Sunday, February 28, 2010

Don’t Tell Me This One

To admit, “I write poetry just for my own enjoyment,” and then write mediocrity, indicates one of three truths, if not all of them. Either you never learned the lesson of doing what you do well (this spills over into all areas of your life); or you believe anything goes; or you really don’t know what poetry is. You wouldn’t want any of these to be known about your situation, so why not not say such a foolish thing in the first place and try your hardest to improve—by reading a great deal of great poetry. If you write just for your own enjoyment, why not experience your pleasures on a higher plane? Or aren’t you worth it?

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Speak Just for Yourself

A reader asked a current popular author (formula mystery stories) if her characters ever surprised her by doing their own thing without her direction, as characters do sometimes. Her reply was an emphatic negative. She next said the surprise is that anyone would believe such a thing happens; after all, she writes fiction. Such an attitude might indicate that this author does not read how other writers create real masterpieces nor read the masterpieces herself.

Many an author doesn’t know all the characters are going to say or do, but when a writer just lets it happen, it’s as if he is merely listening to and watching the characters talk and act. In one story I read, the author didn’t know the name of the protagonist until another character asked him his name well into the story, and it popped right out, whole and perfect, without the author’s needing to search for a name. Because the point of view in this story was that of the protagonist, he had no reason to give his name until asked and the author had no business to intrude on his thinking. This is what people mean when they say the story writes itself, not that it happens all through the story, but in enough places that the author feels it’s throughout the story. Some of these writers say when the going is not so good, it’s because the author has taken over, and the story does not work again until the author lets the characters resume leading the way.

Readers forget formula mystery stories because they present no well-defined characters. A series detective is not the wisest choice to deliver this necessary magnet for literary achievement. We remember him or her, but over time usually not the stories. Of course, there is always one story that sticks in our minds, though we have forgotten who wrote it, such as the non-series number called “The Specialty of the House,” via Hitchcock, written by—

Friday, February 26, 2010

Just What the Doctors Ordered

One night years ago my husband and I attended a lecture presented by a man who had a PhD in biology. All I remember of it is the statement that he believed all natural deaths began in the digestive system. Later I heard medical doctors had officially got these lectures stopped. I wonder if they stopped the man from speaking because he was wrong, or because he was right.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

One, Two, Three

My friend Mary told me her oldest daughter, Eve, was getting treatment for breast cancer. On a visit to her doctor’s office with her husband Al, the doctor asked, “Do you have a support group?”

Eve replied, “Yes—God, Al, and chocolate.”

After I wrote the above, I called Mary to check on Eve’s condition and learned the treatments for cancer had taken away her love for chocolate. But surely, God and Al are support enough.



In that same conversation with Mary, I learned she had lost her husband last December, but since I don’t get the local newspaper any longer, I had not heard. This was the second occasion of my calling her to learn someone in the family had died and I missed the obituary. A son was fatally injured in a construction accident years ago and now her husband Jack had fallen in the yard and broken his neck, dying a few days later in hospital.

We need to stay in close contact with family and friends, and if the fine print is not too much for you, read the obits.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Now I’ve Heard It All

This funny incident happened because of the death of a president. When I couldn’t get the Grand Rapids funeral for President Gerald Ford on Fox News, I tried CNN, only to find a female anchor telling us what we had just heard while we missed the next speaker’s speech. I ended up with C-SPAN, which I should have chosen in the first place, for it has the good taste not to offend the viewers’ intelligence by unwanted interpretation. When the camera showed the outside of the Episcopal cathedral where the service occurred, a regular announcer on C-SPAN did talk a little, but he was not interfering with the airing of the service. Perhaps he should have kept quiet, however, for when he reiterated what had happened during the past few days, I caught his horrendous mistake, one that must have shocked all lexicographers of the English language who happened to be listening at the time.

Many people, if not most, have trouble with correct use of the verbs to lie and to lay, and this man might have thought he’d figured out a way to settle the case once and for all. Instead of saying the body “lay in repose,” (in past days) which he must have thought wrong in the first place, he created his own version and not once, but twice, said, the body “lied in repose.” This must have produced copious mail at C-SPAN’s headquarters, enough that I didn’t need to write to them, but I can almost guarantee this anchor will most likely never make that mistake again.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Grandpa’s Boot

When grandson Mikey was almost three years old, one day he was looking at a catalogue of pictures of shoes and boots, and brought it over to show me a picture of a boot he said was like Grandpa’s boot. As the picture of a sporty boot didn’t look at all like Grandpa’s cowboy boot, I told him I didn’t think they really looked alike. He insisted and insisted, convincing me he was basing his comparison on some specific fact.

He headed downstairs in the townhouse to get one of Grandpa’s boots. I followed. When we got to the boot, he pointed out the flower-like design of stitching across the horizontal top of the boot, just like that on the boot in the catalogue. Then we returned upstairs, taking the boot to show Grandpa.

After our praising him for his keen power of observation, and without his being told to do so, Mikey took Grandpa’s boot back downstairs and placed it where he found it. What a dear little guy he was.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Dick Francis/Ridley Pearson

One of my favorite authors, Dick Francis, died on February 14 of this year, at age eighty-nine, at his home in the Caribbean. All his stories have to do with horses, mainly those at the racetrack. All the novels were best sellers, too. Usually, I can hardly put them down as I read them. But with the latest few titles, they got even better. His son Felix helped write those and the research (or could he just know all that stuff already?) in fields other than horseracing adds a greater depth to the plots. Felix indicates on the Net that he will continue such stories, like those of his “extraordinary” father. Some books I give away but Dick Francis’s I keep. They will stay in the family, I trust.

