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What Are You Reading / Reviews - January thru June 2024
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Edward Wilson-Lee,
The Catalogue of Shipwrecked Books: Christopher Columbus, His Son, and the Quest to Build the World's Greatest Library
[2018] 401 pagesThis is essentially a biography of Christopher Columbus' natural son, Hernando Colón. While everyone knows something about his father and his discovery of America, Hernando's important (and less ambivalent) accomplishments are less well known; I had never heard of him until I accidentally found this book in a group of weeded books being sold by the library.
Hernando accompanied his father, at the age of thirteen, on his Fourth and last voyage to the New World. On the voyage, which ended in their being shipwrecked for two years on the island of Jamaica in very trying circumstances after the mutiny of most of the crew, Hernando discoveried the variation of the Earth's magnetic field (Columbus, on the other hand, thought that the change in the direction of the compass was due to the Earth being pear-shaped around the "Earthly Paradise" which he expected to find, so that the direction of North was actually different) and concluded on the basis of anatomical observation that the manatee was a mammal and not a fish (Columbus thought they were "sirens" and was disappointed that they were not more human-like). On his return to Spain, Hernando began many other projects, including a proposal for circumnavigating the globe (which he was perhaps fortunately not allowed to carry out, but was eventually carried out by Magellan,) a topographical survey of Spain which was one of the first examples of a collective scientific enterprise (eventually shut down for political reasons by the Emperor Charles), a more accurate chart of the Atlantic and the Caribbean, and a new dictionary of Latin to replace those of the middle ages (a massive work which never got past the letter "b").
His most important project, however, was a life-long quest to amass the world's largest private library — and unlike his father's visionary, not to say mad, projects for converting the Indians, reconquering Jerusalem, and by fulfilling prophecies provoking the end of the world, Hernando's vision was successful: by the end of his life he had about 15,000 books, which is about the same number as my own personal library but was by far the largest in Europe at the time. Unlike any existing library, he included not only Christian and classical works, but books in all languages, including "ephemeral" works such as pamphlets, posters and ballads, as well as a large collection of prints and printed music; also unlike other libraries of the time he preferred to collect printed books rather than manuscripts. Hernando's library was the first to have walls of bookshelves with the books arranged vertically rather than piled horizontally, and with call numbers on the spines. He had a mania for lists, which resulted in his advances in cataloguing; in addition to catalogues by author and by title, he was the first to develop a subject catalogue The Book of Materials, and to give descriptions of books in what he called The Book of Epitomes. His plan for his own tomb included the Columbus coat of arms supported by four pillars, representing the four catalogues of his library by author, title, subject, and description. He also made another catalogue on separate pieces of paper which could be reorganized for whatever purpose was needed, the ancestor of the card catalogues which those of us who used libraries before the computer revolution are familiar with.
At his death, he left the library to his nephew Luis, who had no interest in it and sold it to the Cathedral of Seville; much of the collection was soon destroyed by the Inquisition as heretical, and much more was sold or allowed to decay, before the twentieth=century historians realized its value and took action to preserve it. Today less than half, around 6,000 books, remain in the Columbina collection at the Cathedral. Many of the books listed in the catalogues (the Book of Epitomes no longer exists), especially the more ephemeral works, have been totally lost, and we only know of them from Hernando's lists.
Toward the end of his life, he also wrote a biography of his father; it was sold to an Italian publisher by Luis, and while the original is lost, the Italian translation was printed and became the basis for the later legend of Columbus; Hernando left out the supernatural visions, and the project for enslaving the Indians, which we know from Columbus' own writings. Much of our information about the voyages are derived from the excerpts of Columbus' logs in Hernando's book; the originals have been lost.
This is one of the most interesting books I have read in what is already for me a year of interesting reading.
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The Starlite Drive-In – Marjorie Reynolds – 3.5***
The discovery of human bones when developers begin demolishing the old Starlite Drive-In site takes Callie Anne Benton back to her childhood. She was twelve the summer of 1956, when she experienced first love and began to understand the complexities of adult relationships. A great coming-of-age story that captivated me from beginning to end.
LINK to my full review
Ananda Devi,
Pagli
[2001] 157 pages [in French]The second novel I have read in the past year by 2024 Neustadt Prize winner Ananda Devi, Pagli is much more experimental than Le Voile de Draupadi. It is a story of a forbidden love, but even that is perhaps telling too much; any summary of the plot, even the few lines on the back cover, is a spoiler, given the style of the novel. It opens in the first person in stream-of-consciousness fashion (or perhaps I should say second person, since it is addressed to the absent love) and the first of the short chapters (Nuit/Lanwit — the chapters are all named both in French and in the local Creole) reminded me of the opening of Peter Handke's early novel Die Hornissen, giving us much information but not what we need to know to follow what is happening. In particular, we do not learn who the character is (only that the others have given the character the nickname "Pagli", the fool), whether it is a man or a woman, or why he or she is locked up (by whom?) and threatened with execution or commitment to an asylum. In the second chapter, someone (the same character? We aren't sure) is walking down a road, we don't know from where or to where, or whether it is after the first chapter or at the same time or before, and then we are suddenly in a flashback where the character is coming to "The Ceremony" and sees a woman in a red dress under a tree in the rain, whom we learn is called Mitsy. In the third chapter, the character is living as an evident pariah in a luxurious home that resembles a wedding cake, and then we are back in Mitsy's hut waiting for her sailor husband to come home, and from one paragraph to the next we are launched into another flashback to "The Re-encounter". And so forth; gradually we do piece together who is who and what is going on.
The novel is almost an anthology of every experimental device in twentieth-century fiction; in addition to the stream-of-consciousness throughout the book, and the ambiguous and non-linear chronology, there are chapters which seem like pure surrealism, and others with elements of magical realism, including a supernatural rain which reminded me of the end of Cien Años de Soledad and seems to have a similar function. Much of the dialogue is in Creole, although most is preceded or followed by a paraphrase in French. The setting is the village of Terre Rouge/Ter ruz, evidently on L'Isle Maurice (Mauritius) although that is never said explicitly. An important role is played by les mofines/bann mofinn, a word which is not in any of my French dictionaries; the first time they were mentioned I assumed from the description that they were a type of bird, but it turned out later that they were women, "guardians of purity" who were a sort of self-appointed vice squad. Maybe that's another spoiler, although it is on the back cover. The book, like the earlier one, gives an idea of the mores and the position of women in the Hindu subculture of Mauritius and is a good read for those who like non-traditional writing.
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The Bear’s Embrace – Patricia Van Tighem – 4****
While hiking in the Canadian wilderness, Patricia and her husband were attacked by a grizzly bear. This is Patricia’s memoir of the years of reconstructive surgery and depression (PTSD) she suffered following that incident. I found this gripping and interesting, a tale of survival, courage and triumph. But I was not prepared for the severity of mental health issues she would suffer as a result of the attack.
LINK to my full review
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Fat Chance, Charlie Vega – Crystal Maldonado – 4****
This is a wonderful coming-of-age story that deals with body image, friendship, parent/child relationships, and societal expectations. Charlie is a strong young woman, mostly sure of herself, though plagued with self-doubt. Still, she’s smart, funny, kind, loyal and determined. I liked how Maldonado had the teens deal with expectations, whether those of friends, each other, parents, teachers, or their own. And I really liked how Charlie found a way to shine and show her considerable talent.
