tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52818665924991988482024-03-13T04:36:39.176-07:00 Thoth Books<b>THOTH BOOKS</b>
<i>An editorial collective for the Internet age</i>Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.comBlogger77125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-69137720762342202232022-06-23T11:42:00.002-07:002022-06-26T03:52:14.181-07:00La alcaldesa<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59653575-la-joven-pol-tica" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="La joven política" border="0" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1637317952l/59653575._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59653575-la-joven-pol-tica">La joven política</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5568920.Manuela_Carmena">Manuela Carmena</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4723545754">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
Este libro me encantó, en dos niveles: 1º, Manuela Carmena es un encanto de persona, cuya generosidad de espíritu es evidente en lo que dice y la manera de decirlo; y 2º, su experiencia como alcaldesa y cara y símbolo de una coalición electoral de tendencia pendenciera, hace especialmente valiosas sus reflexiones y propuestas respecto a los obstáculos estructurales para que la democracia realmente responda a las necesidades y los deseos del pueblo. <br />Su larga experiencia como abogada laboralista — empezada en los años de Franco y su represión — y luego como juez no la había preparado por las contiendas feroces entre facciones políticas, con sus insultos y descalificaciones, exageraciones y hasta mentiras que ya son costumbre conocida por los políticos más veteranos. Pero aguantó, y hasta hizo gestos importantes para fomentar un ambiente más cordial y productivo, por ejemplo, el invitar a los de los otros partidos a desayunar con ella en su oficina con sus famosas magdalenas (Carmena incluye las receta para sus magdalenas en el libro). <br />Pero lo que encontró más inaceptable y seguramente el origen de gran parte de las ineficiencias de nuestro sistema electoral era la férrea lealtad y disciplina que exigen los partidos, con el único objetivo de alcanzar el poder. Lo que se podría hacer para la ciudad con ese poder es de menor importancia; lo realmente importante es preservar el partido como organización y asegurar puestos pagados para sus miembros más activos y leales. Eso explica la tendencia de los voceros de la oposición de oponerse a toda propuesta del consistorio, sin contemplar una colaboración para mejorar la propuesta.<br />Sin embargo, pudo empezar algunos importantes cambios en la ciudad, En 2018, a pesar de todas las frustraciones,
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Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-76390862526656578862022-04-18T10:08:00.003-07:002022-06-23T11:46:13.825-07:00Time of the wolves: Germany, post WWII<br /><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53288891-aftermath" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img border="0" alt="Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich" src="https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1633554175l/53288891._SX98_.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53288891-aftermath">Aftermath: Life in the Fallout of the Third Reich</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/460842.Harald_J_hner">Harald Jähner</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/4671562406">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
<i>Aftermath</i> (original title: <i>Wolfszeit</i>, “Wolf Time,” 2019) is about the Germans in 1945-1955, recovering from the war, their huge and humiliating defeat, the destruction of most of their cities and production facilities, and their own conflicted consciences. Not surprisingly, most popular was the interpretation of themselves as “victims” rather than perpetrators of the terrible violence that not only killed millions of people but displaced even more millions of survivors. The sequels of the Ukraine war are going to be of similar scale, as we can already see with the millions of refugees, destruction of agrarian and industrial productivity, and the terrible losses of life. How the Russians are going to deal with it, and their own consciences if at least some of them acknowledge the evidence, …?<br />The war and the rapid collapse of the Nazi regime in 1945 altered the structure of all Europe — as will Russia’s current war on Ukraine. What had been the greatest economic and military power on the continent was now divided into four zones governed respectively by the French, the British, the U.S., and the Soviets. National boundaries were redrawn, so that much of what had been German became Polish, leading to expulsion or (more-or-less voluntary) mass migration of German speakers westward, to lands they had never seen before and whose dialects and accents were unfamiliar — and where they had no prospects for making a living.<br />“In the summer of 1945 about 75 million people lived in the four occupied zones of Germany. Some 40 million, far more than half of them, were not where they belonged or wanted to be.” (p. 39)<br />The hardship and misery in the destroyed cities induced the German self-pity mentioned above, their view of themselves as “victims”, and an utter lack of concern about the missing millions of Jews, even among those Germans (a minority) who accepted German responsibilty for the destructive war. Finding ways to survive — often by theft, frequently accompanied by violence over a precarious shelter or a fragment of bread in a bombed out city — and the abuses by the occupying forces, including house-breaking and rapes by barely-controlled Soviet soldiers — earned this period the label “Wolfszeit”, or “time of the wolf”, the ferocious monster of German folklore.<br />But it also inspired creativity and ingenuity of many Germans, sometimes in ways that contributed to the rebuilding of economy, production and even culture. Among the exceptional personalities that Jähner highlights are the now-famous writer and poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger, a creative capitalist as a child in the black market of Bavaria; the beautiful and daring actress Hildegard Knef, portraying women taking sometimes brutal control of their sex-lives — a scandalous departure from pre-war German mores; Rudolf Hernnstadt, a Jewish Communist journalist who established new newspapers in the Soviet zone; Hans Habe, “[t]he most glittering among” the German Jews (though he was actually of Hungarian origin) serving the U.S. occupiers — handsome, clever, pretentious and “highly efficient” at establishing newspapers to counter the lingering ideology of the Nazis; the famous author Alfred Döblin; pilot and sex-education popularizer Beate Uhse; and Heinrich Nordhoff, the “general” who got Volkswagen back in production.<br />Very clearly written and bristling with dramatic incidents, this book is necessary for understanding the Germany that emerged from its “wolf’s time” to become, this time in very different form, the great economic power it is today.
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Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-37650549911870620122022-04-11T03:37:00.001-07:002022-04-11T03:37:31.847-07:00<h1 style="text-align: left;"> <b><span style="color: #2b00fe;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;">Thoth Writers
Collective</span></span></b></h1><h1 style="text-align: left;"><b><span style="color: #2b00fe;">
</span></b></h1><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;">We are six
writers across two continents, from Spain to California, who collaborate via Zoom,
e-mail, etc., to encourage one another and improve our writing —from interpersonal
and gender dilemmas, global conflicts to myth. We take our name from <b>Thoth</b>, the
ibis-headed god who introduced writing to the ancient Egyptians.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"><b>Jan Alexander,</b> based in New York, writes
both fiction and non-fiction that reflects how globalism and technology are
changing everything, in good ways and bad. Her books include <b>Ms. Ming’s
Guide to Civilization</b> (novel, Regal Publishers 2020); <b>Getting to Lamma</b>
(novel); <b>Bad Girls of the Silver Screen</b> (with Lottie Da; nonfiction). <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="https://www.janalexander.com/portfolio-category/books/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;">https://www.janalexander.com/portfolio-category/books/</span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="ES-TRAD"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; margin-left: 35.45pt; margin-right: 0cm; margin-top: 0cm; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"><b>Peter de Lissovoy</b> is a writer and free-lance editor living in New
Hampshire; besides his nonfiction memoirs of his days as a civil rights
activist with SNCC in Georgia (<b>The Great Pool Jump</b>), his works include the
novels <b>Invisible Car Dealer</b>; <b>Wisconsin</b>; <b>Rita</b>; <b>Melusina</b>;
<b>The Angels of Zimbabwe</b>; and <b>Feelgood: A trip in time and out</b>: </span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Peter-de-Lissovoy/e/B06XPRQ21X?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1649153619&sr=8-1"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Peter-de-Lissovoy/e/B06XPRQ21X?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1649153619&sr=8-1</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"><b>Geoffrey Fox,</b> based in Spain and New York, is
the author of the novels <b>Rabble! A Story of the Paris Commune</b> (2021) and
<b>A Gift for the Sultan</b> (2008) and the short-story collection <b>Welcome
to My Contri</b> (1988; augmented e-book 2017) --“This frequently powerful
collection of short stories enters Latin America as if through the rickety back
door of a burlesque house" <i>NYTimes Book Review</i>). His best-selling
sociological work is <b>Hispanic Nation: Culture, Politics and the Constructing
of Identity</b> (University of Arizona Press, 1997). </span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="https://geoffreyfox.com/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;">https://geoffreyfox.com/</span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="ES-TRAD"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"><b>Karla Huebner</b> is a novelist and professor
of art history at Wright State University, Dayton, Ohio, and author of <b>Magnetic
Woman: Toyen and the Surrealist Erotic</b> (art history, University of
Pittsburgh Press), <b>In Search of the Magic Theater</b> (novel, Regal House 2022)
and other works. </span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="https://www.karlahuebner.com/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;">https://www.karlahuebner.com/</span></a></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; mso-margin-bottom-alt: auto; mso-margin-top-alt: auto; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="ES-TRAD"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span></span><u><span lang="EN-US" style="color: blue; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"></span></u></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span class="gmail-im"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Cuerpo en alfa";"><b>Margaret C. Murray</b> lives in the San Francisco East Bay
with two dogs and a cat. She is the author of novels <b>Sundagger.net</b>, <b>Dreamers</b>,
<b>Spiral</b><i> </i>and <b>Pillow Prayers</b><i>.</i> Margaret
is a small press publisher and teaches From Heart to Paper
Writing Workshops. Presently she is fine-tuning her upcoming fifth novel <i>Deer
Xing</i>. See </span></span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="https://writewordspress.com/"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Cuerpo en alfa";">https://writewordspress.com/</span></a></span><span class="gmail-im"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Cuerpo en alfa";">.</span></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman \(Cuerpo en alfa";"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 35.45pt; text-indent: -35.45pt;"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"><b>Dirk van Nouhuys</b> writes
novels, short stories, experimental forms, and occasionally verse. He has
a BA from the Stanford creative writing program and was minor pioneer of what
later became the internet. He has published a book on Macintosh
applications, and a translation of two Flemish novels, <b>The Danger </b>and
<b>The Enemy</b>. He publishes fiction regularly in literary and other
magazines to a total of about 95 items. </span><span lang="ES-TRAD"><a href="http://www.wandd.com/Site/Publications.html"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">http://www.wandd.com/Site/Publications.html</span></a></span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;">. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: ES-TRAD;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-hansi-font-family: Calibri;"></span></p>
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{page:WordSection1;}</style></p>Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-90862433750185938342021-06-09T10:51:00.003-07:002021-06-13T12:40:56.364-07:00Comments on A Book of Memories by Péter Nádas<p></p><div style="text-align: left;"> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzVb700H-jg6jRT8agnJZDIJtO9NQ3eVoXztC1Pz7lHI8JWb7oP1ZAPZb0j0ZulEnqVRcTkAvn5pNU4FJo11nT1hyphenhyphenMXHBihDSywGoXVMehpK60t7THoqFlm9ebDxefg8nhSMit_DEysxGT/s800/nadas1_body.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="780" data-original-width="800" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzVb700H-jg6jRT8agnJZDIJtO9NQ3eVoXztC1Pz7lHI8JWb7oP1ZAPZb0j0ZulEnqVRcTkAvn5pNU4FJo11nT1hyphenhyphenMXHBihDSywGoXVMehpK60t7THoqFlm9ebDxefg8nhSMit_DEysxGT/s320/nadas1_body.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><p></p>This novel is about people whose self-definition has been fragmented and rotted generation by generation by a totalitarian state. Perhaps a reader who had been immersed in the Soviet control of Eastern Europe would know this from the first page, but to a Western reader it at first appears a book about a neurotic guy with romantic and self-image problems. For us, the social depth of the origin of those problems gradually emerges over the first couple of hundred pages. <div><br /><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"> In December 1954, on the last day before winter break, as I recall, a sizable delegation of grim looking men showed up at our school. They arrived in huge black automobiles. They all wore dark hats. From our classroom window we saw the hats disappear in the doorway downstairs. All teaching ceased. We had to sit in silence. Footsteps echoed in the corridors, never just one but several pairs of footsteps, and then silence again. Some people were being led somewhere. Not a peep out of anybody hissed our most hated instructor, Klement, when somebody would stir to change position. The door opened. The janitor called out someone barely whispering the name. Footfalls. Then the waiting: will he come back? After a short while the student would come back, looking pale, and sidle into his seat, followed by our curious stares, and the door would close again. Trembling lips and ears rubbed red told us that something must have happened. Something was going on. But the most unlikely people were taken out; I saw no pattern, so I could draw no conclusion. </div></blockquote><p> </p><div> It is not an easy read at 705 pages. For the first 591 the nameless narrator recounts and ruminates on his life. At the time of the narrative he is in his late 30’s or so but lengthy flashbacks explore his childhood and adolescence. He is also writing a novel that seems to be set in the 19th century and interrupts the narrative here and there. The next 90 pages are a first-person narrative by a friend of his. A single, final chapter is a kind rough draft of the end of the protagonist's life, mostly in first person.
The present-time story is of an unnamed Hungarian who is explicitly bisexual. He is living in East Berlin. The wall is still up. He works in an unclear function in a theatrical production where he is in a love triangle with an East German man and a prominent actress. "Love triangle" usually really means an acute angle with the protagonist at the apex, but this is a full-fledged triangle where each of the people involved is in love with each of the others because being in love with the other is part of being in love with the one and, well or badly, whether they love themselves. The narrative tension focuses mostly on the probability of his affair with the man breaking up. </div><div><br /></div><div> The sentence structure differs in the different sections. Of course, this is a translation and I can only infer that something similar is true in Hungarian.
The long first section contains frequent stretches of dialogue. Here’s one from a flashback to his adolescence: </div><div> </div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"But may I ask you how you found out about their plans, then?" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"That's my business, don't you think?" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
"So that means you have your own little plans, right?" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
"Right."
"And of course that's where you want to go." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"Why not? I haven't decided yet." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"Because you don't want to miss out on anything, right?" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"I'm not going to tell you, so don't get your hopes up." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">
"I'm not interested." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"So much the better." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"I'm an idiot for coming here." </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">There was a moment's silence then very quietly and hesitantly, she said, </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"Want me to tell you?" </div></blockquote><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;">"I couldn't care less. Keep it to yourself."</div></blockquote><p> It also includes vivid descriptions of action. The narrator pays lots of attention to physical detail of many kinds; in particular there are several erotic scenes, closely described but not very sexy. </p><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"> I held his face in my hands, and he held my face in his, the gestures were identical, yet our intentions seemed to be at odds; it's possible that I didn't even mention my shame, didn't say it out loud, afraid that if I went further and said the word, I would have to be truly ashamed, because he would respond the only way he knew, with cold reserve and suggestive irony, with his perennial, exasperatingly beautiful smile, then my own embarrassment would spoil something that must not be spoiled at any cost, I could deprive my hand of the warmth of his face, of its movements, of the stumble’s crackle under my fingers, which I especially liked, though on our first night it had still elicited resistance from me, caused by the dread of the familiarly unfamiliar, the resistance that was also an attraction enticing me to cross the border between smoothness and coarseness on the face of a man, with my mouth to touch another mouth that was also ringed with stubble, to feel the same kind of strength from it that I was imparting to it, as if receiving back not his strength but my own "Why it's my father's mouth!" someone shouted in my voice on our first night when he leaned over to kiss me on the lips, and I could hear the scraping and blending of whiskers on our chins, the stubble on our father’s chins touching the smooth skin of our forgotten childhood selves! </div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div><div> A description of someone assisting the birth of piglets is almost unbearably vivid. </div><div><br /></div><div> But long paragraphs, sometimes two or three pages long, of reflective thought by the protagonist, dominate the first 600 pages. These paragraphs lean heavily on what my highschool English teacher would have called comma faults and on semicolons where standard English practice would have periods. Phrases and ideas are often rephrased and repeated; a point is made three times where a more direct voice would have made it once. Em dashes often enclose tangential thoughts. The style of this narrator is not a mannerism of the author; rather it embodies the narrator’s fragmented state of mind and fragmented self. </div><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"> Now if some unauthorized strangers were to rummage through my things and go over my papers. ... Well, this stranger, this secret agent would appear after my death to make out a report about me based on the papers found among my affects had often cropped up in my dreams; although he was faceless and of intermediate age, I found his immaculate shirt front, stiff collar, polka dotted necktie adorned with a glittering diamond pin, and especially his rather shiny frockcoat all the more characteristic and significant; with long, bony fingers he rummaged expertly through my papers, occasionally lifting a page close to his eyes, giving me the impression that he was near-sighted, though I didn't see him wearing eyeglasses; the pursuit reused a sentence here and there, and I noted with satisfaction that he derived completely different meanings from the ones I had hoped my sentences would imply; no wonder I had managed to fool even someone like him; after all, I made sure that my fleeting ideas, fragmentary thoughts, and hasty descriptions were jotted down so that my papers remained well within the bounds of middle-class propriety, counting also on the possibility that my dear old Frau Huebner[his landlady], taking advantage of my absence driven by simple curiosity, would likewise look through the pages piled on my desk; thus I became an unauthorized stranger to my own life, because of seeing myself as a criminal, a miserable misfit, I still wanted to remain a perfect gentleman in the eyes of the world, I myself became that shiny frock coat, and starched shirt front, and the tie pin, the irreproachably inane form of bourgeois respectability; secretly, and proud of my own slyness, I figured that if I used a private code when recording my accumulated experiences, then, since I possess the key, I'd always be able to open the lock of the code; but as might be expected, the lock turned out to be fool proof, and by the time I finally came around to open it, my hands trembling with anxiety, I simply could not find the keyhole. </div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div><div>The section narrated by his friend is mostly in crisp sentences; the first quotation above is an example. The final chapter is in the form of a rough draft, the end of a life never resolved.
Many flashbacks, not necessarily in chronological order, render painfully present the narrator’s childhood and adolescence. </div><div><br /></div></div><blockquote style="border: none; margin: 0px 0px 0px 40px; padding: 0px;"><div><div style="text-align: left;"> Maybe it's fortunate, or unfortunate, that to this day I cannot decide what is better, knowledge or ignorance; no matter how much I tried to live their [his parents’] lies and find my place in the system of falsehoods, contributing to the smooth operation of the system's fine mechanism with effective lies of my own, and even if I could not see what it set it all in motion or what was covered up by what, still, over time I did gain some insight into the layers of deception;… </div></div></blockquote><div><div><br /></div><div> His father was an important prosecutor in the Hungarian government, and political power shifts eventually drive him to suicide. His parents, grandparents, and their friends live in a state of constant evasiveness joined by powerful bonds. His father and his mother are each involved in love affairs that are enmeshed in arbitrary and dangerous government structures. He is aware of them and his awareness contributes to his confusion about himself, his sexuality, and, even who his father is. As an adolescent, the narrator has intense and erotically charged emotional relationship with a group of friends, both boys and girls, which involve the sort of triangles described above. This part of book is Freudian in the sense that all the characters’ involvement with others and with themselves have an erotic pressure. </div><div>All these people are deeply affected by the oppressive government. For instance the death of Stalin is a major event in all their lives. A friend of the narrator is shot and dies in his arms during the abortive Hungarian revolution in 1956.
