THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
11/30/07 -- Vol. 26, No. 22, Whole Number 1469
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Join Anticipation Now (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Headline (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Musings on Religion (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
THE SINGING REVOLUTION (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Dinosaurs in the Movies (presentation description
by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Hagia Sophia (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
BEOWULF (letter of comment by John Purcell)
This Week's Reading (book sales, PLATO AND A PLATYPUS
WALK INTO A BAR, GENTLEMEN OF THE ROAD, and
LOST CLASSICS) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: Join Anticipation Now (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Anticipation, the 2009 Worldcon, will be held August 6-10 in
Montreal. Membership rates are currently US$90 or C$95, but will
undoubtedly go up January 1.
Note that the US dollar rate is currently *below* that Canadian
one. This is an artifact of the exchange rate at the time of the
bid, and will also undoubtedly change.
And finally, all credit card transactions will be executed in
Canadian dollars.
What this means: If you are a USian and planning to attend, you
should join before the end of the year and *pay by check in US
dollars*. If you use a credit card, it will cost you about US$10
more per membership (plus credit card fees for foreign exchange)!
[-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Headline (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I read a headline that says "Carnivorous Dinosaur Tracks
Discovered In Australia." That is really amazing. Presumably
they are dangerous only to small animals that haplessly take a
shortcut across one. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Musings on Religion (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I am in a correspondence with a film fan from the African country
of Chad, though our discussion has ranged far afield of cinema.
Chad is a country going through a lot of strife right now. It
has a low-educated Muslim majority and a more educated Christian
minority. The person I am talking to, call him G, is a member of
an organization "fostering religion and state separation in
Chad." The president, Idriss Deby, is a Muslim who is working to
remake Chad into a Muslim state. The Christians are, naturally
enough, resisting. Deby is also supporting the Muslims in Sudan
and their genocide in the Darfur region. Some of the discussion
has taken a philosophical turn. The following is adapted from a
piece of mail I wrote to G.
Deby sounds like a dangerous leader and a very bad one. I knew
something of him, but had not heard how was connected with
exacerbating the Darfur situation. I can well understand why G
is anxious to keep religion out of his government. It sounds
like what you are saying is that at base the problems of Chad
come down to religious conflicts. That does not surprise me
because it is happening just about everywhere else in the world.
Nobody fights over whether water is made of hydrogen and oxygen
bonding together or whether 2 + 2 really is 4. There is plenty
of evidence for those observations. People who say 2+2=4 feel
very secure that these facts are true. In religion there is not
strong evidence that what people say about God is true. People
pick what they want to believe and that is the basis of faith.
Faith is what they choose to believe without any good evidence.
In most cases that would be OK. People are usually careful about
where they invest their faith. But when somebody realizes that
other someone else believes something different, people start
getting very defensive. It would be simple if one person or the
other had good hard evidence--2+2=4 sort of evidence--that what
he believes is true. But frustratingly neither can. So what
happens. Each person tells himself that these things he has
decided to believe are true and the other person is just
obstinate. People start dividing the world into "those who
believe the things I do" and "those who don't." Those who
believe the same things do not pose a challenge. Those who
believe something different do.
Religion is really the only field I can think of in which people
can make things up and then the things they make up can be
accepted as truth. People make up out of their own imaginations
all sorts of crazy things that they claim God wants and other
people just accept it. One reason they accept it is that they
have been told they will get a big prize when they die. Again
there is no good evidence that that is true, perhaps just
someone's interpretation of a book, but people are greedy to get
that prize. This made them gullible and willing to be
manipulated for what are really selfish ends.
At one point in the past all of this served a useful purpose.
People would do callous and selfish things to other people. They
would steal from each other and kill each other. Religion said,
"thou shall not steal; thou shall not kill; if you do these
things you will suffer grievously after you die." In fear people
tried not to steal and kill. These days we have civil law to
prevent these crimes. Religion seems to still want to do the
job, though it appears to me that civil law, faulty though it can
be, has a much more reliable sense of what is fair and unfair
than does religious law. You rarely find civil saying the
punishment for this infringement is to be buried up to your neck
and then people throw stones at you until you are dead. It is
also much easier to change civil law when it is found to be
faulty than it is to change religious law. Religious law is
claimed to come from God and God almost by definition cannot get
it wrong. If He gets it wrong, he is not God.
