Literature, Art, and Ideas

Moliere: Drama as Theatre; Drama as Literature

2011-12-21T12:29:00.000-08:00

It is not always easy to distinguish between drama as literature and drama as theatre. My view has always been that good drama is based on good literature, but after having said that, we all know that there are moments in the theatre when the action moves far beyond the printed page and its stage directions. Those are the moments when we realize that drama is theatre.

This meditation is a result of my having just seen a wild adaptation of Molière’s A Doctor in Spite of Himself directed and adapted by Christopher Bayes, whose roots are in the Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Bayes tossed out the standard text and built a commedia dell’arte version on the comic bones that Molière had provided beneath the dialogue.

The result was dynamic, wildly comic, and enthralling to the audience. And while the slapstick, the ham acting, the sometimes lewd jokes, the inappropriate, but funny, music, and all the screaming, shouting, dancing and romping was over, we realized that the story line that Molière concocted as a way of ridiculing the current medical profession was in a bizarre way, still intact.

What I realized–and what delighted me–is that no printed version of this adaptation could ever have done justice to it. And that goes for any version on YouTube or even the iPad or laptop–because much of the fun of seeing the play was in sharing the pleasure with a living audience.

So, in teaching I think it is important to try to talk about the aspects of the play that go beyond the printed page, but at the same time to make sure that the literary values are clear and that they remain the bones on which the production must be animated.

JACKSON POLLOCK

2011-08-22T11:30:00.000-07:00

THE POLLOCK-KRASNER HOUSE

The names Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner bring to mind a turbulent relationship centered on art, liquor, and clashing egos. A visit to their house in the Hamptons, a place they enjoyed together because it was far from the hum and buzz of the city and city dwellers, was very subdued and curious this summer.

The house is simple, small, and evidence of the fact that they lived frugally while creating a body of work that affected the entire world of art and that is now worth millions of dollars. This is such an old story – we think of Van Gogh and many others who suffered only to enrich dealers and owners – that it remains abstract for most of us. But when you walk into Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner's home and look at the simplicity of their arrangements it becomes more concrete and more moving.

One interesting detail in the main floor living space is a wall installation of a speaker system, a very large midrange fan tweeter above a 12 inch woofer, both baffled by the space under the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. The sound system is an old fashioned tube type amplifier - a Bogen. The turntable is a 1950s style changer and the collection of LPs is relatively sparse. I saw New Orleans style records – Louis Armstrong, some Dixieland, and a variety of swing band music. I did not see much be-bop in the collection even though the film on Jackson’s life emphasizes modern jazz.

Their studio building stands apart, also marked by a rural simplicity. Today it is maintained in more or less the condition it was when they worked there. The floor of the studio is marked with spilled paint and one is now allowed to walk on it only after donning protective booties. Still, one looks down and marvels at its strange beauty. Out of a life time of struggle came a great deal of beauty, even in things left behind.

Lee Krasner continued working in the studio after Jackson died. In the winter she wrapped herself in a warm coat and wore fur lined booties that still stand as evidence of her groundedness in the world of art. I have to admit that I felt moved by what I saw. If ghosts are spirits, I felt the presence of ghosts in that experience.

People Watching

2011-06-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

People Watching in a Texas Mall

The temperature outside was 103 degrees Fahrenheit, so it made sense to do a little people watching that afternoon. The fellow in the chair, obviously worn out from walking around the mall, was a perfect representative of one aspect of the Fort Worth community on a spring day in early June.

Because I am not accustomed to sitting and watching people in any mall, much less one that is 1500 miles from my home, I found the experience extraordinary. The variety of people, in terms of age, dress, ethnicity, social status (where detectable), and size, both in terms of height and width, was astonishing. Inscriptions on T-shirts were sometimes alarming, "Don't bother me / I'm always right"; "Did I say you could speak?", and more.

The question of whether people seemed truly engaged in what they were about -- in other words, was this a portion of the examined life? -- was not easy to answer. Few people seemed to be focused, but instead, when they were together in groups, they seemed to be unclear as to which direction to head in, which shop to try out, what kind of product they wanted. Indecision seemed the order of things.

Were they enjoying themselves? Hard to say. It was cool, and that was a distinct advantage of the mall. Did they look harrassed? Well, not always. Some looked distressed. But not many. Most were simply trying to organize themselves. There were many families of three or four young children, usually with a mother alone, although there were several couples with their children, most of whom seemed to be interested in the pet shop near Sears.

Because it is Texas there were more Latino families, probably Mexican-Americans, than in a northeast mall. A number of men sat in the chair in the photo above, after the sleeper awoke and moved on. They simply rested. A well dressed man with a suitcoat and tie -- a distinct rarity in this mall (perhaps unique) -- was a thoughtful man who said he worked with a group of cemeteries helping people make arrangements for their own eventual departure. A good man with a spiritual mission, cooling off before venturing into the field.

Watching these people on a Friday afternoon made me wonder about the future of the nation. The dress of most people would have alarmed my parents and shocked my grandparents. Neither would have felt at home in this environment. In a sense neither would have recognized this America. On the other hand, I am at ease and comfortable enough. Somehow we manage to hold all of this together, despite our differences.

Is it possible that the melting pot begins and ends at the Mall? It's beginning to look that way.

KINDERDIJK: WINDMILLS AND QUIXOTES

2011-04-28T12:29:00.000-07:00

In Holland one major attraction is the row of windmills in Kinderdijk that still stands ready to pump water out of the fields and back into the river above. These structures are, when you are standing there looking at them, much larger than the imagination as guided by Cervantes. I was struck by their absolute gigantism. What occurred to me immediately is the question: “What was Don Quixote thinking when he dared to attack such a monster?”

First, let me mention that the Dutch government demands that all these old windmills be kept active and operated at regular intervals. The point is that they work and they do not need electricity or any other source of power except for the wind, which keeps coming intensely from the water. There are many other modern white windmills along the coast – indeed, an astonishing armada of windmills that must power many more things than the pumps that keep the waters at bay. It is a tribute to the Dutch willingness to tolerate despoiling the landscape for the sake of maintaining the overall ecology of their part of the planet. Keeping them operative is sensible, not just a bit of nostalgia for the past. They may be needed again.

Somehow, I hardly expected to see the windmill in action. I looked at the four blades of the fan and wondered how, since they were wood and see-through, they could function. Then, as I watched, a man responsible for the mill came out and climbed on a rack on the back of the windmill and began stomping on a machine that turned the blades into the wind. Then he drew sails down on two of the blades – opposite each other. And the fan began to move at an astounding rate. If he had put sails on all four blades, the speed would have been frightening. As it was, I could not be sure I could pass beneath the blades to see them from the other side. There are protective markers to keep us safe, but with that machine actually working and responding to the moisture and the brunt of the wind, you could see how much power was being captured by this extraordinary machine.

The age of the machine – dating to a time before Shakespeare, and with very little change up to the present – makes us aware of the independence and engineering skills of the Dutch long before modern tools made the building of such structures almost “easy.” These machines are guardians of a culture and a willingness to bring nature under some slight command. They are inspiring. And it would be quixotic to dismantle them.

REMBRANDT'S THE NIGHT WATCH

2011-04-20T13:12:00.000-07:00

The experience of standing before Rembrandt’s great painting is almost overwhelming, even in its current placement in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The museum was undergoing reconstruction and remodeling while I was there in April. We went through many wonderful rooms before we got upstairs to the large room that it dominates with such power. My first reaction was a response to its vividness, the life of the people who seem to move through its space, and the dominance of its extraordinary colors and light. My second reaction was a realization that no reproduction of this great painting could ever do it justice.

Fortunately, before we saw the painting we had a demonstration by a painter in the Rembrandthuis of how Rembrandt made his paints, using ground materials of lake and madder. Lake is a reference to colors of insect origins, such as the Laq bug and dried red worms. Madder refers to color substances that have vegetable origins. What interested me was the opportunity to participate in making a paint by grinding a substance, an earthen substance derived from stone, and then mixing it with linseed oil and walnut oil until it became one thing – not two things, such as oil and matter. Rembrandt seems to have depended on a pallette of 14 colors from which he then worked his canvases. All that was useful information for me standing before this huge painting if only because I could respond more deeply to the brilliance of the reds, the yellows, the silvers, and the rich dark colors that give the painting its name.

In a word, the vitality of the picture is what overpowers the viewer. The organization of the figures, including those who are partially hidden, is a work of genius which one appreciates after seeing some of the canvases of Rembrandt’s competitors. The Museum at Middleburg holds a half dozen giant group portraits that seem to have been very popular among the wealthy syndics of the 17th century, when the Dutch ruled the seas and had beaten the English into submission. But not one of them, despite the accuracy of their portraits, imparts a sense of life into the composition. Much the same can be said of group photographic portraits in our own time – all of which are lifeless and irrelevant except to those who are positioned centrally. In other words, most of the group portraits were pro forma, routine, and not really expected to be artistic, but simply to be a careful record of a collection of important figures. When we look at them now we respond cooly primarily because we know none of the players in the picture, and the picture is not in and of itself interesting as art.

