The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan published 1678 is book twelve on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge (hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate) - choose a classic travel or journey narrative. Its author, John Bunyan, was a Puritan minister who would spend twelve years in Bedford prison for preaching when he was repeatedly told not to by the Church of England. It was during his time in prison that Bunyan wrote Pilgrim's Progress which has been described as a religious allegory. I have had this book stored in my kindle for some time and the Classics Challenge was the incentive to finally give it a read.
And so when The Pilgrim's Progress begins an unamed narrator, possibly the author, has woken up in his prison cell. He has dreamt that a character named Christian who has been living in the City of Destruction (the earthly world) has become terrified that the town in which he lives is doomed and that fire and brimstone will reign down upon it in the not so distant future. Christian begs his wife and children to flee with him to the Celestial City (heaven) but they are afraid to leave the world they know and face whatever dangers might await. Christian's family and neighbors think he has gone mad and so he sets out on the journey by himself.
Along the way Christian will be accompanied by two friends named Faithful and Hopeful. But the road leading to the Celestial City is not straightforward. Christian will encounter many obstacles: depression, ignorance, fear, greed etc which have caused others pilgrims to lose faith and turn back. One thing the book seems to stress is that if you are going to go on a journey of whatever kind it helps to have companions. Had it not been for Faithful and Hopeful during key parts of the novel Christian would not have made it to the Celestial City.
John Bunyan is a remarkable writer although his view of religion is a harsh one, a great deal of emphasis on the hell that awaits if you stray from the righteous path. Still this book is a major classic which has gone on to influence countless authors and since the day it was published The Pilgrim's Progress has never gone out of print.
And so completes my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge and I made it just under the wire! It's been a worthwhile journey and I plan to do my wrap up review of the books I've read tomorrow and thanks so much to Karen K at Books and Chocolate for hosting the challenge.
Monday, December 31, 2018
Saturday, December 29, 2018
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall by Anne Bronte published 1848 is the eleventh book I have read for my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by a woman author. The Tenant of Wildfell Hall when it was first published was considered the most shocking of the Bronte novels (and that's saying something!) but I guess in Victorian times a woman fleeing her abusive husband and taking her young son with her to start a new life elsewhere was considered more scandalous than anything Heathcliff or Mr. Rochester could come up with.
And so when The Tenant of Wildfell Hall begins it is 1827 and Helen Huntingdon and her young son have moved into Wildfell Hall, a run down mansion that has seen better days. Helen has changed her last name to Graham so her husband, Arthur, won't find her and she has let it be known to her new neighbors that she is a widow. Helen keeps to herself and rarely ventures out to social gatherings. One neighbor, Gilbert Markham (who narrates the book from the looking back vantage point of 1847) breaks through Helen's reserve. He takes a liking to her little boy as well.
Helen and Gilbert are growing closer but they have a falling out when false rumors about Helen begin to circulate. She decides to tell Gilbert the truth about her prior life, handing him her diary. The diary takes up a great part of this novel and it is a fascinating journal, drawing you in regarding who Helen was before she married Arthur Huntingdon, her Aunt's warning about marrying him, Helen's naive belief that she could change Arthur and his descent into alcoholism, unfaithfulness, emotional abuse and Helen's decision to leave.
I found The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be an exceptional book and one theme running through this novel is that who you marry is serious business and not just for women. Lord Lowborough, for example, a character in the novel who falls in love with Annabella Wilmot who only marries him for his title. He is a good husband and she betrays him at every turn. Some have said that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may have been Anne's response to Jane Eyre in which Mr. Rochester is reformed after going through trials and tribulations. That's not the case with Arthur Huntingdon who gets worse as the novel progresses no matter how hard Helen tries to save the marriage.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a very modern novel in many ways and yet all of what we have come to expect from the Brontes is there as well, most importantly the gifted story telling and so I heartily recommend The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
And so when The Tenant of Wildfell Hall begins it is 1827 and Helen Huntingdon and her young son have moved into Wildfell Hall, a run down mansion that has seen better days. Helen has changed her last name to Graham so her husband, Arthur, won't find her and she has let it be known to her new neighbors that she is a widow. Helen keeps to herself and rarely ventures out to social gatherings. One neighbor, Gilbert Markham (who narrates the book from the looking back vantage point of 1847) breaks through Helen's reserve. He takes a liking to her little boy as well.
Helen and Gilbert are growing closer but they have a falling out when false rumors about Helen begin to circulate. She decides to tell Gilbert the truth about her prior life, handing him her diary. The diary takes up a great part of this novel and it is a fascinating journal, drawing you in regarding who Helen was before she married Arthur Huntingdon, her Aunt's warning about marrying him, Helen's naive belief that she could change Arthur and his descent into alcoholism, unfaithfulness, emotional abuse and Helen's decision to leave.
