reading | dual personalities

September 20, 2014

“The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready…”

by chuckofish

While it’s true that the internet abounds with unnecessary top-ten lists, they persist because they are fun and cause us to reflect a little as we compose our own. Recently I came across one that inspired me to think about the books that influenced me most — the ones that, to finish the quote above, “have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.” So here they are — hopefully without repeating too much from earlier posts about books — in no particular order.

1. I don’t know how or why my parents (or was it my brother?) had a copy of this book, but as soon as I opened it, I was smitten. In many ways, this book inspired me to become an Assyriologist. I still have it.

2. I’ve blogged about Seven Pillars before, so won’t add too much here. Suffice it to say that reading this just added to my fascination with the Near East, which was, after all, so much more exotic than St. Louis. And besides, camel-riding sounded like it would be fun.

3. My fourth grade Sunday school teacher was Mrs. Roeder, whom I revered. She was beautiful and oh, so kind. She made me want to go to church and that was also the year we received our Bibles. I read all of the Gospels. It kind of freaked me out (more than once I figured I was headed to hell), but it had a big impact.

4. Sometimes when I couldn’t decide what to read or just didn’t feel like undertaking a whole book, I would just dip into the Oxford Book of English Verse or its American counterpart. Thus, I not only became acquainted with the major poets, but developed some taste (of a decidedly adolescent nature I’m sure, but taste nonetheless).

5. Sometimes I didn’t feel like reading at all, so I just looked at pictures. That’s probably why I picked up the Assyrian Art book in the first place. Looking at pictures gave me an appreciation of art and an abiding love of buildings, especially ruined ones. The last book my mother ever gave me (birthday 1987) was a book on the Chateau of the Loire Valley. She always knew what I would love.

There are many books I’ve discussed in other posts and still more I should mention, but I think I’ll stop here for now. I hope that you will reflect a little on your own reading history and then share your top most influential books in a comment.

Enjoy your weekend!

7 Comments

August 4, 2014

The very top of summer

by chuckofish

“The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot. It is curiously silent, too, with blank white dawns and glaring noons, and sunsets smeared with too much color.”

–Natalie Babbitt, Tuck Everlasting

How was your weekend? Mine went super fast, starting with my Friday night when, after an exhausting day, I sat down to watch Cat Ballou and promptly fell asleep. No great loss, but there went my Friday night!

Saturday I went to a baby shower-(!)-given by the friend of the first soon-to-be-a-grandma of my friends.

Time marches on–relentlessly.

I watched a good documentary about the Ghost Army in WWII suggested by my dual personality.

The documentary tells about a 1944 secret U.S. Army unit that was set up in order to misdirect the Nazis. The weapons used included inflatable tanks and specially made sound effects records. Their mission was to use deceit to fool the enemy into thinking there were troops where there were none. It worked to an amazing degree. Fascinating!

I worked on my DIY project in an upstairs bathroom–removing wallpaper and glue. The worst. My career as a hand model is officially over.

I continued to read about Ned Kelly and started a memoir of a pioneer Presbyterian minister who established the first protestant church on the western slope (in Lake City, CO).

Ned Kelly, as portrayed by the wonderful Peter Carey is an engaging enough character, but the rest of the Australian population, in particular the Irish element, are rather dreadful. I will persevere because Carey writes so well. Unfortunately we all know it will end badly for our anti-hero and there is nothing Kelly can do about it. Oh well.

The Rev. George Darley was truly an amazing man. He ministers to his flock, leads temperance meetings, raises money, conducts funerals for all sorts of characters, and treks back and forth over the San Juan mountains in all kinds of terrible weather. And he has a sense of humor:

“Before going far my swearing acquaintance seemed disposed to enliven the hard ride of almost sixty miles by having some fun at ‘the Parson’s’ expense. He finally called out: ‘Parson, this is not the road to heaven.’ Being already loaded, I answered: ‘No, but there are plenty of such men as you on like trails going to hell, and I am doing what I can to save them.’ That ended his attempts to have fun at the ‘Parson’s’ expense.”

