British Columbia

 Mostly national parks, naturally. 

1. Glacier National Park, in southeastern British Columbia, in the Selkirk Mountains, west of State Highway 95. "Snow-capped peaks and glaciers; contains Nakimu Caves and Mt Bonney, 10, 194 feet high."

Around 600,000 visitors a year, though another 3.4 million pass through annually on the Trans-Canada Highway. The Canadian Pacific Railway passes through as well. All in all, this appears to be one of the jewels of Canada, though its great CPR hotel, Glacier House, was demolished in 1929. I am not sure why Mt. Bonney is singled out by the IWE as an especially notable site, as it is not one of the highlighted mountains or attractions in current literature concerning the park.

2. Kootenay National Park, in southeastern British Columbia, in the Canadian Rockies, on State Highway 1B. "Forests and deep canyons, including Marble Canyon." 

There are seven contiguous National Parks in the Canadian Rockies, not, however, including Glacier above, though that is pretty close by. Kootenay connects with Banff in Alberta and Yoho (#4 below). Marble Canyon is still touted as a major attraction. It doesn't look like there are any hotels or notable restaurants inside the park. 

3. Mount Revelstoke National Park, in southeastern British Columbia, in the Selkirk Mountains, on State Highway 1. "Large forest of virgin timber." 

Adjacent to Glacier National Park (#1). There is a road on this mountain that goes pretty much all the way to the top (1835 meters, which translates to 6,020 feet. I know I am very backwards, but metric measurements mean nothing to me). There are a number of hiking trails. 

4. Yoho National Park, in Eastern British Columbia, in the Canadian Rockies, on State Highway 1. "Waterfalls and lakes, including Emerald Lake; Mt. Gordon, 10,346 feet high."

Located right in between Glacier National Park to the west, Banff to the east, and Kootenay to the south, this looks to be yet another super park--how would any wage slave schmoe ever have enough time to visit all of them? (the answer, of course, is that such a person wouldn't have the time). Emerald Lakes is still touted as one of the highlights of the park. The nightlife doesn't look as exciting as it is in Banff, but there are bars in the adjoining village. 

5. Mount Fairweather, in the northwest, on the boundary between British Columbia and Alaska. "The highest point in the province, 15,318 feet high. slopes covered with glaciers."

The estimated height of this mountain has grown seven feet since the 60s. It looks awesome but I am not sure there is much for the ordinary tourist to do here, if he can even realistically visit at all. This is not a mountain a regular person would be able to climb on his own, and while there is accessibility from the Alaska side via Glacier Bay National Park, the park's own website states that "these are among the least visited mountains of their elevation in North America. Many mountains in the range are unnamed and only limited information is available on most routes...Many climbs take as long as one month to accomplish." The only way to get there even from the inhabited part of Alaska is by charter boat or floatplane. 12 day guided climbs of Mt Fairweather start at $4,021, which I guess is not actually that bad, but this is clearly not a family destination. Global warming does not as yet appear to have had much visible effect on the local topography.  

6. Water Route from Vancouver to Alaska, off the west coast of British Columbia. "One of the most beautiful boat trips in the world."

The Alaska Marine Highway runs a popular (in the summer) ferry service between Bellingham, Washington and Alaska, making a stop in Prince Rupert, British Columbia. It does not appear to stop in Vancouver, which, in contrast to its current popularity on the tourist circuit, did not otherwise merit any mention on this list. It's about a 36 hour ride, and it is not terribly expensive, I guess, especially if you are not hauling a car. It's around $250 a person, ($500 for  a car), and an extra $300 if you want a cabin, though it sounds like people sent up tents on the deck. The dining is cafeteria-style. It's not a cruise ship. The Princess line does run cruises from Vancouver up the coast. The current listed fares actually look cheaper than this other boat, starting at $579 for two people for a five day round trip tour. But not being familiar with how cruise ships operate I am not accounting for extra fees, etc.

  

Hank James--The Bostonians (1886)

This is, in my opinion, one of the better Henry James books. It is not the only one that I have thought especially well-done, or been able, at least in my own mind, to follow, but it is one of the few that I can honestly say I have enjoyed and really looked forward to reading the next chapter every morning (the others that come to mind being the early The American and the much shorter Turn of the Screw and Aspern Papers). This middle period book has some of his clearest and best sentences in describing thoughts and motivations--not as exquisitely subtle, I suppose, as in the later masterpieces, but as I have not to this point really been able to follow the thought processes in those later books the full glory of their subtleties have been kind of lost on me. The IWE introduction notes that:

"The Bostonians is a novel of James's 'middle period.' He was in the realm of high society as usual, this time in the very starched Boston of the late 19th century. The novel was not successful when published and James was very unhappy. Among other things, it was considered wicked. Perhaps it was and still is, but it is among his most important works."

