"When instead of 'witches' we read 'women,' we gain a fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church on this portion of society"--Matil"When instead of 'witches' we read 'women,' we gain a fuller comprehension of the cruelties inflicted by the church on this portion of society"--Matilda Joslyn Gage, Woman, Church and State, 1893
I got this book out of the library because I was looking for any books in English translation by Spanish illustrator Laura Perez, whose Totem and Castaways I read recently and really liked. And the illustrations here are five stars, no question, the big attraction of the book. I had intended to just look at the illustrations but I was seduced by the attractive layouts, and because I know some tarot card reading wiccans, I actually did read it quickly and passed it on to them. It's the first of two books Perez illustrates in the Supernatural Sourcebook series, the second one about vampires.
I am not an expert on the vast subject matter this book introduces the general reader to, so I can't be seen as an adequate critic on any of the various topics, but as a first book for older children and young adults I thought it was entertaining and enlightening. Some folks in the country will be burning it, no doubt....more
“Gooseberries” (1898) by Anton Chekhov is the sixth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a “Gooseberries” (1898) by Anton Chekhov is the sixth Russian story featured in George Saunders’s master class book on writing and reading, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain. I am reading and reviewing each of the stories separately, and then “going to class” to see what Saunders--one of the greatest living short story writers and a great teacher--has to teach me about it.
I have read “Gooseberries” a few times in my life, but not recently, and as with any great work, it tells me different things every time I read it. It’s the middle story of the so-called Little Trilogy of 1898. On the surface it doesn’t seem like much happens. Two guys, Ivan, a veterinarian and Burkin, a high school teacher, are out hunting in the rain and need shelter, so they go to Alyohin’s house, where Pelagya is the housekeeper.
Ivan, as promised to Burkin, tells a story after Pelagya has served them drinks and food, and after Ivan has had a joyous swim in the pond in the rain: “‘By God!’ he kept repeating delightedly. “Lord have mercy on me!” Ivan’s story (within the story) is a tale of his brother Nikolay, a civil servant who has a lifelong dream of buying rural property and raising gooseberries on the land. He saves every miserly penny, over decades, and marries an old rich widow to the purpose, and when he has what he said he wants he gets fat, lazy (indolent), pretends he is powerful (of the gentry), wanting more and more money and power. Maybe we can say that gooseberries represent some kind of misguided idea of happiness, because it is never enough for him. Is he happy? Maybe. But is happiness enough?
In the telling of the story Ivan gets more and more agitated, and critical of the landed gentry (including now, his brother Nikolay) and their pompous, greedy ways. “Money, like vodka, can do strange things to a man.” Happiness? Well, Ivan thinks his brother Nikolay has a limited idea of happiness, but at the expense of the poor and needy. “. . . obviously the happy man is at ease only because the unhappy ones bear their burdens in silence.” Ivan goes on to say he thinks he can no longer be happy if others are unhappy. Forget happiness! Choose instead to do good! This moral opinion seems persuasive to me, or did, in earlier readings, but not to Burkin and Alyohin, who are bored by the story and just go to bed.
Years ago I thought the other two going to bed was just amusing, that they are just ignorant about the wisdom of Ivan’s story, but now I see they have other ideas, and in fact I think the story is far more complicated than I ever knew. I now think the story is a kind of meditation on happiness. Mikhail Bakhtin said the best stories could be cultural forums on societal issues, and I think this is true here. For instance; sure Ivan is right, on a certain level. But is not Ivan happy when he swims, and why not? What actually is happiness? And is it enough?
The two hunters, encountering the “lovely” Pelagya, encounter beauty, and they are happy in the moments they are with her. So maybe she helps to make Ivan's point, though he keeps accepting her service instead of asking her to join them, but this is 1898, folks. She is mainly an object of pleasure for the men, and she does all the work when the guests are there, so while she may in part seem to be happy herself, she’s also a servant paid to serve her “betters.” Are they happy at her (largely silent, underling) expense?
Maybe Burkin and Alyohin in dismissing Ivan's point help to reinforce it for us. But they are simple guys, happy in their work and in their eating and drinking. Sometimes "don't worry, be happy" isn't just an ignorant dismissal of the pain of the world. Anyway, I think it’s not a simple story or essay on one view of happiness; we get to think about it from a variety of ways, not just either-or.
PS: After reading the story, I read Saunders's (informal) lecture on the story. He recalls hearing his teacher Tobias Wolff read it aloud when he was first a grad student. Saunders claims that the best stories reveal 1) a "highly organized system" (which suggests a logical, comprehensive approach to the craft and 2) the work of intuition, something beyond explanation. Contradiction? His view is that if you follow your instincts the organization will lay itself out for you. But it's only your organization, since it could only be your story. And you have to hone your instincts to listen closely to your inner vibe, have to prioritize that. He admits elsewhere that writers may not be consciously aware of all the interlocking parts of their stories; but on some deeper level, the best stories reveal the author's tastes and preferences. But of course bad writers make bad choices, too, have bad instincts.
