Aldous Huxley--Brave New World (1932)

As Brave New World is, along with 1984, the most referenced and widely read of the 20th century dystopian novels, and certain of its ideas about the potential for a technocratic, science and pharmaceutical-dominated future society obviously have resonance with regard to contemporary developments, I thought I should make a more elaborate post about it than what I usually do. But after a couple of weeks of trying to come up with some pertinent idea about it, I have to admit that I don't have anything and just leave what I took for notes. While it is a very famous book, and at times an interesting and amusing book, it is not, even compared with the other books on this list, a major book, and never quite feels like it is particularly important even in the way that something like Alice in Wonderland does. Huxley was a genuinely smart man, and one of the more effective critics, not only here but in his other works as well, of science and technology-worship that I have come across, but the impression I get from all his novels (I think I've read three of them anyway) is that of extended thought-exercises which never quite achieve enough of an artistic form to enable them to make a more powerful emotional impact. This novel felt like once he laid out the general premise he floundered a bit narratively, and especially did not have a strong sense of how to end it. The Savage's constant quoting of and reference to Shakespeare is probably a little heavy-handed, but I get that it is trying to get across an effect that is important to such story as there is, and I trust that Huxley really knew his Shakespeare about as well and naturally as anyone in the last 100 years and was saying something legitimate about it so I don't mind it that much.  

As one of the relatively few popular works on the IWE list that is still widely referenced today, it is perhaps worth looking into what their perspective was with regard to it circa 1960. 

"Miranda said it...'How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in it!' She was speaking ironically, so her words were an apt title for Huxley's satirical Utopia. In a 1946 Foreward (sic) for a new printing, Huxley apologizes for not foreseeing the atomic age (as he might have; Wells did, before the turn of the century). But no one ever said Brave New World is good science fiction. It is enough to be good satire."

Was Miranda speaking ironically? What did Wells foresee? The spectre of atomic destruction seems to loom less in our lives than perhaps it should. People on Twitter are up in arms about many things, but no one ever talks about that. 

So that just leaves my paltry notes.

As far as Huxley's picture of the future goes, even less than 90 years out, there are some notable misses. No computers, no mass immigration (England is still more or less populated exclusively by white English people), men still occupy all positions of authority and administration. There appear to be, relative to the adult population, large numbers of children in this society, managed by the state of course, but earlier generations on the whole did not envision a future with the kind of huge decline in birthrates that we have had for a couple of generations now. 

p.79 "...turning to his secretary, 'I'll leave you to put my things away,' he went on in the same official and impersonal tone; and, ignoring her lustrous smile, got up and walked briskly to the door." My note at the time reads--Of course no one has ever smiled at me lustrously. But I forget I'd be a gamma in this world anyway--This is perhaps overly self-pitying. It is possible that once or twice in my life I may have received a lustrous smile that would actually have been pleasing to me, though I was too obtuse to pick up on it at the time. Also I would probably even in a purely eugenically engineered world such as this have enough brains to make it to a beta level. Gammas don't seem to be smart enough to be self-aware of their intellectual shortcomings, which may be to their advantage in some ways. 

People really could not imagine a future without newspapers (Heinlein always has them in his books too). Also telephones, and going out to public theaters and gatherings for entertainment, which even before the Pandemic had increasingly been becoming something of a niche activity (I capitalize Pandemic because my daughter asked me last week what was the difference between a Pandemic and an Epidemic and while I gave what I think was a plausible answer I had to think it through based on the roots, etc, and I still have been too lazy as yet to look it up).

The elite class in this generation were highly concerned with the need to manage the burgeoning population's day to day life in a technocratic manner to an extent our leaders don't seem to feel much responsibility for doing (other than policing and encouraging consumption, their work/family life/moral development are of little interest).

p.81 "'These women!' And he shook his head, he frowned. 'Too awful,' Bernard hypocritically agreed, wishing, as he spoke the words, that he could have as many girls as Helmholtz did, and with as little trouble." (lol)

Visionaries of the past really thought personal air transport would become much more common than has thus far proven to be the case.

I have to confess, these mandatory community sing-a-longs and meetings with drugged up pneumatic girls is kind of more appealing than whatever social life we have, or are supposed to have, now. (I could have taken part in the election celebrations, I guess, though venerating the likes of Stacey Abrams, etc, though I know it is supposed to be a reward in itself, is not quite the substitute for these evil but somewhat tantalizing orgies one might have hoped for with the new social and technological developments either). 

