This morning, I was pleased to find a $2 copy of Apicius' Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome in the Dover Edition. Classical Studies have long been an interest of mine, and Apicius provides a look into a rather unusual aspect of Roman life (hummingbird tongues, anyone?). To be sure, there was a difference between the eating habits of the patricians and the plebians. I suspect Apicius leans towards the former in his book of cookery. My interest in Ancient Rome has been rekindled recently as I've been watching HBO's series "Rome" on DVD (interesting series, with the usual liberties taken with known facts and chronology, but still fun).
Now, I'm aware that this particular edition has a bit of controversy. The translation was made in 1936, and the translator apparently had no problem diverging from the original text and making his own substitutions for ingredients. Probably not a big problem if you are actually trying to make these dishes in your kitchen and need some accessible ingredients, but I can see it bothering those (like me) who really want accuracy in translation. But $2 sure beats the $250 editions.
Dover Editions are treasures, especially if you can find them used and in good shape. My copy of Mayhew's London Labor and the London Poor that I mentioned in a previous entry is a very nice unabridged 4 volume edition. The down side is that they are often older translations in the public domain, many of which have been superseded by recent scholarship. The Wallis Budge books on Egyptology, for instance, are nice but irredeemably inaccurate. All would be forgiven if they would bring back Aurel Stein's Travels in Desert Cathay.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Huzza! Huzza! The Devil's dead. Now we can all do as we like!
Ladies and gentlemen, pray how you do?
If you all happy, me all happy too.
The Last Days of Mr. Punch by D.H. Myers
This slim 1971 volume purporting to be the memoirs of Mr. Punch (nee Pulcinella) of Punch and Judy fame is in large measure compiled from a variety of sources. Paramount among these is Henry Mayhew's massive and entertaining 1861 London Labour and the London Poor. Myers illustrates his book with some amusing old Punch drawings. The little bugger didn't get by on his looks.
On the end flap, the author presents Punch, a comic trickster figure, philosophically as "the problem of whether it is a good thing to wipe out evil...The Devil...gives a certain controllable shape and size to evil, and if you kill him, then evil may truly run rampant." In some versions of the show, Mr. Punch, a character with a very low threshold for anger, kills the Devil.
I tended to read this book more as light comic fare, rather than as a dissertation on the nature of evil. Punch is clearly from a time when sociopathic violence and casual cruelty were seen as acceptable fare for audiences of all ages, not that things have changed much. Giving philosophical sophistication to one puppet beating the bejezzuz out of another comes perilously close to accepting the sociocultural value of the Three Stooges, which I'm not prepared to do.
This was simply a nice slim palate cleanser to read as a chaser to a truly disturbing novel (The Road).
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Let's Return the Cake
So I was at my 6 year old's school this morning for a "Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss" assembly. The kids were getting ready to recite various books and poems. The teacher had just explained that "Dr. Seuss" was turning 65 this week, when one of the moms raised her hand excitedly and blurted out "Isn't he dead?!"
The teacher then explained that it is the Dr. Seuss character that is turning 65.
The school psychologist probably spent the rest of the day conducting grief counseling sessions.
The teacher then explained that it is the Dr. Seuss character that is turning 65.
The school psychologist probably spent the rest of the day conducting grief counseling sessions.
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Literature and Reality
The first book I picked up after September 11 was The Plague by Albert Camus. I had read it some years before, but the sense of fear and anxiety induced by the attack and the subsequent anthrax episodes put my mind back to this seminal book of the 20th century. Bear in mind that the following notes were written back in October 2001.
I was compelled to reread this novel following the events of September 11. The sense of enclosure, fear of random death, the necessity for a will to continue mirror the situation in America over the last month, with the fear of anthrax substituted for the plague bacillus. The description of Oran at the beginning of the novel, its blandness and frivolity, not to mention a certain ugliness, again strikes a chord to an attentive American reader. Camus writes that
"[t]he evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance" and that "the most incorrigible vice [is] that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill."
Whether we can muster the courage and determination to meet our adversary head on, even with the knowledge of the fights futility, as Rieux does, remains to be seen. After our flag-waving, our bomb strikes, and our propaganda undertaken to accomplish our obscure objectives, we will understand the final lesson: that the plague never ends.