The titles of Dick Francis’s mysteries do not easily identify just which story they tell, such as Even Money, Proof, or High Stakes. But they are clever titles and while you’re reading them, they suit the stories perfectly. I see no other way for it. The Case of the (whatever) is not the way to go.

However, I will say this about his characters. Didn’t Dick know some decent women still exist? The females in his stories appear what a large segment of the population calls indecent. Times have changed, of course, but couldn’t some real ladies go to the racetrack and perhaps witness the murder, or the theft, or the doping of a horse, without using foul language, or having a sordid past and/or present? Why should there be so much loose living, on the part of females in these books? Such is bad enough in the male characters but not every male gets this sort of attention. Realism may be the reason, of course, but realism also says decent people do exist.

This same criticism fits the novels of another of my favorite authors, Ridley Pearson, a real master of suspense. His books with the setting of Idaho’s Sun Valley area are outstanding in this regard. And how smart he is! I assume that when a writer does research seriously, he remembers what he learned during that effort. That may be true, or it may not be. Anyway, while reading Pearson, you do get to thinking about what you’re learning, then do you remember it? I daresay we need reminding to remember most of what we learned.

But I recall something most striking in one of the Francises’ books, information about how horses themselves brought drugs from South America into the country and got through customs without detection of the drugs. Also about the danger of eating undercooked kidney beans. These stories were really good ones, because I learned something, not necessarily about horseracing itself. Their next novel is due out in August.

Pearson has just been touring for his latest children’s book, but I hope that means he finished the next one for us before he left to travel, and that it will be out in the next few months. If you’ll look him up, you’ll read that Pearson works on several manuscripts simultaneously—even on two of his mystery novels. That puts my reading twelve books at the same time in the pale, doesn’t it?

I highly recommend both the Francises' recent books and Pearson's Killer series, if you’re after suspense. The latter includes Killer Weekend; Killer View; and Killer Summer.

*

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Doctor at the Supermarket

He got in line behind me with just one item in each hand and although my cart had only a few purchases, he had fewer; so I told him he could get in front of me. In a most beautiful rich baritone voice, he declined, thanking me. He was youngish—quite young to me—though from the front view he looked completely and handsomely bald, with good suntan, white knit top and tan shorts. It was noon. Perhaps he was headed for a tennis match and dropped into WinCo for a bite to eat on the run.

As he talked and moved his head around, I noticed the colorful beanie on the back of his head, the Jewish yarmulke, or kippah. It looked as if embroidered with bright color, but my research indicates painted-on designs. He didn’t show me the side of his head long enough to examine the cap as I wished to. But something about him—his sense of humor I decided later—led me to think a conversation would ensue. We had already smiled at each other about the ridiculous remarks of people ahead of us in line.

Other than that impersonal opening, I spoke first, but said nothing about the conversation piece on his head. I also didn’t say, “Pardon me, but . . .” for we had already been communicating with each other. I just blurted out, "Are you in television?"

"No, why do you ask?" This was all very light banter from the start.

"You have the perfect voice for it, or for anything, of course. That voice could get you careers anywhere."

"I'm a doctor."

My curiosity grew by giant leaps. “I have to ask, in what field?”

“Sleep disorders.”

I laughed, hardly believing how close I stood to a doctor who might hold secrets for my cure. "I'd be your best guinea pig."

"Everyone tells me that. But I work for the government, at the VA. "

"Well, I'm a veteran." We both laughed then.

"These days, we have reached the place where we take only the needy."

He could tell by my groceries I wasn't needy: two personal-sized watermelons, chocolate cake, mangos, four loaves of bread, cans of party nuts, and a huge package of fresh salmon.

"The fortune I pay each month for health insurance proves I'm not needy," I said.

We had moved up only about twelve inches in the line, not close enough to the counter for me to start laying out my stuff. He mentioned WinCo did not have an Express Line, and then said all WinCo lines are express.

"I was a doctor in the Israeli Army before I came here." How fascinating that he chose to talk about himself, just what I wanted to hear.

"Then are you a naturalized citizen here?"

He hesitated a moment, wondering how to say it, I suppose. "My mother was [or is?] an American and she met my dad in Israel." He didn't need to be naturalized.

"And you're multilingual."

He nodded yes. I don’t often meet a multilingual person, and wished the people ahead of us had more groceries to spend time with. But I was at the counter now and we had waited so long, I told him again to go ahead of me. This time he did, for he really did seem to be in a hurry, perhaps for that tennis game. I got busy unloading my groceries onto the counter and in a sense forgot about him, until I heard that beautiful voice say, "Thanks again. Have a great day."

I knew he spoke to me, and I looked up and saw him wave. I waved back.

What had happened in that short interlude amounted to almost nothing. Yet the man, young enough to be my son, made my day. It seemed an international communication transpired, but perhaps not that so much as just a cultural conversation for someone who seldom meets that these days and longs for it. I got the whole episode into my computer, lest I forget.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

So Little Time

One winter day, while I stood in line at Barnes & Noble to pick up a book they’d ordered for me, a well coiffed, well-dressed, white-haired lady stopped four feet away to wipe the hint of tears from her eyes. We connected somehow when she caressed the little green sack holding the book she had just purchased.

“It’s a terrible place,” she said, sniffling. We connected further.

