Saturday 30 April 2011
Oh dear
Late night madness setting in: mano e mano is a ridiculous phrase but nothing else seems more apt for what I'm writing.
Saturday 16 April 2011
Friday 15 April 2011
Brief update
The best purchases I have made in recent weeks are a whiteboard and a set of pens. I've always found it extremely hard to plan my essays or even sketch out my ideas. Computers are too restrictive (and I'm not tech-savvy enough to use specialised computer programs). Old-fashioned pen and paper is better, but even then the paper is never big enough if I want to brainstorm.
A few weeks ago when I was on campus, I managed to get an empty classroom to read in and I took advantage of its massive whiteboard to do a spider diagram. It was the best planning session I've ever had; I loved having the space to be able to lay out all of my ideas. Last week I finally bought a whiteboard for myself and although I've only been able to use it today (as I've been away from home since Monday), I can see that it's going to be really useful and I wish that I'd bought one sooner.
In other news, I'm going to Bath on Monday, which I'm very excited about. I'll try to update again over the weekend but there'll be another lapse of a few days early next week.
A few weeks ago when I was on campus, I managed to get an empty classroom to read in and I took advantage of its massive whiteboard to do a spider diagram. It was the best planning session I've ever had; I loved having the space to be able to lay out all of my ideas. Last week I finally bought a whiteboard for myself and although I've only been able to use it today (as I've been away from home since Monday), I can see that it's going to be really useful and I wish that I'd bought one sooner.
In other news, I'm going to Bath on Monday, which I'm very excited about. I'll try to update again over the weekend but there'll be another lapse of a few days early next week.
Thursday 14 April 2011
Sunday 10 April 2011
The origins of duelling II
To continue from this post. If the duel doesn't have a direct ancestor in the medieval joust, then where does it come from? It, along with the rapier, arrived in England from Spain and Italy in the mid-sixteenth century, but why did it become such an object of interest and fashion? I think that it might be ascribed to interest in Humanism and classicism and the resulting fashion for all things with a classical or baroque influence.
Joseph M. Levine's study of classical influences in Restoration society, Between the Ancients and the Moderns, is particularly illuminating on this front, as well as being an extremely readable book in its own right. This period, during which sword-fighting on stage experienced an increased popularity, saw classical motifs and inspiration elsewhere in society: in architecture, in education, in overseas travel, and in the place of the man in society. As Levine demonstrates, seventeenth-century culture is indebted to antiquity for fashions in all of these. However, it is the final one that especially interests me. Levine's argument places the charitable acts of fashionable, well-to-do men of the seventeenth century acted not (solely) as examples of Christian aid but rather as emulations of the wealthy classical gentleman. He writes:
The fact is that the best, perhaps the only, moral justification for the life and privileges of a gentleman lay then, as in ancient Athens and Rome, in direct participation in public life - in a life of service to the community. (Levine, 9)
This is not a trivial claim. To contend that the seventeenth-century gentleman should perform good works in the community in imitation of classical examples, rather than those found in the Bible, is to suggest that sections of the society thought of antiquity before Christianity. I don't think that this was the dominating attitude. As well as the religious Dissenters, the first ten years of the Restoration saw the Corporation Act (1661), the Act of Religious Uniformity (1662), the Conventicle Act (1664), and the Five Mile Act (1665), as well as the publications of the Book of Common Prayer (1664) and Paradise Lost (1667). Although there was great contemporary interest in classicism, religion remained a prevailing concern in England.
I would therefore make a slight amendment to Levine's focus: that a moral justification of the life and privileges of a gentleman could be found in ancient Athens and Rome, and the Bible. For those who wanted to rationalise societal emulations of the classical world, it was not hard to connect it with the Bible. For example, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, Erasmus of Rotterdam wrote:
If people who live agreeably are Epicureans, none are more truly Epicurean than the righteous and godly. And if it is names that bother us, no one better deserves the name of Epicurean than the revered founder and head of the Christian philosophy Christ, for in Greek epikouros means "helper". He alone, when the law of Nature was all but blotted out by sins, when the law of Moses incited to lists rather than cured them, when Satan ruled in the world unchallenged, brought timely aid to perishing humanity. (Erasmus 549)
Thus, if to follow the classical mode of living was to apply benevolence to public life, this was in exact accordance with the example given by Christ. We can then imagine how the Restoration modern man aware of and influenced by classical ideology may well have chosen to interpret Christian scripture according to classical fashion. Just as the Dissenters sought divine justification for violence in the Old Testament, so did the classicists confirm their refinements in Greek and Roman texts. Both groups were Christian (although the Dissenters were the more fanatical of the two); both saw their lifestyles as compatible with the teachings of the New Testament.
