Friday Picture Reading

Indian Leader Mohandas Gandhi Reading as He Sits Cross Legged on Floor

by Margaret Bourke-White

Prints available here.

The Strike of a Sex by George N. Miller

I was greatly fatigued, and a feeling of irresistible drowsiness had begun to creep over my senses, when my flagging energies were suddenly aroused by the appearance of a town which, though I had not before observed it, now seemed quite close at hand.

Opening to The Strike of a Sex by George N. Miller

A stranger walks into town. 

The town in George N. Miller's 1890 novel The Strike of a Sex is suffering an unusual form of labor unrest--all of the women have gone on strike.  The narrator is justifiable mystified by this as he meets the men of the town who explain why the women are on strike and what the its effects are.  The town is a mess, of course.  With no one to cook, clean or even replace lost buttons, the lives of the men have deteriorated greatly during the two-month-long strike.  What are the demands of the women, the narrator asks. Do they want the vote?  The men gave them the vote after just a few days.  In fact, they've met all of the women's demands save one.  At the end of the novel, the women parade through town to make their case, and the men vote to decide if they will meet their final demand.

They just don't write 'em like that anymore.

The Strike of a Sex was written in the 1890's during a time of sturggle  over the rights of women.  It's part of the New Woman movement which produced many novels that debated the rights of women and the institution of marriage.  George Miller was at one time a member of the Oenida Community, a Utopian group that believed in communal living and complex marriage.  Their membership reached over 300 at the height of the group's 30 year lifespan.  A decade after the group broke up, George Miller wrote a series of books dealing with the same question the Wife of Bath asks in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: What do women want?

George Miller keeps the answer to this question for the final pages of his book.  The men of his fictional town are already taking their final vote before the narrator discovers what the final demand of the town's women is.  The Wife of Bath believes that all women want sovereignty, to be in charge of their marriage so that they can then give this control to their husbands.  In her day, the late 14th century, this was a fairly forward thinking idea.  George Miller's idea of what women want is both more and less radical than the Wife of Bath's.  What the striking women of his novel want, in the end, is to control reproduction, to have children only when they want to have children.  This is still a major issue in America over 100 years later. 

While The Strike of a Sex by George N. Miller was successful in its day, Yale has a copy from its fourth printing, it has since been forgotten.  It is not as good as other contemporary utopian/dystopian  novels such as Charlotte Gilman Perkins's Herland or even H. Rider Haggard's She, but it does serve to remind us that as far as we have come since 1890, we haven't come as far as we like to think. Ultimately, what is most radical about The Strike of a Sex isn't what the women in the book want, but that they are all united in that desire.  That was no more true in Mr. Miller's day than it is in our own.  And that is probably a major reason why whether or not women should have complete control over their own reproduction is still so controversial. 

Full Disclosure:  The photographs of the Oneida Mansion and its members come from the Oneida Community website.

TSS: Text, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll -- Yale Update #6

I took a day trip into New York Friday to visit the Museum of Modern Art and to go back to Housing Works Bookstore/Cafe, my new favorite bookstore in New York.  Housing Works is a non-profit, staffed by volunteers.  All proceeds go to provide housing for people living with AIDS.  It's also and excellent second-hand bookstore with very good prices.  During the month of July all fiction is 30% off.

Woo-hoo!

I bought three books:  Beyond Black by Hilary Mantell, The Lodging House by Khairy Shalaby and Abyssinian Chronicles by Moses Isegawa.  (I'm trying to limit my book buying to books in translation.  I'm counting Hilary Mantell because she's British so there's likely to be one or two references in her book that Americans like me will miss.)  I also bought a little button that says Housing Works to stick on my new book bag.  They were out of buttons with the store slogan, "Text, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll" but I couldn't put those on my book bag anyway.  The drug reference is not kosher for middle school.  The store bookmarks they give out with each book say "You Are Here." 

 I lunched at the wonderful B &H Restaurant where I had a bean soup with three delicious .  potatoe pancakes for just $8.00.  It came with a generous helping of Challah bread.  I wish C.J. had been with me because he would have loved this place.  It's tiny--just room enough for a counter and one row of small tables.  You can sit a the counter and watch the cook fix your food.  Next time you go to New York, if you're on a budget, even if you're not, try the little hole-in-the wall places like K&H.  I also recommend the food carts.


I did break down and visit The Strand Bookstore, but I didn't buy anything.  Even after over an hour of browsing their "18 miles of books," I didn't find anything that I want badly enough to pay their price.  The Strand is a bit pricey, if you ask me.

Friday evenings are free at the Museum of Modern Art.  Apparently, I'm not the only tourist who knows this.  The line to get in went around the corner, around the corner again, and around the corning one more time.  I decided that even if I did get in the crowd would be too big for and headed back to New Haven instead. 

I thought it would be clever to include a brief video tour of my accomodations at Yale.  Looking at YouTube I find that one out of four college students also thinks it's clever to post a video tour of their dorm room. Some of them have several thousands hits. What's that about?

Here's mine.  Let's hope it goes viral!

