Dostoevsky--The Brothers Karamazov (1880)

This post took a long time to complete. I'll be honest, I don't have anything important to say about it. I am not exactly depressed about this, or about my lack of comradeship/fellow feeling with other book people, or even my increasing day to day indifference about most of life. I am a little bored perhaps, and lacking in purpose, perhaps, but I am not depressed. I need to slim down by about 5-10 more pounds to begin my need mission to appear more professional class and induce people to like me, but I think I can do that. I still enjoy the books. I enjoyed this book, it is great. But my ability to think about anything has gone completely to rot.  

This is another of the great signpost books, obviously, all the big readers and even most of the serious intellectuals tackle it, and almost all still seem to find it up to their exacting standards even in our time. I took a little more time with it and tried to let the impressions really wash over me on this occasion, as I thought it might be, probably will be, the last time I read it.  

My old copy, that I have had since I was in college at least, and maybe before, you see was really falling apart, so I ordered a replacement to finish up the last 700 pages or so. I got the same old Modern Library edition, though the Constance Garnett translation is considered, by the most generous assessment, to be inferior to others. However I have a prejudice against modern translations by scholars, who I find interject too much of themselves and their particular readings into the books, which affects my enjoyment of them; and besides, I tell myself, this is the version that Joyce and Woolf and Hemingway and Orwell and Faulkner and all of those people would have read (maybe Joyce read the French version) and to whatever degree they understood the book would be more than adequate for my purposes.

We had a lot of books in my house as child but not much in the category of classic or even modern imaginative literature. My father, who was the reader in the family, was primarily interested in history, especially American history, and his library contained hundreds of books about the Civil War, World War II, and the colonial and Revolutionary era. Such novels as he owned (and read) tended to be historical novels, frequently of the doorstop variety that were popular in the 1950s and 1960s (The Winds of War and Shogun I remember being two of his particular favorites). He frequently expressed the desire to be better versed in the classics--Jefferson and Madison and others of the founders being his role models in this aspiration--but for whatever reason, perhaps he found them difficult to take up and get into as an adult, I'm really not sure, I never saw him reading any of those types of books. Perhaps he got around to them later in life, I don't know, I have seen him only a handful of times in the last thirty years. Anyway, this wish to be well-read like Jefferson he talked about enough that it made an impression on me that being familiar with the great literature of the world was a desirable pursuit, and while I never exactly set out with that aim in mind--even in my choice of a college I ended up picking a Great Books school mainly because I thought the people there would be social misfits enough that I would have a prayer of being able to participate in such social life as existed there--I have usually fallen back on that as something I could do whenever I have been at an especial loss for what to do with myself.  

This new copy I bought included one of the most alluring Modern Library dust jackets of them all, which is probably fated once I finish this report to go into the cabinet with only the spine visible, never to be seen again, or not very much.

The great 19th century Russian authors did not, as far as I can remember, hold much of a place in my father's consciousness of the greater world. The Founders hadn't read them, nor probably had Lincoln even, and I don't recollect him ever bringing them up in his discourses on learned subjects. Certainly he didn't own any of the books. On one of the few occasions that I saw him after I had finished college I suggested to him that I thought he would probably like War and Peace, but he didn't seem very excited about it. Maybe he had already read it and hadn't liked it, but he never indicated that he had one way or the other. I'm pretty sure my first awareness of Dostoevsky came from the IWE encyclopedia. I remember thinking then--I would have been about 14--that his name was the strangest and ugliest of all the Russian writers. Ivan Bunin or Nikolai Gogol could be modern Olympic athletes or ballet stars or Politburo members but even in the Soviet Union no one had to carry around so unwieldy a name as Fyodor Dostoevsky. My next encounter with this author was in the12th grade, when my teacher in a class called "The Great Documents"--this was a prestigious course at my school--happened to mention in passing that he considered The Brothers Karamazov to be the best novel he had read, at least in whatever phase of his life he was in at that point (he seemed to me to be around age 40-45, though perhaps he was older). This struck me because I was familiar with the title of the book from the encyclopedia, though I didn't know much more about it at that time, and I had never heard anybody else bring it up. Also I had the sense that this teacher was at a somewhat higher level of cultivation, if not necessarily raw intellect, than most of the other faculty at the school. He had a PhD, for one thing, though I don't know what schools he went to. He also dressed better and in general gave the impression of having his life more in order than his colleagues, he was neither slovenly nor overwhelmed by his job or his personal affairs. He may have been married, though I don't think he had any children. He didn't appear to watch television or read inferior books or publications, and one never ran into him at the mall as one frequently did other teachers. In short he seemed fairly serious, and was sparing in expressing enthusiasm for anything; so when he made a point of sharing with us that he considered The Brothers Karamazov to be a great book, it stuck with me.  

