The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, vol 1 - Sir Richard Francis Burton [modern library classics] by Richard Francis Burton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars An Orgy of Story—a Feast of Fantasy—a Sensual World of High-Stakes Storytelling In Sir Richard F. Burton’s splendid translation of The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night (1888), clever Shahrazad (who knows countless stories and how to tell them) keeps her head on her shoulders by stringing along her misogynistic Bluebeard of a King husband by starting a compelling story one night so he must let her live the next day so he can hear the end of it the next night, and then starting a new story right after finishing the first, and so on. Many of her stories feature characters who tell stories in which characters tell stories, as when she tells one in which a reeve tells one in which a thumbless man tells one. There’s also poetry recited throughout, quoted from famous Muslim poets riffing on male or female beauty, the vicissitudes of fortune, the perfidy of human nature, and so on. Seemingly everyone can tell an entertaining story or quote an appropriate poem, and often their lives (like Shahrazad’s) depend on it. There are no unreliable narrators or tellers of tall tales: everything anyone says happened really happened, and the more outlandish (“wonderful”) something is, the more it’s believed and appreciated. Just the first volume of ten contains in its thirty-four nights things like the following: Lovesick tailors, clever fishermen, good merchants, miraculous physicians, hunchbacked dwarfs, monocular Kalandars, randy slaves, fickle Caliphs, tyrannical Sultans, treacherous Wazirs, wise Shaykhs, necromantic princesses, ensorcelled princes, calamitous crones, demanding husbands, murderous siblings, envious neighbors, beautiful youths, luminous maidens, troublesome corpses, powerful Ifrits, resentful Jinn, helpful Jinniyah, talking animals, winged horses, flying serpents… And-- Wonder-filled Baghdad, down-to-earth Cairo, blasphemous cities, sumptuous palaces, busy markets, hidden trapdoors, forbidden rooms, unknown islands, giant magnets, couplets in praise of beauty moles (for which Arabic has at least fifty different words!), pomegranate conserve, rose-flavored sherbet, fritters soaked in bees’ honey, and “A bowl of cumin ragout containing chickens’ breasts, fricandoed and flavoured with sugar, pistachios, musk and rose water” (after eating that dish, be sure to wash your hands before making love to your sweetheart)… A-and-- Executions, reprieves, revenges, murders, mutilations, amputations, petrifactions, reversals, reunions, damnations, salvations, transformations, magical combats, shopping sprees, wild carousing, and sex—lotsa sex! In his Introduction, Burton (1821-90) says he’s trying to present as accurate and complete a translation as he can, unlike earlier translators who “castrated” the original. He’s impressively open-minded: “we must remember that grossness and indecency, in fact les turpitudes, are matters of time and place; what is offensive in England is not so in Egypt.” And he seeks to approximate the original “by writing as the Arab would have written in English,” a rich English infused with archaisms and 19th-century slang and everything in between and ranging from the bawdy and earthy to the sublime and spiritual. From this: “Thereupon sat a lady bright of blee, with brow beaming brilliancy, the dream of philosophy, whose eyes were fraught with Babel's gramarye and her eyebrows were arched as for archery; her breath breathed ambergris and perfumery and her lips were sugar to taste and carnelian to see.” To this: “…the first [box] which they brought to him to open was that wherein I was; and, when I felt his hands upon it, my senses failed me and I bepissed myself in my funk, the water running out of the box.” And from this: “Then we sat talking, I and she (and I was drowned in the sea of her love, dazed in the desert of my passion for her), till the merchants opened their shops; when I rose and fetched her all she sought to the tune of five thousand dirhams.” To this: “All this time the Porter was carrying on with them, kissing, toying, biting, handling, groping, fingering; whilst one thrust a dainty morsel in his mouth, and another slapped him; and this cuffed his cheeks, and that threw sweet flowers at him; and he was in the very paradise of pleasure, as though he were sitting in the seventh sphere among the Houris of Heaven.” If Burton is writing a “Plain and Literal Translation,” the original is anything but! Anyway. It is better read as a book than listened to, because 1) there are no unabridged audiobooks of the whole thing, and 2) the unabridged LibriVox reading of Vol. I leaves out Burton’s numerous, detailed, and idiosyncratic notes and is read by different readers of varying quality (most being fine but at least one being excruciatingly monotonous). And Burton’s notes are an interesting treasury of information, from varieties of “tongue kissing” to the Arabic attitude to smallpox. They explain Islamic (Persian/Egyptian/Ottoman) culture (“A large hollow navel is looked upon not only as a beauty, but in children it is held a promise of good growth”), religious references (“The new moon carefully looked for by all Moslems because it begins the Ramazan-feast”), Arabic grammar (“In Arabic the World is female”), Arabic etymologies (“straight stature like the letter I” in a story is annotated, “Arab. ‘Kamat Alfiyyah’ = like the letter Alif, a straight perpendicular stroke deriving from an Egyptian hieroglyph”), and failures in previous translations (“Lane pleasantly remarks, ‘A list of these sweets is given in the original, but I have thought it better to omit the names’ (!) Dozy does not shirk his duty”). The notes reveal Burton’s caustic wit (the note about “the Holy City” reads, “Arab. ‘Al-Kuds’ = holiness. There are few cities which in our day have less claim to this title than Jerusalem; and, curious to say, the ‘Holy Land’ shows Jews, Christians and Moslems all in their worst form”). And his 19th-century biases, (“Debauched women prefer negroes on account of the size of their parts”). His views on “Eastern” and European cultures are mixed, so in one note he’ll criticize “backwards” Eastern methods of hoist-hanging criminals compared to more “civilized” Western drop-hanging and in another opine that decorative Koranic inscriptions on walls are “generally far superior” to “our frescoes.” Although at times I got exhausted by following another narrator’s story inside another narrator’s story, even when the same genre stories are juxtaposed, as with the barber’s tales of his six delusional and hapless brothers, I found pointed variations on a theme. Anyway, the nested fairytale-like stories of the Nights are rich in human nature. I read Vol. I in Tom White’s Kindle version, which inexpensively presents the first two volumes of the full Burton text with all the hyperlinked, easy to navigate notes (though without, alas, illustrations). I need a break from the rich feast of story and poetry but will surely go on to Vol. II and the rest, even if it takes me till the end of my days. View all my reviews
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Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
