Curtain call from Richard II at Shakespeare's Globe

Hamlet, Prince of Denmark

Over the course of the past few days, my spouse and I have watched a number of Shakespeare-related  DVDs. It began with the documentary, Discovering Hamlet, which features Derek Jacobi directing Kenneth Branagh in Hamlet for a live stage performance. What I largely came away with was the idea that directors must have to know the text of a play at such an internal level of absorption. It’s more than simply having read the play; it’s more than simply having played a particular part within that play and thereby having more than a passing familiarity with the lines. They have to have absorbed the text and the subtext, the language of the play as well as any unspoken themes.The director must have thought seriously about the various levels of text and theme. Directors must have considered each character in the play (just in order to cast the players), but also they must also have developed the possibilities in each character. How Ophelia interacts with Hamlet is more than just the scene wherein she tries to ascertain whether the man is mad with love or if its something more. Ophelia may be played as a pure innocent (immediately bruised by cold reality’s harshness), but she may also be played as someone essentially insecure from childhood (torn and uncertain) even before Hamlet’s behavior drives her over the edge. Which (of just those two interpretations) does the director want to see driving the action on-stage? Jacobi has a tremendous difficulty in stepping away from the physical acting on stage while directing; indeed, he says in the beginning that he -- as director -- wants to be considered as a member of the cast. His presence as the director (even if he is not onstage) should be felt by the cast in his direction of their playing as well as being felt by the audience (in terms of his interpretation of the various aspects of Hamlet and how his differs from foregoing interpretations).

The second thing that hit me was the very real difference between reading Shakespeare’s lines (as a reader of poetic form) and that of watching Shakespeare’s play unfolding with some plausibility. Some forms of Shakespeare deliver the performance with minimal set, costumes, etc., but with emphasis on the deliberate delivery of lines that have entered into our conscious use of the language. Other deliveries of Shakespeare want to make the performance so lifelike that phrases of lines may be swallowed up in the moment of emotional delivery. Two very different forms of performance and very different audience experiences.

I’ve been reading Hamlet over the past three or four days and I have found that one loses that as a solitary reader, moving slowly, reading all the words in one’s head, playing all the characters, but listening for the sound of the poetry rather than actually playing the part. I have been *reading* the play, but that’s not the same way of experiencing Shakespeare as watching Derek Jacobi, Kenneth Branagh or David Tennant play the title role. My print edition of Hamlet (Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Prince of Denmark ) has illustrations by John Austen, dating back to 1922. Very reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley, which is yet another disconnect of sorts. Austen’s interpretation of Hamlet is not at all like the film versions I’ve seen of this play.

I have on The Canterville Ghost (in the background) as I type and this particular film version has Patrick Stewart playing the Ghost, who assumes the role of Hamlet’s father’s ghost for purposes of proving his existence to one of the characters. I didn’t know this when I left it on this channel but it does seem as if everything around me is lending itself to thinking about Hamlet.

Thoroughly enjoyed reading this essay, but in a world of ubiquitous computing and portable devices, do we still need to completely withdraw in order to write? After much consideration, I'm in favor (as is this author) of the approach adopted by Thoreau and his cabin in the woods.

Tales of the Arabian Nights

Title: Tales from 1001 Nights: Aladdin, Ali Baba, and Other Favorites
Author:  Anonymous, Translation by Malcolm J. Lyons, Ursula Lyons, and Introduction by Robert Irwin
ISBN: 978-0-141-19165-2 (Buy from Amazon here)
Copyright: 2010, Penguin Classics (An Imprint of Penguin Books), London
Pages: 496 (528 with bibliography, maps, and glossary)
Genre(s): Fantasy, folklore, literary fairy tale

Summary: This volume in the beautifully designed Penguin Classic Hardcover series is an abridged edition of the 2008 three volume Penguin translation of the full collection of folk and fairy tales that we think of as the Arabian Nights. That set of tales has a muddled provenance. The earliest collection known is a 9th century manuscript in Farsi; the next dated full set of tales is a 13th century Syrian manuscript used by Antoine Galland for his introduction of the collection to the Western world between 1704 and 1717. Modern scholarship suggests that the most well known tales from the Arabian Nights -- stories such as Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves -- were likely the literary creations of Galland and not part of the original Middle Eastern collection of tales. Scroll down a bit on this page to find a most useful timeline for the various versions and translations. The audience for which Galland wrote was similar to the audience of Charles Perrault and Madame D’Aulnoy -- courtiers and intellectuals. This was leisure reading for the upper-class, adult world. It was not until the nineteenth century that the tales received more of a conservative treatment so that they would be more fit to pass down to those of tender sensibilities. The introduction to this volume is by Robert Irwin, and his background on the content was most engaging. Personally, I had no idea of the history of these tales nor any idea of how much they had been sanitized. Gregory Frost over at Endicott Studios has an excellent article that offers more background on the Arabian Nights as a work of fantasy.

The stories in this hardcover volume are risque, violent, far wilder than generally captured in volumes of these same stories targeted at young adults.  There is even something slightly hallucinatory in these tales; on one page is a realistic scene of hands and feet being cut off at the whim of a caliph and on the next, there is an account of some fantastical battle between jinn and sorceress.

Title: Arabian Nights   

Author: Anonymous, Illustrated by Rene Bull

Copyright: 2010, Calla Editions, New York

ISBN: 978-1606600085

Pages: 352 pages, including 20 full-color plates.