Fragments of the novel the protagonist is writing appear from time to time and are in effect another level of narrative, like flashback, something that occupies his mind. The novel is based on similar triangular relationship and the hero’s despair over resolving it, which leads to a murder.
His account of his motivation is also Freudian in the sense that his acts are over determined. For many actions and thoughts more than one adequate motive is documented. Nádas often asserts that what really controls people’s emotions and actions is ‘the body,’ but it is not clear to me how the ‘the body’ is different from other sources of motivation. </div><div><br /></div><div>The protagonist is an unreliable narrator, not in the sense that we should not trust him – he is often painfully frank —, but in the sense that he does not trust himself.
His dubiousness embodies the constant pressure of that society to manifest appearances not central to the self. The characters who suffer this are bitterly forced to be this or that, so that they can never commit themselves to a core self. This dubiousness is at the heart of the fragmentation. He does not endorse himself. He never believes in himself. So no core ever flourishes. </div><div> </div><div>The title evokes <i>À la recherche du temps perdu</i>. The constant state of inquisitive flirtation with a group of friends in flashbacks to his adolescence specifically suggests <i>À l'ombre des jeunes filles en fleurs</i>, but with no Elstir to guide them. Long passages when the protagonist and his lover, while not imprisoned, are cloistered in the lover’s apartment, including his scrutinizing his sleeping partner, suggests <i>La Prisonnière</i>. But whereas for Proust rediscovering the past, though it may be painful, is integrative, and forward looking, for our unnamed protagonist it is disintegration, a horror that destroys him.</div></div>Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-43047642185588078092021-05-11T11:36:00.001-07:002021-06-09T10:24:47.727-07:00Comments on Child of Light<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /></div><br /><br /></div><br /> <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3jvvgMtfs4mUCD5zwGqHiSmy3bAgnrNxctoBI3xbbKstz0QmCw8IRh3ROBqQmha8oOErNSmnl_qTwqSys5n8iDFxYjQ5AlW6Yd_gUBfsIR9Z6-YWzL6e07O-DfHBIfh9dQg49lJZngM0/s750/Robert+Stone+framed.jpg.jpg.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="750" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA3jvvgMtfs4mUCD5zwGqHiSmy3bAgnrNxctoBI3xbbKstz0QmCw8IRh3ROBqQmha8oOErNSmnl_qTwqSys5n8iDFxYjQ5AlW6Yd_gUBfsIR9Z6-YWzL6e07O-DfHBIfh9dQg49lJZngM0/s320/Robert+Stone+framed.jpg.jpg.png" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><span style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">I have to warn you that these thoughts are as much about me as about Madison Bell’s biography of Robert Stone and offer as many questions as answers. In several ways I'm not a very good person to comment on it. First, I'm not a reader of biographies. I can remember reading only four others in my long life: a biography of Duke Ellington for a high school paper; a biography of Mahatma Gandhi by Erik Erickson because of the time I was seeing therapist trained by Erickson; Maynard Solomon’s biography of Beethoven for a short story I was writing; Earnest Jones’ stately tome on Freud (which was stolen from me in a laundromat in Manhattan Beach). I’ve read hundreds possibly thousands of novels for each biography. </div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">The Ellington biography as best I can remember was a dutiful grind. I hated the Gandhi biography because at the time I hated Erickson’s thesis that people's lives divided into developmental stages (like Shakespeare's seven ages of man). In reading Solomon I wanted to get a feeling of what it would be like to know Beethoven. It worked for that, and much of his lore has stayed with me to enrich my listening. But there is something in me that wants to concentrate on what people offer us rather than what they do.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Second, I was a long-time friend of Bob's and have my own ideas and feelings about who he was and its relation to his books. In full disclosure I read small parts of this biography in draft and corrected a few factual details. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> This biography embodies extensive study of sources also depends on personal knowledge. Bell was a good friend of Stone’s in his later years and travelled with him. Among other things, Bell reports his own feelings about various matters Stone was involved in in real time, which lends vividness to perspective. Bell has also had detailed support from conversations and written material by Bob's wife Janice who is also a friend of Bell's and of mine. Indeed there is a way this is the Bob and Janice story.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> What if we had biographies of, say, Tolstoy or Hemingway, some written with substantial cooperation of the authors wife(s)? I guess they would be very interesting to compare. Maybe we do; I don’t know. If we had a biography of Shakespeare based on interviews by séance with Anne Hathaway, it would be wonderfully informative and widely read, but would not be the last word on Shakespeare. That is an unfair comparison because William and Anne lived largely apart while Robert and Janice were constantly enmeshed.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Bell provides great detail about Bob's relations with various people he knew and their effect on his work both in a practical way and as source for his plots and characters; about his publishing contracts, which he tended to fall behind; about the interventions of his agents, but not so much by his editors; about where he travelled and whom with, and Bob travelled a lot; and about where he lived — Janice and Bob had a great many dwellings, sometimes two and even three at once. Bell keeps before the reader Bob's use of alcohol and other drugs. He recounts who went to bed with whom and to a certain extent Bob's thoughts and experiences relative to the Catholic Church and religion in general. Lots of information. As a friend more than I’m interested in. As a reader I feel there is more than enriches the experience, but I’m not quite sure what I would want to omit. For future scholars this is a gold mine.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Travel is important to Bell’s image of Bob. The most fulsome accounts of his personal encounters with Bob come from time he spent traveling with him, and he always sees Bob as a potential traveller rather than someone who lived somewhere and occasionally travels. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Bob’s childhood is hard to describe briefly, but it involved a close but intermittent relationship with his schizophrenic mother, no involvement whatever with his father, and years in an orphanage. Bell carefully unpacks influences in Bob's childhood and adolescence, his mother's religion and his stint in a Marist high school, as sources for his interest in religion (see below). Bell also considers Bob as a commentator, almost a public intellectual, on the state of US culture in his lifetime. That's a little odd considering much of the action of his novels is set outside the United States. Indeed I remember Bob telling me a little before he wrote his last novel, which is set in the US, that he was tired of being considered an expert on countries he had spent a few weeks in. But Bell does not cite people as a source of Bob's perspective on the US. That fits his observation and mine that Bob was an autodidact. He knew a lot about literature and society, but not from studying under X or Y, but through reading and observing with intelligent, passionate attention. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The narrative is a straight ahead time line. Bell provides a useful analytical summary of each of his novels in turn and reports the circumstances they were written in. He points out relationships between Bob’s interests and events in his life and events in the novel or even structural and technical issues in the novel.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> One thing Bell points out is that, with one exception, Bob's novels have a river structure. That is, he begins writing about several characters with separate lives who gradually flow together in plot lines until all are involved with one another at the end. Reading the bio made me wonder why that was. I have a vague feeling some connection exists among his scattered dwellings, persistent travels, and diverse friendships, and the scattered plot lines that inevitably pull together, but I can’t put it in words. His endings, I want to add, are almost always bang up. By ‘bang up’ I mean violent, rapid, physical action often including gunfire and explosions. From my perspective these endings are the weakest part of his work. Carefully and deeply developed characters go up in smoke. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Reading this biography made me wonder what it was about Bob's personality or goals as a writer led to this kind of endings.
Bell devotes a lot of attention to Bob's ambivalent rumination about religion, Roman Catholicism in particular, certainly front and centre in Damascus Gate, set in Jerusalem and peopled with a variety of religious fanatics, and A Flag for Sunrise, set in (unnamed) El Salvador with important priests, nuns, and a protestant fanatic. I’m not sure it is as important as Bell suggests, but Stone told Bell and told me that he tended to talk about religion mostly with people who are particularly interested in religion. I am not one, so perhaps I am in no position to comment. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> In trying to understand my feelings about this biography I reconsidered two long autobiographical novels I’ve enjoyed recently by/about writers. One is Karl Ove Knausgård’s My Struggle. Like Child of Light, it is full of details, but they are details of a different kind. They are mostly accounts of things he did, like the ~ 150 pages it devotes to hiding a case of beer as a young teenager so he can sneak it to a party. It is also highly selective. Knausgård devotes thousands of pages to his relations with his second wife and children and barely mentions his first wife, for instance. Is selectivity what makes it a novel rather than an autobiography? Is it what makes it more interesting to me?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> The other is The Diaries of Emilio Renzi by Ricardo Piglia. I’ve read only the first of three volumes. It is a semi-true diary of a young man trying to be a writer in the lively intellectual and treacherous political world of 1960’s Argentina. Bell, appropriately, precedes in a serious and workmanlike spirit. Bell patiently builds his case; Piglia is free to scatter our thoughts. It has touches of magical realism; there are events that could not have occurred. (More than a hint of magic realism appears in Stone’s novel Bay of Souls, but neither Stone nor Bell really commits as to whether it is magic or delusion.) Why do I find it more fun and more stimulating than reading Child of Light? For one thing, I learn more because it is set in a different country. Although painful at times, overall it stirs a sense of joy. Renzi is constantly at play even when hard up to pay the utilities, betraying his lover, or, briefly, in jail. His feelings about reading and writing blend with those of real life — not something you see in Bell’s account of Bob. Is that a reason I find in more stimulating? </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> Both Knausgård and Renzi were deeply involved in painful struggles with their fathers, something denied to Bob.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> As Bell explains, many of Bob’s characters are prey to demons. They're crazed, haunted, uneducated, men and some women, who are at best thoughtless toward other people and toward their universe and at worst sadistic. Bob was a caring, warm friend and a thoughtful, well informed evaluator of the world. Of course you saw the shadows of his own demons through his drug use, peripatetic life, as well as through his creations, and he was not shy of acknowledging them. Perhaps they have something to do with the convergent and explosive endings. He exorcised them. Bob once told me that his favourite of his novels was Outerbridge Reach because the protagonist, a straight-arrow Annapolis graduate, is least like himself. He was proud of being able to create such a character. That book ends quietly with a drifting empty boat after the protagonist’s suicide.</div></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><br />Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-67773709850873748062021-03-31T10:17:00.003-07:002021-03-31T10:17:34.525-07:00Comments on Catching a Memory<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /><br /></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3C87eBIUP1tqVgWZcW0spsndVKDxJmelpOnPEjSjYOlKOhTwikSzoje7HutyWWyYZ38sMhq3jsiA7Gy-_929CjNcl58fw00TJiS3m8J74I8JMz3kLHTQEmfPzL54Hb_gkCnfOD36s3h4J/s1025/Abraham-Driving-Out-Hagar-oil-canvas-Ishmael.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="771" data-original-width="1025" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3C87eBIUP1tqVgWZcW0spsndVKDxJmelpOnPEjSjYOlKOhTwikSzoje7HutyWWyYZ38sMhq3jsiA7Gy-_929CjNcl58fw00TJiS3m8J74I8JMz3kLHTQEmfPzL54Hb_gkCnfOD36s3h4J/s320/Abraham-Driving-Out-Hagar-oil-canvas-Ishmael.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Some of the pieces in this collection by Judith Shaw are stories in the sense that a protagonist faces tension and the tension is somehow resolved. Some are brief memoirs. Some, like many poems these days, are brief, intense descriptions of a person, place, or event. <div><br /><div> The prose is tight, flexible, supple employing short to long sentences as appropriate. </div><div><br /></div><div> One of the stories is about two sisters, one married to a childish, arrogant husband and how the sisters deal with him separately and as a team. The husband has vainly acquired a drawing by the renascence artist Guercino. Guercino is aptly chosen as if the character knew the author who was writing hm. His style is intensely realistic, his subject mostly people whose portraits appear in revealing light, whose faces, unlike many artist of his time, show particular emotion, but coolly. </div><div><br /></div><div> Shaw is not afraid of esoteric references, to location: New York street corners; to Guercino; to someone undergoing a Kohutian analysis, to little-known culinary techniques. </div><div><br /></div><div> The voice is both detached and intimate, like Guercino. </div><div><br /></div><div> Where there is room to do so, the characters are fully conceived. You read about them like you read about people, not like stereotypes. They tend to be intelligent and educated.</div><div><br /></div><div> The stories are mostly about facing death, in one way or another, mourning, either the mourning of a person for a beloved who is dying or has died, or the mourning of a dying person for his (usually) life. Those dying are usually men who are important figure to those who mourn them, husbands or fathers of the mourners, who are usually women. Sometimes the mourning is drawn from an oblique angle, as in a woman seeking recontact with an old lover after the death of her husband, but mostly straight on, searchingly engaged.</div><div><br /></div><div> Less searching but illustrative, is a poem in reply to a poem by Richard Wilbur. Wilbur’s poem recounts how Don Quixote lets his horse decide where to go next, reveling in the fantasy that whatever course the horse chooses will lead to grandiose adventure. Rosinante heads for the barn. This is Cervantes’ usual trope of warmly contrasting Quixote’s grandiose visions with commonplace reality. Shaw’s response is about Quixote grieving for his fate.</div><div><br /></div><div> Another theme is separation in geography, usually between characters living in New York and those living in parts of northern California. The New Yorkers in California mourn for their lost environment. </div><div><br /></div><div> The stories mostly focus on a single thread. My favorite, however, has the resonance of two strings. The point of view character is a New York woman enduring mourning in a Northern California coastal village, but the subject is the tenuous existence and final death of a local hippie waif. </div><div><br /></div><div> The book is nicely designed and printed. This is quality reading material also in the material sense.
