Monthly Bookpost, September 2016
Farewell to Rousseau: Reveries of a Solitary Walker, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Of all the places I have lived (and I have lived in some charming ones), none has made me so genuinely happy nor left me such tender regrets as St. Peter's Island in the middle of Lake Bienne. This small island, which is called Hillock Island in Neuchatel, is quite unknown, even in Switzerland. As far as I know, no traveller mentions it. However, it is very pleasant and singularly placed for the happiness of a man who likes to cut himself off--for although I am perhaps the only one in the world whose destiny has imposed this upon him as a law, I cannot believe myself to be the only one who has so natural a taste--even though I have not found it in anyone else thus far.
Rousseau was better off alone. He had a gift of pissing people off, which I sympathize with , having been there myself, but nevertheless, it's painful to watch and i want to shake him sometimes. The Reveries seem to show him happy for once, and not quite so full of his own self-importance. He lived, as the quoted part says, on an island far from everybody, where he spent his days Thoreau style, living simply and studying plant life. Then the local Swiss Officials took even that from him and made him leave, since they would not suffer a heretic to so much as mind his own business anywhere near their corner of the world.
During this period, Rousseau was writing despite a vow that he would never write again--which was maybe valid because he didn't submit anything to a publisher---except that he knew quite well that he was going to be published posthumously. The ten short essays that make up the Reveries mingle journal-entry observations and happenings, and elaborations of his artistic and political philosophy. The better parts are the observations.
And that completes the second of the three philosophical "giants" of the century that I had vowed to study. At the end of the day, Rousseau is a mass of contradictions (and who isn't?), and neither convinces me nor gets me to trust him. I do find him likeable, though, at a distance.
First Feminist Rant: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands, they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words; its silken wings are instantly shriveled up when anything beside a return in kind is sought. Yet while wealth enervates men, and women, as it were, by their personal charms, how can we expect them to discharge these ennobling duties which equally require exertion and self-denial?
After five and a half years in "great works through history", I am finally reaching the point where a significant number of books were actually written by women. and about women.
I've seen several works that go into discursive tangents in support of women, ranging from putting them on pedestals to exhorting manly men to protect them from harm to guys telling guys, "You know what? They're actually better than us at a lotta shit and we ought to treat them better"...but Wollstonecraft seems to me to be the first actual feminist writer. If there's an earlier one i might have missed, please let me know.
And, as with most or all respected "great books", hers goes into discursions as well, from morality in general to rights and responsibilities between parent and child. And because Wollstonecraft predated the "first wave" by almost 200 years, it's not surprising that the first arguments for taking the domestic chains off of women boiled down to "so we can better serve men". and "Of course we're not really equal, but..."
Wollstonecraft's daughter grew up to write Frankenstein, the first sci-fi book. So i guess Wollstonecraft put some ideas into her head.
The 18th Century Murders: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, by Diana Gabaldon; Rebellion, by James McGee
Grey was now the only eyewitness. Could he stand before the court-martial, swear to tell the truth, and lie? With everyone--including the judges--completely aware that it was a lie? It would be the ruin of his own career and reputation. Some might see such an act as misguided loyalty to family; many more would see it as an indication that Grey sympathized with Percy's inclinations--or shared them. Either way, rumors would follow him. Discharge from the army was inevitable, and with the odour of such scandal clinging to him, he could not hope to find any reception in English society, or even in the service of a foreign army.
And yet...it was Percy's life. "If there is any kindness left between us...I beg you...Save me." Could he tell the truth and see Percy go to the gallows, or to prison or indentured servitude--and then simply return to his own life?
---from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Squatting, Hawkwood turned the body over. It wasn't easy. The dead were never cooperative and his fingers were cold and when he saw the state of the face he wished he hadn't bothered. The waves and the rocks had inflicted a lot of damage, and sea creatures had already taken full advantage of a free meal. Hawkwood doubted the man's own mother would have known him. Though she might have recognized the tattoos on the left forearm: a Union Jack and an anchor, under which was inscribed the word Dido. The name of a ship, Hawkwood presumed, rather than a wife or sweetheart.
--from Rebellion
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade is hands down better than Gabaldon's previous Lord John tales, and is even better than most of her Outlander work that I've read so far. It's more compact (a mere 500 pages instead of the usual 900+), and what seem to be several different plot paths involving a scandal from John's family history, a military adventure, and John's love that dare not speak its name, end up interweaving in satisfying ways, while the solution and the ending are good ones. Highly recommended.
