Debi Cates
The Church Without ChristSECOND READ December 18 2024 reviewStill absolutely five stars.I rarely re-read, but Wise Blood was one of those books–short as it is–that haunts you, taunts you. The first time, the overriding impression I took away was of its pathos and violence. I felt a swath of pity, not just for Hazel, but for everyone we meet, all those unhinged, wandering, lost souls.This second reading, I enjoyed the humor more, indeed found more humor to enjoy. It is a galloping messy tale! I gave up trying to put it under my contemporary psychological light, accepted humanity as baffling. (Humanity is baffling) when I was pointed by another fine GR reader and now friend, Dave Marsland to that excellent O'Connor essay, “Some Aspects of the Grotesque in Southern Fiction.”Aha! It was a brighter light. I then resolved to enter the world that O'Connor intended, as an observation of large mysteries of the human experience that sometimes require a literary short cut, so to speak. Thus, her so-called grotesques who not only leap from the pages but leap over overwrought reason and logic into the heart of perhaps the most baffling ancient mystery.Here's what O'Connor herself says in my copy.“AUTHOR'S NOTE TO THE SECOND EDITION (1962)Wise Blood has reached the age of ten and is still alive. My critical powers are just sufficient to determine this, and I am gratified to be able to say it. The book was written with zest, and if possible, it should be read that way. It is a comic novel about a Christian malgre lui, and as such, very serious, for all comic novels that are any good must be about matters of life and death. Wise Blood was written by an author congenitally innocent of theory, but one with certain preoccupations. That belief in Christ is to some a matter of life and death has been a stumbling block for readers who would prefer to think it a matter of no great consequence. For them Hazel Motes' integrity lies in his trying with such vigor to get rid of the ragged figure who moves from tree to tree in the back of his mind. For the author Hazel's integrity lies in his not being able to. Does one's integrity ever lie in what he is not able to do? I think that usually it does, for free will does not mean one will, but many wills conflicting in one man. Freedom cannot be conceived simply. It is a mystery and one which a novel, even a comic novel, can only be asked to deepen.”I think I read it this second time with more suggested zestFIRST READ October 22 2024 reviewThis slim novel is driven by the religious logic of almost everyone we meet–the down and outs who have gotten their personalized ideas from what might be called their “blood,” their defeated southern history, their evangelical upbringing, and their racism, resulting in an inheritance of overwhelming inner turmoil. The protagonist, Hazel Motes, is not much over 20, and has been recently released and returned home to Tennessee after suffering an injury in WW II. That home, though, has been abandoned and cleaned out by thieves. We first meet him on a train now headed to the city, where he says, “I'm going to do some things I never have done before.”And he does, because he has released himself from his traditional faith. Only he isn't released. He is fighting his faith every second of his life, becoming a street corner preacher, preaching about his new church, the Church Without Christ, where there is no sin and everyone is clean with no need for redemption. It's the new truth as he sees it: that there is no truth. But Motes' revelation doesn't make him happy and free. He is angry.“His black hat sat on his head with a careful, placed expression and his face had a fragile look as if it might have been broken and stuck together again, or like a gun no one knows is loaded.”What has broken this young man? What has made him a gun no one knows is loaded? We can only guess it is his experiences in WW II, things that opened his eyes, so to speak.Along with Motes, we meet the people he meets, and learn how faith is distorted in their lives as well. They too contend with the shortcomings of their beliefs against their experiences, leaving them unfulfilled, lonely, or just morally and unlovingly hollow.I can't help compare O'Connor's 1952 Wise Blood to Erskine Caldwell's 1953 [b:Tobacco Road 59091 Tobacco Road Erskine Caldwell https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1699226565l/59091.SY75.jpg 1238780] that I very recently read and heartily disliked. Caldwell created a novel of repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters, and made them ridiculous–butts of his dark humor. O'Connor also has created repugnant, ignorant, hapless characters but she treats them with deadly seriousness, even while including moments of dark humor, and dark horror too. For each of her characters there is a twisted, ever unresolved searching for peace, for grace, for comfort. O'Connor's writing is sublime genius. While neither are pleasant reads, one is a single-note gag, and the other is the complicated, tragic need for grace and redemption by various slices of suffering humanity.O'Connor, as always, packs a mighty wallop.I could have underlined the whole book.
