William Makepeace Thackeray--The Book of Snobs (1846-7)

This was a bit of a strange choice for the list. While Thackeray was, and still is to some extent, one of the most prominent Victorian novelists (two of his other books are also on this program), this book, a collection of comic pieces written for the legendary Punch magazine, has not, judging by what is available for sale on the used book websites, been reprinted much going back to about 1900. My copy of the book is a 1999 edition put out (in English) by a German publishing house, Konemann, based out of Cologne. The IWE, in its characteristic enigmatic fashion, promotes the selection by observing that "Thackeray enjoyed writing humor and fancied himself as a humorist but was not so good in the field as he supposed. The Book of Snobs is his best humorous writing but is not in a class with his novels." There is some truth in this critique--Thackeray did not have the extreme natural talent for humor of a Dickens or a Fielding and at times he is noticeably straining for an effect more than would be evident in those other writers--but this book really is quite funny, if somewhat repetitive, it has considerable value as an unusually informal portrait by a top rank writer of the society of the time, and it has the benefit as well of being relatively unknown and not beaten to death through being manhandled by everybody in the Western world with a humanities degree. It also calls to mind the great periodical writings of the 18th century, The Spectator (which for better or worse was the impetus for me to start blogging), The Tatler, The Rambler, and so on, which rank among the most enjoyable things I have ever read. So I liked this a lot, though it is not without some problems which must be acknowledged.

Even though he denounces American slavery several times, he uses the "n"-word every time he refers to people who are dark-skinned, whether they are American slaves, or Othello. It's his default word for black people. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why the book is generally always out of print. There is also a brief reference to Disraeli and Sir Robert Peel, the Prime Minister at the time who was of the opposite party, which is innocuous enough to read if you are not aware of the house politics of Punch, but there is a footnote which explains that "there were campaigns at the time to remove disabilities on Jews, but Punch was far from sharing this liberal opinion..." It should also be noted that this book contains illustrations drawn by Thackeray himself, and in the same footnote regarding this Disraeli item, it states that "Thackeray added one of his more regrettable illustrations to this item (not reproduced in the present edition)."

p. 86 One more rather insensitive section to take note of (it is The Book of Snobs after all). From the chapter 'A Little About Irish Snobs": "I think the shams of Ireland are more outrageous than those of any country. A fellow shows you a hill and says, 'That's the highest mountain in all Ireland;" or a gentleman tells you he is descended from Brian Boroo, and has his five-and-thirty hundred a year...or ould Dan rises and says the Irish women are the loveliest (ed--there is a case to be made that this is true), the Irish men the bravest, the Irish land the most fertile in the world: and nobody believes anybody." The shots at Ireland seem a little cruel considering that the country was enduring mass starvation and depopulation at the very time this was being written. But I have noted a similar indifference to this crisis in other famous English writers of this period, Ruskin, etc. 

p. 150 On visiting the country: "Do you suppose that an agreeable young dog, who shall be nameless (ed--he is peaking of himself), would not be made welcome? Don't you know that people are too glad to see anybody in the country?"

p. 155-6 In an interlude characteristic of the Spectator, the author publishes a charming letter which he claims came from a girl in the north of England asking him whether she might be a snob or not. It contains a number of nice details about how the family always got the magazine on Sunday and would tear it open in the carriage on the way home from church and that sort of thing.

p. 162 Referring to an episode in a popular society novel of the era called Ten Thousand a Year, about a gentleman who has experienced a decline in his fortunes: "It is about seven o'clock, carriages are rattling about, knockers are thundering, and tears bedim the fine eyes of Kate and Mrs Aubrey as they think that in happier times at this hour--their Aubrey used formerly to go out to dinner to the houses of the aristocracy his friends. This is the gist of the passage...What can be more sublime than the notion of a great man's relatives in tears about his dinner?"  

p. 163 The great Mr Goldmore, the East India Director, on hearing that a friend had had dinner at the house of a lawyer acquaintance of theirs who was known to have no practice: "'What! Do they give dinners?' He seemed to think it a crime and a wonder that such people should dine at all, and that it was their custom to huddle round their kitchen-fire over a bone and a crust."

"Snob" by the way is not exclusively used in the book in the manner in which we use it, but it refers to everyone who buys into any of these absurd value systems and social customs, even if one is himself is not in a position where he is benefiting from them. 

p. 202 On poor Mr Sackville Maine, who sounds like me: "He agreed in everything everybody said, altering his opinions without the slightest reservation upon the slightest possible contradiction."

Belonging to a "club", is something that, whenever I read anything about them, I always feel like I ought to do. I lack gravity (gravitas?), somehow, which I feel like is one of the things holding me back from qualifying for admittance to a club, but there is no reason why I should to such a socially crippling extent. At the same time the country clubs seem to be begging for members now, so maybe I could get in, but would the quality of the bar and the lounge or the library (assuming they have one?) really be the same (once they started letting people like me in)?

p. 207 "What a deal of vanity that club mirror has reflected, to be sure!" 

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

There are a lot of upsets available in the qualifying for this one, so matchups will be everything in the early rounds. 

