Broadly, this feels a bit like Steinbeck's Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday, but sadder, more saddled with Kerouac's addiction and struggle with the weigBroadly, this feels a bit like Steinbeck's Cannery Row or Sweet Thursday, but sadder, more saddled with Kerouac's addiction and struggle with the weight of fame on him and his friends. Jack goes out (all names in the novel were changed, but the characters are pretty easy to triangulate) to Big Sur to spend some time at Lawrence Ferlinghetti's cabin at the bottom of Big Sur. He returns to SF, returns to Big Sur, returns to SF, returns to Big Sur as he spirals down a port-induced hole that also gives similar vibes to Lowry's Under the Volcano. It was a book I constantly had to take micro-breaks from because it both reminded me of my little brother and also just wasn't a burden I could carry for long stretches. But good stuff. Ended in a poem about the SEA that wasn't great....more
“There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and fo“There's a huge seal called 'impossibility' pasted all over this world. And don't ever forget that we're the only ones who can tear it off once and for all.” ― Yukio Mishima, The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea
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Wow. Let me check the corners of my bedroom, sleep on this book and react tomorrow. I'm happy my kids are grown and didn't grow up into little nihilists with little nihilist friends. The book is my introduction to Mishima. I've owned a couple of his books for years, but never jumped in. This seemed like an easy jump. Don't let the thinness of the book make you over confident. Like the sea, and like young boys, this book is a beast. Beautiful and cold, with a bit of transgression mixed in, it feels like Dostoevsky decided to rewrite or at least reimagine Oedipus Rex, or perhaps Camus. Anyway, it frightened me and also intrigued me enough that I ordered a few more Mishima novels to break myself over....more
"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibilit"Eternity wasn't just time, but something like the deeply rooted certainty that she couldn't contain it in her body because of death; the impossibility of going beyond eternity was eternity; and a feeling in absolute almost abstract purity was also eternity." - Clarice Lispector, Near to the Wild Heart
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It is hard to put your finger on, wrap your brain around, this novel. In someways it reminds me of (and stands with) the stream of conscious writers like Joyce and Woolf. But the novel itself FEELS like Djuna Barnes' classic Nightwood. It is mysterious, lyrical, fragmented, dreamy. At heart, it feels like a brilliant, introspective girl/woman (Lispector was 23 when this book was published) working out what it means to be human, but more specifically, a woman; independent of her parents, relatives, teachers, husband, lovers, other women, motherhood, and even God.
Using philosophy, geometry, poetry, nature and intuition she examines herself from a period to a line to a triangle to a circle, and then back again. She explores the shape of herself and what it means to be alive....more
“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by d“It would be a dreadful thing to tell anyone about it, for it would destroy some fragile structure of truth. It was truth that might be shattered by division.” ― John Steinbeck, The Red Pony
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A episodic novella that collects four (or sometimes five) short stories written in the 30s. Each of the stories' protagonist is a young boy named Jody, centered on his family's ranch near Salina, California. The novel is pastoral and full of the dreams and emotions of a young boy learning about life, death, fragility and disappointment. Loved the stories. Steinbeck is a master of the simple story that lovingly explores one or more characters.
"The Gift" was first published in the November 1933 issue of North American Review.
"The Great Mountains" was first published in the December 1933 issue of North American Review.
"The Promise" was first published in the October 1937 issue of Harper's Monthly.
"The Leader of the People" was first published in the August 1936 issue of Argosy.
The edition I read (Penguin) didn't have the story "Junius Maltby" that was part of an earlier book of Steinbeck entitled The Pastures of Heaven....more
“There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is “There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.” - John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down
"The moon is down; I have not heard the clock." Shakespeare, Act II, Scene i of Macbeth
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I've been on a Steinbeck kick the last month. This is my fourth. I read a couple novellas and a nonfiction. This is one I knew very little about. I heard it was popular in Europe and the Soviet Union during the war and I'm still not sure if it was written at the request of any government or individual, but as a piece of literary propaganda it works out really well.