Genre: Fantasy, fairy tales and folklore

Calla Editions is an imprint of Dover Publications, more generally known for cheap reproductions of 19th century public domain materials. What makes this important is that Calla Editions are at the other end of the spectrum with regard to the production values. This edition of Arabian Nights is beautifully bound, with color plates of the 1919 edition illustrated by Irish artist, Rene Bull. (see images by Rene Bull here or here)

The presence of those illustrations in this Calla edition represent a huge difference between it and Penguin’s. I missed the presence of ANY illustrations in the Penguin which needs something to relieve the intensity of the tales. Not just a frontispiece but throughout the text the way that this edition has interspersed color and black and white design elements. The inclusion of graphics allows the reader to both see as well as imagine the fantastical elements in this collection. Oddly enough, the cover of the Bull is more muted (brown stamped with gold lettering) than the very busy one-color cloth cover of the other which features a sadly unoriginal rendition of Aladdin on his flying carpet sailing over palm trees and mythical palaces. It looks uncomfortably like something intended for children which is exactly what Lyons’ translation ought not to be packaged as being. Publishers have relegated art to the world of children unfortunately; unless a specialty or art book, titles in the mainstream targeted at adults do without. (I am aware of the business rationale. I think it’s an insufficient excuse for the shift.)

The overlap between the two collections of tales is primarily in the most well-known tales of the voyages of Sinbad, Ali Baba and Aladdin; but both also include the tale of the King who is half stone, the tale of the mechanical horse of black ebony, and of the city whose enchanted natives are fish of four colors.

Which would I rather spend time with? Frankly, the Calla Edition is the one with which I’m more comfortable, as I remain enamored of its beauty and its overall production values, but the Penguin may be more memorable for that strange juxtaposition of brutality and fantasy in the more accurate translation. The former is a pleasant and more simple world view, but the latter suggests more depth in the real culture.

Do You Need to Phone Home First?

Apparently no one gave the staff a heads-up about his return. See video of the President trying to get into the Oval Office at the White House unsuccessfully.

Participation in a Challenge Again? Maybe

As it happens, Carl over at Stainless Steel Droppings is once again hosting his delightful springtime tradition, the Once Upon A Time reading challenge. I think I participated in either the first or the second of these, or maybe I simply entertained the possibility of it. (I know I did complete one of his Readers in Peril (RIP) challenge.) At any rate, I am feeling nostalgic about fantasy at the moment and I have a number of titles available that qualify.
(1) Tales from 1,001 Arabian Nights: Aladdin, Ali Baba and Other Favorites (Penguin Hardcover Classic)
(2) Thomas the Rhymer by Ellen Kushner
(3) The Desert of Souls by Howard Andrew Jones
(4) The Gates of Sleep by Mercedes Lackey (a retelling of Sleeping Beauty)
(5) The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library) by Michael Patrick Hearn
At the same time, there's a nuance that Carl has added this year that I like - the option of reading two non-fiction titles about the four genres on which this challenge focuses -- mythology, fairy tales, folklore and fantasy. Of course, that one would require selecting which collection of expert essays I would want to read. I have ordered a new (to me) fairy tale book edited by Jack Zipes (actually published in 2000) and I never did finish Maria Tatar's Enchanted Hunters. So should I do this? Perhaps. Anyone know of a good retelling of Puss in Boots?

Are Fine Editions The Same as Fine Apps?

I have before me two beautiful editions of Jane Eyre - one is the New York Public Library edition published in 1997 in conjunction with Doubleday's centennial  and the 150th anniversary of the text’s initial publication. The other edition is more recent, published in 2010 by White's Books a publisher specializing in artistic book cover design -- in this instance one designed by Petra Borner (http://www.borner.se/)  

Both editions have high-quality production values associated with them. Acid-free paper, good solid bindings,  The New York Public Library (NYPL) Edition is clearly a labor of both scholarship and pride. It features a brief biography of Charlotte Bronte with images not just of her but of manuscripts by and about the author of Jane Eyre, many of which are held in the NYPL collection. You see her written correspondence to a publisher signed as "Currer Bell", the pseudonym she used. There is a photo of her writing desk. These are not half-tones dropped in as an insert on photographic glossy stock but are instead are placed so expertly in the introduction that they do not intrude on the reader's experience of the primary text. Instead the supporting materials within this book’s binding are arranged to satisfy any curiosity on the part of that reader to know more of the text's background and context. 

The NYPL edition’s cover is less striking than the White’s edition, which according to the paper wrapped around the back cover at purchase reflects the artist's inspiration found in the natural symbolism of Jane Eyre with the intent of conveying “the brooding romanticism of the story”. The intent behind White's edition is to feature the cover art of the designer. The production values are perhaps even higher than those used for the NYPL edition; the quality of paper is superior as is the legibility delivered via combined font and leading on the page.

For real bibliophiles, these are important criteria. There is appreciation of the external packaging of the internal text.

What strikes me is that today (even as I type this) there is a panel at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, TX on the discussion of print as it impacts on the design of apps and other digital reading environments. From the panel’s descriptive abstract: ...Print Design is becoming an important influence in the evolution of Interaction Design. As a craft, design for printed media has a rich history. Several generations of designers have pushed its boundaries in countless directions. It has been shaped over several hundred years as both a functional and aesthetic discipline, with a deep foundation of principles, practices, theories, and professional dialogue. In comparison, Interaction and UI Design is still a relatively young field. Its history has largely been driven by technology and functional goals. The dialogue around it has been centered on usability, which has been its purpose in the context of technological advancement. The visual language of UI has evolved from that standpoint: that it should evoke the familiar, analog experience of tools, buttons, knobs, and dials. That foundation has led to a very specific visual language in interactive experiences. In the past ten years however, the relevant technologies that support the design of Interfaces - displays, processing speeds, and rendering engines - have matured to a point that they provide a more capable canvas for design. Meanwhile, our culture has become visibly more comfortable with the technologies that surround it. These combination of trends are creating an important inflection point for designers. The aesthetic experience of the digital surface can now be considered and explored in a more sophisticated manner.

