Our book club at the library read a delightful book last month: Major Pettigrew's Last Stand, by Helen Simonson. We all loved it, for numerous reasons, not least of which was the Major himself. To a large extent he's your rather stuffy, very old-fashioned British curmudgeon (who is at pains to remind people that "It's Major, actually," rather than Mr.), but who proves himself time and again a decent, kind person, and who evolves, in a positive and believable way, over the course of the book.
I was especially charmed by the love affair that develops between the Major and Mrs. Ali, the widowed Pakistani lady who runs the local bit-of-everything shop. It's nice to watch the unwinding of a believable, but still romantic, relationship between an elderly gentleman (he's 68 which, we folks in our 60s have to face, no longer qualifies as "middle-aged"), and an emphatically middle-aged lady. Especially appealing is the way it is made clear that both loved, and miss, their first spouses, and that their love for one another comes gradually, preceded first by respect, and liking. And yet, for all that, it includes a wonderfully exciting "escape" from the clutches of Mrs. Ali's very conservative relatives-by-marriage; the Major proves himself a true romantic hero, more or less despite himself.
Less believable is the relationship between Mrs. Ali's ultra-conservative nephew, and the free spirit he managed to get pregnant, despite his puritanical views. While you can see how he might have been attracted to the wild and saucy young woman, despite himself, what she could have seen in this rigid young man, fanatical in his devotion to his religion, is never made clear. But the problems of the Muslim culture trying to cope with the larger British culture, and vice verse, certainly contribute to the interest of the story.
We also had trouble with the Major's son, who is so unrelentingly materialistic and opportunist, so thoughtless, that we had a hard time seeing how the kindly Major and, from the snips and bits readers get about her, his apparently very nice first wife, could have produced such a son. This led to an interesting discussion in the group about how you may do your darnedest by your children, but the result may still not be what you would have hoped. But what-ever disappointment one might feel that your child didn't grow up to be a successful doctor/lawyer/ Indian chief -- didn't seem to be able to figure out "what he wanted to be when he grew up," never quite managed to get that college degree, kept having to come home when he'd lost another job -- it would surely be much more distressing to realize your child was rude, selfish and insensitive to the feelings of others. Never having had children, I can't speak from experience, but it seems to me the latter situation would have me feeling much more the failure as a parent.
The group agreed that another of the things we liked about this book was simply the charming way it was written, how the author put things. A few examples:
As Mrs. Ali hesitates over mailing a letter to her relatives in the north of England, a letter she doesn't really want to send: "He held his breath as she stood for a moment, letter in hand, her head curved in thought. He had never imagined so clearly the consequences of mailing a letter -- the impossibility of retrieving it from the iron mouth of the box; the inevitability of its steady progress through the postal system; the passing from bag to bag and postman to postman, until a lone man in a van pulls up to the door and pushes a small pile through the letterbox. It seemed suddenly horrible that one's words could not be taken back, one's thought allowed none of the remediation of speaking face to face."
Or at an outrageous country hunt, that goes horribly awry: "A great splashing on the pond indicated that many ducks had made it through the barrage and were quarrelling over their options like politicians. In a matter of minutes, Morris would bang the oil can again and send them all aloft to repeat their suicidal mission."
When the Major presents two roses to Mrs. Ali, before they leave for the dinner dance which will also go horribly awry: "'Is one of those for Grace? I could put it in a vase for her.' He opened his mouth to say that she looked extremely beautiful and deserved armfuls of roses, but the words were lost in committee somewhere, shuffled aside by the parts of his head that worked full-time on avoiding ridicule."
And I loved his thought on American television, while trying to shore up his courage to meet his son's new American girlfriend: "She would no doubt make his prior reticence out to be some sort of idiocy. Americans seemed to enjoy the sport of publicly humiliating one another. The occasional American sitcoms that came on TV were filled with childish fat men poking fun at others, all rolled eyeballs and metallic taped laughter."
Ain't it the truth.
All quotes from Simonson, Helen. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. New York: Random House, 2010.
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Showing posts with label books. Show all posts
Thursday, November 22, 2012
Friday, May 11, 2012
Learning a thing or two from a snob
I'm reading an interesting book right now, Past Imperfect, by Julian Fellowes, the "fellow" who wrote the screenplays for that Masterpiece Classic series everybody loves, Downton Abbey. Initially I didn't think the book was going to be so interesting, mainly because the tone of the narrator was almost insufferably stuffy. It's about a group of upper-class young people in the London Season of 1968, who were participating in a tradition that was beginning to be touched by the radical changes of the late 60s/early 70s, even as it clung to the "old ways," and certainly the old attitudes, that went back generations. The story deals with particular events during that season, in flashbacks from the present, when the narrator is a reasonably successful writer with an unsatisfying personal life, who is called upon by one of the young men he knew back then -- now filthy rich, and dying -- to try to find out which of several possible women was the mother of the child that this no-longer-young man believes he has out there somewhere.
As I said, initially i was put off by the snobbishness that seemed to ooze from the author as much as the narrator, as well as by the almost-constant habit of the author (narrator) of adding little philosophical asides to every bit of action, practically every bit of dialog.
But gradually I began to be won over by the insightfulness of many of the narrator's observations. For example, at one point, when the narrator is telling his elderly father about this task he has taken on, and how distressing he has found the lives of some of the women he has been visiting, the father is disapproving, for an intesting reason. "You've been made to go back into your own past, and compare it with your present. You've been forced to remember what you wanted from life at nineteen, forty years ago, before you knew what life was....Eventually, in old age, almost everyone with any brains must come to terms with the disappoint-ment of life, but this is very early for you to make that discovery."
And of course this is true, as I and so many of my peers have been discovering over the past few years, as we've realized our youthful dreams are never going to come true, as we have grappled with accepting that we simply have not been able to make our lives turn out the way we wanted them, that we are not now in the place we thought we would be at this time of our lives (retired for example! How many of us can retire?!)
Another example, on the subject of social survival-of-the fittest: "It is a fact that in the brutal periods of history, what changes is not the cutting edge of every new market, or the ambition that drives a new factory owner or new hostess, or a new conquest from the performing stage... All that is constant. It is the level of coasting that goes on behind the bright and harsh facade that is different. In a gentle era -- and my youth was passed in a fairly gentle era -- people could drift by...at every level of society. Jobs were found for them. Homes were arranged. Someone's uncle sorted it out. Someone's mother put in a word. But when things get tough, when, as now, the prizes are bigger but the going is rougher, the weaklings are elbowed aside until they fall back and slip over the cliff. Unskilled workers or stupid landowners alike, they are crushed by a system they cannot master..."
Certainly that is what is happening today, with so many people out of work, lacking the skills and education the jobs that are out there are demanding, in stark contrast to 1965, when an 18-year-old girl with absolutely no experience and only a high school diploma could apply for what she thought was a clerk-typist position, and find herself hired as a trainee assistant buyer at a major department store. But now...40 years on, desperate as that same girl is, has been for much of the past six years, for a different, a more satisfying, and better paying job, she has lacked, in particular, the computer experience and savvy that all libraries are demanding these days, and which all the young whipper-snappers fresh out of library school have in plenty.
To a certain extent Past Imperfect is at its best when comparing that past, "gentler" period with today. For example, on the public drunkenness that is so common in Britain today: "It's not often that I walk at night, though more from laziness than fear, but when I do I am amazed at the changes that have come about in London during my adult lifetime, the main one being...not the muggings and the general crime, not even the dirt and uncollected rubbish...It is the drunkenness that has transformed the streets, not just of London but of almost every town, into a lesser hell for lawful citizens. The kind of drunken-ness that in years gone by used to be talked of in Siberia at the height of Stalin's iron rule as a reflection of the misery of the oppressed... Why did it happen here? I used to think it was a class thing, but it isn't..."
And at another point, as he talks about the thrill he and his friends experienced when they realized that the Spencer Davis Group -- most famous because of its lead singer, Stevie Wynwood -- were actually playing live at this particular dance: "We are a jaded people, these days. We see film stars and singers and every other permutation of fame wherever we go; indeed sometimes, judging by the magazines, it seems that more people are famous than not. But this wasn't true in 1968, and to be in the same room as a real-live band playing and singing its own hit number...was to be inside a fantasy. Even Lucy was silenced, if not for long. 'Can you believe it?' she said. I couldn't. We were sweet, really."
And yes, really, they, and we, were.
*All quotes from Fellowes, Julian. Past Imperfect. New York, St. Martin's Press, c2008.
As I said, initially i was put off by the snobbishness that seemed to ooze from the author as much as the narrator, as well as by the almost-constant habit of the author (narrator) of adding little philosophical asides to every bit of action, practically every bit of dialog.
But gradually I began to be won over by the insightfulness of many of the narrator's observations. For example, at one point, when the narrator is telling his elderly father about this task he has taken on, and how distressing he has found the lives of some of the women he has been visiting, the father is disapproving, for an intesting reason. "You've been made to go back into your own past, and compare it with your present. You've been forced to remember what you wanted from life at nineteen, forty years ago, before you knew what life was....Eventually, in old age, almost everyone with any brains must come to terms with the disappoint-ment of life, but this is very early for you to make that discovery."
And of course this is true, as I and so many of my peers have been discovering over the past few years, as we've realized our youthful dreams are never going to come true, as we have grappled with accepting that we simply have not been able to make our lives turn out the way we wanted them, that we are not now in the place we thought we would be at this time of our lives (retired for example! How many of us can retire?!)
Another example, on the subject of social survival-of-the fittest: "It is a fact that in the brutal periods of history, what changes is not the cutting edge of every new market, or the ambition that drives a new factory owner or new hostess, or a new conquest from the performing stage... All that is constant. It is the level of coasting that goes on behind the bright and harsh facade that is different. In a gentle era -- and my youth was passed in a fairly gentle era -- people could drift by...at every level of society. Jobs were found for them. Homes were arranged. Someone's uncle sorted it out. Someone's mother put in a word. But when things get tough, when, as now, the prizes are bigger but the going is rougher, the weaklings are elbowed aside until they fall back and slip over the cliff. Unskilled workers or stupid landowners alike, they are crushed by a system they cannot master..."
Certainly that is what is happening today, with so many people out of work, lacking the skills and education the jobs that are out there are demanding, in stark contrast to 1965, when an 18-year-old girl with absolutely no experience and only a high school diploma could apply for what she thought was a clerk-typist position, and find herself hired as a trainee assistant buyer at a major department store. But now...40 years on, desperate as that same girl is, has been for much of the past six years, for a different, a more satisfying, and better paying job, she has lacked, in particular, the computer experience and savvy that all libraries are demanding these days, and which all the young whipper-snappers fresh out of library school have in plenty.
To a certain extent Past Imperfect is at its best when comparing that past, "gentler" period with today. For example, on the public drunkenness that is so common in Britain today: "It's not often that I walk at night, though more from laziness than fear, but when I do I am amazed at the changes that have come about in London during my adult lifetime, the main one being...not the muggings and the general crime, not even the dirt and uncollected rubbish...It is the drunkenness that has transformed the streets, not just of London but of almost every town, into a lesser hell for lawful citizens. The kind of drunken-ness that in years gone by used to be talked of in Siberia at the height of Stalin's iron rule as a reflection of the misery of the oppressed... Why did it happen here? I used to think it was a class thing, but it isn't..."
And at another point, as he talks about the thrill he and his friends experienced when they realized that the Spencer Davis Group -- most famous because of its lead singer, Stevie Wynwood -- were actually playing live at this particular dance: "We are a jaded people, these days. We see film stars and singers and every other permutation of fame wherever we go; indeed sometimes, judging by the magazines, it seems that more people are famous than not. But this wasn't true in 1968, and to be in the same room as a real-live band playing and singing its own hit number...was to be inside a fantasy. Even Lucy was silenced, if not for long. 'Can you believe it?' she said. I couldn't. We were sweet, really."
And yes, really, they, and we, were.
*All quotes from Fellowes, Julian. Past Imperfect. New York, St. Martin's Press, c2008.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
An unexpected pleasure
A few months ago, after a couple of people had asked me if the library had a book club, and I had had to reply in the negative, I decided to survey our public, to see if there might be additional interest in starting one. I had done this several years ago, and got all of two positive responses, so that was the end of that. But this time, eight people indicated an interest. So I then went through the process of trying to determine when all or most of those people could get together, both in terms of time of day -- days? evenings? -- and day of the week. Phone calling, emailing. Finally determined that the third Tuesday of the month, at 6 p.m. would work best for everybody. So I scheduled the first meeting, and suggested that for that first meeting, everyone come prepared to talk about a book they'd read recently that they really liked.
Mind you, I had no interest in being part of a book club. But this points up one of the curses of my upbringing: my mother instilled in all five of her children the...not idea...imperative...that when doing a job you not only did whatever had to be done, but what should be done. And always to the best of your ability, it goes without saying. So seeing that there was a demand among the library's patrons for a book club, I knew I had to give them a book club. I had a vague hope that after a meeting or two it would be possible to slide the running of the club onto someone else's shoulders. One of my staff was actually interested in participating, so the possibility of her taking over existed, and even if not, she could at least serve as the library's "presence," letting me off the hook.
To my surprise, I found the first meeting quite enjoyable, as I have the two subsequent ones. I find I love talking about books with others who also love talking about books. And the selections agreed on by the group have "forced" me to read books I doubtless would never have read otherwise -- my reading for some time now has been, to a shocking degree, limited to mysteries -- but which have proved to be, at the very least very well-written (and, indeed, have made me despair of ever being able to write so well); and in two cases have turned out to be books I loved. It is truly one of the supreme pleasures of life to discover an artist -- whether a writer, a painter, an actor, a singer or musician -- whose work leaves one moved and impressed.
