Grading Harold Pinter and a Video of the Week

English playwright and Nobel Prize winner Harold Pinter died last year leaving behind a large body of fascinating and often infuriating work. If you've ever seen any of his plays performed you know that the two frequently hand in hand. I've seen several, a few more than once, and I will confess that if you forced me to say what they were really about, I might not be able to do it. Mr. Pinter himself was known to give contrary explanations of his own work over the years...this play is political....this play is not....yes, it is...no it isn't.... Sometimes, I had the sense that he was secretly having us on and would step out from behind the curtain to say "Just kidding!" But, I did enjoy the show.

You can get an excellent sense of what I mean from this very short sketch he performed with actor Rupert Graves called Apart From That. Be sure to watch it through to the end. You'll get frustrated halfway through, you may not have any idea what is going on, but the finish gave me a slight chill. C.J. liked it, too.



I've been grading a stack of short stories my students wrote using the grading rubric the state of California uses for our annual tests. (It seems like all we do now is test and prepare for tests.) So, I thought I would grade Mr. Pinter's play following the same rubric.

I notice right away that Mr. Pinter uses very simple vocabulary. There are no high level words nor is there any significant variation in sentence length. The piece fails to use compound or complex sentence structures. It is largely a series of simple declarative and interrogative sentences with only the most basic transition words. These repeated transitions are not used effectively. The opening does provide a framework for the story but fails to capture the reader's attention. There is not even rudimentary character development; the two figures are interchangeable, neither is delineated in any way. There is very little use of narrative elements: no suspense, no foreshadowing, no figurative language, no narrative action, no movement. There is no sense of setting, either time or place, at all. There is no sense of rising action nor of climax to the piece. I will assume that the piece is correctly spelled, punctuated and capitalized and I could not detect any errors in usage. These are the only strong points in the piece. Overall, on the scale of one to four I would have to score this piece a two, which is considered basic level and a failing grade. Should Mr. Pinter's teachers produce an abundance of students writing like this their school will have to be designated a program improvement school, forced to used a state approved curriculum, and possibly closed. Since Mr. Pinter has scored basic, his name along with his student i.d. number will have to be put on a list and submitted to the Board of Education along with the names and identification numbers of the other students who scored below proficient. This list it to be submitted four times a year and must include the names of all students who scored below proficient on any of the four tests in the quarterly test battery all English teachers are required to administer. No one knows what the purpose of this list is, but we are required to submit it.

Okay, I've been feeling a little snarky lately.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

Everyone now knows how to find the meaning of life within himself.

The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. begs the question of just how will Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. be remembered. In fact, will he be remembered at all? I found the book to be well in step with his early novels. There is a time travelling man and dog who appear regularly appear on Earth wondering about the house where the man's disgruntled wife spends her days fighting off tourists and religious fanatics who want to see the space man. There is the richest man in the world who loses his fortune and finds himself on a rocket ship bound for Jupiter. There is an alien from Tralfamador, marooned on Titan, one of Jupiter's moon's, waiting through the centuries for the replacement part his rocket needs to arrive. And there is the suicidal Martian invasion of Earth that ends in the creation of a new religion, The Church of God the Utterly Indifferent.

It's all in good fun with a dash or two of metaphysics thrown in. Maybe a splash of social criticism here and there for good measure. I enjoyed it, but I also found it very 60's. I've been reading Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. most of my life, probably for the last 30 years. Now that I've finished this one, I think I've read all of his published work, so you can count me as a fan. But I wonder if anyone will be reading him two or three generations from now. If they are, I suspect they'll be reading Slaughterhouse Five. Maybe a few graduate students will still be reading the rest of his novels, but I'm not sure.

It feels natural to wonder about this regarding Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. since so many of his books, The Sirens of Titan included, deal with the issue of time and the notion that all time exists simultaneously. Everything that will happen has already happened. The time travelling man and dog in The Sirens of Titan are like Billy Pilgrim in Slaughterhouse Five, unstuck in time and space. They travel to the future and back, from planet to planet, experiencing it all as happening at once. Billy Pilgrim could choose which parts of his life he could visit. I hope Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. can, too. That seems like a fitting heaven for him, a paradise he might want to visit now and then. Actually, it doesn't sound that bad to me, either.

Happy 600!!!!!

To celebrate this my 600th post I made this little video.



I started Ready When You Are C.B. just over two years ago intending it to be a blog about local politics. I read quite a few political blogs, but almost all of these are about national politics. I've yet to find one devoted to California politics. With over 24 milllion people, most of them on-line you'd think there would be a blog just about California. I knew I couldn't cover the whole state, but since there was a mayoral election going on in Vallejo, my hometown, I thought I could cover that.

I did fairly well, created some controversy, and may have been part of the impetus behind the creation of a website devoted to Vallejo politics. But I found politics to be a very heated kitchen and if you can't stand the heat...... Meantime, I started reveiwing books I read here and found there were many, many people throughout the world doing the same. So I phased out politics more or less entirely and devoted myself to book blogging. Now, some 150 plus reviews later, and that's not counting the short stories, I'm still having fun.

The Holocaust Chronicle: A Wednesday Wonder Guest Post

Wednesday Wonders are a semi-regular feature here. They are the kind of book you don't read cover-to-cover. Unusual, interesting, beautiful, useful, but not something that you'd typically find reviewed in an on-line book blog. This week's Wednesday Wonder is on a serious topic. Guest author Sandy Nawrot of You've GOTTA Read This takes a look at The Holocaust Chronicle.

A few days ago, I was slowly trying to drag myself out of bed, and my eye fell upon this book on the bookshelf. It had been awhile since I'd looked at it, and honestly I had forgotten it was there. I pulled it down and started flipping through it, and suddenly remembered what an incredible reference book it was. My first thought was "I have to tell James about this...maybe it would make a good Wednesday Wonder."

The Holocaust Chronicle is a not-for-profit effort...a massive 750+ page collaboration by scholars, authors and experts in the field, with the intent of "providing students and lay people the basic facts of the Holocaust and its roots of development". I chuckled to myself at the use of the word basic, because from my viewpoint, this is anything but basic.

The stage is set in the prologue, with the roots of the Holocaust, starting in 1500 B.C. and moving through history. It is a shocking reminder that the Jews have been persecuted since nearly the beginning of time. From there, the overall structure of the book is a timeline. Along the bottom of each page are bullet-point events in chronological order, from 1933 to 1946. To support the timeline and fill in the cracks, each page contains photos, letters, propaganda posters, and mini-biographies of not only the "players" in the Nazi regime, but the unsung stories of the victims. There are, in fact, over 2,000 photos, some from private collections, archives and other from official documents.

These two pictures are German propaganda. The one on the left is of "happy Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto". I won't show you the real pictures in that Ghetto - they are way too disturbing. The picture on the right is a demonstration of the Nazi's desire to keep the Aryan race pure...mixed race on the left, healthy Aryan youth on the right. It amazes me that not only did the Germans feel these types of brainwashing were effective, but that they were!

