Thursday, November 24, 2005
Will in the World
This is a great book. I have never paid much attention to Shakespeare's sonnets, but Greenblatt's book makes studying them richly rewarding.
The following are representative book jacket reviews that I agree with heartily.
"Stephen Greenblatt's book is a tour de force. The immediacy and forcefulness of his prose creates an Elizabethan England bristling with authenticity. His reading of Shakespeare's mind is both startling and stimulating, strengthening the connections between life and art in a way that all creative people instinctively understand. Indeed, it is a book for artists and ordinary people as well as scholars and students." --Tina Packer, artistic director, president, Shakespeare & Company.
"This compulsively readable and deeply imaginative book represents the most sympathecitc investigation yet made into the ways in which Shakespeare's life experiences inform his writings." Stanley Wells, general editor, The Oxford Shakespeare
The following are representative book jacket reviews that I agree with heartily.
"Stephen Greenblatt's book is a tour de force. The immediacy and forcefulness of his prose creates an Elizabethan England bristling with authenticity. His reading of Shakespeare's mind is both startling and stimulating, strengthening the connections between life and art in a way that all creative people instinctively understand. Indeed, it is a book for artists and ordinary people as well as scholars and students." --Tina Packer, artistic director, president, Shakespeare & Company.
"This compulsively readable and deeply imaginative book represents the most sympathecitc investigation yet made into the ways in which Shakespeare's life experiences inform his writings." Stanley Wells, general editor, The Oxford Shakespeare
A Compliment for "Will in the World"
I wanted to see how and if the movie Shakespeare in Love had any relationship to the book Will in the World. I began watching the movie with the expectation that it would be a biography in the same sense as Will in the World. Well..... it was and it wasn't. The book did give a more-or-less chronological telling of Shakespeare's life while trying to discover the "real" Will by looking for parallels between his work and his life. The movie made no serious attempt at an actual biography, but was instead a fictional depiction of Shakespeare as a character in his plays, primarily Romeo and Juliet. The limited compass of the movie made it successful as entertainment, but too fanciful to carry any weight as biography. That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the movie. I did. But I learned a great deal about the real Shakespeare (and his work) from the book and very little about the man Shakespeare from the movie.
Tuesday, November 22, 2005
Man Does Not Live By Bread Alone
Happy Thanksgiving!
It may be true that man does not live by bread alone, but a good loaf of home-baked bread can make life better. I hate store-bought bread and I've worn out my old bread maker, so this is my choice for a replacement. I don't like baking the loaves in the bread maker, but it is wonderful for mixing the dough. I'll let you know how I like this new one.
Followup! This is a great machine. It has 5 separate settings for different breads: basic,sweet,whole wheat, French, "InstaBread", dough, and (wonder of all wonders) it even churns butter. I've used the French bread setting and it is delicious: great crunchy crust, chewy inside--as good as a New Orleans neighborhood bakery. At $69.95 it is a real bargain. I've also churned some butter: delicious. I used the resultant buttermilk in a batch of bread. Works great.
It may be true that man does not live by bread alone, but a good loaf of home-baked bread can make life better. I hate store-bought bread and I've worn out my old bread maker, so this is my choice for a replacement. I don't like baking the loaves in the bread maker, but it is wonderful for mixing the dough. I'll let you know how I like this new one.
Followup! This is a great machine. It has 5 separate settings for different breads: basic,sweet,whole wheat, French, "InstaBread", dough, and (wonder of all wonders) it even churns butter. I've used the French bread setting and it is delicious: great crunchy crust, chewy inside--as good as a New Orleans neighborhood bakery. At $69.95 it is a real bargain. I've also churned some butter: delicious. I used the resultant buttermilk in a batch of bread. Works great.
Saturday, November 19, 2005
New Wilderness
Four Horses of the Apocalypse (plus dogs, cats, squirrels, wasps, whales, et al)
New Wilderness
by Brian S. Matthews
AD Press, 2005
On June 10th, sometime in the late nineties, for an undetermined reason (or reasons), the animal kingdom turned on the human race and brought about a world-wide devastation of civilization. The day the animals went crazy was christened “New Wilderness Day” by a field reporter on CNN and the name stuck.
Knowing even before opening the cover of Brian S. Matthew’s new addition to the end-of-civilization genre calls to mind all the previous literary attempts at assessing how civilized human beings will act in a world suddenly stripped of most of the cultural and scientific advances since the last end of civilization at the fall of the Roman Empire. There have been many previous contributions to the genre: Hitchcock’s The Birds, Huxley’s Brave New World, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, H. Ron Hubbard’s mammoth contributions to name a few classics, plus a zillion lesser science fiction and science fantasy works the titles and authors of which escape memory. None of these, however, except perhaps Hitchcock's, comes close to the horror depicted in New Wilderness.