Not so The Night Watch. We look at the painting and do not need to know who these men are. Indeed, when we do know, that knowledge does not really affect our aesthetic response to the painting. The beautiful girl to the left center was the mascot of the Watch and she bears a resemblance to Rembrandt’s Sabina, but to her right is a mysterious figure in battle gear running purposely away. All the figures seem to have a purpose and are in motion of one sort or another. Action conquers station in this painting, and it imparts a sense of significance missing from virtually all of Rembrandt’s competitors’ similar works.

Is Any Liberal Safe?

2011-01-13T11:16:00.000-08:00

First, my view is that there is no hope of making a direct causal relationship between specific political hate speech and the actions of the crazy fellow in Tuscon.

That being said, however, it is obvious that there are indirect relationships quite apparent in the Giffords shooting. For one thing, and most obvious, the crazy fellow's target was explicitly a political figure who had been previously targeted by opposition politicians and commentators -- all of whom used language that could be compared with shouting "Fire" in a theater.

The point is that while there is no direct causal relationship here, the general atmosphere of elevated threatening rhetoric made it easy for Loughner to act out his fantasies and perhaps think he was acting within the spirit of Arizona politics. And while Loughner is crazy, the people raising the hate level of political speech are not. Eventually we'll get killers who, like those who kill doctors providing abortions, will to all legal appearances be sane. They will just be sane killers carrying out a "reasonable" agenda supported by the current wave of threatening commentary.

The general tenor and emotional atmosphere of American politics are polluted with vitriol, incivility, rage, and threats, and we all know it. We listened to terrible attack ads throughout the Connecticut primaries and elections. Nothing was too awful to for people to say. All Connecticut lacked were the "crosshairs" of political discourse, and if such threats were present here, I'd expect more gunfire here, too.

I can't help but take into account the atmosphere in America in my lifetime. The wave of assassinations and killings has been sunami-like. The four killed by our national guard at Kent State, the killings at Jackson State, the killing of Medgar Evers, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and John Lennon -- just to mention the most obvious ones -- all took place in a political atmosphere intensified by violent statements. And one might notice which "side of the aisle" these figures represent. Is any liberal really safe in America today?

Add to this the reckless rhetoric claiming "blood libel" in reference to the shooting of a Jewish Representative. Add to all that the wild west fetish for Glocks and extended magazines. What you have is a return to the wildness of the early 18th century America and the loss of the civility that refashioned the America politics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Of course, all through American history violence has marked politics and daily life, but there seemed to be a toning down of the atmosphere of political violence until recently.

The awful thing is that we know that nothing will now change. Those who rant and incite have become defensive and not contrite. They are in it for the money and thus will not change their strategies. Since they do not usually pull the trigger they do not feel a bit of responsibility.

THUCYDIDES HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WARS

2010-10-08T15:36:00.000-07:00

Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian Wars. Written in the 5th century BC, this is one of the great early histories of anything. Thucydides was a general in the Athenian army and seems to have set about to write an impartial history of the wars, telling the story in a chronological way, describing the battles of the summer and the preparations of the winter.

One surprising thing he does not do is to involve the Gods in the story. Nowhere does he say that the gods were responsible for this or that victory or defeat. He does mention frequently the messages of the oracles, especially the oracle of Delphi. But he recognizes that the ambiguity of the oracular declamations is such that the messages don’t always help those who get them.

The first book establishes that Athens, after the end of the Persian and Mede wars, and the rebuilding of the Acropolis (although he says little about this), had essentially become a very large empire and felt that it was its duty to remain Imperial in its ambitions. Meanwhile the other city states of the Peloponnese felt that Athens had become too powerful and that it was impinging on their rights and powers. The Delian League (Athens) thus became the target of the Lacedemonians led by Sparta, and war ensued quickly.

Thucydides is inovative in many ways in this book. For one thing, he identifies himself clearly at the end of each of the books as the historian of the wars. For another, he includes the first person speeches of important figures all throughout the book. It is possible that he heard Pericles’ Funeral Oration when it was first spoken, and it is possible that he heard other great speeches, but it is likely that he either took them from the memory of others who heard them, or that he reconstructed them as best he could from what he heard from second-hand. What is so striking is the balance and patterning of the speeches, even in translation, that reveals so clearly the training in rhetoric that all these educated Greeks had. Nothing like this exists in today’s public utterances. The arguments in favor of saving or destroying cities are clear, eloquent, and difficult to act upon.

Thucydides’ method is to recount each of the important battles, on land and on sea, one after another and then explain who won, who lost, and what was at stake. He also goes into detail about how the fortifications were laid, what the nature of the armies was like: the heavy infantry with weapons and shields; the light infantry with less armor; the distant light fighters with stones and slings, arrows, and darts; and the navy with infantry standing on the upper decks while the rowers moved the boats in and out of harbors.

Athens, as Pericles is quick to point out, had the most seasoned navy and was immediately at a complete advantage over their opponents. He explained how long it would take the Spartans to learn how to move ships in and out of battle, and how powerful the admirals were who could defeat the Persians as they had done.

In the second year of the war Plague hit the Athenians and wiped out thousands of the best warriors. Thucydides does not say this was a punishment by the Gods – not a word of it. But he does describe having had a touch of the plague himself and having survived. He also pointed out the doctors in Athens almost all perished while helping patients. They could do nothing, of course, except try to comfort the dying. Finally, the citizens piled the bodies where they could and let the dying die. He also points out that those who contracted plague and also lived were essentially immune from getting it again. The plague was worse in the 2nd year, but it never entirely left the Athenians and later erupted again in the 4th year. They were all unaware of its source or its carriers.

One of the most telling passages occurs in his narrative of the 5th and 6th years of the war, when various factions attacked cities that were peripheral to one or the other side in the war. Often, when a city was beseiged the inhabitants would take sides against one another and ultimately civil war would break out. In some cases the seigeing army would put all the inhabitants to death, killing innocent and collaborators alike. But also, the murdering of neighbors became so vicious and so bloody, and the butchery so inhumane that it shocked even Thucydides. He says at one point that such internescine butchery would probably go on forever, as long as human nature stays as it is. His prophecy holds true.

Reading this book today, in view of the continuation of extensive wars, is frightening.

During a period of truce after the 6th year of the wars, Athens under Nisius and Demosthenes decided to chance an expeditionary war in distant Sicily. This would have opened up new markets for Athens and it would have expanded their imperial ambitions and opportunities. But this was a disaster. After underestimating the power of Syracuse and the naval fleets, and not realizing that Syracuse had fitted its ships in ways that permitted them to ram and destroy many of the Athenian vessels, the Athenians overreached and had their involnerable navy essentially destroyed.

The great expeditionary army of the Athenians eventually discarded its fleet and marched inland. The huge army was split in two between Nisius and Demonstenes and totalled 40,000 men. They were slowly picked apart by the Syracusans and their allies from a distance. Eventually 7,000 men survived, and they were let perish in a prison until only hundreds were left, and they were sold into slavery. It was heartbreaking to read the story of the destruction of the Athenian army.

In the end, Athens surrendered to the Spartans after 27 years. Their democracy had been abandoned and they were ruled by an oligarchy and that was the end of Athens' greatness.

As Santayana said, Those who do not know history are doomed to repeat it.

RICHARD STRAUSS, "FOUR LAST SONGS"

2010-08-16T12:40:00.000-07:00

Richard Strauss, “Four Last Songs.”

Richard Strauss once described himself as “a second-rate composer,” then said, “but I am the best second-rate composer.” For Renee Fleming, this is not an adequate description. She has said publicly that if she could sing the works of only one composer, that would be Richard Strauss.

Were I a soprano I would agree with her. These songs, “Fruhling” (Spring); “September”; “Beim Schlafengehen” (Going to Sleep); “Im Abendrot” (At Sunset), were composed in the last months of Strauss’s life, from May to September, 1948, and, except for the song, “Malven,” are his last works.

He was 84, possibly aware of his impending death. And while the songs are based on texts of the poems of Herman Hesse and Joseph von Eichendorff, all of which are generally associated with the end of days, the songs are extraordinarily uplifting.

They are profoundly moving as sung by some of the greatest sopranos of the second half of the 20th century. Most recently, in 2008, Renee Fleming has recorded them, but many fine recordings are available. Elizabeth Schwarzkopf has a very intimate and personal approach in her late recording in 1965 with George Szell, while Fleming’s voice is plummy and infused with the richness of her operatic voice.

Ricarda Merbeth’s recording is very straightforward, while the richness of Anne Schwanewilms’s recordings since 2004 led her to record all the Strauss songs, in fine interpretations. All these sopranos, and many of the others who recorded these songs, have found something intensely personal in the music, and it is not just an awareness of death. If anything, it is a deeper awareness of life itself. The depth of feeling that the songs give rise to in the experienced listener intensifies our love of life in part simply because of the amazing sensuality of the music in the soprano voice.

The Four Last Songs are said to be special favorites of literary characters, such as Inspector Morse, and real actors, such as Meryl Streep. For me they are virtually an addiction. Sometimes I will load six versions on my CD player and listen to them all, amazed at each version.

London's National Theatre

2010-07-11T13:05:00.000-07:00

After a couple of weeks in London and Oxford, I found myself thinking about the question of support of the arts, particularly in terms of the theater. We stayed in a hotel near the Hungerford Walk Bridge, looking out toward the London Eye and the South Bank Concert Center, and spent most of our time on the South Bank, where people massed in great numbers to take part in the cultural life of the nation.