Where are all of the old women in BNW? Is that part of the utopia? No old men either apart from a few directors and scientists. (It is revealed later on in the book that the physical aging process is slowed and managed until euthanization at around age 60)

p. 267 I thought the Cyprus experiment (clearing out the population of that island and giving it over exclusively to alphas, who proceeded to devote themselves to battling over status and position, ending in a violent civil war) might be akin to much about our present social situation.  

p. 268 "The optimum population," said Mustapha Mond, "is modelled on the iceberg--eight-ninths below the water line, one-ninth above." It's fashionable in some circles to mock the idea of elite overproduction that I see turning up on the internet quite a bit, but like many ideas that catch on to an extent, there is something in it. It's clear for example, that from the social standpoint, everybody cannot be "educated" even should they advance to some level (i.e. literacy) that would once have qualified them for that designation, hence the fervor verging on desperation in some quarters to castigate entire segments of the population as "uneducated" by association based on political or some other kind of social undesirability. Maybe this is too obvious.

Huxley's society has definitely come to the conclusion that the lower orders need to be kept working, as well as generally managed. Our society seems to be coming around to the second point, but is less invested in the first, perhaps because of the expectation that has been instilled in the population that one should be compensated like a serious adult for anything resembling real work, which notion it is going to take some more time to disabuse the masses of entirely.  

The Bourgeois Surrender Challenge    

An unusually large number of movies in this one.

1. Ghostbusters (movie-1984)..................................................................................9,438

2. Ender's Game (movie-2013)................................................................................8,236

3. The Terminator (movie-1984)..............................................................................6,492

4. Douglas Adams--The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy......................................5,352

5. Her (movie-2013).................................................................................................3,440

6. Gaslight (movie-1944).........................................................................................1,730

7. Mary Jordan--The Art of Her Deal.......................................................................1,457

8. The Expanse (TV-2019), Season 1........................................................................1,266

9. Steven Spangler--10-Minute Science Experiments..................................................765

10. Alexis de Toqueville--Democracy in America......................................................345

11. Christa Parravani--Her...........................................................................................274

12. Dodsworth (movie-1936).......................................................................................260

13. Introduction to Learning and Behavior (multiple authors)....................................148

14. Three Early Modern Utopias: Utopia/New Atlantis/The Isle of Pines....................66

15. Kim Stanley Robinson--Mars Trilogy......................................................................45

16. Gregory Floyd--A Grief Unveiled............................................................................24

1st Round

#16 Floyd over #1 Ghostbusters

#15 Robinson over #2 Ender's Game

#14 Modern Utopias over #3 The Terminator

I guess I am going to have to watch these top 3 movies. The rest of them look like they might be all right.

#4 Adams over #13 Introduction to Learning and Behavior

#12 Dodsworth over #5 Her

#11 Parravani over #6 Gaslight

#10 de Toqueville over #7 Jordan

#9 Spangler over #8 The Expanse

I don't think there is anything that controversial here.

Round of 8

#4 Adams over #16 Floyd

#15 Robinson over #9 Spangler

#14 Modern Utopias over #10 de Toqueville

The first real serious matchup of books. One of the three modern utopias (Utopia) is actually on the program anyway. The full de Toqueville is pretty long, and the utopia book has an upset card anyway, so in something of a toss-up it gets the edge.

#11 Parravani over #12 Dodsworth

Final Four

#15 Robinson over #4 Adams

I have heard about and been aware of the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy for most of my life, but I never really understood what it was. I thought it was just a book, and it is a book, but it's also a series of books, and a comic book, and a TV show, and a movie, and it originally started as a radio comedy, and I realized as I got into the contest that I don't really know which of those media productions I should be using in the Challenge, since the entry that got this into the competition to begin with was a general listing of characters, who appear across all of them. So I felt that I had to disqualify it against the Mars Trilogy, which was more clearly designated as just being the books.

#11 Parravani over #14 Modern Utopias

The Parravani book is a memoir. I don't know how good it is, but the author seems to have some critical and social respectability, and the multi-book/multi-author aspect of the Modern Utopias was making me uncomfortable.

Championship

#15 Robinson over #11 Parravani

The Mars Trilogy, which I actually had never heard of, won a number of major science fiction awards and seems to be considered a classic in that genre, so maybe I should try to read it, though I have had at best mixed reactions when I've tried to read famous authors of this type (Heinlein, Philip Jose Farmer, even Huxley to some extent) in the past. 