All these have a great deal in common and the cause of the disaster is usually clear: alien invasion, nuclear holocaust, and scariest of all, perhaps because it presently seems to be a real possibility, destruction of the environment caused by human avarice and greed abetted by complicity of the government. In the case of New Wilderness, however, as in Hitchcock’s The Birds, the cause is not clear. We can guess, but Matthews provides few clues to suggest why the animal kingdom has turned against us, which makes it all the scarier.
Matthews’ brief biographical sketch on the book jacket informs us that he is among other things, a stand-up comic. This makes one suspect that from time to time he is gently pulling the reader’s leg: one of his main characters, for instance, a comely youth named Noah, who of all the other characters has escaped major scarring and mutilation by the “teeth,” the slang reference to the marauding animals. Another Old Testament name also shows up in the form of Lot, a bad guy from a Sodom-like enclave, who is responsible for major Sodom-like? devastation of Compton Pit, the home-enclave of the major good guy protagonists. The New Testament escapes Matthews’ subtle macabre wit unless one counts the sadistic, pederast high-priest named Luke who is a primary "Gospeler" of a bogus goddess cult.
The book opens with a confrontation between Loggers and Tree Huggers, suggesting that the animals are angry over the rape of the natural environment, but when the animals attack, they attack both the rapers and the defenders of the forests alike. What follows is a list of creatures straight out of the Benedicite, omnia opera Domini: O whales and all that move in the waters. All birds of the air. O beasts of the wild and all you flocks and herds. Add to that insects, primarily ants, hornets, honey bees and wasps, and suddenly humankind is beset by the vengeance of not only the feral kingdom but the domesticated realm of animals as well. The only creatures missing from the list are reptiles: alligators and snakes do not play an important role in the book, but probably because the battle ground is in the Canadian west in the summertime. One can only shudder at the possibilities if the book had be set in Southern Louisiana where the population must always be wary of cockroaches, snakes and ‘gators in the best of times.
Ten years after New Wilderness Day, we find that human beings have taken refuge in scattered enclaves surviving on guile, limited trade with each other, and salvaged technology from before the “change.” True to form, humanity still has its good guys and its bad guys.
The good guys, although badly scarred physically and emotionally struggle to preserve their humanity. Sex (both deviant and regular) continues as a major activity, but since children are favorite targets of the marauding animals, bearing children is discouraged (except by a bizarre remnant group in Vancouver that uses newborns for human sacrifice.) Homosexuality is still present in the “changed” world, but except in one isolated and vague inference where it might be considered acceptable, it survives only in particularly perverse instances of pederasty and sadism. Human loathing of homosexual pederasty is also evident: the boy-toy object of Luke, the high priest of the goddess cult had rather have his tongue cut out than endure one more day of the priest’s attentions. One suspects, however, that this may have been purely a plot device necessary to save Noah, the particularly attractive and previously unblemished protagonist, from a ghastly maiming rather than representive of a universal loathing on the part of everyone towards gay sex.
Human greed has also survived, manifested by cornering the market of certain commodities principally gasoline, medicines, and technology. Thieves flourish, preying on weakness, trust, and goodwill.
Religion survives, but only in its symbols. Clergy, dogma, theology, and creed have disappeared except in the most primitive, destructive, and deluded versions. Very little faith is evident even in friends, loved ones or even oneself. Love is also scarce. Loved ones are too easily and frequently lost to the perils of life in a savage, unforgiving environment.
In spite of occasional visible seams in an otherwise tightly structured and extremely horrific world, Matthews proves himself to be a master story teller. One never escapes the sense of danger lurking in the darkness even in the safest places, which are very few and far between. The book is too long to be read in one sitting, but only weariness, stinging eyes, raging hunger, and the calls of nature are strong enough to make one put it down. Even if sometimes the characters take on almost comic-book dimensions in the wham, bang, boom, growl and slash of their lives, they are believable as real human beings. They are sympathetic and the reader truly cares about them even when at times their damaged psyches reveal some serious pathology.
