Lost in a Walker Percy Cosmos, Part 2

Oct27

I forgot to mention, in Part 1 of this series of posts on the Walker Percy conference at Loyola University in New Orleans, that Eldest Daughter was presenting a paper at the conference. I will not tell you which paper she presented, but it was good and it had nothing to do with French medieval poetry, the ostensible subject of her dissertation that she is supposed to be writing. Walker Percy is simply more compelling right now than French medieval poetry, a truth universally acknowledged, is it not?

For those of you who, like me, have never attended an academic conference, the format is quite simple. The presenters, mostly professors of something or another at some university or another, get up in groups of three or four and they read their papers. That’s right, they read to the audience, just as librarians read picture books to first graders in story time, except mostly there are no pictures, and then they take questions. Some of these academics are better storytellers and readers than others, but I will say that I learned something from almost every paper I heard read, except when I got lost in the cosmos of academia and erudition. (I heard and made lots of “lost” jokes at this conference.)

Here are some really, truly, actual sample titles of papers from Still Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy & the 21st Century:

Alienation, Dislocation and Restoration: Percy’s Semiotic Psychology
The Semiotics of Shame and the Christian Meta-narrative in Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos (I can’t tell you about these first two because I refused to attend session or panel in which one of the papers to be presented used the word “semiotics” or meta-narrative”. I have my limits. See Part 1 of this series.)
Falling into Transcendence: Walker Percy’s Demoniac Self, the Erotic and the Lust for God
Walker Percy’s Semiotics of Self: A Case Study: C.S. Peirce and the Problem of Reentry (Two colons! But pardon my ignorance, who is C.S. Peirce, and does he really place the “e” before the “i” in his last name?)
Deceit, Desire, and the Self-Help Book: Rereading Lost in the Cosmos as a novel in light of Rene Girard’s Mimetic Theory (Ditto Rene Girard?)
The Mishmash Theory of Man
Where are the Hittites? Tracing Walker Percy’s Theology of the Jews
A Moveable Piece: Stefan Zweig and Walker Percy’s Problem of Artist-Writer Reentry (And who is Stefan Zweig? I’m starting to feel like a low-information conference attendee.)
Revealing the Transcendent Third: Walker’s Percy’s Trinitarian Imagination
Starting Over: Amnesia, Escape, and Redemption in Lost in the Cosmos and in Percy’s Novels
Lost in the Cosmos and Gulliver’s Travels: Christian Satire in the Anglo-American Tradition
Walker Percy, Herman Melville, and Moby Dick, the (Second-to) Last Self-Help Book: An Intertextual Study of the Self (Ah, at last, Melville, Moby Dick, and Gulliver I know. I went to these two presentations, wanting to feel as if I had at least something in my brain besides mush, the mishmash theory of me.)
The Dialectic of Belief: Participation and Uncertainty in Walker Percy’s Lost in the Cosmos

To begin with, I learned from just reading these titles that an academic conference requires colons. Without colons, the professors would find it impossible to give titles to their papers. However, my favorite title of a paper presented at the conference had no colons at all. It was a joke. Really, the paper was titled: “I went to a bookstore and asked the saleswoman, ‘Where’s the self-help section?’ She said if she told me, it would defeat the purpose.” It may have been my favorite, or at least second favorite, part of the entire conference.

So, the presenting of papers began on Friday afternoon in various conference rooms in the library at Loyola. I like libraries, and it was a very nice library. As we entered, to our left, was a statue of St. Ignatius of Loyola. He was wearing a purple T-shirt.

“Outside the front steps of the Monroe Library stands a life-size bronze statute of St. Ignatius de Loyola, a diminutive ex-soldier, courtier, and our patron saint.
Our students have named the statue Iggy, and occasionally loan him hats and T-shirts to promote various campus events and or decorate him with Mardi Gras beads during carnival season.”

I don’t think the purple shirt had anything to do with Walker Percy, but he might have appreciated the local color. The first panel I attended was transcendence, amnesia, and the paper with the joke title. I took notes. However, my notes may or may not have been recognizable as related to the topics being discussed. In my mind, My Self, the notes I took make perfect sense and are semiotically and integrally related to the papers that I heard. However, an impartial judge, if such a judge were to exist, might beg to differ. Perhaps St. Ignatius in his purple t-shirt will deign to judge in Part 3 of this series, Digression, Catastrophe, and Narcotic Refuge: Are the Existentialists Really Epicurians?