</div></div>Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-67416260343848744912020-09-17T14:22:00.001-07:002020-09-17T14:22:11.161-07:00Comments on Edward St. Aubin's Patrick Melrose Novels<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqsraTIbQchU_S40hnC_hQ3Dd7VEtEXbxGrg-q4MrpVaNbiMy9DuJI621Iho3lVO670F4NqTdym_dvFd_eATb7jWiLhIZe5M6eygY9Z0hJeCMjxkSM8egxBaZk0QlWzluX_vLIaBEwCXf/s724/Screenshot+2020-09-17+at+12.07.14.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="724" data-original-width="677" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibqsraTIbQchU_S40hnC_hQ3Dd7VEtEXbxGrg-q4MrpVaNbiMy9DuJI621Iho3lVO670F4NqTdym_dvFd_eATb7jWiLhIZe5M6eygY9Z0hJeCMjxkSM8egxBaZk0QlWzluX_vLIaBEwCXf/s320/Screenshot+2020-09-17+at+12.07.14.png" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">This work is painful, thought provoking, often wonderfully written, and very funny. The plot is the life the protagonist. On the surface it is his struggle with various addictions, to find the capacity for love, and to be a better parent than his parents were. More inwardly is his struggle with himself, not in the sense of his self as an opponent but in the sense that you might struggle to contain and transport things escaping from a damp, torn, shopping bag. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It has five parts published variously separately and together.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">NEVER MIND, recounts a single day at Patrick's parent’s estate in France. Several characters are fully drawn as they work their way toward an evening dinner party. Flashbacks portray how Patrick’s parents married, and inform us about their upbringing, Patrick’s vicious father, David Melrose, and his relations with his important friend Nicholas. Bright and imaginative, five-year-old Patrick struggles to endure the searing cruelty of his father and the detachment of his mother drained of empathy by resignation. His father rapes him, but the party goes on.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">BAD NEWS is a sort of combination of William Boroughs and Oscar Wild.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It recounts one day in New York where Patrick, 22, has gone to pick up the ashes of his newly dead father. Ensconced in the St. Regis money flows out of his credit card like water. Patrick is addicted to heroin in partnership with several other drugs. He spends much of his time trying to score, and much of the rest in drifting in and out of vivid hallucinations. He has lived in New York and stumbles from one social situation that begins in obligation and ends in flight to another including both poor dealers and rich socialites. He skirts an overdose. Wonderful writing</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">SOME HOPE Patrick has rehabbed off stage from his addiction to hard drugs but drinks too much. He has become a barrister, with little attention by the author to his career, training, or work. The novel recounts the run up to a weekend house party, a little like those in various society novels such as Edith Wharton and the party itself. Before the party he takes a step by telling his friend Tony what his father had done to him. People feel good and bad, but mostly catty about who is going to bed with whom. The English upper crust sucks up to Princess Margaret (The Queen’s sister) who is vain, arrogant, and shallow.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">MOTHER'S MILK Patrick is married. There is no explicit account of how they married or why he or his wife choose one another, but, because these characters are fully drawn, we understand. The novel begins from the point of view of his son Robert at the moment of his birth. In a way this paragraph sums up the series. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">He was an inconsolable wreck. He couldn't live with so much doubt and so much intensity. He vomited colostrum over his mother and then in the hazy moment of emptiness that followed he caught sight of the curtains bulging with light. They held his attention. That's how it worked here. They fascinated you with things to make you forget about the separation. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">His younger brother, born later, is equally precocious, but more emotionally than intellectually.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">MOTHERS MILK is in the painful tradition of heirs struggling over an inheritance. Patrick's mother has had a stroke and is miserable and semi-articulate. A new-age guru is trying to con her estate. Patrick at once hates his mother, wants to respect her autonomy, and hates the con man. In the generation below Patrick we meet and see the world through his young sons. At his own level his wife has emotionally and physically deserted him in her desperate desire to be more real for her children than her mother was for her, and Patrick begins an affair with an old girlfriend. His mother asks him to kill her.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">AT LAST begins with Patrick rehabbing from alcohol, leads up to and culminates in his mother’s funeral. Patrick has a moment of self-control when he does not slip off to shack up with a self-destructive woman in his rehab group. As friends, relatives and foes trickle in to pay their final respects to his mother, the last figure in his father’s generation, Nicholas, dies. In the end Patrick has a twinge of productive self-regard and decides to dine with his ex-wife and his children.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The characters particularly of the protagonist, but also other major characters: his father, his mother, his wife, his two young children, are widely and deeply, inwardly and outwardly richly portrayed. Several major secondary characters including particularly his friend Tony and his father's friend Nicholas, the philosopher Victor Moore and his wife Anne and others are fully explored characters although not inwardly portrayed.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is also a society novel; the major characters are very well-connected. Their money comes from US capitalists as in Wharton’s The Buccaneers and Patrick’s aunt chas up her perennial project of writing a memoir, which she declares will be better than those things like Henry James and Wharton because it is true.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is also a novel about how the adult arises from his or her parenting. The theme of Patrick's life is a struggle to deal with the extraordinary sadism of his father and the frozen empathy of his mother. Presentation of other characters, most of all his wife, dwell on how their parents have shaped them and their struggles to deal with it. Finally, we see in action Patrick and his wife as they deliberately or inadvertently shape their children. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">It is novel which takes childhood more seriously and explores it more ingeniously than almost any I can think of. What Maisie Knew comes to mind, but she is one child and these novels contain full portraits of three very different children. It is written first in from the perspective of Patrick as a child and then from the perspective of his two children, each precociously perceptive in different ways.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The perspective of psychodynamic therapy percolates everywhere. More than anything else it means that people's feelings about things draw their significance from the process of development of that person.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Drawing on the exploration of the perspective of children, Patrick's struggle to contain himself, and on its analytic perspective, this novel is preoccupied with consciousness. So much so that there are not one but two major secondary characters who are professional philosophers writing academic works on consciousness, one in Patrick’s generation and one in his fathers. Consciousness is portrayed as, among other things: the perception of what goes on in a person's own mind, his/her awareness or empathy with what's going on in the mind of another, self, guilt, and as that something that ceases with death.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Partly in the precariousness of consciousness, death informs the novel. The events in the second and last novel are occasioned by the deaths of his father and then his mother. The approaching death of his mother over hangs the events of the third and fourth novel. The implication that Melrose may bet trying to kill himself by his drug use, and consideration of what killing the self means, permeates the second novel.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><br /></div></div><br /><br /></div><br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><br /><br /> <p></p>Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-1517508380577159422020-04-16T12:02:00.000-07:002020-04-16T12:04:01.927-07:00Comments on Slaughterhouse-Five,<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US">This novel is a blunt arrow thudding the chest of US culture. It recounts the life of an American guy who served in World War II in roles mostly detached from battle, was captured and imprisoned, and became a successful optometrist. He's a gently satiric Caucasian American middle class guy resembling characters Sinclair Lewis so often portrayed. The story is rendered in flashbacks scattered in time, not merely for the author’s discretion, but because the main character travels in time to important moments in his life, or his consciousness does. He also travels in space, abducted by little green men who keep him for a while and part of that while display him in the zoo on their planet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The allies' monstrous firebombing of Dresden near the end of the Second World War lies at the heart of this novel. The city was largely untouched until then, like Hiroshima, and was filled with refugees fleeing the Russian Army. It was mostly destroyed. A number of people, uncertain because of the throng of refugees, but in the low hundred thousands were killed, many incinerated. The protagonist, like the author, was sequestered in the basement of a slaughterhouse during the bombing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Trauma is a principle subject, and we see how various characters respond to the trauma of this event and sometimes to other events. Indeed, the protagonist's lapses are described as time travel, but are consonant with dissociative mental processes victims of trauma often resort to. In this sense the form of the novel harmonizes with the psychology of its protagonist. And with the psychology of the Allied Nations as a group, which tended to ignore this vast war crime, as they ignored the similar firebombing of Tokyo and other Japanese cities.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The characterization of the protagonist is full but not deep. Vonnegut is very clear about what kind of man he is and the effective the trauma but his inner life is muted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Indeed the novel in general is emotionally muted. The prose is solid, quietly crafted with occasional telling images, but irate moments in this book are subdued compared to say The Naked and The Dead. Horrendous events are portrayed but with the figured base of the phrase, "So it goes," which occurs any time death is mentioned and in some other situations.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The benumbed emotional range that often accompanies fatalism reflects the epistemological position of the little green men. They "see in the fourth dimension" meaning they see all events past and future from a timeless perspective, much as St. Augustine describes the perspective of God. Their planet has/will be destroyed in an accident some time in what is from our perspective the future but from there perspective the ever present. Their response is 'and so it goes'. This perspective questions the meaningfulness of free will, which the book recognizes but rather dances around. The protagonist, influenced by what he learned from little green men, does not believe in free will. Well, Western culture has been dancing around this issue since at least the Pre-Socratics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Vonnegut treats many American institutions with a kind of distant mild irony that amounts to distaste. Again, it is similar but subtler than Sinclair Lewis's treatment of similar institutions. One of those institutions is the American military.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "gill sans"; font-size: 11pt;">As part of the gun crew, he had helped to fire one shot in anger — from a 57-millimeter antitank gun. The gun made a ripping sound like the opening of the zipper on the fly of God Almighty. The gun lapped up snow and vegetation with a blowtorch thirty feet long. The flame left a black arrow on the ground, showing the Germans exactly where the gun was hidden. The shot was a miss.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The first two sentences are vivid and emotional writing. The third mocks the competence of the military. The last mutes the whole effect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Another is Christianity. A striking example is a cute, crude drawing, one of two illustrations in the book, of a prayer amulet hanging between the naked breasts of a secondary character. The simplicity of the drawing defeats the sincerity of the wearer.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This is an extremely popular book. It was on the New York Times bestseller list 16 weeks when it was first published. But it is also unpopular. It was banned from numerous school libraries and the like as recently as 2011. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">A judge in affirming a school board's decision to ban it described it as, </span><span lang="EN-US"> "depraved, immoral, psychotic, vulgar, and anti-Christian."</span><span lang="EN-US"> It's true the seven words banned by the FCC are sprinkled through it, as are uncritical references to pornography. Vonnegut once commented,"I</span><span lang="EN-US">’ve seen letters to small-town newspapers that put Slaughterhouse-Five in the same class with Deep Throat and Hustler magazine. How could anybody masturbate to Slaughterhouse-Five?"</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-21535615975747749212020-03-17T12:01:00.002-07:002020-04-15T11:59:01.761-07:00Comments on The Door by Magda Szabó<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US">This is an odd book. It recounts the growth and end of an intense relationship between a wishy-washy writer and her traumatized and autocratic cleaning lady. It was was first published in Hungary in 1987 and arose in an atmosphere of intermittent but ever-present government oppression. Szabó, like the writer in the novel, endured a career fluctuating among prizes, forced appearances, and banned books -; on one occasion a prize and the book banned on the same day.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The cleaning lady, whose name is Emerence, is a fully drawn and haunting character. Her path to working for the writer began and continued in a series of traumas, such as her two siblings dying before her eyes as young adolescent and her traumatic self-sacrifice in presenting an abandoned Jewish baby to her conservative village as her own. Her life suggests the essential life of citizens under an arbitrary and autocratic regime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"> In the book, the author slowly doles out knowledge of Emerence's traumatic past step by step as it is discovered by the writer, who fails to be inquisitive in the face of Emerence's perennial proud silence. Their relationship, as they finally acknowledge, is like mother and daughter and a model of autocratic parenting. At one point Emerence says that if someone is to love her, she must love her alone, although she tolerates the writer's husband, as he tolerates her. Finally Emerence's becomes ill and wants the world to allow her to die, which the writer at first prevents and then implements. Pages after Emerence's death provide a satisfying, <i>adagio</i> coda.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The prose suffices but is not striking.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Whereas the development of Emerence is full and vivid, the account of the writer is tenuous —: for example we don't know what she writes, nor do we know what if anything in her history allows her to submit to this relationship. A community of secondary characters is well drawn as far as they revolve around Emerence and are illuminated by her attitude toward them. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">These unpleasant characters with an ugly, quasi-parental relationship limited my enjoyment of this novel but set me thinking of other works with similar situations that I like. What's the difference? Take St. Aubyn’s Patrick Melrose novels. </span><span lang="EN-US">Emerence is empathetic, selfless, and cuddly compared to protagonists parents. Yet I enjoy and respect the book. One reason is St. Aubyn’s page after page of exquisite prose. Another may be Patrick carves out a sort of mental health. I wondered if the tone of the part of The Door after Emerence’s death is somehow equivalent to Melrose' eventual recovery? In some way it allows us to recover.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Patrick has suffered from trauma and like many victims of trauma his bundle of self constantly threatens to disintegrate, whereas </span><span lang="EN-US">Emerence </span><span lang="EN-US">holds herself stiff and tight. In a long scene in the second novel when he is heavily laden with assorted drugs, Patrick's bundle of himself unravels into myriad voices rather like Leopold Bloom's trial in Ulysses and the issue of coherence of self continues through the books. Is Patrick's shaky self-cohesion more sympathetic for the reader than Emerence’s almost heroically stiff self-control?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Or take King Lear. Lear is an unpleasant character who has terrible relations with his children, but I love and admire the play. In the course of the play Lear changes his perspective on things. It seems integral to</span> <span lang="EN-US">Emerence</span> <span lang="EN-US">that she does</span> <i><span lang="EN-US">not</span></i> <span lang="EN-US">change her perspective; she would attack anyone who suggested she might. It is part of her holding herself together tightly. But what kind of book would we have she did?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Or Dorothy Sayers' Peter Whimsy mystery novels. Lord Peter comes from the same social world is Patrick Melrose and likewise suffers from a history of trauma, in his case from the First World War. His gentleman’s gentleman, Bunter, plays a role in most of the novels and stories, sometimes a dominant one. Of, Bunter, Whimsy's mother says,<span lang="EN-US"> "It's that wonderful man of his who keeps him in order...so intelligent...a perfect autocrat." Yet the novels are engaging. </span>Lord Peter <span lang="EN-US">is more attractive than the writer in The Door, the plotting is more intriguing, and Bunter has subtlety in how he controls Lord Peter. Maybe most important, Bunter has Whimsy's best interests at heart whereas Emerence is uncompromisingly self-centered. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-82863210857601702882019-07-29T02:08:00.001-07:002020-03-17T11:51:24.110-07:00Comments on Circe by Madeline Miller<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: #222222; color: #888888; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 10pt;">Odysseus Vase Odysseus and the Sorceress Circe. Greek vase, c.700BC</span><span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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We regularly see novels these days where someone grows up in a dysfunctional family, is the unpopular girl in high school, discovers a vocation that gives her confidence and identity, has some experiences with men, good and bad, which stretch her emotional range and boost both her apprehension and her confidence, finds the right guy, and settles down to a satisfying life. This is such a novel dressed up in Greek classic paraphernalia. In archetypal terms, it is the ugly duckling story grafted onto the little mermaid story. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Although incidents have plots, the main narrative is the story of her life. She is born as a minor goddess to another minor goddess married to the sun god, Helios. She lives in a family compound with related gods where she is considered less attractive and is not given much of chance for a good marriage. She discovers she can work magic based on herbs and her own powers and, among other things, turns a fisherman (Glaucos) she befriends into a god and turns her obnoxious older sister Scylla into a monster that lurks on a rock and eats passing sailors. For using magic, which is generally taboo to the gods, her father exiles her to a pleasant island. Several adventures involving love affairs with figures from Greek mythology mortal and immortal and her difficult relations with her sister and brother garnish her exile. Finally Odysseus arrives and stays for a year with her as stated in the Odyssey. But it is told from her point of view and she provides a lot of realistic details about what interests him and how his feelings run. In the end he goes on his adventures and she is pregnant. Alone on her island she has a difficult pregnancy and a hard time raising a child. As a young adult her son leaves to seek his father. He returns with his father’s wife, Penelope, and his half brother, Telemachus in tow. He recounts how he accidently killed Odysseus, then goes off to Italy to become a king; Circe turns her self into a mortal and forms a couple with Odysseus’ son by Penelope-; Penelope stays on the island.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The prose is smooth and clear if not exciting except for a sprinkling of poetic metaphors and phrases.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The characterization is mostly like the prose, effective but not exciting. In one respect it is particularly effective. That is its attention to how a few characters change over time. Time for the immortals differs from our time and it is a little vague. The period from her birth until Circe meets Odysseus is vaguely hundreds of years long. Of immortals, Circe alone changes. Miller constructs a convincing arc of character from an empathetic but petulant "teenager" to an enterprising and rebellious young adult, to a jaded thirty-something, to a harried mother, to a wise and capable woman. The progression of Odysseus is more of a crash, off stage, from arrogant hero to traumatized insecure monarch. The progress from infancy to young adulthood of their son is also carefully constructed and drawn. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But a changing Odysseus brings us to an issue about this novel.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Let me emphasize that I am no Greek scholar in pointing these matters. I don't read Greek, but I’ve read lots of translations and secondary sources and am a knowledgeable amature.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The novel departs from the body of Greek mythology in various ways. Note, there is no bible of Greek mythology. Instead, a variety of often-conflicting sources spread over centuries, so it is sometimes complicated or even ambiguous whether something is a departure. Miller seems to have mainly used three sources. First the Odyssey, usually considered to have been created around 800 BC. Second is the Theogony (The Genealogy of the Gods) from about the same time. The third is the Telegony (the story of Odysseus son by Circe, <span class="e24kjd">Telegonus</span>) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telegony). The text of the Telegony is lost but it survives as a summary, as an adaptation in Latin from the 1st century BC, and other fragmentary sources. Miller has evidently studied this Latin version. There are other fragmentary and late sources, for example Ovid's Metamorphosis written in Latin shortly before the end of the BC's, that is about 800 years after Homer <b></b>in a very different culture.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Anachronisms: There are various minor anachronisms in the presentation. For example at one point Circe describes Odysseus as being like a lawyer. There were no lawyers in Greek mythology and, indeed, the society was without a judiciary apparatus.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Choices:Miller necessarily makes some choices about which versions of Greek legends she uses. One is about which God's to describe. Versions very, but roughly speaking Greek gods fall into three groups: the Olympians, Zeus and his siblings and their dysfunctional spouses and children; the Titans who are the siblings and relatives of Zeus's father; finally the Chthonic deities who are associated with the underworld and whose ceremonies were often at night (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chthonic).<o:p></o:p></div>
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In the Iliad, Homer limits himself to the Olympians and mainly so in the Odyssey. Miller recalls the war between the Titans and the Olympians, draws on their rivalry for motivation, but chooses to ignore the chthonic deities, which were important in the everyday life of Greek people. What is relevant here is that Circë is sometimes described as the child of Perse, a Titan ocean nymph, and sometimes described as the child of Hecatë a chthonic moon goddess, witch, and, like Legba, deity of crossroads. In either case her father is Helios a Titan sun god. It always seemed to make more sense to me that Circe should be descended from Hecatë because she is a witch and witchcraft is not a common trop in Greek mythology.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another change is the story of Glaucos. In European literature the image of Glaucos comes mostly from the version in the Metamorphosis by Ovid. Other classical references are scattered and brief. Ovid describes Glaucos as an immortal who was accidentally turned into a God by exposure to a magical something or other. He then falls in love with the nymph Scylla who rejects him. He goes to Circe, a competent witch in Ovid's version, seeking a love potion, which leads to various ill consequences. Miller has changed the story. In her version a naïve Circe falls in love with the mortal Glaucos and turns him into a God because she wants him to live forever with her. As a sea God he falls in love with Scylla, not Circe, which leads to various ill consequences. Miller's treatment of Glaucos artfully presages her account of Circe's later love for Telemachus where she wisely, in Miller's view, resolves their difference in mortality by becoming mortal herself.<o:p></o:p></div>
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To take another significant choice, Odysseus’ death is not recounted in the Odyssey, but there is a clear prediction by the highly reputable seer Tiresias that he will die of peaceful old age. In the Telegony he is killed by Telegonus and Miller chooses that version.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Creations: Occasionally Miller makes up legends, at least as far as I understand them. For example, the origin of the poison spine that kills Odysseus. It is in the Telegony that he is killed with a spear tipped with a spine from a ray, but there is no story about Circe marching under sea to confront a ray god, there is no ray god.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Violations of the classic culture: The most important ways Miller departs from the spirit Greek mythology have to do with the importance for her of change. In Greek mythology there is no notion of gods changing. A god's stage in life is as immutable a characteristic as her domain of power, her sacred animal, her weapon, etc. A minor example occurs in a conversation between Circe and Glaucos (before his deification). They have been hanging out together. In the first place, in classical mythology gods and mortals don't hang out. They meet during dramatic or significant moments. The closest thing to hanging out is the relation between Athena and Odysseus in the Odyssey, but even there the goddess only shows up when Odysseus is particularly in need. Circe mentions in chatting that she met Prometheus. Then-mortal Glaucos is startled because Prometheus' crime and punishment occurred hundreds of years ago in time as he figures it. <o:p></o:p></div>
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"His eyes were fixed on me. 'But you are my age.' My face had tricked him. It looked as young as his."<o:p></o:p></div>
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But mortals in Greek mythological times, thought of gods as "ageless." That is, age did not pertain to them.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Less casual is her account of Odysseus as a figure of change. A central point in the Odyssey is that despite his adventures, misadventures, frequent deceit of others about himself, and frequent changes of appearance and body, implemented by Athena, from ragged, aged beggar to buff warrior, despite these things he remains essentially unchanged. This is unlike, say, Gilgamesh, the protagonist of the roughly contemporary near eastern epic, who through complex adventures and self-reflection accepts his mortality and becomes a better king. In the end, Miller crashes Odysseus into an frightened, desperate figure, something deeply contrary to Homer's image of the hero.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another departure from the classical conception of immortals is Circë’s unhappy childhood and adolescence as the slighted girl/goddess. Gods may embody emotions, and frequently bicker like the members of a dysfunctional family, but these conflicts manifest in traumatic scenes like Hephaestus discovering his wife Aphrodite in bed with her brother Ares, but they lack protracted identity sieges. This is the stuff of current young adult novels, not Greek mythology. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">So what? Miller has modified and departed from the letter and the spirit of her sources in various ways to implement a typical 21st century story. Why should that matter? The lengthy and thorough Wikipedia article on Circe documents how her story has been recounted and her image represented in disparate ways over the centuries. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circe). She may be a symbol of gluttony, of lustfulness, of the evils of witchcraft, as an embodiment of evil female wiles or a feminist figure as in Miller’s novel, etc. Her story maybe a homily against drunkenness or on occasion to question whether living without reason like a beast is better than being rationally human. It varies as the interest of individual times and writers demand. Why should we expect anything else in the 21st-century?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "cambria";">For me the issue lies in whether we 21st-century Americans want to regard ourselves, even enriching versions of our own preoccupations, or do we want to reach out for human culture and caring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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It is interesting to compare Circe with two other recent novels set in Greek mythic times. One is: The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, which retells the quarrel between Achilles and Agamemnon from the viewpoint of the captive slave girl whom they fought over. The gods are almost absent from Barker’s book, which is about mortals save for the sea nymph Thetis who is a background character shadowing Achilles. Barker's book sticks very close the events of the Iliad and makes us feel the emotions of an ordinary upper-class girl of those times responding with a modern psychology to the mostly terrible events she witnesses. Barker is searching the meaning of war by cross-fertilizing its ancient action with modern understanding of trauma.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another is Colm Toibín's House of Names, which tells a story of Orestes’ vengeance on his mother. Toibín invents an entirely different story hardly related to the Orestes portrayed by Aeschylus in the Oresteia. Gods are present merely in the images and feelings that human characters have of them. He projects feelings and reactions of someone in Orestes position following a modern, dynamic psychology, and the events of the story develop from the difference between Toibín’s premises in the premises of a classic Greek. He makes us consider what it would mean, universally, in human culture, to kill your mother, by casting his made up story against the shadow of the mythic version.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Barker’s novel amplifies and Toibín’s novel almost abandons what is handed down from antiquity. Barker’s Brieseis and Toibín’s Orestes are no more like the corresponding classical figures than is the Circe in an 18<sup>th</sup>century French rationalism version. But they tell us something by reaching out of our own perspective.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Another interesting comparison is with Shakespeare’s Roman plays. Shakespeare followed closely his principal source, the Greek writer Plutarch, who worked shortly after the events in a time when Rome first dominated the Mediterranean politically and was itself much influenced by Greek culture. He was a keen observer of men and mores. He was a Greek diplomat and had lived in Rome, so he knew both cultures well. Shakespeare carefully preserves his perspective in many ways, for example in presenting the suicide of four central characters. For Christians of Shakespeare’s England suicide was a mortal sin, your soul went to hell, as Hamlet considers in his famous soliloquy. For Romans of the republican period it was an appropriate, indeed praiseworthy act in the event of catastrophic defeat and when we watch those scenes, the perspective has passed from Plutarch, through a translator, to Shakespeare, to us. Consider the scenes in which Brutus and others fall upon their swords, and also the scenes when other characters like Anthony react to the news. Consider Anthony’s praise for Brutus against his own later suicide. Here we feel deeply what character means in other cultures. It is this meaningfulness that the novel Circe fails to provide.<span style="font-family: "times new roman"; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-38338631667087347932019-01-09T10:00:00.000-08:002019-01-09T10:00:38.599-08:00Comments on the 2018 Kaua'i Writers Conference <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">From November 5th - 11th I attended the Kaua'i Writers Conference
(http://kauaiwritersconference.com). It had two aspects, first four days of
master classes, and then three days of the conference more broadly. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Kaua'i (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauai) is a genuine
tropical paradise, a relatively small Hawaiian island with a population of
about 60,000. It happens my son teaches high school there, which is one reason
I attended.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The picture is one I took of
closing ceremonies on the beech.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The master classes seemed to have up to about 30 students each
and met for three hours a day with one or sometimes two teachers. (https://kauaiwritersconference.com/master-classes/)
In the conference there were a variety of talks on various aspects of writing
and publication. (https://kauaiwritersconference.com/schedule/)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">It took place in a grandiose, slightly worn resort with the
largest swinging pool in Hawaii half-ringed with hot tubs and an island in the
middle.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All overlooked a beach on an
inlet. (https://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/lihhi-kauai-marriott-resort/) Our
room was nice but not fancy, the food was good by conference standards. Things generally
ran smoothly.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Demographics: My perspective may have limited my count, but I'd
guess there were about 200 people in Master classes and about 300 attendees to
the conference as a whole. There was a range of age and nationality, but the prominent
group was middle-aged Caucasian women. My impression was that about half of the
attendees were from the Hawaiian Islands. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were a scattering of Asians and two
blacks (one from Nigeria).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A few places had
been allocated to students from a local college. I was sitting for lunch one
day with a Brit. Conversation turned to how people stood in
line for busses in different cultures. (I. E. a lone Brit is visibly in a queue
whereas in Greece any group is a mob.) A young Asian woman sitting next to me
had been rather quiet, so I asked her where she was from. She said Saipan; she was
one of the local college group. I asked about bus queues. She said there are no
busses in Saipan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">My impression was that the most popular genre was memoirs by
people who believed they had led interesting lives or, more often, had had
interesting jobs or professions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I attended the master class given by Nicholas Delbanco (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Delbanco)
on voice. It had some virtues and some faults. The faults were size and the
room. Some fell away, but at the beginning there were 30 people. The room,
which could have held 60 people, had narrow tables arranged in ranks as for
hearing a lecture; it should have been is some sort of round-table arraignment.
