Lloyds of London Will Be Loaded...

Apparently Tom Lehrer is 80 years old today. This is one of my favorites of his wickedly funny songs.



Found via Crooked Timber.

New Book from Ursula K. LeGuin

I read today in the Christian Science Monitor that Ursula LeGuin has a new book out. It's titled Lavinia, for the bride of Aeneas (Harcourt, ISBN 978-0151014248). It is her story, rather than the story of the traditional hero. It clearly would qualify for the Once Upon A Time Challenge, if you are looking for an entry in the category of mythology.

I may have to go out and buy this one immediately. I so admire LeGuin's work. In my opinion, she is never dull and her perception of human behaviors are generally on-point.

Another Fantastic Tale: Smith of Wootton Major

This literary fairy tale by J.R.R. Tolkien is a wonderful option if you're looking for a captivating short read. Originally published in 1967, the story is placed in a medieval village, the Wootton Major of the title. The village takes its baking very seriously and the Master Cook is a person of some importance in the village. Each year, there is a special Feast of Good Children, but every twenty four years, there is a particularly special festival that features a Great Cake to which only twenty-four children may be invited. The Master Cook's legacy is the Great Cake that he delivers at that special Twenty-Four feast. Most cooks are only in office for a single opportunity at creating such a Great Cake.

We meet in his childhood, Smith, as one of the lucky attendees of a Twenty-Four feast. In consuming his portion of that feast's Great Cake, he inadvertently swallows a star of Faery and the star marks him both physically and philosophically (or spiritually, if you prefer). Because of that star, he is drawn away from his ordinary existance now and again, in order to step into Faery and see its wonders. He sees marvelous sights, seas with elven mariners, and ultimately dances with the Queen of Faerie herself. Eventually, however, he comes to understand that he must pass the star on to another child.

I'm not particularly enamored of the New York Times review of Smith written back in 1968, but the reviewer did capture the emotion one feels at the close of the book, Wistful and wishful that we could hold on to that star that leads us into such a sense of wonder.

Fantastic Storyteller: Patricia A. McKillip

If you have never read anything by Patricia McKillip, starting with The Forgotten Beasts of Eld would offer you a wonderful introduction. The book won the World Fantasy Award in 1975. The heroine is Sybel, a woman of power, based on her skill with magic. She keeps at her side such fabulous creatures as the Liralen, the Lyon Gules, and Ter the Falcon. Living remotely on a mountain, she does not seek to meddle in the affairs of others, but a child brought to her door (Tam) by Coren of Sirle changes the dynamics of her existence. Eventually, she is ensnared by her love for Tam and the power struggle between Coren and the great king, Drede. Ultimately she calls to her side a dark creature, one that is part nightmare. The story unfolds from there. As one of McKillip's early works, her style here is very simple and her sentences short and clear, unlike more recent works like The Book of Atrix Wolf or the award-winning Ombria in Shadow. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld is a wonderful example of high fantasy.

I read this book for the first time when I was in my early 'twenties and still very open to tales of enchantment. It was very powerful for me at that point in my life because it articulated for me the idea, the observation, that women may exercise power from a different set of priorities than those used by men. (That may not strike you as a new idea but back in the women's movement of the '70's, it required greater emphasis.) What surprised me as I re-read Beasts in the mindset of a distracted, middle-aged adult was how rapidly I was caught again by McKillip's spell-binding story. It was the tone of the story, her language. An example would be something like this extract:

He nodded, the smile tugging deeper at his mouth. "The seventh son of Lord Steth of Sirle, my grandfather, had seven sons and I am his youngest. Perhaps that is why I hear things the trees tell as they whisper at moonrise, or the growing corn tells, or the birds at twilight. I have good ears. I heard the silence of your white walls even in the noisy halls at Sirle."

The people of Sybel's world do not quite sound like the people I encounter in this world. As Ursula K. LeGuin wrote in her 1976 essay, From Elfland to Poughkeepsie, successful fantasy requires a recognition in written dialogue and tone that the world of Faery is distinct from this world. High fantasy -- that form of fiction that draws us from this world into the world of Faery -- is not easy to create. The real thing touches the numinous imagination, at the deepest part of the human spirit and soul. It is wonderful that McKillip consistently manages to convey that strangeness of Faery while still creating characters with whom we feel kinship. Like LeGuin, McKillip holds that to know the name of a living creature yields power over that creature.

If you are looking for something to read as part of Carl's Once Upon a Time challenge, keep this title in the back of your mind. It's sold nowadays as Young Adult Lit, but like the very best fantasy, it is appropriate for adults as well.

