- the arrival of a man with a mysterious past heightens the mortal danger to the boy, far beyond that of ordinary neglect and abuse. The novel is replete with memorable characters, particularly Nancy -- a teenage girl associated with a gang of criminals, who helps them kidnap him for labor but regrets her actions, later laboring to atone for them. Although this story is more grim than anything else I've read of Dickens, I appreciated the earn-your-happy-ending type conclusion, in which Oliver finally finds happiness but at the cost of a dear friend.
Previously Ian Mortimer has offered readers with access to a time machine a handbook for medieval England. Perhaps mystery plays based on Scripture are not your interest, however, and you'd prefer dining with a little more variety. Come then to Elizabethan England, where the secular theater is in its ascendancy, and the rising merchant marine is bringing the world's produce to English plates. The Elizabethan era is commonly thought of as a golden age for England, between its triumph over the Spanish Armada and the appearance of luminaries like Shakespeare, Spenser, and Jonson. Mortimer warns curious travelers, however, that this is still not an age for the cautious: death by disease, crime, war, or the law are never too far away, and Elizabeth's crown is so questioned that "Gloriana" must rule with a firm hand, using a zealous secret service keeping tabs on the population and dealing with those who would foment rebellion.
Although Mortimer breaks from his faux-guidebook style (regarding it as contrived if repeated), he still covers the whole of everyday life in England during its 16th century. Covered at length are dress and occupations, architecture, law, and the evolution of the theater and literature. Material from the previous book which is still in effect - -the feudal ordering of society, for instance -- is recapped but not plumbed in full again. Mortimer is forced by Elizabeth to focus an entire chapter on religion, given that the legal union which gave her birth and rule was a religious and political controversy that led England to break from the Church, and cost many men their heads, from the noble to the base. (Mortimer still focuses on the political aspects of religion, however, with little on religious practice; it remains more of a background than a subject considered in full. I thought this was odd in a book on the medieval period, and it's still odd.)
As much interest as there in in the lives of those gone on, and of the structures they created which we still use, I also appreciated Mortimer's general appraisal of the age. He is strikingly empathetic of his medieval subjects, including those in an age which is not quite medieval but definitely not industrial-modern, and conveys this to the reader well. He gives the people who breathed and died in this age their full consideration -- sharing their verse and graffiti, imagining the smells and sights, putting readers into their heads so that we may read the landscape as they did. To them, hills and rivers were not a Windows XP wallpaper, but places to keep the sheep that kept them alive, and the best transportation away. Mortimer's final appraisal is that as dangerous and uncertain as their lives could be, we see in the Elizabethan age a growing self-confidence -- one that saw men throw themselves into the unknown expanse of the oceans in search of new lands and possibilities, and one that allowed intellectual knowledge to definitely surpass the aura of classical learning. Despite the perils and problems of the age, it was also one of hope and ambition, one that spurred England to become the greatest maritime power yet seen.
Oh, earlier in the week Ian Mortimer did an "ask me anything" thread on reddit, inviting questions from the public. He answered questions on his sources, inspirations, etc.
”The further up and the further in you go, the bigger everything gets.” - The Last Battle
Christendom and Narnia are never far removed from one another, and in Further Up and Further In, Joseph Pearce takes us through the thin veil between them. He pores over the literary and theological references that deepen the world of Narnia, relying on his previous research into the life of Lewis, as well as his work on Lewis’ influences, Tolkien and Chesterton. Both are companions not just of Lewis, but of the reader here, as the three dwelt in the same moral and literary universe.
Most anyone who has visited Narnia in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe realizes its Christian connection. Aslan’s deliberate self-sacrifice to destroy the power of Death and revive not only Narnia, but redeem the withered soul of young Edmund, makes that obvious -- as does the Garden of Eden story seen in The Magician’s Nephew where the same white witch leads to the corruption of Narnia seven hours into its creation. And if anyone was missing the point, then in Voyage of the Dawn Treader Aslan explicitly tells the children that he is known by another name in their world, and that they were brought to Narnia so that they would know him better there.
Although Pearce expands on the multitude of links to Christian culture -- Aslan’s repeated use of “I am”, a la God’s reply to Moses in the desert, his treble use of the same phrase and other sets of three to bring to mind the Trinity, and so on -- Pearce also understands Lewis as a man deep in history, and particularly in medieval history. He points out Lewis’ allusions to other figures, like El Cid and Charlemagne, based not on dry history but on legends about these men, like “The Song of Roland”. Commentary stretches to the modern age, too, as Pearce points out how Eustace Scrubbs’ parents are caricatures of George Bernard Shaw, who loved “humanity” but disliked most people, and believed in progress for its own sake, rather than people for theirs.
More than anything else, Pearce shines a light on the moral universe that was Lewis’ made ‘physical’ in the land of Narnia. There delivered were his convictions about heroism and temptation, of the self-defeating nature of evil, of the dignity of creatures both great and small, both simple and clever. In The Magician’s Nephew we see condemned the will to dominate; in Voyage of the Dawn Treader we experience again Tolkien’s “dragon sickness”, the madness brought on by fixating on materials -- gold, in Eustace’s case, and secret knowledge in Susan’s. Each book has its lessons, and those who have experienced Narnia’s story and loved it will almost surely appreciate his look deeper into the wardrobe.
"I cannot help but thinking you were England -- the Merry, chivalrous, simple-hearted, fearless England that I loved." - an old friend's letter to Chesteron
Mention the name G.K. Chesterton today, and most who have a glimmer of recognition will venture that he was a Christian apologist. Chesterton was no theological pendant, however; at the peak of his career, which he still occupied at the time of his death, he was a bestselling author, editor, and journalist recognized by many as something unique. More than that, however, he was fun, with an amiability that led even his antagonists to maintain warm relations with him even as they heatedly debated through public newspapers. Pearce's title, Wisdom and Innocence alludes to a core dynamic expressed in the life of Chesterton -- the embrace of romance and reality, wonder and wisdom, faith and reason. The same man who could earn praise from medieval scholars for his biography of St. Thomas Aquinas and hold public debates against H.G. Wells and Bertrand Russell might just as easily entertain a house of small children single-handedly the same night, with equal joy.
