Why does everyone feel compelled to start Superman somewhere in the 1930s? Oh sure, that's when the original comic came out, but still....
Anyway, thatWhy does everyone feel compelled to start Superman somewhere in the 1930s? Oh sure, that's when the original comic came out, but still....
Anyway, that was just one of the nagging little thoughts that kept going through my mind as I read this book. Overall, it's a good read - we begin with the Kents in 1935, raising a strange and unusual son that they found in a cornfield. Meanwhile, young Lois Lane is trying to make her way as a feisty reporter in New York City - an interesting change. There was no pretense of living in a New York-esque city caled "Metropolis," and DeHaven did a very nice job of making New York of the 1930s very real and ready for the Superman mythos. Lex Luthor, an ambitious alderman, has grand schemes for power and money.
In short, nothing new.
As much as I enjoyed the book - it's well written, the characters are mostly well defined (except for Clark, but we'll get to that) and there's a lot of good dialogue - there's nothing new to be said. Clark is conflicted about being Superman? Done it. Lois is only interested in the one man she can never have? Seen it. Lex Luthor is an evil genius who will do anything for power? Bought the T-shirt, and it was made by a LexCorp subsidiary in Southeast Asia. The book was good, but not new, at least not to me. Maybe to a new fan of the character it'll be a refreshing retelling of Superman's early years, but it all seemed pretty familiar on this end.
About Clark. I said that most of the characters were well fleshed-out and knowable, with Clark as an asterisk. To my mind, we didn't really get to know him as well as even most of the minor characters. I felt I knew Soda Wauters (it's her jazz-club name) better, and she didn't show up until the last quarter of the book. Perhaps intentionally, Clark was very difficult to know. The theme of his story, of course, was "Who am I?" a natural question any young person might be asking himself after the first time a bullet ricochets off his forehead. But I have very little patience for soul-searching superheroes. A little is okay, but to grind on and on about it, to deny the reality of who you are and what you can do gets under my skin after a while. That's why I didn't enjoy Ang Lee's version of The Hulk - too much Banner teeth-gnashing and not enough Hulk SMASH.
But that just probably says something terrible about my own psychological issues, so we'll let that go. In any case, it's a fine piece of work and a good read. Just not something that I will go back to if I really want to know more about who Superman is. For that, I recommend reading Kingdom Come, either the original comic or the novelization by Eliot S. Maggin. Good book. It might show up here later.......more
There was this little town, right? And everybody had, like, the same two namRevised 28 March 2012
Huh? Oh. Oh, man. Wow.
I just had the weirdest dream.
There was this little town, right? And everybody had, like, the same two names. And there was this guy who lived under a tree and a lady who ate dirt and some other guy who just made little gold fishes all the time. And sometimes it rained and sometimes it didn’t, and… and there were fire ants everywhere, and some girl got carried off into the sky by her laundry…
Wow. That was messed up.
I need some coffee.
The was roughly how I felt after reading this book. This is really the only time I’ve ever read a book and thought, “You know, this book would be awesome if I were stoned.” And I don’t even know if being stoned works on books that way.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez (which is such a fun name to say) is one of those Writers You Should Read. You know the type – they’re the ones that everyone claims to have read, but no one really has. The ones you put in your online dating profile so that people will think you’re smarter than you really are. You get some kind of intellectual bonus points or something, the kind of highbrow cachet that you just don’t get from reading someone like Stephen King or Clive Barker.
Marquez was one of the first writers to use “magical realism,” a style of fantasy wherein the fantastic and the unbelievable are treated as everyday occurrences. While I’m sure it contributed to the modern genre of urban fantasy – which also mixes the fantastic with the real – magical realism doesn’t really go out of its way to point out the weirdness and the bizarrity. These things just happen. A girl floats off into the sky, a man lives far longer than he should, and these things are mentioned in passing as though they were perfectly normal.
In this case, Colonel Aureliano Buendia has seventeen illegitimate sons, all named Aureliano, by seventeen different women, and they all come to his house on the same day. Remedios the Beauty is a girl so beautiful that men just waste away in front of her, but she doesn’t even notice. The twins Aureliano Segundo and Jose Arcadio Segundo may have, in fact, switched identities when they were children, but no one knows for sure – not even them. In the small town of Macondo, weird things happen all the time, and nobody really notices. Or if they do notice that, for example, the town’s patriarch has been living for the last twenty years tied to a chestnut tree, nobody thinks anything is at all unusual about it.
This, of course, is a great example of Dream Logic – the weird seems normal to a dreamer, and you have no reason to question anything that’s happening around you. Or if you do notice that something is wrong, but no one else seems to be worried about it, then you try to pretend like coming to work dressed only in a pair of spangly stripper briefs and a cowboy hat is perfectly normal.
Another element of dreaminess that pervades this book is that there’s really no story here, at least not in the way that we have come to expect. Reading this book is kind of like a really weird game of The Sims - it’s about a family that keeps getting bigger and bigger, and something happens to everybody. So, the narrator moves around from one character to another, giving them their moment for a little while, and then it moves on to someone else, very smoothly and without much fanfare. There’s very little dialogue, so the story can shift very easily, and it often does.
Each character has their story to tell, but you’re not allowed to linger for very long on any one of them before Garcia shows you what’s happening to someone else. The result is one long, continuous narrative about this large and ultimately doomed family, wherein the Buendia family itself is the main character, and the actual family members are secondary to that.
It was certainly an interesting reading experience, but it took a while to get through. I actually kept falling asleep as I read it, which is unusual for me. But perhaps that’s what Garcia would have wanted to happen. By reading his book, I slipped off into that non-world of dreams and illusions, where the fantastic is commonplace and ice is something your father takes you to discover.
------ “[Arcadio] imposed obligatory military service for men over eighteen, declared to be public property any animals walking the streets after six in the evening, and made men who were overage wear red armbands. He sequestered Father Nicanor in the parish house under pain of execution and prohibited him from saying mass or ringing the bells unless it was for a Liberal victory. In order that no one would doubt the severity of his aims, he ordered a firing squad organized in the square and had it shoot a scarecrow. At first no one took him seriously.”...more
The main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad.
He reads Japanese books exclusivelThe main reason I read this book is because my co-worker translated it. And, in its way, that makes me slightly sad.