1. Donna Tartt--The Secret History............................................................................3,592

2. Anthony Bourdain--Kitchen Confidential..............................................................2,952

3. Julia Child--Mastering the Art of French Cooking................................................1,265

4. Phillipa Gregory-Tidelands.......................................................................................883

5. MacColl & Wallace--To Marry an English Lord......................................................687

6. Julian Fellowes--Snobs.............................................................................................653

7. M. C. Beaton--Snobbery With Violence....................................................................208

8. M. C. Beaton--Minerva: The Six Sisters Book I........................................................142

9. Elizabeth Hayley--Sex Snob.......................................................................................120

10. Marion Chesney--Hasty Death..................................................................................81

11. Garry Wills--The Future of the Catholic Church With Pope Francis........................69

12. Jeffrey Steingarten--It Must Have Been Something I Ate...........................................45

13. A. O. Scott--Better Living Through Criticism............................................................37

14. Stephen T. Um--Why Cities Matter.............................................................................35

15. Julian Fellowes--Society Rules: Two Novels: Snobs and Past Imperfect....................24

16. Aeschylus--Four Plays................................................................................................24

Round of 16

#16 Aeschylus over #1 Tartt

Here we go right off the bat with an almost impossible match-up between one of the more acclaimed books of the last thirty years having to square off against, well, Aeschylus. As an IWE author Aeschylus gets a more or less free passage into the semifinals under the rules of this game unless he encounters a book which has any immunity of its own, but Tartt, making her first appearance in the tournament, did not have that here.

#2 Bourdain over #15 Fellowes

The late Bourdain, besides being a celebrity author, also comes in armed with an upset. However, Fellowes is only half-eliminated, since the first volume of the book eliminated here also qualified in its stand-alone version.

#14 Um over #3 Child

Child is a classic as well but I'm probably not going to read a two volume cookbook as part of my program here.

#13 Scott over #4 Gregory

I eliminate genre books, which qualify for this game a lot, whenever I can. Do you what kind of books almost never qualify for this? Popular history and other non-fiction titles from the 1945-1990 era, which is a class of books I am partial to. 

#5 MacColl & Wallace over #12 Steingarten

Obviously this is the result of having an upset card. 

#6 Fellowes over #11 Wills

I am a little concerned that I have too many novels winning in this contest lately (though looking over the recent winners I would say that only about half of them actually are novels), but my interest is piqued by this Snobs book, which is also fairly short.

#10 Chesney over #7 Beaton

So now I am finding out that Marion Chesney and M.C. Beaton are the same person, or rather were, as this author of many names passed on last December 30th at the age of 83. Both of the books in this contest are part of a series of "Edwardian Murder Mysteries". 

#8 Beaton over #9 Hayley

Beaton had a upset to deploy here, maintaining her formidable presence in the tournament.

Super 8

#2 Bourdain over #16 Aeschylus

Bourdain has a second upset to carry him past the goliath Aeschylus into the Final Four. But he has spent them all now.

#5 MacColl & Wallace over #14 Um

To Marry an English Lord came in armed with a double-barrel of upsets as well. Do you think I really want to read this? 

#6 Fellowes over #13 Scott

I was interested in the Scott book--I like the short introductory videos on classic films he used to do on the New York Times website--but Fellowes looks to be the better received book.

#8 Beaton over #10 Chesney

It's a toss-up. Minerva has the better cover.

Final Four

#2 Bourdain over #8 Beaton

Bourdain doesn't need an upset to finally oust the pesky Beaton/Chesney from the tournament.

#6 Fellowes over #5 MacColl & Wallace

Championship

#6 Fellowes over #2 Bourdain

Bourdain triumphed over Fellowes in the first round, but he is not able to overcome him twice and falls in a very competitive final. 

 

August 2020

A List: Aristotle--(The Nichomachean) Ethics.................................................99/248

B List: W.M. Thackeray--The Book of Snobs.................................................217/218

C List: Shirley Jackson--The Haunting of Hill House......................................83/221

I was a little thrown off today by the new Blogger format, which I had to spend about an hour figuring out how to use. 

The Ethics, along with the Politics, are the "easy" Aristotle books, as opposed to the Metaphysics and especially the Physics, which one of my tutors at school said had never been translated properly into English and spent many years working on his own translation of the book, which, while it may well have been the most accurate, may also I think have ended up being the most unreadable of them all. One should learn Greek to read these things anyway. I did read a decent amount of fundamental Western philosophy in college, including this of course, though I never formed a coherent view of who was correct or which positions I thought were especially significant. Re-reading this, the arguments laid out are very familiar, particularly the idea of moderation and that the truth or ideal state of action usually lay between the extremes, and I am sure that I have long incorporated this understanding of the nature of things into my day to day life to some extent, and I assume there is something of truth in it, as it seems to make some sense, or more sense than what you find elsewhere in life. But I have never gotten much past this in my studies in philosophy.

I don't usually like haunted house type stories, but Hill House is pretty much literature, or close enough to it, it has the clean, direct 1950s style of writing that I love so much, as well that rarest of attributes in my present life, I can read it in the evening without straightaway falling asleep, so, whatever happens or whatever it means, I am enjoying reading it. 

This month's photos are more outings around New England, actually I think all three of the states (VT-NH-ME) are covered, which I hadn't realized.

This swimming hole is in Fairlee, Vermont

This place was in the White Mountains. My wife thought the spot was more beautiful than the famous Flume--she is in my opinion prejudiced against the Flume because it is crowded and expensive, but this site is celebrated for a good reason. 

Back at the place in Vermont

Candid photo of me attempting to read on the beach in York, Maine. (Empty pizza boxes not mine, I no longer eat pizza unless I am at some kind of gourmet pizza place, which obviously during this time I have not been to any such place).

I don't mean to be posting so many pictures of myself, but I am under 200 pounds now for the first time since probably 1998 or 99 and who knows if I will be able to maintain it, so I figure I had better record it while I can.

At home.