“You want to buy the whole store, right?” I asked.

She could only shake her head up and down while daubing at the fresh tears that I’d caused. As she walked away, with a step much younger than her years, she murmured, “So little time, so little time.” I have often felt like crying over the same dilemma, so many books, with so little time to read them.

I thought about Joyce Carol Oates who actually writes fiction as she stands in line in public places, even at a party if no one talks with her. If I had been writing a story in a notebook as I waited in line that day, I would have missed this quirky conversation and the character I could now claim in a story. I most likely would never create her from scratch, for I would hardly expect a character to talk exactly that way and shed tears over that particular plight.

But she could appear in a story of mine just as I have described her, little green sack, tears, and all, without an invitation from me, just as my other characters do. I don’t create any of them, for when I first meet them, they already exist, with their own names, complete, with a whole life history behind them, and with much to tell me. Of course, they all carry baggage that they must sort out by the end of the story. If Mrs. Coif arrives in my story with the baggage of so little time, she will work it out or not work it out; it is not the author’s job to do so for her. While she will never appear as my protagonist, she could show up in a bookstore scene where the action is, and the whole next page will write itself. On that page perhaps I can add what I wanted to say to her but did not: “You can’t buy the store, for I want it.” But really saying that to her would have ruined her moment of epiphany.

With that coiffed white hair above the rosy cheeks and nearly tear-closed eyes, and in a neat tan double-breasted topcoat, buttoned up against the cold weather she was to face in about one minute—I felt I knew her. But I wasn’t inside her head. For the moment she can be only a minor character, but believe me, she plays her role well.

A bookstore is a great place to meet characters. Just watch them, eavesdrop on them, connect with them, and then go home and write—if that’s what you do.

Friday, February 19, 2010

What We’re Dealing With


Overheard in past years from teachers in public high schools:

Female, Choir and Drill Team: “I haven’t read a book since I left college.”

Male, Sophomore English: “I just start the record playing (Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar”) and then I leave the room.”

Female, Sophomore English: “I have them write a lot and just throw their papers in the round file.”

Male, Advanced senior English: “ . . . just tell Doug or I.”

Female, Sophomore English: “They grade their own papers.”

Male, Junior English: “I never assign homework.“

Male, Senior Government: “Aw, they read the daily newspaper in my classes. Thirty copies.”

Female, Sophomore Biology: “I switched from English to science because I just didn’t want to do all that reading.”

Male, Sophomore English: “They’d get just as much out of the movie and it takes less time than reading it does.”

Female, Junior English: “We registered for the conference, to get paid, but then we went shopping.”

Female, young Counselor: “I’m quitting after this year. I can’t stand all these bells ringing.”

Female, Sophomore English: “I get my own reading done while they’re writing.”

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Steve McCurry and the National Geographic

If less can ever be more, perhaps going back may help you in moving forward. If the urge to go back is there, how can you rest till you do? I do not mean going back home. After all, plenty of people have made that pilgrimage, only to report you can’t go home again. But I write of something much bigger and much more important to one’s fulfillment as an inquiring mind, involving geography.

This story perhaps the whole world knew about at the time. But someone missed it, perhaps you did. A National Geographic photographer, Steve McCurry, felt compelled to go back to Pakistan to look for the young woman he caught on camera in 1984, just one child among several he photographed in the school tent at a refugee camp. What captivated him, when he saw his finished pictures, were her enormous sea-green eyes, in a land where eyes are so brown, they look black. A portrait that “sears the heart,” her picture ran on the cover of the June 1985 National Geographic.

McCurry went back and found the girl, now a married woman and the mother of three children, but with the same “haunted and haunting” eyes. These eyes haunted McCurry for seventeen years.

Many people might think this silly, a waste of time and energy, but I understand the man and applaud his efforts. In addition to intriguing people like me, it made a good story for National Geographic and for television. One might say, if you could use a little excitement in your life, go back somewhere to finish a dream or a story, but not back home. Home would be too subjective a destination; you need to be objective about this. Go back alone and finish the dream.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Yours Is the Earth

 I don’t intend to take you through my entire library, but one more book (till I think of another) deserves recognition. Again, it was a bargain book I picked up in San Francisco [another first edition, and so was Marquez’s].

This story covers an escape on foot over the Pyrenees Mountains during World War II, before America got into it. In Yours Is the Earth, Margaret Vail, an American married into the French landed gentry, stays in France as long as she dares, to be as close as possible to her husband Robert in a German prison camp. She waits so long to leave France, that her only way to escape is to travel on foot with her four-year-old daughter Rose-Hélène, across the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain, in a group of eight, with a guide.

When they rest for the night in the house of strangers, sitting by the fire and listening to their hosts and each other talk after Rose-Hélène is asleep, Vail hears the lady of the house say that the young man, who appears not so intelligent, is smart. “He has read that book over there,” she says. Margaret Vail wants to get out of her chair to see what the book’s title is but she is too tired to make the effort. She leaves the house the next morning, before day, and without learning what the title is.

Vail determines at that point she will return someday to that house in the Pyrenees, with her husband, to thank the people there more thoroughly for their kindness and help. She also wants to know the title of that book.