He reads Japanese books exclusively now, and will be returning to the US to take up translating full time. For a while now, I've been hearing about all these books he's been going through, and they all sound really weird and really cool. Mystical battles for the fate of reality, clumsy vampire girls who get thundering nosebleeds, motorcycling pre-teens with guns, visiting little isolated countries.... They're all really interesting-sounding, and I can't read any of them. Admittedly, I haven't put nearly as much effort into learning to read Japanese that he has, so I have only myself to blame. Still....
Boogiepop is one of those weirdly brilliant ideas that take a little while to wrap your head around. At Shinyo Academy, a second-rate high school somewhere in Japan, girls are disappearing. The teachers and police figure they're runaways - after all, these aren't the prize students, the cream of the crop. They're pretty well ordinary, and if a few girls run off every now and then, well, these things happen.
But the girls at Shinyo Academy have a legend. A rumor. The boys don't know about it, but I daresay they'll find out. The secret is Boogiepop.
Boogiepop is.... Well, I don't think even he knows what he is. Is he an alien intelligence possessing the body of young Miyashita Touka? Is he simply a repressed expression of her personality? Is he a shinigami, a death-spirit who takes girls while they're still pretty?
Maybe.
Whatever Boogiepop is, he's the only thing that is standing between the Manticore - the man-eater - and the end of the world. The Manticore has insinuated itself into the school and seduced - or been seduced by - one of the boys. It has terrible plans, and Boogiepop might thwart them. If he feels like it.
It's a weird book. You get a crash course in Japanese high school life, albeit even the author admits that the school in his book is a lot more strict than most high schools are these days. Forbidding dating, having teachers patrol the neighborhood on off hours to make sure the kids aren't frittering away their youth by having fun.... The relationships between the characters are complex, affected by gender, age and position much more than those of us from an American high school might be used to. But the narrative is oddly compelling and complex.
Oh, and the author doesn't deal with such childish fripperies as "linear storytelling." The various sections of the story are told from the points of view of various people, from various points in time. There are flashbacks and flash-forwards, and from time to time we see the same event from the perspective of two or even three different people (although from what I've proofread in my free lessons, the next book has one event viewed from no less than four different points of view). It takes a little bit of getting used to, but he does warn you, right in the beginning....
For those of you who are into Young Adult fiction (and you know who you are), definitely check it out. The translation is very readable and natural (and I'm not just saying that because I helped to proofread it), and it's a fun and complicated story. Plus, there's a nice preview of volume two, where you get to meet the cram school guidance counselor who can tell a person's personality by the image of plants that he sees in their chest. Like I said, weird. But good.
[1] The Japanese is Boogiepop wa wararanai, which can be translated either as "Boogiepop Doesn't Smile" or "Boogiepop Doesn't Laugh." The former being the more interesting (and thematically accurate) translation, the publishing company naturally chose the latter. The translator is still pissed about it....more
When you think about Darth Vader, many things come to mind. Dark Lord of the Sith. Bane of the Jedi. Throat-Crusher Supreme.
Emo?
No.
Of REVISED: 4/19/12
When you think about Darth Vader, many things come to mind. Dark Lord of the Sith. Bane of the Jedi. Throat-Crusher Supreme.
Emo?
No.
Of all my complaints about the new trilogy – and there are many – the biggest one has to do with how Anakin Skywalker was handled. I grew up loving Darth Vader. He was a vicious bastard, but by gods he was awesome about it. He was a hard-ass who inspired terror wherever he went, and he was a man who overcame insurmountable evils to ultimately redeem himself. From the moment we see him emerge from the smoke in A New Hope, we know that this is a man to be feared and reckoned with.
He never said, “Yippee,” and he most certainly was never a mopey little emoboi. I despised the choice to make Anakin a whiny little brat who was turned to the Dark Side. And please note the passive voice there – “was turned.” He was manipulated and pushed and pulled, and finally when Palpatine said, “Go murder children,” Anakin just said, “Okay,” and did it. I never got the feeling that Anakin was making his own choices in these movies, or doing terrible things because he truly thought they were the right thing to do.
The title of Darth Vader fit very, very poorly on this wet noodle of a Sith-wannabe, and that, more than anything else, made me very angry about the new trilogy.
So, in comes James Luceno to clean things up.
Set about a month after the events in Episode 3, this book starts Vader’s transformation from mopey to malicious.
Despite the best efforts of the Clone Army, some Jedi survived the initial massacre of Order 66. One of those, a Jedi named Roan Shyne, is trying to lead his dead comrade’s padawan to safety, wherever safety may be found. He’s questioning his purpose now, in a world where evil has emerged victorious, and where the Jedi are no more. Should he make a stand and die defending the Idea, or should he obey Yoda’s last orders and go to ground?
Sadly, he’s a principle character in a Star Wars novel, so the Force takes the choice out of his hands. He finds himself drawn ever closer into the mystery of the Empire and the Emperor. And Vader.
Who, I might add, is having issues of his own. The first three pages of his first POV scene are about how uncomfortable the Suit is (Luceno talked to the folks at LucasArts to find out what it was like), and how miserable he is being a nubby lump of burned flesh inside a mobile life-support system. He can’t see properly, can’t hear normally, can’t move like he used to – hell, he can barely walk steady, much less wield a lightsaber like he used to.
Palpatine, being the good mentor that he is, knows exactly how to cure Vader’s blues: give him a project, something to keep his mind off things. Like hunting people down and killing them.
Luceno handles the transition from brat to demon very delicately and very smoothly. By the time the book is over, Vader still isn’t the avatar of evil that he will one day become, but he’s certainly over the hump. In addition, the advantage of writing a prequel story is that you can boost the power of events that happen later on, giving them much more significance. When Vader finally kills Palpatine at the end of Return of the Jedi, for example, the moment is a little richer and more powerful for having seen what Palpatine put Vader through in his early days.
In this book, we get a good look at the Master-Disciple relationship of the Sith, and the precarious balance that it requires. The Master works his hardest to break and subjugate his disciple in order to make him strong enough so that he will one day exceed his master. The problem is that, traditionally, the disciple usually kills the master at that point, finds a new disciple of his own, and the cycle begins anew. Palpatine is looking to avoid that, if at all possible, and Vader is just itching for a chance. The key is that power is an end unto itself, and the cycle of murder is just a part of that.
But at the end of Jedi, Vader kills his master for the benefit of another, something that is antithetical to the core philosophy of the Sith. Vader gained no power by killing Palpatine, at least not in the sense that he understood “power” up to that point.