The restaurants and cafes were lively and packed, with lines at dinner and lunch time. People were enthusiastic, multi-lingual, patient and apparently quite happy. The majority were young, well coifed and sophisticated. A few fast-food vans and ice-cream vans filled out the choices.

We ate often in the café at the National Theatre, where we enjoyed concerts and people watching. The Bookshop is filled with the texts of the plays we expected to see as well as stocked thoroughly with historical material on the theater, recent anthologies, and such items as Simon Callow’s awaited autobiography, volume one. With the suggestions of the knowledgeable people behind the counter, we got a range of reviews of the offerings for the week and we made some careful and good choices.

Moira Ruffini’s Welcome to Thebes was the hot new ticket, which we caught on opening night. It was dazzling, a cast of possibly 20, on the huge stage of the Olivier, performing a subtle riff on Greek tragedy. The ostensible action was the arrival of the leader of Athens ready to introduce his version of democracy to the woman-run desolate state of Thebes, which had suffered decades of internal warfare. While it is obvious that the play points to the current situation in the middle east, it also offers some thoughtful insight into the great Greek tragedies, such as Antigone, which underlies some of this drama. In addition, it is a wild, intense, threatening piece of work.

Tennessee Williams’ first play, Spring Storm, at the Cottesloe was slight in some ways – although deeply significant for him personally – and extremely well done.

The Lyttleton Theatre showed Terence Rattigan’s 1939 After the Dance, again, beautifully produced with a cast of 18. It is an indictment of the “bright young things” of the period between the wars, who frittered their lives away in drink and parties, losing the most precious thing of all, their love for life. This play was a success until the war began, early in its run, when it was put away and not performed again until this year.

The commercial theater in London also had virtually all of the plays available on Broadway today, but only the National Theatre had the quality of straight drama that I most respect – excluding, of course, Shakespeare, whose Henry IV, 1, was at the Globe. Is it only through government support that such quality can be sustained, such performances staged, such seriousness approached?

THE SEVEN PILLARS OF WISDOM

2010-06-04T14:06:00.000-07:00

As I write, I am deeply in T. E. Lawrence’s The Seven Pillars of Wisdom. The book is a record of Lawrence’s efforts to help the Arab rebellion during the first world war, when Turkey controlled the Arab peninsula, Palestine, Syria, and Persia. The Turks were aligned with the Germans, so it was to the British advantage to have the Arabs engage the Turks in large numbers.

However, Lawrence, who had been in Arabia before the war, was aware that the Ottoman empire had ruled for more than 400 years over a scattered people who managed to learn to live with Ottoman control.

What strikes me as I read this book, is that Lawrence had developed a keen understanding of Arab interests and Arab habits. His views on Arab psychology are doubtless primitive by today’s standards, since they resemble the kinds of generalizations about groups that we know rarely hold up in practice. But he is subtle enough to see that there are characteristic behavioral patterns among the many different tribal groups and tribal chieftains that he ultimately gathered together. He knew, for example, not to group certain Arab tribes with those with whom they had a blood feud.

I think that modern warriors, such as those who were in the First Gulf War and the subsequent wars in Iraq and Aghanistan, would have profited from studying his work. They might have been better prepared for the difficulties that local police and troops have with discipline and regimentation – complaints that show up daily in our current newspapers. All these were issues in Lawrence’s time.

He describes his activities in 1916-17 and later. He published his work in 1922 in one version, then in another in 1926. He actually lost the bulk of his manuscript in 1919 after he had destroyed his notes, not a good practice, incidentally. Then he reconstructed the book from memory, and he had a most prodigious memory.

He not only characterizes the people with whom he rode and fought, but is meticulous in the best military fashion in describing the landscapes through which he and his men traveled. He emphasizes often the need to speak the language of the people, which many of his superior officers did, just as he emphasizes the fact that the local people were much his master when it came to understanding their land and its difficulties. Water, of course, is an absolute issue throughout the book, but he makes us understand that wells are placed at convenient distances to correlate with the capacities of the camels on which he and his men rode.

this is truly a timely book, and an education for contemporary Americans.

Marcel Proust's The Fugitive

2010-05-19T13:53:00.000-07:00

Proust’s The Fugitive (or The Sweet Cheat Gone) continues Marcel’s fascination with Albertine and the possibility that Albertine has been unfaithful with women. Marcel has essentially driven her from his home – which we must remember is also his mother’s home – and then immediately thinks he wants her back. He ponders his situation, thinking that he both wants her back and wants her gone, realizing at times that he doesn’t really understand his feelings. He is riven with indecision both about his own feelings and his concern for having Albertine return.

None of his feelings are clarified by the news that Albertine has been killed in an accident with a horse. The sense of finality that should be his is not really acceptable to him. He even goes to a seance in an effort to know what Albertine feels about him. He gets a letter from her that says she still loves him and would return to him if he asked, and this does not make his sense of himself any more intelligible to him.

Aime’s two letters to him from Combray insist that Albertine was involved in a lesbian relationship with women in the baths, that she brought women from Balbec with her, and often appeared with younger girls and frequently met a woman in gray. All this made Marcel convinced that all his anguish earlier had roots in the truth of Albertine’s inclination toward a lesbian lifestyle. On the other hand Andree, who admits her own lesbian leanings, suggests that if that were true, Albertine had given it all up for Marcel while they were together.

Again, Marcel is unsettled about his relationship with Albertine. Meanwhile, his old friend Gilberte inherits so much money that she is the richest heiress in France. She is Mlle de Forcheville and attracts Robert St. Loup, who eventually marries her only to make her unhappy. St. Loup takes up with Charles Morel, once Morel is free of Palamede de Charlus. Thus, St. Loup reveals his inclination toward homosexuality and parallels the relationship of Marcel and Albertine. All this functions to reveal the complexities of sexuality and love and marriage. Near the end, Proust says, “Homosexuals would be the best husbands in the world if they did not pretend that they loved women.”

Throughout all this volume, the theme of the multiplicity of selves is constantly before us. Every important character seems to have several selves depending on whom they are with and what they are doing. Marcel is himself several selves, all essentially unaware of each other.

The volume ends with Marcel finally making his trip to Venice – the trip that he longed for in The Captive, but for which he substituted a visit to Versailles with Albertine. Now, his trip to Venice is with Mama, who essentially directs their travels and their attention. When Mama is ready to leave, Marcel is attracted to the Baroness Putbus and decides to stay, but after making his declaration and sending Mama away, he relents and rushes to the train station to go home with her.

Ironically, the novel ends with the realization with Gilberte that the Guermantes Way and the Meseglise Way are one and the same way.

John Steinbeck East of Eden

2010-05-01T06:38:00.000-07:00

John Steinbeck had not yet won the Nobel Prize for Literature (1962) when he published East of Eden (1955). But he had amassed a remarkable number of important works and had established himself as one of America’s great writers. He considered East of Eden his magnum opus and said that he felt destined to have written it. The reviews at the time were not as encouraging as one would have expected, given his reputation and the confidence he had in publishing the work.

In short, the narrative or story line of the book is built on a biblical armature: the story of Cain and Abel. But beneath that armature lies the essential issue of Original Sin and the presence of evil in the world. The purposes of the book are moral in nature, as Steinbeck himself said, and with that come the emphases on good and evil at work in the world. The problem that Steinbeck could not solve is how to populate such a novel with characters who seem to be three-dimensional and self-directed. The essential problem is that Steinbeck knows what his characters must do from the moment he begins writing, and as a result some of the sense of natural behavior is completely missing from the novel. The characters must, by definition, follow the pattern set for them by the biblical armature.

Some novels, like Light in August, can use the figure of Christ, say, and make the story still seem to be natural and the characters developed and interesting in their own right. But most of the time that is not true of East of Eden. We have two sets of brothers, Charles and Adam Trask, whose father was a con man of sorts, and then Caleb and Aron Trask, children of Charles, but unknowingly raised by Adam. Steinbeck includes Cathy Ames, a monster of evil behavior who is totally unredeemed throughout her life. She is the mother of Caleb and Aron, but she abandons them as soon as she is healthy enough to do so, and in leaving Adam she shoots him so that he will understand how dreadful she is and how devoid of human emotion. She becomes a madam in a nearby town and is known for sadistic sexual practices – in other words, Steinbeck makes her as irredeemable as possible, the very essence of evil.

Then, the problem Caleb feels is the burden of an inheritance of sin. He is the first of the children to find and understand his mother, and he is the only one who can still function in face of such horror. When, in a fit of anger, he brings Aron to see his mother, Aron is incapable of facing life. He runs off underage and joins the army fighting in France. Caleb’s action indirectly kills Aron, thus bearing out the Cain and Abel theme.

The most improbable character in the novel is Lee, a Chinese servant who works for Adam almost all his life. He is college educated and melds the east with the west and interprets all the story of Cain and Abel after having learned Hebrew with a Chinese study group. It is he who unravels the Hebrew word Timshel, translated in the standard bible as “you must,” while Lee has divined that it really means “you may,” and thus opens the way for Caleb to choose not to be evil. He has choice and the novel ends with the promise that Caleb and Aron’s first girlfriend, Abra, will go off and live reasonable lives after all.