Another book I picked up from the public library's Free table.
My biggest Little (my 8 year old granddaughter) told me a few weeks back that she was interested in Greek mythology. I've offered up a couple of mythology books since then but so far haven't hit on what it is she is interested in.
This book might be just the right thing. I thought the text and the images combined to make for a compelling tale, a sad love story.
Within the most lovely of book covers is the first Iranian novel I've read! Recommended by a dear and new Iranian friend.
The story takes place in Iran in 1963, pre Iran-Iraq war, pre-Islamic Revolution, in the oil city Abadan. It is narrated by a comfortable housewife, Clarice, 38, who has a husband, a teenage son, and tween twin daughters. They are a Christian Iranian-Armenian family, which also includes two more members who drop by daily, Clarice's opinionated mother and her overweight unmarried sister.
Oddly, the setting was not all that different from the lifestyle and dynamics of an American family in the 60s. I was also somewhat surprised by the number of references to American-made products, a reminder how global the world has become and has been for a while. I was grateful to an included Glossary listing unfamiliar (to me) places, people, events, traditions, and foods.
The plot centers on the arrival of new neighbors, also Iranian-Armenian, and the upheavals that peculiar family cause in the emotional life of Clarice, and to a lesser degree, to her children.
It took me a little while to warm up to the nature of the story–the dull domesticity of housework, the family squabbles that come and go, and the peacemaker personality of Clarice. I wouldn't say this is my normal go-to type novel but as time went on, I relaxed into it, into the rhythm of Clarice's days, her observations of beauty around her, and her inner dialogues that drive the story: those many, many things “left unsaid.”
I enjoyed most learning about the setting, the desert town built to house oil refinery workers, the traditions and some history of Armenians, even the dramatic experience of a plague of locust descending, and the surprising Western-like suburban neighborhoods complete with green manicured lawns. I enjoyed most the traditional food preparations! It's one of my favorite things, to learn about regional middle-eastern foods and ingredients. Call it my own domesticity preference. And if the opportunity arises, I will definitely seek an Iranian/Persian restaurant so that I may taste some of the delicious-sounding, long traditional foods.
I gave it three stars for the enjoyable immersive quality in this tale of the lives of ordinary people. And I gave it another star for the personal enjoyment I had by reading a novel recommended by my friend who felt the novel described some of his own experiences and particularly recommended it to me, a far away friend that is very real and dear to me.
This is a novel, I suspect, is a loving remembrance for author Pirzad who grew up in Abadan. It was a time of safety, comfort and familial love, the quiet before the coming storms in Iran.
I picked this up at the local library's Free table. I'll donate it a Little Free Library somewhere.
This is a lively set of four stories about the folk hero Tyl from Holland, their “Robin Hood.” Although he enriches himself, he does so at the expense of the enemies of the Dutch, and more than one greedy, uncaring rich Dutchman.
His tricks were indeed pretty clever. The illustrations were ink line drawings, the type popular in the 1970s.
I had put this book on hold at our public library so it was waiting for the Littles and I when we went there today.
I read it to the littlest Little while the biggest Little was browsing the stacks.
She and I enjoyed it. We both admired the hairdo of one of the quirky but loving sisters. However Little could hardly believe that anyone would eat a burnt cookie, being a connoisseur of cookies and cakes herself.
Another book put on hold and then read with the littlest Little at the public library today.
This one was fun to read aloud, one of those that are well written and illustrated with that in mind. The littlest Little loves being read to, but is not entirely keen to read herself. (The biggest Little, on the other hand, is a keen reader and often prefers to be the out loud reader herself.)
The littlest Little is always engaged, though, and makes me laugh because she does voice her own opinions as the story goes along. In this book her opinion was that the squirrel was silly accusing others of stealing his leaves when they of course had fallen naturally to the ground. We loved the bird's home with its surprisingly lush decor.