Star Wars purists might stay away from the novels, and that’s certainly their right. I think this one is worth reading, though. It’s an excellent move away from the horrorshow that was the new trilogy, and does a very good job at helping us rediscover the Darth Vader that we all came to know and love.
------------------------------- “The old system is dead, senator. You would be wise to subscribe to the new one.” - Darth Vader...more
This was a tough one. Partly because it has a fairly steep learning curve to it - you know you're in trouble when there's two maps and a character indThis was a tough one. Partly because it has a fairly steep learning curve to it - you know you're in trouble when there's two maps and a character index at the beginning of the book - but also because I kept finding reasons not to read it. Instead of reading this book, I surfed the net, made detailed street and public transportation maps of Kyoto for lessons, and also made maps of the New York City subway for both midtown and downtown Manhattan, also for lessons (you should see their faces when I pull these out - priceless), did crossword puzzles, designed a sigil that I'm not quite sure how to use, copied the Sephiroth into my notebook, and put together a timeline for the Planetary series by Warren Ellis, despite knowing damn well that there's already at least one out there if I just Google it.
It's not that it was a bad book, even. There are some great characters, a very detailed world, and some wonderfully rendered scenes that show the author's genuine love for the work he's created.
I just didn't really care.
It's a fantasy, set in some alternate Earth - a medieval Spain-That-Wasn't, where Christian and Islamist forces contend against each other for control of the peninsula, and the Jews get stomped on at every turn. Except that here, they're Jaddites, Ashirites and Kindath, each with their own god, who is an aspect of the sky - Sun, Stars and Moons (yes, there are two), respectively.
For years, the two have occupied the peninsula in a shaky coexistence, but history will out - Rodrigo Belmonte and Ammar ibn Khairan, the best examples of men that the Jaddites and Ashirites have to offer, are the avatars of the two nations. Incredibly enough, they discover right away how well they work together, and realize that, while war and death and bloodshed may be inevitable, that doesn't mean they can't get some good done. With them is the Kindath physician Jehane, daughter of the greatest doctor the world has ever known, who has to decide how to ally herself with those who would just as soon see her people destroyed.
To give you an idea of how firmly the book stuck in my mind - I had to look up two of those three names. And I just finished it fifteen minutes ago.
Like I said - it's not a bad book. It just didn't grab me. On to other things.......more
This year is the hundredth anniversary of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and so there are many who are marking it. TV shows, magazine articlThis year is the hundredth anniversary of the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake, and so there are many who are marking it. TV shows, magazine articles and, of course, books. One of them is this one, A Crack in the Edge of the World. Winchester, an accomplished writer of non-fiction, is more than willing to take a look at how this great national tragedy happened.
It all started 4.6 billion years ago....
In order to explain the San Francisco earthquake, there's a lot the reader needs to know. About plate tectonics, of course, and the history of how the continents of the world were formed and moved about. About geography and history, politics and gold rushes and fads. In other words, in order to understand how the quake happened, as well as why it's so important in American history, you need a whole lot of background. Winchester does a very smooth job guiding you through billions of years of history and multiple academic fields with grace and gentility.
The events of April 1906 were important - the near-destruction of a major American city should always be. They were also very, very relevant. With all the descriptions of the 1906 event, the shadow of Katrina can be seen. A hundred years apart, both disasters were eerily similar.
They were two cities that were built in areas with a high risk for natural disaster. When the disaster hit, the nation poured in its support, but at the same time, people tried to shift blame and responsibility as quickly as they could. Most importantly, people tried to redirect the truth of the disaster.
The leaders of San Francisco in 1906 said that the true disaster was not the earthquake, but the ensuing fire - forgetting that the fire wouldn't have been as disastrous if they had heeded the warnings of builders and scientists years before.
The leaders of New Orleans in 2005 said that the true disaster was not the hurricane, but the ensuing floods - forgetting that the floods would not have caused nearly as much destruction if they had heeded the warnings of builders and scientists years before.
In both cases, Nature is exonerated and, most importantly, the wisdom of building a city in a disaster-prone area is not called into question. It is assumed that, with planning and preparation, Man can overcome Nature.
This is, as we have seen time and time again, impossible.
The Earthquake of 1906 is still relevant, and its lessons are still important. And while Winchester doesn't go out of his way to make these connections, they are easy for the reader to make.......more
P.J. O'Rourke is a kind of guilty pleasure of mine - a conservative columnist. While I tend to disagree with him - a lot - he's funny and insightful aP.J. O'Rourke is a kind of guilty pleasure of mine - a conservative columnist. While I tend to disagree with him - a lot - he's funny and insightful and aware that most of the time, there are no easy answers to anything. While it may feel good to say, "Screw France, we do what we want," it's never quite as simple as all that.
This book is a collection of articles that he wrote from various combat zones, mostly centering around the Middle East. He writes from Israel and Egypt and, of course, Iraq. This is what he has seen of war and terrorism. He's a very good observer and, like the best of reporters, he is not afraid to ask that extra question that gets him a little closer to the Truth.
The question, however, is what the Truth is, and this book doesn't really help figure it out. While the essays are certainly interesting - especially the Iwo Jima epilogue - it's tough to figure out quite what he's trying to get at here. Maybe because he figures we're intelligent enough to figure it out.
Near as I can tell, it's this - war sucks, but it is necessary. And there are those out there who will ensure that it never ends. The best the rest of us can do is to hope for the best.......more
This is one of my top five books. Whenever anyone asks me, "What is your favorite book?" this is at or near the top. It was the first adult-length booThis is one of my top five books. Whenever anyone asks me, "What is your favorite book?" this is at or near the top. It was the first adult-length book I read when I was in Elementary school, and I have every intention of getting my hands on a copy for my goddaughter at some point soon. I remember watching the movie when they used to show it annually on CBS, way back in those days beyond recall....
Why should this book, of all the books I've ever read in my life, stay so dear to me? I have no idea. Perhaps because, even though its main characters are rabbits, it isn't a "talking animals" book. Adams didn't talk down to his readers, and assumed that they were ready to follow Hazel and Fiver wherever they went. And so, unusually for children's literature, there is violence and loss and true danger in this book. Characters die. Unpleasantly. The rabbits live in fear of mankind and the Thousand, and accomplish great things despite. They do what no rabbit had done before, and find a new world for themselves. And, of course, are forced to fight for it.
