Living as an Ewok

August 26th. It’s been about a week since I’ve had regular access to the Internet, and nearly a month since we’ve had TV. All this moving certainly has the unanticipated effect of cutting one off from real life, huh? You feel like everyone else is building death stars and communicating by hologram, while you're stuck cooking by fire and tying sticks together to throw at Stormtroopers. Having no Internet or TV forces one into a dreamscape of fantasy and surrealism. Life with no Internet: You have to read. You have to talk. You have to study the shapes and textures of the leaves on the trees swaying off the deck as you sip your morning coffee. You have to explore the neighborhood, and walk along the beach with no destination, the shadows of pelicans startling you as they cross your path. You watch how the surfers mount their boards, how the children expect the sea to fill the moats in their sand castles. Life with no TV: You have to listen to the voices of the children at the pre-school across the street. You have to be quiet while a hummingbird does what he does in the flowers along the sidewalk. You learn to jump at the right moment to catch the crest of a wave and body surf to the sand, and to walk on the rocks around a tide pool without disturbing the crabs and starfish. You have to watch as a seabird floats over the ocean, dive-bombing suddenly, drawing other seabirds to the newly plundered feast. You have to listen to music, not as an accompaniment in the background as you do something else, but as something interesting and profound in its own right. If you’re reading this, of course, we are back online. It’s August 31st now, and finally we can get back to real life: Facebook arguments, You Tube videos of one-hit-wonders from the 60s, cats driving cars. Back to the harsh realities of house hunting in Ceylon, living with Bruce Jenner, managing an aristocratic estate in 1920’s England. It was a trying few weeks with no TV or Internet, but I’m sure we will be better people for having endured it. Whew!

Welcome Back!

It's been some three years since I've used Blogger, and I'd like to take this opportunity to welcome me back. Welcome back, me! I now live in Southern California. Well, "live" is an exaggeration, if by :live" we mean "have an address". My family got here Monday, dropped Samie off at Soka University of America on Tuesday, and are now sleeping poolside in a vacation rental in Santa Ana. At any rate, I no longer ride the bus to work, or make random book purchases at Goodwill, so the original purpose of the blog is out the window - perhaps it got loose and flew out as we drove past the sign for the restaurant offering "American and New Mexico Cuisine", or the one promising "No Phony Discounts". Whatever the case, it's gone. Gone also is my job as the Omaha Liberal Examiner. I will not become the "Orange County Liberal Examiner". Yet I must write, and I have this self-created marketplace, and so I will write. But . . . what about? The thought has occurred to me that I am in California a mere 40 or 50 years behind schedule, so I could just pretend it's 1963 or 1965 and post pictures from that era (, and link to songs about California, and write as if nothing has changed (e.g., "Saw The Men at the Troubadour last night"). Or, I could use it to pontificate, a la The Examiner. Or something else entirely. Right now, I just want to see how Blogger works these days. The draft I'm writing looks pretty bad, so I'm just gonna post it to see if it turns out okay. Here goes...Welcome back!!

The hitherto unsuspected versatility of "n't"

In Death and the Dancing Footman, Ngaio March has written herself a corker of a thriller, a smashing piece, what?

It really is a good, suspenseful story. That the characters are all caricatures of British dandies can be either a hindrance, or a supplement, to your enjoyment of the story. A supplement, for the likes of me.

My new favorite line in all fiction: “You used to have a pair of Canadian snow shoes, usen’t you?”

USEN’T??????

You took a walk around the block, tookn’t you?

You ate all the candy, aten’t you?

You rode your bike the to the exterminator, rodent you?

See, that last one is a pun, because “rodent” is an actual word! In a sentence about an exterminator! Clever!

Death and the Dancing Footman is full of stuff like that, those old (not ancient, but old) English idioms, that style in which every speaker is a)grammatically correct, b) sophisticated and c) able to choose words and put them in order instantaneously in a sophisticated way.

After Mandrake has been rescued from a freezing pool in the middle of a blizzard:

“I can’t tell you how distressed I am. Another sip, no, do.”
“Jonathan, somebody came behind me and thrust me forward.”

Next time you want to insult someone: “He is a poltroon as well as a popinjay.”

A subplot is that one character is desperate to keep his real name a secret, because it is utterly humiliating. I was expecting something like “ Hemorrhoid” or “Poopbutt”. Nope: “Footling”. I had to look it up. It means “something trivial.” Speaking as a Celer, I find that not even worth mentioning, let alone making a subplot.

Anyway: excellent murder mystery. And a lot of fun if you like language.

And I have blogged. Blogn't I?

Cakes and Ale and Pi

Cakes and Ale fell apart while I was reading it.  Literally, the book disintegrated during the weeks it occupied me on the bus.  I had to hold it together with a rubber band.

And that’s my review of Cakes and Ale.

Actually, it’s a pretty good book by Somerset Maughan, published in 1930 and thus continuing my series on English writers of the Late 19^th and Early 20^th Centuries.  These writers generally adopt class and manners as a theme, either mocking or accepting the English fascination with propriety and social order.  This one mocks. 

It’s about writers, specifically, one who has died but had reached the firmament on which sit Shakespeare, Fielding, etc.   As the establishment begins eulogizing, it turns out the guys did his best writing while living with a gregarious free spirited woman, with whom he cared not a whit for class distinctions or “acceptable” behavior. Which is not at all what the establishment wants to know.