The very alterity of evil in the novel suggests that Steinbeck was fighting a rear-guard action against the new secular thinking that dominated the late 1940s and the mid 1950s. Evil was out of fashion then, with the new arrival of genetic studies and the flowering of Freudian and other modern psychological models. Going back to the bible was Steinbeck’s way of confirming his life’s commitments and his fundamental beliefs in a conventional religion. The problem with the novel, however, is that his characters seem to have little life except as they represent the counters that are established for them in the first few chapters of Genesis.

William Blake's Eternity

2010-04-22T13:23:00.000-07:00

Blake’s short poem Eternity may have resulted from an encounter with a butterfly, but whether or not such an encounter took place, Blake, in his customary way, sought in this poem some insight into the nature of life. And also in his customary way, he seems to be considering life as it extends far beyond the years allotted each of us on earth.

Eternity

He who binds to himself a joy

Does the winged life destroy;

But he who kisses the joy as it flies

Lives in Eternity’s sunrise.

Blake implies what we already know as we grow older, that joy and beauty cannot be possessed and thus are never commodified except in the minds of shallow people or people who are certain that they are entitled to privileges denied to others. Keeping the beautiful butterfly can be done only by destroying its life, which is a path many people follow, unaware of the fact that by doing so they undo its beauty.

Eternity implies something quite opposite to the material world in which we must live our lives. That we have glimpses of beauty in nature makes us all the more aware that Eternity, like beauty, is immaterial, and thus eternal. Blake asks us to live in “Eternity’s sunrise” with a sense of reassurance that somehow we will “see” that sunrise, that metaphoric beginning of something, like joy and beauty, that has no beginning and no end.

Mary Cassatt's Show Woman

2010-04-08T15:44:00.000-07:00

Mary Cassatt was an independent woman at a time when it was very difficult to achieve such a position. She lived for most of her life in France, where independent women were more able to be part of society without attracting the wrong kind of attention.

Many of her canvases portray mothers with their children, and while the Medieval and Renaissance religious theme of mother and child was virtually a given throughout Europe, in the 19th century the portrait of an ordinary mother with her child was almost a novelty. And it was rarely taken seriously in an age in which huge canvases picturing the accomplishments of men in and out of wars were the norm at the Academy both in the United States and abroad. Yet, we find her portraits very touching because in our time the public tastes have altered. Rather than the epic, we prefer the intimate, the emotionally recognizable and the local.

Her painting Woman with a Pearl Necklace in the loge of the Opera Comique is similar to another of her paintings of a woman alone in a box in the theater. But instead of wearing black and preferring to be unnoticed, this Woman is brilliantly dressed in a radiantly emotional color, showing decollete highlighted by her pearl necklace.

She is a woman on exhibition and because of her beauty and the way in which she engages her audience, including us, she is a refreshing, intimate presence. She radiates beauty and confidence. Like Mary Cassatt, she is an independent woman. The difference is that Mary Cassatt is not, like this lovely woman, seen; she is showing us what is to be seen. Like the showman behind the curtain, Casssatt is the showwoman behind the canvas. The Woman with the Pearl Necklace is showing herself in her setting, not looking at the stage, but around herself as if there is someone, a man perhaps?, by whom she wishes to be seen. She is in fact there to be seen, to be appreciated, just as the painting itself is designed to be seen and to be appreciated. But what is the reflection behind her and what does it imply?

THE INDEPENDENT PRESS

2010-04-05T10:25:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview, I was asked about the advantages of publishing through Hammonasset House Books, an Independent Press set up by several writers to publish their books. First, I pointed out that all the writers involved with Hammonasset House Books had been widely published by commercial presses. One writer has published more than 20 books by conventional commercial presses. Another, a member of the Writer's Guild, has published and produced more than a dozen screenplays, yet another published several dozen articles in magazines. A fourth is a Television writer, member of the Writer's Guild, and the founder of an ongoing theater group in which he has been honored for the year's best work.

So, I answered the question by saying that the Independent Press approach gives us extraordinary control over our books, from the control over copyright, to design, and certainly to editorial content. This model would not necessarily work well for writers who have not yet published book length works, but for highly experienced writers it offers a freedom that has been earned in the world of commercial publishing.

The Indie Press has control, too, over the means of publicizing and maintaining the life of the book. Commercial presses are well known for publishing a book, giving it a little push if the author is not a celebrity or a best-seller, then letting it languish. The sales rankings on Barnes and Noble and Amazon tell that tale clearly. The Independent Press, with fewer titles, is able to keep pushing the book as long as it wishes. True, it may not have the distribution potential of the commercial press, but that potential works best only in the first 6 months of a book's life. With online outlets like Amazon, the Indie Press can promote a book for life.

PROUST'S THE PRISONER

2010-03-18T16:15:00.000-07:00

Proust's THE PRISONER in the new translation by Carol Clark ( or The Captive in other translations) is a study in the power of jealousy to make love especially intense. This is a remarkable vision of the passion Marcel feels for Albertine, but it is also a profound psychological analysis of the way in which he understands love. The last hundred pages are especially marvelous to read, especially following the section on Marcel's visit to the Verdurins. Some wonderful pithy sentences: “Love is space and time made apprehensible to the heart” (356); “we love only what we do not possess” (355); “we can find everything in our memory: it is a kind of pharmacy or chemical laboratory, where one's hand may fall at any moment on a sedative drug or a dangerous poison.” (361). Then there are those lovely passages about the Fortuny dresses that Marcel wants Albertine to have – partly because they are associated in his mind with Venice. Here is one from the 1920s:

I particularly found the analysis of art (347ff) to be remarkable for his insights into Vermeer, Hardy, and Dostoevsky, starting of course from the music of Vinteuil, which echoes through the entire latter half of the book. Ironically at the end of the volume Marcel and Albertine visit Versailles, not Venice, whose architecture and gondoliers have haunted him throughout.

The opening pages of the book set an interesting theme in motion. Marcel meditates on the instability of one's own personality, establishing that we are many “people” in different circumstances, and that it is not a simple matter to know or understand one another. I suspect this concern of his is indebted to Freud's insights into the unconscious, although it is inherent in earlier psychological thought, as evidenced in R.L.S.'s Dr. Jeykll and Mr. Hyde and in the work of Conrad and others who explore the idea of the double. Frequently in this volume, Proust points to the multiplicity of persons within a single character.

The extensive visit to the Verdurins, which Marcel makes alone, without Albertine, parallels the salon of the Duchess de Guermantes, where the subtext revolved around the Dreyfus affair. At the Verdurins Charlus is compromised without an expected passionate defensive response. Mme. Verdurin attempts to separate Morel from Charlus, and each offer Morel impressive “gifts” for him to reject one and accept the other. It is perhaps not precisely a subtext in this section, but certainly a profound concern in these pages is Charlus' homosexuality and Morel's bisexuality. These issues are explored in remarkable depth in the Verdurins' salon, with most characters offering views of both acceptance and rejection.

Another impressive theme running through the book is the question of repetition as a necessary ingredient in art. Repetition implies memory, which implies the recollection of past events, central to the entire book, and Marcel begins with the seven note melody from Vinteuil, which Morel plays at the Verdurins.. He them speculates on repetition in Venetian architecture, in the works of Hardy, which he sees as utterly repetitive from novel to novel, and on to Vermeer, whose work he interprets as repeating the same motifs again and again.

And of course, we see in this volume a great deal of repetition, not only within the volume, but repetitive of events in earlier volumes. Nothing could make the painfulness of Albertine's bedtime kisses in the last pages more intense than our memory of the significance of the bedtime kiss of Marcel's mother in Swann's Way. These kinds of repetitions – and many more than I can mention here – act as armatures for the novel as a whole, and they help us interpret its inner meanings and show us how events take on meaning partly through their very return into our consciousness. It is part of the ineffable beauty of this volume.

THERESE RAQUIN by EMILE ZOLA

2010-03-08T14:07:00.000-08:00

THERESE RAQUIN by Emile Zola is a dark and somber tale of a woman born illegitimately of an Algerian mother and a French father, then abandoned by her father and put into the hands of his sister. Therese is thus an Africanized Frenchwoman living in a household with her aunt and her aunt's son Camille. Mme. Raquin is a haberdasher and operates a shop outside of Paris for a time. But soon Camille and Therese begin to grow up, and eventually they decide to marry, although there is no passion between them.

Camille is a sickly man and had been a sickly boy. But he got a job in civil service when Mme. Raquin, with an invested fortune of 40,000 francs, moves her shop to a dark but serviceable passageway street near the Seine. At first the marriage is workable, although Therese is by no means satisfied. Then, Camille brings home a fellow who works with him and who had come from the same village they had lived in. Laurent is a dilatory fellow who imagines himself a painter, although his work is a scribble. He visits the Raquins frequently and one day when no one is there to see them, Laurent seizes Therese and they make passionate, violent love in the rooms above the shop. Zola is impressive here because of the level of passion in their embrace and their relationship, implying subtly that Therese's African blood supplies what the cold and weak French blood cannot.

Their affair continues unabated for a while and the two of them cannot get enough of each other, although no one seems to notice what they are doing. Laurent takes afternoon strolls and sneaks in the back door of the shop and goes up to Therese's room and makes love to her day after day until they realize they cannot go on as they are. Therese is fed up with the sickly Camille, and when they are out on an afternoon picnic the three of them go out in a rickety boat on a lake. Camille is frightened to begin with but he goes along and Therese and Laurent determine to drown him. Camille fights, bites Laurent on the neck, but ultimately drowns.

