Travis McGee Deserves A Statue

Salvage expert.
Formative influence:
Thank you, John D. McDonald.

Fun Reading: Malazan!

This is the third book in a ten-book series.
Steven Erikson's Memories of Ice.
Erikson's heroic fantasy is real literature, invoking and breaking the stale cliches of the genre, enlivening character and plot with insight, wit, humor, and compassion, pulling and pushing his readers to the brink of expectation and trauma, again and again.

Very fine writing.





Whiskeyjack, man.  Really?

Le Carre's "A Perfect Spy" is a Perfect Novel

Le Carre's A Perfect Spy is, I hazard to claim, a perfect novel.  It carries the adult thesis that the crucial shapings of character are emotional rather than rational, and it dramatizes such a range of humanity, such a range of response, in its pages.  I recently reread this novel -- while traveling in Germany, Austria, and Swizterland, very appropriately -- that I heartily endorse and recommend, and for some the trappings of espionage will be a feature, but I hope for others it will only be a mere distraction.

Le Carre's novel is both an excellent spy novel and a classic work of literature precisely because Le Carre is such a good watcher of humanity and such a good reporter of humane responses.  It's a thriller too.

Here's a passage that matters:

As for Pym, he was gazing on the glories of the kingdom he had dreamed of so long.  The German muse had no particular draw for him, then or later, for all his loud enthusiasm.  If she had been Chinese or Polish or Indian, it would have made no earthly odds.  The point was, she supplied Pym with the means, for the first time, to regard himself intellectually as a gentleman.  And for that Pym was eternally grateful to her.

As a first generation college student, I connect with this passage.  Studying English Literature at UC Berkeley enabled me to regard myself, intellectually, as a gentleman.  And that mattered.

TOP MUSICAL HIT: 14TH BIRTHDAY?

I've read somewhere--some meme, some random posting--that the top musical hit on your 14th birthday has a mystical, even fatal effect on the arc and outcome of your life.  My 14th birthday on June 19th, 1975, seems to have seen this arc of hits:


June 7 "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" John Denver
June 14 "Sister Golden Hair" America
June 21 "Love Will Keep Us Together" Captain & Tennille

I can check further, but I think America's hit was the one that matters.

I'm not sure how I think and feel about all this, but I do recall being both puzzled and drawn in by the lyrics and their delivery in that song so many years ago.



SISTER GOLDEN HAIR---------by the band AMERICA

Well I tried to make it sunday, but I got so damn depressed
That I set my sights on monday and I got myself undressed
I ain't ready for the altar but I do agree there's times
When a woman sure can be a friend of mine

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, sister golden hair surprise
And I just can't live without you, can't you see it in my eyes?
I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?
Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Well, I keep on thinkin' 'bout you, sister golden hair surprise
And I just can't live without you, can't you see it in my eyes?
Now I been one poor correspondent, and I been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind

Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me in the air?
Will you love me just a little, just enough to show you care?
Well I tried to fake it, I don't mind sayin', I just can't make it

Doo wop doo wop

Written by Gerry Beckley • Copyright © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc

Appreciating Erikson's Sword and Sorcery

Steven Erikson of the Malazan sword-and-sorcery novels is a damn fine novelist.  He can write character like nobody's-business.  I wonder how much genre-thinking obscures the true measure of his worth and contribution to that grand old ideal, the Commonwealth of Letters.

For those who know . . . Whiskeyjack--or Kalam-- that's all I have to say . . . right?

"The Other Worlds": Life's Largest Riddle

The Other Worlds is an excellent mythopoeic novel by a dear friend, Christoph Greger.  Christoph's own humble way of introducing the book to the world is worth quoting: "Hey all you cystic fibrosis lit fans, Ren fair geeks, and/or mythopoeic/modernist bildungsroman junkies -- here's something that might be of interest."

This fine novel deserves deep interest, presenting classic character-in-crisis; entertaining and evoking in the tradition of Yeats, Morris, Dunsany, de Lint, and Windling; and offering entry into multiple worlds, this one we share and those others 'beyond the fields we know'.  The setting and the style are distinctly contemporary; the themes and dilemmas, definitely timeless.  Life's largest riddle--mortality--met by mystery, measured by memory, and beset--or aided?--by magic waits at the heart of The Other Worlds.

Read this book.

William Gibson: "A Walking Shadow"

At the moment, there are two particularly resonating pieces in William Gibson's 1999 cyberpunk novel All Tomorrow's Parties that I would like to share.  I'm also thinking -- or feeling, perhaps, as Laney might -- there's an echo of a few famous lines* from Shakespeare's Macbeth in Gibson's title.  Maybe that's just me.

