March 19, 2011

  • A Time To Be In Earnest

    A perfect day should be recorded.
    It can't be relived except in memory
    but it can be celebrated and
    remembered with gratitude.

    P.D. James fascinates me.  She writes mysteries containing biblical allusions, phrases from the Book of Common Prayer and broad cultural references. Reading one of her novels, I am bound to learn ten new words, several new authors, poets, works of art, music or architecture.  However, life in jolly England is not all tea and scones.  Murder, infidelity and sex are part of her crime stories: disturbing but never salacious.

    She calls her memoir a fragment of autobiography.  I was eager to learn more about a lady who, in a catalog of people I admire, reminds me of David McCullough. Decent. Dignified. Distinguished.

    Time to Be in Earnest is written in the format of a diary of Baroness James' seventy-seventh year. The title comes from a description of a minister in Samuel Johnson's The Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland: A man who has settled his opinions, does not love to have the tranquility of his convictions disturbed; and at seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.  Notes of her daily life show her to be full of humor, humility, generosity and humanity. And busy! Her speaking schedule fatigued me. She includes time with her family and friends, memories of her childhood, and a potpourri of opinions.  P.D. James is interested in life; hence a journal of her daily life is interesting. 

    I was asked for Dalgliesh's
    [Adam Dalgliesh is the chief detective in her series]
    views on structuralism--    or was it post-structuralism. 
    I replied that he had     given it careful thought for
    a number of evenings and     had come to the conclusion
    that it was nonsense.
    The young chaplain sitting next to me murmured,
    "In vain they lay snares at her feet."

    Because of her use of Cranmer's magnificent cadences (Book of Common Prayer), I was curious if she wrote about her faith. She was born and bred in the distinctive odour of Anglicanism; her mother gave comforting and lively little homilies on which she could hang her gentle moralizing; when asked point blank if she was a Christian, her reply is affirmative with caveats, which she acknowledges is confusing. 

    This quote is representative of her prose. I love the sibilance and onomatopoeia of susurration, a word spell-check is unfamiliar with.
     

    I stood for a moment in complete silence broken
    only by the note of a song bird and the susurration
    [a soft, whispering or rustling sound] of the breeze
    in the wayside grasses. It was one of those moments
    of happiness and contentment which give reality to death,
    since however long we have to live,
    there are never enough springs.
     

    The appendix contains the full talk P.D. James gave to the Jane Austen society on 18 July, 1998. You can read all but a few pages of Emma Considered As a Detective Story here. Austen fans will love it!
            

March 16, 2011

  • A History of Illicit Laughter

    Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.
    ~ Victor Borge

    I woke up giggling this morning.  We had decided to sleep in and my laughter broke covenant.  Oh great, muttered my husband. Josh, where are you?  Curt's words launched me on a new round of mirth. 

    Josh, who is like a son to me, and I have a history of horse laughs.  When he was Jr. high age, something would set us off and all our pent up laughter would come bursting out in loud guffaws: gasping, tear-squeezing, body-wracking sobs of laughter.  Slowly we decelerated and calmed down until one glance set off more horse laughs.  By the time we settled down we couldn't even remember what was so funny.

    What is weird about those episodes is that they happened around our table. Suppression was never an option. No one else understood us but they got a good entertainment package from our shtick. 

    The most wicked laughter is the illicit kind.  Laughter that is wildly inappropriate is the funniest. And it's even wilder if the source of amusement is mutually understood by less than three people. 

    Let me assert a long-neglected truth
    that nothing binds two people together
     like a history of illicit laughter.

    My friend Ilene and I bobbled our way through my dad's sermon at Bible camp when we were nine. When he spoke about a conjunction saying thank God for that but, we heard thank God for that butt. I still remember my pathetic attempts to disguise the laughter into sneezing, coughing, tears of repentance, anything but laughter. 