I, the reviewer, live in an old house on top of a hill in an ancient village in East Texas that was first settled when the area was a no-man’s land west of the Sabine River. My home is across the street from the site of the first university in Texas and next door to the former home of the chronicler of the first two centuries of Anglo settlement in East Texas. Both the university and the historian’s home have long-since disappeared, burned during the devastation of Reconstruction after the Civil war and never rebuilt. The land is overgrown with weeds, underbrush and giant trees and is overrun with perhaps a hundred squirrels per square foot and no telling how many wasps and hornets’ nests. When reading New Wilderness, I paused from time to time, aware of the oddly opaque gaze of my benign pet Shih Tsu and of the squirrel-infested grounds around the house, and I was not unaware of the possibility that for some strange reason, my world might suddenly be severely beset by a “change” in the animals round me. I would caution anyone who starts reading New Wilderness, to have quick meals readily at hand, be prepared for late nights of compulsive reading, and perhaps have a contingency plan for defense against a surprise attack from an unexpected quarter. I loved the book and you will too if you like survivalist stories and being scared. You can order it by clicking on the amazon.com link below.
Stay tuned right here: New Wilderness is the first of a trilogy. The second City on the Currents is nearing completion and I will review it here as soon as it's available.
New Wilderness
by Brian S. Matthews
AD Press, 2005
On June 10th, sometime in the late nineties, for an undetermined reason (or reasons), the animal kingdom turned on the human race and brought about a world-wide devastation of civilization. The day the animals went crazy was christened “New Wilderness Day” by a field reporter on CNN and the name stuck.
Knowing even before opening the cover of Brian S. Matthew’s new addition to the end-of-civilization genre calls to mind all the previous literary attempts at assessing how civilized human beings will act in a world suddenly stripped of most of the cultural and scientific advances since the last end of civilization at the fall of the Roman Empire. There have been many previous contributions to the genre: Hitchcock’s The Birds, Huxley’s Brave New World, Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged, H. Ron Hubbard’s mammoth contributions to name a few classics, plus a zillion lesser science fiction and science fantasy works the titles and authors of which escape memory. None of these, however, except perhaps Hitchcock's, comes close to the horror depicted in New Wilderness.
All these have a great deal in common and the cause of the disaster is usually clear: alien invasion, nuclear holocaust, and scariest of all, perhaps because it presently seems to be a real possibility, destruction of the environment caused by human avarice and greed abetted by complicity of the government. In the case of New Wilderness, however, as in Hitchcock’s The Birds, the cause is not clear. We can guess, but Matthews provides few clues to suggest why the animal kingdom has turned against us, which makes it all the scarier.
Matthews’ brief biographical sketch on the book jacket informs us that he is among other things, a stand-up comic. This makes one suspect that from time to time he is gently pulling the reader’s leg: one of his main characters, for instance, a comely youth named Noah, who of all the other characters has escaped major scarring and mutilation by the “teeth,” the slang reference to the marauding animals. Another Old Testament name also shows up in the form of Lot, a bad guy from a Sodom-like enclave, who is responsible for major Sodom-like? devastation of Compton Pit, the home-enclave of the major good guy protagonists. The New Testament escapes Matthews’ subtle macabre wit unless one counts the sadistic, pederast high-priest named Luke who is a primary "Gospeler" of a bogus goddess cult.
The book opens with a confrontation between Loggers and Tree Huggers, suggesting that the animals are angry over the rape of the natural environment, but when the animals attack, they attack both the rapers and the defenders of the forests alike. What follows is a list of creatures straight out of the Benedicite, omnia opera Domini: O whales and all that move in the waters. All birds of the air. O beasts of the wild and all you flocks and herds. Add to that insects, primarily ants, hornets, honey bees and wasps, and suddenly humankind is beset by the vengeance of not only the feral kingdom but the domesticated realm of animals as well. The only creatures missing from the list are reptiles: alligators and snakes do not play an important role in the book, but probably because the battle ground is in the Canadian west in the summertime. One can only shudder at the possibilities if the book had be set in Southern Louisiana where the population must always be wary of cockroaches, snakes and ‘gators in the best of times.
Ten years after New Wilderness Day, we find that human beings have taken refuge in scattered enclaves surviving on guile, limited trade with each other, and salvaged technology from before the “change.” True to form, humanity still has its good guys and its bad guys.
The good guys, although badly scarred physically and emotionally struggle to preserve their humanity. Sex (both deviant and regular) continues as a major activity, but since children are favorite targets of the marauding animals, bearing children is discouraged (except by a bizarre remnant group in Vancouver that uses newborns for human sacrifice.) Homosexuality is still present in the “changed” world, but except in one isolated and vague inference where it might be considered acceptable, it survives only in particularly perverse instances of pederasty and sadism. Human loathing of homosexual pederasty is also evident: the boy-toy object of Luke, the high priest of the goddess cult had rather have his tongue cut out than endure one more day of the priest’s attentions. One suspects, however, that this may have been purely a plot device necessary to save Noah, the particularly attractive and previously unblemished protagonist, from a ghastly maiming rather than representive of a universal loathing on the part of everyone towards gay sex.