Guilt begins to rise almost immediately in Laurent's heart, and for days he visits the morgue near the Seine to look at all the drowned victims, most of whom are horribly bloated, with their skin peeling from their faces. These are great scenes – his constant visitations are like scenes from a horror film. Ultimately, Camille appears on one of the slabs, and at least now Laurent knows he is dead, but instead of reassuring him, the sight of Camille unnerves him. The face of Camille is burned into his imagination. The crime that he and Therese have committed is perfect in that no one suspects them. Witnesses among the boaters at the scene back up Laurent's story that Camille stood up in the boat when he should not have done.

So the genius of the novel is that no one can implicate them in the crime except themselves. And once that is clear the novel takes on an intense psychological cast, with all the “action” taking place inside the minds of the criminals. Mme. Raquin becomes paralyzed and thinks they love her, but learns, because of the angry outbursts of the two who now hate one another because of their own guilt over the crime, that they are murderers. She is tormented beyond measure, but cannot communicate what she knows. Therese and Laurent cannot touch one another sexually because their nightmares and their growing guilt poison their relationship. What they wanted they now have – freedom to enjoy their sexual fantasies – but guilt makes all that impossible.

Eventually, Laurent beats Therese and their hatred for each other grows. She meanwhile, pretends that her aunt has forgiven her, which disgusts Laurent. Yet nothing satisfies them, and ultimately their guilt and their hatred for each other drive them to suicide with prussic acid. What makes this such a compelling novel is the intensity with which Zola explores the psychological effects first of passion, then guilt. A television series was made of this book, but the qualities that make Zola's book distinct are not those that lend themselves to visual portrayal. The plot is simple and direct, while the language is fulsome and sensual in ways that films can rarely capture. What the TV series may have revealed is the passion of the characters, and that would make it worth seeing. But the book is a 19th century artifact and, while nodding at the stage, especially in the morgue scenes, it remains a tale told rather than a tale shown.

The Way We Live Now

2010-03-01T09:45:00.000-08:00

Anthony Trollope's remarkable novel, The Way We Live Now, is 825 pages in my 1950 Alfred A. Knopf edition. I might mention that my book smells slightly old, and slightly damp. I found it, of course, on a shelf in a basement of a second hand store and when I saw it I realized that I had wanted to read it for many years and now had my chance.

To get the most obvious question out of the way first, the answer is yes, that in so many ways this book, which was published in parts in an American magazine beginning in 1874, is very much up to date and describes much of the way we live now. He is said to have written the book in response to the several large financial scandals of the 1870s. I presume they somewhat parallel the scandals of the first decade of our own century.

Trollope curiously includes a character, Mrs. Carbury who resembles his own scribbling mother, a woman author who does not get much encouragement from the publishing fellows in her immediate society. The problems of publication are quite different today, but the fright of trying to make a living as a writer is doubtless much the same if we go by Mrs. Carbury's experience.

But most striking for our time is the intense emphasis on money throughout the book. At its center is Augustus Melmotte, a master financial wizard who takes London by storm, is reckoned to be the wealthiest man in town, but who is suspected of being a rogue on the run from the continent. Melmotte has no manners whatever, and his bluntness is a blight on his immediate circle. He actually manages to be elected to Parliament from Westminster by virtue of plowing cash in the appropriate circles. . . does this ring a contemporary bell? And in Parliament he speaks to members as if they were waiters, and they do not approve.

Naturally, he turns out to be a con man of the dimension of our modern Mr. Madoff, wrecking the lives of many, losing a fortune, and unlike modern con men, commits suicide with prussic acid, not a pleasant way to go. But before he goes, he takes in a number of upper class but impecunious gentlemen and lords with his scheme for a Mexican railway to Vera Cruz. He sells shares at a high rate, and might have continued to flourish if it had not been for his hasty dealings with a piece of property whose bill of sale he casually forged. Once that was out he was out.

There are several romantic subplots, with Hetta Carbury refusing her cousin and preferring his friend, whose own situation is questionable. Marie Melmotte who, it turns out, has her own money, is refused by several adventurers hoping for her fortune but who assumed once Melmotte was dead that there was none. She, as a last resort, heads to America. Even Mrs. Carbury ends the novel with the hope of a happy relationship with the editor of a local paper.

I have not seen the TV special that was done in 2001, but I think I will make an effort. I found the novel most interesting and assume the televised version, with David Suchet as Melmotte, would be quite worth seeing.

THE GREAT WALL OF CHINA

2010-02-10T15:54:00.000-08:00

Visiting the Great Wall has been a tourist “must” for centuries, and it has to be admitted that the experience is unforgettable. Apart from the fact that the wall can be seen from deep space and that it is possibly the most massive thing built by man, it has in its way a kind of beauty that grows on one.

Seeing it recently right after the heaviest snow that Beijing had seen in sixty years, we found it especially beautiful. The snow intensified its massiveness and outlined it against its background of mountains stretching on for miles. On the wall itself, where we all tried to walk uphill, the snow was treacherous enough to make us wish for ropes to hold on to or boots that dug deeply into the crust. Yet everywhere we looked, the scenery exalted the vision of the wall winding toward the horizon.

Several things impressed us. First, the wall was filled with tourists, but not primarily western tourists. Far and away the largest number of tourists was local or consisting of groups of workers, all wearing red baseball hats, or groups of citizens with their families and their children. We were amazed when some of them came and photographed us, then placed their wives next to us for another photograph. They placed their children between us and took our photograph. Then I began taking their photograph and giving them my camera to have them photograph us with their wives and children, usually with their arms around us or holding hands. Young couples insisted on having their photographs taken with us and then older couples came and followed suit. I don't remember anything like this happening in an American tourist spot.

We shook hands with many people who simply smiled and spoke a few words. Almost none were in English. But I had the impression that there was genuine good feeling between the Chinese tourists and us American tourists. Everywhere I looked there were smiles and good cheer. It was encouraging on many levels. For some reason it made me think of Samuel Johnson. In his home in London there is a large brick supposedly taken from the Great Wall and given to him as a remembrance. I suppose a good photograph is something like a good brick.

ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

2010-01-29T13:55:00.000-08:00

This month and last I spent an agreeable time reading the entirety of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America (Penguin, tr. Gerald E. Bevan, 860 pp.).

Naturally, I had read segments in abbreviated editions, but this was the first time I had read the entire book from beginning to end. The experience was enormously rewarding. His understanding of the effect of equality in a new nation was profound, and he saw in the death of the old aristocracy the wave of the future. He also found it difficult to fully understand the nature of government in America, since it seemed to him that there was little or none. He saw that people were independent, free, and beholden to no one. He saw that the primary impulse in America was the love of money, and thus that individualism (he is among the first to use the term) was a power to reckon with. This was in 1830, and clearly little has changed.

He also thought that the real power in America was in the individual states and not in the federal government. Even with Andrew Jackson, a potential "tyrant," in position of president–the man Tocqueville says, "is supposed to be working for the institution of a dictatorship in the United States" (461) has actually very little power to force any state, especially South Carolina, to his will. He has little regard for Jackson ("a man of a violent disposition and mediocre ability" [324]), and he deduces that the federal government's power will probably never soon compete with the power of the 24 confederated states of the union.

He has much to say about the possibility of civil war in the democracy of the United States, and concludes that it is virtually unthinkable. And he concludes this after the 1830sTariff incident in which South Carolina armed its militia in a threat to leave the union over perceived damages to its economy. Jackson backed down and the militia returned home. Twenty five years later the brutal Civil War was begun, Lincoln prevailed, and federalism became the power that forced the states to adhere to law.

De Tocqueville's is one of the most important books in American political history, so, for me, reading it was a really important experience, especially in light of the 2010 State of the Union speech by president Obama. Unlike many politicians he did not quote from de Tocqueville, but he was aware of some of the same stresses in political opinion as are expressed in Democracy in America.

In a moment of intense irony, the Governor of Virginia gave the rebuttal for the Republican party. He stood in the Capitol rotunda of Richmond, the center of the Confederacy where Jefferson Davis spoke, in a building designed by Jefferson and built by slaves--a truly symbolic act on his part--and what he did, by quoting Jefferson's comment that local government was the best government, was to reopen the dispute between strong federal government and strong states rights governments, the very things that de Tocqueville focuses on for more than 500 pages. I was amazed.

The Governor ignored the Civil War and the result of Lincoln's decisions to make the federal government strong enough to enforce laws in rebel states. The ignorance of the governor appalled me. But I know he was following an ideology that insists that the federal government be reigned in. Of course, that ideology also forgets that in the 1960s, a hundred years after Fort Sumter, we had to send our young people south to enforce federal rules regarding segregation. If we go back to the states rights version of government, we'll have subtle Jim Crow laws and much other undemocratic legislation designed to restrict abortion, gay rights, and free speech. If that happens, Alexis de Tocqueville would surely recognize the nation he saw in 1830 and feel that his prophecy of a possible tyranny of the majority could come true.

Negotiating With the Dead

2010-01-26T12:04:00.001-08:00

Margaret Atwood's Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing is a hymn to literature itself. This is not a self-help book, or a how-to book, but a smart introduction to the meditations that absorb every serious writer. And the word "serious" there implies only that the writer must be serious about his or herself because writers are, as Atwood makes very clear, in a complex relationship with the past and with the dead writers who have established the terrain and clarified the game of writing.

