The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Sheer Fun and Pure Poetry in a Faerie Fantasy Epic For decades I avoided Edmund Spenser's The Faerie Queene (1590-96), fearing that it would be a lengthy poem-allegory-sermon attacking Catholicism and paganism and promoting Protestant Christian doctrine, a proto Pilgrim's Progress (1678) in verse. How happily wrong I was when I finally tried it! Its six books (and incomplete seventh) depict the moral adventures of various knights (Elfin, British, Saracen, chivalrous, discourteous, errant, retired, etc.) in Faerie, an infinite fantasy land teeming with damsels in distress and squires in bondage, love-sick Amazons and free-agent huntresses, wild vegetarians and savage cannibals, newsy dwarves and lustful giants, scheming magicians and vengeful witches, rapacious tyrants and merciful queens, rakehell rabblements and Lincoln green teens, randy satyrs and brigand slavers, iron men and simulacra women, ravaging dragons and Blatant Beasts, Roman and Egyptian gods and goddesses, personifications of Greed, Slander, Lust, Guile, Envy, Detraction, and more. Equipped with magic rings, mirrors, spears, swords, and shields, the knights undertake quests and engage in gory fighting, tender loving, identity mistaking, cross dressing, prisoner liberating, justice meting, marriage celebrating, and more in a variety of settings: lewd castles, bespelled dungeons, pagan temples, inhospitable huts, hellish dens, enchanted groves, submarine caves, and violated monasteries. Apart from timeouts for things like the histories of Britain and Faerie, Spenser's work is non-stop entertaining action: the Redcrosse Knight debating Despair or fighting a vast dragon; Britomart spurning a smitten lady in a castle of pleasure or smiting every man in a tourney; Artegall whacking off Britomart's helm and then making a religion of his wonder; Guyon getting tempted by Mammon; Venus and Diana bickering about Cupid; knights fighting over the false Florimell; Scudamour spending a night in Care's blacksmithy; Braggadocio getting in over his head; Artegall taking up the distaff; Calidore going pastoral; a band of cannibal brigands hungering for Serene's nude body; and much more. Spenser is suspiciously good at evoking sins like greed, lust, and despair. True, in the nick of time he'll recall his Christian moral compass and punish an unknightly knight or save a virtuous virgin. But he usually only moralizes briefly at the start of each Book, after which he pricks on his steed of poesy to adventure through Faerie. And after the first Book about Holiness featuring Una and the Redcrosse Knight, pagan gods and beings and temples far outnumber Christian representatives. In this Spenser's allegory sure differs from Pilgrim's Progress, which, although also full of exciting fantastic events, strictly adheres to Protestant Christian doctrine. Whereas John Bunyan writes mostly about love of Christ, God, and church, Spenser focuses on other kinds of love, "Love, that is the crown of knighthood," romantic, comradely, familial, chivalrous, spiritual, physical--and also its opposite, hate. As Spenser explained to Sir Walter Raleigh in a letter, he wrote The Faerie Queene "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline" by entertaining his reader with "an historicall fiction" full of a "variety of matter." Thus he imagined King Arthur as a prince possessed of all the moral virtues and then imagined other knights representing specific virtues (Holiness, Temperament, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy) and their opposites, and then set them all adventuring in Faerie. In addition to Spenser's fertile imagination of Faerie and developments comedic or sublime, acts bestial or divine, moods sensual or spiritual, and descriptions foul or beautiful, the pleasure of his epic lies in his poesy, so rich in rhyme, consonance, simile, and diction--despite or because of his restricting himself to his nine-line stanza end rhyming ABABBCBCC. I often found myself chuckling, whether from the outré events in the poem or from its exuberant language and rhymes. After Book I, as I became familiar with Spenser's grammar and idiom, it was surprisingly easy to understand his poetry. He has been taken to task for overusing artificially archaic words, but most of the archaisms are close to our modern forms (e.g., gan/began, eftsoons/soon, brent/burnt) or are easy to figure out from context (e.g., prick/spur, eke/also, dight/clothe, wight/person, weet/know, and--my favorite--shent/ruined). Spenser describes a bloody battle ("That vnderneath his feet soone made a purple plesh"), for instance, so we can enjoy the exotic "plesh" while using the context and the familiar word splash to figure out its likely meaning. Any stanza in the poem is worth savoring, but here's a fine one about the eyes of a dragon: His blazing eyes, like two bright shining shields, Did burne with wrath, and sparkled liuing fyre; As two broad Beacons, set in open fields, Send forth their flames farre off to euery shyre, And warning giue, that enemies conspyre, With fire and sword the region to inuade; So flam'd his eyne with rage and rancorous yre: But farre within, as in a hollow glade, Those glaring lampes were set, that made a dreadfull shade. Spenser's spelling often differs from modern (e.g., u and v switch places, and i stands in for j) and may be inconsistent (e.g., gyant/geante/geaunt), but if you listen to the audiobook the spelling is no problem. About the Naxos audiobook, David Timson's reading makes The Faerie Queene easy to understand and enjoy, because he plays characters and emphasizes phrases and words in just the right ways so as to highlight or clarify meaning. He clearly relishes Spenser's poetry, so we do too. Fans of poetry, fantasy, Faerie, chivalry, classical mythology, and so on, should enjoy Spenser's magnum opus. I've never felt such pleasure and had such fun with any long poem as his. I only regret that he died before he could complete Books VII-XII. View all my reviews
