Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

Geeking Out

Check out what I found: an audio recording of Flannery O'Connor speaking on "Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction" (slightly different from the version in Mystery and Manners) and reading "A Good Man Is Hard to Find." Awesome!

And let me just confirm, the reports of her accent are not exaggerated.

List Compulsion Meme

Considering the haphazard, spotty quality of this list, I definitely don't feel saddened by my haphazard, spotty experience with it. Nevertheless, it is a fun list. Of course, coming from me, that means nothing . . . have I mentioned that I love lists?

Via Scholl.

1) Bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you own.
3) Underline the books for which you have seen a movie or TV production.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Really?)
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (in-progress, but well over half)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 leak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen (Rather a lot Austen . . . and this one's pretty obscure)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (Hmmm . . . didn't I pretty much just see this on here?)
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (The list fails. The end.)
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving (Also known as Simon Birch)
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen (Yeah, definitely Austen-heavy.)
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley (Gattaca should count as a movie version)
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon (Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.)
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (Ick.)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens (Ad nauseum. Quite a lot of Dickens, as well.)
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom (C'mon, what gives here?)
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad (Apocalypse Now TOTALLY counts.)
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (One of those tiresome "children's" books that was really written for adults.)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams (Bunny book!)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (This list seems to lack an awareness of metonymy.)
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Farewell, Grand Master

Arthur C. Clarke died today in Sri Lanka, which he has called home for over 50 years. He was 90. Clarke was one of only two dozen currently acknowledged Grand Masters of Science Fiction, an elite group that includes the likes of Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. His death leaves Ray Bradbury as the last surviving member of the even more elite "big four" writers of modern science fiction.

I've read several of his books, including 2001: A Space Odyssey and the magnificent Rendesvouz with Rama, but not any of the Space Odyssey sequels or his famous stand-alone Childhood's End. His final novel, co-written with Stephen Baxter (their fourth collaboration), was published three months ago.

In any case, he was a great author with a great mind, and he will be missed. However, he certainly won't be forgotten anytime soon. I was very pleased to note that a Rendesvouz with Rama film is currently slated for release in 2009. It will star Morgan Freeman and be directed by David Fincher (of Se7en, Fight Club and Zodiac). Fantastic news.

Planet Narnia

Someone made a discovery a few years ago that I completely missed, recounted in great detail in the book Planet Narnia, and in sketchy detail here. The author makes a strong case for each of the seven Chronicles of Narnia having an intentional thematic correspondence with one of the seven medieval planets, that is: Sun, Moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn. The correspondences, according to this scholar, are: LWW - Jupiter, PC - Mars, VDT - Sun, SC - Moon, HHB - Mercury, MN - Venus, LB - Saturn.

Of course, I'm always fascinated by this sort of thing, and the post is quite interesting. I kind of want to read the book now, and really want to read Lewis's poem "The Planets" (which doesn't seem to exist online, sadly).

The Sharpton Challenge Strikes Back

There are two good reasons for selecting that title for my response to this. The first is that this is a sequel. As to the second, well . . . The more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that I don't have many favorite sci-fi characters outside of Star Wars, I have favorite sci-fi authors: Wells, Verne, Asimov, Clark, Bradbury, LeGuin, Zahn, etc.

There are a few exceptions to this: R. Daneel Olivaw (Asimov's epic, multi-series future earth saga), Academician Prokhor Zakharov (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri), Sarah Kerrigan (StarCraft). Then there are movies and TV shows . . . Star Trek, Planet of the Apes, Back to the Future, Firefly. But with a few exceptions, what I really appreciate there, too, are the plots (and, it has to be said, the special effects).

So this has to be a list of my favorite characters (pretty much a list of scum and villainy, as it were) from the Star Wars Expanded Universe, as anyone who ever read this post will understand:

1.) Han Solo: Han Solo is, very clearly, the best character from the movies (although generally far cooler before he let a certain princess get his number). So, if you really like that pre-infatuation Solo, you'll love the fact that there are several EU books devoted to that period of his life, and several more that let him go off on his own and really live up to that name. And several of them are pretty good. Favorite moments: Anything involving Han in an asteroid belt. Most notably the chase scene from The Empire Strikes Back and the hilarious attempt to live up to that former glory and best piloting records (set by his own children) in Vector Prime.

2.) Corran Horn: This guy has it all. He's a Corellian fighter pilot who becomes a Jedi, and stars in a significant percentage of my favorite Star Wars books, including the amazing X-Wing series. Favorite moments: His derring-do investigations as a member of CorSec in "Side Trip," revelation of the jaw-dropping twist at the end of The Krytos Trap and unexpected battle against five saber-wielding Dark Jedi in I, Jedi (which Luke has to bail him out of).

3.) Grand Admiral Thrawn: A blue-skinned, red-eyed Chiss alien who managed the rank of Grand Admiral in the extremely xenophobic Imperial Navy by dint of his unmatched tactical genius. He attributed his insight into the enemy to a rigorous study of the art of whatever race he came up against. Whatever works, man. Whatever works. Favorite moment: Pretty much anything he says or does in the Thrawn Trilogy.

4.) Mara Jade Skywalker: Kinda like Han, Mara was much cooler before she married into the Skywalker family. She was much closer to the right idea when she attempted to kill Luke on their first meeting, a holdover response dictated by her days working as a Force-sensitive secret assassin taking orders directly from Emperor Palpatine. Ah, well. She still pulls some pretty sweet stunts from time to time. Favorite moments: Probably the exciting investigation of the Hand of Thrawn complex in the Thrawn duology.

5.) Wes Janson: Janson is actually a character from the original movies, but not many casual viewers could tell you when or where. He's one of the pilots during the Battle of Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back. However, his best work is collaborating with Wedge Antilles as part of both Rogue Squadron and Wraith Squadron, as detailed by Aaron Allston. Favorite moments: Three words, "Yub yub, Commander."

Good to Know

In the brown book in my sabretache there was the tale of an angel (perhaps actually one of the winged women warriors who are said to serve the Autarch) who, coming to Urth on some petty mission or other, was struck by a child's arrow and died. With her gleaming robes all dyed by her heart's blood even as the boulevards were stained by the expiring life of the sun, she encountered Gabriel himself. His sword blazed in one hand, his great two-headed ax swung in the other, and across his back, suspended on the rainbow, hung the very battle horn of Heaven.

"Where wend you, little one," asked Gabriel, "with your breast more scarlet than a robin's?"

"I am killed," the anged said, "and I return to merge my substance once more with the Pancreator."

"Do not be absurd. You are an angel, a pure spirit, and cannot die."

"But I am dead," said the angel, "nevertheless. You have observed the wasting of my blood - do you not observe also that it no longer issues in straining spurtings, but only seeps sluggishly? Note the pallor of my countenance. Is not the touch of an angel warm and bright? Take my hand and you will imagine you hold a horror new dragged from some stagnant pool. Taste my breath - is it not fetid, foul, and nidorous?"

Gabriel answered nothing, and at last the angel said, "Brother and better, even if I have not convinced you with all my proofs, I pray you stand aside. I would rid the universe of my presence."

"I am convinced indeed," Gabriel said, stepping from the other's way. "It is only that I was thinking that had I known we might perish, I would not at all times have been so bold."

-The Shadow of the Torturer by Gene Wolfe, Part I of The Book of the New Sun

The Sharpton Challenge

Sharpton wants to know favorite fantasy characters and archetypes. Can't resist that. I've been reading fantasy for as long as I've been reading, and I like a lot of different characters for a lot of different reasons . . . So a request like that took some serious thought.

A younger part of me is drawn to the most crowd-pleasing characters: cucumber-cool swashbucklers (like Inigo Montoya), plucky comic relief (like Puddleglum, although he's so much more), or a combination of both (like Reepicheep, probably my earliest favorite fictional character post-Sesame Street).

On the other hand, from a literary perspective I have a deep appreciation of morally-ambiguous characters who are often wily and unscrupulous, or who struggle with some sort of inner-conflict (Severus Snape and Remus Lupin, for example, are two of my three favorite characters from Harry Potter). In fact, the villains can often be the most fascinating or even likable characters in some stories (like Steerpike, the strangely-charismatic villain of the Gormenghast novels). Magneto is by far the most interesting character of the X-Men movie trilogy. Davy Jones is quite possibly the most colorful movie villain since Darth Vader. Illidan Stormrage, is definitely my personal favorite of the epic-sized WarCraft cast.

But I'll stop cheating and dropping extra names and move on to the characters I chose, in chronological order of origin (newest to oldest):

1.) Jonathan Strange: Central character in Susanna Clarke's amazing 2004 work, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, Strange is an extremely intelligent (though frequently unwise) young man with an amazing affinity for magic. He becomes the apprentice of Mr. Norrell, the only magician in early 19th-Century England, and uses his skill on the battlefield to help the Duke of Wellington defeat Napoleon Bonaparte (though this accounts only a fraction of the massive and intricate 800-page novel).

2.) Hermione Granger: The "cleverest witch of her generation," Hermione is clearly the greatest character of the "Terrible Trio." She always has the answer if anyone does, and if they don't, she'll be the first to get it (this doesn't always work out for her, though, cf. Chamber of Secrets). Impossible to dislike, I guess she's a bit of an obvious choice, but that's why she's a favorite.

3.) Sparrowhawk: Central character of Ursula K. LeGuin's magnificent Earthsea series which, on top of being beautifully written, is the next best thing to reading a backstory for Gandalf. Sparrowhawk (whose true name is Ged) is an extremely gifted wizard, though his skillful arrogance led to big trouble in his youth. However, he eventually matures into one of the greatest archwizards the Earthsea archipelago has ever seen, becoming almost as wise as he is intelligent along the way.

4.) Gandalf the Grey: Gandalf is the fantasy wizard, and the fantasy character I've probably come closest to straight-up worshipping. In fact, he may just be the greatest fantasy character ever. Note that I say "the Grey" rather than "the White" or simply "Gandalf." I always kind of preferred him before his rebirth, not only because grey is my favorite color (probably because of Gandalf, so chicken and egg) and white is boring, but because Gandalf the Grey was a lot more fun. Death took a lot of the perpetual twinkle out of his eye. Also, Gandalf the Grey was a great deal more fallible, which made both him and his adventures more interesting, if not quite as uber.

5.) Merlin: If Gandalf is the wizard of modern fantasy then Merlin is simply The Wizard. Not only is he the ultimate source of pretty much all fictional wizardkind, but in many ways he is a large percentage of the wizard population. Featured in fiction for centuries by everyone from Mark Twain to C.S. Lewis, Merlin stars under his own name in countless series and incarnations, popping in musicals, movies, video games . . . you name it. My personal favorite depiction is the lovable humanist Merlyn from T.H. White's Once and Future King. An often comedic, but deeply compassionate, version of the wizard, Merlyn lives his life backwards in time, with simultaneously amusing and confusing results.

Favorite archetype (pretty obvious by now):
Wizard - Even when they don't know everything, they know a lot more than everyone else. Their characters often arc from Smart Young Man to Wise Old Man, with all sorts of fantastic happenings along the way. Their abilities, beyond being extremely cool and powerful, possess an almost infinite variety. No offense, but there are only so many ways to swing a sharp object (and George Lucas ran through them all quite exhaustively in his Star Wars prequel trilogy). I love a good sword fight as much as the next guy, but a writer has to work pretty hard and be pretty thick to get magic to appear stale and boring.

And there you have it. As long as we're talking about fantasy, have a look at this fantastic trailer for Harry Potter and the Chronicles of the Lord of the Golden Compass of the Jedi.

Too Gay or Not Too Gay

If you're reading this here now, chances are good that you already read elsewhere a few days ago that J.K. Rowling stated that Albus Dumbledore, beloved headmaster of Hogwarts in the Harry Potter books, is gay. You may not have heard, but four days before Rowling outed Dumbledore, she also declared that the content and imagery of her books is, indeed, explicitly Christian. What do these revelations have in common? Neither of them can change what has already been written.

And yet, I can't help but feel a little irritated at the level to which discourse about the books will now be permitted, nay forced, to sink. I'm not irritated at Rowling, mind you. She revealed her thoughts on Dumbledore in response to a direct question from an audience member. I don't think she was trying to drop a bombshell. What I do think is that sexual orientation doesn't play a role in the books, therefore it shouldn't play a role in the already muddied and inane waters of public discourse about the books. Insofar as the series is a prolonged argument for diversity and tolerance, there is an implicit acceptance of homosexuality, but the subject simply does not come up.

I am no great respecter of authorial intent. I have long believed that, as interesting and even illuminating as an author's insight can be, a work of fiction will speak for itself in ways that even the best writer could never have foreseen. I've been arguing for over three years that Harry Potter is Christian fantasy. It's obvious. It's in the books. That's the way Rowling wrote it, and nothing that she says can make it any more or less true. As gratifying as it was to hear it confirmed, I was surprised that she felt that she needed to. On the flip side, Dumbledore's alleged homosexuality flew so far under the radar that not even Rita Skeeter nosed it up in one of her muck-raking columns about him in book 7. It just wasn't in there.

Take a look at this rather good pair of articles by John Mark Reynolds, philosophy professor at Biola (is Martinez familiar with that name, I wonder?). I'm not sure I agree with everything he says, or perhaps I just don't agree with how he says it, but it's a good, level-headed piece of writing. "Taking Stories More Seriously Than the Author: Dumbledore is not Gay, Dumbledore is not Hetero."

This is a non-issue masquerading as an issue. If you pick a side, you automatically lose. Whether you happily accept Dumbledore as a gay character or disgustedly condemn Rowling for her declaration it says something about you, and nothing about Harry Potter, either as literature, entertainment, or anything else. As someone who understands that homosexuality is a highly-charged and deeply-complicated issue involving real people, I resent the assumptions produced by holding either opinion about Dumbledore. You know what I mean . . . If you think it's okay that Dumbledore is gay, you hate children and family values. If you think it isn't okay that Dumbledore is gay, you're a bible-thumping homophobe . . . that sort of thing.

Guess what? I don't care whether Dumbledore is gay or not. I realize (and resent) that making a big deal out of this makes me sound like I do, but I honestly couldn't be less interested. He is a fascinating and wonderful character, and I love him as I love everything else about the Harry Potter books. What I do care about is the irrelevancy of the topic to anything important in Harry Potter and the lack of maturity that results from its introduction.

On the one side, seriously, what's to be so giddy about? Check this out. Stop dancing around like you've just scored a victory that you can rub the other side's face in. On the other side, there is the equally childish "ewwy" reaction . . . particularly annoying when it comes from long-time fans of the series who now find themselves "turned off" by something that they didn't even catch while they were reading (because it wasn't actually there).

And, moving from childish to juvenile, we've got the people snickering in the back about Dumbledore wanting to hold Harry's "wand" and how now it makes sense that he never left Hogwarts to become Minister of Magic. Grow up. Isn't it funny how no one ever thought Dumbledore stayed for the little girls, but as soon as someone says he's gay he must like the little boys? When did homosexuality become a synonym for pedophilia? In any case, this is precisely why the subject should never have come up. It denigrates the discourse rather than elevating it. Our society simply isn't mature enough to talk about this like adults yet. It may never be mature enough.

I rewatched an old favorite last night: Anatomy of a Murder. It's a courtroom drama starring Jimmy Stewart. The movie was made in 1959, and there's one scene in particular that's always just blown my mind. The trial involves a murder and an alleged rape, and the rape victim's panties play a key role. When the subject first comes up, the judge makes a point of standing up and announcing that panties will be part of the discussion. The whole courtroom cracks up, and he tells them he wanted them to get their chuckles out now so the trial could continue.

It's hard to believe that a mere 50 years ago, a roomful of people older than the age of 12 could find the mere mention of the word "panties" so hilarious . . . and yet, watching the furor over "Dumbledore is gay" I realize I shouldn't really be surprised. We haven't progressed all that much. I think that may be what gets to me most of all . . . even participating in this discussion as though it were important makes me feel like I'm in junior high.

It Is Finished

Potterheads rejoice! The 7th book is out, most of you have finished it (if you haven't . . . spoiler warning!), and it is a worthy final chapter in an epically-good series that I will relish sharing with fellow readers for some time to come. Rachel, having seen the first five movies and heard the first book read aloud (by me), wormed a partial summary of book six out of me so I could read Deathly Hallows out loud to her. Not what I would have done, but this is the girl that normally reads the ends of books first. I was just glad she didn't immediately jump to the epilogue and then tell me all about it.

I read about half of it aloud, and the rest we read separately. I finished on Sunday and she finished on Monday. Now she's started over . . . she read Sorceror's Stone and about half of Chamber yesterday. She probably would have read more, but I got irritable at about 2 in the morning when she kept exploding with shrieks of hysterical laughter and thrashing about while I was trying to sleep right next to her. I'm such a grump.

Anyway, back to Deathly Hallows. My expectations for this book were absolutely through the roof (no way to keep them down), and they were satisfied. This book has everything: weddings, funerals, high-speed, high-altitude chases, riddles, mysteries, sudden reversals, disguises, duels, a bank job, a battle . . . even a Grail quest! And it fills in perfectly all the gaps that were left in the story and backstory, all the way back to Dumbledore's early career. Awesome.

And, perhaps most important of all, I hope that anyone still saying these books cannot and do not speak profoundly and meaningfully of key Christian truths feels a right stupid git now. Harry selflessly walks to his death at Voldemort's hands and then finds himself in King's Cross for a discussion with Dumbledore about the deeper magic that Voldemort doesn't understand. He then returns to life where Voldemort is all ready to proclaim his triumphant victory, performing the cruciatus curse on Harry's limp body and lifting him into the air three times. Voldemort declares his supremacy to the still-defiant good guys, but they can't be hurt by him or his followers. They are protected from harm by Harry's blood sacrifice. Harry and Voldy then duel and Harry wins the final Hallow from him, becoming the "master of death."

Pretty blatant stuff.

As soon as I finished the book, I started combing the interwebs in search of others who "got it." I particularly wanted to see what John Granger had to say, but he's not covering the symbolism exhaustively just yet. If you start over at his blog, you'll find a fun list of 20 discussion points to look over. I commented on #12 (the Horcruxes and Hallows) because no one had mentioned the Grail aspects of the Quest.

In the meantime, while I await a more complete discussion of Deathly Hallows from Granger, I also discovered this. It's an outrageously long discussion of the Christian elements of Half-Blood Prince that Granger posted on a Barnes&Noble forum. Good reading, but sadly he eventually allowed himself to be drawn down into a rather silly and petty side-debate over the origins of Christianity (and came off rather badly, IMO) before the thread was locked by a moderator a few weeks later. But the initial post is interesting.

"Christianity Today" (long a bastion of enlightened reason regarding Harry amidst a sea of evangelical inanity and insanity) dove right in with a discussion of the latest books Christian elements. Good article.

And they aren't the only ones that noticed. "The Wall Street Journal" commented on it in their review, as well. (Thanks, Martinez.)

John Mark Reynolds at Scriptorium Daily soberly discusses his impressions of the final book and the series as a whole, as a reader who enjoyed them but is unsure of their literary merit or staying power. Here's more of the same from "Rafting the Tiber." Lots of good commentary out there, and I hope to stumble across some more as people have time to articulate.

Meanwhile, two more links: Remember those raving lunatics from "Exposing Satanism" that I discovered a few years back? No? Well, they're still around, but a lot of the stuff from their site isn't around anymore . . . this article is, though. It's good for an outraged laugh (sexual congress with goats?!), and there's some very clever (if self-defeating) symbology work. Reminds me of Dan Brown, oddly enough. And, finally, courtesy of Uncle Doug, here's an interview with Rowling in which she reveals some information that didn't make it into the epilogue. If you're feeling like you need some more closure, definitely check it out.

Reading Again

And wow, does it feel good.

I finished The Children of Hurin. Fantastic book . . . and I'm in awe of the amount of effort it must have taken to piece this book together so seamlessly. Without adding any significant prose of his own (I forget how he put it, exactly . . . but the claim is that essentially everything was written by the man himself) Christopher Tolkien has managed to turn a jumble of notes and half-written ideas, some of them conflicting, and make it look like it was composed in adeveloped and ordered fashion to begin with.

This would probably be a great gateway book for anyone having trouble transitioning from The Lord of the Rings to The Silmarillion. The book has a much less mythological/fantastical feel about it, I think, and more of literary/historical feel. I can really see Middle Earth here as a very ancient Britain full of things and events that history has forgotten.

And of course Tolkien uses this story to great effect as an exploration of the tragic flaw of pride and the many ways, foreseeable and unforeseeable, that it can bring us down, with a heavy undercurrent of fate vs. free will. Is Turin's doom inevitable, or necessitated only by his stubborn, prideful choices? Is his very nature an element of the curse that is on him, or could he change? And, on a deeper level, how responsible are we for our own sin nature, inescapable since the Fall? Fascinating questions wrapped up in an action-packed epic . . . Tolkien always delivers.

Speaking of Tolkien, and Inklings in general, I just heard about a few things; namely this and this. The gist: The former is a comic book, the latter is young adult fiction. Different authors, same premise: That Tolkien, Lewis, and Charles Williams didn't just write some of the greatest fantasy literature ever, they lived this stuff. The comic book has them squaring off against Aleister Crowley in 1938, while the other finds them meeting for the first time in 1919 and traipsing through all sorts of magical lands together.

The book is #1 in a proposed series of 7, and it has already been nabbed by Warner Bros. for the big screen. The concept is strangely horrifying and compelling all at the same time, but I'm gonna check it out. Perk of the job: I can just locate the book and go pull it for myself, or in this case, note that it is due back in four days, put it on reserve, and wait for it to appear on my desk next Tuesday.

Meanwhile, I also read through The Children of Men. Wow, what an amazing book. This is so beautifully written and deeply felt, quite possibly the best apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic that I have read. And what a stunning, effective premise! In 1995, human males lose the ability to impregnate women, and the book takes place in England in 2021, beginning on the day the youngest person in the world dies at the age of 25. Half of the story is narrated in the third person while the other half consists of excerpts from the diary of Theo Farron (the main character).

Children of Men, the film adaptation, was one of my favorite movies of the spring, and now this is certainly one of my favorite books of the year. I recommend both, with one sidenote: See the movie first, like I did. The two share absolutely nothing but the central premise and the names (but not necessarily roles) of major characters. These are very different stories with very different purposes, and I think the book deserves the final say. As a film, the movie version is great. As an adaptation, it is nothing.

Oh, and I finally finished Madame Bovary yesterday. And, while portions of it were very much like watching the grass grow, it was by equal turns absorbing and hilarious. The cast of characters was especially memorable, my favorite (of course) being the pompous windbag parody of Voltaire and his ilk, Monsieur Homais. While at first I wished the book had had the decency to end after its title character did, I found that I rather liked the ending after all.

I had gone to get Reading Lolita in Tehran, being determined to re-read it as previously mentioned, when I found something else to read first; an even better follow-up to Madame Bovary. The book is Little Children by Tom Perrotta, on which my surprise favorite movie of the Spring was based. I started it in the evening and, although I had to put it down almost immediately, I did so with great difficulty. The book began, in fact, with a brief quote from Madame Bovary, and then dove right in. I think I'm going to like it. Let's see . . . What else?

I'm reading Star Wars books again.

Yeah, yeah. Don't ask me what prompted it, I dunno . . . but I'm going through them all. I haven't opened one since before Episode III came out, and a lot of things have changed since then for various reasons. I want to survey (and re-survey) the territory and, in particular, discuss it . . . That's right, I know at least a few of you people have read heavily (or at least dabbled) in Star Wars novels. If you're really interested, read and re-read along with me. If you're only moderately interested, just read some, or discuss off of what you know or remember. I've started at the very beginning, with Darth Bane: Path of Destruction. I have a feeling none of you own it, either . . . there should be a copy kicking around at your local library. Go get it. We'll have fun.

The Troubling Redemption of Wise Blood

Reading Flannery O'Connor's stories is exhilarating. Writing about the experience is intimidating. Wise Blood was O'Connor's first novel. It took her five years to write (and me five months to read, although it is rather short). With any luck, I'll have finished a post on it in less than five weeks. O'Connor wrote slowly and with an eye to perfection. She edited and rewrote obsessively. When Wise Blood was almost complete, she suffered her first attack of lupus. This was 10 years after the same condition had killed her father, and 13 years before it killed her.

Wise Blood is the story of Hazel Motes, O'Connor's original "Christ-haunted" Southern man. Haze is a veteran returning home to Georgia after serving in World War II. We meet him on the train to Taulkinham, where he is travelling after discovering his old home abandoned and his family gone. People continually mistake him for a preacher, dressed as he is in a distinctive blue suit and black hat.

This infuriates him. His grandfather was a travelling preacher and Motes has come to the conclusion that the only way to escape from Christ (who he sees as a sort of bogey man) is to escape from sin, and the only way to escape from sin is to have no soul. This is his goal. Nevertheless, he still finds himself pursued in dreams by a "ragged figure who moves from tree to tree" through the back of his mind. He still carries his Bible with him, hidden beneath all of his other belongings where he won't have to see or touch it.

Arriving in Taulkinham, Haze embarks on a rather peculiar spiritual journey. He doesn't need a job (he lives quite well off the government), so at first he wanders aimlessly. Eventually he meets Asa Hawks, a blind street preacher, and his virginal daughter, Sabbath Lily, neither of whom are what they seem to be. He also meets (and cannot rid himself of) Enoch Emory, a stupid, lonely lump of a teenage boy, abandoned by his father, who supports himself by working as a guard at the local zoo.

Enoch is a creature of impulse and an archetypal innocent. Left to his own devices, he behaves as the mood takes him. But every now and then his daddy's "wise blood" takes over, directing Enoch's actions toward some greater purpose that Enoch can seldom see the end of. He is strangely drawn to an assortment of the city's attractions, visiting many of them daily in between stops motivated by his carnal and easily distracted nature. The daily rounds might include visits to the gorilla cage at the zoo, the women who frequent the public pool, a man hawking potato peelers on a street corner, and especially a mysterious building in an isolated section of the park with the enigmatic word "MVSEVM" carved into it.

Enoch is fascinated and disturbed by this building, and especially by the weird, shrivelled figure displayed inside. The card near the figure informs him that this was once a man very much like Enoch himself before some "A-rabs" did this to him. Enoch knows this figure is somehow terribly important, and he is burdened with the need to show it to someone else. He simply doesn't know who.

Enoch latches onto Hazel Motes from the moment he meets him, seeking him out at every opportunity despite the other man's obvious attempts to avoid Enoch. He takes him to see the mummy in the museum, and convinces Haze to visit the local whorehouse with him. Haze, meanwhile, has taken to trailing Asa Hawks. He has decided to seduce Sabbath Lily, but unbeknownst to him, Hawks is encouraging Lily to seduce Haze in an effort to rid himself of her. Hawks is not really blind at all, and he is certainly not a Christian. He is a petty charlatan who ekes out a living off of his false persona.

Haze's suspicions of this, his desire to somehow compete with Hawks, and his desperate efforts to rid himself of the haunting feeling of being pursued by Jesus Christ, lead him to buy a car and set up the "Church Without Christ" where "the blind don’t see and the lame don’t walk and what’s dead stays that way." He begins passionately preaching his new doctrine of non-salvation outside movie theaters (where he can draw the largest crowds after a show lets out).

After several weeks, the only disciple he manages to attract is Hoover Shoats (or Onnie Jay Holy, as he calls himself at first). Shoats is nothing but a common shyster who wants to manipulate Haze's message in order to turn a profit. Motes, of course, is deadly serious about his message, and turns Shoats away. But soon, Shoats has found a Hazel Motes lookalike, Solace Layfield, (who even wears blue suits and a black hat), a "false prophet." Shoats sets up shop nearby under the label "The Holy Church of Jesus Christ Without Christ," where you can believe whatever you want according to your own interpretation of the Bible.

Meanwhile, Enoch can't stop thinking about Haze's statement the his church needs "a new jesus." Eventually he sneaks into the museum, steals the mummy, and delivers it to Haze and Sabbath Lily (who has moved in after Hawks left town). Enoch then proceeds (in an intensely comical sequence) to follow a man in a gorilla suit around town as he makes appearances in front of movie theaters, shaking hands as part of a film promotion. Enoch finally slips into the back of the truck and beats up the actor in the suit on the way out of town, donning the gorilla outfit himself. He approaches a young couple in the woods, hand extended, and they flee in terror. We leave Enoch alone and dejected, head bowed, in a gorilla suit.

Haze, when he sees the "new jesus," grabs it, dashes it against a wall, and throws it violently out the window as it crumbles into dust. That night, he follows Layfield home from his preaching endeavors and runs his car off the road. He commands Layfield to take off the blue suit, but before he can finish, Haze runs him over. The next day he sets out in his car for another town. Before long, though, he is pulled over by a policeman, who instructs him to step out of his vehicle before pushing it off a cliff where it is dashed to smithereens. Hazel has no choice but to return to town.

Before long, he blinds himself with lime and spends his days walking around with rocks in his shoes and his nights trying to sleep with barbed wire wrapped around his chest. When his landlady eventually tries to marry him some months later (unable to shake the feeling that he knows something important that she doesn't), he takes off and is discovered in a ditch by the police. They return him to his home and he dies on the way. No one notices. His final words are, "I want to go on where I'm going." The novel ends as the landlady converses with his corpse as it lies on the bed, trying with all her power to discover what has been put over on her. What is it that Hazel Motes has that she doesn't?

This is an extremely difficult novel, widely misunderstood upon its initial release in 1952. Stories of redemption in the O'Connor style (see The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) tend to shock and distance the audiences that should find their message most appealing, and to be misinterpreted by everyone else. Ultimately it boils down to Hazel Motes' inability to escape from God's grace. As O'Connor herself said of those who had come at the book the wrong way:

"For them Hazel Motes’ integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author, Hazel’s integrity lies in his not being able to."

There are some definite and obvious parallels between Haze's journey of faith and the Apostle Paul's. Haze begins by actively persecuting Christ and his Church. He sets off for another town to continue his work and has an important experience before ending up blind but spiritually enlightened. The most troubling part for me was in his actions after he blinds himself: the penance. Haze still feels himself indebted to Christ and he is determined to pay that debt (as if he could). I found it difficult to pinpoint what level his spiritual renewal had reached by the time he died.

Part of the problem, I suppose, is the difference between the novel and O'Connor's short stories. Most of the short stories lead their characters along in sin or stubborness until a (usually violent) event strips away the scales from their eyes and they experience an epiphany which is usually very painful for them. The story generally ends immediately thereafter, with the character bathed (either joyously or despairingly) in the light of their redemption.