Although Chesterton was baptized into the Anglican church, his parents were merely bowing to social convention when they brought him before the fount and priest; they were hazy Unitarians and spiritualists. In his youth, Chesterton experimented with the occult, becoming convinced that there was something more than the material world, and had a distinct appreciation for what we might now call the divine feminine. Chesterton did not write a Surprised by Joy equivalent about his embrace of Christianity via the Anglican church, but the tipping point occurred when he was beginning to teach and met a young nihilist who believed in nothing, not even the possibility of truth. Judging by letters Chesterton wrote thereafter, encountering this man was a staring-into-the-abyss movement that set him searching for meaning and order. He found it in the Anglo-Catholic movement of the Anglican church, and his sympathy for Catholicism would only strengthen over the years, until he finally converted and became one of the Church's most vocal champions.
Chesterton didn't unsheath his pen only to defend the Church on theological grounds, however. For him, the Catholic faith undergirded western civilization, and even the material expression of society – the organization of the means of production, for instance - -had a religious importance. From an early age Chesterton held the large industrialists of the day in contempt, and critiqued capitalism first from the left, and then later from Catholic theology. Marx may have cheered the fact that the family had been destroyed as an economic unit, but for Chesterton this was the crux of the problem. He objected and resented to the fact that so much land and property were pooling into the hands of a few titanic industrialists and their bankers. To take away a man's economic independence, to reduce him to a proletarian laboring for nothing but money – to force him and his children to abandon a home for a hovel, and spend their energy for another besides improving their own home and familial enterprise, was to undermine human dignity and tarnish a creature made in the image of God. In general, Chesterton found modernity absurd, unhealthy, and (in the case of fascism) regressive. He regarded the strident nationalism of the early 20 century as a return to tribal barbarism, and a betrayal of the cosmopolitan aura of the Roman and Catholic world. His early denouncement of Hitler, at a time before democratic leaders were eying the ill-shaven Austrian with envy for his energy, earned Chesterton kudos after the evils of Hitler's regime became apparent.
Wisdom and Innocence is an incredible biography, a review of not only GKC's life, but his work. Pearce is exhaustive, poring into Chesterton's poetry and smaller stories as well. Pearce also visits Chesterton in the company of his friends and rivals. Chesterton and an Anglo-French writer named Hillaire Belloc were especially close, united in their love for their faith, literature, and wine, and Chesterton himself inspired many who became friends His two chief friendly antagonists were George Bernard Shaw and H.G. Wells, who shared his concern about the power of tycoons but little else. This book is nearly as big as its subject, and well worth reading for anyone who has a serious interest in Chesterton. The depth which it goes into may be a little much for very casual readers, however: it had chops scholarly enough to merit Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn granting Pearce an interview for his later biography, Solzhenitsyn: A Life in Exile.
If you've ever glanced at my Classics Club list, you'll see Canterbury Tales sitting there, and I've regarded it as one of the tougher ones on my list -- in the same tier as the Russians, April is the ideal month for reading the Tales, in part because it's set during April ("Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote ..."), but mostly because April is a month I've dedicated to England for the past several years. With its girth in mind, I began early, on March 1st. (That marked the first day of Lent, and I was amused by the thought of reading about a pilgrimage during a time inspired by pilgrimage.)
I will note from the beginning that I did not read the tales in Chaucer's original English. My library, happily, has a 900+ page volume that presents a column of Chaucer alongside one of 'modern' English, and it was the modern English which I largely read. I often compared the two columns, reading as much as I could of Chaucer before having to take a peek at the meaning of words, and I saw enough to realize -- based on the fact that certain words were suppose to rhyme - -that Chaucerian English really did sound much different from ours.
I assume most people are aware of the general premise of The Canterbury Tales, but just in case: a large group of people on pilgrimage to Canterbury (intent on honoring Thomas a Becket) converge on an inn. Since they're all headed the same way, they decide to engage in a little friendly competition: each person will spin a couple of tales there and back again, and when they all return to the inn they will decide who gave the best story, and all pitch in to give that person a free meal. Such is the General Prologue, after which various personalities step forward to give a story. The stories vary in length and in mood, as do the storytellers; some are noblemen, like Knights; others are commoners, some are women, some are members of religious orders. Some of the stories are noble, some tragic, some sad, and some very silly.
Rather than reviewing Chaucer (rather like reviewing Homer!), I want to share a couple of general comments and then recap some of the more memorable stories from the first half of the Tales, when I was still taking notes. I was surprised by the varied settings of the stories; some are set as far afield as Russia, Syria, and Greece. As with The Merrie Adventures of Robin Hood, there are grievances aplenty against the landed nobility, including the church. Lastly, while I've heard much about the medieval cult of courtly love, I never appreciated how fantastically silly medievals were for romance until I read through some of this preposterous goings-on.
And now, recaps of a few more memorable tales, complete with a moral:
Knight's Tale: Two cousins imprisoned together fall in love with the same woman, and are violently jealous even though they're in a tower and there is zero chance of them courting her. Naturally one escapes and the other is pardoned, and upon pursuing the girl they meet in a field and start fighting. Who should discover them but the king who imprisoned them in the first place, who -- persuaded by the girl, who turns out to be his sister -- allows them to meet one year hence, with their respective armies, and enter into trial by combat to see who shall win her hand.
The moral: Finders keepers.
The Miller's Tale: One woman is pursued by two men while still married to a third. The story involves two occasions of rear ends being kissed by mistake.
The moral: Wait until daylight to kiss people.
The Clerk's Tale: A King is pressed by his people to marry and decides to marry a beautiful and virtuous peasant. Despite her character, wisdom, and beauty, the King is constantly suspicious of her and inflicts a series of Job-like tests upon her which amount to (1) making her believe he's killed her children, (2) making her believe he's going to annul their union and marry someone less controversial, and (3) having her PLAN THE NEW WIFE'S WEDDING. When the wedding guests arrive, and lo! The "bride" is actually her long-lost daughter, with long-lost son in tow, everyone enjoys a happily-ever-after moment. (Instead of "What the heck, Dad? moment.)
