Elizabeth Bennet and Caroline Bingley are attending the event Take a Turn about the Room.
At Austenbook, a Pride and Prejudice homage to the Hamlet (Facebook News Feed Edition)
Link from Kate; thanks!
From Book Design Review, a list of favorite book covers for 2008. I own only one, Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends.
A two dimensional picture doesn’t do the layered cover justice. Boing Boing shows details of the impressive, three-part cover.
I think my favorite, though, is The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. There’s a ballot at the end of the entry. Link from Blog of a Bookslut.
The connections to Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment just keep coming. S, who blogs at Puss Reboots, recently reviewed Hemingway’s Moveable Feast, which I read and very much enjoyed last year. She noted that the book, published posthumously, had been edited by Hemingway’s last wife to an unknown extent. While doing research on that point, I found Crime and Punishment named as an influence by Hemingway on the book. Hemingway’s isn’t an obvious homage, but now I knew what to look for, I found it.
Raskolnikov is a man whose guilt and crime prevent him from accepting the love of Sofya until the very end of the novel. To me, A Moveable Feast felt like a loving apology from Hemingway to his first wife Hadley; before the editing the book included an overt apology. Like Raskolnikov, Hemingway left his love for dark reasons but came to his senses much later, and asked forgiveness. Unlike Raskolnikov, though, Hemingway did not reunite with his earlier love.
Doesn’t it seem like post-Halloween is too soon for holiday decorations and best-of lists?
In any case, Publishers Weekly has their picks for the year in several categories: fiction, poetry, nonfiction, mystery, sci fi, kids and more. I’ve read only one from the fiction list, My Revolutions by Hari Kunzru, which I recommend. (Link from Minnesota Reads)
I left out two important things from my recent post on Macbeth.
One, a taste of the play itself. The witches get many of the good lines, but Lady Macbeth’s speeches stirred me most:
…Come, you Spirits
That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here,
And fill me, from the crown to the toe, top-full
Of direst cruelty! make thick my blood,
Stop up th’access and passage to remorse;
That no compunctious visitings of Nature
Shake my fell purpose, no keep peace between
Th’effect and it! Come to my woman’s breasts,
And take my milk for gall, you murth’ring ministers,
Wherever in your sightless substances
You wait on Nature’s mischief! Come, thick Night,
And pall thee in the dunnest smoke of Hell,
That my keen knife see not the wound it makes,
Nor Heaven peep through the blanket of the dark,
To cry, ‘Hold, hold!’ (I. v. 40-54)
Also, as I did with Hamlet, I saw details in Macbeth that I think Dostoevsky echoes in Crime and Punishment’s Raskolnikov: a murderer torn by doubt, whose guilt nearly destroys him, but who eventually acknowledges his deed and seizes back his own destiny. Macbeth and Raskolnikov met with very different fates, perhaps because they had very different women by their sides–Macbeth’s ambitious Lady M versus Raskolnikov’s hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold Sofya. Since many things in Macbeth echo those in Hamlet (e.g., Lady Macbeth’s wish to “pour my spirits in thine ear,” I. v. 26), I’m not surprised to find echoes of both in the later Russian work. I hope, in my not-very-copious free time, to research this Shakespeare/Dostoevsky connection I detect.
Neil Gaiman’s new picture book, illustrated by Gris Grimly is the frightfully entertaining Dangerous Alphabet. It is not, however, for the squeamish or faint of heart.
A piratical ghost story in thirteen ingenious but potentially disturbing rhyming couplets, originally conceived as a confection both to amuse and to entertain…featuring two brave children, their diminutive but no less courageous gazelle, and a large number of extremely dangerous trolls, monsters, bugbears, creatures, and other such nastinesses, many of which have perfectly disgusting eating habits and ought not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged.