These are all photos from three of thousands of compelling stories in the book. The first picture on the left is the official ID card of Cyrla Rosenweig, a "Schindler Jew" and survivor. The center picture is of Maximilian Kolbe, and one of my favorite stories. He was a Polish-Catholic priest that was imprisoned in Auschwitz, and sacrificed his life for one of his fellow prisoners that had a family. This prisoner went on to survive the camp, and until his death, traveled the world to tell the story. Kolbe was made a saint in 1982. Seriously, Google this guy. The story is unforgettable. The picture on your far right is of Jan Harski. Harski was a gentile that wanted the world to know what was happening to Jews in Poland. He disguised himself as a Jew and entered the Warsaw ghetto. He also impersonated a guard and entered a death camp. From both experiences, he gave eye-witness accounts of the atrocities, and, driven by his sense of urgency, traveled to Washington to address President Franklin Roosevelt. Someone needs to make a movie of this gentleman.

I found myself educated by this book with regards to not only the atrocities we have all heard of, like Treblinka, Auschwitz, the Warsaw ghetto, etc.. There is also documentation of the slaughter at Ejszyszki, Lithuania, in Babi Yar, Ukraine, Serbia, many of the Baltic countries, Scandinavia, and Britain. These are the events you hear nothing about.

Interestingly, the publisher of this book also has a corresponding website at http://www.holocaustchronicle.org. Everything that is in the book is on the website. You certainly don't get the same impact as looking at the real thing, but is still available as an excellent reference.

This is not a bit of light reading. Not something you want to put on your coffee table. The pictures do not shelter you from the graphic ugliness of the Holocaust. Some of them can be grotesque, heartbreaking and sickening, and I cannot look at the book for too long. At the same time, it is an expansive piece of work that deserves a spot on the shelf of every person with an interest in this topic.

Thanks to Sandy for another interesting Wednesday Wonder. If you'd like to suggest a title or write a guest post, please let me know.

Les miserables by Victor Hugo: Part One - Fantine

In the year 1815 Monseigneur Charles-Francois-Bienvenu Myriel was Bishop of Dinge, He was then about seventy-five, having held the bishopric since 1806.



Les Miserables by Victor Hugo certainly takes its time getting started. No "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times," or "Happy families are all alike," here. Mr. Hugo seems confident that his readers will indulge him while he takes 150 pages setting things up. Those who do will be rewarded for their efforts.

I've decided to break up my reading of Les Miserables into parts. The book itself is broken up into five parts each of them as long as a typical novel making for 1229 pages in the Penguin Classics edition I'm reading. Les Miserables took more than a decade to write. Hugo completed it while living on the Channel Islands during a period of exile from France. He began life as a conservative royalist and ended up almost an avowed socialist. Clearly he had a lot to say, and Les Miserables was his chance to say it. Hugo is clearly making his case, laying out his critique of French society in Les Miserables; at points he simply preaches his sermon openly, but he is also telling a compelling story, one that generations have found difficult to put down. After reading Part One: Fantine, you can count me as a fan.

Fantine is the story of three people. The first is Bishop Myriel, the Bishop of Dinge and that rare person a truly upright clergyman. We are told the better part of his life story, given several examples of his charity and his moral behavior which is always guided by what is the right thing not just for a man, but for a man of God to do. He is an extreme example, certainly, but he serves to advance the plot and to advance Mr. Hugo's case against a clergy and a society that falls so short of what the New Testament expects.

One night Bishop Myriel meets the second person featured in Fantine, Jean Valjean, a convict newly paroled after serving 19 years hard labor. Valjean is unable to find work, unable to find lodgings even unable to find anyone who will sell him food because whenever he enters a town he must first register with the local police as an ex-convict and no one will do business of any kind with an ex-convict. When Valjean finds lodging with the Bishop, he cannot believe the priest is really as good as he appears to be. How can this man trust him? How can he see good in him? During the night, Valjean steals valuable silverware from the Bishop and runs away. He is caught and brought before the Bishop, accused of the theft. Rather than turn Valjean in, the Bishop gives him the rest of the silverware and two valuable silver candlesticks claiming that was his intention all along and that Valjean is innocent.

In the meantime, young Fantine has fallen in love with a wealthy man. She spends one magical summer with him, his three friends and their three girlfriends, only to be dumped when the four young men return to their wealthy families and the better lives and wives promised to them. The other three girls laugh it all off because they were not really in love after all and there will be other men. Fantine, completely in love at the time, is with child. She is abandoned to her fate by everyone. Alone in the world she leaves Paris, daughter in her arms, and heads for her hometown where she hopes to find work. Along the way she leaves her daughter in the care of what she believes is a good hearted family of innkeepers. Once home she finds work in the new factory of Monseiur Madeline, who is really a reformed and incognito Jean Valjean. Ill fortune follows Fantine everywhere and she eventually is reduced to prostitution. But Monseiur Madeline is also an upright man. At her worst moment, he takes her under his wing, provides for her care and plans to reunite her with her long lost daughter, Cosette.

This is pure melodrama in its most manipulative form. The entire first part reeks with Victorian sentimentality a walking exampler of what Virginia Woolf called a "baggy-pants monster." Hugo is trying to build a realistic novel, his attention to detail is great, but these characters are so over-the-top they defy reality, they could never really exist. But it all works. It works very well. Somehow Victor Hugo makes the reader care deeply about his characters, though they are more archetypes than people. They cannot escape the wheel of fate that they are trapped on, but this does not mean the reader won't root for them anyway. I'm reading Hugo's prose in translation, I admit, but few people can turn on the suspense or build up the excitement like he can. Part one ends with Jean Valjean racing to Arras where another man is on trail, mistakenly charged with being Jean Valjean. The roads are bad, his carriage breaks down, his horse becomes exhausted, the courtroom is so crowded he can't get in... It felt like reading the final sequence of a silent movie adventure serial with an innocent girl tied to the tracks of an oncoming train.

Fantine is only the first part of Les Miserables, but it does satisfy like a novel. There is clearly more story to tell, but the ending is an ending not a to-be-continued. So Les Miserables goes back on my shelf until next month. There are five parts to it and at the rate of one part per month I'll finish it sometime in May. That should leave me with enough time to read Tristram Shandy before the end of the year.

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky - - Featuring a Guest Appearence by Matt of A Guy's Moleskin Notebook

On an exceptionally hot evening early in July a young man came out of the tiny room which he rented from tenants in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. Bridge.

I've been saving my review of Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky for several weeks; a book like this requires some reflection. It was not what I expected. I have read lots of 19th century fiction, most of it English fiction, so I was expecting Dostoevsky to fall in place neatly alongside Charles Dickens. Dickens wrote about crime and criminals in several novels and was said to be a fan of Dostoevsky's work. I was wrong. Rashkolnikov, the murderous anti-hero of Crime and Punishment bears little resemblance to any of the criminals in Dickens's novels--the two authors have little in common in their approach to the subject at all.

Even in Charles Dickens's most intimate story the reader gets the impression that he is in an expansive universe. The richness and the variety of characters imply that there is a colorful world out there if only we can go and find it. I think this is even true in a novel like Little Dorrit much of which is confined to small rooms the Marshalsea prison. Even in prison the characters create a world. I had the opposite sensation with Crime and Punishment. Throughout the novel I felt that the world was collapsing on Rashkolnikov. Although there is a large cast of characters, many colorful enough to be in a Dickens novel, everything seems to close in on Rashkolnikov's lonely room. To the point that when he left it, he was still in it. He takes his isolation with him when he enters the world, rather than bringing the world with him into prison as the characters in Little Dorrit do.

