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The last two in my Mushroom Planet collection (I’m missing A Mystery for Mr. Bass). Pretty good, like the others, not great. But the last page of Time is missing! We don’t have it at the library, either. In these later books, Cameron introduces lots of geography and some history, especially of Wales (she must be Welsh or have Welsh connections). But her portrayal of Welsh stereotypes as actually being extraterrestrial is pretty strange, when you think about it. Planetoid has yet another big-headed, childlike person with an unusual name (Prewytt Brumblydge) who turns out to be a Mycetian–you’d think Chuck and David could recognize them on sight by now. Prewytt almost makes the world explode by letting his scientific curiosity get away from him. The only reason David and Chuck need to use the spaceship is to get high enough above the earth that they can do a visual seach for Prewytt–I wonder when satellite surveillance started? I identified completely with Chuck in this passage:

“C’mon Dave–let’s go!” yelled Chuck, about to burst with impatience over his grandfather’s slow, careful deliberations. How he hated waiting while people thought. He never could understand why they just didn’t start in doing something.

Time is much more preoccupied with mythology than science fiction. The Necklace of Ta has been stolen and the gems that make it up distributed among an array of people. The gems make them crazy–obsessed with mushroom shapes and losing touch with everything that mattered to them before. The structure is that of a mystery, as Mr. Bass and the boys track the gems in search of the thief, Penmaen Parry. Stonehenge and the Arthurian legends make an appearance, and an ancient enemy called “Narrow Brain”–love that name.

Mind-blowing–the epitome of “sense of wonder.” I’ve liked Bill Bryson’s work since Made in America: an Informal History of the English Language in the United States (1995), before he hit the big time with A Walk in the Woods, still his funniest book. I can see why some people don’t like him; his jocularity could become irritating, and his bemused persona can start to feel a little forced. But to me it’s just the right amount–a laugh every page or so–and he judiciously plays it down in this book, a whirlwind tour of the universe and the people who’ve discovered the little we know about this amazing place. The other strengths he shows here are an ability to find the most interesting anecdotes (many I haven’t heard before, I’m sure some exaggerated a little for effect), excellent descriptive skills to help the reader begin to picture what’s inconceivably large, small, numerous, etc., and of course clear writing.

Things I learned: How very little we know about the inside of our planet. That Yellowstone is a HUGE volcano, so large that there is no cone:

Beneath the surface is a magma chamber that is about forty-five miles across–roughly the same dimensions as the park–and about eight miles thick at its thickest point. Imagine a pile of TNT about the size of Rhode Island and reaching eight miles into the sky, about the height of the highest cirrus clouds, and you have some idea of what visitors to Yellowstone are shuffling around on top of.

That Linneaus was a sex-obsessed egomaniac. (The less-stellar qualities of scientists are on disply throughout, but not in a way that discredits their achievements.) A sense of how incredibly complex and speedy the activities of a single cell are.

Every cell in nature is a thing of wonder. Even the simplest are far beyond the limits of human ingenuity. To build the most basic yeast cell, for example, you would have to miniaturize about the same number of components as are found in a Boeing 777 jetliner and fit them into a sphere just five microns across; then somehow you would have to persuade that sphere to reproduce.

It saddens me that so many people think the material world is so much simpler than it is, that it’s “mere” matter. There is nothing mere about it. The simplification and pattern-grouping that makes the human consciouness see a fairly unified, comprehensible “interface” to the world has the downside of blinding us to so much. A book like this can temporarily open a window on the jaw-droppingly amazing all around us.