He tells us that Tolstoy thought Chekhov was a good writer and person but he needed to make clearer ideological commitments. But this is where Tolstoy sometimes got in trouble, pushing agendas in his weakest work. The strength of Chekhov is that he had no ideological agenda, he was exploring what it meant to be human.
PPS: The "beautiful" Pelagya is to Saunders both 1) evidence of Ivan's point about a silent underclass serving the upper classes' happiness and 2) evidence of happiness, of beauty. Is this a contradiction founded in patriarchy? You decide, because Chekhov ain't telling you, he's leaving it to your consideration. When Ivan and Burkin first see Pelagya they are sort of stunned by how lovely she is. Is this wrong of them to notice her beauty? Saunders says no. And I (a man, admittedly!) agree. But I don't agree every time I think of her. And that's good, and interesting, the power of story and ambiguity in story....more
“Things don’t have to be true to be true,” David says, (referring to the nature of literature).
I was increasingly engaged with each volume of J. M. Co“Things don’t have to be true to be true,” David says, (referring to the nature of literature).
I was increasingly engaged with each volume of J. M. Coetzee’s “Jesus Trilogy,” which only loosely is a reference to the historical Jesus Christ. A lot of readers seem to be baffled by it, and early on, this included me. And I still think there is more in it than I have fully grasped. I very much have admired the sort of Kafka-esque allegories Coetzee had written, including Waiting for the Barbarians and The Life and Times of Michael K, but I was unprepared for the tone of this one, which I still find somewhat elusive. And allusive--to Kafka, to Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, and Don Quixote; or rather, it is in conversation with these texts throughout.
The basics of the tale: On a refugee boat coming from who-knows-where and going to who-knows-where, Simon helps David--they have been given new names--a little boy who has become separate from his mother. In the new location, in a town named Novilla, Simon sort of adopts the boy, as he works as a stevedore. All those who have come to this place, where people speak Spanish, seem to have no memories of their previous lives. Simon is intent on getting the boy reunited with his mother, and in the process finds Ynes, whom he convinces is David’s “True Mother.” The three books encompass David’s childhood, schooldays and his death at the age of ten (no, not 33!).
Simon is kind of an intellectual, a philosopher, in the rational tradition, so when he encounters a kind of mystical/imaginative strain in David, he tries to “talk sense” into him, but David is strong-willed, resistant to suggestions. He needs an alternative to the public school system, so he can focus on dance and music, and where he can explore the spiritual properties of numbers with teachers that support this. Simon initially finds this wacky, but over time, he learns to see the world through David’s eyes.
Everyone sees David as “special,” as he teaches himself to read an illustrated edition of Don Quixote. Increasingly, he’s good at football and dancing. In the end, David is seen as having a message for the world, “the light of the world,” in Jesus fashion, and when he dies there seems to develop a following of his way of life. Dmitri, maybe reformed, calls David his “Master,” and calls himself David’s servant.
In the process of learning, David seems to connect to characters much like the ones whom we meet in The Brothers Karamazov--saintish Alyosha (deeply spiritual, deeply connected to David), but even more so to “bad” guys such as Dmitri, a sensualist, a killer, and Daga, who seems very shady. In the Bible, we learn that Jesus hung around with “lowlifes,” prostitutes, thieves, the poor and destitute and needy. David seems to connect with people the Bible or Christianity would call sinners, though in this book there seems to be no organized religion. When David encounters a school for orphans he wants to associate with them, join them, even though some seem to be bullies; he begins to tell everyone he is an orphan, and fundamentally, he is. For a time, he goes to the orphan school. What emerges in this book is that the “message” of David is pretty closely aligned with Don Quixote, a spiritually positive focus on saving people, healing, and kindness, but with some fanciful, even what most people might call weird ideas.
Coetzee’s way is spare, simple prose, almost monastic, without political commentary; Coetzee here is about morality and spirituality and the value of stories, which David increasingly tells and retells from Don Quixote. As Jesus tells parables. The book proceeds, too, as if people spoke in the form of Platonic dialogues, or as they do in Kafka or Dostoevsky, with emphasis on the philosophical or theological. The “dialogues” in the book are about love, parenting, work, justice, and redemption, among other things.
This book, I repeatedly have to say, is not historical fiction about Jesus, in spite of what the pretty straightforward titles suggest. Could it be the second coming? Not sure. Coetzee told an audience he originally wanted a blank cover and title page, but no one in book publishing could figure out how to do that.
I dunno, I have been thinking a lot about this book and recommending people check it out. Ultimately I guess it is mainly a book that protests an understanding of the Order of Things as rational. Even numbers are seen as more than measurement, more than a tool for practical works, but spiritual, connected to the stars. David keeps asking the question few people ask: ”Why am I here?" I was finally quite moved about it, not quite fully understanding it, as happens with the greatest of literature for me....more
“David is no ordinary boy. Believe me, I have watched him.”
I’ve never read anything quite like The Childhood of Jesus, recommended to me by my friend “David is no ordinary boy. Believe me, I have watched him.”