Lost in a Walker Percy Cosmos, Part 1

Oct26

A couple of months ago Eldest Daughter asked if I would like to accompany her to an academic conference in New Orleans in October. New Orleans in October with Eldest Daughter who is one of my favorite persons? Of course, I would love to go. Then, she told me the subject of the conference, “Still Lost in the Cosmos: Walker Percy & the 21st Century.”

Now I am not a fan, really, of Mr. Percy’s fiction. I say that, having read one, maybe two, books by Percy, The Moviegoer and another book long ago that I think was The Thanatos Syndrome. I remember people in trees(?) or sitting on flagpoles and something about poisoning the water supply and a priest and a doctor. It sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and unfortunately that’s all I remember of the novel. The Moviegoer I read more recently, and according to Eldest Daughter herself, who is a fan, I just didn’t get it. I concur: I didn’t get it. The main character, Binx Bolling, was the kind of person who, if I were to meet him, I would feel strongly impelled to shake until he spits, as my mother would say. Existentialists (Percy had a thing for Kierkegaard) affect me that way, oddly enough.

Still I am a fan of Eldest Daughter and of a trip to New Orleans, and I like to feel as if I know what people are talking about when I listen to them speak. So in preparation for the conference I began reading Mr. Percy’s book, Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book. Lost in the Cosmos is not a novel, but rather a parody of the myriad of self-help books that tell us that we can categorize our angst and work it out in six easy steps or by repeating one mantra or by listening to the author who will tell us who we really are. The first part of the book is really quite clever as Percy gets the reader first to admit that “it [is] possible to learn more in ten minutes about the Crab Nebula in Taurus, which is 6,000 light-years away, than you presently know about yourself, even though you’ve been stuck with yourself all your life.” Then, through a series of “thought experiments”, Percy leads his readers to recognize the existential lostness that afflicts each of us: we are indeed lost in the cosmos.

So far, so clever. In the middle of the book, however, Percy stops for an extended tour of the science of semiotics, a word I had to look up in my handy, dandy dictionary. Semiotics is “the study of signs and symbols, and their use or interpretation.” (Clear as mud? No? You obviously need to undertake a serious study of semiotics.) This part of the book is called “A Semiotic Primer on the Self.” The print becomes much smaller, and the text much, much more dense. Diagrams are inserted, and footnotes abound. Percy himself writes, “The following section, an intermezzo of some forty pages, can be skipped without fatal consequences.” I skipped. Not only did I skip, I also skipped out and never managed to finish Lost in the Cosmos before the conference in New Orleans. The consequences were not fatal, but perhaps were an inhibition to my understanding of the presenters at the conference.

So, there you have a synopsis of my preparation for the Walker Percy conference at Loyola University in New Orleans. My preliminary studies were inadequate at best. However, I went with the expectation that I would be enriched and challenged by the conference speakers and satiated and enlivened by the food and sights of New Orleans. And Eldest Daughter is still one of my favorite people, even if she does understand Walker Percy when I do not.

Tomorrow, read part 2, Amnesia, Moby Dick, Gulliver’s Travels, and the Shadow of Catastrophe, or How to Title an Academic Paper on Walker Percy.

The Rosemary Tree by Elizabeth Goudge

Jun20

I have read very few authors with as much insight into the feelings and thought processes of men, women, and children as Elizabeth Goudge. The Rosemary Tree is remarkable in its treatment of characters who are all somewhat broken (as are we all), but who fall on a continuum from repentant to ineffectual to struggling to wise to completely evil. And the character who is represented as utterly irredeemable, because she doesn’t want to be forgiven or changed, might be the character you least suspect.

It all seems very true to life. (By the way that’s an awful cover, but the others I saw at Amazon weren’t any better. I don’t know why the people are wearing what looks like Elizabethan or Edwardian costumes. The story takes place in the twentieth century, after World War II.) The main characters in this little vignette of village life are:

John Wentworth, a bumbling and diffident country parson who sees himself as a weak man and a failure who can never get anything quite right.