I found The Tenant of Wildfell Hall to be an exceptional book and one theme running through this novel is that who you marry is serious business and not just for women. Lord Lowborough, for example, a character in the novel who falls in love with Annabella Wilmot who only marries him for his title. He is a good husband and she betrays him at every turn. Some have said that The Tenant of Wildfell Hall may have been Anne's response to Jane Eyre in which Mr. Rochester is reformed after going through trials and tribulations. That's not the case with Arthur Huntingdon who gets worse as the novel progresses no matter how hard Helen tries to save the marriage.
The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is a very modern novel in many ways and yet all of what we have come to expect from the Brontes is there as well, most importantly the gifted story telling and so I heartily recommend The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
The Trial by Franz Kafka
"A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us" - Franz Kafka
The Trial by Franz Kafka published 1925 is one of the great classics of world literature and Kafka one of the world's great writers. I didn't find him an easy read though and the problem was not his writing style which I found very understandable but rather as with The Stranger by Albert Camus (and the resemblance between these two novels is uncanny), I came to the end of The Trial disturbed and unsettled regarding what the author was trying to say. This tends to be the case with many of the great modernist writers of the twentieth century, Kafka, Joyce, Camus, Woolf etc. It's not all laid out on the table for you and as a reader you have to dig deeper.
And so as the Trial begins we are introduced to Joseph K who has just turned thirty. He lives in a boarding house and works as a middle manager at a bank. He leads a solitary existance. No friends or family to speak of and on this particular morning he is waiting for his landlady to bring him breakfast. Instead two men enter his room telling him that he is under arrest. Joseph K is not told the charges, nor is he taken into custody. He is simply told by these two officials to go about his daily life and the courts will be in touch with him:
"What kind of people were they? What were they talking about? Which department did they belong to? After all, K had rights, the country was at peace, the laws had not been suspended - who, then, had the audacity to descend on him in the privacy of his own home? He had always tended to avoid taking things too seriously, not to assume the worst until the worst actually happened ... he could of course regard the whole thing as a joke, a crude joke his colleagues at the bank were playing on him for some unknown reason, perhaps because it was his thirtieth birthday".
But it is no joke and its not long before Joseph K is told to report to the court. He is given the address where he is to appear but he is not told the time and so decides to arrive at 9:00 AM. However, when he arrives he finds that the courtroom is housed in an old tenement building with so many rooms and stairwells that by the time Joseph K finds the right room he is late and berated by the magistrate. This infuriates Joseph K and he goes on a tirade about the unfairness of the legal system. He leaves the building and continues on as best he can working at the bank with his court case looming over him.
Joseph K reaches out to various people along the way, an attorney, a prison chaplain, a court painter and they all offer him advise on the best way to proceed with his trial but its confusing advise and no one will give Joseph K a straight answer about why he was arrested and what he did wrong. Women play an odd role in The Trial as well. Either Joseph K is trying to begin a relationship with them or they are making a pass at him but it never works out and for this I think we would need to know more about Franz Kafka's life.
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, Czech Republic to a German Jewish family. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a tyrant according to his son, emotionally abusive, mocking Kafka's interest in literature, terrorizing him as a child, disapproving so strongly of Kafka's engagement to Felice Bauer that their relationship fell apart. We know all this because in 1919 Kafka wrote his father a one hundred page letter in which he laid it all out. Kafka never sent the letter but critics have speculated that the oppressive legal system that Joseph K encounters in The Trial where he is found guilty but never told his crime serves as a metaphor for Kafka's relationship with his father, although some have pointed out that when it comes to Kafka and his father we only have Kafka's side of the story.
But the Trial can be read in many ways. An indictment on the legal system, a criticism of nameless faceless bureacracies and critics have also noted the prophetic nature of the Trial published in 1925, two years after Kafka's death. Franz Kafka may have written The Trial to work out his own sense of guilt, depression and self doubt but The Trial also foresaw the nightmarish world about to descend on the 20th century with the rise of Nazism and then Stalinism. The Trial is not a beach read but as with The Stranger by Camus, I finished The Trial wanting to learn more about Kafka and his writings.
The Trial fulfills book ten on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by an author that's new to you.
The Trial by Franz Kafka published 1925 is one of the great classics of world literature and Kafka one of the world's great writers. I didn't find him an easy read though and the problem was not his writing style which I found very understandable but rather as with The Stranger by Albert Camus (and the resemblance between these two novels is uncanny), I came to the end of The Trial disturbed and unsettled regarding what the author was trying to say. This tends to be the case with many of the great modernist writers of the twentieth century, Kafka, Joyce, Camus, Woolf etc. It's not all laid out on the table for you and as a reader you have to dig deeper.