The virtues were the writers and the teacher. There were too many of them, but
the writers were almost universally smart, experienced, and serious. Typically
they were people who had written in some other field (I.e. the author of
several history books, a lawyer who had written books on law etc.) and now
wanted to write fiction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Delbanco has immense experience
and resources as a teacher of contemporary writing and did marvelously considering
the number of participants and the inappropriate room. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The version of the conference I
attended two years ago (http://thothbooks.blogspot.com/2016/11/notes-on-kauai-writers-conference.html)
was dominated by people form the traditional publishing world to the degree
that, with a couple of exceptions in panels, it was as if hardcover books were
the only game going on in publication, a strange illusion.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In 2018 that was no longer the case. Talks
included discussion of electronic publishing, self-publishing, how to
manipulate Amazon, and something new to me, "hybrid publishing", a
sort of cross between self and traditional publishing, where a publisher
selects a book submitted by an agent or author and they then share the cost and
allocate any profits in varying proportions depending on what each contributed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Never the less agents and prominent
writers set a lot of the tone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Characteristically the prominent writers urged people in the audience to
be true to themselves, write what they inwardly wanted and the like, whereas
the agents delivered strong guidelines about what the publishing industry wants
and expects. Jayne Smiley, who always intended to and does write different
sorts of books, commented that winning the Pulitzer Prize helped in arguing with
her publisher. Her agent, however, told a story that elicited some sympathy for
publishers. There used to be a mystery writer named Sue Grafton who wrote a
series of rigidly similar mystery novels. Her publisher wanted her to write
them as fast as twice a year whereas she wanted to slow down to one every two
years, or something like that. The agent pointed out that at that time Grafton’s
novels accounted for about half the publisher's income.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 99.0pt;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">A couple of writers who had a calling
to speak for their minority group were prominent in the conference two years
ago and that was a live topic of discussion. Not this time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Of the many talks (https://kauaiwritersconference.com/schedule/)
the one I attended and enjoyed most was Smiley. I've read only one of her books
(A Thousand Acres) and was only moderately impressed, but she's fun and smart
and has had an interesting career.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
one I liked least was billed as on the Jungian notion of the hero’s journey. I
thought, good, I can get ideas about plot structure. It turns out she was
interested in only on step, (the second, "Refusing the Call"). She
gave us brief writing assignments related to evocative phrases. One was
"The stakes were high." Feeling irritable, I wrote about an enclosure
walled by stakes so high they made the garden shady.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-7259298701252995512018-12-11T20:54:00.000-08:002019-01-09T10:02:39.485-08:00The Demo at 50<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US">I spent Sunday at a <a href="https://thedemoat50.org/symposium/)">symposium</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on the
50th anniversary of a demo of the Online System (NLS) by Doug Engelbart and his
group in 1968. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mother_of_All_Demos">demo</a> is famous in computer history.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I joined the group in 1970, about two years
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the morning were about the demo and how it had been achieved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Computer processing necessary for the demo took
place at SRI in Menlo Park and was connected to Engelbart controlling the
computer and dwarfed by a giant display screen in what is now </span><em><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "1stone serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Bill Graham</span></em><span class="st"><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"> <i>Civic</i> </span></span><em><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "1stone serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Auditorium</span></em><span lang="EN-US"> by a
two-step microwave link.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole
process was intricate, fragile and something of a miracle in terms of both
software and hardware.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, I'd
heard about it, but never in such detail with excellent slides created by some
of the people who did the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found
the morning very interesting.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">By my guesstimate there were about 250
people gathered at the <a href="http://www.computerhistory.org/">Computer Museum</a> in Mountain View,
roughly one tenth of the people who saw the demo.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The audience was dominated by old, white men,
as were the presenters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About half of it
was younger, down to teenagers, but again predominantly white men.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Engelbart's work is conceptually separate
from the Internet, but historically it has been much entwined with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His lab at SRI was the second node on what
became the ARPANET and eventually the Internet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The notion of linking documents came from Doug and/or a philosopher
named Ted Nelson (see below), but the implementation, as we know it in the
Internet today, came later from other sources.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">All of the speakers credited Doug's person
and his thinking as important influences in their lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Later morning sessions discussed the immediate
impact of the demo on computer research and development. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The sixteen presenters, including several
computer luminaries, expressed many interests and viewpoints, but the afternoon
sessions tended to focus on whether Engelbart "vision" was being
fulfilled by the contemporary computer world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Engelbart set out his vision in a <a href="http://dougengelbart.org/content/view/138/000/">paper</a> in 1962.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span> Basically it is not a vision about hardware or software, but about building
tools to aid the process of solving problems: "</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">By
"augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a
man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his
particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems." Speakers were in
general highly aware of the distinction.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Speakers tended to say that the computer
world has sadly failed to implement the vision, mostly because it has been
diverted into getting rich.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There was
some criticism, for instance of Google, even though Google was one of several
sponsors of the meeting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One speaker recalled
the first time an advertisement appeared on the Internet and his moral disgust
at seeing it there, which was shared by his colleagues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Facebook took several hits from speakers,
although I notice more than one person sitting in the audience sneaking a look
as they listened.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wikipedia was several
times praised.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was a group of
smart, collegial, bland, and well-off guys, and a few gals, beating themselves
up for not having done more for the world in the manner Doug envisioned and
suggesting ways, none of them very likely in my perspective, of doing better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">In the foyer of the auditorium, there were demos
of software influenced by Doug’s thought or practice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dean Meyers showed a version of NLS running
on Windows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was most impressed by a
small teaching tool based on links running on an Apple II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's been a while since I saw a running Apple
II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The problem from my perspective is that
forces like capitalism and the human propensity to divide into groups and
squabble tend to subsume whether people communicate with the aid of
computers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For instance, climate change
was mentioned several times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Undoubtedly, computer-based exchange and examination of knowledge can
help with scientific and technical problems having to do with climate
change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But the coal companies have
computers too.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At a high level,
everybody knows what to do about climate change: eliminate fossil fuels
and cultivate forests and other absorbers of greenhouse gases.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is not a technical problem -;<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> i</span>t is a political problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Again, Internet computer communication has
had diverse and profound effects on politics; whether they have reduced
conflict or mismanagement remains to be seen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The methodical use of the Internet by the Russians and others to confuse
people was not motioned in my hearing and efforts by China to mold social identity was
mentioned only once.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The overall moderator was Paul <a href="https://www.saffo.com/">Saffo</a> who describes his occupation as "futurist." That and chatting with
old friends and acquaintances, some of whom I would not have recognized without
nametags, recalled to me how strange it was when I first began working in what
is now called Silicon Valley that people's identity seem to center on what they
hoped or planned to do rather than what they had done or where they had come
from.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I have not yet become comfortable
with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>After all, the past has
happened and shaped us as it has.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
future is at best a plan and for sure uncertain.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The last speaker was Ted <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Nelson">Nelson</a>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is extraordinarily eloquent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He described his personal and intellectual
relationship with Doug over a lifetime.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
cannot describe what he said, only admire it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<!--EndFragment--><br />Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-60499769177424627712018-07-03T15:19:00.001-07:002018-07-03T15:19:50.795-07:00Fake News from the Rhine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT2HzZBFsf5PxUALeDfdiN2PTWCbUmp4XUWSHLnwsw9Swp0CZM861iCtK7vbkrIcY7rSyeY7A2V95GmMdZyVGWbGI9lanOgkY83M4cSubiBHvY91Z_HnA6CsqoXZgSNGBPeCdz3SIHJEAe/s1600/the-story-of-the-ring--siegfriedzambello-thumbnail_1280x720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT2HzZBFsf5PxUALeDfdiN2PTWCbUmp4XUWSHLnwsw9Swp0CZM861iCtK7vbkrIcY7rSyeY7A2V95GmMdZyVGWbGI9lanOgkY83M4cSubiBHvY91Z_HnA6CsqoXZgSNGBPeCdz3SIHJEAe/s320/the-story-of-the-ring--siegfriedzambello-thumbnail_1280x720.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Last week I attended the San Francisco Opera's production of Wagner's four operas The Ring of the </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Nibelungen</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-size: 12pt;">.</span><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;">Let me first of all say that this was a satisfactory experience. The orchestra, central to these operas, was in great shape and wonderfully conducted. The singers were all good, some terrific. I could make some carping criticisms of some singers – there always such criticisms to make – but I don't want to bother. The acting was good. Above all, the special imaginative and emotional hit The Ring offers was present in abundance.</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: normal;"><o:p></o:p></span></h2>
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What is the special Ring hit? It is the musical re-evocation of themes, events, and objects, that have occurred through musical cross-references by means of repeated, sometimes altered but recognizable, Leitmotifs. Let me take a small example. When the most important female protagonist, Brunhilda, is a demigoddess riding high, the celebrated <span class="st"><span style="font-family: "Apple Casual";"></span></span><span class="st">Ho-jo-to-ho</span>music is associated with her entrance. At the end of the next Opera she has been demoted to mortal and obliged to marry the tenor. Basically she is happy with her fate —; she loves the guy and loves feeling love. But, realistically, her response is complicated and ambivalent. As she is exploring her ambivalence she recalls, (in translation) "Once heroes bowed to me.” When she sings those words we get a brief poignant touch of <span class="st">Ho-jo-to-ho</span>music in the midst of her love music. Repeat that process 200 times and one hundredfold and you get a musical experience that enters your mind and emotions as no other. It is the result of intense and creative coordination of text, music, and setting.<o:p></o:p></div>
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But mostly I want to bitch about the stage setting. It's really awful, more awful than merely ugly or crude would be. Generally, it is not coordinated. Let me acknowledge first that in general I am uncomfortable with resetting plays or operas in times other than the author's intent, although it certainly can work. Let me acknowledge also that anyone presenting The Ring has a problem about setting. When and where does The Ring take place? It takes place in mythic never never land. And what pray does mythic never never land look like? Though Wagner provided ample descriptions of scenes in his libretti, the history of productions of The Ring is strewn with failures of staging. But we can be sure of a couple of things. It is set in the forest. The vast forest that covered Germany in the middle Ages as Wagner imagined it. Second it is set by, on, and in the river <span lang="EN-GB">Rhine</span>. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Wagner's idea of nature is not problematic. It is the solid and meaningful background in which the decline of the gods and triumph of human love takes place in The Ring. The notion that nature is something humankind is destroying by exploitation is a late 20th century idea at least in its popular form, well after Wagner.<o:p></o:p></div>
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The first scene of the first opera, Das Rheingold, challenges stage designers. Wagner’s detailed directions describe it:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">(Greenish twilight, lighter above, darker below. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">At the bottom of the Rhine</span><span lang="EN-GB"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">The upper part of the scene is filled with moving<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">water, which restlessly streams from right to left.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Toward the bottom, the waters resolve themselves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">into a fine mist, so that the space, to a man’s height<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">from the stage, seems free from the water, which<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">floats like a train of clouds over the gloomy depths.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Everywhere are steep points of rock jutting up from<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">the depths and enclosing the whole stage; all the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">ground is broken up into a wild confusion of jagged<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">pieces, so that there is no level place, while on all<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">sides darkness indicates other deeper fissures.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> (The curtain rises. Waters in motion. Woglinde<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">circles with graceful swimming motions around the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">central rock.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">For reasons unknowable to Wagner, the stage director, </span>Francesca Zambello<span lang="EN-GB">has decided to begin The Ring in California in the time of the gold rush, extend its duration to approximately the present, and through sets and projections depict the loss of the natural world to industrialization. In Wagner's libretto the action takes around 25 years and involves no reference to what may be going on outside the world of the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Of course the Rhine does not flow in California so, although the name of the opera is Das Rheingold and the Rhine maidens ("</span><i>Rheintöchter</i>in German) <span lang="EN-GB">sing the German text, "Rheingold" etc., the subtitles read "River maid" and "River gold.” The river is a stream running through the middle of the stage and the Rhine maidens are not water sprits, but healthy looking California girls dressed in 19th-century party ware. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The powerful Sacramento River flows through California, was the location of the gold rush, and was involved in environmentally destructive placer mining, which appears on some screen projections, but Zambello ignores that. Perhaps the notion of subtitles translating Rheingold as “Sacramento Gold” was too ridiculous even for her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">At this point the staging is merely silly and distracting. It gets worse in the beginning of the third opera because it tampers with protagonist’s conception of self.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Wagner’s stage directions for Siegfried act I scene 1 are: </span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 7pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">(A rocky cavern in a forest containing a naturally<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">formed smith’s forge with large bellows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">In this forest a villain named Mime has raised the ultimate hero Siegfried without exposure to other human beings. But he has been exposed to the forest. He constantly refers in dialogue to how he had learned about life and himself from the birds, animals, and trees of the forest and at one point leads in a bear, this arrogant adolescent’s idea of a joke on Mime.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">But trees and rocks not what we see when the curtain rises in this production. Mime's cave has become a dilapidated mobile home located in an industrial wasteland (see above). No home for bears here. The real problem with this is that the hero could not have grown up with the self-image or the image of how to relate to others he had in an industrial wasteland. The scene leaves the audience possibly annoyed but certainly confused.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif";">By the end of the opera via staging and projections the setting has progressed to a 20th-century industrial wasteland, which serves to suggest, nay assert, the destruction of nature by humans. Whatever the name of the river, it has dried up and we last saw the whatever maidens collecting garbage on its dry floor in a scene Wagner describes as set "</span><span style="font-family: 1Stone Serif;">in a remote wooded valley where the Rhine flows"</span><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif";">.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Between scenes toward the beginning of the last opera a substantial orchestral passage embodies musically the hero’s trip down the Rhine. The swelling music movingly reflects the flow of the river. It is frequently excerpted and has become a warhorse of symphony concerts. The curtain raiser for the first opera is a beautiful and hypnotic projection depicting a powerful river and related stuff. It would have been appropriate and satisfying to repeat it here. But no, we get more projections of industrial waste. It is weird to hear Siegfried’s Rhine Journey while looking at in concrete and power lines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Wagner provides detailed stage directions for the end of the opera:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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(As the whole space of the stage seems filled with<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">fire, the glow suddenly subsides, so that only a cloud<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">of smoke remains, which is drawn to the background<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">and there lies on the horizon as a dark bank of cloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">At the same time the Rhine overflows its banks in a<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">mighty flood which rolls over the fire. On the waves<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">the three Rhine daughters swim forward and now<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">appear on the place of the fire.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> (Hagen, who since the incident of the ring observed<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Brünnhilde’s behavior with growing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">anxiety, is seized with great alarm at the appearance<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">of the Rhine daughters. He hastily throws spear,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">shield and helmet from him and rushes, as if mad,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">into the flood.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> </span><span style="font-family: Helvetica;">(Woglinde and Wellgunde [Rhine maidens] embrace his neck with</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">their arms and draw him with them into the depths<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">as they swim away. Flosshilde, swimming in front of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">the others toward the back, holds up the regained<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">ring joyously.