A good deal of the conflict is whether people of a certain
religion will live by their religious law or by the state's civil
law. It is not entirely clear to me why one cannot just live by
both laws. Generally religious law simply says certain actions
must not be done and civil law say that certain actions will draw
certain punishments. It is not clear to me why in places like
Chad the Muslims cannot live by Sharia if they want. They just
have to live by the civil law as well. They just have to live
with the union of the two sets of restrictions. They must
neither eat non-halal meat nor park in a hospital zone. In the
United States having four wives may be permitted by religious
law, but it is not by civil law, so it cannot be done. Eating
pork is permissible by civil law, but not by those who want to
live by Sharia. Where conflict comes in is where one set of laws
requires an action while the other set forbids it. But those
instances I believe are rare.
Even in the days before strong civil laws the average person had
a good sense of what was right and what was wrong. Religions
like to foster the idea that without religious law there was
anarchy and terrible things going on. It is easy to say that in
Biblical times that those who lived without religious law
immediately fell to orgying and decadence. Cecil B. DeMille
showed it as when Moses went up the mountain the people the
people took all of about a minute and a half to fall into
decadence and to start worshipping idols. Well, that may be the
Bible account. More unbiased and more reliably documented was
the pre-Christian life style in Hawaii and by all records it was
a reasonable life-style. Religious morality was only so
desperately needed in the self-serving view of the religions.
But there are many people who ignore their internal sense of
morality and choose to believe just what their religion tells
them is right is right and what it tells them is wrong is wrong.
They delegate their sense of morality to a religion. That is
dangerous. But they accept this in large part because they
selfishly want that big reward when they die. There is no good
evidence--there is only faith--that says that reward is any more
than just a fairy tale. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Based on a novel by Cormac McCarthy, NO COUNTRY FOR OLD
MEN is a thriller that actually is a thrill ride. A relentless
killer stalks a man who found 2 million dollars in drug money.
This is a brutal and violent film that breaks some of the rules
that we expect from crime thrillers. With less plot and less
dialog than most Coen Brothers films, NO COUNTRY is gripping, but
it goes for the gut instead of the head. Rating: high +1 (-4 to
+4) or 6/10
It is 1980 is Southwest Texas near the Mexican border. As the
film opens we are listening to the voice of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell
(played by Tommy Lee Jones) telling of some killers he has known.
He is weary of his job and probably as weary of the world. He is
about to be involved as one of the three key players in a deadly
drama that may just push him over the edge. Llewelyn Moss (Josh
Brolin) is out hunting when he comes on the grim remains of a
drug deal that went sour. The ground is littered with the dead,
human and canine. Most of the humans were holding guns when they
died. The drugs are still at the scene, but what Llewelyn wants
most is the money he knows had to have been there. And that is
nowhere at the site. He tries tracking the money and finds one
on more corpse and a case packed delightfully full of $100
bills--about 20,000 of them. Finders keepers, he reasons. But
looking for the money is Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem). Chigurh
is about as dangerous as anyone can be. He kills on whim; he
kills for sport; he kills anyone who can recognize him; he kills
for just about any reason that seems logical to him and he has a
creative mind for finding excuses to kill. He might kill over a
coin toss. His smile seems friendly at first, but it is the
smile of a predator going in for the kill. Chigurh wants to
track down whoever has the money and will happily kill anyone who
stands in his way or can help catch him afterward. Leaving a
trail of dead bodies in his wake brings in the Sheriff. Each of
the three men seems to be fairly clever in what he does.
Llewelyn has good ideas as to how to hide the money. Chigurh is
good at finding it. The Sheriff is good at figuring out crime
scenes. But the reptilian Chigurh seems best at getting the
upper hand and most often does what is unexpected. Most puzzling
is the tank of compressed gas that he carries. That too will
make sense in a twisted way. It wouldn't surprise me to see
tanks showing up in crime films in the future, and perhaps in
real crimes.
