The author of any story dealing with time travel has the problem of handling the inherent paradoxes. The most successful handling of this problem thatThe author of any story dealing with time travel has the problem of handling the inherent paradoxes. The most successful handling of this problem that I've seen was that of the third Harry Potter movie. But the potential time travel paradox in that movie occurred during a relatively short sequence within the movie.
Here, we have the concluding volume to a quartet that has been centered entirely on time travel. The paradoxes abound, and the characters openly acknowledge those paradoxes and attempt to come to grip with them within the boundaries of the plot.
I would have to go back and read all four books again to find out how successful the author was. Not all that successful, I suspect. The books were enjoyable and well-written and worth one reading. But only one such reading, I think.
Aside from my concerns with the time travel paradoxes presented by the plot -- which really is the central issue, explicit in the books themselves, and not something swept under the carpet -- this final volume is an exciting read, as we watch the fairly large cast of characters experience great adventures and continue their development as persons, their motivations becoming more evident to us, and, interestingly, to themselves as well. Even the greatest villain, the dastardly Janus, arouses a certain sense of pathos. Summer, the queen of the fairy Shee, remains remorseless, superficial and without feeling -- but still appealing to us in a perverse way.
And the changeling Gideon, to me the most sympathetic of the characters from the very first volume, finally has his wish fulfilled, although not the wish I would have wished for him.
A good read. But, of course, the first three books are an absolute prerequisite if this book is to make any sense at all.
Merged review:
The author of any story dealing with time travel has the problem of handling the inherent paradoxes. The most successful handling of this problem that I've seen was that of the third Harry Potter movie. But the potential time travel paradox in that movie occurred during a relatively short sequence within the movie.
Here, we have the concluding volume to a quartet that has been centered entirely on time travel. The paradoxes abound, and the characters openly acknowledge those paradoxes and attempt to come to grip with them within the boundaries of the plot.
I would have to go back and read all four books again to find out how successful the author was. Not all that successful, I suspect. The books were enjoyable and well-written and worth one reading. But only one such reading, I think.
Aside from my concerns with the time travel paradoxes presented by the plot -- which really is the central issue, explicit in the books themselves, and not something swept under the carpet -- this final volume is an exciting read, as we watch the fairly large cast of characters experience great adventures and continue their development as persons, their motivations becoming more evident to us, and, interestingly, to themselves as well. Even the greatest villain, the dastardly Janus, arouses a certain sense of pathos. Summer, the queen of the fairy Shee, remains remorseless, superficial and without feeling -- but still appealing to us in a perverse way.
And the changeling Gideon, to me the most sympathetic of the characters from the very first volume, finally has his wish fulfilled, although not the wish I would have wished for him.
A good read. But, of course, the first three books are an absolute prerequisite if this book is to make any sense at all....more
Fascinating treatment of multiple parallel universes, an the nature of reality. And even better if you're familiar with the landscape of Portland, OreFascinating treatment of multiple parallel universes, an the nature of reality. And even better if you're familiar with the landscape of Portland, Oregon -- both now and when the book was published in 1971. ...more
A rather rambling account of the author's experiences -- good and bad -- traveling the Italian railway system. Parks is a Brit who has lived in Italy A rather rambling account of the author's experiences -- good and bad -- traveling the Italian railway system. Parks is a Brit who has lived in Italy for thirty years, and has become humorously opinionated in his observations of Italians and their institutions..
The early chapters describe his frustrations as a regular user of the commuter routes near Milan. He then goes on to expand his horizons, focusing on the trains of Sicily and Puglia.
He has little to say about the excellent long-distance, high speed trains that tourists are most apt to ride, except to point out the state railway system's sharp division in how it treats foreign travelers and how it treats its own citizens. The opinions of foreign travelers affect Italy's standing among its peers in modern Europe; the hardships inflicted on lowly Italian citizens, in Park's opinion, reflect more clearly the peculiarities of the actual and historical Italian mindset
The book is often funny, at the expense of Trenitalia. At his best, Parks uses his experiences on the railroads to illustrate the oddities of Italian customs, pointing out the differences in those customs between the south and north. Despite his humor and observation skills, however, I found myself often disliking the author, in the same way that Paul Theroux often gets on my nerves. Parks doesn't suffer fools lightly....more
(FROM MY BLOG) Julian is a nice 24-year-old college graduate from Brooklyn. Intelligent, curious, and sensitive. But, as we say, unfocused. Like many (FROM MY BLOG) Julian is a nice 24-year-old college graduate from Brooklyn. Intelligent, curious, and sensitive. But, as we say, unfocused. Like many of us, he has gone through one intense interest after another, abandoning each in turn.
Julian existed in an exciting, satisfying serial monogamy of intellectual pursuits.
And now, in quick succession, his roommate is leaving for law school, his girl friend has dumped him, and he has lost his job.
His parents despair. No, they tell him, nicely but firmly -- and to Julian's astonishment and horror -- they won't allow him to return to the family home. But then the phone rings, and his 93-year-old grandmother Mamie invites him to live with her and assist her at her home in Venice, California. It solves two dilemmas for his parents -- what to do with their son, and what to do with the ageing Mamie.
Julian moves west, somewhat resignedly, and he and his grandmother gradually learn to enjoy each other's company. And then the Covid pandemic hits, sweeping toward California from the east coast, and forcing Julian, Mamie, and her friend and "dogsbody" Agatha to huddle together in Mamie's small house and yard.
Quarantine!
