R is for The Raven

Isn't is about time we looked at a poem during our literary romp through the alphabet? I thought so, and decided to visit a classic: The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe.

Poe had a short life, but got a lot written in that time, stories of the macabre, poems, the invention of the detective short story, and more. Certainly  The Raven is a perfect example of his style.  

To me, Poe did two things exceptionally well: use language and create mood.  "Once upon a midnight dreary..." 

just a few words and we know the setting and the situation. 

The nameless narrator is in mourning for a lost loved one. Poe's characters are almost always in mourning for someone (even if they just killed them) and in this case its "the fair and radiant maiden whom the angels name Leonore".  Whatever the name they were all stand ins for Poe's dead child bride Virginia. Nobody could brood like Poe. 

So the narrator is brooding in his study when something taps on his door. He gets up an looks. Nothing there. More tapping. ('As of someone gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door") This time a raven comes fluttering in and perches above a bust of Athena. 

The narrator thinks the raven might be a messenger from the dead, so he makes enquiries of it.  All are answered with the same word: "Nevermore"

At the end of the poem, some time has apparently passed, but the raven, the visible manifestation of the poets grief "Still is sitting, still is sitting" and not likely to leave.  "Shall be lifted nevermore."

One of my kids had, in high school English, what may have been the stupidest assignment of all time: rewrite The Raven in prose. (though asking teenage boys to introspect their way through their own version of Song of Myself was pretty dumb too).  It was stupid because The Raven is one of those poems that are about the language that is used more than what is being said. Multiple paragraphs of "The poet asked about Leonore, the raven said "never more" AGAIN, quickly become tedious. They certainly weren't learning to appreciate one of the great poems  of the English language.

Fortunately Poe and his Raven endure weird English projects to remain one of the most liked and accessible of poems.

Q is for Quiditch through the Ages (and Fantastic Beasts as Well)

We are all huge Harry Potter fans around this house.  We have read all the books and watched all the movies.  Several of us (myself and The Girl) to be precise are full fledged HP geeks, reading just about everything to do with the world of Hogwarts (though I draw the line at the fan fiction my daughter buries herself in. ) 

I could say a great deal about all the things that make the Wizarding World so fascinating, but I want to talk about one in particular today, one that links it to my other favorite fantasy series of all time-The Lord of the Rings, and that is back story.

One of the things that makes the Lord of the Rings feel so real is that J R R Tolkien so carefully created the entire story of Middle Earth. He didn't just say the story was one of many, he wrote the many stories, not necessarily for publication but for his own satisfaction. Since his death in the mid 70's his son has edited for publication many of these stories, which give background to the already published work, and insight into the complexities of his universe. 

J K Rowling has done much the same thing with  the Harry Potter world and again it shows.  The many throwaway references to past wizards and their adventures makes if clear that she has given much thought   to the whole history of Hogwarts. She mentions the name of the occasional past headmaster, we are sure she has a list of all of them written down. One feels that Harry is created for Hogwarts, and not the other way around.

The amount of back story Ms Rowling has created became even clearer in 2001 when she publish two small books titled Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.  

The books were being published to benefit British Charities, and to date have raised more that 17 million pounds.

Both books are among those mentioned in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone: Quidditch is in the school Library, while Fantastic Beasts is one of Harry's textbooks.  

Quidditch Through the Ages is a history of the favorite wizarding sport.  It tells of many famous players and games of the past, some of which reflect on events in the Harry Potter stories.  Fantastic Beasts is designed to actually look like Harry's Textbook, with notes written in the margin by Harry, Ron and Hermione. Entries in this book reflect even more directly on the Harry Potter stories, especially the chapters on giant spiders and various kinds of dragons.  Both books feature forwards from "Albus Dumbledore" discussing Britain's Comic Relief, and also cautioning Muggles are in fact totally fictional and none of this exists at all.  

I should mention that J K Rowling has written yet another supplemental work, with proceeds to charity: Tales of Beedle the Bard, a book that figures prominently in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. One can only hope that Ms Rowling will eventually publish "Hogwarts: A History" and give us even more glimpses into the Wizarding World as a whole.

P is for The Power of Myth

   If a person is lucky, they will, once or twice in their life, come across a book they can truly say changed their life.  For myself, The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers.

     As a child I loved Greek mythology. There was something so real and alive about those characters, not just the Gods themselves, but the heroes like Perseus, and the seemingly ordinary folks like Bauccis and Philemon who have the deities cross their paths. Later I read Norse and Celtic mythology as well.   In high school I began to study comparative religions, and found much that was appealing there as well.

Meanwhile I was becoming more and more discontented with the theology I had grown up with. But I had been taught to believe the others were wrong, and in the case of mythology dead.  So I wandered about in a limbo, not sure how to give spiritual structure to my life.

Then I watched, and read, The Power of Myth.

I wasn't entirely unacquainted with Joseph Campbell. I had read parts of The Hero with a Thousand Faces, and heard it referred to in some of my classed. I knew the book had been a foundation for George Lucas when he created Star Wars as well.  But I saw it more as literary theory. I didn't see clues to living in what I read.

The Power of Myth was different.  The book was actually edited from transcripts of a 6 part series of interviews that Bill Moyers conducted with Joseph Campbell for PBS. (The very idea of two people just sitting around talking about mythology for 6 hours seems amazing now, even for PBS, which dumped Bill Moyers most recent show last year, but that's how the world has changed.) The TV show is well worth watching if you have the time, just to see two of the most intelligent men of our time converse.

The most important takeaway was that myth (myth being the sacred writing of every religion but one's own) was not about what to belief so much as it was about how to live.

This was in the pre-DVD era, and I wasn't even in possession of a VCR as yet, so I went out and bought the book immediately.  I have worn thru several copies since, including the one above that I carry in my work bag, for when I'm short on inspiration.

Mr Campbell talked about heroes, and how their lives and quests follow similar paths, and how we can learn from their journeys.