It has been a while since the Coen Brothers have made a simple
tense action film. The relentless stalking of Chigurh is
reminiscent of some of the better scenes of their first film
BLOOD SIMPLE. The Sheriff's ability to piece together a crime
scene is reminiscent of FARGO. But Bardem's killer is as cold
and ruthless as probably any screen villain we have seen. He is
Hannibal Lector made opaque. He is called crazy, but there is
certainly method in his killings even when he is toying with a
gas station attendant. His methods prove to be believably
effective through most of the film.
The Coen Brothers tell their story with what appears to be very
little style. There are few frills and I remember no music until
the end credits roll. This makes the tension seem more real and
more immediate. The suspense carries the minimal story. Only
the sheriff seems to have time for reflection. Bardem plays his
role as killer with no emotion at all, unless it is with a little
cold sadism. His killer is a force of nature, inscrutable and
unstoppable. We get little personality from Llewelyn who spends
most of the film just doing what he has to in order to stay
alive. Kelly McDonald has little to do but be in danger. That
she does well. Being used to a Scottish accent from her it is
surprising how well she takes to talking Texan.
Through most of the film the plot can be told in one sentence or
two. This is certainly not the best-plotted film the Coen
Brothers have made. (My choice there would be MILLER'S
CROSSING.) It is more an exercise in sustained frisson. I could
admire the style and be pulled into the action, but found myself
distanced from the plot itself. It is a roller-coaster ride and
when it is over there is little to think about other that the
unexpectedness of some of the plot twists. I rate it a high +1
on the -4 to +4 scale or 6/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0477348/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE SINGING REVOLUTION (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: This is a powerful and emotional account of 71 years of
the history of Estonia and especially how the Estonian spirit
freed the country from the leash of the Soviet Union. The film
combines beautiful choral music with the dramatic story of the
country's fight for independence. Directors Maureen and James
Tusty and narrator Linda Hunt bring a dramatic tension unusual in
pure documentaries rising to a climax with the account of the 1991
Soviet coup and its attempt to seize the country. Rating: high +2
(-4 to +4) or 8/10
In the 1990s I took the opportunity to travel both in Eastern
Europe and the Baltic Republics. This was shortly after the fall
of communism. I was struck that each of the newly liberated
countries took to freedom in distinctly different ways.
Czechoslovakia--it still had that name--seemed to involve itself
in artistic description of their joy of freedom with plays and
posters. Budapest seemed to be involved creating fancy upscale
department stores. There was less variation in the Baltic
Republics of Lithuania, Estonia, and Latvia. I do believe in
Estonia that we were aware that there was a singing concert in a
church we visited. I think we did not know how vital singing was
to the Estonians. In fact, perhaps more than any other people,
the Estonian people consider singing to be a major part of their
soul that defines who they are.
The singing carried the people through some painful recent
history. Starting in 1940 they were occupied first by the
Soviets, then the Nazis, and then again the Soviets until the
early 1990s. Their desire to be a free and independent country
again they expressed in their singing. For that time it was
nearly the only outlet they had for their feelings of national
pride. Today they credit their freedom from tyranny to their
singing. THE SINGING REVOLUTION tells the story of those years
of occupation, how singing kept their nation alive, and how it
eventually proved more powerful than the chains that held them.
Estonia won the Estonian Liberation War and won its independence
from the Soviet Union in 1920. But it was the path between the
Soviet Union and the Baltic Sea. It enjoyed two decades of
independence while the Soviet Union desperately wanted a road to
the Baltic. The Soviets, emboldened by its agreement with
Germany, the illegal Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, occupied Estonia in
June 1940. The pact proved to be useless to the Soviets and
Germany took Estonia away from them in 1941. During the war a
full one quarter of the population died. By 1944 the Germans
could no longer hold Estonia and the Soviets took it back. Each
time the country changed hands tens of thousands were murdered
for defending their country or for supposedly having collaborated
with the other side. Tens of thousands of Estonians were
deported to Siberia and Russians flooded in to occupy the
country. Estonia remained under the Soviet heel until 1991 and
credits its eventual liberation to singing and especially to the
Laulipidu.
The Laulipidu is the Estonian Song Festival founded in 1869, a
huge event considering the size of Estonia. As many as 30,000
singers on a single stage will sing in combined choral harmony.