And so is set up something of a framing story for the rest of Cathleen Schine's novel, Künstlers in Paradise, a framing story within which, out of boredom and a sense of life's passing, Mamie begins telling Julian stories of her long life. The stories begin in Vienna, where she lived as a child with her Jewish parents -- a highly respected composer and an actress -- and her own grandparents. In 1939, after Austria has been annexed by the Third Reich, and when the Nazi hatred for Jews had become all too obvious, the family manages to slip out of Austria, leaving all their property behind. Aided by a Jewish aid organization in Hollywood, Mamie's mother is offered a job as a Hollywood screenwriter, enabling the family to obtain American visas.
The saga of the family's move from Austria to America is told through the eyes of eleven-year-old Mamie. To her, and to a large extent her parents as well, America -- and especially Southern California -- was a paradise of vastness, openness, freedom. The family moved into a small house on the Pacific coast.
The Künstlers discover that Los Angeles has become the new home for a vast number of Jewish intellectuals, writers, artists, and musicians, many from Vienna themselves, who had fled the Nazis. Julian listens wide-eyed, to her stories, as he begins to appreciate first, the upheaval his family had suffered leaving Vienna and coming to an unknown country, and second, the famous cultural figures in the Los Angeles milieu to which Mamie had been exposed as a young girl. He takes notes, with Mamie's approval, and writes them up in coherent form after each talk. His current interest is in being a screen writer.
Julian, a young man inclined to feel that his life has been filled with inconvenience and misfortune, begins to realize the differences between his grandmother's years as a twelve-year-old and the coddled childhood which he himself had experienced.
When he was twelve, he was scared to tell anyone he watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in case they thought he was babyish. He was depressed by having to get his braces tightened and distraught when his face broke out.
At the same age, Mamie was realizing that most of her family and friends, left behind in Vienna, were doomed and would never be seen again.
But Mamie had been an optimistic child, delighted by California more than hurt by loss of Austria. She meets a strange woman on the beach, and again at a party with her parents, who has a puppy delivered to her home by limousine. Named after a dog in a child's book that had also emigrated to America, "Prince Jan Saint Bernard." A copy of the child's book accompanied the puppy, autographed with the donor's initials, "G.G." Greta Garbo.
She didn't tell Julian the rest of the story.
Years later, apparently while in high school, Mamie had spent three weeks alone with Ms. Garbo on an isolated island in a lake in the Sierras.
A victim? Mamie thought with a smile. I think not. ... Mamie could still hear her heart pounding all these years later. The blood still pumped and sounded in her ears. Oh yes, now it would be sexual harassment or grooming or some such thing. But then? Oh, it was love.
Garbo gently told Mamie that it must end. Mamie never saw or heard from her again. She married Julian's grandfather not long afterwards.
Mamie's family was a musical family, but as a child, Mamie fought against learning piano. She didn't understand why a piano allowed only certain notes to be played -- those on the white and black keys -- or why certain notes were said to harmonize and others not. "Who said a scale had to have those notes? And why? Why, why, why?" The book perhaps dives into too much musical theory for the average reader, but perhaps not.
Her father introduced her to Arnold Schoenberg, who talked with her with tact and humor, discussing her aversion to the traditional musical scales. At the time, she had no idea that Schoenberg was a pioneer in composing atonal music. But instead of persuading her to study music, he taught her to play tennis. And to play it exceedingly well. To Schoenberg, music and tennis were related. He taught: "Technique and tradition in order to transcend technique and tradition."
The game of tennis mattered to him not only as a test of skill or a competition (and he was famously competitive), but also as something complicated, elusive, and beautiful one could try to understand. It was a lesson for life, she realized soon enough.
Mamie not only became an excellent tennis player, but eventually a violinist -- an instrument, unlike a piano, on which one could play an infinite number of notes, not just those sounded by a piano's white and black keys.
A year of quarantine passed. A vaccine was developed, and Julian's parents came to visit Mamie and Julian. They had sent him away, a sulky quasi-teenager. A year later, he seemed a responsible and caring adult. They will now welcome him back to New York, they tell him. But he has become an Angeleno. One with acquired tastes -- even a taste for atonal music! He will gladly visit them, but for now, he will stay and help Mamie.
Künstlers in Paradise is obviously not a plot driven novel. It is a picture of pre-war Vienna, from the retrospective viewpoint of highly educated Jews who fled to a new life in a New World. It is a story of a bright but aimless boy -- young man -- of our own time who is finding himself by learning to empathize with the struggles and accomplishments of his own family members. And it's a fascinating account of the community of Jewish intellectuals who had fled the Nazis in the 1930s and congregated in the Los Angeles area....more
(FROM MY BLOG) Sixteen years ago, while on a family canoe trip in France, several of us took turns reading Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go. We(FROM MY BLOG) Sixteen years ago, while on a family canoe trip in France, several of us took turns reading Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, Never Let Me Go. We were fascinated by his story of young people (all clones) who had been raised into their teens for the single purpose of having their organs harvested for the medical needs of those who could afford them. Fascinated, and creeped out.
Ishiguro's recent novel, Klara and the Sun (2021), is equally eerie, and raises somewhat similar questions in our minds -- questions we may or may not like contemplating. Ishiguro's approach in both novels reminds me of that in works by Ursula K. LeGuin -- both authors deal with worlds very similar to our own, but with certain critical differences. As LeGuin once stated, she was not interested in predicting our future, or in envisioning possible scientific advances -- she was not, she believed, writing science fiction.
Instead, like Ishiguro, in story after story, she described our own world, or a world very similar to our world, but one with certain critical differences, asking the question -- if we postulate these differences, what might result?
In Klara, the variable is the development of artificial intelligence to the point that resulting "robots" not only can imitate all human behavior, not only have superior perceptions to humans, not only excel humans in analytical skills, but also seem to have a sense of self and an ability to display empathy, to experience emotions.