Dakota's Favorites: Wise Blood by Flannery O'Conner

Wise Blood sat unread on my TBR shelf for decades.  So long that I gave to the library book sale one year.  After hearing it discussed on BBC Four's A Good Read, I decided to give it a try.  I liked what I found. 

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor is not an easy novel to approach. None of the characters are people many readers would find sympathetic. Their actions are more than a little bizarre, and their motivations are often difficult to fathom. While the plot contains many exciting events it's not exactly suspenseful, and the conflict is not exactly clear, either. Still, Wise Blood, by Flannery O'Conner, is rightfully considered a masterpiece of American fiction. It's not an easy book, but it is well worth the effort.


The panel on BBC Radio 4's A Good Read recently agreed that Wise Blood should be read as a sort of comedy of manners, and I agree that reading it as a comedy is perhaps the best way to approach the novel. Two plot lines intersect through most of the book, that of Hazel Motes and Enoch Emory. Hazel has just left military service with a lifetime pension due to an unexplained injury. He arrives in a southern city intent on preaching the gospel of a new church; The Church Without Christ, he calls it. His new church will be based on the truth, that there is neither sin nor salvation, that Jesus was a liar, that there can be no blasphemy. He preaches in front of movie theatres as people leave, but gains no followers, much to his disappointment. Enoch Emory, an 18-year-old night watchman at the city zoo, meets Hazel and falls under the spell of his new church.  Enoch thinks he has a special purpose sent to him by God to reveal the new Jesus, which happens to be the shrivelled mummified body of an ancient human kept in the museum portion of the city zoo.

Hazel becomes obsessed with a blind preacher, who supposedly threw quick lime into his own eyes. The preacher and his overly sexual daughter, Sabbath, live in the same boarding house Hazel does. Eventually, the daughter moves in with Hazel and the preacher, whom Hazel has discovered is not really blind, skips town. While Hazel preaches his Church without Christ, Enoch plots to steal the mummy and deliver it to Hazel. Events spiral out of Enoch and Hazel's control, neither ends well, no one in the novel does really, not even the mummy.

So how can all of this be a comedy? Whether or not a particular reader comes to see the book as a comedy will depend on how one reacts to certain scenes. For example, once Enoch has stolen the mummy, he wraps it up and takes it to Hazel's boarding house. The blind preacher's daughter, Sabbath, takes the package from him, as Hazel is sleeping. She goes into the bathroom where she can open the package undisturbed. Instead of being horrified by what she finds, she thinks the mummy is cute and treats it like a baby doll, forming what can only be considered a blasphemous Madonna and child tableau. Hazel, is horrified by the mummy and throws it out the window. If you think this if funny stuff, like I did, then Wise Blood is the book for you.

Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor is clearly not a book for everyone, but I found it to be an enjoyable and rewarding read. It contains excellent writing and memorable, original characters, so I'm giving it five out of five stars. It's going on my keeper shelf; I think I'll probably come back to it again some day.

Yale Update #5: A Quick Note on Bees

I love this line from "The Squire's Tale" describing a crowd of commoners looking at a horse made of brass :

They murmureden as dooth a swarm of been.

Been is bees, but it's much better in the original.  The vowel sound in "been" should last a bit  longer than the final vowel sound of  "murmureden," but the two should basically rhyme.  The double o in "dooth" should sound like the oo in "zoo." 

It's a fun line to say out loud.

Books on Film: Ian Fleming on the Source of James Bond

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber

I discovered Memoirs of My Nervous Illness listed  in the  New York Review of Books catalogue.  An interesting title and the author shares the same name as a character in one of my favorite movies, Dark City.  Thought it's not a book I've ever seen in the bookstore or in my library, nor has it ever been listed on Paperbackswap.com,  the Yale library had a copy. So in between bouts of "The Knight's Tale" I read of Daniel Paul Schreber's struggle with the voices and hallucinations that plagued him throughout his several stays in turn of the century German asylums. Here's my review.

The human soul is contained in the nerves of the body; about their physical nature I, as a layman, cannot say more than that they are extraordinarily delicate structures--comparable to the finest filaments--and that the total mental life of a human being rests on their excitability by external impressions.

Opening to Chapter One of Memoirs of My Nervous Illness by Daniel Paul Schreber, translated from the German by Ida Macalpine and Richard A. Hunter.

Memoirs of My Nervous Illness was an important work in the development of modern psychiatry.  Sigmund Freud based parts of his study of psychoanalysis on the book, though he never met Mr. Schreber.  Mr. Schreber was a judge in late 19th century Dresden--married with no children.  He had three bouts of "nervous illness," each landing him in an asylum.   Eventually, he became well enough to live in society and to write a memoir.  It was published over the objections of his family who tried to buy up all of the copies.  Fortunately for Sigmund Freud, they failed.