LINK to my full review
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The Personal Librarian – Marie Benedict & Victoria Christopher Murray – 3***
As she has done with other women “lost in history,” Benedict shines a light on a little-recognized woman who had enormous influence on American culture. Belle da Costa Greene, a Black woman who passed as white to work as J P Morgan’s personal librarian. It’s an interesting history lesson and well told, if somewhat repetitive.
LINK to my full review
Ananda Devi,
Soupir
[2002] 225 pages [in French]Devi's sixth novel and the third I have read, Soupir is set on the smaller and less developed Isle de Rodrigues, an outlier near her native Mauritius, which also figures in a novel by the other Mauritian author I have read, J.M.G. LeClézio. It is the story of a group who leave the city (Port Mathurin) to settle on a barren hillside, which is called Soupir (to sigh), hoping to become rich by cultivating ganga. The novel is told by one of the group, Patrice L'Éclairé; each of the short chapters is about one or more individuals in the group. There are also a few ghosts. The style is somewhat experimental but much less so than in Pagli, which was published a year earlier. The book focuses on violence, and has an (unclear) connection with the history of slavery. The psychology is rather unconvincing, and this one just didn't work for me.
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The Tuscan Child – Rhys Bowen – 3***
Bowen uses the ubiquitous dual timeline to tell this story that spans three decades: 1944 to 1973. Joanna finds some papers among her late father’s effects that indicate he had a love affair with a woman in Italy while serving as an RAF pilot in WW2. Joanna feels compelled to travel to the area where her father’s plane went down to find his lost love, Sofia, and to get answers to what really happened during the war. This was a fun, fast read with some intrigue to go along with the romance. And, I loved all the references to food!
LINK to my full review
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One Italian Summer – Rebecca Serle – 3***
Katy has always been very close to her mother, Carol, and when her mother dies Katy is left feeling alone, abandoned and lost. At her husband’s suggestion, Katy decides to take the trip to Italy she and Carol had planned. I was fine with this story at the outset, though I thought Katy was very immature for a woman who is thirty. It held my attention, and it was a relatively fast read. But I’m not sure I’d recommend it.
LINK to my full review
Jon Fosse,
Plays Three
[2002, Eng. tr. 2004] 400 pagesThis collection contains the next five plays by current Nobel winner Jon Fosse (I've previously read Plays One and Plays Two, and plan to read four, five and six before the end of the year. The style and concerns are much the same as in the earlier volumes.
Mother and Child (Mor og barn, [1997]) is a dialogue between a mother who has concentrated on a career and her alienated Catholic son, and is probably the most conservative thing I have read in several years.
Sleep My Baby Sleep (Sov du vesle barnet mitt, [2001]) is a very short play which is rather difficult to understand, with three unnamed persons in some sort of afterlife.
Afternoon (Ettermiddag, [2000])is a longer play about relationships and lack of communication.
Beautiful (Vakkert, [2001] is the longest play in the book and the only one divided into acts. It is about a couple who visit the husband's childhood home and mother, and meet an old childhood friend; there are hints of past secrets which are never fully explained, and there is also a developing relationship between the couple's daughter and a young man from the local community.
Death Variations (Dedsvariasjonar, [2002]) is another long and somewhat obscure play about a divorced couple and their daughter who has just died; it uses the technique of having the couple appear both as young and old on stage at the same time but not interacting; there is a character called "the Friend" who may represent Death.
All five were interesting.
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Surely You Can’t Be Serious – David Zucker, Jim Abrahams & Jerry Zucker – 3***
Subtitle: The True Story of Airplane! This is the creators’ memoir of how they came to think of the parody, and their (often naïve) efforts to get it written, produced, cast, made and distributed. Yes, I saw the surprise comedy blockbuster movie when it first came out. I remember little about it. I laughed and thought some bits were hilarious, but I also thought that much of the humor was juvenile and typical of middle-school boys.
LINK to my full review
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Vanderbilt – Anderson Cooper & Katherine Howe – 4****
Subtitle: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty. Cooper, the son of “the last Vanderbilt” (Gloria Vanderbilt), and a trained journalist, looks at the family legacy in this work of nonfiction. On the whole, it held my attention, and I learned a few tidbits I hadn’t previously come across.
LINK to my full review
Maryse Condé,
Les derniers rois mages
[1992] 311 pages [Kindle, Open Library, in French]The eighth novel I have read by Condé, Les derniers rois mages describes one day, a December 10th, about the time the novel was written, in the life of a middle-aged man named Spero, living in Charleston, South Carolina. We learn that he is an unsuccessful artist, originally from Guadaloupe, who came to Charleston decades before with his wife, Debbie, a liberal academic type from an old petty-bourgeois Charleston Black family, the Middletons, and from whom he is now rather alienated; the couple had one daughter, Anita, who left to work as a development specialist in Africa and whom they have not heard from in two years. This is however only the framework; the actual history is told mostly in memories, although they are often complemented by seemingly objective passages by an omniscient narrator.
The history of Spero's family begins at the end of the nineteenth century, with "the ancestor", a king of Dahomey who has been deposed by the French and sent into exile in Martinique, where he fathers Spero's grandfather, Djeré, with a servant, Hosannah. When he is allowed by the French to return to Africa, though not to his own country, he leaves Hosannah and Djeré behind. Hosannah subsequently marries Romulus, a man from Guadaloupe, and moves to that island; after Romulus is killed in a brawl, the family is left in poverty. Djeré has a son Justin, who is the father of Spero. Djeré, Justin, and initially Spero, are obsessed with their "royal" ancestry, commemorating the death of the ancestor every December 10th, and neither Djeré nor Justin condescend to have any actual occupations, living on the work of their wives. They are mocked by their neighbors as the "rois mages", the appellation for the three kings of the Christmas story. Spero has a bit more ambition, and manages to go to France to study art, where he becomes disillusioned with the story of the "ancestor". On his return, he sells his paintings to tourists in the marketplace, where he meets Debbie, who is on a cruise as a graduation present from her parents. They quickly get married and he goes to live in Charleston.
This history alternates with Spero's own realizations about his life and his relationship to Debbie and Anita. The novel also comments on the views of Debbie about the civil rights movement and other political events from the outside perspective of Spero. Near the end there is also an element of magical realism, but the novel is primarily realist in style. The novel is interesting and well-written but not one of Condé's best.
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The Covenant of Water – Abraham Verghese – 5*****
An epic tale of one family in Kerala, India, over nearly eight decades, spanning the time frame from 1900 to 1977. Gosh, but Verghese can write! There is a lot of drama in this decades-long story. Verghese touches on classicism, colonialism, racism and sexism. But this is NOT an unhappy book. The family relationships are loving and tender. And that ending! My heart swelled.
LINK to my full review
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Ms Demeanor – Elinor Lipman – 3***
It begins when attorney Jane Morgan is spotted by a nosy neighbor with binoculars engaging in consensual sex on her rooftop patio. Soon she’s sentenced to six months of house confinement. And then she discovers there is another resident of her building also wearing an ankle monitor. Cute, modern, rom-com. I love Lipman’s sense of humor.
LINK to my full review
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Ruddy Gore - Kerry Greenwood – 3***
Book number seven in the delightful Phryne Fisher series of cozy mysteries set in 1920s Melbourne, Australia. I like Phryne as a character. She is her own woman and quite modern in her thinking. She’s independent, curious, observant and can take care of herself. She’s also beautiful and wealthy. And she quite enjoys time in the bedroom with a gentleman. Brava, Phryne!