The first problem with Wise Blood was my attempt to pinpoint the epiphany. Was it the murder of Solace Layfield? The destruction of the new jesus? The wrecking of the car? Any of these seem like good candidates, but in the end I think I am wrong by attempting to pick just one. Furthermore, the novel carries on much longer past the arrival at grace and redemption than a short story would (or could).

When a short story ends, it is easy to assume that the main character is a new person whose spiritual struggles are more or less over (particularly if they are dead, which they often are). In Wise Blood, Haze is still working things out right up until the moment he dies, and we no longer have the benefit even of watching from his perspective, as this entire section of the novel is told from the point of view of the landlady.

The power of O'Connor's vision of modern man's struggle against his own salvation in Wise Blood has continued to grow on me in the days since I finished it. It's no wonder people immediately realized upon the novel's release that this was something entirely new and noteworthy. Now, over 50 years later, it continues to baffle, challenge, and convict its readers . . . at least, it did this reader.

Purgation

DESCENDING THEOLOGY: THE RESURRECTION

From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in--black ice and blood ink--
till the hung flesh was empty. Lonely in that void
even for pain, he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse's core, the stone fist of his heart

began to bang on the stiff chest's door,
and breath spilled back into that battered shape. Now
it's your limbs he longs to flow into
from the sunflower center in your chest
outward--as warm water
shatters at birth, rivering every way.

--Mary Karr, Sinners Welcome

Literature and the Libido of the Lifelong Learner

As I was mulling over my recent reading last week, I bethought me of an interesting trend in the way a particular type of character is often portrayed which struck me as being worth a little extra thought. Not worthy of a major paper, perhaps, but more of a journal of sorts.

I've been reading some Nabokov lately, mostly during my break at work. I'm working on the third of his novels that I've picked up, and I've begun to notice a bit of a recurring theme which called to mind another of my favorite authors: Mervyn Peake.

I've written both frequently and at great length about the first Nabokov novel I read, Lolita, since I first encountered her a few years ago (most notably here). I'm not particularly interested in her right now, but in her revolting and sympathetic immortalizer, Humbert Humbert.

HH's career path is, essentially, "intellectual academic." He is a brilliant writer who falls back on teaching university courses when the creative well runs dry . . . or when it is too consumed with "extracurriculars" to be of any other use. By all accounts (well . . . at least, by his own account), Humbert is extremely smart, well-read, widely-traveled, a man of refined artistic tastes and delicate sensibilities, articulate, knowledgeable . . . and a pedophile and sexual predator.

He is not particularly ashamed of it (at least, for most of the novel), wandering easily into detailed descriptions of the exact numeric specifications that make up his tastes (age, build, size, personality, disposition, and so forth). His character seems to flow quite naturally from brilliant into deviant, with no marked contrast between these aspects of his personality.

The second Nabokov I picked up, fairly recently, is the lightly comical Pnin. A more different book from Lolita can hardly be said to exist. Timofey Pnin is the charming, bumbling antithesis of Humbert Humbert. He teaches a few extremely unpopular Russian courses, is widely lampooned by students and fellow faculty alike, and maintains his position at the University only through the benevolence of the head of the German department (under whose jurisdiction he somehow falls).

His English is abominable, his skill in the classroom dubious, and his skills outside the classroom virtually nonexistent. Timofey is extremely kindhearted, but intolerably timid and fussy (very like Mr. Norrell, in fact, although that is neither here nor there). He is also (of course) quite, quite impotent (sexually and in most other respects). He was married, decades earlier, to a mediocre poet named Liza who abandoned him for a mediocre psychologist (a profession which Nabokov particularly despised).

She returns, months later, pregnant and feigning reconciliation just long enough for the hapless Timofey to pay her passage to America, then revealing that she will be living there with the father of her child. Years later, she visits Timofey again to gouge money out of him for her son's education. She has him wrapped tightly around her little finger, but their relationship brings him nothing but pain in return. His subservient role in their relationship is quite possibly at the core of his lack of success and happiness.

And then, finally, there is Pale Fire . . . a very odd and interesting work indeed. I can't even pretend to come up with a brief and coherent summary of the book on my own, so I'll swipe one:

John Shade is a homebody poet in New Wye, U.S.A. He writes a 999-line poem about his life, and what may lie beyond death. This novel (and seldom has the word seemed so woefully inadequate) consists of both that poem and an extensive commentary on it by the poet's crazy neighbor, Charles Kinbote. According to this deranged annotator, he had urged Shade to write about his own homeland--the northern kingdom of Zembla. It soon becomes clear that this fabulous locale may well be a figment of Kinbote's colorfully cracked, prismatic imagination. Meanwhile, he manages to twist the poem into an account of Zembla's King Charles--whom he believes himself to be--and the monarch's eventual assassination by the revolutionary Jakob Gradus.

Charles Kinbote aka (maybe) Charles Xavier aka King Charles II is an even more difficult character to get at than Humbert Humbert. (Side note, in case you were wondering: Pale Fire (1962) came out the year before the first X-Men comic book (1963). I have no idea if Professor X's name owes anything to this book. I doubt it, but it does seem like a rather astounding coincidence.)

Anyway, putting aside all questions of whether Kinbote even exists, whether he is insane, whether he is hallucinatory, schizophrenic, and paranoid, whether the poet he idolizes exists, and so on . . . Putting all of that aside and taking Kinbote at face value (dangerous from a Nabokovian first-person at the best of times), what do we have?

An extremely obsessive academic (Professor of literature, actually); a compulsive liar; unbearably arrogant, sneeringly superior, pretentious (but then, he might be royalty, after all); and an unabashed sodomite to the most hedonistic degree, frequently indulging in oily digressions to drool over the lithe form of some young buck.

Humbert is certainly a slimier character than Kinbote, but Kinbote lacks Humbert's charisma. Poor Pnin is just pathetically pitiable.

In Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast, there are a plethora of extra-special characters, but few are as special as the castle's professorial staff: Bellgrove, Cutflower, Perch-Prism, Opus Fluke, Throd, Shred, Shrivell, Splint, Spiregrain Flannelcat, and the rest. One of the most memorable and entertaining sequences in the novel (although it has little or nothing to do with any of the central plot threads) takes place when Irma Prunesquallor, Gormenghast's only eligible spinster, invites all of the professors to a party with the intention of marrying one of them.

The professors are immediately thrown far outside of their comfort zones at the prospect of encountering even one member of the opposite sex. No one knows quite how to react, but they all agree to go. The opening minutes of the party are excruciating, but it takes the reaction of one in particular to really freeze things over:

And it was then, at her third convulsive stride in the headmaster's direction that something happened which was not only embarassing but heart-rending in its simplicity, for a hoarse cry, out-topping the general cacophony, silenced the room and brought Irma to a standstill.

As every head was turned in the direction of the sound a movement became apparent in the same quarter where, from a group of professors, something appeared to be making its way toward its rigid hostess. Its face was flushed and its gestures so convulsive that it was not easy to realize that it was Professor Throd.

On sighting Irma, he had deserted his companions Splint and Spiregrain, and on obtaining a better view of his hostess had suffered a sensation that was in every way too violent, too fundamental, too electric for his small brain and body. A million volts ran through him, a million volts of stark infatuation.

He had seen no woman for thirty-seven years. He gulped her through his eyes as at some green oasis the thirst-tormented nomad gulps the wellhead. Unable to remember any female face, he took Irma's strange proportions and the cast of her features to be characteristic of femininity. And so, his conscious mind blotted out by the intensity of his reaction, he committed the unforgivable crime. He made his feelings public. He lost control. The blood rushed to his head; he cried out hoarsely, and then, little knowing what he was doing, he stumbled forwards, elbowing his colleagues from his path, and fell upon his knees before the lady, and finally, as though in a paroxysm, he collapsed upon his face, his arms and legs spread-eagled like a starfish.

While all of Throd's colleaugues and Dr. Prunesquallor gather around him an academic fascination, Headmaster Bellgrove moves in on Irma and whisks her out to the garden to woo her off her feet. Their dialogue is straight out of a third-rate melodrama . . . Naturally, since that is the closest either of them has ever been to genuine romance. In the midst of this, Prunesquallor manages to pull Throd out of his catatonic state and the professor makes a most undignified exit, streaking naked out the window, through the garden and over the wall, never to be seen again.

The point of all this (which I've been such a very long time getting to, I admit) is that the old "nerd" stereotypes from high school and beyond are carried one step further in literary circles. Academics don't get girls, either because they don't want them or because they simply can't. I found it very interesting that, over and over, I see academics in literature imbued with a somehow deviant or defective version of what is commonly viewed as the "normal" sex drive. I'm not entirely certain why this is, but it happens a lot.

A few other examples of this which come to mind: Cecil Vyse (A Room With a View), Frederick Chasuble (The Importance of Being Earnest), Quentine Compson (The Sound and the Fury, Absalom, Absalom). With a bit of reaching or speculation, I could spin out a couple dozen more candidates as well. Any thoughts (if you're still here)? Perhaps Wilson could ask that History of Sexuality chick what she thinks . . .

A Fantasy Masterpiece of British Proportions

Every so often a book comes along that just blows me away simply because it does something that I've never seen before, and does it well. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke is just such a book. The first title by this author, it is a massive tome nearly 800 pages long. The story juggles an enormous but memorable cast of multi-dimensional characters and dazzlingly interweaves a dozen intriguing plot threads.

The genre, if it must be defined, is historical fantasy. The novel begins in England in 1806. Magic, once an everyday part of English life and culture, has (to all appearances) disappeared from England entirely. Modern-day magicians are gentleman-scholars who study and write books about magic and its history, but who do not possess any actual books of magic, and do not under any circumstances practice it.

Two members of the The Learned Society of York Magicians, Mr. Segundus and Mr. Honeyfoot, are determined to discover why magic has fallen out of use. Their investigations bring to light the fussy, reclusive bookworm Gilbert Norrell, owner of the largest magical library in history (which no one knew existed) and the only practicing magician England has seen in over a hundred years. Mr. Norrell bursts spectacularly on the national scene when he brings the statues of York Cathedral to life before proceeding on to London to offer his services to the government in the ongoing Napoleonic Wars.

Before long a second practical magician emerges from the woodwork to become Mr. Norrell's apprentice. He is Jonathan Strange, a fiery, intelligent young man who is everything Norrell is not. Where Norrell is cautious and fearful, Strange is brave and impatient. Where Norrell's magic comes only from his books, Strange has an uncanny grasp of the basis of magical theory, and can improvise many of his own spells. And where Norrell is outspoken in his loathing for all things connected with fairy magic, Strange finds himself strangely drawn to fairy lore.

In particular, Strange is fascinated by anything to do with John Uskglass, a human child raised by fairies who emerged from Faerie to become the greatest magician in history. Uskglass established the very foundations of English magic and went on to rule northern England for 300 years during the High Middle Ages before mysteriously disappearing with the promise to one day return and reclaim his throne.

Of course, before long, Strange and Norrell's differing magical philosophies cause relations between the grow increasingly tense, while, unbeknownst to either of them, a unpredictable, sinister force has been awakened and is working mysteriously behind the scenes to ruin both of them.

The novel, however, is far from following the above summary with simply, straightforward storytelling. The entire story is peppered liberally with footnotes containing further fascinating information on the rich and convincing alternate history Clarke has created for England in the form of charming anecdotes, references to magical texts, and explanations of spells and the like.

Clarke draws on a more-than-ample heritage of all things British to create her book. Many of her characters could easily be the beloved creations of Austen, Dickens. Her humor is as dry and hilarious as anything by Shaw or Wilde. Her ability to create new worlds and the originality of her fantasy bring to mind the best of Tolkien, Lewis and Rowling. Her story is as historically grounded and engaging as anything by O'Brian (to name something set in the same period). Her social commentary is as witty, appealing, and incisive as Forster's. Her alternate history and fairy lore are drawn from a vast melting pot of some of the best elements of British folklore and fairy tales, the Arthur legends, and a few bon mots from Shakespeare and Spenser for extra flavor. Her characters encounter and influence history without severely altering it, heightening the realism, and the major historical players who have important roles in the book include figures like the Duke of Wellington and Lord Byron.

In short, Susanna Clarke has written a unique book and populated and enlivened it with the best and brightest that British culture, history, literature and mythology have to offer. If matters of Britain appeal to you, or you enjoy storytelling that pulls you inside another world where you can happily spend hours on end, you should probably give Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell a try. If you love both, you owe it to yourself to pick up a copy.

And now I should really end this particular review, lest I succumb to the overpowering temptation to quote long passages. Still, perhaps just one minor quote wouldn't hurt:

A lovely young Italian girl passed by. Byron tilted his head to a very odd angle, half-closed his eyes and composed his features to suggest that he was about to expire from chronic indigestion. Dr. Greysteel could only suppose that he was treating the young woman to the Byronic profile and the Byronic expression.

Now, go forth. Read.

The Joy of Four Plays

(This title the product of a snicker-filled brainstorming session with Randy.)

Rachel and I, along with the Scholls, Randy, and Barbour . . . and our good friend Wilson (who drove up from Austin especially for the occasion) did the Texas Shakespeare Festival last weekend. A play Friday evening, two plays on Saturday, and a play on Sunday afternoon . . . a veritable stage marathon of epic proportions. The breakdown:

Friday evening: Coriolanus

This is one of two little-read, little-performed Shakespeare plays put on by the TSF this year. He took his plot from Plutarch's Lives. The "hero" of the story (one of the least sympathetic I've encountered in Shakespeare) is a Roman general of unmatched skill on the battlefield, and unmatched disgust for the common man.

The first wins him great renown and a chance to be made consul. The second not only loses him his shot at being consul, but gets him banished from Rome, whereupon he goes straight to his worst enemy, Aufidius, the leader of the barbaric Volscians, and offers to lead his armies against Rome.

This he also fails to do when his mother comes to beg that he turn back, and for his failure, he is slain by the Volscians. The end. Coriolanus is such a moron that I found him difficult to sympathize with, but the performances were largely quite good, and the play certainly had its moments.

Saturday afternoon: The School for Husbands

One of two non-Shakespeare plays performed at the TSF, this one was written by Moliere. It was probably the most enjoyable of the four, and the best in terms of both material and execution. It was translated from the original French (obviously) and the translator largely preserved the characters' speech in rhyming couplets . . . amusing or painful, take your pick. I enjoyed it despite bad Alexander Pope flashbacks.

It is a farcical piece about two brothers who are the guardians of two sisters. Each brother raises one of the sisters as he sees fit with the intention of one day marrying them. The elder indulges his ward, allowing her to stay out late, attend balls, and shop for fashionable clothing, hoping to win her love through trust and respect. The younger keeps his ward under lock and key, never allowing her out of his sight, hoping to preserve her (loving or otherwise) by ensuring that she has no opportunity to cuckold him.

Of course, the younger brother's ward cleverly schemes and connives to trick him into letting her marry the young man across the street. There was much prancing, posing, witty banter, and slapstick for the enjoyment of all before the final curtain.

Perhaps the funniest moment of the weekend, though, was entirely unplanned. Near the end, the younger brother's mustache began to peel off, and when (in a moment of great distress) he reached up to stroke it while speaking, it came away in his hand. Staying in character, he stared at it for a moment, wide-eyed, then agitatedly plucked off his goatee as well, stared at it, then shoved it at a silent character whose only purpose was to hold a lantern saying, "Oh, take this!" and went right on. When he came out to take a bow (still sans facial hair) he smiled slightly and stroked his bare upper lip, much to our amusement.

Saturday night: Pericles, Prince of Tyre

The second Shakespeare play . . . and what a sprawling, fractured, out-of-control Arabian Nights piece it is. It begins promisingly, with Pericles arriving in a foreign land to answer a riddle posed by the king. If he gets the answer right, he gets the king's daughter (who is in an incestuous relationship with his daughter), but if he gets it wrong, he must be put to death.

The answer to the riddle happens to be the fact that the father and daughter are committing incest, and when Pericles figures it out, he naturally wants nothing to do with her. The king, enraged that his secret has been discovered, wants Pericles dead (turns out it was a lose-lose situation) and he must flee across the Mediterranean, hopping from port to port, pursued by assassins.

All sorts of wild things start happening at this point . . . there are multiple shipwrecks, the wicked king and his daughter are struck by lightning, Pericles gets married and fathers a daughter, but loses both wife and child. The wife is presumed dead, but is "resurrected" by a wise doctor (only mostly dead) and becomes a priestess in the temple of Diana. The daughter, left in the care of the king and queen of Tarsus, is nearly killed, but is suddenly rescued by pirates . . . who sell her to a brothel. But she isn't violated because every man who comes to see her is completely charmed by her virtue and goes away to follow the straight and narrow.

Time passes in great and illogical leaps, and the hapless Pericles is eventually reunited with his daughter. Then, just when it seems like the play might go on forever without resolution, Diana appears to Pericles in a dream and directs him to his wife.

Not the best of plays, for sure, but it also had its moments. Most of these moments came when the actors stopped playing the material straight and began to ham it up a bit . . . but such moments were far too few and far between, and the performance suffered for it.

Sunday afternoon: Harvey

I've always been partial to this play . . . well, particularly to the movie version starring Jimmy Stewart, and so I think my expectations caused my experience with this performance to suffer. Nevertheless, it is a charming play, and I still enjoyed myself thoroughly. The way they played some of the parts revealed a few things within the text that I'd never noticed before in the more strait-laced black and white movie . . . that was fun. Harvey was just generally a nice way to end our TSF experience and enjoy a lazy Sunday afternoon.

I greatly enjoyed the theater-going experience of last weekend, and I shall certainly look forward to the productions next summer . . . Hopefully they'll choose some better Shakespeare while keeping up the quality of the non-Shakespeare selections. In any case, that's all for now. I'm off.

Enter the Holy Grail

The last Arthurian Romance by Chrétien de Troyes, the 12th century poet who is perhaps the most directly responsible for the Arthur legends as we know them today, was "The Story of the Grail." Chrétien was the first author to introduce the Holy Grail into the Arthur stories, and so for the purposes of a historical and literary study of the identifiable authors of Grail legend, it all begins here.

"Here," in this case, refers to the middle of a forest, where a disingenuous rube named Perceval lives with his mother. One day, as he wanders through the woods, he meets some knights, whom he immediately mistakes for God and His angels. He refuses to answer any of their questions, being so focused on asking them things, and finally they tell him how he may become a knight: by journeying to the court of King Arthur. This he eagerly sets out to do, despite his mother's great sorrow (her husband and other two sons were knights, and are now all dead). She has been trying to keep him from knowing anything about knights, but now that he does she tells him everything, gives him what advice she can, and sends him on his way. As he rides off, she falls unconscious behind him, but he fails to notice or care.

To make a long story short (as many of these tales tend to wind aimlessly from episode to unrelated episode), Perceval takes a snide remark from Sir Kay at face value when he arrives at court and immediately sets out to win his spurs as a knight. After many adventures, including the defeat of the red knight and the rescuing of a besieged castle (and the attached damsel), Perceval decides it is time to go get his mother. On his way to find her, he shacks up in the castle of a wounded king who spends his days fishing in the nearby river, and that night at dinner, a strange ritual takes place.

A procession passes by him bearing a sword, a lance, a dish, and a cup (the Grail). Not wishing to appear simple (he's learned a few things during his adventures), he refrains from asking what it's all about and goes to sleep. Waking up the next morning, he finds the entire castle deserted, and he saddles up and leaves, very confused. Not far away, he meets a maiden who informs him that, not only is his mother dead from the grief of his departure, but his failure to ask the question about the Grail procession the night before has doomed the Fisher King to continue in his wounded state, and his lands and peoples will continue to suffer.

Perceval wanders on, encountering Arthur and his court, and vows to never rest until he has relocated the Grail Castle and had a chance to redeem his mistake. At this point he promptly forgets about God for about five years and has many adventures. One day (Good Friday, in fact), he happens to meet a group of ten ladies and three knights, wandering around on foot dressed in penitential garb. They berate him for riding around in armor on such a day and direct him to a nearby hermit. It turns out this hermit is related to both Perceval and the Fisher King, and he brings Perceval back into the church. Perceval takes communion that Easter Sunday.

At this point, Perceval's story is effectively over, and the rest of the poem is meanders along after Gawain with very little direction. The story is incomplete, basically cutting off in mid-sentence, and it is believed that Chrétien died before he could finish it. Three later authors attempted continuations of it (all quite lengthy), but I have my own idea about the unity of the story.

This is the original Arthur/Grail story, and the Grail plays an almost non-existent role in the story. Furthermore, it seems to me that all that is truly important here is Perceval's story of a journey from spiritual darkness and immaturity to salvation and growth. Once he takes communion on Easter Sunday, everything ought to be over.

Consider: Perceval begins in ignorance of where he comes from and where he is going. His mother sends him out into the world with instructions to attend church and seek God, which he ignores (being so caught up in the drive to become a knight). Arriving in the Grail Castle after many adventures, he fails to ask about the procession, which seems to be obviously connected to some sort of Christian ritual.

The sword might be the Word of God. The spear could be symbolic of the lance that pierced the side of Christ. The dish and cup (or Grail) could bear the body and blood of Christ for the communion sacrament. The fact is, we don't know for sure, and neither does Perceval, because he simply doesn't care enough to ask. Perceval has his chance at this point to bring healing to his soul, to the Fisher King, and to the land and its people, but he misses it because he is not particularly interested in spiritual things. As a result of this, he fails to achieve understanding and is excluded from the building that houses the Grail (the church?). Not long after this, he forgets about God entirely for five whole years. Finally, someone explains everything to him and he is able to take communion, which he was not able to do when the dish and grail passed by years before.

One of the most interesting aspects of the story, as mentioned previously, is how minor the role of the Grail is. In the beginning, it would seem, the Grail was not the most central element of the entire story. Somewhere along the way, something seems to have changed all that, but as yet it is not quite clear what.

Adultery, Incest, & Miscegenation! Oh, My!

I just finished Absalom, Absalom! yesterday (yes, it took me quite awhile), and I find that it is the best book about the South that I have yet read. It captures every important facet of Southern history from the Antebellum period to 1910, although putting it that way makes it seem less incredible than it actually is. Also, I think Faulkner is crippling my ability to form short, coherent, and meaningful sentences.

The novel follows Quentin Compson (one of the four narrators in The Sound and the Fury) as he discovers the dark truth behind the story of Colonel Thomas Sutpen, a local legend. The story comes to him in fragments and out of order, from various narrators with varying degrees of reliability: Miss Rosa Coldfield, Sutpen's sister-in-law and almost-wife, who has hated him with a burning passion for most of her life; Quentin's father, recounting information he has heard from his own father, one of the few men who ever got close to Sutpen; and, finally, from a figure straight out of the legend itself, come back to haunt Sutpen's old plantation mansion.

We hear the story first as Quentin hears it, told, as I said, out of order, in bits and pieces, with many details (both major and minor) completely wrong. Many portions are repeated from different angles. Then, Quentin returns to college in Massachusetts where he stays up late one freezing night with his Canadian roommate, Shreve, and attempts to piece together the details he has collected to tell the true story of Colonel Sutpen, which becomes representative of the true story of the entire South.

Sutpen grows up poor in the western part of Virginia which will eventually break off from the rest of the state when the Civil War begins. This is the backcountry, where all men are created equal and individualism is king. However, when Sutpen's mother dies the rest of his family slowly slips back towards the Virginia coastland, eventually settling on a large plantation where his father assumes a servile position beneath the local cavalier.

One day, Sutpen is sent to deliver a message to the house, and finds himself turned away from the front door by a negro servant. The next day he runs away to Haiti, determined to somehow build himself up to a position equal to that of the plantation owner. In Haiti he succeeds in making his fortune, and marries a woman who bears him a son. His plan seems to be well on track. Then, he makes a shocking discovery. His wife is an octoroon (one-eighth black), thus making his son also of African descent. This will never do. Sutpen sets them up for life in New Orleans and abandons them, travelling to Mississippi.

He comes rolling in with a wagonload of "wild negroes," tricks local Indians out of 100 miles of pristine land, and builds an enormous mansion on it with the help of a French architect that he nabbed from New Orleans. In the meantime, he fathers a daughter, Clytie, with one of the few black women in his bunch. Once his plantation is up and running, he finds himself a wife among the locals: Ellen Coldfield (sister of Rosa). Over the course of the next few years, he has a son, Henry, and a daughter, Judith.

They grow up, Henry grows to college, and meets Charles Bon (who is Sutpen's first son, unbeknownst to Henry). Henry brings him home and he becomes engaged to Judith. Bon is prepared to simply walk away from this engagement, and the family, at any time if Sutpen will merely acknowledge their relationship, but instead, Stupen freaks out which causes Henry to freak out and leave with Bon, giving up his inheritance.

The Civil War happens, and Sutpen, Henry, and Bon all get caught up in it, leaving everything else on hold for four years. Henry and Bon return to the Sutpen home after the war is over and Henry shoots Bon at the front gate, delivering this news to his sister as she is putting the finishing touches on her wedding dress, and then disappearing forever. Ellen Coldfield is dead by this point, and Rosa moves out to the plantation. Colonel Sutpen returns home from the war and proposes to Rosa, who accepts. Then, Sutpen proposes that they perform a "test-run" before they get married, and if Rosa has a son, they will go ahead with the wedding. She is carried back to town on a wave of righteous indignation and never speaks to him again.

Sutpen opens a small store on his property, with the help of Wash Jones (a white trash squatter) in order to stay afloat. He eventually seduces Wash's 15-year old granddaughter and fathers a daughter with her. When he discovers that she has not borne a son, he prepares to abandon her, but is murdered by Wash, who then also murders his granddaughter and her new baby before being killed by a posse.

Years pass, and Clytie fetches Bon's son (child of an octoroon mistress, much like Sutpen's) from New Orleans. The child, in a fit of rebellion against his white blood, marries a poor black woman, who bears him a mentally-retarded son. They both die, and Clytie and the son, Jim Bond (great-grandson of Sutpen), take care of what little is left of Sutpen's enormous plantation alone. Finally, a figure from the past returns to the mansion to die, and is discovered by Rosa Coldfield and Quentin Compson. Clytie sets the mansion on fire and dies in the blaze. The only Sutpen left standing is Jim Bond, who continues to haunt the ruins of the mansion indefinitely, wailing and shrieking over Clytie's death.

There is a great deal that could be said about this book, obviously, as it functions on quite a number of different levels simultaneously. Read literally, it is full of questions regarding the nature of memory and history, and the style of Faulkner's prose (the confused, jumbled ruminations and speculations of biased narrators regarding long-gone events) is a theme all by itself. There is the obvious link to the biblical story from which the title of the book is drawn. Many of Sutpen's problems result from his children, both legitimate and illegitimate, and his efforts to sire a suitable heir to what he has created.

Most fascinating to me is the way in which the entire story serves as a metaphorical representation of the South's dark past. I read that Faulkner's original title for the book was "Dark House," a reference both to Sutpen's eerie, foreboding mansion and to the South itself. Just like Sutpen, the Old South had not reconciled its white sons with its black ones, and just like Sutpen's house, it came to ruin. Ultimately, Henry kills his brother not because Bon keeps a black mistress, nor even to save his sister from incest, but because a marriage between Bon and Judith would be miscegenation. This is a horror that no white person in the South will abide.

The other aspect of the story that fascinated me was the role played by Quentin. Quentin is not a Sutpen at all, but it falls to him, as a white child of the South, to receive this story and to try and make sense of it. As the younger generation, this burden of Southern history falls squarely on Quentin's shoulders and he must deal with it as best he can and try to understand why it exists. Late in the novel, as the story of the Sutpens is nearing completion, Shreve and Quentin have a very telling conversation.

"I just want to understand [the South] if I can [. . .] Because it's something my people haven't got. Or if we have got it, it all happened long ago across the water and so now there aint anything to look at every day to remind us of it. We dont live among defeated grandfathers and freed slaves [. . .] and bullets in the dining room and such, to be always reminding us to never forget. What is it? something you live and breathe in like air? a kind of vacuum filled with wraithlike and indomitable anger and pride and glory at and in happenings that occurred and ceased fifty years ago? a kind of entailed birthright father and son and father and son of never forgiving General Sherman, so that forevermore as long as your childrens' children produce children you wont be anything but a descendant of a long line of colonels killed in Pickett's charge at Manassas?"

"Gettysburg," Quentin said. "You can't understand it. You would have to be born there."

"Would I then?" Quentin did not answer. "Do you understand it?"

"I dont know," Quentin said. "Yes, of course I understand it." They breathed in the darkness. After a moment Quentin said: "I don't know."

The novel ends with Quentin lying in bed, trying unsuccessfully to convince himself that he does not hate the South. Anyone who has read The Sound and the Fury knows that within six months of the end of this novel, Quentin will commit suicide. But, of course, that work was published before this one, and this one is set before that one, so the two do not reference each other at all. No literary criticism that I have perused attempts to draw any connection between the events of Absalom, Absalom and Quentin Compson's suicide.

This makes sense from a literary perspective, considering that the two novels were necessarily composed independently of each other. However, if we think of Quentin as a separate entity, a fully realized character with his own, independent existence, the implications of his suicide, and the reasons behind it, become much more interesting.

But I'm not prepared to go into all of that at this juncture. Suffice to say that I have successfully completed my 3rd Faulkner, and loved it. And I'll be sure to read another . . . y'know, sometime.

Biblical Unity Revealed: The Great Code by Northrop Frye

Our final two weeks in "Reading the Bible as Literature" were devoted to The Great Code by Northrop Frye, the famous literary critic. His book is devoted to an examination of the biblical material from a literary perspective. The title comes from William Blake: "The Bible is the great code of art and literature."

I absolutely loved the book, but almost no one else did. Gallagher was my only fellow Frye fan. The response of others in the class ranged from "I haven't read it" to "I don't understand it" to "This guy is retarded." The first two were almost forgivable . . . the book was not short, nor was it an easy read, but . . . Northrop Frye is a genius. I was astounded by Frye's ability, writing as a secular figure, to achieve such balance and sensitivity to the material in his critique of the Bible. Anyway, in honor of my classmates, here is my explanation of the book (as produced for my final exam in the class):

In The Great Code, Northrop Frye begins by outlining his general purpose in the introduction. He will discuss in his book the idea that the Bible is a literary unity and is the most important book in Western history and culture. He will do this by describing general factors under the headings of Language, Myth, Metaphor, and Typology in Part I. In Part II he will apply these factors more specifically within the Bible, returning backwards through them and giving the book a chiasmic structure.