And so as the Trial begins we are introduced to Joseph K who has just turned thirty. He lives in a boarding house and works as a middle manager at a bank. He leads a solitary existance. No friends or family to speak of and on this particular morning he is waiting for his landlady to bring him breakfast. Instead two men enter his room telling him that he is under arrest. Joseph K is not told the charges, nor is he taken into custody. He is simply told by these two officials to go about his daily life and the courts will be in touch with him:
"What kind of people were they? What were they talking about? Which department did they belong to? After all, K had rights, the country was at peace, the laws had not been suspended - who, then, had the audacity to descend on him in the privacy of his own home? He had always tended to avoid taking things too seriously, not to assume the worst until the worst actually happened ... he could of course regard the whole thing as a joke, a crude joke his colleagues at the bank were playing on him for some unknown reason, perhaps because it was his thirtieth birthday".
But it is no joke and its not long before Joseph K is told to report to the court. He is given the address where he is to appear but he is not told the time and so decides to arrive at 9:00 AM. However, when he arrives he finds that the courtroom is housed in an old tenement building with so many rooms and stairwells that by the time Joseph K finds the right room he is late and berated by the magistrate. This infuriates Joseph K and he goes on a tirade about the unfairness of the legal system. He leaves the building and continues on as best he can working at the bank with his court case looming over him.
Joseph K reaches out to various people along the way, an attorney, a prison chaplain, a court painter and they all offer him advise on the best way to proceed with his trial but its confusing advise and no one will give Joseph K a straight answer about why he was arrested and what he did wrong. Women play an odd role in The Trial as well. Either Joseph K is trying to begin a relationship with them or they are making a pass at him but it never works out and for this I think we would need to know more about Franz Kafka's life.
Franz Kafka was born in 1883 in Prague, Czech Republic to a German Jewish family. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a tyrant according to his son, emotionally abusive, mocking Kafka's interest in literature, terrorizing him as a child, disapproving so strongly of Kafka's engagement to Felice Bauer that their relationship fell apart. We know all this because in 1919 Kafka wrote his father a one hundred page letter in which he laid it all out. Kafka never sent the letter but critics have speculated that the oppressive legal system that Joseph K encounters in The Trial where he is found guilty but never told his crime serves as a metaphor for Kafka's relationship with his father, although some have pointed out that when it comes to Kafka and his father we only have Kafka's side of the story.
But the Trial can be read in many ways. An indictment on the legal system, a criticism of nameless faceless bureacracies and critics have also noted the prophetic nature of the Trial published in 1925, two years after Kafka's death. Franz Kafka may have written The Trial to work out his own sense of guilt, depression and self doubt but The Trial also foresaw the nightmarish world about to descend on the 20th century with the rise of Nazism and then Stalinism. The Trial is not a beach read but as with The Stranger by Camus, I finished The Trial wanting to learn more about Kafka and his writings.
The Trial fulfills book ten on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic by an author that's new to you.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
Belinda by Maria Edgeworth
For my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - choose a classic with a one word title, I chose Belinda by Maria Edgeworth published 1801. Maria Edgeworth in her day was a very popular Anglo/Irish author who wrote books on education, children's stories and novels two of which are considered classics, Belinda and Castle Rackrent. Jane Austen greatly admired this author and that is high praise.
Belinda begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the town of Bath. Mrs Stanhope a formidable woman in the matchmaking department has arranged for her youngest niece, Belinda Portman, to spend the winter season in London where she will stay with the fashionable Lady Delacour. There will be parties, balls, theater events to attend but the ultimate goal as Mrs. Stanhope makes clear to Belinda is to find a suitable marriage partner.
Soon after arriving in London Belinda meets Clarence Hervey who she is smitten with but at a costume ball she is crushed when she overhears Hervey mocking both her and her Aunt to his friends. Their relationship starts off with a number of obstacles the most serious of which is that Hervey may have a mistress. As for Belinda she begins a courtship with a man from the West Indies, Mr. Vincent, who unbeknownst to Belinda has a gambling problem. Meanwhile Lady Delacour is not up to the challenge of mentoring Belinda if anything Lady Delacour needs a mentor. Her marriage to Lord Delacour, for example, is an unhappy union and in confiding to Belinda why she married him, Lady Delacour puts it as follows:
"I was a rich heiress ...I was handsone and witty ... Having told you my fortune need I add, that I, or it, had lovers in abundance ... of all sorts and degrees - not to reckon those, it may be presumed, who died of concealed passions for me ... any girl who is not used to having a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing - and this is so becoming, and this will wear forever ...the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, and doubting and tossing over half the goods in the shop , it's ten to one, when it begins to get late, the young lady, in a hurry, pitches upon the very ugliest and worst thing that she has seen ... Sad was the hour and luckless was the day I pitched upon viscount Delacour for my lord and judge".
Lady Delacour is quite the character, witty, dramatic, funny. Readers and critics have said over the years that she is actually the star of this book but Belinda is impressive too, like Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice who would come after her, Belinda is very well grounded for someone so young, intelligent, rational and only willing to marry if she can find a husband she has affection for and respects. Belinda has been referred to as a novel of female development, a popular genre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which would end with the young woman married since the life of a woman in the early nineteenth century if she remained single was not a happy one as Mrs Stanhope grimly lays out in her cautionary advice to her neice. Maria Edgeworth, Fanny Burney and of course Jane Austen are the most shining practitioners of the novel of female development. Although the irony is that Edgeworth and Austen never married.
