The Flatland Chronicles

Random Link O' the Day for 12 April 2007. 13 Quotes from Kurt Vonnegut and 13 Lasting Memorials.

After struggling to come up with a few suitable elegiac words on the death of the great Kurt Vonnegut, I found this timely posting at The Computer Diva Diaries, for which I am most grateful. 

I think of all the quotations included there, this one resonates with me most:

"True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country."

Man, it ain't the truth?  Where, you ask yourself, are all the people who know what they're doing?  And then you realize, finally and fully, that nobody ever knows or ever knew.  I sometimes think this realization was my first sobering contact with reality.

For a more graphic tribute, click on this link at JMSnyder.com.  They make their own eccentric light.

Iterations Meme. The Books of My Life.

This week's iterations meme is generally on the subject of books.  Here are the questions presented by Laughing Muse, the comptroller of all things iterated. 

Some possible questions, to kickstart the thinking process:

* Do you read more for business (research, training) or pleasure  (relaxation, leisure time)?
* How did your love of books begin?
* What was the first book you remember reading?
* What’s your favorite book (or genre, or author) and why?
* Share some quotes, paragraphs, or facts from your favorite book(s).

...or anything else bookish.

1.  My work requires constant reading.  I do not exactly enjoy it.  It's work.  Mark Twain said (I'm going to paraphrase, being too lazy to look it up) that work consists of what a body is obligated to do, and play consists of what a body is not obligated to do.  The reading I do for work makes demands on my attention that recreational reading does not. 

2.  I read for recreation whenever I can find the time, but I am extremely picky, and seldom stumble across contemporary novelists whose work I really enjoy.    For a different meme, I made a list of women writers whose work has changed my life.   My most recent discovery (not so recent now) was A.S.  Byatt, the English author who wrote Possession, The Game,  Angels and Insects, The Virgin in the Garden, The Little Black Book of Stories, The Matisse Stories , and others.  Her books are beautiful.  I read them and then I go off and think about them.  Then I read them again.  She's definitely in the top five.  The others are Ursula K.  LeGuin, Margaret Atwood, Amy Tan, and Anne Tyler.   I can't put them in order.  Which one  I want to (re)read depends on my mood.   For example, I read Anne Tyler when I feel in need of comfort and reassurance.  The others are anything but.   

3.  My favorite male author is Kingsley Amis (which no, I am not going to explain or justify except by these two words:  Lucky Jim) and my favorite non-Amis work by a man is Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco, which took the piss right out of The Da Vinci Code long before it was ever written or----I imagine---ever thought of.  I recently discovered English writer Mil Millington, and have ordered his first novel.  Based on his website (linked in the sidebar) I have high hopes of him. 

Random Link of the Day for 3 April 2007. Lyrical Poems of E.E. Cummings.

The first E. E. Cummings or e e cummings poem I ever read was the one about the little lame balloon man whistling far and whee and I thought it was the stupidest thing I'd ever read, a child's poem, about children.  I guess I was 14 at the time; it was one of the poem included in our English textbook (which was all grammar, with literature at widely spaced intervals). 

It wasn't till I was in college and someone gave me a Cummings anthology that I came to appreciate the sheer artistry of the man, not to say the magical lyric quality of his poetry. I mentioned two of my favorites the other day when I wrote a list of my favorite love poetry in response to my Thursday meme....but here is an entire page of links to some of his beautiful and passionate and lyrical poetry. 

Random Link O' the Day for 2 April 2007. For Lovers of Dickens, an All-Purpose Website.

    If you love Dickens like I love Dickens, here is a comprehensive website.

I started reading Dickens seriously in my senior year of college.  I am not sure what started me, but I know I picked up my first copy at the bookshop at Wake Forest University.  Of course I'd read A Christmas Carol as a kid, and I'd read A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in high school.   I liked them both, and Great Expectations was later to become one of my favorite Dickens novels, but you know how it is with books you're forced to read:  you don't connect in the same way as you do with something you read because you want to. 