He talked about how people make the mistake of following the letter of stories instead of their deeper meanings.

He talked about how people have an innate need for myth stories and for rites of passages, and that if they aren't presented with them, they will create them for themselves. (The great appeal of Star Wars, was that it provided a myth cycle in a way that appealed to young people, and was easily accessible to them.)

But instead of going on about what he said, let me share a few quotes:

      "Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told."

     "This is an absolute necessity for anybody today. You must have a        room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what       was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your          friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t           know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can         simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you           might be, This is the place of creative incubation. At first you               may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred             place and use it, something eventually will happen."

    He could also be very funny:  
        "I have bought this wonderful machine--a computer.  Now I am          rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine--it                     seems to me to be an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and           no mercy." 

The Power of Myth opened doors for me, both to the other works of Joseph Campbell and to others who were inspired by his work. If any one work can be said to have changed my life, this is it.  I recomend it to everyone...

S is for Shakespeare

credit: Columbia University Library

I know I am jumping ahead a bit, and solemnly promise to go back and do P, Q and R. plus I am cheating on the title, because I had been doing book titles, and here I am with an author, but the circumstances are unique because today is William Shakespeare's 450th birthday, and how could I pass that up?

I have to admit that although I read Shakespeare in high school, I didn't fully appreciate him, and I know why.  It was because we were reading Shakespeare's plays rather than watching them.  It's important to remember these were works for the stage, and in fact plays were seldom ever printed before Shakespeare's time so they existed only in performance. 

I never would have learned to love Shakespeare had it not been for the BBC. Their decision in the late 70's and early 80's to film every Shakespeare play was groundbreaking. Before that only a handful of the plays had been filmed, several of them repeatedly, Hamlet, Macbeth, Julius Caesar, Taming of the Shrew, Henry V among them.  But now they were all to be filmed, and being British they had a pool of the best actors in the world to work with. The BBC productions were then aired on PBS stations in the US.  Thus it was my good fortune to sit down one night and watch Derek Jacobi in Richard II.

For the first time I was caught up emotionally in a Shakespeare play. I cared about the characters. The next year they aired Sir Derek's Hamlet and I was even more impressed. 

Another actor did a lot to teach me about Shakespeare too, and that was Ian McKellen, who around this same time did a film of his one man show "Acting Shakespeare".  What mattered here was not only his acting, but the insight he gave to the characters, especially his analysis of the final soliloquy from Macbeth.  For the first time I really started thinking about the meaning of the words themselves.

Since then I have had the opportunity to study Shakespeare at depth in college, to watch and work on some fine productions of his plays, and to watch a number of excellent films as well. (My favorite is probably Kenneth Branaugh's film of Henry V.)

I want to say for the record that I am not a believer in any of the various Shakespeare didn't write his plays conspiracy theories.  The aspersions cast upon his lack of family, biographical information, and education are meaningless, and I could use the same argument to claim that someone of Abraham Lincoln's background couldn't have written the Gettysburg Address. 

I haven't had much luck interesting my children in Shakespeare as yet, although I did run the Battle of Agincourt scene from Henry V for the Boy when he was learning about the battle and the efficiency of longbows vs crossbows.  He memorized the St Crispian Day speech and intends to pull it out if he ever needs lines of Shakespeare for a class.

(Mind you, if you are only going to know one bit of Shakespeare, its a good bit.)

I remind myself though that, as noted above, I didn't find Shakespeare till I was almost 20, so there's plenty of time.

There is an added element to Shakespeare in performance that no other writer matches--for actors they are like marathons--in which they test themselves against every other actor who has played the parts before them. Moreover, for the last 100 years or so, a lot of the best performances have been recorded, so everyone in the audience knows what has gone before as well.  No wonder so many performers consider Shakespeare the ultimate challenge.


So happy birthday Will, and thanks for all the great words.

I

O is for Our Town

In  case you hadn't noticed from some of my previous posts--

when I was young I read pretty much anything I could get my hands on, including old English text books that had belonged to my mother. It was in her American Literature book the I first read Thornton Wilder's Our Town.

Our Town is one of those plays that seem deceptively simple on the surface, but which one finds new details in every time one reads it.

What initially seems like a simple, nostalgic slice of life, is actually a profound meditation on life and death. 

(FYI--FROM HERE ON THERE BE SPOILERS!)

When the play was first performed on Broadway in 1938

its staging was one of the most groundbreaking aspects

of the production.  The story is told on  a nearly bare stage

with minimal props, narrated by The Stage Manager, a seemingly

omnipotent character, who speaks to both the audience, and  to characters in the show, and seems to have considerable knowledge of both past and future. 

The first act tells the story of a typical day in this small town, and in the lives of two main families: That of Dr Gibbs and that of Mr Webb who publishes the town paper.  There are several scenes between the Doctor's son, George, and the editor's daughter Emily; as well as other vignettes of small town life, a choir practice, neighbors gossip, and so on. The Stage Manager interviews and expert about the town, and takes questions from the audience. (All this breaking of the fourth wall was pretty daring in 1938)  

The stage manager says they are planning a time capsule for a new building's cornerstone, and he plans to leave a copy of this play:

So-people a thousand years from now-this is the way we were in the provinces north of New York at the beginning of the twentieth century.-This is the way we were: in our growing up and in our marrying and in our living and in our dying."

Act Two, announces the Stage Manager, is called Love and Marriage.  There's another act coming as well, he adds, saying we probably know what that is about as well.  

This is the day of George and Emily's wedding.  Again we are given small slices of both families' lives, moms cooking breakfast, having last moments with their children, a brief flashback to the day George and Emily realized they were right for each other. 

a little last minute nerves for both parties

and then the wedding itself.  Our old friend the Stage Manager takes the role of minister. preaches a sermon and then sends us out to intermission again.

It's the third act of Our Town that made the play famous. The stage is set with chairs, most occupied by people we met in the earlier acts.  The stage is a cemetery and these are the dead of Grover's Corners.  One chair is empty however.  