Our first group choice was Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, a best seller that I found so depressing I didn't even finish reading it. (I have happily reached that point in life where I no longer feel compelled to finish a book just because I've started it.) But even that book, with its very unlikable main character, is wonderfully written. As I commented to the group, you could see every person she described, every scene, and she managed this without a lot of description! A sample scene: (characters: sweet, hen-pecked Henry, his too-often bitch of a wife, Olive, and their son Christopher)
The thing is, there are endless bad things like this that happen, endless everyday occurrences that demonstrate how disappointing and downright bleak life ends up being for so many people As one of the members of our club said, "It's too real." The characters are small-town folk in Maine, but they could be anywhere, leading their lives of quiet desperation.
So I came away from reading this book thinking that Elizabeth Strout is a really excellent writer -- and maybe I should give another of her books a chance -- but this one is a well-written downer.
I'll tell you about our other reads later, but in the mean-time, if you like reading, and talking about what you read...find a book club.
Mind you, I had no interest in being part of a book club. But this points up one of the curses of my upbringing: my mother instilled in all five of her children the...not idea...imperative...that when doing a job you not only did whatever had to be done, but what should be done. And always to the best of your ability, it goes without saying. So seeing that there was a demand among the library's patrons for a book club, I knew I had to give them a book club. I had a vague hope that after a meeting or two it would be possible to slide the running of the club onto someone else's shoulders. One of my staff was actually interested in participating, so the possibility of her taking over existed, and even if not, she could at least serve as the library's "presence," letting me off the hook.
To my surprise, I found the first meeting quite enjoyable, as I have the two subsequent ones. I find I love talking about books with others who also love talking about books. And the selections agreed on by the group have "forced" me to read books I doubtless would never have read otherwise -- my reading for some time now has been, to a shocking degree, limited to mysteries -- but which have proved to be, at the very least very well-written (and, indeed, have made me despair of ever being able to write so well); and in two cases have turned out to be books I loved. It is truly one of the supreme pleasures of life to discover an artist -- whether a writer, a painter, an actor, a singer or musician -- whose work leaves one moved and impressed.
Our first group choice was Olive Kitteridge, by Elizabeth Strout, a best seller that I found so depressing I didn't even finish reading it. (I have happily reached that point in life where I no longer feel compelled to finish a book just because I've started it.) But even that book, with its very unlikable main character, is wonderfully written. As I commented to the group, you could see every person she described, every scene, and she managed this without a lot of description! A sample scene: (characters: sweet, hen-pecked Henry, his too-often bitch of a wife, Olive, and their son Christopher)
A Saturday at home: Lunch was crabmeat sandwiches, grilled with cheese. Christopher was putting one into his mouth, but the phone rang, and Olive went to answer it. Christopher, without being asked, waited, the sandwich held in his hand. Henry's mind seemed to take a picture of that moment, his son's instinctive deference at the very same time they heard Olive's voice in the next room. "Oh you poor child," she said, in a voice Henry would always remember -- filled with such dismay that all her outer Olive-ness seemed stripped away. "You poor, poor child." [It was the young woman who worked at Henry's pharmacy, calling to tell him that her husband had just been killed in a hunting accident.]
The thing is, there are endless bad things like this that happen, endless everyday occurrences that demonstrate how disappointing and downright bleak life ends up being for so many people As one of the members of our club said, "It's too real." The characters are small-town folk in Maine, but they could be anywhere, leading their lives of quiet desperation.
So I came away from reading this book thinking that Elizabeth Strout is a really excellent writer -- and maybe I should give another of her books a chance -- but this one is a well-written downer.
I'll tell you about our other reads later, but in the mean-time, if you like reading, and talking about what you read...find a book club.
Monday, March 14, 2011
On the other hand...
In my last posting I was urging people who hadn't read it to read Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. However, I do have to mention some of the bad news the book conveys. It seems especially relevant given last Friday's earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Coming on the heals of the earthquakes in Haiti and Chili last year, as well as the eruptions of two of Indonesia's active volcanoes (Mount Karangetang erupted again a few hours after the earthquake/tsunami in Japan)...well, there's just no question that the earth beneath our feet is in turmoil. And we can't do a damn thing about it.
There are two unsettling scenarios Bryson discusses in his book. The one has to do with the "hot spot" located beneath Yellowstone National Park. That hot spot is what produces all those spouting geysers and bubbling mud cauldrons that so fascinate visitors. Alas, what it basically is is a volcano, waiting to erupt big time. In fact, it's considered a supervolcano, because the magma chamber deep below the surface is huge, about 45 miles across, or pretty much the size of the park. The park, in other words, visited by thousands of people every year, is the caldera of an active volcano.
There are other "superplumes" on earth -- about thirty -- but the one beneath Yellowstone is the only one that does not lie below the sea (a number of volcanically active, and inhabited, islands -- Hawaii, Iceland, the Azores, the Canary Islands -- do sit atop such superplumes). So when it blows, which it has done about every 600,000 years, it affects a huge area of land. And that land now has lots of people living on it, unlike 630,000 years ago, which is yes, the last time it erupted. In other words, Yellowstone is overdue.
Which makes me want to get there for a visit as fast as I can, before it goes. But which also calls into question my insistence that people who live in dangerous places should just get the heck out of there (see Note of Feb. 1, 2009). For it would seem that there is no safe place. Those ranchers out there in Wyoming and Montana, I'm sure they figure they live in a pretty safe place. Brutal winters, but no hurricanes, no drowning sea coast, no earthquakes, no volcanoes.
And even if you live nowhere near Yellowstone National Park, you could be adversely affected by an eruption as far away as eastern Nebraska. That's where the fossilized remains of a whole slew of animals were found in what is now called Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park. They were buried under ten feet of ash, and had died from breathing in air full of ash. The ash fall from the last eruption covered nearly the whole of the United States west of the Mississippi. And there's no telling how long the volcanic winter from such an eruption would last. This is not a pretty picture.
So what are ya gonna do? You realize you have to "Don't worry, be happy," as the old song put it, because there is nothing you can do to prevent Yellowstone from blowing up...or a meteorite from hitting the earth, another unpleasant possibility Bryson investigates in his book. After all, meteorites have been plowing into the earth for millions of years; why shouldn't it happen again? But now the earth is full of people, and the impact of a meteorite the size of the one that hit what is now Manson, Iowa, about 75,000 years ago, would be devastating for a thousand miles in all directions. Bryson's description of "devastating" -- provided to him by geologists -- is pretty darn scary. Which starts me on another train of thought. Maybe we really need to be pumping money into space exploration, so that we can find some places for the human race to spread out, in case this little globe of ours becomes just plumb uninhabitable.
There are two unsettling scenarios Bryson discusses in his book. The one has to do with the "hot spot" located beneath Yellowstone National Park. That hot spot is what produces all those spouting geysers and bubbling mud cauldrons that so fascinate visitors. Alas, what it basically is is a volcano, waiting to erupt big time. In fact, it's considered a supervolcano, because the magma chamber deep below the surface is huge, about 45 miles across, or pretty much the size of the park. The park, in other words, visited by thousands of people every year, is the caldera of an active volcano.
There are other "superplumes" on earth -- about thirty -- but the one beneath Yellowstone is the only one that does not lie below the sea (a number of volcanically active, and inhabited, islands -- Hawaii, Iceland, the Azores, the Canary Islands -- do sit atop such superplumes). So when it blows, which it has done about every 600,000 years, it affects a huge area of land. And that land now has lots of people living on it, unlike 630,000 years ago, which is yes, the last time it erupted. In other words, Yellowstone is overdue.
Which makes me want to get there for a visit as fast as I can, before it goes. But which also calls into question my insistence that people who live in dangerous places should just get the heck out of there (see Note of Feb. 1, 2009). For it would seem that there is no safe place. Those ranchers out there in Wyoming and Montana, I'm sure they figure they live in a pretty safe place. Brutal winters, but no hurricanes, no drowning sea coast, no earthquakes, no volcanoes.
And even if you live nowhere near Yellowstone National Park, you could be adversely affected by an eruption as far away as eastern Nebraska. That's where the fossilized remains of a whole slew of animals were found in what is now called Ashfall Fossil Beds State Park. They were buried under ten feet of ash, and had died from breathing in air full of ash. The ash fall from the last eruption covered nearly the whole of the United States west of the Mississippi. And there's no telling how long the volcanic winter from such an eruption would last. This is not a pretty picture.
So what are ya gonna do? You realize you have to "Don't worry, be happy," as the old song put it, because there is nothing you can do to prevent Yellowstone from blowing up...or a meteorite from hitting the earth, another unpleasant possibility Bryson investigates in his book. After all, meteorites have been plowing into the earth for millions of years; why shouldn't it happen again? But now the earth is full of people, and the impact of a meteorite the size of the one that hit what is now Manson, Iowa, about 75,000 years ago, would be devastating for a thousand miles in all directions. Bryson's description of "devastating" -- provided to him by geologists -- is pretty darn scary. Which starts me on another train of thought. Maybe we really need to be pumping money into space exploration, so that we can find some places for the human race to spread out, in case this little globe of ours becomes just plumb uninhabitable.
Sunday, March 13, 2011
As Merlin would say...
All my life I have been a lover of the arts. I am at my happiest looking at art, listening to all kinds of music, watching a ballet or other forms of dance, attending the opera, or a good play. And of course I'm a writer and a librarian, a lover of language, books.
But I have long been fascinated by science as well. I often have a hard time understanding scientific concepts, but I still find them fascinating. For example, in my college physics class I could not wrap my mind around the idea that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." My physics teacher used the example of a brick wall -- you lean against a brick wall, bringing the pressure of your weight against it, and at the same time it is pressing back, to the same degree. "Come on," I said, "It's not doing anything! It's just standing there!"
What all this has to do with is the book I am currently reading and enjoying enormously: Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. As with most books I finally get around to reading, most other people have long since read it (this one was published in 2003). Nonetheless, if you haven't read it I can recommend it if you're in the mood to refresh your knowledge about this or that aspect of the physical universe, from the cosmically large, to the infinitesimally small, as well as to learn one or two (or 15 or 20) completely new things, all while being entertained by Bryson's cheerfully wry way of writing.
While I've been amazed many times over by what I've been learning, or reminded of, I think the most mind-boggling has to do with the world of the teeny tiny, of particle physics. It's on a par with the concept of "deep time" that I found so challenging when reading a book on dinosaurs not long ago (See Note of Nov. 20, 2010). And by the way, Bryson also touches on those incomprehensibly long stretches of time, in his sections on fossils and evolution.
Of course we all learned about atoms in grade school: the teeny tiny particles that make up all matter, and consist of a positively-charged nucleus surrounded by swirling, negatively-charged electrons. (Apparently that image, created in 1904 by a Japanese physicist who was more or less guessing, is "completely wrong, but durable just the same.")* We learned it, but did we really grasp the significance? I can't see the individual atoms that go to make up this penny I'm looking at, but since it's very old (pre-1984) it is made up of about 28,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000 atoms of copper. Clinging to each other, to form a thing. And all of those atoms have smaller parts. The nucleus of an atom, for example, is "only one millionth of a billionth of the full volume of the atom."* How do I think about that?
Or about the idea of "all but massless neutrinos" that zoom out from the sun and bombard the earth constantly (about 10,000 trillion trillion of them a second!), most of them passing right through you, me, and the planet itself? There are these things passing through me constantly, that have some mass, even if they are "all but massless?" This is like the approximately one trillion bacteria grazing on my skin, "about a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin,"* feasting on my dry skin cells, as well as the oils my body exudes. You have to assume at some point someone has looked at a square centimeter of skin and seen -- with what kind of amazing instrument? -- all those thousands of bacteria doing their thing.
Which takes me to such statements as: "'Given an adequate supply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280,000 billion individuals in a single day,' says biochemist Christian de Duve."* In the same period, a human cell is doing good to divide once. My goodness, can anyone doubt that bacteria will inherit the earth? Especially since they can live anywhere, in virtually any kind of environment, while we delicate-flower humans are confined to a tiny area that supplies what we need for survival.
So fascinating, learning this stuff. It brings to mind a quote from one of my all-time favorite books: The Once and Future King, by T.H. White:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." You bet.
*Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
But I have long been fascinated by science as well. I often have a hard time understanding scientific concepts, but I still find them fascinating. For example, in my college physics class I could not wrap my mind around the idea that "for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction." My physics teacher used the example of a brick wall -- you lean against a brick wall, bringing the pressure of your weight against it, and at the same time it is pressing back, to the same degree. "Come on," I said, "It's not doing anything! It's just standing there!"
What all this has to do with is the book I am currently reading and enjoying enormously: Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. As with most books I finally get around to reading, most other people have long since read it (this one was published in 2003). Nonetheless, if you haven't read it I can recommend it if you're in the mood to refresh your knowledge about this or that aspect of the physical universe, from the cosmically large, to the infinitesimally small, as well as to learn one or two (or 15 or 20) completely new things, all while being entertained by Bryson's cheerfully wry way of writing.
While I've been amazed many times over by what I've been learning, or reminded of, I think the most mind-boggling has to do with the world of the teeny tiny, of particle physics. It's on a par with the concept of "deep time" that I found so challenging when reading a book on dinosaurs not long ago (See Note of Nov. 20, 2010). And by the way, Bryson also touches on those incomprehensibly long stretches of time, in his sections on fossils and evolution.
Of course we all learned about atoms in grade school: the teeny tiny particles that make up all matter, and consist of a positively-charged nucleus surrounded by swirling, negatively-charged electrons. (Apparently that image, created in 1904 by a Japanese physicist who was more or less guessing, is "completely wrong, but durable just the same.")* We learned it, but did we really grasp the significance? I can't see the individual atoms that go to make up this penny I'm looking at, but since it's very old (pre-1984) it is made up of about 28,000,000,000,000, 000,000,000 atoms of copper. Clinging to each other, to form a thing. And all of those atoms have smaller parts. The nucleus of an atom, for example, is "only one millionth of a billionth of the full volume of the atom."* How do I think about that?