Rashkolnikov is a young student in St. Petersburg, Russia, just eking out a living barely able to pay for his classes and his own support on the money his family can send him. He reaches a point when he can no longer even do this and is faced with paying the rent. He reasons that his life is worth more than that of the local pawnbroker, that if he were to kill her and to rob her he would be no different really from a Napoleon who did just that on a much grander scale and is hailed as a genius and a hero for doing so. Men of genius are not subject to the law and morality of ordinary men according to Rashkolnikov, so what would be an act of murder for one is not so for the other.

Raskolnikov kills the old woman and her servant only to be tormented afterwards by guilt and be the fear of discovery. He becomes ill as a result. His friends and neighbors along with his mother and sister arrive on the scene, each one voicing their own theory as to why he is ill and how to cure him. They hover over him in his tiny room talking about the flu while he is consumed with guilt and the suspicion that they all know what he did and are mocking him. Once he recovers his health he must deal with a police inspector who has found a witness, a young neighbor girl whom Raskolnikov has fallen in love with in spite of her lower status and suspect reputation. In what many, myself included, find a weak ending, she brings him to redemption.

This all takes place in the space of a few days and it all makes for compelling reading. I don't know why that surprised me but it did. I was expecting Crime and Punishment to be something of a slog, but I found it difficult to put down right from the start. Parts of it are actually very funny, but what is most interesting is the study of a single criminal mind. I felt like I was reading a case study in a book by Sigmund Freud. Since the main reason I read Crime and Punishment in the first place is that Matt has talked about it so frequently on his blog A Guy's Moleskin Notebook, I decided to ask him about this. His reply follows:

I haven't stumbled upon any published literature that Freud has written on Crime and Punishment. Fyodor Dostoevsky began to write this novel in 1859, the last of his ten years of exile in Siberia. Living a life of suffering, he created the character of Raskolnikov with the preconceptions of his own harrowing experience. I have read volume after volume of critical essays on where Raskolnikov's suffering originated, which is, from the frame of the novel itself, in his murder of the pawn-woman. The lectures on the novel in my undergrad class also focused on this topic. But Dostoevsky's main concentration I believe is why suffering must exist and how one can overcome this suffering.

In part one of the novel, Dostoevsky describes Raskolnikov as "having been in an over strained irritable condition, verging on hypochondria" for some time past. When out in public, he is almost always preoccupied with his own agitated thoughts or muttering to himself in a state of feverish confusion. These irregular characteristics indicate Raskolnikov’s nervous anticipation of the murder that he plans to commit. The guilt that he experiences after carrying out the murder further amplifies his irritable condition, thus plunging him into a period of illness and delirium. A reader would conclude, therefore, that Raskolnikov’s mental state is directly linked to the guilt about the crime.

As a neurotic, Raskolnikov is unable to suppress his instincts as effectively as a regular person. He engages in these palliative measures for the same reasons as everybody else does, yet is unable to achieve the same results due to the abnormal strength of his instincts. When the instincts of regular people come into contact with their palliative measures, they are instantly subdued. But when Raskolnikov’s powerful instincts come into contact with his palliative measures, they combine with the palliative measures, thus turning them into extreme and distorted mental obsessions.

How is it that Raskolnikov’s aggression still exists, when the conditions of civilization are supposed to repress such instincts? Freud maintains that civilization "is built up upon a renunciation of instinct, how much it presupposes precisely the non-satisfaction (by suppression, repression, or some other means?) of powerful instincts." In order to answer our question, we must again remind ourselves that Raskolnikov is a neurotic character with instincts that cannot be repressed as readily as those of normal people. He maintains his aggressions, therefore, while others find their aggressions limited by civilization.

Freudian analysis of Raskolnikov might indicate that complex connections exist between civilization and the human psyche—connections which are impossible to completely sever. The presence of these connections make it impossible for us to try to oppose the structure of civilization without ending up in the same plight as Raskolnikov. Thus, both Freud and Dostoevsky seem to suggest that it is necessary for us to adapt ourselves as best we can to the pre-existing constructs of civilization and learn to accept its less pleasant aspects.

Reference: Freud, Sigmund. "Civilizations and Its Discontents." The Freud Reader. Ed. Peter Gay. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1989.

I find this to be the key point Matt makes: "Raskolnikov is a neurotic character with instincts that cannot be repressed as readily as those of normal people. He maintains his aggressions, therefore, while others find their aggressions limited by civilization." This should be a major point of debate: does civilization place a positive limit on more natural instincts towards violence? By the end of Crime and Punishment I suspect Dostoevsky's answer would be yes, but I'm not sure mine is. While Raskolnikov is punished and does come to repent his actions, Napoleon is still considered a genius and is still praised as a hero. You can visit his tomb in Paris and see the bas relief sculptures that portray him as the great unifier of Europe. I'm left to wonder if Raskolnikov's great sin is not that committed murder but that he thought he was the kind of man who could get away with it.

I'd like to thank Matt for his participation in this project. I envy his students. I bet his classes provide lots of food for thought.

Update: This book was eaten by Dakota on July 6, 2009.

Short Story Sunday: "Rowing to Eden" by Amy Bloom

Writing a story about cancer must be quite a challenge. So much has already been written about it--one must wonder if there is anything original left to say. No matter how you look at it, it's going to be tightrope walk, sentimentality on one side, heartlessness on the other. How do you find a middle path? Do you even want to find one, really? Can you just trust the idea that some stories need to be told over and over again and be assured that your story will do the job, will succeed.

Reviewing a story about cancer offers many of the same pitfalls. Can you really write a negative review of a story about cancer? What if you read one of the books about cancer survivors who do amazing things, like climb Mt. Everest and flat-out hated it? Could you say so?

Fortunately for me, I loved Amy Bloom's short story "Rowing to Eden." I'd select it as the strongest story in a volume of strong stories A Blind Man Can See How Much I Love You. "Rowing to Eden" is about a trio, an almost love triangle of close friends. Mai is undergoing treatment for cancer and it is not clear that she will survive. She knows that she is supposed to act like a warrior, fight, do battle with her cancer, but she does not feel like a warrior--she feels like a victim. She finds it difficult to deal with her husband Charley, who is supportive, loves her and is doing his best but complicates her situation none-the-less.

Ellie, Mai's best friend, is the third point of the triangle. Ellie has survived breast cancer already. She has been Mai's best friend for decades, loves her, but has never been in-love with her though she has never had a serious relationship with any other women. Ellie is along for the ride, trying her best to support Mai and feeling a little miffed when she puts Charley first. She and Charley get along fine, but they only have a relationship because they share a common affection with Mai. Take her out of the equation and Ellie would probably never see Charley again.

Often in the best modern short stories very little actually happens and that is the case with "Rowing to Eden." The significant scene happens in the end when Charley and Ellie finally talk about what her cancer was like. Charley wants to know what Mai is going through but she will not tell him much detail, in fact he has yet to see her scar. He asks Ellie to show him her scar and she does. This is where Ms. Bloom really walks the tightrope. This scene is a dangerous place to go. It is to her enormous credit that she writes it so well. The scene is touching without becoming sentimental, revealing without becoming exploitative. And completely believable. What could have become a very maudlin tale does not. Neither does it become a falsely hopeful story meant to inspire the reader. What it becomes is real.