Our heroes, you see, are living an idyllic life in a warren in England. They do what rabbits do - eat, sleep, mate, and entertain themselves. But one rabbit, Fiver, can see more clearly than others. He can sense danger, and grasp the shape of the future, and he knows that any rabbit who stays where they are will certainly die. With his brother, Hazel, Fiver and a small group of rabbits leave their home.
They do what rabbits never do - they explore. They go through dense woods and cross streams. They hide among gardens and search for the best place they can find to set up their new warren - a safe place, high in the hills, where they can see all around and the ground is dry. They seek to build a new society, as so many humans have done in our history.
And what's more, they try to build the best society that they can. The need leadership, yes, but how much? How much freedom should the ordinary rabbit have to live its life? This question becomes more and more important when they meet the cruel General Woundwort, de facto leader of the warren known as Efrafa.
The battle that they have, choosing between personal liberty and the safety of the warren, is emblematic of so many struggles that have gone on in our world, and continue today. Through a tale about rabbits, Adams manages to tell us about ourselves, which is the mark of a great writer.
As cynical as I have become in my years, I still find this story to be honest and true. Adams isn't trying to make an allegory or grind an axe. He's trying to tell a good story about hope and perseverance and triumph over adversity, a story with - as Tolkien put it, "applicability" - that we can overlay onto our own lives and experiences. The fact that the main characters are rabbits is incidental.
Well, not really. Another layer to this story is the culture that Adams has created. The stories of Frith and El-ahrairah (which, I've just noticed, is misprinted on the first page of the contents in this edition as "El-ahrairah." Weird) are sometimes deep and meaningful, sometimes fun and silly, but always relevant and rich, in the tradition of oral storytelling. There is a language to the rabbits, which is regularly used throughout the book (and one complete sentence in lapine - Silflay hraka u embleer rah. Memorable....) Adams did a lot of research into the social structure of rabbits and their lifestyles, making it as accurate is it could be....
Anyway, every young person should read this. Hell, older people should read it too. Every time I read the story, it moves me. I can hear the voices of the characters clearly and see what they see. I am inspired by the steadfastness of Hazel, the strength of Bigwig and the resolve of Blackavar. I find qualities in these characters that I would like to possess, and that's as good a reason as any to love a book.
As a side note, this book is the reason I got into Magic: The Gathering way back in college. For a long time, I thought it was just a stupid card game, with no cultural or imaginative merit. Then I happened across a "Thunder Spirit" card, which had a quote from Watership Down at the bottom:
[image]
"It was full of fire and smoke and light and...it drove between us and the Efrafans like a thousand thunderstorms with lightning."
Still gives me goosebumps.
Anyway, I thought, "Maybe there's something to this," and the rest was (very expensive) history.......more
It's interesting that it took me six years to get around to reading this. I mean, it's one of the things that people always mention when they wonder iIt's interesting that it took me six years to get around to reading this. I mean, it's one of the things that people always mention when they wonder if Japan is just like they thought it was. This and Lost in Translation, which I can't watch without becoming cripplingly depressed.
This book, though, is wonderful. At the same time, it was well worth the wait.
Why, you might ask? Because I can probably, within two streets, pinpoint the location of the main character's home in Gion. When she talks about the Minamiza or Kaburenjo theatres, I've been there. When she performs in the "Dances of the Old Capital," I've seen it. She walks across the small bridge over the Shirakawa, and so have I.
I cannot tell you what a rush that is. It gives me a warm feeling to know that people all over the world are imagining Gion as they read this book, and coming up with images of sublime beauty and utter Japanese style. They imagine, but I know, and I know it's all true.
At least when the tourists are thin on the ground.
This is a very good book, and Golden, I have to say, is a hell of a writer. How an American man, living at the end of the 20th century could write in the voice of a Japanese geisha in the pre and post war years is astounding to me. For a man to write in a convincing first person female voice is hard enough work, I know. But to jump that hurdle and then proceed to go over hurdles of time, society, culture, tradition, and still have it sound utterly and completely real when you read it.... He did a lot of research, yes, including one-on-one interviews with former geisha in Gion, but still.... Kudos.
For those of you who haven't actually read the book, go out and get it. As the title suggests, it is the story of a young woman who, when she was a child, was sold to a geisha house in Gion, the most famous geisha district in Kyoto - and Japan. It goes through her struggle to adjust to life in Gion, so very different from the little fishing village in which she had lived, and her attempts to find out both who she is and who she wants to be. There are some laughs, there are some heartbreaking moments, and some very, very difficult choices she has to make. But it all works out in the end, I guess.
I haven't seen the movie yet, though I probably will once it comes to DVD. I already know there's no way it can be as good as the book....more
Alex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signaAlex Kerr is one of those writers you have to end up reading when you live here. There's this book and Dogs and Demons, which invariably tend to signal the end of the Japan Honeymoon for any long-time resident.
To explain - for a lot of people who come here, Kerr included, there's a kind of romantic idea of Japan that keeps people here. It's the Zen and the temples, the red torii gates, the yukata and the festivals. It's the Japanese Mind and the Far East attitude, so different from our own, that entrances us and keeps us here.
Then along comes the moment you realize that, as with so many things in this world, the romantic ideal doesn't match the reality. That's where Kerr comes in.
He's lived here for many years, and spent all of that time getting to know Japan and its culture, and like so many people who study Japan's culture, he mourns its demise. He longs for the simplicity of hidden valleys, of wabi tea bowls and the days when you could buy really good calligraphy cheaply at auctions. He has en entire chapter entitled, "Kyoto Hates Kyoto," about how the city, so desperate to be a Modern City, is tearing down everything that made it the cultural center of Japan. He sees Japan in a state of flux, and he's really worried that it'll go the wrong way.
This book is a series of essays about his life in Japan, the things he's seen that he doesn't see so often anymore. It's pessimistic, to say the least, though not quite so pessimistic as Dogs and Demons is. This kind of harsh eye has led to Kerr being labeled as a Japan-basher, which is a very odd thing to say about someone who's spent most of his life studying and living in Japan.
As he notes, though, there are certain fundamental forces in Japan that resist change, and not the least of those forces are the Romantics who refuse to admit that Japan, the land of philosophy, tea ceremony and Zen, is royally screwing itself up.
He is hopeful, though. He believes that this is another age of transition for Japan, and knows - or at least I think he knows - that no age, however glorious, can last forever. Many of the things he loves about this country will indeed be lost, in the fullness of time. All we can really hope for is that amazing things will arise to take their place....more
Soseki is one of Japan's most famous pre-war novelists. He wrote tons of books, lived in London for a while, and was featured on the thousand yen billSoseki is one of Japan's most famous pre-war novelists. He wrote tons of books, lived in London for a while, and was featured on the thousand yen bill until a couple of years ago. So, yeah, I thought I'd give him a try.