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> (Through the bank of clouds which lie on the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">horizon a red glow breaks forth with increasing<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">brightness. Illumined by this light, the three Rhine<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">daughters are seen, swimming in circles, merrily play-<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">ing with the ring on the calmer waters of the Rhine,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">which has gradually returned to its natural bed.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> (From the ruins of the fallen hall, the men and<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">women, in the greatest agitation, look on the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">growing firelight in the heavens. As this at length<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif"; margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt;">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">glows with the greatest brightness, the interior of<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">Walhall is seen, in which the gods and heroes sit<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">assembled, as in Waltraute’s description in the first<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">act.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;"> (Bright flames appear to seize on the hall of the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">gods. As the gods become entirely hidden by the<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Helvetica;">flames, the curtain falls.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">None of this happens as described in this production. Instead see a barren, post-industrial landscape. The Rhine Maidens, once flirtatious hotties, embodiments of positive libido, are now bedraggled and bent. Siegfried is not on a pyre of wood for </span>Zambello<span lang="EN-GB">has moved his immolation off stage, but Gibichung vassalsn are carrying old tire casings in that general direction. Valhalla is not seen. Etc. Most important the Rhine does not flood the stage. There is no Rhine, and whatever river flowed in the first opera has dried up.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Because the Rhine does not reflood the stage to allow the Rhine Maidens to swim up and remove the ring from Siegfried’s finger, the setting fails the resolution the text and music embodies. </span>Zambello <span lang="EN-GB">has imposed a moral of painful disharmony rather than resolution. She ties to solve the problem she has created by adding a child who comes on stage after theverything Wagner wrote is over carrying a sapling, which she plants. This is Bullshit. This is Fake News. And like political fake news, the confusion it causes is as bad as it's dishonesty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">The libretti Translations are by </span>Frederick Jameson .You can read them all at<span lang="EN-GB">: http://home.earthlink.net/~markdlew/shw/Ring.htm<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-90323144295894524502017-09-21T16:43:00.002-07:002017-09-21T16:43:51.334-07:00Comments on The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjClybflpp-SfSEJjEG8qfr3m-0G_-4Yh9oV9hp1alXCGDvNDFJ298yEsRAYwXj3XjoMQOBMpzZgEXIZRQK1iGoElttEWI9xPngE3i0tmn9cKTp8PGvn2jw4tjCzq3At8uRE3AwVit4j5pC/s1600/The-Hawk-and-the-Nightingale.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="491" data-original-width="650" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjClybflpp-SfSEJjEG8qfr3m-0G_-4Yh9oV9hp1alXCGDvNDFJ298yEsRAYwXj3XjoMQOBMpzZgEXIZRQK1iGoElttEWI9xPngE3i0tmn9cKTp8PGvn2jw4tjCzq3At8uRE3AwVit4j5pC/s320/The-Hawk-and-the-Nightingale.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">This novel has real
strengths and real drawbacks. It recounts suffering and resistance of two
sisters, their father, and communities of associates, friends, and loved ones
in France during the invasion and occupation by the Germans in WW II.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The action is mainly set in a small country
town, but also in Paris and other rural parts of France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It portrays movingly the grinding
preservation and degradation of the French people as the war goes on with
respect to practical matters like getting enough to eat, but also to persona
feelings, like fearing for loved ones, or social and cultural loss, like the
loss of faith in society. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The prose is generally
clear and eloquent and every few pages are graced by tellingly beautiful and effective
metaphors.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Three plot lines
sometimes support and intensify one another and sometimes overlap and obscure
one another. At the heart is the story of two sisters who respond to the early
death of their mother and the emotional crippling of their father in very
different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One is rebellious, an
actor-outer, whereas the other bargains everything for security.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their father is himself the victim of the
trauma of serving in the French army in WW I and the early death of their
mother.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The second line of plot
is the participation mainly of the rebellious sister in the resistance to the
Germans, in particular her smuggling Allied airmen out of the country, which
provides a lot of tense scenes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
stay-at-home sister eventually, and somewhat out of character, becomes involved
similarly in saving Jewish children.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The third line of plot is
a frame story involving an ill, old woman in Seattle in the present day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The reader's uncertainly about her relevance creates
minimal tension.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The characterization in general
is clear and moving. In the case of the sisters and their father, it reaches
beyond being clear into being unremitting. Certainly every few pages from
beginning to end the author informs us of how the sisters have responded
differently to their different lack of parenting and how they feel about one
another.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">During about the time I read
this book, I read, or rather audited, Arnold Bennett's novel The Old Wives Tale.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It too is about two sisters, one of whom is,
in her 19th century English fashion, rebellious and adventurous, while he other
is a stay-at-home.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It establishes the
difference between these two sisters and their attitude towards one another and
their difference in the first 50 pages of a very long novel, and after that
simply lets us see how it plays out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0e0e0e; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: AmazonEmber-Regular;">Hannah</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">
would've done well to follow similar strategy; we get tired of her rehashing
these family differences.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The same thing
applies to their relation to their father, which Bennett establishes and anchors
its importance in the beginning of the novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It remains a live issue without our having to be told about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This economy leaves Bennett free to develop a
whole world.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">One of the virtues of The
Nightingale is the portrayal two German officers who are stationed in a small
town and become involved with the sisters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The difference between the two officers is fully realized; one is a
loyal German but a decent human being troubled by the war and his role, the
other is a sadistic bastard.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">I happen at the same time
to be reading another relevant novel, Heinrich </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #424242; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Böll's</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"> group
portrait with lady, which very fully portrays the life of middle-class and
other Germans during the war, and how it changed as the war approached its end,
as </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0e0e0e; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: AmazonEmber-Regular;">Hannah</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">
portrays so well in France.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #424242; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Böll's</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"> method of
characterization is very much more complex than </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0e0e0e; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: AmazonEmber-Regular;">Hannah's</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #424242; font-size: 13.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Böll</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"> creates as a character an
author like an investigative reporter who compares and contrasts the various
accounts of the various characters by various other characters.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Just as we don't see eye to eye on one another,
his characters do not see eye to eye on one another and he reports it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The results are a very nuanced and
multidimensional portrayal of the individuals and of their world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0e0e0e; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: AmazonEmber-Regular;">Hannah's</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"> focus on the
two sisters and certain aspects of their relationships seems narrow and repetitive
by comparison.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The frame story of the
ill, old woman in Seattle is a tease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
reader comes to believe perhaps halfway through the novel that she one or the
other of the sisters and the uncertainty is only resolved at the very end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The whole frame story is unnecessary and
unlikely. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #0e0e0e; font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: AmazonEmber-Regular;">Hannah</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"> never explains how she
got to Seattle many years after the main events of the novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The story sometimes falls
into melodrama. For example, two lovers are reunited as one is about to die, á
La Bohème.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">So reading the novel was
in part frustrating. I wish the author had stopped redwelling on the family
relations, effectively established, which would have freed her cover some of
the other complex cities of the German occupation of France, for example the
role of those French who were perfectly happy to have the Germans arrive and
save them from communism and Jews.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
frame story was simply an unnecessary and improbable obstruction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But still is a moving book, with flash of
wonderful writing and a moving portrayal of the suffering of war.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-22351909931195612232017-08-11T15:37:00.003-07:002017-08-11T15:37:42.623-07:00Comments on The Enigma Variations by André Aciman<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl_5EIQd8M0lD9WUOLlmUeuQKAVOP8oUfFqcV6EnfUX6sJZCtSx77YYQudLr4_J6z1l3UI6u9a8ACSZ3eXpoHot7QAYmM_e9zXHYRysMgZQcn11sdM7x8JxnqJpSn1djUCx0Z9nzHCbO58/s1600/clinica-delphos-hipnoterapia-imagens-destacadas-o-cerebro-previu-que-futuro-e-obsoleto.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="434" data-original-width="710" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhl_5EIQd8M0lD9WUOLlmUeuQKAVOP8oUfFqcV6EnfUX6sJZCtSx77YYQudLr4_J6z1l3UI6u9a8ACSZ3eXpoHot7QAYmM_e9zXHYRysMgZQcn11sdM7x8JxnqJpSn1djUCx0Z9nzHCbO58/s320/clinica-delphos-hipnoterapia-imagens-destacadas-o-cerebro-previu-que-futuro-e-obsoleto.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">They are not mentioned in the text, but I
believe the title refers to the composition by that name by Edward Elgar, the
late 19th-century English composer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Elgar's
popular piece, it's been recorded over 60 times, consists of 13 variations on his
original theme; each variation is supposed to be a portrait of someone known
personally to Elgar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Several friends are
rendered in the novel, but I take the enigma in the novel to be passionate
infatuation. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This is a novel of twists and turns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Aciman is the novelist of crushes: “Will
she/he, won’t he/she?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Does she/he,
doesn’t he/she?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>What did she/he mean by
that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I attractive enough?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Am I enough?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Am I?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The protagonist is high on
these questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And, as with
other highs, sometimes exhilarated, sometimes crushed.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">I’m going to be explicit about the twists
and turns below, so beware of spoilers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">His first novel, Call Me By Your Name, is
about the summer homoerotic crush of an intellectual Italian teenager on an
older student.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His long and masterful novel
Eight White Nights is about the coupling/failure to couple of a heterosexual pair
in wealthy, intellectual circles in Manhattan who fail to go beyond falling in love
for 368 pages. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like The Enigma
Variations the book is related by title enigmatically to another work, Dostoevsky’s
novella of the same name, but turning to the Dostoyevsky answers no questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">As in Eight White Nights, the tension, what
would be the plot tension in a mystery, in The Enigma Variations lies in the
question of how or if the protagonist will resolve himself as a lover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whom and how you love is central to his being
a person and is always uncertain and anxiously immanent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The book has five sections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the first, as a young teen-ager he has an
unconsummated crush on a local craftsman, who, after<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>his father’s death he discovers to have been
his father’s lover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the second he is
tormented and intoxicated by jealousy over the relation between the woman he is
living with and an unknown man.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It turns
out the interloper is gay and interested in him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the third section he is tormented by timidity
over approaching a guy he sees on the tennis courts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He finally does.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the forth section he is living with his
tennis friend, but it is no longer a crush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This section explores his history of desperately intense flinglets with a
woman he knew in college.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From time to
time in life they meet, go off together, make love, but always clench away form
one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is, so-to-say, a
chronic crush.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The last section advances
the protagonist to middle age.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is in
deep flirt with young writer, a mentee, but is as timorous as he was in the
first section, unable to declare himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In e-mail exchanges the guy he had been living with urges him to seize the moment (as the reader silently urges the protagonists to
seize the moment in Eight White Nights), but he can’t. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As in the fist section, their relationship is
unconsummated.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the first section it
was unconsummated because of the maturity and commitment of the craftsman, which
is rooted in his affair with the protagonist’s father.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the last section it is rooted in the
marriage of the protagonist to a woman who was a background character in earlier
sections, which marriage is only uncovered at the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We discover it only at the end because his agonies
of eagerness and uncertainty remain so convincing; so much part of him even
thought he is married.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">The novel is in first person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The characterization of the protagonist is
the vivid, tense experience of seeing the world though the details of his tremulous
infatuations again and again in varying respects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We experience the other characters through
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10.0pt;">“And there’s the
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have always known, that what I really long for this evening is neither to be on
this side of the river nor on the other bank but on the space and transit in
between, the way after speaking of Russia’s White Nights it wasn’t of nightfall
or daybreak that Gabi had sung but of that fleeting hour between dusk and
daylight which we all longed for on our balcony on this undecided evening that
wasn’t winter or summer or even just spring.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">He can also apply the little, shaping
hammer strikes of short sentences:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 10.0pt;">“I want you to
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look, or pretend not to?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Should I speak,
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Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-84316336715339905962017-06-26T10:33:00.000-07:002017-06-26T10:33:12.368-07:00Pedro Páramo<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US">The brief novel Pedro Páramo by Juan
Rolfo is deeply beloved in Mexico. Its standing has been compared to Don
Quixote in Spain and The Devine Comedy in Italy primarily for two reasons. First,
it is the first novel (1953) to give voice to the rural poor. Second it dramatizes
the trembling veil between the living and the dead that permeates Mexican
culture. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span lang="EN-US">In
the larger context of Latin American and world literature it is admired as the
godfather of Magical Realism.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1f497d; mso-bidi-font-family: OpenSans; mso-themecolor: text2;">Borges considered it to be one of
the greatest texts in any language, while García Márquez, who “could recite the
whole book, forwards and backwards”, acknowledges it as the breakthrough that
allowed the inception of </span><i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1f497d; mso-bidi-font-family: OpenSans-Italic; mso-themecolor: text2;">One Hundred Years of
Solitude</span></i><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #1f497d; mso-bidi-font-family: OpenSans; mso-themecolor: text2;">: “the examination in depth of Juan Rulfo’s
work gave me at last the way that I sought to continue my books”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;">"That night I didn't sleep until I'd read it twice; not
since I had read Kafka's Metamorphosis in a dingy boarding house in Bogotá,
almost ten years earlier, had I felt so thunderstruck"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;">- Gabriel García Márquez<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;">"The essential Mexican novel, unsurpassed and unsurpassable
... extraordinary."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #4e575d; mso-bidi-font-family: Texta-Medium;">- Carlos Fuentes<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The basic story is that the protagonist, an
ordinary guy named Juan </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #343434; mso-bidi-font-family: OpenSans;">Preciado</span><span lang="EN-US">, returns to the town
where he was born to find his father because he promised the journey to his
dying mother. But his father is long dead. At first the town seems deserted,
but a woman offers him a room and he then begins to meet or overhear
conversations or dreams of other people who are the dead of the deserted town
including his hostess. He himself dies halfway through the story and narration
continues in fragments of third person narration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The story behind the fragments of
conversation and narrative is the life and death of a town. It centers on the
patrón, Perdro Páramo ("Páramo" means something like 'wasteland'.)
who is the son and grandson of local landowners.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Very young he is in love with a child-hood
friend named Susana San Juan who does not return his love, marries another man
and leaves town. Páramo marries the mother of the initial narrator in order to
settle a large debt. Never ceasing to love Susana, Páramo grows in viciousness;
killing people who stand in his way, seducing and raping other woman. He
fathers a number of illegitimate children. The Mexican revolution breaks out
and splintered, armed groups ravage the countryside.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On the death of her husband, Susan returns to
town but then dies herself, throwing Pedro into despair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He owns the town but refuses to nourish it. All
along and step by step the local priest despairs over his right to give
absolution especially when Pedro pays him off to do so.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: 130.5pt;">
<span lang="EN-US">Several movies
exist, the most notable directed by </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-bidi-font-family: Roboto-Regular;">Carlos Velo, with a writing credit to Carlos Fuentes
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQJnBOlJqsc)</span><span lang="EN-US">. It mainly
follows the plot in real time as in my summary above. The result is something
resembling a stereotypical Mexican soap opera with plenty of shots of men with
little mustaches and big hats packing guns and riding prancing horses, of women
in luxurious peasant blouses, and of emotional confrontations with an emphasis
on the difference of gender roles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But that is not the experience of the reader.