In February 2002, I reread George Orwell's 1984 and wrote the following notes. I will only say now that, with the Iraq War having been instigated in the interim as an endless war for all the wrong reasons, the complicity of the media in making Orwell's model of thought control as co-opted by the Bush Administration a reality is far from "subtle".
I reread this novel upon realizing the similarities between Bush's "War on Terror" and Oceania's never-ending war with Eurasia/Eastasia. Media manipulation today is more subtle than Orwell's "doublespeak", as is the Bush/Ashcroft campaign to erode the rights of the individual in America. Totalitarianism can creep up quite slowly, almost imperceptibly. The fears and tortures of Winston Smith are more terrifying now than they were when I first read this book in high school, simply because their potential reality is more imaginable than ever before. Didactic and perhaps a bit overwritten, 1984 has passed beyond literature into a state alarmingly close to today's reality.
A few weeks ago, a correspondent noted that I hadn't referenced 1984 on my blog (I had, in fact, made a reference several months ago to "chocolate rations" which might have escaped readers unfamiliar with the works of the fine Mr. Blair, but no matter). Perhaps this post seeks to remedy that deficiency in some small manner. A more considered, and wonderfully argued perspective on 1984 can be found here: http://www.janantoon.be/WP/?cat=12
I was compelled to reread this novel following the events of September 11. The sense of enclosure, fear of random death, the necessity for a will to continue mirror the situation in America over the last month, with the fear of anthrax substituted for the plague bacillus. The description of Oran at the beginning of the novel, its blandness and frivolity, not to mention a certain ugliness, again strikes a chord to an attentive American reader. Camus writes that
"[t]he evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance" and that "the most incorrigible vice [is] that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill."
Whether we can muster the courage and determination to meet our adversary head on, even with the knowledge of the fights futility, as Rieux does, remains to be seen. After our flag-waving, our bomb strikes, and our propaganda undertaken to accomplish our obscure objectives, we will understand the final lesson: that the plague never ends.
In February 2002, I reread George Orwell's 1984 and wrote the following notes. I will only say now that, with the Iraq War having been instigated in the interim as an endless war for all the wrong reasons, the complicity of the media in making Orwell's model of thought control as co-opted by the Bush Administration a reality is far from "subtle".
I reread this novel upon realizing the similarities between Bush's "War on Terror" and Oceania's never-ending war with Eurasia/Eastasia. Media manipulation today is more subtle than Orwell's "doublespeak", as is the Bush/Ashcroft campaign to erode the rights of the individual in America. Totalitarianism can creep up quite slowly, almost imperceptibly. The fears and tortures of Winston Smith are more terrifying now than they were when I first read this book in high school, simply because their potential reality is more imaginable than ever before. Didactic and perhaps a bit overwritten, 1984 has passed beyond literature into a state alarmingly close to today's reality.
A few weeks ago, a correspondent noted that I hadn't referenced 1984 on my blog (I had, in fact, made a reference several months ago to "chocolate rations" which might have escaped readers unfamiliar with the works of the fine Mr. Blair, but no matter). Perhaps this post seeks to remedy that deficiency in some small manner. A more considered, and wonderfully argued perspective on 1984 can be found here: http://www.janantoon.be/WP/?cat=12
Friday, February 16, 2007
Andrea Palladio
For over a decade, I have lusted after Bruce Boucher's Andrea Palladio: The Architect in His Time. This is a big wonderful book on one of the most inspiring architects of all time. The $95.00 list price for the hardcover was prohibitively high, although a softcover is available for much less (see link below). But a book like this deserves hardcover, and I was quite pleasantly surprised this week to find it in a library bookshop for $6.00. Yes, it's ex library, but the stamping, etc, are minimal, and the book is in wonderful shape.
The Renaissance architecture of Palladio was a prime inspiration for Thomas Jefferson's design for Monticello. My wife and I visited Monticello some years ago, and it was a dream come true to visit my favorite American house and find that it more than lived up to it's reputation. Palladio made it all possible.
The Renaissance architecture of Palladio was a prime inspiration for Thomas Jefferson's design for Monticello. My wife and I visited Monticello some years ago, and it was a dream come true to visit my favorite American house and find that it more than lived up to it's reputation. Palladio made it all possible.