Little was known about mental illness during Mr. Schreber's lifetime.  Mr. Schreber hears voices and sees hallucinations, but he does not understand them as such.  To him, they are all real.  He does not seek to convince himself otherwise at all. Instead, he seeks to understand how the voices and hallucinations work, who or what is behind them and how must he deal with what they do to him.  He creates an entire cosmology consisting of two levels of gods at war with each other through him.  They seek to control his soul by controlling his nerves, which he understands as functioning through vibrations and as connected to forces outside of himself.  He describes one method of attack on his nerves:

Further, in the time I am discussing attempts were repeatedly made to cover my nerves with some noxious matter; it appeared as if the natural capacity of nerves to vibrate were thereby impaired, so that even I myself had at times the impression of becoming temporarily stupid.  One of the agents concerned was called "poison of intoxication"; I cannot say what its chemical nature was. From time to time also the liquids of the food I had taken were by miracle placed on the nerves of my head, so that these were covered with a sort of paste, and the capacity to think temporarily impaired; I remember distinctly that this happened once with coffee.

He is not speaking of a metaphorical paste covering his nerves, but of reality as he understands it.  Clearly he is mad, but at no point does he doubt the reality of his delusions.  He does not understand why he is the only one who can see the strange things he sees, but this does not disprove the miraculous events he experiences. Instead it elevates his own status, making him more important in the grand scheme of things.  The fact that he is the only one who knows that the coffee he drinks is turning into a paste that attacks his nervous systems rendering him temporarily dumb makes it no less a fact.   His doctors try to tell him otherwise, but how can he deny the evidence of his own senses?  He never does. 

Reading Memoirs of My Nervous Illness one can't help but wonder about other people who have claimed to see visions and to have experienced the miraculous.  Mr. Schreber's cosmology explains his world.  There are no events that happen to him that cannot be explained through his theory of vibrations and the forces that try to stop or control them.  Is what makes him crazy the same thing that makes someone else a saint?  When does the madman become a visionary? 

While Memoirs of My Nervious Illness is an entertaining and englightening read, it is not an entirely easy one.  I don't think it can be read as a novel, but it can be read as a character study.  There's no plot arc to it, but as the book progressess the reader grows to understand Mr. Schreber to the point where he almost becomes believeable as though his life were a novel.  File this book in the fiction section, and his story of forces trying to control his actions is as believeable as any told by an unreliable narrator.  File it in the non-fiction and he becomes a paranoid schizophrenic.  In either case, Memoirs of My Nervous Illness is fascinating reading.

Full Disclosure: I found the picture of Daniel Paul Schreber on Wikipedia.org.

Short Story Monday: "The Miller's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer

Whilom ther was dwellynge at Oxenford
A riche gnof that gestes helld to bord,
And of his craft he was a carpenter.

Opening to "The Miller's Tale" by Geoffrey Chaucer

The Miller plays a bagpipe.  He is a drunk who rides a broken down horse but he insists on leading the other pilgrims out of town as he plays.  It's easy to accept this description as summing up his character.  But, he is also a genius of a storyteller.

Even his tale is easy to dismiss.  The beautiful Alison has married an older man, a rich carpenter.  Nicholas, a young clerk, rents a room in their home.  Soon,  Nicholas wants to sleep with the beautiful Alison.  A second clerk named Absolon is also in love with Alison, but his love is loftier--he wants only a kiss.  A marvelous plot follows as each man tries to secure Alison for himself, ending with everyone getting exactly what they deserve: a nightmare kiss, a smack an the behind with a hot poker, and a broken arm.   Alison emerges unscathed.

"The Miller's Tale" is  two old tales united by a single word--"Water!"  In the first Nicholas tricks the gullible carpenter into believing a second flood is imminent.  To save his young wife he must hang three separate containers from the ceiling of his workshop.  Each of them must hide in a container and wait for the rain to begin.   Of course, Nicholas intends to spend the night with Alison while the carpenter sleeps high above the ground. .

In the second story, Absolon, who is in love with Alison, determines he should come to her window to beg a kiss.  She is annoyed  by this so she tells him to close his eyes and pucker up. Then she sticks her naked behind out the window.  He is so enraged that he has been tricked into kissing her behind that he grabs a hot iron from his friend the blacksmith and comes back seeking revenge.  This time, Nicholas presents his behind out the open window only to get a smack with a red-hot poker. 

He screams "Water!"

By this point in the story, most readers will have forgotten that the carpenter is still asleep, high in the rafters.  Thinking the flood has come, he cuts the ropes and plummets to the ground smashing the barrel and breaking his arm. 

If "The Miller's Tale" were just this story, it would be brilliant comedy, but it's much more.  Coming as it does right after "The Knight's Tale," it's easy to see it as  a satire.  For example, in "The Knight's Tale" two heroes are both separated from the woman they love-- one is in prison but can see her through the bars of his cell  while the other is free to roam the  world but  banished from her sight.  Who has the better situation? asks the Knight.  The Miller asks this question again in his tale--Nicholas lives with Alison, while Absolon lives some distance away.  Who has it better? The Miller tells us a woman will always choose the man who lives close by, of course.  (Long distance relationship were a problem even in 1385.) 

The Knight refers  to destiny, to fates being written in the stars and lives controlled by gods we cannot fathom.  He even features descriptions of three temples, one for each member of his love triangle.  The Miller mocks this idea with his own presentation of three vessels hanging from the rafters and the Miller's mistaken belief that God is about to flood the world again.  At the end of "The Knight's Tale" king Theseus makes a speech explaining how the world is an ordered place, and everyone must perform their role within that order.  At the end of "The Miller's Tale," the old carpenter who ought to be revered as the wise king, has been rendered a complete fool.  What he says about having been tricked is true, but none of his neighbors believe him because Alison and Nicholas have already told them  that he is obsessed with Noah.  The Knight presents an ordered world; the Miller knows that order is an illusion.