And the real event of the festival is always the singing of "Land
of My Fathers, Land that I Love". The Soviets during their
occupation tried to take over the song festival and turn it to
singing pro-Soviet songs, but they could not stop the spontaneous
singing of "Land of My Fathers". They had no way of arresting
tens or hundreds of thousands of people singing of their love for
their country.
Linda Hunt narrates the documentary story of Estonia from 1920 to
the eventual reinstatement of freedom and independence in 1991.
In 1985 the Soviet's could no longer deny the economic failure of
the Soviet system and instituted the economic revisions of
Perestroika and the relative freedom of speech of Glasnost.
These the Estonians leveraged to create what freedom they could
manage for their country. The film builds to a crescendo when in
1991 the coup in Russia removed Mikhail Gorbachev from power and
Soviet hard-liners sent tanks into Estonia to seize the country,
crack down on it, and control it. This was when the Estonian
people stood together in nationalism to hold back the tanks.
When the coup in Russia failed and the tanks were withdrawn
Estonia declared its independence to the sound of "Land of My
Fathers" and started the dominoes falling of the dissolution of
the Soviet Union. THE SINGING REVOLUTION powerfully tells the
story of those days and insets interviews with the major players
of the 1991 revolution.
This is history as moving as fiction and as entertaining. I rate
THE SINGING REVOLUTION a high +2 on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0954008/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Dinosaurs in the Movies (presentation description by Evelyn
C. Leeper)
"Dinosaurs in the Movies" was a slide/video presentation we
attended at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, with
narration by one of the RTM staff. We spent the time before the
presentation trying to identify the pre-show slides, which all
turned out to be films in the presentation.
It began with "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1914), which was a cartoon
drawn by Winsor McKay, apparently as part of a bet with George
McManus that he could bring dinosaurs to life. It was made in
the midst of Canadian Dinosaur Rush, which undoubtedly fueled its
popularity. However, I do not think that making a cartoon about
dinosaurs constitutes "bringing them to life." This was followed
by "The Dinosaur and the Missing Link" (1917), done in stop-
motion by Willis O'Brien. the narrator claimed this was the
"first ever cinematic example of natural selection," because the
less intelligent caveman gets killed by the dinosaur.
Then came THE LOST WORLD (1925) based on the 1912 novel by Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle. This had an Apatosaurus and an Allosaurus,
and was a milestone because the dinosaurs were very active, even
though conventional wisdom at the time was that the large
dinosaurs were very sluggish. This was also the first film to
show dinosaurs in a modern city.
KING KONG (1933) was, according to the narrator, not just one of
the best dinosaur films ever made, or even one of the best
special effects films ever made, but one of the best films ever
made. (No argument here.) It even has a Canadian connection:
Fay Wray was from Alberta. The narrator noted that the
Apatosaurus comes out of the water and runs, but still drags its
tail, and for some reason eats meat. (He also asks the same
question I have: if the sailor is trying to avoid a tall
dinosaur, why climb a tree the height of the dinosaur's head?)
Then he skipped all the 1950s films to jump to GODZILLA VS. KING
KONG (1963). Godzilla is a cross between a dinosaur and a marine
reptile. The film was in many ways the least technologically
advanced of all of these films: up until 2000 Godzilla was always
a man in a suit. (Mark observed to me that one can identify
which Godzilla movie it is by Godzilla's dentition and ears, or
lack thereof.)
THE VALLEY OF GWANGI (1969) combines dinosaurs and cowboys; the
narrator described it as "an extreme version of the Calgary
Stampede." The special effects were stop motion, done by Ray
Harryhausen. From a scientific point of view, the narrator noted
that the therapod's tail still rests on the ground.
WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH (1970) has different dinosaurs
than those we had been seeing in earlier movies. For example, it
featured a Chasmosaurus. It was also the first dinosaur film to
be nominated for best visual effects. It does have cavemen and
dinosaurs together, though. This was done as stop motion by Jim
Danforth. The narrator claimed it was a sequel to ONE MILLION
YEARS B.C. but Mark was skeptical of this.