These abilities have permitted the development of robots that serve as "Artificial Friends," or AFs as they are called in the novel. (A development we see developing even now, in "real life," in embryonic form.)
The story is told from the point of view of a female AF, whom we first see as she stands on the floor of a retail establishment, waiting to be purchased. She develops a reciprocal friendship with a young girl, Josie, whose mother finally decides to purchase Klara to keep Josie company. Josie is ill, it turns out, suffering from after effects of having been "lifted" -- genetic editing to increase intellectual ability -- which has become a prerequisite for admission to virtually all universities. Klara is purchased to help keep Josie's spirits up, to give her a close friend, while she struggles with the illness.
As in his earlier novel, Ishiguro asks us what it means to have a soul. In Never Let Me Go, the young people -- cloned, which in our civilization would not detract from their humanity -- were believed by everyone to be soulless, mere physical imitations of human beings. In Klara, the AF is clearly a manufactured being. But, by telling the story from Klara's point of view, we are left unable to doubt that she thinks, acts, and feels in ways identical to ourselves, modified only by not having the advantage of our years of gradually accumulated experience with the world. If she doesn't have a soul, what exactly do we mean by a soul?
And what do we mean by love? Klara doesn't love romantically, but she is devoted to Josie, to Josie's boyfriend, and to their hopes of a lasting relationship. She loves the Sun, which she personifies as a divine presence, one to whom she turns repeatedly with both prayers and adoration. She perceives the divine Sun, as it reflects through several stacked panes of glass:
Although his face on the outermost glass was forbidding and aloof, and the one immediately behind it was, if anything, even more unfriendly, the two beyond that were softer and kinder. There were three further sheets, and though it was hard to see much of them on account of their being further back, I couldn't help estimating that these faces would have humorous and kind expressions. In any case, whatever the nature of the images on each glass sheet, as I looked at them collectively, the effect was of a single face, but with a variety of outlines and emotions.
She thus develops a sense of the complexity of her divinity, the Sun, and, perhaps, of the complexity of human love.
As I've suggested, the entire story is told by Klara. Klara has a high intelligence, an incredible ability to infer human emotions from studying faces, but a limited familiarity with day to day human life. Her eyes apparently divide her range of vision into "boxes," blocks which she learns to combine to give a true picture of reality, the way we combine views from our two eyes to obtain three dimensional sight. She has concluded that the sun literally sinks into the ground at the point of the viewable horizon. Her nemesis throughout the book is some form of machinery that emits a cloud of smoke; she believes the purpose of the machine is to produce pollution, an offense against the Sun.
It's a fascinating story -- the oddities of Klara's perceptions, the intense, the lasting sense of guilt by Josie's mother for having had Josie "lifted," and thus subjected to life-threatening illness, the underlying love story between Josie and her friend Rick. The Kindle edition has a Study Guide at the end, with eighteen questions to consider. I didn't find the questions particularly helpful, but they do suggest the number of issues considered or hinted at in the novel, the various ways it might be interpreted.
Despite its complexity, Klara and the Sun is an absorbing story that draws one into its world, a world so like our own, but with the addition of thinking, feeling Artificial Friends, AFs with their own hopes and dreams and ways of viewing life around them.
And an ending that is therefore heartbreaking....more
(FROM MY BLOG) I rarely read books recommended to me, for the same reasons that others seldom care for the books I recommend to them. But a short time(FROM MY BLOG) I rarely read books recommended to me, for the same reasons that others seldom care for the books I recommend to them. But a short time ago, a friend -- who had never before suggested a book to me -- enthusiastically recommended Sarah Winman's Still Life. I downloaded it, and then forgot about it until I serendipitously confronted a combination of a bad cold and an extracted tooth.
I needed something not too heavy to read. Not too heavy, but not simple-minded either. I gave Still Life a try.
My decision to accept her suggestion wasn't totally blind. I knew Still Life took place in England and Italy between the last years of World War II and 1979. I knew it was in part an enraptured tribute to Florence -- one of my favorite cities.
What I wasn't expecting was a Dickensian novel, set in the less distant past. The novel presents a rich variety of characters -- rich enough to be confusing at first -- each well fleshed out. The point of view changes from chapter to chapter, and even within each chapter. The two central characters, perhaps -- but this could be disputed -- are Ulysses and Evelyn. Ulysses is introduced in 1944 as a British army private, who is the aide and driver for Captain Darnley. Ulysses is a friendly, likable boy from east London. Darnley is a well-educated young British officer with a love of art. The unlikely pair (unlikely because of their ranks) become friends, and spend much of their time sightseeing, even as the war rages about them.
The second central character is an unmarried woman from Kent, in her mid-60s, also intensely interested in art, who is in Italy to help salvage the nation's heritage of art. . She runs into Ulysses and Darnley near Orvieto, midway between Florence and Rome, and the three Brits enjoy each other's company.
The dialogue by both Captain Darnley and Evelyn does tend a bit to the didactic -- offering detailed, erudite lessons in art history (and history in general) not only to Ulysses, but also to us, the readers. Didactic and conversationally unrealistic, perhaps, but entertaining as well.
Most importantly, for the novel's plot, Ulysses laps it up and proves essentially a sponge, absorbing not only knowledge of Italian art from his two companions, but a sense that this world of thought and knowledge is the life into which he should have been born -- rather than into the working class world of Whitechapel.
From this beginning, the novel blossoms forth, adding new acquaintances, or introducing old acquaintances, one by one. The scene changes back and forth between the depressing -- but unexpectedly diverse and interesting -- lives of the habitués of a pub in London, and the lives of those dwelling in a square near Florence's Santo Spirito basilica, not far from the Arno river on the Oltrarno side.