Here is my book, accompanied by some seasonal spirit. It is the Modern Library edition with one of their especially attractive jackets. I got it at a library book sale in 1986. 

The 'wickedness' I assume refers to the numerous blatantly lesbian characters and their implied domestic arrangements, though how x-rated in the physical sense matters really got between Verena and Olive (or even, for that matter, Dr Prance and Miss Birdseye), I don't have a great sense of. Also, on the overall Henry James starchiness scale, I would rate this one as being on the lower end. It's set entirely in America. One of the main characters is from Mississippi. The crowd in New York is rich and given to sumptuous dining and so on, but I don't remember encountering anyone there whose breeding would be considered by James or anyone else to meet the highest standard compared to the French aristocrats and the like who populate his other novels. Olive is perhaps the starchiest character in the book, and she is designated on multiple occasions as a "provincial." 

p. 18 "...the Back Bay (don't you hate the name?)" I've always kind of found the name unsatisfying too, for various reasons. When I used to take Amtrak in the 80s and 90s, the train always stopped at the Back Bay Station (I don't know whether it still does), which was modern and ugly, and no one ever got on or off, and I am still kind of vague as to what it is, or is supposed to signify (I know it was an actual bay that was filled in and made into a somewhat fashionable neighborhood around the time this novel was written, but I don't have much of a sense of what it is now).

p. 21 "'In sympathy with what, dear madam?' Basil Ransom asked, failing still, to her perception, to catch the tone of real seriousness. 'If, as you say, there is to be a discussion, there will be different sides, and of course one can't sympathize with both."

p. 31 "They sat there as if they were waiting for something; they looked obliquely and silently at Mrs. Farrinder, and were plainly under the impression that, fortunately, they were not there to amuse themselves."

I mark down these early quotations as a way of building up to anything it might occur to me to say later on. 

p. 43 "...the time hadn't come when a lady-doctor was sent for by a gentleman, and she hoped it never would, though some people seemed to think that this was what lady-doctors were working for."

(handwritten note I can't read--There are a lot of little (somethings?) of interest here).   

p. 46 "I am only myself, I only rise to the occasion, when I see prejudice, when I see bigotry, when I see injustice, when I see conservatism, massed before me like an army...I must have unfriendly elements..."

p. 50 "He had a passionate tenderness for his own country, and a sense of intimate connection with it which would have made it as impossible for him to take a roomful of Northern fanatics into his confidence as to read aloud his mother's or his mistress's letters."

p. 76 "But except when her mother made her slightly dizzy by a resentment of some slight that she herself had never perceived, or a flutter over some opportunity that appeared already to have passed...Verena had no vivid sense that she was not as good as any one else, for no authority appealing really to her imagination had fixed the place of mesmeric healers in the scale of fashion." I have met a few people in the course of my life of this genuine democratic mindset, mostly in northern New England. 

p. 116 "There was nothing in the house to speak of; nothing, to Olive's sense, but a smell of kerosene; though she had a consciousness of sitting down somewhere--the object creaked and rocked beneath her--and of the table at tea being covered with a cloth stamped in bright colors." The snobbery is really brutal whenever Verena's parents come into the story.

It is odd how reading these 100 year old books seems so outdated to me now in a way that it did not even in 1990. The world (social, institutional) of the past still seemed basically relatable then in a way that it doesn't now. So many things--the racial and cultural makeup of society, particularly with regard to peoples who were virtually unknown in Western countries even 30-40 years ago, male social roles, educational structures, in addition to the obvious technological changes with regard to consuming books and newspapers, have perhaps changed more in the last 30 years than they did in the previous 100, as far as the pursuit of literary engagement goes. 

p. 152 "She went so far as to ask Olive whether taste and art were not something...Miss Chancellor, of course, had her answer ready. Taste and art were good when they enlarged the mind, not when they narrowed it."

p. 248 On the Memorial Hall at Harvard, which you can still wander into today, or at least could 15 or 20 years ago: "The effect of the place is singularly noble and solemn, and it is impossible to feel it without a lifting of the heart. It stands there for duty and honor, it speaks of sacrifice and example, seems a kind of temple to youth, manhood, generosity. Most of them were young, all were in their prime, and all of them had fallen..." It is a rather beautiful place. I should make a point of going down and visiting it if it ever opens to the public again. I have frequently of late been afflicted with a more than usual longing to travel as a result of my reading--with The Betrothed, it was Milan, with Bonjour Tristesse it was Nice and the Riviera, with Boris Godunov it was Moscow. But I could actually go to Boston. Olive lived on Charles Street, which has a lot of upscale shops and the like now, but the nineteenth century buildings and atmosphere are pretty well-preserved.