I’ve never read anything quite like The Childhood of Jesus, recommended to me by my friend G for several years. J. M. Coetzee was awarded the Nobel Prize in 2003, after having won two Man Booker Prizes, one in 1983 for The Life and Times of Michael K, and in 1999 for Disgrace, though I think his real masterpiece is Waiting for the Barbarians. There’s an allegorical quality for that book, and this is also so for The Childhood of Jesus (the first of a trilogy), though the tone is very different than in Barbarians.
The story is of an older (late-middle-aged?) man, Simon who, on a refugee ship, takes under his wing a young boy of five, David, who has apparently become separated from his parents. They meet Elena and Ines; Simon gets a job as a stevedore. I should say that this book is not really historical fiction about Jesus (of Nazareth), oddly enough, in spite of the title. Jesus is never mentioned; nor is religion, though spirituality is a central concern of the book, and I think we are led to consider David--which means “beloved of God” as resonating with the life of Jesus in ways, some of them playful, fanciful, cryptic, thoughtful:
*When they arrive in their new country, David asks “what are we here for?” as in the meaning of life. *David’s parentage is in question, as with Jesus (virgin birth? Joseph? Son of God?) *There’s a lot of philosophizing in this book (as in The Bible), specifically ideas about ethics, morality, with respect to relationships, such as parenting, the meaning of work, and so on. *David is a pacifist, non-violent, (though he learns to read and write largely on his own--a kind of savant--by reading a children’s illustrated version of Don Quixote, who was intent of rescuing folks in distress while brandishing a sword) *David says that he wants to save people--“I’m going to be a lifesaver;” he says he is an escape artist (as in the Lazarus story, or Jesus leaving his tomb after the Crucifixion). He says he wants to be a magician, too (water into wine might be seen by some as magic, though others will call this a miracle).
*Ines, David’s adoptive mother, calls David “the light of my life” as Jesus is sometimes referred to in The Bible
Some interesting aspects of the book:
*The specific country where all our refugees arrived is not specified, though they have to learn Spanish to live there. Where they came from and where they now are is not an important detail. *Another kind of allegorical or fantasy element is that they all seem to have lost their memories of their former country or countries. No explanation for that. So it’s a refugee story, where the past has to fade to assimilate in some respects into a new country or culture. Jesus was born on the road, in Bethlehem, and through his life he moves around, as David seems to do. *Numbers--mathematics, the philosophy of mathematics--figures in the book. Coetzee got degrees in both literature and mathematics. Most people’s understanding of math is that it is rational, objective: 2+2=4, but David thinks that numbers are not like that at all. Even the initially more conservative Simon comes to see that there may be ways to see that under some conditions 2+2 may equal 5, or whatever. In other words, rationality and objectivity are not necessarily the standard for knowledge and wisdom in the universe. This comes out in a consideration of David’s resistance to traditional schooling and what counts as “preparation” for life. David is a child of imagination and stories. A doctor advises Simon and Ines:
“As for his being special, let us set that question aside for the moment. Instead, let us all, the three of us, make an effort to see the world through his eyes, without imposing on him our ways of seeing the world.” Yes! If we could do that more in schools!
Overall, I think the book is an allegorical novel, a philosophical novel, not in many ways "realistic fiction" in a conventional sense. Much of the talk seems in some ways heightened, alwasy about ideas. The main ideas here seem to be about the struggle between a view of ethics as either one of rules and laws vs. one of spirit. Simon begins as a rules guy, and he remains principally a rationalist, but he begins to see the world through David’s spirit. It was very strange to read, but I took my sweet time with it. I see at a glance that a lot of people seem to have been bored with it, really hate it, and I get that--I have had to warm to it, and it's not at all a warm book--but I am liking it. That I am thinking about it all the time means something to me....more
"If only she had just remained quiet!"--one of the Church leaders before they all vote to allow her to be burned at the stake
I have read this play a f"If only she had just remained quiet!"--one of the Church leaders before they all vote to allow her to be burned at the stake
I have read this play a few times and seen this play performed in the stage and in film, but reread it because I am reading or rereading many of Shaw's great plays. And this is one of his four or five best, surely. It lacks the pontificating male I have this time around become so tired of hearing, but it features what we find in other plays, a strong woman character, a well-known name in the history of war, religion and feminism, Joan d' Arc, that the cynical and skeptical Shaw identifies as "Saint" Joan.
Joan comes from shepherd background, a farmer's girl, who hears voices that tell her she will lead the French Army to victory over the intruder British. So, "hearing voices" would connote, especially to atheists, insanity, schizophrenia, but not so Shaw or, of course, Catholics. Reviewer Manny notes that Joan nationalistically champions France over Britain, and even champions the army over the Catholic Church, as she--as if she were a Protestant--favors directives from God over directives from The Church.
Joan's a girl dressed as a male soldier, she chooses to fight instead of becoming a traditional wife and mother, she speaks up against older male authority figures (and she's usually right on matters military as well as faith), and these facts help to allow the males of The Church and France to have her to be burned at the stake.