There is much more to be said, but I call enough.  If my Yale posts have inspired you to try reading The Canterbury Tales and you found "The Knight's Tale"  a bit of a slog, be sure to give the Miller's spoof of it a go.  It's  the reward for all of your hard work.

Full Disclosure:  The image of the Miller comes from the Ellsmere manuscript.  My inadequate translation of the opening lines is as follows: Once, at Oxford there dwelled a rich oaf, a carpenter who took in borders. It was common during the middle ages to tell stories of Noah's wife refusing to board the ark, which is why three separate containers are justified.

SS: Yale Update #5--New York Books and Mystic Pizza

We ended our third week of Chaucer on Thursday with a warning from our Yale professor that we need to speed things up.  We're halfway through the course and not quite one third of the way through The Canterbury Tales.  There may be an extra class this week so we can catch up.  I'm working a post just about the tales which I hope to publish tomorrow.  I'm trying to come up with a concise way to explain why  "The Miller's Tale" is the best short story in the English.  We'll see if I  come close to pulling it off.

Friday I took a trip into New York City with one of my classmates.  Since my book-buying embargo is over, we stopped in at every book store we passed, and I spent like a madman.  Not quite a madman; I limited myself to two books per store and I tried to limit those to books in translation.  For some reason New York has many more books in translation that California does.  I think it's because New York is closer to Europe. 

We stumbled on Three Lives Books quite by accident.  It's a wonderful book store focused on  fiction. I could easily have spent several hundred dollars just on literature in translation but I managed to keep it under control.  I walked up to the cash register with three books in my hands and asked the clerk to choose two.  She was quite taken aback by this, but I could not decide.  Since I'd never heard of any of them before, I figured her choice would be as good as mine. 

I did my own choosing at Partners & Crime on Greenwich.  Their clerk has read substantially more detective novels than I have, so I did go with one of her recommendations.  Again, I could have bought many more than two books, but we had a full day ahead of us including two subway rides and a long train ride back to New Haven at day's end.  I will say, that if you are a mystery/detective novel fan,  Partners & Crime is well worth the trip.  Afterwards, you can stop at Pasticceria Rocco where the cannoli are made-to-order.  (Partners & Crime's website is http://www.crimepays.com/.  How cool is that?)

Today a small group of us went on a tour of the Connecticut shore which included a stop at the Book Barn in Niantic.  The Book Barn includes two shops which we did not know.  We started at the downtown shop and were disturbed to find it held no fiction.  Lots of non-fiction, a large Young Adult selection and a roomful of science fiction.  In fact, I've never seen so much science fiction in one place in my life including the old  The Other Change of Hobbit in Berkeley.  (I've not been to the new store yet.) 

The young man who runs the downtown Book Barn is exactly the sort of young man one would expect to find running a book store that only sold science fiction. When I asked where the fiction section was he gave me directions  that included a right turn at Arthur Miller's dance studio, a search for a red door, and an exact step count, 149.  The other store has  lots of fiction and a very large selection of mystery novels.  The picture above shows just one of several aisles of mysteries.  Most of the books at The Book Barn are under five dollars, many are just a dollar.  I'll have to ship them all home.

We spent the afternoon in Mystic.  Yes, I had pizza.  Yes, I had already had a seafood lunch and it was just a couple of hours until dinner, but I just had to have some pizza.  It was delicious.  See photo below.

The stone figure at the top of this post is on the law school building at Yale.  I think he's supposed to be a sort of Pinkerton agent.  It looks like he's holding a magnifying glass and he's smoking a detective type pipe. 

Friday Picture Reading: Extreme Reading #2

From an article on extreme reading by John Olsen. For more go here.

Viva Argentina!

I've stayed away from covering this issue for the last few months, because, frankly, it's just makes me sad.  But around four o'clock this morning something happened that makes me smile. 

Here's the video.



I've wanted to visit Buenos Aires for several years. Perhaps a second honeymoon...

Yale Update #4: The Stacks

A quick video update this time.



Okay, it's a strange way to spend your summer vacation I admit it. In my defense, it's very cool in the stacks.

The Truth of Spiritualism by "Rita"

At the beginning of the nineteenth century a wave of spiritual development swept over the world.

Opening to the introduction of The Truth of Spiritualism by "Rita" (Mrs. Desmond Humphreys)

I was looking for a book called A Husband of No Importance by "Rita."  I've been looking for this book since graduate school.  It's mentioned in a couple of books I read for my thesis project on late 19th century New Women novels, and I hoped to find a copy in the Yale libraries.  No luck.  But they did have The Truth of Spiritualism by the same author. 

So I went off into the stacks  where way up on the 8th floor in a largely forgotten corner I found an entire bookcase of late 19th and early 20th century books on topics like spiritualism, phrenology, automatic writing, and a wide assortment of other long disproved pseudo-sciences.  I'm here for six weeks, why not give 'em a go?