    My  most humiliating episode took place with my sister-in-law at our niece's wedding.  Our nephew thrust a camera into her hand moments before the ceremony began with a request to take pictures.  The camera had a mystifying delay on the trigger and as attendants processed, Karyl Lynn missed each beautiful bridesmaid, ending up with photos of an empty aisle.  Horrified at muffing every single shot, she planned to get the entire wedding party while they stood at the front. 

    She clicked. 

    "Let us pray," intoned the preacher. A twinkle of silence sat suspended in the air.

    Then the bewitched camera began a loud rewinding. Aghast, my sister-in-law shoved the camera under her thigh. That only seemed to amplify the clicking and clacking. 

    And off we went.  Two middle-aged woman shaking, shivering, shambling with laughter. 

    After the prayer, my brother, her husband, stood up for Scripture reading.  He put on his pastor's voice and began the reading when he noticed our ridiculous posture: hands over our mouths, over our eyes, vibrating, pulsing, out-of-control.  It was all he could do not to check his fly.  We came close to landing this massive laughter, when he sat back down and muttered What is going on?, effectively relaunching that airship. 

    I am truly ashamed to admit that we laughed through the entire ceremony.  Amidst the throes I knew I needed to rein it in, find composure.  But we played off each other; every time we grabbed three quick sighs and a slow cleansing breath, the other would release a tiny snicker which was jet engine fuel.     

    After the ceremony the bride and groom acted as ushers greeting friends as they left their pews.  The bride looked at me quizzically and asked, Aunt Carol were you laughing or crying?  I'll explain it one day, I promised.

March 11, 2011

  • She Married a Scottish Laird

     


    I knew when I married the man that I married the mansion.

    This is on my short list of great first sentences.  (N.D. Wilson's (Leepike Ridge) is hard to beat: In the history of the world there have been lots of onces and lots of times, and every time has had a once upon it.)

    On Rick Steve's recommendation (in a UK guide book) I read Belinda Rathbone's memoir The Guynd (rhymes with the wind). It is a poignant account of an American woman who marries a modern Scottish Laird.  Does this sound romantic? The stuff of Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, or the Brontë sisters?  Their quirky courtship is more dalliance than alliance.

    When she married the laird, he offered her the land.  But the Guynd is not Pemberley; no servants dusted and hoovered the carpets.  "I had left Mansfield Park and entered Bleak House."  Overwhelming effort is required to restore the run-down Georgian house and 400-acre estate.  But "the Lady" has determination and energy and good taste.  When they roll up the brown linoleum that was put down during WWII her spirits pick up the promise of more dramatic change. Anyone interested in interior decorating will join in the excitement.  Photos here.

    I had no experience with rooms of these proportions or with architecture of this gravity. Small gestures were lost in the spaces, but large gestures were all the more daunting.

    Different sensibilities and priorities create tension between John and Belinda.  The story begins with a crumbling mansion and ends, sadly, with a decaying marriage.  Belinda writes exceedingly well of modern Scotland: landowner-tenant relationships, tea rituals, famous frugality, education, sense of time, and the bitter cold.

    So one learns to appreciate the native frugality within the context of generations upon generations of people born to poverty, and understand why the Scots might be inordinately grateful for small things and careful with what they have. When times are hard the Scots are better prepared for them than most of us, for a life of hardship is never buried too deep in the Scottish memory.

    It was an easy/hard read.  For the portrait of Scotland, and the well-crafted prose, it was engaging, winsome, even charming.  For the heart-ache and depleted spirit, the seeming futility and failure of restoration and of relationship, it was depressing.

    Marriage is like a house, I thought, staring up at a crack in the bedroom ceiling. It's a shelter, first of all. And it needs to be kept in good repair. Signs of water seeping through the wall need to be investigated before the paint begins to flake off, a bare patch is exposed, the fabric begins to crack, and the job of fixing it is too discouraging, too expensive, simply the last thing you can be bothered to do.            

