John D. Rateliff's Blog, page 205

Evangelion 1.0

So, Friday night (the 14th) I got to go with three friends (hi Stan. hi Monte. hi Ben) up to Seattle to see an anime film at The Grand Illusion, the University District's micro-theatre. It's pretty rare that I get to see anime in a theatre -- I think the last time was when Miyazaki's PONYO came out -- and even rarer to get to see it with the original Japanese voice-actors, as in this case.
This was a good event in several ways. First, I like the U-district and don't get up there that often (about once a month or so, maybe a little more often), and then it's usually straight to Suzzallo-Allen (returning books, doing research among the stacks, working on the laptop in the grand Reading Room w. the stained-glass windows) -- last time's brief side-trip to the Univ. Bkstre reminded me how long it'd been since I'd been there as well. I also enjoyed the company, and conversation, and our stroll around the area between dinner and the movie. The restaurant (Pam's) was a discovery; I've never had Trinidadian food before and, while it's higher-carb than I wd have liked, it's also v. good stuff. I'd heard of pigeon peas before but never seen, much less eaten, them: they remind me of crowder peas, though darker and a little smaller. Plus, of course, it'll be easy to remember a restaurant with the same name as my sister (who runs her own restaurant in Waskom, Texas).
The main event, of course, was the show itself: EVANGELION 1.0: YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE. I'd heard about this, of course, when it came out a few years ago [2007], but not paid much attention because I'd been under the misapprehension that it was a re-release of the first few episodes of the 1995 tv series packaged together as a movie (shades of MAN FROM UNCLE!). And, while I liked the original well enough, I never bought into the line that it was the greatest anime of all time,* though it did play a big role in the big upswing of anime in the late '90s and early '00s. Still, it'd be nice to see it all cleaned up, and there was always a chance they'd cut down on the angst and whining in the edit.
Well, it turns out this is less a clean-up than a remake of the original -- the first of four, which between them will retell the whole story of the series. Don't know what the whole set of films will be like: this one at least follows the original closely for the most part, but speeds things up to concentrate on the story, rather than the main character's woe-is-me's that form so much of the original. They've also improve the look-and-feel a lot, and made small but significant changes throughout, which open up some interesting possibilities for what'll happen down the line.
So, my ultimate verdict is thumb's up: this improves upon the original while still staying close enough to it that if you haven't watched the series in a while (like me) you won't even notice most of the differences, other than a general impression that the art looks better and the story moves more quickly (both a good thing in this case). I'll be looking forward to the second installment, EVANGELION 2.0: YOU CAN (NOT) ADVANCE [2009], which we're planning on seeing, same bat-channel, same bat-time, this coming Friday, Angels willing & the creek don't rise.** I hope they complete the whole set, though I'm concerned that Anno will flake out at some point -- after all, he had three tries to finish the original story and blew it all three times: in the final two episodes of the original series, in the single-episode ova that followed, and in the END OF EVANGELION film that followed that. Some folks are great at keeping the balls in the air but haven't the ghost of an idea how to catch them at the end of the act. But at least, like Blake's 7, they had the courage of their convection not to choose an easy ending. We'll see if they do better this time around -- I hope.
--John R.current audiobook: none, having just finished THE BOOK OF REVELATIONScurrent book: Le Guin's CHEEK & JOWLnewest book to arrive: see tomorrow's post.

*for my money, it's not even the best work of its director or studio (Hideaki Anno of Gainax): that'd be HIS & HER CIRCUMSTANCES
**why yes, we did get three more flood warnings -- two Stage Two and one Stage Three -- both by e-mail and via early morning automated phone calls over the weekend. Driving along the Green River in Kent between the 'fishing hole' and strawberry farm is quite a sight, with the river only a foot or two below the level of the road. Glad it's higher on this side, what with the levee and sandbags and all.