We watch the lives of the characters unfold over a period of 35 years, as they grow, age, and occasionally die, to be replaced by new births. The story feels somewhat bittersweet, but ultimately more upbeat than you might expect. People separate, go their separate ways, and reunite. And as bodies age, minds and hearts grow. Ulysses draws uncomfortably close to stagnation, having returned to London after the war, but events eventually call him back to Florence -- joined by his closest friends.
If London represents stasis and small-mindedness, Florence represents growth, an embracing of life and an openness to new ideas and new kinds of people.
Yeah, it's a feel-good story, but a welcome tonic for recovery from a bad cold and a sore tooth.
The novel also has touches of magical realism. There is Claude, the Amazonian parrot who not only talks, but seemingly understands, and offers both commentary and sage advice to whomever will listen, throughout the novel.
Claude opened his eyes. Peg, he said quietly. What is it, sweetie? And she leaned in close to him. What is it? (Her ear now at his beak.) What?
Don't marry Ted.
There are at least two trees, one in London and one in Florence, who pass on the wisdom accrued from their centuries of life to favored human friends.
And there is the rather surprising realization, obviously a reflection of the author's interests, that the female characters are, with one major exception, lesbians, whose loves and friendships drive much of the action, and that many of the male characters -- whose love lives are treated with perhaps less gusto than those of the women -- are gay (but not Ulysses himself). It's all statistically unlikely, but we accept the plot and characters without question -- until we think about it later.
The opening scenes of Florence, where Evelyn is introduced to us while she is staying at a small, rather rebarbative pensione, project the same golden aura over Florence, even in wartime, as did similar scenes in E. M. Forster's novel, A Room with a View. Not surprising, as we later learn that Evelyn had met Forster in Florence, when they were both very young, where she had encouraged him to break away from his domineering mother and to think and act for himself.
The final chapter of the book ends the otherwise chronological progression, and goes back to 1901, when Evelyn as a young girl first stepped off the train in Florence. The chapter describes Evelyn's early life and first love -- with one of the maids at her pensione. An interesting chapter, but it feels like a bit of an afterthought. I felt it could have been omitted, or parts of it integrated into the chronological narrative.
And now? I'm ready for another visit to Florence. You will be, too....more
(FROM MY BLOG) (I'm still only half-way through the book, so this doesn't really qualify as a book review. But I've had immediate thoughts about Denk'(FROM MY BLOG) (I'm still only half-way through the book, so this doesn't really qualify as a book review. But I've had immediate thoughts about Denk's writing, arising out of my own very limited musical experience, which I shared on my blog yesterday.)
I took piano lessons for six years as a child. During my final three years, I would practice one and a half hours each day, usually before school. I enjoyed it, but -- like many kids -- once I was 15, I decided that enough was enough. I quit.
Years later, near the end of my legal career, I resumed piano lessons from a teacher in Seattle, dropped out again, and returned to the same teacher several years later. She was an excellent teacher, far more accomplished than my childhood teacher, having studied at the Leningrad Conservatory as a young woman. She seemed pleased to have me as a student.
She asked me to perform at a couple of student recitals -- which I did, feeling somewhat awkward among a flock of child and teenaged performers. I recall performing the second movement to Beethoven's Pathétique Sonata. To a limited degree, I'm a perfectionist, and I wasn't too happy with my playing. But my teacher told me that it had gone very well, and I took her word for it.
I suppose that compared with her sixth graders, I was a delight to teach. If I learned all the notes to a piece, followed all the printed notations in the score, and in addition brought some sense of emotional feeling to the piece, she professed herself very happy. "Good sense of musicality," she would say.
What brings all this to mind is my current reading of Every Good Boy Does Fine, by Jeremy Denk. I hope to review this excellent book once I finish it, but what I've read so far impresses me with how little I knew about any of the classical pieces I played, with whose playing my teacher had professed herself satisfied. Denk is not only an outstanding pianist, but an excellent teacher, and his book -- published this week -- is a memoir of his life (written at age 51), intertwined with discussions of the difficulties he had mastering the pieces he was taught. These discussions are, the reader quickly realizes, a vehicle for teaching the reader an appreciation of musical theory.
For me, it's also been a vehicle for teaching me humility -- although, insofar as my musical training was concerned, attaining humility has been hardly an accomplishment. I learned to play entire pages, listening to the melody where there was a discernable melody, juicing it up with a bit of emotion, and otherwise just playing the notes. Denk will spend a number of paragraphs discussing the profound musical effect of omitting just one note in a flight up a scale. His discussions are a revelation, and what they reveal is that no one ever perfects the playing of a classical piece, because there are always new subtleties to be discovered in a good composition -- subtleties that augment the pianist's understanding of the composer's vision, and that can be incorporated in his performance.
A few minutes ago, I looked over my copy of the score to the second movement of Beethoven's Pathétique, and noted the composer's copious use of "slurs" -- those curving lines above or below the flow of notes. They indicate phrases, notes that should be considered together, like words in a sentence. I always ignored them, because the phrasing seemed obvious without them.
Denk, as a college student, tended to ignore them as well. His teacher demanded otherwise, making him sing nonsense lyrics while playing.
The point of the lyrics was that they would force me to observe the slurs written on the page, taking breaths with the words. Painstakingly, I played , while Bill made me sing along .... We practiced until I could do all the slurs exactly as written, which seemed fussy and prissy ....
But Denk appreciated the teaching, once he got the hang of it. But then a later teacher called the slurs simply "sloppy notation" by Beethoven, notation that should be ignored.
Sometimes, learning from two teachers with opposing views can be valuable. Denk appeciated the opinions of the second teacher, but ended up siding with the more exacting demands of the first.