When I read this, perhaps ten years after Vail wrote it, I too wanted to know the title of that book. This wish nagged me so, I finally wrote to the author, in care of her publisher, to ask her the title. That began a most pleasant correspondence with an American lady in France, who had her husband back from the war, but who lived in a huge ancestral house on vast lands where everyone spoke French and some working on the estate could not even read their own language. Robert knew English because of his private schooling and Rose-Hélène grew up speaking both French and English equally well. Yet Vail was lonely for communication with a native of her own language. In her first letter to me she said she had not returned to the house in the mountains, and still didn’t know the title of the book, but she was planning to make that return journey, with Robert.

I’m sure she never did. If she had, during the years she wrote to me, she would have said so. We corresponded until one day her light blue, dark-blue-lined envelope with family crest arrived with an almost incomprehensible bit of scratch saying she’d had a stroke and could no longer write. I doubt she was able to make a trip to the mountains after that.

I did not have to travel to go back, for my return would have been entirely through Margaret Vail’s return. But I believe my need to know the book’s title was as great as hers. Her never satisfying her desire to know has not put closure to my frustration.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The Picture on the Cover

So far, I’ve written mostly about books that were special to me from my first sight of them. Notice that I said “mostly.” Some obviously I did not like. And I forgot to tell you something a few days ago. The reason I purchased Living to Tell the Tale by Márquez, was the author’s photograph as a baby on the front cover. I wish I could reproduce it here, but I don’t have permission to do so, nor would I know how. The child is seated, dressed in oversized feminine attire, tied-on to fit, and holds a cookie in one hand, as if perhaps for a bribe to pose. It does not appear that he has bitten into the cookie yet, for perhaps the huge eyes indicate the photographer and his camera hold his attention. He is only a few months old, for his chin and jaw are not yet fully developed. But what sold me were the eyes. They seem to hold great sorrow, an adult’s worth, and they won’t miss a thing, even at that age. That could have been true. In the many biographies of writers I’ve read over the years, authors’ photos as children showed huge eyes that looked sorrowful, constantly observing, even as if challenging the camera to do a worse job than not. It would be a real treat if you ran across this book’s front cover in a large bookstore. Take a look at that baby and those eyes.

That day in 1982 when Márquez received the Nobel Prize, I heard about it over the radio. Two facts given: he was from Columbia and he was a Communist. In the book, he says he was never a party member. In spite of his political leaning, this one book of his is beautifully written, with many passages worth noting down on paper, if you like doing that sort of thing. The book jacket states he lives in Mexico City.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Man’s Unconquerable Mind

Another great classic of the 20th century is a small nonfiction work by classics scholar and professor, Dr. Gilbert Highet, Man’s Unconquerable Mind. Published by Columbia University Press in 1954, it is extremely relevant to our situation in the world today. He speaks of possible wide mass destruction but with the consolation that the few who survive will be compelled to rebuild civilization if their minds are unimpaired. This is the period of history when wars would be fought with sticks and stones, according to Einstein.

But the chapter that inspires me to insist that every adult should read this book is the one on censorship. It’s easy to say that there should be no censorship in this country. One hears it from others and some adopt it without reasoning through the thought. But censorship in the USA is not illegal. No, it’s only Congress that shall not censor! The First Amendment to the Constitution says:

“Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press . . .”

Highet says that every man [read “head of the family”] has the right and the duty to censor for himself and his family, and even his community so long as he can convince them he is making sense. This agrees with Christian teaching. Freedom can go too far. Nobel laureate, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who lived in America awhile, chose to return to his native Russia, reportedly because America had too much freedom! Anyone keeping up with the daily news in America can easily see this is true. Burning our nation’s flag is just one example; there is also the availability of instructions for making bombs found in various publications, including some encyclopedias. Such information should always be kept from certain individuals, those who have no sense of responsibility. Highet says a strict society has a better chance for survival than does a freer society.

I discovered this gem of a book when I was a member of Book-of-the-Month Club long ago. Gilbert Highet was one of the five or so judges who selected the book of the month. Publications by the judges were not eligible for selection, but the magazine did offer reviews of them. I ordered Highet’s MUM, as I call it, and have placed an order for it several times since then. When I had given away my last copy, I discovered it in hardback on the Net, and ordered one of those. It came as the same softcover edition which had a hard cover added, without book jacket. That tells me not only the book has been in demand all these years, but also readers wanted to preserve the book and someone had the bright idea of adding a hardcover to the original pages. It is college-level reading but it has been taught successfully on the advanced senior level of high school. A powerful book and it ought to be required reading for all who think seriously.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

School Lunches/Restaurants

This article is about life whether you read literature or not, about having a long, productive and happy life, and it is especially for those who serve meals to the public, and for those who eat them.

Diabetes seems to be headed for epidemic proportions in this country if eating patterns continue as they are. Some people think schools should offer a more healthful menu at lunchtime (and at breakfast for some). Learning that ketchup counts as a vegetable sends some of them climbing walls. But doesn’t it depend on what else is in the meal? The combination of ketchup with a lettuce leaf on the sandwich (whole grain bread, of course) can certainly count as a non-starchy vegetable. The bread is the needed starch and no French fries should be forthcoming. Two starches in one meal is one of the main combinations to avoid, including also corn with potatoes or peas with potatoes. But some bureaucracy somewhere is working on school lunches. I heard the new plan will take several years to complete, but if they’d get the YOU doctors running the project, they would have it done in a few days.

Those enterprises who package up the food sold to schools, stores and restaurants should decrease the amount of salt in containers of peanuts, cashews, and any other items they mistreat that way. A lot less sugar would leave canned peaches still tasting good. Yes, there’s a choice between regular and lite, but I’m thinking of everyone’s being healthier. Sometimes a shopper takes a can from a shelf without even looking at its contents on the label. Men did this, when they first began the family shopping, but now, thank heavens, even some men read labels. It’s a joy to witness that as I do my own shopping.