Or about the idea of "all but massless neutrinos" that zoom out from the sun and bombard the earth constantly (about 10,000 trillion trillion of them a second!), most of them passing right through you, me, and the planet itself? There are these things passing through me constantly, that have some mass, even if they are "all but massless?" This is like the approximately one trillion bacteria grazing on my skin, "about a hundred thousand of them on every square centimeter of skin,"* feasting on my dry skin cells, as well as the oils my body exudes. You have to assume at some point someone has looked at a square centimeter of skin and seen -- with what kind of amazing instrument? -- all those thousands of bacteria doing their thing.
Which takes me to such statements as: "'Given an adequate supply of nutrients, a single bacterial cell can generate 280,000 billion individuals in a single day,' says biochemist Christian de Duve."* In the same period, a human cell is doing good to divide once. My goodness, can anyone doubt that bacteria will inherit the earth? Especially since they can live anywhere, in virtually any kind of environment, while we delicate-flower humans are confined to a tiny area that supplies what we need for survival.
So fascinating, learning this stuff. It brings to mind a quote from one of my all-time favorite books: The Once and Future King, by T.H. White:
"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That's the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting." You bet.
*Bryson, Bill. A Short History of Nearly Everything. New York: Broadway Books, 2003.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Murder in Grub Street
I am so not au courante. I started writing this posting about a series of mysteries I really like, only to discover, when checking a fact online, that the latest book in the series was published in 2005, with the titles I have read and was going to write about having come out much earlier. Ah, well. Maybe there's someone out there who's even more behind the times than I.
The books are in the Sir John Fielding Mystery series, by Bruce Alexander, and the one I just finished reading, Blind Justice, was actually the first novel in the series, though I'm reading it after having read two later ones. Like most people, I hate it when that happens; but I stumbled on the later books in my library -- Murder in Grub Street and Jack, Knave and Fool -- long before Blind Justice appeared among a bunch of donated books this past week.
Sir John Fielding is a blind magistrate in the London of the mid-1700s. There really was such a person, and he really was the half-brother of the more famous Henry Fielding (author of Tom Jones). The books are written from the viewpoint of a young orphan boy who becomes Sir John's assistant, after being falsely accused of thievery, and being brought before Sir John's court. Evidently that was quite a little racket in the bad old days: some innocent being set up by a gang of crooks to appear to have stolen something from one of them, and being dragged off to court, where the accusers may receive a "bounty" for bringing in a criminal. Fortunately for young Jeremy, the blind Sir John sees right through the bad guys' game, and takes a liking to Jeremy.
This is one of the things I like about these books: one learns, in an entertaining way, interesting tidbits about the everyday life of that place and time. Given my interest in history, and in other cultures, past or present, it's easy to see why I would enjoy such books. Indeed, I've written about other mystery series with historical settings that I've liked (see Note of May 1, 2009). In the Sir John books, I've also learned a bit more about the Bow Street Runners. I had a dim recollection of having heard of the BSR, without really knowing what or who they were. In effect, they were London's first profes-sional police department, organized by the Fielding brothers (Henry Fielding was also a magistrate, besides being a successful writer). The court was in Bow Street, and the "runners" were the constables who worked for the magistrate, going out to bring in people the court wanted to see, taking them off to jail when that was necessary. They carried clubs for banging obstinate heads, which became eventually the policeman's night stick.
But for all the fascinating historical detail, what most holds these books together, and gives them their greatest appeal, is the upright Fielding, with an earthy enjoyment of his food and his beer, a proud deter-mination to make his way around without assistance, to the extent possible, and his all too human vanity about his ability to distinguish among voices. He is a man of both compassion and integrity, besides being very smart. He is someone you can admire -- one always want to be able to do that with the hero of a mystery series -- and the fact that the fictional character is taken very much from the real-life character (as I learned when I consulted Wikipedia about him) makes him even more attractive.
I have discovered that there are many more Sir John novels that I have yet to read, which gives me great satisfaction. It's always a pleasure to discover new authors that you like, and to know you will be able to read more of their work.
I'll close this mini-review with the blurb from Newsday that appears on the back of Jack, Knave and Fool: "Historical fiction done this entertainingly is as close to time travel as we're likely to get."
The books are in the Sir John Fielding Mystery series, by Bruce Alexander, and the one I just finished reading, Blind Justice, was actually the first novel in the series, though I'm reading it after having read two later ones. Like most people, I hate it when that happens; but I stumbled on the later books in my library -- Murder in Grub Street and Jack, Knave and Fool -- long before Blind Justice appeared among a bunch of donated books this past week.
Sir John Fielding is a blind magistrate in the London of the mid-1700s. There really was such a person, and he really was the half-brother of the more famous Henry Fielding (author of Tom Jones). The books are written from the viewpoint of a young orphan boy who becomes Sir John's assistant, after being falsely accused of thievery, and being brought before Sir John's court. Evidently that was quite a little racket in the bad old days: some innocent being set up by a gang of crooks to appear to have stolen something from one of them, and being dragged off to court, where the accusers may receive a "bounty" for bringing in a criminal. Fortunately for young Jeremy, the blind Sir John sees right through the bad guys' game, and takes a liking to Jeremy.
This is one of the things I like about these books: one learns, in an entertaining way, interesting tidbits about the everyday life of that place and time. Given my interest in history, and in other cultures, past or present, it's easy to see why I would enjoy such books. Indeed, I've written about other mystery series with historical settings that I've liked (see Note of May 1, 2009). In the Sir John books, I've also learned a bit more about the Bow Street Runners. I had a dim recollection of having heard of the BSR, without really knowing what or who they were. In effect, they were London's first profes-sional police department, organized by the Fielding brothers (Henry Fielding was also a magistrate, besides being a successful writer). The court was in Bow Street, and the "runners" were the constables who worked for the magistrate, going out to bring in people the court wanted to see, taking them off to jail when that was necessary. They carried clubs for banging obstinate heads, which became eventually the policeman's night stick.
But for all the fascinating historical detail, what most holds these books together, and gives them their greatest appeal, is the upright Fielding, with an earthy enjoyment of his food and his beer, a proud deter-mination to make his way around without assistance, to the extent possible, and his all too human vanity about his ability to distinguish among voices. He is a man of both compassion and integrity, besides being very smart. He is someone you can admire -- one always want to be able to do that with the hero of a mystery series -- and the fact that the fictional character is taken very much from the real-life character (as I learned when I consulted Wikipedia about him) makes him even more attractive.
I have discovered that there are many more Sir John novels that I have yet to read, which gives me great satisfaction. It's always a pleasure to discover new authors that you like, and to know you will be able to read more of their work.
I'll close this mini-review with the blurb from Newsday that appears on the back of Jack, Knave and Fool: "Historical fiction done this entertainingly is as close to time travel as we're likely to get."
Saturday, January 15, 2011
The not-so-good earth
I have been reading a very interesting book, Pearl Buck in China: Journey to The Good Earth, by Hilary Spurling. This is a book I ordered for the library, because it got such good reviews, but I am the only person to have checked it out in six months, to my considerable disappointment. I'm always disappointed when one of my book selections falls flat with my patrons. I consider a circulation of five for a nonfiction book good, 2-3 is o.k., none at all is, well, flummoxing. How could I so misread my patrons' reading interests?
I know it's not that no one knows who Pearl S. Buck was -- which is apparently the case in the wider population these days -- because a lot of our patrons are older. They would have heard of The Good Earth, quite possibly read it -- maybe even seen the travesty of a Hollywood film that was made of it -- even if they had never read any other of Buck's books. But apparently no one is interested in the back-ground and experiences that made it possible...one might even say necessary...for Buck to write that at-one-time blockbuster novel, which all but singlehandedly saved the small, struggling publishing house, John Day Company, that published it in 1931, which won the author a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, and was a large part of her winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938 (the first woman to do so).
Well, too bad, my patrons have just missed out on a good book, from which I've learned a great deal, both about this complex, fascinating woman, and about a period of Chinese history most of us are essentially ignorant of (late 1800s, early 1900s). I vaguely knew that Pearl Buck was the daughter of missionaries to China, and spent her childhood there, but I really didn't understand to what extent China formed her. She spent the first half of her life trying to be someone she was not suited to be -- first the docile daughter of a Bible-thumping missionary (who estimated that in ten years he had managed ten converts, which just left millions still to be converted) -- then the equally-docile wife of an equally fanatically-dedicated agricultural specialist, still in China. Although she was born in the United States (in her mother's native West Virginia, which came as a surprise to me), during a holiday home for her missionary parents, she spent all but four years, from toddler-hood to her mid-thirties, living in China. The years 1910-1914 she was attending Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, being miserable and feeling out of place (though, as she put it, "externally I became an American"), dismayed that no one was the least interested in the place she thought of as home.
I don't remember much of The Good Earth, which I read many years ago. Mainly I remember being appalled by the life of the main character's wife (who, for me, was actually the main character). She was not loved by her husband, who only picked her because he thought she would be a hard worker, which she was. O-lan's life was an unrelenting hard, from her days as a slave in a rich man's house, to her days married to Wang Lung, during which she was forever getting pregnant, bearing the children all by herself (the scene of her first solitary childbirth is indelibly imprinted on my brain), and work-work-working. I found it heartbreaking that even when she died, her loss was not much felt by her family.
Having read Spurling's book, I now know that the unfortunate O-lan was based to a large extent on an equally unattractive, but stalwartly loyal servant of Buck's. And that, indeed, much of what happened, virtually all of the conditions of which she wrote, Buck had witnessed, over the years. When the book was published the Chinese literati objected to it vehemently, because it was about rough, lowly peasants. Why would one write about such people? The government also objected to it, because it suggested rampant lawlessness in the countryside, and did not paint a pretty picture of life in China. But what came of Buck's close exposure to "rough, lowly peasants" was a respect and compassion for these people, along with a clear-eyed view of what life was like for them, how it dictated their behavior.
She also, apparently, wrote tellingly of her mother -- trapped in an inappropriate and unsatisfying marriage her entire life (at the time of her death she literally despised her husband, whom she felt, quite rightly, had sacrificed both her and their children to his fanatical missionary work) in a book called The Exile, and about her difficult father, whom she finally came to understand, respect and love, for all his flaws, in Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul. I'd be interested in reading both books, though I fear the former would depress me -- I hate being reminded that, in the good ol' days, so many women were trapped in miserable marriages that deprived them of the opportunity to be truly themselves -- and the latter would make me mad.
I can only say I'm glad Buck finally had her day in the sun, that after over 24 rejections the book that made her was accepted for publication, and that once she moved permanently to the United States, and unburdened herself of a marriage that had been as unsatisfying as her mother's, she was able to find constant, loving support from her publisher, whom she married, and with whom she adopted six children. Apparently much of what she wrote in later years was not, in a literary sense, very good, but she never stopped trying to convey to the rest of the world the "real" China. That was her mission.
I know it's not that no one knows who Pearl S. Buck was -- which is apparently the case in the wider population these days -- because a lot of our patrons are older. They would have heard of The Good Earth, quite possibly read it -- maybe even seen the travesty of a Hollywood film that was made of it -- even if they had never read any other of Buck's books. But apparently no one is interested in the back-ground and experiences that made it possible...one might even say necessary...for Buck to write that at-one-time blockbuster novel, which all but singlehandedly saved the small, struggling publishing house, John Day Company, that published it in 1931, which won the author a Pulitzer Prize in 1932, and was a large part of her winning the Nobel Prize for literature in 1938 (the first woman to do so).
Well, too bad, my patrons have just missed out on a good book, from which I've learned a great deal, both about this complex, fascinating woman, and about a period of Chinese history most of us are essentially ignorant of (late 1800s, early 1900s). I vaguely knew that Pearl Buck was the daughter of missionaries to China, and spent her childhood there, but I really didn't understand to what extent China formed her. She spent the first half of her life trying to be someone she was not suited to be -- first the docile daughter of a Bible-thumping missionary (who estimated that in ten years he had managed ten converts, which just left millions still to be converted) -- then the equally-docile wife of an equally fanatically-dedicated agricultural specialist, still in China. Although she was born in the United States (in her mother's native West Virginia, which came as a surprise to me), during a holiday home for her missionary parents, she spent all but four years, from toddler-hood to her mid-thirties, living in China. The years 1910-1914 she was attending Randolph-Macon Woman's College in Lynchburg, Virginia, being miserable and feeling out of place (though, as she put it, "externally I became an American"), dismayed that no one was the least interested in the place she thought of as home.
I don't remember much of The Good Earth, which I read many years ago. Mainly I remember being appalled by the life of the main character's wife (who, for me, was actually the main character). She was not loved by her husband, who only picked her because he thought she would be a hard worker, which she was. O-lan's life was an unrelenting hard, from her days as a slave in a rich man's house, to her days married to Wang Lung, during which she was forever getting pregnant, bearing the children all by herself (the scene of her first solitary childbirth is indelibly imprinted on my brain), and work-work-working. I found it heartbreaking that even when she died, her loss was not much felt by her family.
Having read Spurling's book, I now know that the unfortunate O-lan was based to a large extent on an equally unattractive, but stalwartly loyal servant of Buck's. And that, indeed, much of what happened, virtually all of the conditions of which she wrote, Buck had witnessed, over the years. When the book was published the Chinese literati objected to it vehemently, because it was about rough, lowly peasants. Why would one write about such people? The government also objected to it, because it suggested rampant lawlessness in the countryside, and did not paint a pretty picture of life in China. But what came of Buck's close exposure to "rough, lowly peasants" was a respect and compassion for these people, along with a clear-eyed view of what life was like for them, how it dictated their behavior.