ROFL

Heaven knows that the current state of the economy offers little joy, but this literally had me rolling on the floor laughing. Take your time and go through the archives!

Interesting Tidbits From My Inbox

Things that floated through my inbox at work that I think you'll find interesting:

• Seven Deadly Words of Book Reviewing (New York Times)
• Bringing Old Books Back to Life (Oregon News Review)
• Amazon Kindle and Sony Reader Locked Up: Why Your Books Are No Longer Yours (Gizmodo)
• Book Sales Increase by 7.2% in January 2008 (Press release from the Association of American Publishers)
  

Just some fodder for thought.

Wahoo! Woot! and Other Joyful Noises (Updated)

Carl is doing another Once Upon A Time challenge. I missed participation in last year's and I'm not missing this one!

Don't know which Quest I will pick as yet, but I am looking forward to reading some Patricia McKillip (specifically, Alphabet of Thorn). If you are looking for a recommendation, I can heartily push Guy Gavriel Kaye on you (Lions of Al-Rassan). For that matter, you might want to look at the Ozark Trilogy by Suzette Haden Elgin.

I'd write more, but I'm trying to catch up on visits to other people's blogs this evening...

Update: My titles for Quest the First (for the moment) appear below:

1. Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia McKillip
2. Spells of Enchantment: The Wondrous Fairy Tales of Western Culture by Jack Zipes
3. The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights - John Steinbeck
4. Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett
5. The House of Arden by E. Nesbit
6. D'aulaire's Book of Greek Myths by Ingri D'Aulaire

I'm still making up my mind as to whether I want to do #5 or #6. Didi uses D'Aulaire in her classroom, so I have to think it's a worthwhile read.

In A Fit of Austen

About two weeks ago, wanting something pleasant and non-violent on the television as background noise, I put on Mansfield Park. Not the Patricia Rozema version of 1999 or the IDC version that aired in the States during the past two months, but the older BBC dramatization of the novel, dating from 1983, which accurately delivers the storyline crafted by Jane Austen. In that adaptation, Aunt Norris is indeed self-serving and self-absorbed, and Fanny is exasperatingly self-effacing.

What this has led to has been a peculiar state of mental distraction. I am driven to seek out Jane Austen. Blogs, books, DVDs, social networking sites -- each has contributed to the fit. I started out reading a thread on LibraryThing which led me to this blog, which led me to this woman, who created millinery for a few of the dramatizations, then on to the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA) where I learn that the 2009 JASNA Annual Meeting will be held in Philadelphia!

Suddenly, my mind is feverishly tossing out ideas, wondering whether I might produce an academic paper on the topic of sibling relationships in Mansfield Park of a quality that would get me on the JASNA program. There are the sisters, Maria and Julia, who compete with each other for Henry Crawford's attention, a situation certain to create friction. There are the Crawfords themselves, Mary and Henry. Mary and Henry share certain confidences with regard to their dealings with the Bertrams which suggests a certain fond tolerance of one another. There are the Bertram brothers, Tom and Edmund. Tom is profligate while Edmund tends to conservative ways, another situation rife with conflict. Finally, there are Fanny and her brother, William. (There's no clear reason given for why Fanny is so attached to William, but she ends up enduring a great deal from Henry Crawford on his behalf.) I imagine myself offering my thoughts on Fanny Price and William to an audience of eager Janeites. This is an OPPORTUNITY!

Okay. Reality check. (For one thing, there's an obligation to join the society even to participate as an attendee at the annual meeting. It's not that expensive to join, but it does imply a serious level of commitment to Austen, rather than my own dilettante attitude.)

At the same time, I've been digesting Mansfield Park for years now without ever publicly expressing my feelings on the subject of Fanny Price. She's something of a controversial figure as you know if you've ever spent time over at the Republic of Pemberley. (See the reference to the "Fanny Wars" here.) Is Fanny Price an insufferable, self-righteous little prig? Or is she actually a frail, somewhat crushed female, plain and repressed, whose triumph is greatest when the hero realizes the superiority of her mind and scope of her character in comparison with that of the worldly Mary Crawford?