In The Truth of Spiritualism Rita is not telling the truth that Harry Houdini would tell.  She is a believer, and her book is both an answer to the claims of skeptics and a reassurance to fainthearted followers.  She devotes chapters to the history of the spiritual movement, to seances, to manifestations, automatic writing and materialisation.  After she has explained what spiritualism is and how it works, she offers several chapters dealing with the prevalence of fraud and the  proof she has found to counter the charges of critics and doubters.

Of course, even someone with only a passing understanding of evidence can shoot holes in her proof.  Take for instance this passage supporting the existence of a world beyond our own and of automatic writing as proof of its existence:

Recently a book of experiences entitled Letters from a Living Dead Man has made some stir in the world of psychic research.  The letters are all from the "other side" and written down by the author as given.  They form an interesting record of that "other side" when the spirit entity goes thither.  The entity uses his automatic subject as a means for informing those he has left behind of his personal experience and condition.  Not only do those letters deal with the war, with the sudden translation from life to death, but also with the laws of nature on another plane, and the possibilities of spirit communion.

"Rita" never questions the validity of the sources she cites to prove the truth of spiritualism.  She simply accepts Letters from a Living Dead Man as true because its author says so and because she believes it.   I doubt any professor or high school English teacher anywhere would accept such evidence in a term paper. 

So why bother with a book like The Truth of Spiritualism beyond satisfying a passing curiosity?  You can tell by now that I am not a believer.  Not at all.  But my partner C.J. has an aunt who makes part of her living as a psychic.  We have a good friend who says she has the ability to communicate with pets both living and dead.  A very close friend of mine is currently working with a psychic to communicate with her daughter who died from breast cancer in her twenties.  "Rita" does get to this profound point about spiritualism, I think accidentally, late in her book:

The converts to spiritualism have been mostly those who have suffered personal bereavement and failed to find any comfort in ordinary religious teaching.

If you've been there, then you know what it's like.  I doubt any church can ever provide a satisfactory answer to someone who has lost a daughter to breast cancer and few seem willing to treat the loss of a pet seriously enough to provide the comfort many people need.    This may be why The Truth of Spiritualism is still in print, 90 years after it first appeared while so many other books gather dust on the 8th floor of the  stacks at the Yale library.

The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

The story goes that even after the Return they tried to keep the roller coasters going.

Opening to The Dead-Tossed Waves by Carrie Ryan

You can count me as a fan of Carrie Ryan's first novel The Forest of Hands and Teeth.  In fact, you can count me as such a big fan that I took the trouble to read the sequel, The Dead-Tossed Waves in hardback.  No way I was going to wait around for the paperback edition to find out what happened to Mary after her attempt to reach the ocean through a zombie filled forest.

The Dead-Tossed Waves is billed as a companion to The Forest of Hands and Teeth, but it's a sequel.  Set about twenty years after the conclusion of the first novel, The Dead-Tossed Waves tells the story of Mary's daughter Gabry as she comes of age in Vista, a former seaside resort town. While  Mary wanted to reach the ocean, her daughter wants to find the big city, Dark City.  The two have this in common and that alone would have made a good set up for the sequel.  Mother escapes zombies and reaches seaside--daughter continues to the big city.  But the similarities kept on coming, so much so that The Dead-Tossed Waves became something of a knock-off.

Both books feature a young woman living with a single mother.  Both mothers are emotionally distant becuase of the extreme losses they have experienced.  Both mothers abandon their daughters to persue the men they lost to the Unconsecrated (Zombies).  Both daughters are in love with a boy whom they fail to tell before it is too late. Both daughters face a society that wants to use its rules to force them into a life they do not want to accept. Both daughters leave their hometowns and escape into the Forest of Hands and Teeth.  Both daughters lose a close friend to the Unconsecrated.  Both daughters find and fall in love with another boy while on the run through the forest. 

The Dead-Tossed Waves is a variation on a theme when I wanted an original story.  I wanted to know more about the world Mary and Gabry live in.  I wanted the next part in the story.  Instead, I got a retelling.  Ms. Ryan's fans are probably hoping for more in part three, but I'm stepping off of this particular ride.  I've seen enough. I don't want to go round again.

Sunday Salon and Yale Update #3

I have found a couple of good bookstores besides Barnes and Noble in New Haven.   Labyrinth Books, which is just across the street from Yale and two doors down from a Blue State Coffee, is much more along the lines of what I expected to find in a college town.  Labyrinth has a good range of more scholarly type stuff--history, literary criticism and theory, philosophy--which I used to enjoy reading back in grad school.  I've not had a chance to browse through those sections of the store but I did find the bibliophile's holy grail, the bargain basement.

Labyrinth has a large basement where everything is 50 to 90 percent off.  More books closer to 50% than 90% but still.  I decided I'm just going to buy books on this trip after all.  I'll have to ship them all home media mail, but that's okay.  I will be going back into New York,  next weekend, and I plan on revisiting Housing Works Bookstore/Cafe.  For the record, I have been on vacation two and a half weeks and only bought two books.  I think I can go a bit crazy now.  I'm weak. I know. I have a problem.