There is much to recommend about Belinda but I had a serious problem with the novel as well, the anti-semitism I encountered in the book, specifically in the creation of Mr Solomon who is not so much a character as a caricature. This is a problem one gets into when reading some of the classics where you will be enjoying a novel and then come upon bigotry and it stains the book for you.
But this story has an interesting ending. In 1815 Rachel Mordecai a young teacher living in North Carolina and a fan of Edgeworth's novels and books on education decided to write the author a letter. Rachel who was Jewish was hurt by what she was reading in Edgeworth's novels: "how can it be that she, whom on all other subjects shows justice and liberality, should on one alone appear biased by prejudices?" Edgeworth upon receiving this letter was clearly moved and responded "Your polite, benevolent and touching letter has given me much pleasure, and much pain. As to the pain I hope you will some time see that it has excited me to make all the atonement and reparation in my power for the past". Edgeworth the following year wrote the novel Harrington which tackled the subject of anti-semitism and how wrong it is head on. As for Maria Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai they began a friendship and a lifelong correspondence which their families would continue well into the 20th century.
Belinda begins at the turn of the nineteenth century in the town of Bath. Mrs Stanhope a formidable woman in the matchmaking department has arranged for her youngest niece, Belinda Portman, to spend the winter season in London where she will stay with the fashionable Lady Delacour. There will be parties, balls, theater events to attend but the ultimate goal as Mrs. Stanhope makes clear to Belinda is to find a suitable marriage partner.
Soon after arriving in London Belinda meets Clarence Hervey who she is smitten with but at a costume ball she is crushed when she overhears Hervey mocking both her and her Aunt to his friends. Their relationship starts off with a number of obstacles the most serious of which is that Hervey may have a mistress. As for Belinda she begins a courtship with a man from the West Indies, Mr. Vincent, who unbeknownst to Belinda has a gambling problem. Meanwhile Lady Delacour is not up to the challenge of mentoring Belinda if anything Lady Delacour needs a mentor. Her marriage to Lord Delacour, for example, is an unhappy union and in confiding to Belinda why she married him, Lady Delacour puts it as follows:
"I was a rich heiress ...I was handsone and witty ... Having told you my fortune need I add, that I, or it, had lovers in abundance ... of all sorts and degrees - not to reckon those, it may be presumed, who died of concealed passions for me ... any girl who is not used to having a parcel of admirers, would think it the easiest thing in the world to make her choice; but let her judge by what she feels when a dexterous mercer or linen draper produces pretty thing after pretty thing - and this is so becoming, and this will wear forever ...the novice stands in a charming perplexity, and after examining, and doubting and tossing over half the goods in the shop , it's ten to one, when it begins to get late, the young lady, in a hurry, pitches upon the very ugliest and worst thing that she has seen ... Sad was the hour and luckless was the day I pitched upon viscount Delacour for my lord and judge".
Lady Delacour is quite the character, witty, dramatic, funny. Readers and critics have said over the years that she is actually the star of this book but Belinda is impressive too, like Elizabeth Bennet of Pride and Prejudice who would come after her, Belinda is very well grounded for someone so young, intelligent, rational and only willing to marry if she can find a husband she has affection for and respects. Belinda has been referred to as a novel of female development, a popular genre in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries which would end with the young woman married since the life of a woman in the early nineteenth century if she remained single was not a happy one as Mrs Stanhope grimly lays out in her cautionary advice to her neice. Maria Edgeworth, Fanny Burney and of course Jane Austen are the most shining practitioners of the novel of female development. Although the irony is that Edgeworth and Austen never married.
There is much to recommend about Belinda but I had a serious problem with the novel as well, the anti-semitism I encountered in the book, specifically in the creation of Mr Solomon who is not so much a character as a caricature. This is a problem one gets into when reading some of the classics where you will be enjoying a novel and then come upon bigotry and it stains the book for you.
But this story has an interesting ending. In 1815 Rachel Mordecai a young teacher living in North Carolina and a fan of Edgeworth's novels and books on education decided to write the author a letter. Rachel who was Jewish was hurt by what she was reading in Edgeworth's novels: "how can it be that she, whom on all other subjects shows justice and liberality, should on one alone appear biased by prejudices?" Edgeworth upon receiving this letter was clearly moved and responded "Your polite, benevolent and touching letter has given me much pleasure, and much pain. As to the pain I hope you will some time see that it has excited me to make all the atonement and reparation in my power for the past". Edgeworth the following year wrote the novel Harrington which tackled the subject of anti-semitism and how wrong it is head on. As for Maria Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai they began a friendship and a lifelong correspondence which their families would continue well into the 20th century.
