113. Books For Living

Previous - 112. I immediately regret this...

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Some updates

Since I bought that special tool to tighten the chair screws at Peet's, they've tightened them all properly. So I only got to use the tool once. Either this is the usual thing that happens with me where I call about something or see a doctor right before the problem goes away on it's own or the package shows up in the mail; or my offering to tighten up their chair screws made them finally address this on their own. I'd like to think that it's the latter, but I doubt it.

On the other hand, recall the non-functioning cable car override switch? It's been weeks since I first noticed it wasn't functioning and tried to report it yet it still isn't working. I've finally noticed that this malfunction gives me more time to walk across Bush street -- the harder direction to cross at that intersection -- so I'm just going keep quiet and let the car traffic remain delayed. 

New books

Having finished Absalom, Absalom!, I ventured yet again to Green Apple Books to sell a bunch of books and to buy something new to read. Just as happened last time, I had a long list of books to find and couldn’t find most of them. They didn’t have A Tale of Genji, I’m sad to say, and their shelving system is so chaotic and poorly signed that if they had any of the non-fiction titles on my list I couldn’t locate them. (Granted, I would have been surprised if they had had The Essence of Christianity by Ludwig Feuerbach.)

What I did find was Candide by Voltaire and Vertigo by W.G. Sebald. I’ve started Candide and already found my next role in life. But is there still time for me to become an instructor in metaphysico-theologico-cosmoloonigology? 


And now Vertigo. Oh, my! The beginning is also about war in Europe -- though a century later -- and the protagonist (Beyle) already suffers, along with Pangloss, from our old friend syphilis. And Beyle starts his story as a youth in Napoleon’s army as it crosses the Great St. Bernard Pass for the first campaign in Italy. While nominally a dragoon, he doesn’t seem to take much part in the war and only visits Marengo fifteen months after the battle. His merely dropping a few names, like Kellermann and Marmont take me back to an almost unimaginable past -- since I’ve almost exclusively read about the 1815 campaign for so long. (Oh, the names... Berthier, Lannes, Desaix, Masséna, Murat, Victor. It's like recalling the 1st or 2nd 49er Superbowl teams back in the '80s. The first glimpse of people destined to become legends.) Was Napoleon crushed by the failure of his old Marshals to rally to him after he landed in France after Elba? Fifteen years of war! You could write an Iliad about Napoleon’s endless wars -- with the Marshals grousing in their tents; refusing, like Achilles, to put on their armor and fight. Only wondering if they would ever be able to retire home to rest in peace. 

Anyway, Destiny or which ever Hellenic Deity is the God of Books, mandates that I blog these two titles next, and together, apparently. 

The basics

Candide by Voltaire (originally by "Doctor Ralph")
The Norton Critical Edition, 2nd Edition, 1991

(Finally thought to look up the entire library of Norton Critical Editions... that could keep me busy for a lifetime or two.)


Vertigo by W.G. Sebald 

A New Directions Book, 2nd Edition, 1990

Candigo (the shipper mashup of Candide + Vertigo)

It occurs to me that our modern optimistic liberals share a good deal with Pangloss. While many wish for a world where people are not discriminated against on the basis of their various statuses, the only thing people seem to really agree on is that they themselves would rather not be discriminated for their own statuses. While many wish for a world where young women can dress as they please and drink as they please without having to worry about being molested by Bulgars, the modern Pangloss thinks we actually live in that world, all evidence to the contrary.

Schwalbe

Last night I went to a Will Schwalbe book signing on West Portal (a posh neighborhood commercial street) with a couple people from my book club. Our Meaning Of Life Book Club was inspired by his The End of Your Life Book Club, which was also our first title. His current title is Books For Living in which he talks about books that he feels he read at just the right time and that taught him important lessons.

He's an interesting writer and possibly a better public speaker. He brought up a number of points I wanted to go into more detail about, but, unfortunately, the signing was very well attended, so I couldn't really get into it with him. 