THE LAND BEFORE TIME (1988) was a cartoon that we did not
remember very well. For a scientific viewpoint, it was notable
in that it showed a dinosaur family group and nests.
JURASSIC PARK (1993) was probably the only one a lot of people
knew well. It used digital animation. Unfortunately, according
to the narrator, DNA decays after 10,000 years, so the method
used to bring back dinosaurs shown in the movie would not work.
(But how does he know this is always true?)
WALKING WITH DINOSAURS (2000) was a BBC television production
using both digital animation and full-scale puppets. In the
interests of scientific accuracy, it had no humans, and it tried
to portray dinosaurs as dinosaurs, not some anthropomorphized,
cute, or even mammalian animals. It used the new posture
scientists had come up with for Tyrannosaurus rex. It also had
an Edmontosaurus and an Ankylosaurus.
CHASED BY DINOSAURS (2003) was a sequel to WALKING WITH
DINOSAURS. However, it added a time-traveling scientist to add a
human interest. It did try to keep up with the latest
discoveries, and featured Mononichu, a feathered dinosaur based
on the Chinese discoveries.
There was not much new on the movies included, though the
comments on scientific accuracy were something we do not often
hear. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Hagia Sophia (letter of comment by Mike Glyer)
In his book review of 1453 in the 11/23/07 issue of the MT VOID,
Mark wrote, "By that point the city had already dedicated it
crown jewel, the huge Church of St. Sophia (today the St. Sophia
Mosque)." [-mrl]
Mike Glyer responds, "That's what I believed before visiting the
Hagia Sophia in 2004, and unexpectedly discovered that Kemal
Ataturk himself had converted the place to a museum in 1935. It
ceased to be used for worship by any religion after that. A
couple decades later an international team removed the white
plaster Muslims had used to cover over the huge icons beside the
altar, so the place now looks much as it did a thousand years
ago." [-mg]
Mark answers, "True. But I think many still call it by the name
St. Sophia Mosque, even if it no longer functions as a Mosque.
(Evelyn quotes out the line from EVITA: "I'm still called an
Admiral though I gave up the sea long ago.") [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BEOWULF (letter of comment by John Purcell)
In response to Mark's review of BEOWULF in the 11/23/07 issue of the MT
VOID, John Purcell writes:
I thought I would pass along this bit of info to you in light of your
review of the movie BEOWULF 3D. If they wish, my ENGL 1302 students
have the option of seeing the movie and turning in a critical review of
the film, complete with ticket stub as proof that they actually went to
a showing, for extra credit. So far I have had six reviews submitted,
and at the moment it is 4 negative, 2 positive. Not enough to generate
statistical significance, but their comments are in agreement that the
CGI is wonderful, and the first half of the movie is much better than
the second half; in fact, one student labeled the climactic scene
between Beowulf and Grendel's mother as "completely irrelevant to the
original text." Then that student detailed exactly how the scene
veered off from the original. A pretty good review.
So you liked it, it seems; an 8 out of 10 is a pretty good score.
Well, to be honest, I want to see the movie myself, but I have my
misgivings about it going in. I mean, Angelina Jolie plays Grendel's
mother? That's a real head-shaker. But I will try to go in with an
open mind. [-jp]
Mark responds:
It is not easy to put a final rating on a film like BEOWULF. It is
bound to have a lot that is right and a lot that is wrong. As my first
experience with this form of digital 3D it is hard to be objective.
And the fact they got as far as they did while still being relatively
accurate to the source is another plus. We have had multiple
adaptations of BEOWULF over the last three or four years, I think.
There was a horrible one I saw on the Sci-Fi Channel starring one
Christopher Lambert and one a lot better and still no darn good,
starring Gerard Butler. There is a recent animated version also. This
is by far the best. I would not recommend it to my family, but I might
recommend it to fantasy fans.
If you see it let me know what you think. And do try to see the 3D
version. That is a big part of the experience. [-mrl]
John replies:
I shall have to see this version of BEOWULF. Have you seen THE 13TH
WARRIOR with Antonio Banderas? Filmed version of [Michael] Crichton's
BEOWULF version called THE EATERS OF THE DEAD. It's not bad, but still
not the greatest. You are also referring to that abomination called
GRENDEL, I am sure. I don't remember an animated version. [-jp]
And Mark answers:
You are right, it was GRENDEL I was thinking of on the Sci-Fi Channel.