Today's Word: Genizah

So, a week or two back Janice saw an article in the local (e)paper that she thought wd interest me, how a local author was going to do a reading about his new book in an area bookstore.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2013865258_br07sacred.html

Since the topic was one I've been interested in for years -- I suppose it's fifteen years or so since I first heard about the Cairo Genizah, back when I was working for Gareth Stevens* -- we decided to brave the dark and the rain for a long drive (about thirty miles each way) up to Third Place Books after work that evening to see the author do a reading I'd never been to, or even heard of, Third Place Books before, and I have to say I was impressed. We had a few minutes before the Reading began, so I took the time to poke around and found a modern translation of Verne's JOURNEY TO THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH I'd been looking for, along with a reasonably good Tolkien section.** One good idea they have that I'd like to see put into practice elsewhere is that used and new books by the same author are shelved together. As usual in a good bookstore, I had to restrain myself, but I not only left w. two books from that first visit but when I came back two days later (to retrieve the scarf I'd inadvertently left behind under my chair) I picked up two more: POE ABROAD (which reviews Poe's foreign reputation country-by-country***) -- an impulse buy I knew I'd regret not picking up -- and a mystery novel for light reading: Rhys Bowen's ROYAL FLUSH, one of her 'royal spyness' series**** The cafe/food court alongside the bookstore makes for a pretty good away-from-home place to work w. a laptop, I discovered on this second visit, though I was somewhat thrown off my game when a gospel choir started up nearby (apparently the food-court stage hosts a lot of events on weekends).
In any case, the presentation soon started, and turned out to be a talk rather than a reading per se. That was fine by me: I'd never been able to find out much about the genizah, mainly because I cd never remember the name and didn't know how to pronounce it, so I was glad to finally have the chance to learn more than what I'd been able to gather from passing references over the years.
For those unfamiliar w. the story, there's a longstanding tradition in medieval Judaism against throwing away sacred books. So, instead of tossing worn out scriptures or prayerbooks in the trash, the synagogue in Cairo had an opening in the wall through which old writings could be pushed into the storage room beyond, rather like the 'book return' slot beside most public library doors. Except in this case, the room beyond was unusually large, and the papers deposited there (over the course of several centuries) were left undisturbed until modern times. I'll let you read Rabbi Glickman's book, SACRED TREASURE: THE CAIRO GENIZAH, if you want the details on just how they were rediscovered and brought to scholars' attention, what treasures were eventually recovered from among its more than 300,000 pages of worn-out old manuscripts (handwritten letters from Moses Maimonides, pages from the Hebrew original of a Deuterocanonical book only known to survive in Greek translation, &c); it's quite a story.
The only discordant note was the presenter's rather dismissive attitude towards the remarkable Gibson/Lewis sisters, the ones who actually deserve the lion's share of the credit for the discovery (they also earlier discovered the CODEX SINAITICUS, now in the British Museum*****). Janice had earlier read what she tells me is a really good book about the sisters:
http://www.amazon.com/Sisters-Sinai-Adventurers-Discovered-Gospels/dp/1400041333
That, and someone behind me who seemed upset that Rabbi Glickman said that the Jewish community in medieval Cairo was relatively fortunate, in that they were spared the pogroms and waves of persecutions their co-religionists in Europe were periodically subjected to (he rose during the question-&-answer period to assert vigorously that it'd been "no Paradise" -- e.g., they'd had to pay special not-a-Muslim taxes -- but then no one ever said it was). In fact, the same person had started to voice some objection out loud earlier in the presentation, when Glickman said the reason this genizah had survived so long was that anti-semetism in the Muslim world was a relatively modern development, but had subsided when he went on to talk about the expulsion of Muslims from what is now Israel being matched by the suppression and destruction of Jewish communities around the Mid-east, some of them hundreds if not thousands of years old.
All in all, a v. pleasant evening. I ended up being lucky enough to buy the last copy the bookstore had of the book, which I got the author to sign. I'm looking forward to reading it and finally getting the whole story about this remarkable stash. Having bought a good book on the Dead Sea Scrolls a while back, and now having this on the Genizah's contents, I suppose I'll need to start looking for one on the third of the remarkable Mid-east document recoveries, the Nag Hammadi texts.
Oh, and something I didn't realize until afterwards is that I think this marks the first time I've met a Rabbi. About time! Better late than never, I suppose.
--John R.
current/recent reading: ROYAL FLUSH by Rhys Bowen (a 'royal spyness' mysthery) [#2889], THE THREE COFFINS by John Dickson Carr (a Dr. Gideon Fell mystery) [#2890], and Le Guin's CHEEK & JOWL (in progress)current audiobook: New Testament epistles (finally done with Paul, who's given to too many senior moments)................................*probably while fact-checking the backmatter of their CHILDREN OF THE WORLD: EGYPT.
**I later realized it was somewhat better when I saw the 'collector's items' shelved had several of the HME volumes, along w. the Folio Society LotR set.
***turns out his popularity took a big downturn in Maoist China. Who knew?
**** set in the early 1930s in which the thirty-fourth in line for the British throne, the impoverished sister of a duke, gets assigned odd jobs and tricky tasks by the royal family -- such as, in this case, trying to keep apart the Crown Prince and the American, Mrs. Simpson, he's currently in hot pursuit of.
*****and hence now one of the most famous stolen books in the world