The Stage Manager muses a bit on the long history of the graveyard, and then tells us we need to think about something in the third act. 

"Now there are some things we know 

but don't take out to look at them very often.

We all know that something is eternal...

All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."

We find the dead in the cemetery have become dispassionate and matter of fact.  They are frustrated with the inability of people to appreciate life. 

We learn the new grave is for Emily, who has died in childbirth, having her second baby,  We see the mourners, and then they leave Emily with the dead.  Emily is still full of life, still interested in the world she has left behind.  She realizes she can go back and relive days, but the others warn her not to, or at least not to pick an important day.  She chooses her 12th birthday.  

She slips back into her old home. suddenly aware of everything. She tries to get her mother to really see her but fails.  She asks the Stage Manager "Do any human beings ever realize life as they live it, every every minute?" "No. Saints and Poets maybe, they do some" is his reply. Emily asks to go back to her grave.

So we are left are left with several messages from the play.  One is that life is not just about the big moments, birth/death/marriage, but about all the little moments in between. And we are reminded that we need to aware of the gift of being alive in every one of those little moments in between, while we still can. It's why we are here.

This post is part of the A=Z challenge. Please click on the link to read more.

N is for The NIne Billion Names of God

When it comes to short stories my very favorite writer is the later Arthur C Clarke,  He could create a whole universe in just a few pages, with endings that stick with a person forever. Some of his best are short-short stories, taking up only a few pages,  Amonh my very favorites include "The Star,"  "Dog Star," "If I forget Thee Oh Earth" and the one I want to talk about today, 

"The Nine Billion Names of God. " 

The premise is simple, yet extraordinary.  A group of Tibetan monks has spent the last 300 years compiling all the names of God, the task they believe the universe was created for.  They realize that a modern computer will speed up their task a great deal. (This story was written in the late 50's. I realize that now the same thing could be done on a cell phone in about 20 minutes. But the story wouldn't work nearly as well.)  

Two technicians are paid a considerable amount of money to go to the lamasery and install a massive  computer and run it for the monks.  They begin to worry however, how the monks will react when the run of names is complete and, well nothing happens. They decide they better get out before this happens.

The story ends in one of the most memorable last lines in Science Fiction, which I would not dream of giving away here.

But if  you find this synopsis intriguing go to this link and read the story. It will only take about 10 minutes, and I think you will like it.

Then go to the link below to read more about the A-Z challenge and find links to the fine work other bloggers are doing.

M is for A Man for all Seasons

Today I would like to shift gears a bit, and talk about my favorite modern play: A Man for all Seasons, by Robert Bolt.  The play originally debuted in London in 1960, then was staged in New York the following year.  Robert Bolt, who in addition to this play is best remembered for the screenplays he wrote for David Lean for Lawrence of Arabia and Dr Zhivago. His work was often concerned with role of the individual in society and how far one might take a stand against authority.  Bolt was an agnostic, but he found the perfect example of such a man I'm the 16th century martyr Thomas More. More was executed for refusing to sign the act of succession, his objection being what it made Henry the head of the  Church instead  of the pope.  But the play makes clear that it is not so much about the conflict between Henry and the Church as it is  about More's right to believe as he does 

without interference from the state.

"What matters to me is not whether it is true or not, but that I believe it to be true--or rather, not the I believe  it but that I  believe" as Thomas says at one point.

In the play we meet More at  the point of his final rise to power, about to become chancellor of England. More was a devout Catholic (he once considered becoming a priest, before deciding he would rather be a "good husband than  a bad priest").   He took up the law instead, becoming a respected judge. His first wife gave him a son and three daughters before dying young, and he remarried to a widow with daughters of her own, all of whom he raised, along with several wards, as his own, in a seemingly happy, open household.  More advocated for the education of women, and his daughter Meg was considered one of the most learned women of her time. The play shows us only Alice, the second wife, Meg, and her future husband Will Roper as part of his family, but it is enough  to show he is devoted to his family and friends, including the Duke of Norfolk, and a young man named Richard Rich, who resents the fact that More will not advance him in society.  Rich will eventually find other patrons, to More's detriment.

As a judge More is a firm believer in the law and justice. At one point Roper says he would destroy the law to get at the devil and More responds: "And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide then Roper, the laws all being flat. This country is planted thick with laws from coast to coast, man's law not Gods, and if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, where would you hide then Roper, the laws all being flat.  I give the devil benefit of the law for my own safety's sake.

Early on two one on one scenes set the tone for the play.  The first is between More and Cardinal Wolsey. Long the commander of the king's business, Wolsey has lost favor because he cannot get Henry an annulment (Henry's wife, Katharine was past childbearing age and Henry had no legitimate son.) Henry has decided to break with the Pope and the Church of  Rome, to keep the Church but with himself in charge, thus allowing him to divorce Katherine and marry his new love, Anne Boleyn.  Wolsey wants More to join him, or at least not oppose him.  As a good Catholic More believes that the Pope is the heir of St Peter, whom Jesus put in charge of the Church, and he will not accept a break with Rome.  Nonetheless when Wolsey falls, More accepts the position on Chancellor.  He agrees to not oppose Henry, but he won't advocate for him on the matter either.  Soon Henry comes to visit him, and in one of the great two man scenes in modern theatre Henry tries to both charm and bully More into taking his part. 

Henry VIII is only onstage for this one scene, but Bolt has drawn him so brilliantly he haunts the whole play. He has captured Henry at precisely the moment that begins the slide from golden prince to tyrant and both are present here. He can be charming and pursuasive "If you could see your way to come with me, there is no man I would sooner raise, with my own hand," only to erupt a moment later "I have no queen. Katherine's not my wife, no priest can make her so.  They who say she is my wife are not only liars, but traitors."