The text and illustrations might scare some children, but my two boys, 2 and 5 years old, love this book. The tale unfolds visually, with finely etched painted drawings accompanied by Gaiman’s rhyming couplets. There are a lot of clumsy rhyming books, but Gaiman, with a background in Shakespeare, executes seamless and flowing poetry. Often, though, Grimly’s detailed illustrations cause the boys and me to pause, which interrupts the rhyme of the couplet. It’s a nice problem to have. As with many alphabet books, there are more items on each page than are named. I would guess it’s unique, though, in its depiction of maggots and meat on the M page. I see something new each time I read the book.
The Dangerous Alphabet is great fun for fans of ghoulish humor books for kids, like those of Roald Dahl, Edward Gorey or Lemony Snicket. Others might want to keep their distance. And thus their lunch.
It took him about a month of hauling around a very heavy messenger bag, but my husband G. Grod finally finished the late, lamented David Foster Wallace’s 1,079-page (nearly 100 of which are end notes) magnum opus, Infinite Jest.
His response? “That was good, but there was so much going on. I’ll have to read it again.”
I’m happy for, and proud of him. It’s been on our shelf for about a decade, and I hope to get to it soon. After Will by Christopher Rush, The Film Club by David Gilmour (latter two from the library; I broke my only-one-book-on-hold at library vow), The Return of the Dancing Master by Henning Mankell (for book group), The Likeness by Tana French (on hold at library), My Name is Will by Jess Winfield, The Story of Edgar Sawtelle, and various graphic novels.
Yeah, I’ll be getting right on Infinite Jest.
I didn’t make it to the Junot Diaz reading at the UMN last week, but I’ve taken the Geek Q test from Confessions of an Aca-Fan, that lists a huge number of the often arcane geek touchpoints from The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. How many can you identify? I scored 115. Bonus point if you detect the misspelled item on the list that is abbreviated plus misspelled here, often. Want to up your score quickly? Read Watchmen. Which you should have read already, even if you’re not a geek.
Muhammad Ali
Akira
Lloyd Alexander
Appleseed
Isaac Asimov
Atari
Jeans Pierre Aumont
Balrogs
Billy Batson
Battle of the Planets
“Beam Me Up”
Big Blue Marble
Biggie Smalls
Blake’s 7
Ben Bova
Bon Jovi
Brotherhood of Evil Mutants
Edgar Rice Burroughs
Captain America
Captain Horlock
Chaka
Chakobsa
Champions
Clay’s Ark
Daniel Clowes
Dark Knight Returns
DC
D&D
Samuel Delaney
Deathstroke
DM
Doctor Who
Dr. Manhattan
Dr. Zaius
Dorsai
Dune
Eightball
Elvish
Encyclopedia Brown
The Exorcist
The Eyes of Mingus
Fantasy Games Unlimited
Final Fantasy
George Foreman
The Fountainhead
Galactus
Galadriel
Gamma World
Gen. Urko
Ghost
Gondolin
Good People of Sur
Gorilla Grod
Gary Gygax
Green Lantern
Hardware
Hector Lavoe
Robert Heinlein
Frank Herbert
Herculoids
Hernandez Brothers
Tracy Hickman
Harry Houdini
Robert E. Howard
Ill Will
Incredible Journey
Intellivision
Jabba the Hutt
Jack Kirby
Jedi
The Jeffersons
Kaneda
The Great Kazoo
Stephen King
Land of the Lost
Stan Lee
Ursula Le Guin
Lensman
Lothlorien
H.P. Lovecraft
Luba
Magic
Manhunter
Man Without a Face
Marvel
Mary Jane
Master Killer
John Merrick
Frank Miller
Minas Tirith
Miracle Man
Maria Montez
Alan Moore
Mordor
Morlock
My Side of the Mountain
“Nanoo-Nanoo”
Neo Tokyo
New Order
Andre Norton
“Oh Mighty Isis”
Palomar
Phantom of the Opera
Phantom Zone
Planet of the Apes
Roman Polaski
Project A
Rat Pack
Lou Reed
Return of the King
Robotech Macross
Rorshach
The Sandman
Sauron
Doc Savage
Shazam
Sindarin
Slan
“Doc” Smith
Robert Smith
Solomon Grundy
Sound of Music
Space Ghost
Squadron Supreme
Olaf Stapledon
Star Blazers
Star Trek
Street Fighter
Tom Swift
Sycorax
Take Back the Night
Teen Titans
Tetsuo
The Terminator 2
This Island Earth
Three’s Company
J.R.R. Tolkien
Tomoko
Tribe
Tripods
Twilight Zone
U2
Ultraman
Adrian Veidt
Veritech Fighter
Virus
The Watcher
Watchman
Watership Down
Margaret Weis
H.G. Wells
What If
What’s Happening
Wonder Woman
X-Men
Zardoz
Hey folks! I’m interviewed over at Minnesota Reads, a great local reader resource, by Jodi, who also blogs at I Will Dare. It’s six short questions, and I had fun answering them; click over to see which fictional characters and author I have crushes on.