At the library today, the littlest Little browsed the stacks and came back–skipping–with this book in hand for us to read while there. OF COURSE! She loves anything panda. Today I learned that white and black pandas are the ones she loves, the red ones not so much.
While there, her mom texted wanting to know what sort of gift to pick up for an upcoming school friend's birthday. Littlest said that the friend “likes scary things. But all girls pretty much like unicorns and mermaids.” I asked her, “Do you like unicorns and mermaids too?” She said “No. I like pandas.” And that is her in a nutshell. She has her own preferences, sometimes unique, and doesn't worry about being “in.” God love her for that.
And darn it, I wish I had paid attention to the title of a book that the biggest Little brought for me from the stacks today. It wasn't for me to read to her; no, it was a book she saw, browsed, and then brought because she thought–so rightly–that I would like. It was about plant structures and very beautifully illustrated. And that is her in a nutshell. She pays such loving attention to people. God love her for that.
This book just came in today. It's gorgeous!
Every big page is a “scanning electron micrograph” and a sprinkling of a few other types, like “light micrograph.” Each picture is of the structure of the plant world that is all around us but too small to see with the naked eye. Color has been added, sometimes called “false color,” to enhance the structure-and for its beauty to be better appreciated by us mere humans. Yes, please.
Sections are Seeds, Pollen, Fruiting Bodies, Trees and Leaves, Flowers, Vegetables, Fruit. Indexed as well. Each image has an engaging blurb about the plant, details, and its magnification. I foresee many hours of enjoyment.
I carry in my purse a little Carson MicroBrite Plus 60x-120x Power LED Lighted Pocket Microscope. It's a bit finicky to get things into its view and focused, and you need a steady hand. But once I do I nearly stop breathing, such is the wonder of seeing a tiny weed seedpod or the eye of a dead windowsill insect up close.
This book is heaven for me.
Update 10/19/2024Third attempt to assess this problematic novel!I had it wrong. Erskine and his father Ira were not proponents of eugenics, although the elder did think it could help in the short term and wrote some articles for a eugenics periodical. Erskine Caldwell's 1932 Tobacco Road, however, went on to be firmly at the center of a eugenics discussion in Georgia in the 1930s. After the novel's release, the mortified citizens of Georgia disputed any possible foundation in reality within the novel. And when various reporters went to investigate, the horrors were found to be true. Their investigations found many shocking examples of the level of poverty in the state, and included finding the source family nicknamed the “Bunglers” by Ira Caldwell, whom Ira tried and failed to uplift, the family that Erskine fictionalized as the Lesters. Then, true to the long-standing southern prejudices, some Georgian citizens began to worry out loud about the effects these–now acknowledged as real–Tobacco Road types would have on the whites' case for racial superiority. That's where eugenics came in.Unlike his father, Erskine did not think eugenics was the correct solution, even short term; he advocated for socio-economic solutions, suggestions that went unheeded. Instead, in 1937 Georgia passed a law legalizing forced sterilization. The state of Georgia ultimately oversaw the operation on more than 3,200 individuals. It was only in 1970 that the law was repealed, although it had ceased forced sterilizations by 1963, a still ignorantly and shamefully late year, long after WWII ended and the truth of Nazi Germany known.Source: Chapter 3 of [b:A Century of Eugenics in America: From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era 8241786 A Century of Eugenics in America From the Indiana Experiment to the Human Genome Era (Bioethics and the Humanities) Paul A. Lombardo https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1383167159l/8241786.SX50.jpg 13089288]So, how to assess this novel now, knowing the history and its context?The novel backfired for Caldwell by fueling a misguided decades-long repugnant history. (It did, however, lift Caldwell himself and his family out of poverty.) Then along comes me, in 2024, reading the novel because it is listed in the Modern Library's 100 best novels. I hated the novel. I hated experiencing the story within it. It was as repugnant as the sorry history of eugenics and forced sterilization in America (and ultimately part of Nazi Germany's horrifying “final solution”). Without any hint of redemption or call for reform within the text, surrounded in so-called black humor, it left me and countless others wondering what the heck we were supposed to take away from it. It seemed the only choices were ridicule or pity.I'll go with pity, though the Lesters created by Caldwell had no pity for one another, especially cruelly none for their old and young. (Maybe that was a point he was making? That because they are pitiless themselves all the more reason for us to have pity?) Ultimately, I can only come away with a firmer belief in the foundations of a good public education system and additionally of public welfare as being in the best interests of a nation, the best interests of humanity.Now, at last, I'm done with personally wrestling this unpleasant novel.