Have a great week!

6 Comments

July 31, 2014

I look down deep and do believe

by chuckofish

Moby Dick by Rockwell Kent

(Ahab) “Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,–though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,–in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of life immortal in them. Would to God these blessed calms would last. But the mingled, mingling threads of life are woven by warp and woff; calms crossed by storms, a storm for every calm. There is no stead unretracing progress in this life; we do not advance through fixed graduations, and at the last one pause:–through infancy’s unconscious spell, boyhood’s thoughtless faith, adolescence’s doubt (the common doom), then skepticism, then disbelief, resting at last in manhood’s pondering repose of If. But once gone through, we trace the round again; and are infants, boys, and men, and Ifs eternally. Where lies the final harbor, whence we unmoor no more? In what rapt ether sails the world, of which the weariest will never weary? Where is the foundling’s father hidden? Our souls are like those orphans whose unwedded mothers die in bearing them: the secret of our paternity lies in their grave, and we must there to learn it.”

And the same day, too, gazing far down from his boat’s side into that same golden sea. Starbuck lowly murmured:–“Loveliness unfathomable, as ever lover saw in his young bride’s eye!–Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks, and thy kidnapping cannibal ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust memory; I look deep down and do believe.”

Tomorrow is Herman Melville’s birthday, so take a break today and read some Moby-Dick!

6 Comments

July 16, 2014

What are you reading?

by chuckofish

Once again I found myself casting about for something to read over the weekend. I picked Susan Cheever’s memoir of her father John Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) from the bookshelf. I received it as a Christmas present in 1984.

So I have been reading Home Before Dark again and enjoying it very much. Old John Cheever, the “influential twentieth century fiction writer affectionately known as ‘the Chekhov of the suburbs,'” is such a familiar type of dude to me–the waspy, literate Yankee gentleman who is also a terrible alcoholic.

I mean look at him in his shetland sweater. He was even a practicing Episcopalian who said grace before every meal! So familiar. Like my own pater, he made to age 70, but just barely.

It’s true that this “brilliant chronicler of American suburbia” led a tortured double life filled with sexual guilt, self-loathing and immense quantities of booze. Unfortunately his bad behavior went way beyond drinking too much. But I really think Susan Cheever could have stopped after writing her first memoir. Did she need to write another? Cheever’s son Ben has edited a collection of his letters. And they sold his journals in an auction. He has been turned inside out. Does anyone deserve this?

Anyway, I bought a used copy of The Stories of John Cheever and I will re-acquaint myself with his writing, which is what we should remember old Cheever for, right? I will resist reading Blake Baily’s 700-page Cheever: A Life which chronicles every sordid detail and secret of his life. Enough already.

An aged man is but a paltry thing, a tattered coat upon a stick, unless he sees the bright plumage of the bird called courage–Cardinalis virginius, in this case–and oh how his heart leapt.

–John Cheever, Oh What a Paradise it Seems

3 Comments

June 5, 2014

“This must be Thursday,’ said Arthur to himself, sinking low over his beer. ‘I never could get the hang of Thursdays.”*

by chuckofish

I am a bit confused about what day it is. After a week away from the office, the amount of emails and phone messages and out-of-context requests is daunting. You know how it is.

Anyway, I was pleased to find out that today is the birthday of Richard McClure Scarry (June 5, 1919 – April 30, 1994), illustrator extraordinaire and children’s book author.

I loved his books when I was growing up and collected them long after I was considered to be of an appropriate age to read them.

I am not alone in this. Scarry is arguably the most popular children’s book author of all time. In a career that spanned four decades, he wrote and illustrated more than three hundred books and it is estimated that he has sold more than 200 million copies in over twenty languages. Scarry is most famous for writing a series of books about Busytown, a fictional town populated with a variety of anthropomorphic animals. Some of the main characters include Huckle Cat, Lowly Worm, Bananas Gorilla, Hilda Hippo, and Farmer Fox.