The moral: What seems like psychopathic behavior may, in twenty years, turn out to be a convoluted plan with a happy ending. So uh, have patience.
The Wife of Bath: After entirely too much information about her five husbands, the Wife of Bath tells the story of a Knight who raped a woman and was brought on trial to the King's court, whereupon the Queen gave him one year to solve the question: What do women want? Having queried high and low to no avail, the Knight resignedly begins returning to the court to meet his death, only to chance upon a horribly disfigured old woman who will give him the answer if he promises to anything she wants. He gives the answer to the Queen and is promptly confronted by the old woman, who bids him marry her. He resists by recounting her faults (poverty, age, etc); she rebuts them by praising poverty, age, etc, and finally he relents to marrying her. She then asks him: would he rather she be old and faithful, or young and tempting to others? He leaves the matter to her, and she -- happy that he has ceded his judgement to hers -- decides to become both young and faithful. (Oh, and the answer to 'what do women want?' is 'to be in charge'.) Hurrah for...resignation...?
The moral: Rape is evil, but if you find a witch who wants a husband, you might get away with it.
In some circles of American Protestantism, the authority of the King James Bible is coequal with the authority of the Bible itself. If other translations were mentioned in my childhood church, for instance, it was only to declare how inadequate, pale, and flaccid they were. Long after I switched to the Revised Standard for reference and reading, I still find myself comparing its passages with those of the KJV. Its words are the ones I was raised with, the ones I hear most often in culture, the ones written into my memory. In the Beginning gives a fulsome history of how the KJV came into being, and then follows this up with much smaller sections regarding its influence on the English language and Anglo-American culture in general.
McGrath begins with the the reformation, naturally, which championed the translation of the Bible into the vernacular throughout Europe so that all people could read the scriptures and decide on what they meant , without any guidance from above. English translations of the Bible were strictly forbidden until the reign of Henry VIII, who -- after rejecting the authority of Rome for reasons of state -- became marginally more friendly to other ideas of the reformation. Sanctioned English translations began appearing, the most prominent being the Geneva Bible. That bible was the result of Queen Mary's restoration of English Catholicism, a six-year reign in which Protestant theologians fled to Switzerland, formed their own churches, and began to work on their own Bible. When Mary perished and a more Protestant form of religion returned to England, the Geneva Bible would arrive and begin achieving prominence. One reason it was popular was that it came with an abundance of annotations, annotations which supported other ideas of the reformation and enlightenment-era zeitgeist: namely, a criticism of the divine right of kings. When King James assumed the throne, having long butted heads with Scottish Presbyterians, he determined not to brook any of that anarchic nonsense in England -- and so commissioned a translation that would exceed others and omit those anti-monarchical side comments.
There is more to the King James Bible than religion, however, and McGrath provides extensive historical context. He gives, for instance, a brief history of the English language. Englishmen yearned for an English bible not simply because they believed people should read the scriptures for themselves, but because it was English. Medieval Christendom was fading; the age of the armed and passionate Nation State was at hand. For most of their history, when Englishers heard the Bible it was either in Latin or French -- and French, after the Hundred Years War, might as well be spoken in Hell, so odious was it. Throughout the medieval period, English re-asserted itself: once the tongue of oppressed peasants, it became the language of State, a source of pride and identity. Indeed, McGrath argues that the King James Bible arrived at an absolutely pivotal time: by the age of Elizabeth and James, English was truly maturing as a Language instead of hodgepodge of dialects, and the KJV was able to set an example throughout the entire island: this is what English is. The KJV's English provided the standard, rather like newspapers standardized German, French, and Italian later on. When Englishmen traveled overseas and began creating a new life for themselves in North America, the KJV kept their roots planted in England -- and shaped the American language, so that it maintained many older words of English long after they'd been forgotten on the sceptered isle itself.
Although In the Beginning is largely a history of the KJV's inception and execution -- and only marginally about its effects on the Anglo-American language and culture -- this is a book to consider if one has any interest in the Bible at all. McGrath covers not only the political and cultural genesis of the book, but explains the translation and printing process itself. Considering the sheer scope of the project -- Bibles are an enormous amount of text -- little wonder bibles used to be considered heirlooms, to be passed down from generation to generation. There's also quite a few amusing stories in here, like variant editions that resulted from typesetting problems: the "Wicked Bible", for instance, which commanded readers to commit adultery, and another edition that declared that Israel's enemies would vex Israel with their...wives. In general, I think this history will foment a greater appreciation for the KJV translation, especially given that it was intended to build on the best of preceding English volumes, and includes their successes along with its own.
Next up in Read of England.....a splash of Inklings, followed by medieval lit or late-medieval history.
What an odd little story! Begin with one J. Hoopdriver, a draper's assistant who lives for nothing but spare opportunities to ride his bicycle -- or rather, to crash repeatedly on his bicycle, banging up his legs but still delighting in sheer momentum. Mr. Hoopdriver, at the novel's beginning, is finally embarking on his yearly vacation: a cycling tour in England. Immediately he spies a beautiful woman, crashes dramatically, and earns her pity and his own chagrin. He chances to see her again, later on, and this time in the company of another fellow who claims to be her brother. His love-sickness not withstanding, Hoopdriver can tell that something's amiss, especially after the "brother" accuses Hoopdriver of being a detective. Delighted at having a game to play, Hoopdriver pursues the odd couple, eventually changing roles to that of a clumsy knight- errant once he and the woman (Jessie) realize the other chap is a genuine cad. Jessie's intention was to Be Her Own Woman, but her first ally turned out to be a manipulative fink. Eventually the gig is up for everyone, but Hoopdrive ends the tale most invigorated, having gone on a quest and discovered a friend who could put a little steel in his soul and allow him to dream of doing greater things with his life.
Although the story is nearly inconsequential, there's much charm. Wells' writing is often fun (one passage remarks that while Hoopdriver was in the throes of indecision, gravitation was hard at work and thus the man found himself on the ground with a bleeding shin, still wondering what to do), and sometimes beautiful, as when he's describing the landscape or the dreams of these two. Still, there were two reasons I picked this book up: bicycles and H.G. Wells -- and that, in the end, was the reason I finished it. If nothing else this is literature from bicycling's first bloom of mass popularity.