In the first passage that I'd like to quote, I think Gibson provides a somewhat humorous self-portrait in his description of this particular character, a very adept killer.  I haven't done any kind of research to see if such is common knowledge, at least among those who know, but when I look at the author photo from 1999 (and consider Gibson's look over the years), I do see something a bit autobiographical in the passage.  Consider:

     But he does not draw [the knife] now, and the traders see only a gray-haired man, wolfishly professorial, in a goat of grayish green, the color of certain lichens, who blinks behind the fine gold rims of his small round glasses and raises his hand to halt a passing cab.  Though somehow they do not, as they easily might, rush to claim it as their own, and the man steps past them, his cheeks seamed vertically in deep parentheses, as though it has been his habit frequently to smile.  They do not see him smile.


In the second passage, we get what I would consider an apt insight into tools, whether a knife (as in the novel) or in the handouts and prompts I make more or less everyday.   (I'm not eschewing focus or direction or precise utility for the students, not at all; still, the "handles" -- the ways I may manipulate and use those handouts and prompts -- ought to be "simple" to afford "the greatest range of possibilities".)  Imagine the handle of a knife from the kitchen: plain, streamlined, straight in design, I'm guessing.  Now imagine one of those knife handles shaped specifically with finger grooves, shaped to be held in only one way; that second knife affords a very firm grip, but only in one position, yes?  And therefore, the utility of the knife is limited, prescibed, overly-shaped.  Not the kitchen knife, though, as you can shift your grip to suit the particular job at hand.  All that's part of the meaning I find in the passage from Gibson below.

I love finding the truth in as many disparate places as possible. Consider:

     The handles of a craftsman's tools bespeak an absolute simplicity, the plainest forms affording the greatest range of possibilities for the user's hand. 
     That which is overdesigned, too highly specific, anticipates outcome; the anticipation of outcome guarantees, if not failure, the absence of grace.

--from William Gibson's All Tomorrow's Parties


*Those lines from Macbeth, from the character Macbeth himself in the last act just after he hears that his wife, the queen, has died:

She should have died hereafter,
There would have been a time for such a word.
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.  Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more.  It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

A Danish Mermaid: Ophelia Revised

In my version, she lives.
Ophelia survives her madness and suicide attempt.

I'm not sure what would happen when she gets back to Elsinore's great hall, though.
If we entertain this resurrection, what's likeliest?  Or . . . .
"What's your poison?" would be the wrong way to ask what you favor, so I'll just say, What would you favor for Ophelia Revived?

(Ophelia played, this time, by . . .
Medea: stoneware; transparent brown glazing, layered; copper wire.)

Dunnett's Macbeth: Thorfinn of Orkney -- A Favorite Passage

Here's a favorite passage from Dorothy Dunnett's King Hereafter, a novel about the historical Macbeth: Thorfinn the Mighty, Earl of Orkney, King of Scotia.  Frankly, Dunnett's King Hereafter is one of my Top Ten Novels of All Time, but that's an idiosyncratic list.  Still.

Here, we get a crucial insight into the "secret of [Thorfinn's] success", but even as Dunnett provides Thorkel Fostri's bitter assessment, she also provides Tuathal's reflections on what Thorkel says, making a simple statement complex in the best ways.  I end up appreciating the insight into the main character, even as I feel for Thorkel's frustration year after year.  (And yet Thorkel deserves some of that frustration . . . and if you've read the novel, I'll bet you'd agree.  "Year after year" refers both to Thorkel's relationship over time with Thorfinn and to my yearly rereadings.)  There are worthy ponderings possible here: about leadership, about problem-solving, and about reciprocity and the mysteries of connection and admiration.

I'm putting Dunnett's passage below the photo of knife and novel.  (The point of view, here, is that of Tuathal, Prior of St. Serf's, as the POV shifts throughout the novel, usefully so.)

Did [Earl Siward of York] regret his exile?  Had he envied Kalv, turning his coat so adroitly over and over, and at least buying back some years at Egge?

'Envy?  He despised Kalv.  Kalv was a fool,' Thorkel had said.  'There was only one man he envied.'

'He hated Thorfinn?  Always?  I suppose he must have done,' Tuathal had said, thinking aloud.  'Or the Lady Emma would never have risked making Siward her buffer between the rest of England and Scotia.  But then, what if Siward had tried to take over Scotia?'

'Twelve years ago?  Against Thorfinn's manpower, and his money, and his fleet?  Even with England and Denmark behind him,' had said Thorkel Fostri with scorn, 'I doubt if he would have got a levy over the Forth.  And England wouldn't have backed him.  Magnus had Norway then, remember, and half a foot in Orkney already through Thorfinn's nephew Rognvald.  England would rather have had Thorfinn in Scotia, I can tell you, than Siward or Norway.'