The great thing about his books is that they can be read over and over and studied and enjoyed.

The boy reading about Busytown

Well, his books have been very successful and to some of us they are timeless, but, of course, they had to be “updated” to make them more politically and gender correct.

According to Wikipedia, characters in “cowboy” or “indian” costumes were either removed or given nondescript clothing. Moral and religious elements were altered or removed, and wording like “he comes promptly when called to his breakfast” was changed to “he goes to the kitchen to eat his breakfast”. And so on and so on.

Oh gee whiz.

Dated maybe, but offensive? Discuss amongst yourselves.

*Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

4 Comments

May 23, 2014

Happy Friday–like the blast of a trumpet!

by chuckofish

This Friday has been a long time coming–what a long week! But we have a three-day weekend coming up, so it’s all good.

FYI May has been a big month for birthdays already and this weekend we have two more favorites: Bob Dylan (May 24) on Saturday

and Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25) on Sunday!

Those are two great reasons to celebrate this weekend! One good way to do so would be to re-read Self Reliance, which I have been meaning to do–how about you?

“Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self Reliance

Another way would be to watch No Direction Home (2005)–a film chronicle of Bob Dylan’s evolution between 1961 and 1966 from folk singer to rock star. Directed by Martin Scorsese, it uses archival footage and recent interviews to tell the story of the illusive Bob, who refuses “to be simplified, classified, categorized, or finalized”. And why should he be? He is, like Emerson and those other guys mentioned above, a “pure and wise spirit,” both great and misunderstood.

Dylan and Emerson are certainly on the same page. Here’s Bob:

‘Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do the things that only you know best
Trust yourself
Trust yourself to do what’s right and not be second-guessed
Don’t trust me to show you beauty
When beauty may only turn to rust
If you need somebody you can trust, trust yourself’

How Emersonian can you get?

So enjoy your weekend and trust yourself. Eat cake.

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May 13, 2014

“Dead men tell no tales, Mary.”*

by chuckofish

“He took her face in his hands and kissed it, and she saw that he was laughing. “When you’re an old maid in mittens down at Helford, you’ll remember that,” he said, “and it will have to last you to the end of your days. ‘He stole horses,’ you’ll say to yourself, ‘and he didn’t care for women; and but for my pride I’d have been with him now.”

― Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn

Happy birthday to Dame Daphne du Maurier (13 May 1907 – 19 April 1989)!

According to IMDB, “Daphne Du Maurier was one of the most popular English writers of the 20th Century, when middle-brow genre fiction was accorded a higher level of respect in a more broadly literate age. For her services to literature, she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1969, the female equivalent of a knighthood.” In other words, they don’t write them like she did anymore.

Yes, it may be time to dust off Jamaica Inn or Frenchman’s Creek. I wish they would do justice to her books on film, but I haven’t seen any that really come close to her prose power. The Birds maybe. I must say, they keep trying. Check out all the versions here.

*Jamaica Inn, of course

6 Comments

April 28, 2014

Oh me of little faith*

by chuckofish

Then the same day at evening, being the first day of the week, when the doors were shut where the disciples were assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the midst, and saith unto them, Peace be unto you.

John 20:19

This Sunday’s Gospel reading was the scripture where Jesus does not bother to use the door which is locked anyway. He just appears to 10 of the remaining 11 disciples. This is mentioned very casually. No one really makes a big deal of it. Because they don’t, one thinks it is probably just what happened. At least I think so.

The disciples, huddled in their locked room after everything that has happened, are both afraid and ashamed of their fear and their behavior in general. We should try to remember the disciples when we are fearful and anxious. They were not paragons of strength. Far from it. Some of them were not even very smart. (Think of Peter.) They were just like us. After this visit from Jesus, however, when he breathes on them and they receive the Holy Spirit, they seem to have gotten their collective acts together. It took a second visit for Thomas, because he missed the first and refused to believe without “touching and seeing”.