She covers everything one might expect, including the important question of who the writer's audience must be. She almost comes close to saying that the dead may be among the writer's audience, but of course she holds back and reflects upon the possibility that the writer may have only an audience of one--in which case there may be some difficulties. The book is after all the messenger that communicates the message. It is not the writer who does so. Once the book is gone from the writer's hand time moves on and the writer is no longer the person who wrote the book.

These are the Empson lectures at Cambridge and they allude indirectly to the ambiguities that are central to Empson's most famous book, Seven Types of Ambiguity. In one fascinating chapter she addresses the ambiguity implied in the multiple identities of the writer writing. One identity is as a person, another as the poet. The poet is most unpoetical as a person, and that alone creates a curious situation for our contemplation.

In general, this book sweeps through literature from Gilgamesh to Yeats, Delillo, and beyond, and while something short of a book of literary criticism, it is a book of literary discussion and literary communion. So many writers, famous and obscure, are addressed and quoted in these pages that one soon realizes there is a sub-text here that cannot be ignored. Writers must be readers. Such a simple observation may seem unnecssary to the "serious" writer, but the facts are very simple. Many people who think they are going to be writers neglect the most important thing of all: a literary education. Even James Patterson reads Joyce (except for Finnegans Wake). What Atwood does here is create a hymn for the love of literature.

THE PEKING OPERA

2010-01-19T13:45:00.000-08:00

Even in winter, China was at times a vibrant place. I spent three weeks this November in China, during the coldest winter since 1949, the year of Mao's Long March. In general, I have to say that China was gray and sometimes grim because of the weather–no sun, considerable cold, dampness, and eventually lots of snow. It surprised the natives, but as a New Englander, we were prepared. The Peking Opera was a nice surprise. Not only was there an interesting and socially significant libretto, but the visuals were often stunning. The opera was a welcome contrast to the out of doors in several ways. For one, the warmth and colors were lovely and delightful. But the contrast with the outdoor vendors, most of whom were hard working and serious about their business, but who were also desperate and obviously poor, was considerable. China is amazing in many ways, and one of the most remarkable is in the contrasts one sees all around the major cities.

Of course, the size of the cities is overwhelming for most of us. These days almost every city is marked by a plethora of cranes high in the skyline, building condos and business landmarks everywhere. Rarely is there fewer than three to seven visible cranes in cities like Beijing and Shanghai. In the region of the Three Gorges on the Yangtze, one sees cities built for the displaced people whose homes are now below almost 300 meters of water.

People are mixed in their reactions to this gigantic project. Some naturally lament the loss of their ancestral homes, but others revel in the fact that they now have their own condo with indoor plumbing and separate bedrooms. What impresses me as an outsider is the fact that China is rebuilding itself while we are waging war and resisting serious investment in our own infrastructure.

Beijing's National Stadium, The Bird's Nest

2009-09-14T13:46:00.000-07:00

The National Stadium, the Bird’s Nest, in Beijing is one of the most photogenic of modern buildings. It appears its best at night, like many dazzling women. It is the product of a Swiss architectural firm that employed a Chinese artist, Ai Weiwei, to help them keep the project in line in terms of its indebtedness to Chinese designs. Weiwei introduced the concept of great Chinese ceramics in part because any great stadium, is in part a bowl. But the use of such dramatic steel trusses crossing everywhere throughout the building gives the impression of a bird’s nest more than that of a bowl.

The Chinese had taken to the building right away, and the dramatic photographs that circulated in the Western media made it a darling of magazines and newspapers. The reviews of the building were almost uniformly positive, and the anticipation of being within it sparked all the tourists who went to see the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Olympics. It was a great success in providing the space for the track and field and gymnastic events as well as for the general ceremonious uses to which it was put. It pleased almost everyone.

Today, a year after the Olympics, the fate of the building is in some doubt. The plans were designed so that the building would house shopping malls and also become an 80,000 seat entertainment center. As of now, relatively few large entertainments have taken advantage of the space, and in some places, according to commentators, the building is flaking and not being well maintained.

We hope to see the Bird's Nest for ourselves in November. Perhaps we can see it at night, with its “makeup” on.

ANDREW CARNEGIE'S "GOSPEL OF WEALTH"

2009-08-06T08:48:00.000-07:00

Written in 1889, Carnegie’s essay was immediately influential and still remains among the most quoted of his writings. The very imprimatur of the word "Gospel," which literally translates to "Good News," but which lingers in the imagination as akin to the words of God, was a bold and effective stroke lending considerable weight to his thoughts.

His essential message is that with the evolution of civilization comes the inevitable condition of some possessing great wealth and others possessing very little. Instead of condemning this situation (as did the Communists whom Carnegie reviled), he tells us that we should be delighted because it indicates the forward thrust of civilization. As he says, the Sioux had no wealthy magnates and thus their civilization is primitive. Now that civilization has progressed, we have barons of industry.

His recommendation to the wealthy is that they dispose of their wealth before they die. That wealth, he says, they hold in trust for the community. It’s nice to leave that money to others when the wealthy die, but it’s vastly better to administer it while living. That way the money gets spent doing the most good for the most people. Besides, the wealthy magnate knows best how to spend the money; the public would waste it.

One thorny point he makes is that great industrialists held down the wages of their workers on the grounds that the extra money they might have made would have been spent on gewgaws that would not have benefitted society. Whereas, Carnegie, who was passionate about keeping wages low, used all that extra money to build 2500 libraries across the country. A much better way to benefit the community. Carnegie tried to convince his readers that he knew how to satisfy the needs of the public much better than did the public.

As unpleasant as this may sound to some people, an argument could be made in his favor by examining the circumstances of the last three decades. American wealth was spent mostly not by people like Bill Gates, but by the average middle and upper-middle class citizen. That money was spent on big TVs, CDs, GameBoys, iPods, and thousands of other cheap products aimed at entertaining individuals. Nothing wrong with that, but it would have made Carnegie seem prophetic. What have the spending habits of average citizens accomplished for the community that compares with Carnegie’s libraries? And where, today, are the people who Carnegie expected to be reading in those libraries? Where are the readers at all? And where is the wealth of the nation?

CHARTRES: TRIUMPH OF HOPE

2009-07-20T12:35:00.000-07:00

What strikes us about this figure from Chartres Cathedral, carved sometime around 1145, is its extraordinary expression of regality, its queenliness, its sense of peacefulness, its quiet power of dignity and belief. She holds the canon of hope in her hands and offers us the most human face on the central portal.

In essence, she points the way in, through the door, to the maze, to the mysteries of a belief that demands understanding, not only of stone, but also of the human implication expressed in this stone. She has withstood not only the weather, but the vagaries of history. She was spared the worst carnage of the French Revolution and all the other iconoclastic terrors of the centuries after it. That may be a result of accident, or possibly a result of respect and of hope.

Carved in stone, the queen is a simulacrum of flesh. She represents a spiritual presence and a spiritual future. Yet, because She is stone and formed in lifelike three dimensions, she points to a future that includes the three dimensions of flesh. Resurrection, a key belief of the Christian faith, has depended on the rising of the body from the grave, and thus a persistence of the flesh in the afterlife.

The stoniness of the queen tells us there is hope after death. But it also tells us that such hope is essentially meaningless if it means only that the spirit endures. It is essential that the flesh endures, or else our consciousness would perish with the flesh. The most powerful statement the sculptor could make is to render this figure to seem lifelike enough to convince us she is not only a symbol, but a fact. Fact and belief cohere to produce hope.

BALZAC, EUGENIE GRANDET

2009-06-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

"A bourgeois tragedy without poison, dagger, or bloodshed"
Balzac, in "Family Sorrows"

After finishing Balzac’s Eugenie Grandet, I went to see a new French film, Summer Hours. The amazing thing is that the 1833 novel is paced almost exactly like the 2009 film. The French seem to have time in novels or film to let things play out without rushing them and, given our penchant for action, the French films seem slow. Very slow.

What I liked about Eugenie Grandet was the portrait of bourgeois French life in a provincial town in which Eugenie's father becomes rich by doing the capitalist thing and double-crossing others in his village and then, with piles of gold in his house, pleads poverty. In this sense the book reveals a great deal about the opportunity for wealth created in the 1820s at the end of the Empire and the beginning of a new France, one not dominated by aristocrats, but open to the wiles of clever businessmen like Grandet, who understands, like Jeremy Bentham, that money is a commodity.

Like a good farmer, Grandet sees that money begets money. However, Grandet is not a farmer, but a cooper, and he puts his skills to work by secreting his gold in small barrels. Ironically, his clever business deals sound very much like modern deals with bonds and derivatives and I constantly expected the bubble would burst. But it did not.

Eugenie Grandet is a love story too, but of no kind that makes sense to us today. Eugenie remains faithful to her first love, her cousin Charles, a cad who eventually marries a woman for her title and her money. The irony, however, is that Eugenie inherits her father's unsuspected 17 millions and if Charles knew, he would have married her.

Eugenie herself marries on condition that Des Grassins, her husband, demand no sex. That way she can be faithful to her true love. And since her husband primarily wants her money, everyone is happy.