“He took off his coat, rolled up his shirt-sleeves, lifted up to Almighty God the magnitude of his failure and the triviality of his task, and applied himself to the latter. The hot water warmed his cold hands and the pile of cleansed china grew satisfactorily on the draining-board. There was a pleasure in getting things clean. Small beauties slid one by one into his consciousness, quietly and unobtrusively, like growing light. The sinuous curves of Orlando the marmalade cat, washing himself on the window-sill, the comfortable sound of ash settling in the stove, a thrush singing somewhere, the scent of Daphne’s geraniums, the gold of the crocuses that were growing round the trunk of the apple tree outside the kitchen window.”

Others see him as Don Quixote, the Man of la Mancha.

Daphne Wentworth, John’s wife, is much more competent than her husband, but also full of pride and thwarted ambitions from her youth.

The couple have three children: Pat, who is like her mother, competent and intelligent and sharp, Margary, who is more like John, dreamy and vulnerable, and Winkle, who is the baby of the family, but wise with the innocence of childhood.

Harriet lives upstairs in the Wentworth parsonage, and she is wise with the wisdom of many years of experience, first as John’s nanny, then as the parsonage housekeeper, and now as a retired pray-er and watcher over the entire household.

“They all said they could not do without her. In the paradoxical nature of things if she could have believed them she would have been a much happier woman, but not the same woman whom they could not do without.”

Maria Wentworth, John’s great-aunt, lives in Belmaray Manor and keeps pigs.

Young Mary O’Hara, Irish and full of vitality, and Miss Giles, middle-aged, bitter, and full of frustrations, both teach school at the small private school that the Wentworth girls attend. Mary’s aunt, Mrs. Belling, “was a very sweet woman and had been a very beautiful one.” She is headmistress of the little school, where all three girls are quite unhappy, each in her own way.

Into this mix comes a stranger, Michael Stone, who is weighed down by many, many real failures and sins and who comes to Devonshire where the story takes place not so much for redemption as simply for a place to go, perhaps to hide from the world. Michael will find more than he’s looking for, and the other characters in this novel will change and grow as a result of Michael’s presence and the truth he brings into their lives.

Elizabeth Goudge really has written a lovely novel. Apparently, The Times criticized its “slight plot” and “sentimentally ecstatic” approach when the book was first published in 1956. I’ll admit the story is a bit short on action, but the descriptions of how and what people think and feel more than makes up for any deficiency in fictional exploits.

Sidenote/detour: While looking for more information about Elizabeth Goudge, I found this article about an Indian author, Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen, who plagiarized from The Rosemary Tree in her 1993 Cranes’ Morning. In fact, aside from changing the setting to India, the names of the characters to Indian ones, and the religion to Hinduism, Ms. Aikath-Gyaltsen copied much of Goudge’s novel word-for-word. It took about a year for the plagiarism to be noticed and confirmed, and in the meantime Indrani Aikath-Gyaltsen died, probably committing suicide. Sad story.

I wonder what Elizabeth Goudge, who died in 1984, would have thought about it all?

Not to end this review of and homage to Ms. Goudge’s agreeable novel on such a sad note, I’ll leave you with one more quote:

“The way God squandered Himself had always hurt her; and annoyed her, too. The sky full of wings and only the shepherds awake. That golden voice speaking and only a few fishermen there to hear; and perhaps some of the words He spoke carried away on the wind or lost in the sound of the waves lapping against the side of the boat. A thousand blossoms shimmering over the orchard, each a world of wonder all to itself, and then the whole thing blown away on a south-west gale as though the delicate little worlds were of no value at all. Well, of all the spendthrifts, she would think, and then pull herself up. It was not for her to criticize the ways of Almighty God; if He liked to go to all that trouble over the snowflakes, millions and millions of them, their intricate patterns too small to be seen by human eyes, and melting as soon as made, that was His affair and not hers.”

I like the idea of God as a spendthrift, creating beauty for the sheer joy of it all whether there’s anyone there to perceive it or not. Isn’t there a poem based on that idea? Maybe Emily Dickinson?

The Resurrection and the Life

Mar29

I thought Iâ€™d post a few times today and tomorrow about the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to me and to some of the authors and fictional and actual characters that I have on my bookshelves. Iâ€™m going to take turns blogging and house-cleaning and see how that goes.

I first read Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities when I was in ninth grade. Three of us—Christina, Teresa, and I— wrote a chapter-by-chapter summary of the entire book, making our own little study guide to the novel as a school project. We did this before the age of personal computers and before any of us knew how to type. I can’t remember exactly what the finished product looked like, but it was a lot of work.