Francoise Sagan--Bonjour Tristesse (1955)

"The tremendous interest aroused by this very short novel, and its big sale, can perhaps be attributed chiefly to the interest in its youthful author, who was 16 (ed--most sources say 18, but still precocious) when she wrote it. Mlle. Sagan is the contemporary and authentic voice of the "beat generation", in her native France affected by existentialism and living in shameless pursuit of thrills, speed in sport cars and rhythm in music. Nevertheless Mlle. Sagan has undoubted genius as a writer. She became the idol of teenage Paris and fulfilled her promise by almost killing herself in a motor accident. John Steinbeck satirized her in passing in his novel The Short Reign of Pippin IV."--IWE


Francoise Sagan was the latest born (1935) of all the writers on this circa 1960-composed list. She died in 2004, the author of many books and plays, though none of her later works equaled the success and influence of this, her first novel (she remained a colorful and adventurous figure throughout her career, being convicted for cocaine possession as late as the 1990s). In retrospect it is a little difficult to appreciate what the big deal was. At the time the book was considered something of a French (and female) counterpart to Catcher in the Rye in its depiction of stylishly jaded affluent young people, but the writing isn't on that level. Even though it is only 128 pages the plot moves along rather slowly and in truth not a great deal happens--it probably could have been even shorter than it was without any sacrifice of quality. By current standards the famously scandalous parts of it are not all that alarming--even the (largely blase) parts where the 17 year old Cecile goes to bed with her 25 year old boyfriend, while they might officially be met with distaste and disapproval in the present environment, are obviously neither dark nor dangerous in the way that one would expect such an "inappropriate" relationship to be. Escapism for repressed (really repressed) women perhaps? This doesn't seem like a book that men at that time, especially older men, would have been that interested in, though obviously someone was buying all of those little red printings of the book during its initial success that I have come across dozens of copies of in used book stores over the years.

Having said all of this, I still liked it and am glad to have finally read it, as it was something of a cultural touchstone during the 50s and even long afterwards, when it would be referred to mockingly in association with wide-eyed American tourists, especially women, with silly or exaggerated romantic notions of France. If it were 400 pages I don't think there would be much justification for still reading it, but at the length it is, and as it does partake of the attractive spare, pointed French literary style that was prevalent in the 40s and 50s, I think it is worthwhile. I know that others are, supposedly, engaging with books more pertinent to the present hour, about critical race theory and structural injustices and the like, while I am hiding out on summer vacation on the Riviera in the 1950s, towards the end of which my sentiment was, "more of this candy, please."


Just a few short quotes, as always for the sake of my own remembrance.


pp.9-10 "Although I did not share my father's intense aversion to ugliness--which often led us to associate with stupid people--I did feel vaguely uncomfortable in the presence of anyone completely devoid of physical charm. Their resignation to the fact that they were unattractive  seemed to me somehow indecent."


p. 13 "He refused categorically all ideas of fidelity or serious commitments. He explained that they were arbitrary and sterile."


p. 19 "'What you call types of mind are only mental ages.' I was delighted with her remark. Certain phrases fascinate me with their subtle implications, even though I may not altogether understand their meaning. I told Anne that I wanted to write her comment in my notebook."


p. 54 "They had a night of love to look forward to; I had Bergson."


I just recently acquired some writings by Bergson. He was one of the three writers included in the edition of the Nobel Prize Library I got in order to read the last selection for this list (Benavente).


p. 64 "She brought with her the aura of a kept woman, of bars, of gay evenings, which reminded me of happier days."


p. 97 "At six o'clock we drove off in Ann's car. It was a huge American convertible, which she kept more for publicity than to suit her own taste, but it suited mine down to the ground, with all its shiny gadgets."


p. 104 "It amused me to think that if one told the truth when drunk, nobody believed it."

I seriously would have bought this if I could have found any that were currently for sale.



p. 105 "Already I almost shared Anne's condescending attitude toward our friends; it was catching."


p. 114 "How difficult she made life for us through her dignity and self-respect." 


The Competition


1. Jodi Picoult--Small Great Things...……………………………………..11,183
2. Mary Ann Shaffer--The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society.....7,452
3. Ann Patchett--The Dutch House...…………………………………………….3,215
4. An Affair to Remember (movie-1957)……………………………………2,338
5. Ernest Hemingway--A Moveable Feast...………………………………...1,325
6. Sebastian Barry--Days Without End...……………………………………...803
7. Matthew Quick--Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock...…………………………334
8. Daniel Mendelsohn--An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic...………...205
9. The Affair (TV--Season 5, Episode 4)……………………………………...203
10. Brenda J. Webb--Mr Darcy's Forbidden Love...…………..……………...141
11. Willow Aster--Downfall...………………………………………………...131
12. Jane Porter--The Good Wife...……………………………………………...85
13. Cyril C. Richardson--Early Christian Fathers.............................................64
14. L'Hotel de la Plage (movie--1978)...............................................................53
15. James Martin SJ--A Jesuit Off-Broadway.....................................................37
16. Marlene Riggs--Love Me Best.......................................................................16




Round of 16


#1 Picoult over #16 Riggs


I'm not going to read a Jodi Picoult book if I can help it (I actually started one once back when she was really popular and had to give up pretty quickly) but she can still beat a standard order romance novel.


#2 Shaffer over #15 Martin


This was an extremely close game as the books were nearly identical in length and apparent quality. I gave the nod to Shaffer as this is the second time recently--perhaps the second time in a row--that this book has qualified for the tournament, and that experience begins to count for something in the early rounds.


#3 Patchett over #14 L'Hotel de la Plage


Patchett is a former champion of this tournament, for the somewhat acclaimed novel Bel Canto, which I however did not like very much. This movie, a 1970s French beach flick, though necessarily defeated here, looks interesting.

#13 Richardson over #4 An Affair to Remember
#5 Hemingway over #12 Porter
#11 Aster over #6 Barry


The Barry book received some acclaim, but it was fated to be the victim of an upset here.


#7 Quick over #10 Webb
#8 Mendelsohn over #9 The Affair


There is a decent selection of books here which for the most part did not have to face each other in the first round.