Gerhard is a close friend of my mother’s who’s become a friend of ours too; he’s a witty and brilliant conversationalist, and also happens to specialize in Tennyson, my favorite poet. A few years ago he kindly gave us a copy of this book (with a funny inscription) and I finally got around to reading it. The reason it took me such a long time is mostly laziness; makes me realize how often I reach for what’s easy and/or familiar to read rather than something more challenging. Not that it was hard to read (on the contrary, it’s admirably clear and well-constructed), but to do justice to literary criticism takes a certain kind of attention and focus that I often seem to lack. I jotted down notes as I went along, which helped. (learned some new words: psychomachy, kex, fuscus, theodicy, vatic, ogdoad, oread)

The book helped me understand more clearly a lot of what appeals to me in Tennyson (gee, I guess that’s what this lit crit fad is all about, huh?)–his theme of “the tragic inevitability of change and of human mortality.” (The discussion of “Tears, Idle Tears” is especially good. Gerhard traces the conflicts in Tennyson’s depictions of love (in the broadest sense), between sensuousness and idealism, between classic myth and Christianity, between “hearth and home” and the “fatal woman.” The last chapter, “The Myth of Western Love” (discussing Idylls of the King), talks about why the stories of Arthur/Guinevere/Lancelot and Tristan/Iseult/Mark were popular topics for the Victorians, which in turn made me appreciate T.H. White’s The Once and Future King (one of my all-time favorites) in a new way.

The lasting significance of the Idylls of the King is the comprehensive way in which it outlines the most basic of human tragedies, the personal and social dislocations that arise from man’s passion to transcend mutability and mortality. Muted in our own sensibility is the extreme aversion to the human body that certain historical periods have stressed in the sense/soul division of both Platonic eros and Christian agape. But man’s fleshly nature is still his most pesistent reminder of change and death; his heroic drive to elude these twin terrors is as intense as ever; and the certainty of their triumph over his best efforts is as much the occasion of idle tears as it has always been. Whether or not we insist upon translating into a contemporary idiom the Platonic/Christian terminology (a marriage-war between sense and soul) in which Tennyson couches these themes, we cannot escape the continuing relevance for our restless, questing selves of Tennyson’s vast Arthurian tapestry.

The Police were one of my very favorite bands for a long time, and part of the reason I got into the independent/underground music which had a huge effect on my life. I had a big crush on Sting as a teenager (me and 83 million others!). I can’t disagree with the accusations that he’s pretentious, arrogant, etc. (which leads to funny song titles like Allen Clapp’s “Why Sting is Such an Idiot” and Atom and His Package’s “Sting Cannot Possibly Be the Same Guy Who Was in The Police;” I wish they had quotable lyrics too…), but I still think he has moments of brilliance as a songwriter and I love his powerful furry voice. So all that helped me slog through this not-very-good book. Sting’s another candidate for the Wonderful Adjective Cellar, but the most irritating stylistic tic is the verb tenses: some past, some present, and a heck of a lot of that bizarre future perfect (“In the interim I will have become famous,” but speaking from a past POV set as the present) which infects bad memoirs. How did that start? Is there a master switch somewhere where we can turn it off?

A few interesting perspectives and anecdotes, especially about the Copeland brothers (Miles, shown in all his shrewd, cost-cutting glory, didn’t take to Sting at all initially and couldn’t get his name right–“that guy, whatsisname, Smig?”), and a good evocation of the sheer persistence, hard work, and raw ambition that led to the success of the Police. Three very experienced musicians, flexible enough to adapt to the changes that were sweeping through the industry, and willing to do whatever it took–no wonder they thrived when most other bands fell apart. “…The backbone of our legend will be that we would play anywhere, travel any distance, sleep anywhere there was a bed, give 100 percent and never complain.” Our music biz friend Geoff told us years ago that that appetite for touring, and the willingness to keep it up for years, was the main ingredient in “making it.” Best story in the book is about his meeting with Miles Davis:

The great man fixes me with his eye.

“Sting, huh?”

“Yes sir,” I reply.

“Sting,” he says again, savoring the word in his mouth like a gob of spit, “you got the biggest fuckin’ head in the world.” His voice is no more than a malevolent whisper.

I’m not a little shaken by this, to say the least. “What exactly do you mean, er, Miles?”

“Saw ya in a fuckin’ movie, man, and your head filled the whole fuckin’ screen.”

Link to book

My second post-process for Distributed Proofreaders. Although nowadays this depiction of dog and cat personalities is trite, it probably was novel at the time. “Please, no stories told from the dog’s point of view” was already a staple of submission guidelines in the 80s, but it can’t have originated much before the late 19th century, can it? Black Beauty was 1877. (If I had oodles of time, surveying literature from an animal POV would be a lot of fun, if it hasn’t already been done…) Anyway, Colette’s poetic language is delightful, if sometimes a little excessive. (In a few spots the translation’s not quite spot-on, but not too many). “The Storm” is particularly evocative and “The Caller” has some funny bits:

THE LITTLE DOG 

… Do they leave you in the room all alone?