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The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Comic Books, Magic, Escape, NYC, WWII, and Love Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) is an absorbing, moving, and funny historical novel depicting the lives, friendship, partnership, and growth of the Jewish cousins and comic book creators Joe Kavalier (of Prague) and Sammy Clay (of NYC). It covers the first meeting of the young men in NYC in 1939, the creation of their famous comic book superhero the Escapist, their development into one of the most fertile, successful, and influential comic book artist (Joe) and writer (Sammy) teams, and the increasing dark influence on their work, lives, and relationship of Nazi Germany and WWII. Chabon's narrator tells the above fictional history from a position around 2000, which leads to touches like, "Over the years, reminiscing for friends or journalists or, still later, the reverent editors of fan magazines, Sammy would devise and relate all manner of origin stories, fanciful and mundane and often conflicting, but it was out of a conjunction of desire, the buried memory of his father, and the chance illumination of a row-house window, that the Escapist was born." The Pulitzer Prize-winning novel ranges from the 1930s Superman beginnings of comic books through the Golden Age and up to the 1950s Frederic Wertham's The Seduction of the Innocent anti-comic book crusade. Chabon gives a loving and knowledgeable account of the materials and methods and people behind the development of the superhero comic book. His novel is a pastiche of and paean to that art form. He reveals how creating a golem and creating a comic book are both gestures of hope against hope, yearnings to escape the borders of this world, vital vehicles of self-expression. His novel demonstrates that there could be "no more noble or necessary service in life" than satisfying the desire to escape. And that "Only the most purblind society couldn't recognize comics as art." In addition to comic books, the novel depicts circa WWII NYC and American culture and explores the relationship between fantasy and reality, different kinds of magic (sleight of hand, escapistry, comic book art, life itself, etc.), and different kinds of love (familial, romantic, comradely, heterosexual, homosexual, etc.). It is all funny, sad, absorbing, and well-written, as in the following complex epiphany: "As he watched Joe stand, blazing, on the fire escape, Sammy felt an ache in his chest that turned out to be, as so often occurs when memory and desire conjoin with a transient effect of weather, the pang of creation. The desire he felt, watching Joe, was unquestionably physical, but in the sense that Sammy wanted to inhabit the body of his cousin, not possess it. It was, in part, a longing--common enough among the inventors of heroes--to be someone else; to be more than the result of two hundred regimens and scenarios and self-improvement campaigns that always ran afoul of his perennial inability to locate an actual self to be improved. Joe Kavalier had an air of competence, of faith in his own abilities, that Sammy, by means of constant effort over the whole of his life, had finally learned only how to fake." In addition to Joe and Sammy, Chabon creates human, flawed, funny, and convincing characters like Sammy's mother Ethel Clayman, Joe's magic teacher Bernard Kornblum, the "likeable and cruel" owner of Empire Comics Sheldon Anapol, EC's cynical alcoholic chief editor George Deasey, creative Rosa Saks, reckless Tracy Bacon, Joe's brother Thomas and Sammy's son Tommy, and even, why not, the Escapist himself. He writes many great scenes like the following: Joe and Kornblum finding a golem. Sammy having his Escapist epiphany watching his illuminated cousin. Joe meeting Rosa Saks for the second time (at a party in honor of Salvador Dali). Tom Mayflower taking up the Gold Key. Judy Dark finally seeing the Book of Lo. Joe "seeing" his father in Hoboken. Tracy Bacon bringing Sammy dinner at the Empire State Building. Joe encountering a German geologist in Antarctica. Tommy meeting his "cousin" in a drug store comic book section. Rosa asking, "Well?" Sammy watching Tommy sleep. He writes vivid, interesting similes and descriptions like the following: "He was not, in any conventional way, handsome. His face was an inverted triangle, brow large, chin pointed, with pouting lips and a blunt, quarrelsome nose. He slouched, and wore clothes badly: he always looked as though he must have been jumped for his lunch money." "He whirled around, the expression on his face at once innocent and reckless, for all the world like a toddler searching the nursery for something new to break." "Then the sky just beyond the windows was veined with fire and they heard a sizzle that sounded almost wet, like a droplet on a hot griddle, and then a thunderclap trapped them in the deep black cavern of its palms." He writes witty lines like the following: "Houdini was a hero to little men, city boys, and Jews; Samuel Louis Klayman was all three." "The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost that they might never have existed in the first place." "One of the sturdiest precepts of the study of human delusion is that every Golden Age is either past or in the offing." Audiobook reader David Colacci enhances the novel wonderfully. All his characters effortlessly sound just right for their personalities and situations, especially sad, deliberate, deep-voiced Czech Joe and NYC wise-guy Sammy. Anyone interested in the history of the American superhero comic book (or comic books in general), the circa WWII history of NYC and America, the plight of European Jewish people during the Nazi era, and magic should be enriched by this novel. View all my reviews
Plain Tales from the Hills by Rudyard Kipling