Production values in a physical book matter. It is a visible demonstration as to whether this is a publication that someone deemed to be of such value as to deserve the best of treatment in production in order to attract the highest number of buyers at a sufficiently profitable price.

Knowing that bottom-of-the-line apps can cost in the range of $26,000, one wonders how we’re going to recognize quality in the digital reading environment. Will it just be determined through a slick interface (and I’m not intending to denigrate the difficulty of that achievement) but rather I’m wondering how long it will take for the navigational conventions as well as the packaging to be set for trade books in a digital environment.

Odd and the Frost Giants [Review]

Title: Odd and the Frost Giants
Author: Neil Gaiman (his site: http://www.neilgaiman.com)
Illustrator: Brian Helquist  (his blog: http://bretthelquist.blogspot.com/)
Copyright: 2009, Harper, ISBN 978-006-167173-9
Genre: Literary fairy tale
Length: 117 pages

Summary: Odd is a 12-year old boy very much at odds with the rest of his Viking environment. He’s lame in one leg and even he admits it was due to his own failure to think through his actions. His father is dead and his mother has remarried a man who has no particular interest in Odd. Winter has dragged on for far too long, affecting overall spirits in the village. Can anything be done to improve his lot in life?

This literary fairy tale satisfies our appetite for stories about coming of age and quests. Odd encounters members of the Norse pantheon in animal form (with one of the priceless scenes being one with Odd awakened by those animals indulging in human speech when they think he’s still asleep.)  Ultimately, Odd thinks his way through the resolution of the conflict that has kept Spring from arriving when it ought. If there is a take-away from this reassuring fairy tale. He returns to his home and to his mother having grown in a variety of ways.

Excerpt: “Winter hung in there, like an invalid refusing to die. Day after grey day, the ice stayed hard; the world remained unfriendly and cold.
In the village, people began to get on one anothers’ nerves. They’d been staring at each other across the Great Hall for four months now. It was time for the men to make the longship seaworthy, time for the women to start clearing the ground for planting. The games became nasty. The jokes became mean. Fights were to hurt.”

Spring is of course the antidote to this type of illness as is beauty.

Also relevant: I liked this story just as I liked the companion illustrations by Brett Helquist. (For a taste of those illustrations, make a point of viewing the book trailer found here: http://www.mousecircus.com/extras.aspx)  That said, I doubt that Odd and the Frost Giants is the most timeless of Gaiman’s works, but, on the whole, it is a satisfying story -- satisfying rather than being charming or adorable or enchanting. This short (14,000 words) tale is explanatory in many ways, helping younger readers better understand what is required in life. Odd is called upon to be smart; he must think  things out. He must be resourceful in meeting the challenge of putting things back on track. Far from being able to turn to his creature companions for assistance, he has to figure out the answers. The Norse Gods while helpful at times in Odd’s quest just as readily demonstrate their well-known character flaws. (Odin is overly taciturn while Loki tends to boast of his cleverness).

The length is right for the tale; it spins out over the course of six chapters, suitable for reading out loud over the course of an evening or two. Sentence structure is simple but appropriate. Nothing has been dumbed down.

One tidbit, this story has aleady been tranmuted into another medium; this link takes you to a puppeteer’s blog where she discusses her challenges in delivering Gaiman’s tale to an audience.

Perhaps I’m wrong and this work will live longer than I anticipate.  If it’s any indication, I don’t think I will be passing my own copy on to the local library friends book sale.  I too need to be reminded of Spring and the importance of Beauty.

My 2007 review of Gaiman's Stardust.

A Time to Keep Silence [Review]

Title: A Time to Keep Silence 

Author: Patrick Leigh Fermor, Introduction by Karen Armstrong

Copyright: New York Review of Books, 2007, New York, ISBN: 978-1-59017-244-5

Length: 96 pages

Genre: Essays

Summary: On the surface this tale is about visits to several religious houses, taken not on the basis of any religious fervor but in the hope of finding a quiet place to work. Back in the '50's, Patrick Leigh Fermor visited St. Wandrille des Fontanes, La Grande Trappe,  and Solesmes, and an even more ancient form of monastic shelter found in the Turkish rock monasteries of Cappadocia with the purpose of writing a book. The three essays in this book were drawn from letters written by Fermor during the course of those visits to the woman who would later become his wife.

This is one-third travel, one-third history, one-third Fermor's meditation on a life that he finds as much disconcerting as it is engaging. He is respectful of the monastic life, but clearly has no idea why it would be pursued. What he finds most striking is the monastic pursuit of devotional silence in contrast to the rest of modern life. He writes with erudition, assuming that his reader will be comfortable with historical details as well as with untranslated phrases in French or Latin throughout A Time to Keep Silence. A 2005 newspaper profile of the author characterizes this work as “exquisite” and the lyricism of Fermor's descriptions are indeed beautiful.