These days, I find the slurs almost more beautiful than the notes. They tell you about the play of the music against the beat, the visible against the invisible. ... Slurs look like an arc, and imply a journey.
I don't offer these quotations because I have any feeling, one way or the other, about slurs. But Denk's discussions remind us that highly trained musicians can argue over matters that are far above the notice or understanding of a novice pianist -- even one who has been praised for his "musicality" by his well-meaning (and probably long-suffering) teacher.
Denk's entire book -- in the guise of a well-written, humorous, self-deprecating memoir -- is an encouragement to everyone, whether music novices or experts, to avoid complacency, and to realize that no matter how well you think you know a piece of music, there's always something more to discover.
After falling into a well, four-year-old Sam is befriended by a chatty, sarcastic, talking armadillo named Bartleby. Sam asks the armadillo if he coulAfter falling into a well, four-year-old Sam is befriended by a chatty, sarcastic, talking armadillo named Bartleby. Sam asks the armadillo if he couldn't help Sam get out by digging a tunnel to the top.
Bartleby said, "I would prefer not to."
I question how many middle school students are familiar with Herman Melville, but that line, coming out of the blue, cracked me up.
(FROM MY BLOG) The present, we assume, is eternally before us, one of the few things in life from which we cannot be parted. It overwhelms us in the pa(FROM MY BLOG) The present, we assume, is eternally before us, one of the few things in life from which we cannot be parted. It overwhelms us in the painful first moments of entry into the world, when it is still too new to be managed or negotiated, remains by our side during childhood and adolescence, in those years before the weight of memory and expectation, and so it is sad and a little unsettling to see that we become, as we grow older, much less capable of touching, grazing, or even glimpsing it, .... ---------------- In June, I described a trip that Pascal and I took to Sri Lanka in 2004. I reprinted my journal's description of our ascent of Adam's Peak.
I'm sure that during our tour throughout the southern portion of Sri Lanka, we were aware of the continuing struggle of the Tamils in the Northeast for independence, and of the terrorist actions by both the Tamils (mostly Hindu, some Christian and others) and the Sinhalese majority (Buddhist) in the south. I don't recall being concerned about the struggle, even though we spent a couple of days visiting the ruins at Anuradhapura, which is near the south's border with the Tamil north. I may have been lulled into a sense of security by the fact that a formal cease fire -- often violated -- existed between the government and the Tamils from 2002 to 2007. After the cease fire ended, the government achieved total military victory in 2009.
This is all prelude to my having read a novel, set in the present, by Sri Lanka author Anuk Arudpragasam: A Passage North (2021). It's an unusual novel, containing far more impressions and contemplations than plot. But it offers a vivid image of life in Sri Lanka and among Sri Lankans, and an interesting illustration of the life and thoughts of a contemporary, intelligent Tamil.
Krishan is a Tamil who was born and raised in Colombo, the predominantly Sinhalese capital in the south. He grew up in the same household as his mother, his grandmother Appamma, and Appamma's Tamil caretaker and eventual friend Rani, who had come to Colombo from the north to provide that care. Krishan attended university in India, in the more cosmopolitan capital of Delhi, where he met and fell in love with an Indian student, Anjum. He breaks up with Anjum, who is far more focused in her interests than is the somewhat dreamy Krishan. Krishan's life is complicated when Rani, to whom he was somewhat attached, falls into a well during a visit back to her home village in the north and dies -- possibly but not conclusively a suicide.
Although set in the present, the characters' lives and thoughts are haunted by the violence of the war. Rani had lost both of her sons to war -- her eleven-year-old younger son killed before her eyes by shrapnel in the waning days of the war. She is kind and friendly with Appamma, but suffers from progressive depression and emotional detachment from the world about her. Krishan, growing up in Colombo, had been shielded from personal contact with the war, but while a student in Delhi finds himself obsessed with accounts and photographs of its horrors, and a sense of survivors' guilt for not having shared his people's sufferings.
Much of the novel is given over to Krishan's thoughts and daydreams -- erudite passages that reflect Krishan's intellect and academic orientation, but also perhaps the concerns of the author. Krishan gives a detailed and lengthy description of a Sanskrit "poem of yearning": The Cloud Messenger, a tale of a divine spirit (yaksha) who had been punished by exile from his home and family, and who pleads with a passing cloud to carry a message to his beloved wife. The poem describes the wife's city as a place where flowers of every season bloom at once, which Krishan construes as proof
that all seasons were collapsed there into a single season, that time itself stood still or that all times were contained in a single time -- as though, the narrator was suggesting, in ordinary life we are pulled in different directions by our contradictory desires, so that what we imagine as heaven is a place where these conflicting longings are somehow reconciled, in which the separate and seemingly incompatible times of their fulfillment are brought together, uniting our otherwise divided souls.
Krishan, contemplating the ecstasy of being together with Anjum, concludes that it is only in such moments that one experiences reality, where the falsity of daily life becomes obvious.
Krishan was grateful that they were part of the same place and the same time, that for now at least they were together in the same moment, a moment that contained not only what was proximate and what was distant but also what was past and what was future, a moment without length or breadth or height but which somehow contained everything of significance, as if everything else the world consisted of was a kind of cosmic scenery, an illusion that, now that it was being exposed, could quietly fall away.
Krishan decides that, even when love dies, this knowledge that one acquires through love remains:
...the knowledge that the world we ordinarily partake in is somehow not quite real, that time does not need to pass the way we usually experience it passing, that somehow it is possible to live and breathe and move in a single moment, that a single moment could be not a bead on an abacus of finite length but an ocean that can be entered into, whose distant shores can never be reached.