Hobbit Movie: Coming Together Nicely

So, thanks to friend Jessica (thanks Jessica), I saw the following link today, which brings up to date the various casting announcements for who's reprising roles from Peter Jackson's LORD OF THE RINGS movies in his new HOBBIT.
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story/andy-serkis-agrees-hobbit-appearance_1194679
Here's the run down
must-haves:Ian McKellan as Gandalf: checkIan Holm as old Bilbo: mooted as possibilityAndy Serkis as Gollum: check
weren't-in-the-book-but-you-can-kinda-see-why-they'd-be-in-extended-movieKate Blanchett as Galadriel: checkOrlando Bloom as Legolas: checkChristopher Lee as Saruman: check*Elijah Wood as little Frodo: check
missing in action?Hugo Weaving as Elrond.
Of these, it's great that McKellan and Serkis will be back, as well as Blanchett and (hopefully) Lee. I hope Holm is there as well, given that his was one of the best performances in the original film trilogy. I've been wondering if Bloom wd show up in the Battle of Five Armies, slaying a hundred goblins with a single arrow -- though a million dollars for a two-minute cameo seems kinda steep. The only one returning character I'd expect to see who isn't mentioned here is Hugo Weaving as Elrond, and frankly I'd be just as happy to see somebody else play the part --they certainly improved Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies by a change in cast (although there it was of necessity, when the original actor died). And while not as disastrous as the film trilogy's Denethor or Faramir, once past the opening battle-scene Weaving's Elrond cdn't seem to rise above petulance as characterization. Maybe he'll lighten up for the prequel.
Given this update, it's interesting to check the IMDb entry for the forthcoming movie, which includes the news (news to me, anyway) that Howard Shore is returning as composer -- I guess it's like Carroll/Tenniel. Here's the link:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0903624/fullcredits#cast
I'd been wondering who might do the voice of Smaug (Richard Boone being long gone); the rumor of Nimoy is an intriguingly odd choice. I'd still prefer Tom Baker, myself. I guess we'll see soon, though -- filming is due to start next month.
--JDR
*while the article linked to above lists Lee as pending, Kristin Thompson's site today carries a story confirming that Lee is indeed returning: http://www.frodofranchise.com/blog/