Excerpt: The faces of the seated monks are hidden in their hoods; their heads are bowed; and they themselves are only just discernible under the accumulation of shadows. The solitary voice reading aloud seems to issue from an inner silence even greater than the silence that surrounds them. The reading comes to an end; the single light is extinguished; and the chanted psalms follow one another in total darkness. The whole service is a kind of precautionary exorcism of the terrors of the night; a warding off of the powers of darkness, each word throwing up a barrier or shooting home a bolt against the prowling regions of the Evil One. “Scapulus suis obumbrabit tibi”, the voices sing; “et sub pennis ejus sperabis”. The New York Review of Books site links to a Googl Books preview; visit http://www.nybooks.com/books/imprints/classics/a-time-to-keep-silence/

Also Relevant: This book reminded me however fleetingly of James Hilton's Lost Horizon. The desire to escape a society constantly moving in haste to the next Big Thing discounts the value of older approaches to solitude and sustaining inner quiet. Hilton's novel is, of course, more frivolous than this short series of essays but the mindset of Conway, the novel's protagonist, reflects the feelings of the author Fermor.

For this New York Review of Books edition, Karen Armstrong's introduction picks up on the similar attraction of Fermor's work for a distracted audience in the 21^st century, “As time advances, the stress of work and the threat of outside distractions make the need for silence and privacy more urgent than ever...” We all benefit from pursuing some form of sabbatical from our pell-mell daily race towards – what? Seeking the silence of another form of life is sometimes the right answer.

NKJV Greatest Stories of the Bible

I had enrolled in the Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger program and received a free review copy of the book discussed in this blog entry back in 2010. The original draft of this review is quite literally a year old.  .

Title: NKJV Greatest Stories of the Bible

Author: Thomas Nelson Publishing

Copyright:  2009, Thomas Nelson, Nashville (ISBN: 978-1418541668)

Length: 624 pages (including index)

Summary: Those who publish Bibles are frequently challenged in finding new ways to present the content in ways that are both practically useful and attractive to the market.. For some publishers, the easy approach is to slap a new cover on the Biblical canon with some few study aids such as maps and glossary and ship the product.

Other publishers spend time and resources on considering the various purposes that readers have for selecting a Bible. The volume may be used for purposes of devotion, for purposes of education, for purposes of cultural reference. This particular volume, The Greatest Stories of the Bible, is not in fact a Bible in the traditional sense, as the front matter makes clear. While the actual text is taken literally from the New King James translation of material, the volume is made up of editorially-selected extracts from the Biblical canon with an eye to building a narrative thread through both the Old and New Testament. Rather than presenting a more fluid storyline, Nelson's Greatest Stories of the Bible has focused on ordering a string of  various stories and plot lines  (each not more than three or four pages in length). [For why this is currently considered to be a good approach, read this article, Why Johnny Can't Read the Bible http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2010/may/25.38.html]

This treatment works for some Books of the Bible (such as the Book of Jonah, a minor prophet) but not for others (such as the Book of Job).  The Book of Jonah is broken into four relatively equal segments (Rebellious Prophet, Repentant Prophet, Successful Prophet and Pouting Prophet). Given the length of the original and its flow of its storyline, this makes sense. Contrast that with the treatment given to Job, a fairly lengthy poetic treatment of Everyman's reaction to the decisions made by a seemingly capricious Deity. In this volume, Job has been reduced to three chapters (specifically 1,2, and 42) which reduces the message of Job down to the overly simplistic message (and this is my statement of the takeaway from those segments) of “God is God, so mind your manners and don't whine”. Hardly inspiring. Some of the more awkward incidents in the lives of patriarch Jacob as well as King David have been eliminated entirely.

It was heartening to see that certain stories of women were still deemed important to the overall message of the Bible.. We see somewhat less familiar figures such as the Judge Deborah, Jael, and Abigail.as well as the better-known Ruth, Sarah, Esther and Mary Magdalene.

Overall, however, this treatment is largely respectful of both the content and the reader's intelligence. Each of the 250 “stories” is manageable in length for purposes of reading aloud or instruction. For example, in introducing great works of classical art, a book such as this would be quite useful in presenting the literary reference for a painting of Jacob meeting Rachel at her father's well for the first time. Production values are pleasing (cream pages with a light brown type, good quality paper and deckle-edged, a ribbon bookmark sewn into the binding); the cover design uses the conceit of a tattered old volume and debossing of the trim at the edges adds a pleasing tactile touch.

Ventus [Review]

Title: Ventus

Author: Karl Schroeder (official web site). Schroeder is a physicist by training, an author of more than half a dozen science fiction titles and a professional futurist/consultant.

ISBN: 0-312-87197-X (note that the full text of Ventus may be downloaded from the author's site in formats compatible with a number of e-reader devices; see this page for more information)

Genre: Science Fiction (Hard SF)

Copyright: 2000, Tor, New York

Length: 477 pages

Summary:  In exploring his theme of man's intelligence versus machine intelligence, Schroeder provides us with a set of characters who before the ending of the novel will reveal themselves to actually be a range of beings some of whom are fully human, others part-human-part-machine and finally others who are fully machine. We first meet Jordan, a youth who is ripped away from his home and family when he goes in pursuit of a runaway sister. Calandria May is a woman who has a mission to complete on Ventus, a planet she doesn't find to be particularly congenial or welcoming., and it is she who spirits Jordan away to join her in an assassination plot impacting on a war that threatens to engulf this planet. One meets the character Armiger when he is lying dead in his tomb with a grave robber about to sack the place for whatever may be of value. Later the reader encounters Queen Galas, both goddess and monarch to her people. These inhabitants of Ventus live uneasily between the tyranny of the Winds who maintain control over Ventus and the social constructs that humans have created in order to survive on this planet. Before Jordan, Armiger and Galas and the other significant players (Axel, Megan, General Lavin, Marya, Enneas, Ka) have assembled for the last battle, each will have traveled across the planet and into space in the interests of protecting and sustaining civilization as they understand it.