My rating: 5 of 5 stars A Perfect Picture Book I’ve been teaching Where the Wild Things Are (1963) here at Fukuoka University for over twenty-five years now, and almost every time I learn something new about how it works and enjoy it again. Maurice Sendak had some false starts making his classic book, one in 1958 called Where the Wild Horses Are, a book about an inch in height with wide pages, and then one in 1963 with the final title but fashioned too small (about the size of his Nutshell Library). And then when he’d found just the right size and title of the eventual book, he had to de-clutter the words (the text being overwritten) and pictures (the initial pictures having too many objects and details). Anyway, he did finally make a perfect picture book. In the compact and potent story Max is wearing his “wolf suit” pajamas and going violently crazy at home (torturing his stuffed animal bear, hammering a nail in the wall to hang a string to make a blanket lair, chasing his dog down the stairs with a large fork, threatening to eat his mother up, etc.), so his mother calls him, “WILD THING!” and sends him to bed without supper, whereupon his bedroom changes into a forest and an ocean, and he sails off in a boat to Where the Wild Things Are, where he tames the monsters and becomes their king and plays with them, until he finally is sated and realizes he misses someone who loved him most of all and returns to his bedroom to find his supper waiting for him. To tell that story, the pictures and words do interesting things, separately and together. Sometimes the words add details absent from the pictures, like Max’ mother, whom Sendak never draws. One sentence goes on for about eight pages! But he uses “and” skillfully and ends each page at a pause-able point so as to make it easy and fun to read the book aloud. There’s even a neat touch whereby he puts the time words when Max travels to Where the Wild Things Are in an order increasing from small to large (night, day, weeks, year) only to reverse them (year, weeks, day, night) when his hero returns home, giving the impression of time travel (though then how is one to explain the full moon in his bedroom window at the end of the story when it began with a crescent moon?). Sometimes the pictures add details absent from the words, like the nature of Max’ mischief, the picture on the wall of a wild thing that Max has drawn, the presence of the moon throughout, the way the moon changes size to match Max’ changing moods, the items in his supper, the diverse and chimerical composition of the wild things, and so on. Sometimes the illustrations provide a pleasing balance or symmetry, as when Max and the wild thing with human feet are sitting like mirror images in the same pose. Sendak’s extensive cross-hatching makes the pictures solid and substantial but also dreamlike and nocturnal. Sometimes the words and pictures work together, as when Max is “lonely,” and the picture shows his melancholy face. Sometimes the words and pictures work against each other, as when “mischief” seems an understatement for the mayhem Max is unleashing, and when “terrible” repeatedly describes the wild things, but they look more silly or cute or ugly. Sendak also cleverly uses layout, as in the way the pictures at first appear on the right hand pages with big white margins around them, while the words at first appear on the left hand pages, but as Max’ wildness grows, the pictures grow across the pages as the words and margins retreat, until in the wild rumpus climax there are three consecutive wonderful wordless two-page spreads where the pictures go from edge to edge (it is now that the moon is finally full, too). Then after Max expresses his wildness and fulfills and exhausts himself, the pictures start retreating as the words start advancing, till the last page has no image at all but only the words, “and it was still hot.” A wonderful touch to represent the degree of Max’s wildness by the presence or absence of words (more civilized) and pictures (more primitive). It must be so fun for kids to read a story in which the little boy hero goes wild at home, escapes punishment by journeying to his ideal wild play place, takes command of giants like grotesque adults, gives them the punishment his mother has given him by sending them to bed without their supper, then returns home to his own still hot supper comprised of soup, milk, and cake. (The themes on using fantasy to express one’s anger and resentment and frustration are great.) And although in the last picture he has pulled down his wolf suit head to reveal his good boy’s head, he is still wearing the wolf suit, and he can go wild again any time, and the moon is full, and the wild thing on the cover is waiting for him. Finally, I’m impressed by Sendak’s emotional restraint in the book, which is unsentimental. Imagine if at the end, instead of the brilliant last blank white page bearing only the words, “and it was still hot,” Sendak had, for instance, forced on us a picture of Max and his mother hugging or of Max’s mother watching her son eating! (Contrast that with the ending of the 2009 movie.) This year the book is sixty, but it never feels old. View all my reviews
Mistress of Mistresses: A Vision of Zimiamvia by E.R. Eddison
My rating: 5 of 5 stars ‘When I kiss you, it is as if a lioness sucked my tongue’ OR A Renaissance Game of Thrones Featuring Four Eternal Lovers and a Bestial Machiavel After an odd “Overture” in which the narrator attends the funeral in our world of his great friend Lessingham, E. R. Eddison’s Mistress of Mistresses (1935) shifts to the Renaissance fantasy world Zimiamvia, where Lessingham is alive and twenty-five and the cousin/troubleshooter of Horius Parry, the Vicar. The Vicar is a noble but brutish Machiavel who wants to rule the land as Regent for the new eighteen-year-old Queen Antiope, the King her brother having recently been assassinated (the hand behind the poisoning rumored to have been the Vicar’s). Because the dead king’s bastard half-brother Duke Barganax (whose hobby is painting his gorgeous goddess of a lover Fiorinda and then destroying his paintings for failing to capture her essence) and his allies chafe at being ruled by the duplicitous Vicar, war breaks out, both sides claiming to support the Queen. Against the odds, Lessingham wins a big battle and then attempts to force a peace on the stubborn Duke and the enraged Vicar, after which he heads north to the court of the young Queen in Rialmar to shore up her defenses against the perennial enemy of the realm Akkama, ruled by the loathsome King Derxis. Will the Vicar accept the peace? If he starts scheming again, what will the Duke and Lessingham do? And what will happen when the consummate courtier and captain Lessingham meets the beautiful and clever Queen Antiope? And won’t Derxis, who’s been egregiously wooing Antiope, do something dastardly? And why does the old “logical doctor” Vandermast, a philosophical wizard, tell Lessingham he’ll be dead within a year or two? “What is fame to the deaf dust that shall then be your delicate ear, my lord?” The basic plot is like a compact Game of Thrones with far fewer players, far more metaphysics and romance, and no dragons or undead. But the plot is not where lie this novel’s charms and fascinations! These largely derive from Eddison’s splendid and ornate style, painterly descriptions, epic similes, dry humor, and pleasure in nature, architecture, music, poetry, beauty, love, etc. Characters occasionally lace their speech with Greek or Latin quotations—which fortunately they often translate. (How Sappho and Shakespeare made it into Zimiamvia, I don’t know…) Eddison’s “Elizabethan” prose is savory, e.g., “The horror and ugsomeness of death is worse than death itself,” and-- ‘Philosophic disputations,’ said Fiorinda, ‘do still use to awake strange longings in me.’ ‘Longings?’ said the Duke. ‘You are mistress of our revels tonight. Breathe but the whisper of a half-shapen wish; lightning shall be slow to our suddenness to perform it.’ ‘For the present need,’ said that lady, ‘a little fruit would serve.’ ‘Framboises?’ said the Duke, offering them in a golden dish. ‘No,’ she said, looking upon them daintily: ‘they have too many twiddles in them: like my Lord Lessingham’s distich.’ He writes great similes, like “Only there sat in his eyes a private sunbeamed look, as if he smiled in himself to see, like a sculptor, the thing shape itself as he had meant and imagined,” and-- “Again her eyes crossed with Lessingham’s: a look sudden and gone like a kingfisher’s flight between gliding water and overshadowing trees.” And evocative descriptions, like “The falcon was perched still on the crag, alone and unmerry,” and-- “So they had passage over those waters that were full of drowned stars and secret unsounded deeps of darkness.” The battles and duels here have neither magic nor the supernatural but are man against man with armor, weapons, numbers, and tactics. The novel does introduce, however, fantastic things: immortal shape-changing Hamadryads, a time-free garden and cottage, a leaf to open any locked door, and most provocatively the two pairs of lovers, sensual Barganax-Fiorinda and spiritual Lessingham-Antiope, vibrant, distinct individuals who at times merge into each other. Lessingham and Barganax gaze into different mirrors and see each other’s reflections, Lessingham’s voice and manner recall Fiorinda’s, and Lessingham looks at Barganax and sees Antiope. As the Duke muses to his lover in a letter, “My thoughts growe busy that some way there bee IV of us but some way II only.” All of this suggests interesting things about gender and love and identity. Although the real-politic world of intrigue, assassination, and war drives the plot, Eddison often seems more interested in the two-couple romance he’s writing. The main characters are larger than life—archetypes—Eternal Lovers prefiguring Michael Moorcock’s later Eternal Champion. Lessingham dies in our world and yet vibrantly lives in Zimiamvia; he says to Antiope, "I love you … beyond time and circumstance" and calls her “Mary,” the name of his wife in our world; and the novel closes with Fiorinda, Mistress of Mistresses, looking at her nude reflection in a mirror and musing on all her female identities, from Aphrodite to Zenobia. All that said, Eddison isn’t only writing metaphysical romance. The novel features heroic violent action: a few battles, a bath time brawl between the Vicar and his dogs, Lessingham’s horse ride down a two-thousand foot cliff, and so on. And it features plenty of life wisdom like, “There was often more good matter in one grain of folly than in a peck of wisdom,” and “That which can be done, ’twas never worth the doing. Attempt is all.” Just keep in mind that it's not The Worm Ouroboros (1922), Eddison’s more famous epic fantasy, which has much more action and much less romance. Mistress of Mistresses has a lot of conversation and description, and the ending feels rushed and incomplete, but I relished reading it for moments like this: “As a man awakening would turn back into his dream, yet with that very striving awakes; or as eyes search for a star, picked up out but now, but vanished again in the suffusing of the sky with light of approaching day; so Lessingham seized at, yet in the twinkling lost, the occasion of those lines, the thin seeming memory blown with them as if from some former forgotten life.” And this: “And now his bee-winged kiss, hovering below her ear, under the earring’s smouldering of garnet, passed thence to where neck and shoulder join, and so to the warm throat, and so by the chin to that mocking spirit’s place of slumber and provocation; until, like the bee into the honeyed oblivion of some deep flower incarnadine, it was entertained at last into the consuming heaven of that lady’s lips.” Eddison was an English civil servant?! View all my reviews
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Charming and Not for Children When he was a little boy, the narrator of Le Petit Prince (1943) gave up becoming an artist because adults thought his drawing of a boa constrictor who’s swallowed an elephant was a hat. Now an adult, he’s all alone in the Sahara Desert thousands and thousands of miles from any human habitation, trying to repair his airplane (a matter of life and death), when a little guy suddenly appears and asks him to draw him a sheep. As the narrator can’t seem to draw a satisfactory sheep, he finally draws a box and says the sheep is inside it, which does the trick. Thus begins the narrator’s time with the Little Prince, which happened, we learn, six years ago and which the narrator has never forgotten. As the Little Prince never answers questions, only asks them, persistently, the narrator only gradually learns his story: he left his tiny home “planet” (asteroid B612, which turns so fast that you can see multiple sunsets each day and has three miniature volcanoes, a flower, and some baobab seeds) to learn how to deal with his temperamental and manipulative rose, whom (he realizes after leaving his planet) he loves. On his way to earth, drawn by a flock of passing birds, he stops off at a series of small worlds inhabited by solitary grownups, a king (who commands you to do what you’re going to do anyway), a vain person (who expects you to applaud and compliment him), a drunkard (who drinks because he’s ashamed and is ashamed because he drinks), a businessman (who has no time for loafing cause he’s gotta keep counting his possessions, the stars), a lamplighter (whose world is so small that he’s constantly having to light or extinguish the one streetlight as day and night rapidly pass), and a geographer (who has been too busy doing geography to explore his world). And so to Earth, where there are orders of magnitude more of each of those “bizarre” adults: “111 kings ... 7,000 geographers, 900,000 businessmen, 7,500,000 drunkards, 311,000,000 conceited men; that is to say, about 2,000,000,000 grown-ups.” During his year on Earth, the Little Prince has met a wise fox, who suggests he be tamed, a snake, who promises to help the Prince return to his home world (and his rose) with a little bite, and then finally the narrator, who befriends the Prince and hears his story and learns to be less uptight about his adult concerns (e.g., running out of water in the desert with a damaged airplane to repair). My high school French teacher took us to see the Bob Fosse movie adaptation (which we enjoyed for the cool songs and dances), I first read the book in a university French class, and I often listen to the wonderful (though unfortunately abridged) 1954 French adaptation on record with Gerard Philipe as the narrator, excellent voice actors for the other characters, and neat background music. And I don’t think it’s a book for children. It’s more a book for adults trying to remember being kids or for adults nostalgically remembering when they thought about remembering being kids. It is full of poetic, potent life wisdom, that would probably go right over kids’ heads, like: “Je suis responsable de ma rose.” (I am responsible for my rose.) And “on ne voit bien qu’avec le coeur. L'essentiel est invisble pour les yeux." (one only sees well with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.) Perhaps the messages re childhood and adulthood and life and love and perception and what’s important etc. get a little . . . strongly delivered. . . But the conversations in the book are meaningful, humorous, and strange, the ending is moving and ambiguous, and the illustrations by the author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry are distinctive charming, minimalist, and beautiful. It is a uniquely appealing work. View all my reviews