In Language I, Frye notes that Christianity, unlike either Judaism or Islam, has relied primarily on translations for its religious texts since the very beginning of its history. First there was the Greek Septuagint of the early church, followed by the Latin Vulgate in the Middle Ages. Around the time of the Protestant Reformation, translations in English and Germany gained prominence. And today there is a concerted movement to see the entire Bible translated into every language known to mankind.

In examining, in particular, the language of the Bible, Frye describes the three phases of history posited by Giambattista Vico: the Age of Gods, the Age of Kings, and the Age of Men. He also discusses the difference between langue (or different languages like French, English, and German) and langage (or the common experience of living on earth which gives all languages equivalent terms and the ability to be translated into each other). Frye notes that there is a history of langage which moves through three distinct phases. Vico calls them poetic, heroic (or noble), and vulgar. Frye describes them as hieroglyphic, hieratic, and demotic. However, for most of the chapter, he refers to them as metaphor, metonymy, and descriptive.

In the metaphorical phase of language, words carry a great deal of power with them, for they invoke their objects when they are used. A word is the object which it refers to, and all concepts (even those we might consider abstract today) are concrete and real. Thus we see in the Bible how God speaks and Creation begins, how Jepthah’s vow must be kept, how the Hebrew people never say or write out the name of God, etc. At the center of the metaphorical phase is the concept of the “god” of nature and the world. A sentient personality is given to virtually everything, and from this we have a sun-god, rain-god, war-god, and so on.

In the metonymic phase of language, words shift from a state of “this is that” to a state of “this is put for that.” The language becomes capable of sustaining abstract concepts, and the idea of a transcendent “God” (who is outside of and over all things) moves to the center of the language. In metonymy, what was once literal is now much more poetic in nature.

In the descriptive phase of language, words arise out of the need to describe that which we see before us. In this phase, “God” no longer has any linguistic function because the concept cannot be sensed physically or in any way tested or measured empirically. Therefore, in the third phase of language God is said to be dead. However, Frye points out that God “may not be so much dead as entombed in a dead language.”

Once he has described these three phases, Frye states that the Bible does not fall squarely into any of them. The Bible contains metaphorical language, metonymic concepts, and descriptive writing, but it is actually something else altogether. The Bible makes use of a kind of rhetorical oratory which claims to bring revelation from a time outside of time. The Bible, then, is what Frye calls kerygma, or proclaiming rhetoric. Kerygma, he says, is the vehicle of the Bible’s revelation. In turn, the linguistic vehicle of kerygma is myth.

Myth, Frye says (in Myth I), serves to “draw a circumference around a human community.” Myth is communicated in story form, and it delineates the things which a society needs to know about itself. Myth is differentiated from other forms of story in two ways. First, it is part of a larger canon, or a Mythology. Second, it serves to set a particular society or culture apart from all others by forming the basis of a cultural history.

There are two types of history: Weltgeschichte and Heilsgeschichte. Weltgeschichte is authentic, accurate history which recounts events as they actually happened. Heilsgeschichte explains the importance of and meaning behind those historical events. The Bible, Frye asserts, is the latter type of history, and accurate history is usually secondary (and even irrelevant) to the biblical message. The myth of the Bible serves to redeem history by explaining its purpose and meaning.

In Metaphor I, Frye explains that the Bible, in accomplishing the construction of a mythology, uses a great deal of poetic imagery, despite the absence of a literary purpose as such. The reason for that is because of the value a verbal structure has in constructing a corresponding material structure. Frye notes that, when any verbal structure of words is created, it artificially links disparate material elements into a material structure. These material elements are only a minute part of all material reality, and may be totally unrelated without the presence of the linking verbal structure.

The purpose of this sort of structuralization in the Bible is to draw together the various events of the past in the construction of a unified, purposeful history. The Bible at its core consists of a universalized structure which remains open to a variety of theological interpretations. The history of the Bible presents a natural cycle of events which recurs over time, moving us towards a final denouement, or judgment, in which all creatures are divided between paradise and hell. Although Frye states that the Bible cannot be reduced to a single “metaphor cluster,” the guiding purpose throughout this historical movement is embodied in the word of God. The word of God can refer to both the Bible itself and to Jesus Christ.

In Typology I, Frye reveals that the Bible is able to carry its purpose (to account for the forces guiding all of human history) because it possesses a typology. A typology is essentially a theory of historical process which holds that there is a meaning and a purpose behind all events which transpire. Every event which occurs is a type, pointing to some event in the future which will remain clouded and unknowable until it actually takes place, thus revealing both itself and the manner in which it was concealed in the preceding event. This future event is the antitype of the type that came before.

Frye shows that the Bible consists of Old Testament and New Testament, which are type and antitype of each other, forming a “double mirror” in which each reflects the other but not the world outside. However, not only are the Old and New Testaments type and antitype, but every event in the Bible is in some way the type of what is to come and the antitype of what has already been. In this way, Frye believes, the Bible moves inexorably from beginning to end, carrying a single purpose forward throughout.

In Typology II, Frye discusses the seven specific “Phases of Revelation” which make up the totality of the Bible: five in the Old Testament, two in the New Testament. These phases in order are: Creation, Revolution (the Exodus), Law, Wisdom, Prophecy, Gospel, and Apocalypse. Each of the seven is, as previously discussed, the type of the phase after it and the antitype of the phase before it. Frye carries the reader through each of these phases, describing them and their links with each other. These descriptions serve largely as review material for anyone who possesses previous familiarity with the text.

In Metaphor II, Frye discusses the unity of biblical images. Imagery in the Bible is of two kinds: either Apocalyptic (good), or Demonic (evil). Each of these kinds is further divided, Apocalyptic into Group and Individual, and Demonic into Manifest and Parody. Parody only exists within the Demonic type because everything within Parody is a perversion of something good. Good does not pervert evil, so there is no Apocalyptic Parody. Parody itself is further divided into Group and Individual.

Once the images have been placed beneath one of the above headings, they are further divided into one of seven categories: Divine, Angelic (or Spiritual), Paradisal, Human, Animal, Vegetable, and Mineral. All biblical imagery fits somehow into this scheme, presenting the reader with a unified picture of the world where everything is part of the positive picture or the negative picture, all the way from the divine down to inanimate objects on earth.

In Myth II, Frye discusses the unity of the biblical narrative. He describes the entirety of the Bible as a rising and falling cycle of high points and low points tracing their way throughout history towards a final, ultimate high point. The narrative goes something like this: Garden of Eden, Sin/Wilderness/Cain’s City/Ur, Promised Land I (Pastoral), Sea/Wilderness/Pharaoh, Promised Land II (Agrarian), Philistines, etc., Jerusalem/Zion, Captivity/Babylon/Nebuchadnezzar, Rebuilt Temple, Antiochus Epiphanes, Purified Temple (Maccabees), Rome/Nero, Jesus’ Spiritual Kingdom.

Within this narrative, Pharaoh, Nebuchadnezzar, Antiochus, and Nero are all spiritually the same oppressor, and Egypt, Babylon, and Rome are the same place. Furthermore, the Garden of Eden, the Promised Land, Zion, and Jesus’ Spiritual Kingdom are all metaphors for the same place, and Moses, David, Joshua, etc. are all pointing towards the coming Messiah.

In Language II, Frye first addresses the question of the biblical canon which has formed this unity of imagery and narrative that he has just discussed. He believes that it has been formed around the book of Deuteronomy. The other books in the Pentateuch were re-written to conform to it. Earlier prophecy was interpreted according to it. Histories were written in light of it. And, finally, the New Testament books were selected according to their conformity with, and illustration of, Deuteronomy 6:5.

While some might see the question of authorship as integral to the selection of the canon, Frye states that this is not the case. In fact, authorship and the question of inspiration are fairly irrelevant. If inspiration is to be believed, then we must also believe in the inspiration of editors, translators, compilers, and so forth.

As for authorship, Frye states that the Bible was largely composed during a transitional phase between oral tradition (wherein the author is anonymous) and writing tradition (as in modern times, where the author is named). In this transitional phrase we have a great deal of pseudonymous writing, in which the actual authors will attach the name of some famous or important person in order to show the legitimacy of their writings. Frye supplies us with the example of II Peter.

Frye further describes the unity of the Bible as being largely built out of innumerable smaller units, or kernels. Examples of these include the proverbs or aphorisms of Wisdom literature, the oracles of Prophecy, the commandments of the Torah, and the pericope of the Gospels.

Proceeding forward, he discusses the importance of the Bible as a piece of objective (rather than subjective) art. Objective art by Frye’s reckoning consists of works which form an integral part of a society’s cultural history. In our case, this might mean such things as the writing of Shakespeare, Dickens, and, of course, the Bible.

Objective art, he states, has achieved “resonance” with its audience. In other words, particular phrases have achieved their own power and significance within a culture, even when separated entirely from their context within the original text. The example he gives is the phrase “Grapes of Wrath” from Isaiah 63, which has become a famous line in a culturally significant song as well as the title of an important piece of literature.

Next he describes Dante’s ideas of finding multiple meanings within a single passage. Dante classifies these meanings as: Literal, Allegorical, Moral, and Anagogical. Literal is the obvious meaning of the actual words. Allegorical is how the words form a picture or symbol of our salvation from a fallen state. Moral is how the words form a picture or symbol of our movement from a sinful to a virtuous life. And Anagogical is how the words form a picture or symbol of our glorification from base, human, earth-bound existence to an existence in the divine presence of God. Frye is careful to note that these varying meanings do not conflict with each other, but rather operate on various levels and are all, in some sense, true.

There are two cautionary notes which Frye provides to the application of Dante’s theory of polysemous meaning, however. First, it assumes the validity of a single worldview through which we interpret (in Dante’s case, Medieval Catholic Christianity). Second, it assumes that the words themselves are not important, but rather some higher meaning which exists behind the words.

However, Frye states that what Dante is trying to accomplish in the search for polysemous (but unified) meaning in a religious or spiritual sense is very near to what Frye is advocating in the application of polysemous (but unified) interpretation in a literary sense. He states that this approach is the most useful in any consideration of the Bible as literature. It must be considered as a unity of narrative and imagery, a product of composition which sought to account for a purpose behind history, and a self-contained work of proclaimed revelation in order to allow for the most useful study of its text in literary terms.

I found that Frye had a great deal of value to communicate in The Great Code. His approach to the Bible was both profound and meaningful. At times his writing could be quite difficult to follow and understand, yet this was not a failing of that writing, for once I understood what it was communicating I could think of no better way to explain whatever he was trying to say. In other words, I found the reading of the book to be a very rewarding and stretching experience. Frye challenged my beliefs without belittling, demeaning, or dismissing them, and I think I came away from the book ultimately strengthened in those beliefs.

Nevertheless, it is a marvel to me that a man with Frye’s obviously intimidating intelligence should be capable of conducting so thorough and knowledgeable a study of the meaning and value of the biblical text without himself believing in the truths espoused within that text. There were times in The Great Code where I felt that he was very close to believing just that, times when he seemed puzzled because something did not quite add up between his own assumptions and the actual situation he found, yet somehow he does not seem to have been capable of making that last leap to faith.

Even towards the end of the book when he is describing the nature of faith so well, there does not seem to be the least spark of any such knowledge or sentiments on his part. This both astounds and saddens me. However, Frye’s lack of faith in the Bible does not in any way affect the importance of what he has to say about it in his book. The Great Code was of considerable value to me in giving me perspective on what exactly the Bible is that I had never before heard or considered on my own.

One Literary Theory to Rule Them All

As anyone could easily tell from the preceding entries, I've had a lot of fun this semester playing around with different perspectives and ways of looking at literature. But through it all I must confess the slightest shade of discomfort. All of the critical theories to which we were exposed were alright in their way, but none of them worked perfectly for me. In particular, I was bothered by the fact that I could not fit my own critical efforts in the past into any of the categories which I was being taught.

I despise New Criticism, as I've mentioned before, for its total rejection of context and its attempt to reduce what I consider art to what it considers science. To me, New Criticism seems cold, dry, boring, and ineffective as a theory.

Reader-Response is fun in its way, and probably allows me the greatest latitude to exercise my opinions . . . but I can't help but feel that it is a cop-out as a serious theory. All you have to do is talk about your feelings while you were reading and voila, you have a piece of textual criticism. It can't be that easy, surely. I can't take myself seriously that way, at least.

Deconstruction is one that I've had a great deal of fun with this semester: presentations, papers, journals, and a lot of serious thought. And I was surprised to find that there is a great deal more to it as a serious approach, even for someone who believes in objective truth, than I might have expected. But unknowability is all you are ultimately allowed to arrive at, and that is far, far too limiting, surely. Certainly the objective reality of the text may always prove to be unknowable, but that doesn't mean that I can't draw a single, most-valid reading out of it which will be of use.

Psychoanalysis I have played with, both seriously and (more often) in jest, for years now. There's just something both quaint and entertaining about looking for sex in everything, just as a purely intellectual exercise. Phallic symbols, sexual frustration, parent-related trauma . . . all very inviting and easy to fall back on in a pinch. And, again, here is a theory that should be applied from time to time as the most useful in a particular case . . . but not always. Sex may well motivate everything, I don't know, but it isn't the meaning of everything, and as such I am not satisfied entirely with psychoanalysis.

Marxism is just flat out-dated, and does very little for me outside of functioning as an amusing joke. It, too, is fun to play with, and is actually applicable (largely for comedic value) in a few instances. Perhaps it can be most seriously applied where an author is clearly and intentionally dealing with the socio-economic themes which are dear to the Marxists heart, but for myself I have no interest in their politics.

Historical/Biographical certainly has its place, particularly in attempting to explain authorial intent. Why did the author produce this text, and what did it mean to them? But I still believe it is important to consider what it means, or ought to mean, to us. And there is no real room for that here. This theory I find extremely useful, but only in a secondary role, not as an end in itself.

Postcolonialism, Cultural Studies, Feminism, Post-feminism, and Queer Theory . . . all of these are variations on a theme. Not a bad theme, really . . . simply the idea that there are voices in both literature and history which are woefully underrepresented, and that this ought to be examined and rectified. Perhaps advocates of these theories, in their enthusiasm, turn a bit more material on its head than is strictly necessary, but it is an admirable effort nonetheless. But do they not see that they have simply boxed themselves in in a new location? There is no freedom here to accept certain types of literature on its own terms. I can't accept that, as much as I may enjoy dabbling in any of the above from time to time.

What I am not finding in any of these critical theories is a true accounting for literature itself. Some of them attempt to measure empirically, others to describe, others to account for in terms of libido or cold, hard cash, others to evaluate and re-evaluate from a dizzying array of angles, and still others merely to respond to. But who among them seeks to find a purpose and a great theme or drive behind the production and lasting value of literature? None . . . not really . . . not in the way I mean. These were the sorts of thoughts that were floating around in my head in a very disconnected fashion for quite some time.

And then, on the final day of class, Watson produced a handout for us which, quite frankly, made my week. I have copied it out below. It delineates the essentials of a critical theory which embodies precisely what I have been trying to do myself beginning some years ago. The origins of my own thought along those lines go back at least seven years or so to my first arguments over Harry Potter (if not even further back than that).

Essentially, the conflict that arose both in my own mind and between myself and others, and which has continued to resurface regularly throughout the intervening period, is whether I may positively state that any text is worth my time to examine and account for in terms of my own Christian worldview. Can I acceptably combine "All truth is God's truth" with "Art for art's sake" as I have long sought to do? The handout in class crystalized the definite, solid answer to that question which I have long postulated but seldom adequately proved: Yes.

But, I'm not sure if any of the above is making any sense at all, so maybe I'd better just get on with reproducing the contents of this handout for you. Maybe then everything will explain itself:

Christian Criticism

Assumptions with which to enter the text:
1. The glory of God is the central issue in all human endeavor.
2. The production of all literature is motivated by obedience or rebellion against God.
3. Your interpretation (insight) is influenced by your own relationship to the Spirit of God.
4. Literature, its writing, its reading, and its criticism is an arena for influencing conversion, redemption, and/or sanctification.

Questions to ask while reading the text:
1. Who has "fallen" and how did it happen?
2. What does the text say about redemption, forgiveness, enlightenment, or growth into wisdom?
3. What is the impact of evil/good, sin/forgiveness, etc. on the characters and their choices, dilemmas, and interactions with each other?
4. How is God's grace at work at various levels to bring about His moral and spiritual purpose in the text?
5. How is the text itself a product of God's grace?
6. What incarnations of God and godliness are reflected in the work (whether knowingly by the author or not)?
7. How does the work reflect or challenge a theistic or Christian understanding of life, the universe, and everything?

Practices to apply in analyzing the text:
1. Identify issues of sin, judgment and redemption in the text.
2. Identify who has spiritual power; what kind of spirit lies behind it; what is done with power; and who wants power.
3. Identify issues of faith, hope, and love.
4. Determine whether the text supports or undermines the status quo, "the world."
5. Observe the sacramental archetypes in the text (water, bread, blood, marriage, forgiveness, the call of God, etc.).
6. Trace the "passion" of the main character (figures of agony, betrayal, trial, execution, resurrection, etc.).

This, outlined in clear, practical terms and steps, is the theory I have been blindly striving to apply to everything I have read or watched for the past several years, with varying degrees of success. Suddenly having it dropped in my lap, and all contained so handily on a single sheet of paper, was . . . well, rather a rush to say the least. I felt both vindicated and purposeful . . . and a little disappointed he hadn't introduced it earlier in the course.

Anyway, I think I finally have a pet critical theory.

Gendering Till We Have Faces

Till We Have Faces presents C. S. Lewis's retelling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche from the viewpoint of one of the "evil" older sisters from the original myth. Lewis's changed message in this book is about the difference between sacred, selfless love and profane, selfish love, and about truly knowing ourselves ("having faces") before we can know "the gods" and meet them face to face. However, very little of that is truly related to the most important aspect of the story: its treatment of gender identity.

The story is narrated in the first person by Orual, the ugly but clever oldest daughter of the King of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian society heavily influenced by the Hellenistic world. The King of Glome has no sons, so Orual inherits the throne when he is no longer able to rule. She has begun covering her face shortly before this time, and she soon becomes a wise, strong ruler, adept both in battle and at the negotiating table, and leads Glome into a period of prosperity during a long and profitable reign.

It is difficult to stress enough how insignificant Orual, as a girl in the royal family, actually is while growing up. As far as The King is concerned, she has no value whatsoever, because not only is she female, she is ugly, a fact which he reminds her of as often as possible. She lacks both the value of being a male heir and of being desirable to marry off to a potential ally.

The King, with hopes of a male heir, acquires a learned Greek slave named The Fox, and he sets him to teaching Orual as practice for when the male heir arrives. This is very fortunate later on when no male heir is forthcoming as The King begins to require Orual's new wisdom in his deliberation in the throne room. As far as he is concerned, she might as well be of assistance there since her looks will not allow her to be of any other use. The skills she acquires at this time will serve her well later.

Meanwhile, Orual's early life begins miserably and proceeds unsuccessfully because she does not fall into the proper stereotypes of femininity. Shortly before her father falls gravely ill and is unable to rule any longer, however, she assumes a thick veil which hides her face and begins to train with swords and riding horses. Additionally, she has managed to find a place in the formerly male-dominated world of the throne room, where important deliberations take place and a well-developed intellect is vital.

By the time her father is dead, she has assumed many more aspects of masculinity than femininity. She is performing her gender, as per the theories of Judith Butler, and that gender is male. In fact, Bardia, one of her most trusted advisers, observes "Oh, Lady, Lady, it's a thousand pities they didn't make you a man" (Lewis 197). Although this comment wounds her deeply at the time, she forcefully pushes that emotion, and all others, aside.

Before long Orual is experiencing more and greater success than ever before in her life. From one perspective she has conformed her personality to the demands of a male-dominated society. From another perspective, however, it was only by breaking free of the constricting gender identity imposed on her from birth that she was able to fulfill her potential. She has natural skills of both mind and her body which would never have been allowed to mature within the bounds of her former gender.

In this way, Lewis seems to show a definite bent against the entire social construct that is gender identity in Part I of the book. People of the male sex should not be forced to perform as members of the male gender, and people of the female sex should not be forced to perform as members of the female gender. Rather, everyone should be free to exercise the full range of their identity, wherever that leads them in terms of gender. Glome's pre-Christian, patriarchal society is, of course, full of these social expectations, but in Orual Lewis seems to have created a character that movingly transcends those boundaries.

However, he pretty much blows it in Part II. In this much shorter portion of the book, Lewis asserts that, rather than finding her true identity by abandoning gender-based modes of thought, Orual has lost it. Almost her last experience before death is a beatific vision in which she finds herself remade in the image of her beautiful younger sister, Psyche (the essential type of femininity), for only then does she truly have a face and an identity with which to meet the gods. Lewis begins his book by freeing his female character from a prison of gender, which would have led to a life of unfulfilled potential and frustration. He ends his book by twisting this on its head and asserting that this freedom was, paradoxically, the real prison. He sets her free by imprisoning her once again, perpetuating the stereotypes of a male-dominated literary tradition with yet one more book.

The Historical Flannery in "A Good Man Is Hard to Find"

In 1953, Flannery O'Connor wrote "A Good Man Is Hard to Find," which would become the title piece in her first published collection of short stories. One of her shorter and more anthologized works, the story concerns a Southern family (parents, two children, baby, and grandmother) that sets out on a vacation to Florida. The grandmother, who has been opposed to the trip from the beginning, partially on the grounds that there is a notorious killer named "The Misfit" on the loose, has snuck her cat, Pitty Sing, into the car against the will of her son.

Along the way to Florida, she regularly feels the need to make conversation and generally makes a nuisance of herself, finally manipulating the children into begging for a detour so they can visit an old plantation mansion she recalls from her youth. However, much to the grandmother's horror, she suddenly realizes that her memory has been playing tricks on her, and the plantation house is not located anywhere near where they are. At about this time, the cat gets loose and causes the family to have a wreck. No one is hurt, but The Misfit and his accomplices happen along in the midst of the chaos.

The grandmother recognizes him and stupidly blurts out his name, prompting him to send the family off into the woods one by one to be executed. While this is going on, he holds a discussion with the grandmother during which she tries every trick she knows to convince him not to hurt her, almost to the point of denying the Resurrection of Christ. Then, suddenly, she experiences a shock of revelation. She finally escapes her self-centered babbling long enough to recognize that The Misfit deserves her love and compassion as if he were one of her own children.

As she reaches out to him, he shoots her, observing that "She would of been a good woman if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life" (O'Connor 153).

There are two vital historical and autobiographical keys to understanding the full context within which this story was originally written. First, Flannery O'Connor was a devout Roman Catholic whose faith played a significant role in her fiction (and nonfiction). Second, Flannery O'Connor was a native of Georgia writing during the Southern Literary Renaissance which took place during the middle of the 20th century.

Aside from studies in Iowa and some time in Connecticut, Flannery O'Connor remained largely a home body, never straying far from the family farm in Milledgeville where she raised peacocks. She published her first book, Wise Blood in 1952 and died in 1964 at the age of 39. Her particular concerns as a writer in the South during the Literary Renaissance manifest themselves in this story through her concern with familial relationships, the importance of historical consciousness in the grandmother's mind, and the religious concerns of two of the characters.

In "Good Man" each successive generation is portrayed as having less respect for their elders than the generation before it, yet the grandmother continues to live with her son despite the difficulty of putting up with her. This indicates that family connections are still important to her son even if he isn't happy about it. At the end of the story, the grandmother recognizes that everyone is connected to everyone else in some way, all part of the same family.

Historical consciousness crops up a number of times in the story, mostly from the grandmother. She speaks fondly of the way things used to be, reminiscing about the good old days when people were nice and decent and had good manners. The cause of the family's demise is a detour to visit an ancient house that the grandmother remembers from the past.

At one point on the trip, the grandmother points out a graveyard that was once attached to a plantation. When her granddaughter asks where the plantation is, the grandmother replies, "Gone With the Wind [. . .] Ha. Ha" (O'Connor 139). This reference, of course, is to the famous book and movie which gained immense popularity in the South when they were released in 1936 and 1939, respectively. Elements like this not only lend the story a distinctly Southern flavor, but cultural references show the importance of the time period as well.

Additionally, beginning in the late 1920s writers like O'Connor became some of the first Southerners in history to openly portray the South in a bad (or even questionable) light. They began to question their world honestly in an unprecedented fashion, and the result is the finest literature ever seen in that region, and some of the finest in the nation's history as well. O'Connor examined many of the same subjects that her contemporaries were examining: the poverty-stricken, socially backward country people of the region. But rather than attributing their condition to any economic or social trends, she blamed an unfulfilled longing for God's grace. O'Connor's own religious notions of good and bad approaches to things like prayer and Christ, and her views on states of grace are very obvious in "Good Man," particularly near the end.

The grandmother's religion is portrayed as something which she has never really thought about, only used like a charm or a magic spell, and now it has ceased working for her. "Pray, pray" she tells The Misfit (O'Connor 149), and then later "If you would pray [. . .] Jesus would help you" (O'Connor 150). Still later, she is almost entirely unable to speak: "She found herself saying, 'Jesus. Jesus,' meaning, Jesus will help you, but the way she was saying it, it sounded as if she might be cursing" (O'Connor 151).

Finally, when everything else has failed, she is reduced to a half-hearted denial. "'Maybe He didn't raise the dead,' the old lady mumbled, not knowing what she was saying" (O'Connor 152). Then, her mind clears for an instant, she has her epiphany. Experiencing true charity for perhaps the first time ever she reaches towards someone else in the midst of her own troubles (almost certainly for the first time), and she is dead almost immediately.

The Misfit, too, addresses the topic of religion, something he seems to have thought about too much. His style of oratory as he speaks to the grandmother is vaguely reminiscent of evangelical preaching, and he claims to have been a gospel singer (among many other things) at some time in the past. When the grandmother asks him why he doesn't pray, he claims to be doing all right by himself. We soon learn that he believes that "Jesus thown [sic] everything off balance. It was the same case with Him as with me except He hadn't committed any crime [. . .] I call myself The Misfit because I can't make what all I done wrong fit what all I gone through in punishment" (O'Connor 151).

Jesus was the only One that ever raised the dead [. . .] and he shouldn't have done it. He thown everything off balance. If He did what He said, then it's nothing for you to do but thow away everything and follow Him, and if He didn't, then it's nothing for you to do but enjoy the few minutes you got left the best way you can - by killing somebody or burning down his house or doing some other meanness to him. No pleasure but meanness (O'Connor 152).

The Misfit cannot believe in anything he hasn't seen for himself, and there is no way for him to have seen whether or not Christ's claims are true, therefore he cannot believe. But he is haunted by the thought that it might be true, and the conflict is tearing him up. In the meantime, as he concludes at the end of the story, "It's no real pleasure in life" (O'Connor 153).

The Kitchen Boy Who Would Be King: Steerpike and Class Struggle in Gormenghast

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Novels are, as previously indicated, densely populated with rich characters that move, sometimes in dignity, sometimes in madness, but always within the constricting bounds of ritual, through day-to-day life in Gormenghast castle. There is a place for everyone in the castle, and those places have been occupied by them and people like them for over seventy generations. The patriarch of the Groan family presides as lord and master. His family is waited on hand and foot by a vast array of servants.

There are the coveted, prestigious positions: Lord of the Library, personal butler to the Earl of Gormenghast, personal nurse to the children of the line of Groan, Chief Gardner, Head Cook, Duster in the Hall of Bright Carvings. Then there are the villagers whose houses huddle against the outer walls, and who only enter the castle once per year for the Festival of the Carvings or when a new Groan baby requires a wet nurse. However, lowliest in the hierarchy of class that governs the world of Gormenghast, even lower than these ignored peasants, are the countless, nameless kitchen workers. Little better than slaves, these hapless individuals work tirelessly in the heat and the smoke and the noise to perform all tasks related to this area of castle life. For instance:

The walls of the vast room which were streaming with calid moisture, were built with grey slabs of stone and were the personal concern of a company of eighteen men known as the 'Grey Scrubbers.' It had been their privilege on reaching adolescence to discover that, being the sons of their fathers, their careers had been arranged for them and that stretching ahead of them lay their identical lives consisting of an unimaginative if praiseworthy duty. This was to restore, each morning, to the great grey floor and the lofty walls of the kitchen a stainless complexion. On every day of the year from three hours before daybreak until about eleven o'clock, when the scaffolding and ladders became a hindrance to the cooks, the Grey Scrubbers fulfilled their hereditary calling. Through the character of their trade, their arms had become unusually powerful, and when they let their huge hands hang loosely at their sides, there was more than an echo of the simian. Coarse as these men appeared, they were an integral part of the Great Kitchen. Without the Grey Scrubbers something very earthy, very heavy, very real would be missing to any sociologist searching in that steaming room, for the completion of a circle of temperaments, a gamut of the lower human values (Peake 18-19).

It is the centuries-old system of class hierarchy which relegates these workers to a role where they are so obviously oppressed and exploited by the ruling class. But one, single bold member of the proletariat in Gormenghast is not satisfied with the injustice of his subjugation. His name is Steerpike, and he is a kitchen boy. Unlike his legion of fellows, who are content to remain the simpering lackeys of the bloated chef, Abiatha Swelter, Steerpike possesses ambition and an overwhelming sense that his mind makes him worthy of something better.

And he is most definitely right! Steerpike's resourcefulness, ambition, and natural intelligence enable him to escape his job in the kitchen, taking a series of successively higher positions in Gormenghast: first as assistant to Dr. Prunesquallor and finally as Lord of the Library and Keeper of Ritual himself. Yet, in The Gormenghast Novels Steerpike is considered the villain because of his efforts to overthrow the established order in the castle.

What that order amounts to is the perpetuation of an aristocratic class system which crushes the many beneath it while glorifying the few. And as for those few who are glorified, many of them are certifiably insane, and those who are not insane are for the most part either cruel or stupid. Their power derives from, in one memorable scene (I kid you not), a farcical aquatic ceremony. In a broader sense the ruling class stays in power simply because that is their traditional role, handed down for over six dozen generations, and no tradition in Gormenghast Castle ever goes away, once begun.

Despite the obvious and grave problems with this system, Peake's storytelling angle very clearly seems to support the ruling class in all its decadence, in particular the heir to it, Titus Groan. Steerpike's many excellent qualities (courage, intelligence, resourcefulness, skill), however, are of no consequence except insofar as they help him in his "evil" designs, for he wishes to overthrow the established order of rank and class. This book very clearly shows the tension between the classes and the revolutionary spirit of the Proletariat waiting to break forth, but the sympathies of the narrator are entirely with the old, hierarchical order.