The entire final section of the novel -- over a quarter of its length -- is devoted to Krishan's travel to the north to be present with Rani's Tamil family and fellow villagers at her funeral, and to witness in striking detail the cremation of her body. He watches the smoke rising and dissipating into the sky, like a message to another world that would never be received. Like the love-sick yaksha's cloud-borne message to his wife in the Sanskrit poem.
Summarized, the novel sounds abstruse and perhaps boring. In reality, I found it gripping and fascinating. The author, in attempting to follow Krishan's thoughts, describes his surroundings and his actions in great detail, bringing to life the often strange (to us) world of Sri Lanka life, a world that is often strange but in some ways very familiar as well. A book worth reading slowly, and -- although I haven't yet done so -- reading a second time....more
(FROM MY BLOG) Sir Federico Gonzaga is the son of the Duke of Mantua. He has been held hostage in the Vatican by Pope Julius II, in order to ensure th(FROM MY BLOG) Sir Federico Gonzaga is the son of the Duke of Mantua. He has been held hostage in the Vatican by Pope Julius II, in order to ensure the continued loyalty of the Duke.
Sir Federico has a fine eye for ranks of nobility, for court etiquette, and for proper dress. We would call him arrogant, but he is acting as he has been brought up. He feels a strong duty to maintain the dignity of his father and of his family.
Sir Federico is also lonely and bored. He has many important acquaintances -- the pope himself plays backgammon with him, and is often enraged when he loses -- but he has no true friends. This is understandable, because Sir Federico is only eleven years old. A child surviving in a court of intrigue.
The boy makes his first friend when he opens a large, ornate box and meets a lively, friendly, and intelligent kitten. The two are inseparable, until the kitten walks back into the box and disappears. Federico is devastated, but the kitten emerges again, a short time later, as a fully grown, elegant cat. Federico fears witchcraft.
But the reality is even stranger. The box is a time machine, one crafted -- we eventually learn -- by Leonardo da Vinci as a gift for the King of France.
Thus begins Da Vinci's Cat (2021), a novel apparently aimed at middle school students, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock. The plot is perhaps too elementary, and the human relations too superficially described, to serve as an adult novel (but not perhaps as a sci-fi or fantasy novel). And yet, it appeals to adults (to this one, in any event), while it may seem too rich in history and art to be accessible (or of interest) to the typical middle school reader.
Leonardo himself plays little additional part in the story. But Federico is close friends with Raphael (elegant, charming, popular) and is tactfully diplomatic with Michelangelo (ugly, hostile, jealous, and -- as Federico repeatedly reminds us -- he stinks). The time is the early sixteenth century. Michelangelo is painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Raphael is doing the papal apartments. (Federico brags that Raphael painted him as a beautiful young boy and inserted him into his School of Athens masterpiece.)
The boy views Pope Julius II as just another egotistical Renaissance aristocrat, the head of one of the most powerful Italian states. He hardly touches on the pope's religious leadership. As he observes during a service in the Sistine Chapel, below Michelangelo's scaffolding:
His Holiness promptly went to sleep as he usually did during ceremonies. Federico could not hear the priests for the pope's snoring.
And that may have been an accurate assessment of Julius II's priorities. According to Wikipedia, Julius II "left a significant cultural and political legacy." No mention of his personal sanctity.
The plot thickens. From the same box from which the cat had stepped appears an American from the year 1928.
"I am Sir Federico of Mantua."
"Pleased to meet you Sir Federico. Herbert Bother of New Jersey. Call me Herbert."
Federico found Herbert's Italian appalling, but then he was from New Jersey. But despite initial dislike, he soon adopts Herbert as his second friend, after the cat. We also are introduced to Beatrice, or Bea, also from America -- but from America in our own time -- a young girl Federico's age. Bea becomes a protagonist along with Federico, and some of the chapters are told from her point of view. Stir these odd characters together with the concept of time travel, and you end with a plot that is interesting enough to keep you reading.
But the better reason for reading Da Vinci's Cat is the picture Ms. Murdock paints of Renaissance Rome, as seen both through Federico's contemporary eyes, and through the astonished eyes of visitors from the twentieth century: The Vatican, a century before the completion of the modern St. Peter's (first planned by Julius II himself). The darkness and danger of the Roman streets at night. The smells. The jousting for advantage by both nobles and artists, all seeking the pope's favor. The policing power of the newly formed Swiss Guards. The mutual jealousies of all those competing artists whose names loom large in Art 101.
Most of the background is accurate. As the author notes at the end, Federico was a real kid, born in 1500 in Mantua. A kid who really was a hostage of Pope Julius II for three years. He may or may not be the young boy painted in Rafael's The School of Athens -- but the author is convinced he is. The personalities and characteristics of Michelangelo ("he stinks") and Raphael (charming and popular) were actually more or less as described. Leonardo was a scientific genius as well as an artist. As Murdock notes, tongue in cheek:
Perhaps he invented a time machine, but since many of his notebooks have been lost, we'll never know for sure.
So, I ask again. Will middle school kids enjoy the book? Some, probably. I'm not sure how I would have reacted to it at that age. It may presume more historical and artistic background than I had in middle school. Although what seventh grader can resist a heroine about whom it is written: "Also she really needed to pee. No one in books ever talked about pee."
Federico is arrogant, but he was an aristocrat. He has a good heart, and becomes increasingly likeable. (Anyone who loves a cat is just dandy in my book.) Bea discovers a painting of Federico as an adult in a modern encyclopedia -- he had a distinguished career as Duke of Mantua and as a patron of the arts.
It's not mentioned in this middle school novel, but Federico died at the age of 40 of syphilis....more
(FROM MY BLOG 6-20-2011) A decade ago, I spent a short two weeks wandering around Central Europe -- eastern Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Re(FROM MY BLOG 6-20-2011) A decade ago, I spent a short two weeks wandering around Central Europe -- eastern Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic. That would be a lot of territory to see in two weeks, of course. More truthfully, I should say that I spent two weeks visiting large cities in those countries: Berlin, Dresden, Vienna, Prague and Budapest.