I must not have seen the Lambert version. Yes, I should have mentioned
THE 13th WARRIOR. I thought the film was just okay. The Jerry
Goldsmith musical score was great, and I sort of alluded to it in my
review. Now I should go back and watch the animated film GRENDEL
GRENDEL GRENDEL, based on the John Gardner book. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
For one brief shining moment . . . I was down to under three
months' of reading backlog.
Then the local book wholesale warehouse (JR Trading in Monmouth
Junction, NJ) had its annual public sale weekend. (Normally they
sell only to dealers and educators.) I bought much less than I
did when I started going to this several years ago, but still
enough to make a noticeable "anti-dent" in my list.
I really like the "Introducing" series from Totem books, and
would probably buy any of those at the three-for-$10 price the
sale offers. Similar, but not nearly as good, is the "For
Beginners" series from Writers & Readers Publishing. "For
Beginners" has a much more definite political slant (and agenda)
than "Introducing", both in their choice of topics and in their
treatment of the topics they choose. I passed up quite a few of
these (including the unfortunately-named "Domestic Violence for
Beginners"), but did buy ZEN, THE HISTORY OF EASTERN EUROPE
(which really covers only the post-World War I period), GARCIA
LORCA, OPERA, and STANISLAVSKI. (The last seems to be somewhat
rare; copies on-line are priced at $20 and up!) I also got the
Granta book/magazine FILM (number 86 in their series) and a self-
published novel by Michael Hollister titled FOLLYWOOD, which
seems to be an alternate history of sorts. New this year was a
table of mass-market paperbacks for $1 each. Apparently this
company defines "mass-market" by size rather than by the
publishers' returns policy, so I was able to get an anthology of
Rafael Alberti's poetry published in Spanish in Madrid for only a
dollar, as well as an Agatha Christie novel translated into
Spanish. (I figure the latter is an easy enough read to let me
practice my Spanish.)
And then we continued on to Rocky Hill and Half-Price Books,
where I sold them some books, but then turned around and used
that store credit plus some of our banked store credit for Adolfo
Bioy Casares's INVENCION DE MOREL (more Spanish, this one with an
introduction by JLB), Agatha Christie's BLACK COFFEE (more
Christie!), a *readable* translation of some the Arabian Nights
(the W. H. Dulken translation, published by Barnes & Noble), and
Hugh Ross Williamson's WHO WAS THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK? (a book
of real-life mysteries in history).
For those interested, there will be another open weekend at JR
Trading (as some sort of fund-raiser for the local animal
shelter, I think) March 15-16, 2008. This will probably kick off
the spring book sale season, at least for me, as I think the East
Brunswick Library sale and the Bryn Mawr sale are the following
week. (The Bryn Mawr sale fills a full-sized gymnasium *and"
another room at least half that size.)
PLATO AND A PLATYPUS WALK INTO A BAR: UNDERSTANDING PHILOSOPHY
THROUGH JOKES by Tom Cathcart and Dan Klein (ISBN-13
978-0-8109-1493-3, ISBN-10 0-8109-1493-X) gives a very sketchy
outline of such topics as metaphysics, logic, ethics, and so on.
Each aspect of the topic is illustrated with jokes so, for
example, a paragraph on utilitarianism is followed by a joke
illustrating (or refuting) it. My problems with the book are
that the philosophy is fairly superficial, and the jokes fairly
old. It is clearly intended as a book intended to make people
feel they are reading something edifying, while not taxing them
too much. There is a brief (humorous) glossary, but no index.
This is okay for a quick read, but don't mistake it for a useful
text on philosophy.
I find Michael Chabon a very frustrating author. I will find one
book of his wonderful, and the next one unreadable. For example,
I loved THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY, but could not
get into SUMMERLAND. I liked THE FINAL SOLUTION and adored THE
YIDDISH POLICEMEN'S UNION, but could not finish GENTLEMEN OF THE
ROAD (ISBN-13 978-0-345-50174-5, ISBN-10 0-345-50174-8). The
last seemed to be very well-written, with an amazingly ornate
vocabulary, but there was just something about it that distanced
me from it to the extent that I finally gave up. It is
particularly irritating because part of me knows this is a very
good book, but the other part says that reading it is a chore. I
would be curious to hear other people's reactions to it.