The younger generation of classicists were of the same ilk. Just as their fathers rejoiced in architecture and education inspired by classical antiquity and encouraged travels through Greece and Italy, so too did the sons enjoy the fashion of duelling in both dramatic works and reality. This is to be explored in a later entry.
Tuesday 5 April 2011
REVIEW: Sweet Land Stories / Homer and Langley by E.L. Doctorow
This past month I have been fortunate enough to read a number of very good books. There was True Grit by Charles Portis, whose narrator is one of the most engaging I've ever encountered. I read a collection of stories by Richard Yates, one of my favourite American authors, called Liars in Love, which I didn't find quite as good as some of his other writing but still head and shoulders above the current American male literati. I also reread several favourite books: The Fairies in Tradition and Literature, which I have already praised in an earlier entry, and in immediate response to that, Susanna Clarke's books; these are like old friends, however, and I'm going to keep to my maxim of reviewing books that are new to me.
Most engaging of all the new books I read were two by E.L. Doctorow: Sweet Land Stories and Homer and Langley and, as they seemed to act as a question and answer to one another, I'm going to treat them as such. The former is a collection of short stories with no explicit common theme, although three of them have an explicitly criminal element, one dealing with a serial killer, another with the kidnapping of a baby, and the third with the murder of a child. The other two, one chronicling the life of an unfortunate young woman, the other regarding life on a religious commune, both introduce characters who do some morally questionable things but aren't quite as clear-cut. The latter book, Homer and Langley, is based on the lives of a pair of reclusive brothers who lived in New York in the first half of the twentieth century. Doctorow makes some minor artistic changes and extends their lives by about thirty years, but his story follows a similar narrative to reality.
Of note, none of the narrators or principal characters of the Sweet Land Stories are the true "villains"; their actions are the product of circumstance and the inducement of others. In "A House on the Plains", Earle helps his mother dispose of the bodies but she is the brains and muscle of the operation. Jolene commits adultery - but it's her husband's uncle who first acts on his feelings. Lester in "Baby Wilson" goes along with the kidnapping because his girlfriend brings the baby home. (As a side-note, Lester repeatedly states that it's in his character to just do whatever is easiest for him, and that going to the police would involve too much effort. But surely it's more effort to go on the run with the girlfriend and the child when there's an ongoing nationwide manhunt for them?)
Perhaps the clearest unifier stems from the title: Sweet Land Stories, a reference to a line in the song My Country 'Tis Of Thee. The irony of considering any of the stories representative of life in a "sweet land" is obvious - perhaps particularly in the final story, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden", where an F.B.I. agent uncovers a government conspiracy. However, in the song, the words "sweet land" are followed by "of liberty"; it is the question of liberty that I think is at the heart of the book. Liberty is a common theme in American literature, perhaps stemming from the promise in the Declaration of Independence of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and Sweet Land Stories seems to merge all three ambitions together in its discussion of what it means to live in America, placing liberty at the forefront.
Liberty - but from what? And at what point does liberty become a matter of keeping out of reach of would-be captors? The book is concerned with these two questions. In the first two stories liberty does seem to mean the freedom to live on the run from the police without being caught; it's the liberty of a creature aware that its freedom is neither permanent nor assured. (One is reminded, reluctantly, of the caged animals of Kate Chopin.) In "Jolene: A Life", liberty refers more to transience that an American lifestyle can bring: Jolene can leap from prostitution to the life of a wealthy housewife with relative ease - until her past comes to catch up with her. It is only at the culmination of the story that she finds a different (and perhaps more genuine) form of personal liberty, which allows her to live without compromising her lifestyle to that of someone else.