Rebellion is the most disappointing so far of the four Hawkwood books I've read so far. It's still a decent read, but becoming formulaic, as if McGee is picturing the big budget movie while making the plot. No ship in Hawkwood's world can take him from one place to another without a chapter concerning the life-threatening storm they endure. He cannot impersonate someone doing the "Ah, you've been to Baltimore; I guess you frequented the Pullyou Inn with the green door" "It's a red door, and that inn is in Philadelphia." "Why-so it is, silly memory of mine" test. And so on. Here, Hawkwood is undercover in France taking part in a plot that apparently really (unsuccessfully) was tried.
Exit The Dame: The Wycherly Woman, by Ross MacDonald
Mirza had a vision of a bridge which a lot of people were crossing on foot; all the living people in the world. From time to time one of them would step on a kind of trap door and drop out of sight. The other pedestrians hardly noticed. Each of them went on walking across the bridge until he hit a trap door of his own, and fell through.
I hit mine, or something like it, at the top of the graceful stairs. It wasn't a trap door, exactly, and it wasn't exactly mine. It was a body, and it sighed when I stumbled over it. It sighed as if it had fallen the whole distance and lived.
Highly recommended as a mystery. Very highly recommended for fans of Chandleresque noir hard boiled detective stories. MacDonald was one of the very best, maybe the very best imitation of Chandler. I've often felt like having MacDonald is like having more Chandler, only with three or four times the output.
Sometimes hard-boiled writers have a trope of naming characters after 16th century poets--Marlow, Spenser, etc. William Wycherly was a restoration-era playwright who favored risque comedies of manners. The Wycherly Woman is only darkly comic in places, and the title family has about as much manners as a family of sociopathic gila monsters. But they managed to produce a daughter with a fragile mind and a conscience who heard something the night dad was just leaving on a cruise and divorced mom showed up to holler at him. Two months later, dad's cruise ended and he came back to find the daughter hadn't been seen since that day. And so he hired Lew Archer, PI, to pick up the cold trail and find her.
What archer finds made me weep, both for the Wycherly woman and for humanity in general. we are a sorry lot, as the hard-boiled noir detectives continually discover.
Avenue of the Americas: Southern Cross to Pole Star, by Aime Tschiffely
People in Bolivia are very fond of eating what they call a "picante" about four o'clock in the afternoon. This very appetizing dish is prepared with turkey, chicken or different meats, and one day I could not resist the temptation to try one. When I had taken the first mouthful I had to run outside to rinse my mouth with water, for the "picante" was so "hot" with the most wicked and devilish spices that I felt as if I had taken a mouthful of glowing charcoal.
MMmmmmm, sounds like my kind of dish. Your mileage may vary.
I envisioned "Tschiffley's Ride" covering the full distance from Tierra del Fuego to Yellowspork; as it turns out, 2 1/2 years and 10,000 miles by horseback is enough to cover some unspecified part of Patagonia as far as Washington DC, which is still kinda mindblowing. I was smitten as soon as I opened the book and saw the whimsically illustrated map of the two continents, full of tiny illustrations of adobe villages, Ozymandius-ish statue fragments, and arrows pointing to where the jaguars are.
As with Steinbeck's furry friend Charley (see Bookpost, August 2015), you get to know the horses very well. As with steinbeck, you get to know the author better. Tschiffley is something of a kook 9in other words, he is of my people), and he has a turn of phrase that frequently made me turn back to confirm that he had just said what, indeed, he had said.
He went through 12 countries, and the first half of the book is entirely taken up with Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru, which, in fairness, make up about half of the ride's total distance, with a whole lot of Mexico toward the end and Texas to DC included almost as an afterthought. What? the United States aren't the center of the Universe and deserving of most of the narrative? Why, knock me over with a peacock feather!
Very well told. highly recommended.
Blackstone the Great: Comment on the Commentaries, by Jeremy Bentham
With our worthy author, merit is the never failing appendage of rank and power: add to which, of profession, if his own. By knowing that men are Peers and Bishops, he knew that they were pious, wise and valiant and that it was for these qualities that they had their titles. He knows that they were able, though he knows of nothing that they did. By knowing that there were such men as Lawyers, he knew that they were wise and able. For in our author's Poetic Calendar, Lawyers are as sure to be sage or learned as Princesses to be chaste or Homer's hog-feeders to be divine.