TOBY-DOG

It happens so now and then.

THE LITTLE DOG

And you don’t bark? I cry as soon as I’m left alone. I’m bored, afraid, feel sick, and chew up the cushions.

My mother used to talk about how Colette’s husband Willy repressed her, forced her to write for money, then put it out under his own name, etc., etc.–I don’t know how accurate that is, but it feels very strange that in this book written by a woman, the man is shown “scratching paper” (writing) and must not be disturbed, while the woman does housewifely stuff.

So many people raved about this book (and at work, we’ve had to request it though ILL enough times) that I ordered it for the library. Enchanting, absorbing, touching–right up until the end, at which point I threw the book from me and burst into angry tears. Yes, I prefer happy endings. Real life is crammed full of horrible things that can’t be prevented–why create more in fiction? But I can deal with sad, even tragic endings as long as there is some kind of redemption or transcendence, something I can feel good about. Of course I saw the sad ending coming–it made the theme of the fragility and beauty of life stronger, there was no other plausible outcome, and Patchett made it clear that the new life the terrorists and hostages evolved into was just a dream. But did she have to kill so many people we grew to love? Realistically, yes, and even that could be handled in a way I would not object to so much. It’s the suddenness of the ending, and the way that we’re then excluded from the main character’s heads–we’ve seen their thought processes and felt their emotions all through the book (very effectively–Patchett’s a brilliant writer), and then we only see a little bit of what the survivors do. Gen and Roxanne are getting married, but WHY? I can rationalize the cut-off as part of the tragedy–the sudden, shattering end of the idyll is too much to absorb–but it just feels very dissatisfying. It’s a sign of how deeply the book got to me that it could make me so angry and sad.

Every single guest and terrorist is transported by the beauty of Roxanne Coss’ voice, even those who’ve never particularly enjoyed music or even been exposed to it. Does that require some suspension of disbelief? I’m not sure. That they’re hearing it live makes a big difference–it’s not just the sound, it’s the performance, the group psychology, the whole experience. One of the greatest pleasures I get from reading is finding new topics of interest, curiosity, and research. I’ve never liked opera at all, but now I’ll check out a few CDs and who knows, maybe I’ll change my mind.

I wanted to like this book, I really did. The youth of the author, who was 15 when he started writing, intrigued me (see tangent on The Young Visiters), but didn’t raise my hopes. It was this terrific 3-way interview with Philip Pullman and Tamora Pierce that did. Pullman is a (mostly) fantastic writer, and I liked Pierce’s “Protector of the Small” series–not brilliant, but decent writing and enjoyable stories. Paolini held his own in the interview. Plus, I like good fantasy, I like dragons (one of the main characters is a female dragon named Saphira), and several people recommended it to me.

I gave up at 100 pages and it was a struggle to get that far. I checked out the last 25 pages in case some dramatic improvement had take place–but no. Paolini probably could be a good writer some day–as Jonathan said, a novel Proust wrote at 15 might not be so hot–but right now he could use “Cousin Len’s Wonderful Adjective Cellar” from Jack Finney’s story, which sucks up excess adjectives & adverbs. When I hit stuff like “Dark eyebrows rested above his intense brown eyes,” I’m jolted out of the “vivid and continuous dream” good fiction is supposed to engender (John Gardner’s phrase). Hearing Paolini’s sentences in my head felt like chewing gravel; he’s presumably aiming for a brawny Beowulfian pattern (“It struck her steed…[she] landed lightly, then glanced back for her guards”), but to me the result is self-concious and clunky. Nor did the scenarios in the first hundred pages seem particularly original: McCaffrey-style dragons in a world with Star Wars politics and Tolkien races. But again, he’s only 19 now, and to have the stylistic control and awareness to make the choices he did here (even if the result didn’t work for me) is remarakable. I guess my “bad fantasy” buttons were just pushed–purple prose combined with multi-volume stories…