The place is the death of the town. The time is years that do not succeed one
another-; events endure in timeless ambiance. A working title, The Murmurs,
more evokes the reader's experience than the name of the villain. The initial
narrator and the reader are exposed to the thoughts, dreams, and self-describing
dialogue spilled out the dead in the order of revelation, not the plot, in the
mood of violent, desperate and constricting privation. Rulfo declines to orient
the reader in a chain of causes and consequences. All consequences are immersed
in nostalgia</span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">, longing, death, and loneliness.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">The characters are like etchings, we do not
see deeply into them, we see them compassionately as hard, grey lines; we
remember them more than we understand them. It is their communal history we remember,
not thier individual stories. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #404040; mso-bidi-font-family: "Georgia Bold Italic";">They are the dead, which many rural
Mexicans feel as immanent, invisible presences, rapt, unabsolved. Death was
cheap in rural Mexico in those days, and today still is; we daily read of new
mass graves uncovered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">The prose is clear and beautifully simple (Media Luna is
Páramo's hacienda):<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I am sleeping
in the same bed where my mother died many years ago; on the same mattress, under
the same black wool blanket that used to cover both of us when were sleeping.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Then, I slept by her side, in a little place
she made for me under her arms. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I think I still
can hear the slow pulsation of her breathing, and the sighs with which she
lulled my sleep...<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But none of that is
real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I am in a black box like those
they use to bury the dead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because I am
dead. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I can feel the
place where I am, and I think... </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I think of when
the lemons ripen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the wind in
February breaking the stems of the bracken when the lack of care makes it dry
up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of the ripe lemons filling the patio
with their odor. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">The wind came
down from the mountains on those February mornings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And the clouds were up there waiting for the
weather that lets them fall down into the valley, leaving the blue sky empty,
so that the light shines down with the wind, making circles on the ground,
blowing the dust, and rocking the branches of the orange trees. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And the
sparrows chirped; they pecked the leaves that the wind had blown off the trees,
and they chirped while they did that; they left their feathers on the branches,
and they chased butterflies and chirped some more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was that time of the year. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">I remember the
February mornings full of wind, and sparrows, and blue sky.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was when my mother died.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I probably shouted and my hands must have
been torn to shreds after wringing out my despair.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You would have liked the way things were.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But maybe you were not happy that morning.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The wind blew through the open door, rustling
stems of the ivy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The hair between the
veins on my legs began to rise, and my warm hands trembled as they touched my
breasts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The sparrows were enjoying
themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the fields the corn was
waving in the wind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I felt sorry that
she would no longer be able to see the wind in the jasmines, that her eyes were
closed to the light of day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But why was
I going to cry? </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Do you
remember, Justina?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You had arranged the
chairs along the side of the corridor for the people who would come and wait
for their turn to say goodbye to her.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
the chairs were empty, and my mother was alone in the center of the candles;
her face was pale, her white teeth were barely visible between her red lips
that were hardened by the chill of death.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Her eyebrows were motionless, the same as her heart.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You and I were praying endlessly, without her
hearing it, nor did you or I hear anything, since all was covered by the
sonority of the wind that night.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
ironed her black dress, starching the collar and the cuffs so her hands would
look fresh when they were crossed over her breast, her loving breast where I
once had slept, that had also given me something to eat, and that palpitated,
soothing my dreams. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">No one came to
see her, but that was for the best.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Death
is not something that you offer as entertainment.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No one goes around looking for sadness. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">Someone knocked
on the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You went out. </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“You go,” I
told you.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“I have a hard time seeing
things clearly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And tell them to go away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Are they coming for the money from the
Gregorian Mass?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She didn’t leave any
money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tell them that Justina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She will not be able to leave purgatory if
they don’t hold these Masses and pray for her?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Who are they to enforce justice?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>You
think I’m crazy?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s okay with me.” </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">“And the chairs
you set up were still empty until we went to bury her with those men we hired
who were sweating under someone else’s weight.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They lowered the coffin slowly; they covered the grave with damp sand,
while they were refreshed by the cool wind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Their eyes were cold and indifferent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They told us how much it would cost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And you paid them, like one who is buying something, untying your
handkerchief that was damp with tears, and was now wrapped around the money for
the funeral...” </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;">And when they
left, you kneeled in the place where her face was now, and kissed the ground;
and it could have made a hole in the ground, if I hadn’t told you: “Let’s go,
Justina; she’s somewhere else now; here there is only a dead body.” </span><span style="font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 11.0pt;"><br /></span>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">Later in the book, but at no clear time, Susan thinks, "It
was as if the night were being dragged back and forth by the restless breath of
the wind." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The presence of the events in reading are
like the presence of events in memory. We remember stories, but we do not in any
moment remember our life as a story. Try to tell it and you'll see. In our
minds memories are what's going on in our mind, a succession of incidents and
images, particularly of people, like beads spilled on the floor and taken up
together in our hands.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">In its disassociated structure and well as its
incidents and characters, this novel projects the haunting sadness of the
oppressive and violent history of rural Mexico.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">One way to look at the structure is as response to trauma. The trauma
of Páramo’s oppression of the townspeople, and the related trauma of the civil
war. Disassociation is a common consequence of trauma.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #171616; mso-bidi-font-family: font000000001ede1f1c;">You can read this book as a puzzle. Rolfo is giving you clues as
in a mystery novel or a thriller and you can work out what happened. Or you can
open you mind to a night of vivid and unsettling revery. Or both. Pick up Pedro
Páramo. Read it. If you are confused, read it again; it's short. Know you are
holding in your hand something intimate to the character of Mexico.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-58033045774960284322017-05-13T11:34:00.001-07:002017-05-13T11:42:58.417-07:00Y observador tan agudo<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6999197-coraz-n-tan-blanco" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px;"><img alt="Corazón tan blanco" border="0" src="https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1440371504m/6999197.jpg" /></a><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6999197-coraz-n-tan-blanco">Corazón tan blanco</a> by <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/71956.Javier_Mar_as">Javier Marías</a><br />
My rating: <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1999065509">5 of 5 stars</a><br />
<br />
El misterio anunciado en la primera oración da impulso a una serie de reflexiones y dudas sobre las relaciones humanas, en la voz de un narrador — interprete y traductor profesional — especialmente sensible a las connotaciones de cualquier discurso y sus silencios. Desbordado por los secretos de los otros, y por sus dudas sobre si realmente lo son, este narrador busca un inalcanzable equilibrio emocional, muchas veces por acciones que lo ponen en ridículas y hasta muy cómicas situaciones. Porque hay bastante humor, mezclado con ironía y horror, en este hilo de observaciones agudas y divagaciones que tiene tanto de ensayo como de novela. Las oraciones suelen ser muy largas, con cláusulas que cuestionan una primera interpretación y obligan al lector a pausar y pensar. Eso sí : el misterio al final se explica, y los encuentros aparentemente inconexos (una noche en La Habana en viaje de novios, un episodio en el apartamento neoyorquino de una mujer deseperada por ligar con un extraño, las anécdotras del padre del narrador, etc.), se conectan. Pero todo eso ha sido poco más que el pretexto para incitar al lector a pensar sobre muchas cosas, incluyendo especialmente el lenguaje que usamos y si o cómo nos obligan unos a los otros a amarnos. Es un placer, para saborear cada oración y oír trabajar un cerebro hiperactivo.
<br />
<br />
<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/3024716-geoffrey-fox">View all my reviews</a>
Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-8625329226804743602017-03-16T10:55:00.002-07:002017-03-16T10:55:33.638-07:00To save the NEA and NEHAll of us who care about literature or any of the arts, we cannot permit the killing of the National Endowments of the Arts and of Humanities. Here's one way to protest: by signing on to <a href="https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/help-save-national-endowments-arts-humanities/" target="_blank">the Authors Guild letter to the U.S. House and Senate</a>. Thanks, from me and all creators.Geoffrey Foxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04041450398780043453noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-53853147007715997262017-01-16T10:44:00.000-08:002017-01-16T10:44:25.624-08:00BLIND SPOT BY HAROLD ABRAMOWITZ<div style="text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3m2QbYwtdVRJtt0ejfCDdg3lejMm0YhRunf7XY3bbUKscbE9SUO7ifAWSoemaeX-f7mKByuV1pMfJHnOVUAAhHxtEakj0EUQJ3F_zGuv0OS6BcElrUdGNRLINZ3pX1KAvkC2vQhRONsFf/s1600/Harold-Abramowitz-372x282-200x152.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="304" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3m2QbYwtdVRJtt0ejfCDdg3lejMm0YhRunf7XY3bbUKscbE9SUO7ifAWSoemaeX-f7mKByuV1pMfJHnOVUAAhHxtEakj0EUQJ3F_zGuv0OS6BcElrUdGNRLINZ3pX1KAvkC2vQhRONsFf/s400/Harold-Abramowitz-372x282-200x152.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">It is rather hard to say in conventional
terms why this is such a satisfying novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It has two parts and a postscript.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Each of the parts is divided into chapters of a few pages, which are in
turn divided into paragraphs of narrative and description that range from a
page and a half to a line or so and are separated by centered rules.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All the paragraphs in a given chapter tend to
be related to an incident initially described.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In the first part, a number of small incidents occurring to a man
staying in a mountain resort are told several times each with small
variations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the second part, the
narrative recounts possibly the same man going to a funeral, to a café, perhaps
after the funeral and where he may meet a woman or other friends, and to a
garden at night or a room where he may dwell with similar echoing
framings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The postscript of a few pages
repeats material from the second part in more conventional paragraphing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">The action manifests in a haze of
indefiniteness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I were reaching for fancy
metaphors, I would say it was like the impossibility of knowing both the
location and the momentum of a particle in quantum physics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The descriptions may contradict themselves
and are often interrupted with equivocal asides like "if you will,"
or "or perhaps," or "at this time.” that delocate them in the dimensions
of certainty. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Things are often described
with two consecutive adverbial phrases that overlap in meaning but do not
coincide exactly, as "in a café or restaurant.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These constructions suggest that the author
is projecting a reality that is only imperfectly knowable, or can only be
imperfectly put into words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Let me give you and example. Note that
examples are hard to choose. Superficially many paragraphs seem very much alike,
but when you examine them they have differences that make it hard to select one
as typical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is a sequence of three:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">He
is wearing a hat as he walks down the street. He has no hat. He is on his way
to the café to meet his friends, associates, for lunch. He is walking down the
street in a part of the city that has a, more or less, quaintly industrial feel
about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He is in the city, and he is
going to meet her at the café, or restaurant. And it is still, in fact, hard to
believe, sometimes. It is indeed still, sometimes, and hard to believe that
what has happened has, in fact, happened. It is a surprise, in the way that
many events in the past months and weeks and days, have been a surprise. It is
a surprise, he feels, and a shame, somewhat. It is a shame, somewhat, because
there are things that could've been done differently. There are things, he
feels, that could have been done that would have made all the difference in the
world. But then, of course, nothing could have been done. Still, he stands very
well. He cuts a fine figure as he walks down the street. It is his defining
moment. A golden moment, if you will. Yet things could have been very
different, he feels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">--------------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">He
is standing in the middle of the street. He is standing on an island, a
concrete pedestrian traffic island, in the middle of the street. He is waving
to his friends, associates, gesturing, somewhat wildly, humiliatingly, in a
way, doing a kind of dance, almost a dance, trying to get their attention.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div align="center" class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-align: center; text-autospace: none;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">-----------------<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">His friends, associates, are
talking and drinking beverages in the café. It is after the funeral, and the
café, is more or less, crowded that day.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">I usually consider novels from the
viewpoint of prose, plot, characterization, and theme. These tools of criticism
are not very useful here. The prose is consistently good, steadily solid,
particularly evocative of mood, but not exciting in itself. There are many brief narratives,
but no plot. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The mood and thoughts of
the protagonist are often and movingly described, but they do not add up to a
vivid sense of a character. We are privy to many of his thoughts and feelings,
but not to his past or future, not to who he is. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The theme is the poignant familiarity of
uncertainty. The operation of the theme is how we pay close attention in a continuing
experience of small variations. In a way the theme is attention, both the
pleasure of it and the futility of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">But that is a theme shared by the author
and the reader -; for the protagonist there is no theme.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Yet we continue to read, and are glad we
do, and are both satisfied at the end and sorry that it is over as in a well-plotted,
conventional novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Something is going on that questions
whether plot and character as I usually think of them, are fundamental to the
pleasure and function of a novel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">What is going on?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif";">Let us
say that at its most fundamental what keeps us reading or listening to
narrative in general is the tension that arises from uncertainty. We may want
to know how the plot comes out; we may want to know how a character will
further express him/herself. One thing that keeps us reading Blind Spot is pervasive
uncertainty. This uncertainty is poignantly connected with mood. Blind Spot has
a dark even ominous mood, something that resembles what I would call Middle
European melancholy, the mood of writers like Kafka, parts of Kundera, and </span><u style="text-underline: #292929;"><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #292929; font-family: "1Stone Serif"; mso-bidi-font-family: OTS-derived-font;">Imre Kertész's </span></u><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif";">Selfless or </span><span lang="EN-US" style="color: #292929; font-family: '1Stone Serif';">Péter Nádas' A Book of Memories</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "1Stone Serif";">.</span><span lang="EN-US"> For
example, we vaguely suspect that the funeral in the second part is the funeral
of the protagonist, but at other times are reassured that, though he is ill, his
illness is not fatal. We hang longingly in this uncertainty.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">This novel differs from most also in the
cover blurbs. Where most blurbs are transparently meaningless hype, on the back
or this book are five brief essays by smart writers, each attempting to put
across how the book is so good. I will quote one, T. C. Tlbert:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Blind Spot weaves a new structure for
narrative, forces the reader to consider the complex and profound structures
hidden in a record of time, each observation of the utterly quotidian
transforming into a lyrical evocation of essential significance. Each
repetition is a surprise…<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Amanda Ackerman adds "… Each sentence
feels like it undoes a lie."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-87109933788207701402016-11-28T10:43:00.000-08:002016-11-28T10:47:57.163-08:00Notes on the Kaua'i writers conference<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">From October 31 until November 6 I attended the Kaua'i writers
conference (http://kauaiwritersconference.com). It had two aspects, first four
days of master classes, and then three days of the conference more broadly. The
master classes consisted of groups of 15 students with one, or in my case two
days each of two successive "masters" for a total of 75 participants.
The conference itself consisted of various roughly one-hour sessions, sometimes
in parallel for up to 150 people. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Kaua'i (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kauai) is a genuine
tropical paradise, a relatively small Hawaiian island with a population of
about 60,000. It happens my son is a middle school teacher there, which is one
reason I attended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Demographics: I was able to count the house for the master
classes. Middle-aged women dominated them, like the conference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The group was 80% women, only a few of them
under 30. Some men <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>-my class happened to
have 4. Five Blacks, considerably above the normal percentage in Kaua’i, and
five Asians, considerably below. Faculty was all white except one Asian and evenly
split between men and women.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">My impression was that the most popular genre was memoirs by
people who believed they had led interesting lives or, more often, had had
interesting jobs or professions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">By and large I came away with a good feeling. I felt partly
that it was useful but more broadly warmly towards it, unlike the San Francisco
writers conference (http://thothbooks.blogspot.com/search?q=francisco), the
only other such conference I have ever attended, which basically seemed to me
like a tacky fair.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Luis
Alberto Urrea (http://www.luisurrea.com) opened the conference proper with a
truly inspiring speech about how he wrote to give voice to people without
voices. He told, for example, about how when he was a young man he was doing charity
work in the Tijuana dump (Not far from his birthplace). He was keeping a
journal. A garbage picker came out of the dump and asked him what he was doing.
He explained that he was keeping a journal. The guy asked what that was. He
said it was like a diary. The guy asked if Urrea would write about him. He replied
that he probably would. Urrea commented that at that moment he did know weather
they guy would hug him or punch him. Urrea is a big guy; I would think twice about
punching him. The guy said that was good, he should write about him, tell that
he was born in the garbage dump, worked in the garbage dump, and when he died
they would bury him in the garbage dump. Wow.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">But beyond that there was very little discussion of the purpose
of writing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Agents dominated this conference. Of the faculty of 21, seven
were agents and another agent took a prominent role. The group leader for the
second two days of my master class was not a writer but an agent. There were
two panels on how writers and agents work together, to on how to acquire agents,
and agents tended to dominate various broader panels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was reminded several
times of a friend of mine who writes thrillers. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He wrote a book proposal for a possible thriller
about a Silicon Valley nerd who is transmitted by technobabble into Mayan times.
He wrote a book proposal, sent to his agent who said that it was great, he
could sell it, but he had a few suggestions. After two or three cycles of that
sort the agent sent it to publishers one of which said it was great and they'd
like to publish it but they had a few suggestions. After two or three cycles of
that sort the book that resulted was about a group of eco terrorists who are
fomenting climate change to increase the value of their property in Canada.
What my friend liked about the whole process was he still had his original
idea, which he also later wrote and self published with some success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Except for two talks, the fact that the publishing industry is
in turmoil or and perhaps far-reaching change because of electronic publication
including a wide range of forms of self-publication mostly went unmentioned. It
was usually as if this were 10 years ago and the New York publishing industry and
paper books completely dominated publishing. The two exceptions were a an
excellent, experienced and well organized talk on self-publishing and little
presses by Terry Persun (http://www.terrypersun.com), and in the talk by
Christina Baker Klein (http://christinabakerkline.com), which was billed as
about her novel The Orphan Train, but in response to questions she gave a very
intelligent and up-to-date overview of the publishing industry including
self-publishing and e-books. I sensed that the parts are trying to ignore each
other. She reported that when she gave a talk at a convention of independent
bookstores she was instructed beforehand that she could not mention Amazon. She
also spoke the memorable phrase, "There are so many gatekeepers."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Incidentally, I had read The Orphan Train, which I found soundly
written but boring. I wondered how it had sold so many copies. I figured it
would only be of interest to young teenage girls were who were disaffected with
families, but it turns out there are four million descendants of the orphans on
the trains.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The agents allocated obsessive attention to the first page of
novels. The theory is: the way novels sell is this: the customer goes into a
bookstore, picks up a novel, opens it to the first page, is then hooked or not –
only if hooked buys the book. When I asked an agent if he believed this, and
commented that I could never remember doing that, but rather I bought books on
the basis of reviews or recommendations from friends I trusted. He replied that
he did not know if it was true but he knew publishers believed it and so it may
as well be true. As was occasionally mentioned, people go through a similar
process on Amazon, which tracks your every click for marketing purposes so Amazon
knows the answer to my question for its readers. In general agents prescribed a
first page focusing on the protagonist who has at that moment a sense of
urgency about something or other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">There was a panel by authors who had been involved with
Hollywood and the Hollywood came up several other times. No one suggest the
possibility of non-Hollywood movies. On the whole the experiences were
difficult although Baker-Kline is happy about the plan for a movie of The
Orphan Train. The most difficult negotiations were over Jamie Ford's novel The
Hotel on The Corner of Bitter and Sweet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_on_the_Corner_of_Bitter_and_Sweet),
in which all important characters are Asian except for one black man. This is a
problem for Hollywood, which does not want to undertake a movie unless it has a
slot for a "bankable" actor, that is a Caucasian actor. Urrea, who
has not completed a deal, reported a fabulously wealthy producer commenting to
him, with self-conscious irony "I'll turn you into a whore yet."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">There was a master class and one session on screenwriting. The
session consisted of playing a number of clips and commenting on structural
features. The clips tended to be extraordinarily cliché-ridden and stereotypical
Hollywood box office successes including, for sooth, Ben Hur. As far as I could
tell, all the movies were from Hollywood. Surely there are things to be said
about screenwriting of good movies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="color: #040108; font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Priya Parmar (http://www.priyaparmar.com)
is an interesting example of the attention to the relation between authors and
agents. She and her agent did a presentation on the subject. Her agent was not
part of the regular faculty and was described to me as a very important New
York agent, but I've forgotten her name. Parmar looks about 16 but is 40
(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/for-priya-parmar-a-career-as-a-novelist-wasnt-even-in-the-plans/article22606030/).