Memorial Hall, Harvard University

James, who went to Harvard, saw it as decidedly inferior at that time to the European Universities, and perhaps it was, though the rise of American power and influence over the ensuing century have allowed many of its students and faculty members of this general period to remain well-known names.

p. 246 While touring one of the Harvard Libraries, there is a mention of the card catalogue. A system still current 100 years on, in 1986, when I acquired my copy of this book, but now of course antiquated.

The depiction of Verena's simplicity but "preternatural candor" is good. It is difficult to write a character like that. In fact I think all of the characters in this are quite well-done and multi-dimensional. It's one of his best books for that.

p. 280 "...he wanted to see her alone, not in a supper-room crowded with millionaires." Don't we all, pal.

In the present social environment, it is clear which characters we should sympathize with (not Ransom!), but H.J. is a little more ambiguous. I think he is more sympathetic to the claims of women than was usual in that era--he must have had something of a curious and open mind, if the ideas were presented in a guise adequate to his perceptiveness--but I do not think he saw how realistically these were supposed to come off on a societally broad scale. 

p. 343 "I am so far from thinking, as you set forth the other night, that there is not enough woman in our general life, that it has long been pressed home to me that there is a great deal too much. The whole generation is womanized; the masculine tone is passing out of the world; it's a feminine, a nervous, a hysterical, chattering, canting age, an age of hollow phrases and false delicacy and exaggerated solicitudes and coddled sensibilities, which, if we don't look out, will usher in the reign of mediocrity, of the feeblest and flattest and the most pretentious that has ever been." Dull-witted men never learn. 

p. 348 "...the beer-saloons, with exposed shoulders and sides, which in New York do a good deal toward representing the picturesque, the 'bit' appreciated by painters, announced themselves in signs of large lettering to the sky." The days when German and Irish immigrants (my people, or 3/4 of them) teemed in New York.

Is Verena, the "daughter of New England", the most appealing H.J. heroine? I think so, though most modern readers must be disappointed by her submission to such a distastefully anti-feminist man. I am not being sarcastic either, even I find it difficult to take the smug superiority of Ransom, who is the prototype of the mansplaining, mediocre, worthless white guy we have all come to know and hate. Unfortunately in 1880 there is no one who can really put him in his place.

Starbucks on Charles Street, Boston, MA

I did write this on Twitter as well, and it didn't get a bug response, but Henry James didn't like beer, I don't think. Whenever a character is drinking it, usually in a German tavern or beer-garden, we can take it as a fair sign that he is down on his luck.

This is, incredibly, the end of Henry James on the IWE list. We do not see him again. One could almost think (if they hadn't left out The Ambassadors) that they just took the first three of his books alphabetically and said, we've reached our quota of Henry James, we'll stop now. This was a decent sample--The American and this book, as noted above, are two of my favorites of his, though I would have chosen something else in place of The Awkward Age, which I made a fairly strenuous effort to get into but just could not. The choices do feel rather random. While the final three extremely difficult novels, along with Portrait of a Lady and maybe Turn of the Screw (?) seem to be the most highly regarded of his books now, what were the most celebrated ones in 1960? Portrait still, and perhaps Daisy Miller, neither of which were chosen for this list. I don't know. But it is nonetheless farewell to Henry James, unless we have the good fortune to encounter him sometime in our Challenge.   

The Challenge

1. Pride and Prejudice (movie-2005).....................................................................................14,920

2. Min Jin Lee--Pachinko.........................................................................................................6,426

3. Margaret Mitchell--Gone With the Wind..............................................................................4,674

4. Raina Telgemeier--Drama....................................................................................................4,427

5. Gregory Maguire--Wicked....................................................................................................3,475

6. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass........................................................................2,216

7. Philadelphia (movie-1993)..................................................................................................2,195

8. Nancy Isenberg--White Trash...............................................................................................1,849

9. Sharon Kay Penman--A King's Ransom..................................................................................450

10. Kira Jane Buxton--Hollow Kingdom.....................................................................................437

11. Chris Ware--Rusty Brown......................................................................................................303

12. Robyn Carr--The Wedding Party...........................................................................................282

13. Aiden Thomas--Cemetery Boys............................................................................................220

14. Arthur Conan Doyle--The Return of Sherlock Holmes.........................................................140

15. Gus Pelagatti--Wicked Wives.................................................................................................106

16. Tillie Walden--Are You Listening?..........................................................................................80

1st Round

A high qualifying threshold for this tournament, leaving out some books I have heard of. 

#16 Walden over #1 Pride and Prejudice

#15 Pelagatti over #2 Lee

Pelagatti had an upset.

#3 Mitchell over #14 Conan Doyle

IWE authors generally get an immunity through the first two rounds, unless they come up against a book with an upset, which is the case here.