I haven't yet read this book, so all I have to go on is what he said last night. It seems to me that to do this right, you would have to first lay out the proper circumstances under which you should read the titles he's selected. Some of these are easy: After the death of someone very close to you; or When you realize that the path you are on in life isn't that satisfying. But others are more challenging. It would be interesting to describe the perfect circumstances for ones reading the books you yourself have found most important. Sometimes this would include having already read prerequisite books. Sometimes you might have to be at the right age or level of maturity. 

(And of course there is the reverse of this idea: Books you should not read at certain times -- either because of what you're dealing with or because of what you haven't yet experienced or learned. I'm now imagining "trigger warnings" on books. For Metamorphosis, "Avoid this title when your residence is experiencing an insect infestation.") 

Someone in the audience brought up the lack of books in translation on his list, which he loved since in his other life he is a publisher of books in translation -- mostly from the Far East. 

He also made what may be the most frightening comment I've ever heard, I brought up my question about the possible existence of books that are better in translation than in the original, and he said he had heard from German speakers that some English translations of German philosophy are actually better because the translator had to struggle to make sense of, and then translate, ideas that were even more puzzling in the original German. I have always assumed Kant and Heidegger and the rest must be at least a little more understandable in German. I even tried to tackle Kant in German back in the late '70s... no wonder I didn't have any luck (as if that was the real problem).

It turns out he has dreams of a type I also have, but had never heard mentioned before. The kind of dream where you suddenly discover your house has rooms (or sometimes just storage areas) that you had previously been unaware of. I love these dreams. A variation on the genre are dreams where you discover you still have things you haven't had for decades. I recall a dream where I discovered my old P-38 automatic had simple been stored in an unlikely place (since high school, I guess.) 

Troy, 4?

p72 Schliemann began his search for Troy after retiring from his business enterprises as a millionaire at age forty-five or so...

Schliemann made his money as a successful businessman, who earned one fortune selling indigo, tea, coffee, and sugar in the Crimea, and another during the California gold rush in 1851-52. It was in California that he served as a banker/middleman in Sacramento, buying gold dust from the miners and selling it to the Rothschild banking family, via its representative in San Francisco. He bought low and sold high -- and, some say, kept his thumb on the scales while doing so. He may well have left California one step ahead of the law, perhaps with as much as $2 million in profits, amid charges concerning the amount of gold dust that he was shipping....

I had no idea he had a local connection. I'm not going to go into any detail about Schliemann (since I don't really care) but I will say that the account of him here reminds me a great deal of Donald Trump -- though Schliemann may have been more deceiving than delusional. Well, maybe a few more details,

p75 Upon his return [to the Eastern Med.] from the United Sates, in September 1869, just a few months after procuring both his American citizenship and divorce through unorthodox and possibly illegal means, Schliemann married Sophia Engastromenos in Athens. He was forty-seven; she was sixteen. They had two children, whom they named Andromache and Agamemnon -- but that would come later...

Schliemann was in such a rush to get down to Troy II, which he believed to be the Troy Homer wrote about, that his workers dug through and dumped the more recent layers of Troy on the mound -- the remains of cities more recent in time -- including Troy VI and VII, which are now believed to be the actual levels of interest. He literally destroyed what he had been so desperate to find.

Next - 114. The age of Supers

111. Miscegenation

Previous - 110. Tainted blood and sticky buds

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Absalom

p340 Still Shreve, "... Jesus, think of the load he [Henry] had to carry, born of two Methodists (or of one long invincible line of Methodists) and raised in provincial North Mississippi, faced with incest, incest of all the things that might have been reserved for him, that all his heredity and training had to rebel against on principle, and in a situation where he knew that neither incest nor training was going to help him solve it..."  

I wonder how they teach this book at Wesleyan? And incest is a curious choice for misdirection here, except that it works so nicely when Henry finally comes to terms with the incest only to then choke on that spot of "alien blood." 

p347 In '65 after Bon decides, "...and Henry said 'Thank God. Thank God,' not for the incest of course but because at last they were going to do something, at last he could be something even though that something was the irrevocable repudiation of the old heredity and training and the acceptance of eternal damnation..." 

p356 [Bon] --So it's the miscegenation, not the incest, which you cant bear...

p357 --You are my brother.

--No I'm not. I'm the nigger that's going to sleep with your sister. Unless you stop me, Henry... 

