The Book Shopper

The End of Civilization

This week marks the End of Civilization. After having a set of Will and Ariel Durant's 11 Volume, The Story of Civilization on the shelves of my glass bookcase for over 40 years, I sold them online through  Destination:Books. 

The thought process was that even though they are an excellent reference set, I was not going to read them all. ( I only read the first volume Our Oriental Heritage and I am not sure I even finished that. ) When the Pandemic didn't motivate me to crack any of them open, my decision became final.

The set came in my possession in the late 1970s when the handyman of my apartment building approached me about the books that an eclectic tenant, who never talked or made eye contact to anyone, had moved out leaving his possessions to the handyman. (He noticed that I had a lot of books in my place and thought I might be interested.) My roommate and I lived down the hall from the mysterious tenant and we had created a story that this pipe-smoking man who walked  nonstop around downtown Danville, Illinois was none other than the reclusive writer Thomas Pynchon. What better place  for the novelist who had just finished Gravity's Rainbow to avoid publicity than to live in a small, rust belt, Midwestern city. Moreover, derived from his writings Pynchon is presumed to be a big reader of encyclopedias, almanacs, and history books, which further reinforced our fantasy.

The handyman kept the man's television and stereo, but I bought the books for a few dollars and saved them from the incinerator (remember the handyman had access). I provided them a decent home for decades and I now hope the set has gone to a good place and not be repurposed into anonymous  living room décor. 

On the brighter side, this has freed up some considerable space and I restocked my shelves with my collection of Pynchon books. It seemed appropriate. And behold there is space for more of the author's work.

 

Upping the Worm Game

As an amateur vermi-composter  – who has been raising worms for his own personal consumption for several years (that doesn’t sound quite right), I have recently been inspired to take my worm works operation to a new level. Heretofore I have been content with a simple, blue plastic tub, drilled with air holes and partially filled with red wiggler worms, selected food scraps, and newspaper. Shown here are the worms enjoying a print advertisement  promoting the Ernest Hemingway PBS documentary. Given the novelist’s fear of death, my worms appreciate the taste of irony, as much as avocado and melon rinds.

My renewed commitment began while I was browsing in the section of R.J. Ruppenthal’s Fresh Food from Small Places (2008), where he gives easy-to-follow instructions on how to build a simple worm operation for the home. Ruppenthal also does a shoutout for Amy Stewart’s The Earth Moved: On the Remarkable Achievements of Earthworms (2005), which he describes as “not a ‘how-to book’, but a reflection and synthesis of wisdom on the achievements of earthworms and their importance to human civilization.” Intrigued, I obtained a copy and started reading.

The Earth Moved

Stewart begins her book with a chapter on Charles Darwin, who studied worms with the same diligence exhibited during the naturalist’s famous voyage on the Beagle, which eventually led to his providing additional evidence to the theories of evolution.  Just before his death in 1882, Darwin captured this fascination with earthworms and their effects on enriching soil in his The Formation of Vegetable Mould, Through the Actions of Worms.  

Stewart goes on to explain how earthworms including the red wigglers or Eisenia fetida (as I now call them) work their magic on nematodes, coffee grounds, manure, bacteria, and fungi. Along the way I was able to glean tips on doing a better job with my bin full of critters.

Folded in throughout the book are interviews with researchers and “field trips” to places such an experimental sewage treatment plant in Pacifica, California where earthworms are part of the process of turning human waste into usable biosolids for agriculture. Along the way,  Stewart never loses her light-hearted anecdotal style that makes the book such a pleasure.  For example, in this passage she explains why she has not gone into the Big Worm business.

For one thing, I’d run into the same problem selling worm castings that I would if I were to go into the business selling chocolate or tawny port; I’d keep all the inventory for myself. I buy compost by the truckload for my annual mulching of the flower beds. I have to buy it because my worms only produce a few cubic feet of castings each season. If I had enough worms to generate truckloads of castings, my farm would still have only one customer: me.