When the break with Rome finally happens,  More resigns his office, hoping that removal from the public eye will protect himself and his family. He will not take any public position on what his going on, and therefore he thinks he can't be accused of treason, But as another character suggests, More's silence is nosier than many other persons' speeches.  More is first deprived of his property, then is thrown in jail, then has his family threatened, but More will not sign the act of succession, because although he acknowledges that Parliament can make whomever they want Queen or heir to the throne, only God can decide who runs the church. 

 When his daughter Margaret suggests he take the oath in public, but deny it in private, she answers her 

in one of the best speeches in the play:

"When a man takes an oath he is holding his own self in his own hands, like water, and if he opens his fingers then he needn't hope to find himself again. Some men aren't capable of this but I'd be loath to think your father one of them."

Eventually More is hauled into court, and convicted of treason on the basis of false testimony by his old "friend" Richard Rich.  More's faith in law fails him in the end, because he doesnt realize until its too late that if he doesnt provide evidence it will be created. But his faith in God does not betray him, and on the scaffold he announces that he dies "The King's Good Servant, but God's first." 

I actually read this play when I was about nine or ten,  before I ever saw it performed,  and it reads quite well. I have been lucky enough to see it staged live, and you should too if you ever get a chance. There are also two film versions.  The version Charlton Heston starred in for TNT in 1988 sticks quite closely to the  stage play (which Heston toured in a number of times.)   The cast includes John Gielgud , Vanessa Redgrave  and Roy Kinnear as the Common Man (the plays narrator who steps in and plays a number of minor parts as well.).  The real master piece however, is the 1966 film version, winner of  a number of  Oscars, including Director and Best Film. The cast includes Paul Scofield, who had originated the role of Thomas More on stage and won the Oscar for Best Actor, Wendy Hiller, Susanah York, Orson Welles,  Leo McKern, John Hurt, and perhaps most memorably, Robert Shaw who is unforgettable  as Henry.  Although the film takes some liberties with the script to make the film more cinematic, it is still quite true to the play, retaining virtually all of the brilliant dialogue.

When Robert Bolt was writing this play he was looking at a time when not many people seemed willing to take stands on what they believed.  Now 50 plus years later one may wonder even more: Who in our world takes a stand. Who will stand on their beliefs, no matter what? Questions like these are what this play is all about.

This post is part of teh A-Z challenge,
blogging a book a day all month

L is for "The LIghtning Thief"

This was a hard letter for me, not for a lack of choices, but an excess.  Two of my all time favorite books belong here:  Little Women and The Lord of the Rings.  But I have written about both before, so I decided to write about a different set of books that I have encountered more recently, one that is still going strong at this time--The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, the first book of his hugely successful Percy Jackson series. 

Like so many great children's  books, this began as a bedtime story.   Mr Riordan, a teacher as well as a writer, has a son with dyslexia.  To encourage his son he began to tell him stories about a hero who also had dyslexia, a Greek demigod in fact (son of a god and a mortal). Demigods have dyslexia because their brains are hardwired for ancient Greek.  They are hyperactive because they haven't learned to harness their semi divine powers.  His son loved the stories so much that Mr Riordan started writing them down and now there are 9 hugely successful books with another on the way, plus a set of books built around Egyptian Mythology.  

I first found the Percy Jackson books while reading an article on books for boys. Under the section on "If they like Harry Potter try this..." was a recommendation of the Percy Jackson Books.  A few days later I was Christmas shopping and found a box set of the first three volumes at the store, and gave them to the Boy for Christmas.  The Boy loved them, and we bought each of the next two books in hardback as they came out, which finished the first set of adventures.  The Boy wasn't as interested in the second set, which featured a number of other demigod characters (though Percy is still around) but my daughter took the stories up, and I have read each one along with her.

At the beginning of the first movie Percy is an 11 year old misfit. He's been kicked out of a number of school, he has dyslexia and ADHD, and his stepfather, Gabe is a total jerk who exploits his mother. Percy can understand why she stays with the jerk. 

In other words he is a very typical, very real, middle school boy. Until he is attacked by some monsters in a museum  and learns that nothing in his life is what he has thought he was.

Percy discovers that he is a demigod, and that his father is Poseidon, the God of the Seas. He learns that many of the great men of history have also been demigods, and that many wars have been born of the rivalries between sons of different gods.  He also learns there are a lot of demons in the world who do not like demigods, and that they can literally smell their presence.  This is why his mother has lived with Gabe all these years, his behavior and grooming habits throw the demons off Percy's track. (We also learn that none of the Greek Monsters ever really die, they are repeatedly reborn, so Percy will encounter the likes of Medusa and the Minotaur, sometimes more than once.)

Percy also learns their is a summer camp especially for demigods called Camp Half Blood. The camp is surrounded by a force field that keeps the monsters (and mortals) out. Here he can learn in relative safety how to manage the powers he inherited from his father.  But when Percy arrives things are in chaos--someone has stolen Zeus' lightening bolt, Hades thinks Percy knows something about it, and he is holding Percy's mother hostage in the Underworld. 

So Percy and his two friends Grover (a satyr) and Annabeth (daughter of Athena) set off on a cross country journey. 

One of the things that is so entrancing about this story is the way Mr Riordan updates the Greek Myths for modern times.  For example, Mount Olympus is now above the Empire State Building, because New York is the center of power in the world.   Meanwhile,  the gateway to hell is behind the Hollywood sign in California (didn't you suspect it all along?)

For kids who love mythology, the stories are especially exciting because they often know where the stories are going even before Percy does.  As a teacher, Mr Riordan fills the books with classical and historical references that hopefully inspire young readers to research.  The great popularity of the books has caused several classic works on mythology (including my favorite, The Greek Myths by Robert Graves to be reissued with forwards by Rick Riordan.

Another thing I like about the books is he gives considerable thought to what causes kids to feel marginalized and uses his stories to address  exactly those situations.  

According to a recent article on his blog, he is planning to launch a series grounded in Norse mythology sometime in 2015. I'm looking forward to it, and I know a lot of kids who are too. 

But I will always have a place on my shelf for Percy Jackson.   

This post is part of the A-Z chalenge. To see what other
writers are blogging about please click on the link above.