Hm.
The idea is good – four stories going simultaneously that possibly intersect as a kind of puzzle to figure out. The execution, though, was off for me. The solo story of the cows went on too long. And did the robber show up in the other story lines effectively? True, the stories could be connected but nothing was especially worth telling.
I don't know. We'll see how the Littles feel about it. They may enjoy it without overthinking it like I've done.
This was a lot of fun!
The Littles and I “read” this together. Since it is a made-up language we could interpret the words any way we wanted, usually based on visual clues. And the visual clues were super fun too. Each page, we looked at the details and the changes from the previous page to see everything that was happening.
Recommend :)
Update: a day later.
I'm still thinking about this novel today. I don't know the history of sci fi, but if Clarke was the original of these recurring themes, then he definitely deserves props for that, much like he and Kubrik do for 2001: A Space Odyssey. I could edit my review below to be less disappointed, less persnickety. But then I'd have to do the same for other works (eg. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley). Yes, I've run into this dilemma before and probably will again: how to read older classic works that were The First but in whatever way don't meet today's scientific knowledge or societal advancements, or even taste? (Many old novels drive me up the wall with their strange, disjointed endings, like Frankenstein or even Robinson Crusoe and Mill on the Floss.)
If you have ideas on this conundrum, I would be most receptive–and not persnickety–to hear them.
CONTAINS SPOILERS
For all his trail-blazing imagination, Clarke's imagination went only so far. With his Grandpappy Sci Fi reputation, I thought he fell surprisingly short of being visionary. Not even outstandingly prophetic.
For me the prime example was that, in spite of being an atheist himself, he couldn't get away from a cosmic superpower entity, the Overmind. But not only that, it is an entity in communication with the novel's last interstellar beings standing, the Overlords who admired, obeyed, and lamented not being deemed worthy of being consummated into it. Clarke dismisses all the world's religions and gods only to envision another unfathomable, inexplicable One.
And apparently for all his powers of imagination, Clarke was unable to imagine a future without 1950s misogyny. Women are still “girls” and have no function outside the home in the plot.
Additionally, but more forgivably, the technology, compared to the world we live in now, was clunky and only vaguely and only sometimes on the mark with the real advancements made a mere 20, 30 years later. Not as prophetic as, say, cartoon Dick Tracy's watch in the 1930s.
He had a nice take on Time not being an arrow in one direction, and used it well in plotting his story. Truth be known, I don't read much science fiction so that could be quite old hat even when he wrote this work.
I noticed that many of the ideas here are foreshadows for the 1968 film (and perhaps his novelization of it as well), 2001: A Space Odyssey. Which, I might add, also includes misogyny and white-male-centricity.
“NOW A SYFY MINISERIES EVENT” is emblazoned on the cover of the copy I read. There's a pictorial snapshot that looks like they did something different with the original work, reflecting no scene I found while reading. I hope the 2015 miniseries included some contemporary sensibility updates.
In the end, we have to ask, what was Clarke saying about humanity. That there is some force greater than science, what we consider the paranormal? That we should pity the Overlords who have mastered science but can't procreate and thus don't have the capacity for a special mutation that would make them worthy of God, I mean Overmind, to want to absorb, instead relegating them to only being worthy of doing its bidding? Isn't all that straight from the pages of the Old Testament, and its seeming direction for the End of Man as well, or what?