I'm pleased to say that Amy Bloom will be a featured interview on this site in a few weeks. It will be interesting to see what she has to say about "Rowing to Eden."

Short Story Sunday is now open to the blogosphere. If you like to read and review a short story today, or if you have a review of a short story or a short story anthology somewhere on your blog, please feel free participate in Short Story Sunday by using Mr. Linky below. Everyone is welcome.

Lost Generation: Video of the Week

I saw this video over at Crooks and Liars, one of the political blogs I read, a couple of weeks ago and was knocked out by it. Don't worry, it's not all that political and it's message is very hopeful.

It's also a terrific piece of wordplay.


Hat tip to the AARP which sponsered the contest this video was a part of.

Tales Out of School by Benjamin Taylor

That was the house where the Jews lived.

Tales Out of School by Benjamin Taylor is about the fall of a wealthy family. Descendants from displaced German Jews the Mehmel family is one of the wealthiest in Galveston, Texas. The family started the first brewery in the area, grew rich off if it, and has spent most of the fortune by 1907 when the novel opens.

There are two sons, Aharon and Leo. Aharon has good business sense but he marries Lucy, a Catholic girl he meets on a trip to New Orleans. They have one son Felix before Aharon has a brief affair that leaves him with syphilis and Lucy with no opportunity for more children. The other brother, Leo, never marries. He lives alone in one of the better hotel rooms in Galveston studying birds and investing his part of the fortune in plans for building a glider.

Aharon's son, Felix forms an unhealthy bond with a local bully, Wick. The two spend time alone together in what appears to be an abusive sexual relationship. Felix has much in common with his uncle, Leo. Both are probably gay, though since it's 1907 neither character nor the narrator is open about this. Both are interested in high culture--Felix spends his free time studying Latin and practicing music. Both are drawn to lower class men as well. In spite of this, Felix rejects his uncle and ultimately the rest of his dysfunctional family to run off on his own.

There is enough in Tales Out of School to fill several novels. The characters are richly constructed and have such complicated lives that any one of them could be the sole subject of the book. The problem is that none of them are. The all share the stage equally, more-or-less, which produces an unsatisfying product in the end. The reader gets to know everyone well enough to be impatient with them but not well enough to be empathetic or even sympathize with them really. Mr. Taylor provides a glimpse into the lives of the Mehmel family, enough to get our interest certainly, but not enough to make us understand. This is one of the few times I've found a book under-written. Had the book been twice as long, I would have liked it much more.

Inspiration: A Booking Through Thursday Meme

This week from Booking Through Thursday:

Since “Inspiration” is (or should) the theme this week … what is your reading inspired by?

Heck if I know. Curiosity. A good book cover. The recommendation of a friend. Reading about a book in another book. Finding a new title on the front table in a bookstore. Finding a curious item on the remainder shelf in the back of the store. A mention or two on someone's blog.

Asking me why I read is like asking me why I eat. I eat to become full. I read to become full, too.

It's just something I do. I've tried not doing it, but I soon get too hungry.

The Penland Book of Handmade Books: This Week's Wednesday Wonder

Beside keeping this blog up-t0-date and teaching middle school, I make books. I don't write books, rather I practice book arts: making books that are art or making art from books. You can see some of my work here. I consider myself a very good amateur at this point in time, with prospects for improvement. I'm not yet in the same league with the artists featured in The Penland Book of Handmade Books this week's Wednesday Wonder.

The Penland School of Crafts in North Carolina has offered workshops in bookbinding and other book arts since 1930. Anyone who wants to can register to take classes there. The Penland School is in the Appalachian Mountains and sounds like a terrific summer vacation to me.

The Penland Book of Handmade Books features chapters on ten different book artists. Each chapter showcases the artist's work and features a detailed workshop wherein the artist describes how to make a particular book. These have the usual range of difficulty, but this is not a book for first timers. You'd be better off starting with a few simpler projects before trying the projects in the Penland Book.

One of the artists is Carol Barton of Popular Kinetics Press who specializes in pop-up books. Once you start dabbling in book arts it is difficult to stay away from pop-ups. Pop ups are an easy way to explain why C.J. considers book arts to be a form of sculpture.

I think you can see what he means in the picture above. Words are certainly involved and are important. But the overall visual effect is sculptural with a pop-up book. If you define sculpture as three dimensional art then you can argue that all books are sculpture. Pop-up books certainly are. They're actually kinetic sculpture.

Daniel Essig's work drives home this argument. The cover of the Penland Book is a photograph of his piece Niche Bridge Book. It uses carved mahogany, maple, handmade paper and rag books from the 1850's along with bones and fossils. The two pillars that support the book each have a carved niche containing a smaller handmade book. (This is not shown in the cover photograph.)

Even Mr. Essig's blank journals are works of sculpture.

Mr. Essig does not write in his journals though other people do. He considers each blank journal to be a record of his life at a particular time. The book itself is the journal in Mr. Essig's case.

The artists and artwork in The Penland Book of Handmade Books stretch the idea of the book. It's interesting to see this happening at a time when the publishing industry itself is changing the idea of the book with new electronic readers like the Kindle. The question of just what is a book seems to be more up for grabs all the time.

The Calendar at the End of the Universe

I have an unhealthy affection for pulp fiction. Most of the time I just enjoy looking the covers which you can usually find lots of at Hang Fire Books along with lots of very cool book plates and other book related paraphernalia. But, I've even been known to read the stuff, especially 19th century pulp, see yesterday's  review of She by H. Rider Haggard below, a novel that can best be described as fantastically bad.

So, even though we're almost through the month of January, I was very happy to find this excellent free calendar featuring 12 wonderful and slightly tacky covers from pulp science fiction novels at The Website at the End of The Universe.  Just download it and print it out on ordinary printer paper. It may not be the calendar for you, but it could be the calendar for someone you know. And the price is certainly a bargain.

And, this is my 593rd post.  How about that. Maybe I should do something special for number 600.

She by H. Rider Haggard

There are some events of which each circumstance and surrounding detail seem to be graven on the memory in such fashion that we cannot forget them.

She by H. Rider Haggard is one of the worst books I've ever enjoyed. The writing is stilted, the dialogue is ridiculously both overwrought and formal, the plot is absurd, the characters are two dimensional, the laughs are unintentional. I loved it.

The story follows an aging Oxford don, "on the wrong side of 40" as he says, Horace Holly and his young ward the handsome Leo Vincey, called the Lion because of his wonderful golden curls. The two set out with their man servant Job in search of a lost African kingdom ruled by a powerful, undying woman, Ayesha called She Who Must Be Obeyed by her terrified subjects. Leo's father, whom he never knew, left him an iron box to be opened on his 21st birthday. The box contains evidence written and physical linking Leo back through a long lineage to a ruler of ancient Egypt who loved Ayesha only to die by her hand. Aeysha is cursed with long life, forced to live over 2000 years alone while she waits for the reincarnation of her beloved Kallikrates to appear. Leo, of course, looks just like the paintings of Kallikrates.

Then story starts to get ludicrous.