"Walter John Harmon", the story of life on a cult, is rather different. Its narrator and his wife moved to live under the guidance of Walter John Harmon some years before the story begins, and he describes their lifestyle and the aftermath of his wife's eventual elopement with Harmon. In particular, how can the WJH cult continue now that Harmon has been proven a liar and charlatan? The WJH cult is conservatively Christian with the exception of Harmon himself (who practices free love) - but apparently not otherwise unethical (no child-rape horror stories, for example). Yet the cult receives wide condemnation from the outside world; it cannot exist untormented by critics and it is eventually reduced to a militaristic state. The final, ominous line - "We are assured of a clear and unimpeded field of fire" - indicates that in order to exercise their liberty, the cultists will meet the outsiders who seek to collapse them face on.
The final story, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden", is perhaps the least successful. A child's body is found in the garden of the White House and an F.B.I. agent takes it upon himself to investigate when everyone else wants it hushed up. The subsequent narrative draws on the unequal dichotomy between established white Americans and poor Mexican immigrants. Immigration is obviously an important theme in any work that wants to tackle the subject of American life, but I felt that Doctorow handled it with far more flair in his Ragtime. In this story the meaning of liberty shifts again, while Doctorow considers the cost of liberty for immigrants - will they keep quiet about the death of their son for the sake of life in America? - and the freedom of speech - what are the benefits and losses of keeping a national scandal quiet? Perhaps it would have been better as a full-length novel; as it was, I felt that there was too much stuffed in there.
Perhaps the lasting lesson from Sweet Land Stories is that unqualified liberty can be a dangerous thing. If you're lucky, you may end up with a peaceful life of isolation - married in Alaska, as in "Baby Wilson", or living alone, as in "Jolene: A Life". If you're unlucky, the future may bring rootlessness ("A House on the Plains"), conflict and uncertainty ("Walter John Harmon"), or disillusionment ("Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden"). For the most part the main characters in each story are left happy ("Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" is the exception), but it's a happiness of compromise and lowered expectations.
If Sweet Land Stories considers the joys and terrors of liberty, then Homer and Langley does just the opposite. As I have said, the book is based on the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer, and sticks fairly close to reality. As the years pass, the pair become more and more bound to their house and the piles of newspapers and trash they amass, until eventually they couldn't get out even if they wanted to.
The story is narrated by Homer, who went blind early on in his life and is dependent on his brother to aid him, thus strengthening the barrier against the outside world. There is no hope of liberty, whether literal or spiritual. Even the papers they keep in the house are eventually filled with stories about their curious life. The final passage of the book is truly terrifying; as good as any serious horror story.
Together, the two books complemented each other well, with their diverse attitude towards liberty. Side-by-side, the difference is striking. Where the central concern of Sweet Land Stories is that of liberty, Homer and Langley refuses to engage with the subject. Liberty means the outside, a place of change and insecurity, two things which the brothers are opposed. Much of Langley's time is spent in the creation of a newspaper that is wholly representative of every newspaper ever and will therefore only need to be bought once: "Collyer's eternally current dateless newspaper." Homer is more cynical but even so his blindness and his reliance on Langley prevent change from forming a striking impact. Far better to inflict imprisonment on oneself within the safety and stability of one's own home than to risk the myriad of dangers that can come from venturing outside.
What I find both bizarre and frustrating about Doctorow is his determination to avoid admitting his sources. This is less problematic in the case of Homer and Langley, where the title explicitly refers to the real Collyer brothers, and yet in spite of this, there is no reference to them in the blurb, or in the reviews on the cover, or even as an epigraph (which would have worked quite well, I think). In fact, had I not looked the book up on the internet before reading it, I wouldn't even have realised that it was based on true events. Perhaps this is in part due to the fact that I am not American and that Doctorow assumed that the Collyer brothers were notorious enough in his own country that there was no need to provide an explanation.
Similarly, "A House on the Plains" in Sweet Land Stories is a point-for-point retelling of the story of Belle Gunness, a serial killer who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. What baffles me about this is that Doctorow claims that the two stories have little in common - even though they are nearly identical, other than a few superficial biographical details. The most obvious addition is that of Earle, the narrator and Dora's son and co-conspirator, but really, what does he bring to the story? He acts as an instrument to reveal the horrors of Aunt Dora's farm without giving explanation to her actions. He is there to narrate rather than as an integral cog in the story's mechanics.