She also, apparently, wrote tellingly of her mother -- trapped in an inappropriate and unsatisfying marriage her entire life (at the time of her death she literally despised her husband, whom she felt, quite rightly, had sacrificed both her and their children to his fanatical missionary work) in a book called The Exile, and about her difficult father, whom she finally came to understand, respect and love, for all his flaws, in Fighting Angel: Portrait of a Soul. I'd be interested in reading both books, though I fear the former would depress me -- I hate being reminded that, in the good ol' days, so many women were trapped in miserable marriages that deprived them of the opportunity to be truly themselves -- and the latter would make me mad.
I can only say I'm glad Buck finally had her day in the sun, that after over 24 rejections the book that made her was accepted for publication, and that once she moved permanently to the United States, and unburdened herself of a marriage that had been as unsatisfying as her mother's, she was able to find constant, loving support from her publisher, whom she married, and with whom she adopted six children. Apparently much of what she wrote in later years was not, in a literary sense, very good, but she never stopped trying to convey to the rest of the world the "real" China. That was her mission.
Saturday, November 20, 2010
Former masters of the earth
I have been trying to plough my way through Dinosaur Odyssey: Fossil Threads in the Web of Life, by Scott D. Sampson. I am as fascinated by dinosaurs as any 10-year-old boy, but while the book is certainly interesting, and informative, it is also pretty heavy going, at least partly because of all the mind-numbing words like ornitho-mimosaurs, hadrosaurs, ceratopsids, not to mention all the proper scientific names of particular species -- Deinonychus, Tenontosaurus, Coelophysis. I never realized there were so many.
There are a number of concepts I've had a hard time wrapping my mind around, the biggest being that of "deep time." The (approximately) 4.54 billion years the earth has been around, that's an example of deep time. The "160 million-year tenure of dinosaurs," that's deep time. We're not talking a hundred years, not a thousand years, or even ten thousand years -- the approximate length of time human society for which we have plentiful evidence has been around -- we're not even talking about 4.4 million years, which is about how old the oldest humanoid (not human) remains thus far found have been. The last of the dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago (that's 10,000 x 10 x 65), and this was at the end of their "160 million-year tenure." How can I possibly think intelligently about that kind of time span? And how can self-destructive humans ever hope to compete with that record for longevity?
Of course, they weren't all the same dinosaur species during that 160-million-year stretch. Just as in the more recent past, species came and went, evolved and died out, due to one cause or another. I never thought about that, but living creatures are certainly going to change, evolve, over that long a time span.
Another idea I have trouble with is that the birds of today are the descendents of a certain group of dinosaurs (interestingly, not the flying kind, like pterosaurs, but "small, carnivorous dinosaurs [that] found a way to be-come airborne," and that "managed to eke through the extinction bottleneck that brought an end to the Mesozoic." Admittedly, if you sit and watch a bunch of birds, you can spy very predatory and rapacious be-havior, but that's the closest to anything dinosaur-like that you can easily detect. But at least I'm glad to learn that no one is claiming that birds are the descendents of T-Rex.
One very interesting and highly plausible idea Sampson has introduced me to is that the weird horns/stiff neck "ruffles"/rooster-like crests/and other adornments many dinosaurs sported were less likely to have served as weapons, as originally thought -- many would have been very ineffectual weapons, because of their locations -- or even to assist in getting at or eating food, than to have served as attraction mechanisms for the opposite sex. After all, that's the purpose served by any number of oddities in the animal kingdom today. The elaborate spread of the peacock tail, the brighter coloration of the male of many bird species, the antlers of the deer, the red bottom of female baboons...all of these serve a primary function of attracting the opposite sex. I like to think of a female triceratops spotting a nearby male and thinking, "My, look at the frill on that big guy. I'd like him to be the father of my children."
Only, of course, not really thinking it, but intuiting it. Enabling the reproduction dance to go on, and evolution to continue on its ponderous but ineluctable way.
There are a number of concepts I've had a hard time wrapping my mind around, the biggest being that of "deep time." The (approximately) 4.54 billion years the earth has been around, that's an example of deep time. The "160 million-year tenure of dinosaurs," that's deep time. We're not talking a hundred years, not a thousand years, or even ten thousand years -- the approximate length of time human society for which we have plentiful evidence has been around -- we're not even talking about 4.4 million years, which is about how old the oldest humanoid (not human) remains thus far found have been. The last of the dinosaurs died out about 65 million years ago (that's 10,000 x 10 x 65), and this was at the end of their "160 million-year tenure." How can I possibly think intelligently about that kind of time span? And how can self-destructive humans ever hope to compete with that record for longevity?
Of course, they weren't all the same dinosaur species during that 160-million-year stretch. Just as in the more recent past, species came and went, evolved and died out, due to one cause or another. I never thought about that, but living creatures are certainly going to change, evolve, over that long a time span.
Another idea I have trouble with is that the birds of today are the descendents of a certain group of dinosaurs (interestingly, not the flying kind, like pterosaurs, but "small, carnivorous dinosaurs [that] found a way to be-come airborne," and that "managed to eke through the extinction bottleneck that brought an end to the Mesozoic." Admittedly, if you sit and watch a bunch of birds, you can spy very predatory and rapacious be-havior, but that's the closest to anything dinosaur-like that you can easily detect. But at least I'm glad to learn that no one is claiming that birds are the descendents of T-Rex.
One very interesting and highly plausible idea Sampson has introduced me to is that the weird horns/stiff neck "ruffles"/rooster-like crests/and other adornments many dinosaurs sported were less likely to have served as weapons, as originally thought -- many would have been very ineffectual weapons, because of their locations -- or even to assist in getting at or eating food, than to have served as attraction mechanisms for the opposite sex. After all, that's the purpose served by any number of oddities in the animal kingdom today. The elaborate spread of the peacock tail, the brighter coloration of the male of many bird species, the antlers of the deer, the red bottom of female baboons...all of these serve a primary function of attracting the opposite sex. I like to think of a female triceratops spotting a nearby male and thinking, "My, look at the frill on that big guy. I'd like him to be the father of my children."
Only, of course, not really thinking it, but intuiting it. Enabling the reproduction dance to go on, and evolution to continue on its ponderous but ineluctable way.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Perfection
Today I did something pleasant that was good for me. All too rare, those things that are good for you, but also pleasurable. I had lunch outside in the sunshine. The weather was absolutely perfect, with a high of maybe 70 degrees, no humidity at all, and until about 1 p.m. there wasn't a cloud to be seen. The sun was very bright, but the tiniest whisper of a breeze kept it from feeling too hot on my face and arms as I sat eating my Subway roast beef sandwich at a clean picnic table in the rectangle of a park that stretches down in front of the State House in Augusta.
One of my errands for the day was to take the graduation card, with accompanying gift, that I had for my niece Sara (and that I've been meaning to get mailed for a week -- it's just so hard to get myself to do things these days!), to the Augusta post office before one o'clock when it closes. Driving there I passed the park, which lies across the street from the State House, sloping down toward the river. I knew I was going to have to eat soon, and the thought struck that a little picnic in the park would be nice. Something different from my usual resorting to a Burger King Double Whopper or McDonalds Double Quarter Pounder when I'm out and about and hunger strikes.
The park is very nice, but seems to rarely get used, perhaps because of its location. Maybe during the work week, when it's nice, people from the State House, the legislators' office building behind it, and the State Library and State Museum, which are across the parking lot from the State House complex, take their sand-wiches, sodas and yogurts across the street and down the slope. But today I pretty much had the place to myself, except for a mother and father with their two young kids, who seemed to be practicing riding their bikes. There were also a couple of men who looked like construction workers, who ambled past my table bearing their empty pizza box to the trash receptacle by the sidewalk. And a fellow who was taking pictures. I myself regretted not having my camera with me, as the white State House dome against that Microsoft Active Window Bar blue of the sky, framed by the trees in the park, made a striking picture.
White I ate I was reading one of my two current books, The Rose Cafe: Love and War in Corsica, by John Hanson Mitchell. It reads like a coming-of-age-while-doing-Europe novel, but is actually a beautifully written piece of nonfiction, describing the few months Mitchell spent on the northwest coast of Corsica during the early 60s, when the Algerians were fighting for their independence from France (Corsica is controlled by France, so all the papers were full of this news), and the U.S.'s involve-ment in Vietnam was beginning to gather momentum -- thus, the 'war' part of the title. You get a clear sense of the island of Corsica, its inhabitants, the various tourists -- French, German, English -- who come through, stopping at the small inn where Mitchell washed dishes and did whatever else they wanted him to do, in exchange for room and board. It's a travel book with a difference.
So after this pleasant repast I was able to make myself do some other errands that I've "been meaning to" do for ages: pick up the sweater that had been sitting at the cleaners since June, buy a couple of bottles of paint for the kids at the library, using the coupons that ran out today, buy a new pocket dictionary, and a new French-English dictionary, since the ones I've been using for years are ancient, and falling apart. And then on my way home I passed the fellow I've passed a couple of times this week, sitting out in a parking lot hawking pumpkins from a flatbed. On an impulse I swung into the next parking lot up, and drove back down to where he was, and bought my annual pumpkins. Normally I like to get these from a farm stand out in the country, but this fellow was from a farm, and deserved some business, given his infinite patience in sitting out there all day, every day.
Stopped at the supermarket -- something else I've been avoiding this week, because I just get so tired of having to eat, having to cook, having to decide what to cook and eat -- and I bought some fresh flounder, brought it home and cooked it very simply, with parsley and dill, and it was delicious.
A leisurely day, physically comfortable, with no hyper-ventilating, but still getting things accomplished. It was a wonderful day.
One of my errands for the day was to take the graduation card, with accompanying gift, that I had for my niece Sara (and that I've been meaning to get mailed for a week -- it's just so hard to get myself to do things these days!), to the Augusta post office before one o'clock when it closes. Driving there I passed the park, which lies across the street from the State House, sloping down toward the river. I knew I was going to have to eat soon, and the thought struck that a little picnic in the park would be nice. Something different from my usual resorting to a Burger King Double Whopper or McDonalds Double Quarter Pounder when I'm out and about and hunger strikes.
The park is very nice, but seems to rarely get used, perhaps because of its location. Maybe during the work week, when it's nice, people from the State House, the legislators' office building behind it, and the State Library and State Museum, which are across the parking lot from the State House complex, take their sand-wiches, sodas and yogurts across the street and down the slope. But today I pretty much had the place to myself, except for a mother and father with their two young kids, who seemed to be practicing riding their bikes. There were also a couple of men who looked like construction workers, who ambled past my table bearing their empty pizza box to the trash receptacle by the sidewalk. And a fellow who was taking pictures. I myself regretted not having my camera with me, as the white State House dome against that Microsoft Active Window Bar blue of the sky, framed by the trees in the park, made a striking picture.
White I ate I was reading one of my two current books, The Rose Cafe: Love and War in Corsica, by John Hanson Mitchell. It reads like a coming-of-age-while-doing-Europe novel, but is actually a beautifully written piece of nonfiction, describing the few months Mitchell spent on the northwest coast of Corsica during the early 60s, when the Algerians were fighting for their independence from France (Corsica is controlled by France, so all the papers were full of this news), and the U.S.'s involve-ment in Vietnam was beginning to gather momentum -- thus, the 'war' part of the title. You get a clear sense of the island of Corsica, its inhabitants, the various tourists -- French, German, English -- who come through, stopping at the small inn where Mitchell washed dishes and did whatever else they wanted him to do, in exchange for room and board. It's a travel book with a difference.
So after this pleasant repast I was able to make myself do some other errands that I've "been meaning to" do for ages: pick up the sweater that had been sitting at the cleaners since June, buy a couple of bottles of paint for the kids at the library, using the coupons that ran out today, buy a new pocket dictionary, and a new French-English dictionary, since the ones I've been using for years are ancient, and falling apart. And then on my way home I passed the fellow I've passed a couple of times this week, sitting out in a parking lot hawking pumpkins from a flatbed. On an impulse I swung into the next parking lot up, and drove back down to where he was, and bought my annual pumpkins. Normally I like to get these from a farm stand out in the country, but this fellow was from a farm, and deserved some business, given his infinite patience in sitting out there all day, every day.
Stopped at the supermarket -- something else I've been avoiding this week, because I just get so tired of having to eat, having to cook, having to decide what to cook and eat -- and I bought some fresh flounder, brought it home and cooked it very simply, with parsley and dill, and it was delicious.
A leisurely day, physically comfortable, with no hyper-ventilating, but still getting things accomplished. It was a wonderful day.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Giving, in a time of crisis (or anytime)
I was just trying to find out what, if anything, one of my favorite charities, the Central Asia Institute (CAI), was doing to help those affected by the recent flooding in Pakistan. The CAI, for those of you who don't know, was started by former mountain-climber Greg Mortenson, after he was rescued by villagers in the high passes of northwestern Pakistan. While he was recuperating in their village of Korphe, he learned that the children had no school and, impulsively, he promised he'd build them one. He spent the next three years trying to fulfill that promise, and found himself, in the process, falling into his life's work: getting schools built, supplies purchased, teachers trained, throughout northwestern Pakistan, and eventually northeastern Afghanistan.
Mortenson has written about his experiences and his mission in, first, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, published in 2006, and later in Stones into Schools, which covered the expansion of his efforts into Afghanistan. Mortenson's story is truly inspiring, proof of what a single person can accomplish if he or she is sufficiently motivated. (It also illustrates how much energy, perseverance and sacrifice are involved in bringing about a miracle.) And it provides a shining example of what the United States should be doing, in our efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of the people in that part of the world. Mortenson's organ-ization is determinedly apolitical; it is not trying to foist American ideology onto the locals; it is completely respectful of the Islam religion. It is just trying to help these very poor people obtain what they want, which is education for their children. The one stipulation the CAI insists upon is that girls must be educated, as well as boys. And in almost every place they have sought to build a school, this requirement has presented no problem.