     

March 10, 2011

  • No Dark Valley

    I am unenthusiastic about contemporary Christian fiction.

    I'm not sure how this title ended up on my shelf, but I  gave it a go.  No Dark Valley is a phrase from a hymn (There'll be no dark valley when Jesus comes to gather his loved ones home).  As a resolute lover of robust hymns, I found the best part of No Dark Valley to be Turner's employing hymn phrases into chapter titles and into her prose, e.g. Ten Thousand Charms; Where Bright Angel Feet Have Trod;  Some Melodious Sonnet; Frail Children of Dust; And Grace Will Lead Me Home.  I'm often snipping little phrases from hymns for a bouquet of words.  This, alone, made the book worth reading.

    There was a laugh out loud moment: ... Grandmother's pastor, who seemed to be trying to depict the concept of eternality by the length of his prayer. 

    The protagonist, Celia, is a director of an art gallery.  The last five books I've read have referenced pieces of art, a delightful rabbit trail. No Dark Valley paired paintings and poems inspired by the paintings, a worthy exploration.  Here is Delmore Schwartz's poem Seurat's Sunday Afternoon Along the Seine; Cathy Song's poem Girl Powdering Her Neck based on a Kitagawa Utamaro print; a Charles DeMuth, William Carlos William pairing.

    I liked the hymn phrases and fine art references.  When she isn't highlighting fine art, Turner pokes some fun at kitsch: Their idea of good art was sticking a calendar picture or an old greeting card inside a frame from Kmart.  And later: Her idea of good art was the newest Precious Moments figurine.

    But the writing did not win me.  The reader is told in almost every chapter about Celia's angst and remorse; the subtlety of showing Celia's feelings by her facial expressions, position of her hands, physical responses would have been better. That, along with a predictable storyline and wooden characterization, haven't changed my opinion of contemporary Christian fiction.
     
       

March 9, 2011

  • P.D. James' Advice for Book Reviewers

    from Time to Be in Earnest

    1.  Always read the whole of the book before you write your review.

    2. Don't undertake to review a book
    if it is written in a genre you particularly dislike.

    3. Review the book the author has written,
    not the one you think he/she should have written.

    4. If you have prejudices...
    face them frankly and, if appropriate, acknowledge them.

    5. Be scathingly witty if you must and can,
    but never be deliberately cruel [...]

    6. If you absolutely hate the book
    and have nothing either interesting or positive to say, why review it?

    7. If you are given a book to review by a close friend
    and you strongly dislike it, don't review it.
    We none of us like hurting our friends
    and the temptation to be over-kind is too strong.

    8. Resist the temptation to use a review to pay back old scores
    or to vent your dislike of the author's sex, class, politics,
    religion or lifestyle. Try to believe that it is possible
    for people of whom you disapprove to write a good book.
     

    ::     ::     ::

    What would you add to this list?

    I appreciate personal interactions with the book.
    I like to get to know reviewers, especially bloggers.

March 5, 2011

  • Hans Brinker - A Sterling Story

    Hans Brinker is a sterling story. 

    Like a meal at a four-star restaurant it is delicious, beautiful and nourishing.  But a taste for delicious, beautiful and nourishing must be cultivated.  I would not serve Mary Mapes Dodge's classic  Hans Brinker to a child who has been fed a steady diet of literary Happy Meals.  But a boy or girl who has tasted Laura Ingalls Wilder, Robert Louis Stevenson, Louisa May Alcott or Ralph Moody would eat this story up.

    The setting, the time period and cultural references are foreign, and thus require some work to read.  Published in 1865, the story is set in the Netherlands.  Imagine weather so cold that the canals froze.  What would American families do?  Stay inside and watch TV.  In nineteenth century Holland every able bodied person laced on his skates, bundled up and had fun skating! 

    There are benefits to reading it slowly, using tools such as Google Earth, search engines and maps to explore areas of interest.  Rabbit trails abound!