See July's Bookpost for Blackstones's Commentaries. Prior to this year, the main things I knew about Bentham were that he was a Utilitarian; that he was known for speaking truth to power, and that he has or had a fanatical group of followers who, after his death, had his corpse preserved and trundled it out to be seated at the annual dinner of their Jeremy Bentham Society. Different squids for different kids, I guess. Bentham must have said some very popular or worthy things to be *that* beloved by people...but whatever it was, it was not in "Comment on the Commentaries", which descends into some delightful snark but otherwise does little more than call for laws to be written down in the form of statutes rather than have a bunch of horse's-ass judges create "common law" by ruling arbitrarily from the bench.
Bentham had read his Swift (" Your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.") and knew about the dangers of an unaccountable judiciary being bound by nothing more than the precedents set by previous corrupt judiciaries. If his writing is to be believed, he was the only one of his time who thought so, or at least the only one who dared to denounce it and demand a codification of the rules of law that must be interpreted by the courts.
I needed this after Blackstone. It may be my own biases, but I found myself nodding in agreement with a great deal of what Blackstone--whose writing may have been the first attempt to write down what the actual laws of England were--wrote, although much of it boiled down to ridiculous appeal to authority, and I didn't even notice until Bentham pulled the rug out from under it.
The Rogue Levels Up: The Magician of Ludlum, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
He had to decide this very night, choose between his religion and the cross, between Esther and Emilia, between honesty and crime (a single crime for which, with God's help, he would later make restitution). But his mind would resolve nothing. Instead of attacking the main problem, it dallied, went off on tangents, became frivolous. He could have been the father of grown children by this time, yet he remained the schoolboy who had played with his father's locks and keys and trailed the magicians through the streets of Lublin. He could not even be sure of the extent of his love for Emilia, decide whether the feeling he had was really what is known as love. Would he be able to remain true to her? Already the devil tempted him with all sorts of speculations about Halina, how she would grow up, become enamored of him, become her mother's rival for his affections.
Yasha, the magician/locksmith/acrobat at the heart of this parable, is a stock character I come across often who doesn't usually tug at my heart this way. The person going through life without a moral compass, who has dedicated himself to developing several physical skills (he put his high stat in DEX) without developing depth of character to go with it (low stat in WIS) until he comes to some moments of decision and must reach for whatever may be at his depths.
He is full of contradictions. A Jew who doesn't really practice, except when he does. A married man with several mistresses around town, who doesn't really love anyone, except when he does. Law-abiding, except when he isn't. Usually stories like this feature an antihero who thoughtlessly betrays his own ideals and never realizes what or who he really values until they're gone forever, and no one is happy, and my depression gets triggered like nobody's business. Here--it turns out differently. High recommendations.
The Ultimate Curse, and Other Nonsense: Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
May the Father who created man, curse him.---May the Son who suffered for us curse him.-----May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him' 'May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him.
'May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.---May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him.---May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him.'
'May St. John the Prae-cursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ's apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him'
'May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ have despised the things of the world, damn him---May all the saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of God, damn him---May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him,'
'May he be damn'd wherever he be---whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church.---May he be cursed in living, in dying. May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting!
'May he be cursed in all the faculties of his body!
'May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly!---May he be cursed in the hair of his head!---May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex, in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers!
'May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach!
'May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin, in his thighs, in his genitals, in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails!
'May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! May there be no soundness in him!
'May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty and the word itself.----By the golden beard of Jupiter---(and of Juno, if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatic---to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore 'em)-----all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the pagan establishment;-----every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn by---by all these beards together then----Curse him!' And may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. So be it,---so be it. Amen.'
Tristram Shandy is one of the strangest books ever written, and unfortunately spawned a host of imitations of his style, when it seems to me that once was enough. The narrator/title character sets out to write his memoirs, and instead writes a nonsensical biographical fragment of over 600 pages, about his father and uncle. Roughtly two thirds of the book takes place on the day that Tristram is born, with Father and Uncle Toby drinking and having one nonsensical "learned discourse" after another in the main sitting room, with servants and doctors and parsons popping in and out to take part and Mom is in labor in the next room over. James Joyce was influenced by Sterne when he wrote a passage in Ulysses with similar carousing going on next door to a birth. In that scene, the book, if not the drunk medical students, pays more attention to what that poor woman in labor must be going through.