K is for The Killer Angels

 

 

 

One of the classes I took my very first semester of college was American History to the Civil War.  Of all the things I got from the class, the most important was my introduction to

The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara,

the book that was the basis for the film "Gettysburg".

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975, it has become

required reading for many history classes.

 

Before Shaara's time, war novels usually inserted a fictional character into a factual event, as in The Red Badge of Courage. But Shaara tells the story  from the perspective of a number of participants in the battle: including Confederates Robert E Lee, James Longstreet, George Pickett, Lewis Armistead, a spy named Harrison, and a British observer  Arthur Freemantle. The northern perspective is provided by such men as John Buford, John Reynolds, Winfield Scott Hancock, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.

 

  Outside of his native Maine, Chamberlain was little known before the book's publication, but Shaara saw him as an example of the Citizen Soldier, the man who has plenty to lose (Chamberlain was a college professor, with a wife and children)

but goes to war because it is the right thing to do.

Since the publication of the book both historians and tourists have paid far more attention to Chamberlain and the battle of Little Round Top. (Some historians would say too much.) But Chamberlain was heroic figure in many battles besides Gettysburg, and after the war as well, so I think he is merely being give his due.

 

Another historic figure who has his reputation enhanced by the book is James Longstreet. Long condemned in the South because he was critical of Lee after the war, and supported Grant as president, Shaara sees him as a visionary who recognized the changing nature of war, arguing in favor of trench warfare and against charges upon defended positions. 

 

Three main events dominate the battle: The successful attempt of Bufford to hold off advancing Confederates until reinforcements can be brought up on the first day.

Then on Day 2 the defense of Little Round Top, followed by Pickett's Charge on the third day.  Even if you know how it all turns out the story is gripping and dramatic.  Shaara successfully puts the reader in the shoes of soldiers from both side. The book is illustrated with maps, which give a clear picture where everyone is at any given time, and Shaara often has characters explain, for the audience and the soldiers, the maneuvers they are about to make.    Because he tells each segment of the battle from an individual point of view, only allowing us to know what they know,

a well known story becomes suspenseful again.

 

I have returned a number of times to re-read this book. Michael Shaara died in 1988. His son Jeff Shaara wrote 2 novels to bookend The Killer Angels, and tell the complete story of the Civil War.  Gods and Generals & The Last Full Measure are good books, but they have too much story to tell and can't match the focus of the three days in July of 1863.

 

Another person who was greatly influenced by this book was documentarian Ken Burns. He once said that he went to Gettysburg for the first time after he read the book-and felt like he had already been there.

I can attest from my own experience that this is true. 

 

My son is now away at college, and had to read the book this semester. He called me one night and said "I'm going to be up late tonight." "Why is that," I asked. "Colonel Vincent just told Colonel Chamberlain to take his men to the top of the hill and hold it at all costs. I won't be putting this down till at least the end of Day 2"

 

That is the magic of The Killer Angels.

 

 

This post is part of the A-Z challenge, blogging a book
a day for the month of April.
For more info please click on the link.

J is for The Jungle Books and Just So Stories

 

 

When I look over the list of books that I most cherished and most frequently read from my childhood, The Jungle Books would finish second only to the Louisa May Alcott collection I discussed back on the letter E.

I was 6 when I was taken to see the animated Disney version, and not long after that I was given a copy of the actual Kipling stories.  The Disney film is cute, but it changes the nature of virtually all the characters except Shere Khan. It would surprise those who only know the movies, for example, that it is Baloo the Bear who is the responsible mentor to Mowgli, while Bagheera the black panther who encourages Mowgli to kick back and enjoy himself more. Kaa the snake isn't interested in dining on Mowgli, and indeed becomes a mentor to him (the monkeys on the other hand are a favorite delicacy.) Humans are not nearly as benign in the book either as they are in the movie.

 

In the book Mowgli is a baby when he is rescued by a family of wolves from the tiger Shere Khan, who is despised by the other animals because he hunts man, which is strictly forbidden by the Law of the Jungle that all the animals live by.  Bagheera the black panther buys Mowgli's way into the Pack for the price of a newly killed bull.  Mowgli is raised among the other wolves, who are led by Akela.  Several of the best stories revolve around Mowgli learning the laws and traditions of the jungle from Baloo and others,  including the story "How Fear Came" which tells jungle animals Creation and Fall myth.

 

At the end of the first book Mowgli defeats Shere Khan by use of fire, which terrifies all animals, but which he as a human can manage. Rejected by all of the wolves except his parents and Bagheera, he then goes off to become part of the man village. 

 

Thus far the story is similar if much deeper to what is in the book. 

But now the book takes a darker turn, as Mowgli is rejected by the man village and returns to the Jungle, this time as a lone hunter, respected by all the other animals who know that even when he isn't stronger than them he is far more cunning.  He has several more adventure, including one. "The King's Ankh" which deals most disdainfully with Man's love of jewels and gold.  But in the end Mowgli can't resist the call to be part of man and have a family and so he returns, this time of his own free will.

Kipling ends with what may be the saddest lines in literature "And that is the last of the Mowgli stories."

 

But it isn't the last of the Jungle Books, as Kipling intersperses a number of other animal related stories set in India the best known of which are The White Seal and Rikki Tikki Tavi.  There is also poetry at the beginning and end of most of the stories:

 

"“Now this is the Law of the Jungle -- as old and as true as the sky;
And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the Wolf that shall break it must die.
As the creeper that girdles the tree-trunk the Law runneth forward and back
For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack.”  

 

"Wood and water, wind and tree

Wisdom, strength and courtesy

Jungle Favour go with thee."

 

Trivia note: Lord Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouting, modeled Cub Scouting on The Jungle Books. To this day Boys are organized into dens and packs and led by a leader who is Akela;

 

I can't let the letter "J" by without mentioning another Kipling classic, the Just-So Stories. Written for someone younger reader, they are a set of animal fables explaining why different creatures have various attributes.  Probably the best known is the Elephant's Child who is more inquisitive that Curious George, but my personal favorite is the Cat Who Walks by Himself.  Anyone who ever owned a cat would love the story.