It is essentially the story of a village in an unnamed country (read Norway) that is invaded by another country (read Germany) and begins to initiate resistance to occupation. It was made into a play in 1942 (not great reviews) and later a film in 1943.
Not a perfect novel, but I think the thing that keeps bringing me back to Steinbeck is this generalization, while I think other writers (see Faulkner) are technically better writers, I get fed really well whenever I read Steinbeck. There is just something about his outlook, his moral philosophy, his vibe that I really roll with....more
"Classical mythology only happens when the stories become active agents; when people use them." - Helen Morales, VSI Classical Mythology
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An inte"Classical mythology only happens when the stories become active agents; when people use them." - Helen Morales, VSI Classical Mythology
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An interesting take on Classical Mythology. Just like Mary Beard begins and ultimately frames her examination of the Classics for VSI by exploring the British Museum's Bassae room and the Temple of Bassae in Greece, Helen Morales uses Europa on the Bull (on the Euro and on a 3rd Century Roman coin) to BEGIN to examine how myth is used and transformed by cultures, governments, etc., as emblems and powerful statements. While she travels beyond the myth of Zeus (as Bull) and Europa (and beyond governments), she will often return again and again to this myth to explain and illuminate other aspects of classical myths.
In the book Morales looks at the context of Classical myths, Gods and heros, the metaphorphoses of mythology (muthos to logos), she looks at Freud's role in our modern view of Classical Myths (how myth impacted analysis and analysis impacted Classical myths), the sexual politics of myth, and myths and the New Age.
I liked it. I'm always interested how scholars will attempt to tackle the distilation process of VSI. Some cram, some thin, some find creative ways to obliquely tackle and introduce their subjects to amateurs. It is a venture that is (for many subjects) a challenge worthy of a mental Hercules (Heracles). ...more
"The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world. Its aim is also to define and debate our relationship to that world." - Mary"The aim of Classics is not only to discover or uncover the ancient world. Its aim is also to define and debate our relationship to that world." - Mary Beard, Classics
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Using the British Museum's Bassae room and the Temple of Bassae as a framework, Mary Beard introduces us to the Classics. There are points when her Bassae-frame almost doesn't hold her subject, but her metaphor/frame largely holds together. It acts like a map, allowing Beard and Henderson an opportunity to walk around and examine the classics from several perspectives. Readers of the Classics become tourists and Beard and Henderson become our tour guides. Like all VSI, I'm always left feeling a bit snubbed and short shrifted. My whistle is barely wetted and I'm asked to leave room and exit the museum....more
"Uplifting illusion is dearer to us than a host of truths." - Pushkin quoted in Chekhov's "Gooseberries"
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Vol N° 34 of my Penguin Little Black Cla"Uplifting illusion is dearer to us than a host of truths." - Pushkin quoted in Chekhov's "Gooseberries"
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Vol N° 34 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. This volume contains excerpts from Penguin's three book collection of Chekhov's short stories (tr Ronald Wilks). The following are the three stories included in Vol 34:
1. The Kiss - ★★★★ 2. The Two Volodyas - ★★★★★ 3. Gooseberries - ★★★★★
I really enjoyed each of these, but LOVED Gooseberries (a story nested in a story) and 'The Two Volodyas'. Chekhov nails the human condition in each of these. His tone is perfect. He carries the reader carefully, with a bit of humor even, to exactly where he wants them and then with the perfect sentence kills and buries his literary novice.