I've found comical stonework all over Yale.  This week I thought I'd share these four gentlemen who adorn the entryway to the Graduate Studies College.  I've no idea who they are--I suspect they were donors. If anyone knows, please leave a comment.  I think they are kind of funny looking.  Big ears, yes?

New Haven had a bout of 'black water' this week.  Apparently the heat wave, which was pretty hot, caused everyone to use so much water that the water table plunged low enough for  silt got into the system.  Tuesday while we were all at a local Irish Pub's trivia night, we weren't allowed to drink any water by order of the City of New Haven.  Fortunately, there were other libations available.  We didn't win the trivia competition, by the way, though we did place fairly well.  If they game had been graded on a curve we would have gotten a B+, maybe an A-.

We don't have class on Friday, so a fellow student/teacher from Georgia and I took the morning commuter bus to Hartford to see the Mark Twain house.  In all honesty it was a disappointment. The house, is, as you can see, a 19th century wonder.  Mr. Twain spared no expense, so the house is an opulent place. Big, beautiful (I guess), full of fancy woodwork and expensive furniture (very little of it his).   We just got stuck with a dud tour guide.  If you're taking a guided tour no matter how wonderful the place, if you're tour guide is a dud, your tour will be a dud, too. 

Fortunately, the Harriet Beecher Stowe house is next door and their tour guide was very good.  While I have read Uncle Tom's Cabin, I'm not a fan of it.  In fact, I think it's an outright bad book.  I can see why people at the time were so excited by it, but I don't think it holds up well at all.  However, I did like Ms. Stowe's house very much. It's a much more livable place than Mr. Twain's is and it has a great deal more inside it that actually belonged to Ms. Stowe.  It turns out she was quite the painter.  One of her pastimes was painting pictures of the flowers she grew in the gardens around her home.  She even designed the floral patterns on her china. 

We toured the state capital and the Atheneum Museum of Art both of which are well worth a visit.  On the way back to the dorms at Yale I passed by this building which has neither windows nor identifying marks.   It's surrounded by an iron fence with grill work designed to look like two kissing snakes.  I suspect it houses one of Yale's many secret societies.  What do you think?

Look for another review of a Canterbury Tale later this week, probably Tuesday.  I've fallen head-over-heels for "The Miller's Tale."  The Miller is a storytelling genius.  I'm having trouble coming up with a post that will do him justice.  There is so much more going on in his tale than just a funny little dirty joke.  It just may be the best short story in English. 

Dakota's Favorites: Freak Show by James St. James

I read a lot of Young Adult novels but it's not often that I consider reading one twice, just for fun.  Freak Show by James St. James is an exception.  If you're out there, Mr. St. James, more please.

Freak Show by James St. James is a very modern take on that age old question, can a social misfit find love with the popular high school quarterback? Freak Show, however, breaks new ground because the social misfit who narrates the novel is Billy Bloom, drag queen, twinkle queen, glitteroid, gender obscurist.


Though his story is often harrowing, as you would expect, his narration is hilarious. (I laughed out loud twice, which is very good.) The story opens with Billy preparing for his first day of school at the exclusive Dwight D. Eisenhower Academy in a very posh section of south Florida. In order to blend in with the expected conservative student body, Billy chooses a much butcher ensemble than he might normally wear. He begins with a basically masculine pair of pants, adds a basic white shirt with ruffled sleeves, like a pirate might wear, just a little makeup and a dangly earring; he decides not to wear the eye patch as this might be over the top. He makes a grand entrance in first period science; the students react the way you might expect and things go downhill from there for Billy.

Once Billy hits bottom and has had enough, he comes up with a plan to force the student body, and the teachers, to deal with their intolerance and to change Eisenhower Academy for the better. The plan involves a loose network of social misfits who hide in the shadows, so to speak, so as not to draw the attention of anyone who might beat them up the way Billy is beaten up. With the help of these invisible outcasts, Billy plans to run for homecoming queen. Along the way he befriends the school's star quarterback who has a secret or two of his own.

What could easily become a standard, Sweet Valley Highish plot line, with more than a few twists granted, is saved by the strength of Billy's narrative voice. He is a great story teller, full of humor, fierce in every positive sense of the word. By the end of the book the reader may find some of the plot a little hard to believe, but the character of Billy Bloom takes on a fully fleshed out life of his own. Ultimately, the actual story matters less than how well Billy describes what he is wearing.

The Knight's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer

Whilom, as olde stories tellen us,
Ther was  a duc that highte Theseus.

Opening to The Knight's Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer.

I love "The Knight's Tale."  It's a big, overblown, ridiculous, romantic, idealized story that no modern reader would ever believe.  But I love it.

The main story concerns two young men, cousins and sworn blood-brothers.  Defeated in battle they are imprisoned by Theseus, Duke of Athens.  While in prison they see a beautiful woman through the bars of their cell and both fall in love with her.  Though she sees neither of them, the two live for the moments when they can watch her pass by.

One cousin is later released from prison on the condition that he never set foot in Theseus's kingdom ever again on pain of death.  Who is the better off? asks the Knight.  The man who can see the woman he loves though he is in prison? Or the man who can roam all the world never to see his love again?

I love that kind of stuff. 