Remember, that is a Confederate officer in General Johnston's Army speaking.

--You shall not!...

--You will have to stop me, Henry...

So, in the end, not your standard RomCom. This is less an indictment of the South as it is of religion (wonderfully represented by the strict sect of Christianity also associated with temperance and woman's suffrage) and of the human tendency to go along with the members of our group -- regardless of what that group happens to believe. 

I'm now going to do a search on the novel and "Methodist" and see what I find.... nothing. Well, that was just a quick Google search. But the Wiki entry doesn't even include the word "Methodist." Disappointed. But then this is why I prefer to not read any analysis until after I've thought something through myself. If I was teaching this book I would start with a detailed lesson on Methodism. I mean, it's not like Faulkner is subtle about this.

Troy 3

Now he's debating who Homer was and how reliable the account is. This is actually rather interesting. Some people think "Homer" was a title for any person who traveled around reciting or singing these stories, and not a single person. Some of the details are accurate for the Bronze Age when the events happened, but others reflect the Iron Age when Homer was telling the tale. This is similar to Medieval European paintings that show Ancient subjects dressed or armed in a contemporary style.

It turns out there is a German Neoanalysis School (Germans, of course) who argue that the entire Troy Cycle combines events from more than one time in history. Ajax and the first attack against Troy are examples where previous epics dating from centuries before the historical Trojan War had been blended in. Reminding me of what I've heard about traditional English Christmas pantomimes.   

Next - 112. I immediately regret this...

110. Tainted blood and sticky buds

Previous - 109. Oakland

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Pork People

I'm back at Coffee to the People after having breakfast at the Pork Store. I'm sitting at a different table and this one, I'm delighted to find, has a concert poster for "Not In Our Name" an anti-war benefit in Berkeley from 2003 headlined by Ani Difranco, who I love. Cool. 

Absalom

p321 Shreve imagining Bon, "...It should have been me that failed; me, I, not he who stemmed from that blood which we both bear before it could have become corrupt and tainted by whatever it was in mother's that he could not brook...."  

p323 Still Shreve talking to Quentin, "...and you said North Mississippi is a little harder country than Louisiana, with dogwood and violets and the early scentless flowers but the earth and the nights still a little cold and the hard tight sticky buds like young girls' nipples on alder and Judas trees and beech and maple and even something young in the cedars like he never saw before..."  

I haven't a clue what Shreve/Faulkner means by this, or what Ivan/Dostoyevsky means by "sticky little leaves", but it would seem there's some male descriptive tradition here that I've never known about -- though I wonder if it can be traced back to either Goethe or Byron. In this day, however, "sticky buds" sounds like potent cannabis.

"besides knowing that that sherbet [Judith] is there for you to take... and him [Bon] not used to that since all the other cups [women] that had been willing and easy for him to take up hadn't contained sherbet but champagne or at least kitchen wine..." 

I must confess here that it's never occurred to me to compare women to beverages. Now I'm also wondering what beverage I would be. This is why reading is so valuable :-|

Next Shreve speculates about how incest might differ from other "fleshly encounter[s]." The idle curiosity of sister-less boys. 

Troy 2

Still reading that other book. Finished the part where he covers what is now known about the Hittites and Mycenaeans (some) and about the Trojans and "Sea Peoples" (next to nothing). For someone who has spent far too much time reading and thinking about obscure areas of history (and philosophy) I have very little interest in subjects we are unlikely to ever know much about. The best case scenario would be our discovering some historical text -- carved into clay, probably -- by a precursor of Herodotus. How would we ever be able to judge the veracity of his (or her) account? Maybe "alternative facts" go back a thousand or more years BCE -- in fact I'm sure that they do. (I really like Kellyanne's "alternative facts" coinage. This is a term the study of comparative religion has always needed.)

What's more important? What actually happened over 3000 years ago or what the Attic tragedians, and Homer and the others, were able to make of it. Just as what actually happened to the characters in Absalom, Absalom! (nothing, in fact) is less interesting than what Quentin and Shreve see in this Rorschach-like story.