Glamorous Indigo Eye: Fuchsia's Sexuality Revealed in "The Frivolous Cake"

Fuchsia Groan, older sister of the title character of Titus Groan (first of the three incomparable Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake), is a character who cannot truly be understood and sympathized with without an understanding of her psychological make-up. As the neglected eldest daughter of the 76th Earl of the House of Groan, Lord of the ponderous, sprawling, and decaying Gormenghast Castle, Fuchsia is presented as somewhat of a tragic heroine (bearing more than a slight resemblance to Ophelia, when all is said and done) when we first meet her at the age of about fifteen.

She is a lonely and reclusive girl, neglected all her life, but now even less important as a result of the birth of a male heir, Titus. Her love for her father, Lord Sepulchrave, is rivaled in intensity only by her hatred for her mother, Gertrude. Both, however, are equally indifferent to her existence. Fuchsia, the perpetual child who never really grows up despite her physical age, has a very clear Electra Complex. Meanwhile, the only two people who seem to care for her at all are her mousy nurse, Nanny Slagg, and the effeminate Doctor Prunesquallor (unmarried and living with his spinster sister, Irma).

Prunesquallor, however, is (as our story begins) totally absorbed with the birthing of baby Titus, and Nanny Slagg, who will take charge of the new baby, is equally preoccupied. Fuchsia's fury at the arrival of a baby brother is boundless. She responds to the news by throwing a tantrum and retreating to her sanctuary, the existence of which is unknown to anyone but Nanny Slagg.

Behind her bed, a door in the wall leads up steep and rickety stairs into a series of attics which lead finally to a window to the outside world. In this sanctum, Fuchsia has comfortable furniture, food, and all of her favorite things about her. These things include pictures, costumes, and books of all kinds. Nanny cannot climb the stairs to reach her here, and when she is inside this place, it is almost as though she has retreated into her own mind. In her sanctuary, she is untouchable and safe.

Among the many books she keeps in this room there is a book of poetry, and her favorite of all the poems in the book is a nonsense piece called "The Frivolous Cake" (Peake 64-65) This poem, reproduced in its entirety beneath the fold, provides a fascinating summary of Fuchsia's psychological state and subtly foreshadows the course of her fateful romance with the conniving and evil Steerpike, who will soon invade her world.

The poem is about a cake (a fruitcake, no less) which sails "on a pointless sea" (line 2) beneath a strangely-colored sky, amidst flying fish and enchanted islands populated with fantastic creatures. This cake, all unsuspecting, is pursued by an amorous knife which, when it finally catches up to her, proceeds to devour her in a fit of passion.

The life and environment of this "frivolous cake" parallel Fuchsia's own activities and picture of her surroundings. She has neither duties nor cares, and may come and go as she pleases. This she does, "in a manner emphatic and free" (line 4), floating about in a world which she can make no sense of and over which she has no control.

Soon, a new figure enters the scene where the frivolous cake has cavorted so carelessly, "filled to the brim/With the fun of her curranty crew" (lines 19-20). This figure is, of course, the knife, swiftly pursuing the cake through the water, and winking "his glamorous indigo eye/In the wake of his future wife" (lines 31-32). This tension within the poem refers directly to the imminent sexual pursuit of Fuchsia by Steerpike, who relentlessly worms his way into Fuchsia's affections in order to take advantage of her connections. Steerpike carries a swordstick about with him wherever he goes. In the poem, the imagery of the phallic knife pursuing the fruit-filled cake is unmistakably sexual within the poem.

In the end, the knife reaches the cake, and crumbs begin to fly in all directions as the "tropical air vibrates to the drone/Of a cake in the throes of love" (lines 39-40). The phallic knife, burying itself in the cake, satisfies its own lusts but destroys the fragile cake in the process (even though the cake doesn't seem to realize that it is being devoured). Meanwhile, Steerpike grows closer and closer to Fuchsia, and she remains oblivious of what his true purpose is until it is almost too late.

When she does realize what he has been up to, a part of her dies and she sinks into deep melancholia. "Her need for love had never been fulfilled; her love for others had never been suspected, or wanted . . . a girl who was, in spite of her title and all it implied, of little consequence in the eyes of the castle" (760). The combination of events drives her to the very brink of suicide, and she ultimately drowns in a flood, a sea just as pointless as that which the frivolous cake of her favorite poem sailed on.

"The Frivolous Cake" by Mervyn Peake

A freckled and frivolous cake there was
That sailed on a pointless sea,
Or any lugubrious lake there was
In a manner emphatic and free.
How jointlessly, and how jointlessly
The frivolous cake sailed by
On the waves of the ocean that pointlessly
Threw fish to the lilac sky.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare,
And every conceivable make there was
Was tossed through the lilac air.

Up the smooth billows and over the crests
Of the cumbersome combers flew
The frivolous cake with a knife in the wake
Of herself and her curranty crew.
Like a swordfish grim it would bounce and skim
(This dinner knife fierce and blue),
And the frivolous cake was filled to the brim
With the fun of her curranty crew.

Oh, plenty and plenty of hake there was
Of a glory beyond compare -
And every conceivable make there was
Was tossed through the lilac air.

Around the shores of the Elegant Isles
Where the cat-fish bask and purr
And lick their paws with adhesive smiles
And wriggle their fins of fur,
They fly and fly 'neath the lilac sky -
The frivolous cake, and the knife
Who winketh his glamorous indigo eye
In the wake of his future wife.

The crumbs blow free down the pointless sea
To the beat of a cakey heart
And the sensitive steel of the knife can feel
That love is a race apart
In the speed of the lingering light are blown
The crumbs to the hake above,
And the tropical air vibrates to the drone
Of a cake in the throes of love.

"This Be the Verse" . . . That Tears Itself Apart

Well, folks, it's that time again: time for the ol' Watson lit journals to come out to play here at the end of yet another semester. For my opening act I'll be applying Deconstruction Theory to "This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin, just as my group did during our class presentation (full text of poem appears beneath the fold . . . oh, and it has a couple of naughty words, if that sort of thing curls your toenails).

In the journals ahead, I'll be covering a whole gamut of contemporary critical theories: Freudian Psychoanalysis, Marxist Theory, Historicism, and Gender Studies . . . all (well, most) delightfully pagan in their outlook. I am relishing the chance to dabble in a wide range of perspectives that fall well outside conventional Christian norms. This'll be fun, I promise.

Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse" is an interesting study in self-defeating bitterness and angst. On the surface, his poem suggests that parents inevitably screw up their children, whether intentionally or not, by passing on their faults. However, this is not entirely the parents' fault since they, too, were screwed up by their parents (old fools in out-dated clothes), whom Larkin accuses of being "soppy-stern" (line 7), pairing off two apparently contradictory words which ultimately don't seem to mean anything.

In this way, the progression of human history from generation to generation becomes a sort of relay race where each runner passes misery on to the next runner, and with each successive runner the misery becomes that much heavier and more difficult to carry, deepening, as Larkin puts it, "like a coastal shelf" (line 10). Presumably, like a coastal shelf, man's misery will eventually drop over the edge into the depths and the human race will face drastic consequences. Larkin's solution to this problem? Ditch your parents as quickly as possible and avoid having any children of your own at all costs.

Now, this is, on the surface, what the poem seems to be saying. However, if we go back and examine more carefully what Larkin's use of language actually communicates, we see that his proposed solution is actually self-contradictory on two levels. Line 3 asserts that our parents fill us "with the faults they had" (emphasis mine). The use of past tense seems to indicate that these faults no longer plague our parents, almost as if they have purged themselves of these faults by handing them to us (as per the relay race analogy). This idea of something passed from one person to another is confirmed by line 9: "Man hands on misery to man."

In light of this, what might Larkin's command to "Get out as early as you can,/And don't have any kids yourself" (lines 11-12) now mean? Well, that partially depends on the motive for getting out and avoiding children. If the emphasis is on the first line, the motive seems to be a selfish one. In other words, escape from your parents and avoid having kids so that you don't have to deal with any of these problems anymore. Save yourself that grief.

However, taking the alternate reading of the poem into account, whoever follows this advice will retain the faults and misery of previous generations. Unable to purge themselves by having children, they will carry this deepening burden themselves throughout their lives. This, then, is no solution at all for the person with selfish motives. They must have children or face an intolerable strain.

On the other hand, if the emphasis is on the last line, the motives seem a bit more altruistic. It is almost as if we are being counseled to avoid having children for the childrens' sake rather than our own. However, in this case (if the motive then, is indeed to save later generations from the increasing burden of grief and misery which may ultimately destroy them), the proposed solution is still a failure. If everyone were to refuse to perpetuate the human race, ostensibly to save humanity, the entire race would be gone within a single generation.

This fundamental contradiction within the poem's own verbal structure ultimately subverts its entire intended meaning, transforming it into a meaningless expression of negative emotions which fails entirely to address the problems it raises. Larkin has been defeated in his attempts to communicate by the inherent subjectivity of language, which allows his point to be undermined and destroyed.

"This Be the Verse" by Philip Larkin

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don't have any kids yourself.

The Top Fifty, Part X

The Man Who Was Thursday (G. K. Chesterton) - There are seven members of the radical Central Anarchist Council who, for security purposes, name themselves after the days of the week - Sunday, Monday, etc. However, the turn of events soon cast doubt upon their true identities, for the man who was Thursday is not the impassioned young poet he pretends to be, but rather a member of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist squad of secret detectives. Who and what are the true identities of the other days of the week? Chesterton unwinds the mysterious entanglements in his own inventive and lively way and then escalates the mounting nightmare of paradox and surprise, culminating in a shocking revelation. He probes the mysteries of behavior and belief in an all too human world.

Chesterton wrote a whole lot of great stuff. I adore the Father Brown Mysteries. and Wilson's got his own little (very little, I guess) Orthodoxy cult going on. Last Christmas break, I camped out in Barnes & Noble over the course of a few days and read (among other things) The Ball and the Cross and The Man Who Was Thursday. They were both good, but the latter was magnificent . . . a thrilling, convoluted, suspenseful, and shocking story of intrigue on a global scale. Chesterton piles on the plot twists until the reader doesn't know what to believe anymore, finally taking the whole plot in a wholly unexpected direction, full of powerful Christian symbolism, at the very end.

The Inimitable Jeeves (P. G. Wodehouse) - Bertie Wooster's friend Bingo falls in love with every woman he meets, from Mabel, the waitress at the bun shop, to the Amazonian Honoria Glossop (whom Aunt Agatha has earmarked for Bertie). Naturally there are obstacles to be overcome - the matter of allowances, class prejudices and a lack of revolutionary tendencies. Rely on Jeeves, the consumate gentleman's gentleman, to apply his superb brain-power in emancipating Bertie and Bingo from the tightest of corners in plenty of time for tea.

I don't remember when I first heard of P. G. Wodehouse, but Watson and his three shelves of Wodehouse books probably had something to do with it. I got a collection of three Jeeves books for Christmas a year or two back, and worked my way through them at my leisure. I distinctly recall needing to read them alone because I created a significant disturbance whenever there were other people around. The adventures of Jeeves and Bertie Wooster are so funny, I just couldn't help it. This particular book had a great overarching plot with loads of deliciously humorous supporting stories that built towards its conclusion. Wodehouse is definitely one of the more fun (and funny) reads I've experienced in recent years.

Everything That Rises Must Converge (Flannery O'Connor) - Collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'connor, published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment. The title story is a tragicomedy about social pride, racial bigotry, generational conflict, false liberalism, and filial dependence. Similarly, "The Comforts of Home" is about an intellectual son with an Oedipus complex. Driven by the voice of his dead father, the son accidentally kills his sentimental mother in an attempt to murder a harlot. The other stories are "A View of the Woods," "Parker's Back," "The Enduring Chill," "Greenleaf," "The Lame Shall Enter First," "Revelation," and "Judgment Day."

I like Flannery O'Connor so much that it makes Rachel jealous. She gets tired of hearing "Flannery O'Connor this" and "Flannery O'Connor that" . . . is it my fault that O'Connor is handy when you need paper or presentation topics in a pinch? Well, maybe I have been a tad bit insufferable since I got a copy of her Collected Works. I have read (and probably raved about) all of the short stories and essays already, but I have not yet ventured into the novels. Maybe this Christmas Break . . .

Anyway, I love all of her short stories, and it was difficult to choose between A Good Man Is Hard to Find and Everything That Rises Must Converge. Both are excellent. However, ultimately I decided that the latter was the superior collection. Her earlier stories are a bit more heavy-handed in their symbolism, a bit more obviously grotesque in their technique. The later stories, on the other hand, are much more subtle and less fantastical and seem largely to possess greater depth as a result.

I have read that O'Connor obsessively groomed, touched-up, and edited her stories until she thought they were perfect . . . and it shows. And, of course, the powerful Christian themes she addresses have lost none of their spiritual relevance in the forty years since she died. She is one of the supreme masters of her craft.

Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov) - Humbert Humbert is a European intellectual adrift in America, haunted by memories of a lost adolescent love. When he meets his ideal nymphet in the shape of 12-year-old Dolores Haze, he constructs an elaborate plot to seduce her, but first he must get rid of her mother. In spite of his diabolical wit, reality proves to be more slippery than Humbert's feverish fantasies, and Lolita refuses to conform to his image of the perfect lover.

Surprised? You probably should have seen this coming when I praised Nabokov's prose so highly while talking about Mervyn Peake. I've read Lolita twice now, seen the movie version twice, and written two sizable (roughly ten-page) papers. Nabokov's grasp of the English language, and the ease with which he manipulates and shapes it, astounds me. Nabokov is a true literary artist, and Lolita is a true work of literary art. The prose is as exquisite as it is impenetrable, with its maze of hints, riddles, and allusions. This, however, only serves to make the work a good deal richer with each successive reading. The plot is tense, the characters are tragic, and the moral and emotional impact (at least for me) is high. Lolita is certainly not for everyone, but then . . . few books are.

As I Lay Dying (William Faulkner) - At the heart of this 1930 novel is the Bundren family's bizarre journey to Jefferson to bury Addie, the family matriarch. Speaking in no less than sixteen distinct voices, Faulkner lets each family member, including Addie, and others along the way tell their private responses to Addie's life through the brilliant flow of stream-of-consciousness prose.

I just read this about halfway through the semester. It is only the second book I have read by Faulkner, but I was floored by it. As I Lay Dying is a good deal more accessible than The Sound and the Fury, but it still doesn't hand everything to the reader on a plate. Faulkner masterfully and believeably weaves together over a dozen totally different voices to create a story which could only be set in the deep South. I decided not long after finishing The Sound and the Fury that I was a definite fan of stream-of-consciousness. I enjoy the unique challenge it presents to the reader and the writing skill required on the part of the author (when, as with Faulkner, it is well-done).

In this book, the characters are very alive and very real, and their situation inspires a great deal of empathy on the part of the reader, partly because they are so movingly described and their struggles so memorably portrayed. It is not a long book, but, as the narrative slowly unwound and drew to a close, I felt as if I had been with the characters for quite some time.

And so ends my "Top Fifty" list, at last. I started it nearly a month ago believing that it was practically ready to post. Little did I suspect how much more time it would take me to put it together properly . . . or how little time I would have to do so. Now that it's over, I will return to regular posting . . . in fact, I've almost got a bit of a pile-up already what with all sorts of eventfulness going on here and there. Before I bring this whole thing to a close, though, I'm going to go ahead and toss out a quick list (in no particular order) of two dozen books that were in the running for the "Top Fifty," but didn't quite make the cut . . . just for kicks and giggles. Some of these were very difficult to remove, some not nearly so much . . .

By the Great Horn Spoon! by Sid Fleischman
Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
Redwall by Brian Jacques
The Firm by John Grisham
The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin
Homer Price by Robert McCloskey
Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy
The Twenty-One Balloons by William Péne DuBois
God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew
Jackaroo by Cynthia Voight
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare
The High King by Lloyd Alexander
Rifles for Watie by Harold Keith
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit
Christy by Catherine Marshall
The Great Brain by John D. Fitzgerald
Escape from Warsaw Ian Seraillier
The Wheel on the School by Meindert DeJong
Anne of Green Gables by L. M. Montgomery
101 Dalmatians by Dodie Smith
The Spy Who Came In from the Cold by John le Carré

The Top Fifty, Part IX

Master and Commander (Patrick O'Brian) - This, the first in the splendid series of Jack Aubrey novels, establishes the friendship between Captain Aubrey, Royal Navy, and Stephen Maturin, ship's surgeon and intelligence agent, against the thrilling backdrop of the Napoleonic wars. Details of life aboard a man-of-war in Nelson's navy are faultlessly rendered: the conversational idiom of the officers in the ward room and the men on the lower deck, the food, the floggings, the mysteries of the wind and the rigging, and the roar of broadsides as great ships close in battle.

Fry loaned me this book when I went back to Guatemala for Christmas two years ago, and I read it over the break. I had already seen the movie by this point, it had met with my approval, but little did I suspect the vast depth the books add to the characters of Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin. In addition to the dazzlingly captivating characters in the book, I was drawn in by a narrative style that reminded me very much of Jane Austen (as both the second and third books in the series have continued to do). Master and Commander is a supremely magnificent historical read. Aubrey, master tactician on the water, and Maturin, master spy on the land, are a literary pair on a level with the likes of Holmes and Watson, and certainly worthy of an entire series to chronicle their adventures.

The Importance of Being Earnest (Oscar Wilde) - Cecily Cardew and Gwendolen Fairfax are both in love with the same mythical suitor. Jack Worthing has wooed Gewndolen as Ernest while Algernon has also posed as Ernest to win the heart of Jack’s ward, Cecily. When all four arrive at Jack’s country home on the same weekend—the "rivals" to fight for Ernest’s undivided attention and the "Ernests" to claim their beloveds—pandemonium breaks loose.

Few plays, if any, are more fun to read (particularly in a theatrical setting) than this one. The SC Players have done it twice in the past, and both times I played my favorite character, Algernon. I have also read through the play on my own a few times. I remember once in British Lit II when I, sitting in the back of the room, randomly opened to it in our textbook and began to read, only just managing to stifle my laughter (which is so much more difficult the harder you try).

Wilde in this play is simply so recklessly frivolous and trivial, and it seems as though every singly line of dialogue states the facts of life in a manner which is both precisely the opposite of the truth and (at the same time) more true than we might care to believe. In this case, as well, I happen to own the movie version (which I believe I actually saw before I had ever read the play) and I haul it out and watch it every so often as well. The play is a short, light read with gut-bustingly hilarious dialogue and a wickedly convoluted (but easy to follow) plot which provides the audience with a shocking twist and an excruciating pun all rolled into one at play's end.

The Gormenghast Novels (Mervyn Peake) - A doomed lord, an emergent hero, and a dazzling array of bizarre creatures inhabit the magical world of these novels. At the center of it all is the darkly humorous, stunningly complex tale of the life of Titus, heir to Lord Sepulchrave. He stands to inherit the miles of rambling stone and mortar that form Gormenghast Castle and its kingdom, where all events are predetermined by a complex ritual whose origins are lost in history, understood only by Sourdust, Lord of the Library. Titus will one day rule as the seventy-seventh Earl unless the conniving Steerpike, who is determined to rise above his menial position and control the House of Groan, has his way. The Gormenghast royal family, the castle's decidedly eccentric staff, and the peasant artisans living around the dreary, crumbling structure make up the cast of characters in this engrossing story. Peake's command of language and unique style set the tone and shape of an intricate, slow-moving world of ritual and stasis where all is like a dream--lush, fantastical, and vivid.

Mervyn Peake's Gormenghast Novels astound me on two levels. First, they are unbelievably good. Peake's prose remains virtually unmatched in my mind by anyone except perhaps Vladimir Nabokov. His story, characters, and world are deep, rich, and full of surprises and symbolism. He defies classification . . . the books are generally classified as fantasy for sheer convenience, for they do not fall into any known category. Second, at times it seems as though no one has ever heard of Gormenghast, much less read the books. How can writing and storytelling of this caliber fly practically under the radar for over half a century?

The first two books are totally enthralling and nearly flawless, the third less so. Peake envisioned a truly epic series which would follow his hero, Titus Groan, from birth to old age. The pace he expected to maintain is evident when we have reached page 100 or so of Titus Groan and our hero has only just emerged from the wound. Sadly, Peake became mentally diseased after beginning the third book, during which Titus is supposed to be in his early twenties, more or less, and died just a few scribbled pages into book four. Titus Alone, while still brilliant in a unique way, shows the sad effects of Peake's decline. The story is often confusing and disjointed and lacks some of the perfection of the earlier works. Nevertheless, it is an excellent read, and the first two books stand alone very effectively.

As a brief preview of coming attractions, I've been absolutely itching to begin producing a body of literary analysis of the works from a variety of perspectives (there are certainly plenty of angles of approach). Soon, my friends, soon . . .

Man and Superman (George Bernard Shaw) - John Tanner is horrified to discover that he is the object of Ann Whitefield's ambitions in her search for a satisfactory husband. For Tanner, political pamphleteer and independent mind, escape is the only option. But Ann is grimly resigned to society's expectations and ready for the chase. A protracted, allegorical detour through Hell in the third act features a mind-numbing, but fascinating debate between supernatural figures and reveals the startling philosophical thesis of the play before the final denoument. In this caustic satire on romantic conventions, Shaw casts his net wide across European culture to draw on works by Mozart, Nietzsche, and Conan Doyle for his re-telling of the Don Juan myth. Haled as "the first great twentieth-century English play," this remains a classic exposé of the eternal struggle between the sexes.

I believe this is the third and final playwright to make my list. Shaw, much like his character Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, is not in the least afraid of offending everyone equally. His plays are radically and courageously anti-establishment in a way that I find it difficult not to admire. In addition to his pointed and often disturbing philosophical agendas, Shaw has a devastating and hilarious wit which he employs to brilliant effect in his plays. This is my favorite of his plays due in large part to a ponderous third act (of four) which outlines a starkly pragmatic philosophy of life (the "Life-Force" Philosophy, in fact) from within a wicked vision of the afterlife that (in his day) only Shaw would dare to dream up and put on the stage.

Besides this third act, which is a dream sequence that lasts longer than the other three acts combined and contributes next to nothing to the plot while slipping in nearly everything regarding the point that Shaw is attempting to put across, Man and Superman is a cute and funny romantic comedy filled with quite a number of truly humorous characters and situations.

A Room With a View (E. M. Forster) - This Edwardian social comedy explores love and prim propriety among an eccentric cast of characters assembled in an Italian pensione and in a corner of Surrey, England. A charming young English woman, Lucy Honeychurch, faints into the arms of a fellow Britisher when she witnesses a murder in a Florentine piazza. Attracted to this man, George Emerson--who is entirely unsuitable and whose father just may be a Socialist--Lucy is soon at war with the snobbery of her class and her own conflicting desires. Back in England she is courted by a more acceptable, if stifling, suitor, and soon realizes she must make a startling decision that will decide the course of her future: she is forced to choose between convention and passion.

The process by which E. M. Forster has become one of my favorite authors is singularly bizarre . . . no less so as this is the only book of his which I have read. I first encountered him in British Literature II during the spring of my sophomore year, in which we read a chapter of A Passage to India and watched the 1984 movie version. The movie instantly became one of my favorites and I have since watched it at least three times. Sometime during the following fall semester I got the movie versions of both Howard's End (featuring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson) and A Room With a View (with Helena Bonham Carter and Maggie Smith) from the library and loved them both. By now I had enjoyed three movies based on the works of Forster without once having read one of his books. Unacceptable.

Returning to the library, I arbitrarily settled on A Room With a View as Christmas Break reading and loved it. The book is hilarious, a fantastic read from its period. It skewers both Romantics and Aesthetics, and generally has a great deal of fun at the expense of the British upper-middle class. I'm already planning to squeeze A Passage to India in sometime this Christmas Break. We shall see.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part VIII

Paradise Lost (John Milton) - This is the quintessential epic English poem. Penned by Milton in the 1600s, it relates the story of Lucifer's revenge on God after he has been cast out of Heaven. Bursting from the confines of Hell he blazes a trail to Earth, bent on corrupting God's pristine masterwork in any way he can. Little does he know that even his success in destroying Man's innocence and introducing Sin into the world will lead to God's ultimate victory with mankind's redemption and salvation. In the poem's final section, an angel reveals God's plan for mankind's history to Adam in its entirety, giving him hope for the future even as he is cast forth from the Garden of Eden forever. Beautifully written and vividly described, the real strength of Paradise Lost lies in its characters and in its source material: The Bible.

Oh, look at me! I'm such a poser (again)! I have Milton and Shakespeare on my list! Well, this is a book which I have written about before, it just so happens. I stayed up all night to finish Paradise Lost one Christmas break because I couldn't put it down, and I was so excited about it that I got up and started writing a post that shows definite effects of sleepiness. That aside, I guess Milton probably isn't for everyone, and I've heard a lot of complaints about his theology (however relevant that may be to a literary work). But whether he gets it right or wrong in the end, Milton did give me a startling new perspective on the story of Creation and Fall which, while it probably didn't shed much valuable light on the story itself, gave me a lot to think about with respect to almost everything else. And, in the end, isn't that the essential point of a retelling anyway?

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J. K. Rowling) - The pivotal fourth novel in the seven part tale of Harry Potter's training as a wizard and his coming of age. Fourteen-year-old Harry gets away from the pernicious Dursleys and goes to the Quidditch World Cup with Hermione, Ron, and the Weasleys. He then begins his fourth year at Hogwarts Academy where he is mysteriously entered in an unusual contest that challenges his wizarding skills, friendships and character. The event involves two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened in a hundred years. Amid signs that an old enemy is growing stronger, all he wants is to be a normal, fourteen year old wizard. Unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards.

The Harry Potter series (idiot controversy aside) is one of the supreme children's literature creations of all time. Sadly, as of this writing, it is still one book shy of completion. Nevertheless, the series thus far is an incredible joy to read. My personal favorite thus far (by a nose) is Goblet of Fire, as the central book on which everything else hinges. This is, of course, yet another case of a book in a series that might not be on the list without the support of other books which are not.

Despite the publication of the first book in 1997, I was not allowed to begin reading the series while still living at home. This was a subject of much contention for years (you may find my definitive final word on the subject here), and ultimately I did not begin the first book until I moved out of the house during the summer after I graduated from high school (2002). It was probably, in fact, one of the first things I did. At the time, the fourth book was just coming out in paperback, but I only bought the first one to read and discover what all the fuss was about to see if I would want to continue the series.

To make a long story short, I did, and I rapidly acquired the remaining three. I read most of book two during the trip from Lubbock to Longview when I moved in at LeTourneau my freshman year. I read book three during Thanksgiving Break my freshman year. And I read book four during Spring Break my freshman year (at least the final half of it one sitting). Book five came out that summer, and a generous aunt (one of the few relatives I have who will tolerate the series . . . and, incidentally, who has actually bothered to read it) loaned me a copy. I finished it in three sittings while on vacation travelling about the state with my family. And, of course, book six came out just this summer, and just as I was casting about for the means to get my hands on it, my wonderful girlfriend informed me that she had bought it as my early birthday present. When it arrived I finished it in two sittings.

All that I need add to complete this brief history of myself and the Harry Potter series is that I have arrived on opening night to showings of the last two HP movies (the third was the best of the series, the fourth perhaps the worst). Trust me, people should be reading these books, but if they don't or won't . . . well, their loss.

The Great Train Robbery (Michael Crichton) - Lavish wealth and appalling poverty - and Edward Pierce easily navigates both worlds. Rich, handsome, and ingenious, he charms the city's most prominent citizens even as he plots the crime of the century - the daring theft of a fortune of gold. But even Pierce could not predict the consequences of an extraordinary robbery that targets the pride of England's industrial era: the mighty steam locomotive.

To the best of my recollection, I read this book in its entirety during one night in the lounge of Andy's suite at John Brown University. I had finished my first spring semester at LeTourneau, and I was spending a week at JBU with Andy while he took his finals in order to return to Colorado Springs with him. I got a lot read that week . . .

It is not uncommon for me to read large portions of Michael Crichton books at a single go. I recall reading hundreds of pages of Sphere without moving a muscle, and when I finally finished the book, one of my arms and both of my legs were asleep. The Great Train Robbery is quite simply the best "caper" story I've ever encountered, and it paints a very vivid and memorable picture of the seedy underbelly of Victorian London. I can't say for certain how much of the story is actual historical fact, but I know that a great deal of it is, and while I was reading it I certainly felt as though every word was true.

Arthur (Stephen R. Lawhead) - They called him unfit to rule, a lowborn, callow boy, Uther's bastard. But his coming bad been foretold in the songs of the bard Taliesin. And be had learned powerful secrets at the knee of the mystical sage Merlin. He was Arthur -- Pendragon of the Island of the Mighty -- who would rise to legendary greatness in a Britain torn by violence, greed, and war; who would usher in a glorious reign of peace and prosperity; and who would fall in a desperate attempt to save the one he loved more than life.

Well, well, another version of the Arthur legend has appeared on my list. Now there's a shock. I felt that Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle (an attempt at a more or less historically based retelling of the myth) got off to rather a slow start with Taliesin, the story of Merlin's father. The second book, Merlin, was considerably better, but still not perfect. The third book, though, totally blew me away. It's use of multiple first-person narrators to tell the story of Arthur's exciting reign is quite riveting. You might think that, with that opinion of book three I might have moved on to book four, Pendragon, by now. But I haven't due to a busy reading schedule. Also, I've heard that it's not as good as the others in the series . . . maybe I'm afraid that's true.

Many Dimensions (Charles Williams) - The book turns on the discovery of the magical Stone of Solomon, infinitely divisible, and through which one can move at will through space, time, and thought. Those who think they can manipulate the stone to serve their own ends, however, find to their horror that, as Jesus once ironically said, "they have their reward." While the story clearly deals with the extraordinary, through his humorous and loving depiction of his British characters Williams more deeply shows us the spiritual reality that lies inside the ordinary.

Charles Williams is the third and final Inkling on my list, and only with great difficulty would I be able to convince myself that he isn't the best. I feel that both Lewis and Tolkien themselves would agree with that assessment. I was introduced to Williams in the Inklings Only class I took during the fall semester of my sophomore year. We bought a collection of three of his novels in a single volume and were required to choose two to read. Of course, many of us read all three. Of those three, while I know that Wilson prefers the depth and profundity of Descent into Hell and perhaps others might prefer the epic good vs. evil themes of War in Heaven, my favorite is Many Dimensions, with a little of both of the above and an extremely exciting concept to boot.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part VII

The Foundation Trilogy (Isaac Asimov) - Asimov's epic of Empire and the ebb and flow of history covers a span of several hundred years in the history of an ideal universal ruling organization. When the Galactic Empire began to decay and crumble, Hari Seldon and his band of psychohistorians planted a colony, the Foundation, on a remote border planet. The Foundation would incubate art, science, and technology, and form the nucleus of the Second Empire, thus shortening the Dark Age between empires from 10,000 years to only 1,000. The first section, Foundation traces the Foundation's embryonic development and the beginnings of its rise to power. In Foundation and Empire, a period of disruption transpires amid the death throes of the Galactic Empire, followed almost immediately by the sudden appearance of a powerful mutant force, known as "The Mule," that not even Hari Seldon could have predicted. Second Foundation describes the climactic search for Seldon's hidden Second Foundation undertaken separately by both The Mule and the desperate, reeling First Foundation.