Wednesday, November 07, 2018
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck (published 1937) is a book I first read I believe in tbe eigth grade and it made quite an impression on me. George and Lennie, two ranch hands travelling together through California during the Great Depression looking for work. George is small, quick, alert. Lennie is big, strong with the mind of a child. They are alone in the world except for each other and as George tells Lennie:
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch .... With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us"
The two men have a dream to have a place of their own where they can raise chickens, plant crops and Lennie will be able to care for the rabbits he loves so much. It's a nice dream but there's a problem. Lennie doesn't listen. He doesn't do what George tells him and it has gotten George and Lennie into trouble but maybe things will be different at their new job.
Steinbeck tells us a good deal about the men who work on these ranches, as they hang around the bunk house, playing cards, talking about life, sharing gossip. There is Slim, smart, respected and acknowledged by all to be the best rancher around. Candy and his old dog who should be put down but Candy doesn't have the heart to do it. There is Curley, the boss' son who bullies the other men. Crooks, the black ranch hand, angry and hurt that the white ranchers won't socialize with him. There is Curley's young wife. The only female character in the book. She is the catalyst to what will happen at the end and as with everyone else in the novel she is lonely and just wants a better life.
And that brings us to George and Lennie. When I first read Of Mice and Men it was George that stood out for me but this time around the surprise was Lennie. I remembered Lennie as a gentle giant who loved rabbits and all small creatures and when we first meet him he is petting a little mouse he keeps in his pocket but here is the problem, the mouse is dead and for Lennie it doesn't make a difference. He just likes to pet soft things, Later when Lennie learns there are puppies on the ranch he gets excited. George tells him to stay away from them. Lennie doesn't listen and when he accidentally kills one of the puppies here is his reaction:
"And Lennie said softly to the puppy, 'Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice. I didn't bounce you hard ... Suddenly his anger arose. "God damn you", he cried. Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice". He picked up the pup and hurled it from him. He turned his back on it. He sat bent over his knees and he whispered, "Now, I won't get to tend the rabbits. Now he won't let me". He rocked himself back and forth in his sorrow".
I had remembered Lennie wrong. The only remorse he feels is self pity because now George might not let him tend the rabbits. I make some allowances for the fact that Lennie is mentally disabled but I also wonder what does George see in Lennie? Slim for example would have made a much better friend but could Steinbeck in the 1930's have written a story about Slim and George travelling together and telling their fellow ranch hands about their plans to have a place of their own? My guess is Steinbeck didn't feel he could and so Lennie was created but even with Lennie, George feels the need to tell people they are cousins when in fact they are not related.
All of this said, I am glad I chose Of Mice and Men for my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - reread a favorite classic and I have to get back to reading more Steinbeck. The writer Barry Lopez said that "John Steinbeck brings together the human heart and the land" and I think that puts it very well. He knew the American West, specifically California and its people. But there is something universal and timeless about Steinbeck's novels which is why his books are read and loved the world over.
"Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake and then they go inta town and blow their stake, and the first thing you know they're poundin' their tail on some other ranch .... With us it ain't like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us"
The two men have a dream to have a place of their own where they can raise chickens, plant crops and Lennie will be able to care for the rabbits he loves so much. It's a nice dream but there's a problem. Lennie doesn't listen. He doesn't do what George tells him and it has gotten George and Lennie into trouble but maybe things will be different at their new job.
Steinbeck tells us a good deal about the men who work on these ranches, as they hang around the bunk house, playing cards, talking about life, sharing gossip. There is Slim, smart, respected and acknowledged by all to be the best rancher around. Candy and his old dog who should be put down but Candy doesn't have the heart to do it. There is Curley, the boss' son who bullies the other men. Crooks, the black ranch hand, angry and hurt that the white ranchers won't socialize with him. There is Curley's young wife. The only female character in the book. She is the catalyst to what will happen at the end and as with everyone else in the novel she is lonely and just wants a better life.
And that brings us to George and Lennie. When I first read Of Mice and Men it was George that stood out for me but this time around the surprise was Lennie. I remembered Lennie as a gentle giant who loved rabbits and all small creatures and when we first meet him he is petting a little mouse he keeps in his pocket but here is the problem, the mouse is dead and for Lennie it doesn't make a difference. He just likes to pet soft things, Later when Lennie learns there are puppies on the ranch he gets excited. George tells him to stay away from them. Lennie doesn't listen and when he accidentally kills one of the puppies here is his reaction:
"And Lennie said softly to the puppy, 'Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice. I didn't bounce you hard ... Suddenly his anger arose. "God damn you", he cried. Why do you got to get killed? You ain't so little as mice". He picked up the pup and hurled it from him. He turned his back on it. He sat bent over his knees and he whispered, "Now, I won't get to tend the rabbits. Now he won't let me". He rocked himself back and forth in his sorrow".
I had remembered Lennie wrong. The only remorse he feels is self pity because now George might not let him tend the rabbits. I make some allowances for the fact that Lennie is mentally disabled but I also wonder what does George see in Lennie? Slim for example would have made a much better friend but could Steinbeck in the 1930's have written a story about Slim and George travelling together and telling their fellow ranch hands about their plans to have a place of their own? My guess is Steinbeck didn't feel he could and so Lennie was created but even with Lennie, George feels the need to tell people they are cousins when in fact they are not related.