But in each large city, I did try to get out of town a bit, so that I wasn't locked into a "Famous Capitals" sort of tour. While in Vienna, for example, I made a special effort to hop a train to the little town of Melk. Melk is most famous as the site of Stift Melk -- a very large Benedictine abbey, located scenically on a hill overlooking the Danube.
Why Melk? The power of the written word. Not long before my travels, I had read, entranced, A Time of Gifts, by Patrick Leigh Fermor, the first of two volumes describing his wanderings on foot in 1933-35, at the age of 18, from the English Channel to Constantinople (Istanbul).
Leigh Fermor was quite a kid. He had been kicked out of what in America we would call prep school, after he'd been caught smooching with the local grocer's daughter. He nevertheless was already well educated at 18, self-taught to an extent that's difficult today for us to believe. Moreover, he had a sense of self-confidence that permitted him to feel equally at ease with the workers and peasants among whom he traveled and the European aristocrats and diplomats who often took him in, offered him food and shelter, and found him fascinating and agreeable company.
Like a fair number of other English youth in that era, he had a fine sense for both literature and art. And it was his vivid description, in musical metaphors, of Melk abbey that put me on the train from Vienna, headed up the Danube for a day's exploration of Melk:
Overtures and preludes followed each other as courtyard opened on courtyard. Ascending staircases unfolded as vaingloriously as pavanes. Cloisters developed with the complexity of double, triple and quadruple fugues. The suites of state apartments concatenated with the variety, the mood and the décor of symphonic movements. Among the receding infinity of gold bindings in the library, the polished reflections, the galleries and the terrestial and celestial globes, gleaming in the radiance of their flared embrasures, music again seemed to intervene. A magnificent and measured polyphony crept in one's ears.
And so on, and on, and on.
Melk Abbey was indeed beautiful. I studied the same sights described by Leigh Fermor. But my trip journal, after having quoted the above passage, suggests my mild disappointment. And why wouldn't I have been a bit disappointed? A traveler needs a highly trained eye to view architecture as Leigh Fermor did; it also helps to be 18 years old, if you wish to feel it as emotionally and to express it with as little restraint as did this unusual young man. I once again learned the sad lesson that a sense of awe in the presence of magnificent art, architecture or music results only in part from the object that's being contemplated; much depends on the education and sensitivity that the viewer himself brings to the experience.
Leigh Fermor had little to say in his writings about the political currents that already were rocking the regions through which he traveled, but war was already looming ahead. Patrick Leigh Fermor was himself to play a part in that war. He was, in fact, the hero of W. Stanley Moss's memoir of the Cretan resistance, Ill Met by Moonlight. Moss, who was Leigh Fermor's second in command, tells the story of how his superior, as a daring young British Special Operations officer, led a group of partisans hiding in the Cretan mountains in an audacious kidnapping of the German general who was in command of the island.
According to a full page obituary in this week's Economist, Leigh Fermor never talked much in later years about his role in this sensational strike against the German occupation. He seemed far more pleased with the fact that when the German general, now Leigh Fermor's prisoner, one day quoted -- quite unexpectedly -- a line from Horace, "Vides ut alta stet nive candidum Soracte,"1 Leigh Fermor was able to come right back and complete the thought by reciting from memory the next five stanzas.
Patrick Leigh Fermor died last week at the age of 96. I suspect he is irreplaceable. I imagine, in fact, that his entire generation of eccentrically educated amateurs is irreplaceable, and that their passing is a sad loss to humane civilization.
----------------------------------- 1"You see how [Mount] Soracte stands out white with deep snow..."...more
(FROM MY BLOG) One morning in early June, I woke up in Troutbeck, England -- near Windermere lake in the Lake District. I had hiked there from Grasmer(FROM MY BLOG) One morning in early June, I woke up in Troutbeck, England -- near Windermere lake in the Lake District. I had hiked there from Grasmere the day before, in beautiful early summer weather, and had eaten a great dinner at The Mortal Man pub. My hike through Westmorland had just two more days to go.
But hark! Was that rain I now heard outside my window? Not just rain, a downpour. It rained all through breakfast, it rained and soaked through my windbreaker within minutes of my stepping out the door. It rained all day -- I mean it poured -- as I walked the fifteen miles to my next night's stop in Kendal. The raindrops pounded on my phone screen, changing the page as I tried to consult a map. In fact, the phone finally slipped from my cold fingers, fell to the ground, and suffered a serious screen fracture.
But my 15-mile hike was on level ground. Where the designated path now passed through rain-drenched bogs, I cheated and followed roads. Half way to Kendal, I stopped at a café for a perfectly nice lunch. It was a wet day, but not a debilitating day. But it gave me some appreciation for Mark Richards's sufferings as described in his humorous and moving account of a novice's introduction to hiking, Father, Son, and the Pennine Way (2016).
The Pennine Way has been described as the oldest official hiking trail -- and one of the toughest -- in England. It runs 268 miles up the spine of England from northern Derbyshire to a point just across the Scottish border.
Mark's hiking background? Unimpressive. His age was 61, and he weighed 232 pounds before he began training. He had walked his dog four miles along the beach. But his youngest son Alex was 17, soon bound for university and, Mark feared, a less close relationship with his father. Therefore, in February, with some trepidation he nervously asked Alex the question:
"Do you want to come for a walk with me?"
"With Pepper? I'm busy ..."
"No, not with the dog. Further than that. The Pennine Way. 5 days: 80 miles. In the summer holidays." ...