The themes of death, burial, imprisonment, rescue and resurrection are woven throughout Dickens’ tale set during the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. Doctor Manette is rescued from a living death inside the Bastille. Jerry Cruncher is a “resurrection man” who digs up dead bodies to sell them. Charles Darnay is rescued and recalled to life twice during the novel, once when he is on trial in England and again when he is headed for guillotine in France.

But the most vivid representation of death and resurrection comes at the end of the novel when the reprobate Sydney Carton gives up his life to save Charles and Lucy Darnay and to ensure their future together. Carton is walking down the street when he remembers these words from Scripture read at his father’s funeral long ago:

“I am the resurrection, and the life, saith the Lord: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me, shall never die.”

Now, that the streets were quiet, and the night wore on, the words were in the echoes of his feet, and were in the air. Perfectly calm and steady, he sometimes repeated them to himself as he walked; but, he heard them always.

The night wore out, and, as he stood upon the bridge listening to the water as it splashed the river-walls of the Island of Paris, where the picturesque confusion of houses and cathedral shone bright in the light of the moon, the day came coldly, looking like a dead face out of the sky. Then, the night, with the moon and the stars, turned pale and died, and for a little while it seemed as if Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.

But, the glorious sun, rising, seemed to strike those words, that burden of the night, straight and warm to his heart in its long bright rays. And looking along them, with reverently shaded eyes, a bridge of light appeared to span the air between him and the sun, while the river sparkled under it.

The strong tide, so swift, so deep, and certain, was like a congenial friend, in the morning stillness He walked by the stream, far from the houses, and in the light and warmth of the sun fell asleep on the bank. When he awoke and was afoot again, he lingered there yet a little longer, watching an eddy that turned and turned purposeless, until the stream absorbed it, and carried it on to the sea.- “Like me!”

A trading-boat, with a sail of the softened colour of a dead leaf, then glided into his view, floated by him, and died away. As its silent track in the water disappeared, the prayer that had broken up out of his heart for a merciful consideration of all his poor blindnesses and errors, ended in the words, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

On Good Friday, when we are in the midst of death and sin and darkness, it does sometimes seem a if “Creation were delivered over to Death’s dominion.” A blogging friend sent out a tweet earlier today saying that he had “difficulty ‘pretending’ on Good Friday that Jesus is dead.” Of course, Jesus isn’t dead, but as far as imagining the feeling of despair and “being delivered over to death”, I have no trouble whatsoever. Sometimes things in this world are very dark, and the hope of the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our eventual resurrection with Him is all that keeps from utter despair.

Thank God for Resurrection Sunday!

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Feb17

This novel from a Nigerian/American author is classified as young adult fiction in my library, probably because the narrator is fifteen years old, but I think it will resonate with adults of all ages, and with readers around the world because the themes–abusive relationships, religious legalism, freedom, and the source of joy–are all universal themes.

Fifteen year old Kambili and her older brother Jaja live with their mother and father in a wealthy or at least upper middle class Catholic home in Enugu, Nigeria. Their father’s strict, legalistic Catholicism pervades the family’s life, from twenty minute prayers before meals to reciting the rosary on car trips to fasting before mass every Sunday. Not only is the family required to be strictly Catholic by Kambili’s papa but they are also held to a stringent schedule made up of course by the father. Kambili has conflicting feelings about Papa: she is pleased, even thrilled, when he approves of her words or actions, but of course when harsh punishment comes her way, Kambili is crushed.

Then, the catalyst for change enters the life of this silent, repressed family: Kambili’s Aunty Ifeoma invites the children to visit her home in Nsukka. Aunty Ifeoma is a widow, a teacher, much poorer than her brother, but the joy in Aunty’s home is overflowing and overwhelming for her love-starved niece and nephew. Kambili and Jaja learn another way of life, without rigid schedules and authoritarian rule-keeping, and most of all without fear. Kambili, who comes across as much younger than fifteen throughout most of the story probably because of her repressed childhood, doesn’t know what to think or do with all the freedom that she is given in Aunty Ifeoma’s home, so she mostly does nothing and remains very, very quiet, even silent. Jaja sees the possibilities of freedom and becomes rebellious. However, it is the children’s meek, long-suffering mother, who has also suffered abuse at the hands of her husband, who takes the most surprising action of all.