Human greed has also survived, manifested by cornering the market of certain commodities principally gasoline, medicines, and technology. Thieves flourish, preying on weakness, trust, and goodwill.
Religion survives, but only in its symbols. Clergy, dogma, theology, and creed have disappeared except in the most primitive, destructive, and deluded versions. Very little faith is evident even in friends, loved ones or even oneself. Love is also scarce. Loved ones are too easily and frequently lost to the perils of life in a savage, unforgiving environment.
In spite of occasional visible seams in an otherwise tightly structured and extremely horrific world, Matthews proves himself to be a master story teller. One never escapes the sense of danger lurking in the darkness even in the safest places, which are very few and far between. The book is too long to be read in one sitting, but only weariness, stinging eyes, raging hunger, and the calls of nature are strong enough to make one put it down. Even if sometimes the characters take on almost comic-book dimensions in the wham, bang, boom, growl and slash of their lives, they are believable as real human beings. They are sympathetic and the reader truly cares about them even when at times their damaged psyches reveal some serious pathology.
I, the reviewer, live in an old house on top of a hill in an ancient village in East Texas that was first settled when the area was a no-man’s land west of the Sabine River. My home is across the street from the site of the first university in Texas and next door to the former home of the chronicler of the first two centuries of Anglo settlement in East Texas. Both the university and the historian’s home have long-since disappeared, burned during the devastation of Reconstruction after the Civil war and never rebuilt. The land is overgrown with weeds, underbrush and giant trees and is overrun with perhaps a hundred squirrels per square foot and no telling how many wasps and hornets’ nests. When reading New Wilderness, I paused from time to time, aware of the oddly opaque gaze of my benign pet Shih Tsu and of the squirrel-infested grounds around the house, and I was not unaware of the possibility that for some strange reason, my world might suddenly be severely beset by a “change” in the animals round me. I would caution anyone who starts reading New Wilderness, to have quick meals readily at hand, be prepared for late nights of compulsive reading, and perhaps have a contingency plan for defense against a surprise attack from an unexpected quarter. I loved the book and you will too if you like survivalist stories and being scared. You can order it by clicking on the amazon.com link below.
Stay tuned right here: New Wilderness is the first of a trilogy. The second City on the Currents is nearing completion and I will review it here as soon as it's available.
Friday, November 11, 2005
The Last Days of Publishing
A Novel by Tom Engelhardt
University of Massachusetts Press, 2003
Tom Engelhardt, a veteran editor with 15 years experience at Pantheon, has written a first-person narrative told by a ‘fictional’ veteran editor who has worked for many years in a small prestigious publishing house that has been adsorbed into a multi-media entertainment conglomerate. In what must be a classic ‘art imitating life’ story, Engelhardt has written a compelling human story about a man struggling with his own mortality, his existential loneliness, and his professional obsolescence in an industry that seems to have lost its relevance. This human story is wrapped in a chronicle of the “decline unto death” of traditional small-press publishing and the loss to ‘literature’ the death implies. Within the tale the narrator struggles with the loss of a love (both an ex-wife and a lover) and friendships, which run parallel to the loss of his livelihood and his professional identity. At the end of the story, Engelhardt suggests that there is hope; all is not lost: literary fiction and low-profit-margin books of all types will survive. The life force that drives the creation of low-profit books is too strong to disappear even if the venue for publication changes. It is interesting to note that the publisher of The Last Days of Publishing is the University of Massachusetts Press. University presses traditionally have been a venue for books of limited interest.
University of Massachusetts Press, 2003
Tom Engelhardt, a veteran editor with 15 years experience at Pantheon, has written a first-person narrative told by a ‘fictional’ veteran editor who has worked for many years in a small prestigious publishing house that has been adsorbed into a multi-media entertainment conglomerate. In what must be a classic ‘art imitating life’ story, Engelhardt has written a compelling human story about a man struggling with his own mortality, his existential loneliness, and his professional obsolescence in an industry that seems to have lost its relevance. This human story is wrapped in a chronicle of the “decline unto death” of traditional small-press publishing and the loss to ‘literature’ the death implies. Within the tale the narrator struggles with the loss of a love (both an ex-wife and a lover) and friendships, which run parallel to the loss of his livelihood and his professional identity. At the end of the story, Engelhardt suggests that there is hope; all is not lost: literary fiction and low-profit-margin books of all types will survive. The life force that drives the creation of low-profit books is too strong to disappear even if the venue for publication changes. It is interesting to note that the publisher of The Last Days of Publishing is the University of Massachusetts Press. University presses traditionally have been a venue for books of limited interest.