Actually, I'd read this once before, a little while after I got here. I didn't really get it, and put it away to be sold or given or something. But, after going through books to put up on Bookmooch, I figured I'd give it another shot.
Also, Takeo Doi used Botchan in his book The Anatomy of Self to illustrate the extremes of honne (the "inner self" that one keeps quiet in order to get along with others in society), and that book was pretty interesting, so I thought this time I might get more out of it.
Indeed, Doi has an excellent perspective on this book. Our narrater, whose nickname is one you would give to a demanding child (it means "little master"), is utterly incapable of understanding one of the most basic lessons of adulthood - It's Not All About You.
He was a willful child, who easily roused his parents' anger. His mother died after she'd sent him away to relatives, and he viewed this as a kind of ultimate punishment. His brother wants nothing to do with him, he has no friends, and no prospect of a bright future. He views any obstacle as an attack, and reacts instantly with an attack of his own. Long story short (too late), he's an asshole. The only person who has any love for him is his old nurse, Kiyo, and she treats him as an indulged child. No wonder she's the only one he seems to like as well.
As we go through life, we learn how to deal with other people. We learn how to give up some of the things we want in order to keep our environment running smoothly. It's a carefully laid web of tradition, customs, social dance steps and lies that allow the world to spin, and learning how to navigate this web is a necessary part of growing up. And Botchan can't do it. Indeed, he's not even aware that it exists.
When he is transferred to a middle school in a small country town, he is dropped headfirst into this tangled web and almost instantly makes a mess of it. When the waitresses at the inn are nice, he sees them as condescending. When the innkeeper at his second boarding house tries to be friendly, Botchan sees opportunism. When the boys at the school indulge in hijinks, Botchan immediately knows it to be harassment.
The only person he gets along with is the other math teacher, but only because the math teacher's need for revenge coincides with Botchan's. Until that point, the math teacher is another adversary.
I kept thinking through this book how similar Botchan is to Holden Caulfield. Both of them impose their own faults on the people around them, and refuse to admit their own shortcomings. Neither of them know how to live in their worlds, the only difference being that at least Holden knows what he's done to his life and feels powerless to change it. Botchan has no idea that he's such a dick, and probably wouldn't care if he did.
It's kind of funny and kind of tragic. A classic of modern Japanese literature.......more
I get the feeling that Stephenson's writing process goes something like this:
Hey, I found a really cool idea here. I wonder what I can do about it....I get the feeling that Stephenson's writing process goes something like this:
Hey, I found a really cool idea here. I wonder what I can do about it....
He then writes about 200 pages of really awesome, meticulous world-building, with innovative ideas about, in the case of this book, the possibly uses of nanotechnology and its eventual social ramifications, and then goes, Oh, damn, I'm writing a story, and high-tails it to the end of the book, leaving the reader a little wind-blown and confused. It happened in Snow Crash, where he was playing with the origins of language and the fundamental functioning of the human mind. It happened in Cryptonomicon, where he dove into the murky waters of cryptography and brought up brilliant gems, and it happened here, too.
The Diamond Age is, fundamentally, about what would happen, or what might happen, if we really got nanotechnology working properly. How would society adapt if, suddenly, government became obsolete? With the Feed and the Matter Compilers able to create anything out of nothing, the entire economic and political underpinnings of the planet came undone, and people banded together into phyles. Like-minded individuals bonded with each other through shared values and morality, united only by a commonly upheld treaty which, in turn, rested on the new economy that nanotechnology allowed.
Within one of the phyles, the Neo-Victorians, one of the more highly-placed Lords realized what was wrong with the world. The problem wasn't the corruption of values of which the old always accuse the young - indeed it was that those values were passed on too well. Children did not elect to join their phyles, they were indoctrinated into them from birth, which made them, well, boring.
And so Lord Finkle-McGraw commissioned a great work - The Young Lady's Illustrated Primer to guide his granddaughter to a more interesting life. And had that been all that happened, the story would have been short. But two other copes of the Primer were made - one for the daughter of the book's designer, and another that fell into the hands of Nell, a young girl born into poverty and otherwise destined to lead a life of misery and sorrow.
The Primer is a smart book, fully interactive, able to teach reading, science, history and martial arts, among other things. And what it teaches little Nell is how to be great.
All of this is quite awesome - there's a great hunt for the Primer, plans within plans and all that. And then, suddenly, a new plot about a technology to supplant the Feed and some kind of Chinese revolution and the whole book runs off the rails.
I know a lot of people love Neal Stephenson, and I can understand why. He's an incomparably imaginative man, who is able to find ways to express ideas that some of us couldn't even imagine. He's an heir to the world of that William Gibson and his contemporaries pioneered. He creates captivating worlds and characters and problems without simple solutions.
He just keeps bollixing up the endings. Seriously, it's like a whole different story kicks in around page 250. I'm willing to read more of his works, though, in the hope that he's getting his act together.......more
One of the most powerful questions available to any writer is "What if?" What if there were a monster living under a small New England town? What if yOne of the most powerful questions available to any writer is "What if?" What if there were a monster living under a small New England town? What if you could time travel back to the Middle Ages? What if you could build a new universe in the lab? Most of the time, these "What if" questions become fantasy or science fiction, but in the hands of someone like Harry Turtledove, they become history. In this case, the question was, "What if the Japanese had occupied Hawaii after attacking Pearl Harbor in 1941?"
As I discovered when I turned the last page of the book, this is actually a sequel to the book Days of Infamy, which describes the actual attack and occupation. Knowing this helped explain a few things that bugged me about this book, namely the over-rapid shift from character to character. We whip from pilot-in-training Joe Crosetti to Japanese Lieutenant Saburo Shindo to American POW Jim Peterson with lightning speed, sketchy backgrounds and an assumption that you already know who they are. Which, if you had read the preceding book (which I will, if I can find it), you would have.
The first half of the book is kind of jumpy and tough to follow, mainly because I was coming into the story halfway. But the second half, when the Americans come to retake the island, was brilliant. Turtledove has spend most of his career writing about war and combat and can make what could be a chaotic mess of airplane dueling and ship combat into an exciting page-turner. Even better, he knows his history cold, and is able to extrapolate from what really happened into what might have happened.