Literary Converts is a historical survey of the 'second spring' of Anglo-Catholic literature and all that followed, covering most of the twentieth century. Its author would call it a history of grace acting through literature, and Joseph knows about the power of literature; his own soul was rescued through it. In his youth he was the publisher of Bulldog, a vicious racial newspaper in the U.K, but while exploring economic debate he encountered Chesterton, and through Chesterton the redemptive power of the Christian faith. In Literary Converts, he takes on nearly a century of English literary society, focusing on a group of authors whose paths brought them closer to Rome, even as the rest of society became more secular. While the 32 sections appear to be miniature biographies, they are in fact intertwined; Pearce tells here the story of a multi-generational community, one decade’s converts inspiring the next through literature and personal conversation. There are many familiar names here, the greatest being G.K. Chesterton, but some have passed into obscurity. Many caused scandals when they converted, either because of their social status (R.H. Benson, the son of an Anglican archbishop), or because of their long-respected stature as libertines, like Evelyn Waugh. What did they see in tradition and the Catholic church, amid increasing material prosperity? In an age of dehumanizing work and political machines, of eugenics and social 'darwinism'*, they saw an institution which insisted on the dignity of the human person, regardless of the ideology of the hour; when populations were being shifted from the fields to the cities, when everything seemed chaotic and new, they saw stability in a tradition that had weathered the storms of centuries and would, most likely, stand fast through these,As monstrous factories belched smoke, armed mobs brawled in the streets, and ugliness was enthroned, they saw in the west's tradition a preserve of beauty, truth, and love. The work produced by these authors -- a lifetime's worth of reading -- wasn't mere spiritual dabbling. Chesterton and Belloc, for interest, provided works of political economy in The Servile State, What's Wrong with the World, and An Outline of Sanity; T.S. Eliot created The Waste Land, and Christopher Dawson contributed insightful history. Even if they did not join the Catholic church, as was the case with C.S. Lewis and T.S. Eliot, they still drew very near it, and did so through literary engagement – and often through engagement with one another. To read this book is to eavesdrop on a great conversation, a century of passionate and introspective men and women grappling with the fundamental question of meaning. While Pearce is an accessible writer, this is a book of density, and may fall on the obscure side for those who aren't passionate about -- even smitten by -- literature. I only heard of it while listening to Pearce lecture on the 'English spring' following the Romantic period in literature.
Related: Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis The Fellowship: the Literary Lives of the Inklings, Phillip Zaleski The Third Spring: G.K. Chesterton, Graham Greene, Christopher Dawson, and Davis Jones; Adam Schwartz * With apologies to Charles Darwin, since that pernicious social policy owes its name to Herbert Spencer.
Years ago an online quiz declared to me that of all the characters in English literature, I was most like…Jane Eyre. It may have been a quiz intended for women, but I had an awful lot of spare time on my hands in high school. Regardless, since that I’ve had a faint interest in reading Jane’s novel, and since I’ve instituted April as English Lit month, why not? Jane Eyre is the story of a young orphan who must find her way in the world, overcoming both temptation and self-righteousness. Jane is probably the most personable of the classics I’ve read, using as it does the first-person perspective and beginning not with a storied introduction, but with a seemingly mundane episode in Jane’s life that will set her on her own course. Charlotte Bronte combines a happy talent for description with wisdom that is neither strident nor impotent.
Jane begins as a ward of her uncharitable aunt, a woman who bemoans the fact that she has been made the guardian of her niece. Rather than bringing Jane up as a member of the family, she instead attempts to reduce Jane to an abused servant. This injustice so distresses Jane that she collapses in nervous sorrow, and on the advice of a doctor, is sent away to a boarding schools for indigent orphans, where she encounters a saintly young girl who is an exemplar of virtuous patience and long-suffering. The young girl perishes, as is the way of saintly mentors, and Jane quickly grows to become a teacher at the school herself. The real story begins when she, craving something new, advertises for and lands a job as a governess. Her new home is a gloomy place with an absent master and strange goings-on, some of which won’t be explained until very late in the novel, but presently the owner arrives and things grow steadily more agitated. Though Jane has no money, no familial connections, and no great beauty, she develops feelings for this Mr. Rochester. Unknown to her, but fairly obvious to the reader from his wide array of pet names, Rochester also has feelings for Jane….but things aren’t quite that easy. Rochester isn’t the man he appears to be, and Jane must choose which she prefers: love or honor.
“I will hold to the principles received by me when I was sane, and not mad — as I am now. Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation: they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigour; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth — so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am quite insane — quite insane: with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have this hour to stand by: there I plant my foot."
Mad though she may be with love, since her friend ‘s death she has attempted to live rightly, and it is that habit of seeking the Good, not merely what feels good or can be rationalized, that keeps her beginning a new life with a mistake. From there she flees into the country, with resources and again fixing for herself alone, winning friends and admiration for her character and kindness. She discovers long-lost relations and encounters a different kind of proposal before returning to where the story began, for a marvelous conclusion.
Readers today might praise Jane for being an independent woman in the Victorian age, but truth be told she is a remarkable character even in today’s age. She is independent, but not self-obsessed. From an early age she is aware of her own dignity, and respects that of the people who antagonize her; even when she denies them, thwarts them, she is doing it as much for their sake as hers. Thus we have independence, but not egotism. Jane’s strength is her character, her compassion. Unlike Pip, another literary orphan, she is not possessed by her wealth; it leads her to embrace and strengthen her bonds with those "who knew her when", not push them away in search of social status. (She did have the advantage of having escaped her youth, I suppose. Pre-Helen, Jane might have made Pip's same mistakes.)
Jane Eyre was for me another happy surprise. I intended on reading A Classic. I found myself immediately attached to an admirable and lovely young friend in Jane.