Then I went to St. John's, which naturally is home to many serious students and champions of Dostoevsky. I had one friend especially who identified strongly with Dmitri (he was a very entertaining person to go out with, up to a point). The Brothers itself is even on the reading program, though it doesn't come up until the return from spring break senior year, when then are only about six weeks of college left, many people emotionally already have one foot out the door, and almost everyone has long wearied of most of their classmates. As it is a book that a lot of people in the earlier days of school look forward to getting to, I feel that the overall mood when you come to those seminars inevitably makes them somewhat anticlimactic. However I may be mistaken in this, as I gave myself too little time to read the book on this occasion and only got as far as page 300, which is around the section containing the episode of the Grand Inquisitor. St. John's type people naturally gravitate toward the Grand Inquisitor part, and I'm sure they talked about that the most in the seminar, along with exploring the questions of who killed Karamazov, who Smerdyakov really was, why any of it mattered, etc. I'm sure someone made a genius point that went over everybody else's head, and that that person still thinks of this with bitterness from time to time. I admit that every time I read this book I gear up to concentrate super hard on the Grand Inquisitor part, like it's an amusement park ride with a jarring climax that cannot be missed, but every time, while I am attentive to it and follow the arguments and all, I find myself coming out at the other end of the tunnel without feeling particularly struck, and within a day or two I can never really remember what exactly it was about. I suppose if it were meant to be really important in my life it would have happened by now. I read it later on in my 40s when I was distracted and evidently going through some kind of phase where I believed technology or advancements in science or the overall spirit of the modern age had perhaps exposed Dostoevsky as perhaps less insightful and important than he had formerly appeared. This time however, only a few years on in time, but on the other side of some significant life shifts, I was more moved by it, I found the characters to be as alive and interesting as one wants literary classics to be, and the story to be telling something of significance, it brought me back somewhat to the way I thought and felt when I was young, which had a much greater clarity and cohesiveness and beauty than the way I have mentally experienced life in many years. 

I didn't make any notes until page 407, but then, as often happens, the closer I got to the end of the book, the more I anticipated leaving it and the sentimental need to procure souvenirs of the experience propelled me to take quite a few. 

p. 407 "But in some it is really more creditable to be carried away by an emotion, however unreasonable, which springs from a great love, than to be unmoved. And this is even truer in youth, for a young man who is always sensible is to be suspected and is of little worth-"

The image of arriving in Mokroe, in the dark, the town rising out of the plain. I liked that. Reminded me of the autumns of my youth, for some reason. Very intense, dramatic, and beautiful.

p. 605 "It was a wretched morning, the whole sky was over-cast, and the rain streamed down in bucketfuls."

p. 668-9 "The study of the classics, if you ask my opinion, is simply a police measure, that's simply why it has been introduced into our schools...Latin and Greek were introduced because they are a bore and because they stupefy the intellect. It was dull before, so what could they do to make things duller? It was senseless enough before, so what could they do to make it more senseless? So they thought of Greek and Latin."

This was spoken by Kolya, the liveliest and most dominant personality among the boys. I don't pretend to know what the appropriate amount of Greek and Latin study should be in a formal education. Perhaps it isn't very useful for geniuses, though one would expect them to progress in those subjects quickly. My two oldest sons took five years of Latin, and the elder did especially well in it. I was pleased with it, as the teacher was good, and seemed to me easily one of the more intelligent people in the school, and it is important at that age to be exposed to intelligent and serious adults if you can. 

p. 718 "'When I get hold of the silly woman's fortune, I can be of great social utility.' They have this social justification for every nasty thing they do!"  

p. 723 "They are ready to flay you alive, I tell you, every one of them, all these angels without whom we cannot live!" Mitya on women.

p. 752 Dmitri is so vital, I wrote.