The story is terribly sad. The depth of the dysfunction and abuse in the family is revealed slowly, a little at a time, until it becomes overpowering. Papa is not a wholly evil man; he publishes the truth about the government in his newspaper and he is generous to the poor, to family, and to many others. But of course, this generosity and honesty displayed to outside world makes the secret, petty evil that Papa perpetrates inside his home even worse.

I hope I haven’t spoiled the narrative arc of this novel by telling what it is generally about. I don’t think so. Ms. Adichie is quite skilled in the way she spins her story, and she enlists our sympathy as readers for all the characters in the novel, even Papa to some extent. One senses that he is caught in a web of legalism himself, and he cannot see a way out. That emotional captivity certainly doesn’t justify the abuse, but it explains to some extent why the children and their mother take so long to escape and why their feelings about Papa are so contradictory and confused.

Recommended.

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Feb9

Victor Hugo’s epic novel is divided into five volumes:

Volume 1: Fantine
Volume 2: Cosette
Volume 3: Marius
Volume 4: Saint-Denis
Volume 5: Jean Valjean

In January I read, or rather re-read, the first two volumes, but I’m sort of stuck. I first read the entire novel when I was in college. This reading was back in the Dark Ages, before the stage musical, before any movie versions that I was aware of, certainly before the most recent movie musical version starring Hugh Jackman and Anne Hathaway. I didn’t know what would happen to Cosette, Marius, and Jean Valjean. This burning desire to know how the story would turn out explains why I stayed up until two in the morning once upon a college dorm room, reading Les Miserables even though I had an eight o’clock class that same morning. I had to finish; I had to know.

Now I already know. And although I am enjoying my re-read thirty-plus years later, I no longer have the suspense pulling at me to finish the novel. So, I’m not sure when I will get the motivation to go ahead and read the rest, but here are a few observations on the first two parts.

The first part of Book 1, like the first part of the musical, actually focuses on Monseigneur Bienvenu, the Bishop of M., who first shows Jean Valjean what grace and mercy look like.

Of M. Bienvenu: “He did not study God; he was dazzled by Him.” Brown Bear Daughter thinks the good bishop is too good to be true, but I have met people who, having put their past behind them (and it is implied that M. Bienvenue may have a past of some sort), are veritable saints.

However, Jean Valjean does not immediately become good after his life-changing encounter with the bishop. Even after he is shown mercy, in the book Valjean robs a child on the road, out of habit(?) or dullness or ingrained hopelessness. He only sees himself in his own sin after this shameful act that cannot be excused by “the law is too harsh” or “I had to help my sister and her children by stealing a loaf of bread.” When Valjean sees himself in all his wickedness, then he is given even more grace to go ahead and “become an honest man,” sort of, or at least a useful and respectable man.

Fantine is another character who is more multi-dimensional in the novel than in the musical/movie. She is certainly “more sinned against”, abandoned by Cosette’s father, cheated by the Thenardiers, and driven into debt, prostitution, and slavery by her situation. However, she also nurses hatred and pride in her heart as she thinks of how she lost her factory job and as she continues on to a life of prostitution instead of appealing to M. Madeleine to give her job back. And she, like Valjean, needs and receives redemption and mercy.

Part 2 does introduce us to Cosette, and we watch her grow into a young lady as Jean Valjean grows in his ability to love and to sacrifice himself for another. He becomes Cosette’s true father.

Girl Detective enjoyed reading all 1231 pages of Les Miserables, but she complains, as do most people, about the long digressions and says the book begs to be abridged. I understand and have some sympathy for the abridgment position, especially when it comes to the name-dropping, political sections when Tholomyes and later Marius and his friends talk about people and political situations that we latter-day readers have never heard of and don’t need or want to know about. The political/historical parts where Hugo writes about people who add no value to the story are skippable. But the sewer and the cloister chapters are actually quite interesting to me anyway, and they set a tone for the setting of the story that I think makes it richer and more intense. (Not sure those are the right adjectives? Maybe â€œdeepâ€ or â€œvividâ€.) Yeah, you can skip those and the whole battle of Waterloo, except the part where Thenardier rescues somebody, and the argot chapter and itâ€™s OK, but I would argue that at the least there is good writing (essay and historical writing) there, too.