HOW TO HEPBURN: LESSONS ON LIVING FROM KATE THE GREAT by Karen
Karbo (ISBN-13 978-1-59691-351-6, ISBN-10 1-59691-351-7) is half
Hepburn biography, half self-help book, and not very good at
either. If you are a Hepburn fan, you are liable to come away
liking her much less. (Ditto for Spencer Tracy.) But there
isn't much in the way of self-help either--given the negative
portrayal of Hepburn's personality, a list of ways to emulate her
would seem to be something to avoid rather than follow. And the
editing is way below what I would expect from a publisher such as
Bloomsbury. Karbo says that Mary Stuart was Elizabeth I's sister
(she was her cousin), spells "Christendom" as "Christiandom", and
says that Spencer Tracy's character in BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK is
"one-armed". (He actually has two arms, but one is paralyzed.
(Karbo seems to know this, in fact, because a few sentences later
she says, "[N]otice how he keeps his arms down?")
I did not read all of LOST CLASSICS edited by Michael Ondaatje,
Michael Redhill, Esta Spalding, and Linda Spalding (ISBN-13
978-0-385-72086-1, ISBN-10 0-385-72086-6), but I did read a few
selections. This is a collection of several dozen three-page
essays by writers on books that they think should be classics but
are "Lost, Overlooked, Under-read, Unavailable, Stolen, Extinct,
or Otherwise Out of Commission."
Most were unfamiliar to me, but some I recognized. Christian Bok
describes the CODEX SERAPHINIANUS of Luigi Seafini "an other-
worldly encyclopedia" and compares it to Jorge Luis Borges's
"Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius". (Laird Hunt also references this
Borges story in his essay on Lafcadio Hearn.)
Brian Brett writes about CLASSICS REVISITED by Kenneth Rexroth in
such a way as to make me want to run out and find a copy somehow.
(And in fact, I did, and will write about it in a future column.)
For example, he quotes Rexroth on the prose of Tacitus as having
"a style like a tray of dental instruments", or of Julius
Caesar's style with the sentence "The nouns and verbs carom off
each other like billiard balls."
A story that Mark and I have been recommending--"Address Unknown"
by Kressman Taylor--is chosen by Nancy Huston. It first appeared
in "Story" magazine in 1938, was condensed by Reader's Digest
soon after (though who knows why, as it was only about 9000 words
to start with), anthologized in Philip Van Doren Stern's POCKET
READER in 1941 (with almost continuous re-printings for the new
few years, and re-issued in a small hardback in 1995. For all
this, it remains difficult to find (although there is a version
floating around the Web these days, which coincidentally Mark
recommended last week!).
One science fiction novel appears in the list, THE TWILIGHT OF
BRIAREUS by Richard Cowper (chosen by Eden Robinson). And my
father's favorite book of all time was chosen: LOST HORIZON by
James Hilton. I knew it was a classic; I just had not realized
it was lost.
In the Afterword, Javier Marias talks about the loss of the old-
fashioned bookshops with individual characters. One he described
had "more rare and select titles than almost any other" he had
seen--signed first editions, etc. But every book he asked the
owner about got the response, "This volume is not for sale."
Eventually he asked just *which* books were for sale, and was
told that most of them were. "I'm not about to work against the
interests of my own business," the owner said. Marias writes, "I
later learned . . . that the man was indeed working against the
interests of his own business, or, rather, that despite the fact
that his shop opened onto the street and there was a sign on the
door saying 'Open' or 'Closed' depending on the time of day, he
had no business. He was a collector so fanatical, so proud of
his possessions, that after having amassed one of the best
libraries in the country, he found it unbearable that no one, or
only the few acquaintances who came to visit him, ever saw or
admired it. So he decided to pass himself off as a book dealer
in order to enjoy the astonishment and greed that his exquisite
treasures in incautious passersby or aspiring clients." [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something;
in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be
satisfied with bad ones.
-- Bertrand Russell