Otto of the Silver Hand by Howard Pyle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars Otto is no Tom Sawyer or Huckleberry Finn! What would you do if you were the baby boy of the robber Baron Conrad, but lived your first twelve years lived among gentle monks in a monastery, until your father abruptly fetched you to live with him and his hard men in his castle? What would happen were your father to mend his ways and go swear fealty to the new Holy Roman Emperor, taking his men with him and leaving his castle and “little simple-witted boy” unprotected, “a sad mistake”? What would happen were Conrad’s feud-foe Baron Henry to get his hands on you, who know how to read but not to fight? Howard Pyle’s compact novel Otto of the Silver Hand (1888) is that kind of story. It’s full of authentic details of life in the “dark ages” (food, clothes, work, arms, castles, monasteries, illuminated books, morals, etc.), suspenseful action (raids, rescues, pursuits, combats, etc.), vivid painterly descriptions (like “‘Forward!’ cried Baron Henry, and out from the gateway they swept and across the drawbridge, leaving Drachenhausen behind them a flaming furnace blazing against the gray of the early dawning”), and Pyle’s beautiful, arresting monochrome illustrations (from first letter of chapter decorations to full-page pictures). Tom Sawyer (1876) and Huckleberry Finn (1884) were published about when Otto of the Silver Hand was, but Twain and Pyle couldn’t be more different in their approach to literature for children. Otto is sure no Tom or Huck! They speak slangy demotic English, Otto elevated medievalesque English (e.g., “Oh, father!” he cried, “oh, father! Is it true that thou hast killed a man with thy own hand?”). They are “bad boys,” active, spirited, clever, irreverent, independent, and hostile to book-learning and church-going. Otto is a “good boy,” passive, spiritual, religious, obedient, and gentle, and loves reading books, gazing at their illustrations, especially one of the nativity, and listening to stories. Unlike Tom and Huck, who constantly play, scheme, trick, and adventure, Otto never initiates anything: starting when he’s a baby (when his mother dies giving birth to him), without his input or outcry he’s picked up and carried from point A to B to C. The closest Otto comes to making a plan is when Pauline, the daughter of Baron Henry, lets him know his father Conrad is in the vicinity, and the boy asks the girl if she’ll let his father know he’s in Henry’s castle so his father can work out how to rescue him. Otto has no sense of humor, and his novel has but one funny sequence (when One-eyed Hans infiltrates the enemy castle), whereas Twain’s boys and novels are made of jokes, comedy, and humor. Tom and Huck laugh more than they cry; Otto cries more than he laughs. People who meet Otto find him “cracked.” In Otto’s defense, he’s a holy child in the violent world of an allegorical historical fiction set in the German “dark ages,” not a “real” boy in a realistic historical fiction set in 19th-century America. Actually, Pyle may be more realistic than Twain in depicting the lack of a child’s agency in the face of adult tyranny, because Tom and Huck always outsmart any strict or sadistic adults they meet. Too often in real life, kids can only be passive and victimized, like Otto. While Tom and Huck are eternally boys, Otto grows from a baby to a man, so in a sense Pyle packs more of a person's life into his shorter novel than Twain does into his longer ones. And although Otto wants something very different from Tom and Huck, like them he sticks to his own way of thinking, no matter what life brings him. Some people may not like their children reading a story in which a child is mutilated, but though we are in the room when it happens, Pyle finesses the act so we don’t “see” it happen or know it happened till later. The graphic violence he does show in real time occurs between men. Indeed, an interesting thing about the story, especially considering that Pyle also published The Story of King Arthur and His Knights (1903), is that it features no feats of derring-do, no knightly jousts or Arthurian quests. It depicts the violence of men as more horrible than glorious. Although at one point Conrad does heroically hold a bridge alone, the book should make children want to read, not to swordfight. There are two spots of bad writing in the novel. Otto’s mother is disturbingly self-centered, and at one point Otto is said to “lay for a while with his hands clasped” when that isn’t really possible. But mostly it’s really well written, with everything from tense suspense, like-- Minute after minute passed, and Schwartz Carl, holding his arbelast in his hand, stood silently waiting and watching in the sharp-cut, black shadow of the doorway, motionless as a stone statue. Minute after minute passed. Suddenly there was a movement in the shadow of the arch of the great gateway across the court-yard, and the next moment a leathern-clad figure crept noiselessly out upon the moonlit pavement, and stood there listening, his head bent to one side. Schwartz Carl knew very well that it was no one belonging to the castle, and, from the nature of his action, that he was upon no good errand. To strange lyrical imagination, like-- But most of all they loved to lie up in the airy wooden belfry; the great gaping bell hanging darkly above them, the mouldering cross-beams glimmering far up under the dim shadows of the roof, where dwelt a great brown owl that, unfrightened at their familiar presence, stared down at them with his round, solemn eyes. Below them stretched the white walls of the garden, beyond them the vineyard, and beyond that again the far shining river, that seemed to Otto’s mind to lead into wonder-land. There the two would lie upon the belfry floor by the hour, talking together of the strangest things. “I saw the dear Angel Gabriel again yester morn,” said Brother John. “So!” says Otto, seriously; “and where was that?” Pyle’s illustrations, especially the twenty-six full-page ones, are exquisite: beautiful, austere, detailed, absorbing, unforgettable. My mother read the book to me when I was ten, and I just now after fifty years reread it, and though I’d mostly forgotten the story, I had mostly remembered the pictures, and looked at them again with mesmerized deja vu. Unlike with Twain’s works, the popularity of Otto of the Silver Hand has worn off by now, but it must have been popular in earlier times, for I detect its influence on artists like Maurice Sendak (e.g., cross-hatching) and Barry Windsor-Smith (e.g., trees) and writers like Lloyd Alexander (e.g., Taran and Eilonwy). Pyle’s The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (1883), The Garden Behind the Moon (1895), and Howard Pyle’s Book of Pirates (1921) are all much more entertaining, but Otto, the classic passive strange outsider children’s literature hero, really sticks with me and makes me think. View all my reviews
ジャングル大帝 1 by Osamu Tezuka