Now let’s think about restaurants. If we took a survey of foods in the typical restaurant kitchen, we would probably find the cottage cheese is not fat free or 2% fat, even though skim milk and 2% milk may be available. With the advent of pizza on the American scene, lard was the shortening used. How sure are we that no pizza parlor is still using it? Or bakeries, in their dessert piecrusts? How healthful is the oil that comes with a Caesar salad with dressing built-in? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to fill those saltshakers with lite salt, which has half the sodium of table salt? Some diners, who salt their food out of habit, would not notice the difference.

It is time for restaurants to reserve one page of their menus for meals for diabetics, created by dieticians, and from which all diners may choose. Weight loss in America would keep the restaurant busy with customers. Good business and good health to all!

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Mark Twain/Nobel Prizes/Márquez

Let’s take a breather, from World War II, that is. It’s great to hear from my readers, by email, by comment, or by following. “Followers” is such a funny term for this. Wouldn’t “subscribers” be a better choice? If you follow me and my ramblings, there is no telling where you’ll end up. The posting of my blogs is on Pacific Time, in case that interests you.

One of you reported another story about look-alikes: Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper. Excellent! A good book for parents to read with their small children. Twain is possibly the best writer that America has produced to date. But if memory serves me accurately, Twain died before the Nobel Prizes came into existence. Otherwise, he might have won the award. I’ve enjoyed most some of his essays, especially one called “That Awful German Language” but it won’t be so funny to anyone not knowing something about German verbs. Huckleberry Finn ranks as one of our greatest classics, not a racist production at all, as some attempt to make it, but a work of beauty, as my detailed study of it in graduate school proved. It’s a novel that deserves reading more than once.

On the other hand, the choice of Nobel Prize winners depends on who is currently serving as a member of the Swedish Academy that makes the decision. For many years now it has seemed the winners were socialistic writers, or even self-professed Communists. It’s almost as if an author doesn’t have a chance otherwise.

One of the latter is Gabríel Garcia Márquez, whose volume one of his autobiography, Living to Tell the Tale, is an outstanding literary work, beautiful and inspiring to other writers (he doesn’t use –ly adverbs), in spite of his adoration of Fidel Castro, and his anti-Americanism which barely shows through. But this Columbian’s fiction is something else again. I can’t stand it. Every fictional story of his I’ve tried to read was filled with the same sort of thing: constant alcohol drinking by the very poor, even by youths; brothel visiting even by youths; incest; thievery; and what have you. I gave up on One Hundred Years of Solitude. So much for Oprah’s recommendations! I don’t trust them.

Mark Twain is so refreshing by comparison.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Wine and War

One of the most informative volumes I’ve run across about World War II, one that gives details history books omit, is Wine and War by Don and Petie Kladstrup. (Read about them on the Net.) These 279 pages, with an index, read as movingly as a novel. They tell how the French devoted as much tenacity to saving their vineyards and wine industry as they did to preserving the art treasures of the Louvre. One bit of information is that under the Occupation and with the order to send wine to German troops in Russia, the French sent some of their least desirable wines in their best bottles.

American planes did quite a bit of damage to vineyards in France, when flying at necessarily low altitudes, but as is the American spirit, we helped get those vineyards producing again by even transplants from America.

I had never heard of this book but when I saw it in a store, it had that enticing uniqueness I look for. I loaned it to a man who served in France in World War II and who has made several trips back there since. He enjoyed the reading and the enlightenment by additional facts of the war. And readers certainly learn more about Adolph Hitler. I highly recommend it.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

World War II

You’ve probably heard about the girl who was reading in public something she’d been handed, which contained the title just above. She read it as “World War Eleven.” Every young person is not that ignorant, of course, but the generation after mine does not know much about that war and seems not to want to know. That is so strange, for it is our biggest war to date, if that means anything; we were victorious; it ushered in the most powerful weapon of all wars; it gave us a richer vocabulary with such words as Hitler, Mussolini, Nazi, Fascism, atomic, Vichy, Hirohito, and others. Yet our youth are not learning this history in school. If we don’t know our history, we are destined to repeat it. Many people have said this, but I don’t know who said it first.

Although I have not read the book, I think the generation that served in World War II is the one Tom Brokaw calls “the greatest generation” in his book of the same title. It’s their children who have grown up without this particular knowledge—and their children too—who may have to repeat it. That war will be different, naturally, but could be just as devastating or more so. Then someone has predicted—I think Einstein—that the war after that one will be fought with sticks and stones.

Several years ago I entered a World War II short story in a writing contest of which the contest judge was a public school junior high teacher. Although it won first place, the judge made a note she had a difficult time trying to determine the story’s historical setting. However, on the very first line of the story was a reference to the Allied invasion at Normandy. The second line contained the word Nazi. What’s so difficult about knowing when this occurred?

This is probably as good a place as any to offer one lesson in this area which numerous people have learned wrong, including especially media personnel. “Nazi” is just a shortened version of a long German word that means “National Socialism.” That puts it squarely on the Left, not the Right.