I can understand why She was huge a success when it was first published in 1887. I can even understand why it would spawn three successful sequels. (It has sold over 83 million copies and been translated into 44 languages. I just wish one of them had been English.) At the end of the 19th century powerful women were a major concern among English authors. The New Woman was asserting herself all over the place making more than a few male authors very nervous. Africa was of great interest to the reading public in the 19th century, and Haggard is credited with inventing the lost kingdom genre of adventure fiction with his very popular stories of Allan Quartermain the hero of King Solomon's Mines. (The phrase She Who Must Be Obeyed later resurfaced as the "name" John Mortimer's Rumpole used to call his long-suffering wife.) All this makes sense to me given the culture of the time, but why She and its sequels should still be in print today is a mystery to me. Maybe just for the laughs. Take this passage:

"Ah, so!" he answered. "Thou seest, my son, here there is a custom that if a stranger comes into this country, he may be slain by 'the pot' and eaten."

"That is hospitality turned upside down," I answered feebly. "In our country we entertain a stranger, and give him food to eat. Here you eat him, and are entertained."

"It is a custom," he answered, with a shrug. "Myself, I think it an evil one; but then," he added by an afterthought, "I do not like the taste of strangers, especially after they have wandered through the swamps and lived on waterfowl."

Or this one:

"My love! my love! my love! Why did that stranger bring thee back to me after this sort? For five long centuries I have not suffered thus. Oh, if I sinned against thee, have I not wiped away the sin? When wilt thou come back to me who have all, and yet without thee have naught? What is there that I can do? What? What? What? And perchance she--perchance that Egyptian doth abide with thee where thou are, and mock my memory. Oh, why could I not die with tjee, I who slew thee? Alas, that I cannot die! Alas! Alas!" and she flung herself prone upon the ground, and sobbed and wept till I thought that her heart must burst.

Or this one:

"I want a Black Goat, I must have a Black Goat, bring me a Black Goat!" and down she fell upon the rocky floor, foaming and writhing, and shrieking for a Black Goat, affording as hideous a spectacle as can be conceived.

See what I mean.

In spite of this there were a few scenes in She that came close to brilliant. One in particular described a ritual sacrifice She presided over in one of the many temple chambers in her underground palace. Slaves enthralled to her mysterious powers brought forth the mummified bodies of kings left for centuries in the tombs. Some they threw on a large bonfire while others the put inside holders along the walls lighting their heads as though they were torches. There's an image to haunt your dreams and something a Freudian analyst could really sink his teeth in to.

The main reason I was able to enjoy reading this book was not to read it but to listen to it. If you've not discovered it yet Librivox.org is an excellent site for free downloadable audio books. It's an organization run by volunteers. People from all over the world can sign up to read a chapter from a wide selection of works in the public domain. These chapters are then collected and posted as downloadable zip files. Hearing She read by so many different people and with so many different accents made it much more fun. I heard male and female voices from America, England, India, New Zealand and one who struck me as having a Russian accent. Some readers were better than others and each came up with their own way to pronounce Kallikrates, but this added to the overall charm of the project. It was like having your parents read to you, a kind of outsider audio art. I've downloaded several more books, none of them sequels to She.

I found this scene from the 1965 Hammer Films version of She starring Ursula Andress as She with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing. I have not seen the entire movie, though C.J. is a big fan of Hammer Films, but judging from this scene the movie is not only very loyal to the book, it is also much, much better.

It's nice to see a movie version that's better than the book once in a while.

Short Story Sunday: "A Clean Well-Lighted Place" by Ernest Hemingway

The trouble with stories by Ernest Hemingway is that it so often looks like nothing is happening in them. Take "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." Two waiters in a Spanish cafe, one older and one younger, argue briefly about whether or not they should close up for the night. The younger one wants to go home and argues that no one is out so late anyway, while the older wants to keep the cafe open a little longer because there may be someone out there who is looking for a clean well-lighted cafe to spend an hour or two. A cafe is different from a bar or a bodega, the older waiter insists.

That's the story!!! The whole thing is so short you can read it in under ten minutes! Why bother?

One bothers because of this paragraph which comes just after the waiters have closed the cafe.

"Good night," said the other (older) waiter. Turning off the electric light he continued the conversation with himself. It is the light of course but it is necessary that the place be clean and pleasant. You do not want music. Certainly you do not want music. Nor can you stand before a bar with dignity although that is all that is provided for these hours. What did he fear? It was not fear or dread. It was a nothing that he knew too well. It was all a nothing and a man was nothing too. It was only that and light was all it needed and a certain cleanness and order. Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it all was nada y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who are in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada and in nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing is with thee. He smiled and stood before a bar with a shining steam pressure coffee machine.

Damn. That nada stuff sure is something. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but after re-reading the story a couple of times, it's very short almost a long poem really, I get it. I see why the old waiter wants a clean well-lighted cafe to hide out in for a while instead of going home. I see why it is so important to him and I appreciate how he ultimately accepts a bar instead. But I can also see why so many people have so much trouble with stories like this. Apparently pointless rambling dialogue with a seemingly flippant last line about it all just being insomnia. So many people seek connections when they read fiction; it can be difficult to face the prospect that in the end we may be separate.

And it's a damn fine story in any case.

Reading Hemingway makes me write like that.

Introducing Mr. Linky!

A couple of weeks ago Frances over at NonSuchBook suggested I send Short Story Sunday out into the world by inviting everyone to post a link here to the short stories they are reading a writing about. Seems like a very good idea to me, but unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, by the time I got Mr. Linky figured out John at TheBookMineSet got Short Story Mondays set up and rolling.

So that means the book blogosphere may end up with two short story days a week, which is certianly not a bad thing for those of us who love short stories. Maybe someday there will be seven short story days a week.

If you'd like to join Short Story Sunday read any short story you want, post a review and then post a link below. As far as I'm concerned, you can post a link to the same review tomorrow; I don't think John will mind. As far as I'm concerned, post a link here to a short story or anthology anywhere on your blog and day of the week. The more people we can get hooked on short stories, the better.

Video of the Week: Dakota Eats Half of a Yellow Sun

Here is my review of this wonderful book. This is Dakota's first book feast of 2009, and I have to admit it probably won't be her last. She loved the book, and would have eaten more of it if I hadn't found her in time.

Daisy Miller by Henry James

At the little twon of Vevey, in Switzerland, there is a particularly comfortable hotel.

I only recently started reading Henry James. I could not stand him in graduate school, when I was in my 20's, and never finished him when he was assigned, but twenty years on, I find much to enjoy in his work. I suspect he may be someone you have to grow into; I don't think he has much to say to the young; one needs more life experience before he can be appreciated. But why shouldn't living long come with a few rewards?

Daisy Miller may be a good case in point. The main character, Mr. Winterbourne, meets young Miss Miller on one of those protracted vacations wealthy people in 19th century novels so often take. Mr. Winterbourne is at once taken in by Daisy's beauty and by her vivacity; she has a great lust for life and no self-conscienceness to hinder her. Daisy unknowingly breaks all the rules of her society in her search for experience. She does not know what she is doing, but she does not seem to mind.

The two separate and then meet up again in Rome where Mr. Winterbourne finds Daisy engaged in an affair of sorts with a gold-digging Italian man. Daisy has so offended society by this time that none of the other Americans abroad will have anything to do with her or her family. Mr. Winterbourne tries to get her to change her ways, to convince her that she should drop the Italian and rejoin the more proper society of her peers, but she refuses. She will have her way whether or not society approves.