You can even say that what Trump does will be less interesting (though it does look like it's going to be compelling TV) than what the rest of us do with this situation. Will this turn into America's "Finest Hour" or, as an article I read suggested, is this just a Hegelian thesis, antithesis situation waiting for a synthesis. 

My tendency to see American history as an echo of the Roman Republic is consistent with this Hegelian view, I think. Though I'd never thought of Roman History in that way. I've always viewed the swings between the popular and senatorial Roman factions as like a machine falling out of balance and finally toppling over. But I guess you can see the Empire as a kind of synthesis. And of course the core of this synthesis was that, while the Roman people continued to hold elections and the offices of the Republic remained, the real power was removed from their hands. If anyone before had doubts about why one would want to do that, they should be gone now.

Though I still think there is a chance for a synthesis that preserves the Republic. But that could change if The Opposition can't get it's shit together in the next several years. If instead we go all Italian, I'll have to reconsider the desirability of the Imperium.

Finally

Our rains are finally letting up. On the one hand I don't mind: We've got a good supply of water and snow, and I would like to start getting back to the gym regularly. On the other hand, now people are going outside to smoke again. Now we'll get to see if the air cleaner I bought for myself at Christmas actually works.

Next - 111. Miscegenation

108. Creating fiction

Previous - 107. More social contract

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Quatre Bras

While looking for something else (number of horses Marshal Ney lost at the Battle of Quartre Bras, still unknown), I noticed something interesting about Ney's conduct of that battle -- a battle I'm sad to say I've read very little about, because the other three battles have always seemed more interesting to me. What's interesting is that he used horse artillery very well. This is surprising because, at Waterloo, it's like he completely forgot such a thing existed. Now I'm wondering if the French lost Waterloo at Quatre Bras when their horse artillery was expended. 

As I've written before, at this time horse artillery was the most elite unit in the armies of the day. They combined the increased knowledge and training (and intelligence) needed to operate artillery in general, with the boldness of cavalry, and required a very large number of well trained horses to pull the guns around the battlefield at the speed of cavalry. They were like a combination of today's Delta Force "operators" and the crews that operate the Little Birds that often carry them into the fight. 

So what horse artillery did the French have at Quatre Bras?

2nd Bty, 4th Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 6" how.)
3rd Bty, 2nd Horse Arty (four 6 lb., two 5.5" how.)

And at Waterloo?

Old Guard Horse Artillery - 399 men, 4 batteries, 24 pieces + 73 men, 1 battery, 6 pieces

So, yes. The only French horse artillery at Waterloo were not under Ney's command. Here's a key quote, "[French] Horse artillery was scarce to boot. Most of it had been ordered to reinforce the massed battery by General Lallemand, commander of the Old Guard foot batteries." -Source


So Quatre Bras was a classic Pyric Victory for the French. They won but at a cost so high that they were at a disadvantage a few days later at Waterloo. It could also be argued that Lallemand bore some responsibility for wasting his horse artillery, but you could also blame Napoleon for not committing his Guard earlier. Or you could blame Napoleon, or maybe Soult, for not detaching the Old Guard horse artillery so that Ney could have used it.

All that being said, I still keep to my previous idea that it was in fact the mutual hatred of Napoleon's Marshals that was the undoing of the French in this campaign. But at least now I can take back what I've said about Ney's failure to employ horse artillery during the battle, he apparently didn't have any under his command to employ. 

Trump

I avoided as much of the inauguration as I could today -- and I never assume politicians mean what they say -- but if Trump really means any of what he said today about jobs he's going to have to toss David Ricardo onto the ash heap of history. I would put up with a good deal to get that outcome. And who but a "populist" (nominal) Republican could achieve such a thing? He could be like Nixon with China... though maybe in reverse as it comes to China. 

Also, given our foreign policy over the past 16 years, a little "America First," and let the rest of the world sort itself out, may not be the worst idea. It's hard to see how he could do any worse than George W. Bush. Maybe he can even get the Navy to reduce the number of carriers they think they need.

In either of these cases, I'll believe it when I see it.

Absalom

p303 ...It was Shreve speaking, though... it might have been either of them and was in a sense both: both thinking as one... the two of them creating between them, out of the rag-tag and bob-ends of old tales and talking, people who perhaps had never existed at all anywhere, who, shadows, were shadows not of flesh and blood which had lived and died but shadows in turn of what were... shades too...