All of this said, I am glad I chose Of Mice and Men for my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge - reread a favorite classic and I have to get back to reading more Steinbeck. The writer Barry Lopez said that "John Steinbeck brings together the human heart and the land" and I think that puts it very well. He knew the American West, specifically California and its people. But there is something universal and timeless about Steinbeck's novels which is why his books are read and loved the world over.
Saturday, October 06, 2018
The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
As much as I love to read there are huge gaps in my literary education. For example I rarely read books written prior to the 19th century. Maybe I'm afraid that works written centuries ago will be written in a kind of old English that I won't be able to decipher. But the great thing about the 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge (hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate) is that it is pushing me out of my comfort zone and so book seven on my classics list (choose a classic in translation) is one of the masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, The Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated into modern readable English by G. H. McWilliam.
Literary scholars say that Giovanni Boccaccio probably conceived the idea for The Decameron in 1348 and completed the book in 1353. The setting for The Decameron is Florence 1348 during the time of the Black Death, a terrible plague that Boccaccio lived through and which by some conservative estimates wiped out tens of millions across Europe and Asia. Boccaccio paints a vivid picture in his introduction to The Decameron about the societal breakdown that occured in the midst of this pandemic. He then introduces us to ten fictional young people (seven women and three men) who meet in an abandoned church. Pampinea, one of the young women in the group, gives a rousing speech to the others as she suggests they leave the city of Florence with so much death and panic around them and head to the countryside:
"What are we doing here? What are we waiting for? What are we dreaming about? Why do we lag so far behind the rest of our citizens in providing for our safety? ...I would think it an excellent idea for us all to get away from this city ... we could go and stay together on one of our various country estates, shunning at all costs the lewd practices of our fellow citizens and feasting and merrymaking as best we may"
Her friends think its an excellent idea as well and they decide that in addition to the food, the merrymaking, the dancing and the fresh air, they will spend their time telling each other stories centering around the subject of love and specifically the tricks lovers play so that they can be together. These stories are also about fortune and how it smiles on some and not on others. The ten young people will spend ten days in the country and each day they each tell a story, totalling one hundred stories that make up the Decameron. To give you a taste of how ahead of his time Boccaccio was here is one story told by one of the young men in the group, Filostrato, about a woman charged with adultery standing before a judge:
"Sir, it is true that Rinaldo is my husband, and that he found me last night in Lazzarino's arms, wherein, on account of the deep and perfect love I bear towards him, I have lain many times before; nor shall I ever deny it ... But before you proceed to pass any judgement, I beseech you to grant me a small favor, this being that you should ask my husband whether or not I have refused to concede my entire body to him, whenever and as often as he pleased ... Well then, the lady promptly continued, if he has always taken as much of me as he needed and as much as he chose to take, I ask you, Messer Podesta, what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs? Is it not far better that I should present it to a gentleman who loves me more dearly than himself, rather than allow it to turn bad or go to waste".
And here is Pampinea introducing one of her stories and getting a few things off her chest with regard to the clergy:
"They go about in those long flowing robes of theirs, and when they are asking for alms, they deliberately put on a forlorn expression and are all humility and sweetness; but when they are reproaching you with their own vices, or showing how the layity achieve salvation by almsgiving and the clerics by almsgrabbing, they positively deafen you with their loud arrogant voices ... if only I were allowed to go into the necessary details, I would soon open many a simpleton's eyes to the sort of thing these fellows conceal beneath the ample folds of their habits".
Where Boccaccio is concerned no subject is off limits and the women in these stories are not shrinking violets. They want sex and love as much as their partners do and very rarely is anyone punished in these tales for finding inventive ways to be together outside the bonds of matrimony. Boccaccio has been called an early feminist and I think tnat is true. He dedicated The Decameron to the ladies who "are forced to follow the whims, fancies, dictates of their fathers, mothers, brothers and husbands, so that they spend most of their time cooped up within the narrow confines of their rooms ... wishing one thing and at the same time wishing its opposite". But it's also true that in some of these stories Boccaccio proves himself to be a man of the 14th century.
I recommemd The Decameron and there are abridged versions out there which include only Giovanni Boccaccio's most famous stories. You will find when you read these tales that in some ways people from the fourteenth century were not that different from you and me but then you will encounter stories that demonstrate that it truly was a different time.