A friend of mine once told me that Henry James ends his stories with an almost throw-away line or two that seems to put everything that went on up to then in a completely new light. That is the case with Daisy Miller, so though I really want to talk about the ending, I won't spoil it. I will say that I think it also supports my belief that one should wait before reading Henry James. Had I read this "throwaway" ending when I was 20, I would have been outraged at the hypocrasy Mr. Winterbourne displays. Now, I understand why he would do what he does, though it goes against what he has said up to then.

My favorite character in Daisy Miller, my favorite in Henry James so far, is Mr. Winterbourne's aunt, Mrs. Costello. Here is her opinion of the Miller family:

"They are hopelessly vulgar," said Mrs. Costello. "Whether or no being hopelessly vulgar is being 'bad' is a question for the metaphysicians. They are bad enough to dislike, at any rate; and for this short life that is quite enough."

I think if I had read a line like that when I was 20 I would have come to at least dislike Mrs. Costello and possibly Henry James. Now, even though I realize she would certainly have nothing to do with me, I find her very funny. I've certainly moved away from Daisy's age towards Mrs. Costello's age and that has added to my understanding and appreciation of Henry James. Though I spend much of my time reading Young Adult fiction, I'm pleased to find something written with an older audience in mind. If you are under 35 and haven't read Henry James yet, I recommend waiting. Save a few treats for yourself later in life. You won't regret it. It's nice to discover something new, especially when it is also something old.

Now For a Brief Musical Interlude: Booking Through Thursday

This week Booking Through Thursday can be had for a song. Rather, it asks for a song.

What songs … either specific songs, or songs in general by a specific group or writer … have words that you love?
Why?
And … do the tunes that go with the fantastic lyrics live up to them?

Fortunately for us C.J. and I share a love for the music of Richard Rogers and Lorenzo Hart. (Our general policy regarding Rodgers later work with Oscar Hammerstein is "Don't ask, don't tell. We're snobs.) Rodgers and Hart wrote many very hit musicals over three decades creating a large portion of the standard American songbook. Their songs include My Funny Valentine; This Can't Be Love; Thou Swell; Where or When; Isn't it Romantic; Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered; Ten Cents a Dance; I Could Write a Book and The Lady is a Tramp. Lorenzo Hart wrote the lyrics and Richard Rodgers wrote the music and the hits kept coming show after show. Here's one of our favorites, from A Connecticut Yankee, "To Keep My Love Alive."




Theatre legend has it that this song was such a sensation on opening night that the audience immediately demanded an encore. Lorenzo Hart was standing in the wings madly writing the last set of verses on the spot and passing them on to the actress on stage who sang them/read them to wild applause.

Mr. Hart is well known for his acerbic, New York outlook on life and love, and many people have speculated that this may have been due in part to being a gay man in early 20th century America. Maybe so. But whatever he went through and however it affected him, he produced wonderful lyrics full of fantastic wordplay. It was never enough for Mr. Hart to simply rhyme words; he rhymed entire phrases, whole lines, used internal rhyme as well as end rhyme and other sophisticated word play that made the audience listen closely and rewarded them for doing so. Here's some of the lyrics from "To Keep My Love Alive":

Sir Paul was a frail;
he looked a wreck to me.
At night he was a horse's neck to me
So I performed an appendectomy
To keep my love alive.

Sir Thomas had insomnia
he couldn't sleep at night.
I bought a little arsenic
he's sleeping now all right.

Sir Philip played the harp;
I cussed the thing.
I crowned with his harp to bust the thing.
And now he plays where harps are just the thing,
To keep my love alive,
To keep my love alive.

Neck to me, wreck to me, appendectomy....They don't write 'em like that anymore.

A Humument by Tom Phillips: This Week's Wednesday Wonder

A Humument: A Treated Victorian Novel by Tom Phillips is a book unlike any other. It's life began when British artist Tom Phillips found a cheap edition of an old Victorian novel by W. H Mallock called A Human Document. Mr. Phillips took the novel apart, searching for stories locked inside the text and then brought them to the surface by using the pages of the book as a canvas for his art. He has created a new work of art on every one of the original book's 367 pages. Thought he 'finished' the project and published it in 1980, Mr. Phillips continues to find more copies of A Human Document  to make new pages for A Humument. You can find a complete gallery of all the books' pages at his website.

volume And side I shall like, bones my bones

The following sing I a book a book of art of mind art and that which he hid reveal I

The poetry Mr. Phillips found inside the text amazes me. I have tried to do this in my own art work, but I've seldom come close. In the edition I own, Mr. Phillips has discovered the story of a, ill-fated love affair between a man called "toge" and "Irma" his love.  Reading A Humument is like putting together the pieces of a puzzle.  There is a plot arch, there are characters, but how do you read the book?  Words are connected into groups, sometimes you read them forward, sometimes backwards.  Each group is like a peek into the life of "toge"; together, they create a story.

Saturday displeasure sea-side child

his mind like water he mentioned the convenient train

they met at Waterloo an hour's rapid travelling brought them to a wild common soon flickering sun singular primitive surprised undulating round glimpses shimmering through He took her by the gorse-bushes; beyond, backed by blue

Keeping up with Mr. Phillips's website can be fun as well. Since he is continually updating the book, I can compare my edition with the new pages on the website. The artwork and the story are always changing.  

Ill, ill in his room take his orders

ill Irma, ill.

ill, ill, toge he has not strength as he lies in bed, to drink champagne, nurse

You kill me she replied

I've tried to do this kind of found poetry with both modern and Victorian novels. It works much better with older novels. You have to begin with a text full of rich language to come up with poetry this spare.  

If you have a suggestion for a Wednesday Wonder, the kind of book you treasure but don't always read cover to cover, please let me know.

Dakota Wins an Award!

Meg89 at Literary Menagerie has given Dakota and me the Butterfly Award for "coolest blog I ever know." Meg89 picked Ready When You Are, C.B. because I let Dakota choose the winners in all book giveaways. You can see just how difficult it can be to get a Bassett Hound to select a winner here.

This is a very timely award, too, because I've been thinking about doing a post featuring some of the book blogs I have recently found. Now, I get to give them an award.  All but the first one on my list tend toward the classic.  I've been going classic quite a bit so far this year.

I'm Here, I'm Queer, What the Hell do I Read. Lee Wind runs this blog devoted mostly to books for young adults and children that feature LGBT characters or issues. He also covers parenting and writing; he is both a parent and a writer. I admire the positive attitude he brings to his site and the fact that he finds books I've never heard of that sound really interesting.

Wuthering Expectations. One common reader works his way through the classics, with some suprising and entertaining results. Check out this end of the year post celebrating the best book of 1808. Just when I thought I knew what all the classics were, Wuthering Expectations finds another one.

Booklit: a Literary Handout. Stewart, who keeps this blog, leans towards the more serious stuff. Stewart reads a wide range of classic novels, many in translation, many I've not heard of before. His reviews are the thoughtful kind that make you want to find the book and read it.