The story is told in tensions between male and female, human initiative and programmed hardware, agrarian world and technological environment. This is a science-fiction reworking of the Frankenstein tale -- what happens when man creates a machine that is smarter and stronger than humankind? What can be done when that machine must be turned off but there is no record of how that might be accomplished, when there is no clear understanding of the nature of the original programming that drives the machine? There are hints of the fantastical technologies found in Isaac Asimov's and Ray Bradbury's short stories of the 1950's, but Schroeder examines our interactions with tools and technologies in the harsh light of artificial intelligence and nanotechnology as we understood them in the year 2000.

Extract: One image that I tapped seemed to stagger as it stopped. I tapped it again and it jittered in place. I touched my finger to the wall and slowly drew it along. To my amazement, the pictograph followed....Soon I had ten or so of the things lined up in front of me. The rest were were still whirling around, but they were less fearsome now that I knew I could control them....I immediately made another discovery. If two or more images overlapped, they would both flash for a few seconds, then disappear, replaced by new ones. These new images were the reply of the desal. (page 221)

Also Relevant: Vernor Vinge addressed an audience of information professionals at ALA Midwinter this month and suggested that this novel along with Canticle for Liebowitz were the science fiction they needed to read in order to prepare for the future. As per his notes found here, he sees the theme of Ventus as being a discussion on the nature of extreme distributed computing. His talk was entitled "Guardians of the Past, Enablers of the Future" and focused on how important the preservation of the human record is at both a local level (as represented by the way in which the inhabitants of Ventus have fallen back in their use of technology) and at a far higher level (grasping Ventus' role in the wider space-traveling universe known as the Archipelago). The cover art shown above represents Queen Galas, but might just as easily have been a futuristic image of a librarian. Having learned through Twitter of Vinge's recommendation, I went out and found this book in both print and ebook forms and tried to race through it as quickly as I could.

That was a mistake. Ventus is a novel best read slowly, taking in every paragraph, as there is significance in every scene in the early chapters describing each individual character and their interactions. The pacing is slow in the beginning but in the middle third of the text, the action speeds up dramatically. You need to understand Armiger's rising from his tomb just as you need to absorb the nature of Calandria May's space ship and the uninhabited mansions of Ventus. This is not science fiction to be read through lightly, but rather to be ingested and considered. I thoroughly enjoyed it and recognize its creative fuel for re-thinking the role of libraries and archives in the future.

Bonus Link: Science fiction author Cory Doctorow blogs about Karl Schroeder's work (Feb 2006 -- note link to podcast interview there)

It's Those Rampaging *Anarchists* Again

It's not that I'm not sympathetic to any lingering trauma for the Duchess, but the coverage in the UK-based London Daily Mail tabloid does take the cake:


On a day of bitter recriminations after the tuition fees protest:
■ It was revealed that the Duchess of Cornwall was prodded in the ribs through an open window by an anarchist as she and Prince Charles were surrounded by a mob;


Come now. I know it's traditional with the Brits, but must we resort to characterizing them as anarchists? It makes the student protestors sound like something out of a 1920s' thriller.

The Father Brown Stories (G.K. Chesterton)

This entry was originally composed back in May of 2009, but inexplicably never posted.

I have spent the past few weeks re-discovering the Father Brown mysteries by G.K. Chesterton. I am quite sure that I was in 8th grade the first time I read a collection of these and I'm fairly sure that I wasn't able to appreciate them at that age. This time it was a combination of some old British television episodes on sale and a paperback Modern Library edition that intrigued me. Borders had a sale on boxed DVD sets and I picked up two seasons of the Father Brown series, starring Kenneth More, circa 1972, for half off. As it happened, the following weekend at Borders, there was a copy of Father Brown: The Essential Tales on the shelf. Between that and the full text of all of the stories available here, I read some dozen stories or more over the course of the last month. Chesterton's stories run approximately 9,000 words (or 15 pages printed out on normal 8-1/2 x 11 paper) so they are just the right length for a thoughtful read on a 20-25 minute commute. Specifically, I printed out:

• The Man With Two Beards
• The Mirror of the Magistrate
• The Dagger with Wings
• The Oracle of the Dog (*)
• The Curse of the Golden Cross(*)

and one still to be read is “The Vampire of the Village”.

In The Essential Father Brown, I read:

• The Blue Cross (the very first Fr. Brown story)
• The Queer Feet
• The Hammer of God
• The Eye of Apollo

Two of the stories particularly caught me in watching them on DVD (see asterisked items above). Neither was adapted slavishly but both captured the essential drama of the individual tales. In Curse of the Golden Cross, the linear narrative on the DVD picks up with a guide explaining the significance of the Byzantine gold cross and then jumps to the archaeologist in Crete who forms the focus of the story, a Professor Smaill who receives anonymous threats because someone resents his discovery of the cross. . The narrative then shifts to shipboard where we see the doctor in conversation with Father Brown. The story as written flips that order, opening on shipboard and the story of the cross emerging in the first few pages as Father Brown and Professor Smaill form an alliance to uncover the threat to his life. Written in the mid-nineteen-twenties, the story plays on the public interest in archaeological excavations at that time, excited by the discovery in 1921 of the tomb of King Tutankhamun. Father Brown is entirely pragmatic in the stories, not particularly impressed or taken in by superstition or folklore. He solves problems, based on his keen professional grasp of human frailty and behavior.