The rest of the book--all of it, really--is "stream of consciousness" writing, on purpose. Tristram writes the preface when he realizes that the book is half over and he hasn't done so yet, and then he leaves it write there in the middle. Same with the dedication later on. This does not strike me as funny, or educational. It just seems like a good deal of rambling. His stream of consciousness is also obsessed with a couple of childhood injuries that he has suffered to his "nose", by which he means another part of the male anatomy, which he won't shut up about, and which are only funny if you like slapstick injury "humor" or if you still giggle about "noses".
One critic called Sterne the English Rabelais. I adore Rabelais in the proper translation, and Tristram Shandy is nothing like Rabelais. Or maybe you have to be in the right mood. I did, after all, see fit to record that long, long curse quoted above, which I may well bring out in its entirety for the purpose of denouncing Internet trolls.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts
Of all the places I have lived (and I have lived in some charming ones), none has made me so genuinely happy nor left me such tender regrets as St. Peter's Island in the middle of Lake Bienne. This small island, which is called Hillock Island in Neuchatel, is quite unknown, even in Switzerland. As far as I know, no traveller mentions it. However, it is very pleasant and singularly placed for the happiness of a man who likes to cut himself off--for although I am perhaps the only one in the world whose destiny has imposed this upon him as a law, I cannot believe myself to be the only one who has so natural a taste--even though I have not found it in anyone else thus far.
Rousseau was better off alone. He had a gift of pissing people off, which I sympathize with , having been there myself, but nevertheless, it's painful to watch and i want to shake him sometimes. The Reveries seem to show him happy for once, and not quite so full of his own self-importance. He lived, as the quoted part says, on an island far from everybody, where he spent his days Thoreau style, living simply and studying plant life. Then the local Swiss Officials took even that from him and made him leave, since they would not suffer a heretic to so much as mind his own business anywhere near their corner of the world.
During this period, Rousseau was writing despite a vow that he would never write again--which was maybe valid because he didn't submit anything to a publisher---except that he knew quite well that he was going to be published posthumously. The ten short essays that make up the Reveries mingle journal-entry observations and happenings, and elaborations of his artistic and political philosophy. The better parts are the observations.
And that completes the second of the three philosophical "giants" of the century that I had vowed to study. At the end of the day, Rousseau is a mass of contradictions (and who isn't?), and neither convinces me nor gets me to trust him. I do find him likeable, though, at a distance.
First Feminist Rant: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft
It is vain to expect virtue from women till they are in some degree independent of men; nay, it is vain to expect that strength of natural affection which would make them good wives and mothers. Whilst they are absolutely dependent on their husbands, they will be cunning, mean, and selfish, and the men who can be gratified by the fawning fondness of spaniel-like affection have not much delicacy, for love is not to be bought, in any sense of the words; its silken wings are instantly shriveled up when anything beside a return in kind is sought. Yet while wealth enervates men, and women, as it were, by their personal charms, how can we expect them to discharge these ennobling duties which equally require exertion and self-denial?
After five and a half years in "great works through history", I am finally reaching the point where a significant number of books were actually written by women. and about women.
I've seen several works that go into discursive tangents in support of women, ranging from putting them on pedestals to exhorting manly men to protect them from harm to guys telling guys, "You know what? They're actually better than us at a lotta shit and we ought to treat them better"...but Wollstonecraft seems to me to be the first actual feminist writer. If there's an earlier one i might have missed, please let me know.
And, as with most or all respected "great books", hers goes into discursions as well, from morality in general to rights and responsibilities between parent and child. And because Wollstonecraft predated the "first wave" by almost 200 years, it's not surprising that the first arguments for taking the domestic chains off of women boiled down to "so we can better serve men". and "Of course we're not really equal, but..."
Wollstonecraft's daughter grew up to write Frankenstein, the first sci-fi book. So i guess Wollstonecraft put some ideas into her head.
The 18th Century Murders: Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade, by Diana Gabaldon; Rebellion, by James McGee
Grey was now the only eyewitness. Could he stand before the court-martial, swear to tell the truth, and lie? With everyone--including the judges--completely aware that it was a lie? It would be the ruin of his own career and reputation. Some might see such an act as misguided loyalty to family; many more would see it as an indication that Grey sympathized with Percy's inclinations--or shared them. Either way, rumors would follow him. Discharge from the army was inevitable, and with the odour of such scandal clinging to him, he could not hope to find any reception in English society, or even in the service of a foreign army.