The usual disclaimer about how I obviously can’t stop shopping for books. From Half Price Books, St. Louis Park MN, 25 October 2008:
Rise Against Siren Song of the Counter Culture CD (for 5yo Drake)
Persuasion and Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
(all for me. I buy multiple copies to get different introductions and footnotes, since many of my current copies are footnote-free.)
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl (for G. Grod. I don’t remember liking this one.)
The Yellow Admiral, The Wine-Dark Sea and The Truelove by Patrick O’Brian (all for G. Grod, who is working his way through the series)
Happy Halloween, Curious George!
(for Drake and Guppy, of course.)
Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human by Harold Bloom (nod to Mental Multivitamin for finally “talking” me into Harold Bloom) (me)
Oblivion. RIP David Foster Wallace (G. Grod)
Bonus points to anyone who can correctly identify which item(s) are for which member of the family, Me, husband G. Grod, 5yo Drake and 2yo Guppy. Edited to add links. Edited to add answers.
I recently saw Mamma Mia! in the theater, and enjoyed it very much. Afterward, I had the nagging sensation that it reminded me of something from Jane Austen. I began to make a list, and this is what I ended up with:
Did I miss any? As always, if you’re in the mood for more Austen goodness, visit the erudite and entertaining Austenblog.
Thanks to Weirleader, whose html might have worked but I couldn’t make it do so, and my tech support G. Grod, who turned this into a readable table. Let me know if it’s not readable enough.
Sadie at Jezebel takes issue with the media’s habit of wondering what Jane Austen would do with modern problems:
This is not to disparage the scope or appeal of Austen’s work, which obviously owes a good measure of its brilliance to the natural universality inherent to all good writing, and all honest portrayal of emotion…but simply to question the weird “Austen is always applicable” notion that seems to have crept into our culture.
Apparently it’s turning into Austen week here at Girl Detective. More to come, I hope.
From Jane Austen’s Persuasion:
Anne to her sister Mary: You have had your little boys with you?
Mary: Yes, as long as I could bear their noise; but they are so unmanageable that they do me more harm than good. Little Charles does not mind a word I say, and Walter is growing quite as bad.
Substitute 5yo Drake for Charles, and 2yo Guppy for Walter, and you have a typical day in my house. I grew up with sisters. I did not foresee the noise, opposition, and chaos of boys.
One of my favorite scenes in Persuasion is when Anne is rescued from a disagreeable situation by Captain Wentworth:
[2yo Walter] began to fasten himself upon [Anne], as she knelt, in such a way that…she could not shake him off. She spoke to him, ordered, entreated, and insisted in vain. Once she did contrive to push him away, but the boy had the greater pleasure in getting upon her back again directly.
‘Walter,’ said she, ‘get down this moment. You are extremely troublesome. I am very angry with you.’…
In another moment, however, she found herself in the state of being released from him; someone was taking him from her, though he had bent down her head so much, that his little sturdy hands were unfastened from around her neck, and he was resolutely borne away, before she knew that Captain Wentworth had done it. (Chapter 9)
This scene follows the motif of a knight rescuing a princess from a villain, who in this case is a toddler. I suspect Austen didn’t much like the noise and mess of little boys, either.
From Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (Arden 1995, ed. Lothian and Craik):
Duke.
There is no woman’s sides
Can bide the beating of so strong a passion
As love doth give my heart; no woman’s heart
So big, to hold so much: they lack retention. (ll. 94-97)
Viola.
We men may say more, swear more, but indeed
Our shows are more than will: for still we prove
Much in our vows, but little in our love. (ll. 117-19)
From Austen’s Persuasion:
Captain Harville:
I will not allow it to be more man’s nature than woman’s to be inconstant and forget those they do love, or have loved. I believe the reverse. I believe in a true analogy between our bodily frames and our mental; and that as our bodies are the strongest, so are our feelings; capable of bering most rough usage, and riding out the heaviest weather.
Anne Elliott:
Your feelings may be the strongest, but the same spirit of analogy will authorise me to assert that ours are the most tender. Man is more robust than woman, but he is not longer lived; which exactly explains my view of the nature of their attachments.
In Twelfth Night, Viola is a woman dressed as a man, in love with the Duke, who is in love with Olivia, who in turn is in love with Viola’s male persona. Viola’s point is proved later, when the Duke learns that she’s a woman, and immediately appears to forget his “love” for Olivia, and instead declares for Viola.
In Persuasion, however, the love of woman (Anne Elliott) and man (Captain Wentworth) are portrayed as equally enduring. Interestingly, Captain Harville’s sea metaphor can refer both to his and Captain Wentworth’s naval experience, as well as to Twelfth Night’s shipwreck that separated Viola from her twin, Sebastian.
(I heart alliteration; you’ve noticed, no?) In my recent post on Austen’s Persuasion, I included Captain Wentworth’s letter, but wanted to do a few more, since the book is so replete with delicious, often politely nasty, passages.
***
Anne, with an elegance of mind and sweetness of character, which must have placed her high with any peopel of real understanding, was nobody with either father or sister; her word had no weight, her convenience was always to give way–she was only Anne. (Chapter one)
***
There could have been no two hearts so open, no tastes so similar, no feeling so in unison, no countenances so beloved. (Chapter eight)
***
They were actually on the same sofa, for Mrs Musgrove had most readily made room for him; they were divided only by Mrs Musgrove. It was no insignificant barrier, indeed. Mrs Musgrove was of a comfortable, substantial size, infinitely more fitted by nature to express good cheer and good humour, than tenderness and sentiment; and while the agitations of Anne’s slender form, and pensive face, may be considered as very completely screened, Captain Wentworth should be allowed some credit for the self-command with which he attended to her large fat sighings over the destiny of a son, whom alive nobody had cared for.
Personal size and mental sorrow have certainly no necessary proportions. A large bulky figure has as good a right to be in deep affliction, as the most graceful set of limbs in the world. But, fair or not fair, there are unbecoming conjunctions, which reason will patronize in vain - which taste cannot tolerate - which ridicule will seize. (Chapter eight)
***
I noticed again the pattern in Austen that her main character is the only one in a family with sense. Note, not sensibility, since that is what characterizes Marianne, the flighty sister in Sense and Sensibility. Elinor is that novel’s character with sense. Persuasion’s is Anne; Mansfield Park’s is Fanny Price; Pride and Prejudice’s is Elizabeth Bennet. Austen grants sense to the other sex in Northanger Abbey to Henry Tilney, and in Emma to Mr Knightley. I think it’s clear which character in each novel is the one with which Austen most identifies, no?
As always, for more Austen geekjoy, visit Austenblog. I have a few more Austen-related posts coming, if only I (or my tech support, ahem, husband) can figure out how to do a table in html.
Crime and Punishment is often described as one of the earliest psychological novels. I found the descriptions of Raskolnikov’s state of body and mind interesting in light of recent increased awareness of depression disorders.