Jesus says, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.”

We all have our doubts, and that’s okay. Doubts, Frederick Buechner says, are “the ants in the pants of faith. They keep it awake and moving.”

Well, my mind wandered during the sermon on this scripture, but this is what I was thinking.

Meanwhile this weekend I enjoyed the spring weather by working in the yard. I also went on a birthday outing with my best Grace girlfriends. Our fearless leader and party planner Carla reasoned that, because we never have room for dessert when we go out to lunch, we should just go out for dessert. Brilliant! So we ventured downtown to a place famous for its ice cream concoctions and had sundaes. When was the last time you had a sundae? I cannot begin to remember when that was. It really was a treat.

Art Deco walls at the “Fountain”

We also went to the main branch of the downtown library which has been recently renovated.

Notice the 250th birthday cake in front and the spire barely visible behind of our Episcopal Cathedral

Notice the 250th birthday cake in front and the spire of our Episcopal Cathedral barely visible behind the library.

Intrepid explorers that we are, we had a super fun time.

I also re-read “The Snow Goose” a very short novella by Paul Gallico about a lonely hunchbacked artist who participates in the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 and the snow goose that watches over him. It gave me chills.

If you are looking for something to pick up and read at one sitting, I highly recommend this marvelous book.

Have a good week!

* Nickle Creek

2 Comments

April 17, 2014

Everything was blazing

by chuckofish

…Everything was blazing, everything was sweet. They were playing old Bob Dylan, more than perfect for narrow Village streets close to Christmas and the snow whirling down in big feathery flakes, the kind of winter where you want to be walking down a city street with your arm around a girl like on the old record cover–because Pippa was exactly that girl, not the prettiest, but the no-makeup and kind of ordinary-looking girl he’d chosen to be happy with, and in fact that picture was an ideal of happiness in its way, the hike of his shoulders and the slightly embarrassed quality of her smile, that open-ended look like they might just wander off anywhere they wanted together, and–there she was! her! and she was talking to herself, affectionate and old-shoe, asking me about Hobie and the shop and my spirits and what I was reading and what I was listening to, lots and lots of questions…

–Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

Okay, I have finally finished this magnum opus and I have to say I liked it. I think it is overly long and could have used some tightening up. At times I wanted to tell ol’ Boris to shut the hell up, but, you know, he was a talker. I have heard some blog-grumbling about the end of the novel. Personally–spoiler alert–I was relieved to have it work out the way it did. And I think the last twenty pages were worth waiting for.

I guess they are making a movie. I’m sure it will be awful. Sigh.

3 Comments

March 28, 2014

The weekend approacheth

by chuckofish

Well, this time last week I was going out to dinner with cute boys and hanging out with daughter #2. This week it has been back to the salt mines for me as usual. Work, work, work.

One bright spot was going to my first lacrosse game of the season.

The boy’s Varsity Hounds creamed his old high school team 15-3.

It was kind of weird sitting in the KHS football stadium cheering for the “visitors”. It was also quite cold! Once it started to get dark, I had to bail and go home even with my winter coat and a Bean’s wool blanket to sit on.

At home I am keeping my spirits up with these pretty flowers–and, yes, the Christmas Cactus is blooming again.

On the reading front, having finished Peter Carey’s wonderful Olivier and Parrot, I started reading The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and I am hooked. The book, which took more than 10 years to write, is narrated by Theo Decker, a 13-year-old New York boy whose world is violently disrupted during a routine visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his mother. A terrorist bomb explodes, killing Theo’s mother and other innocents, including a man who, just before dying, implores Theo to take “The Goldfinch” out of the smoking wreckage of the museum. I have not read Tartt’s other two books, but I am impressed. We’ll see if she holds me for 700 pages. I plan to find out this weekend.

Have a great weekend!

8 Comments

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