"To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again, as recent and unknown to me, books which I had read carefully a few years before . . . I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book . . . the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it." (Montaigne, Book II, Essay 10 (publ. 1580))

Friday, July 31, 2009

The Reef (Edith Wharton, 1912)

I just enjoy Wharton's novels a lot. This one perhaps not as much as The Age of Innocence or The House of Mirth, but it was very good reading at the gym (or would be elsewhere).

Basically, a widow (Anna Leath) is getting married to someone (George Darrow) with whom she was in love earlier in life but didn't marry for various reasons; her stepson (Owen Leath) is getting married to Anna's daughter's governess (Sophy Viner). This plays out in a French chateaux that has been in the family of the widow's in-laws. The relationships have some complications. And yes, there is a sort of reef on which the relationships are on the verge of foundering and around which the main participants seek to steer. The ending is nice and ambiguous.

Wharton has an unusually good feel for how people think and speak. Which I think is helpful as we look at our own behaviors . . . but who knows. In any event, it is much enjoyable to read.

Monday, July 27, 2009

The Pilgrim's Progress - Part I (John Bunyan, 1678)

This one is widely recognized as a classic, and I've had it on my list for quite some time. But I didn't like it at all. And quit after Part I. (Missing Part II, which recounts a similar journey by the pilgrim's spouse and children.)

The back cover describes it as the "supreme classic of the English Puritan tradition," which may have been the problem here.

Anyway, some guy named "Christian", accompanied by "Hopeful," makes his way from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City. Christian talks about being humble, but seems pretty smug to me. They succeed on the journey through a combination of fortitude and lucky interventions from third parties. Other pilgrims, such as "Ignorance," aren't so lucky.

So what was this all about?

Anyway, now I know the source of "Vanity Fair," which supposedly is a good novel. So put it on hold at the library.

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Robert Frost - A Life (Jay Parini, 1999)

I continue reading biographies of artists in the hope that it might give some glimpse of the "creative process." I don't know that that's happening at all, but I am enjoying the bios (Goethe, Lizst, Tolstoy, Goya, now Frost).

Didn't know Frost actually grew up in San Francisco - he didn't get to New England until age 11 or 12 or whatever. The author comments that this might have helped him become such an effective observer of New England - not having grown up there, he didn't take for granted the look of the place, its folkways, its speech patterns, etc.

Didn't know that he lived in England for a few years, and that that interlude was a catalyst for putting his poetry into publication and bringing him into the public eye. Came back just as WWI was breaking out.

Interesting stories of his parents - the father was a hard living newpaperman, the mother a saintly figure. Frost was quite interested in Darwin's work, and loved being out in nature on long hikes, "botanizing."

Frost learned by reading; interesting that he was such a fan of Prescott's work on the conquest of Mexico - this author says that he wrote his first submitted poem on this. He didn't much care about being in college. He actually did try farming in a number of settings, after a fashion. Dramatic love affair with his bride-to-be; children in a what seemed to be a pretty undisciplined household; mental illness with children.

Also spent many years teaching, and then many years as a famed public figure doing minimal work for excellent pay at various colleges. Also was perhaps the first poet to do widely attended public lectures. It seems that he developed a certain on-stage persona, and really enjoyed playing it.

Also interesting - and seems contemporary - he was out of step with many of the university types because of his opposition to the New Deal - expressed belief instead in limited government and individual freedom and responsibility. This was particularly interesting to me because of the current intensified debate along these lines.

And then the poetry - no need to list favorites here, it would be long. Just re-read "Death of the Hired Man" the other day. I just really don't get how poets do it, but wish I had a better feel for this. Basically incredible to think about how much is packed into each line, once somebody breaks it down for me.

Saturday, July 18, 2009

To the Heart of the Nile - Lady Florence Baker and the Exploration of Central Africa (Pat Shipman, 2004)

I am always fascinated reading about African exploration (most recently, this one). This book was also very interesting. But not that great. It felt like it was written for a junior high class where the teacher was interested in touting the "woman's perspective." I wouldn't chase down any more of her books.

The story line is another one of these unbelievable situations. 38-year-old widower (stalwart Englander) traveling in eastern Europe (Ottoman territory, I think) spontaneously bids on a 14-year-old Transylvanian girl being presented at a Turkish slave auction as a high-priced virgin (harem product) who could speak a European language. He had never seen the girl before. Outbid by the local headman. So he did the only logical thing: abduct her (before ever having spoken to her) and head for the border.