The Road
The Road is Cormac McCarthy's version of the perennial sci-fi genre, the post-apocalyptic novel. McCarthy does not impose the supernatural/fantastic element on the genre, although there is plenty of horror to go around, including the constant threat of cannibalism. This isn't a stretch for the author, who explored necrophilia in Child of God, incest in Outer Dark, and general moral depravity in Blood Meridian. He is, however, a thoughtful and precise writer- qualities which distinguish him from the Stephen Kings of the world in his treatment of a common theme.
The Road follows an unnamed man and his son as they make their slow hazardous trek to the sea some years after an apparent nuclear holocaust. The landscape is ashen and dead and the bleakness of the extended nuclear winter and the hopelessness of survival on earth in the wake of the catastrophe are well portrayed. I can't write too much about the plot without giving spoilers to the narrative. Suffice to say that McCarthy tries to give some faint glimmer of hope at the end, but that hope is surely a mirage, a temporary reprieve from suffering in a future in which all hope has been annihilated.
On a personal note, as the father of young boys, the narrative of the man and his son adrift in the wasteland holds a real poignancy. This father-son relationship is surely the most tender and true bit of writing that McCarthy has yet written. The dedication, to John Francis McCarthy, is presumably to the author's son.
The Road follows an unnamed man and his son as they make their slow hazardous trek to the sea some years after an apparent nuclear holocaust. The landscape is ashen and dead and the bleakness of the extended nuclear winter and the hopelessness of survival on earth in the wake of the catastrophe are well portrayed. I can't write too much about the plot without giving spoilers to the narrative. Suffice to say that McCarthy tries to give some faint glimmer of hope at the end, but that hope is surely a mirage, a temporary reprieve from suffering in a future in which all hope has been annihilated.
On a personal note, as the father of young boys, the narrative of the man and his son adrift in the wasteland holds a real poignancy. This father-son relationship is surely the most tender and true bit of writing that McCarthy has yet written. The dedication, to John Francis McCarthy, is presumably to the author's son.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
The Beckett Trilogy
While reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the sense of despair in that novel made me think of one of the masters of existential hopelessness, Samuel Beckett.* I have been a Beckett fan for years, admiring him no less for his humor than for his articulation of 20th Century angst. In that vein, I am posting some older observations on the trilogy comprised of Molloy, Malone Dies, and The Unnameable. There is no dearth of worthwhile interpretive books and essays on these works: what follows are simply my synopsis and thoughts regarding them.
(*One contrast with regard to McCarthy: Beckett doesn't have to imagine a post-apocalyptic world - for him, each human life is an ongoing apocalypse, a decrepit ramble towards nothingness.)
The Trilogy
Molloy, the first volume in Beckett's trilogy, is comprised of two sections, purporting to be notes scribbled by two quite different characters, each in his own state of isolation. The first is Molloy, an almost feral vagabond whose goal, when discernible amid the odd and humorous reveries of life as a tramp, is to reach his "mother's room." He writes, apparently, from her room, but she is absent and there is no real idea of where she has gone or of how Molloy has come to take her place. Molloy is a wild man, hardly verbal, shaggy and urine-soaked with a bum leg and an aversion to human contact. For all this, he seems comfortable with his extreme situation, and with being outside of society and its norms. He has no great love of life, and appears to be content in his room, waiting to die.
The second "author", Jacque Moran, begins as a self-satisfied, if rather obsessive, suburbanite. He is given vague instructions regarding Molloy that take him out onto the open road, where his mode and manner of living rapidly disintegrate as he loses touch with the sense of society and his place in it that he so highly values. He badgers his son into abandoning him, murders a man for no real reason, and, after descending into his own kind of madness, returns to pass the remainder of his existence in his own now dilapidated house.
Beckett's prose is poignant and scatological, reflecting the disturbing situations each of these men find themselves in. Molloy is the individuals desire to escape from society and its suffocating norms, taken to the nth degree. He is taken into police custody for vague reasons concerning which he has no real curiosity. He is subsequently taken in (for sexual purposes, he suspects) by a charitable matron whose dog he has accidentally run over on his bicycle. He cannot wait to regain his grubby clothes and make his escape from this intolerable confinement. He is content to gather "sucking stones" (to ward off hunger) on a beach and spends pages devising elaborate mathematics for the purpose of shifting the stones from pocket to pocket.