The Hobbit begins with the sudden arrival of a pack of dwarves at Bilbo Baggin’s house. Though he is very much the quiet homebody, they have arrived expecting him to both play host an then join them on a dangerous quest – which he does, grudgingly, because he has little choice against a band of strangers and the stern wishes of the wizard Gandalf. His resulting adventure is a coming-of-age story in which the hobbit learns to look outside his hobbit-hole and appreciate the world at large. Bilbo’s Journey expounds on the moral aspects of this travel into maturity, and sees in its conclusion a Bilbo who has learned to look outside himself. Pearce relies on Tolkien’s myth-saturated scholarship to stress that the Dragon is not merely a large reptile whose lair was disturbed, but a creature of evil who is utterly craven. The Dragon feasts on innocents and hoards gold not because it is hungry and wishes to put something by for its retirement, but because it is wicked, and its presence makes real our own craven consumerism and selfishness. Tellingly, when near the end the Dragon is loosed on the town and swoops down, shining in the moonlight, its lone piece of unarmored flesh is its black heart, open to one well-shot arrow. As with Return of the King, the defeat of the monster is not the end of evil; the wealth-obsessed dragon sickness leads to a war between various factions, and when Bilbo returns home he finds his distant relations greedily pawing at his own possessions. Having grown throughout the adventure, however, Bilbo is not nearly as wrecked by having lost his ‘precious’ possessions as he once was. As with Frodo’s Journey, Pearce comments on other aspects of the story – the development of the ring, Thorin’s kingship vs Aragon’s -- but the virtue against evil, charity vs selfishness theme is predominant. There’s a fair bit of redundancy between this and Frodo’s Journey, but this one has broader appeal.
The Invisible Man opens with the arrival of a Mysterious Stranger to a country inn. He is covered from head to toe, and remains so even after he takes a room. The townsfolk don't know what to make of the irritable visitor who insists on wearing gloves, a hat, and goggles indoors, and peevishness only intensifies their curiosity. That, and the fact that his luggage consisted of a small library and an enormous set of chemical apparatus. The more time he spends with them the more suspicious he seems, and those who keep trying to get a feel for the man notice...curiosities. For instance, once his sleeve seemed to be empty, yet it moved in a way that would be impossible for an amputee's. Driven to frustration by their constant prodding, the visitor reveals that he is, in fact, an Invisible Man. From there, the plot is one of spectacle, siege, and violence as the Man lashes out in desperation. The other villages think the people in the first hamlet are lunatics, but soon the "madness" spreads as he moves. His every encounter results in contemptuous treatment of the terrified people he meets, followed by attempts to subdue people with inexplicable force. It turns out that the English winter is not the best time to embark on an experiment in invisibility. Invisible he may be, but he still still needs clothing and food -- and both expose him. Eventually the Man is cornered when he attempts to enlist the help of a university colleague. That man, Kemp, listens to his story but can't help but notice that the Invisible Man seems to be the one instigating all of the trouble. He is especially bothered by the Man's account of nicking a man's goods....from his very house. This is England, you transparent lout, don't you know a man's home is his castle? When the Man reveals that he wants to inflict a profitable Reign of Terror on England, that's the last straw. A trap is sprung, the man is caught, and when he dies the electro-chemical process he exposed himself to wears off to reveal him. That's that.
The Invisible Man is curious, as compared to the other Wells novels I've read. It drops the reader right into the middle of the character's story, and doesn't consist of any thoughtful narration. In recapping the story, I've attempted to be as sympathetic as I can, attempting to frame him as a man driven to desperation by the miserable condition he inadvertently cast himself into. It's a bit of a stretch, though, because the Invisible Man is a grump from page one, as though the invisibility simply escalated his own disdain and short temper. His intelligence is all technical; he doesn't have the least bit of tact or strategy in his head. A Reign of Terror in England? Sounds awfully French. I don't know if Wells was aware of the old Greek story about a ring that makes the wearer invisible and quickly immoral, but the lesson certainly applies to our fellow here.
This is a fast story, with the feel of horror.. The Invisible Man is more a monster to be feared than a man to be awed by or pitied.
A group of boys marooned on a tiny Pacific Island must work together, battling the elements and one another. If they don't adapt, they'll be voted off the island -- or thrown off. It's not Survivor, it's Lord of the Flies. You know the story, of course. A plane crash dumps a score or so of boys onto an island, an attempt at restoring civilized order is made, but it falls apart in tribalism and bloodshed. In taking a group of creme de la creme school children, some of them literally choir boys, and placing them in an idyllic setting that leads only to chaos and death, Golding offers not an adventure story but a reflection human nature.
The island not only abounds in food, but is predator-free. Coconuts, fresh water, and timber for making shelter are everywhere for the taking. Despite this, the boys become increasingly psychologically stressed, a plight made worse by the ambitions of one to become the next Chief. This idyllic bloodshed directly repudiates the myth of the noble savage, though, maintaining that there is something dark and irrational within man that will devour society from within if it is not tamed. Yet there is something irrational outside in this story, something that makes it a near-fantasy, because the boys are haunted by some Beast that attacks from the sea, from the trees, from the air. It's not simply a parachuted corpse they dread; at one point the Beast directly taunts one of the boys, and another time they enact murder under some sort of a mass delusion that one of their number is the Beast. What keeps the boys together as long as they were is the proud memory of being English, and therefore devoted to good order and setting things aright. The intelligent thing to do, maintains their leader Ralph, is to maintain a signal fire -- but the fun thing to do, the thing that enchants the senses and drives the boys to madness, is putting on war-paint and hunting pigs. The madness and chant of the hunt will so consume the boys that murder joins them on the island, though they are saved from destruction by Her Majesty's Ship, the Deus ex Machina.
This is a grim little story, of course, but a welcome rebuttal to those who today believe everything would be peachy-keen if it weren't for this politician or that program or lack thereof. The 'beast' isn't so mild that it can be drawn out of the sea with a hook.
Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
A chance encounter with a desperate and threatening convict in the dark marshes near his home, followed by an inexplicable invitation to a reclusive spinster's home, creates for young Pip an unexpected adolescence. Pip is an orphan, a boy who lives with his weary and frequently abusive sister and her ironmonger-with-a-heart-of-gold husband, Joe. The two events are not as random as they appear, with connections that will be exposed throughout this story of Pip's young life as he grows into a twenty-something with a lot of mistakes behind him. More overtly pivotal is a third event, the arrival of a lawyer who announces to Pip that someone, somewhere, has taken an interest in him with the intention of making him into a gentleman. There is more to being gentle, however, than having money.
When I think of Dickens, I think of dirt -- of miserable hovels, filthy laborers, dark streets filled with muck and offal, grimy oil lamps whose meager light masks even more despairing conditions. Great Expectations provides that amply, though not in the places to be expected. One of the more harrowing settings is the interior of a great house, Satis, which has been closed to the light and left to decay after a woman's heartbreak. When Pip meets the woman, Miss Havisham, she is much aged, more through anguish than time. She is a woman utterly consumed by her grief, literally living in it: jilted by a fiance decades ago, she continues to wear a tattered bridal dress and lives in a room featuring the rotting remnant of her bridal feast. She proves to be a pivotal figure for Pip, not because she is the author of his (mis)fortune, but because she introduces him to someone who will be: her adopted daughter, Estella. Estella she has raised to be the ruin of men, a siren whose rocky core breaks their hearts like flimsy ships. Pip, is literally starstruck and will spend the entire book pining for her -- accepting a mysterious fortune and reforming his manners and expectations to please her. For her, he will leave his sister and dear brother-in-law Joe behind; he will forget them entirely, ashamed of their tiny house and the dirty forge, their rough hands and woeful habit of referring to knaves as jacks within the card deck.
For all his being enraptured by Estella -- who, to her credit, does attempt to warn him off repeatedly -- Pip's eyes are not so clouded that he doesn't come to realize the mistakes he is making. Eventually the person who has been providing him this mysterious fortune appears, and there are complications -- creditors and men waiting at the gallows, desperate attempts at escape and plans foiled. Pip will have to be rescued by some of the people he has left behind, and this time is properly ashamed -- not of them, but of his own cretinous behavior. The ending doesn't have the resolution I would expect -- a man rescued, the girl gotten -- but it's truer for that, given that every thing has its cost. Great Expectations was an utterly riveting story. I approached it with dread, having started it last year and then fallen off the track, but this year I couldn't put it down. I was ever surprised by Dickens' humor. I expect his work to be Very Serious dramas about the plight of orphans and the poor and such, but there's giggle-bits everywhere, from the characters to the narration. There's even a fart joke. (For shame, Dickens!) One bit of whimsy is a character directly and consistently referring to his senile father as The Aged Parent. Expectations brims over with remarkable characters, most notably the haunted Havisham and the extraordinary Magwitch, Although I still have my sentimental attachment to A Christmas Carol, Expectations definitely deserves its status as Dickens' best. Well over a century and a half after its publication, the story still resonates.
My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life--for we possess nothing certainly except the past--were always with me.
Some time ago after finishing off a season of Downton Abby, I queried Goodreads: is there a Downtonesque book? Its readers recommended, among others, Bridehead Revisited. After learning about it, of course, I seemed to hear it mentioned incessantly and decided to give it a try. Glad am I that I did, because Brideshead proved to be one of the most beautifully written novels I’ve ever taken on. It is a sad, wistful novel, one man’s recollection of his time spent with a noble family in decline, provoked when his battalion is ordered to take over their home during the Second World War and he realizes he has tread this ground before. Brideshead is a love story, but without the kind of resolution expected of one. The tale is saturated in beauty; characters linger over rich meals and fragrant brandies, and bare their souls in sunlit salons and gilded smoking rooms. The sensuality would please a Dorian Gray. It helps that the narrator, Charles Ryder, is a painter of architecture and relishes it for its timelessness, a created work that combines the efforts of generations.
Beauty was the main attraction of Ryder to the Marchmain family, exhibited strikingly in the person of Ryder’s friend Sebastian and his sister Julia. The Marchmains are the main source of interest to the reader, beside the writing, for Ryder himself has only a superficial presence. Religion permeates the book, as the Marchmains are Catholics; their religion creates an identity for them as ‘others’ within England. The religious sense is innate, not outwardly pious. The main characters describe one another as half-heathen, even at their most cavalier there is a seriousness to their foibles, a sense of wonder. They may act merrily cynical, but there are convictions at the root of their characters that have the ability to produce fruit at the right moment. A sense of grace ties the two halves of this book together, separated even as they are by years. A tale of one character's slide into alcoholism, to his family's grief, and another tale of discovered love, are woven together by it. While much of the story is sad, most of the characters find relief for their private burdens, and Waugh cuts the emotional intensity with comic scenes and descriptions. Some of it borders on silly, other mingles the laughs with some woe, like the description of a father greeting his son with “the usual air of mild regret”. There are surely depths to the story that can’t be plumbed in one read alone, but there will be others, for Waugh’s writing here, bordering on the lyrical, is beautifully arresting itself.
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“Two wives despaired of him,’ he said. ‘When he got engaged to Sylvia, she made it a condition that he should take the cure at Zurich. And it worked. He came back in three months a different man. And he hasn't touched a drop since, even though Sylvia walked out on him.’
‘Why did she do that?’
“Well, poor Charlie got rather a bore when he stopped drinking. But that’s not really the point of the story.”
More even than the work of the great architects, I loved buildings that grew silently with the centuries, catching and keeping the best of each generation, while time curbed the artist's pride and the Philistine's vulgarity, and repaired the clumsiness of the dull workman.
The trouble with modern education is you never know how ignorant people are. With anyone over fifty you can be fairly confident what's been taught and what's been left out. But these young people have such an intelligent, knowledgeable surface, and then the crust suddenly breaks and you look down into depths of confusion you didn't know existed.
"Light one for me, will you?"
It was the first time in my life that anyone had asked this of me, and as I took the cigarette from my lips and put it in hers I caught a thin bat's squeak of sexuality, inaudible to any but me.
"Oh, Mummy, must I see him? There'll be a scene if I do."