LINK to my full review
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First Gen – Alejandra Campoverdi– 3***
Campoverdi’s memoir details her experiences and that of her family, particularly the women. From growing up poor in a single-parent household with her grandmother, three aunts, and mother, the author writes about her path to success as a “First and only.” Her story is an interesting one, but I didn’t really identify with her experiences, and felt she was not fully identifying the causes of her feelings of inadequacy.
LINK to my full review
Jean-Paul Sartre,
What Is Literature
[1948, Eng. tr. 1949] 205 pages Sartre's What Is Literature, originally written in French as Qu'est-ce que la littérature?, is a collection of four long connected essays. Each essay is about twice the length of the preceding one. The first two at least, "What is Writing?" and "Why Write?", were first published in Sartre's journal Les Temps Modernes and in his collection Situations II; I'm not sure of the origins of the two last and longer ones, "For Whom Does One Write?" and "The Situation of the Writer in 1947". Taken together, they are a defense of his thesis of "engaged literature".
In the first essay, he is concerned with defining his theme. He attempts to distinguish prose literature from the other arts and from poetry. Much that he says here is questionable; he is neither an artist nor a poet, and I think at most it applies only to a certain type of contemporary French poetry. (He admits later that his discussion of literature is only meant to be about French literature.) His main point is that prose literature is written in language, which is a form of communication which signifies meanings by signs.
The second essay, "Why Write?", could have had the title of the first, since it is concerned with the nature of writing. He distinguishes between the content and the style, and maintains against certain French writers (he cites specifically Gide) that the content is primary and the style is merely an adornment, although it gives the work its aesthetic value; he considers the aesthetic value, however, only as an "extra", while the content is central. This essay contains much of interest, although it is expressed in abstract language based on his philosophy of "existentialism" (basically an abstract way of saying we should deal with the concrete rather than the abstract). He defines the work of literature as an appeal from the freedom of the writer to the freedom of the reader. What is interesting is his argument that the writer "discloses" the world to the reader, but the reader creates the work by his or her interpretation, giving the signs their signification based on his or her own experiences.
The third essay, "For Whom Does One Write?" distinguishes between the "real" readers and the "ideal" or "virtual" readers; that is between those who would really read the book and those who might but usually would not; he takes Richard Wright as an example, whose "real" readers would be "middle-class" Blacks and liberal whites, but whose "virtual" readers would include working-class individuals of all races, Europeans, and even the occasional white racist. This is an idea which has been taken further by other writers. The majority of the essay is devoted to a history of (French) literature and its relationship to the class structure of society at various times. The earlier history is not particularly accurate; he is no historian, and claims for example that late mediaeval literature is written by "clerks" to justify the ideology of the absolute monarchy, the feudal nobles and the Church — obviously not realizing that the ideology of the absolute, "divine-right" monarchy was developed in opposition to the ideology of the Church and the feudal nobility. As he approaches modern times, his account becomes somewhat better, but he interprets the dependence of the literature on the economic substructure in a very direct and "undialectical" way, and ignores the fact that there is also a dialectic within the superstructure. This is also due in part to his underestimation of style. He is best when he reaches the twentieth century, although he polemicizes too much against the surrealists, whose motivations he doesn't seem to really understand.
The last and longest essay, "The Situation of the Writer in 1947", is the real point of the book. He gives a good explanation of anti-revolutionary Stalinist politics and the positions of the French Communist Party, although at the same time he tries to justify them as necessary given the isolation of the USSR by the failure of the Revolution to spread; he doesn't truly break with Stalinism until after the Hungarian Revolt of 1956. Based on this, he describes the plight of official Communist writers, again very well. But apart from this, and his polemics against surrealism, apart from the negative evaluations of various types of writing, what is his positive recommendation? Not very much, actually; all I can make out is that writers should present various viewpoints and leave it to the reader to decide what is reality — certainly one of the techniques most used by later modernist and post-modernist novelists, but hardly a guarantee of engaged writing as subsequent history has shown.
Unfortunately, the only novel he wrote after this was the third novel of a trilogy published the next year, and his further literary output was only a few plays, so we cannot look to his own work to explain what he thought the way forward should be. The book is worth reading, but seems rather dated after three quarters of a century.
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Flying Solo – Linda Holmes – 3***
This was a fun rom-com / mystery / heist caper! Laurie comes back to her Maine hometown to clear out her great-aunt Dot’s home. When she finds a wooden duck decoy in a cedar chest, she can’t help but wonder why Dot would keep such an item. Her efforts to solve the mystery of Dot’s past lead to a con job, a heist, and a counter-con job. And she begins to rethink her “I’m a loner” philosophy as she reconnects with her friends from high school.
LINK to my full review
Roland Barthes,
Writing Degree Zero
[1953, Eng. tr. 1967] 88 pagesAccording to the introduction by Susan Sontag to the English version, Writing Degree Zero was written in response to the previous book I read, Jean-Paul Sartre's What Is Literature; in fact, I was starting to read this book and decided after reading the introduction to read that first. I think she is right that Barthes is in fact responding to Sartre, although his book is never actually mentioned. Both books begin with a chapter titled "What is Writing?". Unfortunately, Barthes is even more abstract (though in the sense of general metaphors rather than philosophical definitions) and much less clear than Sartre. According to Sontag, the essential difference between the two is that Sartre distinguishes between language, the historically determined system of signs which carries the content, and style, which is an ornament, while Barthes makes a threefold distinction of language, style, and écriture, which the translators represent by "writing" or "mode of writing".
Barthes agrees that language is historical, though he says it is "not so much a stock of materials as a horizon, which implies both a boundary and perspective"; that it is "not the locus of a social commitment" but "the undivided property of men, not of writers", and in the last analysis he considers it something negative, the limit of what can be said. I found this somewhat confusing, in that I don't think Sartre, or anyone else, sees language as such as the locus of social commitment, but rather that the social content has to be expressed in language if it is to be understood at all.
My real confusion however is what he means by "style" and "mode of writing". Sartre is using the word "style" to mean what most people mean by it, the formal properties of a work. We can divide the usual meanings of the word into two senses, the personal idiosyncrasies of an author, as when we talk about the style of Moliére or the style of Victor Hugo, or the features common to the writers of a period, as when we talk about Romanticism, Realism, Naturalism, Modernism, Surrealism and so forth as "styles". Barthes says, "Style is almost beyond [Literature]: imagery, delivery, vocabulary spring from the body and the past of the writer and gradually become the very reflexes of his art. Thus under the name of style a self-sufficient language is evolved which has it roots only in the depths of the author's personal and secret mythology, that subnature of expression where the first coition of the great verbal themes of his existence come to be installed. . . . Its frame of reference is biological or biographical, not historical: it is the writer's 'thing', his glory and his prison, it is his solitude. Indifferent to society and transparent to it, a closed personal process, it is in no way the product of a choice or of a reflection on Literature." He continues in this vein for a couple of pages, very full of metaphor but not really defining what he means, but I think he is talking about the first sense, the individual, personal style of a writer.