I am very tired this month. My brain seems to be completely shot.

December 2020

A List: The Venerable Bede--Ecclesiastical History of the English People.............132/360

B List: Ignazio Silone--Bread and Wine....................................................................139/319

C List: Carlyle--The French Revolution....................................................................432/727

Another month gone by, and we enter what increasingly feels like treacherous territory, as I have had to go to the hospital in December two of the past three years. So I am trying to pace myself a little more this month. So far, so good. 

My reading pace is not quite where I would like it to be. It isn't bad for a person with as many children, etc, as I have, who is expected to attend to them and do other things, but Other People get a lot more done, I know.

I'm not sure quite what to make of old Venerable Bede so far. He writes from the point of view that the Church is the be all and end all of existence, its officials and leaders the heroes of history, guiding and at times even forcefully admonishing kings and rulers for their reticence in adapting or lapses in demonstrating their devotion to the faith. The churchmen, particularly the successors of the original group behind the evangelization of England, Gregory, Augustine, etc, who did seem rather great-souled, come off as pushy and more interested in furthering a socio-political agenda than questions of spiritual salvation. But as I have read so little about this period of history in England (600-700s A.D.), and have quite a bit of familiarity with the later history and geography of the country both through reading and having done some traveling there, at least in the southern part of England, the book holds some interest for me, whatever its degree of accuracy as a history.

The Carlyle book is worthwhile to me, but it takes a considerable investment of time in a day even to read a few pages, and I have kind of limited myself for the time to reading it in the intervals between B List books. Last month I was reading Brave New World, and I am still working on my report for that. Since it is a book that people have remained somewhat familiar with and has status as a cultural touchstone, I wanted to go into some things in that line a little. Since this was threatening to take weeks, and even the greater part of a month to complete, I decided to go ahead after a week and start the other book to keep the line moving.

 

As usual, my pictures this month tend to be concentrated into a couple of outings. I put pictures from one of my outings on Facebook, and then didn't do it here, though there is no reason why I shouldn't have, since I don't think there is much overlap in readership between the two sites. But I didn't do it.

The outdoor scenes here are mostly from a hill called Table Rock in Walpole, New Hampshire, overlooking the Connecticut River, on which we walked on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I'm not sure if the river is visible in these pictures, but the town you see, apparently at the bottom of the hill, is actually Bellows Falls across the river in Vermont.

Sunday was my anniversary. I am not good at loading pictures from my phone, they load out of order and mess up my planned narrative. Like all people of my type, I like to show off my wife any chance I get (Look, someone loves me!). This is I believe the first ever picture of the two of us together, back in '93, though we had already been going out more or less for three or four months. People didn't take as many pictures in those days.  

After our hike on Thanksgiving weekend we went to a melancholy consignment shop which, especially this time of year, I like to go to as a place to get something of the atmosphere of the 80s pre-internet and other tech influenced New England of my teen aged years. There aren't any screens or beeping things in this store, just racks, shelves, florescent lights and piped in pop songs. I love these kinds of places, though their ranks are dwindling now. The photo above features unsellable drinking vessels commemorating the Duck Dynasty television show. Every pop culture phenomenon has its window of time, but I am hard pressed to remember anything that dropped off the face of the earth like those guys have.  

The old battleax again. This is around the time I first met her. I thought it might have been the very same day, as she was wearing a similar outfit, but according to the inscription on the back of the picture it was a different social event, which I probably attended but did not socialize with her at, which probably explains why she appears to be having such a good time.

We went back to Ogunquit again on one of our 50 degree weekend days in November, and I saw what struck me as this very strange sign outside of a rest area on I-95 in Maine.

Last Tuesday, December 1st, it was 63 degrees in the morning, so I took the opportunity to have breakfast outside. Since I began keeping this record I have never had breakfast outside in December. On the 5th it snowed and it's been cold and icy since then. I meant to take a picture of the icy yard today for this check in, but I forgot. The pictures really have to be somewhat organic with me, I guess. If I am moved to take a picture, I will take a picture.

You should be able to see the river here.

This is on the way up the hill. We had already lost the sun by the time we started down.