In Curse, the party visits an old church, (having a catacomb relating to Smaill's discoveries) to dine with the old vicar and view his excavation. The small set of suspects (met on shipboard and gathered again on shore at the church) and the limited set of locales in the tale make the attempt on Smaill's life an ideal candidate for a television episode.

The Oracle of the Dog was similar in approach (small set of suspects, limited setting), featuring someone who attributes a pre-turnatural awareness to the howling of a dog, included with Cross in the collection, The Incredulity of Father Brown.

The Wind in The Willows: Annotated Editions [Review]

I'm looking at two distinct publications in this review, interestingly both annotated editions of Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows.

Title: The Annotated Wind in the Willows
by Kenneth Grahame, edited with a preface and notes by Annie Gauger
Introduction by Brian Jacques
Copyright: 2009, W.W. Norton, New York City (ISBN: 978-0-393-05774-4)
Length: 384 pp.


Title: The Wind in the Willows: An Annotated Edition
by Kenneth Grahame, edited by Seth Lerer
Copyright: 2009, Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (ISBN: 978-0-674-03447-1 -- linked page includes interview with Lerer in mp3 format, as well as a 14-page excerpt in PDF)
Length: 273 pp.

The 100th anniversary of the initial publication of The Wind in The Willows (WitW) was actually in 2008, but these two editions celebrating that anniversary appeared in 2009. I can't recall how the two came to my attention, but I purchased both of them in August of this year in order to see how they compared. One of the most memorable fictional events from my childhood was the Dulce Domum chapter of WitW. Mole, walking along in mid-December, suddenly catches a whiff of his old home and runs urgently back to it with Ratty in close pursuit. Mole is in bad shape, but his supportive friend helps him back to some semblance of himself, with a reassuring preparation of a meal and the arrival of a holiday chorus of field mice singing in the snow outside the door of Mole End. It's one of the most emotionally reassuring renderings of home that I have ever found in literature. Looking at the way in which these two editors handled the annotation of this particular chapter is indicative of the differences between the two editions.

The Norton edition, primarily intended for the trade marketplace, opens with an extended explanation of the chapter's title in latin (essentially, home sweet home), including other uses of the phrase in art and poetry. She makes an attempt at identifiying the geographical location for the fictional Wild Wood. Perhaps most controversially, she notes unspoken themes of homosexuality based on Mole's and Ratty's friendship as evidenced by the 1937 illustrations by Payne. In particular, this chapter contains a dozen illustrations from the various editions of WitW. Because it is so closely aligned with Christmas, despite never being called that in the text, the illustrators could draw from the emotional symbols of that holiday in their contributions. Given that Mole is supposedly a middle class, low-church Victorian sort, Dulce Domum functions as a landmark for showing how far Mole has come in his own journey from an unseen creature laboring in a burrow to being up above ground and out of his natural element on the River. Gauger points this up with an annotation regarding potential allusions to The Odyssey. Gauger has 52 notes to this chapter, some of which are (in my opinion) irrelevant. While it might be valid to tie Mole's unconscious awareness of proximity to his home to a telegraphic signal, it doesn't seem worthwhile to take up space by noting Nelson's use of flags to send the message at Waterloo (England expects every man will do his duty).

By contrast, the more scholarly Belknap Press version, edited by children's literature scholar Seth Lerer (University of California-San Diego), offers no explanation of the chapter title. Where the Gauger edition has 12 illustrations included with this chapter, eight of which are in color, the Lerer edition has only 3 black and white Shephard illustrations. (Note: The single inset of color illustrations in the Belknap edition has 8 glossy pages of illustrations from a variety of editions, not all of which refer to this particular chapter. However, the inset is placed squarely in the middle of this chapter, most likely for production/binding reasons.) Lerer includes 47 notes to Gauger's 52, but his are brief and predominantly tied to his stated scholarly themes. Those include a belief that Grahame was deeply influenced by John Ruskin's thinking on the value of domesticity and a human need for caring shelter. A second theme in Lerer's interpretation of WitW is Grahame's language and the frequent inclusion of examples from the text in the Oxford English Dictionary to illustrate contemporaneous usage. Another contrast between the two interpretations of these editions is that Lerer sees the function of this chapter as differentiating Mole's emotionally valid affinity for his old burrow with Toad's artificial ties to his estate, Toad Hall. The former is naturally appropriate whereas the latter shows Toad in a stone and wood construct, not the natural dwelling place of an amphibious creature. Toad has never found his natural place in the world and Mole still retains that awareness.

I don't think I would be satisfied with owning just one or the other of these annotated editions. Each is a perfect complement to the other. Gauger's edition focuses less on the total body of Grahame's life and work and more on the various editions and body of illustrations associated with The Wind in the Willows. Lerer's effort is at positioning The Wind in The Willows in the larger context of the author's life and historical context. If Grahame's work has any emotional significance in your life, you may also wish to have both on your shelf.

Other useful links:
Interview with Charles van Sandwyck, illustrator of the most recent Folio Society edition of The Wind in the Willows
Web Resources Compiled by Kenneth Grahame Society

Thomas Nelsons American Patriot Bible

Consider Carefully Before You Buy

Caveat: I had requested Thomas Nelson's The American Patriot's Bible as a participant in the Thomas Nelson Book Review Blogger program (see http://www.brb.thomasnelson.com). As a part of that program, bloggers receive review copies with the understanding that they will post their feedback on personal blogs as well as on one commercial site. My interest in reviewing this text sprang from my interest in how this particular re-packaging of the Bible had been handled. I'm not the target market for this product and that should be weighed in reading this review.