One of my favorite sentences, that seems as fresh and new as a mid-May strawberry (or FINE gooseberry) is:
"Everything is calm and peaceful and the only protest comes from statistics -- and they can't talk."...more
“I have put out my books and now my house has a soul.” ― Robert Harris, The Dictator
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Dictator is the best book in Harris' Cicero trilogy★★★1/2,“I have put out my books and now my house has a soul.” ― Robert Harris, The Dictator
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Dictator is the best book in Harris' Cicero trilogy★★★1/2, but that is largely due to how disappointed I was in Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome ★★★ and Conspirata ★★. Oh well. What did I like? I liked that Cicero's later life was narrated by Tiro, Cicero's slave, secretary, friend(?). Harris did a lot of work with Cicero's character. I'm a fan of Cicero, and Harris' trilogy does a good job of surveying Cicero's life, the late Republic and early Roman empire.
What did I not enjoy? I'm not a fan or Harris' prose. And, while it is obvious Harris loves Roman history, I am starting to see a patern. Harris writes better WWII era or political novels, than Roman historical novels. Sometimes, passion for a topic doesn't translate into brilliance....more
"Many-formed are the gods; and the end men look for is not the end they bring." - Mary Renault, The King Must Die
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A nice, detailed historical fi"Many-formed are the gods; and the end men look for is not the end they bring." - Mary Renault, The King Must Die
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A nice, detailed historical fiction (well, let's call it mytholigical fiction, yes?) about Theseus, the founding hero of Athens. Renault takes many of the Labors of Theseus and weaves them with the stories of Theseus, Aegeus, and Medea, and Theseus, King Minos, and the Minotaur.
Structurally, it reminded me a bit of Knausgaard's book 'A Time For Everything' where he takes the flood myths of genesis and humanizes them. Both Mnausgaard and Renaut share the same gift for seeing the men (and women) behind the myth; of deconstructing what the history might have looked like that created these origin myths. I love this approach. It, at once, is interesting, informative, and subversive....more
"As with every modern version of Constantine, the urge to draw reductive conclusions is a strong one, and the religious question in a world where reli"As with every modern version of Constantine, the urge to draw reductive conclusions is a strong one, and the religious question in a world where religious affiliation is a strong one, and the religious question in a world where religious affiliation is still for so many a crucial aspect of their identity makes this both a reasonable and perhaps inevitable choice." - David Potter, Constantine the Emperor
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A nice survey of Constantine's life, utilizing primarily first hand documents to separate the man from the myth. Porter's biography of Constantine essentially paints Constantine as a pragmatic emperor and religious leader. Where he felt he could change things through battle, he would (and did). Where he felt like he could strengthen the empire through compromise and moderation he would (and did). His conversion to Christianity allowed him to weave parts of the empire together, and unify them under a divine "Mens Divina". He used Christianity as much as Christianity "used" him. Both were legitimized and strengthened by the other. That doesn't mean he wasn't a true believer, but mostly that his conversion (as told by Christian historians) might not have been as immediate. Perhaps, it was line upon line as Constantine became more confident in his new God.
It really is hard to imagine what place Christianity would hold globally without Constantine, or what exactly it would look like. Probably after Christ and Paul, Constantine might be considered the most influential Christian. He unified (mostly) the Church, gave it a safe place to grow, and sheltered it under the Aegis of the Roman empire. Potter does a good job of pointing out the complexities of Constantine and the limits of what we actually DO know about this influential ruler, Christian, and man.