p. 755 I made a note that reads "Incident of knocking over peasant like my screaming "no!" at homeless guy yesterday. Dostoevskian response." I had forgotten about this. At one point on his way to his final interview with Smerdyakov, Ivan pushes a drunken peasant who approaches him onto the frozen ground and leaves him lying there. My incident was not quite this dramatic, but I was on Main Street in Concord the day before I read this passage evidently, and I was fairly tense about something which I don't even remember now. I wanted to take out some money from my bank's ATM machine but someone else was in the booth and I had to wait outside. While I was thus waiting an able-bodied-looking man of about 30 with, I thought, a middle class bearing, came up to me and began a spiel about being homeless and asked me for money, to which I replied "No!" in a sharp and fairly loud voice which was not polite and was intended to say, "Get away from me!" and indeed he did get away from me. But this is not characteristic behavior for me and I wish I had not gotten so agitated. 

p. 780 "For all their indisputable intelligence, men take this farce as something serious, and that is their tragedy...suffering is life. Without suffering what would be the pleasure of it? It would be transformed into an endless church service; it would be holy, but tedious." This seems like a loose distillation of some of the more interesting underlying themes of the book. 

p. 784 Smerdyakov assures Ivan, "You'll dine on locusts." Reminiscent of climate religion and their seeming fondness for promoting the eating of bugs? 

p. 803 "All the four officials in the jury were, in fact, men of no consequence and of low rank. Except one who was rather younger, they were grey-headed men, little known in society, who had vegetated on a pitiful salary, and who probably had elderly, unpresentable wives and crowds of children, perhaps even without shoes and stockings." Why make a point of this? (I forget whether I was asking this question of myself or of Dostoevsky). Because it's important.

Dostoevsky's talent for psychological insight well-suited to writing about a trial. If that were not obvious. 

p. 817 On Herzenstube, the German doctor. "...it had always been a weakness of his to believe that he spoke Russian perfectly, better indeed than Russians." Dostoevsky has the Germans' number. The part where the doctor can't remember basic words like "nuts" at the trial is good too.

Closing with a few passages that are comic in their deadpan absurdity.

p. 842 "He was certainly not in a normal state of mind: he told me himself that he saw visions when he was awake, that he met several persons in the street, who were dead, and that Satan visited him every evening', said the doctor."

p. 908 "The weak-minded idiot, Smerdyakov, transformed into a Byronic hero, avenging society for his illegitimate birth--isn't this a romance in the Byronic style?"

p. 913 "The devil's bound to have a hand in it. Where should he be if not here?"

The IWE introduction is more verbose than usual and not one of their more memorable commentaries, but I will include most of it to give the post that extra flavor that it brings (with some interspersed comments by me).

"Several of Dostoevski's (sic) novels have been nominated as his greatest (ed--I feel like this question has been settled in my lifetime), but despite its defects in novel-construction and literary finesse The Brothers Karamazov, his last work, should have unchallenged position also as his best. Neither Dostoevski nor any other novelist ever explored the souls of his characters so completely as Dostoevski did in this novel, traveling the full range from the depths of depravity to the heights of exaltation, from the meanness to the nobility of which the ambivalent human spirit is capable. The characters are Russian and their emotions may seem unreal or exaggerated to English-language readers, but these readers would be better advised to accept the characters as the novelist portrays them (ed--The English language reader has had to grow accustomed to a great deal more than the exaggerated emotions of Russians in the intervening decades). The Brothers is a long novel, overlong in fact; it is one of those Somerset Maugham named as the world's greatest but said were candidates for 'artful skipping' (ed--I find it hard not to be nostalgic sometimes for the days when Somerset Maugham could be unironically invoked as a literary authority of sorts). Also enjoyment of The Brothers in English is lessened by the fact that there is only one translation and it is a very poorly written one..."

I stand by my position that the Garnett translation is adequately readable and enjoyable. I suppose I should give one of the modern, more scholarly ones a try, but my prejudices against them are really strong. It is almost a rebellious instinct. Oh, I am sure all of these contemporary people, even those in the academy, understand literature perfectly well, infinitely more than I do, but I like to believe--perhaps have to believe--that they don't, because otherwise how else could I go on?   

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge

This was a large one, with an unusually high qualifying threshold.