The French Film is about successful French upper middle class people. A sister (living in New York), a brother (in Peking) and an older brother (in Paris) inherit their mother's country house with magnificent art and antiques. One wants to keep the house for the next generation, the others need the money and realize they will never come back to the house. The next generation is interested in hip-hop music, drugs, vodka, and mild orgies, and they do not recognize the name Corot even though there have always been two splendid Corot's in the house.

There are some marvelous ironies in both works, and some lovely writing in Balzac. He was one of Proust's favorites, as well as a favorite of Henry James. Both those writers have important essays on Balzac. Flaubert also much admired Balzac and this particular novel and I suspect, as well, that Dickens found him instructive.

N. C. Wyeth: Illustration versus Art

2009-05-19T06:36:00.001-07:00

After a recent visit to Brandywine Valley and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (for the Cezanne Show), I gave some thought to the issues of illustration and how people evaluate illustration differently from fine art. Above are two examples of N. C. Wyeth's work that offer an interesting comparison.

The painting on top is of N. C. Wyeth's wife and seems to have been painted with no intention of making it an illustration for a book. The second painting is of a pirate dueling. It is somewhat reminiscent of Goya, but it is clearly intended for a children's book on pirates. It is typical of most of N. C. Wyeth's work, while the portrait of his wife is not.

What I'm interested in knowing more about is the relationship of these two paintings. In my mind, and probably for most of those interested in fine art, the portrait is a much more revealing, sensitive, and moving painting than the duel. And the ultimate question is: Why? So much art, including oil paintings like Wyeth's, is illustration that it is not a simple thing to dismiss it as a lesser form of art. Yet, these two paintings push us to that conclusion.

This is problematic in many ways, not least of which is that some of the world's most important paintings are illustrations. I point to Leonardo's Last Supper, Michelangelo's Creation, Goya's Third of May, Paul Delaroche's Execution of Lady Jane Grey, Edgar Degas' The Dancing Class, and hundreds more--especially hundreds of crucifixions and pietas, all of which seem to command our attention not as illustrations, but as fine art.

Is it just that the kind of illustration we tend to demean is devoid of profound emotional content and simply substitutes sentiment for feeling or drama for understanding? Or is it that there are gradations in illustrations just as in fine art? Is Edward Hopper just good illustration and N. C. Wyeth not so good?

Standing in front of an N. C. Wyeth, as I did only last week in Brandywine Museum, demonstrated that Wyeth's technique is the equal of many great artists, and certainly much better than most artists. So it is not technique. What is it that distinguishes illustration from fine art?

John Milton, Sonnet 14

2009-04-22T14:19:00.000-07:00

When Faith and Love which parted from thee never,
Had ripen’d thy just soul to dwell with God,
Meekly thou didst resign this earthy load
Of Death, call’d Life; which us from Life doth sever.
Thy Works and Alms and all thy good Endeavor
Stay’d not behind, nor in the grave were trod;
But, as Faith pointed with her golden rod,
Follow’d thee up to joy and bliss for ever.
Love led them on, and Faith who knew them best
Thy handmaid, clad them o’er with purple beams
And azure wings, that up they flew so drest,
And spake the truth of thee in glorious Themes
Before the Judge, who thenceforth bid thee rest
And drink thy fill of pure immortal streams.

John Milton’s Sonnet 14 was designed as a consolation to those left behind after the death of a pious woman. His emphasis on Faith, Love, Works, and Alms is essentially a conventional Protestant position.

And so much of the sonnet is conventional that it may be applied to any death, even that of my own daughter, Sharon, who died on March 16, aged 50. She too never lost faith and never lost her sense of love. Our conversations in Hospice, where she lingered for a month, confronted the fact of death and its impact on those she was leaving behind. Her constant focus was on the love she felt for us, her family, and for those who cared for her, nurses and doctors.

Her works are visible in the devotion of her students, who came from great distances to spend time with her in Hospice. They told her how much she had changed their lives, how much they had relied on her, how much beauty she had introduced them to. Her photographs, intense Mandalas built from floral fragments, are on display at the Fort Worth Community Art Center and stand as testament to her talent, cut short while she was in her prime.

Alms are gifts of the spirit, which she gave freely to students who responded with love in their turn. She was a pure soul in many ways, a gift to those who knew her–as they attested variously in her memorial. What we learned was how large a soul she was. And what we hope is that faith will somehow make her immortal.

George Herbert, PRAYER

2009-03-06T08:55:00.000-08:00

Prayer

Prayer, the Church’s banquet, Angels’ age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet, sounding heaven and earth;
Engine against the Almighty, sinner’s tower,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-days’ world transposing in an hour,
A kind of tune, which all things hear and fear;

Softness, and peace, and joy, and love, and bliss,
Exalted manna, gladness of the best,
Heaven in ordinary, man well drest,
The milky way, the bird of Paradise,
Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood,
The land of spices; something understood.

George Herbert 1593-1633

Herbert died when he was forty, filled with faith for a future life. As I write, my own daughter is dying at the age of fifty and I am filled with grief.

Herbert’s faith is always a source of inspiration, but I find myself unable to pray with his kind of faith.

People have placed prayers for Sharon in Jerusalem’s Wailing Wall several times over the years, and prayers have been said in synagogues and churches for her as well as in homes and fields.

As a child I prayed, too, and I know that Sharon prays regularly, but in the face of her disease prayer seems inadequate. As an adult, I rarely prayed, but today I will say a prayer and pray for her peace and say a prayer in admiration of her grace as she faces death.

I will say a prayer now while she holds onto life and wishes all around her well. She is in the company of devoted friends, students, and family, and if George Herbert was right and there is an after-life she will be with them again.

Mary Cassatt, In the Loge

2009-01-23T13:46:00.000-08:00

One of Mary Cassatt’s most famous paintings, In the Loge, 1880, a portrait of a woman at the opera, is also one of her most complex and interesting. She seems to anticipate the literature of the gaze as developed by Jacques Lacan, Michel Foucault, and others. Feminists have seen clear patterns of power expressed in the gaze, especially when men gaze at women who may be sexual objects. When we look at the painting we are ourselves gazing at a woman who is wholly unaware of us–yet the painting itself presents her to us in a way that belies what we actually see. Of course, we are meant to gaze at this woman, but Cassatt has dressed her completely in black. And she has dressed her completely from top to toe so that we see more an emblem of a woman than a woman for whom we may have some desire. Does Cassatt somehow give us a sense of power in relation to this woman?

Then, the woman is engaged in gazing at a distant figure. We can safely assume she is gazing at another person, but a woman or a man? What clues might help us know? One might have assumed that she was gazing at another woman to compare fashions, but given her own scant interest in fashion, is that really likely? Is it possible she is looking at another woman with a sense of desire? Or is it more likely she is looking at a man with a sense of desire? We see a man, rendered very small, with his opera glasses gazing at the woman herself. What is his motive in studying her so closely? His rakish posture implies a sexual interest. We have here an example of triangulation of desire a la Rene Girard and Eve Sedgwick, and we are involved.

All of this may be very innocent, just Cassatt’s comment on the opera as a social experience rather than as a dramatic musical experience. The lighting in the painting suggests that the opera has not yet started, and the angle of the woman’s opera glasses suggest she is, like the man, studying a member of the audience. But the point of the painting seems to be that there is as much drama in the audience as on stage. Cassatt gives us a range of possibilities in terms of the relationship of figures in the painting to one another as well as our own relationship to all the figures in the painting. The power of the gaze is expressed everywhere in the painting, and Cassatt certainly understands that the act of viewing–whether of a painting or living beings–gives the viewer power over what is seen, if only temporarily and if only partially.

One obvious benefit from our gazing at this painting is our own pleasure. Color, form, the expression of figures in the composition–all these conduce to a pleasurable experience. Such pleasure may be a form of power as a natural consequence of a careful aesthetic engagement.

EUGENE ATGET'S PROSTITUTE

2009-01-15T15:05:00.000-08:00

Atget was famous for photographing Paris early in the morning. In some senses one can say he photographed the emptiness of Paris because there are rarely any people in front of his lens. He sold many of his photographs of scenes and places, so it was advantageous to keep the vision clear of obstructions. Whether he was photographing storefronts filled with mannequins or women’s underware, or photographing the streets leading to the Pantheon, he usually kept the scene empty.

The fact is that he had to be rediscovered in mid century by Beatrice Abbott because the casual viewer thought of the work as typical of the photographers that sold tourist photos to wanderers beginning in the 1840s. Their work was bland, clear, and ordinarily a simple record of a piece of architecture or a park. Because their work was quick and cheaply printed it was rarely a deeply saturated image, nor was there any effort to make the image more intense by burning and dodging. But Atget had a sense of drama that eluded the common photographers. He found even the most empty spaces of Paris filled with anticipation and uncertainty.

But the photograph above is unique for its inclusion of a person, a Parisian prostitute who seems to be very patient with Atget, whose tripod and large camera stood before her waiting for the right moment. He may have simply removed the lens cap for an instant, or he may have had a shutter release–which seems likely–and the bored woman before his eyes and his lens expresses nothing other than tolerance. She could hardly imagine that the world would later see her here and contemplate both her uneasy and patient expression and wonder just what might have been going through her mind.