Hmph. I expected more. Or different.
I gave it 2 stars because the premise was at least good enough that it kept me thinking ahead, even as it disappointed me. I give it another star for some cleverness, like the moment the Overloads appear for the first time to humanity in shocking recognizability. I got a big kick out of that, although he turned it into a less interesting premise I thought it hinted at. Also it was cool that humans were not allowed to be cruel to animals. Amen to that, although that didn't seem to be integral to the Overmind's grand plan but rather something that the Overlords uniquely endorsed. They were the epitome of peacefulness, and that is in contradiction to the Overmind's juggernaut–from a mere human perspective, that is–which they must ultimately obey. (Is that Purgatory?)
For now, I won't be reaching out to read more Clarke. For me, it includes the same endless, unanswerable issues that religious suppositions do.
Sadly, I'm also trying not to let this book change my previous high esteem of the abstract end of the Kubrick film that seemed to say something more, something less confused, than this earlier Clarke work did.
A true story but also a kind of fable.
It begins with a happy baby gorilla living a happy gorilla life. Then suddenly is wickedly captured and sent far from his home. At first he is treated kindly, like a baby human. But then he begins to grow gorilla size and he is put in a dungeon. (Well, not a dungeon but a cement room with a tire and a TV and a window so that mall visitors could gawk.)
Years pass. Human parents and their children begin to realize it's not really fun to gawk at a mistreated sentient being. As a matter of fact, it's cruel.
More years pass. Newspapers write articles about Ivan's plight, children start petitions, and good people boycott and protest because they know now Ivan should not be caged.
After several decades of Ivan, a silverback gorilla, being mistreated at last he spends his last decades (he lived to be 50) in a preserve for gorillas. It wasn't the wild but his feet once again touched the ground and he was happy among fellow gorillas.
Interesting how attitudes can change so radically in a mere 50 years. Reading this to a child should help continue the lessons learned. Humans can be better humans and definitely better to our fellow sentient beings. We should ALL have a chance to live happily ever after.
While Odysseus was taking his sweet time getting back...
what was going on back home with his wife and son?
That's the question Margaret Atwood decided to answer. And even more intriguing to Atwood was a “small” detail in The Odyssey.
Why, upon his return, besides killing all the suitors that had been eating his estate out of house and home, suitors that had plotted to kill his only son, suitors that had been pestering his wife Penelope to admit he was dead and marry one of them, why did Odysseus in his justifiable rage also hang 12 of his own slave maidens?
Atwood, being Atwood, took a clever, genius approach. Of course.
She has Penelope tell her own story from Hades, as a vaporous spirit still going after more than 2000 years while munching on asphodel and sometimes interacting with the spirits of other ancient Greeks from her lifetime. (Hades is mostly populated by ancient Greeks since the invention of Hell most people now go there, eschewing old-fashioned Hades. ha!)
In spite of being a 2000 year old spirit, Penelope continues to harbor much of the all too human feelings she had while alive, like jealousy of Helen of Troy, distrust of her husband Odysseus, and guilt over the fate of those maidens.
The 12 maidens are the book's Greek Chorus. Still lumped together as a group of unnamed individuals, they interject commentary in verse and even perform bawdy songs and dance. Like Penelope, they haven't forgotten. They lament, regularly, the injustice done to them. Nor do they let Penelope get away with the self-serving softening of her self-deceptions and most importantly, her role in their outcome.
I read somewhere here on Goodreads that Atwood objected to this being touted as a feminist piece. I didn't find it particularly feminist, except on its premise alone: that yes, women also had a tale to tell, ignored for millennia, and it might be interesting too.
It was interesting.
I confess, though, I would have enjoyed The Penelopiad a lot more had I actually read Homer's Odyssey at some point in my life. Instead, most of my recognition of the ancient Greek myths has come from the 1960s stop-motion animation films of Ray Harryhausen. :P
2024 AMERICAN VOTERS:CHECK YOUR VOTER REGISTRATION!www.vote.org/am-i-registered-to-vote
Written almost 100 years ago in 1955, this horrifying short story is nearer to reality than not.