In the past five to ten years, there has been significant publishing industry emphasis on making the Bible more immediately relevant and attractive to modern readers. Re-packaging, interesting graphic design, and active merchandising has become common in order to reach different market sectors (teens, women, whatever, etc.) In the case of The American Patriot's Bible, the appeal is to those who think public duty should be infused by personal piety.

The full title of Thomas Nelson's targeted volume is The American Patriot's Bible: The Word of God and the Shaping of America. The press release positioning it rationalizes the presentation as melding together "the teaching of the Bible, the history of the United States, and the connection it has to its citizens today." Post-election results having come in, the publisher's press release (April 15, 2009) also points out that "...to our knowledge, this is the first Bible to ever include a mention of President Obama or to focus on the Bible's influence on American culture."

The emphasis is on family and American heritage; the first few pages allow the user to document family trees, marriages, military service, and deaths of family members as well as pages for noting special family history (immigration, pioneering, etc.). Such inclusions indicate to me that this really is intended for domestic use rather than for educational or reference use. Also included are seven pages of maps, a subject index and a brief concordance.

Throughout the pages of this New King James Version translation, there are boxed entries that draw the attention of the reader to specific virtues that might be associated with developing good character as well as good citizenship. Each boxed entry has a heading indicating which virtue is exemplified -- faith, honor, service, truth, freedom, and moral strength among others. The feature is a key element breaking up dense text in a very attractive page lay-out, designed to encourage interest as well as connecting specific passages with historical figures and events. One such example would be a box appearing on page 83, noting the 1665 legislative enactment in the New York Colony calling for the building of a church for each parish in the colony of New York, capable of holding 200 people. The scriptural tie-in is Exodus 20:8, one of the Ten Commandments (Remember the Sabbath Day, to Keep It Holy) and the inference is that together these exemplify honor. Another one matches up Longfellow's poem, "Sail on, O Ship of State" with the prophet Obadiah under the heading of hope (pg 1035)

Even assuming that the majority of such boxed entries are historically accurate and intended to bolster pride and historical awareness, one can't help noting that selection and placement of such quotations might seem to suggest -- even direct -- a particular interpretation. (For example, one might consider the box on page 44. It ties the sale of Joseph into slavery by his brothers to a statement by Dick Cheney that those who have never had liberty taken from them may not properly value such liberty. There is indeed a topical relationship between the two items, but so is there potential for political bias.)

Where the editor(s) could document the scriptural selections of presidents used for purposes of the swearing-in portion of the ceremony, those selections are also noted and boxed throughout. Where such information cannot be documented or where the Bible was closed during the ceremony, the information is not included and this is properly noted in the index. What is striking is that some Presidents are heavily referenced throughout the volume (usually those from the 18th and 19th centuries), while others (President Lyndon B. Johnson being a case in point) have no index listing at all. Those presidents appear solely on a single page listing the U.S. presidents' names and terms.

What I found somewhat more worrisome was the lack of bibliography or documentation. Presented in such a way, the historical viewpoint of various entries is left open to question. There are no footnotes in the printed text referring the reader to any kind of source documentation or even a list of institutional libraries consulted. Where did the quoted text from the 1665 legislature of the New York Colony on page 83 come from? There is no credit line associated with the quote on that page or on any other page including such entries. (Only illustrations and photos are credited to their source.) The copyright for all notes and articles included in the volume belongs to the general editor for the volume, Dr. Richard G. Lee, founding pastor of First Redeemer Church in Atlanta, Georgia. However, neither in print nor on the Web is there any indication of the man's professional credentials for the creation of this material. (One hesitates to trust Wikipedia in this instance). I raise this as an objection because in at least one instance, I was able to verify that a quotation attributed to an historical figure was edited from its original text. Such a situation is troubling to me and leads me to wonder what other quotes or historical accounts might have been similarly "modified" to fit a particular political agenda.

That lack of objectivity and balance is particularly obvious in the "special inserts", each several pages in length. These inserts cover a diversity of topics -- the Civil War, World War II, the American Civil Rights movement -- but emphasize how fortunate Americans have been to live through such trying periods with such positive end-results. There is nothing wrong in wishing to instill national pride but there is something decidedly wrong in appearing to suggest that this country is particularly favored by God over others or more enlightened than other countries. In some of these inserts (as in the instance of women's suffrage), any Christian opposition to such change that manifested itself at the time is entirely overlooked.

This volume may be an appropriate purchase for families, for personal or home use. Inclusion elsewhere (as part of either educational or reference material) might be questionable.

2007 Video on How We Will Read and Books

Alexandre and Marie have a lovely European weekend. The video is in French without subtitles, but I rather think it's self-explanatory.

Playing with the Book Glutton Embedding of Text

This is just an experiment to learn more about how Book Glutton facilitates online reading through the embedding of a text on a blog or web site. Click on the book below. 

Pastorale

Perhaps it is the seasonal shift that is affecting me. We're still in the early days of spring with winds blowing chill, but sunshine warm enough to cause the hyacinth to bloom in the side garden patch. Spring refreshes the spirit after the winter and I see now that pastoral fiction does the same.   

If you've not encountered it elsewhere, Lark Rise to Candleford is the work of Flora Thompson, originally published as three separate books between 1938 and 1943. In 1945, the three titles were combined into a single volume and that combined edition has survived through the decades (more here), having recently been adapted to television with great success for the BBC for two successive seasons and an upcoming third. 

The book tells of the childhood of Laura Timmins in a small rural community 19 miles outside of Oxford. Using that fictional device, Thompson is actually describing her own upbringing in the agricultural hamlet up through her adolescence, leaving school at the age of 13 to work in the village post office. The stories -- in most instances, brief anecdotes -- emphasize the prevalent cultural attitude of the time -- a willingness to accept life as it comes and the virtue of welcoming both the hard work and small pleasures that make up the ordinary day. 