I graduated from fantasy to science fiction, and hence to Asimov, somewhat late considering my predilection for the former. It was probably Star Wars that did it when I saw the trilogy for the first time in 1997, but I no longer remember. In any case, Asimov is certainly one of my favorite authors, and one of my most read. There is not a great deal of action in his novels . . . in fact, almost nothing seems to happen in some of them, despite their length. Nevertheless, I was always fascinated by them from start to finish.

Asimov is a master of plotting on a grand scale, and many of his books demonstrate this on three levels. Each book contains elements that are part of itself (obviously), elements which connect with the larger series (often trilogy) of which they are a part, and elements which fit into the grand scheme of "Asimov time" which spans something like 20,000 years of human history. His Foundation trilogy is a perfect example of this, and it employs a classic Asimov device. Each part is neatly divided into sub-parts so that really the entire massive saga seems like a collection of novellas more than anything else.

My favorite part of the trilogy is probably the third book, but it could hardly be a favorite without the context of the preceding two. That, plus the facts that the previous two are excellent books and the trilogy is available in a single-volume form made it a necessity to add to the list. The Foundation trilogy is undoubtedly one of the great masterpieces of sci-fi literature (although if you find that term to be an oxymoron, you might want to avoid it).

A Midsummer Night's Dream (William Shakespeare) - Three members of a love triangle (and a fourth who wants in) along with a troupe of rustic tradesmen with thespian delusions stumble into an enchanted forest on the eve of the wedding of Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, and become the playthings of a group of mischievous, feuding fairies. Of course, love conquers all by the end, but some very strange events transpire along the way.

Shakespeare is another of my most read authors, and that made it extremely difficult to decide which of his plays ought to go on his list. I feel like such a poser to begin with by putting anything by Shakespeare at all, but I assure you that I do genuinely love the works of Shakespeare. I have read 25 of his plays, and over a dozen of those at least twice, and I'm looking earnestly for the time to complete the remaining 13.

My immediate problem was really whether to choose a comedy or a tragedy. Both are so different from each other that I had legitimate favorites in both camps that almost defied comparison. In the end, however, I decided that none of Shakespeare's plays has given me more joy than A Midsummer Night's Dream. I've probably read it at least five times, more than one of those aloud in a "reader's theater" setting. I also own the charming recent movie version, and have watched and enjoyed it several times (one of the few instances where a drastic change from Shakespeare's original setting, from Ancient Greece to 19th century Italy, genuinely works).

My favorite character to act, incidentally, is undoubtedly Bottom the Weaver, whose flamboyant, good-natured chutzpah make him one of the most endearing characters in all Shakespeare. On the one hand, he is obnoxiously proud and self-centered, but on the other, he is so charitable and guileless about it (not to mention comical) that he is almost impossible not to like.

The Eye of the World (Robert Jordan) - The peaceful villagers of Emond's Field pay little heed to rumors of war in the western lands until a savage attack by troll-like minions of the Dark One forces three young men to flee their home in the company of an Aes Sedai (a powerful female mage) as the Dark One's evil armies pursue. While a series of life-threatening encounters keep them constantly on the move, they are visited by terrible dreams that hint that they must soon confront a destiny which has its origins in the time known as The Breaking of the World.

Some may think this a strange choice, being disgusted with the the way Jordan has stretched out his saga to cover eleven massive books without yet being done. Personally, I am currently stalled out on book six, searching for a chance to proceed, and still enjoying the series for what it is. In any case, regardless of what some people may think about this series, they probably only think it because they liked it enough at the beginning to keep reading later. After all, if the first book had sucked, why would they have picked up the second? No matter how much later portions of the series may have jumped the shark (and I'm still enjoying it immensely at book six, personally), book one is an excellent read.

I'm noticing that I have given fantasy a great deal of space on this list, which should indicate how fond of it I have been in the past. The Eye of the World provides solid high fantasy in the tradition of Tolkien, and Jordan's world is enormous. I found his writing to contain an excellent mix of borrowed elements common to all fantasy and his own highly-original ideas. This series contains some fascinating elements which lead to exciting developments from the beginning of the first book. The Eye of the World, despite its length, is a very absorbing read, full of suspense, action, and some very unexpected twists. It is both satisfying by itself and an excellent primer for the later books.

City Boy (Herman Wouk) - This work about a "Bronx Tom Sawyer" spins the hilarious and often touching tale of Herbie Bookbinder, an urban kid, and his adventures, misadventures and wild escapades on the street, in school, in the countryside, always in pursuit of Lucille, a heartless redhead personifying all the girls who torment and fascinate pubescent lads of eleven.

I read City Boy twice in a single summer, directly after I had graduated from high school, and was highly entertained both times. Herbie's story is by turns nostalgically poignant, side-splittingly hilarious, and painfully suspenseful. And through it all, I was captivated by the rise and fall of Herbie's fortunes, participating vicariously in his adventures and misadventures. It's no wonder this book won the Pulitzer Prize. The grand money-making scheme he devises while at summer camp, the manner in which he carries it out (which occupies a significant portion of the story), and the ultimate result of the whole experience had me in stitches and on pins and needles at the same time. That may not sound very pleasant, but I assure you it was.

The Princess Bride (William Goldman) - Westley, handsome farm boy who risks death and much, much worse for the woman he loves; Inigo, the Spanish swordsman who lives only to avenge his father's death; Fezzik, the Turk, the gentlest giant ever to have uprooted a tree with his bare hands; Vizzini, the evil Sicilian, with a mind so keen he's foiled by his own perfect logic; Prince Humperdinck, the eviler ruler of Guilder, who has an insatiable thirst for war; Count Rugen, the evilest man of all, who thrives on the excruciating pain of others; Miracle Max, who can raise the dead (kind of); The Dread Pirate Roberts, supreme looter and plunderer of the high seas; and, of course, Buttercup, the princess bride, the most perfect, beautiful woman in the history of the world. From the Cliffs of Insanity through the Fire Swamp and down into the Zoo of Death, this incredible journey and brilliant tale is peppered with strange beasties monstrous and gentle, and memorable surprises both terrible and sublime.

Everyone's seen the movie, not so many have read the book. Yet I can assure everyone that the book is every bit as worthwhile (and in some ways more so) as its cinematic counterpart. The characters and situations of The Princess Bride are unforgettable, and hardly need explaining here. However, the most amazing aspect of the book is the way in which it operates as both the ultimate fairy tale and as a satire on all other fairy tales.

The author, William Goldman, pretends that the book is a condensation, a "good-parts version," of a much longer work by a fictional author named S. Morgenstern. Goldman constructs a very elaborate autobiographical portrait of the books impact on his own life (in much the same way I have done with some of these books, but longer and more developed) and maintains his fiction so thoroughly that I was completely taken in until I had finished the entire thing. The story is written in a charmingly tongue-in-cheek style, and Goldman interjects frequently with explanations and justifications regarding what portions of the unabridged version of the story he has removed and why he chose to remove them (interrupting the flow much as the grandfather and grandson do in the movie version). The total effect produces one of the most original and memorable reading experiences that I have run across.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part VI

Till We Have Faces (C. S. Lewis) - This is the timeless tale of two mortal princesses — one beautiful and one unattractive — and of the struggle between sacred and profane love. A reworking of the classical Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche, it is the story of Orual, Psyche's embittered and ugly older sister, who possessively and harmfully loves Psyche. Much to Orual's frustrations, Psyche is loved by Cupid, the god of love himself, setting the troubled Orual on a path of moral development. Set against the backdrop of Glome, a barbaric, pre-Christian world, Orual's struggles are illuminated as she learns that we cannot understand the intent of the gods "till we have faces" and sincerity in our souls and selves.

C. S. Lewis wrote a lot of great books, and of course The Chronicles of Narnia were the favorites of my younger days and still rank very highly. Nevertheless, I consider this to be the best book Lewis ever wrote. It has a level of depth and maturity that his other fiction doesn't, and there is the added bonus of an extremely absorbing narrative which is naturally absent from his nonfiction theological works.

I've read this book three times now, always for a class, but always with great pleasure: first in about 9th grade (I think), second for the Inklings course I took during the fall of my sophomore year at LeTourneau, and most recently for a presentation and paper for my C. S. Lewis class. Each reading has provided me with a new angle of approach, and I am sure that they are many left to discover. Orual's story in part one is as exciting and suspenseful as anyone could wish for, and her epiphany in part two is one of Lewis's most emotionally and spiritually impacting passages, no matter how many times you've already read it.

Mila 18 (Leon Uris) - It was a time of crisis, a time of tragedy--and a time of transcendent courage and determination. This novel is set in the midst of the uprising that defied Nazi tyranny, as the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists in a heroic effort to counter continued deportations to death camps.

I first discovered Leon Uris when I read Exodus, his novel of the tumultuous founding of the nation of Israel. After that I couldn't get enough of his historical fiction for awhile. I read Armageddon (The Berlin Airlift), Mitla Pass (The Six-Day War), QB VII (A British court case related to Nazi war crimes), and Mila 18 (The Warsaw Ghetto during World War II). Uris has a fascinating manner of making his fictional characters completely genuine by not only developing their personalities and personal histories, but giving them a fleshed-out past that goes back for generations. It is not uncommon for the story to digress for 50 to 100 pages while we get a fascinating and compelling account of the lives of the main characters' parents and grandparents. This is particularly important because his best work is centered around the Jews, where heritage is crucial. Leon Uris, even before Fiddler on the Roof introduced me to Jewish life in tsarist Russia, pogroms and all.

Mila 18 is an astoundingly moving read, where we know from the outset that most or all of the characters are doomed. It may be morbid of me (although I don't think that's it), but I never get tired of stories which treat on the contrasting depravity of Nazi Germany and the courage and fortitude of their victims during the Holocaust.

The Martian Chronicles (Ray Bradbury) - In these connected, chronological short stories are recorded the chronicles of Earth's settlement of the fourth world from the sun. Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor - of crystal pillars and fossil seas - where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn - first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars . . . and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.

Who cares if Bradbury writes of breathable air on Mars, an enormous and ancient telepathic civilization, or colonizing another planet beginning before the year 2000? That The Martian Chronicles has left the realm of science fiction and entered the realm of pure fantasy after several decades does not detract from the rich, deep quality of Bradbury's prose, or the power and fascination of his short stories. Fahrenheit 451 is the Bradbury book that everyone reads, but his best work, I think, is in his collections of short stories, most notably this one, The October Country and The Illustrated Man (not to ignore his beautiful novel Something Wicked This Way Comes).

Anyway, returning to the work at hand, the stories in this book embrace a broad range. There are funny stories, tragic stories, mystery and suspense stories, just plain weird stories . . . etc. The total effect produces a very satisfying and memorable experience, and I have revisited and even retold individual favorites from the collection a number of times.

A Wizard of Earthsea (Ursula K. LeGuin) - Ged was the greatest sorcerer in all Earthsea, but once he was called Sparrowhawk, a reckless youth, hungry for power and knowledge, who tampered with long-held secrets and loosed a terrible shadow upon the world. Sparrowhawk becomes apprentice to a Master Wizard; but impatience to learn faster takes him far from home to Roke Island, where he enters the School for Wizards. As a student of magic, Sparrowhawk exceeds his years in accomplishment, but pride and jealousy drive the boy to try certain dangerous powers too soon. This is the tale of his testing, how he mastered the mighty words of power, tamed an ancient dragon, and crossed death's threshold to restore the balance.

I am quoted as having once said: "There are women who can write [high fantasy] and I'm sure I can think of one if I sit here long enough." The quote arose from a discussion of a particularly horrible fantasy short story I had been reading, by a female author, in which the main character (among other things) wandered around firing a longbow "from the hip." That's still one of the most asinine things I've ever seen in print, but it doesn't forgive the fact that I sat there for quite some time and didn't immediately come up with Ursula K. LeGuin, a shining beacon of the genre.

I snagged A Wizard of Earthsea on a whim from a hole-in-the-wall used bookstore in Antigua, Guatemala for Q19 (slightly less than $3 at the time), and proceeded to devour it that afternoon. The style and flow of LeGuin's writing is indescribably serene and beautiful. The world of her Earthsea series is a fascinating one, consisting of the Archipelago, hundreds of islands of all sizes scattered across thousands of miles and populated by all manner of peoples and cultures (and some dragons). There are no epic journeys by land in Earthsea, for there are no land masses large enough. Virtually all travel is by sea.

The plot of A Wizard of Earthsea also captivated me. I was often frustrated during The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings because Gandalf appears out of nowhere with no background or history, and often wanders away on dark and mysterious errands which the reader isn't allowed to know about. LeGuin's book is the exact opposite of this. The entire story follows the wizard character through his early life and training and on to his first great quest: to track and defeat the shadow he himself unleashed.

And this is only the first of six Earthsea books (although two had not yet been published when I discovered the series). LeGuin's other work is worth checking out as well, although I haven't read nearly all of it. Some of her books can be a bit hard to find, and others I just haven't gotten around to reading yet. Her science fiction is excellent, and her book Rocannon's World is a close second behind A Wizard of Earthsea.

The Icarus Hunt (Timothy Zahn) - Independent space shipper (smuggler) Jordan McKell accepts a contract to deliver a sealed cargo to Earth aboard a ship of unknown origin and dubious quality. After the suspicious death of a crew member and several attempts to "acquire" his cargo, McKell realizes that he has become the center of a conspiracy that pits him against the powerful race of aliens who control galactic trade and aspire to much more. With everyone in the galaxy looking for the Icarus, and an unknown saboteur amongst the crew, McKell begins to suspect that whatever he is caring may have the power to change the course of human history.

The Icarus Hunt is my self-indulgent (okay, who am I kidding? the whole list is self-indulgent) nod in the direction of pulpy, action-packed, contemporary science fiction. I read it during the first summer (of two) that I spent in Colorado Springs with my good friend Andy Winger . . . in fact, we read it concurrently, a chunk at a time, and had a grand time trying to figure out all of its twists and turns along the way.

Timothy Zahn is a fantastic author, and I first discovered him through the Star Wars books he had written (five at the time, if memory serves). I have since read eight or nine of his non-Star Wars books, with a few more waiting in the wings. No other sci-fi author that I have encountered has come up with more different original ideas than Zahn has. Almost every one of his books begins from scratch with a new vision of the galaxy. Once it was a world where all humans had extraordinary telekinetic powers . . . until the age of 12. Another time it was a black hole which emitted quantum particles that compel people to act ethically. A third book has humans as the late-comers to interstellar travel relegated to colonizing the few low-resource planets left . . . only to find themselves in possession of one that contains priceless ancient technologies buried beneath its surface.

But I digress. The Icarus Hunt is by far my favorite of Zahn's books, obviously, and I've made a number of people read it since I first completed it. Intricate plot twists fly successively thicker and faster as the story builds to a fever pitch, culminating in a climax which does not disappoint. With all this going for it, plus excellent characters and fun writing, this book was a must for my list.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part V

Cheaper by the Dozen (Ernestine G. Carey & Frank B. Gilbreth, Jr.) - No growing pains have ever been more hilarious than those suffered loudly by the riotous Gilbreth clan. First, there are a dozen red-haired, freckle-faced kids to contend with. Then there's Dad, a famous efficiency expert who believes a family can be run just like a factory. And there's Mother, his partner in everything except discipline. How they all survive such escapades as forgetting Frank, Jr., in a roadside restaurant, going on a first date with Dad in the backseat, or having their tonsils removed en masse will keep you in stitches.

Seriously, this book will make you laugh. It's hilarious. Before there was the crappy movie starring Steve Martin and Hillary Duff and a crappy sequel to said crappy movie, there was the great original. This book provides another example of my affinity for anecdotal-type stories . . . especially true ones (although so long as its a good story, I don't really care about veracity so much). I honestly can't say whether members of large families would find it humorous or not, but I know that I (not having an enormous family, but being familiar with several) do. And, to the best of my knowledge this is an accurate portrayal of the environment surrounding such . . . ummm . . . units. I'm trying to be tactful here, because I am marrying into a large family. Suffice to say, some of the stories in this book are reminiscent of stories my fiancée has related from her youth. However, let me assure the world that it is no insult to anyone to be compared to the charming Gilbreths.

The Flames of Rome (Paul L. Maier) - The sensuality and excesses of first-century Rome, the treacherous and deadly ploys of imperial politics, the shocking persecution of early Christians by a power-mad emperor - Maier faithfully reconstructs the dramatic conflicts preceding and following the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64 through the experiences of a family of Roman nobility caught up in the political and religious clashes of the world's capital. The family of Flavius Sabinus, mayor of Rome under Nero, was among the first crucial converts to Christianity, and this novel recounts "the rest of the story" following the book of Acts.

This is probably the only book on my list that might fall into the category of "contemporary Christian fiction," and I am hesitant to call it that because of all of the negative connotations associated with that genre. In other words, I don't like to say that that is what this is, because this actually doesn't suck. I really need to go back and reread it in light of some of my Bible classes (most notably "Social Backgrounds of the New Testament") and in light of Historiography, but to the best of my rememberance it does not fall prey to any of the glaring fallacies often common to religious historical fiction.

Even if it does, and I just don't remember, it is so compellingly written that it easily falls into the realm of perennial classics like Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis . . . and I actually prefer it to both of those, personally. This was probably the book that first truly interested me in the history of the Roman Empire, and it gave me a solid grasp on the details of Nero's reign. It is both exciting and moving, and I highly recommend it.

Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) - An epic, romanticized story about the American Civil War from the point of view of the Confederacy. In particular it is the story of Scarlett O'Hara, a headstrong Southern belle who survives the hardships of the war and afterwards manages to establish a successful business by capitalizing on the struggle to rebuild the South. Throughout the book she is motivated by her unfulfilled love for Ashley Wilkes, an honorable man who is happily married. More than this, though, it is a sweeping story of tangled passions and the rare courage of a group of people in Atlanta during and after the Civil War.

Speaking of Historiography, Gone With the Wind is not a book that I enjoy because it's good or accurate history (it's not), but because it's a good story, well-written, and a cultural icon. Gone With the Wind may not be solid history, but it is very solid myth. Granted, I didn't realize this when I first read it, but I think it was for that reason that it resonated with me. I would probably hesitate to call it literature per se, but it is definitely a classic work of the South and well worth reading by any who enjoy things from that region.

For me, Gone With the Wind (more than any of the other highly romanticized Southern works of its type) transcends the petty prejudices and jaundiced perspectives of history that skew lesser works beyond the tolerance of a modern audience. This is because it is about a particular character that can be identified with universally. Scarlett O'Hara is not a lost vision of perfection from the past, but strong survivor in the present who maintains a hope for the future right up until the final lines of the book. For that reason, I think the novel has survived and will continue to survive as a classic favorite in a way that a work like, say, The Clansman could never hope to match.

Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontë) - Orphaned into the household of her Aunt Reed at Gateshead, subject to the cruel regime at Lowood charity school, Jane Eyre none the less emerges unbroken in spirit and integrity. How she takes up the post of governess at Thornfield Hall, meets and loves Mr Rochester and discovers the impediment to their lawful marriage are elements in a story that transcends melodrama to portray a woman's passionate search for a wider and richer life than that traditionally accorded to her sex in Victorian society.

Almost the only kind of romance novel (of the love story type) that I read and enjoy is the kind which has the word "Gothic" in front of it as a modifier. Jane Eyre is enthralling and creepy in a way peculiar to the great Victorian authors, with their familiarity with death, insanity, and cruelty. Sometimes they seem melancholy even when they and their characters are most happy and at peace. Jane herself is among the most endearing narrators in literature, and her story is almost impossible to stop reading. I read both this and the next book for school during the same year, and I remember both of them providing me with hours of quiet bliss over the course of entire afternoons and evenings during which I barely shifted from my bed or the couch.

David Copperfield (Charles Dickens) - Fervently embraces the comic delights, tender warmth, and tragic horrors of childhood, it is a classic tale of growing up, the enchanting story of an orphan discovering life and love in an indifferent adult world. Persecuted by his wrathful stepfather, Mr. Murdstone; deceived by his boyhood idol, the callous, charming Steerforth; driven into mortal combat with the sniveling clerk Uriah Heep; and hurled, pell-mell, into a blizzard of infatuation with the adorably dim-witted Dora, he survives the worst--and the best--with inimitable style, his bafflement turning to self-awareness and his heart growing ever more disciplined and true.

Speaking of great Victorian works and endearing narrators, David Copperfield is my favorite Dickens book. It is very long, and I very much wished (when I read it) that it was a good deal longer. I was completely drawn in by the experiences of the main character . . . indeed by all of the characters. Dickens, of course, has a special flair for creating iconic and memorable personalities to populate his thick novels. Like Jane Eyre, and a few of the other books I have discussed, I have a soft spot for David Copperfield partially because it is a coming-of-age story. And its length makes it something I can really sink my teeth into (as with three of the other four books I just discussed). Long can be bad . . . but often it's really good.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part IV

Little Women (Louisa May Alcott) - Meet the March sisters: talented and tomboyish Jo, beautiful Meg, shy Beth, and temperamental Amy . . . This book presents a lively portrait of their joys, hardships, and adventures as they grow up in Civil War New England, separated by the war from their father and beloved mother, "Marmee." Jo searches for her writer's voice . . . Meg prepares for marriage and a family . . . Beth reaches out to the less fortunate, tragically . . . and Amy travels to Europe to become a painter.

Yeah, yeah . . . I know what you're probably thinking. At least, I know what certain other people have said when I have mentioned off-hand that this is one of my favorite books. It's been quite some time since I last read it, and I daresay it's probably very sappy indeed in some way. But that doesn't change the fact that I enjoyed the book, its characters, its anecdotal nature, and overarching plot . . . And the autobiographical element of the thing always fascinated me. It's a good, long, uplifting sort of a read. And it's not as though I put up with things that attempt to shove gratuitous warm fuzzies off on one. This is a good book, regardless.

The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Arthur Conan Doyle) - There are 60 mysteries starring the legendary Sherlock Holmes, arguably the world's best-known detective, all chronicled by the unassuming Dr. John Watson, former military surgeon. Watson is introduced to Holmes's eccentricities as well as his uncanny ability to deduce information about his fellow beings and a lifelong literary friendship is born. Residing together at 221B Baker Street, they collaborate in solving and recording mystery after mystery in Victorian London.

I hardly know where to begin with Sherlock Holmes . . . absolutely one of my favorite literary idols of all time. I vividly remember the first Holmes story I ever heard: The Adventure of the Speckled Band, which was read aloud to me in 4th grade at CAG by Mr. Ulrich. That story stills sends chills up and down my spine. It was sometime later, after I had read several more of his adventures here and there, that I stumbled across an enormous red tome in the CAG library, with a faded "Complete Sherlock Holmes" inscribed on the tattered spine. I took it home with me and stayed up most of the night reading A Study in Scarlet, but it was the short stories I liked (and still like) best.

I can remember lots of them . . . and there are many more I can't remember. That's grand, as far as I'm concerned, since it means that I can go back and reread them someday. Most of my favorites are in The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes, where so many unique things happen: vampires, a case told in the third-person, and the only case related by Holmes himself. But His Last Bow, with Holmes as a spy during World War I, is grand as well. And, of course, I still love all of the earlier collections that set up the character, kill him off, and bring him back again: The Adventures, The Memoirs (with the climactic "Final Problem"), and The Return.

It would be impossible to pick a single Sherlock Holmes story or collection . . . it has to be the whole thing: every word ever written about the character by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It is a magnificent body of work.

The Once and Future King (T. H. White) - The Once and Future King defies classification, encompassing poetry and farce, comedy and tragedy -and sudden flights of schoolboy humor. White's "footnote to Malory" (his own phrase) resulted in the last major retelling of the Arthurian cycle of legends. This is the magical epic of King Arthur and his shining Camelot, of Merlyn and Guinevere, of beasts who talk and men who fly, of wizardry and war. It is the book of all things lost and wonderful and sad.

I was initially sucked into the work by the laugh-out-loud look at medieval Britain in The Sword in the Stone, quite on par with, or better than, Connecticut Yankee. But, more than just the humor, the really captivating element of what I consider to be the quintessential version of the Arthur legend (this is it for me), is the tragic, bittersweet failure of Arthur's dream. The Once and Future King, despite its often tongue-in-cheek style captures the humanity of its characters in a way the dry prose of Malory, or high, cold verse of Tennyson never could. What makes the tragedy of Arthur's fate (along with Guinevere, Lancelot, and the rest) is that the story didn't have to turn out that way but for a series of very slight, very understandable, very human errors. And we sit and read and watch disaster unfold before us . . . but not without the hope of ultimate redemption, too. It is masterfully, beautifully done.

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith) - From 1902 until 1919 the Nolans live in the Williamsburg slums of Brooklyn. Francie Nolan, avid reader, penny-candy connoisseur, and adroit observer of human nature, has much to ponder in colorful, turn-of-the-century Brooklyn. She grows up with a sweet, tragic father, a severely realistic mother, and an aunt who gives her love too freely--to men, and to a brother who will always be the favored child. Francie learns early the meaning of hunger and the value of a penny. She is her father's child--romantic and hungry for beauty. But she is her mother's child, too--deeply practical and in constant need of truth. Like the Tree of Heaven that grows out of cement or through cellar gratings, resourceful Francie struggles against all odds to survive and thrive.

I guess I'm just a sucker for coming-of-age stories . . . in fact, I know I am. Here's another book that I remember reading largely in the space of a long night (or perhaps two). I remember just enough about it to want to read it again to refresh my memory. Francie Nolan, as I recall, is a hero the reader can really root for with no trouble, and her story (and that of her family) fascinated me. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn provides one of those rare, very clear glimpses into a world that is completely different from any that I've experienced, and it also provided me with an early glimpse of what it is like to look back on childhood at the cusp of adulthood. For that reason alone, I ought to reread it very soon.

The Dark is Rising (Susan Cooper) -
"When the Dark comes rising, six shall turn it back,
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; water, fire, stone;
Five will return, and one go alone."
With these mysterious words, Will Stanton discovers on his 11th birthday that he is no mere boy. He is the Sign-Seeker, last of the immortal Old Ones, destined to battle the powers of evil that trouble the land. His task is monumental: he must find and guard the six great Signs of the Light, which, when joined, will create a force strong enough to match and perhaps overcome that of the Dark. Embarking on this endeavor is dangerous as well as deeply rewarding; Will must work within a continuum of time and space much broader than he ever imagined.

The Dark is Rising is actuall book two of a five-book series, but it mostly stands alone. It introduces a completely different set of characters from book one, and the two sets join forces in book three and proceed from there. The series draws very heavily on Welsh and Celtic elements, and takes place almost entirely in that small area of Great Britain. This was, obviously, my favorite of the five (but they're all pretty good). The material Cooper draws on is rich and satisfying, and she knows how to spin a real nail-biter . . . excellent writing. I'll admit that the book loses a little if one doesn't read the others in the series, but rules are rules, and I could only pick one of them. It's still a compelling read.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part III

Watership Down (Richard Adams) - Set in the once idyllic rural landscape of the south of England, this is a powerful saga of courage, leadership, and survival. An epic tale of a hardy band of Berkshire rabbits forced to flee the destruction of their fragile community. Led by the doughty Hazel and his oracular friend Fiver, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing dangers posed by predators, hostile warrens, and worse, to a mysterious promised land known to them only as Watership Down. From their travails, they forge a more perfect society, made stronger by the vision that drives them.

When I was (I think) 13, almost 14, I heard of this book and decided to read it, but didn't find a copy handy right away. That summer we visited an old lady friend of my parents' who lived in Waco, and stayed in her large, ancient house. It was rather a creepy house, deathly silent but for the creaking noises made by the wooden floor when we walked around in it. It was the sort of house I could spend a great deal of time carefully exploring, and still be certain of missing some secret panel or passageway, but the almost total lack of air conditioning made one too lethargic for exploring.

In one of the guest bedrooms, however, I discovered a copy of Watership Down: a bulky, hardcover version without the dust jacket. Everyone thought I was reading a book about submarines as I carted it around with me to restaurants, church potlucks, and the like. My parents always have a lot of visiting to get done in Waco, and it has always been my philosophy to bring along a hefty chunk of "boredom insurance" in the hopes of finding a quiet corner to tuck myself into.

Well, as immersed as I was in the story of Watership Down (which offers an unforgettable portrait of Adams's made-up rabbit culture, including a language and complex folklore, in addition to page-turning excitement), between one thing and another I didn't quite finish the book before we had to leave. I was terribly disappointed, but I received a shiny new paperback copy for my birthday not long after, and all was well. When the sequel, an anthology entitled Tales from Watership Down, came out a few years later, I snapped it up and devoured it, too. These books are not to be missed.

The Rescuers (Margery Sharp) - The Prisoners' Aid Society, run entirely by mice, strives to help cheer and aid a variety of human prisoners held around the world. When the society learns that a Norwegian poet has been wrongly imprisoned in the legendary (and much feared) Black Castle, home to a number of terrible dangers (including the dreaded Mameluke, a monstrous cat belonging to the prison warden), the mice waste no time in formulating a plan for his release. Bernard, a stolid brown mouse, is dispatched to enlist the aid of Miss Bianca, a white mouse who has always lived in the lap of luxury. If Bernard can convince Miss Bianca to locate a brave Norwegian rodent for their cause, the prisoner may stand a chance. Being a bit of a spoiled pet, Miss Bianca initially shies away from Bernard's pleas, but his good heart and her better nature prevail and soon she too is involved in the world of intrigue and heroic rescues.

The Rescuers and its eight sequels are, much to my dismay, long out of print, and I had a heck of a time even finding a picture of the cover. For all I know, they may have already been out of print when I first checked them out from the CAG library and read them years ago. This is a shame because any one of the first three (which are the only ones our library had, and are still the only ones I've read) could eviscerate either Disney animated version in a fair fight. The first book remains my favorite for a variety of reasons. The mission undertaken by Bernard, Miss Bianca, and Nils is just so ridiculously impossible at the outset that their ultimate success is all the more exhilerating in the end.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (Mark Twain) - Vibrates with slapstick comedy and serious social commentary. While Hank Morgan, Twain's time-displaced Yankee traveler, keeps up a steady stream of flippancies, founding the first tabloid, the Camelot Weekly Hosannah and Literary Volcano, and organizing a game of baseball between armor-clad knights, he also keeps up a steady commentary on the social mores of King Arthur's court, criticizing the hereditary social classes and state church still strong in the Victorian England of Twain's own day, and championing women's suffrage and union labor organization.