 

There is a good, reasonably faithful film version of the Jungle Book, made in the 40's by England's Korda Brothers, distinguished by it beautiful cinematography, use of live animals, and a fine performance by Sabu as Mowgli.

 

As for the subsequent live action Disney film, the one known as 

Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book

I'd like to introduce you to Meg's Rule One of Film Titles

"Anytime the author's name is included in the title, it is probably farther from the author's original work than anything previously seen."

This was the film that caused me to create the rule. 

 

 

This post is part of the A-Z blogging challenge.
To learn more click on the link.

I Is for "In The Best Families"

One of the saddest moments in my life as a book lover was when I realized I had read every Nero Wolfe novel.  This does not of course preclude rereading books (as readers of this blog should already be aware.) Still the is a sadness in the finality that I now know everything Rex Stout chose to tell us about his two greatest creations: Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. Today I am looking at  one of my favorite Wolfe adventures- In The Best Families.

Rex Stout was, to my thinking, one of the most extraordinary people of the 20th century. AS a young man in the Navy he spent 4 years serving on Theodore Roosevelt's presidential yacht. While still a young man he created a school banking system that allowed students to  set up accounts to save money.  He worked a number of jobs in his youth, before settling upon writing as a profession. He helped  build his own house and much of its furnishings.

An early opponent of Fascism, he gave up most of his writing career during the early 40's to devote himself to radio programs and writing propaganda articles supporting World War II.   He was also a president of the Writers Guild, and helped create the International Copyright Convention.

Oh and he wrote some of the best mystery novels and novellas ever penned, most featuring Nero Wolfe and Archie Goodwin. He employed the Conan Doyle technique of Narrator/Detective, but perfected it by making the narrator, Archie a fine detective in his own right. Archie is a hard boiled detective in  the tradition of Sam Spade or Phillip Marlowe.  He does the leg work, bringing evidence and suspects to Nero Wolfe, an eccentric fat man, a classic thinking detective, reminiscent of Mycroft Holmes (If you've only watched Sherlock you don't know what Mycroft was really like. Go read The Adventure of the Greek Interpreter or The Bruce Partington Plans.) Wolfe would prefer to spend his days raising orchids, planning extravagant meals (he employs an orchid nurse and a chef) and reading, but in order to afford his extravagant lifestyle he must make a living by his wits.  Oh one other thing, Wolfe hates to leave his house on business. T hats what we have Archie for. One of Archie's jobs is to nag Wolfe into working, and he relishes it. Archie is a chivalrous womanizer, which is to say he is always a gentleman and has no intentions of settling down.

This particular case is part of a set of linked books often referred to as the Zeck novels. In each of the stories Wolfe runs up against the activities of a man named Arnold Zeck, who has his fingers in enough activities to make Professor Moriarty look like a common criminal. Not that Zeck is ever directly involved.  He has multiple layers of men between the street level crime and himself.  When Wolfe refused to withdraw from an earlier case, Zeck had the entire rooftop greenhouse shot up, destroying 10,000 orchids.  Each time previously, Wolfe has found a way to solve the crime without connecting it to Zeck's activities. But this case is different, so Wolfe disappears without even telling Archie where he is going.

There is a whole middle section of the book in which Wolfe is missing, and we see Archie running his own detective agency. We realize Archie can function without Wolfe far more effectively than Wolfe can without Archie.  Eventually of course, the plot to deal with Zeck kicks into high gear, ending in a climatic shootout.

This is only an outline of course, and it barely touches on the main reason most people read (and especially reread) Rex Stout.  Seldom have there been any fictional characters in any genre more completely created so that one feels like they could sit down and converse with them. It is not merely the two main characters, there is also an equally well drawn supporting cast: Cramer and Stebbins from Homicide, Fritz the cook, Saul, Fred and Orrie the backup PI's, Theodore the orchid nurse.  Archie has a breezy and confidential style, and he is just plain fun to read. The people and furnishings of Nero Wolfe's brownstone are  as familiar as one's own family.  One would fake a crime just to get in the door to talk with Wolfe, and hope to stay for dinner, then be escorted home by Archie.

Somehow Rex Stout accomplished a miracle with the 40 year span of these books, keeping Archie and  Wolfe more or less the same ages and personalities, while keeping the world around them contemporary. The first book takes place in the Depression, the last tackles Watergate.

Though I picked this particular book as one of my favorites, there are dozens of stories, none of them bad, most of them fabulous. If you want one with a particularly contemporary feel, check out The Doorbell Rang. In this story Wolfe takes on the FBI, which is intimidating a client. Some things never change.  It really doesn't matter where you start. Just get the heck over to the old brownstone.  Tell Archie I sent you.

 

H is for (double) Header

Today I find myself confronted with two totally different books, both beginning with H, both personal favorites.  Call it a double Header if you wish.

I first read How Green was My Valley as a high school freshman, but I was already acquainted with the story from the classic film by John Ford starring Donald Crisp, Maureen O'Hara and Roddy McDowall. I have said before that watching that movie as a child was the first time I realized I was watching a great film. When I ran across a copy of the book in our high school library I decided to read it.

My first impression was to be pleasantly surprised by how faithful the movie was to the first half of the novel. LIke the film, the book is told in flashback, with Huw, the narrator, leaving his home village for the last time, upon the death of his mother. He then reflects back upon life in his valley, a valley of his youth. . Huw is the youngest son of a family of coal miners that have done well  for their profession, their family owns their house, and with so many sons of the house all employed the family has prospered. They can even afford to send Huw to school in the hope that he will become a professional man and escape the mines.  Times are changing however and the changes will destroy the family unit.