November 2020

A List: R. L. Stevenson--Kidnapped.........................................................................237/254

B List: Aldous Huxley--Brave New World................................................................353/511

C List: Carlyle--French Revolution...........................................................................366/727

Still three old warhorse western man books going at once--including 2 Scots!--which I guess is bad. I'll eventually get through this logjam. The Carlyle is holding me up. It's a valuable book to read, and parts of it are very vivid, though it assumes a pre-existing familiarity on the part of the reader with many of the historical figures that I at least do not have. It is also absurdly verbose and imagistic by the standards of a twenty-first century history book, so one cannot easily fly through it. 

As the years pass and the pressure grows to break out of the old literary ruts and pay attention to new or neglected voices representing rising peoples and sectors of society, Stevenson seems to be one of the more likely of the old western standbys to fall into the obscurity of being unread, if he has not already. His main talent as a writer as far as I can see is for conceiving plots and telling a yarn, and he is good at this, after an old-fashioned nineteenth century fashion that is congenial enough to me, who am on the whole a forgiving reader if an author displays any spark of excellence in his writing, but I don't see jaded, questioning 21st century readers finding much in him. Do such people even like yarns, or regard them as possessing cultural value?

There is a lot going on of course, but tonight is not a good night for me to tackle writing about it. It is 67 degrees here at the moment, very humid, today was a holiday, people are behaving somewhat wildly, I am already 5 days late on my monthly update. Best to get it up and write about these other issues, if they merit any treatment at more leisure later on.

I didn't take many pictures this month. I don't generally take a lot of pictures as a rule. Sometimes if I go somewhere new and want to put it in a post I'll take a few, but I didn't do anything like that this month. 

My children eating hot dogs in a parking lot in Wells, Maine. We went to the beach last Sunday because it was 70 degrees, but I didn't take any pictures because we go there all the time. That's my new car by the way, that I finally persuaded myself to indulge in.

I took this picture today (Veteran's Day) thinking it might be the last day of sitting on the porch this year, which I like to commemorate, as it supposed to cool off tonight and I doubt it will be warm enough to sit outside again until the spring, which is a long time away. After October 24th I was in for about two weeks and thought that would be it for the year, which would be normal, but then we have had this last week of unusually warm weather.

A fall picture from early October.

I don't know what look/persona I am even going for anymore. It seems like I should be able to pass as a normal person, but I can never quite pull it off.

This year more than ever I am seeing people opining on how so very stupid it is to change the clocks twice a year, naturally as if it is something everyone of any intelligence must think and understand themselves. I of course do not have any strong opinion of it, do not mind it, feel that it has been going on my entire life until now without people feeling the need to rail violently against it, and rather think it is probably good to have the sun rise a little earlier even if it gets dark unpleasantly early in the afternoon.  

John Maddison Morton--Box and Cox (1847)

This one act play--almost a skit, really--has to be one of the more obscure titles I am going to get to read on the IWE list. Back in the 80s when I first contemplated reading this list, and went to the trouble at least of beginning to collect many of the titles when I came across them cheaply at library book sales and the like, I never once saw a copy of this anywhere, in any anthology or collection, and in those times before the internet, I thought it would be a serious obstacle to my ability to complete the program if I were to try to undertake it. 30+ years on I have still never encountered this play in a "natural" setting, but I was able to find a printed copy from the "French's Minor Drama" series, which according to the internet dates from the later 1800s, but which is in such good condition that I have to believe it is from later than that. I will put up some pictures of it. 

As I say, considered as a work of literature, this is rather slight--the most ready comparison that comes to mind is the old play/movie/TV series The Odd Couple--though I can see the conception and some of the gags being funny on stage. The premise is that Box, who works the night shift, and Cox, who works the day shift, rent out the same room in a boarding house, but each without being aware of the other's existence, while the landlady double dips on the rent. Among other things, this suggests that both Box and Cox work seven days a week and never have a day off, but I get that such nit-picking misses the point of the comedy. I didn't mind reading it--it is interesting to me as a period piece, especially in its contrast to the rather grander and much more elaborate literature we are accustomed to reading from England in this time period--and it has moments of being humorous, though a lot of it is goofy, and there are numerous stretches where the dialogue runs like this:

Box: Now then, sir!

Cox: I'm ready, sir! (They seat themselves at opposite ends of the table.) Will you lead off, sir?

Box: As you please, sir. The lowest throw, of course, wins Penelope Ann?

Cox: Of course, sir.

Box: Very well, sir!

Cox: Very well, sir!

Box: (Rattling dice and throwing.) Sixes!

Cox: That's not a bad throw of yours, sir. (Rattling dice--throws.) Sixes!