This may seem like a bit of an odd pick to some, considering Twain's other great works. Huck Finn is, of course, widely regarded as his best (and by some as the best) novel. Personally, my difficulty was more in deciding between this one and Tom Sawyer, and in the end I may not be able to adequately justify why, with my love of the South and Southern literature, I picked a book about a Yankee set in legendary Arthurian Britain. My fascination with Arthurian legend aside, it probably boils down to the fact that my favorite element of Twain is his humor, and this is (in my opinion) by far his funniest book. Connecticut Yankee made me laugh. A lot. And at this point I'd probably have to re-read it in order to make my analysis any deeper than that.

And Then There Were None (Agatha Christie) - Ten complete strangers, apparently with nothing in common, are lured to an island mansion off the coast of Devon. Once there, all of them are accused of murder and sentenced to die. One by one the members of the party are killed off, and tension mounts as, cut off from the mainland, the dwindling survivors realize that the killer must be one of them.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've actually read more books by Agatha Christie than by any other single author (a fact which quite surprised me when I discovered it). I never got into any of her detectives except Hercule Poirot, and I read everyone of his mysteries I could lay my hands on. I remember burrowing my way through a thick tome of five Poirot mysteries at a fairly young age, lugging it around everywhere I went.

Christie has the uncanny ability of throwing me so totally off the scent in her mysteries that, not only is the killer not the most likely suspect, they are not even the least likely suspect. With almost no exceptions, Christie reveals the killer to have been the one character who was not a suspect at all, who hadn't even entered into your reckoning when you formed your list. I remember one mystery where the murderer was the policeman investigating the case, and another where the murderer was the person narrating the story.

Neither of those refers to this particular book, which is one of perhaps three non-Poirot Christie's that I have read. It does not feature any of her regular detective characters, or any detective at all for that matter. Relying more on suspense than investigation to keep the reader glued, the ending is, of course, a complete surprise. I've seen a couple of movie versions and have been thoroughly disgusted both times with the adaptation. Moviemakers can be such weenies sometimes, and in this case seem thoroughly incapable of following the original plot through to reach Christie's brilliant, dark ending.

King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard) - Three men trek to the remote African interior in search of a lost friend. At the end of a perilous journey they reach an unknown land cut off from the world and inhabited by a lost civilization which stands on the brink of savage civil war, where terrible dangers threaten anyone who dares to venture near the spectacular diamond mines of King Solomon.

King Solomon's Mines stands out in my mind as the most action-packed, adrenaline-pumping, rip-roaring adventure novel I have ever read. I bought it on a whim from a tiny bookstore in a mall in Guatemala and devoured it shortly thereafter. This is the quintessential African adventure of the British Imperialist period. It has pretty much everything: danger, suspense, men being ripped in half by stampeding elephants, bizarre encounters with the natives, an epic, day-long battle with tens of thousands of warriors savaging each other in hand-to-hand combat, our mighty, larger-than-life heroes emerging victorious, bathed in blood, wealth beyond measure surrounded by booby-traps . . . I'm telling you, it's all in here. Just thinking about that battle scene makes me want to go read the whole thing again.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part II

Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH (Robert C. O'Brian) - There's something very strange about the rats living under the rosebush at the Fitzgibbon farm. But Mrs. Frisby, a widowed mouse with a sick child, is in dire straits and must turn to these exceptional creatures for assistance. Soon she finds herself flying on the back of a crow, slipping sleeping powder into a ferocious cat's dinner dish, and helping 108 brilliant, laboratory-enhanced rats escape to a utopian civilization of their own design, no longer to live "on the edge of somebody else's, like fleas on a dog's back."

Genius lab rats who plot and scheme and build utopias . . . this concept is so much fun! This was one of the first books I read where the story kept intriguing details hidden from the reader for a time while dropping tantalizing hints about them. Sometimes the revelation doesn't happen (a nearly unforgivable sin, if done improperly), and sometimes it's just underwhelming (which is even worse). In this case, though, I loved the backstory of the rats of NIMH. The rest of the book generated a good deal of tension and suspense as well, and I remember it being a very exciting read. My most vivid memory is of an escape through air ducts, and of the horror of uncertainty as to the fate of those who were swept away by the rush of blowing air. Air ducts . . . brrr . . .

Matilda (Roald Dahl) - At age five-and-a-half, Matilda is knocking off double-digit multiplication problems and blitz-reading Dickens. Once she begins school, her classmates love her even though she's a super-nerd and the teacher's pet. But everything is not perfect in Matilda's world. For starters she has two of the most idiotic, self-centered parents who ever lived. Then there's the school principal, Mrs. ("The") Trunchbull, a former hammer-throwing monster of a woman who now flings children instead. Fortunately for Matilda, she has the inner resources to deal with such annoyances: astonishing intelligence, saintly patience, and an innate predilection for revenge.

To my thinking, it would simply be a crime not to have a book by Roald Dahl on this list. All of his books are an absolute joy to read. I have fond memories, for instance, of the time when I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory aloud to my brothers in a single sitting because they didn't want me to stop. There was a bit of a struggle as to which one to pick . . . I love so many of his (especially the second half of his autobiography, entitled Going Solo).

In the end, though, I picked the book about a bookworm who scores some sweet, sweet revenge on the Philistines in her life. It just doesn't get any better than that. I received this book as a present for my 13th birthday, a very memorable occasion which also netted me a week-long trip State-side (beginning and ending the journey with a plane ride was only part of the joy of the experience, at the time). There are lots of memorable parts in Matilda, most involving The Trunchbull and her punishment system. I recall a small girl whirled about by her hair and flung a few hundred yards . . . A small boy forced to eat an entire enormous chocolate cake in front of the whole school until he nearly splits open . . . And, of course, the hilarity that results from a pitcher of water, telekinesis, and a common garden newt.

The Land I Lost (Huynh Quang Nhuong) - "The land I love was lost to me forever. These stories are my memories." Huynh Quang Nhuong grew up in the highlands of Vietnam, next to the jungle teeming with wildlife. Encounters with tigers, wild hogs, and deadly snakes were as much a part of his life as tending the rice fields while on the back of his pet water buffalo, Tank. Here are fifteen tales that will transport you into a world of lush beauty and terrible danger -- and a way of life that is gone forever.

I can't for the life of me remember why this book affected me as much as it did. The stories are fascinating, often involving strange and dangerous encounters with the jungle. Some are funny, some are intense, some are tragic, but all are quite poignant. The cumulative effect is both moving and lasting. I can only clearly remember fragments about snakes, monkeys, crocodiles, and water buffalo, as well as snatches about the devastating effects of war. As I consider further, I think it was the bittersweet quality of the book which touched me the most. It is an excellent read, all the more so because the stories are true.

To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee) - An enrapturing coming-of-age story told from the point of view of six-year-old Scout Finch. Growing up in pre-Civil Rights Movement Alabama, Scout and her older brother, Jem, witness the transformations that take place in their small town during a controversial trial in which her lawyer father, Atticus, agrees to defend a black man who is wrongly accused of raping a white woman. To Kill a Mockingbird captures small-town Southern life in the middle of the twentieth century, and so much of what makes up a Southern childhood, without over-glorifying them.

This is one of those few books that I can (and do) pick up at random and read from cover to cover just because I happen to spot it sitting on the shelf. If I had to pick a single favorite, it would be a very strong contender. I think I first read it in sixth grade, and I've re-read it in whole or in part several dozen times since then (one of very few books I've re-read at all). I have also, through sheer force of will, browbeaten several people into picking it up and reading it.

Because it has been so ubiquitous for several years, I'd have a hard time attaching specific memories to it. And almost every scene in the book is memorable . . . I couldn't pick just a few. I am, however, fairly certain of one thing: To Kill a Mockingbird is the most prominent factor in my affinity for Southern history, literature, and culture. That makes it also responsible for my paper topic in Intellectual History and for my specially requested independent study in Southern History next semester. It is responsible for a few other books on this list, as well. And, in all likelihood, it will one day have been responsible for what I study in graduate school. How's that for influential?

The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame) - When shy Mole climbs out of his hole and into the fresh spring air, he meets Ratty. The two set off for a day on the river, and thus begins this classic tale of deep friendship and adventure as Mole, Rat, and Badger try to reform their rather wild friend, Mr. Toad (of Toad Hall). When Toad's obssession with motor cars and reckless driving land him in prison, Toad Hall is taken over by fiendish weasels and the four friends face the complications of a daring prison break and a climactic battle for the mansion in the most thrilling adventure of all.

The Wind in the Willows glows with a special luminescence all its own. Its characters are sheer magic, and their various adventures are enchanting as well as entertaining. I have many emotions connected to specific scenes: the relief of Mole stumbling into Badger's den when he is lost in the forest, the excitement of Toad's wild escape from prison, the serenity of a day on the river with Rat, and the sheer exhiliration of the storming of Toad Hall. None of these scenes, however, equal the transcendent awe of Mole and Rat's unexplained encounter with the pipe-playing, God-like being they meet one night. This powerful scene, perhaps even more than anything in C. S. Lewis, is the strongest and most lasting image I possess of an encounter with Deity. I have re-read that one portion of the book more times than I remember.

To be continued . . .

The Top Fifty, Part I

The Lord of the Rings (J. R. R. Tolkien) - In ancient times Sauron, The Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was lost, and fell, by chance, into the hands of the hobbit, Frodo Baggins. The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard, Merry, Pippin, and Sam, Gimli the Dwarf, Legolas the Elf, Boromir of Gondor, and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider. Together they will journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom

I discovered the trilogy as a 4th grader in late '93. Already a fan of Narnia since '88 or '89, I reached Fellowship through The Hobbit, based on the awed recommendations of a few classmates. The latter I re-read over a dozen times (several of them nearly consecutively), to the point where my mother asked whether I shouldn't try something new for a change. It was, in some small part, that encouragement not to re-read the same few books over and over again that prompted me to begin keeping a record, and I do not often re-read entire books these days.

As for the trilogy, its impact on me was profound for many years, as it fueled and drove my search for fantasy and science fiction that could equal the joy I derived from reading it. Narnia alone probably could not have sustained my interest in fantasy, but the discovery of Middle Earth made my continued interest a certainty. I have very vivid memories of reading those frightening opening chapters aloud to my younger brothers by the dim glow of a flickering nightlight as we shivered in the bottom bunk, cut off from the rest of the room by walls of blankets draped over the top bunk. I remember reading an enormous chunk of the trilogy perched in various trees, and ignoring cries of "Un mono! (A monkey!)" from below. Additionally, the first time I read The Return of the King, I listened to a George Gershwin CD over and over and over. "Rhapsody in Blue" now forever brings to mind the spectacle of Frodo and Sam toiling wearily up the slopes of Mount Doom.

When word of a new movie version began to circulate, I was, of course, very excited. But by then the full peak of my Hobbitmania had come and gone, and it was my younger brother Micah who got caught up in the magic of the thing most violently. I have experiencing vicariously his enthusiasm for the subject in addition to my own. I am quite pleased that Lord of the Rings was the first of these that appears on my Booklist, because this gives me the chance to get it out of the way up front. Yes, it is on my list. Moving on . . .

The Phantom Tollbooth (Norton Juster) - This ingenious fantasy centers around Milo, a chronically bored ten-year-old who comes home one afternoon to find a large toy tollbooth sitting in his room. Driving through the tollbooth's gates in his toy car, Milo journeys into The Lands Beyond with the companions he finds along the way: the watchdog, Tock, and the foolish but lovable Humbug. Faintly Macabre, the not-so-wicked "Which," gives Milo the impossible mission of rescuing the lost princesses, Rhyme and Reason, from the Castle in the Air in the midst of the dreaded Mountains of Ignorance and restoring them to the Kingdom of Wisdom. With his faithful companions in tow, he sets out to accomplish the task, visiting places like the Word Market in Dictionopolis, and encountering colorful characters like King Azaz the Unabridged along the way.

For sheer fun and frivolity, Tollbooth is hard to beat. This book was not directly responsible for my love of learning, perhaps, but it certainly shows how much cooler knowledge is than ignorance, low culture theory notwithstanding. Tollbooth is a surefire cure for boredom, and contains quite a few good laughs as well. The characters and situations are unforgettable (my favorite scene was always Milo's encounter with the Mathemagician, but really, it's all pretty great). Everyone should have this read once before they hit middle school, again before high school, before college, and at least once after.

A Wrinkle in Time (Madeline L'Engle) - World-renowned physicist Dr. Murray is experimenting with tesseracts (fifth-dimension travel) when he mysteriously disappears without a trace. Several months later, his children - warm, awkward Meg and gifted, eccentric Charles Wallace - have still had no news of their father. Then, quite suddenly, they and their neighbor, Calvin O`Keefe, embark on a perilous quest to other worlds to find their father. Guided by three celestial beings - Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which - they must survive a myriad of unexpected dangers to reunite their family.

A bit of an oddity, this one. It baffled and intrigued me when I was younger, trying to wrap my brain around fifth dimensions and travel by tesseract. This book may well have laid a few foundations of my anti-Utopian cynicism. Or maybe not. The story isn't strictly science fiction, but it is not fantasy either. This particular blend of the two is unique (as far as I know) to L'Engle and Ursula K. Leguin. However, what really stand out in my memory are the characters: Mrs. Whatsit, Charles Wallace, Meg . . . very special, and with a life of their own.

I remember especially images of a planet where everyone is identical, performing the same actions at the same time . . . children bouncing balls in unison, mothers making identical dinners, etc. I also remember the frustrating sensation of feeling so very close to knowing just how tesseracts work, but not quite getting it. Wrinkle is the first in a series of four stand-alones: A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly-Tilting Planet, and Many Waters. That last stars the least developed characters in the series, the blonde Murray twins, rather than the usual cast, as they wind up in the days of the antedeluvian patriarchs after messing with one of their mother's experiments.

The Gammage Cup (Carol Kendall) - Muggles is an ordinary Minnipin living in Slipper-on-the-Water as generations of Minnipins have ever since their great leader Gammage led them to this valley. But one morning, Muggles awakes to fires on the distant mountains and knows that her life is about to change dramatically. The only people who believe Muggles' story are Gummy the poet, Walter the Earl, Curley Green and Mingy, all outcasts themselves. They are not like other Minnipins--they speak their mind, they wear different colors, and they question rules. When they try to convince the rest of the town that danger is lurking, they are banished from the village. In a peaceful knoll up the river, the unlikely friends rejoice in their newfound freedom and begin a new life. But the presence of the ancient enemy of Minnipins cannot be ignored, and this group of exiles must fight to protect the very people who cast them out.

In addition to feeding the aforementioned appetite for good fantasy with a fun plot, great characters and situations, plenty of action, and a very satisfying conclusion, The Gammage Cup undoubtedly appealed to my disgust with conformity to mindless societal conventions. Like the heroes of the story, I prefer to express myself however I please, and I hate falling in line just because "it's the way things work." If something doesn't make sense to me, I openly disagree, or just try to ignore it. Of course, ridicule is usually the best outcome I can hope for in such cases. All that aside, this is a fantastic book.

There are almost too many memories to describe: the fun use of colors, the pretentious town leaders who share a common ancestry with a ridiculously lucky buffoon, the nail-biting, eerie tension of the climax, and the exhiliration of restoration to a better community . . . The only tangible memory, however, that I seem to be able to call forth in relation to my reading of it, is an auditory one: "WEEK WEEK WEEK!" (as a cry of fear and retreat).

The Second Mrs. Giaconda (E.L. Konigsburg) - Leonardo da Vinci, the greatest artist of his time . . . Salai, a wayward apprentice with a larcenous heart and an aversion to the truth . . . Beatrice d'Este, the young wife of the Duke of Milan, whose plain face belies her beautiful soul; could the complex ways these three lives intertwine hold the clue to the most famous -- and puzzling -- painting of all time? Why did da Vinci lavish three years on a painting of the second wife of an unimportant merchant when all the nobles of Europe were begging for a portrait by his hand?

I love historical fiction . . . probably more than I love actual history. And this story about (partially) the life of Leonardo da Vinci affected me very deeply for some reason. I was moved by it, and I'm really not sure why. It wasn't the first book to have done so by any means. Black Beauty caused me to weep at the tender age of . . . probably seven or so. Where the Red Fern Grows has brought me to tears on multiple occasions (blasted animal stories . . . they always suffer and die in the end, you know). Anyway, Mrs. Giaconda inspired me to a brief fascination with da Vinci, although an actual biography which I read shortly thereafter bored me terribly after the inspiration of this (partially) fictional work.

I prescribe this book as the cure for anyone who has been subjected to How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci . . . because, really you shouldn't be hating the great Leonardo. He really was an incredible genius, you know. This book is the first, but not the last, of these that I read as part of a school assignment. That was during the glorious days of Sonlight homeschool curriculum, which I used for 7th through 10th grade (beginning shortly after I began the Booklist). Sonlight is a literature-based curriculum, and it had me reading upwards of 70 books a year (most of the highest caliber) as I studied literature and history. Their catalogue, which I devoured every year as it came out, read almost like a glowing combination of my favorites and my to-reads.

To be continued . . .

Reflections on 1000 Books

Tonight is something of a momentous occasion for me. It is a night that I have been anticipating for over nine years, and that I originally expected to arrive four or five years ago. On July 1st, 1996, when I was 12 years old (nearly two months shy of 13) and about to enter 7th grade, I set out for the umpteenth time to see how quickly I could read The Chronicles of Narnia all the way through.

Before I was even halfway done with them, I had already decided to see how many fantasy books in general I could read over the course of one month. And shortly after that, I just decided that I'd keep a record of every book I read, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, from then until the end of time. I've kept a "Booklist" in a Microsoft Excel or Works spreadsheet ever since (okay, actually I started in Word, but my dad recommended the switch, then helped me make it, before the first year was out).

For the past nine years I've celebrated the New Year twice. As January 1st approaches, I enjoy the Christmas holiday, consider what I have accomplished in the past year, and think about what the next 365 days will bring. As July 1st approaches, I begin to read furiously (I can generally do that in the midst of the summer with no trouble) so that I will have as many books as possible "logged" for that year of reading. I take a look at my reading progress for the past year, and resolve to read even more next year. Usually I have my eye on a number of books that I'd like to have read by then, as well. The tradition changes the way my entire midsummer works.

Tonight, November 15th, 2005, at age 22 and well into my senior year of college, I completed The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, which is the thousandth book on my list (specially selected from half a dozen candidates to fill that particular role). I have a vague idea that this was the number I was aiming at back in '96. I have no idea what I intended to do once I'd reached it . . . I think I just wanted to see how fast I could get there. Well, now I know. But I've been reading fewer books every year, and so presumably I couldn't do it that fast again.

Anyway, I know what to do with it now: Tuck it away and set out for the second thousand. Maybe I'll see how long it takes me to catch up to the present year AD or something. Then, at least, I'd have some kind of representation in terms of reading material for every year since the time of Christ. Because if there's one thing I've realized with the completion of every book I've ever read, it's the fact of how many I haven't. No one warned me, at the tender age of four when I first began to read, or at any point after that, that reading is a Lernean hydra. You can't read a book without having thirty you haven't read thrust rudely into your conscious awareness.

This may come as a nasty shock to Rachel, who earlier wondered aloud whether, perhaps, I might be able to "stop" now, but as far as I'm concerned, I'll never be well-read, but I'll always be trying to be.

Meanwhile, now that I have reached the magic number 1000, and found it to be (as I have suspected for quite some time now) inadequate even as a bare beginning, I can at least launch a special project here on my blog which I have been planning ever since the arrival of the thousandth book became a tangible reality rather than a mere concept. Beginning very soon and continuing over the course of the next few weeks, I will post a listing of my 50 favorite books (the top 5%) off of my Booklist in small, bite-size chunks.

The list has been mostly assembled (though, of course, always subject to change) for some time now, after I had reflected extensively on how best to compile and present such a list. First, I had to decide which books belonged on the list.

Of course, my Booklist itself is by no means populated exclusively by "good literature." For example, over 5% of the list is made up of Hardy Boys mysteries. Star Wars novels comprise nearly 10% of the list. However, the top five most represented authors (not counting Franklin W. Dixon, of course, as that is a pen name used by numerous authors), are as follows: Agatha Christie (32), William Shakespeare (25), Beverly Cleary (20), Sigmund Brouwer (18), and Isaac Asimov and C. S. Lewis (both 17).

My Booklist records a work's title, author, and the rating (out of 100) that I gave it. The ratings have shifted so drastically over the years, and were so totally bizzare to begin with, that they are now meaningless to everyone except (sometimes) me. I soon realized that, out of the 38 books I have given a perfect score, only a little over half of them would make it to my top 50. More deserving books have been given lower ratings in the past. Also, I realized that over 25% of all books I have read have received a rating of 90 or higher. This is clearly ridiculous. I mean, I get a great deal of pleasure out of the simple act of reading, and that is certainly a factor, but come on . . .

Then I wondered about order. At first I had them ranked from least to most favorite, but I played with them and played with them and finally realized that it was silly to try that. In the end, I dropped them all into a spreadsheet, categorized them every which way from Tuesday, and sorted them to see what worked best. I decided that I would present them in chronological order, as I read them. I think it shows best how my tastes have changed, along with how what I'm reading has changed, but also what has remained the same.

All that to say, I had a fun time of it selecting my 50 favorite books of all time and listing them off. There are four things to keep in mind as I post them in the days ahead:

-I limited myself to only one work per author on the list. This allows the list to reflect more of the authors I enjoy reading, so that it is implied that some of their other works are among my favorites as well, and I can keep the list more diverse. It also really helped me wittle down the candidates.

-In a few very special cases, I have counted books which were published seperately as a single work. I have tried not to let this get out of control, and only used it with the works that are available in a single-volume edition. There were certain cases where I truly felt that either a single, favorite book could not be separated from others without losing part of what makes it a favorite, or that the books must be taken together to be complete. In a few cases, I felt that a single volume was, perhaps, not a favorite, but that the whole definitely was. That's just the way it is sometimes, and my list reflects that.

-This is not a list of The Best Books I Have Ever Read. I wouldn't presume to judge that . . . I wouldn't dare. These are simply the books that I have gotten the most pleasure from reading over the years, and which I most heartily recommend to others or enjoy discussing with fellow fans. I would like to think that, in a sense, there is at least one book or author on this list for everyone. In other words, I would hope that everyone might find at least one of their own favorite authors on this list (if not their most favorite), or that (if they haven't read them all) there is at least one book or author which would number among their favorites.

-In the spirit of that last observation, I would very much relish any commentary from my audience regarding my list. Congratulate me for including a particular book. Tell me I'm crazy for including a particular book. Shake your fist at me for not including a particular book, or (as it is quite possible that I haven't read it) recommend that I go find myself a copy. But, most importantly, say something. I've had a great time pulling this together, and it exists for me, chiefly, but I love talking about this stuff with others. Let me know what you think.

Yes, of course, but can it be done?

This is the reply that leaps unbidden to mind when I ask myself, "Do I really want to attempt to produce a deconstructive analysis of Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita in (ostensibly) seven pages or less for presentation at the Student Literary Conference in early December worth 20% of my Literary Criticism grade?" This way madness seems to lie.

And yet, I rather believe that this is something which I must undertake. I am at a critical point in my education: just knowledgeable enough to have the capacity to produce such a paper, and just dumb enough to apply that critical theory to this novel. Only now do I possess together the essential tools I am required to employ and the lack of academic face to lose. I want to do a good job with this paper.

At this point, I had composed a lengthy examination of the problems I foresaw with the writing of such a paper, and the solutions I expected to encounter. But that was really boring, and all I really wanted, I think, was an excuse (however tenuous) to reproduce two very interesting pieces of poetry composed by Humbert Humbert within Lolita. I believe, however, that they are excuse enough by themselves. They are below the fold. Make of them what you will.

The first is written in the fit of madness suffered by H. H. directly after Dolores is spirited away by "McFate." It is tragically sweet on one level, but the rhyme and rhythm give it an air of pathetic comedy, and the context creates a total effect that is simply haunting. The reader struggles between sympathy and revulsion. H. H. himself refers to it as "a maniac's masterpiece" (257).

The second is the poem which H. H. forces "McFate" (avoiding possible spoilers by not naming names) to read aloud when he finally catches up to him. The critical work I am consulting calls this poem a parody of T. S. Eliot's "Ash Wednesday," and earlier explains that Nabokov wasn't particularly impressed with Eliot's poetry. It's most interesting feature is the way in which McFate's snide interjections seem to be part of the poem even as they tear apart the dramatic effect of the thing.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Hair: brown. Lips: scarlet.
Age: five thousand three hundred days.
Profession: none, or "starlet."

Where are you hiding, Dolores Haze?
Why are you hiding, darling?
(I talk in a daze, I walk in a maze,
I cannot get out, said the starling).

Where are you riding, Dolores Haze?
What make is the magic carpet?
Is a Cream Cougar the present craze?
And where are you parked, my car pet?

Who is your hero, Dolores Haze?
Still one of those blue-caped star-men?
Oh the balmy days and the palmy bays,
And the cars, and the bars, my Carmen!

Oh Dolores, that juke-box hurts!
Are you still dancin', darlin'?
(Both in worn levis, both in torn T-shirts,
And I, in my corner, snarlin').

Happy, happy is gnarled McFate
Touring the States with a child wife,
Plowing his Molly in every State
Among the protected wild life.

My Dolly, my folly! Her eyes were vair,
And never closed when I kissed her.
Know an old perfume called Soleil Vert?
Are you from Paris, mister?

L'autre soir un air froid d'opéra m'alita:
Son félé - bien fol est qui s'y fie!
Il neige, le décor s'écroule, Lolita!
Lolita, qu'ai-je fait de ta vie?

Dying, dying, Lolita Haze,
Of hate and remorse, I'm dying.
And again my hairy fist I raise,
And again I hear you crying.

Officer, officer, there they go -
In the rain, where that lighted store is!
And her socks are white, and I love her so,
And her name is Haze, Dolores.

Officer, officer, there they are -
Dolores Haze and her lover!
Whip out your gun and follow that car.
Now tumble out, and take cover.

Wanted, wanted: Dolores Haze.
Her dream-gray gaze never flinches.
Ninety pounds is all she weighs
With a height of sixty inches.

My car is limping, Dolores Haze,
And the last long lap is the hardest,
And I shall be dumped where the weed decays,
And the rest is rust and stardust.

-Lolita, 255-257

Here goes. I see it's in verse.

Because you took advantage of a sinner
because you took advantage
because you took
because you took advantage of my disadvantage . . .

That's good, you know. That's damned good.

. . .when I stood Adam-naked
before a federal law and all its stinging stars

Oh, grand stuff!

Because you took advantage of a sin
when I was helpless moulting moist and tender
hoping for the best
dreaming of marriage in a mountain state
aye of a litter of Lolitas . . .

Didn't get that.

Because you took advantage of my inner
essential innocence
because you cheated me -

A little repetitious, what? Where was I?

Because you cheated me of my redemption
because you took
her at the age when lads
play with erector sets

Getting smutty, eh?

a little downy girl still wearing poppies
still eating popcorn in the colored gloam
where tawny Indians took paid croppers
because you stole her
from her wax-browed and dignified protector
spitting into his heavy-lidded eye
ripping his flavid toga and at dawn
leaving the hog to roll upon his new discomfort
the awfulness of love and violets
remorse depair while you
took a dull doll to pieces
and threw its head away
because of all you did
because of all I did not
you have to die

Well, sir, this is certainly a fine poem. Your best as far as I'm concerned.

-Lolita, 299-300

Intellectual Expatriates

America between the World Wars was an interesting place to live, to say the least. Prohibition, the Roaring Twenties, the Great Depression, the New Deal . . . okay, maybe not that last part so much. But this period of American history finally brings me within the realm that I hope to cover in my major paper for the course: the impact of the Southern Literary Renaissance on the South (fuzzily dated 1929-1965). The 1930s sees the emergence of the early renaissance writers: Faulkner, Caldwell, and Wolfe (to name the major voices).

These three authors were native Southerners writing about their home ground in a . . . well, less than flattering light. But our reading this week was packed to the limit with authors of the 1920s who were dissatisfied with the society and economic systems they saw around them: Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and a host of minor names I'd never encountered before. What makes the Southern voices so unique and noticeable?

I would guess that the key difference lies in what and who they were writing against. Upton Sinclair wrote an expose on the horrific practices of a meat-packing company, skewering a faceless corporation motivated by greed to disregard the consequences of their policies on everyone. Sinclair Lewis wrote about the closed minds and soulless existences of white-collar America, a faceless mass who only really harmed themselves through their actions. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about the destructiveness of amoral and hedonistic upper-class lifestyles. All of these authors were writing against the current of the populace, and many of the very people they targeted loved them for it.

But Faulkner, Caldwell, and Wolfe, and the Southern writers who came after them, were writing about blind prejudice and a backwards mentality which were keeping the entire region socially, economically, and mentally tied to an anachronistic ideal. The South was unable to develop past a certain point, and the results were poverty, ignorance, and discrimanation (to name a few). And Southern authors were not simply speaking out against these problems, nor were they addressing a faceless mass. Southern authors were condemning their own relatives, their own friends, the citizens of the small towns they grew up in. They were traitors and infidels. At least that's what their former friends and scandalized relatives called them.

The literature of the South during this period comprises a more significant, poignant, and truly revolutionary body of work because the writing of it required sufficient intellectual strength to tear loose of the generations-old mores surrounding these authors, and sufficient moral courage to speak out against people they knew personally.

Expect to see me develop this theme further before the end of the semester, but for now, that's all I've got.

Paige's Shirt: A New Critical Approach

Dr. Watson is sick again today. His illness last night led to me and Gallagher running our Reading the Bible as Literature class. Today I was to have Literary Criticism with him, as usual, but sadly he was not here. Instead we were instructed to compose our journals for today using a poem or other short work and applying a formalist reading to the text.