A play in six scenes but I especially love the Epilogue, where we meet Joan and some of her detractors in the afterlife, Joan getting canonized four centuries later (which required The Church accepting a deep critique of itself, which it apparently takes a long time to do). I also love it that the skeptical Shaw endorses Joan as Saint and political leader and strong young woman. Beautifully written, undeniably moving, a classic....more
I am not alone in being a little mystified by what is going on in the "Jesus" trilogy by J. M. Coetzee, that opens with The Childhood of Jesus, but feI am not alone in being a little mystified by what is going on in the "Jesus" trilogy by J. M. Coetzee, that opens with The Childhood of Jesus, but features no character named Jesus in it, clearly not a historical fiction story of Jesus Christ. Though there are parallels one can make. It's a refugee story that brings three people--a boy, David; a middle-aged man, Simon, and Ines, a younger woman--together as a kind of adoptive family in a new land that is never named, where they speak Spanish, during a time that is also never named. The tale is largely told from the perspective of Simon, an intellectual and philosopher (though not by profession) who, like Simon Peter (one of the Twelve Apostles), is close to a young man, supporting him. The Apostle Peter's young man is named Jesus; Coetzee's Simon's young man is named David, who makes it clear that David is not his real name. This is actually true since they were all given new names when they arrived in their new country, but one begins to suspect that David just may be Jesus Christ, though he is never named as such.
The tale is a kind of spiritual and philosophical allegory, where Simon represents the skeptical and rational, and David represents the mystical. One site for the investigation of the nature of the universe is the province of numbers. Are numbers just useful for calculating, or are they somehow connected to the divine? David (and others) assume the latter position, and Simon assumes the former position. Also, Simon and Ines discuss, as many parents do, the nature of schooling. Simon wants for him to have traditional school skills such as reading and math, but (the resistant and headstrong) David seems to lean to something less traditional, let's say.
The threesome have--at the end of book one--traveled to Estrellia (which sounds suspiciously like the Australia where the author J. M. Coetzee lives! But I don't know what to make of that, though Coetzee did in fact emigrate there) and David is enrolled in a Dance Academy where he learns to "dance the numbers" (with a focus on prime numbers, it seems), something that Simon finds beautiful, but impractical, essentially nonsense. But Coetzee has degrees in both literature and mathematics, so as I see it, he sides with David that numbers (and knowledge in general) should be viewed as having more than merely practical dimensions to them. We who are readers understand that as a novelist Coetzee sides with the need for imagination in all learning.
In the process, the trio meets two characters in the town associated with the school and its faculty: Alyosha, a kind of saint-like person, who is especially good with young children, and Dmitri, who loves the head of the school, and might best be described as a sensualist. So I suddenly recall that the three brothers in The Brothers Karamazov, probably Fyodor Dostoevsky's greatest novel and probably J. M. Coetzee's favorite novel (and mine!), are Alyosha, Dmitri (who are very much like their namesakes in Dostoevsky's novel), and Ivan (who is also quite a bit like Simon in Coetzee's novel)! So now we know this is not only an allegorical novel about the nature of spirituality and the meaning of life but is also in conversation with The Brothers Karamazov (as was Coetzee's also great The Master of Petersburg). So, late career, Coetzee is grappling in this trilogy with what he understands to be the issues at heart in that book: What is truth? What is knowledge? What is love? What is family? What is goodness? What is morality? What is the place of the imagination in learning and life?
Just before writing this review, I read several relevant reviews of these Coetzee books and other books on mathematics by Goodreads reviewer Black Oxford to help me better understand the importance of numbers in this book, which I invite you to consult if you ever decide to read this trilogy.
In the end of this one, the skeptic Simon caves to David's desire to stay in the Academy of Dance, but to better understand David and his view of the world, he himself enrolls in classes there. This is something like what Ivan does in The Brothers Karamazov, in trying to understand his brothers. I begin to see that this is a remarkable trilogy....more
Teacher's Memories (spoilers, if you are reading, but you would not be surprised by anything, really)
Nagabe is a master of subtle gesture and pacing aTeacher's Memories (spoilers, if you are reading, but you would not be surprised by anything, really)
Nagabe is a master of subtle gesture and pacing and delicate line work, but if you were the slightest bit impatient about when things might actually be happening, this is the volume. So Shiva is a Child of Light and Teacher is/was a Cursed one, but her protector, and they have been pursued by the leader of the Church (something like the Pope). In this volume I was suddenly reminded of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series where something like The Catholic Church wants to take the souls of children.
So, to save Shiva's soul, Teacher reveals the depth of his love for her in giving up his own soul for her (which I know, sounds like the Biblical story of Christ's sacrifice on the cross), which results in the (gradual) loss of his memories, including his memories about her. It is anguishing to see Shiva realize this as she tears at her chest, wanting to remove what he has given to her. Then the Church captures her and takes her away, imprisons her. In this moment we see more than ever the love she has for him. In prison, someone, we know not who or why, gives her the Teacher's pocket watch, which has been inscribed to her. I think volume nine is available in English soon. Clearly, anyone reading volume eight will drop everything to find out how things proceed. In volume eight there are moments you will remember, for sure....more
“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made”—W. B. Yeats
Sometimes you travel to escape—to le“I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, and a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made”—W. B. Yeats
Sometimes you travel to escape—to leave your dull or anxiety-filled job to have raucous fun with others, or to be by yourself (and maybe a significant other), away from all that noise, traveling to explore “bucket-list” sites of incomparable beauty. This is the third “coffee-table” size book on the topic of travel I have been through in this house this winter, meant to inspire me to think in more “spiritual” terms of visiting places. Sometimes when I travel I like to be moved as much by the “inner” experience of being in a particular place as much as by the beauty and mystery of a place. Sometimes those two are linked, of course.