I will take heed of Stewart's advice to limit my own personal consumption.

Worm Connoisseurs

Providing some additional inspiration and reflection on our natural world is Deborah Warren's short book of poems, Connoisseurs of Worms (2021). In her sixty-five poems Warren seamlessly mixes references to Greek mythology, classical paintings, as well as modern life (one poem is even entitled "PETscan"). She deeps dives into all creatures great and small, ranging from zebras, "Titian-haired" orangutans, to moles and a worm dietary favorite - nematodes. A good example of how she can work these seemingly disparate themes into one poem is demonstrated in "Mosquito in the Heart."

 

Mosquito in the Heart

There's nothing viable on the EKG.

So says the cardiologist.

Wrong. Clearly he missed

some small anomaly:

 

With an incessant and insistent hiss

under my left ribs—a falsetto whine,

whetting its proboscis,

it flits and ricochets around my heart.

 

The doctor's diagnosis?

He'd call it a feint of heart—if he had the wit:

He doesn't. He's just content to be smart,

and here's his opinion: It's anxiety.

It isn't in your heart—it's in your mind.

There's medication; often meditation

helps with tension. And he won't admit

that coronary insects do exist.

 

Just paranoia? I'm not buying it:

He'll give me white lies but—when I insist—

refer me to Cardioentomology.

You don't have to be a vermi-composter to appreciate her wit and small wisdoms. Just someone who can take time out to examine life all around us, including what is beneath our feet. 

 

Traveling by Book

“A travel writer knows that a reader isn’t interested in tourism” – Jorge Carrión

Though I am starting to give serious thought (like the statuesque Dante) about traveling outside the tri-county area, I remain for the time being tethered to home. Undeterred, I recently finished reading two short books that have taken me to places around the country and the globe, but with two different approaches.

American Places

It does not really matter whether or not you have visited the points of interest in William Zinsser’s  American Places: A Writer’s Pilgrimage to Sixteen of This Country’s Most Visited and Cherished Sites (1992, 2007). Zinsser makes it work either way. It has been decades since I visited Mark Twain’s hometown and Zinsser’s descriptions reminded me that Hannibal wasn’t much more than Tom Sawyer’s House, Becky Thatcher’s House and a roadside view of Jackson Island on the mighty Mississippi.  And yes, Zinsser's overall impression of The Alamo was the same as mine: The Alamo is a lot tinier than you would ever expect. (The reason? We grew up seeing it on big movie screens.)

And if you are concerned that it's been nearly 30 years since its original publication, don't worry. American Places isn’t a tour guidebook anyway. He examines the fundamentals of why places in our nation’s history continually resonate with us. 

Two things that keep the book fresh is that Zinsser interviews National Park Rangers and gift shop employees alike and purposely avoids talking to tourists and official representatives. This allows him to get the insights of those who are there every day and provide a fair amount of background history on the site itself (e.g. Mount Vernon had fallen into serious disrepair just before The Civil War and later during the war both armies agreed not to battle there, treating it as a demilitarized zone).

Also, this not just a compilation of independent pieces published elsewhere, Zinsser builds on the narrative of his trip and circles back on previous stops to draw comparisons between the sites.

As the author of the mega bestseller On Writing Well (1976), Zinsser has set high expectations for tight, evocative prose and he does not disappoint. And as a bonus, there are many passages that have a subtle humor to them. For example,  in this excerpt from the Alamo chapter Zinsser watches the tourists buying  gift items and lists the items alphabetically: ashtrays, belts, bookmarks, books, buckles, bumper stickers…tote bags, toy guns, and yo-yos. “I was impressed that one small martial shrine could lend its imagery to such a multitude of domestic uses,” he writes. “The items all appeared to be of a certain quality above kitsch, and I walked around the display counters and racks taking notes. As I was finishing, a very tall security guard accosted me and told me to ‘step outside.’ I followed him out the door, my heartbeat racing ( I am about to be arrested at the Alamo!)…”

Unamerican Places

In sharp contrast in style and content, Jose Carriόn’s Against Amazon and Other Essays (2019) acts a guide to book shops and book people in London, Korea, Argentina, Tokyo, Mexico City, Capri and his home country of Spain. Carriόn made this blog’s Best Books Read in 2018 with his 2017 effort —Bookshops: A Reader’s History. (His Certificate of Merit is still waiting to be picked up at the blog offices, sigh.)