But to return to my original impetus for this posting: what, if anything, was the CAI doing to help in the current crisis? I was especially wondering because back in 2005, when there was a major earthquake in north-eastern Pakistan, the CAI was flooded with questions from regular donors as to what the organization was doing, or was going to do, to help. After much soul searching, the CAI decided it would not try to do any-thing in the way of immediate-emergency-response. They felt there were other organizations better equipped and trained for that sort of thing, and that what they should concentrate on was exploring the area for damaged or destroyed schools, to see how they could help rebuild those. And this actually proved of enormous psychological help, during that very stressful period, because going to school every day gave the children a sense of security, and normalcy. Also, the CAI was able to provide wages for teachers in that area, some of whom hadn't been paid for months.
My guess is the CAI will maintain the same policy in the current crisis, even though one of the areas most severely hit was where much of the school-building of the past 15 years has taken place. Quite possibly some of those schools have been destroyed, along with the villages they were in. Which means the CAI will have its work cut out for it once more. I would like to have seen some mention of this, of the crisis in general, on the organization's web site, or that of its founder, Greg Mortenson. Nonetheless, I do consider this a charity worth supporting -- can anyone doubt the positive effects of making possible a balanced, as opposed to extremist, education amongst people who would otherwise continue living in abject poverty and ignorance? Leaving their young people ripe for the picking by Muslim extremists? I've added a link to the CAI's web site, for anyone who might like to learn more about it. And I urge you to read Mortenson's books. They are fascinating, and make you feel good about the good people can do.
Mortenson has written about his experiences and his mission in, first, Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace...One School at a Time, published in 2006, and later in Stones into Schools, which covered the expansion of his efforts into Afghanistan. Mortenson's story is truly inspiring, proof of what a single person can accomplish if he or she is sufficiently motivated. (It also illustrates how much energy, perseverance and sacrifice are involved in bringing about a miracle.) And it provides a shining example of what the United States should be doing, in our efforts to "win the hearts and minds" of the people in that part of the world. Mortenson's organ-ization is determinedly apolitical; it is not trying to foist American ideology onto the locals; it is completely respectful of the Islam religion. It is just trying to help these very poor people obtain what they want, which is education for their children. The one stipulation the CAI insists upon is that girls must be educated, as well as boys. And in almost every place they have sought to build a school, this requirement has presented no problem.
But to return to my original impetus for this posting: what, if anything, was the CAI doing to help in the current crisis? I was especially wondering because back in 2005, when there was a major earthquake in north-eastern Pakistan, the CAI was flooded with questions from regular donors as to what the organization was doing, or was going to do, to help. After much soul searching, the CAI decided it would not try to do any-thing in the way of immediate-emergency-response. They felt there were other organizations better equipped and trained for that sort of thing, and that what they should concentrate on was exploring the area for damaged or destroyed schools, to see how they could help rebuild those. And this actually proved of enormous psychological help, during that very stressful period, because going to school every day gave the children a sense of security, and normalcy. Also, the CAI was able to provide wages for teachers in that area, some of whom hadn't been paid for months.
My guess is the CAI will maintain the same policy in the current crisis, even though one of the areas most severely hit was where much of the school-building of the past 15 years has taken place. Quite possibly some of those schools have been destroyed, along with the villages they were in. Which means the CAI will have its work cut out for it once more. I would like to have seen some mention of this, of the crisis in general, on the organization's web site, or that of its founder, Greg Mortenson. Nonetheless, I do consider this a charity worth supporting -- can anyone doubt the positive effects of making possible a balanced, as opposed to extremist, education amongst people who would otherwise continue living in abject poverty and ignorance? Leaving their young people ripe for the picking by Muslim extremists? I've added a link to the CAI's web site, for anyone who might like to learn more about it. And I urge you to read Mortenson's books. They are fascinating, and make you feel good about the good people can do.
Sunday, August 1, 2010
If you stick around long enough...
The other night I watched part of the program on PBS honoring Paul McCartney (officially Sir Paul McCartney, but please), as he received the third annual Gershwin Prize for Popular Song from the Library of Congress. The program took place at the White House, with President Obama and family in the front row. McCartney and other performers did a selection of his songs. I missed most of the other performers, except for an all-right version of Baby, You Can Drive My Car, by the Jonas Brothers -- a very young group, with whom I am totally unfamiliar -- during which I was completely distracted by the lead singer's hair, which literally covered practically his entire face. I know that some of the time he was singing with hair in his mouth, which could not be pleasant.
But anyway. Listening to McCartney sing, I was reminded that he was never the strongest of singers, and his voice hasn't gotten any stronger with age. This guy is no spring chicken -- he was born in 1942 -- but there he is with brown hair. I've complained before (Note of June 13, 2008) about the double standard that forces women to color their hair, while men are allowed to grey naturally. But in the world of rock music this is obviously not so. Two of the Rolling Stones -- who are all well into their 60s, and looking genuinely old -- also "still" have brown hair. Their peers -- we baby boomers who may be aging but still love rock and roll -- might accept them with grey hair, but presumably not the young whippersnappers who buy the records and go to the concerts.
While watching the PBS program, I was also reminded of the book I recently plowed through (it's a BIG book): The Beatles, by Bob Spitz. In it, McCartney comes across as the most traditionally ambitious of all the Beatles, the most realistic, the best at ingratiating himself with people. This tribute at the White House is surely an illustration of all of these qualities serving the man, and providing him with those things he wanted out of life.
The book provides a fascinating portrait of the "four lads from Liverpool," who really did change popular music dramatically (I can hear my friend Clifford saying, "Not for the better!"). This relatively restrained Beatlemaniac (see Note of Nov. 30, 2009 for my version of Beatlemania) was surprised to learn about all the unpleasant realities that she was totally unaware of, during that time when she was busy thinking of the Beatles as so cute, funny, talented, and different. They were all of that, but as four very young, unsophisticated men who suddenly found themselves a totally unexpected wildly successful (originally their ambition had been to be the best rock band in Liverpool) they didn't lose any time immersing themselves in sex, drugs and rock and roll. Indeed, I had no idea that drugs played such a huge part in the lives of all four men, but especially John Lennon, who resorted to LSD frequently, once he'd been turned on to it, and was even addicted to heroine for a while. Apparently during many of the later recording sessions drugs both played a big part in the interesting sounds and effects they created, and in the rapidly disintegrating relations among the four men (in particular Paul and John, who were always in a kind of competition for leader of the pack).
I was surprised to learn what a nasty piece of work John Lennon was in general. He always hated the jolly, clean-cut, well-dressed image that Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, insisted they adhere to. That image worked magnificently, but John chafed under it. He was the original "angry young man," and his preferred persona, which he adopted when he first started playing the guitar at 15, and formed his first band, was that of what the British called a teddy boy, what we Americans would call a punk. Tight jeans, leather jacket, hair slicked back in a duck tail, cigarette hanging out of his mouth (all the Beatles were heavy smokers). When the Beatles went into their psychedelic phase, in the late 60s, and dropped the neat (if long) haircuts and buttoned-up suits, John became truly shaggy and scruffy looking. He was always wanting to shock people, shake 'em up, while Paul wanted to make them happy, give them what they wanted.
And you see who got the prestigious Gershwin award, even though there is no question that all of McCartney's best work was done with John Lennon. Of course, Lennon was shot to death at the tragically young age of 42, but I can't see him ever doing anything so main-stream as appearing at the White House to accept an award from the Library of Congress. But...we'll never know.
But anyway. Listening to McCartney sing, I was reminded that he was never the strongest of singers, and his voice hasn't gotten any stronger with age. This guy is no spring chicken -- he was born in 1942 -- but there he is with brown hair. I've complained before (Note of June 13, 2008) about the double standard that forces women to color their hair, while men are allowed to grey naturally. But in the world of rock music this is obviously not so. Two of the Rolling Stones -- who are all well into their 60s, and looking genuinely old -- also "still" have brown hair. Their peers -- we baby boomers who may be aging but still love rock and roll -- might accept them with grey hair, but presumably not the young whippersnappers who buy the records and go to the concerts.
While watching the PBS program, I was also reminded of the book I recently plowed through (it's a BIG book): The Beatles, by Bob Spitz. In it, McCartney comes across as the most traditionally ambitious of all the Beatles, the most realistic, the best at ingratiating himself with people. This tribute at the White House is surely an illustration of all of these qualities serving the man, and providing him with those things he wanted out of life.
The book provides a fascinating portrait of the "four lads from Liverpool," who really did change popular music dramatically (I can hear my friend Clifford saying, "Not for the better!"). This relatively restrained Beatlemaniac (see Note of Nov. 30, 2009 for my version of Beatlemania) was surprised to learn about all the unpleasant realities that she was totally unaware of, during that time when she was busy thinking of the Beatles as so cute, funny, talented, and different. They were all of that, but as four very young, unsophisticated men who suddenly found themselves a totally unexpected wildly successful (originally their ambition had been to be the best rock band in Liverpool) they didn't lose any time immersing themselves in sex, drugs and rock and roll. Indeed, I had no idea that drugs played such a huge part in the lives of all four men, but especially John Lennon, who resorted to LSD frequently, once he'd been turned on to it, and was even addicted to heroine for a while. Apparently during many of the later recording sessions drugs both played a big part in the interesting sounds and effects they created, and in the rapidly disintegrating relations among the four men (in particular Paul and John, who were always in a kind of competition for leader of the pack).
I was surprised to learn what a nasty piece of work John Lennon was in general. He always hated the jolly, clean-cut, well-dressed image that Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager, insisted they adhere to. That image worked magnificently, but John chafed under it. He was the original "angry young man," and his preferred persona, which he adopted when he first started playing the guitar at 15, and formed his first band, was that of what the British called a teddy boy, what we Americans would call a punk. Tight jeans, leather jacket, hair slicked back in a duck tail, cigarette hanging out of his mouth (all the Beatles were heavy smokers). When the Beatles went into their psychedelic phase, in the late 60s, and dropped the neat (if long) haircuts and buttoned-up suits, John became truly shaggy and scruffy looking. He was always wanting to shock people, shake 'em up, while Paul wanted to make them happy, give them what they wanted.
And you see who got the prestigious Gershwin award, even though there is no question that all of McCartney's best work was done with John Lennon. Of course, Lennon was shot to death at the tragically young age of 42, but I can't see him ever doing anything so main-stream as appearing at the White House to accept an award from the Library of Congress. But...we'll never know.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Minus the warts
On the other hand you can tell it's an authorized biography, because very little that's negative gets said about the Queen Mother (see Note of June 6, 2010). Most of the negative things are slipped in via letters or other writings of other people. For example, when there's concern over how long it's taking the Queen Mother to decide which of her ladies in waiting she's going to let go, now that she is no longer The Queen, a friend of hers writes to another friend: "The Queen, bless her heart, has cultivated procrastination to a degree which is really an art -- when one is vexed, as I fear I often am, one should recall that the Bowes Lyons [the Queen Mother's family] are the laziest family in the world. Against this reflection it becomes remarkable that she accomplishes so much."* He goes on to say, "I think it possible that this omission may be the reflection of what has been apparent from the first, a sturdy repudiation of any idea that HM has any intention, because she is widowed, of relinquishing all to which she has become accustomed."** And the author adds: She did not give up any of her ladies.
In other words, once a queen, always a queen.
It is just the very occasional, slight dig like this -- or the admission of her growing matronliness of form during the '40s -- that suggests Elizabeth Bowes Lyons Windsor was anything less than perfect. And there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the marriage of King George and Queen Elizabeth was anything less than ideally happy, though the times and the situation they lived through were very hard on them both, especially the king, who lacked physical resilience, and had to make up for it with strength of character (and isn't it inter-esting what a difference there was between him and his older brother, who was very briefly Edward VIII, in terms of character. It suggests the dangers of getting by on charm and good looks for too long.)
But come on, every grownup knows that all marriages have their problems, even the most loving, even the happiest. You have two individuals trying to live together day after day, year after year. There is bound to be some conflict, some disagreement over how things should be done. Arguments, upsets. I realize that the British tend to be much more reticent about personal matters than we let-it-all-hang-out Americans -- and of course this was even truer of earlier generations -- but my guess is Elizabeth did confess in a letter of two, to some close friend or family member, that she really wished "Bertie" did not require quite so much bolstering up, or, during the months preceding the abdication, that she thought the behavior of Bertie's older brother truly reprehensible.
The only "complaining" she does do -- and i'm glad to see it, because it does show that she's human -- is over how hard it was to visit the areas that had been bombed during the war, which she and her husband did religiously. In a letter to her sister she wrote, "It makes one furious seeing the wanton destruction. Sometimes it really makes me feel almost ill. I can't tell you how I loathe going round these bombed places. I am a beastly coward, and it breaks one's heart to see so much misery and sadness."^ She loathed doing it, but she did it. More character. We get lots of examples of character, precious little in the way of flaws.
Still, for all that the book may have left out, it continues to interest.
*Shawcross, William. The Queen Mother: The Official Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 672
**Ibid, p. 673
^Ibid, p. 529
In other words, once a queen, always a queen.
It is just the very occasional, slight dig like this -- or the admission of her growing matronliness of form during the '40s -- that suggests Elizabeth Bowes Lyons Windsor was anything less than perfect. And there is absolutely nothing to suggest that the marriage of King George and Queen Elizabeth was anything less than ideally happy, though the times and the situation they lived through were very hard on them both, especially the king, who lacked physical resilience, and had to make up for it with strength of character (and isn't it inter-esting what a difference there was between him and his older brother, who was very briefly Edward VIII, in terms of character. It suggests the dangers of getting by on charm and good looks for too long.)
But come on, every grownup knows that all marriages have their problems, even the most loving, even the happiest. You have two individuals trying to live together day after day, year after year. There is bound to be some conflict, some disagreement over how things should be done. Arguments, upsets. I realize that the British tend to be much more reticent about personal matters than we let-it-all-hang-out Americans -- and of course this was even truer of earlier generations -- but my guess is Elizabeth did confess in a letter of two, to some close friend or family member, that she really wished "Bertie" did not require quite so much bolstering up, or, during the months preceding the abdication, that she thought the behavior of Bertie's older brother truly reprehensible.