An extract may be helpful here to give the flavor of the writing: Yet even out of these unpromising materials, in a room which was kitchen, living-room, nursery, and wash-house combined, some women would contrive to make a pleasant, attractive-looking home. A well-whitened hearth, a home-made rag rug in bright colours and a few geraniums on the window sill would cost nothing and yet make a great difference to the general effect. Others despised these finishing touches. What was the good of breaking your back pegging rugs for the children to mess up when an old sack thrown down would serve the same purpose, they said. As to flowers in pots, they didn't hold with the nasty, messy things. But they did, at least, believe in cleaning up their houses once a day for public opinion demanded that of them. There were plenty of bare, comfortless homes in the hamlet but there was not one really dirty one. (page 89)

It's a different way of thinking. One might be poor by external social standards and yet one might still preserve a certain dignity, unlike much of the current thinking which would appear to only endow individuals with value if they have a conspicuous level of consumption of material goods.

Flora Thompson offers us a wonderful reading experience, even if one suspects that some of the true dreariness of those lives has been left out of the narrative. There is an unmistakable tone of respect throughout the book for the cultural values of the time, despite our perception of limited opportunity, and I think I enjoyed it particularly for that reason. Just as with the return of spring, Lark Rise to Candleford causes one to throw off the grimness of the modern economic winter and instead feel a re-born sense of pride, energy, and practical renewal. 

The book is published by David Godine in the US (see catalog entry).

Read This Now!

Incredibly wonderful analysis of what book reviews should encompass!

Eifelheim [Review]

Title: Eifelheim   

Author: Michael Flynn (author's live journal)

Copyright: 2006, Tor Books, New York

Genre: Science Fiction

Length: 312 pages

Summary: This is a braided tale of time and space. Flynn takes us back to the culture of 14th century Rhineland Germany, a period of technological shifts and venture into the sciences. He introduces a foreign (or, as this is science fiction novel, alien) culture into the village of Oberhochwold. This culture contrasts sharply with the medieval culture because its governing values are more closely related to the modern sensibilities (mechanistically, scientifically oriented rather than theological). That tale is juxtaposed with the experience of a trio of modern-day researchers who are investigating issues tied to both time and space. The stories intertwine, but the tale of primary interest is the first contact story between the medieval priest, Father Dietrich, his parish, and the Krenk.

Flynn draws a parallel between the encounter of historians grappling with an ancient culture of centuries past with that of a science fiction "first contact" between space alien and mankind. The conflicts presented in scientific concepts and spiritual beliefs are intriguing because each side understands and explains the world differently. Father Dietrich, in a world that has only the most shallow grasp of mechanics, energy and disease, must communicate his rational understanding of how the world operates (temporal and eternal) to a highly advanced race of beings with a far more sophisticated understanding of how the world operates. While Dietrich is challenged to incorporate the aliens into his belief structure, the aliens are faced with technological, physical and ultimately spiritual challenges. When both sides are faced with an unreasoning challenge to survival (bubonic plague), which belief structure emerges as being correct? This is what *good* science fiction does -- it explores assumptions and ideas -- and it is not surprising that this novel was nominated for a Hugo Award. (It lost against Rainbow's End by Vernor Vinge.)

Pacing is slow until the last quarter of the novel; the long build-up introduces a variety of questions relevant to the final outcome of the story. Flynn's use of language is not particularly lyrical, as one might expect of a trained mathematician and statistician. There is an extensive list of historical names and dates that play into the development of the theme as well as a complex set of fictional characters that one must keep straight. The characterization, however, is quite robust. These characters have flaws and temperament and behavioral quirks.

The author demands intellectual engagement by the reader because Eifelheim is neither a frothy space opera nor is it a bastardized medieval fantasy. There are lengthy passages of theology as well as physics. However, the story's conflict is primarily revealed in human capacity for understanding as well as a stubborn failure to understand. That extends not just to the inter-species relationships but the human relationships as well. Dietrich has a ward, his primary familial relationship, and that relationship is tested as is his primary professional relationship with a mendicant Franciscan, Father Joachim.  

Extract:  "There was no cadence to the voice," he decided, "or rather its cadence was mechanical, without rhetorical flourishes. It lacked scorn, amusement, emphasis,...hesitation. It said 'Many thanks' with all the feeling of a shuttlecock flying across a loom."

"I see," said Manfred, and Dietrich raised a finger post.

"And that was another convincing point. You and I understand that by 'see' you signified something other than a direct impression on the sense of sight. As Buridan said, there is more to the meaning of an utterance than the precise words uttered. But the Heinzelmannchen did not understand figures. Once it learned that the 'tongue' is a part of the body, it became confused when I referred to the 'German tongue'. It did not comprehend metonymy."

"That's Greek to me," Manfred said.

"What I mean, my lord, is that I think...I think they may not know poetry."

(page 76 of the hardcover)

For more, there is a limited preview on Google Books.

Also relevant: This novel was written as an offshoot of a novella originally written and published in 1986. The modern portions of this braided tale are taken from that novella, which was also nominated for a Hugo. Fans of James Blish's A Case of Conscience or Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow may find this to be of equal interest. Religious belief systems are accorded respect in this narrative  as having equal footing as scientific knowledge in constructing an understanding of how we traverse this world and our lives (again, that theme of temporal vs. eternal). This is a challenging read, but well worth the time it takes to get through it.