So of course they fall madly in love. Samuel Baker is an adventurer and shortly thereafter takes up the idea of searching for the source of the Nile (inspired by similar efforts of Burton, Speke, etc.) His new wife (Florence, as Anglicized) tags along on all of his trips, facing the usual litany of awfulness that those trips involved. High risk for anyone, super high risk for a woman.

It is pretty amazing.

They didn't find the source - Speke gets credit - but they did quite a bit of useful geographic work and came back to England as heroes. They were so popular that Florence's past - a non-starter in Victorian society no matter how much it wasn't her fault - was generally overlooked.

A few thoughts:

1. Florence had ended up a slave as part of the unrest in the 1848 revolution where Louis Kossuth sought to gain a measure of independence from Austria for Hungary. Kossuth was viewed in America as some sort of patriot and freedom lover, thus there are places named for him. Like the Iowa county in which I was born (and which was laid out shortly after 1848).

2. Samuel & Florence were mightily frustrated trying to get the natives to function in anything near the manner that folks back in Europe would have functioned. Much commentary that definitely wasn't PC.

3. Allowing for that - unfortunately it all sounds too familiar in many key aspects going back to these very early European incursions into Africa. Western powers in it for a mixture of trade and territorial ambition and to reform the benighted natives (including I think some sincere motives). Main method of dealing with the locals seems to be to endlessly provide gifts (then: trade beads and weapons to the leaders, now: cash (outright aid, or loans that won't be repaid) and weapons) to the leaders. The leaders typically kept, and keep, the lion's share of the gifts with pretty much zero benefit to the society as a whole. Ugh.

4. This book was helpful in sorting out the Ottoman empire relationship with Egypt. Nominally it was part of the Ottoman empire, but Egypt took counsel with England before doing much of anything. Which is how folks like "Chinese" Gordon ended up as a pasha in Khartoum when the Mahdi overran the place (Baker also was a pasha on the Egyptian payroll for a few years.)

Sunday, July 12, 2009

The Age of Innocence (Edith Wharton, 1920)

I had much enjoyed Wharton's The House of Mirth almost three years ago, but liked this better. Not sure (or perhaps incapable of articulating) why, but I very much like Wharton's writing.

In this one, New York upper society is changing (something Wharton lived through). Newland Archer is scheduled to be married to a prize catch of New York society, but things get very complicated as he helps out his fiancee's cousin.

I liked the way Wharton ended the book.

I also like that while she is quite focused on the foibles of this segment of society, she also obviously appreciates some of its strengths and charms - very little black and white here.

Didn't know this was a significant movie in 1993, with some pretty big name stars involved. I think I would be scared to watch it as I have nice memories of the book. Even found myself wondering what might have happened with the principal characters after the final events in the book, which is a pretty weird thing to wonder about in a novel.

Thursday, July 09, 2009

The House of Wisdom - How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization (Jonathon Lyons, 2009)

Great follow-on to two books just completed (here and here). Though per my usual reading approach this takes place by happenstance, not planning.

As I keep reading, this era becomes somewhat less cloudy. This book was very helpful.

Quickie chronology items (no particular significance other than they help me keep things in a bit of order):

312 - Constantine/Constantinople
476 - "official" collapse of Roman empire in the west
632 - Mohammed dies
732 - Islam expansion into Europe via Spain halts at Tours; Islam in Spain develops as a somewhat separate branch (al Andalus) (Islam also had expanded (and continued to expand) eastward, including ancient civilizations such as Persia and India)
762 - Baghdad founded - "House of Wisdom" (the subject of this book) founded shortly thereafter - bringing materials from Greece, Persia, India
800 - Charlemagne crowned
[1066 - Battle of Hastings, Vikings had traveled 'round, including southern Italy and Sicily]
1095 - First Crusade called
1100 - Adelard (major early figure in this book) travels east to learn from the Arabs
1270 - Thomas Aquinas (trying to reconcile faith and reason as these issues become more combustible with the spread of learning from Arab sources etc.)
1277 - Catholic church issues another detailed ban regarding various teachings (faith v. reason issues etc.) (this goes on much longer)
1453 - Constantinople taken by Ottomans
1492 - the "reconquista" is completed, Islam is out of Spain (and guess what, the dynamism diminishes rapidly into a super-conservative model, especially when the Jews were also later kicked out)
1517 - Luther's 95 Theses
1543 - Copernicus publishes
1571 - Battle of Lepanto
1633 - Galileo convicted
1683 - Battle of Vienna (last big push up the Danube by the Ottomans)

So what was up with these Arabs? Unbelievable energy; even if there was a power vacuum following Rome's collapse, the territorial conquest in ~100 years is unbelievable

And these were folks who previously had lived incredibly simple lives in the desert.