When you think about “spirit” in connection with travel you possibly think first of religious buildings and monuments, but some places of natural (or urban, say architectural) beauty I have experienced is imbued for me with a kind of spiritual (which is not necessarily to say religious or connected to a particular deity; I’m not religious) ambience; sometimes it could be a church, sure, but it could also be a historical setting. Sometimes it is a place of great power (say, a Yosemite waterfall) or one of deep tranquility (Grand Lake, in the Rocky Mountains, comes to mind at this moment or, if you yourself travel, name the first three places you can think of you have been touched by in some way).
This book features many gorgeously photographed sites accompanied by terrific writing (Therooux, Iyer, Michael Ondaatje, Alexander McCall-Smith) about 100 spiritual journies, including the prehistoric megaliths of Carnac in Brittany to the Buddhist temple-complex of Borobodur in Java, to the Confucian Temple of Heaven in Beijing. It’s inspiring, yep! I haven’t yet decided, but I am going someplace this summer and reporting back about it! Here’s some of the photographs, at least:
This is a National Public Radio podcast on How to Make Travel Meaningful with Pico Iyer and Paul Theroux (it’s about 30 minutes, which is a lot, but you know, if you are interested in making your travel meaningful . . . ):
I saw the 5th grade girl, L., reading this and asked her if she liked it and she said she loved it. I am not Catholic, I am no longer religious (and tI saw the 5th grade girl, L., reading this and asked her if she liked it and she said she loved it. I am not Catholic, I am no longer religious (and thus neither is she), but of course I have always know of the nun Agnes who took on the name Teresa. We are all in a sense "spiritual" (humanist, devoted to compassion and social justice) in this house, and this inspirational book is less about a particular religion than the story of one woman's lifelong commitment to serve the poorest of the poor in the slums of Calcutta. It's a more complicated story than this picture book lets on, maybe, but in this version Teresa became the adopting "mother" of many abandoned and sick children and an international icon who lived very very simply. It may be that she lived less simply than this story contends, but any person, religious or atheist, can find something to admire in that example.
I was reminded in the process of reviewing the book of Christopher Hitchens's account of Teresa, Missionary Position, which is really critical of this spiritual icon, which I will look into again to see if some of it is worth sharing with L.
The art in this picurebook is a little on the dark side, but is otherwise lovely, watercolored. ...more
The sequence of seasons naturally pushes forward, Suddenly I am startled by the ending of the year. Lifting my eyes I catch sight of the winter crows, CaThe sequence of seasons naturally pushes forward, Suddenly I am startled by the ending of the year. Lifting my eyes I catch sight of the winter crows, Calling mournfully as if wanting to complain. The sunlight is cold rather than gentle, Spreading over the four corners like a cloud. A cold wind blows fitfully in from the north, Its sad whistling filling courtyards and houses. Head raised, I gaze in the direction of Spring, But Spring pays no attention to me at all. Time a galloping colt glimpsed through a crack, The tap [of Death] at the door has its predestined time. How should I not know, one who has left the world, And for whom floating clouds are already familiar? In the garden there grows a rosary-plum tree: Whose sworn friendship makes it possible to endure. —Chan Master Jingnuo
Haiyin. We know very little about Haiyin, apart from the fact that she appears to have lived during the last part of the Tang dynasty and was associated with the Ciguang Convent in what is today Sichuan Province. Hers is the only poem attributed to a Buddhist nun (there are quite a few by Buddhist monks) among the over fifty thousand poems written by some two thousand poets included in the voluminous compendium of Tang poetry, The Complete Poetry of the Tang Dynasty.
The color of the water merges with that of the sky, The sound of the wind adds to that of the waves. The traveler’s thoughts of home are painful, The old fisherman’s dream-self is startled. Lifting his oars, the clouds get there before him, When his boat moves, the moon follows along. Although I’ve done reciting the lines of my poem, I can still see the hills extending in both directions.
Plum Blossom Nun. Little is known about this poet, but the poem is widely anthologized now.
The entire day I searched for spring but spring I could not find, In my straw sandals I tramped among the mountain peak clouds. Home again, smiling, I finger a sprig of fragrant plum blossom; Spring was right here on these branches in all of its glory!
This is an amazing collection edited and crafted by Beata Grant, a look into women Buddhist poets, long and still neglected. I read a bit of it each day for the last month, in the morning, as a kind of prayer or spiritual guide. Reading the poems and reading what Grant is able to find about the poets as individual writers is its own form of meditation, in solitude.