Alex looks at me. He shrugs. "Sure," he says. "Why not?"
Fortunately, they were not attempting the entire Pennine Way path. They hiked from Malham in North Yorkshire north to Dufton in Cumbria (historically in Westmorland) (just 3.7 miles from Appleby, where I began my own Westmorland hike). But they were averaging over 16 miles per day. Their last day was their longest, at 23.77 miles. I may have hiked 23 miles in one day, but I can't remember when. By comparison, on my hike through Westmorland in 2017, I was averaging just 12 miles per day, with little elevation gain.
Mark makes quite a point of the climbs involved in their hike. The elevation gains don't seem particularly impressive, by American standards, but some of them -- notably their first day climb up Pen y Ghent -- do seem steep. And Mark obviously suffered from a certain amount of acrophobia, as well as a bum knee.
But it wasn't just the daily mileage and the elevation gains that made their hike impressive. Overlying those little difficulties was the fact that -- in August -- it rained constantly every day. And when it wasn't raining, they were wading through thick fog. I recall how demoralizing just one day of hiking in torrential rains was for me in 2017.
The author emphasizes that his book is not a guide to the Pennines (although it contains some interesting information for potential hikers), and is not aimed at experienced hikers. Besides being a travel guide, it is at least as much a love story between a father and his teenaged son. Alex was experienced with hiking as part of England's Duke of Edinburgh awards program, and he often found himself rolling his eyes at his father's blunders. But the mutual affection between the two was obvious. You don't survive in good spirits five days of exhausting hiking, being wet, losing your way, sinking into bogs, and falling to the ground and breaking your fingers -- without killing each other -- in the absence of mutual respect and affection.
I had all the respect in the world for the father -- a newbie who had bit off almost more than he could chew. But I also admired Alex, who maintained his sense of humor throughout -- and who willingly admitted his own mistake the one time he was seriously wrong about directions. Their conversations while hiking were humorous and intelligent. They made great hiking companions. As Mark concludes:
Because he's like me in so many ways, he understood that the walk wasn't just about walking. He understood it was an internal journey for me as much as an external journey; that talking to Custard-and-Ice-Cream, breakfast at Tan Hill and saying 'thank you' as we walked down from High Cup Nick was every bit as important as reaching Dufton.
And he was funny. We kept each other amused. We were pals. He stole my joke, but I'll forgive him that.
Would he do it again? No, he says.
It was a one-off. I don't want to spoil the memories. As long as I live I want to keep the image of Alex walking up the hill into Dufton and the setting sun.
But two years later, after Alex had completed his A-levels and his first year at the University of Edinburgh, they paired up again for the final portion of the Pennine Way, from Dufton to the Scottish border. Another hundred miles. There's a book, of course. I may have to read it....more
(FROM MY BLOG) I suspect that any average American who visits Iran for the first time is impressed by the friendliness, openness, and sense of humor o(FROM MY BLOG) I suspect that any average American who visits Iran for the first time is impressed by the friendliness, openness, and sense of humor of the average Iranian. Our own press has prepared us to encounter a closed, hostile society, something along the lines of Soviet Russia. Despite the hostility of our respective governments, however, Americans and Iranians tend to enjoy each other's company.
How did it all go so wrong diplomatically?
Iranian-born writer John Ghazvinian -- who earned his Ph.D. from Oxford, and who writes for a number of influential American magazines -- has tried to answer that question in his recently-published book, America and Iran: A History, 1720 to the Present (2021).
Ghazvinian begins the heart of his study with the appearance of Protestant missionaries in northwestern Iran in the 1830s, and gives a detailed account of the generally high esteem in which America and Americans were held for many years. Iran was a weak power, under continuing pressure from both Russia and Britain for favors and "capitulations" -- similar to the demands made by the colonial powers on China. America appeared to be an idealistic new power with little interest in or ambitions toward Iran. Iran hoped that a close friendship with America would help avoid partition of their country between the two large European powers.
The subsequent story has been sad and increasingly tragic.
America's fall from grace dates most memorably from 1953 when, under pressure from Britain and its Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, the CIA joined in undermining the popular and liberal government of Mohammad Mossadegh. I have a vague memory of this episode from my childhood. I was under the impression -- an impression fostered by the CIA -- that Mossadegh was a Communist. He wasn't. From Ghazvinian's description, he was in fact the very sort of democratically-supported ruler that America purported to support in every nation. Except when oil was involved.
Because the Mossadegh government had nationalized the Anglo-Iranian assets in Iran.
Americans have forgotten that episode, and how it restored to absolute power the Pahlavi Shah. Iranians never have.
The Shah ruled -- increasingly despotically -- as a firm American ally until 1979, when he was overthrown by a popular revolution, backed by devout Muslims, Western-oriented liberals, and extreme left-wing radicals. Since that date, Iran has become an Islamic Republic, with government functions divided between an elected president and a religious ruler (the ayatollah).
In the last half of his book, Ghazvinian describes in detail the times since 1979 that our two countries have come close to resolving their differences. Each time, the attempt failed because of conservative and religious opponents in Iran, Republican and conservative and/or hawkish Democratic opponents in America, and the strong diplomatic efforts of Israel (and to a lesser degree, and with different motivation, Sunni Arab states) to avoid any successful reconciliation between the two.
If Iran has been willing to forget that America supported Iraq's Saddam Hussein in his war against Iran from 1980-88 -- a war that devastated Iran and cost it about a quarter million deaths -- America can surely forget that an Iranian mob held 52 Americans hostage in 1979.
The book is long and complex, but Ghazvinian is a good writer, and writes in a colloquial, non-academic style. The book is aimed at the average reader, although it will no doubt be of interest to academic readers as well....more
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