Because of our U.S. electoral college, the outcome of our presidential election is not based on an American voter majority as we all like to think it is but rather is based largely on the best jerrymandering by the best jerrymanders; currently that is the Republicans who have lost two of the popular majority presidential elections since 2000 vote but have won the presidency anyway by the founding father's horse and buggy days: ye ol' electoral college.
Unless you belong to one of the so-called swing states, in essence your vote doesn't count. All of California and Texas, with their millions of voters, are virtually fly-over states. The election is down to the ten thousand or so voters who are “undecided.” Undecided? Really? I find that incredible.
In the future–in this story that's 2008–no need to bother with undecideds, or any of the hullabaloo of big, expensive elections at all. A machine, Multivac, has been invented to calculate the most average person each election year and that person is the franchise. The whole franchise. To be chosen as Mr. Average (it's always men) is a major patriotic honor and will bring him fame, a likely big promotion, and better life perks all around.
Gone is the messy voter registration process, false accusations of nation-wide voter fraud, violent mobs trying to storm government buildings to prevent the certified electoral votes from being counted, the vice-president almost being hanged. No, no. None of that. It's all nice and clean, worry-free, violence-free in the future. No longer having to contend with “one person one vote” and all that unhappiness, it's one average person designated as stand-in for us all.
But funny thing is, Multivac is so smart it can now nearly do the voting itself, it just still needs a little more information, for now, from that average voter. The voter need only answer a few questions about his feelings about the price of eggs, public utilities, school boards, and so on. Once that is known, Multivac calculates (yeah, right) who the selected patriot would vote for, voila! In just a couple of hours, we have a democratically elected president! Without Multivac even asking that lucky fellow who he'd vote for.
This idea should be right up the alley of the GOP these days who are purging voter rolls by the thousands without notification, suing for shorter early voting, suing for the elimination of drop boxes (especially on college campuses), suing for 1 polling place per county, and not to mention the stealing voting machines and multiple schemes for “alternate” electors during the election. They have clearly decided that patriotism means something different than it used to.
Gosh, and to think all their evil efforts could be solved with just a mysterious, top secret Multivac.
Who is this wild writer named Ramona Ausubel?
I oohed. I gasped. I shook my head. I re-read frequently. And I was absolutely engaged in every page of these bizarre stories!
This collection is nearly impossible to classify, but let me give you a small example. In “Chest of Drawers” a man whose wife is pregnant, suddenly develops little drawers in his chest. They try to get help but the medical field is baffled and curious, and offers no treatment. Thus the couple decide to live with it. While waiting for his wife's doctor's appointment, the husband sees a brochure and likes a photo of the smiling male model. He tears it out, folds it up and puts it in one of his drawers. That is the first of odds and ends that he puts in there.
Does that sound weird? It is weird! And all the stories are bizarre like that, usually to do with odd, highly imaginative alterations of the human body. Is it science fiction? Is it fantasy or magic realism? All? Or none? None of those genres fit perfectly, really. She might have invented a new one because these are normal human beings where each story is at its heart emotional, emotions that we can connect with given the circumstances.
There are a couple less interesting stories, but the others are absolutely fantastic–fantastic as in “fantastically good” and “fantastical.”
I don't know a thing about Ramona Ausubel but would I read her again? I WOULD!
Hello, Book Twinsie!
I so enjoyed this middle grade story, recommended to me by a new friend, my bookish twin. Reminded me of the favorite kinds of books I read as a kid, especially ones with a tough young girl as the protagonist. My book twinsie has read it many times in her life. And I can see why.
It is funny, sad, and mighty eventful. Also worrisome to this old lady. Lordy, how are these children going to survive is the question I asked myself time and again as their growing dilemmas unfolded.
But they are made of tough Appalachian stuff. I was uplifted that it was also a story of kith and kin.
The short afterward by authors and married couple Vera and Bill Cleaver was a fulfilling end. I don't know how a couple writes a book together, but this book had such an authenticity to it that however they arranged it, they made a smooth, believable combination.