The only "complaining" she does do -- and i'm glad to see it, because it does show that she's human -- is over how hard it was to visit the areas that had been bombed during the war, which she and her husband did religiously. In a letter to her sister she wrote, "It makes one furious seeing the wanton destruction. Sometimes it really makes me feel almost ill. I can't tell you how I loathe going round these bombed places. I am a beastly coward, and it breaks one's heart to see so much misery and sadness."^ She loathed doing it, but she did it. More character. We get lots of examples of character, precious little in the way of flaws.
Still, for all that the book may have left out, it continues to interest.
*Shawcross, William. The Queen Mother: The Official Biography. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009, p. 672
**Ibid, p. 673
^Ibid, p. 529
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Courage under pressure
I've been reading the authorized biography of Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (called, appropriately enough, The Queen Mother). It was moderately interesting, reading about her youth, her marriage to King George VI (when they were married he was Prince Albert Frederick Arthur George, and throughout his life was called Bertie within the family, but when he became king in 1936 he used the last of his Christian names, to provide the country with a sense of continuity from his father, George V), the dreadful period when "Bertie's" older brother, Edward VIII, decided to abdicate so he could marry the American divorcee Wallis Simpson, which resulted in the shy, nervous Albert, inflicted with a stammer, and with no desire to be king, being forced to become exactly that.
Yes, all quite interesting, but what has been most interesting is the section on the Second World War, and how the royal family, and all of Britain, coped. As was the case when I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Note of May 25, 2010), I've gotten a much better sense of just what the war meant to the British. I think I, perhaps like many Americans, have been more aware of happenings in the European war from D-Day, in June of '44, on. But the people in England had been enduring the ravages of war for four years by that time (they had officially entered into war with Germany in September of 1939, but there followed several months of what came to be known as the Phony War, when not much happened. Beginning in early 1940, things started happening.)
People in England suffered with the same food shortages that they did on Guernsey, but also had to contend with bombing raids. For four years. This was especially true in London, which was practically flattened. Reading about it reminded me of my first trip to London, in 1974, when I learned that so many of the historic sites I was looking at were not the originals, but had been rebuilt after the war. They had survived for many centuries, and then been wiped out by modern warfare within a four-year span.
And the British people as a whole really do seem to have been amazingly staunch, impressively resilient and determinedly cheerful through it all. And their king and queen were in there suffering with them, and being just as staunch, resilient and determinedly cheerful. One wonders if we Americans, as a people, would bear up so well, for so long. We all like to think so, of course, but selflessness and a disinclination to complain seem to be less in the way of American national traits.
We have been so lucky in this country. True, our ancestors lived through the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, both taking place on our soil, and producing the tragic losses that all wars produce. But except for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was an attack on a military target (the ships within the harbor, and the harbor itself), and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, this country has been spared so many of the outrages and devastation of war.
The Queen Mother, by the way, is coming off almost as the Princess Diana of her era -- much loved by the masses of common people, charming everyone she met with her graciousness, her ability to seem to be genuinely interested in whomever she was talking to. Although by middle age she had become plump and somewhat dowdy -- especially by American standards -- when she was younger she was considered quite lovely, with gorgeous skin, beautiful eyes and smile, and her good humor and kindliness. And she appears to have been a true helpmeet to her husband (unlike Princess Diana).
But I can't help wondering: why was she the Queen, when she was married to King George, but Prince Philip has not been the King, while married to Elizabeth II?
Yes, all quite interesting, but what has been most interesting is the section on the Second World War, and how the royal family, and all of Britain, coped. As was the case when I read The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (Note of May 25, 2010), I've gotten a much better sense of just what the war meant to the British. I think I, perhaps like many Americans, have been more aware of happenings in the European war from D-Day, in June of '44, on. But the people in England had been enduring the ravages of war for four years by that time (they had officially entered into war with Germany in September of 1939, but there followed several months of what came to be known as the Phony War, when not much happened. Beginning in early 1940, things started happening.)
People in England suffered with the same food shortages that they did on Guernsey, but also had to contend with bombing raids. For four years. This was especially true in London, which was practically flattened. Reading about it reminded me of my first trip to London, in 1974, when I learned that so many of the historic sites I was looking at were not the originals, but had been rebuilt after the war. They had survived for many centuries, and then been wiped out by modern warfare within a four-year span.
And the British people as a whole really do seem to have been amazingly staunch, impressively resilient and determinedly cheerful through it all. And their king and queen were in there suffering with them, and being just as staunch, resilient and determinedly cheerful. One wonders if we Americans, as a people, would bear up so well, for so long. We all like to think so, of course, but selflessness and a disinclination to complain seem to be less in the way of American national traits.
We have been so lucky in this country. True, our ancestors lived through the Revolutionary War, and the Civil War, both taking place on our soil, and producing the tragic losses that all wars produce. But except for the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was an attack on a military target (the ships within the harbor, and the harbor itself), and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001, this country has been spared so many of the outrages and devastation of war.
The Queen Mother, by the way, is coming off almost as the Princess Diana of her era -- much loved by the masses of common people, charming everyone she met with her graciousness, her ability to seem to be genuinely interested in whomever she was talking to. Although by middle age she had become plump and somewhat dowdy -- especially by American standards -- when she was younger she was considered quite lovely, with gorgeous skin, beautiful eyes and smile, and her good humor and kindliness. And she appears to have been a true helpmeet to her husband (unlike Princess Diana).
But I can't help wondering: why was she the Queen, when she was married to King George, but Prince Philip has not been the King, while married to Elizabeth II?
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
The importance of books
I've just finished a wonderful book called The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. It was written largely by the former lady, but when she became ill her niece took over to make the changes the editors were wanting. Alas, Shaffer did not live to see the book appear on American bookshelves, as it came out in July, 2008, and she died in February of that year. Such a shame that she didn't see it become such a big success, since she worked on it for many years. A glaring example of the importance of deriving satisfaction from a process, (see Note of Aug. 19, 2008) since you may not have the opportunity to enjoy the result.
Given that the book did come out in 2008, those of you who read new books when they're still new have probably already read it. I almost never read books when they first come out, except for Robert Parker and Dick Francis mysteries, and now both those gentlemen have died, so there won't be anymore new books from them.
But back to TGLAPPPS. It's a book that manages to be charming and amusing -- sometimes laugh-out-loud funny -- while relating the horrors of Nazi occupation for the inhabitants of Guernsey Island, in the English Channel, during the Second World War. It's written in the form of letters, a format I usually tire of quickly, but here it's quite successful, after the first few letters. A London writer who is undergoing the tiresomeness of going 'round for book signings to publicize her book receives a letter from a gentleman on Guernsey, who is writing to her because a book he has come into possession of, and that has made a great impression on him (the writings of Charles Lamb) had her name and address in the front. She is so charmed by the letter she replies, and ultimately gets drawn into a correspon-dence with not just him, but various other of the Islanders who are all members of the...you guessed it...Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
The letters are a delight. Not only do you come to know these people (including the London author) very well through their letters, but you learn a few things you may not have known about a few authors. And about how important books can be to people. And oh yes, you learn about what life was like under German occupation.
This book brought home to me in a new way the different kinds of deprivation that the war inflicted on people, perhaps the most devastating being the food shortages (in places where they were not also enduring bombing raids, and Guernsey was not bombed). Eventually no butter, no sugar, no tea, no salt, never mind the big stuff like meat. (The GLAPPPS came into being as the result of a highly ingenious method the Islanders developed of overcoming the Germans' system of keeping tabs on all livestock.)
On Guernsey they were also forced to see their lovely little island torn up by German fortification efforts, and forced to witness the working to death of slave laborers who were brought in to do the work. Those who felt a wrench of pity for the prisoner-laborers could find them-selves in big trouble if they tried to help them, as was the case with a major character in the book, who never actually "appears," though she is referred to by and has a big impact on virtually all the other characters.
The book is an informative and entertaining little gem. I encourage you to read it.
Given that the book did come out in 2008, those of you who read new books when they're still new have probably already read it. I almost never read books when they first come out, except for Robert Parker and Dick Francis mysteries, and now both those gentlemen have died, so there won't be anymore new books from them.
But back to TGLAPPPS. It's a book that manages to be charming and amusing -- sometimes laugh-out-loud funny -- while relating the horrors of Nazi occupation for the inhabitants of Guernsey Island, in the English Channel, during the Second World War. It's written in the form of letters, a format I usually tire of quickly, but here it's quite successful, after the first few letters. A London writer who is undergoing the tiresomeness of going 'round for book signings to publicize her book receives a letter from a gentleman on Guernsey, who is writing to her because a book he has come into possession of, and that has made a great impression on him (the writings of Charles Lamb) had her name and address in the front. She is so charmed by the letter she replies, and ultimately gets drawn into a correspon-dence with not just him, but various other of the Islanders who are all members of the...you guessed it...Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
The letters are a delight. Not only do you come to know these people (including the London author) very well through their letters, but you learn a few things you may not have known about a few authors. And about how important books can be to people. And oh yes, you learn about what life was like under German occupation.
This book brought home to me in a new way the different kinds of deprivation that the war inflicted on people, perhaps the most devastating being the food shortages (in places where they were not also enduring bombing raids, and Guernsey was not bombed). Eventually no butter, no sugar, no tea, no salt, never mind the big stuff like meat. (The GLAPPPS came into being as the result of a highly ingenious method the Islanders developed of overcoming the Germans' system of keeping tabs on all livestock.)
On Guernsey they were also forced to see their lovely little island torn up by German fortification efforts, and forced to witness the working to death of slave laborers who were brought in to do the work. Those who felt a wrench of pity for the prisoner-laborers could find them-selves in big trouble if they tried to help them, as was the case with a major character in the book, who never actually "appears," though she is referred to by and has a big impact on virtually all the other characters.
The book is an informative and entertaining little gem. I encourage you to read it.
Friday, April 2, 2010
A rule made to be broken?
I recently read a very short, insignificant, moderately entertaining book called Rules for aging: Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection. You can see the author's tongue planted firmly in cheek even in the title. The author, by the way, is Roger Rosenblatt, whose publisher, HarperCollins, refers to him as an "award-winning essayist for Time and PBS."
Rosenblatt's Rule #1 (which is both Garrison Keillor's and Jim Lehrer's favorite of the rules, according to the inside front cover of the book) made me laugh out loud when I first read it. To wit:
"It doesn't matter. Whatever you think matters -- doesn't. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late, or early...if you were clever, or if you were stupid; if you are having a bad hair day, or a no hair day...if you don't get that promotion, or prize, or house, or if you do. It doesn't matter."*
And of course, "it" doesn't. Not in the Grand Scheme of Things. Or, as we used to say when and where I was growing up: "What'll it matter a hundred years from now?" And no doubt Rule #1 is really an encour-agement to keep ones perspective, similar to the now-annoying cliche "Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's all small stuff."
But. After I'd read the whole book -- which takes maybe half an hour, and which provids plenty of other chuckles (e.g., "Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.") -- and I went back and read Rule #1 again, I didn't laugh so hard. It is, in fact, if you think about it long enough, a depressing rule. A depress-ing idea. If we don't make things matter, or don't at least convince ourselves that things matter, we become in danger of losing our sense of purpose. And people lacking a sense of purpose tend to sit around staring at the walls or the T.V., living on McDonald's takeout and beer. And, come on, what kind of a life is that?
So we make things matter, we make what we do seem important, necessary, at the very least to ourselves. Thus, we are able to make ourselves get out of bed, prepare decent meals, go every day to a job that we don't much like (or even hate), do this that and the other thing. Because it's necessary, it matters.
Of course, in some cases what we do really is important-- many of the things President Obama (or any president) does, or might do, could have drastic repercussions for millions of people. The dastardly suicide bombers could be said to be doing something that matters, in a highly negative sense, to at least the dozens of innocent people they kill, as well as to those people's families.
But for the rest of us...all us "little people"...let's face it, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the wins and losses, it just doesn't matter.
But pretending it does can keep you sane.
*Rosenblatt, Roger. Rules for aging: Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection, New York: Harcourt, c2000, p. 1.
Rosenblatt's Rule #1 (which is both Garrison Keillor's and Jim Lehrer's favorite of the rules, according to the inside front cover of the book) made me laugh out loud when I first read it. To wit:
"It doesn't matter. Whatever you think matters -- doesn't. Follow this rule and it will add decades to your life. It does not matter if you are late, or early...if you were clever, or if you were stupid; if you are having a bad hair day, or a no hair day...if you don't get that promotion, or prize, or house, or if you do. It doesn't matter."*
And of course, "it" doesn't. Not in the Grand Scheme of Things. Or, as we used to say when and where I was growing up: "What'll it matter a hundred years from now?" And no doubt Rule #1 is really an encour-agement to keep ones perspective, similar to the now-annoying cliche "Don't sweat the small stuff...and it's all small stuff."
But. After I'd read the whole book -- which takes maybe half an hour, and which provids plenty of other chuckles (e.g., "Just because the person who criticizes you is an idiot doesn't make him wrong.") -- and I went back and read Rule #1 again, I didn't laugh so hard. It is, in fact, if you think about it long enough, a depressing rule. A depress-ing idea. If we don't make things matter, or don't at least convince ourselves that things matter, we become in danger of losing our sense of purpose. And people lacking a sense of purpose tend to sit around staring at the walls or the T.V., living on McDonald's takeout and beer. And, come on, what kind of a life is that?
So we make things matter, we make what we do seem important, necessary, at the very least to ourselves. Thus, we are able to make ourselves get out of bed, prepare decent meals, go every day to a job that we don't much like (or even hate), do this that and the other thing. Because it's necessary, it matters.