Box: That's a pretty good throw of yours, sir. (Throws.) Sixes!

Cox: (Throws.) Sixes!

Box: Sixes!

Cox: Sixes!

Box: Sixes!

Cox: Sixes!

Box: Those are not bad dice of yours, sir.

Cox: Yours seem pretty good ones, sir.

Box: Suppose we change?

Cox: Very well sir. (They change dice.)

Box: (Throwing) Sixes!

Cox: Sixes!

Box: Sixes!

Cox: Sixes!

Perhaps you get the idea. 

The IWE introduction has this to say about it:

"Chiefly, this farce deserves its immortality (?) because it is a classic idea. It is not, however, merely a dramatic idea. Lodging houses in industrial cities--in the U.S., notably Pittsburgh (?)--used to rent rooms in sleeping shifts, two or three each twenty-four hours, when the steel mills were busy. The idea made a musical show for Sir Arthur Sullivan in 1867; there the title was Cox and Box. The librettist was not Gilbert but Francis Burnand. It is very short and is usually produced in a double bill with a short Gilbert and Sullivan operetta."

John Maddison Morton lived from 1811-1891. He was English, and hailed from Pangbourne in Berkshire, near Reading. In his heyday he was a pretty successful playwright. Box and Cox earned him 7,000 pounds according to Wikipedia, which also notes that the New York Times in 1891 called the play "the best farce of the nineteenth century", which however would seem to say more about the comparatively moribund state of the English theater in the 19th century than anything else. He is revived very rarely in our day by major professional companies.

I've dragged out this review about as long as I can. You can read the entire play in about half an hour, if you want, and if you have any interest in this type of literature it is probably worth the time, even if just as a brief escape from election news and all of the other contemporary political and social problems. 

The BS Challenge

1. Supernatural (Season 10, Episode 24 "Brother's Keeper, TV--2015............................2,476

2. Stefan Zweig--The World of Yesterday.............................................................................466

3. Brothers and Sisters (Season 5, Episode 9 "Get a Room", TV--2010..............................419

4. William Faulkner--Light in August..................................................................................359

5. Room Service (movie-1938)...............................................................................................69

6. Gilbert & Sullivan--The Yeoman of the Guard (opera)......................................................21

7. Walshin & Leal--Rhode Island Recipes...............................................................................9

8. Andrew Goliszek--In the Name of Science..........................................................................8

9. Stan Cox--The Green New Deal and Beyond......................................................................8

10. Francis W. Shepardson--Beta Lore....................................................................................1

11. John Maddison Morton--Comediettas and Farces............................................................0

12. Walter Hamilton--Parodies................................................................................................0

A small field for a small book whose words do not produce a wealth of other associations. 

I like how Box has his gridiron here.

1st Round

The top four seeds receive byes.

#12 Hamilton over #5 Room Service

#11 Morton over #6 Gilbert & Sullivan

#10 Shepardson over #7 Walshin & Leal

#9 Cox over #8 Goliszek

Cox is 500 pages shorter. 

Quarterfinals

#12 Hamilton over #1 Supernatural

#2 Zweig over #11 Morton

Zweig has seen a big revival of his once dormant popularity among the serious reading public in the last few years, as evidenced by the large number of reviews for this book, even outpointing a major Faulkner novel in the seedings. In theory I should go with Morton here because according to my system he is an IWE author in an early round game, and Zweig is not. However, this particular Morton title is a photocopied and bound volume of a book printed in 1886 and out of print since then, and I am rather interested in not passing up the chance to read the Zweig book, or at least have it compete deep into the tournament.

#10 Shepardson over #3 Brothers and Sisters

#4 Faulkner over #9 Cox

Final Four

#2 Zweig over #12 Hamilton

#4 Faulkner over #10 Shepardson

Two routs against books which didn't belong in the Final Four

Championship

#2 Zweig over #4 Faulkner

In addition to Zweig being about 170 pages shorter, I thought it likelier that this Faulkner book, which despite being famous does not appear to have made it onto either of my other lists, would qualify for the tournament again, where it would always stand a decent chance of winning depending on the field. The World of Yesterday has made inroads among a contemporary English-speaking, largely male audience somewhat given to Europhilia and nostalgia, which, even though I could be said to be part of this crowd, is also a reason, perhaps the only reason, that I am a little wary of it. But I am sure I will like it. 