The Bronteblog is your one stop source for all things Bronte. They don't do that many original posts but they have links to every single mention of the Bronte's throughout the world. If you want to know who's adapting something for the stage or screen big or small, what new piece of writing has been found and is soon to be published, just about anything you can think of in any way related to Charlotte, Emily or Anne, or their brother or father, this is the blog for you.

I want to end with Danteworlds, a website from the University of Texas devoted to the works of Dante. This is a fantastic site, full of illustrations, audio files, study guides, summaries, maps, just about everything you could want related to all three of Dante's classics Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise. I spent several hours there myself Sunday morning.

Here are the rules for the award winners and anyone else who would like to give out an award:

1. Put the logo on your blog.
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you.
3. Award up to ten other blogs.
4. Add links to the blogs you award onto your blog.
5. Leave a message for your awardees on their blogs.

Thanks again, Meg, for the award.

Ranger's Apprentice by John Flanagan

Morgarath, Lord of the Mountains of Rain and Night, former Baron of Gorlan in the Kingdom of Araluen, looked out over his bleak, rainswept domain and, for perhaps the thousandth time, cursed.

Ranger's Apprentice Book One: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan came from one of my students with the highest recommendation. According to her it's one of the best books ever, and she should know, she reads at least one book a day. In fact, she is one of those rare students that I can actually scold for reading when she shouldn't be in good conscience. (There simply are time when one must set one's book aside and pay attention to the teacher, especially if you are sitting in the front row.)

My student likes the book more than I do, but that's okay. The story is a fantasy, though there are so few magical elements in it that it's very close to historical fiction. Will, who has just turned fifteen is apprenticed to a Ranger, one of a mysterious brotherhood whose exact role in the kingdom's society is unclear. Will wanted to go to battle school to become a knight as many boys his age do. After spending some time with his new master, the ranger named Halt, Will comes to see that the Rangers have an important part to play in the impending war with Lord Morgarath and that he is, in the end, a natural Ranger himself.

One thing that made this novel stand out for me was, as I mentioned above, was the absence of magic. There are four children at the start of the novel, four friends, who are all assigned apprenticeships in the book's opening chapters, much like the sorting hat scenes in Harry Potter or the rite of passage described in The Giver, but none of the children are made apprentice wizards. In the kingdom of Araluen, magic is taboo, not to be trusted or used. As far as one can tell from reading the first book in the series, it does not exist. The situation is very close to historical medieval Europe where witchcraft was something people believed in, but they believed it was always evil.

Will's rival, Horace, does go to battle school where he is bullied far worse than anything he ever did to Will before they turned 15. Horace's subplot serves as a counterpoint to Will's. Where Will learns the in's and out's of how to move through the environment without anyone noticing you and how to spot the changes around you in order to avoid attack and to track your prey, Horace learns the details of swordplay and how to force one's opponent to submit through force. Their former physical rivalry becomes of test of which is superiour, cunning or muscle. The two come together towards the middle of the book when the Ranger Halt makes it possible for Horace to turn the tables on the three boys who bullied him for so long. My student lists this as her favorite part of the book.

This was my main problem with Ranger's Apprentice. There are three very exciting scenes in the book, three fights. The Horace's revenge is the second one and it's by far the best. The third fight, the one against the Kalkara which are a sort of magical monster, the only magical element in the novel, is not as exciting. My student did not have a problem with this, but personally, I wanted a bit more of a pay-off in the end. This is the first book in a series, so the big pay-off my be down the road.

I've described three fights in this review, but do not think Ranger's Apprentice is a particularly violent book. I don't think it is, but it is the story of how two boys train for war. It's also a story of finding a friend and of finding one's place in the world. My student wanted me to read it because she thought it would be a great book for our class book clubs, and I agree. It is an exciting start to a series of books, perfect for middle school age readers, reluctant or not. An adventure story with exciting combat and lessons on how to use a sword and how to sneak around unseen, what 13-year-old could resist?

Short Story Sunday: "The Bogo-Indian Defense" by Richard Lange

The people in Richard Lange's short stories are down on their luck in a classic American sense of the phrase. These are the same people James M. Cain wrote about in novels like The Postman Always Rings Twice. Drifters and bar-keeps, even the characters who own decent businesses or have good jobs seem down-on-their luck, running the sort of bars only lifelong serious drinkers would frequent. Mr. Lange's understanding of his characters is deep. He knows what makes them tick, what they love and the parts of them that get in the way of the things they love.

In "The Bogo-Indian Defense" we find a perfect character for Mr. Lange--a man who can't stay put, who finds himself in a new town with a new job, things going okay, only to panic and run as if he has just escaped a deadly trap. At the start of the story, the narrator has a regular group of friends who all play chess together at their local bar. Bill, a Vietnam veteran and good friend to all of the chess players, has died. After a very sparsely attended funeral the narrator gets the job of taking Bill's ashes to his daughter, whom he'd had a falling out with years prior. The narrator is taken with the daughter, Kate, and begins a slow, touching and almost comic courtship. He tells her about his tendency to run away and asks her to take a chance that this time he'll stay.

Of course, in a story like this, it's up to the reader to decide what ultimately happens. I guess your own outlook on life and people like Kate and the chess players will determine whether or not the narrator stays  or ends up running away again. Personally, I think he will.

There is also a second question, as there is with any volume of short stories--will the reader keep on reading them? Since none of the stories in Dead Boys have disappointed me so far, my answer is yes.

"I'm Spartacus!" -- Video of the Week.

How many great two-word movie lines can you think of? 

Somehow, this thought came to me yesterday and would not let go. Great one or two word movie lines. A great movie line is often the result of everything that leads up to it, a moment the sums up an emotion or idea in just one or two words that can give the audience chills or bring them to tears. In a well written movie, very few words are needed.

Here are the examples I could come up with. I've include one clip and several links when I could find them.

"I'm Spartacus!" from the Kirk Douglas picture. I know this one has been parodied so often that it may bring laughs, but I had the opportunity to see it on the wide screen back when I lived in San Francisco and by the time we all got to the end of the picture when this scene takes place, there was not a laugh in the house. Here's the scene...


Here are some other great two and one word scenes:

• "No Prisoners!" from Lawrence of Arabia. A terrific movie. If you get the chance to see it on the big screen do not pass it up. Here's a link.
• "Attica! Attica!" from Dog Day Afternoon. Strangely, this movie works much better on the big screen too. Warning, this link does contain R rated language.
• "Adrian! Adrian!" from the ending of the first Rocky. This series was definitely up and down in quality, but the final scene from the first one does me in every time. I'm a sucker for this kind of stuff. Unfortunately, I cannot find a clip of it.
• "Union" from Norma Rae. This is not a spoken line. Sally Field writes the word on a piece of cardboard and holds it over her head. A brilliant example of language and image doing an incredible job together. The scene is at the opening of this review.
• "Hey, Stella!" from A Streetcar Named Desire. I'm not sure if I should count this one since it's really a line from a play, but the scene is terrific and the line is just as famous as the much longer one that ends the play/movie. Here it is.
• "It's alive!" from Frankenstein. You can see the original here and the very funny spoof of the same line from Young Frankenstein here.

So, how about it? I'm sure there are more examples. Can you think of a memorable movie line of two words or less? Articles must be counted as a word.

An Anonymous Comment Shows Me Why Prop 8 Must Be Repealed

I hope this doesn't come off as a diatribe. This is a political post. You have been warned.