I will not give a detailed review of this wonderful book, but instead encourage you to read the incredible review of Rat de bibliothèque, who includes, as he often does, his reading of the book and in particular the poetry through stunning paintings with which he is familiar. A gift to us, his creative reviews!
“The world breaks everyone and afterwards, many are strong in the broken places.” –Hemingway (and this is the book’s epigram)
“This [Chicago] was a cit“The world breaks everyone and afterwards, many are strong in the broken places.” –Hemingway (and this is the book’s epigram)
“This [Chicago] was a city that beat inside me like blood.”-Wendy
(There might be a spoiler or two in here. I’ll try not to give too much away.) The author came to my YA class today; I know her and am a fan, but I also genuinely liked this book a lot. Jessie’s a former student in my teacher education program, and has been a high school English teacher for ten years. Her first book, The Carnival at Bray, which I loved, is set in Chicago and Bray, Ireland in the grunge rock nineties, and is a Printz Honor book. Neighborhood Girls is set only in Chicago, in a Catholic girls school in the Jefferson Park neighborhood on the north side, featuring Honors student Wendy Boychuck, who was named by her father after the Wendy in Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run.” The difficulty, which we learn about fairly early on, is that Wendy’s Dad, a former cop, is no longer living with the family; he’s in prison for his involvement in a torture case that echoes actual real events here.
Wendy seems like a canvas on which everyone adds their own paint. She’s not really that distinctive in her own right for much of the book, but after all, she is persona non grata, the daughter of a rogue cop. At one point one of her father’s victim’s daughter and a couple of guys beat her up, so she makes a decision to kind of leave her old life behind, make herself anew, choosing to leave her smart girl friends such as Alexis, and align herself with the mean popular girls in her small school, such as Kenzie, as a kind of protective mechanism. This aspect of the book feels to me fairly typical YA, about the need to make good and ethical choices. And Wendy, pretty passive, makes the wrong choices through a great majority of the book. She’s just us, she’s a normal girl faced with huge moral dilemmas about who and what she will align herself. As she says, “I’m not into anything. I mean, I’m into my schoolwork. Getting good grades. Getting a scholarship and getting the hell out of Chicago.” In order to truly grow up, Wendy (like Peter Pan’s Wendy) must be her own person, think and feel for herself, and Do the Right Thing, though: “The right thing is always the hardest thing.”
The thing that sings in the book for me is what sings in Bray, the great and distinctive writing of Foley that makes Chicago come alive. And it’s ultimately a kind of spiritual book, maybe even a Catholic one, though not super religious. I just read another Catholic one, The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene, which depicts a flawed priest who is forced to strip off the vestments of his material and religious life, to take on the cloak of humility, in order to get to the core of important spiritual values. This book is like that. Wendy, who uses popularity and a group of mean girls as her shield, must find another shield, her own moral commitments, signified by a tattoo of Our Lady of Lourdes, an image of which was also painted by her mother and is hung just above her locker. In this way Wendy aligns herself with her family and the aspects of religious tradition that make sense to her spiritually. Though she also aligns herself with her new age, Millennium Park Chicago-area Aunt Kathy, who hunts ghosts in old Chicago places. She’s painting herself anew using her own distinctive colors; not her Mom or Dad or anyone else.
There’s a range of belief here: the painting of Our Lady is known to have wept, after the death of a couple of Kathy’s friends, which is either a miracle or the runoff from a leaky air conditioner, you choose. What are your talismans, where are the emblems of your commitments? Her Dad, in prison, learns to paint. Aunt Kathy takes Wendy to the Chicago Art Institute. Alexis is a classical violinist. What kind of art will Wendy align herself with? Thanks to a boy, Tino, who becomes a love interest, who sports two tattoos, one of Michael Jordan, the other of Shakespeare, it increasingly becomes literature, and especially a book Tino gives her, Chicagoan Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms, a romance that features a young (and pretty superficial) guy who changes profoundly when he falls in love.
Neighborhood Girls features lots of references to literature I appreciated: Pride and Prejudice, Othello, (Chicago’s) Native Son. Judas, Iago, figure in. I also laughed aloud several times, especially at the references to bodies, and the sometimes edgy language. I loved it as a Chicago book—“jagoff” is a Chicago word I learned when I moved here—and I love it that it features A Farewell to Arms, one of my favorite books. I like the fact that most of the characters speak like real people. I like the fact that it is a book about morality, religion, spirituality, a contemplation about the nature of belief, superstition, and even miracles—“Kissing is a miracle”—and redemption. I like the feel of the school in the book from teacher Foley. I like that activist nun Sister Dorothy and the teacher I see in the author Foley.
I like all the fun (and serious thought) she has with weeping paintings, which is a long Chicago tradition:
This book does not focus on race, but it would be a good book to read in conjunction with The Hate U Give, which I also just read with my YA class and reviewed, and which also features a kind of suburban-urban class struggle with moral choices....more
“The mind poet stays in the house / the house is empty and it has no walls / the poem is seen from all sides / everywhere / at once.”—Gary Snyder
Gary“The mind poet stays in the house / the house is empty and it has no walls / the poem is seen from all sides / everywhere / at once.”—Gary Snyder
Gary Snyder is a Pulitzer award winning American poet, environmental activist, deep ecologist, Buddhism—and maybe particular Zen--scholar. This is a book that represents a relationship of over thirty years between Snyder and Julia Martin, A south African writer and literary scholar. Julia first writes to him as a graduate student in 1983 with some questions. She remains a kind of neophyte, a sort of disciple, throughout their relationship, focused as she is on her questions more than his questions, but there is a developjng warmth between them that actuals models some of the principles of relationship and community that he brings to Buddhist practice.