The first book I read on my own was The Pickwick Papers.  I adored every single one of the Pickwick Club---I wanted Mr. Pickwick to be my grandfather---but I really fall in love with the comically terse (but very naughty) con man Alfred Jingle and then, inalterably, with the cockney manservant Samuel Weller.    Over the next few years, I read my way through his other works.   I've always had a tendency to fall in love with fictional gentlemen or "gentlemen" in Jingle's case, and quite a few of my fictional affaires were with characters from Dickens. 

The ones I really loved best were the ones I'd never heard much about:   Our Mutual Friend (because I developed a severe crush on the caddish Eugene Wrayburn and a slightly lesser one with his partner, Mortimer Lightwood) and Little Dorrit (sweet, gentlemanly Arthur Clennam, ditto, though I think I had even more of a girl-crush on tiny Amy Dorrit herself).  I am only slightly less fond of Bleak House.

I only recently read The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Dickens' mysterious final novel.  I have been puzzling ever since over where he was going with it.  The frontispiece for the novel (which was prepared according to his instructions) infuriatingly hints at what might be going to happen, but of course it's hard to know for certain.  I can remember studying it at some length trying to work out what it meant.   Did John Jasper really kill Edwin?  While it seems the most obvious explanation, there are other possibilities that might explain his bizarre behavior. 

It's true that at the point the novel breaks off, he is beginning to take on the tiresome, moustache-twirling quality of Dickens most unsubtle villains and stalkers, but I was hoping for an unexpected twist:  it seemed unlikely that CD would tip his hand in that fashion since he was determined to write a true mystery (and perhaps piqued at the success of former friend/later rival Wilkie Collins' The Moonstone).  I was very much taken with the suave and enigmatic Datchery and longed to know who he was and what his interest was in Drood. 

I got a lot of my ideas from a wonderful Italian book  (by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini) called The D Case, in which a number of fictional detectives meet to solve the case, but I've looked at many other sources since.  Alas, the book is more of a mystery than I think Dickens intended. 

The Flatland Chronicles for 27 March 2007. The Final Episode of Rome.

Being otherwise occupied last night, I saw the final episode of Rome tonight.  (If you haven't seen it, this note contains spoilers).  I did a number of clip art tributes to the show (you can see one of them on the left) and included on the page where they are found such information as I was able to garner about the historical characters (click here to check it out).  Some of it, of course, I already knew.  It was interesting to see the different direction taken by the show such as Pullo saving the life of his bastard son---in more ways than one---- Caesarion (who was in fact killed at the age of 17, I believe). 

I wasn't as sad as I was probably supposed to be when Vorenus died, which made me think that despite the cries of woe and the rending of garments at sites such as TWoP, it's probably just as well the series ended.  After you've cheated death the first half dozen times, it's hard for me to go on getting emotional about it.  I was just relieved that it didn't end with the two of them (one working for Antony, the other for Octavian) going for each other, which I was half expecting.  And the scenes with bratty Caesarion were good value for money. 

You know, according to history Cleopatra was a great and dignified queen, with a magnificent presence and kick-ass administrative skills.  She was a scholar who spoke several languages.  Unlike most of her predecessors, she spoke her country's native language.  But I don't think she'd have mixed quite so much with the locals.  The Ptolemys were Greek and didn't really hang out much with the Egyptians, sort of like the Norman French and the Saxons.  Okay, don't take my word for it, but this is what I was taught.  I had trouble believing that she would routinely wear Egyptian dress.  It's not how I'd imagined her, since all the information I had about her pointed to a very different picture of her than the Hollywood image. I'd have assumed she'd be less like a native Egyptian and more like a Roman.   Also a bit older.  Lindsay Duncan or Polly Walker either one would have rocked the part, for example.

Random Link O' the Day: If you love a religious or historical mystery or were captivated by The da Vinci Code, presenting the REAL mystery of Rennes-le-chateau.