Celebrating a Birthday

So, this week we celebrated Janice's birthday. As opposed to some years where we've gone out in a group or gotten together with friends, this time we had a low-keyed, but still v. enjoyable, weekend. Among the highlights were a trip out to Black Diamond to the Black Diamond Bakery for freshly made cinnamon rolls bigger than our heads.* We followed this up w. a nice poke in Baker Street Books next door -- nice place; wish it were closer -- and then headed on home, where I spent the next few hours making home-made rolls,** by request, from my Grandmother's recipe; once they were done, I made up some skillet potatoes (potatoes, mushroom, bacon, onion, and cheddar).*** A quiet, pleasant day.
Sunday was much the same, except that our expedition today involved art, not food. We hardly ever go down to Tacoma, for some reason, even though from here it's just as close as downtown Seattle, which we find our way to probably about once a month or so. A few years back we'd gone with the extended Baur family down to the Museum of Glass, where I saw for the first time the work of famed local artist Dale Chihuly, whom I'd never even heard of before. We also on that visit walked over to the nearby History Museum and saw a v. bad exhibit on Japanese popular culture (good topic, bad exhibit. it happens). This time, as part of our do-something-new-&-different pledge, we went to the third museum in the district: the Tacoma Art Museum. They were having what turned out to be a deeply interesting display of Japanese woodcut art. I'd known about Hokusai's famous 'Twenty-Four Views of Mt. Fuji", but had not realized that sets of art around a theme were an accepted genre, just as you might buy a themed book of art today. The faces and portraiture element of the art didn't do much for me, but the designs on the robes were spectacular -- often different patterns on the inside and outside of the same robe, plus another for the underrobe worn beneath it. The backgrounds were also nice, esp. the landscapes and scenery. One striking piece shows Mejii Japan: a scene in a railway station, where all the men had adopted American/European style clothes, while some women had also gone the Victorian bustle dress route but most of the women still wore traditional Japanese clothes. I guess it's always the way of things that women are expected to keep up the old ways of dressing longer than the men do, as is still evident in immigrant communities around us today.
After that, we breezed through their Impressionists exhibit (I love Impressionism, but this wasn't really an eye-catching display and spent the rest of our time in their Chihuly room. Glass art is not really my thing, but you have to be impressed by brilliance even in an art form that doesn't speak to you personally. They had an interesting documentary about Chihuly playing in one corner so you cd see his team at work (ironically enough, because of injuries Chihuly himself can't actually blow or spin glass himself anymore, so all the pieces are made under his direction by his team).

After that, we stopped for one more non-Atkins dinner out, then came on home and wound down for the evening. A good week-end. Tomorrow, it's long walks and eggs for breakfast as we get back to the diet.
--JDR
*well, not really, but they kinda felt like it, especially during those last few bites. Did I mention that this was a non-Atkins/Feast day?**see above re. feast day***ibid, feast day

Arizona

So, we'd been thinking, a few months back, about how the SouthWest (which we mainly know from Tony Hillerman novels) is one part of the country neither of us has ever visited. And there's a lot of interesting, indeed spectacular, things to see in that area that wd make it well worth a visit.
Then came the Juan Crow laws, a sudden outpouring of anti-immigrant rhetoric, and a string of racist incidents that made us decide that if we did go to the Southwest sometime in the next few years, it wouldn't be to Arizona -- more likely New Mexico, which shares a lot of the same problems but hasn't become unhinged in facing them.
States do go through crazy seasons: McCain & Brewer's Arizona, George Wallace's Alabama, John Brown's Kansas, John C. Calhoun's South Carolina. That's not to overlook the decent, sane, honorable people who live there during such times; it's just to recognize that they're not in control of events. And this current spate is not altogether unprecedented in the state's history -- people tend to forget that Barry Goldwater ran on a states' rights platform opposing the pending landmark civil rights bills; his strongest support in the 1964 election came from white supremacists in the Deep South, which provided him with 90% of his electoral votes. Now there's been another upsurge and, like the local sheriff said, Arizona has become "a Mecca for prejudice and bigotry".
So, while the news this weekend of attempted Congressional assassination, which included the murder of a federal judge and nine-year-old-girl, is shocking, it's not surprising. Hate speech has its consequences.* Or, to put it another way,
"Guns don't kill people: People with guns kill people."
--JDR
current audiobook: Acts of the Apostlescurrent book: TROY & HOMER [still!]current project: "Macpherson & Tolkien: A Tale of Two Legendariums" [Kalamazoo paper]
----------------------------*The Wife Says:Anyone who doubts that words have consequences should consider the effect of calling the estate tax a "death tax".
Or, in the wise words of John Stewart, our national court jester:"Take it down a notch for America"