If the digressions bore you, skip them or get an abridged version. If you’re like me and you enjoy ponderous chapters full of information about arcane subjects, chapters that interrupt the action but do something that I can’t put my finger on exactly for the tone and development of the story, then go ahead and read them. I can’t say that you miss anything, really, by skipping, or that there is any virtue in being able to say you’ve read the entire, unabridged version. Just read it in some version. My favorite novel ever.

By the way, I loved the movie, except for the one part with Santa and various other vulgar vignettes in the Thenardiers’ inn, a scene which begged to be abridged, cut, censored and never even thought up in the first place. Drunken Santa Claus, at least, makes no appearance in Victor Hugo’s novel.

Novel Views: Les Miserables by Jeff Clark. These charts and graphs are fascinating. Did you know that, other than character names, some of the most common words used in Les Miserables are: bishop, love, mother, child, gamin, Paris, old, right, war, barricade, sewer, man, day, street, city, wall, door? And each character has characteristic verbs that are used to describe his/her actions.
Jean Valjean fell, condemned, concealed, stood, robbed, slept, caught.
Fantine coughed, sighed, sang, shared.
Cosette gazed, grew, developed, fetched, noticed, woke, loved.
Marius lived, fixed, paid, launched, fell, reflected, heard.
Javert pinioned, killed, permitted, bound, hunted, recognized, yielded.
Thenardier screamed, unmasked, growled, shook, lied, cast, thrust.
Gavroche muttered, sang, scratched, climbed, shrugged, pushed.

Emotional Detachment and Les Miserables by Michael Sacasas at Mere Orthodoxy. This article asks if some critics of the new movie and of the story itself are disturbed by “having been brought dangerously near the edge of feeling again what had been assiduously suppressed by reflexively deployed irony or cynicism.”

Les Miserables book study at the blog Mommy Life. Barbara Curtis, the blogger at Mommy Life has gone on to be with the Lord, but her blog lives on in cyberspace. Her comments and thoghts on Hugo’s opus are full of insight and Christian theology.

Magistramater gives us some quotations from Volume 1 and from Volume 2.

Amy’s rambling thoughts on Les Miserables at Hope Is the Word.

I started this blog post a couple of weeks ago, and now I think I’m about ready to get back to Les Miserables and finish it. I’ll try to check in again when I’ve finished Volume Three, Marius.

Sweet Tooth by Ian McEwan

Feb4

Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive. ~Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.

My name is Serena Frome (rhymes with plume) and almost forty years ago I was sent on a secret mission for the British Security Service. I didn’t return safely. Within eighteen months of joining I was sacked, having disgraced myself and ruined my lover, though he certainly had a hand in his own undoing.

Set in the 1960’s, this novel of lies and spies and deception within deception is spell-binding, especially toward the end as the author begins to tie up all the loose ends into a choose-your-own ending sort of denouement. As it begins, Serena Frome tells us how she became a spy, a very low-level spy with a fairly innocuous duty to perform. She simply has to recruit an up-and-coming novelist and lie to him about the source of her funding. No big deal. However, as Sir Walter so aptly observed, small deceptions grow over time into large, knotty messes.

Serena, who is anything but serene throughout most of the novel, and her spy-target, Tom, become lovers. They actually fall in love with each other, and the secrets between them become more and more heavy and complicated and unsustainable. In one scene Serena and Tom make love to one another on the beach and declare their love in words for the first time:

“I knew that before this love began to take its course, I would have to tell him about myself. And then the love would end. So I couldn’t tell him. But I had to.
Afterward, we lay with our arms linked, giggling like children in the the dark at our secret, at the mischief we had got away with. We laughed at the enormity of the words we had spoken. Everyone else was bound by the rules, and we were free. We’d make love all over the world, our love would be everywhere. We sat up and shared a cigarette. Then we both began to shiver from the cold, and so we headed for home.”

So ridiculous. We all do this: fool ourselves into thinking that the rules don’t apply to us, that we can lie and steal and cheat and still give and receive love that is lasting and stable. But love that’s built on deceit is just like that Biblical house built on beach sand, headed for a fall.

However, just when the reader thinks that he knows the end of this story, after all we’ve all heard it and experienced it before, love lost, betrayal uncovered, and tragedy, Mr. McEwan and Tom the novelist and Serena herself all have a few more tricks and twists of plot to reveal or live through. I’m not sure the ending is really, truly possible or likely (can the Gordian knot really be dispatched with a single sword stroke?), but I want it to be so.