Moran is the man cut loose from society, whose values and pretensions disintegrate in the absence of that society. There is a tinge of Buddhist thought in these pages: Molloy is almost Buddha-like in his detachment and his pessimism regarding the human condition and the tragedy of birth, the escape from which is the elusive goal - the annihilation of nirvana. Moran is the fool, discovering the abyss that confronts the unprepared mind when the illusions of life and its apparent certainties are swept away.
Malone Dies and The Unnameable thematically continue the narrative begun in Molloy. Whereas the first novel in the trilogy possessed at least a modicum of dramatic action, these simply reflect the thoughts of first a dying, and then a dead (vegetative?) man. The search for the self and the realization of the horror of existence continue, and some of Beckett's most grotesque images occur in these works: the bizarre sexual relations of Malone and Moll, the Dante-esque episode wherein the Unnameable/Mahood trudges through the entrails of his dead family in the course of a spiral descent into nowhere. These works, especially the third volume, are emotionally difficult to read. Still, they are powerful statements on the hopelessness of existence and the stasis of the self in the absence of meaning.
Also Of Interest
Michael Robinson's The Long Sonata of the Dead (out of print) is a somewhat useful guide to Beckett's work, and to the trilogy in particular. James Knowlson's book on Beckett, Damned to Fame, is by far the best biography, rounding out the somwhat dour view of Beckett presented in Diedre Bair's earlier biography.
Various editions of the trilogy are available. They are of course included in the superlative Grove Centenary Edition of Beckett's work, now available from Amazon at a very attractive price (down from the original $100 list price). Personally, I am hard pressed to abandon my collection of Beckett's works, mostly dog-eared paperbacks and foreign editions, painstakingly assembled over the years.
(*One contrast with regard to McCarthy: Beckett doesn't have to imagine a post-apocalyptic world - for him, each human life is an ongoing apocalypse, a decrepit ramble towards nothingness.)
The Trilogy
Molloy, the first volume in Beckett's trilogy, is comprised of two sections, purporting to be notes scribbled by two quite different characters, each in his own state of isolation. The first is Molloy, an almost feral vagabond whose goal, when discernible amid the odd and humorous reveries of life as a tramp, is to reach his "mother's room." He writes, apparently, from her room, but she is absent and there is no real idea of where she has gone or of how Molloy has come to take her place. Molloy is a wild man, hardly verbal, shaggy and urine-soaked with a bum leg and an aversion to human contact. For all this, he seems comfortable with his extreme situation, and with being outside of society and its norms. He has no great love of life, and appears to be content in his room, waiting to die.
The second "author", Jacque Moran, begins as a self-satisfied, if rather obsessive, suburbanite. He is given vague instructions regarding Molloy that take him out onto the open road, where his mode and manner of living rapidly disintegrate as he loses touch with the sense of society and his place in it that he so highly values. He badgers his son into abandoning him, murders a man for no real reason, and, after descending into his own kind of madness, returns to pass the remainder of his existence in his own now dilapidated house.
Beckett's prose is poignant and scatological, reflecting the disturbing situations each of these men find themselves in. Molloy is the individuals desire to escape from society and its suffocating norms, taken to the nth degree. He is taken into police custody for vague reasons concerning which he has no real curiosity. He is subsequently taken in (for sexual purposes, he suspects) by a charitable matron whose dog he has accidentally run over on his bicycle. He cannot wait to regain his grubby clothes and make his escape from this intolerable confinement. He is content to gather "sucking stones" (to ward off hunger) on a beach and spends pages devising elaborate mathematics for the purpose of shifting the stones from pocket to pocket.
Moran is the man cut loose from society, whose values and pretensions disintegrate in the absence of that society. There is a tinge of Buddhist thought in these pages: Molloy is almost Buddha-like in his detachment and his pessimism regarding the human condition and the tragedy of birth, the escape from which is the elusive goal - the annihilation of nirvana. Moran is the fool, discovering the abyss that confronts the unprepared mind when the illusions of life and its apparent certainties are swept away.