So, just as this is not just a novel about a family in Jefferson or just a novel about Race -- or even Race and Class in the South -- you also have to add that it is a novel about the creation of fiction. Like the beginning and end of that Alain Tanner film -- where the camera begins by passing through the film crew to the actors and the action, and then at the end pulls back out so we again see the film crew -- here the author gives us characters spinning the tale he is telling out of thin air... alternatingly ice cold and then hot and humid. There is no illusion that he is telling a "true" story, except in so far as "truth" is what we, like Devi, dream up.

Which means, now I think about it, that the story they are creating is also their story. This cooperative fiction should be telling us something about them. Of course to get that I would have to read more of the novels that feature them as characters. It's either cunning or cruel to force me to read more novels to confirm my suspicions here.

p308 Still Shreve, now talking about the octaroon, "...Men seem to have to marry some day, sooner or later. And this is one whom I know, who makes me no trouble. And with the ceremony, that bother, already done. And as for a little matter like a spot of negro blood --" [sic, I think " should be '] not needing to talk much, say much either, not needing to say I seem to have been born into this world with so few fathers that I have too many brothers to outrage and shame while alive and hence too many descendants to bequeath my little portion of hurt and harm to, dead; not that, just 'a little spot of negro blood --'...."  

So this is, I believe, the first hint we have of the "little spot of negro blood." To join the boys in their plotting, I do find it surprising that the mother, given the circumstances of her being set aside, would allow her son this alliance. And does this presume that the lawyer didn't know about the other "spot of negro blood?" Did the lawyer-client relationship extend to winking at something like that in the Old South, I wonder. So we have Bon in a relationship just a shade darker (see what I did there?) than Sutpen's but handling it just a little differently, not setting aside the octaroon but rather the institution of marriage as it came to her. Had the marriage with Judith have come to pass, would the octaroon have taken it better than Bon's mother? This treatment would seem to be if anything a little worse. Unless you were Mormon. Also, isn't it interesting that we are never even given a name for "the octaroon?" She seems to be treated shabbily by everyone. I would love to read a feminist examination of male-female relationships in this novel. The juxtaposition of "Penelope" and Milly in that crucial scene is no accident. For Sutpen marriage has more to do with animal husbandry than anything else. 

And I can imagine Charles Swann reading about Bon's possession of the octaroon with considerable interest. Not just a marriage contract but a chattel contract as well. Then he would really be assured of always getting a good cup of tea. Though the Russians wouldn't care for this, as the opportunity for laceration would be sadly reduced. Or so one would imagine. 

Troy

Yesterday while rooting in my backpack for something, I discovered The Trojan War: A Very Short Introduction, by Eric H. Cline. I can't recall who gave me this, probably someone in my book club. I started reading it today. It is, so far, a decent summary of what is currently known (as of 2013) about the various accounts of the Trojan War and about what historical facts might lie behind these tales. It's always concerning when Herodotus is mentioned as a source of information, but so far the author seems to be doing a decent job. Though I would have emphasized the use of this story in Attic Tragedy. 

It is a little odd, I admit, that I (with my interest in history in general and military history in particular) think the story of the House of Atreus is more interesting than the tale of the war that is at the heart of all their travails. And isn't that just a tiny bit like the situation I just described in Absalom? Take a sketchy account of a long ago war and spin it into gold by adding in betrayal and sacrifice and revenge and still more revenge. 

There's a famous quote about how no one would have known of Hector's virtues if the Greeks had not come to plunder Ilium (even the Stoics wouldn't have made such an heartless claim); but I would say a tragic tapestry woven of the tales of Iphigenia, Cassandra, Clytemnestra, Electra, and the rest is almost worth the death and destruction described in the Cycle. Maybe it even justifies the slave economy that Attic tragedy was built on.

As much as I love The Odyssey (and especially that final ur-action scene at the end where Odysseus reclaims his kingdom with the assistance of Athena, I feel that The Odyssey is a pointless tangent that takes us away from the main story of what those wacky Atreus kids will do next. 

Next - 109. Oakland