Moliere--The Bourgeois Gentleman (1670)

Periodically in these reviews, I feel the need to revisit the question (mainly to demonstrate that I am aware that it exists) of why I should bother to write a commentary on these works of literature that are already so well known and expertly explained by the greatest and most interesting minds spanning many centuries. Of course I am not really trying to explain anything to anybody, if I ever was doing that, other than my own experience of this as a kind of pilgrimage, and the particular landscapes, or countries, or ages, through which it passes, and the impressions, fleeting thoughts, or even crossing of paths with the occasional fellow traveler I encounter there. It is a class of narrative I have always been fond of and I thought it at least possible that the cumulative effect of noting my reactions and how they intersected with what was going on in my mind over a long period might add up to something of interest. 

Coming to this especially evoked that feeling of having arrived via some fog-shrouded forest path in a remote and strange, if somewhat jolly old hall, perhaps a somewhat more modest version of the castle of Chambord, where the play had its debut before King Lewis XIV to cap off a day of hunting, the entire theatrical company and its sets, costumes, musical instruments, etc, having been brought down on a four day's journey from Paris at great expense. This great cultural epoch of later monarchial France has, I feel, grown especially far away from me in these last years. While it never occupied a central place in my studies or the formation of my worldview, I did have in my youth some basic familiarity with the art and philosophy and history and architecture of that age, but then for many years it seems I did not follow up much on this foundation and I got rather old. But there is considerable charm in revisiting its literature, especially in contrast with the unrelentingly dark and despairing art of our present age, and for most of the entertainment I found it highly pleasing to be back among such spirits.

The I.W.E. introduction contains nothing I find to be of interest so I am skipping over it. 

Act I (p.329) The Music Master: "But you can't live on applause; praise alone won't pay the rent...the best hand people can give us is a hand with cash in it."

Act III (pps. 352-3) Nicole: "I've also heard, madame, that to top it off he took on a philosophy teacher today." M. Jourdain: "Quite right. I want to sharpen my wits, and be able to discuss things among intelligent people." Mme Jourdain: "One of these days you'll be going to school to get yourself whipped, at your age." M. Jourdain: "Why not? I wish to heaven I could be whipped now, in front of everybody, if I could know what one learns in school." 

This sounds eerily like me doing this blog. 

Chambord Castle, where the Bourgeois Gentleman had its debut. When I was searching online for a picture, I was startled that one of the first images to come up was of my old French teacher in Boston from the early 2000s, who has since returned to France, posing in front of the chateau. That had not happened to me before.

I read this in the 1957 Modern Library edition of Eight Plays by Moliere which should be pictured somewhere in here. Readers in the more egalitarian, culturally striving 1950s and 60s found this more personally offensive. The brief introduction for what they translate as The Would-Be Gentleman observes (and then engages in wild-eyed speculation) that: 

"Citizens of a different world, a different time, are likely to feel a certain sour aftertaste on reading the play. The immense mockery of the Bourgeois, whose only offense is that he wants to be a gentleman, seems to us, who are not gentlemen either, excessive, even repellent. Monsieur Jourdain's desire for instruction, for excellence, is admirable rather than ridiculous. We note that the representative of the nobility is a thoroughgoing scoundrel, who belongs in jail and not the king's suite. We sympathize with Madame Jourdain's candor and with Cleante's manly statement of his pride in the bourgeois tradition. Are such reactions due merely to the changed social situation, or did Moliere consciously hint at social criticism? The spectator of the play had no time for such reflections; the reader has a right to say that Moliere's words have taken on a new meaning which he could not have intended. Perhaps; but I think Moliere knew what he was saying."

Sadly, the play is much more socially relevant again today with regard to education, marriage prospects, and so on, which have become more widely segregated by social status again, as well as I suppose great talent in isolated instances. 

Monsieur Jourdain is in the pantheon of iconic characters of the post-Renaissance European theater. I am more sure of this having actually read the play, it is something one feels when the character is before you. He is so thoroughly ridiculous, and so thoroughly earnest and determined in his ridiculousness, that he achieves a singularity of person that goes beyond mere type and makes him inimitable. The play doesn't achieve immortality, I don't think, without this quality. His anger at his parents for not educating him properly, his middle-aged self hatred, his inability to accept himself, his idolatry of his social betters, is genuinely humorous, but in that way that is ultimately heartbreaking at the same time, which is why it has been able to have the effect that it does have and would appear on a surface description to be lacking.  