On top of the conquests, they actively sought to gather learning from areas with far deeper histories (India, Persia, Greece); to understand; to build. Luckily, they didn't have theocrats halting studies in those days. (Plenty in the West at the time.) Though it sounded like there was developing tension already in the Muslim world between religion and science.

Story lines:

1. Consistently low level of learning in the West. Lost access to classics after centuries of barbarian invasions, Muslim territorial grabs. Augustine set the tone - not much to learn beyond faith. (Can hear echoes of blind Jorge from The Name of the Rose to exactly this effect.)

2. Roger of Sicily - open to Arabs (like Lepanto books, can see where these Italian states prospered during these years, including Genoa, Florence and Venice)

3. Medicine, Euclidean geometry, Ptolemy, Aristotle, etc., etc. - the Arabs worked this stuff over, hard. (Even if for astrology (a traditional Persian focus) and alchemy to a significant extent).

4. Translators - including Averroes - constantly referred to in The Name of the Rose as a threat to Western church leaders - brought Aristotle to Europe. Averroes also did extensive commentaries, not just translations.

5. Cathedral schools transition into early universities; not much impressed by orders from church authorities to stop studying various topics.

6. Helped get a glimpse of how learning proceeded under Arabs, stagnated in the West, how a few individuals started the cross-pollination that became a flood.

7. That Muslims - though at odds with the West on various - weren't systematically demonized until the politicians and churchmen needed this for the First Crusade. Like most of these situations, demonizing wasn't applicable for those living on the boundary areas; they interact, trade, learn, etc.

8. With all the learning derived from Arabs - the West apparently later sought to suppress this heritage, instead claiming direct learning down from Greece. Which didn't happen.

9. Very bizarre to think of all the conflict over the centuries, what a shame.

10. And how the two groupings essentially switched sides in fairly short order - the West became a dynamic center of learning and "progress," the Islam world characterized by repression, theocrats, etc. Weird.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

The Name of the Rose (Umberto Eco, 1980)

I enjoyed this book a bunch. Moreso than this other book by Eco.

Wealthy abbey in Italy, early 14th century. One death per day for seven days, seeming to follow Apocalypse verses. First death on the day that William of Baskerville (protagonist) arrives as one of numerous visitors for a meeting at the abbey. Important meeting to discuss tensions between Franciscans wanting poverty in their order (reacting to what they perceived as a drift toward materialism and away from St. Francis's teachings), and others who felt too much emphasis on poverty could be a dangerous, destabilizing concept (how far might the impoverished masses go if the concept of renouncing private property took hold?)

Unique abbey: fabulous library, including lots of materials from Arabic and other non-Western sources. But the keepers limit access rather than make widespread availability.

The abbot asks William to get to the bottom of the murders. William references Roger Bacon, William of Occam; uses what would be considered scientific method in a setting where medievalism and superstition tend to control.

In a way this is a detective story, but the "detecting" takes place in the context of so much else.

Long discussions about poverty in religious life (in the context of a very wealthy abbey).

Long discussions about heresy, and how the political and religious leaders pursue heretics to achieve other policies. While little people unable to comprehend (or uninterested in comprehending) doctrinal minutiae are swept up (and used by the leaders) for reasons that have little to do with the ostensible religious issues. Sounds familiar, actually.

Long discussions about the proper role of laughter for man. (Did Jesus ever laugh? Blind Jorge says no.)

Long discussions about appropriate access to knowledge. And the role of the inquisitors.

I read that this was a commercial success. Which seems unlikely given that the book is long and - as should be evident from the above - not focused on pop topics. But it works. Perhaps even gave a snippet or two of insight into life in systems where the civic and religious authorities manage knowledge and doctrine to maintain power and control.

Very good follow-on to this book, which described events a couple hundred years later - but many of the same concepts crossed over.

"The Name of the Rose" shares many concepts with this book, which is another one that I like an awful lot.