That said, the biography sometimes gets lost in the weeds. I could have probably done without as much detailed exposition on details such as the Arch of Constantine. Sometimes, these expansions throw the reader off the narrative thread a bit. For the most part, however, it was a good biography. I walked away with a more complex and complicated idea of not just Constantine, but his father (Constantius), Diocletian, Galerius, and Maximian....more
1. Sindbad the Sailor [the frame] - ★★ 2. The Valley of Diamonds [2nd voyage] - ★★★★ 3. The Black Giant [3rd voyage] - ★★★ 4. The Cannibal King [4th voyage] - ★★★★
The editors of this edition did a fine job of keeping the feeling of the frame story, linking the last three through the beginning. I loved "Thousand and One Nights" as a kid (and Richard Burton's translation as a teenager). Returning to Sindbad as an adult, I enjoyed the style and absurd BIGNESS of the stories of Sindbad (I will never question James Bond's luck again). I even enjoyed how each of the stories was built on the same framework. It reminded me of certain popular television series and cartoons. We love to be entertained, and sometimes we even want a bit of predictability in our entertainments. You know what you are going to get when reading a tale of Sindbad the Sailor:
1. Sindbad leaves Baghdad (by-way-of Basra) in search of fortune on a ship. 2. Something happens on the journey 3. He loses everything 4. He finds himself in a strage land, among strange beasts/people 5. His friends are killed 6. Through his wiles he escapes 7. He finds himself among other people. 8. He ends up, through a combination of fortune and his wits, making a fortune 9. He returns to Baghdad, gives money to his family and the poor...more
"I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I'm torn in two." - Catullus, "85"
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Vol N° 69 of my Penguin Little Bl"I hate and I love. And if you ask me how, I do not know: I only feel it, and I'm torn in two." - Catullus, "85"
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Vol N° 69 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. This volume contains about 44 of Catullus's poems assembled from Penguin's book Catullus, The Poems. It does not contain the first Catullus poem I was ever introduced to, Catullus' 16, which starts:
Pēdīcābō ego vōs et irrumābō -- I will sodomize you and face-f#ck you
I know this because my wife was grading a short story, a group project, from a group of 10th grade boys who used this poem in their story. It was an awkward introduction to one VERY specific form of Catullus poem. Generally, Catullus writes polymetra and epigrams about: 1. His friends 2. Erotic poems (some homosexual, but mostly about women) 3. Invectives (Catullus 16 fits into this type) 4. Condolences
This selection of his poems contains a bit of each. A lot of his poems are directed at Lesbia, probably Clodia Metelli, who acted as a muse for many of his most passionate poems. Anyway, 16 is not included, but certainly read it if you want to be a bit shocked. The poems included in this selection are rather tame in comparison and actually many are quite lovely. One of my favorite lines, from 70, ends with:
"but what woman tells her lover in desire should be written out on air & running water."
And from 76:
"For what by man can well in act or word be done to others has by me been done sunk in the credit of an unregarded heart."...more
"O woe, woe, man is only a dot; Hell drags us off and that is the lot; So let us live a little space, At least while we can feed our face." - Petronius, T"O woe, woe, man is only a dot; Hell drags us off and that is the lot; So let us live a little space, At least while we can feed our face." - Petronius, The Satyricon
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Vol 21 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. Trimalchio's Feast is a section from Petronius' famous work The Satyricon. It was hard to read this and not think of Donald Trump, but this book isn't the first time I've linked (in my mind) our current political spot with Nero's Rome.
"spent his days in sleep, his nights in attending to his official duties or in amusement, that by his dissolute life he had become as famous as other men by a life of energy, and that he was regarded as no ordinary profligate, but as an accomplished voluptuary. His reckless freedom of speech, being regarded as frankness, procured him popularity. Yet during his provincial government, and later when he held the office of consul, he had shown vigor and capacity for affairs. Afterwards returning to his life of vicious indulgence, he became one of the chosen circle of Nero's intimates, and was looked upon as an absolute authority on questions of taste (elegantiae arbiter; note the pun on Petronius' cognomen) in connection with the science of luxurious living."
The Feast of Trimalchio is everything you would imagine an over-the-top Roman feast would be. Music, wine, debauchery, slaves, food nested in other foods, an over-abundance of money, satire, witicism, insults, and again lots and lots of wine and food.