Huw's father, Gwilliam  is the head of the house, a supervisor in the mine, the sort of person the other miners choose to represent them.  But he is a company man, grateful the company has given him a good living, and he opposes the idea of a union. Huw's mother, Beth, is the center of the family, holding everyone together. She dismisses herself as unimportant, but she is capable of speaking forthrightly when called to do so, and clearly nothing will function without her.


The older brothers have all made careers in the mines, but times are changing. Other mines have closed, bringing out of work men to their valley. Desperate for work, they will take lower wages than the native miners. Meanwhile a younger generation is taking over the business and they lack loyalty to those who built the business. There are strikes and layoffs.

The son of the mines owner wishes to marry Angharad, the beautiful daughter of the family, but she is in love with the village minister, who loves her as well, but rejects marrying her because he doesnt want her living the life of a minister's wife. So Angharad marries the man she doesnt love but finds it hard to hide her feelings. The insular nature of the village leads to gossip and scandal. The author  relates the spread of gossip to the spread of slag from the coal mine, each destroying things of beauty.

The quest for employment eventually leaves all but on of the sons to leave the valley to seek work elsewhere. This son, Ivor, marries Bronwen, but is later lost in the mines.  Growing from youth to adulthood, Huw watches everything he knows dissolve.

If a lot of this material sounds familiar, for a novel that begins in the early 20th century, there is much of relevance to our own time.  Exchange coal mines for factory towns and you have an exact analogy of what goes on in many American communities today. Parents who have built good lives for their families, remaining faithful to their employers, and expecting their children to follow after them and find the same success , find that the next generation can't find jobs in their field, nor can they manage a lifestyle as good as their parents. This is a book that can be read both as a memoir of the past, and a reflection of the present day.

Much as I love this book however, I can't let this letter go by without noting that H also can stand for Holmes as in Sherlock, and his most famous adventure Hound of the Baskervilles. Thanks to two hot TV shows (Elementary on CBS and  Sherlock which is produced by the BBC and airs in America on PBS, Holmes is currently a hot topic, but he has rarely been out of fashion at any time in the past 125 years,  Hound of the Baskervilles is probably his most famous adventure. This classic story of a family cursed to be attacked by a ghostly hound, and Holmes attempts to save the last of the line from meeting the fate of his ancestors, the story has everything: deductions, red herrings, false trails, a spooky setting, eccentric comic relief, and of course that Hound. Conan Doyle had a great narrative style, at least when he was writing as Watson, and this book is a great way to pass an evening.  I personally rely on a copy  of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, so I don't have to prune my collection,  but if I could only have one of the tales, it would be this one.

This post is part of the A-Z blogging challenge. To read more on the challenge click on the button on the right.

G is for "Great Green Rooms" and Goodnight Moon

 

It's been close to ten years since I read this book to a child

and still I can recite it from memory

"In the great green room

there was a telephone

and a red balloon

and a picture of a cow jumping over the moon..."

 

Goodnight Moon written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd, is perhaps the best loved and most comforting of all modern

bedtime stories.  Since it was first published in 1947 it has sold more than 4 million copies, often to new parents who loved their own copies to death as children. 

 

The book first came to our house as a board book, in a set with The Runaway Bunny (another popular book at our house), a first

Christmas gift from his grandmother. By the time the Boy was two, our copy was being held together by clear plastic packing tape, for we went almost nowhere without it.

 

When the Girl came along, I got her a copy of her own, as I did  with several other favorites the Boy showed no sign of surrendering.

It really didn't matter though, because by that time I knew the story so well I could hold up the pictures and tell the story without even looking at the pages.

 

In the story the narrator first names all the items in the room, including a telephone, a balloon, some animals (kittens and a mouse) and even actual bedtime items (a comb, brush, and bowl of mush). Then the child (a little boy bunny, in fact) says goodnight to everything, starting with the moon outside his window. The patterns of the rhythm and rhyme are perfectly calculated to lull a child to sleep, and indeed with any luck, by the time we get to "Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere" there is hopefully nothing to do but turn out the light.

 

Books like this are all about comfort and security: the security of being safe in one's own bed, the comfort of the bedtime ritual.  If you ever read this book to a child you know what I mean: you probably felt better

as soon as you read those first few lines. (You probably went right on with the list too, at least in your head.)

 

I don't expect my kids to necessarily raise their children as we raised them.

(Or even to necessarily have children, for that matter.)

Different thing work for different people and different times.

But I do hope they will each find a child, whether their own

or someone else's, and give them this bedtime gift

of the room and the moon wishing them pleasant dreams,

 

 

 

This blog post is part of the A-Z challenge. For more info please click on the icon above.

F is for Fruits of Solitude

    Have you ever taken a roundabout path to a favorite book? I do occasionally, but never more so than when a 21st century children's novel  led me to this 17th collection of  religious and philosophical maxims by William Penn, the great Quaker who founded the state of Pennsylvania.

It all began in July of 2007, when I sat down to my brand new, long awaited copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On the front piece of the book, J K Rowling placed two quotes, both quite relevant to the book as it turned out; one was from a Greek tragedy, while the other was this from William Penn's   More Fruits of Solitude :

"Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.
In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."  

As excited as I was to get into the last Harry Potter book, the quote from William Penn caught my attention, as one of the best things I had ever read on death and friendship. I had 4 people standing in line waiting for me to finish Deathly Hallows, but I promised myself I would track the Penn book down once I was done.

A month or so after I finished Deathly Hallows I ran across a Harvard Classics edition containing both Fruits of Solitude and the
A  Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin in a used book store, and snatched it  up. I learned there were actually 2 volumes, the first published in 1693, the other in 1702. 

Although  it takes a little getting used to the writing style, this book is much more readable than many works of the 17th century, especially once you get to the maxims.  Penn  wrote these books during several periods of exile and house arrest, and they do suggest the reflections  a person who has had a lot of time to think. He writes from a Quaker perspective, but there is much of value here for anyone, especially those who want to simplify the way they live their lives. For a book written more than 300 years ago, much rings true even today.  It's not a book many people would read cover to cover, I think, but its an excellent book to dip into for a little wisdom:
"""It is Reproach to Religion and Government to suffer so much Poverty and Excess".