Over a year ago I posted a review of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers by Sean Covey which I was considering for use in one of my classes. Since then it has always been at the top of my hits chart but it has never received a comment until today. (If you want to increase your traffic, review it.) My review was basically positive, I gave the book four out of five stars, but I did have a few issues with it. Basically, I have a problem with books that want to promote tolerance and end discrimination but make no mention of prejudice against LGBT people. (See the button at the top right for why.) You could argue that my praise of Mr. Covey's book was lukewarm, but it never provoked a response until now. Here's the comment. (I've broken it into paragraphs because I cannot stand huge blocks of text. I'd like to encourage everyone to use paragraphs. I've made no other corrections or changes.)

I think that the issue mentioned above about not including every category of discrimination in the book is not securely founded; you seem to be jumping very quickly to some slightly ridiculous conclusions about Mr. Covey's meaning. Mr. Covey, I believe, feels that it is quite a touchy subject to bring up with teens, as I have noticed it to be at my high school, and he had no intention of encouraging readers to discriminate against those kinds of people with such mental defects as you were hinting at.

I have recently read the book in my career education class, and I have read it several times before now as well, and I assure you that no thought whatsoever entered my head about Mr. Covey implying that it is okay to be mean to people of certain sexual orientations. If you had read the book and applied the principles that were taught, it would make more sense to you why Mr Covey didn't mention every single possible type of discrimination that happens at schools across the country; obviously, if a teen is following the advice given throughout the book, there would be no need to explicitly advise teens on every possible scenario in which discrimination might be a problem.

As the writer of such an excellent book, one would wonder at your forming of such wild conclusions with so little factual basis about his discriminating against the mentally affected people mentioned above; for all you know, he could have an excellent reason beyond your own understanding to leave mention of that subject out of his book. I can also assure you that (as you were strongly hinting about as well) Mormons do NOT discriminate against those kinds of people! we are widely misunderstood on this subject- we are taught in our church that we are to have charity towards EVERYONE, no exceptions at all, but Mormons have fought against gay marriage because it threatens our rights to marry in pure Mormon temples. In fact, is highly looked down on to treat those people with any less kindness than we would treat anyone; we are to be kind to them under any circumstances.

If a gay couple were to petition their leader for a temple recommend to be married in a Mormon temple, (and of course they would not receive one because we strongly believe that marriage is a sacred union between man and woman) and that couple were to petition the government for the right to be married there after being denied by the church, and if the case were to be solved in their favor, then all temples on that continent would have to be closed to prevent that sort of an abomination from happening, which is severely encroaching on our rights to freedom of religion, a basic right that was insured to all at the founding of America.

First, I'd like to say that if you're going to write such a long comment you should sign it, even if you don't use your real name. I almost feel that I can let this comment be the argument against itself; it's a pretty good example of why any book that really wants to end discrimination must include a discussion of LGBT issues. Take a quick look at some of the language "anonymous" has used:

• a touchy subject
• those kinds of people with mental defects
• certain sexual orientations
• mentally affected people
• those kinds of people
• those people
• that sort of an abomination

I've been called worse, I admit. I teach middle school after all; I have a fairly thick skin. But what if you were a young person in "anonymous's" career education class and you had the suspicion that you were gay? I just don't think the use of Mr. Covey's book would help you much. And what if you were a gay parent and your child was in "anonymous's" class and using Mr. Covey's book? This is precisely why it is so important for a book aimed at teens that proposes to fight discrimination to explicitly fight discrimination against LGBT people. It's probably true that a single book cannot cover all possible types of discrimination that exist, but I will argue that the single most common type of discrimination that exists in American high schools today is discrimination against gay and lesbian people. (Spend ten minutes in any high school lunchroom counting how many times certain words are used.) Though it is a "touchy subject," not to include a discussion of it after discussing many other kinds can be seen as giving tacit approval. I was a gay high school student once. I remember what it was like. This happened to me.

I assumed that Mr. Covey is a member of The Church of Latter Day Saints, but I don't know this for certain. I will state that the Mormon church, like most but not all churches, does discriminate against gay and lesbian people. Not allowing us full marriage rights is discrimination. Please look up the definition of the word in any dictionary. It's also, in my honest opinion, pretty mean. Members of the Mormon church recently spent over 20 million dollars to make discrimination the law of the land in California by donating their money to pass proposition 8.

Since the beginning of this nation, no church in America has ever been forced to allow a marriage it didn't approve of to take place in its sanctuary. For example, divorce has been legal in America for over a century, but if you want to get married in a Catholic church in America, you must not only be Catholic, you cannot be divorced. No Catholic church has ever been forced to perform the marriage of a divorced person or of a non-Catholic couple through legal means. Ever. In addition, it is illegal in America for employers to discriminate solely on the basis of sex; yet most religious denominations in America do not have women ministers or women in leadership positions within the church hierarchy. This is completely legal. It falls under the heading of separation of church and state. To my knowledge, no one has ever sued to get a job as a priest, minister or nun. If you know of a case, please let me know.

The truth is that most churches only perform weddings for their own members, and this is and always has been perfectly legal in the United States. When gay and lesbian marriage becomes the law of the land in America as it already has in many countries, all churches will be allowed to keep their "purity" in whatever way they see fit. The "sacred union between a man and a woman" (which ends in divorce over 40% of the time) will still be sacred. How can anything I do determine whether or not what you do is sacred, anyway?

Again for the record, I would like to sign this post with my full, real name:

J a m e s B e n j a m i n C h e s t e r, J r.

C.B. James is a pen-name I came up with back in high school, when I wanted to be a novelist. I use it because I think pen-names are fun.

I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti

I was about to overtake Salvatore when I heard my sister scream.

I'm Not Scared by Niccolo Ammaniti, translated from the Italian by Jonathan Hunt, is a thriller that slowly builds rather than one that grabs you from the start. This is not to say that the opening sections are dull, quite the contrary.  But I'm Not Scared is a thriller that truly earns its big finish, not one that has thrown every horrifying twist and turn imaginable into the story right from the beginning like so many others do.

I'm Not Scared is narrated by ten-year-old Michele who lives with his little sister Maria and his mother and father in a small country town in Southern Italy. His small group of friends spend the hot summer months holding various contests and making the loser pay a forfeit by taking on a particular dare. When Michele has to pay a forfeit by going in to an old abandoned farmhouse he discovers the body of a boy his own age at the bottom of a deep hole. Is the boy alive? Why is he there?

Michele is ten and he treats the situation as an ten-year-old would, not as an adult would. Instead of telling someone about the boy, Filippo, Michele is too worried about getting into trouble himself to do that, he tries to befriend him. Ten is an age when simple things can be wonderful, like a bicycle, or an old farm house. Finding a boy at the bottom of a hole is a fantastic secret, one worth having and worth keeping. Michele brings him food and water with no notion of just how serious his situation is, until he overhears his father and a couple of strangers having a conversation about Filippo.

I can go no further without giving away too much. I'm Not Scared does not become a page turner until the closing scenes of the book, but I would not view this as a fault. The opening scenes take their time, like a lazy summer day, the tension builds slowly, but it definitely builds. By the end of the novel, I'm Not Scared became very hard to put down.