Actually, a good time for a family’s discussing history is during the dinner hour, with the television off. Testing of what the children learned last night could happen at the family breakfast table. Just get up a half hour sooner. If all families did this, it could help save the nation.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Suddenly They Heard Footsteps

In the days before the excellent Wordspy took a long vacation from sending us emails daily, one day’s offering intrigued me no end. Not the new vocabulary word it showcased, but the section called “Words About Words.” It gave a quotation from a new book telling about how, though we have invented amazing technologies for saving data, we run the risk of losing our personal, family and cultural stories. We broadcast our voices over vast distances but hardly know our neighbors. The book was Suddenly They Heard Footsteps by American-born storyteller and writer Dan Yashinsky, living in Canada.

It was the title of the book that attracted me. I had to know the significance of it. But I could find no reference to the book in any of the local bookstores; neither could they order it for me. I tried Amazon.com to no avail. However, in the process of fooling around with Amazon, I discovered Amazon Canada. I got the book at a great discount, but the cost of postage brought the price back up to the stated retail price. Oh, well . . .

Early in the book, I came to a delightful story in which the author’s three-year-old son was going to bed but fighting going to sleep. His mother began telling him a soporific story that went something like this: “The little rabbits are sleepy and are closing their eyes and going to sleep. The little chickens are sleepy and are closing their eyes. The little piggies are sleepy and are closing their eyes. The little ducklings are sleepy and are closing their eyes.” When she had covered all the little farm animals she could think of, and supposing the boy to be asleep, he raised his head from the pillow and said, “Suddenly they heard footsteps.” The author was illustrating that little children know when a story is a story and when it is not. It must have a beginning, a middle and an end. Children recognize bluffing. Therefore, this mother had to continue the story and have it make sense while the boy sat up to listen.

Soon after that I lost interest in the book, especially when it began to have political overtones. I eventually settled on the idea that the author had possibly fled to Canada to escape military draft in the USA. Such a move might have resulted in his writings' being banned in his native country, perhaps a just ruling.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Words/C. S. Lewis

Words, words, words. How wonderful they are. And yet, how ugly some can be. The story goes that a college professor had his classes the first time they met to take out paper and write all the dirty, filthy, ugly, smutty, vulgar, blasphemous words they could think of. I can hear him now, saying, “Take forty-five minutes if you need it, but just get every word down and give me your papers before the period ends. No, you don’t have to put your name on the paper.” And I can see a great big male student writing fast with a big flourish when he starts the second page. What a he-man he is! And there’s a girl unable to erase the grin around her mouth, seeming to enjoy the assignment.

When the professor has collected all the papers, he then announces, as he tears them up and throws them into the wastepaper basket, “Now that you have written what may be a great percentage of your speaking vocabulary, you will not need to repeat any of it in your writing for this class. Any use of these words in your papers will result in a grade of 'F.'”

Aha! We need more teachers like him. Now think of some “pretty” words. When I think pretty words in English, or any in foreign languages I’m familiar with, I am going by the sounds, not the meanings (however the meanings are rated “G”). Here are a few of mine: osier (a type of willow), aujourdhui (French, meaning “today”), Darjeeling (a tea and a place in India), and effectual. If you say these words aloud, you will probably hear a repetition of a sound or almost a repetition of it. So, that must be the actual sound I like. How about your favorite words? Tell someone what they are. This is a great icebreaker for conversations.

One of the greatest novelists and essayists of the 20th century, and also philologist (but perhaps without a degree in that particular field), was C. S. Lewis of English dondom. The Narnia stories top the list for children, but his Out of the Silent Planet is one of the best novels I’ve ever read, in the top five, at least. The second and third volumes of this trilogy don’t compare with the beauty and story of OSP, as I call it. You don’t have to be into science fiction to appreciate this masterpiece, just be into people. In this fantasy, you may learn a few foreign words too, of a language you have not heard before. I’ll never forget the hrossa, the seroni, and the pfifltriggi.

The story about the author’s life and romance made a powerful movie in “Shadowlands,” starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (1993), with five big awards for Hopkins and film nominations for several more.

C. S. Lewis was definitely a lover of words. That’s LITERATURE and LIFE in caps.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Reading/Writing/Math

Many Americans say, “I don’t have time to read.” For the typical middle-class family—from which most of my readers likely spring—there’s a simple answer: turn off the television. Sure, watch a news segment to keep up with things, but even if for only one or two school nights a week, with the television off, the family can read a lot of books. Children need to see their parents reading books, not just the newspaper, for they like to copycat when they are little. Later, it’s another story, but by that time, if you’ve got them loving books while they’re young, the teen years could prove a son or daughter is your best friend. Appreciation of literature means appreciation of life, and life includes family.

Perhaps one reason home-schooled children score higher on standardized tests in contrast to public school students is that home schoolers see less television, sometimes none at all.

On the other side of that coin, many people, especially retired people, say, ”I’ve always wanted to write.” My reply to that is, “Then why haven’t you?” Observations indicate that if you show no inclination toward creative writing in your youth, it’s almost guaranteed you will not even try later. But it’s doubtful that “teaching” creative writing to grades below junior high pays the best dividend. That time needs to go into learning one’s own language (reading, grammar, spelling, etc.), at least one foreign language, mathematics, art, music, and some natural science. With a solid foundation in reading and math, all other subjects should be easy enough.