His anti-Amazon title essay includes a seven-part manifesto why we should not mindlessly bow to the will of the corporate giant when we buy our books. 

Carrión also interviews The History of Reading ’s Alberto Manguel who now is the director of the National Library of Argentina. Manguel tells the story of every booklover’s nightmare— how he was forced to dismantle his 40,000 book library and move it from France to Montreal.

As Carrión takes you to various book shops and booksellers throughout the globe he reminds readers the value of physicality of the best bookshops inhabited by booksellers who can tell you what is on the shelves without checking their computer. In contrast to Zinsser who is diligent in connecting the dots, Carriόn will refer to many favorite titles and bookshops, many of which  you have not heard of, much less visited. But do not be discouraged, just ride his passion.

Besides being “travel books not for tourists” another of commonality of these two books is the author Jorge Luis Borges. The Argentinian-born Borges, known for his writings about labyrinthic book places, figures in one of Zinsser’s American Places—Hannibal, Missouri the boyhood home of Mark Twain.

According to Zinsser, in 1982, the aging, blind Borges accepted an invitation to give a lecture at Washington University in St. Louis on the condition that he could visit firsthand the “the source of the author’s strength.”  Zinsser tells the story of the museum curator that accompanied Borges:

“I took him down Front Street and led him across the cinders where some cobblestones go down to the Mississippi. He squatted to where he could reach the river, and he leaned over and let the water run through his hands. Then he said, ‘Now my journey is complete.’”

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Here's our American family at Tom Sawyer's house. From the left is my brother Neil, my sister Kay,  our Dad, (wearing his "vacation tie" ) and your narrator. Mom is taking the photo. No Borges photobombing.

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Ken Burns's Hemingway Outtakes

Bull Ring at Ronda, Spain

I don't consider myself a big fan of Ernest Hemingway, but I've probably read a half-a-dozen of his books, and learned plenty watching the new Ken Burns' series, especially about bullfighting (e.g., the proper placement of hands to emulate horns). But Burns didn't have room for everything in his six hour documentary and I'm glad to help fill in the gaps.  

Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson.  One of the more popular posts in this blog is short paragraph about Hunter S. Thompson's 1964 essay "What Lured Hemingway to Ketchum?" Details of the July 2011 post is here. What makes the essay an interesting read in retrospect is the coincidence that Thompson also died by a self-inflicted gunshot in 2005.  Thompson prophetically says, "writers who lose their power of conviction lose the willingness to create art out of chaos."

Hemingway vs. his contemporary John Hersey. In 2016, I reread Hemingway's novel The Sun Also Rises (1926), and John Hersey's 1996 collection of short stories Key West Tales (who also lived in Key West). Hersey stories show tremendous range in subject matter with some measure of wit. For example, in the story "To End the American Dream,"  Hersey pays "tribute" to Hemingway by portraying him as a bar brawler, but also balances his portrayal by showing how Hemingway cares about his sentences and his writing habits.

Hersey also wrote the Pulitzer Prize winning novel A Bell for Adano (1944) about the American occupation of an Italian village in World War II, but his Hiroshima far surpasses any of Hemingway's journalism.

Hemingway & Martha Gellhorn & My Grandmother. My grandmother was very well read, and she loved tossing in quotes from her reading experiences at the appropriate time.  When my grandfather was being particularly difficult, she'd say, "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen--except Gellhorn." It was a reference to Ernest Hemingway's fourth wife Mary Welch who once made the remark "Nobody knows the trouble I've seen"  in front a what she thought was a dozing Hemingway. Papa woke and replied, "Nobody, but Gellhorn" (his third wife). 