If you love everything Roman, you will enjoy this. Even though it is fiction, it does give a glimpse of what the 1% in Rome during Nero might have lived like, because Gaius Petronius Arbiter WAS the elegantiae arbiter for Nero. He even died with style....more
"-- and when she'd finished, then, at last I mounted Circe's gorgeous bed...." - Homer, "The Odyssey"
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Vol N° 70 of my Penguin Little Black Classi"-- and when she'd finished, then, at last I mounted Circe's gorgeous bed...." - Homer, "The Odyssey"
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Vol N° 70 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. This volume contains about two sections of of Homer's Epic The Odyssey translated by Robert Fagles. I'm a ho for Homer. So, I read this again in preparation for finally getting to the Emily Wilson translation of The Odyssey. I've had it sitting on my shelf to read for too long.
This selection contains: 1. "In the One Eyed Giant's Cave" and 2. "The bewitching Queen of Aeaea". Both sections are quite wonderful. My little brother loves Dante and collects many different translations. I'm not ashamed to find I have done the same with Homer. My biggest regret is I can't read him(them) in the original Greek. From my understanding, at best, I'm getting Homer in black and white and missing the full color and force of his verse. Someday, I guess, I will find time to learn Greek for my Greeks and Russian for my Russians....more
"Men serve no harsher mistress than necessity, who drives me now..." -Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason and Medea
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Vol 18 of my Penguin Little Black Cla"Men serve no harsher mistress than necessity, who drives me now..." -Apollonius of Rhodes, Jason and Medea
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Vol 18 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. "Jason and Medea" represents Book 3 of Apollonius of Rhodes epic Greek poem the Jason and the Golden Fleece (aka Argonautica). This Penguin selection is limited mainly by two things: First, it is only a section of the Hellenistic epic, thus the reader is dropped into the middle of it. If you are unfamiliar with the myth of Jason and the Argonauts and are otherwise unfamiliar with his trials, it might take a minute to get your sea legs. Second, this is a translation. I don't read classical Greek, and my fluency with the Argonautica is limited, by necessity, to the translators' gift (E.V. Rieu). But it IS a limitation. I've heard that the difference between reading Homer in the Greek and Homer translated, is like color vs black & white, etc. So, there is that limit. I DID, however, dig this translators ability to both make the text readable and lyrical at the same time. So, win....more
“The cook was ordered to stew them in salt, and the wicked woman devoured them, thinking she had eaten the liver and lungs of Snowwhite.” ― The Brothe“The cook was ordered to stew them in salt, and the wicked woman devoured them, thinking she had eaten the liver and lungs of Snowwhite.” ― The Brother's Grimm, "Snowwhite"
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Vol N° 68 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. This volume contains a selection of seven tales written by Jacob and William Grimm and translated by David Luke. These stories first appeared in Penguin's Selected Tales. This selection contains:
1. The Master Huntsman ★★★★★ 2. The Robber Bridegroom ★★★★ 3. The Devil's Three Golden Hairs ★★★★ 4. The Six Servants ★★★ 5. The Bremen Town Band ★★ 6. Snowwhite ★★★★★ 7. Lazy Harry ★★★
Most were really good with a great mix of macabre that doesn't appear in the more cartoonish versions that appear in Disney or other mass-market reproductions. A couple like "Lazy Harry" and "The Bremen Town Band" were kinda throwaways. Cute, perhaps, but nothing super compelling....more
"You will hear it for yourselves, and it will surely fill you with wonder." - Marco Polo, Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls
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Vol 16 of m"You will hear it for yourselves, and it will surely fill you with wonder." - Marco Polo, Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls
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Vol 16 of my Penguin Little Black Classics Box Set. Contains the section of 'The Travels of Marco Polo' focused on Maabar (or greater India). I've had Travels on my "To-Read" shelf for awhile now, and this might be the kick I need to break it out and read it. Polo's observational skills are amazing. He seems to be an early anthropologist. He's got a bit of Western-bias, but still gives a pretty fair accouting of Hindu, Jainist, Buddhist, and Muslim ritual and rites. Somethings shock him a bit, and other things seem to roll off him fairly easily. Culturally, however, he sets the tone writing about the area for generations. So, love him or hate him, there is no ignoring Marco Polo....more
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