Elite 8


#13 Richardson over #1 Picoult
#2 Shaffer over #11 Aster
#8 Mendelsohn over #3 Patchett


This was another tightly contested matchup. Patchett's book was even a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. I was swayed in the end by the lingering memory that I found her other book to be quite overrated.


#7 Quick over #5 Hemingway


Upset special. I haven't looked at the Peacock book to this point, so I don't know yet how formidable it may or may not be, but Hemingway was the heavy favorite to win the championship here, obviously, and he is knocked out.


Final Four


#2 Shaffer over #13 Richardson
#8 Mendelsohn over #7 Peacock


The Peacock book seems to fall into the Young Adult category, which puts it at a disadvantage.


Championship


#8 Mendelsohn over #2 Shaffer


This Mendelsohn is just too heavy-hitting of a guy to go against in this spot. He is one of those resume monsters, of exalted American birth and exquisite upbringing and education. He has been eating, breathing and sleeping culture and learning at pretty much the highest levels this society has to offer for a long time. Better luck next time, Shaffer, if we see you again.

That skull!

Jacinto Benavente y Martinez--The Bonds of Interest (1907)

Jacinto Benavente, a prolific Spanish playwright, was another Nobel Prize winner (1922), which I am sure is the reason he has turned up on this list. I am glad that he did, because he is a kind of author that I like--a true old European, deeply rooted in one of the central cultural traditions of the continent, wry, humane, familiar without being stodgy or obvious. Born into a comfortable family--his father was a surgeon in Madrid--in 1866, Benavente was studying law when he abandoned this to lead a Bohemian lifestyle in the cafes of the Spanish capital. From this point up until about World War I he led what I would regard as a charmed existence. His witty personality, fashionable dress, and ready supply of money caused him to be readily welcomed into the interesting society of Madrid's leading young artists and intellectuals. Developing an especial interest in the theater, he began to try his hand at writing plays, and after about ten failed efforts, he succeeded in persuading the director of the Comedy Theater to produce one, at which time he was 28 years, which seems in most cases to be right around the make or break age for being embarked upon the road to literary greatness. This initial play was not a huge success, but it enabled him to produce other, and increasingly better, plays in the ensuing years, by which time it was 1898, a year of crisis in Spain--she was defeated in the Spanish-American War and lost her last two colonies, Cuba and the Philippines--and Benavente, belonging to the rising generation of writers who seemed comparatively modern and fresh, rose to pre-eminence in the Spanish theater for the next two decades. The later part of his life after he won the Nobel Prize saw him increasingly buffeted by the ever more complicated turns of Spanish politics after World War I. He had a falling out with the Royalist government in the 1920s which caused his plays to be banned for a number of years. During the Spanish Civil War, by which time he was nearly seventy, he came out so strongly against the Republican side that he was placed under house arrest, though later "the editor of a Marxist paper...extracted a declaration from him which was in principle favorable to the Republican people's cause." The biographical sketch of him given in the Nobel Prize Library (1971) notes that "This kind of turnabout, of which there were many examples in Benavente's life, seems to be opportunism ever so slightly tinged with cynicism. Perhaps Benavente's veerings of opinion and tackings to and fro were simply the results of momentary enthusiasm, all the more keen if the subject was a new one, or of an impulse which was sincere at the time, but which he was unable to sustain for long." He died in 1954 at age 88 in his house in Madrid, "almost completely forgotten", according to my edition of his book. 

I do not usually go on at such great biographical length in these reports, but I found this author's life to be particularly interesting at least for my favored themes, and I also think he is comparatively unknown to present day Americans.

The IWE introduction does not say anything particularly noteworthy. It notes that Benavente "wrote this play as a farce along the traditional lines of the Italian comedy" and that it "is set in the 17th century and uses an old theme (its similarity to Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem is immediately apparent)." I did not actually think of the Beaux' Stratagem at all while I was reading this, probably because the setting, rather than taking place in the inns and carriages and dark nighttime roads of 18th century England, is in the southern European world of sunshine, poor itinerant poets, swarthy sequestered beauties, haughty quick-tempered gentlemen, and the general atmosphere of social life as partaking of the elements of a carnival which has been carried through well into our own time in the movies of Fellini and the various artwork of the magic realism school. My being a more emotionally responsive than cerebral type of art-consumer, it is to be expected that I would be struck in this way.

The general plot of this is that there is one character in the play who possesses a great deal of money, and around fifteen who are either in debt to or owed money by each other which they have no means of paying or collecting, so a number of conspiracies are set afoot which involve luring the rich man's daughter into a marriage by which each of the various characters, by their particular role in the procurement/upholding the necessary deceptions, etc, will in the end be paid off. It is pretty clever and lends itself to humorous exchanges and self-justifications for deceitful behaviors and so forth.

In the prologue, the main character and architect of the outrageous scheme, Crispin, addresses the audience. "The author is aware that so primitive a spectacle is unworthy of the culture of these days...He only asks that you should make yourself as young as possible. The world has grown old, but art never can reconcile itself to growing old, and so, to seem young again, it descends to these fripperies."

No more notes until Act II. Dona Sirena, who needs her fete for the heiress to go off so that she can get paid off by whichever indigent gentleman she can mange to get her married to, is unhappy that the cooks, musicians and servants are threatening to refuse to show up unless they are paid beforehand. "The rogues! The brood of vipers! Whence does such insolence spring? Were these people not born to serve? Are they to be paid nowadays in nothing but money? Is money the only thing which has value in the world?"

I am already to the 3rd and final act, though at this point my note-taking picks up a little. I just like the expression here. "Come in, my beautiful Columbine! Do not be afraid...We are all your friends, and our mutual friendship will protect you from our mutual admiration."  