1. Mary L. Trump--Too Much and Never Enough.......................................................................98,568

2. Margaret Mitchell--Gone With the Wind.................................................................................21,109

3. Antoine de Saint-Exupery--The Little Prince............................................................................5,683

4. Chris Colfer--The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell..............................................................3,685

5. Fyodor Dostoevsky--Notes From the Underground..................................................................2,054

6. Philippa Gregory--The Boleyn Inheritance................................................................................1,761

7. Lauren Fox--Send For Me..........................................................................................................1,703

8. Kiera Cass--The Betrothed........................................................................................................1,632

9. Ariana Neumann--When Time Stopped.....................................................................................1,214

10. Julian Barnes--The Noise of Time..............................................................................................777

11. Monk (TV S4 E12)......................................................................................................................731

12. Cristi Caldwell--Forever Betrothed, never the Bride..................................................................668

13. Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche--In Love With the World..................................................................508

14. Forrest Fenn--The Thrill of the Chase.........................................................................................409

15. James Agee--A Death in the Family............................................................................................316

16. James H. Cone--Black Theology, Black  Power..........................................................................306

Round of 16

#1 Trump over #16 Cone

This may be the highest qualifying number in the history of the tournament, a testimony to the staggering level of interest in all things Trump-related, it dwarfs everything else. James H. Cone is a name of sorts. His book goes all the way back to 1969, which I had not realized. I am not particularly amped to read either of these books, but the Trump title has a few shiny extra features which make it a little more enticing in the first round. 

#15 Agee over #2 Mitchell

Gone With the Wind is a recent champion, so recent that I haven't gotten around to reading it yet. Agee is a celebrated older writer in his own right, and I did like his books of film criticism, which is all that I have read by him. He has a big edge in this matchup. 

#3 Saint-Exupery over #14 Fenn

I had never heard of Forrest Fenn, who was evidently a colorful figure who gained some notoriety during the last decade by claiming to have hidden a treasure chest somewhere in the Rocky Mountains north of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Five people died looking for the treasure, and there were numerous other incidents related to the search. Fenn stated shortly before he died in September 2020 (at age 90) that the treasure had been found, it was later revealed by a student from Michigan. 

#4 Colfer over #13 Rinpoche

I'm not really sure why, the Colfer books (there is a series of them) seem to be pretty famous, though I suppose I could stand to read something by a Buddhist monk. 

#5 Dostoevsky over #12 Caldwell

#6 Gregory over #11 Monk

#10 Barnes over #7 Fox

I don't know, Barnes is shorter and it sounds like the sort of thing I would like better.   

#9 Neumann over #8 Cass

Rare 1st round matchup of 1,000+ review books, Neumann gets the nod on the basis of appearing to be the more serious book. 

Quarterfinals

#1 Trump over #15 Agee

The Trump book comes with upsets to play.

#10 Barnes over #3 Saint-Exupery 

#9 Neumann over #4 Colfer

#5 Dostoevsky over #6 Gregory

Semifinals

#1 Trump over #10 Barnes

#5 Dostoevsky over #9 Neumann

Championship

#1 Trump over #5 Dostoevsky

A very improbable run to the championship for Mary Trump, taking out a number of heavyweights. She won according to the rules of the game, however, given the nature of her qualifying. 

June 2021

A List: St. Augustine--The City of God.....................................................................176/867

B List: Thomas Mann--Buddenbrooks......................................................................105/748

C List: Madeline L'Engle--A Moment of Tenderness..................................................26/285

I also got up to page 73 or so in Zena Hitz's Lost in Thought which I am reading in small snippets in between these other books.

Am I going to absorb much of The City of God? Remember the arguments? Probably not, although supposedly the really good part of the book are in the later sections. Right now I'm still in the part where he is discussing the role God played in various developments in the history of the Roman Empire, which if nothing else is a good review of those personalities and wars, which I would like to have as thorough a grasp of as possible. Besides, it amuses me to read this. I used to sit in a particular chair in the basement of the old library at St. John's and do my seminar readings and take naps, and this chair was right beside the shelf which had about twenty copies of The City of God on it, and I would frequently take it down and flip through it, because it was a handsome, solid looking book that for some reason I liked holding in my hands. And then I have always wanted to have had something of a real Catholic upbringing in my background (without the hassle of painstakingly having to acquire it in adulthood), and this gives something of the flavor of that whole scene as well.

The Madeline L'Engle book is a collection of short stories that were unpublished in her lifetime (1918-2007, another life more or less contemporaneous with Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Phil Rizzuto), most of which seem to have been written in the 1940s and 50s, and all of which are around 18-20 pages, which is about the length of the classic New Yorker stories of that era. The 1st one and half of these stories that I have read so far definitely seem to be going for that style, and why not? It was a good style and a good period for that form. I am impressed with what I have read so far. The conceptions for the stories are quite good, and the writing is sure of itself without straining for effect. The first one ("Birthday") did not land a particularly strong ending, and I wonder if that will be a pattern with the rest of the stories. But it is not a bad book. 