Act III (p. 363) "I display for a certain person all the ardor and affection conceivable. I love only her in all the world; I have her alone in my thought; she has all my devotion, all my desires, all my joy; I speak only of her, I think only of her, I dream only of her, I breathe only for her, my heart exists only for her..." Cleonte's over the top expression of his love is a fine example of concise theatrical presentation. 

p. 372--Monsieur Jourdain, in response to his wife's intelligent plea on Cleonte's behalf: "Those views reveal a mean and petty mind, that wants to remain forever in its base condition." 

Act IV (p. 378) Dorante (M. Jourdain's noble friend), at the expensive dinner Monsieur has given: "...the wine with a velvet bouquet, somewhat young and saucy, but not to the point of impudence..." "Impudence" lol. 

Madame Jourdain is funny.

Each act in the original performance ended with a song and dance number which one obviously misses in reading. 

The ending does not really work (can you even do it in a performance anymore?--M. Jourdain's friends play at being "Turks" and bestow on him the title of "Mamamouchi"). Mostly it just isn't funny, it goes on too long and in general is not in line with the rest of the play, which is rather pointed and witty.

 

Challenge Time

1. Margaret Atwood--The Testaments...........................................................................11,627

2. Chinua Achebe--Things Fall Apart.............................................................................3,118

3. I Love Lucy (TV Show)...............................................................................................2,157

4. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (movie-1953)....................................................................1,148

5. The Great Dictator (movie-1940)..................................................................................900

6. Julia Quinn--An Offer From a Gentleman.....................................................................596

7. Mary Shelley--The Last Man.........................................................................................240

8. Viviana Durante--Ballet: The Definitive Illustrated Story.............................................217

9. Sandra Ingerman--The Book of Ceremony.....................................................................201

10. Moliere (movie--2007).................................................................................................166

11. Dorothy Dunnett--The Unicorn Hunt.............................................................................72

12. G. K. Chesterton--Charles Dickens................................................................................18

13. New Order--"Ceremony" (song--1987)...........................................................................16

14. Hesiod--The Homeric Hymns..........................................................................................11

15. Marilyn Manson--"The Fight Song" (song--2001).........................................................10

16. Christopher Durang--The Marriage of Bette and Boo......................................................8

1st Round

#1 Atwood over #16 Durang

Durang is a "troubled marriage" play from 1973, and even though those types of works tend not to have aged well, I was tempted to take it over the sequel to The Handmaid's Tale. However I have kind of made it a rule for the time being to stick with powerhouse authors and overwhelming favorites, especially in the first round, where no mitigating circumstances intervene.

#2 Achebe over #15 Manson

This is quite a matchup. I tried watching the video for this Marilyn Manson song. It's really not my kind of thing.

#14 Hesiod over #3 I Love Lucy

Speaking of stellar matchups.

#4 Gentlemen Prefer Blondes over #13 New Order

While New Order is, or at least was at one time, more in my line of musical taste, this particular song does not do much for me either.

#12 Chesterton over #5 The Great Dictator

I do like that I have a couple of classic movies that I haven't actually seen before to add to that list.

#6 Quinn over #11 Dunnett

In the battle of the genre books, Quinn is shorter.

#7 Shelley over #10 Moliere

#9 Ingerman over #8 Durante

Ingerman wins on length and for appearing to be a more conventionally readable book. Viviana Durante is a well-known real Italian ballerina however, and a lovely specimen of an artistic European person for us, so she merits a picture, as long as it stays up.

Quarterfinals

#1 Atwood over #14 Hesiod

This is another shaky win for Atwood in an unconventional matchup where I am not sure of the form of the Hesiod book and whether I would get anything out of trying to read it.

#2 Achebe over #12 Chesterton

A good matchup here. I would like to get to both of these authors someday. Achebe is probably more essential in contemporary literary culture, especially the mainstream of it.

#9 Ingerman over #4 Gentleman Prefer Blondes

#7 Shelley over #6 Quinn

A pretty strong final four.

Semifinals

#9 Ingerman over #1 Atwood

Ingerman benefited from favorable opponents to get to this point, but her book is just the right length and level of seriousness to take out a #1 seed I was looking for an excuse to defeat

#7 Shelley over #2 Achebe

Everything was set up for Achebe to break through and win the tournament, but going up against another well-regarded book with an upset factor spelled doom in the semifinal game.

Championship

#7 Shelley over #9 Ingerman

  

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.