At last, the book you've been waiting for - a book of gay samurai love stories! Woo-hoo! Hot Bushido love! Awwwwww yeah.....
No, seriously, it's short At last, the book you've been waiting for - a book of gay samurai love stories! Woo-hoo! Hot Bushido love! Awwwwww yeah.....
No, seriously, it's short stories of gay samurai love.
You see, here's the thing - prior to the modern era of Japan, the attitude towards gay love was similar to that of ancient Greece. Women were fine for having children and securing alliances and building property, but if you want real passion, real true love, you needed a bright-eyed young boy. This kind of relationship between an older man and an adolescent boy, generally known as pederasty (which is often wrongly confused with pedophilia), was considered a natural and healthy bond in those days, and assuming that both parties acted honorably and respectfully, it was mutually beneficial.
As in many other world cultures, this kind of bond was a common one, especially amongst the religious and ruling classes - people who were less interested in breeding large families and more interested in the aesthetic aspects of romance and eroticism. It wasn't necessarily a lifelong bond, but it could be, and some of these pairings have inspired love stories as passionate and heartbreaking as any other.
This being Japan, of course, most of the love stories in this book don't end well. About half tend to finish with seppuku, ending the lives of the lovers and, occasionally, other people who are unlucky enough to be in the area. The story All Comrade-Lovers Die by Hara-Kiri is a case in point - it's the story of Ukyo, Uneme and Samanousuke, three youths bound together by a deep, passionate love. When Ukyo murders a romantic rival in order to prevent the deaths of his friends, he is ordered to kill himself to pay for it. His beloved Uneme joins him in death, and Samanousuke, unable to live without either of the men he loves, takes his own life soon after.
Then there's Love Vowed to the Dead, in which young Muranousuke fulfills the dying wish of his best friend Gorokitji by giving himself to Gorokitji's lost lover. In He Died to Save his Lover, young Korin allows himself to be tortured and executed by one lover to save the life of another, and of course, He Followed his Friend into the Other World, After Torturing him to Death, which is pretty much what it sounds like. Let it be said, though, that Sasanousuke didn't mean for Hayemon to freeze to death, it just kind of happened that way.
In my favorite, The Tragic Love of Two Enemies, a man, Senpatji, falls in love with the young son of the samurai that he had been ordered to kill many years before. The boy, Shynousuke, is ordered by his mother to kill Senpatji, and thus avenge his father, but the boy cannot bring himself to murder the man he loves - especially since Senpatji had been acting under the orders of his lord. He convinces his mother to give them one more night together, which she does, because she's not completely heartless. She finds them dead the next morning, both impaled through their hearts on Shynousuke's sword.
Who says the Japanese aren't romantic?
There are happy(ish) tales, too. Tales of constant dedication, of loyalty and hidden desires in the courtly world of the ruling classes of Edo-period Japan. Men and boys endure great hardships and risk their lives to be together, an on occasion get to spend the rest of their lives together.
These stories were all written back in the 17th century and the author gained great notoriety writing these kinds of soft romances. One of his books was titled, Glorious Tales of Pederasty, which I would really love to see on a bookshelf at Borders someday. Just to see the reactions.... There's a whole lot of, "They lay together through the night" kind of language, and a general avoidance of sordid detail. Still, they're well-written, and well-translated, so you can get a very good sense, in these short, short stories, of the kinds of relationships that popped up among the samurai class way back before Western prudishness got its claws into people. In the preface to Glorious Tales, Ihara says:
Our eyes are soiled by the soft haunches and scarlet petticoats of women. These female beauties are good for nothing save to give pleasure to old men in lands where there is not a single good-looking boy. If a man is interested in women, he can never know the joys of pederasty.
So that should give you an idea of the cultural divide you're working against when you pick up this book. It's tough for us modern folks, whose culture is dead set against cross-generational homosexual relationships, to really be comfortable reading stories like this. Usually when you hear stories about a grown man and a teenage boy, it's immediately classified as "abuse." Images of windowless panel vans, sweaty gym teachers, NAMBLA meetings rise up and.... Yeah.
Speaking from an American perspective, I can't think of any situation where a relationship such as the ones in this book would ever be considered acceptable, despite the purity of the feelings involved. The characters in these stories, it must be noted, are not leches. They're not Herbert from Family Guy. But no matter how pure my intentions might be, if I were to start hanging around the arcades, chatting up fifteen year-old boys, my life as a respectable citizen would be effectively over.
Even assuming that a relationship built on pederasty can be mutually beneficial - and it could be argued that it can - it's still a) illegal in most places and b) massively creepy. So that makes it an interesting challenge to get into these stories. Life was different back then, after all. The extended childhood that we take for granted in our teenage years pretty much didn't exist. As soon as someone reached the age of sexual maturity, they were basically proto-adults, rather than lingering children, and were therefore fair game. So as much as I hate to invoke cultural relativism (because I find it wishy-washy and noncommittal), I have to just say, "It was a different time." In times gone by, pederastic relationships worked, but our culture has moved to a point now where even if it were legalized, the emotional and experiential gulf between the older and younger party would probably make it impossible to go beyond a relationship built on physical eroticism.
Still, the feelings in these stories are just as valid and pure as "traditional" romances, the obstacles they overcome and risks they take are just as real and just as difficult. If you can set aside your more judgmental self, you can appreciate the depth of feeling that existed in these relationships, and recognize the universal themes of all great love stories - discovery, love, loss, betrayal, redemption.... They're all here. So get reading....more
I do enjoy reading Japanese fiction, especially that fiction that stands on the fringes of fantasy and reality. Haruki Murakami is a master of this, wI do enjoy reading Japanese fiction, especially that fiction that stands on the fringes of fantasy and reality. Haruki Murakami is a master of this, with his weird underground people and border universes. Banana Yoshimoto is equally skilled, writing exquisite short stories about the minor strangeness that one might encounter in life.
About a strange shapeshifting creature that rides the train, trying to tempt salarymen to leave their lives of dullness and predictability. A woman who can heal with her mind, but finds that it takes a little bit of her soul away each time. A man who creates simple metal amulets that absolutely radiate with the quality of amae, that unique Japanese concept of total immersion in a greater unconditional love.