My pictures this month are good but kind of melancholy. I know a lot of people are getting away from putting up pictures of their children online due to privacy concerns and the like and I have wondered whether I should do that, but on the other hand I have not really gotten a grasp on how to preserve and curate all of these thousands of digital photos that one takes very well. I don't know for example where all of our pictures are from the pre-cloud era, 2008-2012 or so, are, apart from the ones I put up online at the time. I certainly don't get a lot of general attention as a middle aged man without a compelling internet persona or even local importance.... 

I'm running out of time. Short captions on the rest of the pictures. Above: Mother's Day with 2 older boys.

I don't like being caught with the mask on, but this was the Science fair (outside under the tent), and someone wanted a picture.

Cherry tree, early May.

View of Manchester, NH from a nearby hill. 

On top of the same hill (South Uncanoonuc, if you are scoring at home). This was just Saturday, when it was over 90 degrees.

Lake Uncanoonuc, which is at the bottom of the hill.

Not among the really large rocks of New England that we have visited over the years but an impressive sized one for this minor hike.

At the end of the day a storm comes over the lake.

This is from another walk the week before (Memorial Day Weekend) when it was 48 degrees and rained two of the three days. 

May 2021

A List: Between books

B List: Dostoevsky--Brothers Karamazov..........................................................654/940

C List: Lauren Slater--Lying.................................................................................86/221

I just finished a set of plays on the A-List, the last being Hedda Gabler by Ibsen. I'm pretty sure I have read this before, but I didn't have it documented anywhere and I didn't have it starred in my book, so I read it again. I've been trained to like psychological dramas about well brought up and reasonably intelligent but dissatisfied and not completely moral bourgeois Europeans--indeed I formerly imagined myself to be a person of this general type--so I enjoyed reading it well enough. I gather that Ibsen, whose plays are solid pieces of work, came to be considered one of the greats because he was quite a bit in advance of his time in his subject matter and was at the forefront in updating the European theater for the modern era. His plays do have a purpose and a quality of extremity about them though, more than what other writers have. He never rambles, even when he appears to ramble.

The Lauren Slater book is a memoir published in 2000, around which time if I remember correctly memoirs were something of a trend. It is mainly concerned with the author's epilepsy. It is not really a good book, and I may leave it off soon. The author does not any real friends or social life, she does not do anything that is particularly interesting, she does not know anyone who is particularly interesting, or at least if they reveal this side of themselves at all around her she is not able to pick up on it, and her own thoughts are not too great either. So there isn't much for the reader to work with.

I didn't take many pictures last month. The last week of April was school vacation so we went to Boston one day, and Maine a couple of times. 

Bridge over the Mass Turnpike, Fenway Park visible to the right. There was no game that day but the boys wanted to make a pilgrimage to the field anyway.  

On Landsdowne Street behind the left field wall.

The Chinatown Shakespeare. I guess this is something of a landmark, but I didn't know it was there.

Inside the Red Sox shop. We didn't buy anything. 

On the Common. This is blue state central, so masks are still de rigueur.

 

This is in Maine. 

Connecticut

The first state that is actually near me.

1. Devil's Hopyard State Park, 7 miles east of East Haddam, on State Highway 85. "Rugged Ravine, five waterfalls, unusual rock formations; hiking trails and picnic grounds."

I visited this place back in 2010. Here are some pictures and some account of that expedition, Part I, and Part II. Looking back I have very fond memories of this trip now. We went down for I believe a two night stay around the middle of August, right before school started, and I enjoyed that time so much that for many years afterwards I tried to do something similar every year. While some of those trips, especially the first few years afterwards, also hold some good memories--we went to Boothbay Harbor in Maine one year, and the White Mountains in another one--they never quite matched for me that Connecticut trip. I think it was partly the children's ages--we only had the four boys then, and their ages were 8, 7, 4 and 1, so they pretty much went along with anything. Also at that time we could also still fit in one hotel room, which as they got bigger and we had one and then two more children, became impossible. We took a few camping trips, which the younger children at least actually liked, but I never really warmed to camping. Also one year--the last we tried this August mini vacation--we tried to camp on Cape Cod, which is a mistake because, as I realize now, it rains there much more frequently than anywhere else in New England, and by the third day our tents were so soaked through that we just gave it up and came home. But I will always look back at the Devil's Hopyard trip as a high point of the older boys' childhoods. 