Junior high students enjoy writing a journal; ergo, perhaps they are ready for creative writing. High school is the place for perfecting it and preparing for college. Twelfth-grade teachers should not take up where last year’s teacher left off, but aim for the place where next year’s teachers will expect them to have reached. Most students can do more than what schools currently expect of them. But the secret is starting early, so that the students will feel they are well prepared.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Mistaken Identity/Scapegoat/Brat

One of the most fascinating plots in fiction is that in which two people look exactly alike and their paths cross unhappily. The situation intrigues me so, that, when a friend years ago said she'd seen my double working at the airport in Amsterdam, I wanted to fly there to see this creature for myself, anticipating not indulging in the unhappily part.

Of course, I didn't make that trip. Instead, I enjoyed reading such a story called The Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier. Not grand literature exactly, and not so well known as the author's Rebecca, it was well worth my reading it several times (and Rebecca only once). The Scapegoat became a film, a 1959 release, starring Alec Guinness, but I haven't yet found a source from which to acquire it. If any of you can locate it for me, I'll be happy to have a comment from you about it.

Another great story of look-alikes is a modern classic: Brat Farrah by Josephine Tey, shown on the PBS program "Mystery" several times. I won't say more about these intricate plots, for I don't want to ruin the surprises for you.

Most of you, I hope, studied A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens in high school. Do you remember that Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton looked enough alike that one of them gave his life under the blade of the guillotine to save the life of the other? They both loved the same woman but she loved only one of them, the one whose life the other saved.

I wonder if mistaken identity in real life ever happens to the extent it does in any of these intricate tales. Someone should make a study of it (could be for a master's thesis). Several movies concern the topic, though they may not spring from books. "A Stolen Life" comes to mind, with Bette Davis, a 1946 release.

If you know of other fiction with mistaken identity of look-alikes, I would appreciate the titles and authors in a comment.

Friday, February 5, 2010

Doctor Zhivago/InHis Steps

Literature is not the favorite subject of all you readers, hard to understand, but true. But if you'd take a look at this list of what literature does for one, you should be impressed, if not convinced.

1. Gives one an emotional outlet.
2. Gives one a mastery of his own language.
3. Shows one the glory of the commonplace.
4. Interprets the present, restores the past, and predicts the future.
5. Gives one a knowledge of human nature.
6. Makes one a better person in some respect.

This bit of information came to me from my eighth-grade English teacher in Nashville, Tennessee.

When I write of reading twelve books at a time, I am not talking about twelve of the same kind, not twelve Agatha Christies, not twelve westerns, and not twelve by many a modern writer, who has gotten rich with reproducing the same plot in new clothes. But I am referring to really good books, the kind that will endure through generations. My pick for the greatest novel of the 20th century is Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak, published in the United States in 1958, also the year he won the Nobel Prize in literature. Have we had a novel that good since then?

If book sales mean anything: Charles Sheldon's little book In His Steps, published in 1896, has sold over 30,000,000 copies, and enjoys popularity still in the 21st century. The count for Doctor Zhivago is only 310,000. Indeed, Zhivago is a larger book and much harder to read than Sheldon's work, but each has its place in worthy literature.


Source for the above dates and figures: The Internet.
Kostova

The book referred to as my current reading is The Historian, the premiere novel by Elizabeth Kostova, who first came to my attention when I picked up her second one The Swan Thieves at CostCo Wholesale. I read Thieves, a first edition, by the way, immediately, while Barnes & Noble ordered her earlier novel for me. While I enjoyed Thieves, the over-abundance of italics (in letters of correspondence) bothered me. Such print looks smaller and is paler ink, possibly slowing down other readers too and not just me. This 561-page volume contains much about art, possibly because the author holds a Master of Fine Arts degree. That alone is worth the reading but there is more to it than art.

Much praise surrounds The Historian (another first edition for me), which sold at auction for two million and to the movies for another million and a half. The Internet shows some people worry that Hollywood will mess it up (their word).

What is absolutely great about the 642 pages of The Historian is the actual wording, the artistry of language, which Kostova’s ten years of research ought to guarantee and does. How can that happen? Possibly in Kostova’s own reading, which she says is for form as much as for story. A well-written work of prose deserves reading for form, with a good dictionary within one’s reach. Writers’ critique groups would do well to study a sizable paragraph from Part 1 of this book. I’m about to begin Part 2.

This first volume, so far, has several references to Dracula and company, with the expectation of more about vampires in Part 2, but that’s not the whole story. You don’t have to believe in vampires, or even like to imagine them, to enjoy this book.

Kostova is married to Georgi Kostov, a Bulgarian. (I love the tradition of adding the “a” to shape the feminine name.) She has traveled at length in Eastern Europe where we go in Part 2. Be prepared to enjoy traveling with her as you read about London, New York, South Carolina, Washington, Amsterdam, Paris, Istanbul and perhaps other points, in these excellent novels.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Printers/Punctuation/Truss

With this blog, it’s time to write some sort of introduction. Books seem to get in the way of intentions sometimes in my case, those books you’ve read about already in these blogs, for example. But if I’m going to write about literature, that’s books, and if I’m going to write about life, that’s literature. You can’t separate the two. Then I may stir into the pot something about food and cooking. Certainly a peppercorn or two about writing, for that is what I do. So far, the Flesch-Kincaid reading level of this blog is grade 8.1, about the same as that of Reader’s Digest, with a reading ease of 69.3 percent. It will likely stay at that level (though I do enjoy throwing in a challenging word occasionally) for I do want my readers of varying ages to stick with me.