I’ve read McEwan’s most famous novel, Atonement, and it, too, had a twist at the end. The surprising or ambiguous ending seems to be a trademark in most of Mr. McEwan’s novels, as is a “predeliction for more graphic sexual description than I am comfortable reading” (what I wrote about Atonement and what is also true of Sweet Tooth). I thought the sexual details were unfortunate and unnecessary, but I usually do think that about modern novels. These lascivious particulars were skim-able, and the rest of the story somewhat redeemed the few vulgar parts.

So I give the novel, which also deals with the value of fiction and the intricacies of the Cold War, a qualified recommendation.

Christmas in Norway, c.1330

Dec5

“It was the custom for all priests at Christ Church to give supper to the poor. But Kristin had heard that fewer beggars came to Gunnulf Nikulausson than to any of the other priests, and yet–or perhaps this was the very reason–he seated them on the benches next to him in the main hall and received every wanderer like an honored guest. They were served food from his own platter and ale from the priest’s own barrels. The poor would come whenever they felt in need of a supper of stew, but otherwise they preferred to go to the other priests, where they were given porridge and weak ale in the cookhouse.
As soon as the scribe had finished the prayers after the meal, the poor guests wanted to leave. Gunnulf spoke gently to each of them, asking whether they would like to spend the night or whether they needed anything else; but only the blind boy remained. The priest implored in particular the young woman with the child to stay and not take the little one out into the night, but she murmured an excuse and hurried off. Then Gunnulf asked a servant to make sure that Blind Arnstein was given ale and a good bed in the guest room. He put on a hooded cape.
‘You must be tired, Orm and Kristin, and want to go to bed. Audhild will take care of you. You’ll probably be asleep when I return from the church.’
Then Kristin asked to go with him. ‘That’s why I’ve come here,’ she said, fixing her despairing eyes on Gunnulf. Ingrid lent her a dry cloak, and she and Orm joined the small procession departing from the parsonage.
The bells were ringing as if they were right overhead in the black night sky–it wasn’t far to the church. They trudged through the deep, wet, new snow. The weather was calm now, with a few snowflakes still drifting down here and there shimmering faintly in the dark.” ~Kristin Lavransdatter, Mistress of Husaby by Sigrid Undset, translated by Tina Nunnally.

Kristin Lavransdatter is one of my very favorite books, so realistic and yet encouraging. Kristin is a real person: warts, and passions, and good intentions, and stupid decisions, all wrapped up in the life of one fourteenth century woman.

The scene I quoted above takes place near Christmas-time when Kristin is visiting her brother-in-law, a priest, because she is having marriage and family conflicts. She goes to the church to think and pray about all her sins and her life. Orm is her step-son.

I would highly recommend Kristin Lavransdatter as a gift for the wife/mother/reader in your family.

Christmas at Queens Crawley, Hampshire, England, 1823

Dec3

“Christmas at the Hall was the gayest which had been known there for many a long day.

On Christmas Day a great family gathering took place. All the Crawleys from the Rectory came to dine. Rebecca was as frank and fond of Mrs. Bute as if the other had never been her enemy; she was affectionately interested in the dear girls, and surprised at the progress which they had made in music since her time, and insisted upon encoring one of the duets out of the great song-books which Jim, grumbling, had been forced to bring under his arm from the Rectory. Mrs. Bute, perforce, was obliged to adopt a decent demeanour towards the little adventuressâ€”-of course being free to discourse with her daughters afterwards about the absurd respect with which Sir Pitt treated his sister-in-law. But Jim, who had sat next to her at dinner, declared she was a trump, and one and all of the Rector’s family agreed that the little Rawdon was a fine boy. They respected a possible baronet in the boy, between whom and the title there was only the little sickly pale Pitt Binkie.