I hate New Criticism. I find it limiting, narrow-minded, and pretentious. I, for one, would rather not put blinders on before I read something. But that is what I was instructed to do. As my Lit Crit group (self, Paige, Randy, and Ashley) got into a huddle, all of our eyes were drawn once again to Paige's shirt, a rather busy affair consisting of scads of black text in different fonts crowded onto a white background. I've already forgotten who suggested the idea, but it didn't take long for everyone to latch onto it and run with it . . . we must clearly analyze Paige's shirt using New Criticism. No, seriously, we should. See end of post for bibliography.

"Entity" by Daniel Benjamin is a work full of confusion, contrast, tension, and irony which, ultimately, resolves itself into a pointed description of a culture defined by superficial materialism. The work is composed of a wild, disorderly jumble of words in different fonts and different sizes. All of the words, phrases, and concepts in the work appear multiple times. Some of the words are associated with others, some seem to have nothing to do with anything else, and some change according to their context within the work.

For instance, the word "diet" (center, under collar; center, above stomach, left sleeve, shoulder) appears in numerous places throughout the work, but is never truly connected to anything else. However, the concept of encouraging weight-loss is affirmed by the few types of foods which appear scattered here and there: "apples" and "avocados" (right, under collar). Additionally, the text includes a number of disconnected references to tropical destinations like "Miami," (right sleeve, wrist) "Palm Beach," (center, upper back) and "Costa Rica" (center, lower back). One of the most telling phrases in terms of a unifying theme is "US leadership in terms of culture" (right, lower back).

Juxtaposition also plays an important role. For instance, when "Perfect Compromise" is linked with "Nothing," (center, chest) producing the impression that a perfect compromise is no compromise at all. In another spot, "Looking Younger" is placed next to "Production," (center, diaphragm) implying that one must work to avoid the effects of aging and produce a good impression. Or there is the connection of "Behind Those Blue Eyes" and "BOMBSHELL," (left, chest) indicating that shocking part of ourselves which we keep hidden from the world.

"Entity" is a jumbled work, full of contradiction, tension, and irony, but ultimately the entirety is unified through its connection to a single person: the average vapid materialist of modern culture. The work is a testament to the busyness and drive of their lifestyle, but also shows the emptiness of it all. It hints at dark tensions that lie beneath the surface of even the shallowest personality.

Work Cited

Benjamin, Daniel. "Entity." 45% polyester, 45% rayon, 10% lycra. Machine wash cold, gentle cycle, reshape, dry flat, no bleach, inside out. Cut 717, Style #1252-1. Made in USA, Small.

My Lincoln Log

This week's intellectual history topic was a bit . . . well, narrow. At least, it was narrow compared to our other topics. We didn't discuss a period, or a group, or a body of literature . . . We discussed Abraham Lincoln. One guy, one lifetime. So much has been written and said about Lincoln . . . almost too much. In fact, our reading this week included a collection of bizarre titles covering every possible facet of his life (and some I would have considered impossible). My personal favorite of these titles was Abraham Lincoln The Friend of Man His Life Was Another Drop in That Vat Where Human Lives, Like Grapes in God's Vintages, Yield the Wine That Strengthens the Spirit of Truth and Justice in the World. But that still doesn't give me anything to write about.

Who was this guy? I'm not asking this question in the same sense as the title of our reading for the week ("Who Is This Fellow? He Is Smarter Than He Looks"). That question indicates that even people in Lincoln's own day wondered who he was and how he had come to exist. I ask the question because I think we still don't know . . . Surely we know less now than we did then, and are less certain to find out.

I wondered in class what it was that made Lincoln unique, and I just double-checked with a list of presidents to try and confirm what we came up with. Lincoln was the first president to rise from truly humble beginnings directly into a position of power (no, Andrew Jackson doesn't count). Looking down the list of the presidents, Lincoln is one of a very scant handful of "log cabin" presidents, none of whom really distinguished themselves quite like he did. In addition, Lincoln was an intellectual, something we wouldn't normally link to humble origins. He is one of a very scant handful of intellectual presidents (not counting the founding fathers, clearly a special group) . . . and none of the others really had "humble beginnings."

But is it really this quality of being, as we discussed in class, a "self-made intellectual" that makes Lincoln special? Or do we just notice this all the more because of the extraordinary circumstances surrounding his presidency? In other words, is his success due to his notable qualities, or do we only notice that he had notable qualities because he employed them successfully at a unique time in American history? Might we have presidents who were just as great as Lincoln, but who don't get his "press" because they didn't pull us through a crisis . . . because their admirable qualities weren't given a chance to shine? Did Lincoln's excellent qualities make his success and fame inevitable?

If there's one thing I hate, it's having an entire paragraph of only questions and no real answers for them, but those are the things I wonder about. I can't really give a solid response to any of them. As I said the other night, I don't think it detracts at all from Lincoln's greatness to say that his fame and success are not at all surprising. Lincoln described himself in early life as a "strange, penniless, friendless, uneducated boy working on a flatboat for ten dollars a month." But the fact remains that, no matter how humble his beginnings may have been or what he may have had working against him, Lincoln was a white male born in the right country at the right time in possession of all the qualities he would need to achieve what he achieved. His position was no accident. His success was no mistake. Whoever Abraham Lincoln may or may not have been, he was certainly not a historical fluke.

The Master Geniuses

I posited a hypothesis in class on Wednesday night regarding the development of a distinctly American literature. It came from a consideration of our reading, part of which was on American literary nationalism of the antebellum period. Washington Irving and James Fenimore Cooper were named, of course, as two early and popular distinctly American authors. And then, of course, there were the Romantics pushing for America to develop her own literature, to do her own thing: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman, Margaret Fuller, Henry David Thoreau, etc. But the ones which, as usual, really caught my eye were the following:

If the only surviving documents from the 1840s and 1850s were its major novels, historians would face an impossible task in describing the appearance of antebellum American society. The unusual settings favored by [Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe] partly reflected their view that American life lacked the materials for great fiction. Hawthorne, for example, bemoaned the difficulty of writing about a country "where there is no shadow, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land" . . .

Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe ignored Emerson's call to write about the everyday experiences of their fellow Americans. Nor did they follow Cooper's lead by creating distinctively American heroes. Yet each contributed to an indisputably American literature. Ironically, their conviction that the lives of ordinary Americans provided inadequate materials for fiction led them to create a uniquely American fiction, one marked less by the description of the complex social relationships of ordinary life than by the analysis of moral dilemmas and psychological states.

-The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People

My idea, in keeping with this, was that while Emerson and Whitman and Thoreau were attempting to impose a distinctly American form on their writing or that of others, Hawthorne, Melville, and Poe were actually succeeding because they weren't actually trying, or, in fact, even thinking about it. I also consider the latter three to be writers of infinite better quality than the former three (although they have their place). In my estimation, once those three begin to write, American literature, as such, starts to actually "get good."

Then I read "Hawthorne and His Mosses" by Herman Melville, and it in turn directed me to read "A Select Party" by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The quotes below led me to modify my hypothesis a bit (pardon their length):

It is true, that but few of them as yet have evinced that decided originality which merits great praise. But that graceful writer, who perhaps of all Americans has received the most plaudits from his own country for his productions,--that very popular and amiable writer, however good, and self-reliant in many things, perhaps owes his chief reputation to the self-acknowledged imitation of a foreign model, and to the studied avoidance of all topics but smooth ones . . . Without malice, but to speak the plain fact, they but furnish an appendix to Goldsmith, and other English authors. And we want no American Goldsmiths, nay, we want no American Miltons. It were the vilest thing you could say of a true American author, that he were an American Tompkins. Call him an American, and have done, for you can not say a nobler thing of him.--But it is not meant that all American writers should studiously cleave to nationality in their writings; only this, no American writer should write like an Englishman, or a Frenchman; let him write like a man, for then he will be sure to write like an American. Let us away with this leaven of literary flunkyism towards England. If either we must play the flunky in this thing, let England do it, not us. While we are rapidly preparing for that political supremacy among the nations, which prophetically awaits us at the close of the present century; in a literary point of view, we are deplorably unprepared for it; and we seem studious to remain so . . . we should refrain from unduly lauding foreign writers, and, at the same time, duly recognize the meritorious writers that are our own,--those writers, who breathe that unshackled, democratic spirit of Christianity in all things, which now takes the practical lead in the world, though at the same time led by ourselves--us Americans . . . if any of our authors fail, or seem to fail, then, in the words of my enthusiastic Carolina cousin, let us clap him on the shoulder, and back him against all Europe for his second round. The truth is, that in our point of view, this matter of a national literature has come to such a pass with us, that in some sense we must turn bullies, else the day is lost . . .

-Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses"

But now appeared a stranger . . . he was a young man in poor attire, with no insignia of rank or acknowledged eminence, nor anything to distinguish him among the crowd except a high, white forehead, beneath which a pair of deep-set eyes were glowing with warm light. It was such a light as never illuminates the earth save when a great heart burns as the household fire of a grand intellect. And who was he?--who but the Master Genius for whom our country is looking anxiously into the mist of Time, as destined to fulfil the great mission of creating an American literature, hewing it, as it were, out of the unwrought granite of our intellectual quarries? From him, whether moulded in the form of an epic poem or assuming a guise altogether new as the spirit itself may determine, we are to receive our first great original work, which shall do all that remains to be achieved for our glory among the nations . . . he dwells as yet unhonored among men, unrecognized by those who have known him from his cradle; the noble countenance which should be distinguished by a halo diffused around it passes daily amid the throng of people toiling and troubling themselves about the trifles of a moment, and none pay reverence to the worker of immortality. Nor does it matter much to him, in his triumph over all the ages, though a generation or two of his own times shall do themselves the wrong to disregard him.

-Hawthorne, "A Select Party"

And here, let me throw out another conceit of mine touching this American Shiloh, or "Master Genius," as Hawthorne calls him. May it not be, that this commanding mind has not been, is not, and never will be, individually developed in any one man? And would it, indeed, appear so unreasonable to suppose, that this great fullness and overflowing may be, or may be destined to be, shared by a plurality of men of genius? Surely, to take the very greatest example on record, Shakespeare cannot be regarded as in himself the concretion of all the genius of his time; nor as so immeasurably beyond Marlowe, Webster, Ford, Beaumont, Johnson, that those great men can be said to share none of his power?

-Melville, "Hawthorne and His Mosses"

From these passages it is fairly clear that the emergence of a distinctly American literature was very much a part of Hawthorne and Melville's thinking. And as for Poe . . . well, who dares to plumb the depths of whatever may have been running through his head? Y'know, when he wasn't drunk or high. The point is, that this quite shattered my hypothesis, but it did lead me to an interesting thought. Hawthorne and Melville, although they probably didn't know it, were talking about themselves.

Melville and Hawthorne, along with Poe and those who would soon follow (Henry James, Mark Twain, and, much later, William Faulkner and Flannery O'Connor, to name just a few), are among the Master Geniuses who tower above the rest in our study of the uniquely American literary tradition. Not a great revelation, perhaps, but it is fascinating to see the men themselves speculating about the form American literature will finally take when it comes into its own, even as they themselves are playing an essential role in shaping it.

Scattershot Education and Divine Impetus

Most conspicuous in the writings of the Revolutionary period was the heritage of classical antiquity. Knowledge of classical authors was universal among colonists . . .

But this elaborate display of classical authors is deceptive. Often the learning behind it was superficial; often the citations appear to have been dragged in as "window dressing with which to ornament a page or a speech and to increase the weight of an argument" . . . Thacher too thought Plato had been a liberty-loving revolutionary, while Jefferson, who actually read the Dialogues, discovered in them only the "sophisms, futilities, and incomprehensibilities" of a "foggy mind" - an idea concurred in with relief by John Adams, who in 1774 had cited Plato as an advocate of equality and self-government but who was so shocked when he finally studied the philosopher that he concluded that the Republic must have been meant as a satire.

. . . What is basically important in the Americans' reading of the ancients is the high selectivity of their real interests and the limitation of the range of their effective knowledge. For though the colonists drew their citations from all portions of the literature of the ancient world, their detailed knowledge and engaged interest covered only one era and one small group of writers.

-The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution, Bernard Bailyn

But, my friend, the priests of the temple of Zeus at Dodona say that the first prophecies were the words of an oak. Everyone who lived at that time, not being as wise as you young ones are today, found it rewarding enough in their simplicity to listen to an oak or even a stone, so long as it was telling the truth, while it seems to make a difference to you, Phaedrus, who is speaking and where he comes from. Why, though, don't you just consider whether what he says is right or wrong?

. . . Those who think they can leave written instructions for an art, as well as those who accept them, thinking that writing can yield results that are clear or certain, must be quite naive and truly ignorant of Ammon's prophetic judgment: otherwise, how could they possibly think that words that have been written down can do more than remind those who already know what the writing is about?

-Phaedrus, Plato

One thing apparently hasn't changed about education over the course of the last few centuries: we still only study bits and snatches of the great writings of western civilization. Reading from Bailyn for Intellectual History this week, I was struck by the irony that I, too, was merely reading a selection by this historian for class.

Furthermore, I've been sampling liberally from Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles, Horace, etc. for Literary Criticism. We read portions varying between 5 and 20 pages of their work, discuss them briefly in class, and move on. This is the extent of my knowledge of Greek and Roman literature: whatever some mysterious group of people deemed important enough to shove into an anthology, and then whatever portion of that is actually assigned by the professor.

But as I saw what the literati of the revolutionary period were reading, and how they were using what they read, I was reminded of that excerpt from Plato that I quoted above. The Founding Fathers had an idea, even a fixation, in their heads of liberty and government and purpose, and once that idea was there, they saw it everywhere they looked. They pulled aspects of their grand philosophy together (whether they actually existed in the text or not) out of writings from (among others) the Ancient Greeks, the Enlightenment thinkers, the Puritans . . . could three groups of intellectual thought be more diametrically opposed to each other than these?

And yet from them, men like Jefferson, Adams, and Hamilton began to cobble together the foundation of the American Republic. Plato has it that writing cannot teach anyone new ideas, it can only remind them of things they already knew. I don't know for certain that I agree with that statement and all of its implications, but I think it was true here. Incidentally, I am also not immune to the irony of quoting a fragment of Plato to support this particular point.

There was one more thing that struck me during the discussion of Bailyn's piece. "In one sense [New England Puritanism] was the most limited and parochial tradition that contributed in an important way to the writings of the Revolution . . . But in another sense it contained the broadest ideas of all, since it offered a context for everyday events nothing less than cosmic in its dimensions."

Having just completed Wide as the Waters by Benson Bobrick and discussed the incredible impact on history of the translation of the Bible into English, it is apparent just how important this "most limited" contribution really was. The Puritans represent, out of all of the sources of Revolutionary thought Bailyn named, the staunchly biblical worldview. This was a worldview which most people had no real exposure to a mere 300 years before. Once the Bible, that all-time bestselling book, started to hit British stands in fits and starts beginning in the early sixteenth century, it began to revolutionize the lives and minds of everyone who came into contact with it.

As to the contribution of the Puritans to the American Revolution, and America in general, it seems to me that logical arguments and appeals to reason and precedent can only go so far in forming the impetus of a movement which seeks to overthrow an established government and create an entirely new country out of thin air. If, however, you can convince people that not only is God on their side, but this is His plan for them . . . How much more powerful of a motivator is that? That, not something from Plato or Locke or Montesquieu, is an idea that people will fight and die for.

Puritan Fetish

The Puritans have been getting a great deal of attention in my classes lately. In Literary Criticism we read and dissected "Young Goodman Brown," and I returned in my mind to my readings of The Scarlet Letter. In Reading the Bible as Literature our studies of the Scriptures in English have carried us into the reign of James I, who became yet another ruler to dash the hopes of those who had been aching for a Protestant agenda in government ever since the all-too-short reign of Edward VI some 55 years before. And there were hints at the extreme religious group that would soon emerge . . . One that would gain so much power so quickly that they would be able to overthrow the government less than 40 years later and plunge England into civil war.

And, in Intellectual History in America, we discussed at length "The Puritan Imprint" and the intellectual character of the Puritans based on readings from "The New England Mind" by Perry Miller and various primary source works from people like Mather, Edwards, Bradstreet, and Winthrop (see also Wilson's excellent post on Roger Williams). Our text spent a great deal of time belaboring the idea that, yes, the Puritans were very intellectual types, despite their apparent dogmatism and authoritarianism.

He proved his point by citing the extensive writings of the Puritans, their complex and well-developed theological system, their standards of education from young children through university students, and the religious controversies they became embroiled in, especially during the English Civil War.

The Puritans were by no means perfect. They gave us the expression "witch hunt" from the universally-reviled goings-on in Salem. Lovers of the learning and The Arts hate them for the closing down of London theaters and their general disapproval of secular art, philosophy, etc. But what can we, as Christians and as Americans, learn from the Puritans today?

As we continued to read about them and discuss them, there began to emerge in my mind an image of men and women strong in faith, character, mind, body, and spirit, who weren't going to settle for anything less than a community of believers governed entirely by the principles of the Bible and devoted to spiritual and intellectual growth along biblical lines. This was their vision for the colonies in America and, in one way or another, that has had a profound impact on our history.

It has been fascinating to study, not only the Puritans, but those who laid the foundations for them, and those who looked back on them after they were gone. Men like John Wycliffe and William Tyndale led the way towards a translation of the Bible in English (an unbelievable story in itself) as the Catholic Church fell into chaos and disarray and seemed ready to fragment into a million pieces, and Henry VIII (for his own reasons) pulled away from Rome to establish the Church of England. And, of course, there are the giants of the Reformation like John Calvin and Martin Luther, making a successful break from Catholicism and establishing new doctrines.

Then there is Nathaniel Hawthorne, a 19th Century Romantic and one of the great American authors, who also happened to be descended from the Puritans. He, if his writings are any indication, was fascinated by them, both their flaws and their better qualities, and he used their communities as the setting for inquiries into the nature of good and evil, piety and sin, love and revenge . . . He saw the Puritans as flawed and conflicted human beings, many of whom tried (with mixed success) to do the right thing.

Hawthorne's perspective on the Puritans is, I think, both healthy and valuable. Their ideals were sound, even when their practices were not. Their impact, both on the world around them and on generations to come, was profound. And always they strove towards a firm establishment of God's Kingdom on earth. What more could we ask of any Christian in any age in history? Has any single group of believers at any one point in history since the Apostles succeeded as the Puritans did?

The Chief Horror of the Scene: Hawthorne's Heart of Darkness

I have discovered that I much prefer Hawthorne's short fiction to his longer works. In this case that basically means that I liked Young Goodman Brown a great deal more than I liked The Scarlet Letter. Hawthorne, it would appear, had something of a Puritan fetish. His love/hate relationship with them (his ancestors) and their actions emerges over and over again in his writing, and this yielded some fascinating results. In the story, Goodman Brown leaves behind his young wife, Faith (despite her protestations that he remain) for a meeting in the midst of a dark and gloomy forest with Satan himself.

Satan and Goodman journey through the forest together, and as they go deeper and deeper Goodman begins to have doubts about this meeting that he is attending. But each time he resolves to turn back, he is confronted by a member of his community who he had formerly believed to be above reproach; the woman who taught him his catechism, the minister, etc. And all of these people are on their way to the meeting, as well.

When he finally arrives, already questioning the very foundation of everything he has ever believed, he joins the group of new initiates and finds Faith among them. Faith, before now, has been his only anchor to everything he thought he knew about humanity and virtue before entering the forest. Now even that has been stripped away. And yet, at the critical moment, Goodman cries out to Faith to resist the devil, and at once everyone around him vanishes (including her). He returns to town the next morning and finds everything exactly as he left it. Was it all a dream? Lies from Satan? Did any of it really happen?

Whether it did or not, Goodman Brown lives out the rest of his long days certain that Satan is watching him from behind the eyes of everyone around him. He becomes a paranoid and embittered old man, and "his dying hour [is] gloom."

I think that the title of this work, the characters, and the development of the plot and themes carry strong ties to medieval morality plays in the vein of Everyman. "Young Goodman Brown" is a very simple and generic title for a character that we should all be identifying with in his struggles with himself and the evils around him. Faith is clearly a somewhat allegorical character of the type often found in morality plays, and Goodman's actions bear this out.

Goodman leaves his Faith behind at the beginning of the story. "Poor little Faith! . . . What a wretch am I, to leave her . . ." He spends the rest of the story attempting to cling to his Faith. "With Heaven above, and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the devil!" And, finally, he loses his Faith entirely at the end. "My Faith is gone!" ". . . he shrank from the bosom of Faith . . . and turned away." And, of course, Satan is the prominent antagonist in the story, using every trick in his arsenal to take possession of Goodman's soul.

In particular, there are two interesting aspects of how the story develops. All of the imagery in the story is a direct reflection of the descent of the character into darkness and evil, while the outward appearance of the people around him is a direct contrast to their true natures. Satan, when Goodman meets him in the forest, is dressed "in grave and decent attire." And, of course, everyone he meets along his way, though formerly revered as among most pious in his community, is in fact evil.

The use of color in the story is especially significant . . . there isn't any. Goodman enters the gloomy forest and things just get darker, from grays to blacks, from there. The only two colors mentioned are the distinctive pink of Faith's ribbon, and the red of the satanic fire. This lack of color and light is a reflection of the darkness that Goodman is shocked to discover in the human heart. (As a side-note, Goodman is in possession of Faith's ribbon when he meets her before Satan in the woods, but she has it back again the next morning. This, though Goodman fails to notice it, seems to indicate that she was never actually in the woods at all.)

The key moment in the story for me comes near the end, when Faith and Goodman are together, standing before the devil. He says to them, "Depending on one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived! Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness."

Satan has put into words what Goodman was already beginning to suspect as his journey drew to a close. Earlier on Hawthorne describes a bone-chilling scene: the forest, thick and dark, full of terrifying sounds, nothing even remotely indicative of any sort of comfort or light. "But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors . . . The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man." In the midst of a scene full of darkness and evil, the heart of darkness is within Goodman Brown ("the horror, the horror").

Standing before Satan, he hears a mixture of lies and half-truths, and believes because of what he has been shown. Satan has revealed to him something that he should already have learned from scripture (that man is basically evil), but has left out half the story. Goodman has no more faith, no more hope. Having been told that evil is his only happiness, he chooses not to be happy at all.

Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita: The Horror of Proximity

I have done it. I have finished reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov within a mere hour of the arrival of Harry Potter 6. Having seen the movie last semester, and given it top marks, and considering the nature and quality of the literary version, I find it is impossible to proceed without writing something in the way of my impressions of the novel, and how I think it compares to the cinematic version.

This is the first (though by no means the last) Nabokov work which I have read, and I was floored by it. The only works of prose fiction that I have found which can compare with the skill and beauty of Nabokov's use of the English language are the "Gormenghast" novels by Mervyn Peake. The opening sentence of the novel is "Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins." It proceeds, sometimes in a wild and feverish tone, sometimes in a dry and sardonic conversational tone, as the confession of a heinous sinner who has reached a point of almost ridiculously blunt honesty simply because he has nothing to lose by telling every word of the truth.

And yet English was not Nabokov's first language, nor even his second. Nabokov, like Joseph Conrad, is one of the few authors to gain special renown for their incredible deftness with a language which was not their own. I was quite shocked, in fact, to find this pronouncement by the author himself at the very end of Lolita: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian tongue for a second-rate brand of English."

However, some might, and indeed have, argued that the sublimity of Nabokov's prose, while impressive, does not succeed in masking the rotted, amoral heart of the novel's subject matter. Beautiful writing may be all well and good, and certainly there is much to be said for it, but really, at its core, Lolita is simply a book about a 12-year old girl who is forced into two years of sexual slavery to our narrator, who is in almost all other respects a highly sympathetic, intelligent, and good-looking main character. Or is it? Is it really possible to dismiss so lightly something with which we are uncomfortable on merely moral grounds, or does it not rather depend on how the book treats the subject? Obviously, I am siding with the latter choice.

I mentioned earlier that the entire book is narrated by the semi-penitent pedophile, Humbert Humbert. This is not entirely true. Humbert's account takes up approximately 98% of the novel, however it is sandwhiched between an introduction, ostensibly written by an editor selected posthumously by Humbert's lawyer, and an afterword by Nabokov, finally writing as himself. Each of these three voices has something very important to tell us about the book and what it has to say. The first, strangely (considering we see it before the story proper has even begun), is the most detailed of the three. However, it is also the most shallow analysis of what we can take out of Lolita.

Viewed simply as a novel, "Lolita" deals with situations and emotions that would remain exasperatingly vague to the reader had their expression been etiolated by means of platitudinous evasions. True, not a single obscene term is to be found in the whole work; indeed, the robust philistine who is conditioned by modern conventions into accepting without qualms a lavish array of four-letter words in a banal novel, will be quite shocked by their absence here. If, however, for this paradoxical prude's comfort an editor attempted to dilute or omit scenes that a certain type of mind might call "aphrodisiac" (see in this respect the monumental decision rendered December 6, 1933, by Hon. John M. Woolsey in regard to another, considerably more outspoiken, book), one would have to forego the publication of "Lolita" altogether, since those very scenes that one might ineptly accuse of a sensuous existence of their own, are the most strictly functional ones in the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. The cynic may say that commercial pornography makes the same claim; the learned may counter by asserting that "H. H."'s impassiouned confession is a tempest in a test tube; that at least 12 percent of American adult males - a "conservative" estimate according to Dr. Blanche Schwarzmann (verbal communication) - enjoy yearly, in one way or another, the special experience "H. H." describes with such despair; that had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 1947, to a competent psychopathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this book.

This commentator may be excused for repeating what he has stressed in his own books and lectures, namely that "offensive" is frequently but a synonym for "unusual"; and a great work of art is of course always original, and thus by its very nature should come as a more or less shocking surprise. I have no intention to glorify "H. H." No doubt, he is horrible, he is abject, he is a shining example of moral leprosy, a mixture of ferocity and jocularity that betrays supreme misery perhaps, but is not conducive to attractiveness. He is ponderously capricious. Many of his casual opinions on the people and scenery of this country are ludicrous. A desperate honesty that throbs through his confession does not absolve him from sins of diabolical cunning. He is abnormal. He is not a gentleman. But how magically his singing violin can conjure up a tendresse, a compassion for Lolita that makes us entranced with the book while abhorring its author!

As a case history, "Lolita" will become, no doubt, a classic in psychiatric circles. As a work of art, it transcends its expiatory aspects; and still more important to us than scientific significance and literary worth, is the ethical impact the book should have on the serious reader; for in this poignant personal study there lurks a general lesson; the wayward child, the egotistic mother, the panting maniac - these are not only the vivid characters in a unique story; they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils. "Lolita" should make all of us - parents, social workers, educators - apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world.

Incidentally, the ruling of 1933 that is referenced above decided that James Joyce's highly controversial Ulysses, which had been successfully kept out of the United States for over a decade, was not pornographic. As such the significance of this ruling should be readily apparent. That interesting tidbit aside, this view of Lolita preserves a very important distance between the audience and Humbert Humbert. We, the "parents, social workers, educators," the moral compass of society, the fine, upstanding citizens should see in Lolita a call to increasing vigilance against the prowling lion.

It is certainly true that the book functions on this level. As Humbert carefully plays out his hand in the acquisition of sole, unrestricted access to the young Dolores Haze throughout part one we see the serious blunders made by responsible adults all around both Lolita and H. H. They could have seen this coming, and they could have prevented it. This element continues throughout the two-year period of captivity in part two. A number of adults enter the lives of Dolly and Hum who might be capable of grasping the enormity of the situation if only their eyes were open. Sadly, they do not. Lolita points with a gnarled and trembling finger at evils which we must constantly guard against, and it does so in a vivid and unforgettable manner.

However, there is still this distance which is maintained in the introduction. That distance is erased from the first sentence of chapter one. Humbert Humbert, who has generously offered to guide us through the dark and twisted paths of his own story, will now attempt to explain himself, his background, his motives, his dark obsessions, addictions, and descent . . . He will reveal all. Or will he? I have very little doubt that H. H. believes that every word he tells us is the absolute truth, but after all, that doesn't mean that it is, does it? We must never forget that every passage of his journey into sexual obsession, manipulation, and finally, domination is viewable only through his own impossibly-biased eyes. Lolita herself, sole witness to most of what transpires in the book, is dead, even were she given the opportunity to speak (which, importantly, she is not). More on this later.

The point here is that now we are fully inside the mind of Humbert, and looking about us we certainly cannot claim to like what we see . . . but do we recoil in disgust and repulsion because we fear his depravity, or because we recognize it? The following passage was, to me, one of the most compelling in the book by far, as it outlines the vicious and never-ending cycle of fall into sin, guilty and remorseful weakness, and renewed temptation.

I recall certain moments, let us call them icebergs in paradise, when after having had my fill of her - after fabulous, insane exertions that left me limp and azure-barred - I would gather her in my arms with, at last, a mute moan of human tenderness (her skin glistening in the neon light coming from the paved court through the slits in the blind, her soot-black lashes matted, her grave gray eyes more vacant than ever - for all the world a little patient still in the confusion of a drug after a major operation) - and the tenderness would deepen to shame and despair, and I would lull and rock my lone light Lolita in my marble arms, and moan in her warm hair, and caress her at random and mutely ask her blessing, and at the peak of this human agonized selfless tenderness (with my soul actually hanging around her naked body and ready to repent), all at once, ironically, horribly, lust would swell again - and "oh, no", Lolita would say with a sigh to heaven and the next moment the tenderness and the azure - all would be shattered.

A Father Brown book I have recently finished contained the following quote: "There are two ways of renouncing the devil . . . and the difference is perhaps the deepest chasm in modern religion. One is to have a horror of him because he is so far off; and the other to have it because he is so near. And no virtue and vice are so much divided as those two virtues. You may think a crime horrible because you could never commit it. I think it horrible because I could commit it." Humbert Humbert may not be committing an "average" sin, but I would contest that he is certainly the average sinner. He is selfish, dishonest and manipulative, in addition to being addicted to his pedophiliac lusts and being obsessed and consumed by his desire for Lolita. This makes him almost a sympathetic figure.

Almost.

But I'll get to that in a moment as well. As I mentioned earlier, there is one more narrative voice that casts light on Lolita, that of the author himself. As I have already shown, the book has a great deal to tell us, both about others and about ourselves, but what exactly is it that we are being shown? The answer to that lies in Nabokov's explanation of his original inspiration for the story:

The first little throb of Lolita went through me late in 1939 or early in 1940, in Paris . . . As far as I can recall, the initial shiver of inspiration was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardins des Plantes, who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage. The impulse I record had no textual connection with the ensuing train of thought . . .