Literary scholars say that Giovanni Boccaccio probably conceived the idea for The Decameron in 1348 and completed the book in 1353. The setting for The Decameron is Florence 1348 during the time of the Black Death, a terrible plague that Boccaccio lived through and which by some conservative estimates wiped out tens of millions across Europe and Asia. Boccaccio paints a vivid picture in his introduction to The Decameron about the societal breakdown that occured in the midst of this pandemic. He then introduces us to ten fictional young people (seven women and three men) who meet in an abandoned church. Pampinea, one of the young women in the group, gives a rousing speech to the others as she suggests they leave the city of Florence with so much death and panic around them and head to the countryside:
"What are we doing here? What are we waiting for? What are we dreaming about? Why do we lag so far behind the rest of our citizens in providing for our safety? ...I would think it an excellent idea for us all to get away from this city ... we could go and stay together on one of our various country estates, shunning at all costs the lewd practices of our fellow citizens and feasting and merrymaking as best we may"
Her friends think its an excellent idea as well and they decide that in addition to the food, the merrymaking, the dancing and the fresh air, they will spend their time telling each other stories centering around the subject of love and specifically the tricks lovers play so that they can be together. These stories are also about fortune and how it smiles on some and not on others. The ten young people will spend ten days in the country and each day they each tell a story, totalling one hundred stories that make up the Decameron. To give you a taste of how ahead of his time Boccaccio was here is one story told by one of the young men in the group, Filostrato, about a woman charged with adultery standing before a judge:
"Sir, it is true that Rinaldo is my husband, and that he found me last night in Lazzarino's arms, wherein, on account of the deep and perfect love I bear towards him, I have lain many times before; nor shall I ever deny it ... But before you proceed to pass any judgement, I beseech you to grant me a small favor, this being that you should ask my husband whether or not I have refused to concede my entire body to him, whenever and as often as he pleased ... Well then, the lady promptly continued, if he has always taken as much of me as he needed and as much as he chose to take, I ask you, Messer Podesta, what am I to do with the surplus? Throw it to the dogs? Is it not far better that I should present it to a gentleman who loves me more dearly than himself, rather than allow it to turn bad or go to waste".
And here is Pampinea introducing one of her stories and getting a few things off her chest with regard to the clergy:
"They go about in those long flowing robes of theirs, and when they are asking for alms, they deliberately put on a forlorn expression and are all humility and sweetness; but when they are reproaching you with their own vices, or showing how the layity achieve salvation by almsgiving and the clerics by almsgrabbing, they positively deafen you with their loud arrogant voices ... if only I were allowed to go into the necessary details, I would soon open many a simpleton's eyes to the sort of thing these fellows conceal beneath the ample folds of their habits".
Where Boccaccio is concerned no subject is off limits and the women in these stories are not shrinking violets. They want sex and love as much as their partners do and very rarely is anyone punished in these tales for finding inventive ways to be together outside the bonds of matrimony. Boccaccio has been called an early feminist and I think tnat is true. He dedicated The Decameron to the ladies who "are forced to follow the whims, fancies, dictates of their fathers, mothers, brothers and husbands, so that they spend most of their time cooped up within the narrow confines of their rooms ... wishing one thing and at the same time wishing its opposite". But it's also true that in some of these stories Boccaccio proves himself to be a man of the 14th century.
I recommemd The Decameron and there are abridged versions out there which include only Giovanni Boccaccio's most famous stories. You will find when you read these tales that in some ways people from the fourteenth century were not that different from you and me but then you will encounter stories that demonstrate that it truly was a different time.
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Laura Ingalls Wilder published Little House in the Big Woods, the first book in her Little House series, in 1932. She was 65 and the Great Depression was devastating the country and the Wilder family as well. There was also the deaths of Laura's mother Caroline and sister Mary a few years back and so as a way to remember happier times Wilder began jotting down memories of her midwestern childhood in the 1870's. Those memories, with the editorial help of her daughter Rose, would eventually become the Little House books.
The Ingalls family were farmers and homesteaders. Homesteading has been described as a life of complete self sufficiency. You built your own log cabin, built the furniture, hunted and grew the food you ate. There were rare trips to town miles away where you would barter with wheat, eggs, animal skins in exchange for fabric and maybe some store bought sugar you reserved for company. All through the spring, summer and fall you had to prepare for winter when the animals would be in hibernation, nothing would grow and your nearest neighbors were miles away::
"Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come. Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops, and then were hung in the attic beside wreaths of red peppers strung on threads. The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in orange and yellow and green heaps in the attic's corners. The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves ...often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic, Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cozy".
In the evenings Charles Ingalls would play his fiddle and tell stories to Mary and Laura about when he was a boy growing up in the Big Woods. The stories could be funny like the time Charles and his brothers were forbidden to play on Sunday but when their father fell asleep they snuck out and piled onto the new sled which halfway down the hill ran under a pig scooping it up onto the sled. The brothers and the pig which was afraid and squealing loudly flew past their house with their father outside and not happy. Other times Charles' stories could be harrowing. The time his own father rode home from town later than he should have and encountered a panther:
Grandpa leaned forward in the saddle and urged the horse to run faster. The horse was running as fast as it could possibly run, and still the panther screamed close behind. Then Grandpa caught a glimpse of it, as it leaped from treetop to treetop, almost overhead. It was a huge black panther, leaping through the air like Black Susan leaping on a mouse. It was many many times bigger than Black Susan. It was so big that if it leaped on grandpa it could kill him with it's enormous, slashing claws and its long sharp teeth ... the panther did not scream any more. Grandpa did not see it anymore. But he knew that it was coming, leaping after him in the dark woods behind him. At last the horse ran up to Grandpa's house. Grandpa saw the panther springing. Grandpa jumped off the horse, against the door. He burst through the door and slammed it behind him".