#4 Telgemeier over #13 Thomas

Cartoon/graphic novel over a Young Adult novel featuring a trans protaganist. 

#5 Maguire over #12 Carr

Carr is a romance novel. I need to figure out a way to minimize their qualifying for the tournament, since when they come up they always have a lot of reviews, much more than popular history or science books.

#6 Douglass over #11 Ware

Ware is another comic book. I hope these aren't going to start qualifying in large numbers (though the acclaimed Persepolis is a past winner of this tournament, and I did read it).

#10 Buxton over #7 Philadelphia

The 1984 Merchant Ivory adaptation of the Bostonians did come up as an entrant for this tournament, but with only 69 reviews, it was the 17th place finisher and didn't qualify. I am putting it on my to-watch list anyway, although I suspect I am not going to like it that much.

#8 Isenberg over #9 Penman

As you know I am generally down on genre books as far as this competition goes unless they are regarded as classics of a kind.

Quarterfinals

#3 Mitchell over #16 Walden

Walden is another graphic novel.

#15 Pelagatti over #4 Telgemeier

Pelagatti is a novel based on the seventeen murders of husbands by their wives in Philadelphia in 1938, which I had never heard of, though apparently it really happened.

#5 Maguire over #10 Buxton

The Maguire book is highly celebrated. Buxton's is science fiction set in a post-apocalyptic Seattle.

#6 Douglass over #8 Isenberg

The white trash book got some positive press, but I am not that hyped to read it. 

Semifinals

#3 Mitchell over #15 Pelagatti

#6 Douglass over #5 Maguire

Championship

#3 Mitchell over #6 Douglass

Both of these books have appeared in this tournament before, both are of course very famous--there is some dispute over whether Gone With the Wind is worthy of being considered a classic, but it is at the very least iconic and has been well-loved by a certain class of reader. I have only avoided reading myself to this point because of its enormous length. It does have another upset to use here--it would be hard to justify passing over Douglass otherwise--and I think it is time to have a go at it.

October 2020

A List: Hemingway--The Sun Also Rises......................................................168/247

B List: Between books

C List: Carlyle--The French Revolution..........................................................59/727

I had never read The Sun Also Rises, which is usually considered to be Hemingway's best novel, until now. It is on the B list, but not for a long time, so I'm happy to have the opportunity to take it up now. I do like it. It doesn't seem like a lot actually happens, in terms of action, compared with traditional novels, yet more than in other books, especially of this brevity, one does get the sense of a cohort of people occupying the world quite entirely for a certain period of years which the reader a century on at least knows and feels to have passed on. I guess this means the characters are not especially timeless or universal, though maybe they will come to seem so in the future. For me the world and mentality described in this is real enough while not being quite reproducible that the passing of this particular era and generation carries some influence in my life. The characters in this spend almost all of their time doing exactly the things I most like doing, or would have liked doing--wandering around Paris having nightlife adventures, drinking, reading novels, going on train excursions, having love affairs, bantering with their friends--but that never quite comes off with the same appeal in our age. One reason is that the people in this time had educations, particularly literary educations, that are more similar to what I have than that of contemporary educated people. Not better, perhaps--I don't really know, our truly educated people now are certainly very very smart in some ways--but more in line with my own mind...(would go on but I have run out of time)

I didn't get very far in Carlyle last month. Reading him and Henry James at the same time would have been ridiculous so I put Carlyle off. With having to write the Henry James report and a couple of shorter works upcoming, I should be able to put a little bit of a dent in him this month. There is a fair amount of gold to be found in his book, I think, but there is a lot of overgrowth to hack your way through to get to it...

I don't take very many pictures. I should take more perhaps, but my children usually won't hold still long enough to get the picture I want, and when I go somewhere I find I am not usually at inner rest enough to take the time to calmly size up and get a good picture. And then often my children take my phone and take hundreds of pictures by themselves, a few of which come out interesting. 

(Vermont)

(Vermont)

(Vermont)

(Concord--soccer field)

Our little squirrel died just a few days after this. I'm assuming it was one of those rodent diseases that takes them off suddenly. We probably should have let him go, though I don't think he would have survived long anyway. 

We've gone back to Maine a couple of times. I was in Portland last weekend, but I wasn't moved to take any photos on that occasion.

 (Vermont again)

Arkansas

 1. Hot Springs National Park, in western Arkansas, on U.S. Route 70. "Healthful mineral and hot springs; beautiful parks, gardens and lakes; magnificent view of four states from tower on top of Hot Springs Mountain."

This is supposed to be a pretty cool park, and the nearby town sounds like it is more in the tradition of the Bar Harbor or Banff type resort town than what is common around the parks out west, which in many instances looks to be nothing. Numerous of the bathhouses have been designated as National Historic Landmarks, and there is a racetrack (horses), and many elegant old hotels.