There's some wonderful poetry in "The Knight's Tale."  Like this bit from one of the cousin's dying speech:

What is the world? What asketh men to have?
Now with his love, now in his colde grave,
Allone, withouten any compaignye.
Farewell, my swete foo, myn Emelye.

My very poor translation into Modern English

What is the world? What asks man to have?
Now with his love, now in his cold grave,
Alone, without any company.
Farewell, my sweet foe, my Emily.

"My sweet foe, my Emily."  Who could resist dying words like that?  Not this reader. 

Of course, the Yale professor I'm studying Chaucer with this summer finds more in "The Knight's Tale" than a simple, straightforward love story.  And there is more.  Much more. 

The Canterbury Tales features 24 tales and 24 tellers, and it's impossible to separate the teller from the tale.  It would be a mistake to do so.  With that in mind, our Yale professor began the class on "The Knight's Tale" with this question: How does what the knight wants his tale to mean compare with what we think it means?  The knight wants to show his audience that the world is a place ruled by order, and that that order is basically a benign one.  Our professors reads "The Knight's Tale" as a treatise on good government--the knight presents Theseus of Athens as the ideal of a good ruler.  A good ruler listens to advice, is empathetic and tempers anger with reason.  He seeks to control people's behavior to produce order.  But even the Knight cannot keep the real world from breaking into his story, and in the end the reader must see that destiny is more capricious than orderly and that following love can lead one to sorrow.  By the end of his tale we see that those in positions of power, while they may be good people, fall victim to a system larger and more powerful than they.  While they should feel powerful, they feel only the burden of power.

A perfect tale for a knight, a worthy man...a verray, parfit, gentil knyght, to tell.




Full Disclosure:  I found the picture of "The Knight's Tale" at the University of Arizona website here.  The opening lines are translated as "Once, as old stories tell  us/There was a Duke that was called Theseus."  The closing lines come from the description of the knight in the prologue and roughly translate as "A worthy man....a true, perfect, noble knight."  The more thoughtful ideas presented in the last two paragraphs above are those of our Yale professor. 

A Nation Rising by Kenneth C. Davis

Two riders were approaching.

Opening to A Nation Rising: Untold Tales of Flawed Founders, Fallen Heroes, and Forgotten Fighters from America's Hidden History by Kenneth Davis.

History is not for the feint of heart.  It's contentious. It's a constant struggle.  One need look no further than the recent decision of the Texas State Board of Education to see just how contentious history is in America.  William Faulkner once said, "The past is never dead.  It's not even past." 

But that's what makes it such interesting reading.

A Nation Rising by Kenneth C. Davis covers the early, often overlooked, period of American history from the presidency of Thomas Jefferson to that of James Polk.   Mr. Davis looks closely at the trial of Aaron Burr, the Seminole and Creek Wars, the struggle against slave rebellions, the annexation of California and the 1844 Anti-Catholic riots in Philadephia.  

Mr. Davis believes history is a story well told, and he tells his story well.  A Nation Rising is, at heart, an entertaining read.  It's not a book that will awake a new path in historical research or bring about innovation in the field, but it's not meant to.  Mr. Davis's interest lies in educating his readers in areas of American history they may have missed in school.  He does an excellent job.  In fact, A Nation Rising would make an good text for  a high school level history class.  Not in spite of its faults, but because of them.

Many people would find fault with A Nation Rising because it does not portray American history in a completely shining light.  Mr. Davis himself addresses the need to present historical figures as heroes.  Can one admire Andrew Jackson enough to feel a sense of pride when the ATM spits out six copies of his portrait knowing that he was an unapologetic slave owner and that he defied the Supreme Court to remove as many Native Americans from Georgia as he possibly could in clear violation of existing treaties, an act best described as ethnic cleansing.  Can the children of California be proud of their heritage knowing that their states "independence" from Mexico began with the murder of two innocent teenage boys? 

These are not easy questions to answer, but they are questions that might interest high school sophomores and juniors studying American history.  They'd certainly interest them more than the ones typically found at the end of each chapter in their history books.  As would the question of the main fault with A Nation Rising. 

Throughout his book, Mr. Davis draws parallels with contemporary events.  He compares an early presidents actions with those of Mr. Bush or Mr. Obama, for example.  At times the connections Mr. Davis finds feel awkward, inserted without enough evidence to fully back them.  The unfairly poor customer reviews A Nation Rising has received on Amazon.com cite this issue again and again, as though no historian should ever look to the past as a means to evaluate contemporary America.   But, then why study the past at all?  If history cannot provide some lesson, some knowledge about how the world works that we can apply today, it's nothing more than an entertaining story. Whether or not Mr. Davis has drawn the correct lesson from the history he covers is a subject many high school students would be interested in.

Most book clubs never read non-fiction.  My own has read over 125 titles over 10 years, and can count the non-fiction books on one hand if you exclude memoirs.  This is too bad.  A Nation Rising is readable, entertaining, and provides enough material for several hours of discussion.  Just the sort of thing books clubs ought to seek out.  And just the sort of thing the Texas State Board of Education wants to protect their young adults from.  The question of how to present history to children is not entirely settled in my own mind, but 17-year-olds ought to be able to handle the truth in all its complexity and moral ambiguity.  If they're old enough to go to war to defend their country, we have a responsibility to tell them the truth about their country's history.  They should know.  A Nation Rising is a good place to start.