I've never been too “grown-up” to read books for kids or young adults; it can often be a great introduction to a larger picture. Like, “wildcrafting,” I had never heard of that before. Yet, it's right up my alley. I spent a year teaching myself to make yucca baskets from the yuccas that grow wild on my place. (Easier to let them grow than to try to dig them up!) I even tried my hand at dyeing some of the prepared yucca fronds with cochineal, the red bugs that grow on prickly pear cactus, encased in white fuzz. Truth is, though, I hated killing the insects just for their red color so my baskets started off a light green hue and then quickly would fade to a simple golden pale hay color. They were lovely and I enjoyed giving them away, except saving one, the last one for myself that I still use.
Thank you for the recommendation, Book Twinsie. I laughed out loud about the onions. And the bear!
Whoa! There are some pretty crazy creatures in the sea! It's an alien world down there. The illustrations really drive home the creepy strangeness just perfectly.
We'll see what the Littles think of it. This Granny loved it and wants to search for videos of all of the creatures on YT:
Box jellyfish
Leatherback sea turtle
Vampire squid (cool name)
Barreleye fish (has eyes in the interior of its head)
Mimic octopus
Anglerfish
Hagfish (wicked ugly)
Ocean sunfish
Whale shark
Blue whale (tongue is as heavy as an elephant)
Leafy sea dragon (very loveable)
Wolffish
Helpers: oysters, sea urchins, coral, krill, remora, wrasse, menhaden (hadn't ever heard of those last three)
I also love the last picture showing all those amazing creatures in one illustration; you can see their relative sizes to one another.
I have only one theory.I have the theory that water is good.One doesn't even have to go by my theoryunless one is thirsty.–recalcitrant Pastor Jón PrimusWell, well. Well! How to describe what I just read? In a nutshell–a nutty nutshell–this short novel takes place in a remote Icelandic village where Christianity hasn't fully taken hold, not even by 1968. The village sits near a glacier and strange things are happening there.This is the same glacier that Jules Verne's [b:Journey to the Center of the Earth 32829 Journey to the Center of the Earth Jules Verne https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1389754903l/32829.SY75.jpg 1924715] used to reach the mysterious beginnings of life. In this work by Laxness, the glacier's presence and energy is also recognized as something quite special, as an unrelenting pressure on human understanding of Time. And, it's a real glacier! Snæfellsjökull. Here, under the glacier, it is as if Creation is still ongoing. Thus how can any religious or spiritual or intergalactic understanding be “set”? Christianity does, though, see things as set.The novel begins when alarming rumors have reached the Bishop of Iceland: the village pastor is not performing his high office duties. The church is nailed up, the pastor's wife has been missing, and perhaps most alarming, there has been a mystery burial up on the glacier instead of in the churchyard. The Bishop dispatches a young emissary to interview the villagers, to record their answers and report back. One gets the impression the self-effacing young man is chosen because he knows how to operate new technology: the tape recorder. (And the “kid” can be had on the cheap.) He is given strict instructions not to believe or disbelieve, not to engage in theological debate, not to try to correct or judge anyone. Just report back what was said.Embi, as he calls himself, short for “Bishop's Emissary”, does exactly that in spite of the many challenges. The instructions were sound because the quirky villagers say things so remarkable and so regularly include comical non sequiturs that I can't imagine anyone else performing so well under those conditions. However, they clearly convey their love for their Pastor Jón and have absolutely no complaints about how he conducts the burden of his office, which he fulfills mostly by being a tireless and talented handyman of old technologies, like horseshoeing and repairing Primus camp stoves. No one is particularly concerned that the church is nailed shut and rotting, of having no services even at Christmas, nor especially worried about the many additional mysteries that come up here and there in their interviews with Embi. Everyone is content. Content with their pastor and with their personal doctrines that each has taken firmly to heart–each being a personalized patchwork of scripture, sagas, and a skewed or maybe not skewed world view.In this place, Christianity does seem odd and though never disparaged, it just doesn't fit, is not practical, and doesn't help with the hardscrabble struggles of the villagers nor the village's continuation of a near ancient way of life. Christianity