Most of the book is not so harrowing. We learn about Laura's getting a doll for Christmas, the first doll she had ever owned, which she named Charlotte. Mary and Laura were close but Laura was a bit jealous of Mary who always did what she was told and had beautiful blonde hair which Lauta envied. Charles and Caroline worked from dawn to dusk with Charles hunting and harvesting the wheat and Caroline cooking, churning and mending. Everything had to be made by scratch including cheese which was quite a procedure and then tnere are the descriptions of maple candy which involves hot maple syrup poured over snow. That recipe I think I could manage.
Sometimes when you read a children's book as an adult you can be disappointed. This is not one of those times. Little House in the Big Woods is a fascinating wonderfully written look at what life was like for 19th century homesteading families like the Ingalls. I understand that future books in the series get even better and that's saying alot since this first effort is so good.
Little House in the Big Woods is book six on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge list (choose a classic of children's literature) hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate. I have six more classics to complete by the end of the year and I am getting a little nervous but I don't regret taking the challenge. I am reading some wonderful books this year and without the challenge who knows when I would have gotten around to them.
The Ingalls family were farmers and homesteaders. Homesteading has been described as a life of complete self sufficiency. You built your own log cabin, built the furniture, hunted and grew the food you ate. There were rare trips to town miles away where you would barter with wheat, eggs, animal skins in exchange for fabric and maybe some store bought sugar you reserved for company. All through the spring, summer and fall you had to prepare for winter when the animals would be in hibernation, nothing would grow and your nearest neighbors were miles away::
"Now the potatoes and carrots, the beets and turnips and cabbages were gathered and stored in the cellar, for freezing nights had come. Onions were made into long ropes, braided together by their tops, and then were hung in the attic beside wreaths of red peppers strung on threads. The pumpkins and the squashes were piled in orange and yellow and green heaps in the attic's corners. The barrels of salted fish were in the pantry, and yellow cheeses were stacked on the pantry shelves ...often the wind howled outside with a cold and lonesome sound. But in the attic, Laura and Mary played house with the squashes and the pumpkins, and everything was snug and cozy".
In the evenings Charles Ingalls would play his fiddle and tell stories to Mary and Laura about when he was a boy growing up in the Big Woods. The stories could be funny like the time Charles and his brothers were forbidden to play on Sunday but when their father fell asleep they snuck out and piled onto the new sled which halfway down the hill ran under a pig scooping it up onto the sled. The brothers and the pig which was afraid and squealing loudly flew past their house with their father outside and not happy. Other times Charles' stories could be harrowing. The time his own father rode home from town later than he should have and encountered a panther:
Grandpa leaned forward in the saddle and urged the horse to run faster. The horse was running as fast as it could possibly run, and still the panther screamed close behind. Then Grandpa caught a glimpse of it, as it leaped from treetop to treetop, almost overhead. It was a huge black panther, leaping through the air like Black Susan leaping on a mouse. It was many many times bigger than Black Susan. It was so big that if it leaped on grandpa it could kill him with it's enormous, slashing claws and its long sharp teeth ... the panther did not scream any more. Grandpa did not see it anymore. But he knew that it was coming, leaping after him in the dark woods behind him. At last the horse ran up to Grandpa's house. Grandpa saw the panther springing. Grandpa jumped off the horse, against the door. He burst through the door and slammed it behind him".
Most of the book is not so harrowing. We learn about Laura's getting a doll for Christmas, the first doll she had ever owned, which she named Charlotte. Mary and Laura were close but Laura was a bit jealous of Mary who always did what she was told and had beautiful blonde hair which Lauta envied. Charles and Caroline worked from dawn to dusk with Charles hunting and harvesting the wheat and Caroline cooking, churning and mending. Everything had to be made by scratch including cheese which was quite a procedure and then tnere are the descriptions of maple candy which involves hot maple syrup poured over snow. That recipe I think I could manage.
Sometimes when you read a children's book as an adult you can be disappointed. This is not one of those times. Little House in the Big Woods is a fascinating wonderfully written look at what life was like for 19th century homesteading families like the Ingalls. I understand that future books in the series get even better and that's saying alot since this first effort is so good.
Little House in the Big Woods is book six on my 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge list (choose a classic of children's literature) hosted by Karen K at Books and Chocolate. I have six more classics to complete by the end of the year and I am getting a little nervous but I don't regret taking the challenge. I am reading some wonderful books this year and without the challenge who knows when I would have gotten around to them.
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