What he says about "writing" is that "A language and a style are objects; a mode of writing is a function: it is the relationship between creation and society, the literary language transformed by its social finality, form considered as a human intention and thus linked to the great crises of History." This is not very clear to me, but he further explains by an example: "Mérimée and Fénelon, for instance, are separated by linguistic phenomena and contingent features of style, yet they make use of a language charged with the same intentionality, their ideas of form and content share a common framework, they accept the same type of conventions, the same technical reflexes work through both of them. Although separated by a century and a half, they use exactly the same instrument in the same way: an instrument perhaps a little changed in outward appearance, but not at all in the place and manner of its employment. In short, they have the same mode of writing. In contrast, writers who are about contemporaries, Mérimée and Lautreamont, Mallarmé and Céline, Gide and Queneau, Claudel and Camus, who have shared or who share our language at the same stage of historical development use utterly different modes of writing. Everything separates them: tone, delivery, purpose, ethos, and naturalness of expression: the conclusion is that to live at the same time and share the same language is a small matter compared with modes of writing so dissimilar and so sharply defined by their very dissimilarity. These modes of writing, though different, are comparable, because they owe their existence to one identical process, namely the writer's consideration of the social use which he has chosen for his form, and his commitment to this." It seems to me from this (although I'm not sure) that by "mode of writing" he means the second sense, the shared style of a period or a literary "movement". (I am at somewhat of a disadvantage in that both Barthes, and to a lesser extent Sartre, take their examples from late nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century authors, which is a period, especially in French literature, which is a relative gap in my reading, although I have read Mérimée and Camus.) It is a little odd that he uses "delivery" as an attribute of both "style" and "writing".
What is important here is that for Barthes, it is the "mode of writing" or the "form" which is chosen, and represents his commitment to the "social use". However, if this is a correction to Sartre in terms of the verbal analysis, the overall idea is not really that different; even if Sartre doesn't use the term, he is obviously describing the historical development of literature in a similar way. Barthes contradicts Sartre in a number of details: He says "this social arena is by no means that of an actual consumption", where Sartre describes the author as consuming rather than producing, in a rather difficult metaphor. Sartre quotes Gide as saying that style is more important than content; Barthes uses Gide as an example of an author "without style". Both, however, in their socio-economic histories of literature, consider traditional narrative — Barthes uses Literature with a capital L — as "bourgeois" and see the decline in bourgeois ideology reflected in a crisis of language, in attempts to destroy language and traditional Literature. For Barthes, this takes the form of a proliferation of different modes of writing as opposed to the single mode of bourgeois writers of the past. I found it interesting that he identifies the use of the preterite (the passé simple, which is obsolete in the spoken language) and third person narrative as markers of Literature, while present perfect ("passé composé") and present tense, and first person, are attempts at undermining Literature. Barthes in my opinion, probably because of his emphasis on "writing" rather than simply content, is better at understanding the point of some of the modernist styles. His recommendation is even more obscure than Sartre's: a sort of neutral mode he calls the degree zero, which he never really explains, although Sontag connects it with his critical championing of the nouveau roman.
Both books were interesting but I admit when it comes to literary theory I'm a bit out of my depth.
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The Christie Affair – Nina de Gramont – 3.5***
On December 3, 1926, Agatha Christie drove away from her home after an argument with her husband. She would be missing for eleven days. This is a novel about marriage, about motherhood, about love, about grief, about how society punishes those who fail to follow the rules, about forgiveness and justice. De Gramont took the story in a direction I wasn’t expecting, and at first, I was unhappy, but eventually the two parallel stories merge in a fashion that fascinated me.
LINK to my full review
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Royal Blood – Rhys Bowen – 3***
Book number four in the delightful Lady Georgiana Ranoch series of cozy mysteries takes us out of London and to a remote castle in the mountains of Romania for a royal wedding. I like this series. Georgie manages to get herself caught up in all sorts of intrigues. This episode in her life was a little over-the-top, though Georgie, of course, keeps her head and manages to help solve the case. She’s certainly resourceful! An entertaining quick read.
LINK to my full review
Mircea Cărtărescu,
Solenoid
[2015, Eng. tr. 2022] 638 pagesAfter finishing Solenoid, my first impulse was to say, "What did I just read?" It is an understatement to say that this is a rather strange novel. The author, Mircea Cărtărescu, is the first writer I have read who is an ethnic Romanian translated from Romanian. (I express it that way because I have read some novels by Herta Müller, who is also from Romania, but is ethnic German and writes in German.) He is a self-described modernist writer who is well-known in Romania and becoming better known in the West, and has been rumored to have been shortlisted for the Nobel Prize (we'll know in fifty years, unless he wins it); I read this book for my World Literature group on Goodreads, which is working its way through Europe this year.
As with much modernist fiction, a major theme of the novel is literature itself. Ostensibly, the book is a journal kept by the protagonist, a high-school teacher of Romanian language and literature at a run-down school in Bucharest. (Actually, to believe the novel, all of Bucharest is a ruin and was "designed" from the beginning as a ruin to express the condition of humanity; he describes it repeatedly, almost every time he uses the name, as "the saddest city in the world.") The protagonist was an unsuccessful poet; he rejects literature as "fake doors" painted in the "museum of literature." He claims that his journals are not literature, and that they are intended only for himself; at the end he claims they have been burned. He also describes them as an "anti-book". He uses all the techniques for destroying traditional literature, such as nonlinear order, mixing "reality" with dreams, memories of the past and of the future, hallucinations, automatic writing, and so forth — the reader is not always (read almost never) sure at what level we are at, what is "true" or "real". The novel has been described as surrealism and as "body horror"; it begins with talking about lice in his hair and is obsessed with physical functions and with parasites. There are also allusions to the authors who are associated with modernism, especially Kafka and Borges who are obviously influences on the style and occasionally the content. There are also resemblances to writers he doesn't specifically mention; some of the hallucinogenic episodes could be taken right from Naked Lunch, without the excuse of drugs. He shifts tones without warning, mixing colloquial language with arcane and archaic words and technical jargon of the sciences, sometimes (intentionally, I'm sure) misusing them.
In addition to the literary theme, other themes include the fourth dimension (much about Charles Howard Hinton and his extended family) and relativity of perspectives. Symbols constantly reoccur: dentist's offices and dentist's chairs appear in hallucinations and perhaps in reality, and in his childhood memories — perhaps we can attribute their presence in his hallucinations to a traumatic experience he remembers as a child; insects, especially parasites, appear frequently and in unexpected contexts; shifting rooms and corridors; mysterious tunnels and tubes under the city; and of course there are the solenoids of the title, copper coils with mysterious properties — the man he buys his house from tells him he built the solenoid under the house according to a plan from Tesla, but we are told later that there are many solenoids under the city and that they have always been there.
The protagonist claims that he is different, "chosen", and that he is recording his dreams and experiences as "signs" which he is trying to decipher, to find a meaning for his life, and we follow along with him trying to piece together a meaning from the clues we are given. The book is very long and somewhat repetitious, but I couldn't stop reading it, even after I realized (very soon) that the pieces were never going to fit together in any comprehensible meaning, which is itself the meaning, or perhaps not.
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Into Love And Out Again – Elinor Lipman – 3.5***
This is a collection of short stories set in New York City. As the title implies, the focus is on love … falling in love, attraction, heartbreak, excitement, intimacy, falling out of love. This was Lipman’s debut work. I’ve become a fan of hers in the last few years and decided to go back and read some of her earlier works. She writes with wit and tenderness and eyes wide open to her characters’ flaws and gifts.