In her afterward to this book, she says that all the stories she chose were those about hope, and the utter terror and exhilaration of finding hope for the first time. Hope, she believes, is not something that we are born with. It is, rather, something that is presented to us, something that comes to us by way of a small change, an insignificant alteration in our reality that gives the glimmering of another way. And that can be a wonderful thing, as so many people say, or it can be utterly repellent. Each case is unique, and this book is a group of six stories about the rise of hope and what can come after.......more
**spoiler alert** I liked it. I really did. I laughed, I cheered, I said "Holy SHIT!" at least twice.... I even got a little choked up at some points.**spoiler alert** I liked it. I really did. I laughed, I cheered, I said "Holy SHIT!" at least twice.... I even got a little choked up at some points. All in all, I'd say it was a successful end to the series. Ms. Rowling deserves to take a little time off and enjoy basking in the glow of the knowledge that she has not only written seven successful books in ten years, but created an entire world that is big enough to fit hundreds more.
Anyway, about this actual book. It felt a lot longer than the rest of them did, probably because of the format change - no more Hogwarts, no more Quidditch, points gained, points lost, detentions with Snape and all that. Our Heroes were kept on the run for pretty much the entire book, so that by the time you get to the climax you think, "Wow, did they do all that in just 500 pages? A wedding, a break-in at the Ministry, a break-in at Gringotts, a major battle in the Malfoy mansion, a brush with death at Godrick's Hollow and all that in just 500 pages? Hot damn...."
Speaking of Gringotts, that's one of the many reasons I liked this book. Rowling told us in book one that you'd have to be a fool to break into Gringotts, and most authors would require you to take it on their word. But she went and showed us, and came up with a hell of a scenario.
As much fun as it was finding out that Dumbledore was just as obnoxious in his youth as most of us are was cool, it did feel a bit forced. The entire scene where Aunt Muriel lectured Doge on Dumbledore's youthful indiscretions and mysterious family goings-on should have just WARNING: EXPOSITION stamped on it in red. I'm not sure what the purpose of it was, other than to humanize Dumbledore and to give us a lead-in to the Deathly Hallows. Which I'm still of two minds about anyway. As cool as the idea was, I don't think we should have had to wait until this late in the series to find out about them. At the end of Half-Blood Prince, Harry's path is straight and sure - Horicruxes all the way - and now we have this distraction in the Hallows. Also deserving of the EXPOSITION stamp: Snape's final memories in the Pensieve and Harry's last conversation with Dumbledore.
I don't know, maybe it was to give him the choice between destroying Voldemort and defeating Voldemort or something. I haven't really processed it all yet, since I did read the book at approximately Mach 4, which is not the recommended reading speed. Perhaps I'll be more comfortable with the Hallows in the re-read.
And then there was the camping sequence. I get it - they're lost in more ways than one. I suspect this may have been an artifact of the one book = one year format. It was probably also meant to keep us in a sense of heightened danger, but that's pretty much where I felt the book drag.
Okay, now that I'm done nit-picking...
DEATH!
Ms. Rowling said in an interview that this book "isn't a bloodbath."
Oh really?
1. Hedwig - This was Rowling saying, "I'm not fucking around. I've just killed Harry's most faithful companion, his tether to the world in which he belongs. Imagine what else I'm planning."
2. Mad-Eye Mooney - A fallen warrior, just like the chapter title says. I think Mad-Eye would have been surprised to survive this battle - of all the Order of the Phoenix he seemed most in tune with the reality that they faced.
3. Dobby - This was where I got choked up, I don't mind telling you. Dobby didn't deserve a knife in the heart. Hell, he didn't deserve to die at all. Having said that, he died very well, and his death was handled with dignity. It was also another reminder from Rowling - "See? I killed off another completely innocent character. You people have no idea what you're in for...."
4. Wormtail - Devious bastard. Good riddance. I would have liked to have seen more of his super-hand in action, though. What was it truly capable of?
5. Crabbe - We finally hear him speak! And we find out he's been hiding his light under a bushel. Too bad it then proceeded to burn up the bushel, and the room it was in.
6. Fred - I hate being right. Dammit.
7. Snape - Ah yes, Snape. This was done well. She kept us wondering right up to the end, and it paid off. I seriously thought he was on the dark side, but that's probably because I have no faith in real human beings, much less fictional ones. Now since I'm not a fan-fictioner, or a 'shipper, I never caught on to the idea that Snape and Lily might have had any relationship prior to Hogwarts. I thought her reaction to James' hazing was simply out of compassion for her fellow human being. I had no idea. Anyway, it's good to be wrong. Knowing everything will certainly make re-reads a little more interesting....
8. Remus and
9. Tonks - There seems to be a lot of anger out there about the way they died - off-screen and without much impact. A lot of people appear to have a lot invested in their relationship, which surprised me. I thought they were an interesting couple, and the idea of their child was very fertile ground for future storytelling, but their relationship was never a central storyline to begin with. Every step of it was happing without the reader's knowledge. It was just revealed to us through Harry. Their courtship, their wedding, their child and their death, none of it was meant to be - and I know I'm going to get snapped at for this - important. They were a nice couple, but as we've already seen, "nice" doesn't exempt you from dying in this book.
If you want to get analytical about it, it is probable that the orphaning of young Ted Lupin was meant to provide a positive mirror to Harry's own experience: here is another child of a wizarding family whose parents were taken from him before he even knew who they were. Unlike Harry, though, Ted will have a loving, supportive extended family to look after him and see that he's brought up right. For his part, Harry will be able to redeem Sirius in that he can be the godfather that Sirius never was. So while the deaths of Remus and Tonks was regrettable, it was not wrong.
10. Colin Creevey - The grace note. One last reminder from Rowling that she plays no favorites with the supporting cast, and a reminder that being innocent and nice and likable won't be enough to save you. See Remus and Tonks. 11. Voldemort - Definitely dead, if the epilogue is to be believed. So there.
That's a pretty impressive body count, not including all the nameless characters who died and the people who only got seriously maimed. And it was this willingness to be brutal to her characters that made me love Rowling all the more....
Let's see, what else.... Yes, Mrs. Weasley is my hero, and hopefully we can get Sigourney Weaver to play her in the movie. And Neville finally lived up to his promise. He could have been in Harry 's place, and he finally proved that he could have been every bit the hero that Harry was. Bravo for him. And his grandmother kicks ass in every way, shape and form....