My rating: 3 of 5 stars A Compact Manga Epic about Africa, Nature, Animals, Human Beings, Civilization, and Life and Death **This review is about all three volumes of the manga** When I was about ten, I enjoyed watching Kimba the White Lion anime on tv in California, mesmerized by scenes of the hero running over the African plains to adventures with quirky animals and inimical people, so I was curious to read Osamu Tezuka’s source manga Jungle Taitei (1950-54), or Jungle Emperor. I found that the two are very different, as, for example, the anime Kimba stays young, while the manga Leo grows up, and the anime has fewer disturbing moments. The manga is a 534-page mini epic about a family of white lions living in a jungle in east Africa in the Great Rift Valley and the interactions between the lions, other animals, and human beings. After introducing Leo’s legendary father Panja (called the Demon Beast by the local natives because he hinders their exploitation of animals), the story shifts to his son Leo, who’s born on an ocean liner bound for a London zoo, is raised for a while in Aden among people like the Japanese youth Kenichi and Hige Oyaji (Moustache Uncle), returns to his birthright in Africa, attempts to pacifically rule an obscure jungle, and finally leads a party of men on a Quixotic cold-war quest for the source of the Moon Jewel on a legendary inaccessible mountain. It ends with Leo’s son Rune, who finds the reality of NYC less magical and more nightmarish than he’d expected and tries to escape back to Africa. My favorite parts are about young Leo trying to fit into human life (including attacking a movie screen showing a film of Africa and visiting a zoo and trying to free its animals) and later trying to establish himself as Jungle Emperor in the face of a hostile local tribe, a rival lion, an uncooperative herd of elephants, and a horrifying plague. Also, the climactic scene of mountain blizzard chaos and terror is hair raising and the late large picture of Leo as a giant white cloud is magnificent. Throughout, Tezuka highlights and blurs the dichotomy between wild animals and human beings, as Leo wears human shorts till he finally casts them off to be more au naturel, learns human language, and seems much more humane—brave, generous, non-violent—than most of the humans in the story (like the awful ex-Nazi war-criminal Ham Egg, the delusional and selfish Pierre, and the amoral gangster-spy Adam Dandy). There are, to be sure, some good people, like the early hero Kenichi and the late hero Hige Oyaji. The anti-heroine of the middle part of the epic, Mary, is great: feisty, violent, and, she thinks, unbeatable. When tribesmen capture her in the first volume, Mary sure doesn’t swoon and wait for rescue! Instead, not unlike H. Rider Haggard’s She or Robert E. Howard’s Belit (and as offensive to people of color), she takes over the tribe, names herself Konga of the Upper River, and starts carving out an empire in the jungle, demanding total obedience from her human and animal subjects. She tries to extinguish her persona as white civilization representative, dressing native (leopard skin bikini top and feathered headdress) and wielding a sharp spear and a cutting whip. She is insane and brutal, but read with Tezuka’s Ribbon no Kishi, in which the girl Sapphire dresses and passes for a fairy tale prince, Mary is an interesting female character for the 1950s manga world. But—alas—Tezuka domesticates her by making Kenichi take her to Japan, where she becomes a typical quiet young Japanese mother! Although the manga makes plenty of fun of the large number of venal and or stupid white characters, it is egregiously offensive to people of African descent, as every dark-skinned native is an absurd, repulsive caricature, naturally serving white (or Japanese) people. The callous, “comical” depiction of them, the use of them as porters and props, and the lack of interest in their cultures and needs let alone in their exploitation at the hands of white imperialist countries, is disappointing. That’s especially so because Tezuka shows a breadth of vision vis-à-vis animals, wanting to take human arrogance down a peg and to demonstrate the characters, needs, lives, and fascinations of animals and the frailty of human life in the face of the awesome power of nature. The manga features some sad, painful scenes involving abuse, disease, and death (like when young Leo dons his deceased father’s skin), and as there are no small syllabary to help young readers who don’t know many Chinese characters read Japanese, it almost seems like the manga, unlike the anime, is more for adults than for kids. This feels especially the case as Jungle Taitei becomes an anti-war cold-war story, with Countries A and B rivals in spies and exploration etc. finally (almost) transcending their rivalry via hardship and adventure on Moon Mountain. The compact, three-volume edition that I read had such small font that I often had to use a magnifying glass to read the text (I have old man eyes), and at times Tezuka draws at least a dozen small panels on a single small page, so it’s hard to read and appreciate in this format. A larger size would be more impressive and pleasurable for sure. Throughout, Tezuka uses all his manga techniques and tricks: zooming in and out, silhouettes, broken frames, shaky lines, establishing shots, strategic point of view and camera angle shifts, and dynamic, beautiful, impressive, creative art and layout, as in the following example. There are more that I couldn’t find pictures online of to link to, like these: A great sequence: Leo freshly returned to Africa shocked by vultures feeding on a zebra carcass, with closeups of his appalled face interspersed with different angle shots of the carcass and birds, the vultures beautiful in their stark black silhouettes on the white pages. An impressive frame: pitch black frame but for the malevolent large eyes of a black panther at night. A majestic picture: a full page showing the jungle river landscape with mountains in the distance, the human party like tiny ants dwarfed by the land. A surreal sequence: Rune fantasizes a Hollywood movie musical scenario where he goes to the big, tall-skyscraper NYC and goes to the zoo and sets free all the animals and is a celebrity and then imagines he’s flying around with butterflies and then comes to a mountain top where he sees all of Africa spread out in the sunset below him. Finally, Jungle Taitei is a weird, unpredictable story. It has powerful and wonderful and strange moments, but it also has silly ones, repetitive ones, and head-scratching ones, perhaps down to the impromptu plotting. I think too much time/space is spent on the exploration of the mountain (nearly the entire third volume). Finally, I’m glad to have read it, but I prefer Tezuka’s Ribbon no Kishi. View all my reviews
Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Magical Valley for Kids and Adults OR The Difficulties of Getting Rid of a Hobgoblin’s Hat I love all the Moomintroll books by Tove Jansson because they are so whimsical and wistful, charming and unsettling, strange and deep. Each book has its own mood, setting, and story-type as it combines with the others to present a full picture of Moomin Valley life. So I was looking forward to hearing Hugh Laurie read an early book in the series, Finn Family Moomintroll (1948). In it, Moomintroll (a soft sensitive animal the size of a plump child), his parents (Moominpappa and Moominmamma), and his friends Snufkin (a wandering loner), the Snork Maiden (a vain and strong girl who loves Moomintroll), the Snork (her know it all brother), and Sniff (a self-pitying coward), as well as their guests the Hemulen (a pompous dress-wearing collector) and Muskrat (a dour hammock philosopher who’s always reading a book called On the Uselessness of Everything), and assorted mysterious creatures, like the deaf and dumb Hattifatteners, the kleptomaniacal mouse-sized herring-faced friends Thingummy and Bob, and the dread wintry Groke, participate in spring and summer adventures initiated by the finding of the Hobgoblin’s black hat: magical transformations, island explorations, alien encounters, nonsensical courtroom dramas, wish-fulfillment feasts, and more. There are many funny asides like when the narrator swears by “the-Protector-of-all-Small-Beasts” (instead of God) or says something like, “If you want to find out what the muskrat’s false teeth were turned into, you can ask your Mama. She's sure to know.” Most of the incidents in this story are charming and cheerful, but beneath them flow undercurrents of dissatisfaction, insecurity, loneliness, and sadness flow. The scene where Moomintroll is unwittingly transformed so that his friends and even (briefly) his own mother don’t recognize him starts off funny but turns distressing. The scene where the Hemulen is depressed because he’s completed his perfect stamp collection and hence has stopped being a collector and become an