LINK to my full review
Roman Jakobson,
Fundamentals of Language
[1956] 88 pagesThe next in my mini-project of classic readings in linguistics, this book is actually the first volume of the monograph series Janua Linguarum: Studia Memoriae Nicolai Van Wijk Dedicata. It contains two parts, Fundamentals of Language by Roman Jakobson and Morris Halle, and Two Aspects of Language and Two Types of Aphasic Disturbances by Jakobson.
The first part goes into depth with regard to the minimal oppositions which distinguish phonemes, and uses a terminology which I was not previously acquainted with, so it was rather difficult reading. The second part distinguishes between two types of aphasia and relates them to the two "poles" of language, the metaphoric and the metonymic or similarity and contiguity. Both parts take the theoretical side of linguistics a bit farther than my only actual college course in linguistics.
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The Fortunes of Jaded Women – Carolyn Hyunh – 3***
Mai’s ancestor was cursed by a Vietnamese witch: the women would birth only daughters, never a son. Oh, what a tangled web of melodrama! In general, this is about family – especially an extended family whose members are always in each other’s business. They meddle, fight, make-up, mourn, and celebrate. Ultimately, they come together as a family, rising in unison, ready to conquer the world.
LINK to my full review
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This Time Will Be Different – Misa Sigiura – 3.5***
This is a charming YA novel about family, social justice, friendship and loyalty. There’s also a little romance thrown in. CJ is a pretty mature teen. Although she frequently doubts herself, she usually follows her inner compass and makes solid decisions. Of course, this is a young adult novel, so there is bound to be some of the drama typical in teen life – prom-posals, mean girls, cliques, attractions based strictly on looks, best friends who maybe aren’t anymore.
LINK to my full review
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Rebel – Beverly Jenkins – 3***
This bodice ripper is set in New Orleans during the reconstruction period after the Civil War. It's a typical romance with heaving bosoms, knees made weak by kisses, demure women and strong men who are talented and generous lovers. The action is fast, even if the plot is fairly predictable.
LINK to my full review
Kazuo Ishiguro,
Klara and the Sun
[2021] 303 pagesThe first novel of Ishiguro since he won the Nobel Prize in 2017, Klara and the Sun is more similar to Never Let Me Go than to any of his earlier novels. Both are science-fiction novels set in dystopian technological societies, with important teenage characters which give them somewhat the feel of YA novels, although they are not exclusively for that age group.
The novel is written in the first person from the perspective of Klara, an Artificial Friend, that is an AI android designed to be a companion for a young person (in this case the teenage Josie, who is suffering from a serious and perhaps fatal illness.) We eventually learn that she also has another purpose. The book begins with Klara in the store waiting to be bought by a customer, and in Ishiguro's usual style everything in the first two-thirds of the novel seems somewhat mysterious, as Klara and Josie (and therefore the reader) do not understand much of what is going on.
The novel is very topical today with the advances in AI technology over the past two years. I found it enjoyable, although there were many problems with the plotline that seemed like carelessness on Ishiguro's part; I had to keep reminding myself that he is not a realist writer, and his interests are not in world-building but in the self-delusions that are magnified by our technological progress.
Noam Chomsky,
Syntactic Structures
[1957] 117 pagesI'm still reading the classics of linguistics. Syntactic Structures is one of Chomsky's earliest works and perhaps his most original; this is the book that established transformational grammar as a major trend in linguistics. It is the fourth volume in the Janua Linguarum series, of which I read the first volume last week. Chomsky is concerned with grammar as a device for distinguishing grammatical from ungrammatical sentences, or generating any grammatical utterance without generating any ungrammatical ones (as defined operationally by the behavior of native speakers.) He begins by considering and rejecting two simpler models for grammar, the idea that grammars can be modeled by finite Markov processes (like a Turing Machine, where each state is determined only by the previous state), which he shows is inadequate with examples like either. . .or, if. . .then, etc., and immediate constituent analysis which is similar to traditional grammar.
He then interrupts the argument for a general consideration of the goals of a linguistic theory, which was very interesting from a philosophical viewpoint. After this, he goes on to propose that there is another level distinct from phrase structure which he calls the transformational level; he argues that there are certain "kernel" sentences which are terminal states of the phrase structural level (all simple affirmative declarative sentences) which are then transformed by an ordered series of transformational rules, obligatory or optional. He shows how this simplifies the explanation of things like the passive, interrogations, and negations, and compound expressions. He then gives detailed examples from English. The book is difficult at the beginning; I almost wished that I could have somehow read it backwards, because the earlier chapters make more sense in the light of the later ones.
The transformational approach is certainly a powerful way to consider grammar. It has since been very much modified, in large part by Chomsky himself, but this was the beginning. It is a book that anyone with a serious interest in language should read. I only wish that he had given examples from other languages with grammars very differently structured than English, because he claims that the transformational approach is a universal which should apply to all language grammars.
Short reviews of 20 early English playsFour early English plays [before 1500] 88 pp.
My eighteenth, then seventeenth-century "fill in my gaps" reading project has finally been pushed back to the beginning of the sixteenth century, as I have been reading plays in four anthologies which cover the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. I intended to simply review the four anthologies, but since I have found more plays by several of the same authors on various Internet sites I decided to review the individual plays. Most of the plays, especially the very earliest, including these four, I had read a long time ago, but some were new to me as well.
One of the four anthologies is Arthur F. Kinney's Renaissance Drama: An Anthology of Plays and Entertainments (Second edition, 2005), which begins (after a lengthy introduction and a very useful chronology of the period) with four of the earliest English plays, the Oxford St. George play and three of the "cycle" mystery plays, which are first attested at the beginning of the sixteenth century but undoubtedly are much earlier. The St. George play is a "mumming" play, a short two-page skit which features the dragon-fighting saint, originally a pantomime but with words being added later.
Two of the "cycle" mysteries are from the Townesley or Wakefield cycle, and are among the best and best-known of the mysteries, the Mactatio Abel about Cain and Abel and The Second Shepherd's Play about the birth of Christ, with a comic subplot about a stolen sheep. The third is Noah from the Chester cycle, with a humorous portrayal of Noah's wife.
John Heywood, The Play called the foure PP; a newe and a very mery interlude of a palmer, a pardoner, a potycary, a pedler [ca. 1530] 34 pp.
Another re-read, this was in another of the anthologies, Russell A. Fraser and Norman Rabkin, Drama of the English Renaissance I: the Tudor Period (1976). It is an example of the form called an interlude, designed to be played in the intervals of some other form of entertainment. John Heywood's interludes all take the form of debates, a tradition which goes back to ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia and was very popular in the Middle Ages. In this play, a palmer (pilgrim) and a pardoner (seller of indulgences and relics) debate the relative effectiveness of pilgrimages versus buying indulgences for achieving salvation, while the potycary (apothecary or pharmacist) and the peddler comment. The play is an anticlerical satire on religious hypocrisy and corruption, a popular topic at the time even for Catholic playwrights such as Heywood. (He was part of a family which provided many Catholic martyrs including Sir/Saint Thomas More. He was also the grandfather of the poet John Donne.)
John Heywood, The Mery Play between the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and Neybour Pratte [before 1533] 16 pp.
The first of the plays that were new to me, this was from the Kinney anthology. It is similar in structure and theme to The Foure PP, with the same debate in other words.