Of course, in some cases what we do really is important-- many of the things President Obama (or any president) does, or might do, could have drastic repercussions for millions of people. The dastardly suicide bombers could be said to be doing something that matters, in a highly negative sense, to at least the dozens of innocent people they kill, as well as to those people's families.
But for the rest of us...all us "little people"...let's face it, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the wins and losses, it just doesn't matter.
But pretending it does can keep you sane.
*Rosenblatt, Roger. Rules for aging: Resist normal impulses, live longer, attain perfection, New York: Harcourt, c2000, p. 1.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
I'll think about it tomorrow
I have been reading Scarlett, the rather audacious sequel to Gone with the Wind written by an ambitious Alexandra Ripley. The book came out in 1991, so no doubt all of you who are readers read it long ago. Someone donated a copy to the library and since we already had a copy I decided to bring this one home and give it a try. So far I'm finding it entertaining, and similar enough in style to Margaret Mitchell's original not to be jarring.
The book has sent me back to my copy of that original, as all sort of things have cropped up that I didn't remember, e.g., the fact that Scarlett had a child by each of her first two husbands. The only child that appeared in the movie was her child by Rhett Butler, who died. I certainly remembered Bonnie, so obviously the movie had more sticking power than the book, which I've actually read twice.
The first time I read it was in the 9th grade, when I devoured it over one weekend, for a book report due on Monday. At the time we were living with my grandmother who essentially kept her living room "shut up," except on those rare occasions when company came. It was the perfect place to escape the noise and activity of my mother, my four siblings, and the small children who attended my grandmother's "nursery" at the back of the house. I plopped myself down in an armchair in the dim, chilly living room, door closed, and had to be all but dragged off for meals and bedtime. I was enthralled by this book.
Maybe twenty years ago I took the book up again, and, at 43 rather than 14, found myself a little less impressed. Mainly what weakened the book for me was that Scarlett never grew. She never changed, never seemed to learn from anything she experienced or observed. She remained always selfish, completely lacking in empathy, in any ability to see things from another's perspective. The sufferings she endured only made her hard and more calculating, not wise. I suppose it could be argued that people don't change, but perhaps one of the things we depend on fiction for is the suggestion, if not the illusion, that change is possible. Because if nothing and no one can change, on what can we place our hope when things are grim?
And eventually I had to wonder, why would Rhett Butler love this woman? Although she has a calculating shrewdness she is not intelligent, she has no sense of humor, she is not kind, she's a hypocrite, dishonest as the day is long, along with all the other negative qualities I listed earlier. Is the fact that she has "spirit," as he says during the famous scene with her after he's accidentally overheard her declare her love to a dismayed Ashley Wilkes, enough to make up for everything else? Rhett Butler is a pretty cool guy -- who adores and can't do enough for his mother, according to Scarlett, though I don't remember these qualities being mentioned in GWTH -- so why he would be so crazy about this conniving little bitch? Of course, I do know that the heart (or maybe the hormones) makes its choice, not the mind.
At any rate, it is my understanding that in this sequel Scarlett does enough changing to make it possible for her to win Rhett back. So I'm looking forward to those developments. So far -- at page 121 -- she hasn't changed one iota. But given its length of 823 pages, the book is young.
The book has sent me back to my copy of that original, as all sort of things have cropped up that I didn't remember, e.g., the fact that Scarlett had a child by each of her first two husbands. The only child that appeared in the movie was her child by Rhett Butler, who died. I certainly remembered Bonnie, so obviously the movie had more sticking power than the book, which I've actually read twice.
The first time I read it was in the 9th grade, when I devoured it over one weekend, for a book report due on Monday. At the time we were living with my grandmother who essentially kept her living room "shut up," except on those rare occasions when company came. It was the perfect place to escape the noise and activity of my mother, my four siblings, and the small children who attended my grandmother's "nursery" at the back of the house. I plopped myself down in an armchair in the dim, chilly living room, door closed, and had to be all but dragged off for meals and bedtime. I was enthralled by this book.
Maybe twenty years ago I took the book up again, and, at 43 rather than 14, found myself a little less impressed. Mainly what weakened the book for me was that Scarlett never grew. She never changed, never seemed to learn from anything she experienced or observed. She remained always selfish, completely lacking in empathy, in any ability to see things from another's perspective. The sufferings she endured only made her hard and more calculating, not wise. I suppose it could be argued that people don't change, but perhaps one of the things we depend on fiction for is the suggestion, if not the illusion, that change is possible. Because if nothing and no one can change, on what can we place our hope when things are grim?
And eventually I had to wonder, why would Rhett Butler love this woman? Although she has a calculating shrewdness she is not intelligent, she has no sense of humor, she is not kind, she's a hypocrite, dishonest as the day is long, along with all the other negative qualities I listed earlier. Is the fact that she has "spirit," as he says during the famous scene with her after he's accidentally overheard her declare her love to a dismayed Ashley Wilkes, enough to make up for everything else? Rhett Butler is a pretty cool guy -- who adores and can't do enough for his mother, according to Scarlett, though I don't remember these qualities being mentioned in GWTH -- so why he would be so crazy about this conniving little bitch? Of course, I do know that the heart (or maybe the hormones) makes its choice, not the mind.
At any rate, it is my understanding that in this sequel Scarlett does enough changing to make it possible for her to win Rhett back. So I'm looking forward to those developments. So far -- at page 121 -- she hasn't changed one iota. But given its length of 823 pages, the book is young.
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Life and death in Big Ben
Watching the Ken Burns film on the national parks, and noting that former Park Ranger/current novelist Nevada Smith was an advisor, reminded me that I just finished her most recent Anna Pigeon book. Called Borderline, and set in Big Ben National Park in west Texas, it is arguably one of her best, at least partly because Anna's need to protect a newborn even as she is trying to escape bad guys, and extradite herself and others from life-threatening circumstances, gives her a new level of humanity. Her understanding of, among other things, the responsibilities of motherhood, dramatically increase, as she discovers how the first instinct of motherhood -- protect the young -- can limit ones options, and change ones priorities.
"Civilization. Anna longed for it, and the unnaturalness of the emotion registered even as she crept through reeds in shoulder-deep water trying to keep herself and her charge alive. For most of her life she had felt more at home, safer, saner, stronger and more able in the wilderness than she had in towns and houses.
Babies changed that, too. Since she'd taken over the care and feeding of one of the little buggers, Anna had wanted homes and diapers, stoves and sterilizers, warm, dry clothes and washer/ dryers."*
At another point: "When she was a young woman, she remembered wondering why stay-at-home moms...didn't write epic novels, create great paintings, or memorize all of Shakespeare. ...Having spent part of a day and a night with an infant, Anna knew she owed each and every one she'd internally sneered at an apology. It was mind-boggling how all-absorbing caring for an infant was. Cute little aliens who stole ones brain and rendered [ones] body a slave."**
But Barr's basic stance in favor of strong, independent women -- apparent in all of her books -- comes through loud and clear with this passage:
"Standing unarmed with a baby she was responsible for and a large male person of unknown motivation sitting down the hall from her, Ann realized what a terrible disservice America was doing its women -- all its citizens -- in teaching them never to do for themselves but to wait for the authorities to come and save them from whatever dilemma had arisen."*** This was exactly why Micheal and I bought me a gun -- and why Micheal had me out in the back yard, shooting at a paper plate nailed to a tree -- when we were living in southern Louisiana, and I would be alone for weeks at a time while he was working offshore. Somebody breaks into the house in the middle of the night, you can't count on being able to call the police, and their being able to arrive in time; you need to be able to defend yourself. This country is (alas) too full of crazies and creeps for (especially) a woman living alone in a rural area to depend on "the authorities" to protect her.
Barr also has a marvelous, complex character in Darden White, former Secret Service agent turned head of security and substitute father for the female mayor of Houston, a gubernatorial hopeful. The few pages at the beginning of the book where the reader is intro-duced to Darden are a priceless picture into one man's life and psyche. Take the following paragraph:
"Darden had never married. His job didn't lend itself to family life. Sometimes he wished he was gay. Another man would be a better fit for the home life of an agent: sex and companionship, somebody to grow old with, and no worries about who'd call the plumber or shovel the walks or scare away the burglars when you were away on assignment."#
Or there's the telephone conversation with his elderly mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, with whom he lives, but whom he must place in a nursing home whenever he has to be away from home. It perfectly captures how surreal such "conversations" can be:
"The woman on duty told him his mom was agitated and wanted to speak with him...Calls from his mom entailed a dark tunnel down which long conversations trickled as the caregiver reminded Ellen she wanted to speak with her son, and helped her to figure out how the phone worked, and where to put it against her head...
'Hey, Mama, what's happening?'
"Oh, Darden! How nice of you to call."
'Just wondering how you were doing is all.' Darden no longer corrected his mother when she forgot. He didn't explain how life worked, either. That was a rabbit hole he'd gone down a few times when she'd first started losing it. 'You doing okay, Mama?'
'No,' she said. Murmuring at the far end of the tunnel ensued as confusion erupted and caregivers gave care."##
And with all the fine characterizations (and there are others), we get vivid descriptions of rafting down the Rio Grande, scrambling up rocky cliffs while sharpshooters are trying to pick off you and your party, and unlikely rescues of stranded cows and people. I recommend it.
*Barr, Nevada. Borderline. C.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009, p. 383.
** Ibid. p. 281
*** Ibid. p. 345
# Ibid. p. 19
## Ibid. p. 73
"Civilization. Anna longed for it, and the unnaturalness of the emotion registered even as she crept through reeds in shoulder-deep water trying to keep herself and her charge alive. For most of her life she had felt more at home, safer, saner, stronger and more able in the wilderness than she had in towns and houses.
Babies changed that, too. Since she'd taken over the care and feeding of one of the little buggers, Anna had wanted homes and diapers, stoves and sterilizers, warm, dry clothes and washer/ dryers."*
At another point: "When she was a young woman, she remembered wondering why stay-at-home moms...didn't write epic novels, create great paintings, or memorize all of Shakespeare. ...Having spent part of a day and a night with an infant, Anna knew she owed each and every one she'd internally sneered at an apology. It was mind-boggling how all-absorbing caring for an infant was. Cute little aliens who stole ones brain and rendered [ones] body a slave."**
But Barr's basic stance in favor of strong, independent women -- apparent in all of her books -- comes through loud and clear with this passage:
"Standing unarmed with a baby she was responsible for and a large male person of unknown motivation sitting down the hall from her, Ann realized what a terrible disservice America was doing its women -- all its citizens -- in teaching them never to do for themselves but to wait for the authorities to come and save them from whatever dilemma had arisen."*** This was exactly why Micheal and I bought me a gun -- and why Micheal had me out in the back yard, shooting at a paper plate nailed to a tree -- when we were living in southern Louisiana, and I would be alone for weeks at a time while he was working offshore. Somebody breaks into the house in the middle of the night, you can't count on being able to call the police, and their being able to arrive in time; you need to be able to defend yourself. This country is (alas) too full of crazies and creeps for (especially) a woman living alone in a rural area to depend on "the authorities" to protect her.
Barr also has a marvelous, complex character in Darden White, former Secret Service agent turned head of security and substitute father for the female mayor of Houston, a gubernatorial hopeful. The few pages at the beginning of the book where the reader is intro-duced to Darden are a priceless picture into one man's life and psyche. Take the following paragraph:
"Darden had never married. His job didn't lend itself to family life. Sometimes he wished he was gay. Another man would be a better fit for the home life of an agent: sex and companionship, somebody to grow old with, and no worries about who'd call the plumber or shovel the walks or scare away the burglars when you were away on assignment."#
Or there's the telephone conversation with his elderly mother who suffers from Alzheimer's, with whom he lives, but whom he must place in a nursing home whenever he has to be away from home. It perfectly captures how surreal such "conversations" can be:
"The woman on duty told him his mom was agitated and wanted to speak with him...Calls from his mom entailed a dark tunnel down which long conversations trickled as the caregiver reminded Ellen she wanted to speak with her son, and helped her to figure out how the phone worked, and where to put it against her head...
'Hey, Mama, what's happening?'
"Oh, Darden! How nice of you to call."
'Just wondering how you were doing is all.' Darden no longer corrected his mother when she forgot. He didn't explain how life worked, either. That was a rabbit hole he'd gone down a few times when she'd first started losing it. 'You doing okay, Mama?'
'No,' she said. Murmuring at the far end of the tunnel ensued as confusion erupted and caregivers gave care."##
And with all the fine characterizations (and there are others), we get vivid descriptions of rafting down the Rio Grande, scrambling up rocky cliffs while sharpshooters are trying to pick off you and your party, and unlikely rescues of stranded cows and people. I recommend it.
*Barr, Nevada. Borderline. C.P. Putnam's Sons, 2009, p. 383.
** Ibid. p. 281
*** Ibid. p. 345
# Ibid. p. 19
## Ibid. p. 73
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Death comes to an island (again)
Well, I've now read the first of Ann Cleeves's mystery novels, called Raven Black. I think it's actually better than the second one, White Nights, which I liked very much (see Note of Aug. 22). For one thing, the murderer was more psychologically feasible, and came as more of a surprise. I'll admit to having had an intuitive flash of who the murderer was, early on in White Nights, based on the fact that the character seemed to serve no essential purpose in the story...but there he/she was. Must be there for a reason...(Would this qualify as a spoiler?)
There was no great satisfaction in being proved right with that book since, by the time the climax rolled around, too many deaths, and the reasons for them, had made it hard to swallow that the murderer was, indeed, the murderer. It's interesting that the author made this mistake (to my mind it was a mistake) in the second book of the series, but not the first. I'm hoping she doesn't go out on another psychological limb with her third culprit (I gather four books in all are planned for the series).