I loved the callback to Sorcerer's Stone. In that book, Harry, Ron and Hermione were trying to get past Devil's Snare, which can be repelled by fire. Hermione laments that they don't have any wood, to which Ron replies, "have you gone mad? Are you a witch or not?" In this book, while trying to get past the Whomping Willow, Ron moans that if they only had Crookshanks with them, they could hit the secret knot and freeze the limbs. To which Hermione replies, "Crookshanks? Are you a wizard or what?" Bless Rowling's heart for trusting us to be paying enough attention to get that joke.
I really wish we could have seen Dolores Umbridge get her comeuppance. Imagine this scene from chapter 31, The Battle of Hogwarts....
Umbridge dashed as quickly as her legs would take her through the carnage. She was nearly hit by blast after blast of green light coming from wands carelessly aimed. Her thoughts ran on one track - I have to get out of here. She turned the corner and ran into a resilient, pinkish wall. She barely had time to register what it was before Grawp clenched his fist around her. "Release me!" she screamed. "I am the senior assistant to the Minister of -"
And then Grawp ate her.
Ahh, the poetry. She was an evil word-that-rhymes-with-runt and deserved to be punished.
Oh, also, Pansy Parkinson: "But he's right there!" Winner of Hogwarts' first Slowest on the Uptake Award. That was a great moment. I would have liked to have seen a few of her fellow Slytherins stand up as well, but I guess it's tough to go against your own House.
The epilogue was a good idea, if rushed. There was a flood of information that needed to be processed in only a few pages, and I see no reason why she couldn't have let it out for a few more pages. It's not like we were going to get to "Nineteen Years Later...." and just give up because the epilogue was too long. But it serves its purpose - it lets us know that after all that we'd seen, everything eventually works out. Not right away, and not perfectly - note that after all the talk about not allowing themselves to be divided, there are still houses at Hogwarts and Slytherin is still the "evil" one - but all in all everything's okay.
Which brings us to my final thought, at least for now: I said at the beginning that Rowling has earned herself a nice break. She's put in a lot of work and reaped massive rewards, both tangible and intangible. But I suspect that she won't be able to rest for long. There is so much Story there, just waiting to be told. The fans will certainly take a stab at it, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone's already written a threesome between Albus Potter, Scorpius Malfoy and Teddy Lupin.
Anyway, that's a whole lot more than I was planning to write, and I'm pretty sure I left things out. But there it is, my thoughts on Deathly Hallows. A good end to a good series....more
Christopher Boone is a troubled young man. He has Asperger's Syndrome, which means he has no idea how to interact naturally with other people. He can'Christopher Boone is a troubled young man. He has Asperger's Syndrome, which means he has no idea how to interact naturally with other people. He can't understand the intricacies of human behavior, even though he can count cubes in his head and has a perfect memory for any form of information. Christopher is obsessed with color and food, and has set rigid patterns for his life that are understandable only to himself. He lives with his father, who is just about able to handle the task of raising a developmentally disabled son, and attends a special school to try and learn to live in a world that scares and confuses him.
And now he has a mystery to solve. His neighbor's dog has been murdered - stabbed with a pitchfork - and he's determined to find out who did it. He plans to use his reason and his logic to uncover the murderer. Unfortunately, by investigating the death of the dog, he uncovers darker, more disturbing mysteries emerge. Unraveling them will push him beyond the boundaries of his world....
It's a fascinating book, written from his perspective. All the chapters are numbered as primes, and he goes on interesting tangents on cosmology, number theory and population control, all the while narrating his attempts to make sense of what's happening around him. It's a quick, fun read - have fun....more
I walked into my local bookstore, saw this on the shelf and snapped it right up. I think Terry is now the only author I'll do that for. As much as I lI walked into my local bookstore, saw this on the shelf and snapped it right up. I think Terry is now the only author I'll do that for. As much as I love Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Connie Willis, Robert Jordan, they're not automatic buys. Pratchett is.
Anyway, this is the third of the Tiffany Aching books, stories about the young witch of the chalk. She's the granddaughter of a great witch, Granny Aching, and studies under some of the most powerful witches of Lancre. In addition, she has the undivided devotion of the Nac Mac Feagle, the Wee Free Men, who are determined to help her. Even if she doesn't want them to. The Nac Mac Feagle? Imagine.... Imagine the Smurfs crossed with mad Scottish Picts. They're a blast.
In this story, Tiffany has come to the attention of Wintersmith, the spirit of winter, by interrupting the Black Morris Dance. By doing so, she finds herself the obsessive target of an elemental force of nature. The frost on the window spells her name, and the flakes that fall from the sky have her shape. Over-attentive boyfriends have never been quite this bad, and this one is threatening to plunge the world into eternal ice.
In addition, Tiffany is learning the darkest arts of witchery, its hidden secrets and greatest power. Her teacher, the 113-year old Miss Treason is one of the most feared witches in the mountains, but not long for this world. It will be Tiffany's responsibility to see to it that the great power of witchcraft remains strong.
As always, it's a fun book. It's Pratchett. And I understand he has a new one out now, too. Man, anyone who can write as many books as he does and be consistently good is my hero.......more
For an English teacher, this is our bread and butter.
One of the hardest things about teaching students English as a foreign language is the fact that For an English teacher, this is our bread and butter.
One of the hardest things about teaching students English as a foreign language is the fact that the language is ever-changing. I try to tell my students that what is nailed down in the textbook is not "real" English. It's a useful variant of English that will help them get by until they can figure out what the real thing is, or at least which version of the real thing they want to end up speaking. What surprises them the most is when I tell them that even though I want them to pay attention to the rules of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and the like, they're going to run into native speakers who flaunt their ignorance of such things.
That's where people like John Humphrys and I converge. He has been working for the BBC for many years now, and has been watching English all that time. While not quite the rule-loving pedant that so many people imagine, he is worried about some of the ways that English has not only naturally degraded over the years (he notes the emerging acceptance of "could of" and "would of" in this) but also the deliberate use of language to obfuscate and confuse.
Language changes. Often it's simple evolution from generation to generation, and that can't be helped. But the more insidious change is deliberate. It's saying that people are not hungry, but have "low food security." It's hospitals referring to the people they treat as "clients" instead of "patience," and the spouting of empty, meaningless phrases in place of real thought. It is this kind of evolution that needs watching, and it is this kind of English that should prompt furious letters to the editor. Rather than sound off because the newspaper used a meaningless tautology like "future progress," it would be better to press our leaders to talk to us, rather than at us, to debate their points, rather than sell them. As though peace were a late-model Chevrolet that they were trying to get off the lot.
If you love your language, you'll enjoy this book......more
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