"Nonsense, Julia, you twist that poor man round your finger."
So Julia went into the library and came out an hour later engaged to be married.
Related: The Picture of Dorian Grey, Oscar Wilde. A Seperate Peace, John Knowles
I rejoiced in the Burgundy. How can I describe it? The Pathetic Fallacy resounds in all our praise of wine. For centuries every language has been strained to define its beauty, and has produced only wild conceits or the stock epithets of the trade. This Burgundy seemed to me, then, serene and triumphant, a reminder that the world was an older and better place than Rex knew, that mankind in its long passion had learned another wisdom than his. By chance I met this same wine again, lunching with my wine merchant in St. James's Street, in the first autumn of the war; it had softened and faded in the intervening years, but it still spoke in the pure, authentic accent of its prime and, that day at Paillard's with Rex Motttram years before, it whispered faintly, but in the same lapidary phrase, the same words of hope.
Dorian Gray is the picture of youthful innocence, but his portrait is one of deathly corruption. After sitting for a painting rendered by his friend Basil, Dorian becomes a source of infatuation for himself. Awed by his own beauty, Dorian is driven to angst by the sight of his own beauty and confesses that he would do anything, even give his soul, if the figure in the painting would age instead of himself. Through such a Faustian bargain, the portrait becomes Gray's hidden self, his conscience reflecting the ugliness within as he becomes increasingly self-obsessed. The Picture of Dorian Gray is a tale of sin and degradation, of a man's destruction -- the fulfillment of the teacher's exhortation in Ecclesiastes that all is vanity.
Although The Picture of Dorian Gray ends in death, being the literary account of a moral crash-and-burn, Wilde's wit makes for numerous fun moments. There is a bitterness to the laughs, the vicious humor; the many stabs taken at society and middle class morality are strikes rendered by truly vicious men, individuals who commit murder and abandon themselves to moral chaos. Many witticisms attributed to Wilde are placed in here the mouth of the malicious Lord Henry, like "The only way to get rid of a temptation is yield to it." One hopes that few readers look for wisdom from the likes of Henry, who is such a profoundly dismal influence that the painter Basil begs him not to corrupt young Dorian. (Alas for Bas, soon Dorian will be doing the corrupting...and to such an extent that many of his deeds can't be named directly, but alluded to only by the fact that people leave the room when he arrives.) During at least two points in the work, Dorian wavers at a moral crossroads, but at both times he only slides further into the pit, unable to free himself from his one fixation: self-adulation.
Gray is a curious accomplishment, humorful but with a great sadness. Gray's obsession with himself, his surrounding of himself with trivial amusements, are haunting. For all his pleasures taken, for all the pursuit given to making himself feel good, Dorian at the end is worse for the wear. The one character who remains interested in his person -- Henry again -- does so because Dorian is an amusing spectacle. Even the man who encouraged him on his descend will not accompany him on it, merely watch coldly from above. Selfishnesss reigns. In a world filled with trivial amusements, and now more than ever obsessed with perpetual youth, Dorian Gray remains a warning. In both art and substance, Wilde's sole novel commends itself to the modern reader.
As 2015 was ending I finished up a couple of works which merit mentioning. Firstly is Jane Austen’s Emma. I have read Austen before (Pride and Prejudice), intrigued by mention of Darcy as a model gentleman, Emma was thus my second foray into the author’s works, though I did not enjoy it nearly as much. The plot is familiar to most: Emma Woodhouse is a witty, self-assured, and quite attractive woman so enormously satisfied with her life that she seeks to manage others. She attempts to pair a few of her single neighbors up, disaster ensues, much chatter follows, and eventually everyone winds up married off – including her. There were quite a few utterly brilliant lines in here – a favorite, following a haughty woman’s “discovery” that Mr. Knightly was a gentleman, noted that he was unlikely to ‘discover’ her to be a Lady, given her manners. This was only a first reading, I think, given Emma’s reputation as Austen’s “perfect” novel. Perhaps I missed something in the end-year weariness.
Closer to my usual fare was Stagecoach: Wells-Fargo and the American West. As the title indicates, it is primarily a history of Wells-Fargo’s rise to fame in the 19th century. It was an unusual company, doing its best to fill a vacuum of infrastructure and service in the still-being-settled west. Principally, the firm provided banking and express services. Its commercial network provided both communication and transportation, at a dearer rate than the Postal routes but far more efficiently. It became most famous for the mail and treasure that traveled on stagecoach lines, and one chapter sheds a little light on the workings of stages in particular. After nearly dropping the ball on the transition to railroads, Wells-Fargo rebounded and became such a productive company that it drew the attention of trust-busters, who found the collusion of banking and railroads worrisome. The bank that exists today has only a tangential connection to the former behemoth of California, but retains the imagery of a stage coach -- which proved a useful brand image even in the late 19th century, reminding prospective customers of how the west was won.
2016 is off to an excellent start so far, with How I Killed Pluto already read and reviewed, and another fantastic book following that. Right now I'm nibbling at a couple of books, but I'm really looking forward to what January holds. Today I chanced upon a list of books I scribbled down next year, and I must say...I forget about some of the most interesting books.
Oh! I'm presently watching The Last Kingdom, a BBC miniseries based on my favorite bit of Bernard Cornwell, the Saxon Stories series. So far it doesn't stack up too well against Vikings, but the latter is...brutal.