Each time I have read Mansfield Park, I have been struck by Austen's characterization as well as her skill in choosing how to reveal personalities. I have always assumed that Austen knew readers might shy away from Fanny's self-effacing nature. Fanny isn't an ideal heroine, by any stretch, yet Austen shows us that as quiet and despised as Fanny may be, she has the strength of character that those around her have not developed. This time around as I re-read the novel, I was struck by the scene of Mary Crawford offering Fanny a chain to use with Henry's gift of a cross. Mary seems sincerely to extend a generosity to Fanny, in part as a kindness towards pleasing her brother and in part because it is a small thing to her to share with Fanny something that Mary has in abundance. She sees Fanny's reluctance in accepting the jewelry and laughs good-naturedly at the scrupulousness of Fanny's conscience. Fanny is horrified that Mary would so casually give to her a necklace that Mary received from her brother; we are left to suppose that Fanny would never part with a present that William had given her. Mary isn't in the least disturbed by the idea of offering it, but Fanny, we assume, can't imagine that evidence of a brother's regard would be given to her so lightly. There's a good case for the scene's use as an indication of each woman's mindset regarding a brother and his gift. In both instances, the cross William gives his sister and the chain Henry gives his, the value associated with an article of jewelry is a way of revealing how each woman regards the familial bond.

I don't want to go into more detail. Thanks to good friends who teach at the college level, I am ruefully conscious of some idiot student googling the point and turning it in for a grade, but the joy of reading is that one is taken with an idea (in the midst of boring, hum-drum daily life) and turns it over and plays with it. Why else read?

Humorous Column (San Francisco Chronicle)

Chortle, chuckle, snark

Although I think the cats would invariably want to be on the wrong side of the door. You'd never get to drink your coffee in peace.

More later.

Binu and the Great Wall [Review]

Title: Binu and the Great Wall (publisher's page)

Author: Su Tong

Copyright: 2007, Canongate, Edinburgh (Hardcover, ISBN 978-1-84195-904-7)

Length: 291 pages

Genre: Fiction/Part of the Canongate Myth Series

Summary: Binu discovers that her husband, Wan Qiliang , has been drafted into the service of the Emperor in building the Great Wall of China. But he has been taken so abruptly -- working bare-chested in the forest -- that he has no warm clothing for the winter. Binu sees her duty as a wife as traveling to the farthest reaches of the kingdom to bring Wan Qiliang his winter coat. The other village wives whose spouses have also been taken are unwilling to travel with her so Binu sets off alone. Her chief characteristic throughout the course of this journey is tenacity, her stoicism in facing the harsh judgments of others as she makes her way towards the Great Swallow Mountain. Those others, who offer her no sympathy, include a carter with no hands who drives his team with his feet, a herd of Deer-boys, even the great General Jianyang who can hear the sound of Binu's weeping from a great distance. She does have one mystic guide with her, a blind frog who retreats and then returns to support her. But it is critical to the point of the book to stress that Binu is isolated and alone, a person of no status, an orphan without family to intercede, a woman entirely vulnerable to every indignity that is part of the human experience.

The writing style of this tale contains both poetic imagery and bleak events. The presence of Death in this story is as much a constant as the blind frog. Binu and the Great Wall is not told as a happy fairy tale the way that the story of Meng Jiang is frequently told. (See this version sanitized for Western audiences.) Su Tong's novel, translated by Howard Goldblatt, has points that are utterly bleak but still pays homage to the capacity of the ordinary person to change the direction of the powerful.

Extract: The frog stayed put, a single tear on its face bringing a white light into the darkness. Binu turned away to avoid looking at that tear. Sorrow had lost its power on this night; a woman who did not cry had already shed all the tears she had, and the tears of the frog were now someone else's burden. Neither could get a reaction from the other. So a long confrontation between a pair of one-time traveling companions developed at the river bend, and an air of antagonism turned the atmosphere icy. Even the water flowing in the moonlight gasped tensely.

Also Relevant: The story on which Binu and The Great Wall is based is well-known in China. The softened version (linked above) is re-told in a fashion suitable for children; other versions (like this one) are told in the context of a historical period in Chinese history. I read Binu without any foreknowledge of the story of Meng Jiang's tears; while I recognized occasional flashes of dry humor in the writing, the novel still struck me as a fairly serious story making a point about the ways a repressed, saddened citizenry may erupt under the rule of bureaucracy. Binu consistently adheres to her own beliefs of appropriate behavior even though the society around criticizes harshly her behavior. As she moves in a symbolic journey from a simple village in the South to the more complex and unfamiliar urban society in the North, Binu is incapable of adopting survival mechanisms that could ease her living. Her single-minded intent to provide the necessities needed by her husband in winter weather is laughable to those with some level of power or control. She obviously cannot succeed and yet, inexplicably, her individual devotion to a perceived duty is what triggers great change. Thus, Binu and the Great Wall is peculiarly hopeful even as it closes without romanticism or traditional "happy ending".

I found this installment to the Canongate Myth series to be worthwhile reading and certainly thought- provoking. I reviewed Karen Armstrong's introductory volume to the full series here and subsequently reviewed Lion's Honey, another volume in the series, here. So far, I think this is my favorite.