I scribbled this memorable note in my copy of For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940).

The Shopper Becomes the Shopkeeper

After a year hiatus my book pop-up Destination: Books will be at the Freedom Farmer's Market at the Carter Center here in Atlanta on Saturday morning, March 27, 2021.  My longtime partner Denise and I did this once last year just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and it was fun talking with people about books. It was difficult to shut it down, but things have improved and both of us have had our second vaccinations. (Still, public health protocols will be followed. Denise is retired from CDC. )

Destination: Books (for the adventurous) specializes in history,  travel writing,  gardening & sustainability, and books about books. As one might suspect,  we will be bringing mostly about gardening & sustainability books but with a few surprises (to make it destination worthy).  See the pop-up inventory page at the Destination: Books homepage  for details.

Naturally, my books The Book Shopper: A Life in Review and the obscure, cult-classic, wannabe Down & Outbound: A Mass Transit Satire will be there too. I guess I have joined the ranks of writer-book retailer, but no one ever confused me with Anne Patchett, Larry McMurtry or Lawrence Ferlinghetti. 

Here's hoping for good weather (a rainout is possible) and the t-shirt still fits.

Reading in the Past

For the last several weeks I have been reading two books from the 1930s. The first is George S. Schuyler’s Black No More (1931). Isabell Wilkerson recommended it in one of those “By the Book” columns in the New York Times Book Review. She mentioned that the book was a satire, which caught my attention because there are times that I have dabbled in satire (despite the trend that memes are crushing the long-form satire market).

The premise of Schuyler’s short novel is that a black doctor has discovered a process that can bleach a black man’s skin white, which will solve “America’s race problem,” but as one would expect there are many unforeseen complications as blacks rush to turn themselves white thinking this will be a permanent solution. One major shortcoming is that the blacks-turned-white soon begin to miss their black culture, and whites become increasingly nervous about the thought that there are blacks posing as whites. The possibility that the offspring between these two “demographics” could be born black adds to the society's confusion and anxiety.

Naturally, religious leaders and politicians alike take advantage of America’s new race dynamic.

Schuyler’s book drips with tone-sharp, dark humor (I liken it to Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary - 1911) while making one uneasy since not a whole lot has changed in almost a century. He explains how a demagogue can rise to power. Not only will “people believe anything that was shouted at them loudly and convincingly enough” writes Schuyler, but these demagogues also justify stealing (misappropriating donations) because it was the “rightful reward for their services.” Sound familiar?

Included in the Penguin edition is an illuminating introduction by Danzy Senna, who explains Schuyler’s controversial legacy, which began when he was  African-American journalist during the Harlem Renaissance. Because the book is set in the near future (1933), Senna maintains that Black No More is an example of Afrofuturist fiction “before such a term existed.”

William Faulkner’s Civil War

The second book from the 1930s is William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! published in 1936 the same year as Gone with the Wind.  This novel came to my attention via Drew Gilpin Faust (see previous posting) who wrote a review of Michael Gorra’s The Saddest Words: William Faulkner’s Civil War (2020), which was published in last September’s issue of The Atlantic (“What to Do About William Faulkner”).

Absalom, Absalom! is considered Faulkner’s most Civil War centric novel, though most of this work deals with the aftermath of the South shortly after the war instead of military engagements. The plot centers around the Sutpen family beginning with Thomas the patriarch who arrives mysteriously in Yoknawpatha County in 1837. He fathers two children Henry and Judith with Ellen Coalfield, the daughter of local merchant but sires another son, Charles Bon with a Haitian woman before he ever arrives in Mississippi. By happenstance Charles and Henry meet in college and become good friends at the precipice of the war, though unbeknownst to Henry, Charles is his half-brother. They fight together in the war and Charles plans to marry Judith. But when Henry finds out about Charles lineage well, bloody hijinks ensue.