Anonymous, The Noble Triumphant Coronation of Queen Anne, Wife unto the Most Noble King Henry the VIII [1533] 10 pp.
From the Kinney anthology, a short description of the pageant for the coronation of Anne Boleyn. There were various stages set up along the route that presented allegorical praises of the Queen, similar to the way the cycle plays were performed. This was one I had not previously read.
William Stevenson, Gammer Gurton’s Needle [betw. 1552 and 1563] (Pub. as by Mr. S., prev. attrib. to John Still) 24 pp.
While the uncertainty as to the date makes it hard to be sure, this may be the oldest extant full-length comedy in English (the other contender is Udall's Ralph Roister-Doister, which I have also read previously). The premise of the farce is simple; Gammer Gurton has lost her needle. A rascal named Hodge, descended from the Vice of the old moralities, convinces her that it was found and kept by her next-door neighbor, and there is a lot of slap-stick action before the needle turns up and Hodge is punished for his deviltry. This was a re-read and from Fraser and Rabkin.
Richard Mulcaster, The Queen Majesty’s Passage through the City of London to Westminster the Day before Her Coronation [1559] 18 pp.
Another pageant description from the Kinney anthology, this describes the entry of Queen Elizabeth I into London for her coronation. The pageant was similar to and undoubtedly modeled on that of her mother.
Thomas Norton and Thomas Sackville, The Tragedie of Gorboduc or Ferrex and Porrex [1561] 20 pp.
An early attempt at writing classical tragedy, this was the first English play in blank verse. It is one of the best of the older plays. It is based on an episode in the legendary British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth. The political subtext is interesting inasmuch as the Puritan Norton and the Anglican aristocrat Sackville had very different opinions on the nature of monarchy. This was a re-read and from Fraser and Rabkin.
George Gascoigne, Supposes [1566] 24 pp.
One of the most classical of the Elizabethan plays, this is a translation of Ariosto's Italian comedy Gli Suppositi, itself modeled on the early Roman comedies of Plautus. Fraser is right in comparing it to Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors, one of the few other plays of the period modeled on Plautus. Both plays are based on mistaken identity and feature comic servants and parasites. It is also important as the first English play entirely in prose. This was a re-read and from Fraser and Rabkin.
Thomas Preston, Cambyses, King of Persia [1569] 23 pp.
A historical play about Cambyses, who is essentially just a generic tyrant, under the influence of Ambidexter, a version of the Vice from the morality plays and the only redeeming feature of what was a poor, if very popular, play. This was a re-read and from Fraser and Rabkin.
Sir Philip Sidney, The Lady of May [1579] 10 pp.
A short rustic skit put on to entertain Queen Elizabeth who was visiting Sidney's estate. It was hardly worthwhile, and adds nothing to the reputation of Sidney, but it could be considered a precursor of the masque. I hadn't read it before; it was in Kinney.
George Peele, The Arraynment of Paris [1581] 21 pp.
George Peele, together with John Lyly and Robert Greene, dominated the theater in the early part of Elizabeth's reign, before the rise of Marlowe and Shakespeare. This was Peele's first play. It was based on the story of the Judgement of Paris which was the cause of the Trojan War; it continues the story by having Juno and Pallas appeal the judgement to the other gods, who appoint Diana to hear the case, and the play ends in a compliment to Queen Elizabeth as combining the beauty of Venus, the Wisdom of Pallas, and the Majesty of Juno. This seems like a rather slight beginning for a playwright who later wrote much better plays. I hadn't read it before; it was in a third anthology, C.F.Tucker Brooke and Nathaniel Burton Paradise's English Drama 1580-1642 (1933).
John Lyly, Sapho and Phao [ca. 1582] 82 pp.
This isn't my misspelling; he spells Sappho with one "p" and it has nothing to do with the poet. Given the uncertainly to the dates, it is unsure whether this or Campaspe was Lyly's first play. As he tells us in the prologue, Lyly intended to write a more refined (some might say precious) comedy than those usual up to the time; but if he eliminates the rough language and slapstick of earlier plays, he unfortunately also eliminates any really dramatic action. The slight plot concerns a plot by Venus to make Sapho, the queen of Syracusa, fall in love with a poor ferryman named Phao whom she transforms into a handsome young man; Venus ends by falling in love with Phaos herself, and trying to undo her former actions, but Cupid is won over by Sapho and makes Phao disdainful of Venus. This rather implausible action ends with Phao leaving Syracusa. Some scholars see political allusions in all of this, so it might have been more interesting to audiences of the time. The only redeeming feature today is the language which is filled with puns and Lyly's "Euphuistic" pseudo-learned metaphors from mythology and natural history. There are also some very long and tedius episodes where Sybylla (the Sybil) gives advice to Phao taken from Ovid's Ars Amatoria. All in all this is of purely historical importance, if that. I had not read it before; it was an extensively annotated edition from an Internet site.
John Lyly, Campaspe (or Alexander and Campaspe) [ca. 1583] 17 pp.
Whether written before or after Sapho and Phao, this is a similar play. The action consists of a love triangle between Alexander the Great, the painter Apelles, and a young woman named Campaspe. There is also some dialogue between various Greek philosophers including Aristotle and Diogenes the Cynic; I can't call it a subplot because there is really no plot. It was a re-read, taken from an old anthology (nineteenth-century; my copy is brittle and literally disintegrating as I read it) called Works of the British Dramatists.
John Lyly, Gallathea [1585] 19 pp.
A somewhat more interesting (if less often anthologized) play by Lyly, which I hadn't read before; it is in the Fraser and Rabkin anthology. The plot is loosely based on a story from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Neptune, angry at the people living around the mouth of the Humber River (between Lincolnshire and Yorkshire), because a Danish army has plundered his temples, sends a sea-monster which must be appeased by the annual sacrifice of the most beautiful virgin in the land. Two beautiful young girls, Gallathea and Phyllida, are disguised by their fathers (shepherds) as boys to avoid the risk of their being sacrificed. They meet and fall in love with each other, each thinking the other is actually a boy. In the end, Neptune relents, and Venus agrees to transform one of the girls into a boy so they can marry. The play combines themes of pastoral with mythology and is written in the usual style of Lyly.
Thomas Kyd, The Spanish Tragedy or Hieronymo is Mad Again [mid-1580s] 49 pp.
One of the most popular and influential of the Elizabethan plays, this was in three of the four anthologies I am working through (Kinney, Fraser and Rabkin, and Brooke and Paradise); it was a re-read for me. It is a revenge tragedy in the style of Seneca's tragedies. Hieronymo's son is murdered, and he pretends to be mad in order to gain his revenge; the play ends with a bloodbath that kills off most of the characters. It influenced much of the later drama including most obviously Shakespeare's Hamlet.
Christopher Marlowe, The First Part of Tamburlaine the Great [ca. 1587] 30 pp.
My reading/re-reading of early English drama has finally reached Marlowe, the high-point before Shakespeare. I had previously (long ago) read all of Marlowe's works, so this is a re-read. It is one of the first good examples of the historical chronicle play, and of blank verse in drama. It presents the rise of Tamburlaine, a (historical) conqueror who rose from obscurity to rule much of Western Asia at the end of the fourteenth century; it turns largely on an (unhistorical) love story, and emphasizes the role of Tamburlaine as a tyrant, often in the bombastic style of the mystery play Herods. This was in both the Fraser and Rabkin and Brooke and Paradise anthologies.