    • Were the telescope and microscope invented by the Dutch Jacob Metius and Sacharias Janssen or by the English Roger Bacon? 
    • A group of boys skate to Leiden and The Hague: look it up!
    • Why did the art of curing and pickling herrings revolutionize the economy of Holland?

    Any reader with a whiff of curiosity could learn a fair bit about Holland by reading Hans Brinker alone, in concert with other reference tools, or alongside other books like The Wheel on the School.  References to art abound; use Hans Brinker as a springboard for studying Dutch artists.  

    Some favorite quotes:

    Never had the sunset appeared more beautiful to Peter than when he saw it exchanging farewell glances with the windows and shining roofs of the city before him.

    It is no sin to love beautiful things.

    A tamed bird is a sad bird, say what you will.

    Although the sermon was spoken slowly, Ben [English boy] could understand little of what was said; but when the hymn came, he joined in with all his heart. A thousand voices lifted in love and praise offered a grander language than he could readily comprehend.


    Who will be the fastest skater in the race and win the Silver Skates?  Read Hans Brinker to find out!

March 4, 2011

February 25, 2011

February 23, 2011

  • Provence with MFK Fisher

    If you were to ask foodies who the best food writer of the twentieth century is, MFK Fisher would show up on everyone's list.  She is on my short list of food writers I'll never tire of reading (along with Robert Farrar Capon, Ruth Reichl, Julia Child, and Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin). 

    Since I've only read one book by MFK Fisher, How to Cook a Wolf, I picked up Two Towns in Provence, two books bound into one.  The two towns are Aix and Marseilles. But there is precious little about food here. These memoirs focus on the people in Fisher's daily life in Southern France: the waiter at her favorite cafe, her doctor, the proprietress where she boarded,  taxi drivers, a couple whose window faced theirs, fish wives, mendicants, students, even strangers whom Fisher repeatedly sees. 

    Fisher is a sculptor and words are her tools.  She chips away the banalities and highlights the quirks and mannerisms unique to her subjects.  Her characters are not wooden; they were warm and vibrant. 

    Both books would have benefited from stronger editing.  Sections could have been cut, leaving a tight, cohesive memoir.  I had to push myself through parts, knowing Fisher's characters and turns of phrase would eventually reward me. 

    The few people that used [the only bath in the hotel] evidently felt that this price [$0.10] included full maid service, but the two overworked slaveys in the hotel did not, so that I usually cleaned the tub in self-protection. I decided then that many people are latently swinish and that I would rather work anywhere than in a hotel.

    I am intrigued by the skilled synthesis of fast and slow people in this description of the Two Sisters restaurant in Marseilles (emphasis mine).

    What we see is the top of the iceberbg, as in any good restaurant. Beneath it is the real organization: the staff, both seen and invisible, the provisions, constantly checked and renewed; the upkeep of the whole small tight place, with all its linens, glasses, table fittings, and its essential fresh cleanliness. Above all, there is the skilled synthesis of fast and slow people, that they will work together on bad days and hectic festivals, through heat waves and the worst mistrals.

    If you are a Francophile, you should probably read this book.  For the rest, pick up one of Fisher's other titles.

  • Simple Pleasures in February


    Brothers (Gavin and Preston) in harmony


    Smiles, freely given by Ethan.


    Living in a region with many bronzes
    (Pendleton Round Up)


    The only thing I've learned on my new camera is the Macro focus.
    I need to lean into the learning curve!


    At five months, Levi takes great gulps of life through his eyes.
    He is the unblinking baby.
    We call this look The Levi. 


    Noah is so much like his Daddy.
    I can only chuckle. I should be praying.
    Praying for his mama.
    The simple pleasure with this kiddo is singing.
    Twinkle, Twinkle, Jingle Bells, Doxology, and whatever we make up.
    He wakes up singing.

     
    The bamboo forest.
    Scope for a boy's imagination.