2. Buffalo River State Park, in the north between Yellville and Marshall, on State Highway 14. "Overlooks Buffalo River from sheer rock cliffs; beautiful scenery with canyons, caves, and waterfalls; fishing is the chief attraction." 

 

Absorbed into the newly established Buffalo National River federal park in 1972. The 1939 CCC structures are preserved as a historic district within the much larger new park. The old park also includes the 3 mile Indian Rockhouse Trail. 

 

3. Calico Rock, on the White River, in the north, about 12 miles northwest of Melbourne, on State Highway 56. "A bluff of limestone rock, whose high, smooth wall is variously colored with squares, stripes, spots, and angles."

This rock is located in a town of about 1,500 people of the same name. There doesn't appear to be much of a tourist industry there, though they sort of have a promotional web page, and I am sure they would like people to come visit, as the median household income, according to Wikipedia, is $23,000. The top restaurant in town is a cafe/ice cream parlor, the pictures of the inside of which are however inviting in an old-fashioned way, and not off-putting even to a pretty confirmed northeasterner like myself. If I ever had all the time in the world to go driving around exploring Arkansas, I would go see this place.

4. Diamond Cave, in the northwest, 5 miles south of Jasper, on State Highway 7. "No one has ever reached the end of this cave. Strangely shaped stalactites and stalagmites, which look like giant icicles, grow in the many beautiful chambers of the cave."

From the Encyclopedia of Arkansas (linked above): "During the 1920s and 30s, the cave was very popular, having a campground, hotel, restaurant, outdoor pavilion, and skating rink at the site. It officially opened for tours in 1925, though ownership and management of the cave have been transferred many times. Hundreds of tourists each day went through it. One of the most beautiful caves in Arkansas, it has several rooms, mineral formations, and clear pools. At the height of its popularity, the tour was approximately two miles long, but the cave still has many unexplored regions. It has been a source of study for geologists and students from every state in the country...Diamond Cave was operated as a tourist attraction until the mid-1990s. The cave is at present privately owned and is not currently operating tours in order to protect this natural environment."

So I guess this place is out as far our travel itinerary goes, for the time being. 

5. Big Hurricane Cavern, in the northwest, 7 miles south of Western Grove, on U.S. Route 65. "So named because many years ago a violent storm hurled uprooted tress into the mouth of the cave; once noted for the bears and wildcats killed within its shelter; has fantastic formations, including an onyx parrot and a stone airplane." 

It appears that this place (which I am thinking is now known as Hurricane River Cave) has been closed since around 2016 and is currently for sale. The hope is that new ownership would restore it and re-open it to the public, as people have fond recollections of the place. Most of the sites listed for this state are in the popular tourist region known as the Ozarks. Evidently some of the older attractions there are in a state of flux. 

6. Mammoth Spring, in the north, about 11 miles north of Hardy, on U. S. Route 63. "One of the largest springs in North America; a torrent of cold, blue water rushes from it at the rate of 200 million gallons a day."

This is contained within a state park, which was established in 1957. The outlet pool is located just 500 feet from the Missouri state line. This is the seventh largest natural spring in the world! There are only two hotels in Mammoth Springs. They aren't expensive, and they look decent enough that I would stay in them--I don't have high expectations for rural Arkansas. I don't know that I could get my wife to come here, but I got her to go to Tennessee and Alabama, and I know she liked Tennessee, and she liked the place where we stayed in Alabama, in Cheaha State Park, though the surrounding area that we drove through on the way in and out was rather poor and depressing-looking. The state park here doesn't appear to offer any accommodations; these often have good value lodges and cabins. 

7. Old Arsenal, in Little Rock, on U.S. Highways 67-70-65. "The birthplace of Douglas MacArthur."

The building is now known as the MacArthur Museum of Arkansas Military History. Though the general was born here, this was not a house but a military barracks, MacArthur's father being an army man, a captain, himself. The Arsenal, which was built around 1840, is part of the MacArthur Park Historic District, "a remarkably well-preserved collection of Victorian buildings in the heart of Little Rock." The museum is free and appears to consist primarily of military memorabilia, and is not primarily dedicated to the singular figure of Douglas MacArthur, whose celebrity has I think faded somewhat compared to what it was in the 1950s and 60s.

September 2020

A List--Rousseau--The Social Contract...........................................................28/53

B List--Henry James--The Bostonians...........................................................99/464

C List--Carlyle--The French Revolution........................................................31/727

This is an extreme dead white guy grouping. Sometimes it works out that way. Rousseau is not really that short, the only copy of this particular book I have happens to be the one in the "Great Books" set. As of now I can still read the small print in these books with enough light, but I suspect the days when I can do this are numbered. 