Tom and Viv is not based on a book, and I cannot even say that I have read the first bit of T.S. Eliot. But this movie haunts me in such a way that I figure it's worth saying a few words about, and since the movie has such obvious literary connections, why not here? Tom and Viv is a British drama about the first (failed) marriage of Tom Eliot, better known as T.S. Eliot, whose famous work is The Wasteland. This is an extensive poem I've also not read, but I have heard about it, and the sentiment expressed was that the world is going to pot. I mention The Wasteland because it features in Tom and Viv, as a work of collaboration between Tom and his wife, Vivienne Haigh-Wood. The two are from different worlds; Tom is an American poet with no social status whatsoever, while Viv is a society daughter from a line that goes clear back to the Norman conquest. In the film's opening lines, Tom's future brother-in-law Morris ponders that Tom desperately wanted to be English, so infatuated was he by England's rich traditions. This is unfortunate, because Viv saw in Tom someone who could take her away from high society, allow her to escape it. She had such hope for him -- he lived in the attic of the most hated man in Europe, Bertrand Russell! She didn't expect that Tom would become utterly respectable, and worse yet through the most ploddingly civilized ways -- through ordinary work at a bank and joining the Church of England. And for his part, Tom didn't expect that she was absolutely mental. What exactly the matter is with poor Viv is never really nailed down; there's speculation that she's manic-depressive with unfortunate hormonal balance issues, but more accurate diagnoses don't emerge until it's too late for her. The pair's whirlwind courtship gives them no clue that one day Tom will be attending dinner parties with Virginia Woolf, or that Viv will be forcing Ms. Woolf out of her taxi at gunpoint and taking it to Tom's office, where she will pour melted chocolate into the mailbox because TOM NEEDS HIS CHOCOLATE and that wretched secretary won't let her in. The movie spans over fifteen years, through which the two make one another steadily more miserable, worsened by the fact that they really do love one another. Or at least they're devoted to some ideal of the other - the idea that Tom loves Viv is put into question by the fact that he sticks her in a lunatic asylum and never sees her again, going to to marry some other woman and leave her to sit in a garden with other lunatics, baking chocolate cake for the husband she will never see again. Her brother's no better, wandering off to Africa and never writing. At the end the viewer is left with two every depressing bits of speculation: Viv and her entire family were made miserable by erratic behavior that could have been ameliorated by medicine, and that Tom was mostly attracted to Viv for selfish reasons. I have watched it perhaps four times in the past year, and every time it leaves me sad -- yet there is something compelling about the unhappy couple's contradictory cries of the heart.
In the past few days I’ve knocked out several categories for
the 2015 Reading Challenge, including:
A Book Older than 100 Years: Beowulf, the story of a hero from another land who
conquers a monster, his mother , and his
own fear of death against a horde-guarding dragon. I used Seamus Heaney’s translation, which
seemed to be the best judging by reviews, and found it far shorter than I expected.
A Book You Were Supposed to Read in High
School: Grendel is a mid-20th century retelling of Beowulf
through the eyes of the fearsome beast our doughty Geat rendered ‘armless. This was assigned to me in 12th
grade English, though we never read it because the teacher was a Guardsman and
we were taught by a series of substitutes.
I never gave away the book, though, because I paid $12 for it, and when
a book is assigned to me reading it becomes a point of honor. Anyhoo, Grendel was a curious choice for my
teacher. As it turns out the fearsome beast is a teenager: clumsy, chronically mired in an existential
crisis, and fairly miserable on the whole.
Aside from a few philosophical conversations with the dragon, Grendel
spends the book crashing through the woods, spying on the Danes, feeling sorry
for himself, and occasionally screaming at the heavens. Though I endured this
in the hope that Beowulf would show up and put him out of his misery, I must
say the ending line did make me feel…almost
sorry for him. Almost.
A Book Based on a Television Show: Star Trek: Foul Deeds Will Rise, based heavily on “The Conscience of the King”
and touching on another though to name it would give away the whodunit.
A Book By an Author Who You Love, But
Which You Haven’t Read: Zebra Derby, Max Shulman. Yes, despite
saying “anything by Asimov or Wendell Berry” for months now, last night I spotted my copy of Max Shulman’s
Large Economy Size and realized – hey, I’m awfully fond of Shulman, and I haven’t
read the third novel in that collection, so why not? It’s a short bit of postwar satire in which a
returning soldier struggles to find his place in the new world. Through his
misadventures Shulman pokes fun at door-to-door salesmen, Communists, psychologists, bureaucrats, and entrepreneurs
. It’s not nearly as funny as the soldier’s previous misadventures (Barefoot Boy With Cheek), erring as it
does on the side of randomness, but I still like Shulman.
What's next? Probably either Book on the Bottom of Your To-Read List, for which I have a nonfiction contender I've been meaning to read for several years now, but have never actually picked up, or A Book with Magic, as I'm plodding through The Two Towers. Sure, I could use a Narnia book for the magic, but scavenger hunts are no fun when there's no challenge.
The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very
tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility! (Algernon,
Act I.)
Algernon and
Earnest are two pals who have more in common than they realize. When Earnest
visits Algernon, planning on proposing to Algie’s cousin at a family
lunch, a mystery is waiting for him.
Algernon has recovered a lost cigarette case, one he knows to belong to
Earnest, but which for some reason is inscribed to an Uncle Jack from his
adoring niece Cecily. Who is Jack?
Who is
Jack, indeed? That’s a three-act
question. Jack, it turns out, is the
real name of Earnest. In real life, he’s
a respectable gentleman in the country with a young ward, for whom he must be
very proper and upright. When it gets too much, he likes to escape to the city
to see after his libertine brother, Earnest. Algernon isn’t in the least bothered to learn
that he knows his friend under an assumed name – Algy likes to pretend he has a sick friend in
the country, Bunbury, who occasionally needs help. (The occasion invariably
coincides with party invitations from Algernon’s aunt.) When Algernon decides to visit Jack’s country
estate pretending to be the scoundrel brother Eanrest, hilarity ensues.
Strictly
speaking, hilarity was ensuing long before that. Wilde once equipped that nothing succeeds like
excess, and this play’s abundance of witty dialogue may hint at truth in the
saying. Part of the humor comes from
Wilde turning social conventions on their head; his rich characters complain
that the lower orders aren’t setting a good example for the uppers, characters
despair of hypocrisy in a good man who pretends to be naughty, and at least one woman proclaims that men’s
proper place is in the home, and once they leave it they become altogether too
feminine. It’s a very silly play, and
even a little meta: towards the end Aunt Augusta complains that contrived
coincidences like this simply have no place in ‘good’ families like hers. This is a topsy-turvy plot, wherein characters
are alternatively sparring and then defending one another, traveling from sobs to shrieks of joy at a moment’s notice.
It’s magnificent fun, especially in the hands of talented actors.