The children were very good friends. Pitt Binkie was too little a dog for such a big dog as Rawdon to play with; and Matilda being only a girl, of course not fit companion for a young gentleman who was near eight years old, and going into jackets very soon. He took the command of this small party at onceâ€”-the little girl and the little boy following him about with great reverence at such times as he condescended to sport with them. His happiness and pleasure in the country were extreme. The kitchen garden pleased him hugely, the flowers moderately, but the pigeons and the poultry, and the stables when he was allowed to visit them, were delightful objects to him. He resisted being kissed by the Misses Crawley, but he allowed Lady Jane sometimes to embrace him, and it was by her side that he liked to sit when, the signal to retire to the drawing-room being given, the ladies left the gentlemen to their claret—by her side rather than by his mother. For Rebecca, seeing that tenderness was the fashion, called Rawdon to her one evening and stooped down and kissed him in the presence of all the ladies.” ~Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray

Brown Bear Daughter (age 17) has been reading Vanity Fair for her senior English class, and she is not impressed with Miss Becky Sharp nor with the near-perfect Amelia Sedley. I find it interesting that the characters of Gone With the Wind’s Scarlett O’Hara and her sister-in-law Melanie Wilkes are based on Thackeray’s characters, written so many years before. “Adventuresses” and simpering young ladies and hypocrites and the like never go out of style. But Christmas does sometimes make us all behave ourselves for a while and if not remember our better selves, at least act as if we do.

“I mean the baronet and the rector, not our brothers—but the former, who hate each other all the year round, become quite loving at Christmas.”
~ William Makepeace Thackeray, Vanity Fair.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb by Jane Rogers

Jun24

The Testament of Jessie Lamb is a book about teen rebellion and the end of the world, and it was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2011. The London Daily Mail called it “a wonderful evocation of teenage confusion, passion, and idealism.” I was not impressed.

Ms. Rogers says in a note in the back of the book that her influences were American Pastoral, a novel by Philip Roth, Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, The Chrysalids, a science fiction classic by John Wyndham, and The Diary of Anne Frank. Because of the basic premise, a world that is dying because humans have for some reason lost the ability to reproduce, the novel most reminded me of Children of Men by P.D. James. But Children of Men was a much better book, IMHO.

The Testament of Jessie Lamb really is a depiction of teen confusion and hubris, and I can see the Anne Frank influence. However, maybe because I’m firmly entrenched in the “older generation”, I found it difficult to sympathize with the narrator, sixteen year old Jessie, and her know-it-all teen egotism. Without giving away the plot of the story, I’ll say that Jessie is out to save the world by sacrificing herself, and her parents think she’s making a huge mistake. Her parents are right. Jessie’s a fool, and the book never makes it clear that she is not a heroine, but rather a mixed-up kid who’s living in a very mixed-up world.

I’m just not a fan of teen rebellion, even though I sometimes live with it in my own house. (Oh, yes. It’s here, too.) And even though the adults in The Testament of Jessie Lamb are not much more mature or wise than Jessie is, I’m still on the side of the grown-ups. Poor Jessie could have used a few fully grown authority figures, or maybe a word from God, in her life to help her make decisions based on something besides misguided feelings and delusions of grandeur.

Ms. Rogers also says that Jessie is a sort of mirror image of the character from Greek mythology, Iphigenia, interesting because the name Iphigenia means “she who causes the birth of strong offspring,” and Iphigenia, of course, sacrifices her life for the good of her people. Wikipedia opines,

There are several possible reasons for Iphigeniaâ€™s decision. The first is that Iphigenia wants to please her father and protect the family name. Not only does Iphigenia want to please her father, but she also forgives him for making the decision to sacrifice her. The second reason is that Iphigenia sees this as a patriotic cause. Iphigenia realizes that if she dies, then the men can sail to Troy and win and protect their own women. If the men did not get to Troy to defeat the Trojans then all the Greek women would be raped and possibly killed. Thus, Iphigenia sees her death as saving hundreds of women. A third reason for Iphigeniaâ€™s choice could be a more selfish reason. Iphigenia wants to be remembered with honor through her self-sacrifice, unlike how Helen of Troy is viewed. While the concept of glory is mostly seen in the men who fight, here it is seen in Iphigenia. A final possible reason is that Iphigenia sees bad in her father and now has nothing to live for.

Almost all of Iphigenia’s possible motivations are brought up as motives for Jessie’s sacrifice, but none of them are really convincing. I came to the conclusion that Jessie was acting out of pure stubbornness, and that motivation didn’t endear her to me either.

So, my final analysis of this award-winning novel is that it’s thought-provoking but somehow lacking in warmth and appeal, with the kind of characters that made me wonder and want to be drawn in, but never really got me to snap at the bait.

Semicolon

Books we must have though we lack bread.

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