I actually am interested in some of Martin’s questions, too. Like me, she’s an activist, and wants to see how Snyder’s Buddhism contributes to his activism. I didn’t become a Buddhist in part because I thought of it as more about inner life than anything else.
I am not really a scholar of Buddhism. I read this because I love Snyder’s poetry, his sensibilities and commitments and because I was reading it with my friend J, a Buddhist and a poet. But I did learn from him:
“What I like most about Buddhism is its fearlessness. So much of what warps people is fear of death and fear of impermanence. So much of what we do is simply strategies to try and hold back death, trying to buy time with material things. So at its best Buddhism provides people with a way of seeing their own frailty: You need less in the way of material objects and fortresses around yourself.”
“Walking in the mountain wildernesses & in the depths of great cities is my meditation & angle of approach to the times right now.”
“We study the self to forget the self. When we forget the self, we encounter all phenomenon.”
Snyder thinks one way we can speak to the “present moment” is to stay in one place and develop a relationship with that place, the environment of that place. He thinks Buddhism (vs Christianity) offers a non-dualistic approach to the world that is more generous and productive and open.
The book is comprised of two sections: interviews—three of them—and a series of letter exchanges. The second and third interviews are the best part of the book, and the letter exchanges the least interesting. I prefer letters between Snyder and people whose work I know, such as Wendell Berry and Jim Harrison, people who are more his equals. I prefer reading Snyder’s poetry, naturally, and every time either of them quote from the poems I am all over those moments. The sense of time through which Snyder sees the world is so expansive, so unafraid and powerful and warm, but compared to some of his other books, I thought this was just good, not great. Read the poems! ...more
I read this because my friend Jenn said she was reading it. Last year I read Anna Karenina (which I loved) and decades ago I had read War and Peace anI read this because my friend Jenn said she was reading it. Last year I read Anna Karenina (which I loved) and decades ago I had read War and Peace and some of his terrific stories such as "The Death of Ivan Ilych", but I had never read this piece. I think of myself as an agnostic, brought up in a conservative Dutch Calvinist religion, and once taught Bible in a Christian school, so I am familiar with and have read theology and am always exploring spiritual issues in my reading, one way or the other.
That said, I was not blown away by this book. I felt I knew some of it through my own experience. The book is called a "confession" because it is a story of the spiritual struggles, in his fifties, that led him to the brink of suicide. So the first half of the book is dark and challenging. Spoiler alert: he does not commit suicide, of course--he says he was not "courageous" enough to go through with it--but instead comes to a fresher vision of faith he can embrace, one that is simpler, more connected to the lower classes he over time came to admire (and you can see that in Anna Karenina), a simple faith he sees reflected in the farmers and serfs. In contrast, he denounces the upper classes he came from (and still was technically part of as a pretty wealthy landowner) and the followers of the religion in which he was raised, Russian Orthodoxy, because of what he sees as their cynicism, consumerism, and hypocrisy.
The text is simple, straightforward, and very short, especially for Tolstoy. This is a small book format for a pretty short essay which is more like a letter to the members of his religious "circle" and fellow upper class people. He denounces them and romanticizes the lower classes. I guess the pattern for the essays owes something to Augustine's Confessions: I was a terrible and lost sinner, I committed all the sins you can think of, and now I know better. He does confess a few specific sins in the first half of the book.
Tolstoy as he got older got more devout, and more entrenched in his own kind of orthodoxy, maybe, with simpler, more Buddhist leanings, more existentialist than typically Christian approaches. Out of these views he wrote his last novel Resurrection, which I recall being pretty didactic. I liked Anna Karenina, the last of his books that represents real complexity and doubt and struggle. This "Confession" makes it clear that he has now "arrived" at some truths. I prefer the doubting Tolstoy, and his contemporary also doubting Fyodor Dostoevsky's anguished spiritual exploration, The Brothers Karamazov. But Confession helped Tolstoy gain thousands of followers, all the way to his death, who saw him as a spiritual leader, so it is seen as kind of a spiritual classic. And Tolstoy, it should come as no surprise, is a great writer, so that in itself is a pleasure....more
Maybe admirable but barely comprehensible utopiaThe Cartoon Utopia.
Seriously crazy.
Completely unique.
Amazingly and often dizzingly detailed artwork.
Maybe admirable but barely comprehensible utopian vision for how to save the universe and achieve ecological harmony and world peace.
The poet and artist and spiritual mystic William Blake gets quoted in Regé’s book, and because, of the spiritual guides he cites, I know (and love and am often mystified by) Blake best, I will say this reminds me of the most out-there ideas of William Blake. Though not like Blake’s artwork, except in the sense that it expresses an unconventional spiritual vision.