There are not many options for finding this play in English. I ordered Volume I of a set of Benavente's plays published by Scribner's in 1923, just after he won the Nobel, but unfortunately the morons I ordered it from sent me Volume II, which contains "No Smoking", "Princess Bebe", The Governor's Wife", and "Autumnal Roses", doubtless all fine works, which I would be interested in reading some day, but no "Bonds of Interest." So I went back to the drawing board and ordered this Nobel Prize Library edition, which seemed like it might be less easy for the flunkeys in the shipping department to mess up. These are the kind of books made for wannabes like myself that look handsome and classy but if you actually try to read them the spine comes off in about three days (I own a lot of these types of books). The other work of Benavente's included in this collection by the way is "La Malquerida" ("The Wrongly Loved") which is widely regarded as his other great work along with "Los Intereses Creados".

"Love is all subtleties and the greatest subtlety of them all is not that lovers deceive others--it is that they can so easily deceive themselves." A common sentiment but worth repeating.

A lawyer joke. "Can it be that all those glorious exploits of Mantua and Florence have been forgotten? Don't you recall that famous lawsuit in Bologna? Three thousand two hundred pages of testimony already admitted against us before we withdrew in alarm at the sight of such prodigious expansive ability!" The evocation of the glorious ancient cities of Italy, where do they go from here? They remained something of what they have always been even down to our own times, but can they really go on as they have been in this relentless 21st century world that seems to despise and suspect anything that smacks of the past? I also think on my first reading of this passage I read "expensive" instead of "expansive" which to me would have made for a funnier joke.

The chief qualities of this play are its good-nature and ingenuity. 

Since I had the Nobel Prize Library edition, there was some more inside information about the 1922 prizes than you would get elsewhere. The other finalists for the literature prize that year were another Spaniard (Angel Guimera y Jorge) and two Czechs (Alois Jirasek and Otokar Brezina) whom I have never heard of, and the by then 82 year old Thomas Hardy, who had however been nominated several times by that point and whom the committee seemed to have determined never to award the Prize, as has been the case with numerous prominent English-speaking writers through the years. Benavente was in South America at the time of his victory and did not attend the award ceremony in Stockholm. "Was it because he knew of the coolness with which the news of his award had been received by the literary world...?" the Nobel Prize Library asks, "Or was it because he was afraid of having to play too obscure a part, overshadowed by those two world-famous giants of science, Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr, who were going to collect their prizes at the same time?" I suppose we'll never know, but it is true that one advantage the literature prize winner usually has over the genius scientists is that his celebrity and cultural influence, at least in his home language, is usually somewhat greater, and his acceptance speech generally the one of most interest to the ordinary educated public. It is not often that they run up against crossover rock stars of the likes of Einstein and Bohr.  

One thing I look forward to in helping me speed up my course through this list in the (still distant) future is that I will have more time to bang out these reports more quickly. It only took me a couple of days to read the play but it's taken me nearly two weeks to write this blog post, without completing which I cannot move on to the next book. I am so desperate to finish this tonight that I typing this at 1 am on the computer in my basement, which room reeks of cat urine, in partial darkness because my overhead light bulb has burnt out. I am a serious blog writer, and these are the conditions I find myself having to work in. 

Illustration from the Nobel Prize Library. I like it, it's kind of early Picasso-esque, right, it evokes an idea of the Spanish artistic sensibility in the early 20th century for the type of person who would collect cheaply bound volumes with the Nobel Prize seal on their covers. 

The Challenge
1. Kevin Kwan--Crazy Rich Asians...…………………………………..5,027
2. John Boyne--The Heart's Invisible Furies...………………………….1,598
3. Kate Morton--The Distant Hours...…………………………………..1,509
4. Brenda Jackson--A Lover's Vow...……………………………………...602
5. Sarah MacDonald--Holy Cow: An Indian Adventure...………………...327
6. The Exterminating Angel (movie-1962)………………………………..114
7. Miranda Kennedy--Sideways on a Scooter...…………………………...110
8. Namwali Serpell--The Old Drift...……………………………………….82
9. Frank Abagnale--The Art of the Steal...………………………………….77
10. Shoshan Bantwal--The Dowry Bride...…………………………………54
11. J. S. Le Fanu--Uncle Silas...…………………………………………….43
12. Jessa Crispin--The Dead Ladies Project...……………………………...29
13. The New Interpreter's Bible...…………………………………………..17
14. John Vorhaus--Comedy Writing For Life...……………..……………...13
15. Maryvonne Fent--The 35 Cent Dowry...………………………………..13
16. Dannagal Goldthwaite Young--Irony & Outrage...……………………...9


One of the keywords in this edition of the competition was "dowry" which seems to account for the preponderance of books with an Indian setting or theme.

Round of 16
#16 Young over #1 Kwan
I had been interested in reading the Crazy Rich Asian books and at least anticipated Kwan's going deep into the tournament at least, but it got a first round matchup against a shorter book that I can actually read (about polarization in American media) so it goes down in something of a shock.
#15 Fent over #2 Boyne
Boyne is over 700 pages and it sounds formulaic rather than thought-provoking--sounds.
#14 Vorhaus over #3 Morton
Another contest decided by the length of the books.
#4 Jackson over #13 New Bible
Because I am not going to read this Bible.
#5 MacDonald over #12 Crispin
This was a pretty even battle, both books appearing to be travelogues of sorts written by Generation X women. MacDonald wins based on the seeding.
#11 Le Fanu over #6 Exterminating Angel
The movie actually should win here, but I mainly have them in here as a way to jumble up the early rounds for the books. I put all of the ones that qualify into my watch list anyway.
#7 Kennedy over #10 Bantwal
Kennedy is yet another Generation X woman who walked away from the rat race (in which she at least appeared to have been not just taking part, but succeeding) to go have adventures and gain insight into the human condition in India. I can't get enough of this.
#9 Abagnale over #8 Serpell
The Serpell book has been hailed in some quarters as a masterpiece, or near masterpiece, but it's a tournament of matchups, and generally speaking, a shorter book that is plausibly entertaining is going to beat you.