I cannot say with any certainty that I know how Nabokov got from point A to point B, but consider for a moment the nature of Lolita. The subtitle is "Confessions of a White Widowed Male" and the entire book is (ostensibly) produced by this person. I know of no book that precedes Lolita which does what Lolita attempts to do. It is, in fact, the first novel ever produced by a self-confessed pedophile. And it shows us the bars of his cage. Lolita explains Humbert's every move . . . why he acts as he does, why he makes the decisions he does, where he comes from. It is not a cage from which there is no escape, however Humbert is unwilling or unable to make his escape on his own. This, I think, is one of the most important aspects of the book.

This would be as good a time as any to get back to a few things that I mentioned earlier, and begin my comparison between novel and movie. The movie, in terms of plot, is virtually identical to the book. The only changes I can think of are in things that are omitted from the movie version, either as I time consideration, or to sneak the movie by the censors. On the surface, the movie and the novel relate the events of the story in precisely the same manner. The key difference, which separates the two from each other entirely, is in the point of view.

In the book, we see everything through the eyes of Humbert. In the movie, we see everything through the eyes of the camera. This is a problem. Yes, Humbert is still the storyteller in the movie, and technically we do witness everything from his point of view. However, there is an inherent assumption by the viewer that what is on-screen is unbiased reality. While the novel might make it quite clear that everything we hear from Humbert is being told with his slant on it, the average movie viewer assumes that it is impossible to similarly trick the eyes. What we see on the screen is what is happening, and we believe this and form our opinions of the situation accordingly.

I would like to mention first that reading the book did not diminish my appreciation of the movie in any way. If anything, it had the opposite effect. However, it is important to realize that the movie we are watching is still a filmed version of Humbert's account. Lolita still does not have a voice and cannot speak for herself.

I have spent a great deal of time so far showing the tragedy of Humbert's character . . . his flaws and weaknesses and the damage that these do to his soul as he is trapped in a prison of lust. But all of this does not diminish the fact that Humbert is not the primary victim of tragedy in Lolita. That label goes to the title character alone. Lolita herself is the one deserving of pity and sympathy. Humbert, throughout his final denouement, expresses a great deal of remorse for what he has done, beats himself up over his failings, etc. But once again, as he has stolen Lolita's innocence and childhood and two years of her life, he is attempting to make off with our sympathy for her, to transfer it onto himself. I don't think he even realizes he is doing it. His character is so very manipulative and self-centered that he is incapable of doing otherwise.

But I wasn't fooled. It does not take much effort throughout a reading of Lolita to see that nothing which takes place, no matter what Humbert may say or how he may justify himself, is her fault. Throughout the novel I was captivated by the story, awed by the prose, filled with sympathy by the actions and emotions of the characters, and even somewhat convicted (I, too, can be quite self-centered and manipulative). Lolita is an incredible literary experience, just as it is an intense cinematic experience, and it would be a shame to hate it, or ban it, or dismiss it completely simply because we are uncomfortable with its subject.

Henry James and The American Girl

Late last night I finished reading Washington Square by Henry James, the third book by that author that I have read (The Turn of the Screw and Daisy Miller being the other two). At this point, I think I can safely call myself a fan of James. I chose to read Washington Square after the considerable attention devoted to it in Reading Lolita in Tehran, and as I read and enjoyed the book, I decided I needed to write something about it, especially in light of having read Daisy Miller (post here).

My original intention was to highlight the extreme differences between the two books and see what conclusions I could draw from this contrast . . . but as I began to catalogue the differences in characters, settings, themes, and so forth, I soon realized that the difference between the two is purely a superficial one. Ultimately they are about much the same thing. I might almost call them mirror images of each other, because they seem like complete opposites, yet the philosophy of the one reflects the philosophy of the other exactly.

Daisy Miller is the story of a young American ingénue (the title character) and her experiences in Europe, told from the point of view of the worldly Winterbourne, an American who has lived in Europe for many years. Daisy, a native of New York and a very free-spirited sort, is travelling with her mother and younger brother, and the American community in Europe is decidedly disapproving of her impetuousity and ignorance of "acceptable" behavior. Ultimately, her innocence and her stubborness lead to her tragic death from Roman fever.

Washington Square is the story of a young American ingénue and her ill-fated romance with a fortune hunter. Catherine Sloper is a native of New York City (she lives in a house at the title location), residing there with her father and aunt. Her mother died shortly after giving birth to her. Catherine, a plain, shy, and unintelligent girl, is wooed by a handsome, silver-tongued young charmer named Morris Townsend, who has recently returned from squandering his modest fortune on a world tour.

Now very much in the market to wed, he has been encouraged in his attentions towards Catherine by the overly-romantic, meddlesome aunt, but her father, Dr. Austin Sloper, sees through Morris at once. He knows that Morris must be after Catherine's money, for why else would he be interested in the girl? Catherine lacks charm, intelligence and beauty, as her father well knows. But, Catherine has been swept off her feet, and while perceptive judgment of others' characters may not be one of her strengths, compassion and fidelity are. She has committed herself wholly to Morris Townsend, no matter what her father may say or do.

Unswayed by her father's threats to cut her off without a cent should she proceed to marry Morris, Catherine prepares for her wedding . . . but as soon as Morris sees that he has been beaten, and that Dr. Sloper will not be moved, he skips town. This is not done maliciously . . . He regards Catherine merely as a business opportunity which fell through. Catherine herself is left flat, with no one to turn to. Her father has grown even more cold and distant than he already was and her aunt is infatuated with Morris and believes he acted understandably.

As I said before, on the surface, the two novels could hardly be more different. The heroines are polar opposites of each other. Daisy is extroverted, adventurous, and beautiful, but thinks little of the feelings of others. She travels Europe with her mother and younger brother. Her father is alive, but out of the picture. Catherine is shy, quiet, extremely domestic, plain, and places her sense of duty to those she cares about above all other considerations. She lives at home with her father. Her mother is dead. An older brother died as an infant.

Daisy Miller follows Winterbourne around, and the novel's plot chiefly follows his fascination with Daisy and his perspective of her actions as we try to figure her out. His attitude, and the reader's, changes from immediate admiration of her gradually towards annoyance and even apathy. When he discovers at the end of the novel that he has misjudged her character, he is remorseful, but soon seems to have forgotten about her entirely.

The reader, too, is perhaps sorry to learn of the truly tragic nature of her death, but she is a difficult character to respect. She is, after all, a very foolish girl. None of the relationships she cultivates in the story, even her seemingly serious and even compromising involvment with Giovanelli, has any depth or permanence. She had no intention of marrying Giovanelli and would have eventually moved on to someone else. Her character, although we find out more about it over the course of the book, remains completely static.

Washington Square does not follow one particular character, alternating chiefly between Catherine, Aunt Lavinia, and Dr. Sloper. Morris remains as something of an enigma, in roughly the same way Daisy is, until near the end of the story. We are unsure whether his motives are pure, partially pure, or totally self-serving . . . although we suspect. This is the chief direction in which the plot moves as Catherine and Morris get closer to marrying one another.

When Catherine finally learns that she has misjudged his character, the sorrow felt by both her and the reader is of an entirely different nature from the feelings about Daisy. We are sorry for ever having liked or been sympathetic to Morris in any way. Knowing the truth, it is difficult to feel anything for him but contempt. The full sympathy of the reader in this case is for the character who was mistaken rather than the character they were mistaken about.

By the time this final split occurs, of course, there is no longer any doubt in the reader's mind that Catherine Sloper is no Daisy Miller. She has given up, or is prepared to give up, everything she knows (family, home, money) for Morris, and for Morris alone. The great tragedy is that she has "loved not wisely, but too well" and has given her heart to a man that did not deserve it. Unlike Daisy, Catherine is capable of inspiring a great deal of respect and admiration. She begins the book as a timid, weak-willed young girl, who James describes over and over as the antithesis of a typical heroine. By the end, she has become strong, assertive, and much wiser, while retaining her best quality: compassion.

Really, almost the only similarity between Daisy and Catherine, aside from nationality, is that they both suffer because they are innocent. But it is at that depth that the two novels truly connect. They share a number of important themes and ideas.

The most obvious of these is the discrepancy between appearance and reality, and the havoc this creates in the lives of the characters. Daisy Miller appears to be willfully violating the rules of decent social conduct and common sense, when in fact she is too innocent to really know any better. Winterbourne's failure to realize this and come to her rescue lead to her demise. To Catherine Sloper, Morris Townsend appears to be charming, handsome, and sincerely in love with her, although in reality his eye is on her money alone.

Dr. Sloper sees only his daughter's lack of wit and perception, and her stubborness in clinging to Morris, and is disgusted with her and disappointed in her as he has been her whole life. He fails to recognize that his daughter possesses a very strong character, but is emotionally vulnerable and inexperienced. While he believes that he has her best interests at heart, his approach to exposing Morris lacks compassion and sensitivity. He only cares that she, and by extension he, is being made a fool of, and he cannot stand this.

This problem with the characters' perceptions leads to a series of betrayals, both real and imagined. In Daisy Miller, the American circle in Europe believes that Daisy has betrayed the common values they all share, and Winterbourne comes to believe that this is the truth when he misinterprets her actions in the Colosseum. In reality, it is he who betrays her respect, trust, and friendship when he declares that he does not care what she does. This is such a blow to her that stops caring about anything. Additionally, Giovanelli plays at being her suitor and harboring affections for her, but he does not care enough to act with her best interests at heart, and so she contracts Roman fever and dies.

In Washington Square, Dr. Sloper believes that Catherine has betrayed the relationship between father and daughter by stubbornly and deliberately opposing his will. It does not help matters that he happens to be right. He is so put out by her actions that he is blinded by them, and cannot see that her relationship with Morris has ended. He dies still believing that she means to defy him, and so disinherits her almost entirely (only leaving her the house in Washington Square) in consequence. However, Dr. Sloper is actually the betrayer. He fails her as a father when he presents her with cold, logical facts and ultimatums rather than love and understanding. In the end, he cares little for Catherine herself, or her feelings. The only things that matter to him are that he is right, and that he should not be made to look a fool.

Morris' betrayal is obvious, though no less heartbreaking. Aunt Lavinia betrays Catherine by playing the part of intimate confidante to her and fostering the relationship at every step of the way, only to retreat to Morris' side at the crucial moment of his callous act of mercenary cowardice, leaving Catherine completely stranded and alone.

As I mentioned earlier, though, at the heart of both stories is the innocence of their young American heroines. Both Daisy and Catherine possess a certain helpless innocence which leads others to either take advantage of them or condemn them wrongfully. Daisy requires the guidance of a firm hand from someone who knows better than she. Catherine needs love and acceptance, someone who appreciates her and will take care of her. Neither of them have their needs fulfilled by their families. Daisy's mother is malleable and oblivious. Catherine's father is harsh and critical.

Both girls come in contact with strong, worldly, male characters who are in a position to provide them with what they need, and seem to be willing to do so, but remove their support at the crucial moment. The effects are shattering. In the end, Daisy Miller and Washington Square are potent and moving object lessons about the tragedy of mishandling innocence. I recommend both as excellent reads (although I enjoyed the latter somewhat more). I also recommend the recent film adaptation of Washington Square, which features some great performances and remains very faithful to the original.

Children Waving Cheerfully Through the Window: John Le Carré and the Cold War in Microcosm

The book is a legend among Cold War spy novels, the standard by which all others are judged. But there is no glamorous 007-esque blend of shiny gadgets, spectacular explosions, and swimsuit models here. The fate of the world is not at stake here . . . at least not in the James Bond sense. No, this is a different sort of spy novel entirely. John Le Carré's 1963 work, The Spy Who Came In from the Cold, was written while the author was working for the British Foreign Service in Berlin, and it shows.

When I first read this book in 9th grade, my predominant emotions were boredom and confusion. I was not caught up in the book, and so I did not quite follow its many subtle and intricate twists and turns. Having paid too little attention to the opening chapters, my mind was unable to keep pace as the plot turned itself upside down again and again . . . When I picked it up again a few weeks ago, the only thing I could remember was some vague notion of one character betraying another (and I got that completely wrong, it turned out) and what happens on the very last page.

The true genius of this book, which I did not quite grasp the first time, has three layers, which I will get to in a moment. First, a brief rundown of the plot: Alec Leamas is the British Head of Counter-Intelligence in Berlin, directing and controlling the flow of information from double agents on the other side of The Wall. He faces just one problem: The East German Head of Counter-Intelligence, a ruthless and efficient genius named Dieter Mundt. In fact, as the book opens Mundt has just finished cleaning out Leamas' entire network of operatives. Leamas is forced to return to England in disgrace and appear before the god-like "Control" (who somehow manages to come off looking both omniscient and clueless as his character is developed).

Leamas fully expects to be relieved of his post. He has felt himself slipping gradually for years now, and his best days of espionage work are behind him . . . but Control has one final operation in store before Leamas will be allowed to permanently come in from the cold: Destroy Dieter Mundt. It was probably shortly after this point that the book took a sharp turn down a back alley and lost me the first time through, so if (that is to say, when) you read it, be sure you're paying attention. However, I have unfolded quite enough of the plot for you. If I tell you anymore, I'll have to kill you.

The greatness of the book, as I mentioned before, is particularly apparent to me on three different levels. To begin with, there is the style in which the narrative is told. We follow the action of the plot from the perspectives of two and only two specific characters (namely, Alec Leamas and Elizabeth Gold). The author is very selective, however, about when and where we are allowed inside their heads. Most of the time I felt like I was watching from the vantage point of a camera the floats above and slightly behind the characters' heads, following them as they go about their business in the story.

This is effective because, although it was the factor that originally caused me to lose the thread of the plot in my younger days, it allows the reader to make a few leaps of logic for himself. The plot is such that, while somewhat convoluted, it is quite possible to follow, and the author does not insult the intelligence of his audience by awkwardly forcing dialogue to keep us up to speed. Telling the story in this way also subtly communicates the fact that Alec is playing a very dangerous game of deceit where he must keep even himself fooled in order to avoid a potentially fatal slip.

Secondly, the plot of the book is fantastic. The opening chapter is full of tension, suspense, and frustration, effectively setting the tone, mood, and theme for what is to come. The pool of major characters which the author draws from is small and easy to track (the true motives and natures of these characters less so). Once the premise has been established, we are plunged immediately into a labyrinth of plots, counterplots, and surprise twists. Alec may (in fact, does) see a number of these coming, but the reader does not. Through it all runs a quietly understated love story . . . very simple, very tenuous (so much so that the reader hardly realizes it is there sometimes). But it is this love story that gave the book its great human, emotional impact for me during the closing chapters. And, make no mistake, it is the human element that is really important . . . that is truly at stake here. More on that later.

I recently saw a documentary involving two main people (call them A and B, for simplicity's sake). The end of the documentary had A reading a letter to B which B had written as if he were A. The challenge of the scene was in remembering exactly whose words we were hearing . . . and this situation strikes me as somewhat analogous to the way we see espionage work in Le Carré's book. Intelligence is trumped by counter-intelligence, which is trumped in turn by counter-counter-intelligence, and nothing is ever quite what it appears to be. The quality and sophistication of the narrative with which we are presented makes one wonder why the movie industry ever decided that gargantuan pyrotechnic displays were superior to a good old-fashioned triple-cross in dominating the viewers' attention during a spy thriller.

However, it is the third layer that really makes the book an enduring classic: the philosophy. The philosophy of The Spy Who Came In from the Cold is both explicitly and implicitly stated at various points during the narrative. The message it is trying to get across through this has, I think, two points which are of primary importance.

The first of these is stated at the very end of chapter 18, in a conversation between Alec and Fiedler. Fiedler is Mundt's second-in-command, and they respect each other's abilities, but Fiedler is a Jew and Mundt hates him for it. Fiedler grows to hate Mundt for his prejudice. (Side note: For some reason I can't quite put my finger on, I invariably associated Fiedler with Wilson in my imagination.) Alec is a pragmatist and an atheist, and rarely thinks beyond the immediate business at hand. Fiedler, on the other hand, is a deep thinker, a philosopher, and his insistent inquiries into the ideology of the West both annoy and baffle Leamas. Their final private exchange proceeds as follows:

"I thought a lot about you," Fiedler added. "I thought about the talk we had -- you remember -- about the motor."

"What motor?"

Fiedler smiled. "I'm sorry, that is a direct translation. I mean 'Motor,' the engine, spirit, urge; whatever Christians call it."

"I'm not a Christian."

Fiedler shrugged. "You know what I mean." He smiled again, "the thing that embarrasses you . . . I'll put it another way . . . would you kill a man, an innocent man --"

"Mundt's a killer himself."

"Suppose he wasn't. Suppose it were me they wanted to kill: would London do it?"

"It depends . . . it depends on the need . . ."

"Ah," said Fiedler contentedly, "it depends on the need. Like Stalin, in fact. The traffic accident and the statistics. That is a great relief."

"Why?"

"You must get some sleep," said Fiedler . . . as he reached the door he looked back and said, "We're all the same, you know, that's the joke."

Both sides in the Cold War, we are being reminded, are loudly preaching high-minded but conflicting ideals to the entire world. But in the seedy underbelly of government, where intelligence agencies work ceaselessly to undermine the enemy, is either side really practicing what they preach? Are they not both pretending to some degree to be that which they are not? For both communism and democracy, the end justifies the means when no one is watching.

The second point (dovetailing with the first) is made in a conversation between Liz (Elizabeth Gold, Alec's lover) and Alec near the end of the book (severely edited to avoid major plot points):

"It gives him a chance to secure his position," Leamas replied curtly.

"By killing more innocent people? It doesn't seem to worry you much."

"Of course it worries me. It makes me sick with shame and anger and . . . But I've been brought up differently, Liz; I can't see it in black and white. People who play this game take risks . . . London won -- that's the point. It was a foul, foul operation. But it's paid off, and that's the only rule." As he spoke his voice rose, until finally he was nearly shouting.

"You're trying to convince yourself," Liz cried. "They've done a wicked . . . he was good, Alec; I know he was . . ."

"What the hell are you complaining about," Leamas demanded roughly. "Your party's always at war, isn't it? Sacrificing the individual to the mass. That's what it says. Socialist reality: fighting night and day -- that relentless battle -- that's what they say, isn't it? At least you've survived. I never heard that Communists preached the sanctity of human life -- perhaps I've got it wrong," he added sarcastically. "I agree, yes, I agree, you might have been destroyed. That was on the cards . . . So you might have died -- today, next year or twenty years on -- in a prison in the worker's paradise. And so might I. But I seem to remember the Party is aiming at the destruction of a whole class. Or have I got it wrong? . . .

"Don't complain about the terms, Liz; they're Party terms. A small price for a big return. One sacrificed for many . . .

"There's only one law in this game . . . Leninism -- the expediency of temporary alliances. What do you think spies are: priests, saints and martyrs? They're a squalid procession of vain fools, traitors too, yes; pansies, sadists and drunkards, people who play cowboys and Indians to brighten their rotten lives. Do you think they sit like monks in London balancing the rights and wrongs? . . .

"This is a war . . . It's graphic and unpleasant because it's fought on a tiny scale, at close range; fought with a wastage of innocent life sometimes, I admit. But it's nothing at all beside other wars -- the last or the next."

"Oh God," said Liz softly. "You don't undertand. You don't want to. You're trying to persuade yourself. It's far more terrible, what they're doing; to find the humanity in people, in me and whoever else they use, to turn it like a weapon in their hands, and use it to hurt and kill . . ."

"Christ Almighty!" Leamas cried. "What else have men done since the world began? I don't believe in anything, don't you see -- not even destruction or anarchy. I'm sick, sick of killing but I don't see what else they can do. They don't proselytise; they don't stand in pulpits or on party platforms and tell us to fight for Peace or for God or whatever it is. They're the poor sods who try to keep the preachers from blowing each other sky high."

"You're wrong," Liz declared hopelessly; "they're more wicked than all of us . . . Because of their contempt. Contempt for what is real and good; contempt for love, contempt for . . ."

"Yes," Leamas agreed, suddenly weary. "That is the price they pay; to despise God and Karl Marx in the same sentence. If that is what you mean . . . But it's the world, it's mankind that's gone mad. We're a tiny price to pay . . . but everywhere's the same, people cheated and misled, whole lives thrown away, people shot and in prison, whole groups and classes of men written off for nothing. And you, your party -- God knows it was built on the bodies of ordinary people . . ."

As he spoke Liz remembered the drab prison courtyard, and the wardress saying: "It is a prison for those who slow down the march . . . for those who think they have the right to err."

As Liz and Alec shout defensively at each other, they are enveloped by an enormous gray area, where flashes of black and white show infrequently through the haze. I challenge anyone to read this book and, at the end, present me with a clear-cut list of the good guys and the bad guys. It simply can't be done (or, if it can, no two lists will look alike) because invariably you will be struck with the conflict of whether to judge characters consistently based solely on their actions or based on which "side" they are on and what you know in your head they are fighting for. What Le Carré is doing here is what no one involved in a war likes to do: He is zooming the camera in on individual human faces, and we observe with horror that some of our enemies' faces look like ours and some of our allies' faces look like theirs.

As I read the book, I thought of all the different views one could get on the nature of the Cold War simply from all of the different labels the combatants apply to each other and themselves. How many communist nations during the Cold War had the word "Democratic" in them? But we call their government totalitarian. The Western world, of course, stands for Democracy and Freedom, right? But they call our governments imperialist. Are we both right in a sense in what we say about the opposing side? An imperialist government is one that practices "the policy of extending a nation's authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and political hegemony over other nations." Is that not exactly what we were doing throughout the fifties and sixties?

The Spy Who Came In from the Cold cuts directly to the ugly heart of the ideological conflict of the Cold War, exposing to us the fact that both sides had at least one thing in common: They both used any and all means necessary (no matter how treacherous or foul) to achieve the appearance of a utopian end which could never co-exist in reality alongside such vile methods of implementation. The double life that one of those two superpowers was living eventually disconnected the ideal so far from the reality that it self-destructed. The double life that the other superpower leads has only this going for it, that it is only really practiced outside the borders of that nation. I should have hoped that the example of the Soviet Union would have taught us that much, at least.

Lest I get too far off topic, though, let me just wrap this up with one final thought. The book employs a fantastic metaphor from a combination of Alec's memory and his imagination. And it connects beautifully to what the book is talking about on the most basic level . . . more basic than the global or the ideological or even the national: at the level of what Alec calls "ordinary, crummy people." It is the recurring, nightmarish image of a small car with smiling, waving children in the backseat, smashed to pieces by two enormous trucks.

Understanding Keats

I bent slightly at the waist and peered apathetically through the tiny window of CPO #1134. After two weeks of eagerly checking the mail three and four times a day, I couldn't handle the disappointment anymore. And, true to form, as soon as I stopped expecting my package slip to be waiting, there it was. I calmly carried it up to the front desk and immediately used my CPO key to tear into the box they handed me in return.

Packing peanuts went everywhere in a spray of white foam, floating listlessly to the floor of MSC-1, but I barely noticed . . . There it was: The long-awaited purchase. The coveted UPS package. My own personal cloth-bound, dust-jacketed, shrink-wrapped Holy Grail, Flannery O'Connor herself smiling up at me from the shiny black cover, her last name sprawling under her picture in large, flowing white script . . .

Collected Works

Wise Blood
A Good Man Is Hard to Find
The Violent Bear It Away
Everything That Rises Must Converge
Essays and Letters

I read carefully over the titles listed under the name before gathering up the scattered peanuts, tossing the box, and removing the shrink-wrap. A quick glance over the table of contents told me that I held over 1200 pages of pulchritudinous prose in my hands, while a quick glance at my watch told me I had just ten minutes to get to Philosophy class. I do believe I floated all the way over to Longview Hall . . .

I was extremely distracted during the first hour of class, barely able to wait to show off my new treasure. I briefly discussed it with Ashley (who was gratifyingly appreciative) at the beginning of our ten-minute break . . . then made a beeline for the office of Dr. Coppinger. I breezed by the secretary (distracted by a phone call) and ducked inside his door.

He was looking quite casual today as he moved about his office tidying up, decked out in a blue Hawaiian shirt punctuated by tropical yellow flowers. I greeted him and we talked for a second or two before he spotted O'Connor under my arm. He took it reverently in both hands and admired it for a few moments. Opening to the table of contents and leafing through a few sections for closer inspection, he declared himself to be officially jealous. He owns numerous O'Connor works, but no handy single-volume version of them all. My Collected Works also contains about nine short stories and an essay or two not published in most collections . . . and, of course, The Letters.

He wanted to know where I got it and we talked a bit more about that and other related matters, then I noted that my break would soon be over and moved towards the door. He saw me to the outer office door, as usual, and with the usual pleasant farewells, but I thought I detected a slight anomaly of tone. Just before I exited, he made the oddest repressed-strangling noise . . . sort of as if he were physically forcing his hands to his own throat in order to resist the urge to hit me over the back of the head with the nearest blunt object and abscond with the book. The image amused me so much I laughed to myself all the way back to class.

During the second half of Philosophy, even Dr. Batts noticed my O'Connor sitting out on the desk as he handed out a quiz. "Oooo!" he exclaimed, pausing for a moment to stare. "Lucky you!" I could only nod in agreement. I think I'll sleep with it under my pillow tonight.

Suddenly, I think I understand John Keats a lot better . . . My somewhat bemused English Lit journal of last February comes to mind. Does increased identification with a Romantic poet make me a healthy English major or a lost cause? (Please don't say "Yes.")

Reading Update on Command

As agonizing as these little lists of questions are to answer, their lure is utterly irresistible to me. Thanks, Wilson. It's funny to think how different this would have looked three years ago, just before I started college . . . Anyway:

* What book, other than Fahrenheit 451, would you want to be?

Something long, fun, and not likely to run out of readers anytime soon. I'm essentially an escapist at heart, so my first choice would probably be a fantasy like The Chronicles of Narnia. Something like The Complete Sherlock Holmes (or any of my "desert island" books below) would be a lot of fun, as well.

* Have you ever been really struck by a fictional character?

Geez . . . only all the time. A double handful of books have made me cry, and thrice as many more have left me quiet and introspective for days, but as for a specific character that I must point to forthwith . . . Well, most recently I would have to note both Asbury Fox ("The Enduring Chill" by Flannery O'Connor) and Ambrose ("Lost in the Funhouse" by John Barth).

* What was the last book that you bought?

Flannery O'Connor: Collected Works, Great Novels and Short Stories of E. M. Forster, and William Faulkner: Novels 1930-1935 . . . I decided to snag a little summer reading and beef up my personal library at the same time.

* What was the last book you read?

Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt and Everything That Rises Must Converge by Flannery O'Connor

* Which books are you reading?

I am officially in the midst of summer, so I've taken a large bite . . . *clears throat* . . . The Complete Father Brown by G. K. Chesterton, Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence, Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray, Lost in the Funhouse by John Barth, Cobra by Timothy Zahn, and The King of Torts by John Grisham.

* Which five books would you take to a desert island?

I'm pretty sure I'd self-destruct if I actually had to choose only five books to take along . . . but discounting anything that would actually be useful to me, here are a few possibilities:

The Bible (beefiest version I can find, Apocrypha a must, in English and Spanish if possible, plenty of supplementary material in the form of concordances and so forth)

The Gormenghast Novels by Mervyn Peake

The Once and Future King by T. H. White

The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Collected Works by Flannery O'Connor

Alternately, I would be just as content for a time with all four volumes of the Norton Anthologies of American and British Literature . . . although if I didn't get off the island I would go crazy wanting to read more than just the included excerpts of larger works or wishing I could delve into other writings by the favorite authors I picked out.

* To whom are you going to send this erm... let's say confession...and why? (three people) Hrm . . . How about a few fellow readers who haven't done it already . . . Say, Ardith, Andy, and Scholl.

May's Featured Books

5/26 - Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (o o o o o)

Dr. Azar Nafisi taught English Literature for nearly 20 years (from the time of the revolution in 1979 until her departure in 1997) in the intellectually restrictive climate of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and the almost equally strict regime which followed. During that time, she and her students studied the controversial works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jane Austen, and (of course) Vladimir Nabokov, first in a public university classroom, and later in the secret privacy of her own home. Part soul-searching autobiography, part historical exposé, and part witty and insightful literary criticism, this is an incredible story told by an equally incredible narrator about free thought in an atmosphere of unimaginable repression and fear.

5/16 - The Rule of Four by Ian Caldwell & Dustin Thomason (o o o o)

Billed as an "intellectual suspense" novel, this book follows a few days in the lives of four Princeton roommates as their senior year comes to an end. In the midst of all the usual end-of-semester madness two of them, Tom and Paul, are close to cracking a fiendishly difficult code and unlocking the startling secrets of a 15th Century Renaissance text called the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, a real-life work which has stumped literary types for centuries. But these two are not the only ones who are obsessed with solving the text, or enjoying the academic prestige it will bring, and events begin to spin out of control as Paul gets closer to the final answer.

The book largely does an excellent job of juggling discoveries in the Hypnerotomachia with outside complications and only rarely does it feel as though these intrusions are interfering with the important portion of the story. The extensive asides about the history and traditions of Princeton are almost as fascinating as the insights into Renaissance lore . . . all worked seamlessly into the plot. The book's gradual revelations of its secrets seemed almost perfectly paced, as well . . . coming out ever so slowly, but not too slowly, and serving to slowly develop the characters and their histories as well.

What set this book apart from the standard academic treasure hunting pot-boiler for me was the excellent writing (filled with vivid, engaging metaphors, profound philosophical ruminations, and literary allusions both obscure and well-known), and the deeply human element. The book spoke to me on a number of levels, and I identified very closely with the main character. He and his friends remind me of me and my friends at a time of the year when I'm beginning to miss them all.

I don't know for sure whether it is simply because I feel myself to be in his position in many ways, but the book's treatment of the serious college student's choice between dedicated academic pursuits versus career-and-family rang especially true. The meaningful way in which Tom works through the loss of his father by becoming involved with his father's peculiar lifelong obsession is also a large part of what makes this story worthwhile. Overall, the story and the writing have a great deal to offer even a casual reader, and, although the story flags at times, I would recommend it quite highly to anyone interested in literature and/or history, especially if they are within a stone's throw of their college years.

Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books by Azar Nafisi (o o o o o)
Dr. Azar Nafisi taught English Literature for nearly 20 years (from the time of the revolution in 1979 until her departure in 1997) in the intellectually restrictive climate of Iran under Ayatollah Khomeini and the almost equally strict regime which followed. During that time, she and her students studied the controversial works of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry James, Jane Austen, and (of course) Vladimir Nabokov, first in a public university classroom, and later in the secret privacy of her own home. Part soul-searching autobiography, part historical exposé, and part witty and insightful literary criticism, this is an incredible story told by an equally incredible narrator about free thought in an atmosphere of unimaginable repression and fear. [Read More]

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