And yet...it was Percy's life. "If there is any kindness left between us...I beg you...Save me." Could he tell the truth and see Percy go to the gallows, or to prison or indentured servitude--and then simply return to his own life?
---from Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade
Squatting, Hawkwood turned the body over. It wasn't easy. The dead were never cooperative and his fingers were cold and when he saw the state of the face he wished he hadn't bothered. The waves and the rocks had inflicted a lot of damage, and sea creatures had already taken full advantage of a free meal. Hawkwood doubted the man's own mother would have known him. Though she might have recognized the tattoos on the left forearm: a Union Jack and an anchor, under which was inscribed the word Dido. The name of a ship, Hawkwood presumed, rather than a wife or sweetheart.
--from Rebellion
Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade is hands down better than Gabaldon's previous Lord John tales, and is even better than most of her Outlander work that I've read so far. It's more compact (a mere 500 pages instead of the usual 900+), and what seem to be several different plot paths involving a scandal from John's family history, a military adventure, and John's love that dare not speak its name, end up interweaving in satisfying ways, while the solution and the ending are good ones. Highly recommended.
Rebellion is the most disappointing so far of the four Hawkwood books I've read so far. It's still a decent read, but becoming formulaic, as if McGee is picturing the big budget movie while making the plot. No ship in Hawkwood's world can take him from one place to another without a chapter concerning the life-threatening storm they endure. He cannot impersonate someone doing the "Ah, you've been to Baltimore; I guess you frequented the Pullyou Inn with the green door" "It's a red door, and that inn is in Philadelphia." "Why-so it is, silly memory of mine" test. And so on. Here, Hawkwood is undercover in France taking part in a plot that apparently really (unsuccessfully) was tried.
Exit The Dame: The Wycherly Woman, by Ross MacDonald
Mirza had a vision of a bridge which a lot of people were crossing on foot; all the living people in the world. From time to time one of them would step on a kind of trap door and drop out of sight. The other pedestrians hardly noticed. Each of them went on walking across the bridge until he hit a trap door of his own, and fell through.
I hit mine, or something like it, at the top of the graceful stairs. It wasn't a trap door, exactly, and it wasn't exactly mine. It was a body, and it sighed when I stumbled over it. It sighed as if it had fallen the whole distance and lived.
Highly recommended as a mystery. Very highly recommended for fans of Chandleresque noir hard boiled detective stories. MacDonald was one of the very best, maybe the very best imitation of Chandler. I've often felt like having MacDonald is like having more Chandler, only with three or four times the output.
Sometimes hard-boiled writers have a trope of naming characters after 16th century poets--Marlow, Spenser, etc. William Wycherly was a restoration-era playwright who favored risque comedies of manners. The Wycherly Woman is only darkly comic in places, and the title family has about as much manners as a family of sociopathic gila monsters. But they managed to produce a daughter with a fragile mind and a conscience who heard something the night dad was just leaving on a cruise and divorced mom showed up to holler at him. Two months later, dad's cruise ended and he came back to find the daughter hadn't been seen since that day. And so he hired Lew Archer, PI, to pick up the cold trail and find her.
What archer finds made me weep, both for the Wycherly woman and for humanity in general. we are a sorry lot, as the hard-boiled noir detectives continually discover.
Avenue of the Americas: Southern Cross to Pole Star, by Aime Tschiffely
People in Bolivia are very fond of eating what they call a "picante" about four o'clock in the afternoon. This very appetizing dish is prepared with turkey, chicken or different meats, and one day I could not resist the temptation to try one. When I had taken the first mouthful I had to run outside to rinse my mouth with water, for the "picante" was so "hot" with the most wicked and devilish spices that I felt as if I had taken a mouthful of glowing charcoal.
MMmmmmm, sounds like my kind of dish. Your mileage may vary.
I envisioned "Tschiffley's Ride" covering the full distance from Tierra del Fuego to Yellowspork; as it turns out, 2 1/2 years and 10,000 miles by horseback is enough to cover some unspecified part of Patagonia as far as Washington DC, which is still kinda mindblowing. I was smitten as soon as I opened the book and saw the whimsically illustrated map of the two continents, full of tiny illustrations of adobe villages, Ozymandius-ish statue fragments, and arrows pointing to where the jaguars are.