owner is interesting. Moominpapa is ever writing his memoirs and crying when he recalls his youth, and Moomintroll’s longing love for Snufkin is poignant. Amidst her whimsy, Jansson reveals the depths of the human heart through her cute, grotesque, and fantastic creatures. And her distinctive illustrations are prime: clean lined, lovely, strange, simple, detailed, and fantastic. All those features, in addition to her original imagination, make her books appealing to both kids and adults. Finn Family Moomintroll is not the best Moomintroll book and listening to any of them without Jansson’s illustrations is a loss. However, hearing Hugh Laurie (with his natural British accent) read moments like the rising of the August moon shivered me with pleasure: It sailed up, a deep orange colour, unbelievably big and a little frayed round the edges like a tinned apricot, filling Moomin Valley with mysterious lights and shadows. “Look! To-night you can even see the craters on the moon,” said the Snork Maiden. “They must be awfully desolate,” said Moomintroll. “Poor Hobgoblin up there hunting!” Yea, she can really write fantasy, like “A top hat is always somewhat extraordinary,” “Oh, to be a Moomin and to dance in the waves when the sun gets up,” “Far away, Lonely Island lay flaming in the light of the sunset,” AND-- “It [a ball of poisonous pink perennials] twisted slowly up out of the hat, and crept down onto the floor. Tendrils and shoots groped their way up the walls, clambered round the curtains and blind-cords, and scrambled through the cracks, ventilators, and keyholes. In the damp air flowers came out and fruit began to ripen, and huge leafy shoots blotted out the stairs, pushed their way between the legs of the furniture and hung in festoons from the chandelier. The house was filled with soft rustling sound: sometimes the pop of an opening bud could be heard, or the thud of ripe fruit falling on the carpet. But Moominmamma thought it was only the rain and turned over on her other side and went to sleep again.” View all my reviews
Paradise Lost by John Milton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars Wowed by imagination and language-- Milton’s Puritan epic Paradise Lost (1667/74) gets off to an amazing start with Book I. The compelling anti-hero Satan and his fellow fallen angels have just been exiled from Heaven to Hell, “this dark and dismal house of pain,” where they speed-build Pandemonium. It's all sublime fantasy, majestic poetry, vivid language, wonderful epic similes, and absorbing psychology. Many delicious phrases like “by harpy-footed Furies hail'd” and “Hell trembled as he strode” and famous lines like “The mind is its own place, and in it self/ Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n” and “Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav'n.” Check out this wonderful description of Satan: Then with expanded wings he stears his flight Aloft, incumbent on the dusky Air That felt unusual weight, till on dry Land He lights, if it were Land that ever burn'd With solid, as the Lake with liquid fire; And this epic simile describing his “ponderous shield,” whose broad circumference Hung on his shoulders like the Moon, whose Orb Through Optic Glass the Tuscan Artist views At Ev'ning from the top of Fesole, Or in Valdarno, to descry new Lands, Rivers or Mountains in her spotty Globe. And this fantastic physiology: For Spirits when they please Can either Sex assume, or both; so soft And uncompounded is thir Essence pure, Not ti'd or manacl'd with joynt or limb, Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones, Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose Dilated or condens't, bright or obscure, Can execute thir aerie purposes, And works of love or enmity fulfill. Yikes—I’d better get going on my *concise* summary of the next eleven books! In Book II, the impious crew debate their next move: Hunker down in Hell? Naw. Renew the war against Heaven? Better not. Revenge ourselves on God by messing with his newest creation, man? Hmm. Satan meets his daughter Sin and his son/grandson by her (!), Death, and then scouts out earth, hanging there from a gold chain, ripe for the tainting. In Book III Satan approaches earth as God watches without interfering: his creations have free will, else no point in creating them. Someone will have to die to balance man’s impending sin and thereby save man for grace! Volunteers? What about the Son of God? *The sacrifice feels less heroic when Jesus declares that he’ll defeat Death by being resurrected. In Book IV, Satan spies on paradise, violently conflicted as to whether to submit to God or to mess up man, deciding on the latter, because “my self am Hell.” Adam and Eve are insufferably innocent, Eve revoltingly obedient to Adam (“my Guide/ And Head”), saying things like, “God is thy Law, thou mine: to know no more/ Is womans happiest knowledge and her praise.” I thus get a kick out of Satan enviously watching them and saying things like, You’ll soon join me in my less pleasing place! *Our pre-fall “general ancestors” Adam and Eve shamelessly have sex ‘cause God wants them to have pleasure (in wedlock) and to increase. In Book V Raphael pep talks Adam about obedience and contentment. He explains why God gave his creations free will (without it, obedience is meaningless) and recounts the story of Satan’s rebellion (sparked by his jealousy over God’s promotion of Jesus), including a rebel-rousing speech to the angels: are we going “to begirt th' Almighty Throne/ Beseeching or besieging”? And, hey, paradise is delightful: Awake, the morning shines, and the fresh field Calls us, we lose the prime, to mark how spring Our tended Plants, how blows the Citron Grove, What drops the Myrrhe, and what the balmie Reed, How Nature paints her colours, how the Bee Sits on the Bloom extracting liquid sweet. In Book VI Raphael vividly depicts to Adam the three-day war between Satan and his minions and God and his. It’s like a mini-Iliad—but nobody dies, because though the angels feel pain, they are immortal, ethereal, and quick-healing. The “obsequious” angels rout the “atheist” rebels, who return with dread new war engines only to be smothered by some sacred mountains, until finally the Son of God kicks the impious crew out of Heaven and sends them falling nine days to Hell. Book VII has Raphael vividly tell Adam how God created the heavens, earth, light, dark, lands, seas, plants, creatures, etc. in six days. It too closely follows Genesis—though there are splendid descriptions of animals coming into existence. In Book VIII Adam tells Raphael his memories of being created, not unlike Frankenstein’s creature telling his story (except Adam had a loving and caring creator), including God interdicting the knowledge tree. And the making of Eve from Adam’s rib. Adam’s account of waking up alive for the first time and enjoying his new world and body is splendid: By quick instinctive motion up I sprung, As thitherward endevoring, and upright Stood on my feet; about me round I saw Hill, Dale, and shadie Woods, and sunnie Plaines, And liquid Lapse of murmuring Streams; by these, Creatures that livd, and movd, and walk'd, or flew, Birds on the branches warbling; all things smil'd, With fragrance and with joy my heart oreflow'd. Starting with another super Satanic soliloquy as the fiend possesses a serpent’s body, Book IX relates the tempting of Eve and-- So saying, her rash hand in evil hour Forth reaching to the Fruit, she pluck'd, she eat: Earth felt the wound, and Nature from her seat Sighing through all her Works gave signs of woe, That all was lost. Wow. Adam decides to eat and die with Eve. Fruit-full and intoxicated, they enjoy carnal pleasure till they pass out, waking up the next day hungover and recriminatory, like any bickering couple: Why didn’t