Regé tells us in an interview (see below) that there are a lot of artists who were or have been attending lectures in the LA area on alchemy. Alchemy is the medieval chemical science and speculative philosophy whose aims were the transmutation of the base metals into gold, the discovery of a universal cure for diseases, and the discovery of a means of indefinitely prolonging life. So alchemy figures into this vision, and theosophy, and magic, and the occult, and the visual arts, using comics to envision the future. Is this reminding anyone so far of Alan Moore at his craziest and most utopian, as in Promethea? Exactly.
I can’t imagine there are a thousand people in the world that would read this all the way through and engage seriously with its philosophy of the universe, but hey, no judging here on your chosen spiritual quest, go for it. It’s difficult, and mostly shared (verbally, at least) in the forms of zen koan-like aphorisms. Which are hard to read, based on his crazy unique (obscure) lettering style. But still, I like Blake, I like crazy visionaries, and I took a few days poring over this and once in a while showing the amazing art work to anyone I could. But of course they all thought I had dropped acid (with the author) just to read it.
The oversized volume is not a neat layout of the Cartoon Utopian vision but glimpses, fragments, a kind of journal versus a step by step statement of beliefs. Think vision, in part communicated through the visual, of course. Maybe that's the primary medium for communicating the philosophy.
However, the cartooning, while remarkable, is also difficult to decipher at times, and it can give you a headache, even as you admire it on some level. Feels psychedelic, as I referenced above, in many ways, and this may be deliberate. Maybe in part because it is in black and white and obsessively detailed. And so mystical and non-narrative, lyrical. An homage to Blake's drawings in places, too.
The Holy Bible sayeth, many are called but few are chosen. I would say you have to be one of the chosen few to embrace this difficult work. You have to be in his cult, I think!
But seriously, the art is amazing, I would give it five stars for the achievement of it. You have to support ambition this grandiose, even if you don’t love it in other respects. You just have to. There’s so much assembly line crap out there, even in comics. Well, MOST of comics, admit it.
And I liked Goodreads reviewer Jason’s idea of the book as an adult comics coloring book. It would be a way we might take it a little less all-fired seriously. I bet Regé would like this idea, he definitely likes to have fun with his art, to, so I am glad I mentioned this fun part, after all the world peace wackiness.
I mean, yes, this is California, where the environment is crashing and burning. This is a global holistic crisis and it requires drastic measures. So I appreciate some unconventional vision!! I mean, I am old enough to recall singing (from Hair!) “The Age of Aquarius” with The Fifth Dimension with some of y’all hippies! Peace out!
So, as to utopias: There's Blake. And the mystical Yeats. And Thomas More’s Utopia. And religion in general. I grew up in a conservative religious community and we might consider religions as utopias, ways the world can be whole. And I left that conservative religion because it didn't serve my needs, was more Calvinistically dystopian (total depravity as its foundation) quite. But is Rege’s vision the one to follow? I disrespect no one’s Grand Theory of the universe. But this one’s not for me.
One thing Regé admits that keeps me in his game: Set aside for a moment his unusual, maybe even at times funny, vision of the world and you can just see he is about the joy of comics. And as an artist he is a true wonder, and original, and passionate about his art. You gotta give him that.
Here's Regé on Tumblr, so you can see some of us his stuff:
Experimental work focused on eighteen people told in eighteen panels on every facing two pages (two 9 panel pages). One theme or Happy Ray Fawkes Day.
Experimental work focused on eighteen people told in eighteen panels on every facing two pages (two 9 panel pages). One theme or motif works its way through all the stories. The concept is interesting and maybe even is hard to criticize something so technically ambitious, but it didn't move me and a book about the soul really intends to do that. The artwork isn't as sharp as I would have liked it. The characterization isn't as sharp as I would like it. The stories seem a little distant to me. It's a concept and an experiment and must have some deep emotional relevance for the artist, I'm sure, through the "one soul" concept, a point about our underlying interconnections, but on the whole, I was not connected to those connections....more
The conclusion of humanist Tezuka's manga Buddha saga, and it does not disappoint, with lots of dramatic and surprising turns (there's a lot Buddha haThe conclusion of humanist Tezuka's manga Buddha saga, and it does not disappoint, with lots of dramatic and surprising turns (there's a lot Buddha had to face in the last years, terrible tragedies that made him question his faith, for instance), but much enlightenment for the reader, finally. I've said a lot about previous volumes, so won't say much here, except maybe to remark that this particular religion is very stripped down to a few simple principles. Remember: all things are connected. Seems sort of relevant now, yes? Treat all living beings, treat the planet as you would want to be treated, with empathy, caring, love. Some thoughts on death/karma come up in this one… and humor, always, proves necessary in the context of such a serious subject; he never forgets that (and always is just crossing the line of manga silliness for me at times)... I like his meta-commentary through out the volumes, little moments where he talks of himself or manga... funny light touches... Great series of books, incredibly ambitious in its scope and artistic vision. Masterpiece....more
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