The image itself is stark and impressive. Its date is uncertain, but early in the 1920s, after the first World War, when French society experienced a total upheaval, as Proust reports in his subtle analysis of the Faubourg St. Germain. This image is far removed from the upper class, and the crudeness of the surroundings, old cobblestones and shabby stone walls and cheap shutters all tell us a great deal about the lower depths. Yet the centrality of the figure, the simplicity of the pose and the snapshot-like quality of the photograph almost implies an artistic innocence on the part of Atget. However, the image reveals anything but innocence, especially when one considers the angularity of the leg with its shiny boot dug in, ready for a sudden move. The image has almost no middle tones. It is dominated by deep blacks, stark whites.

2008-12-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

At a recent meeting with writers, editors, and agents, we heard a story of a fellow whose novel had just been taken by a major press. He was elated and could hardly wait to tell us the good news. But then one of the agents began pouring cold water on the proposition by explaining how much of his advance would have to be spent on promotion and how little the PR department of his publisher could actually do on his behalf.

In other words, promoting the book was up to the author. One thing he could do is make the rounds of bookstores at his own expense and pray that for whatever reason he might have an audience and some of them might buy the book. The last author I spoke to about this gave a reading to 22 people and 4 bought the book. That’s a very good ratio, and the truth is that the profit on his books did not pay for his gas to get to the book store.

Advances these days are not given out like bonuses. They are expected to stoke the fires of a professional PR person and a vigorous campaign to get the book noticed. How that happens is different for every author and we know how hard it is to stand out in a crowd that is also peopled by celebrities and scoundrels, who manage to hog the headlines.

Harper Collins is said to be experimenting with a line of books that have no advance. For some writers that represents opportunity because whatever happens these days the job of helping the book get some sales is on the shoulders of the writers no matter who publishes the book.

The advantage, for fiction writers, of Harper Collins’s deal over self-publishing is clear. Harper Collins has distributors that put the book in bookstores; having the Harper Collins imprint would make it easier for an author to publicize the book and get some local press coverage; and finally, having someone else design and print the book without involving the author’s expense makes life a little easier for the author. But in the final analysis no matter how one publishes, the author must do the work of getting the book noticed and reviewed.

Can Quality Writing Prevail in Publishing Today?

2008-12-07T18:04:00.000-08:00

The New York Times’s Timothy Egan complained that Samuel J. Wurtzelbacher, known as "Joe the Plumber" in the current election campaign, has come out with a book. He also mentioned that Sarah Palin may command as much as seven million dollars for a book under her name, although it is clear from her general communiques to the public that she is a hopelessly inadequate writer. However, that never stopped celebrities from "penning" tell-alls.

Egan's complaint is based on some simple painful facts. There are many fine novelists who cannot get agents or publishers, just as there are fine poets and memoirists who have no hope of finding space on bookstore shelves. So many good writers will never command an audience on the scale of fabricated books of the kind Egan condemns that it makes us realize that self-publishing is not just for vanity seekers.

Quality comes in many forms, and right now it is very hard for good writers, writers of literary quality, to place a book with a publisher unless there is some previous media blitz or unless there is some powerful person who can promote the book with a powerful editor. Even some very fine novelists whose early books showed great promise tell me that there is no market for their current work. No commercial press will touch them because the early books did not sell well enough for them to take the risk. Of course one reason they cannot take the risk is that the publishers have lavished advances on non-book books. The result is that writers of quality prose will not have the chance to develop their talent in the open marketplace.

Maybe it has never been much different, but today with fewer "big" publishers and with many editors and support people losing jobs in publishing, things certainly feel different.

The end result is that the idea of founding a publishing house whose mission is to bring out good books that don’t fit the commercial mold seems more and more appealing. Hammonasset House Books is an artists’ cooperative dedicated to publishing a few good books. For people who like good books.

Good Books for People Who Like Good Books

2008-11-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

The Basilisk Solution

One of Hammonasset House’s new books, a celestial thriller called The Basilisk Solution, combines suspense, comedy and satire in a hilarious fantasy.

In Heaven, souls create virtual domains to suit their heart’s desire, and share Paradise with mafiosi, religious zealots, literary characters, pagan gods, and monsters.

They also face the threat of Satan unseating God and ruling Heaven. The Midwest Book Review calls it "A satirical romp through the afterlife. . . .wittily composed and highly recommended to community library fantasy collections and to those who love the genre."

William J. Kelly was an English professor at UCONN, Groton, and editor of Mystic Aquarium’s natural history magazine. His nature writings and humorous pieces appeared in national and international periodicals. $15.95 ISBN 978-0-9801894-7-6

As described in the Ingram Catalog:

Astral travel to the afterlife by two retired cops begins a tale that is both a ciffhanger and comic opera. After a lackluster career as a detective, Benny Spielmacher disappears during an impulsive astral journey to Heaven in search of inspiration for a musical version of Paradise Lost. His former partner, Roscoe Duffy, risks the deadly perils of Chaos to find him, and the two soon find themselves in a life-and-death struggle to defeat a colossal conspiracy that threatens God Himself. To complicate matters, Roscoe falls in love with the late Rose Trautman and must figure out how to conduct an affair with a dead woman. In this witty romp through Heaven and Hell, the damned get limited air conditioning, a college education, and virtual sex. Those in heaven create virtual domains to suit their heart’s desire, and share Paradise with mafia dons, crackpots, villains, literary characters, and pagan gods and their monsters. The Basilisk Solution serves up mystery, mayhem and belly laughs as once-mediocre gumshoes finally become the heroes they always wanted to be.

The reviews on Amazon are enthusiastic for this wonderful comic novel. Order it at:
http://www.amazon.com/Basilisk-Solution-William-J-Kelly/dp/0980189470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226683393&sr=8-1

Hammonasset House Books

2008-11-03T11:39:00.000-08:00

Lee A. Jacobus, William J. Kelly, and Norman Weissman, all distinguished as educators, writers, editors, and filmmakers, began Hammonasset House Books as a cooperative artists' press to publish our books and keep them in print.

We write short fiction, novels, memoirs, and poetry. In later posts, I will include some sample work in addition to discussing the ins and outs of establishing a publishing house.

Later posts will also include a description of each of our current books and how to obtain them. All our first four books are softcover and are priced at $15.95. All may be ordered through your bookstore or ordered directly from Amazon.com or B&N.com, or any other online bookseller.

Volcanic Jesus: Hawaiian Tales is a collection of short stories that both Hawaiians and world wide visitors will treasure. It offers a vision of the Hawaii that most people might not notice, a Hawaii that is rich in spiritual significance and lush with touches of paradise.

These stories are set on Maui, Oahu, Kauai, and the Big Island, Hawaii. They tell the tales of natives, haole, and tourists alike.

A Rochester reviewer said, "Clear, clean writing reminiscent of Hemingway's best. A must read for those who admire short stories with bite and sensitivity."

ISBN 978-0-9801894-4-5
http://www.amazon.com/Volcanic-Jesus-Lee-Jacobus/dp/0980189446/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209416017&sr=8-1

This book is close to my heart. I started it on my first visit to Hawaii when I saw a woman with a black eye. Her story became the first in the collection, "Pi'ilani, the Girl with the Heavenly Eyes."

Subsequent visits brought me in contact with marvelous people whose stories I knew I needed to tell. I used a technique that Nadine Gordimer describes as "inhabiting the character" while I wrote.

Other stories started from such germs--to quote Henry James. For instance, Keezu Breen, the bell hop in "Why Not Live in the Hokole" came to me when I was staying in Maui and saw a young man in a native costume running around lighting the tiki lanterns in preparation for an evening party.

"A View of the Water" came to me when I reflected one day in one of the new hotels in Kaui on the fate of the people whose homes were sacrificed for the sake of commercial progress. Camille and Lawrence Tanaka were those people, and their fate was a mixed blessing.

The title story derived from my walk along the slopes of Kilauea on the Big Island and up to Volcano Inn where I saw the steaming caldera and smelled the sulphurous residue. That was an experience I shall never forget because it awakened in me images from the first book of John Milton's Paradise Lost when he described Satan in Hell.

Volcanic Jesus is not, however, a hellish story.

A Writers' Cooperative

2008-11-01T10:26:00.000-07:00

In a recent writers conference in New Canaan, CT, people talked about ways to get published in the twenty-first century.

After listening to some really bright and creative people talk about how they got their books accepted by mainstream publishers, and after hearing an agent who does not want any new clients explain what agents do, I was very glad that I belong to a cooperative artists' press.

We created Hammonasset House Books early in 2008 after a couple of years of talk and research. Our books are literary and personal, but not really commercial in the sense that the people in the writers conference revealed. We write literature, fiction and memoirs, but not self-help books, not young adult, not really any of the niches that seem to be in demand at the present.

When a member of the audience at this conference mentioned that his book had been taken by a major press, the agent described some of his potential journey. His book would be promoted for a month, then it would be on its own. The publisher will probably demand that he invest his advance in a book publicist and advertising. The real job of promotion, in other words, is on the author's shoulders. In six months his book will be old news.

Well, Hammonasset House can keep promoting our books on the web and through email and snailmail for as long as we wish. We are the PR people and the creative people, and we don't abandon our books. And most important, our books never go out of print.

Right now, this option represents an opportunity. Not only are our books out there and in people's hands, but they are being read and we control all the phases of production and pricing.

To me, this sounded like the best way to get published in the twenty-first century.