I found her novel good and interesting and she talked enough to show that she
was intelligent and interesting, but mostly when there were hard questions she
handed the mic to her agent. I had a slight feeling of seeing Svengali and
Trilby.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Short stories got short shrift. There was virtually
no discussion of them except a presentation on the subject by the indefatigable
Jonathan Mayberry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Maberry) who is a
publications industry unto himself. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
reports that he publishes about a million words a year. He sees short stories
as improving market particularly in anthologies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">I never heard a non-US writer or publisher mentioned.
I did not hear poetry mentioned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I heard no complaint about pressure on writers
to continue series.<span style="color: #040108;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The
writer's discomfort with Hollywood constraints made me reflect on their feeling
about publishers constraints and my perspective as a reader. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I'm not a fan of Hollywood movies, not that
there is not a good one occasionally, but it is definitely the exception for
me. I watch a lot of movies, generally not from the United States. Likewise I
seldom read novels that have been on the New York Times bestseller list. I read
five by presenters preparing to come to this conference. Two I thought were
pretty good, as good as the novels I generally read, which are mostly from
outside the United States or from the past. The other three were soundly
written but not interesting to me. They are the product of rather stringent
process, a lot of gatekeepers as <span style="color: #040108;">Christina Baker
Klein</span> commented, particularly of course the first page, which really has
rules as intricate as a sonnet, as do query letters and book proposals. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Nor are the gatekeepers reliable. We all know
the stories of Harry Potter or 50 Shades of Gray being turned down on numerous
occasions and those of us who know writers all read unpublished books or books
published in very limited printings that read better than most of what appears
in the stores. I heard writers complaining about Hollywood strictures but no
one here complained about the similar New York publishing strictures. Yet if
you want to get fame or money or readers in the United States it is a game it
is useful to play. It is not necessary to play because people are getting fame
and money on readers via a wide range of sorts self-publishing these days. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But that involves the burden of self-marketing.
But so does working with big publishers. These are not new thoughts; every
writer that does not have an established market is harboring them. I have a
novel in hand that, as it happens can be tweaked pretty easily to fit the
strictures (or so I imagine). That is, it can be tweaked without destroying its
meaning for me as the meaning of his novel would be destroyed for Jaime Green
by Hollywood casting a Caucasian star. Not everyone has that luxury.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">I
have a number of interesting conversations with writers. For example I
talked a couple of times with a physician that works for the Social Security
Administration rather than practicing – presumably evaluating claims for
disability – but her primary interest was combining Native American medicine
with astrology. I quizzed her some on Native American medicine and she seemed
to have a broad knowledge reflecting understanding that what they practice
depended on their culture and local geography. She was writing a memoir and was
worried about its reception among her astrologer friends who might condemn her
for her turn towards Native American medicine.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">A
guy I chatted with was a short middle-aged man, a little rotund with a round
face and balding head, a semi retired patent attorney. He writes romance and
erotica for women. He drew a sharp line between erotica and porn but I did not
understand what it was. He was intelligently articulate about how to construct
such novels, for instance when to follow the woman's point of view and when to
follow the man's. He gave an interesting account of when he told his wife and
each of his three sons that he was pursuing writing romance and erotica and
portrayed interestingly their very individual reactions. He has a friend who
writes porn but has never told anyone else that he did it, except my informant
because he consulted him on a legal matter. He has a wife and family and has a
problem accounting for the income stream without letting them on his little
secret.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "stone serif itc medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">This is only the third year of the conference, and it is
larger than it has been before. Many ragged ends showed, mainly having to
do with the schedule, which, since I first heard of the conference, constantly
changed and changed from day to day even hour to hour when we were in
session.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I had to make an expensive alteration
to our airline flights on that account. Meals provided by the hotel varied from
very good to poor. There was a luau with fire dancing that impressed me but
with mediocre food. My son, who has been to many luaus, joined us and commented
that luau food was generally bad and that this particular set of fire dancing, was
second rate. However, unlike the big-deal San Francesco writer’s conference,
the mics worked and presenters generally knew how to use them.</span><span lang="EN-US"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-60134818204632314142016-01-21T12:19:00.001-08:002016-01-21T12:19:49.064-08:00I Can Make You Happy<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">A
short story by Jan Alexander<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">An
undisclosed location in New Mexico, 2027<o:p></o:p></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Welcome to New Pathways. My name is Sonia Delarosa. I’m the founder of this
workshop. I’m 43 years old, and I’m a happy person. Stroll around here and you’ll see lots of
others who are happy. You can identify our
</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;">graduates by their “Trump Pride” buttons and their
smiles. You’re here because you’re liberals and you think you can’t bear
another day of President Trump’s reign. But you’ll learn that even you can
re-educate yourself, with some help from me.</span><span style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #222222; font-family: Cambria, serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Ten
years ago, I was miserable too. In fact, I wept uncontrollably on the New York
subway that day in January, 2017 when President Trump was inaugurated. I thought this can’t really be happening. No doubt you all felt the same way—otherwise you
wouldn’t be here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">That’s
right, I was one of the last of the working people living in New York and burrowing
underground like a gopher every day, before the city became the first
Trumpistan, Inc. Real Estate Investment
Zone for global billionaires looking to diversify their holdings and was closed
off to fulltime residents. Back when I
lived in New York I was an aspiring writer making what we used to call a
creative salary—that’s a joke, I see you get it. I worked at a magazine and in
my spare time I was writing the novel that was going save humanity. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">So
that day of the inauguration, I was on the subway and all around me were other
young liberals on their way home to Brooklyn—and I wasn’t the only one sobbing. There we were, a subway car full of people with
advanced degrees in literature, sociology and history making less money than
the managers at our neighborhood Starbucks. We started talking. We all thought
President Trump was going to mow down the crumbling brick walkups where we lived.
We feared he was going to deport people
because of their religion and get the country into a war we could never win.
And we dreaded, absolutely dreaded, having to look at his disgusting face everywhere.
The sneer. The peroxided- balding-Elvis
hairdo, the albino rhinoceros-in-pancake-makeup face. Someone
drew a cartoon of his sneer and passed it around. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now,
though, when I see my President sneering I feel nothing but pride. All of my early predictions came true, but I’ve
stopped blaming Trump and learned to love him. You’re going to love him too, by the time you
graduate from my workshop. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I
see from your applications that a lot of you came here from Detroit. I lived there too—it seemed like the only
place to go after a bomb demolished my apartment building. At the time I
thought my life was over; I was one of
the many poor but hip New Yorkers who was sure it was a Trump conspiracy when the
bombs went off in the New York Times building, and then in the old residential
buildings all over Manhattan and Brooklyn. I believed, sincerely believed, that the
bombers were just hired thugs disguised in kuffiyehs so they’d look like
Muslims. Remember the rumors that it was
all a master plan to get the war started and incidentally wipe out the
affordable housing? I was furious—I
walked around gnashing my teeth and sobbing and wishing I had a gun so I could
destroy the guilty parties—when luxury towers rose up, with armed guards around
Manhattan and Brooklyn, and there was nowhere to live in the outer boroughs
because they were all combat zones. I heard that the whole Muslim family who’d run
a store on my corner back in Brooklyn had disappeared, and I blamed Trump. Just
as I blamed him when Shiites and Sunnis,
jihadists and moderates from all over the world managed to find a united cause,
attacking our country. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I
was still screaming about conspiracy in 2020—I was convinced it was yet more hired
thugs who planted the bomb that killed Elizabeth Warren after she won the election
that year. Especially when President Trump made his big announcement and said,
“This is war, my friends. Have you noticed the enemy has invaded and no one is
safe? Until we kill off every single one of the enemy, democracy takes a back
seat. I’m going to remain the President and
the Commander in Chief. Because no one else is tough enough.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">By
then, I’d settled in Detroit, and things started to get worse for me. There
weren’t many jobs for writers unless you were willing to work for the Trump and
Adelson-owned media, which I wasn’t. So I got a job making lattes for minimum
wage—and you remember how all the minimum wage earners started disappearing
after Trump created the private-sector Trumpistan Police, Inc. in 2021? They didn’t publicize their new laws
at first, and there were all kinds of offenses that no one knew were crimes
until they were charged. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I
was a week late with my rent, and the Trumpistan Police came after me. So there
I was in a place they called a reform camp. But that awful place was where I
saw the light. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Everybody
in the camp was poor. All their crimes
were failure to pay some bill or another. We didn’t have showers or plumbing and
it stank of filthy bodies and stale urine. We got watered-down macaroni and cheese once a
day, and a lot of inmates were so hungry
they stole food from the officers’ mess hall—we’d hear shots in the night and
figure someone else had been caught trying to steal food. We also had these daily intake sessions with
police social workers. My social worker said
to me, kind of shouting and sneering, like they’d all been trained to do, “Oh,
so you have a masters of fine arts?” By then, of course, MFA programs had been banned
on the evidence that they caused poverty. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">The
social worker asked me, “What do you think of your bunkmates?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">One
of my bunkmates was a woman who weighed 280 pounds and had snake tattoos that undulated
when she moved because there was so much loose flesh on her arms. She’d voted for Trump in 2016 because he wasn’t
afraid of speaking out about what everyone around her was really thinking. Another bunkmate was a born-again Christian
who’d voted for Trump too, and in the camp she was ranting that the worst thing
about the place was that people were going to form homosexual bonds and never
go to heaven. She told me that if I had
any perverted ideas I should know she kept a pistol under her pillow. That was
one thing they let everyone have in the camp; they had a canteen where they
sold guns on easy credit terms. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">So
when the social worker asked me what I thought of the bunkmates it didn’t take
me long to concede, “They’re riffraff.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">“You
see?” the social worker said. “If they weren’t so ugly they wouldn’t be poor.
What’s wrong with you? ” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> You don’t hear much about the disappeared. My tattooed bunkmate got a bullet in the head
because she had diabetes and she couldn’t afford the insulin they sold at the camp
canteen. The police came and got her and told her they were going to put her
out of her misery. But I turned out to
be someone they could re-educate. I started wandering around in this trancelike
state, talking to myself and all I remember saying was, “It’s my fault I’m
poor.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">That’s
when I got the idea to start a company of my own, offering workshops and a safe
space for the remaining liberals, or at least those who, like you, could afford
to come. Because I had a business plan,
they let me out to pull myself up by my bootstraps. They warned me that if I failed I’d be back,
so I had a big incentive. I came out here to New Mexico and I hid in the
guard’s cottage in someone’s vacation ranch. That’s how I survived for six
months. Then slowly, I began to make it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I’ve
grown to love it out here and I think you’ll love it too. The Muslim armies haven’t
invaded lately, and you have a lot of space before you get to that half-an-acre
point where it’s legal for a homeowner to shoot you. The 20 kids who were shot at the amusement
park last week, and that guy who shot all the inhabitants of the senior
citizens’ home, well, you know, stuff happens. But mostly it’s peaceful here. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You’re
going to feel immortal when you get out of my training class. You probably saw
in the literature that the $10,000 you paid for the week includes a fully
registered AK-47 of your own. We’ll issue it when you complete the course. I know, you’re the kind of people who don’t
believe in having guns. But you’re going
to walk out of here re-educated and re-born, and you’ll be happier for it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I’ve
been doing this a few years now, and I know a few things about you. The clients
who’ve come to me always hanker for the
good lives they used to have. You used
to be dot.com executives or tenured professors in San Francisco, or non-profit
lawyers in New York, or TV producers in L.A., before all those cities became Trumpistan
Real Estate Investment Zones. You’ve
managed to keep going and keep on as affluent liberals in the heartland, but
you’re miserable, right?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yes,
I figured that. For 10 years now you’ve been waking up every morning in a shivery
sweat. You’ve been thinking you can’t bear to look at that sneer again. Maybe
you had Muslim friends who didn’t want to go to war and no one knows where they
are now. Or you employed a sweet-tempered nanny who taught your children mariachi
tunes and wanted to become a music teacher—and then she disappeared. And we’ve
all lost people we loved in bombings. I’ve
been there too. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Well,
here’s what we’re going to do this week. We’re going to talk about rewiring
your sense of logic. Nearly all suicide bomb terrorists on our soil are
Muslims. Therefore all Muslims are terrorists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">I
see some hands up. Yes, you in the third row? Of course, you say but what about
all the mass shootings by Americans who aren’t Muslim? We’ll rewire you for
that too. You’re going to feel a lot less worried when you have your own
automatic rifle. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">And
that brings us to the part of your brain that all of you turn to pretty much
every time you hear the news or see people getting herded out of their slum
neighborhoods. The over-developed empathy part.
Do you know what it’s really like in a ghetto? Did you know that every
single low-income person in this country started smoking crack at the age of 12?
Then they start making meth and selling heroin to pay for their crack habit. If
you give them welfare they’re just going to have more money to spend on drugs. We
have statistics to prove that there’s plenty of drug money circulating in the
poor parts of town. They’re just hiding their cash under the mattress. You’ll
believe our statistics by the end of this week. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">More
questions, comments? Yes, hand up in the back. . I’ve heard that one lots of
times. You feel like you’ve spent ten years in a country ruled by a big
bullying jerk. You feel that he’s such a larger- than-life narcissist that he
had to run for president and pillage the world instead of just taking Viagra. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">You’re
quite right, our beloved president has psychological problems. Trust me, this week you’re going to learn to
love him for his flaws. For him, money and power fill an emotional gap the size of Las Vegas; underneath it all
he’s afraid of being worthless as a human being. You’ll come out of this
workshop feeling good about yourselves because you’re helping him feel deserving.
The way I look at it, I’m here talking to you as an altruist who’s made a lot
of money helping others become altruists. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">And
here’s a question for all of you: Do you why President Trump feels so entitled?
Tell me what your gut feeling says. Don’t think about the answer too much.
Remember, thinking is what’s made you miserable. You’re here to break your
thinking habit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Yes?
You say he feels deserving because he’s decided he is and once he decides
something is so, he doesn’t ever question himself. You’re absolutely right. And
all of you, you’re going to love how easy life is when you stop asking
questions. Especially when you stop asking yourself questions.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Cambria",serif; font-size: 12.0pt; line-height: 115%; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">Now
I think this is a good time to rise and stretch. We have a mantra that will
help relax you. Everyone stand. Raise your arms, bend side to side. Now repeat
after me, “I love helping Donald Trump.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
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Jan Alexanderhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09958245321349178950noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-72441896736105322592015-12-19T19:34:00.000-08:002015-12-19T19:34:08.200-08:00Comments on Cleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Al_W8UHaNkVCkfOo5Q2Tyb0rkQZ56nLSQHhcVEihl6aRrg5qIMKPk8FOViLXEcMZjBoz1ckeHx984UOqN5R3hpBfalGeSCqZszyw6_2o-yIjmf2_iOZzZaCC39oaZPA3t1eQKrsWmgMG/s1600/Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-Museum-Berlin1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3Al_W8UHaNkVCkfOo5Q2Tyb0rkQZ56nLSQHhcVEihl6aRrg5qIMKPk8FOViLXEcMZjBoz1ckeHx984UOqN5R3hpBfalGeSCqZszyw6_2o-yIjmf2_iOZzZaCC39oaZPA3t1eQKrsWmgMG/s320/Kleopatra-VII.-Altes-Museum-Berlin1.jpg" width="241" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Cleopatra had four children
known to history. The eldest, Cesarion, was the son of Julius Caesar. He
disappeared around the time that Augustus conquered Egypt, and historians
presume that Augustus ordered his death because he had a more legitimate claim
to be Caesar's heir than did Augustus himself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The other three were children of Marc Antony, whom, Shakespeare omits to
mention, was actually married to Cleopatra.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The two elder were twins, Selene and Alexander.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Selene is the heroine of this book. No likenesses
of her endure; the bust above is of her mother. They had a younger brother named Ptolemy.