Elite 8
#16 Young over #4 Jackson
The Jackson looks like some kind of romance novel.
#5 MacDonald over #15 Fent
#14 Vorhaus over #7 Kennedy
Vorhaus is really short. That is deadly to opponents in the early rounds.
#9 Abagnale over #11 Le Fanu
Le Fanu's book is a Victorian Gothic mystery. This was a competitive game, but I am in the mood for a more modern book at this time.


Final Four
#5 MacDonald over #16 Young
I'm kind of leaning towards seeing a travel book win here.
#9 Abagnale over #14 Vorhaus
Maybe I should read a guide to comedy writing at some point, but I don't feel like doing it now.


Championship
#5 MacDonald over #9 Abagnale
The book put up for this competition was not Abagnale's chef d'oeuvre, Catch Me If You Can, which was famously adapted for the movies by Steve Spielberg. So I'm going with the white Australian lady's journey to India. I haven't read a travel book in a while, maybe since Bruce Chatwin's epic victory here?

July 2020

A List: Alfred North Whitehead--Modes of Thought..........................................98/174

B List: Between books right now

C List: Laurens Van der Post--Jung and the Story of Our Time...……………221/276

I didn't know anything about Alfred North Whitehead before taking this up--I thought he was some kind of literary critic--but it turns out he was a prominent mathematician who turned to philosophy later in life. Modes of Thought is a collection of lectures he gave, 6 at Wellesley College and 2 at the University of Chicago, in 1937 and 1938, when he was a professor at Harvard after having come over from his native England. He was a leading proponent of something called process philosophy. He certainly writes like a serious philosopher, and not of the rambunctious Nietzsche or Schopenhauer type, but very dry, concerned with the pure nature of thought and perception (the sentence where I left off was "The peculiarities of the individuals are reflected in the peculiarities of the common process which is their interconnection." Yeah). I am a little out of practice as far as reading this kind of book, so my concentration drifts in and out, but I have picked up that he is not believer in the Platonic concept that truth consists in static, unchanging, ideal forms, but that the meaning of things is to be found in their transitions and the way in which they become themselves. He is pretty persuasive about this. This is also reminiscent of William James's philosophy, I think, which also has the benefit of being more entertaining to read.

Coming to the end of the Van der Post book. As I noted in last month's check-in, he is not the greatest writer. This book is all right when Van der Post is relating anecdotes about Jung and his occasional interactions with other great intellects of his day (he seems to have worked mostly on his own though), less so when he is explaining the great man's ideas and breakthroughs. Neither of these books really fits in with the current zeitgeist; in fact Jung wrote something to the effect that modern Europeans--whether this applied to Americans or not I cannot tell, probably not--would ultimately have to rediscover their lost spiritual understanding through engagement with their own culture, that adopting say, Eastern wisdom, wise as it was (and Jung was apparently a serious student of it) would not answer. Something of this sort I suspect to be true among the confused and somewhat intellectually beleaguered white people of the present day, of whose number I certainly make one.     

My pictures for this month are not terribly exciting, since I haven't really been anywhere, and I don't think to take a lot of pictures anyway. Most of these are the result of my children getting hold of the phone, though they come up with some interesting snaps. Maybe by next month I will have at least made it to the beach, though I am told there are a lot of rules involved with doing this that threaten to dampen even that fun.  

Rattlesnake (?) on the patio in Vermont. I had been told that these kinds of snakes lived in the area. 

Afternoon cards. If I am going to put in pictures of the children, I ought to get all of them in.

Later in the evening the game moves indoors.

A very large moth on the front porch back in N.H.

The morning after we caught him slithering around, the snake left his skin out for us.

Cherry from the backyard tree.

My son who is supposed to be going to college next month. I still have a sneaking feeling it isn't going to come off.

Squirrel that my ever virtuous wife found as a hairless, starving infant abandoned to die by his own kind that she rescued and nurtured to almost full squirrel strength, though he is still too young to let go.

Our Fourth of July pictures were a little too cute to post on social media in this contentious environment, but I will bury one here to mark the occasion.



Maurice Maeterlinck--The Blue Bird (1907-8)

When I was a young child and my parents would go to some other adults' house (which they did far more than I ever do), especially if they did not have children around my age (which seemed to be the case most of the time), if there were nothing else to amuse me, they would drop me by the host's bookcases and tell me to find something to my taste. Usually this would mean a sports book or perhaps a history book with a lot of pictures, but I did go through a stretch where I became fond of certain kinds of books of plays and would be excited to come upon one of those. Almost everyone seemed to have at least some volume of Shakespeare, but as an eight or nine year old I didn't care for that, due to the length of the speeches and the difficulty of the language. If there were nothing else I would give it a try but I never got much out of these, other than becoming somewhat familiar with the lists of characters. The real jackpot was to come across an edition of popular midcentury American plays, which were written more like the television programs I was used to, and best of all was to find something like "30 One Act Plays for School Groups" (most of my parents' acquaintance were teachers) which I remember as being invariably wholesome and having satisfying endings. I would imagine all of the roles as being played by the most vivid kids from my school who would fit them, though with myself of course always as the star. This period didn't last more than a year or two at most, but I was reminded of it when reading this, as it the kind of play I would have liked to have come upon that time, though I don't recall ever doing so.

Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian author who won the Nobel Prize in 1911 at the age of 48--they used to give it regularly to much younger writers than has been the case recently. The Blue Bird was overall his most celebrated work, but some of his earlier plays from the late 1880s and early 1890s seem to be well regarded. In the words of the IWE, "A fairy-tale play for children is the best-known and most surely immortal work of the Belgian Nobellian. It gave the world a phrase, 'the blue bird of happiness,' and its moral is that the blue bird is to be found at home, be it ever so humble. The play is excellent for performance by schoolchildren in large schools because it offers an almost unlimited number of parts, costume parts at that. It can easily accommodate 200 performers. But it demands elaborate sets and machinery for professional performance. When it is properly produced it is quite a spectacle." Though I had not been attentive to it before, if it had ever come up at all, I have come across two instances of someone using the expression "blue bird of happiness", since I read this, including one who tossed it off in the course of ordinary speech. So I guess it is still somewhat alive.

The style of dialogue was reminiscent to me of Samuel Beckett's writing. Very spare, with a lot of exchanges consisting of each speaker uttering speeches of 1-3 simple words in turn for several pages. Maeterlinck was a proponent of what he called "the static drama", which downplayed emotion in favor of emphasizing the external forces that acted on man. Samuel Beckett certainly strikes me as having some relation to this tradition, though obviously taken to a much more relentless and unsettling extreme. 

p. 72--The Land Of Memory. The children, passing through here on their quest to find the Blue Bird, encounter their dead grandparents. "Why don't you come to see us oftener?...It makes us so happy...It is months and months now that you've forgotten us and that we have seen nobody." 

The idea of the Land of Night--diseases, fears, etc, that have largely been conquered by human knowledge--I thought was worthy of being remarked on. It is an optimistic, pre-World War I nod to progress. Although Maeterlinck lived until 1949, he doesn't appear to have written anything considered to have much literary value after the first World War, though his books still sold well in France through the 1930s.   

p. 130 I thought the catalog of the trees and their various personalities: the poplar, the birch, the chestnut, the beech, the elm, etc, was very good. The eloquence of the stark depiction of the elements of the (sensitive?) child's world, physical, cultural, emotional. I am now sure that literary and artistic minded people in our age are as attuned to this, in their own manner, as any old European writer was, but I do like this particular expression of it. 



p. 186 "Here is the Happiness of Loving One's Parents, who is clad in grey and always a little sad, because no one ever looks at him." In the Palace of Happiness, there are various Happinesses who appear as characters, among them the Happiness of Being Well, the Happiness of Pure Air, the Happiness of Innocent Thoughts, the Happiness of the Winter Fire, and on and on. I noted the characterization of the Happiness of Loving One's Parents, because I am myself guilty of not allowing myself to feel this, even though there is no reason not to other than that I have always been unhappy about my lack of talents and attractive qualities that might have given me some of the social standing and respect I would have liked to have had. But I just can't overcome that.

p. 204-5 Fire's role in death. "I am used to burning them...Time was when I burnt them all; that was much more amusing than nowadays..." "Fire, in particular, would want to burn the dead, as of old; and that is no longer done." Of course it is going back the other way now. I still personally recoil in something (can't read my note) against the idea of cremation and would prefer to be buried, but due to cost, changing mores, concern for the environment, etc, it probably will happen the other way. I don't know why the thought of being burned bothers me, especially it would eliminate any chance of my being buried without actually being fully dead, which is something to avoided for sure.

p. 246-7 This is the part where they encounter all of the babies preparing to be born. There are two of these babies, one boy and one girl, who were lovers and always embracing, and had to be forcibly separated in order to be born, never fated to meet on the earth. This was reminiscent to me of the incels, some number of whom are wont to speculate about the possibility that some potential girlfriend of theirs may have been aborted and things of that nature. Somebody I went to school with called me, or least my younger self, an incel within the last year, which I don't think was really fair, or quite accurate when considering the crowd going by that designation now, but obviously the impression was made.

I have a note here to "comment on worldviews therein ([word I can't read] of fire, bread, etc) in light of current cultural reassessment." I don't remember what I was referring to here. I should note again that during the fairy part of the story, Fire, Bread, Sugar, Water, and so on are live characters who have elaborate costumes and speak, as well as the Dog and the Cat. Apart from the Dog, who is unshakeably loyal to the humans and regards the little boy as his god, the other characters do a fair amount of complaining about their relation to and usage by man and attempt from time to time to abandon him. Overall the story does not promote an idea of struggle, but presents an idea of the world as something to marvel at and full at all times of unseen and unnoticed energies and passions and phenomena that are sources of wonder and strength, while much of what is immediately visible is crude and distracting and were best overcome. I am not sure how this relates to the current cultural reassessment, beyond that people don't seem to have time for this kind of miniaturist approach to thinking about the world and their own lives, but I really do not often have consistent ideas about anything from day to day.

   

There have been numerous film versions of this play, the most notable being the silent 1918 adaptation directed by Maurice Tourneur, a 1940 version starring Shirley Temple, which turned out to be the first box office flop of her career however, and an animated Soviet movie from 1970. I don't think the story has remained familiar to modern audiences however.

So with the completion of this report I have now reached the end of Volume 3 (out of 20) in the progress of this list. Volume 3 took me about 2 and a half years to complete, which is about 6 months longer than I got through each of the first two volumes. At my current pace I wouldn't be able to get through the whole list until I was 88, which is an age I am not going to make it to. These months of quarantine and having everyone home all the time have not helped this either. Still, if I can make it through a few more years, I should have more time to read these books and write these reports faster. I know there are at least a couple of very long (although very great) books coming up in Volume 4, but the first few that I see include a number of plays and very short novels, so perhaps I will be able to get back on a doable track.