The silly thing is that my argument isn't with ficionalising real life; that is an age-old technique. No: the use of obscure, uncited sources is problematic because at some point the reader has to distinguish what part of the story is to be admired as the author's own creation. I recognised the Belle Gunness story only because I'm a true crime nut. If the other stories in Sweet Land Stories have real sources, I am not aware of them.
Complaints aside, I very much enjoyed both books and wouldn't hesitate to recommend either of them. Doctorow is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American writers and is well worth your time.
Most engaging of all the new books I read were two by E.L. Doctorow: Sweet Land Stories and Homer and Langley and, as they seemed to act as a question and answer to one another, I'm going to treat them as such. The former is a collection of short stories with no explicit common theme, although three of them have an explicitly criminal element, one dealing with a serial killer, another with the kidnapping of a baby, and the third with the murder of a child. The other two, one chronicling the life of an unfortunate young woman, the other regarding life on a religious commune, both introduce characters who do some morally questionable things but aren't quite as clear-cut. The latter book, Homer and Langley, is based on the lives of a pair of reclusive brothers who lived in New York in the first half of the twentieth century. Doctorow makes some minor artistic changes and extends their lives by about thirty years, but his story follows a similar narrative to reality.
Of note, none of the narrators or principal characters of the Sweet Land Stories are the true "villains"; their actions are the product of circumstance and the inducement of others. In "A House on the Plains", Earle helps his mother dispose of the bodies but she is the brains and muscle of the operation. Jolene commits adultery - but it's her husband's uncle who first acts on his feelings. Lester in "Baby Wilson" goes along with the kidnapping because his girlfriend brings the baby home. (As a side-note, Lester repeatedly states that it's in his character to just do whatever is easiest for him, and that going to the police would involve too much effort. But surely it's more effort to go on the run with the girlfriend and the child when there's an ongoing nationwide manhunt for them?)
Perhaps the clearest unifier stems from the title: Sweet Land Stories, a reference to a line in the song My Country 'Tis Of Thee. The irony of considering any of the stories representative of life in a "sweet land" is obvious - perhaps particularly in the final story, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden", where an F.B.I. agent uncovers a government conspiracy. However, in the song, the words "sweet land" are followed by "of liberty"; it is the question of liberty that I think is at the heart of the book. Liberty is a common theme in American literature, perhaps stemming from the promise in the Declaration of Independence of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness", and Sweet Land Stories seems to merge all three ambitions together in its discussion of what it means to live in America, placing liberty at the forefront.
Liberty - but from what? And at what point does liberty become a matter of keeping out of reach of would-be captors? The book is concerned with these two questions. In the first two stories liberty does seem to mean the freedom to live on the run from the police without being caught; it's the liberty of a creature aware that its freedom is neither permanent nor assured. (One is reminded, reluctantly, of the caged animals of Kate Chopin.) In "Jolene: A Life", liberty refers more to transience that an American lifestyle can bring: Jolene can leap from prostitution to the life of a wealthy housewife with relative ease - until her past comes to catch up with her. It is only at the culmination of the story that she finds a different (and perhaps more genuine) form of personal liberty, which allows her to live without compromising her lifestyle to that of someone else.
"Walter John Harmon", the story of life on a cult, is rather different. Its narrator and his wife moved to live under the guidance of Walter John Harmon some years before the story begins, and he describes their lifestyle and the aftermath of his wife's eventual elopement with Harmon. In particular, how can the WJH cult continue now that Harmon has been proven a liar and charlatan? The WJH cult is conservatively Christian with the exception of Harmon himself (who practices free love) - but apparently not otherwise unethical (no child-rape horror stories, for example). Yet the cult receives wide condemnation from the outside world; it cannot exist untormented by critics and it is eventually reduced to a militaristic state. The final, ominous line - "We are assured of a clear and unimpeded field of fire" - indicates that in order to exercise their liberty, the cultists will meet the outsiders who seek to collapse them face on.
The final story, "Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden", is perhaps the least successful. A child's body is found in the garden of the White House and an F.B.I. agent takes it upon himself to investigate when everyone else wants it hushed up. The subsequent narrative draws on the unequal dichotomy between established white Americans and poor Mexican immigrants. Immigration is obviously an important theme in any work that wants to tackle the subject of American life, but I felt that Doctorow handled it with far more flair in his Ragtime. In this story the meaning of liberty shifts again, while Doctorow considers the cost of liberty for immigrants - will they keep quiet about the death of their son for the sake of life in America? - and the freedom of speech - what are the benefits and losses of keeping a national scandal quiet? Perhaps it would have been better as a full-length novel; as it was, I felt that there was too much stuffed in there.