A Tolkienian Puzzle

So, I've recently been thinking about some of the twists and turns that went into the creation of Tolkien's legendarium, and I've just about decided that the strangest of all is Tolkien's abandonment of the Lost Tales for the Long Lays. That is, not that he left the Lost Tales unfinished (this, alas, would prove to be characteristically Tolkienian) but his shift to an altogether different genre, that of narrative verse, to replace the prose tales.
While Christopher Tolkien's work through the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series does a brilliant job of explicating all the various stages and how the multitude of texts relate to each other, the why must always be more allusive. Had Tolkien first written the Lost Tales in verse and then adapted them into prose, he would have been more closely following what I see as his primary model for THE BOOK OF LOST TALES, Wm Morris's THE EARTHLY PARADISE.
Each author has to follow his own muse, I suppose, and what a writer writes, and in what sequence, is often a complex interplay of internal and external forces. But while the other shifts in focus and genre make sense to me as I retrace Tolkien's career, this one doesn't. I can think up a lot of possible explanations, but none that really seem to ring true. So, for now, file this under "pondering". One day a little lightbulb may suddenly light up and all the pieces may fall plausibly into place, or this may remain one of those "Why? Because!" imponderables. I guess we'll see (or not, as the case may be).
--JDRtoday's music: "The Tourist" by Gerry Rafferty (dec'd.) [alas, not available on i-tunes]today's audiobook: The Gospel of John

Censoring Twain

So, I recently saw a news story about a new bowdlerized edition of Mark Twain's classic THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN that's just out. Why would anyone censor what's widely considered the single greatest American novel? Because in portraying racists, like Pap Finn, Twain lets them rant and reveal their shortcomings out of their own mouths. Which means that some of the things his villains say are (and are meant to be) deeply offensive, as is the language they say it in. That those characters say such things, and in such language, is meant to demean them and undercut their position. But inevitably this means children that read the novel get exposed to some rough stuff. The new editor's solution? Remove the N-word and replace it with "slave" or some similar elocution throughout. Leaving aside the more-politically-correct-than-thou response of some who even object to the use of slave (they feel it's more respectful to say "enslaved person" -- as if Twain meant ignorant bigots to sound respectful!), I see their point but don't think bowdlerizing is the solution.
What I'd suggest is to follow the practice of Twain's own time. Twain was very fond of using a favorite profanity which cdn't be printed in books and papers in his day and so was indicated by an initial followed by a dash: d---.* Why not replace the offensive word in HUCK FINN with N+dash, just as news reports do as standard modern practice? Maybe someday we'd actually get to the point where a reader might genuinely not know what word this stood for. And that would be a happy day.
Even better would be to leave the text alone. If we're to assume that readers Huck's own age can't handle the use of racist language, wait until they're a little older to let them have the real book, not some watered-down version that distorts the reality the author was attempting to convey. Racism was ugly and to neutralize the ugliness of his portrayal of it distorts the picture. Twain famously maintained that the importance of using just the right word was the difference between lightning and a lightning bug; he deserves better than to be abandoned to the Bowdlers of the world.
--JDR
*this particular taboo was not broken until a half-century or so after HUCK FINN, in Clark Gable's closing line in GONE WITH THE WIND.

.....................The Day's Canto (Canto 5)
. . . on the barb of time.The fire? always, and the vision always,Ear dull, perhaps, with the vision, flittingAnd fading at will . . .
--Ezra Pound [circa 1930]
UPDATE (Friday Jan. 7th)I've turned off the comments, since several of the posters used the very word I'd carefully avoided. I'm simply not comfortable having what is, after all, a racist slur included in anything that has my name attached to, like this blog, whatever the context. I apologize to the posters, who to a man were thoughtful and well-informed; I hope they'll repeat their points on their own blogs, which I'd happily link to from here.
Also, after I'd posted, it occurred to me that I'd wound up agreeing with Tolkien's point of view, which probably won't surprise anyone who knows me. When discussing in OFS whether some of the more disturbing of the Brothers Grimm's tale shd be re-written to avoid exposing children to things like cannibalism, parents murdering their own children, & the like, Tolkien can down firmly on the side of no: keep the tales as they are, and if they're too strong for today's audience then hold them back until they're ready for them (cf. p. 48 of the Fleiger-Anderson edition, esp. the footnote at the bottom of the page). --JDR 1/7-11.