you stay by me? Why didn’t you force me to stay? In Book X Jesus compassionately punishes the sinners. God curses the poor serpent (more victim than Adam and Eve!). God/Jesus tells Adam the moral: your wife was made to serve you, so you lost all when you unleashed her. Sin and Death make a bridge over chaos from hell to earth (“Mace petrific”! “Gorgonian rigor”! “Asphaltic slime”!), while Satan oversees the anti-terraforming of the earth, making it hostile to man. In Book XI, Jesus brings Adam and Eve’s repentant prayers to God, who says death will remedy their pain and lead to a better second life, and Michael goes to banish the penitents from Eden but give them hope, so he reveals to Adam the future, from Cain and Abel to the Flood. Eve promises Adam, “I’ll never from your side stray,” while bruising the serpent becomes their life goal. In Book XII, Michael continues revealing the future to Adam, listing horrible diseases and deaths (thanks, Eve!) and relating the Exodus and Christ Redeemer stories: goodness infinite to bring grace out of evil, the fortunate fall. Michael preaches virtue, faith, patience, temperance, love, charity: paradise within thee. And our father and mother exit Eden, Eve in meek submission, and “the World was all before them.” About the Naxos audiobook, Anton Lesser reads the poem with understanding, empathy, wit, and pleasure; lovely melancholy music by John Jenkins and William Lawes, English composer contemporaries of Milton, introduces and concludes the twelve books. Finally, I recoil from the sexist Christian vision of the poem, and its Bible summaries bore me, but the insight that we have heaven or hell within us according to our thoughts, actions, and personalities, rings true. And the language, imagination, epic similes, and Satan are all wonderful. View all my reviews
Eric Brighteyes by H. Rider Haggard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars "Last night a-marrying—to-day a-burying" I can’t believe my Mom read Eric Brighteyes to me when I was in Junior High school! Imagine her, a “cheerful by nature” Unitarian Mother for Peace, reading something like this to 12-year-old me: “Here, it would seem, is nothing but hate and strife, weariness, and bitter envy to fret away our strength, and at last, if we come so far, sickness, sorrowful age and death, and thereafter we know not what. Little of good do we find to our hands, and much of evil; nor know I for what ill-doing these burdens are laid upon us. Yet must we needs breathe such an air as is blown about us, Gudruda, clasping at that happiness which is given, though we may not hold it.” I guess she read it to me cause she knew I had a Viking fetish. The edition we read of H. Rider Haggard’s 1891 Icelandic saga pastiche was published in 1974 in the Newcastle Forgotten Fantasy Library series, with the original beautiful monochrome wood cut illustrations by the splendidly named Lancelot Speed. The book must have been beyond me: adult storyline (a love triangle tragedy), archaic syntax and vocabulary, and Icelandic setting (with Norse gods like Odin and Ran, supernatural figures like the Norns and Valkyries, and exotic cultural features like weregild). And from that first reading, over the decades I forgot everything but a few scenes, like the hero waking to find his sword sticking through his lover’s heart, and only retained a vivid memory of having been excited and moved by the story. So I was curious to reread the novel a while ago (in 2011). I found it a brutal, beautiful, fascinating, and powerful tale of Norsemen and Vikings and witches and berserkers, in all their bleak, brave, destructive, and passionate glory. Despite (or because of) the tragic deaths prophesied early in the novel for the main characters, and despite (or because of) their pride, anger, jealousy, gullibility, and violence, I cared about Eric, Skallagrim, and Gudruda, as well as about supporting characters like Asmund and “villainous” characters like Swanhild, and suspensefully read their inevitable progressions toward their foretold dooms because I kept hoping that somehow they would avoid them. Haggard manipulates his characters with supernatural devices (potions, spells, gods, etc.) while never making them do anything they couldn’t do anyway due to their own human hearts. And the thrall Jon, the amateur skald who turns out to have kept the saga of Eric Brighteyes alive, has his own minor but interesting role to play in the story… There is a grim humor in the novel, as when Eric takes to calling Skallagrim “the drunkard” or to mocking cowed foes. There is horror, too, as when Swanhild makes an evil pact with her familiar-demon-sending, or as when her eyes glow red as she casts a sleeping spell, or as when all the men whom Eric has killed or caused to die crowd silently around his fire. And numerous impressive scenes: Eric wrestling Skallagrim, Skallagrim inopportunely indulging his fondness for ale, Gudruda cleaning Eric’s festering wound, Eric awaking after his wedding night, the Norns revealing their weaving of Eric’s life and its end, and so on. Haggard’s style is epic, archaic, and laconic (“I care not for this rede”; “thou shouldst take my helm”; etc.) and plenty of Icelandic saga words like “fey,” “athling,” and “baresark.” And plenty of alliteration, clauses beginning “For,” and vivid and meet similes. Characters (especially Eric) are wont to break into Anglo-Saxon-esque alliterative verse in moments of intense emotion (similar to what Poul Anderson later does in The Broken Sword): "Hence I go to wreak thy murder. Hissing fire of flaming stead, Groan of spear-carles, wail of women, Soon shall startle through the night. Then on Mosfell, Kirtle-Wearer, Eric waits the face of Death. Freed from weary life and sorrow, Soon we'll kiss in Hela's halls!" Haggard even imagines a sentient sword precursor to Stormbringer: "Thou art a strange sword, Whitefire," he said, "who slayest both friend and foe! Shame on thee, Whitefire! We swore our oath on thee, Whitefire, and thou hast cut its chain! Now I am minded to shatter thee." And as Eric looked on the great blade, lo! it hummed strangely in answer. The reader of the free Librivox audiobook, Brett Downey, does not have a charismatic voice, and his female characters verge on the artificially feminine, and yet he reads the rhythm, pauses, and words well, and I came to enjoy listening to him. I liked his gruff Skallagrim voice and his simple, good natured Eric voice. He effectively overdubs his voice a few times when a large number of men shout in unison. And Haggard’s prose is so distinctive and savory that it is just a pleasure to hear it spoken aloud (though I’d like to time travel to hear my Mom—bless her heart—read it to me again…) If you like Viking stories or tragic heroic fantasy like The Broken Sword and The Children of Hurin, you would probably like this book. And if you are interested in the history of fantastic fiction, you should read it, because, apparently, it’s the first modern English novel to pastiche the Icelandic sagas and also influenced Tolkien. View all my reviews
Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars A Sprawling Tale of Love, Hate, Crime, Culture, Money, and Revenge Things are looking up for nineteen-year-old merchant seaman Edmond Dantès: he’s just returned to Marseilles after a long voyage, he’s going to be made captain, and he’s earned enough money to marry his beautiful Catalan sweetheart Mercedes. So naïve, happy, and well-liked, Dantès has no idea what’s about to happen to him! He’s envied and hated by the ship’s sneaky accountant Danglars and by Mercedes’ murderous friend Fernand, so Danglars writes an anonymous letter falsely accusing him of being a Bonapartist (the exiled ex-emperor is planning a return from Elba), and Fernand delivers it to the authorities. The ambitious prosecutor Villefort has Dantès arrested during his engagement party, interrogates him, and to protect his own family secrets and career has him tossed—without trial—into the notorious island prison Chateau d’If. As the years of solitary confinement pass, Dantès morphs through hope, despair, faith, and unfaith. He’s starving himself to death when he meets a fellow prisoner, the learned, wise, humane, and resourceful Italian Abbé Faria. Faria starts working with Dantès’ on their escape while teaching him everything he knows, including science, philosophy, languages, and the location of a vast treasure hidden on the uninhabited rocky island of Monte-Cristo off the Tuscan coast. After his fourteen-year imprisonment, Dantès starts playing God, rewarding those who tried to help him and scheming to punish those who destroyed him. Is he angel or devil? He’s an Oriental Byronic vampire! He’s got unnaturally cold white skin, long black hair, a beautiful sad or sardonic smile, night vision, unlimited wealth and knowledge, exquisite taste, devoted servants and slaves, fine hashish, and endless energy—especially for weaving webs of long-term revenge. To that end he dons multiple personas: smuggler-sailor Simbad, humanitarian Italian Abbé Busoni, philanthropic British nobleman Wilmore, and mysterious Comte (Count) of Monte-Cristo. Are they all Dantès? Or has he died and been reborn as the protean, cosmopolitan, calculating Comte? It’s a stretch to imagine that no one (except Mercedes?) would recall Dantès when the Comte shows up in Paris disguised only by name, wealth, and twenty years of aging, though Dumas is demonstrating that Dantès was destroyed by the kind of men who’d forget him. It’s also a stretch to imagine Dantès so expert in so many fields (medicine, cuisine, finance, art, horses, telegraphs, guns, etc.), though Dumas is setting us up to be surprised by his uber-man’s mistakes. Dumas writes other interesting characters: Caderousse (a coward who turns convict), Noirtier (a paralyzed old Bonapartist who communicates by blinking or shutting his eyes), Benedetto (an amoral young monster who thinks somebody’s watching over him), Villefort (a strict law man who is finally akin to Hawthorne’s Dimmesdale), and Eugenie (a masculine young lady who’d rather be an independent artist than a wife). Maximilian and Valentine are sweet “Pyramus and Thisbe” lovers. Mercedes has moments of dignity and remorse, while her son Albert is a dilettante rich boy who gains gravitas. Dumas taps into human drives like love, hate, greed, ambition, REVENGE, and forgiveness and depicts moments of intense emotion: eyes bulge, faces sweat, hands tremble, and people collapse. Check out this description of paralyzed Noirtier: “In this moment all of the soul of the old man seemed to pass into his eyes, which were infused with blood; then the veins of his throat swelled, a bluish tint like that which invades the skin of an epileptic covered his neck, his cheeks, and his temples; he only lacked in this interior explosion of his entire being a cry. This cry exited so to speak from all of his pores, dreadful in its muteness, heartrending in its silence.” Because we care about the characters, the story is often suspenseful, as when Dantès gets in a body bag, when the Comte hosts a dinner party, when Noirtier changes his will, when Maximilian waits for Valentine at night, and when Mercedes visits the Comte. Many chapters are moving, like the one where Dantès returns to Chateau d’If and prays for a sign: “Monte-Cristo raised his eyes to the sky, but he couldn't see it: there was a veil of stone between him and the firmament.” Dumas is often funny, as when the Comte enjoys seeing what a spoiled brat Villefort’s eight-year-old son is, when Villefort questions “Busoni” and “Wilmore” for intel on the “Comte,” when Caderousse catches up with Benedetto, or when Roman bandits overcharge Danglars for chicken, bread, and wine. He writes proto-Wildean lines: “An academic would say that the parties of the world are collections of flowers that attract inconstant butterflies, famished bees, and buzzing hornets.” He writes witty dialogue: “What do you want to do with me?” “That’s what I'm asking you. I tried to make a happy man and I only made an assassin.” Dumas is a master of irony. He writes sarcastic asides, like, “Let’s return now to that dutiful son and that loving father” (a pair of conmen playing lucrative roles). He writes dramatic irony, as when Villefort doesn’t know who the poisoner in his house is but we do, when adulterous-ex-lovers don’t know that a criminal is their illegitimate son but we do, or when the generous gift of a jewel leads to murder and theft. His writes many prime insights into human nature, like these: “Moral wounds, especially those we hide, never close up; always painful, always ready to bleed when one touches them, they remain sharp and gaping in the heart.” “In the history of humanity, ghosts have done far less harm than living people do in a single day.” “Alas, said Monte-Cristo, it’s one of the prides of our poor humanity, that each man believes himself more unfortunate than another unfortunate who cries and moans right beside him.” Dumas assumes much cultural knowledge in his reader, referring to Greek/Roman myths and history and to 1001 Nights, and to the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Racine, Byron, and to many kinds of opera and art. He also must’ve been obsessed about money! The novel is longer than necessary. And I have problems with its ending. (view spoiler)[First, the month-long “death” of Valentine is too contrived and lasts too long. Maximilian is a self-made officer who already values life and his family and Val, so he needs no such tough love adversity training from the Comte. Second, I don’t buy Haydée (the Comte’s Albanian princess-slave) and the Comte sailing off together as lovers. Dumas doesn’t develop her character and relationship with the Comte enough to make her an equal partner, so I was hoping that he and Mercedes would end up together as weathered lovers. (hide spoiler)] But the virtues of Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (1844) far outweigh its flaws. The novel is entertaining and moving and potently demonstrates the corruption of the wealthy and powerful. (If Dantès’ enemies had only sinned against him, he’d only be a petty revenger.) I’m glad I finally read it—in French—though it took me four months□. View all my reviews |
Jefferson Peters
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by Sabaa Tahir
A Young Adult Epic Fantasy with Lots of Violence & Romance
Elias is an elite Martial soldier, Laia a naïve Scholar slave. As they alternate telling their stories (in trendy Young Adult first person, present tense narration), we soon rea...
"It must be due to some fault in ourselves"--
George Orwell's Animal Farm (1945) is an anti-totalitarian-communist allegory in which the exploited animals of the Manor Farm kick Farmer Jones out and set about running the farm. At first...
by Lu Xun
Perfect Stories of Life in Early 20th Century China
Chinese Classic Stories (1998) by Xun Lu is an excellent collection of seven short stories by perhaps the most important 20th century Chinese writer of fiction. Lu Xun (1881-1936) stu...
Fine Writing, Great Characters, Immersive World
The Surgeon's Mate (1980) is the 7th novel in Patrick O'Brian's addicting series of age of sail novels about the lives, loves, and careers of the British navy captain Jack Aubrey and the ...
An Overwritten, Oddly Compelling Gothic Father
Matthew Lewis' notorious and influential Gothic novel The Monk (1796) takes place during the heyday of the Spanish Inquisition. Ambrosio, the monk/friar/abbot/idol of Madrid, is nicknamed ...
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