Christopher Marlowe, The Second Part of Tamburlaine the Great [ca. 1587-1588] 28 pp.
The sequel, obviously, to the previous play, this takes the action to the final defeat and death of Tamburlaine (historically in 1405). It was in Fraser and Rabkin.
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Mrs Jeffries On the Ball – Emily Brightwell – 3***
Book number five in the Victorian Mystery series starring Inspector Gerald Witherspoon and his very capable housekeeper, Mrs Jeffries. Victorian London is certainly a hotbed of crime but Mrs Jeffries and her staff are more than up to the task of ferreting out the information to make the Inspector look good when he solves the murder.
LINK to my full review
John Lyly,
Endymion, The Man in the Moone
[1588] 30 pagesLyly's most complicated play, this tells the story from Greek mythology of Endymion, although Lyly changes it considerably. Endymion falls in love with the Moon (Cynthia, also described as a queen and undoubtedly in part a symbol for Queen Elizabeth); his former lover, Tellus, becomes jealous and hires the witch, Dipsas, to enchant him, which causes him to fall into a coma. His loyal servant, Eumenides, eventually finds a way to wake him; Tellus, confined to a prison, suborns her jailor, Corsites, to attempt to hide Endymion's body. There are many other characters who play minor roles. In the end, there is a happy ending for everyone, including the witch who is reunited with her husband. The fairy-tale chronology is somewhat confusing but this is one of the most entertaining of Lyly's plays. A re-read for me, it was in the Brooke and Paradise anthology.
E.W. Bovill,
The Battle of Alcazar: An Account of the Defeat of Don Sebastian of Portugal at El-Ksar el-Kebir
[1921] 198 pagesThis was a popular account of a part of history I hadn't previously read anything about. It begins with a description (about 40% of the book) of the "great power" politics of the period, the civil war in Morocco between Mohammed Mulai and Abdul el-Malek, and the events leading up to King Sebastian's invasion of Morocco ostensibly to restore Mulai to the throne but actually with the intent of conquering Morocco. About half the book is then devoted to the campaign of Sebastian, his disastrous decision to attack Larache by land on in inland route and the actual battle at El-Ksar (Alcazar) on August 4, 1578. It then finishes up (about 10%) with the immediate consequences of the battle up to the death of Abdul el-Malek's successor, Ahmed el-Mansur.
According to Bovill's account, the young King Sebastian was fanatical and irresponsible, insisting on a campaign which was hopeless from the beginning against the advice of his uncle Philip II of Spain and all his more responsible counselors and military men. The Portuguese forces, apart from a small standing army, and some nobles more interested in show than fighting, were largely unwilling conscripts, with no military experience and little training; they were supplemented by mercenaries from the Netherlands and small contingents from Spain and the Papal forces, who were at odds with each other from the beginning. They brought with them a large contingent of non-combatants such as the king's household, the nobles wives, children, and servants, as well as many priests, altogether probably equaling the number of soldiers, with carriages and luxury items. El-Malek's forces were more numerous and better trained, although of doubtful loyalty, and mostly cavalry; he also had more artillery. The Portuguese forces were trapped between two rivers, with only a narrow ford as a possible retreat (as it turned out it was impassible at high tide.) Only a hundred or so of the Portuguese managed to escape; the rest were killed (including King Sebastian and Mulai) or captured.
The result of the battle was that the Portuguese nobility was decimated and the country became for decades a part of Spain. El-Malek himself came to the battle extremely ill (poisoned by the Turks) and died on the field. Morocco was temporarily very prosperous under El-Mansur, first by ransoming the captives, and later by following up the victory by conquering the gold-rich Songhai Empire in the Western Sudan.
Although Bovill clearly has a bias in favor of the Europeans, the account was quite interesting. I read this as background for reading Peele's play about the battle.
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To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before – Jenny Han – 3***
This is a lovely coming-of-age novel featuring a trio of sisters, of which Lara Jean is the middle sister. Among the issues dealt with are sibling rivalry, teen crushes, sex, social media (and bullying), and conflicting feelings – whether for your sister or your boyfriend. I really liked Lara Jean. She mostly has her act together, but she is only sixteen. Still, she’s a good kid; she’s smart, talented, loyal, principled, and determined. And she has an open heart that is ready to learn about love and what it really means.
LINK to my full review
Eight more Elizabethan plays:George Peele, The Battle of Alcazar [1588] 74 pages
An interesting work given the subject matter, though not one of his best plays for style, The Battle of Alcazar (Complete original title: The Battell of Alcazar, fovght in Barbarie, betweene Sebastian king of Portugall, and Abdelmelec king of Morocco. With the death of Captaine Stukeley) takes up a contemporary historical event which took place only ten years before the play was written. I won't summarize the plot, since it follows the history reasonably closely and I have already reviewed a non-fiction account of the battle. Like Shakespeare in his history plays, Peele condenses the chronology somewhat to make for a more dramatic story; the annotated edition I read, from the Elizabethan Drama website (http://elizabethandrama.org/) notes most of the points on which the play diverges from the historical facts. Writing for an English audience, Peele emphasizes the role of the English "renegade" Stuckeley, and exaggerates the size and importance of his contingent. Most of the female characters seem to be Peele's invention.
Robert Greene, Alphonsus [1588]
Greene's first play, Alphonsus is a completely fictional story; although ostensibly about the historical characters of Alfonso V of Aragon and the Ottoman Sultan Murad II, the events are all invented by Greene. The imitation of Marlowe's Tamburlaine is obvious, in the theme, in the style, and even in the wording. This was also an annotated edition from the Elizabethan Drama website and new to me.
George Peele, The Love of King David and Fair Bethsabe with the Tragedy of Absalon [1588] 23 pages
Perhaps Peele's best-known, or at least most anthologized play, King David and Fair Bethsabe has been described as a mystery play expanded to the length of a classical play. It begins with the Biblical story of David and Bethsabe but focuses mainly on the rebellion of Absalon, considered as God's punishment for David's adultery. The young Solomon is introduced at the end. The play was a re-read for me, in the Fraser and Rabkin anthology.
Anon., Arden of Faversham [ca. 1588] 29 pages
This anonymous play has been attributed, on little or no evidence, to many of the major dramatists of the time, including Shakespeare. It is difficult to confirm or rule out any of the suggestions because the subject matter is so different from the earlier plays, resembling more the Jacobean than the Elizabethan drama. It is a domestic tragedy about the conspiracy of a wife and her lover to murder her husband, and takes place at a lower bourgeois level of society, with no kings, nobles, or mythical personages involved. The play ends in a kind of epilogue with the capture and punishment of everyone involved. It was in three of the four anthologies I am working through, Kinney, Fraser and Rabkin, and the Works of the British Dramatists; it is also on the Elizabethan Drama website, and in a collection I downloaded of Shakespeare apocrypha. I had not read it previously.
Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus [ca. 1588-1589] 34 pages
Marlowe's Doctor Faustus is undoubtedly (and deservedly)the best-known Elizabethan play not by Shakespeare. I assume everyone is familiar with the general plot of the occult scholar who sells his soul to the devil, and the famous line, "Is this the face that launched the thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?". The play is somewhat simpler and less allegorical than the later plays by Goethe on the same character. The play was also in three of the four anthologies I am using, Kinney, Fraser and Rabkin, and Brooke and Paradise.
Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta [ca. 1589-1590] 33 pages
Another important play by Marlowe, The Jew of Malta is based on the same theme as Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, a Jewish moneylender who seeks for revenge on his Christian persecuters. In Marlowe, both the initial persecution (the Jews are essentially all arbitrarily stripped of all their possessions) and the revenge (after causing the death of several Christians, including his daughter's Christian suitor, he poisons an entire convent of nuns, killing his own daughter in the process) are more extreme than in Shakespeare; the play is more cynical, both the Christian and Jewish characters are totally evil and there is no "happy ending" or reconciliation possible. Of course, he is writing a tragedy rather than a comedy, but he also shows the anti-religious ideas for which he became notorious. Unlike Shakespeare's play, this has never been a staple of High School English classes. It was in two of the anthologies, Fraser and Rabkin and Brooke and Paradise, and like all Marlowe's plays was a re-read for me.
Robert Greene, Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay [ca 1590] 31 pages
In this comedy, Greene is obviously seeking to compete with Marlowe's tragedy, Doctor Faustus. The historical Roger Bacon was one of the first and greatest scientists in mediaeval England; perhaps not surprisingly he was wrongly credited with both real inventions such as gunpowder and occult practices such as the creation of a speaking brass head, which features in this play. Otherwise, Greene treats him as a Faust who makes use of demons to foresee and influence events. Friar Bungay is a somewhat less powerful magician of the same type. They both become involved with a love story between a nobleman and a peasant girl. This is one of the more humorous comedies I have read; it was the first time I had read it, and it was in three of the anthologies, Fraser and Rabkin, Brooke and Paradise, and the Works of the British Dramatists.
Christopher Marlowe, The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second [ca. 1590] 54 pages
The longest of the plays I have read (apart from the annotated plays from the Internet), this is the first of the chronicle plays to carry through a single theme, the baneful influence of the favorite, Gaveston, on the king and the opposition to him on the part of the nobility. Today it is probably most interesting for its clear hints of homosexuality, but when it was written the interest was certainly in the theme of royal power versus the feudal power of the nobles. It was undoubtedly a major influence on the history plays of Shakespeare, but it is also worth reading for its own sake. It was in Kinney, Brooke and Paradise, and the Works of the British Dramatists.
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The Underground Railroad – Colson Whitehead – 4****
Whitehead’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel is an extraordinary work of fiction. Unlike many novels set in the antebellum south, Whitehead’s imagination gives us a real railroad, traveling underground, through various states. As abolitionists and slave holders battle for supremacy, stations are closed or opened, sections of track are expanded or abandoned. Cora is a marvelous character - strong, resilient, smart, observant. Her desire for freedom never wanes; she will get there or die trying.
LINK to my full review
Javier Marias Franco,
Todas las almas
[1989] 294 pages [Kindle, Open Library] [in Spanish]Javier Marias was apparently one of the major Spanish novelists of the post-Franco era. I had never read anything by him previously. Todas las almas (All Souls,1989) was his sixth novel; this and his next novel, Corazón tan blanco (Heart so White, 1992, which is this month's reading for a group I am in on Goodreads) were the books which brought him to attention outside of Spain.
Science-fiction writer Joe Haldeman famously wrote, “Bad books on writing tell you to "Write what you know", a solemn and totally false adage that is the reason there exist so many mediocre novels about English professors contemplating adultery.” I wouldn't exactly describe this as mediocre, but it belongs to the genre of "campus novels", with a first-person protagonist (never named) who is a two-year visiting professor of Spanish Literature at Oxford University (All Souls College) and his affair with a married colleague, Clara Bayes. (Marias himself spent two years teaching at Oxford.) The novel has a good deal of satire on the city of Oxford and the University "dons".
However, in post-modernist fashion, the genre novel is merely the wrapper for a novel about knowledge, reality, and of course literature, and it was these discussions which were the heart of the book, while the ostensible plot sometimes became somewhat boring. I admit that the only thing I could really relate to was the narrator's frequent visits to the many used-bookstores of Oxford and London, where he searched for books by or about Arthur Machen and the even more obscure John Gawsworth, who may or may not turn out to have had a relationship to one of the characters in the novel.
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Leave the World Behind – Rumaan Alam – 4****
This grabbed me from page one and held on through the wonderfully ambiguous ending. It’s hard to say this is post-apocalyptic, though it’s certainly headed in that direction. Alam writes these characters so well. And gives the reader the same “unbalanced” sense that the characters feel – not knowing what is happening nor whom to trust. I’m left feeling unsettled and confused and curious and excited and desperate to know what is next.
LINK to my full review
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Unfortunately Yours – Tessa Bailey – 1*
A rom-com set in the Napa Valley, with a kernel of a cute idea. But I did not find either Natalie or August remotely interesting. Of course, they have hot sex and achieve multiple orgasms. But these scenarios are so ridiculously unbelievable that I found them tedious to read. There was one very interesting metaphor for orgasm that earned it 1 star.
LINK to my full review
Otto Jespersen,
Language: Its Nature, Origin and Development
[1922] 428 pagesI have found several more classic linguistics books in my garage, written before the last one that I read (Chomsky's Syntactic Structures) so once again I am pushed backwards before going forwards.
Jespersen's Language is a popularly written book which, after a long first part (about 100 pages) giving a history of nineteenth-century linguistics, goes on to treat of a number of previously underemphasized and some very speculative topics. The second part is on the child's acquisition of language and its probable influences on the history of language; the third part is on the effects of foreigners or second-language speakers and their influences, and contains chapters on pidgin languages and on what are now called genderlects (the differences in usages between male and female speakers of a given language) — some of his attitudes and assumptions are almost comic from a contemporary perspective; the last part deals with the development of languages and the origin of language, and is totally speculative. Among other things, he argues that the development of language has been progressive rather than a deterioration from a more perfect origin as most linguists at the time assumed, going in general from very complex but also very irregular earlier languages (think of Sanskrit, classical Greek and Latin) to more efficient and flexible analytic languages. Not surprising given that Jespersen was Danish and wrote mainly in (and about) English, he sees English and Danish as the most perfect languages.
He then extrapolates this argument backwards to claim that language began in a state in which very long, musical or poetic words represented vague and largely emotional total meanings which later had to be analyzed to convey more rational thought.
All of this was fascinating to read, but I am not sure how much of it would still be accepted after a hundred years; I suspect that what has held up best, apart from his emphasis on language acquisition as fundamental to understanding language change, is his common-sense demolition of other writer's speculations, rather than his own equally speculative theories with which he tries to replace them.
The book is probably most important for those who are interested in the history of linguistics as a discipline; I am following it up with the same author's Philosophy of Grammar published a couple years later.
Paging All Bookworms!
Books mentioned in this topic
Unfortunately Yours: a novel (other topics)Leave the World Behind (other topics)
The Underground Railroad (other topics)
To All the Boys I've Loved Before (other topics)
Mrs. Jeffries on the Ball (other topics)
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The House In the Cerulean Sea – T J Klune – 3***
Linus Baker is summoned by Extremely Upper Management and given a highly classified assignment: go to an orphanage on a remote island and evaluate the six dangerous magical children living there. This is a modern fairy tale for adults with a message of tolerance, kindness, courage and forgiveness. The sentiment is charming and Klune gives us a wonderful fairy-tale ending. But the story fell flat for me. I felt I was “missing the magic” that so many of my friends experienced.
LINK to my full review