Blackbird Dying in the Dead of Night

So, recently I've been following the weird news out of Arkansas: thousands of red-winged blackbirds plummeting from the sky in Beebe, not far from Searcy, between Little Rock and Jonesburo. It's apparently co-incidental that the day before there'd been a massive fish-kill on the Arkansas River, since that was all the way over on the far side of the state, or that the next day there was a smaller similar sudden death (amounting to several hundred) of red-wing blackbirds, grackles, and starlings in SE Louisiana (down near Baton Rouge). So far the various explanations have been singularly lacking in plausibility -- so much so that you can actually hear the skepticism in the NPR reporter's voice (a rare thing in itself) when the Arkansas official explains that birds drop dead all the time from "stress". Here's the initial story:
#1: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2011/01/04/132621511/arkansas-mysteries-why-did-thousands-of-fish-and-birds-suddenly-die
And here's a follow-up:#2: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=132619466
--JDR

Mannin Veen

So, writing up my post about Breton music got me thinking about some other Celtic music, and in particular my favorite Manx music, an old folktune we played in band years ago, called Mannin Veen. I tried a few years back to find this, without success, but this time I found it pretty quickly -- suggesting that either there's a lot more available online now than just a few years ago, or that search engines have improved, or that I simply guessed better on how to spell the name this time around.
It turns out that what I liked so much when we played it in band is a 'tone poem'* that adapts four old Manx folksongs: "The Good Old Way", "The Manx Fiddler", "Sweet Water on the Common", and "The Harvest of the Sea". The tone poem compilation/orchestration is by Haydn Wood, a once-popular composer in the earlier parts of the twentieth century, and dates from as long ago as 1933 (and hence was already more than forty years old when the Magnolia High School Band tackled it).
The question now becomes, how to get it? Itunes has several versions available, but one is the Vaughn Williams piece and the others are somewhat syrupy performances. One online site ("The Sheet-Music-Store") has the sheet music available, but only if you buy the entire band score (all thirty-two parts); there doesn't seem to be a way of getting just, say, the clarinet part or the master (band director's) score. ArkivMusic.com, an invaluable source for out-of-the-way classical music (e.g., Joseph Holbrooke) has a recording of it on one cd, but again their version errs towards the softly symphonic.
A much better idea of what the piece should sound like comes from various entries on you-tube; here's the one that I thought sounds the best:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUUGgeoN0uY
So, now I've found it again, but the search for a good recording I can put on my i-Pod or play on the stereo will continue for a while.
--John R.
current audiobook: The Gospel According to Luke.current book: TROY AND HOMER


*not to be confused with the choral piece of the same name by Vaughn Wms

Lord Nann

So, some days you just can't find a Breton melody.
Last year, as part of my Kalamazoo paper, I did some work on Tolkien's "The Lay of Aotrou & Itroun", his reworking of the traditional Breton ballad Aotrou Nann hag ar Gorrigan ("Lord Nann and the Corrigan"), which comes from Vicomte Hersart de la Villemarque's BARZAZ-BREIZ. One of the things I found interesting was that in the first English translation of Villemarque's book, by Tom Tyler,* Tyler's wife Laura (a talented composer in her own right) had included as an Appendix to the book as a whole a page of sheet music for most of the songs contained therein, including "Aotrou Nann (The Lord Nann)" (p. 222).
Unfortunately, I've never been one who could hear music just by looking at the score: I have to actually play it to find out what it sounds like. And being woefully out of practice on the clarinet (my embouchure is shot), and without access to a piano, meant that I still don't know what the original tune to this piece sounded like.
That's when I found a reference to a French edition of the book (BARZAZ BREIZ: CHANTS POPULARIES DE LA BRETAGNE), which came with a cd of people performing the original songs. Accordingly, I ordered this -- only to find when it arrived from France that the accompanying cd, while it covers a dozen pieces, didn't actually include the one I was looking for.** Alas.
So here's a query for folks: does anyone out there have, or know where I could find, a recording of "Lord Nann" in the original Breton?
Oh, and Happy Tolkien's Birthday, everybody
--John R.

..............................*better known today as an early editor of PUNCH and the author of the play OUR AMERICAN COUSINS, which Lincoln was watching when he was shot.
**it's still well worth having, of course, since it does include sheet music for twelve bars of the "Aotrou Nann hag ar Gorrigan" melody in the back (p. 536), which shows that Laura Tyler adapted the melody slightly to match the English translation.