"Never Marry but for Love; but see that thou lov'st what is lovely."

" If Love be not thy chiefest Motive, thou wilt soon grow weary of a Married State, and stray from thy Promise, to search out thy Pleasures in forbidden Places."

 T " There can be no Friendship where there is no Freedom. Friendship loves a free Air, and will not be penned up in straight and narrow Enclosures. It will speak freely, and act so too; and take nothing ill where no ill."

 "A true Friend unbosoms freely, advises justly, assists readily, adventures boldly, takes all patiently, defends courageously, and continues a Friend unchangeably"

" Believe nothing against another but upon good Authority: Nor report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to others to conceal it."


There's a lot more wisdom in this book. But if Penn had written nothing else, I would still treasure  the section titled: "The Union of Friends" from which Ms Rowling took her quote:

"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship.
If absence be not death, neither is theirs.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.
In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."

   I have thought a lot about this quote, and especially the statements "They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it" and "Death is but crossing the worlds, as friends do the sea."  In William Penn's time people travelled from the old world to the new and one might not hear from them for years, if at all.  And persons also might return to England (as Penn himself did) leaving loved ones behind in the Americas. Even though one didn't hear from these friends, they were still there, on the other side of the world. going about their lives.  It is the most perfect expression I have ever found for the feeling of losing a loved one, they are out of sight and communication, and yet still around.  
I        If Penn had written nothing else he would still be important to me, because of this quote. But there is much of merit in Fruits of Solitude, for those who wish to take the time to explore it.

This post is part of the A-Z blogging challenge
click on the link above for more information

E is for Eight Cousins

There are, I think, comfort books as well as comfort foods.  Certain books, especially when read in the copies we treasured from childhood, can take us to that time and place where we first encountered them.

I have written before about my childhood love of Louisa May Alcott, and my much treasured set of her books (gifted by a friend of my mother, who only had boys).  These are books I have returned to repeatedly throughout my life. Now I have a set on my Nook, and have discovered that an added perk of an E-reader is that no one can tell what you are reading.  Some might take the advantage to read Fifty Shades of Grey, but I'm reading kid-lit.

Indeed, Alcott was a groundbreaking writer in this regard, writing books written for children about realistic children, in a relatively non moralistic way.

Although I love the Little Women trilogy and  the March Family my favorite Alcott books involve another family, the Campbells. They are the main characters of Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom. 

I first discovered Eight Cousins in my early teens when my grandmother brought me a copy of the book on a visit to Concord. As it happened, I had eight cousins at the time, and my grandma wrote their names inside the front cover. 

The premise of the first book was perfectly designed for a 12 year old girl: young Rose Campbell, newly orphaned, has been sent back to America from her native England to be brought up by her Uncle Alec. While she waits for her uncle to return from a sea voyage, who must contend with her 4 aunts and 2 great aunts, each of whom has definite ideas about what constitutes the proper upbringing of the young heiress. In addition to all the maternal guidance, she also has 7 boy cousins: Archie, Charlie, Mac, Steve, Will, Geordie and Jamie. Sheltered Rose is initially terrified of the boys, and wants nothing to do with them, but soon finds a friend and ally in a fellow orphan girl, Phoebe, who has come to work at the Campbell mansion.

The first book covers a year of Rose's life as Uncle Alec slowly draws her out of her shell and helps her become a healthy and happy young woman.  Since Alec believes in exercise and activity, she spends more and more time with her cousins and their families, and becomes more involved in their successes, setbacks, and fights.  At the end of the book, Rose chooses the family she wishes to remain with.

Rose in Bloom begins several years later, with Rose and Phoebe returning from a trip abroad to take their places as adults in the family and the world.  Rose has decided to take up philanthropy as a profession, outraging family members who feel her fortune should be kept intact, and that  tenement houses and orphanages are not fit places for a woman of breeding to be.

Most of the adults would like to see Rose marry one of her 3 eldest cousins, but Archie will fall in  love elsewhere, Mac seems far to prickly to settle down with any woman, and Charlie, while charming and handsome, is a weak willed alcoholic totally spoiled by his mother, Aunt Clara. 

As I mentioned, these were my favorite books when I was young.  Alcott was great at weaving plots together, and I got totally caught up in the family dramas. By the end of the story the futures of most of the characters have been satisfactorily resolved, but Ms Alcott wasn't one to sugarcoat the ups and downs of life, and several major family tragedies compound events along the way (Nobody, but nobody could kill  a character off like Louisa May).  If Rose is not quite as vivid a personality as Jo March, she is in many ways a more typical young woman (minus the fortune) and the workings of the plot allow Ms Alcott to drop subtle hints about health, education, maturity, charity and other concerns for young women. 

We take it for granted now that women will be doctors and members of other professions, that they can manage their own properties, that they will be just as well educated as the young men around them, that they needn't rush into marriage for the wrong reasons, or indeed marry at all; but these views were radical in Ms Alcott's time. Miss Alcott herself came from a rather unconventional family, but she spent much of her childhood in poverty, originally started writing to help support them, and never forgot where she came from and those who helped her along the way. All this resonated with me when I was young. 

Even as a young girl, my favorite character was Mac, and I fervently hoped he would end up with Rose in the end.  Mac is original and real, a man who dabbles in science, philosophy, medicine and poetry, and has  a great interest in knowing all about the world around him.  Louisa May Alcott knew Henry David Thoreau in her youth, and I always thought he was a model for Mac, with his love of nature and books and desire for independence.

Nothing gives me more pleasure as a reader to return to a book I loved when I was young, and love that book again. I return to these books repeatedly, because they still feel so true and honest, and because they take me back to that time when a few treasured books were my very best friends.

  

This post is part of the A to Z challenge. I am writing each day about a favorite book for each letter of the alphabet.  To read more about the challenge, and what other writers are doing, click on the link above.