I am falling asleep tonight. I was halfway through an especially pompous paragraph on Rousseau when I realized I was kidding myself if I thought I was going to be able to write about any of these books tonight. 

The introduction to Henry James says that the first 150 pages of the Bostonians are outstanding, and the book declines after that. I am finding it to be good, and to actually have some detectable movement, to this point.

I am probably going to be reading the Carlyle over a period of many months, which is fine. I will get to the end of it eventually, if I want to, and I will absorb what I will absorb. I am already getting the sense that Carlyle holds the intelligent portion of the French population (which was naturally not any great part of it), who should have known better, responsible for not keeping the rabble in check and allowing the revolution to get out of control. It is impossible not to be frequently struck by the parallels to the current crises in the body politic of our own country.

I didn't take so many pictures in August. As the school year approaches, and the days of summer to do necessary upkeep and get organized for the fall start to run out, we sadly do not get to go on so many excursions, particularly after the middle of the month. Like a broken record, I tell myself that someday I will have more leisure time, etc, etc. I probably never will, but I can't face the truth. I need the belief to keep going, even though these things I think I want to do are either trivial or not realistic. 

This was just today on Labor Day.

Along the Marginal Way, Ogunquit, Maine.

The sublime?

Child gets hold of the phone on an ordinary day.

Route 9, West Brattleboro, Vermont.

In the shop.

Aleksandr Pushkin--Boris Godunov (1825)

I am still not down on this program, though I sometimes don't know what I am hoping to achieve by recording the various stages of the journey, especially when, as is often the case, I don't have anything particular to say about the experience, let alone about the books themselves. The status of this old literature as a legitimate resource for serious mental engagement and development seems to be declining precipitously by the day in many quarters, and in those where it is still held in some regard among intelligent people I have not had much success ingratiating myself. However, I have to tell myself that even those people who appear to me to be more solidly embedded in these attractive social circles, are almost certainly lamenting that they are themselves lacking the truly dynamic friendships, lively conversations, and dangerous sexual frissons that fill the pages of the best loved books, however tantalizing some of their interactions with like-spirited peers either in real life or online may sometimes be. Indeed, if anyone even tangentially connected to the literary world is having any of the kind of raucous, invigorating social life that has at times in the past been associated with such artistic milieus, their public is not generally aware of it (and I would think if they were they, or their publishers, should want to publicize it, as it would undoubtedly improve their sales).  

So this brings me to the circumstance of my being, at age fifty, for the first time reading, or even owning a book by the great Pushkin, one of the true all around literary threats of all time: he has three works on the IWE list, one play, albeit a kind of poem-play, one long poem, and one novella, in addition to being in general the acknowledged father of nineteenth century Russian literature. I don't know if there is another 19th century literary figure of this stature of whom I haven't read anything at all yet--maybe Goethe, though his most celebrated works were written in the late 1700s, I believe. Boris Godunov, as referenced above, is nominally a play, though written in verse, and no attempt was made to stage it until fifty years after it was written, when Pushkin had been long dead, and this was not a success, though the work was eventually of course the basis of a famous opera by Moussorgsky (I've tried to watch this opera on several occasions, but I have to confess I find it rather heavy going). From the IWE introduction: "When Pushkin wrote Boris Godunov in 1825 he was living under police surveillance, suspected of atheism. Pushkin is called the Russian Byron (because he was a contemporary of Byron's, was of similarly aristocratic birth, had similar poetic talent, and died similarly untimely) and he was influenced by Byron,but in this 'dramatic poem' he was influenced chiefly by Shakespeare. Boris is based on events of the years 1598-1605 and is semi-historical." Pushkin is known for having been part black. It is noted in the introduction to the 1936 Modern Library edition of his works that Pushkin's great-grandfather was "the Negro of Peter the Great, Ibrahim Hannibal, who seems to have been the son of an Ethiopian princeling." The writer of this introduction, one Ivrahm Yarmolinsky, noted that "The poet...liked to refer to his African origin, on one occasion speaking with sympathy of the fate of those he called 'my brother Negroes.'" Some might imagine this to be terribly cringe-inducing, but Pushkin was a pretty cool and dynamic guy and may well have been able to pull an attitude like this off. He wasn't one of those stiff German or Victorian English writers. Yarmolinsky goes on to add, "Whether or not this exotic strain in his heredity had anything to do with his sensual temperament and his keen feeling for rhythm must remain a matter of conjecture." The general European male deficiency in rhythm was apparently already a recognized phenomenon even in early 19th century Russia.      