The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

1. Dale Carnegie--How to Win Friends and Influence People...............…...............16,982

2. The Words (movie-2012)..................…............................................................…...7,724

3. Mary C. Neal--To Heaven and Back...….............................................................…3,264

4. Kate Danley--The Woodcutter...........................................................................…..1,880

5. The Village (movie--2004).................................................................................…..1,327

6. Arnold Lobel--Frog and Toad Are Friends............................................................…496

7. Pamela Aidan--An Assembly Such as This..................................................................356

8. Jack London--"To Build a Fire"...............................................................….........…..128

9. Erin Hunter--Survivors (novel series).....................................................................….114

10. Colleen Coble--The Mercy Falls Collection.........................................................…104

11. Zen Cho--The True Queen..........................................................................................55

12. Patricia Marx--Him Her Him Again the End of Him.............................................…..43

13. Isabella L. Bird--The Hawaiian Archipelago..............................................................33

14. Paul Higgins--No More Bile Reflux........................................................................…28

15. Dawn Brower--One Heart to Give........................................................................…..24

16. Lara Richard--A Chance For Him........................................................................…...24

Round of 16

#1 Carnegie over #16 Richard

#15 Brower over #2 The Words

#3 Neal over #14 Higgins

#13 Bird over #4 Danley

#12 Marx over #5 The Village

#11 Cho over #6 Lobel

I own and have read Frog and Toad Are Friends, which is a children's book. I don't care for it that much, as it is a series of understated, repetitive stories in which virtually nothing happens, but my children seemed to like them well enough when I would read it to them, so I guess there is something to it.

#7 Aidan over #10 Coble

Aidan's book is Jane Austen fan fiction, it is about characters from Pride and Prejudice, etc, which is a genre of story that I am not inclined to like at all, but it has an upset.

#8 London over #9 Hunter

We have this Survivor series as well, though I have never read them. My wife tried to get one of my reluctant sons to read them a few summers ago, but I don't think he made it very far in them.

Round of 8

#1 Carnegie over #15 Brower

#3 Neal over #13 Bird

The Neal book, despite the romance novel title, appears to be a spiritual book about angels and that sort of thing. It is very short.

#12 Marx over #7 Aidan

Marx was a comedy writer for the New Yorker and Saturday Night Live. I doubt I would find her particularly funny, and would probably find her writing smug and sanctimonious--most people in this vein of the culture seem to fall naturally into this character nowadays (though this book is from 2006 at least)--but I am sure it is more endurable than Jane Austen fan fiction.

#8 London over #11 Cho

Final Four

#1 Carnegie over #12 Marx

This was a pretty close match, but the Carnegie is kind of a classic, and I have never read it, and that will carry it to a win here.

#8 London over #3 Neal

Championship

#8 London over #1 Carnegie

In this battle of publishing heavyweights, London's story wins by being even more of a classic, and one which, rather incredibly, I have also never read.  



June 2020

I'm late this month. There's a lot going on. It's the end of the school year, and my oldest is graduating from high school on Friday. At the ceremony all of the families will be sitting in the parking lot in their cars and the students will be called out one by one to go up and receive their diplomas. While I always found these ceremonies anti-climactic as a young person, as a parent this is all a disappointing way to end the fifteen years of school and the rest of childhood that we have just gone through, especially as it is the first kid.

I'm pretty much out of the way of the riots so far, which is good for me, because I don't find them exciting or think they are likely to result in bringing about the re-ordering of the world that everybody claims they want. I am not opposed to a less oppressive police presence or fewer people in jail, but as I have said before, there are huge conflicts between what different segments of the population consider to be acceptable behavior, and how much of the unacceptable behavior the less tumultuous people can endure however noble their intentions are, which is why, in spite of 90% of the educated portion of the population and all of the major corporations and universities supposedly being in ferocious agreement with the reforms being demanded, I believe that these problems will inevitably recur. But nobody wants to hear my opinions on these matters.

A List: Chretien de Troyes--The Knight of the Cart.................................….59/96

B List: In between books

C List: Laurens Van Der Post--Jung and the Story of Our Time...………..53/276

More Arthurian romance that I am not that into. I guess the repetition is helping me learn the stories.

Laurens van der Post (1906-1996), a Boer native of South Africa, was evidently a pretty well known and well-connected guy in his time, being a writer, television host, soldier, conservationist, advisor to the British government, friend of C.J. Jung, Prince Charles (he is Prince William's godfather), a Zulu chief with a very long name that I am too lazy to spell out, and too many other notable friends and titles to miss. His book, which is a memoir about his friendship and encounters with Jung, is pretty interesting to me so far. Van der Post, who appears by his biography to have been an extreme man of the world, in his book expresses what is to someone in our age an odd conviction in the significance of dreams, and of trying to attain a non-material understanding of the phenomena about us in the world in general, particularly though their mythological or "primitive" interpretations. Jung has thus far only appeared in one episode, in which he does appear to have been an unusually tireless, imaginative and questioning thinker of the sort that drove the narrative of European intellectual history for so many centuries. When Jung was in Africa on one occasion he apparently was so taken by the primitive energies of a tribal dance that he joined in with the dancers, but then, becoming persuaded that there was a demonic influence at work in it, he began to crack his whip in the air all around him and roar at the other dancers to desist and go away, which they eventually did. I'm not sure how much patience the modern academic crowd would have for these types of behaviors, interesting and brilliant as he was. 

I am trying to get a post up on my other blog, which has been idle for a while. I'm having difficulty finding the time to do it, and it is hard to avoid going off on a tangent about current events as well.

This month's pictures are from various places around New Hampshire I have been to lately, some are at White Lake in the White Mountain region, some are at the Sculptured Rocks near Bristol, and some are in Enfield.