2. Fort Shantok State Park, 4 miles south of Norwich, on State Highway 12. "Once the site of an old Mohegan Indian village. Contains the remains of the old Shantok Indian fort, and the Shantok burial ground, now surrounded by a log stockade."

In 1995 the state of Connecticut returned the site to the Mohegan tribe. It is very near the famous (in New England) Mohegan Sun Casino, which is on the same tribal lands, and which was not yet in operation in the 1960s. I have never been to a casino, which is the kind of place I suspect I would enjoy going to, or would have when I was younger. Twenty years into having children and with no end in sight I am out of practice of doing, or even imagining myself doing, anything that could be considered "adult" "fun" of this sort. Indeed, after spending much time over these decades dreaming about traveling again someday or living the international expat life instead of being tied down to my job and family I worry am losing interest in it and growing cranky about it now as either an impossibility or a frivolity. I'll see a video now of attractive 29 year old westerners living in some tropical place especially, and even if they aren't partying that much, whereas up until very recently I would have been envious, my reaction now all of a sudden is that somehow they shouldn't be doing that, it's not quite right. But why wouldn't it be right? When I was that age I would have loved the idea of doing that sort of thing, though I would have preferred to be in one of the European capitals.

There is a banner on one of the Google search items for Fort Shantok stating that it is permanently closed but I cannot find any corroboration for this. There is a review from someone claiming to have there as recently as 4 months ago, though 3 months ago a commenter wrote that there are no signs for this park in the neighborhood and that he was unable to find it. 

3. Colonial Museum, in Israel Putnam Memorial Campground, 5 miles southeast of Danbury, on State Highway 58. "Contains many interesting relics from the Revolutionary War."     

I think this is what they are talking about, and it is still open, though I don't know whether it is open right now. It is part of the Putnam Memorial State Park in Redding, which is Connecticut's oldest state park, dating to 1887. The current museum was built in the 1920s. Due to declining visitation throughout the 1970s and 80s the park was decommissioned for most of the 90s but re-opened as a state facility in 1997. Other features include a visitor's center and a statue of Israel Putnam (donated 1969), the grounds being where Putnam passed the winter of 1778-9. As you probably know, this general is most celebrated for his successful leadership at the battle of Bunker Hill, where he gave the legendary order, "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes." This sounds like my kind of place. I hope they are doing better. Maybe I could stop in sometime on my way to Philadelphia--it's right off I-84--if I ever take a trip down there again. 

4. Barnum Institute of Science and History, in Bridgeport, on U.S. Route 1. "Contains personal belongings of P. T. Barnum, born in this city, and of Tom Thumb, the 26-inch midget who was the star attraction of Barnum's circus." 

Now called the Barnum Museum, this place is closed currently due to the pandemic, but is expecting to be open again once all of that is over. This institution seems to be too historically important to have been allowed to be turned into a spectacle. In 2016 it received a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and admission is free, with donations accepted. Bridgeport is a pretty run down city on I-95 that I suspect most people, including me, have not given much thought to visiting, but I'd go see this. Maybe I could combine it with a ride up to New Haven for pizza afterwards, as I have reading about the pizza in New Haven (Frank Pepe's and the other place that I don't remember the name of but that knowing people claim is better) for at least 25 years now but have never gone down to have it. 

5. Traveler's Tower, in Hartford, on U.S. Route 6. "The highest building in New England, 527 feet high."

The seventh tallest building in the world when it was constructed in 1919, it was dethroned as the tallest in New England in 1964 by the Prudential Building in Boston (itself since surpassed by the John Hancock Tower, the reigning champion since 1976). It still houses the headquarters of the Traveler's Insurance Company. There is an observation deck on the 27th floor, although since 2017 even this doesn't appear to be open to the public (they stopped giving tours of the rest of the building in the 1990s).

6. Children's Museum, in Hartford, on U.S. Route 6. "Contains fossils, shells, insects, birds, animals, and things of interest about the Indians of North America." 

Somewhat to my surprise, given the usual associations that come with calling something a "children's museum" nowadays, this institution still exists and still specializes in animal and science exhibits (I don't what happened to the Indian exhibits; there is no reference to them on the website at least). The museum has relocated to West Hartford from its original location, though that happened in 1958. An article appeared on March 5, 2020 reporting that plans were afoot to relocate again to a new state of the art building in Hartford, but I am guessing this has been put on hold for the time being. Looking over the reviews, there are some complaints about the building being run down and the exhibits dated, but of course that is exactly the sort of attraction I am looking for. A lot of people still like it.