As literature goes, I find Pushkin to partake of most of the more admirable qualities of the Russian greats, the language so straightforward in its impact, weighty without being obscure (the translation, by the way, by Alfred Hayes, is very good, well-presented, etc.) I noted some other classic trait in him, but I cannot read my handwriting now to remember what it was. If this particular effort has a weakness, I would say it is in character development. Neither Boris Godunov nor his antagonist Dimitry the Pretender are particularly strongly drawn in ways that would seem to correlate with their roles, and Godunov's death, presumably by poisoning, though in the story he just all of a sudden gets sick and dies, was decidedly anticlimactic. The most vividly drawn character was Maryna the ambitious and cripplingly beautiful Polish princess and love interest of Dimitry who essentially tells him when he babbles about his love for her, "send for me when you are sitting on the throne". Other critics have found the plot to be too choppy, with constant jumps to new scenes and characters who appear only briefly, but I did not find this distracting, I thought it was fine.  

All right, now, for some sample passages. From the cell in the Chudov Monastery, the aged to the younger monk, and later pretender and eventual czar of Russia:

"Complain not, brother, that the sinful world/Thou early didst forsake, that few temptations/ The All-High sent to thee. Believe my words;/The glory of the world, its luxury/Woman's seductive love, seen from afar,/Enslave our souls. Long have I lived, have taken/Delight in many things, but never knew/True bliss until that season when the Lord/Guided me to the cloister." 

Men who have experienced pleasures can denounce those pleasures to their fellow men of the world, and men inexperienced in sensual life can debate the virtues of continuing to forgo these experiences among themselves, but there is always something grating when the man who has immersed himself in such activities on any kind of scale assures the man to whom these are inaccessible that he is not missing anything and is better off in his sheltered innocence, even though it be true.

My copy of the book is a castoff, in library binding, from Wellesley College. The check-out card is still in its sleeve calling out across the ages the names of the (imagined) beauties who took it out on loan from 1983 until its final borrowing in May of 1999, which years roughly correspond with my own era. Martha and Alice and Jessica and Wendy and Sheila and Michele and, last of all, Carla, after which Wellesley College, as far as we know, knew not Pushkin anymore.

From the Palace of the Czar, a charming little poetic disquisition on the young czarevitch's study of maps: 

"Very good! Here's the sweet fruit/Of learning. One can view as from the clouds/Our whole dominion at a glance; its frontiers,/Its towns, its rivers. Study, son; 'tis science/That teaches us more swiftly than experience,/Our life being so brief. Some day, and soon/Perchance, the lands which thou so cunningly/To-day hast drawn on paper, all will come/Under thy hand."

Pushkin is good, but I wonder whether if he were not the "father" of the other 19th century Russian greats, he would have generated enough attention on his own to penetrate the Western European consciousness and been more or less included in the "canon". He is like an athlete who gets elected to his sport's Hall of Fame on the basis of having been a stalwart player on a great team, great enough that perhaps the team doesn't win a couple of its championships without his contributions, but about whom there has always been speculation as to how great he would have been in different circumstances. I then wrote some thoughts about my perception on how canons, or at least the Western canon, works, and why it isn't quite so easy for activist scholars or rabble rousers on Twitter to demand that some heretofore neglected person should immediately be considered the equal of Pushkin or whomever, but I want to refine them some before I go more into that.

In Cracow--Russian defectors to the Pretender:

"...we have fled from Moscow,/Disgraced, to thee our czar, and for thy sake/Are ready to lay down our lives; our corpses/Shall be for thee the steps to the royal throne."

A grim image. And for a pretender!

We get to Maryna, my favorite character. Her maid is speaking as she dresses the princess:

"They say that at the ball your gracious highness/Shone like the sun; men sighed, fair ladies whispered--/'Twas then that for the first time young Chodkiewicz/Beheld you, he who later shot himself."

No further context is given in the printed text.

Humorous scene where Maryna shuts down Dimitry's love talk. "I give my hand to the prince."

"I called myself Dimitry, and deceived the brainless Poles."

This is an affecting depiction of blindness:

"In my young days/...I lost my sight, and thenceforth knew not/Nor day, nor night, till my old age; in vain/...The Lord vouchsafed not/Healing to me.Then I lost hope at last,/And grew accustomed to my darkness. Even/Slumber showed not to me things visible,/Only of sounds I dreamed." At the time this made me ponder on the discomfort of waking and opening one's eyes without seeing anything, though I am not sure what exactly called up such sensations now.