Very well written, of course, and engaging characters.  If you can find it, and it doesn’t fall apart on you, read it.

Evidently there as some controversy at the publication, as some contemporary authors thought Maugham was satirizing them.  Ironically, in the book I’m reading now, by Ngaio March (published in 1941), there’s a controversial writer with a club foot who, I think, is based on Maugham.  Though it’s a fun-house-mirror version of Maugham on which he’s based.

Between Cakes and Ale and the Marsh book, though, came Life of Pi by Yann Martel.  It’s about a teenage boy who winds up crossing the Pacific on a lifeboat with a tiger.  It is very similar to what happens every day on the bus.

The boy, Pi, had become, at an early age, a Hindu-Catholic-Moslem.  This , of course, is ridiculous, as the Catholics, at least, would not allow it.  But lets say it happened.  It was still no excuse to write this book.

The story of his survival is equally ridiculous:  initially, his companions are a crippled zebra, an orangutan and a hyena, as well as the tiger.  Eventually, just the tiger.  He survive s storms, heat, sharks, a blind cutthroat   in another llifeboat, and a carnivorous island made of algae.  After 6 months, he lands in Mexico.  What is the one thing everyone wants him to talk about?  Yes – ther theory of story telling from the viewpoint of a Hindu-Catholic-Moslem.

I mean, there were some good parts, and one can certainly suspend disbelief when a story demands it.  It’s the ending that ruins it:   a teenage boy goes through all this, and in the end all he's interested in is debating the Japanese maritime investigators about whether or not life itself is a story?  Blech.

Next entry soon: I just found something in the Ngaio Marsh book I can’t wait to write about.  Have to finish the book first, though.

Harry Potter, Buddhist

Well, my determination to read two books at once didn't really pan out. I'm up to page 10 of Cakes and Ale. I have finished all 7 harry Potter books. Again.

The main reason this hapened, of course, is that the Potter story is so interssting and easy to read. A subsidiary reaosn, perhaps, is that, as I started making my way through the first book, I wanted to keep everything -- everything -- fresh in my mind. I didn't want, for instance, a reference in The Order of the Phoenix to befuddle me, or make me scramble back in a blind search through the earlier books; I wanted to remember what the reference was about.

Weird thing. At times I really resented the hold the story had on me: I wished I could do something else. But that very resentment kept me reading, so that I'd get the project over with. And reading kept me hooked on the story, the same story I resented. Catch-22.  Viscious circle.  Whatever.

Buddhism  often refers to a double structure to insure the success of a project, of the fruition of a dream. There is a vertical connection between a dsiciple and the mentor, and a horizontal relation between various disciples. I didn't notice this in my first reading, but toward the end of The Half Blood Prince, and throughout The Deathly Hallows, it becomes obvious this double structure is what the Potter story is about. Harry would have nothing to do without the vision and instruction of Dumbledore, and he would be unable to do it without the support and encouragement of Ron and Hermoine. As a Buddhist, that just leapt out at me, the importsance of those two streams of relationships. Teacher, friends -- and Harry's own determination and loyalty ("I am Dumbledore's man through and through").

Another thing I picked up this time was the depth of the supporting characters, even the ones I didn't like. Snape is a great creation, but one of the 5 Stars, I would say (with Harry, Dumbledore, Ron and Hermoine). It's the peripherals: Luna Lovegood is a treasure, Lucius Malfoy lusciously oily, Dobby -- Dobby! Dobby changes over the course of the books, but stays so consistent in his personality (unlike, say, Neville) that one wonders how Rowling did it (and I admit to crying more at his fate than at any other occurrance, even the manipulative "hooks" at the end, when all heroes emerge simultaneously when [of course] least expected).. Some of them I got tired of, while still admitting their completeness. I mentioned Neville - not particularly fond of him, once his character is established, until the heroic end. Fred and George became too predictable. Other little things too.

Lost ends 4 days from now.  The Potter saga ends in a little over a year with the two Hallows flicks. Lost stands alone, but, frankly, the Harry books are superior to the movies, in every single way.

On to Cakes and Ale!

New Colony Six Gets Mentioned!

One things about long series that really interests me is: did the artist have it all planned out, in minute detail, from the beginning? Or did events – or popularity, actors’ contracts or other effects of time marching on – influence the direction the story takes?

I think, for instance, that a lot of Lost’s last couple of seasons was made up as they went along; they did not know, for instance, that Michael Emerson would be so terrific as Ben, so I doubt Ben was a big deal when they were outlining the arc. And I don’t think Tolkein had a clue about Aragorn (for instance) when he started The Hobbit, but most certainly did have a very detailed outline by the time he started The Fellowship of the Ring.

It strikes me, having now re-read the first Harry Potter book, that Ms Rowlings pretty much had it all down when she started. I found nothing inconsistent with later books, and a lot of positively accurate foreshadowing (Scabbers!) Groundwork laid sor Sirius Black, even.

I admire that.

“I Love You So Much” by the New Colony 6 on the speaker at Goodwill today!

Oh no - not again!

I've decided once again to read two books at once.  I've done it before with A Streetcar Named Desire and Madame Bovary.  This time, I was really intrigued by a yellowed old Pocket Books edition of Somerset Maugham's Cakes and Ale, but can no longer hold back the impulse to read all the Harry Potter books again.  So, now, a medley of Cakes and Ale and The Sorcerer's Stone.  Great fun.