Symptoms are from the Mayo Clinic site, on Bipolar Disorder. Quotations from Crime and Punishment are from the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation; I’ve included a few examples from the text. There are many more.
Signs and symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder may include:
* Euphoria
* Extreme optimism
* Inflated self-esteem
* Poor judgment
* Rapid speech
* Racing thoughts
* Aggressive behavior
* Agitation
* Increased physical activity
* Risky behavior
* Spending sprees
* Increased drive to perform or achieve goals
* Increased sexual drive
* Decreased need for sleep
* Tendency to be easily distracted
* Inability to concentrate
* Drug abuse
He had been walking for about six hours (p. 115)
It was as if he were not himself. He was unable to stay still even for a minute, unable to focus his attention on any one subjet; his thoughts leaped over each other; his speech wandered; his hands were trembling slightly. (p. 522)
Signs and symptoms of the depressive phase of bipolar disorder may include:
* Sadness
* Hopelessness
* Suicidal thoughts or behavior
* Anxiety
* Guilt
* Sleep problems
* Appetite problems
* Fatigue
* Loss of interest in daily activities
* Problems concentrating
* Irritability
* Chronic pain without a known cause
A strange time came for Raskolnikov: it was as if fog suddenly fell around him and confined hm in a hopeless and heavy solitude. Recalling this time later, long afterwards, he suspected that his consciousness had sometimes grown dim. (p. 439)
Severe episodes of either mania or depression may result in psychosis, or a detachment from reality. Symptoms of psychosis may include hearing or seeing things that aren’t there (hallucinations) and false but strongly held beliefs (delusions).
In the dark of evening he was jolted back to consciousness by terrible shouting. God, what shouting it was! Never before had he seen or heard such unnatural noises, such howling, screaming, snarling, tears, blows and curses…And then, to his great amazement, he suddenly made out his landlady’s voice…
“No one was beating the landlady,” [Natasya later] said…”No one was here.” (pp. 115-7)
I’ve lately read several Shakespeare plays, and Shakespeare-related books. Imagine my surprise, then, when I found several Hamlet parallels in Crime and Punishment, the book for my book group, one I’d thought would be a departure. Like Hamlet, Raskolnikov veers between mania and depression, hesitates over taking action, and contemplates suicide.
***
Crime and Punishment:
To take a false bank note, and where?–to a banking house, where they do know a hawk from a handsaw–no, I’d get flustered.
Hamlet:
I am but mad north-north-west: when the wind is southerly I know a hawk from a handsaw.
***
Crime and Punishment:
“After all, it’s a way out!” he thought, walking slowly and listlessly along the embankment of the canal. “Anyway, I’ll end it because I want to…Is it a way out, though? But what’s the difference! There’ll really be the end?
Hamlet:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? … To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause…
***
Crime and Punishment:
I noted him, I noted him well.
Hamlet:
I did very well note him.
***
Crime and Punishment:
All in flowers, a girl was lying in it, in [the coffin]…her loose hair…was wet; it was twined with a wreath of roses…The girl was a suicide–by drowning.
Hamlet:
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make…
There, on the pendent boughs her crownet weeds
Clamb’ring to hang, an envious sliver broke;
When down her weedy trophies and herself
Fell in the weeping brook…
but long it could not be
Till that her garments, heavy with their drink,
Pull’d the poor wretch from her melodious lay
To muddy death…
Drown’d, drown’d.
At the Times Online, A.N. Wilson reviews the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams’, DOSTOEVSKY: Language, Faith and Fiction, a combination of literary criticism and historical theology.
Link from Arts & Letters Daily.
Rain Taxi’s Book Fest is today. I may head out to see Jess Winfield at 3:30 p.m., author of My Name is Will: A Novel of Sex, Drugs, and Shakespeare
Minx, a line of graphic novels from DC for teen girls, has been canceled. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut) I wasn’t a fan, and am not surprised. There are many better YA graphic novels. Check out Hope Larson, Hopeless Savages, Scott Pilgrim, Craig Thompson and Persepolis.