As the play ends with Boris Godunov, his wife, and his son dead, and the rabble of Moscow exclaiming "Long live Czar Dimitry", I had the idea that one often gets from Shakespeare and the Greeks and other classic tragedies that with the end of the play the great crisis of the nation is over, the tumultuous personalities have burned themselves out and a more stable, if rather boring, leader has ascended the throne for a considerably less eventful reign. So I was surprised in looking into the history on which this play was based, about which I knew very little (this was during the period described in one book I used to own as when Russia "was about as well-known in England as the Iroquois nation"), that Dimitry only reigned for about 11 months, and was married to Maryna for just ten days before he was overthrown and executed in turn. Maryna was spared at this time, though later she would marry another false Dimitry (there was even a third one later on), whom she supposedly claimed to have recognized as her husband. False Dimitry II was killed before he was able to take the throne, and Maryna herself died in prison. Pushkin evidently had some plans to write further plays about these events, but was prevented from doing so by his early death at age 37.

Being me, naturally my thought on all this was, boy, that was going to a lot of trouble, walking all the way to Poland, carrying out an elaborate deception, raising an army and fighting one's way back across Russia, all to occupy the throne for a mere 11 months, and then getting ignominiously murdered by my own enemies. But a great spirit would think it was completely worth it, what after all is the purpose of life but to attempt great enterprises, woo the choicest women, etc. I am guessing that Pushkin's works in general adhere to this spirit in both their subject matter and boldness of expression.

Ever since finishing Bleak House (which was going to be my big quarantine book), in what, April? it has been a run through the spring and summer of much shorter books for this list. I am finally coming to one that is a little longer now, not Bleak House-sized, but it will probably take me a month to read it and get a report up. I've got about six or seven weeks left of reading outside for this year, and the autumn weather with the changing leaves, etc, will be on us probably in two weeks, which is perhaps the pleasantest but all too short-lived time of the year here.

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

This book produced a lot of weird search words specific to itself, so we got a weird tournament. While all of the movies and TV shows water down the tournament, they managed to prevent about ten obscure books about Russian studies with very long titles, multiple authors, etc, which had zero points from qualifying and making for an even lengthier tournament. 

1. House: Season 1 Episode 8 (TV show)...............................................................................1,344

2. Craig Johnson--Death Without Company............................................................................1,183

3. House: Season 2 Episode 15 (TV show)................................................................................828

4. Louis L'Amour--The Walking Drum.......................................................................................716

5. Victoria and Albert (movie--2001).........................................................................................271

6. 1612 (movie--2007)................................................................................................................148

7. Frontier House (TV show-2002)............................................................................................130

8. Lisa Van Allen--The Night Garden.........................................................................................129

9. Pierre Gilliard--Thirteen Years at the Russian Court................................................................77

10. Sydney Tyler--The Japan-Russia War.....................................................................................24

11. Paul Watkins--The Ice Soldier.................................................................................................19

12. Michael Kort--A Brief History of Russia................................................................................16

13. T. J. Binyon--Pushkin: A Biography........................................................................................14

14. Hugo Vickers--The Crown Dissected (Seasons 1, 2, and 3)....................................................11

15. Benjamin Levin--This Crown is Mine......................................................................................11

16. In the Night Garden (TV Show)................................................................................................4

1st Round

#1 House over #16 In the Night Garden

TV shows automatically lose unless of course they draw another TV show. In the Night Garden is a British children's show that doesn't look particularly interesting even by the standards of a guy who has been watching children's TV shows for going on 20 years.

#2 Johnson over #15 Levin

Levin probably should have won, but given the backlog of books for this list that I already have to read, I don't that I am up for a 600 page tome on 17th century Russia.

#14 Vickers over #3 House

#4 L'Amour over #13 Binyon

Maybe some day I will take up reading 760 page literary biographies, but not right now.

#12 Kort over #5 Victoria and Albert

#11 Watkins over #6 1612

#10 Tyler over #7 Frontier House

#8 Van Allen over #9 Gilliard

This one probably would have gone to Gilliard, but this is an upset game.

2nd Round

#14 Vickers over #1 House

#12 Kort over #2 Johnson

The "brief" in the Brief History of Russia is the key here.

#4 L'Amour over #11 Watkins

This was a close game. L'Amour gets the edge for being the more recognized name. That is life. I suffer from it in the great blogging and social media competitions myself.

#8 Van Allen over #10 Tyler

Tyler is old (contemporaneous with the war itself) and long.

Final Four

#4 L'Amour over #14 Vickers

Vickers, who defeated 2 episodes of a single TV show to reach the Final Four, is about a TV show that I haven't seen.

#12 Kort over #8 Van Allen

Reviews of Lily Van Allen often compare her to Alice Hoffman, a former champion here, whose book, however, I could not get through when I tried to read it.

Championship

#4 L'Amour over #12 Kort

I was not hugely excited about any of the books in this tournament. L'Amour was pretty much the favorite to win because he had a couple of upsets to use, but it wasn't like there was any obvious occasion to use them. And the guy did after all sell 500 million books or something in the days when people actually did read, so there must be some entertainment value in them. 

Still having trouble with the new format and putting in pictures.