In the California post I stated that it was the only state in the set whose article included a gallery of famous residents, but I was wrong! Connecticut has a list too. Here is who was considered to be historically notable in state history in the environment of 1960. 

"More famous inventors have come from Connecticut than from almost any other state. In addition to the men mentioned in other sections of this article* are John Fitch, who made the first steamboat, Samuel Colt, who perfected the revolver, Charles Goodyear, who discovered a practical way of hardening rubber, called vulcanizing, and David Bushnell and Simon Lake, who made improvements on the submarine. Eli Whitney, who invented the cotton gin, made his home in Connecticut.

The famous circus man, Phineas T. Barnum, was born there, as was Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary. 

Many important people also made Connecticut their home, including the writers Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mark Twain." While this wording implies that the inventors and other notables mentioned previously were not important people, I don't think that is what was intended. 

*Among these I see Eli Terry and Seth Thomas ("improved the modern clock"); Linus Yale ("the locks people have on their houses were invented by" him); John Ireland Howe, inventor of "a machine to make pins and needles"; Ethan Allen; and Benedict Arnold.

April 2021

A List--Chekhov--Three Sisters........................................................................53/70

B List--Dostoevsky--The Bros Karamazov...................................................294/940

C List--Stanley Gordon West--Amos............................................................191/231

"D" List--(Special Guest Book) Zena Hitz--Lost in Thought........................36/210

It's always exciting on the B List when we come to one of the major signpost books in the whole enterprise. We have the multiple Russians at the same time this month (really just this week), just as we had the multiple Scots a few months back. It is maybe not the ideal time to have come around to Chekhov after waiting for several decades for him to turn up, though maybe some aspects of him are amplified in having him alongside Dostoevsky. I saw the ca. 1970 film version in English that Laurence Olivier made of Three Sisters a couple of years ago, which was very handsomely made, but I had trouble following the spoken dialogue and missed a good deal of what it was about, namely the depth of all of the sisters' unhappiness and dissatisfaction and the impotence and lack of gravitas of all of the men. The writing in both of these books is of course wonderful in its particular details and turns of thought, even in the expression of the deepest despair, it is why people undertake studies in the first place, to encounter such lively and interesting minds.

Just before Chekov I had to read Mrs Warren's Profession by Shaw (the A list is running through a set of plays right now). I had this play in the old Norton Anthology, the numerous volumes of which for both the English and American sides I have been carrying around since my Annapolis days, and have relied on enormously while doing this list, especially with regard to poems, as they contain most of the ones that have come up. I took them with me to Prague in the pre-internet era, I bought one of them in Washington on one of my first "dates" with my eventual wife. But I might be getting near the age where I won't be able to read the small print in those books any longer. I had to make an extra effort on several occasions, adjust the light. They're rather clunky and unattractive books, but I'm attached to them and like the idea that even after all this time I can still go to them for new things. 

Compared with these other books, Amos cannot really measure up, and it is incredibly depressing to boot (it's about inmates in a nursing home being abused and robbed of their insurance money, etc, by the staff). However I am near enough to the end now that I am going to stick it out and see what happens. 

I picked up the Zena Hitz book because, in addition to being a tutor at my alma mater, she was actually a classmate of mine and therefore her memoir and intellectual points of reference I figure will be of particular interest to me. I think I may still be in the prologue. I started this in the break between Thornton Wilder and Dostoevsky while I was writing the Thornton Wilder post, but since I started Dostoevsky I've been kind of busy and haven't gotten back to this in a couple of weeks. I think I will be able to dip in and out of it and keep the narrative pretty straight even if I can't get to it every day.     

Pictures this month. We went back to Round Top Hill near Vermont. There are pictures from this place in the December 2020 post.

Some deer hanging out in the driveway one morning in early March. 

I made it out onto the porch early this year. This was March 11th. I have been out quite a few afternoons since, though not the majority, obviously. 

Crawford Notch, White Mountains. This was a fairly warm day too (50 degrees or so) but there is still a decent amount of snow cover there.

And another day we went to the beach. This is in Kennebunk, in Maine.

The rest area on I-95 in Kennebunk. 

One of our city parks in Concord.

Now we come in with the Easter pictures. 

My two older boys.