Perhaps the lasting lesson from Sweet Land Stories is that unqualified liberty can be a dangerous thing. If you're lucky, you may end up with a peaceful life of isolation - married in Alaska, as in "Baby Wilson", or living alone, as in "Jolene: A Life". If you're unlucky, the future may bring rootlessness ("A House on the Plains"), conflict and uncertainty ("Walter John Harmon"), or disillusionment ("Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden"). For the most part the main characters in each story are left happy ("Child, Dead, in the Rose Garden" is the exception), but it's a happiness of compromise and lowered expectations.
If Sweet Land Stories considers the joys and terrors of liberty, then Homer and Langley does just the opposite. As I have said, the book is based on the lives of Homer and Langley Collyer, and sticks fairly close to reality. As the years pass, the pair become more and more bound to their house and the piles of newspapers and trash they amass, until eventually they couldn't get out even if they wanted to.
The story is narrated by Homer, who went blind early on in his life and is dependent on his brother to aid him, thus strengthening the barrier against the outside world. There is no hope of liberty, whether literal or spiritual. Even the papers they keep in the house are eventually filled with stories about their curious life. The final passage of the book is truly terrifying; as good as any serious horror story.
Together, the two books complemented each other well, with their diverse attitude towards liberty. Side-by-side, the difference is striking. Where the central concern of Sweet Land Stories is that of liberty, Homer and Langley refuses to engage with the subject. Liberty means the outside, a place of change and insecurity, two things which the brothers are opposed. Much of Langley's time is spent in the creation of a newspaper that is wholly representative of every newspaper ever and will therefore only need to be bought once: "Collyer's eternally current dateless newspaper." Homer is more cynical but even so his blindness and his reliance on Langley prevent change from forming a striking impact. Far better to inflict imprisonment on oneself within the safety and stability of one's own home than to risk the myriad of dangers that can come from venturing outside.
What I find both bizarre and frustrating about Doctorow is his determination to avoid admitting his sources. This is less problematic in the case of Homer and Langley, where the title explicitly refers to the real Collyer brothers, and yet in spite of this, there is no reference to them in the blurb, or in the reviews on the cover, or even as an epigraph (which would have worked quite well, I think). In fact, had I not looked the book up on the internet before reading it, I wouldn't even have realised that it was based on true events. Perhaps this is in part due to the fact that I am not American and that Doctorow assumed that the Collyer brothers were notorious enough in his own country that there was no need to provide an explanation.
Similarly, "A House on the Plains" in Sweet Land Stories is a point-for-point retelling of the story of Belle Gunness, a serial killer who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. What baffles me about this is that Doctorow claims that the two stories have little in common - even though they are nearly identical, other than a few superficial biographical details. The most obvious addition is that of Earle, the narrator and Dora's son and co-conspirator, but really, what does he bring to the story? He acts as an instrument to reveal the horrors of Aunt Dora's farm without giving explanation to her actions. He is there to narrate rather than as an integral cog in the story's mechanics.
The silly thing is that my argument isn't with ficionalising real life; that is an age-old technique. No: the use of obscure, uncited sources is problematic because at some point the reader has to distinguish what part of the story is to be admired as the author's own creation. I recognised the Belle Gunness story only because I'm a true crime nut. If the other stories in Sweet Land Stories have real sources, I am not aware of them.
Complaints aside, I very much enjoyed both books and wouldn't hesitate to recommend either of them. Doctorow is, in my opinion, one of the greatest living American writers and is well worth your time.
Sunday 3 April 2011
Chronicle of Higher Education article
A rather confused article on the othering of violence; it's adapted from an upcoming book and I don't think that it really works in this condensed form. However, I'm looking forward to the book when it comes out: Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence From Cain and Abel to the Present. I'm interested to see how he'll relate othering to the duel - assuming that the duel is covered, of course.
I have a review-in-process which should be up tomorrow evening, so stay tuned!
I have a review-in-process which should be up tomorrow evening, so stay tuned!
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