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Comedies & Tragedies of Manners in the British Raj Rudyard Kipling wrote his first collection of stories, Plain Tales from the Hills (1888), with a clear style, ironic tone, tight pacing, and an eye for drama. When you think that many of the tales were first published in the Civil and Military Gazette in Lahore, British India, where Kipling worked as a journalist from when he was about 17 and the rest when he was 22, the breath and depth of his youthful insights into the British Raj, indigenous cultures, and human nature are remarkable. Indeed, the voice of his narrator usually feels like that of a middle-aged man who is wise in the ways of empire and the world, well-versed in 19th-century British and Indian cultures, and a keen observer of human nature. Most of the stories are comedies or tragedies of manners featuring British soldiers, officers, policemen, bankers, bureaucrats, wives, daughters, mothers, and the like doing things in India like courting, marrying, having affairs, gossiping, advancing their careers, and so on. At their best, the stories are compact and potent vignettes. Some are skimpy and end abruptly before we've had time to care about the people involved. Most are polished and interesting. Together they give a large view of British rule in India, showing it to depend on military and organizational control without trying to drastically change India or Indian culture (e.g., religions and the caste system). Kipling writes about intercultural (mis)communication, human nature, and fate. And about love, which tends to end in marriage or mutilation, divorce or reconciliation. Kipling's narrator often knows the people in his stories or has heard what happened to them. In most cases he has a distanced point of view, usually not being a major player (it's never HIS romance or career that thrives or dies), but he does at times serve as a witness to or supporter of the action of the story. His tone is ironic. He often plays with us by saying, "But that's another story…" or by explaining that the bad language an officer used while suffering from a case of mistaken identity can't be quoted in its unexpurgated form. Being written by a young man who'd been born in British India and loved it, the tales reveal a mix of pro-empire and pro-indigenous sentiments. Overall Kipling favors honest human feeling against pretense based on religion or class or culture. He can see the positive and negative sides of the British Empire and Christianity and of Indian cultures and religions. Although he approves of British white men "going native" to learn local languages and cultures, he doesn't condone marrying across boundaries of race and class. Thus there are some unappealing moments in the collection. One ostensibly funny but really unpleasant story features a young British man in need of saving from his foolish love for an obviously mixed blood lower class woman (and her extended family). But many of the stories are great, like those about a sheltered suicide, a lucky alcoholic, a ghost horse, an archery contest, a wizardly con, an opium addict, and a Muslim servant's creative little son. The first story, "Lispeth," is my favorite, featuring a beautiful, direct, and passionate local hill girl baptized and raised by the local British chaplain and his wife and finally made to realize that "You are all liars, you English." (Kipling is no pious Christian: "Whether Christianity improved Lispeth, or whether the gods of her own people would have done as much for her under any circumstances, I do not know; but she grew very lovely.") It is a sad and memorable story, and Kipling must have been impressed by Lispeth, for she appears at one point in Kim. There are some gender-biased lines like, "Regiments are just like women. They will do anything for trinketry." But such ideas are balanced by many moments of female power, like when Mrs. Hauksbee takes over or when "Diana" flamboyantly loses an archery contest. And by many telling lines from the female point of view: "The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool." And "What fools men are!" Much life wisdom informs the tales: "There is hope for a man who gets publicly and riotously drunk more often that he ought to do; but there is no hope for the man who drinks secretly and alone in his own house--the man who is never seen to drink." Kipling has a critical but fond view of India: "Now India is a place beyond all others where one must not take things too seriously--the midday sun always excepted. Too much work and too much energy kill a man just as effectively as too much assorted vice or too much drink." He ironically criticizes white ethnocentrism: "He held the extraordinary theory that a Policeman in India should try to know as much about the natives as the natives themselves. . . . and, following out his absurd theory, dabbled in unsavory places no respectable man would think of exploring--all among the native riff-raff." He writes many catchy first sentences: "This began in a practical joke; but it has gone far enough now, and is getting serious." Tim Piggott-Smith reads the tales with wit, feeling, and skill, convincingly voicing a wide range of characters (old and young women and men of upper and lower classes, children, Brits and Indians, and so on) and enhancing the stories in all the right ways. I recommend this audiobook to fans of Kipling and to anyone interested in how the British Raj worked and what it did to Brits and Indians, but buyers should be aware that its 32 stories are missing eight found in another edition of the print or e book: "The Three Musketeers," "The Taking of Lungtungpen," "The Daughter of the Regiment," "A Friend"s Friend," "The Madness of Private Ortheris," "Wressley of the Foreign Office," "By Word of Mouth," and "To be Filed for Reference." View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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