Full Disclosure: I received and advanced review copy of A Nation Rising from the publisher.

Yale Update #2: Editing Chaucer and the Sterling Library

I've spent my first at Yale week learning how to read Middle English and working my way through the Prologue to The Canterbury Tales.  I'm please to say that it's funnier in the original.

Except there is no original.  Turns out there are no surviving manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales written by Chaucer or published in his lifetime.  There's no way to know which version is closest to the way he intended it to be with certainty.  Among Chaucerians, there are many points of dispute. We studied this example on Tuesday.

One line in the section describing the knight is usually written like this:

At many a noble armee hadde he be.

Most of the older manuscripts and early editions use the word armee which means army.  The Knight had been in many noble armies.  Simple enough.  But the oldest manuscript has the line written like this:

At many a noble arivee hadde he be. 

Which means, the Knight had been in my amphibious landings. 

Which should be considered correct?

In the calligraphy of the time the letter n looks like two i's side by side which is also just how both the u and the v look.  Lower case r is not much different. An m looks just like three i's in a row, or an i and an n. The only time arivee is ever used in all of Middle English is in this one line of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.  The word probably comes from French which Chaucer knew well.  But most of the texts say armee, so shouldn't the majority rule?

Our esteemed professor says no.  His guiding principle is the same as that followed by Renaissance scholars: "durior lectio patior."  "the harder word is more powerful."  It's very likely scribes saw arivee and "corrected" it to read armee.  None of them would have made the reverse mistake by changing armee to arivee.  So, arivee rules the day. 

Those of us in the class all love this kind of stuff.  Most of our spouses will probably just stare at us blankly when we get home and tell them about it. 

"That's nice.  Pass the salt, please."

I've spent many of my off hours at the Sterling Library reading lots of obscure and very obscure books, many I've been trying to find for years.  (Yale has over 3,000,000 books in it's collection not counting micro-fiche.)  I should be able to pepper Ready When You Are, C.B. with very obscure book reviews well into the fall. 

The pictures I've posted today were all of  the Sterling Library.  There's an exterior as well as an interior shot of the main lobby. The carvings are all from a series of capitals in one hallway.  Together they show a complete history of reading and writing up to the 19th century scholar.  Notice the owl of wisdom looks over the top of his book while the skeletal figure of death looks over his shoulder.  (You can't really see much of death in this shot, alas.  But you should know that he's there.)

The Doomsday Key by James Rollins

The ravens were the first sign.

Opening to The Doomsday Key by James Rollins

A medieval prophecy foretelling the end of the world.

An ancient temple on a storm ravaged island.

A West African village mysteriously massacred.
A mysterious symbol.

A plot to assassinate a senator.

A polar bear pack attacks.

An underground vault full of rare seeds.

An agent with a robotic hand.

A murder in the Vatican.
A black Madonna.

An international conspiracy to destroy the world.
A clue in the Domesday Book.

A beautiful paid assassin.

A dedicated anti-terrorist team.

An Egyptian princess buried beneath a French abbey.

It's not as exciting as it sounds.

But it will occupy a plane ride from San Francisco to New York.  There's something to be said for that. 

Full Disclosure:  I received a free copy of The Doomsday Key from the publisher.

Friday Picture Reading: Extreme Reading #1

From an article on Extreme Reading by John Olsen. For more go here.

Coming Soon -- Book Blogger Appreciation Week

 There have been some changes made to Book Blogger Appreciation Week.  To be considered for an award this year, you have to nominate yourself.  Many people have trouble with this, but I think we should all keep in mind that only books submitted for consideration are eligible for most literary awards.  It's often the case that the publisher has to send in a not insubstantial fee as well in order to be considered for awards like the Newberry Medal, the Mann-Booker Prize, and many others.  So I say, go ahead.  Nominate yourself. 

There are many, many categories you can enter, but you'll have to choose one.  This can be problematic for anyone with a blog not devoted to a single genre, like mine.  Is this a YA blog? a literary fiction blog? an LGBT blog? a speculative fiction blog? A big-hot-mess blog?

I did choose a photograph of a flea market to represent my reading so it should come as no surprise that I'm entering Ready When You Are, C.B. in the eclectic blog category. 

Best Eclectic Book Blog—This blog doesn’t specialize in any one book genre. It is known for consistently excellent reviews, recommendations, analyses, and other content in a variety of genres.

Last year Ready When You Are, C.B. made it to the final round of voting for Best LGBT Blog, which was very exciting.  But, in all honesty, I don't think this is a gay blog.  I am a gay man, but my blog is not a gay blog.  I don't review very many LGBT themed books.  My reading taste is all over the place, as I hope my five selected entries will illustrate. 

Submitted for your review:

The Wikipedia Revolution by Andrew Lih

The Painted Veil by Somerset Maugham 

The Book of Lost Things by John Connolly

The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things by Carolyn Mackler

Two Visions of Blindness by Jose Saramago

It was not easy getting this list down to five.  But it's done.

Wish me luck.  And good luck to you, too.