Gorra’s book is a great companion to Absalom, Absalom! and as valuable as one of those online chapter-by-chapter summaries (otherwise you'll be buried Faulkner’s stream-of-consciousness prose). But what sets Saddest Words apart is that Gorra also spends time and effort contextualizing Faulkner with other writers of the post-Civil War period (George W. Cable, Ambrose Bierce, Joseph Conrad). Gorra has written kind of a travelogue as well, as he describes visits to Oxford, Vicksburg, and Shiloh – the latter being Faulkner’s “favorite” battlefield as it was less than two hours from his home. Discussion of current hot button issues such as The Lost Cause and Confederate memorials are deftly woven into the book as well.

Gorra does not avoid the difficult assessment of the Faulkner, who is both a white man in the Jim Crow South and winner of the 1949 Nobel Prize for Literature.  Gorra writes in the last chapter:

There is never a clear line between the work and the life, many people now judge the tale by the teller, they see the book’s best self in terms of the man at his worst. For some people, the history I’ve detailed in the paragraphs above (where Gorra reveals some of Faulkner more shameful opinions) will be reason enough not to read him. Such decisions are personal and not perhaps subject to argument or exhortation. I have made a different one. I read him despite, and I read him for or because or on account of this difficulty. Not the formal difficulty of his work, however compelling I find it. The moral difficulty, rather, the drama, and struggle and the paradox and power of his attempt to work through our history, to wrestle or rescue into meaning.

With Black Lives Matter, the rise of white supremacy groups, the gerrymandering efforts to restrict voting, and the Meghan Markle-Royal Family saga, the works of Schuyler and Faulkner are as topical today as when they were first penned 90 years ago.

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If you purchase Black No More or The Saddest Words at Destination:Books, part of the purchase price goes to the blog and to independent bookstores. 

The Current Republic of Suffering

As the U.S. death toll from the coronavirus surpasses the half a million mark, comparisons to the those who died during the American Civil War are sure to follow. Over 625,000 Union and Confederate soldiers perished in the war along with an estimated 50,000 civilians, approximately 2 % of the country’s population at the time.

Rereading Drew Gilpin Faust’s often cited and highly regarded book, This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War (2008) has a new degree of relevance as we begin year two of the pandemic. Her book is not about specific battles, strategies, or personalities, (she assumes you already know about this) but rather her theme is about how the unprecedented casualties in the Civil War directly affected the entire country and how it shaped our current views of death. The breadth of Faust’s scholarship is overwhelming as she discusses the logistical and emotional nightmares of burying, identifying, and reconciling the staggering losses. Because so many died on distant battlefields and hospitals, she writes that the fallen and their loved ones would not have the comforts of what was known as The Good Death (ars moriendi). No family member could attend to a dying son, husband or brother and any corresponding religious ceremony was severely truncated or non-existent.  This sounds strikingly familiar given that those who die in hospitals from COVID-19 are often unable to be joined by family members in their final hours and traditional funerals have been curtailed because their potentiality as super-spreader events.

Here in 2021, amidst the mourning, ignoring, forgetting, obsessing, and despairing over the virus death tolls, one hopes to uncover the significance or meaning of it all. In This Republic of Suffering, Faust writes that though we continue  to question “both the humanity of those slaughtered like animals and the humanity of those who had wreaked such devastation” a paradigm change did emerge from the carnage*.  

Soon after the first battles of the Civil War, (most notably Shiloh in April of 1862), both sides realized that they had no mechanisms to deal the emotional devastation  as well as the physical bodies themselves. Thousands of corpses rotted on the battlefields; others were buried unidentified in mass graves—and only the “lucky” families received any news of what had happened to a missing loved one. But the war changed all that as the Federal government, the military, philanthropic organizations, and private citizens sought to establish procedures to address this new crisis. By late 1865 a nationwide program began to find, identify and move the bodies of tens of thousands Union soldiers.  (Faust details how this came about, which will leave the reader humbled by the dedication of those who took on this monumental task.)