As with Steinbeck's furry friend Charley (see Bookpost, August 2015), you get to know the horses very well. As with steinbeck, you get to know the author better. Tschiffley is something of a kook 9in other words, he is of my people), and he has a turn of phrase that frequently made me turn back to confirm that he had just said what, indeed, he had said.
He went through 12 countries, and the first half of the book is entirely taken up with Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru, which, in fairness, make up about half of the ride's total distance, with a whole lot of Mexico toward the end and Texas to DC included almost as an afterthought. What? the United States aren't the center of the Universe and deserving of most of the narrative? Why, knock me over with a peacock feather!
Very well told. highly recommended.
Blackstone the Great: Comment on the Commentaries, by Jeremy Bentham
With our worthy author, merit is the never failing appendage of rank and power: add to which, of profession, if his own. By knowing that men are Peers and Bishops, he knew that they were pious, wise and valiant and that it was for these qualities that they had their titles. He knows that they were able, though he knows of nothing that they did. By knowing that there were such men as Lawyers, he knew that they were wise and able. For in our author's Poetic Calendar, Lawyers are as sure to be sage or learned as Princesses to be chaste or Homer's hog-feeders to be divine.
See July's Bookpost for Blackstones's Commentaries. Prior to this year, the main things I knew about Bentham were that he was a Utilitarian; that he was known for speaking truth to power, and that he has or had a fanatical group of followers who, after his death, had his corpse preserved and trundled it out to be seated at the annual dinner of their Jeremy Bentham Society. Different squids for different kids, I guess. Bentham must have said some very popular or worthy things to be *that* beloved by people...but whatever it was, it was not in "Comment on the Commentaries", which descends into some delightful snark but otherwise does little more than call for laws to be written down in the form of statutes rather than have a bunch of horse's-ass judges create "common law" by ruling arbitrarily from the bench.
Bentham had read his Swift (" Your honour is to know, that these judges are persons appointed to decide all controversies of property, as well as for the trial of criminals, and picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy; and having been biassed all their lives against truth and equity, lie under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury, and oppression, that I have known some of them refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty, by doing any thing unbecoming their nature or their office.") and knew about the dangers of an unaccountable judiciary being bound by nothing more than the precedents set by previous corrupt judiciaries. If his writing is to be believed, he was the only one of his time who thought so, or at least the only one who dared to denounce it and demand a codification of the rules of law that must be interpreted by the courts.
I needed this after Blackstone. It may be my own biases, but I found myself nodding in agreement with a great deal of what Blackstone--whose writing may have been the first attempt to write down what the actual laws of England were--wrote, although much of it boiled down to ridiculous appeal to authority, and I didn't even notice until Bentham pulled the rug out from under it.
The Rogue Levels Up: The Magician of Ludlum, by Isaac Bashevis Singer
He had to decide this very night, choose between his religion and the cross, between Esther and Emilia, between honesty and crime (a single crime for which, with God's help, he would later make restitution). But his mind would resolve nothing. Instead of attacking the main problem, it dallied, went off on tangents, became frivolous. He could have been the father of grown children by this time, yet he remained the schoolboy who had played with his father's locks and keys and trailed the magicians through the streets of Lublin. He could not even be sure of the extent of his love for Emilia, decide whether the feeling he had was really what is known as love. Would he be able to remain true to her? Already the devil tempted him with all sorts of speculations about Halina, how she would grow up, become enamored of him, become her mother's rival for his affections.
Yasha, the magician/locksmith/acrobat at the heart of this parable, is a stock character I come across often who doesn't usually tug at my heart this way. The person going through life without a moral compass, who has dedicated himself to developing several physical skills (he put his high stat in DEX) without developing depth of character to go with it (low stat in WIS) until he comes to some moments of decision and must reach for whatever may be at his depths.
He is full of contradictions. A Jew who doesn't really practice, except when he does. A married man with several mistresses around town, who doesn't really love anyone, except when he does. Law-abiding, except when he isn't. Usually stories like this feature an antihero who thoughtlessly betrays his own ideals and never realizes what or who he really values until they're gone forever, and no one is happy, and my depression gets triggered like nobody's business. Here--it turns out differently. High recommendations.
The Ultimate Curse, and Other Nonsense: Tristram Shandy, by Laurence Sterne
May the Father who created man, curse him.---May the Son who suffered for us curse him.-----May the Holy Ghost, who was given to us in baptism, curse him' 'May the holy cross which Christ, for our salvation triumphing over his enemies, ascended, curse him.