Mmm…essays…I’ve loved Wilkinson’s writing since I came across Midnights in the mid-80s. Even as a young writer he had an amazing gift for vivid description and acute character portrayals, and he’s gotten stronger with age: able to play with form, to write about very personal experiences without being self-congratulatory or maudlin, to explore fringe areas of human behavior and make them more accessible. (He didn’t win me over with the hockey stories, but that’s a tough sell…) What fascinated me most about the book, though, was actually the author photo on the back flap. Wilkinson’s incredibly good-looking, and I remember his photo on the jacket of Midnights as a harbinger of the “as long as they look sexy, we’ll sign them” publishing trend. I’d read a couple of the essays before I turned to the back flap, looking for the brooding, dark-haired man I remembered–and he’s gray! OK, how can that be a surprise–but it makes me realize that twenty years have in fact passed since he was the hot young thing. And just as Jonathan is more handsome than ever to me now and 23-year-olds look like babies, the late-forties(?) Wilkinson with his short graying hair is far more good-looking now. But that’s not what kept drawing me back to the photo. I couldn’t help staring at it because the way he’s looking off to one side, with a purely joyous, spontaneous grin, makes my eyes want to follow his and see what he’s seeing. The Mona Lisa’s enigmatic smile never particularly drew me, but I think I understand better now why people find her mysteriously fascinating.

About half-way through the second Aubrey-Maturin novel, the thought of fourteen more in the series made my heart sink. The jargon and indirect exposition (like the relationship between Jack Aubrey and Diana Villiers, initially cloaked in an allusive fog) put me off. But then the characterization grabbed me again and although I want a breather, I’ll probably go on to number 3. The difficulties of supervising people, especially those who manage others, the politics of advancement, and the ups and downs of friendship are all particularly well-handled. Maturin and Aubrey are very different, each admirable in their own way; one of the most striking aspects of the book is the clarity with which the two see each other, strengths and flaws, and yet how invisible the nature of each is to himself. As reader one can identify with both and yet find both exasperating. Particularly funny: Stephen Maturin bringing his glass beehive complete with 60,000 bees on board the Lively.

[Aubrey] went below, noticed the smell of midshipmen in the fore-cabin, walked through the after-cabin, and found himself in total darkness.

‘Close the door,’ cried Stephen, swarming past him and clapping it to.

‘What’s amiss?’ asked Jack, whose mind had moved so deep into naval life that he had forgotten the bees, as he might have forgotten even a vivid nightmare.

‘They are remarkably adaptable–perhaps the most adaptable of all social insects,’ said Stephen, from another part of the cabin. ‘We find them from Norway to the burning wastes of the Sahara; but they have not grown quite used to their surroundings yet.’

‘Oh God,’ said Jack, scrabbling for the handle. ‘Are they all out?’

‘Not all,’ said Stephen. ‘And learning from Killick that you expected guests, I conceived you might prefer them away. There is so much ignorant predjudice against bees in a dining room.’ … ‘Urge them to mount on your finger, Jack, and carry them back to their hive.’

For me, self-help books have always been like potato chips–can’t read just one, not really nourishing, the initial deliciousness doesn’t last, etc. I’ll take it as a sign of growth that this is the first one I’ve read this year (not the first I’ve skimmed, but that doesn’t count)–and it’s better than most. The primary goal I got out of it is to try to leave work ON TIME more often. Many of my co-workers leave at 5 on the dot and theoretically it would be fine for me to do so; but 5:15 is early for me. There’s so much to do, and when I’m at work I want to stay there… (when I’m at home I want to stay at home!) But I know I would be less stressed if I didn’t give myself so much more to do than could possibly fit into a workday–and that’s the point that Davidson makes: “Time ‘speeds up’ and you seem to have less when …you work in front of a clock to meet an unrealistic time frame; …you jam-pack your calendar with activities and appointments.” He also recommends getting enough sleep, which I’m sold on as a goal. I’d probably put this in the top 10 of time management books I’ve read. I’m still looking for the one with the magic formula, though. That’s why I keep reaching for the next potato chip…