Today, there is an expectation that the military authorities will go to great lengths to recover the remains of a dead U.S. soldier and to properly honor them for their sacrifice. (According to Faust, “The United States expends more than $100 million each year in the effort to find and identify the approximately 88,000 individuals still missing from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam.") She reminds us that it was the horrors of the Civil War that led to the outcry that the fallen deserve a decent burial in the hallowed ground of a National Military Cemetery, many of which were located near battlefields.**

By reading This Republic of Suffering, one can at least be hopeful that something meaningful will emerge from the millions globally who have died during the pandemic. But for the time being that revelation remains shrouded in grief. 

Footnotes

*Thanks to Francis Walker of the GRSG, who has also recently read the Faust book and gave me some good feedback on this posting. With respect of the quote from Faust, (“both the humanity of those slaughtered like animals and the humanity of those who had wreaked such devastation”), Francis poses how these same sentiments translate here in 2021. He writes: “similar questions may haunt us going forward with the pandemic death toll with respect to those who succumbed and the humanity of those who knowingly or unknowingly contributed to its spread.”

** The headstone photo comes from my cousin Jackie Fehrenbach who spends a lot of time delving into our family’s history. Here is a photo from a trip she made a few years ago to the Nashville National Cemetery, which was established in July, 1866.

 The framed piece at the top of the posting contains a photograph of my grandmother’s uncle William Henry Kelley who fought with the 12 Regiment of the Indiana Volunteer Infantry and later died from his wounds sustained in the Battle of Missionary Ridge in November, 1863.  The letter dated November 30, 1863 was one of his last letters to his family.

 

A Brief History of Vaccinations in Colonial America

Reading Rick Atkinson’s The British Are Coming: The War for America, Lexington to Princeton, 1775-1777 (2018) struck me in many ways. First, how extraordinarily little I knew about the military campaigns of the Revolutionary War*. Second, this war though small in terms of the size of the military engagements, was no less bloody and full of inhumane acts.  These transgressions ranged from the slaughter of slaves who were punished for joining the British in hopes of earning their freedom, to the cruel treatment of American prisoners who surrendered at Fort Washington on Manhattan Island.  In a sense it was a civil war, since the combatants at some time were all subjects of Mother England.

But the odd historical fact that resonates in our pandemic times was the role smallpox played in the War for Independence. American troops suffered terribly from outbreaks, which could thin their ranks by as much 50 percent as infected persons often would succumb to the disease. Since the symptoms left heavy rashes on the face and body, survivors were left with noticeable scars (including George Washington) and immunity for life. “Pocked young men” writes Atkinson “were much prized by military recruiters.”

Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine was still decades away (smallpox was declared totally eradicated in 1980 ), but some early colonists and the British military experimented  with making their own effective vaccinations by taking pus from a smallpox sore and making “an open incision into a healthy patient’s arm or thigh. The consequent interruption was usually milder and far less lethal…”

It is this kind of historical perspective helps limit my own frustration while waiting in my car for a vaccine.  It also underlines that even the colonists 250 years ago understood the live-and-death importance of getting vaccinated.

More Atkinson

This is my fourth Atkinson book I have read. The first three were his Liberation Trilogy about the United States fighting in North Africa, Italy, and Western Europe. Atkinson has an amazing ability to weave stories of individuals into the big picture. He once said at an author reading in 2013 that I attended that one of the historians he most admired was Shelby Foote author of the three volume The Civil War: A Narrative. Atkinson and Foote’s books are lengthy, but reading them is almost effortless, a tribute to their talent, research prowess and perseverance.

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* One example of my ignorance is that the battle of Trenton when Washington crossed the icy Delaware River to defeat the British-Hessian mercenaries in a surprise attack, was followed a few days later by a second battle of Trenton/Princeton. In the second engagement, Washington's army drove the British out of New Jersey, thereby protecting the young nation's then capital of Philadelphia. 