'May the holy and eternal Virgin Mary, mother of God, curse him.---May St. Michael, the advocate of holy souls, curse him.---May all the angels and archangels, principalities and powers, and all the heavenly armies, curse him.'
'May St. John the Prae-cursor, and St. John the Baptist, and St. Peter and St. Paul, and St. Andrew, and all other Christ's apostles, together curse him. And may the rest of his disciples and four evangelists, who by their preaching converted the universal world, and may the holy and wonderful company of martyrs and confessors who by their holy works are found pleasing to God Almighty, curse him'
'May the holy choir of the holy virgins, who for the honour of Christ have despised the things of the world, damn him---May all the saints, who from the beginning of the world to everlasting ages are found to be beloved of God, damn him---May the heavens and earth, and all the holy things remaining therein, damn him,'
'May he be damn'd wherever he be---whether in the house or the stables, the garden or the field, or the highway, or in the path, or in the wood, or in the water, or in the church.---May he be cursed in living, in dying. May he be cursed in eating and drinking, in being hungry, in being thirsty, in fasting, in sleeping, in slumbering, in walking, in standing, in sitting, in lying, in working, in resting, in pissing, in shitting, and in blood-letting!
'May he be cursed in all the faculties of his body!
'May he be cursed inwardly and outwardly!---May he be cursed in the hair of his head!---May he be cursed in his brains, and in his vertex, in his temples, in his forehead, in his ears, in his eye-brows, in his cheeks, in his jaw-bones, in his nostrils, in his fore-teeth and grinders, in his lips, in his throat, in his shoulders, in his wrists, in his arms, in his hands, in his fingers!
'May he be damn'd in his mouth, in his breast, in his heart and purtenance, down to the very stomach!
'May he be cursed in his reins, and in his groin, in his thighs, in his genitals, in his hips, and in his knees, his legs, and feet, and toe-nails!
'May he be cursed in all the joints and articulations of the members, from the top of his head to the sole of his foot! May there be no soundness in him!
'May the son of the living God, with all the glory of his Majesty and the word itself.----By the golden beard of Jupiter---(and of Juno, if her majesty wore one) and by the beards of the rest of your heathen worships, which by the bye was no small number, since what with the beards of your celestial gods, and gods aerial and aquatic---to say nothing of the beards of town-gods and country-gods, or of the celestial goddesses your wives, or of the infernal goddesses your whores and concubines (that is in case they wore 'em)-----all which beards, as Varro tells me, upon his word and honour, when mustered up together, made no less than thirty thousand effective beards upon the pagan establishment;-----every beard of which claimed the rights and privileges of being stroken and sworn by---by all these beards together then----Curse him!' And may heaven, with all the powers which move therein, rise up against him, curse and damn him unless he repent and make satisfaction! Amen. So be it,---so be it. Amen.'
Tristram Shandy is one of the strangest books ever written, and unfortunately spawned a host of imitations of his style, when it seems to me that once was enough. The narrator/title character sets out to write his memoirs, and instead writes a nonsensical biographical fragment of over 600 pages, about his father and uncle. Roughtly two thirds of the book takes place on the day that Tristram is born, with Father and Uncle Toby drinking and having one nonsensical "learned discourse" after another in the main sitting room, with servants and doctors and parsons popping in and out to take part and Mom is in labor in the next room over. James Joyce was influenced by Sterne when he wrote a passage in Ulysses with similar carousing going on next door to a birth. In that scene, the book, if not the drunk medical students, pays more attention to what that poor woman in labor must be going through.
The rest of the book--all of it, really--is "stream of consciousness" writing, on purpose. Tristram writes the preface when he realizes that the book is half over and he hasn't done so yet, and then he leaves it write there in the middle. Same with the dedication later on. This does not strike me as funny, or educational. It just seems like a good deal of rambling. His stream of consciousness is also obsessed with a couple of childhood injuries that he has suffered to his "nose", by which he means another part of the male anatomy, which he won't shut up about, and which are only funny if you like slapstick injury "humor" or if you still giggle about "noses".
One critic called Sterne the English Rabelais. I adore Rabelais in the proper translation, and Tristram Shandy is nothing like Rabelais. Or maybe you have to be in the right mood. I did, after all, see fit to record that long, long curse quoted above, which I may well bring out in its entirety for the purpose of denouncing Internet trolls.
Find all of my previous Bookposts here: http://admnaismith.livejournal.com/tag/bookposts