Augustus took them to Rome as young teenagers after his victory over their
parents and paraded them in his triumphal march.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He then gave them to his sister Octavia to raise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He later marred off Selene to a Juba II, whom
he appointed king of </span><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-weight: bold; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Mauretania</span><span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">
(roughly today's Morocco).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Juba II had
been educated in Rome and was a distinguished geographer and writer. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Alexander and Ptolemy mainly drop from history
after the triumph.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today's historians
generally assume that Augustus had them killed because they could be nuclei of
a conspiracy against him by Marc Anthony's clan, but there is a suggestion by a
historian writing about 200 years later that they accompanied Selene to Africa
with Juba II.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I usually write about the plot,
characterization, and prose of a novel. But for a historical novel something
else is necessary. I'll call it setting. Setting has various parts -: physical
setting; the customs, ceremonies, infrastructure, clothing of the time; and
psychological setting, the social structure and self-image in which people shaped
themselves.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The prose of this novel is not
prone to errors, but it is flat and uninteresting.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is prose that is successful by not taking
chances. The force of words and images never makes you say to yourself, ah, that
is what that means. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Material and customary setting
is meticulously painted. I'm no more than a knowledgeable layman about ancient
Rome, but I know enough to see that the author has done her homework and
displays it very effectively. The heroine travels early in the book from
Alexandria where she has reached the age of 13 to Rome where she gets a tourist-like
chance to check everything out including an excursion to Capri. She arrives
during the period when Augustus was converting Rome from the city of brick to
the city of marble, as he self congratulatorily boasted, and the author does a
fine job of showing the physical process. She's also up on what Romans wore,
the various festivals, the formal relations of social classes.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The frame plot is a historical
question: What will Augustus do with these young people?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two sub plots: one is the sort of
romantic intrigue typical of young adult novels, and the other is a highly visible
slave rebellion in which several patrician characters a take a compassionate
interest. They are reliably exciting sub-plots for young adult novel, but not
Roman plots. In the end it turns out Selene at first hated Juba II due to misinformation,
and then had a crush on him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We have
lots of good documentation of the love life of upper class Romans of this
period, from Catullus through Petronius and many others. Lots of people fell in
love, but not with the people they had been married off to. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Slave rebellions were chronic
during the Republic and early Empire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Spartacus',
which preceded the time of this book, is only the best known. They were not
something the patricians as a class felt sympathy for. The heroine and some of
her friends feel weepy about the slaves and all poor people. Of course
individual Romans may have felt the same way, but this is not characteristic of
the society.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Augustus rightfully feared
conspiracies against his life and power, but they came from the patricians, the
senatorial class, not from the populace, as portrayed in this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That's why he had Cesarion and Alexander
killed, so they could not be the nuclei of patrician conspiracies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Selene's thoughts and feelings center
on the suffering caused her by Augustus killing her parents, sympathy for the
oppressed, her love interests, and self-realization. She is a graphic artist
and budding architect. These are the interests of privileged American teen-aged
girls. As I understand classical Roman culture, a typical girl like that would
be interested in fulfilling her duty to her clan by marrying and running a
household and in maintaining her reputation. I cannot stress enough the importance
of reputation to self-image. I remember reading Shadi Bartsch's The Mirror of
the Self: Sexuality, Self-Knowledge, and the Gaze in the Early Roman Empire, where
she discusses what Socrates meant by the Greek words that we translate as, “Know
thyself." Our current popular culture gives them a kind of Freudian dig;
they mean something like we should have a deep understanding of our inner
nature. As I understand it, what Socrates meant and Roman people meant was:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>be able to see yourself as others see you. In
a way the opposite.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">So, from the viewpoint of
portraying the self-image and consequent interests of Roman or Hellenistic
characters, this book is bogus. But what does that matter? Is the job of a
historical novel to produce characters that are true to the culture of their
time rather than ours? Especially considering that empathizing with the
self-image of an ancient civilization so different from ours is hard both for
the author and the reader. The book, instead, gives the intended reader an attractive
perspective to survey externals. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">But I think it does matter in
this sense -: the more deeply we feel what personhood meant in a genuinely
different society, the more we are broad and deep human beings. This book lets
us look as through a window at history and does a good job of that, but we do
not step through the glass.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-69963973687747706392015-11-24T17:27:00.000-08:002015-11-24T17:27:31.373-08:00Comments on Selling to Steven Jobs by Pierre Bedard<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxZEKQrU5jGNwbiWflDuEdEKX77ZRswlD5xIXPHgzXgOejtti9IGV9BEYD8tl2oqz24-n4iITYXIh7uHlzXRf82RlJCVKmbiAncB0UvvJa8oKGt-kObDtEpZVHDL9Lag8ov-grCQnUwq1/s1600/Steve_Jobs_portrait_by_tumb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="186" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpxZEKQrU5jGNwbiWflDuEdEKX77ZRswlD5xIXPHgzXgOejtti9IGV9BEYD8tl2oqz24-n4iITYXIh7uHlzXRf82RlJCVKmbiAncB0UvvJa8oKGt-kObDtEpZVHDL9Lag8ov-grCQnUwq1/s320/Steve_Jobs_portrait_by_tumb.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">This short book or essay was written
by a long-time Silicon Valley professional who has toiled as a writer and a
sales rep. In full disclosure, he is acquaintance of mine of many years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The book is a good way to get a feel for
attitudes people have towards work, sales, management, and star figures in
Silicon Valley from an enthusiastic perspective.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; tab-stops: 28.3pt 56.65pt 85.0pt 113.35pt 141.7pt 170.05pt 198.4pt 226.75pt 255.1pt 283.45pt 311.8pt 340.15pt; text-autospace: none;">
<br /></div>
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The overt content of the book is mainly about three things:
the author (The book is about 40% over before there are more than passing
remarks about Steve Jobs), about Jobs himself from a mainly anecdotal point of
view, and about the craft of sales rep. A subtext about how people evaluate one
another and establish esteem runs through it.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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His image of his audience is not always consistent. On the
one hand he writes as if he were explaining Silicon Valley culture to the
uninitiate:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
"Sit in any meeting in any
conference room in the Valley. I challenge you to fine more than two of seven participants
who were born in the Untied States. We are a Valley of immigrants."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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(Though many immigrants work there, I find this estimate something
of an exaggeration.)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
On the other hand he frequently names without explanation
people and concepts that are locally famous but far from universally
familiar:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>"C-level" (local
slang for corporate executive)" "NeXT", (an unsuccessful
computer company that Steve Jobs headed for a while) "J2ME" (a layer
of software that lets a given program run on several devices), "John
Warnock" (an inventor of display software and in the C-level of Adobe).<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The author is and portrays himself as a French Canadian
working-class immigrant. He graduated in French form the University of San
Diego and has translated French literary works. He holds and MBA from Sana Clara
and a JD, but has not practiced law. He was the sales rep from Adobe to NeXT
and has often negotiated intellectual property rights.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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His style is open, engaging, chatty, and energetic like a friend
addressing a small group of companions.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
His openness extends to confession, almost to self-abnegation<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
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"To the best of my knowledge
everything I am about to relate here is true. I was, at times, inebriated. I
did not live through my life with the idea of recording it. Keep that in mind
as you are either being cruel fair or both."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The idea of heroism is important. He modestly describes
himself as not a hero and explicitly seeks at times the reader's esteem. But he
has lots of heroes, most of them managers of hardware or software development.
The only other one you are likely to have heard of is Kurt Vonnegut. Of course,
Steve jobs most of all.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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He reports his negotiations with Jobs over intellectual
property rights as someone might report negotiating the sale of baseball bats
to Hank Aaron.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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But Jobs is a controversial figure. Many admire him as a
great CEO and technical innovator. Others, I among them, see him as some one
who promoted an abusive and over-driven work environment, some one who improved
the fortunes of Apple computer and affected the style of marketing and of
industrial design of smart phones, but had no long-term technical or broad
social effect. For example, you sometimes hear him credited with making the
smart phone popular or even with inventing it, but we would be looking at smart
phones if he had spent his energies in other fields. The first thing that could
be called a smart phone was marketed by Bell South in 1994, and Ericsson and Palm
marketed basic smart phones at the beginning of the century. The idea was on a
role. The smart phone in our hand might look somewhat different, and Apple
might have disappeared as a company if not for Jobs, but from my perspective that
is not so consequential as to make him a heroic figure. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Bedard catches this difference of
perspective neatly in an exchange with his wife:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in; tab-stops: 31.5pt;">
"I remember
telling Caroline that we had to get a front-loading washer, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">because Steve thought they were cool</b>....As
Caroline has pointed out for years since, what the hell does Steve Jobs know about
washing clothes and clothes washers?"<o:p></o:p></div>
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The later part of the book provides advice about how to work
as a sales rep in Silicon Valley and much of it thrusts toward being open and
natural with your clients as he is with his reader in this book.<o:p></o:p></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-86059030089742990252015-10-16T10:08:00.001-07:002015-10-16T10:19:28.064-07:00Comments on Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRxsJeTPe6mrb9f-LVNuFPiyi-tB3FEgNX9c3cGHoHoGc0PFXzu3UQunbodFhx26vA45IWi74RBLZQhJl0SkkHaeKZeB2Mfuk5hA4x7Lj5kI8yJgnCAl9Izw1M3Ym4C542T_R8X6p1Na0/s1600/23_07_15_01_nts.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRRxsJeTPe6mrb9f-LVNuFPiyi-tB3FEgNX9c3cGHoHoGc0PFXzu3UQunbodFhx26vA45IWi74RBLZQhJl0SkkHaeKZeB2Mfuk5hA4x7Lj5kI8yJgnCAl9Izw1M3Ym4C542T_R8X6p1Na0/s320/23_07_15_01_nts.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">This is a good, little book. It
centers entirely the development of a single character. Eilis (pronounced just
a little more tightly in the mouth than "Alice") has grown up in a
medium-size town in Ireland in 1950's, where job opportunities are few. An American
priest, who has been connived by her more expansive sister, propels her to
Brooklyn. Her world in Brooklyn is enmeshed in Irish connections and
seems more like 1935 than 1955. She lives in an Irish boarding, house, works in
a shop managed by Irish, and chiefly attends Irish church functions. But she
grows in independence and sophistication, learns bookkeeping, and drifts into
love with an American man of Italian descent. Then the death of her charismatic
sister calls her back home. There she drifts into romantic involvement with
another likely husband. She has to decide whether to stay or return to her commitments
in Brooklyn. Her weakly-felt independence turns out to be constrained by the
gossip of despotic, small-town figures.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The heroine is very likable,
moderately smart, and moderately pretty. Tóibín doesn't tell us these things.
Rather he lets the reaction of other characters show them to us. It is an
engaging way to develop our understanding of the character and is part of the
story. The only other fully drawn characters are her mother and her sister,
Rose. Her mother is in a constant state of muted anxiety because she wishes her
daughter well in the world and at the same time wishes her to stay home. Her
sister knows from before the beginning of the book that she has a condition
that may kill her at any time, although we do not. Her condition frees her to
lead a more interesting life, more impulsive, free of the stereotypes of work
and marriage of the village. At first we believe that our heroine is in a sense
living through her sister, but later we realize that her sister was hoping to
live through her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The author is omniscient, and we
see into the thoughts and feelings of the heroine but not very deeply because they
are neither deep nor intense. Remember, she is 19 and from a rather
unsophisticated background. Her fully realized and detailed characterization is
like a finely cut empty space filled only with pastel inference but clearly etched
within a lush medium of other people’s acts and feelings. That medium is part
of the warmth of the novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">Keeping silent is important in
this book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Characters tellingly do not utter
their thoughts and often fail to articulate to themselves their own ideas and impulses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In her family, in her town, and in her restricted
corner of Brooklyn many things ride on unspoken. A stereotypical American
popular novel would see such reticence as a failure -:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>yet another family secrets novel. But it is
not so simple. For example, when Eilis returns to her home town, she does not speak
of her romantic involvements in Brooklyn and only slowly and reticently
articulates them to herself, yet this process is how she finds her necessary
path. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Stone Serif ITC Medium";">The prose is simple, carefully wrought,
but not striking, like the story, like the heroine, always appropriate. Here is
Eilis on her first day back in her home town: <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
Eilis wondered if her mother had
always had this way of speaking that seemed to welcome no reply, and suddenly
realized that she had seldom been alone with her before, she'd always had Rose
to stand between her and her mother, Rose who would have plenty to say to both and
questions to ask, comments to make, and opinions to offer. It must be hard for
her mother too, she thought, and it would be best to wait a few days and see if
her mother might become interested in her life in America enough for her slowly
to introduce the subject of Tony, ....<o:p></o:p></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5281866592499198848.post-91102085942238159102015-09-08T21:12:00.000-07:002015-09-08T21:14:24.932-07:00Comments on Information Doesn't Want to be Free by Cory Doctorow<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs07zf4I0yir1ck2ysvv5PDPWZVio6IQ_qlV87QppxQR04ICoJJ9wrDHdQJWFBJKBHSiYr4ovy41Ack-_xIZYfFDUGkGAWNqf31H0qJn-ldaaukeCOq2SeXf1czSTrWZ0Bumx-GN-MCMw0/s1600/zombies_silhouettes_58807.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhs07zf4I0yir1ck2ysvv5PDPWZVio6IQ_qlV87QppxQR04ICoJJ9wrDHdQJWFBJKBHSiYr4ovy41Ack-_xIZYfFDUGkGAWNqf31H0qJn-ldaaukeCOq2SeXf1czSTrWZ0Bumx-GN-MCMw0/s320/zombies_silhouettes_58807.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Despite it’s lively style, this book is oppressive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has several threads, but it mainly explores
the dismal consequences of the entertainment industry trying to impose copyright
on the World Wide Web and on the world of digital communication generally. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Doctorow favors copyright in principle and supports strategies
that would allow creators and the entertainment industry to make a reasonable
amount of money but he is hostile to strategies that make information flow more
difficult, more expensive, or more vulnerable to malware.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Along the way he offers advice for creators (musicians,
movie makers, freelance writers, graphic artists, and the like) about how to
prosper on the World Wide Web.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His basic
advice is: Become well known.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He is widely informed in relevant knowledge: about both the
theory of computer operation and practical programming, about the ongoing
development of the World Wide Web, about copyright law, about the policies and
threatened policies of important nations and international agencies and
treaties, and about the changing economics of the entertainment industry (which,
of course, now includes Amazon and Apple and Google as well as Disney and,
Warner Brothers, Bollywood, Nollywood, and Hachette).<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Ironically this little book is a beautifully designed and
printed example of a paper, hardcover book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The writing is brisk, clear, but glib at times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is divided in to small sections and
sometimes has the feel of threaded-together, short-form blogs, but it has an
overall arch of argument. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He’s a bit
exhibitionistic and frequently talks about his personal experience as a writer
and entrepreneur and good deeds he has done.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I urge anyone who wants to become informed in this area to
read this book.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
He explains various political censorship efforts as those in
China, Iran, and North Korea.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
discusses briefly their techniques, success and failures, and points out their
similarity to censorship aimed a preserving copyright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All this he does without citing more than
illustrative snippets of computer code.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The basic problem is that scattering copies is essential to
digital communication.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When you log into
a web site and, say, look at a picture, something like this happens: You send a
request, which is a sort of text, to a server somewhere where the image
resides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In response, software peels off
a copy of that image, which is reproduced and handed off in steps on its home
server, and then passed to a node of the internet where one or more copies are
made, and scattered to other nodes, where other copies are made and passed intricately
toward you, until one arrives at your ISP, where a copy is made, or several in
several steps, and transmitted to your computer, where one or more copies are
made till one appears on your screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
same process applies to a movie, a song, a computer game, and the text of this
little essay.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what “Downloading “
means.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The entertainment industry marshals an army of engineers, expensive
lawyers, and equally expensive lobbyists in a leaky effort to control copying and
to make each of the entities that handles copies responsible for not leaking
them. Of course ultimately we pay for this army.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But that is not the worst of the problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, the title is false, (It is an allusion
to a famous dictum by the futurist guru Stewart Brand).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Information lacks volition and doesn’t want anything.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But by the nature of how computers work it is
unfettered.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In order to fetter it’s free
flow, engineers and their bosses have to cripple the files, the programs that
read them, and the machines that handle and display them.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
They do this, on the level of glib generalization, by
embedding in the image or in the machine bits of code invisible to you but visible
to one another that make it impossible to handle the image freely. Generally,
these are bits of code, that look to the human eye like, say, $sys$, though
they may be much longer. They are called keys.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Of course, cleaver engineers and hackers locate the keys and
remove them to create files everyone can read or machines that can read any
files, and the engineers working for the entertainment industry make new and cleverer
keys, and hackers removed them in an endless escalation, but that is not the
worst problem. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Worst of all the crippled software and hardware is vulnerable
to spyware and malware. Doctorow gives this example:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
In 2005 Sony shipped 6 million
audio CD's loaded with a secret rootkit that covertly installed itself when you
inserted one of these CD's into your computer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once your computer had been compromised, any file or process that began
with "$sys$" was invisible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Sony toolkit was used to cloak a program that watched for, and then
killed, attempts to copy music off audio CD's ... it looked like you computer
had suddenly developed a mysterious bug that stopped CD ripping software from
running.... But it didn't stop there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Once there were millions of computers in the wild that couldn't see
files that started with "$sys$," virus writers started to add
"$sys$" to the names of their programs..."<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Doctorow does not quite say, but implies strongly that the
massive efforts to cripple copying are responsible for a substantial part of
the vulnerability of software to viruses. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Nor does he hold back from scathing agencies like NSA.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Here is another example:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .5in;">
NIST (The National Institute for
Standards) was forced to recall one of its cryptographic standards after it
became apparent that the NSA had infiltrated its process and deliberately
weakened the standard - an act akin to deliberately ensuring that the standard
for electrical wiring was faulty so that you could start house fires in the
homes of people you wanted to smoke out during an armed standoff.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Doctorow accepts the principle of copyright and proposes a
compromise based on something called a blanket license, or similar arrangements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Essentially it is a method for paying money
into a collective pool of copyrights and statistically allocating it to the copyright
holders. DJ's are allowed to play songs on the radio (Remember radio?) because
of such an arrangement. There are many technical and legal difficulties, which
he discusses.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
From a time before this technology arose, I myself never
accepted the principle of copyright. It seems to me, as has often been said, copyright
is theft.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is theft from the commons
as sure as is The Lord of the Manor fencing off the common pasture of the
village to run his sheep only.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
theft for the simple reason that if I sell you an apple or a painting or a
manufacturing device, at then end of the transaction you have and apple or machine tool or whatever and I do not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If I tell you
a story or tell you how to do something, at the end of the transaction we both
have it. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this way information differs
from property as named by Proudhon in his original phrase, "property is
theft."<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Doctorow does not explain temp files, but perhaps that’s a
red herring. He omits mention of 3-D printing, but the issues seem to me
essentially the same except for the initial step of making an image of an
object.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Be my perspective what it may, I believe that by its nature digital
communication has killed copyright. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It
is meaningless in the world of computer communication. But the entertainment
industry is making a massive and destructive effort to give it zombie life, and
it is eating our brains.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You may say that the entertainment industry could not exist as
we know it without copyright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tough
shit.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal">
You may ask how creators are to earn their bread. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Creators have been surviving and occasionally
prospering since long before the entertainment industry, since long before
copyright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Shakespeare did not have
copyright (He did have a faint precursor called the Stationers Register, but he
became modestly wealthy mostly by owning stock in his acting company). Dante
did not have copyright. Archimedes did not have copyright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Galileo did not have copyright. The authors of
the Bible did not have copyright.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
long view of recorded history creators have mostly earned their bread through
patrons. The patronage system had serious problems and opportunities for abuse
of creators, but it seems to me no worse than what is going down now.
Furthermore, as Doctorow explains, the World Wide Web provides once unimagined
ways for creators to reach audiences.<o:p></o:p></div>
Dirk van Nouhuyshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17920127581598506664noreply@blogger.com1