Malone Dies and The Unnameable thematically continue the narrative begun in Molloy. Whereas the first novel in the trilogy possessed at least a modicum of dramatic action, these simply reflect the thoughts of first a dying, and then a dead (vegetative?) man. The search for the self and the realization of the horror of existence continue, and some of Beckett's most grotesque images occur in these works: the bizarre sexual relations of Malone and Moll, the Dante-esque episode wherein the Unnameable/Mahood trudges through the entrails of his dead family in the course of a spiral descent into nowhere. These works, especially the third volume, are emotionally difficult to read. Still, they are powerful statements on the hopelessness of existence and the stasis of the self in the absence of meaning.
Also Of Interest
Michael Robinson's The Long Sonata of the Dead (out of print) is a somewhat useful guide to Beckett's work, and to the trilogy in particular. James Knowlson's book on Beckett, Damned to Fame, is by far the best biography, rounding out the somwhat dour view of Beckett presented in Diedre Bair's earlier biography.
Various editions of the trilogy are available. They are of course included in the superlative Grove Centenary Edition of Beckett's work, now available from Amazon at a very attractive price (down from the original $100 list price). Personally, I am hard pressed to abandon my collection of Beckett's works, mostly dog-eared paperbacks and foreign editions, painstakingly assembled over the years.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
But What About the Books?
I have neglected any book posts for a while. Having kids means that one's reading time is necessarily limited, although I do usually get some time to read later in the evening. Gone are the days when I had several books going at once: now I just hit them one at a time. Currently I'm reading John Hale's The Civilization of Europe in the Renaissance, a fairly hefty tome, but quite worthwhile. I hope to post some notes on past books read sometime in the next few days.
Monday, January 08, 2007
Weird Coincidence
I tend not to get too weirded out by things, but strange smells permeating Manhattan (I don't know what it is, but I'm sure there's nothing to worry about, says the Mayor)-
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/nyc.odor/index.html
- and dozens of birds mysteriously dead in downtown Austin on the same day
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/austin.birds.ap/index.html
sure strikes me as a little.....odd.
And I will be more than a tad concerned if Bush shows up on the teevee within the next few hours, wearing a gas mask and telling us to go shopping.
Now where the hell did I leave that duct tape?
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/nyc.odor/index.html
- and dozens of birds mysteriously dead in downtown Austin on the same day
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/08/austin.birds.ap/index.html
sure strikes me as a little.....odd.
And I will be more than a tad concerned if Bush shows up on the teevee within the next few hours, wearing a gas mask and telling us to go shopping.
Now where the hell did I leave that duct tape?
Thursday, January 04, 2007
Friday, December 15, 2006
Black Water Anthologies
There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
-John Donne, from LXXX Sermons
Anyone interested in fantastic tales, a la Saki, Borges and Aickman, should check out the two thick Black Water anthologies compiled by Alberto Manguel in 1984 and 1990. I have been perusing the second volume again over the last few days, and am amazed by the wide range of authors represented, from Melville to Lampedusa to Eliade to Satyajit Ray (director of the wonderful Apu trilogy) to my old classics professor at the University of Texas, Peter Green. Really, there are over fifty authors in this volume alone, and it's a shame to single out only a few. If you like stories with an element of the weird and supernatural, you might want to find a copy of one of these books.
The George Tooker paintings on the covers fit the mood of these books quite nicely.
Manguel has also compiled Dark Arrows, an anthology of revenge stories (including William Trevor's deliciously sinister "Torridge", in which a family learns some secrets about Father's boarding school days from one of his victims) and the very readable A History of Reading.
-John Donne, from LXXX Sermons
Anyone interested in fantastic tales, a la Saki, Borges and Aickman, should check out the two thick Black Water anthologies compiled by Alberto Manguel in 1984 and 1990. I have been perusing the second volume again over the last few days, and am amazed by the wide range of authors represented, from Melville to Lampedusa to Eliade to Satyajit Ray (director of the wonderful Apu trilogy) to my old classics professor at the University of Texas, Peter Green. Really, there are over fifty authors in this volume alone, and it's a shame to single out only a few. If you like stories with an element of the weird and supernatural, you might want to find a copy of one of these books.
The George Tooker paintings on the covers fit the mood of these books quite nicely.
Manguel has also compiled Dark Arrows, an anthology of revenge stories (including William Trevor's deliciously sinister "Torridge", in which a family learns some secrets about Father's boarding school days from one of his victims) and the very readable A History of Reading.
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