Cleeves did as good a job in Raven Black of rendering the people, the culture, the physical makeup of the Shetland Islands as she did in White Nights. In both books police inspector Jimmy Perez is a jewel of a character, very likable, not hard-boiled at all, but smart. He gets there. And while in White Nights we saw what folks of the Shetlands got up to in the summer, in Raven Black we see them celebrating the same kind of drunken New Year's Eve celebrated elsewhere in Scotland, and later involved in their own special celebration, Up Helly Aa, which celebrates the island's Viking heritage with a giant bonfire in which a full-sized replica Viking longboat is burned. All quite fascinating.
However, I do have to take issue with the publisher calling these books thrillers. They are intriguing, well-plotted mysteries, but the emphasis is on the characters, on their interactions with one another, and on their interior lives, not on heart-stopping action, on exciting adventures of the hero, often while tracking and/or being tracked by the bad guys. That's my idea of a thriller. Did they think the books wouldn't sell if they were just called "A Mystery"?
So...check 'em out.
There was no great satisfaction in being proved right with that book since, by the time the climax rolled around, too many deaths, and the reasons for them, had made it hard to swallow that the murderer was, indeed, the murderer. It's interesting that the author made this mistake (to my mind it was a mistake) in the second book of the series, but not the first. I'm hoping she doesn't go out on another psychological limb with her third culprit (I gather four books in all are planned for the series).
Cleeves did as good a job in Raven Black of rendering the people, the culture, the physical makeup of the Shetland Islands as she did in White Nights. In both books police inspector Jimmy Perez is a jewel of a character, very likable, not hard-boiled at all, but smart. He gets there. And while in White Nights we saw what folks of the Shetlands got up to in the summer, in Raven Black we see them celebrating the same kind of drunken New Year's Eve celebrated elsewhere in Scotland, and later involved in their own special celebration, Up Helly Aa, which celebrates the island's Viking heritage with a giant bonfire in which a full-sized replica Viking longboat is burned. All quite fascinating.
However, I do have to take issue with the publisher calling these books thrillers. They are intriguing, well-plotted mysteries, but the emphasis is on the characters, on their interactions with one another, and on their interior lives, not on heart-stopping action, on exciting adventures of the hero, often while tracking and/or being tracked by the bad guys. That's my idea of a thriller. Did they think the books wouldn't sell if they were just called "A Mystery"?
So...check 'em out.
Saturday, August 22, 2009
Murder, she wrote
I recently read a book that I so enjoyed, I'm reading another by the same author. The one I read was actually the second in a series by the author, Ann Cleeves (no, not Anne of Cleaves). I think of it as the Shetland series, because the books take place on the Shetland Islands, north of the Scottish mainland. Those of you who know me know I have a peculiar fascination with islands, having spent extended periods of time on a Greek island (Santorini), a French island (Isle d'Yeu), and a Scottish isle (Mull). Indeed, I would live on one of the many Maine islands, if I could figure out a way to make a living there.
Thus, a mystery book that takes place on an island is bound to have an allure for me. Also, I enjoy mystery series in which one painlessly learns about the setting, as well as the culture within that setting, at the same time that a mystery unrolls. This was one of the attractions of the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books by Tony Hillerman -- I loved learning about the Navaho culture, within its Northern Arizona/New Mexico milieu. When Micheal and I went to visit the Grand Canyon in 2000, I insisted on our driving back through what I thought of as Hillerman country, delighting in spotting some of the landmarks mentioned in the books, such as Shiprock (which didn't look like a ship to either of us, but rather a huge rock fortress, sitting out there by itself in the middle of the prairie).
I enjoy Nevada Barr's national park ranger series for the same reason: I learn all about the various national parks, while pursuing mysterious evil-doers! In Barr's case, I don't much like her heroine, park ranger Anna Pigeon, whom I find humorless and irritatingly touchy, but the descriptions of and information about the parks are priceless.
But to get back to White Nights. That's the name of Ann Cleeves' second book, and refers to the twilight-like night-time hours of summer, on the Shetlands. Looking at my trusty world map, on the wall of my study, I see that the Shetlands are at almost the exact same latitude as Anchorage, where I experienced "white nights" myself, the two times I lived there. Several characters in the book mention how crazy the lingering light makes them, never seem to get enough sleep, etc. I know that in Anchorage many people have heavily lined curtains, to keep that pesky light out so they can sleep like normal people.
Cleeves' other book, Raven Black, which I've just begun, takes place in winter, when there is the opposite situation: long stretches of darkness, characters setting out for work or school before sunrise. There is frequent blowing snow (apparently the wind blows so constantly on the Shetlands that when it isn't blowing the locals notice; they are struck by the absence, the silence.) and ice everywhere. No tourists now.
In both books you get a nice sense of the people, the older ones hoeing their turnips in their bit of a garden, the younger ones drinking too much (a real problem throughout Scotland), everybody hooked up to the computer now. And there's a terrific police inspector, Jimmy Perez, a native Shetlander, despite the exotic name. He's mild-mannered and courteous, worried about his relationship with his new girlfriend -- is he pushing too hard, going too fast? --and also striving to maintain a good relationship with the detective inspector sent from the mainland, who is impatient, intense and driven. This kind of opposites-working-in-tandem often works well, in the aforementioned Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books, for example (intuitive Jim Chee, steeped in Navaho ways and religion, trying to work with rational Leaphorn the skeptic), or in the Inspector Lewis mysteries on PBS, with the old-school, working class Lewis tied to his Cambridge-educated, technically savvy Sergeant Hathaway. Here I like the fact that DI Taylor actually respects Jimmy, recognizes that Perez's methods get results, even though they make him crazy with impatience. In general I like the way Cleeves avoids stereotypes with most of her characters, making them realistic composites of negative and positive attributes.
And I think to myself, maybe Shetland should be my next island.
Thus, a mystery book that takes place on an island is bound to have an allure for me. Also, I enjoy mystery series in which one painlessly learns about the setting, as well as the culture within that setting, at the same time that a mystery unrolls. This was one of the attractions of the Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books by Tony Hillerman -- I loved learning about the Navaho culture, within its Northern Arizona/New Mexico milieu. When Micheal and I went to visit the Grand Canyon in 2000, I insisted on our driving back through what I thought of as Hillerman country, delighting in spotting some of the landmarks mentioned in the books, such as Shiprock (which didn't look like a ship to either of us, but rather a huge rock fortress, sitting out there by itself in the middle of the prairie).
I enjoy Nevada Barr's national park ranger series for the same reason: I learn all about the various national parks, while pursuing mysterious evil-doers! In Barr's case, I don't much like her heroine, park ranger Anna Pigeon, whom I find humorless and irritatingly touchy, but the descriptions of and information about the parks are priceless.
But to get back to White Nights. That's the name of Ann Cleeves' second book, and refers to the twilight-like night-time hours of summer, on the Shetlands. Looking at my trusty world map, on the wall of my study, I see that the Shetlands are at almost the exact same latitude as Anchorage, where I experienced "white nights" myself, the two times I lived there. Several characters in the book mention how crazy the lingering light makes them, never seem to get enough sleep, etc. I know that in Anchorage many people have heavily lined curtains, to keep that pesky light out so they can sleep like normal people.
Cleeves' other book, Raven Black, which I've just begun, takes place in winter, when there is the opposite situation: long stretches of darkness, characters setting out for work or school before sunrise. There is frequent blowing snow (apparently the wind blows so constantly on the Shetlands that when it isn't blowing the locals notice; they are struck by the absence, the silence.) and ice everywhere. No tourists now.
In both books you get a nice sense of the people, the older ones hoeing their turnips in their bit of a garden, the younger ones drinking too much (a real problem throughout Scotland), everybody hooked up to the computer now. And there's a terrific police inspector, Jimmy Perez, a native Shetlander, despite the exotic name. He's mild-mannered and courteous, worried about his relationship with his new girlfriend -- is he pushing too hard, going too fast? --and also striving to maintain a good relationship with the detective inspector sent from the mainland, who is impatient, intense and driven. This kind of opposites-working-in-tandem often works well, in the aforementioned Jim Chee/Joe Leaphorn books, for example (intuitive Jim Chee, steeped in Navaho ways and religion, trying to work with rational Leaphorn the skeptic), or in the Inspector Lewis mysteries on PBS, with the old-school, working class Lewis tied to his Cambridge-educated, technically savvy Sergeant Hathaway. Here I like the fact that DI Taylor actually respects Jimmy, recognizes that Perez's methods get results, even though they make him crazy with impatience. In general I like the way Cleeves avoids stereotypes with most of her characters, making them realistic composites of negative and positive attributes.
And I think to myself, maybe Shetland should be my next island.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Medicus
I just finished a marvelously entertaining book called Medicus: A novel of the Roman Empire, by Ruth Downie. The part of the Roman Empire it's concerned with is Britain, circa 117 A.D. The emperor Trajan has just died, and it looks like Hadrian will replace him – that fellow who, as we all know, went on to have a huge wall built between England and Scotland, in an effort to keep the marauding Picts and Scots out. So that gives you an indication of the time period.
It's a period, and a place, about which relatively little is actually known, as the author frankly admits in a Note at the end of the book. Nonetheless, Downie does an impressive job of conveying a believable world in which slavery is taken for granted, in which all bathing is done in public baths – and is done frequently! in sharp contrast to, oh, about the next 1800 years – in which the conquering Romans have been on the scene long enough to be accepted by the local populace – that part of it that hasn't escaped to the mountains of Wales, and will never accept – but is still resented.
There's a lot of humor in the book. A good deal of that humor comes from the fact that the hero is a put-upon doctor for the Roman army (the "Medicus") who can never seem to avoid doing the decent thing, even when it seems to run counter to his own interests, and who is in endless battle with Roman bureaucracy. Indeed, one of the more interesting of the author's touches is showing how ancient bureaucracy could be as ubiquitous and as much of an irritant to those under its thumb as in the modern world. It's also interesting to see how advanced ancient medicine was in many ways, especially when compared with the medical practices of the Dark Ages and medieval period that followed. They did cataract surgery!
At any rate, the often-grouchy Gais Petreius Ruso makes the book, as he tries to concentrate on the guide to first aid in the field that he's trying to write (in warm wax, with a stylus) while the puppies his house mate has inflicted on the household run riot, as he sadly wishes the slave he bought in the street to keep her from being abused could cook better, as he keeps insisting "No, I'm not!," every time somebody says, "Oh, you must be the doctor who's looking into these killings."
I'll admit to being a big fan of historical mysteries, and the further back in time, the better, mainly because the more ancient the history, the more interesting I find it. I have very much enjoyed the Brother Cadfael mysteries of Ellis Peters, the Catherine Levendeur mysteries of Sharan Newman – both of these series being set in the 1130s and 40s, when Stephen and Matilda were fighting over who got to be ruler of England (and think how different history might have been, if Matilda had won), although the Cadfael books are set in England, and the Levendeur ones in France – and I've also enjoyed the Justin de Quincy mysteries of Sharon Kay Penman, which are set at the very end of the 12th century, when Eleanor of Aquitaine's son John is continuously plotting to replace his brother, Richard the Lion Heart, as king of England (Justin de Quincy serves Eleanor – the first book in the series is called The Queen's Man – and he solves mysteries along the way).
In all of these I am as interested in learning about how people lived in these times and places, as I am in following a story, and having a mystery solved. And all of these books do a splendid job of giving one a real sense of what it might have been like to live then, and there.
Obviously Medicus describes a world much more ancient, and about which much less is known, but we still get a good sense of what it might have been like, then, and there.
It's a period, and a place, about which relatively little is actually known, as the author frankly admits in a Note at the end of the book. Nonetheless, Downie does an impressive job of conveying a believable world in which slavery is taken for granted, in which all bathing is done in public baths – and is done frequently! in sharp contrast to, oh, about the next 1800 years – in which the conquering Romans have been on the scene long enough to be accepted by the local populace – that part of it that hasn't escaped to the mountains of Wales, and will never accept – but is still resented.
There's a lot of humor in the book. A good deal of that humor comes from the fact that the hero is a put-upon doctor for the Roman army (the "Medicus") who can never seem to avoid doing the decent thing, even when it seems to run counter to his own interests, and who is in endless battle with Roman bureaucracy. Indeed, one of the more interesting of the author's touches is showing how ancient bureaucracy could be as ubiquitous and as much of an irritant to those under its thumb as in the modern world. It's also interesting to see how advanced ancient medicine was in many ways, especially when compared with the medical practices of the Dark Ages and medieval period that followed. They did cataract surgery!
At any rate, the often-grouchy Gais Petreius Ruso makes the book, as he tries to concentrate on the guide to first aid in the field that he's trying to write (in warm wax, with a stylus) while the puppies his house mate has inflicted on the household run riot, as he sadly wishes the slave he bought in the street to keep her from being abused could cook better, as he keeps insisting "No, I'm not!," every time somebody says, "Oh, you must be the doctor who's looking into these killings."
I'll admit to being a big fan of historical mysteries, and the further back in time, the better, mainly because the more ancient the history, the more interesting I find it. I have very much enjoyed the Brother Cadfael mysteries of Ellis Peters, the Catherine Levendeur mysteries of Sharan Newman – both of these series being set in the 1130s and 40s, when Stephen and Matilda were fighting over who got to be ruler of England (and think how different history might have been, if Matilda had won), although the Cadfael books are set in England, and the Levendeur ones in France – and I've also enjoyed the Justin de Quincy mysteries of Sharon Kay Penman, which are set at the very end of the 12th century, when Eleanor of Aquitaine's son John is continuously plotting to replace his brother, Richard the Lion Heart, as king of England (Justin de Quincy serves Eleanor – the first book in the series is called The Queen's Man – and he solves mysteries along the way).
In all of these I am as interested in learning about how people lived in these times and places, as I am in following a story, and having a mystery solved. And all of these books do a splendid job of giving one a real sense of what it might have been like to live then, and there.
Obviously Medicus describes a world much more ancient, and about which much less is known, but we still get a good sense of what it might have been like, then, and there.
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