Clarification now about my punctuation. (That’s a fragment and I use them. Just check them in current novels and see they are acceptable today.) Most American readers don’t notice much change in the pattern of punctuation as time passes. However, it is the business of writers to know and new stylebooks come out every year to keep them up to date. On the other hand, some authors have created their own rules, accepted by their publishers, or possibly vice versa. One example is a book that uses a short dash (–) to designate dialogue is starting but with no closing dash. The reasoning behind such changes seems to dominate the minds of—guess who—printers! The human kind. Now shouldn’t that “guess who” have a question mark after it? I opt not to give it one in this historical age. Besides, “guess who” isn’t a question. And in my sentence, it should be “guess whom” anyway. I use something like poet’s license for my style at times, though I know the rules. Let me add quickly here that printers must be trying to save ink, and in the long run, paper, for the dollar is king. Notice how much ink a set of quotation marks necessitates and how much the short dash does. In Lynn Truss’s excellent little best seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves you can find the notation that printers are to blame.

So, what’s happening now in punctuation? I see quotation marks disappearing altogether, for italics are cheaper. But the comma seems destined to be a while longer the point of disagreement. Should the rules depend on the cost of ink in a rich country, or should they originate with the creators of literature who surely feel every question, pause and stop in the stories they write? Lynn Truss campaigns for writers to uphold tradition in such matters, particularly for the apostrophe. I agree with her, but in this blog, I will still use my poet’s license. Please remember that before you condemn me.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

First Editions/Vercors

The English textbooks my big sister suffered through for four years of private high schooling were called Literature and Life. She didn’t care to read, and being just the opposite of her, I dug into these books off and on but remember only one selection from any of the volumes. I think the title of the work was “Nevertheless,” merely a story about a couple of kids, perhaps teenagers, laughing over the word nevertheless. (As for nonetheless, they probably would have laughed harder.) I thought the story worthless, but it made an impression on me: every time I read or hear the word “nevertheless,” I think of that story. Surely a textbook with such a grand title had more to offer, and it’s offering itself now as the name of my blog, for that’s what I intend to write about: literature and life.

Outside the day is a bit dreary, but inside my study, with its walls of bright yellow, it always seems the sun is shining, a prop I need to get through routine chores. But alas, the yellow walls are in only this room, and that dictates the selection of activity. But before preparing my lunch, I made myself get through another chapter in the book I’m reading. (I will tell about it later.) That is a great plus in my accomplishments for the day, as the tome has 642 pages. I’m ready for page 112. When I hold up the closed treasure, with its bookmark barely sticking out, it looks like so little read. But each turn of the page counts and in time they accumulate.

I read several books at the same time, just as the author of the above book, in an interview, said she does. Perhaps many writers do. It’s been my custom for many years to have about a dozen going concurrently, reading what suits my mood or need at the time. But when one of the twelve grabs me harder than the others—perhaps as far as halfway through—I move on with it and get it finished first. Occasionally before the second one of this dozen crosses the finish line, a new book, or two or three, have entered the house, and the stack grows. I wouldn’t be quite happy if not for a stack of mainly new books to devour. And devour is what I want to do when my shopping bag weighs heavy with new books. I look at the author’s photo at the store, read the short bio there; then at home I break in each volume as the librarian at my high school showed us how to do, check the title page, the back of the title page (looking for a first edition), the dedication, the acknowledgements, index if any, look at but don’t read the notes if any, sometimes read an introduction or preface, but I never read about the book in the material on the dust cover. The book’s surprises are not to spring forth that soon.

As for first editions, someone asked me, “Why do you want first editions in these new books? They aren’t worth anything.” I’m not interested in paying a fortune for old first editions to someone who perhaps bought them new at the regular price. Why not let value multiply while a book is in my possession? We never know when one of them may become a rare one in these days of mass destruction. But I don’t collect first editions seriously, just spasmodically, like when I find one I want to read.

What a joy it is to come across a volume (preferably small) that in some way appears unique. So I buy it. The greatest one I’ve acquired that way is The Silence of the Sea by Vercors, translated from the French. Jean Bruller, who used the pen name for an obvious reason—he wrote it clandestinely in Nazi-occupied Paris—tells a fascinating story of patriotism and passive resistance with only three characters: an older uncle, his adult niece, and the German officer who has taken over part of their “chateau,” as he calls it, for his own habitat, and the barn for his men. The unique quality of this work shows up in the enemy officer’s doing all the talking with no reply from his French hosts.

I have often thought what a great stage play this story would be and how inexpensive to produce with its one setting. But drama groups want set and costume changes in a play, and more characters than three, with all of them talking. But great dramatic and cinematic action often occurs with the eyes and body language. This tiny volume I purchased at a lending library (that was discarding it, for it was worn) in a San Francisco department store, for only twenty-five cents, and it was a first edition to boot. Somewhere through the years, I bought a soft-cover copy in French, a language I cannot read. I would have bought it in any language. I doubt it was ever published in German, which I could have understood. In English I have read The Silence of the Sea at least fifty times. Faster readers than I can manage it in less than an hour.

P. D. James once said in a television interview that she reads the five novels of Jane Austen every year. Someone out there will say, “No wonder she doesn’t write many books herself. She doesn’t have time.” But she’s written quite a long list of books. She must use the rest of her time wisely.

If a book is truly good, it merits reading more than once. When you eat your favorite food, does one time do it for you? A good book offers so much more variety of ideas, style, excitement, beauty, drama, LIFE, than does any pizza. Besides, you may learn something from the book. The only lasting affects of eating pizza are weight gain and a memory for more weight gain.