is lacking the full power for life under the shadow of all that, plus a glacier.Multiple times Embi thinks his assigned task is complete–the interviews requested have been duly recorded, if hardly coherent, and ready to submit. He is ready to leave this wackadoodle place. But when a villager unexpectedly dies, he must stay to help oversee the proper arrangements for burial. He does that and again he's ready to finalize his reports and go. But now, suddenly, the time has been deemed right for the coffin buried up at the glacier to be retrieved and an infamous resurrection be conducted. Embi again must stay to protect the church building, which the resurrectors would love to use for the purpose.What happens next was a doozy.I most heartily hope to read this again! And definitely more Laxness is in my future. But I would not banter around a recommendation, willy-nilly. I'm not sure I personally know anyone who would like this but me. Wait. I can think of one person, not living though (how apt). My deceased mother would have enjoyed it. But even if there were such a thing as a current manifestation of Lord Maitreya who could teach how to resurrect a woman (he has also done fish), would a resurrected still be interested in reading? I like to think if any would, it would be my mom.So, in spite of my not having any knowledge about Iceland except Bjork and loving her music, and in spite of reading this work in translation, and in spite of my head spinning with the many zany philosophies encountered (Theosophy, oh my), in spite of all those obstacles, I absolutely loved this. It was a page-turning, head-scratching, belly-chuckling WTF for me.
“It's a common criticism of my works that I write about women whom I find admirable, but whom the audience dislikes.”
That's what Hare writes about this play in the edition I read. I have watched the 1985 Meryl Streep film adaptation many times. It always spoke to me. Today, for the first time, I read the play, where I gained additional insights including within Hare's “A Note on Performance” where he recognizes the potential problems and discusses his intended goals.
He was right. The majority of audiences dislike Susan, in the play and film.
Susan is complex and her reactions are complex. In WWII she was an 18 year old member of Special Operations inside France, an experience that was so intense, so dangerous, and so worthwhile that nothing in ordinary post-WWII English life can compare. She will feel a void the remainder of her life. It will haunt her and yet always be an unnamed, maladapted never-resolved disappointment.
I honestly think, that if this had been presented as a story about a man's similar experience, (like the glimpse of Lazar's life near the end of the play) it would have been more empathetically received. And that is a major point. This is an incredibly perceptive depiction of one way that a highly intelligent, capable woman might attempt to cope with the loss of once having a profound purpose and comradery with the world. We aren't used to being made aware that women also had these kinds of war experiences. I read Hare wrote this play because 75% of women who were in Special Operations divorced in the immediate post war years.
Something significant in their expectations had changed.
Susan is not mean or cruel or cold, although it seems that way to the men in the play. She is honest in a way few of us are, or at least were. Honesty can hurt and especially so, apparently, when coming from a woman to a man. Frankly, she wears her heart on her sleeve, in a way not easily recognized, probably not even by herself.
It might look like a hard heart, or like neurosis. But, goddamn, I admire her fight against utter banality. Futile as it might be, self-destructive as it might be, baffling and hurtful to her husband as it might be, her battle never has cruelty as its goal. Indeed, most of her recurring episodes are trying to wrangle some shred of a higher objective than the bourgeoisie status quo to which the world had gladly and easily slipped into after the war.
Was she ever successful? No.
Every time I've watched (and now have read) this play, my heart hurts a little more.
An intriguing title, but...
It never left my mind that these were children who ran away. I kept thinking of the agony their parents would have gone through. And the nights would have been unimaginable grief.
First published in 1967–I would have been 8–this suffers from being dated, in many, many ways. I will say the second half is better than the first half. It sure took its time getting there, though, with what felt like a lot of tedious details–details that could be construed as instructions if everything wasn't so impossibly different in 2024.
Times have changed.
And, as blissfully nostalgic as I can get sometimes, I was anything but nostalgic reading this story.