 

The Da Vinci Code, Holy Blood Holy Grail, and the current revival of interest in the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus:  all the current discussion started right here, with this story of a rebellious (and possibly renegade priest) who died in a little town in the French Languedoc, Rennes-le-Chateau.  What secrets were revealed in the mysterious documents he may (or may not) have found in his church?  How did a small local mystery evolve into a complicated web of speculation incorporating the family of Jesus,  the lost kings of France (the Merovingian dynasty), the demon Asmodeus,  the Knights Templar, the Cathars and the Albigensien Crusade, the gnostics, the gnostic gospels,  the Holy Grail, the Green Man, St. Dagobert, St. Sulpice, the Plantagents, the Rosicrucians, the troubadours, the Masons,  the French Resistance, the paintings of Da Vinci,  the cult of the Black Madonna, the worship of Isis, strange geographical anomalies, mysterious French secret societies that may---or may not---exist, Cocteau,  the paintings of Poussin, and so much more? 

If you liked The Da Vinci Code, will love the famous "mystery of Rennes-le-Chateau" and Berenger Sauniere (the real Sauniere).  Explore Sauniere's peculiar church, read the original story, and---once you're well and truly sucked in--- buy a copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail (on which The Da Vinci Code heavily relied).  I didn't like The Da Vinci Code, but I like this.  It's all one big tangled skein of rumor, history, inference, speculation, wishful thinking, and weird patterns that might, or might not, be completely random.  You know, like life itself, and the whole history of the world and origins of consciousness.

It's not history, of course, and it's not literature either.  I've heard it called junk history, but I object to this label:  what could be more enjoyable and intellectually stimulating than trying to piece together the elements of a mystery that no one can ever solve from bits and pieces of known history?  (As long as you don't start believing in your own constructs, of course). 

It's sort of the ultimate conspiracy theory, connecting everything to everything else, and showing that at some time or another everyone, even God, was involved.  And not even God knows why.  It's the conspiracy of random events making ripples in space time.  Or, you know, whatever.  And the beauty part is that the moving parts are all TRUE (i.e., based on rumors, allegations, and assertions that qualify as "history," whatever that meant before people could get it on tape.)

I learned a great deal of French history, and particularly about certain dead and gone religious and historical movements the survival of which would have changed the entire course of western religion.  I became fascinated with the Cathars and the Gnostic Gospels; and with the history of the Languedoc generally,

How could any of that be bad? And it all started right here. 

The Secret (or "Secret"): Peter Birkenhead at Salon speaks about Oprah; Salon readers share their secrets about "The Secret;" and I speculate about optimism, pessimism, and why Jesus failed as a "prosperity teacher."

  WHAT IS THIS SECRET OF WHICH WE HEAR SUCH STRANGE REPORTS? I didn't have the foggiest idea when I first heard about the mysterious "Secret"  that it was something entirely mainstream and pedestrian (which it really is).  I stumbled on some sort of link to it when stumbling through "Stumbleupon" and didn't click on it because I assumed it was some sort of commercial self-improvement/spirituality site or, alternatively, some sort of End-of-Days apocalyptic thing.  It didn't look appealing. 

Eventually, of course, I found out that The Secret  is mainstream enough even for Oprah. 

DON'T SHOOT THE MESSENGER.  Now, I think Oprah is a good person( after all, Oprah---generous to a fault--- wants all of us to have just as many luxury consumer goods as she does).  I think Peter Birkenhead's article at Salon.com is much too hard on her (Salon.com, Peter Birkenhead--"Oprah's Ugly Secret").  After all, however much she may promote it (because she wants all of us to have luxury consumer goods), it isn't actually her secret.

Every couple of generations someone pops up to tell you that God and the Universe want you to have it all.  This is nothing new, this secret, though the argument that God (the Judeo-Christian God) wants you to be wealthy and successful probably hasn't been touted this baldly since the age of Sinclair Lewis and Babbit.

My First Meme Ever. THIRTEEN NOVELS BY WOMEN THAT HAVE AFFECTED MY LIFE.

I posted the result of my first meme participation ever here on the homepage---and now I wish I hadn't;  I'm already becoming addicted to the blogging and inspirational possibilities presented by memes, and I want them all right here in my personal journal.  So I'm going to link to it in this blog.  All others will be posted on this page from now on. My blogs may be complicated, but there is a method in my madness nonetheless. 

It was the Thursday 13, the sort of game I like best:  13 of anything.  My first submission was a list of 13 novels by women that permanently changed my point of view (including two children's books I read when I was a child).   . The list is posted here.