Other Writings

Once in a while I will write a longer essay that doesn't fit The Book Shopper format, which is surprising because our editorial policy can be a little loosey-goosey at times. These alternative lengthier works often end up at the Tropics of Meta  (ToM). Using their words,  ToM "offers a fresh perspective on history, current events, popular culture, and issues in the academic world. Founded in 2010, ToM has published (online) over 1000 essays by historians, social scientists, artists, activists, and creative writers both within and outside the academy, giving voice to communities across the United States and the world."

Last month they published my long essay "The Power of the Endless Love of Automobiles" where I weighed the potential of the pandemic changing  our car centric culture versus our inbred relationship (using myself as an example) with automobiles.   

In addition to "The Power of Endless Love," I made a couple suggestions in ToM's end of the year summary on what they consider noteworthy in books, film and television, "What Made 2020 Slightly Bearable For the Tropics of Meta Gang, the Scariest of All Gangs".  I did a shoutout to Viet Thanh Nguyen for his three-index-card-of-notes book, Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War (2016), which I have written about earlier in this blog, but there are other worthy book suggestions from the ToM gang.

(Coincidently, my first ToM posting in 2017 was a retrospective look at Neil Sheehan's 1988 Pulitzer Prize winning A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam. The book is a sad reminder of the carnage a government inflicts when it lies and misleads its people. Sheehan died yesterday in Washington D.C. at the age of 84.)

Television Series

On a lighter note, my selection for recommendations for  television series are more escapist in nature such as Netflix's The Norsemen series billed  "Game of Thrones meets Monty Python."

Also in 202o, I've become a big fan Richard Ayoade, the "reluctant" host of Travel Man: 48 Hours in, an amusing show for plagued-with-doubt adventurers such as myself who always worries on "whether they should have come" as Ayoade reminds us in each episode.

Both series rely on dry humor and verbal repartee, which somewhat justifies their cameo appearances in a book blog.

A Dickens of a Year

 

Before "the old year slips away, lamented by no one*,"  a celebration of the 150th anniversary of the death of  Charles Dickens is in order.  My memory of Dickens goes back to my school days in the 5th grade when I was assigned the Victorian novelist as part of the class project on the "Great Authors." 

To explain why I kept this report all these years would require much space and deep thought, which is beyond the scope of this blog, but it does serve as physical proof of my lifelong interest in books and authors.  The "cover art" -- with a grade of A-  (see left) -- is an early example of grade inflation. The list of authors that were considered "great" is kind of interesting from the perspective of which classic writers were in vogue in the mid-1960s (very few authors from the 20th century and very few women).

I wish I still had that excellent penmanship.

I did go on to read quite a few Dickens novels  until I said "enough already" 30 years ago while I  was halfway through Oliver Twist. Still, Dickens is in my entertainment mix.

My longtime partner Denise and I always watch A Christmas Carol every December. She prefers the black and white 1951 Alastair Sim version, which is quite good, but I favor the 1984 version starring George C. Scott as curmudgeonly Ebenezer  Scrooge.  However, this season there is a new up and comer, a "live streaming film version" of  Jefferson Mays 's one -man stage performance where  he plays all the characters. The richness of Dickens's language really comes through in this filmed theatre version.

We also recently watched the film The Personal History of David Copperfield, a quirky adaptation by Armando Iannucci (Veep, Death of Stalin) and staring Dev Patel as the hero of his own life. 

For a more in-depth overall assessment of Dickens, read Charles Gottlieb's recent review of A.N. Wilson's The Mystery of Charles Dickens (2020), but if you're looking for something tighter that captures the crux of the novelist, check out this report from a 5th grader who showed some early promise.

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* The expression "the old year slips away, lamented by no one," is from Rick Atkinson's Day of Battle about the United States fighting in Italy during World War II. It was Atkinson's description of 1943 which had been a bloody stalemate that accomplished little at great cost.