And that, thought Tuathal, was still true.  Despite Thorfinn's present weakness, it was still, thank God, true.  He had said, 'And Thorfinn?  He's used to dealing with princes these days.  Does he resent being forced to barter with someone . . . '

He had paused, having caught Eochaid's eye, to rephrase the question, but Thorkel Fostri's voice, at its most sardonic, had taken him up.  'Someone like me, from the barbarous north?  Haven't you noticed yet that Thorfinn is prouder of being Earl of Orkney than he is of ruling Scotia?  He fought for Orkney and won it, against men just like Siward.  His own kind.  He knows them too well to despise them.'

His own kind?  Thorfinn was three-quarters Celt.  They were not his own kind.  Tuathal had said, 'So it's just another negotiation?  Thorfinn neither likes nor dislikes Kalv's nephew?  I find it hard to believe.'

To which Thorkel Fostri had answered in a way he had not expected.  'When did you ever know whether Thorfinn likes or dislikes a man?  He takes them for what they are, and deals with them accordingly.  It's the secret of his success.  You don't fight the sea by getting angry at it, or persuade it to be kinder by loving it.'

The bitterness was plain to all to hear.  Eochaid had got up and left, and he, Tuathal, had asked only one or two questions more.

He was not embarrassed.  It merely appeared to him a paradox worth someone's attention: how a man such as Thorkel described could inspire what Thorkel undoubtedly felt for him.

Reading Dickens: Reflection In Action

Today I started reading Dickens' David Copperfield for the second time in my life because of something novelist David Corbett shared in a speech at Marin's best bookstore Book Passage last week. I am realizing that I haven't read this novel in more than 30 years, not since undergraduate days.  I am enjoying the opening puzzle about "the hero of my own life" and the bit on "meandering" also on the first page, but then I encountered this paragraph on early memories, on the people who tend to have such strong powers of memory, and on the other qualities that such people tend to possess, and I found this passage resonant. I certainly have retained my "capacity of being pleased," which is no small thing, and I wish the capacity of being happy in life on all.

Here's the passage:

This may be fancy, though I think the memory of most of us can go farther back into such times than many of us suppose; just as I believe the power of observation in numbers of very young children to be quite wonderful for its closeness and accuracy. Indeed, I think that most grown men who are remarkable in this respect, may with greater propriety be said not to have lost the faculty, than to have acquired it; the rather, as I generally observe such men to retain a certain freshness, and gentleness, and capacity of being pleased, which are also an inheritance they have preserved from their childhood.

--Charles Dickens, David Copperfield, Ch. 2

Oddly enough, or not, I feel just a bit closer to the novelist and to his autobiographical narrator too.

"My Aim Is True": Novel Navigation?

Or, By Bluff and Blunder?
Or, Compassion As Compass?
Or, Pin The Tale On The Donkey?

I'll stop with the subtitles, the alternative guides, and move to my central concern.  Here are three quotations that I've probably offered before, but the last few days I've found them resonating alongside a certain ambition to craft a full-length narrative of mystery and adventure.

1.  "But I had learned long ago that resolution by itself is not enough; we are what we do, not what we think and feel."
--James Lee Burke, "Heaven's Prisoners"

Here I am quoting from memory, but this is a quotation that sticks with me, that offers a rather pitiless ideal, which draws me in even as I want to bring or find more compassion than those words offer. "Resolution" in the first part of the sentence definitely means "completion" or "finishing," not merely "deciding upon" or "resolving to do." I think this quotation will help me to set up the conflicts in the "novel" I'm attempting to outline/frame.

2.  Let's listen to my second-favorite ancient Greek poet:


I over-reached
And another
Bears the bother.

--Archilochos
trans. Davenport

I take that short poetic fragment with ruefulness, with regret in the tone, not triumph, though I can see the psychology that would exult in that way. I can see such, but save me and all of us from such, I say.


3.  And the last of the triad, for now:

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
--Maya Angelou

Fourth?  Frankly, on reflection, I can see how all three of the quotations above spiral around each other, twining thematically into one threefold strand, and so further sayings may be called for.  Somehow, the supposed opening line of my absolute favorite ancient Greek poet's lost comic-epic also horns in . . . .

"He knew many things, and all of them badly."
Homer, from his lost Margites . . . .


I'm quoting from memory again here, but I think you can see I don't plan to tell a tale overburdened by seriousness.  And a fallible, flawed, but well-meaning character?  Who wouldn't like a bit of that?  I mean, aren't we constructed in that way ourselves, however we may aspire and resolve to do better?

And, that fourth selection just may be another way to say "Pin the tale on the donkey."

Seferis and Sophocles: Character is Fate

TWO POEMS FROM GEORGE SEFERIS, Translated from the Greek by Rex Warner:

EURIPIDES THE ATHENIAN

He lived and grew old between the burning of Troy

And the hard labour in Sicilian quarries.

He was fond of rocky caves along the beach;

Liked pictures of the sea;

The veins of man he saw as it were a net

Made by the Gods for trapping us like beasts.

This net he tried to pierce.

He was difficult in every way. His friends were few.

The time arrived and he was torn to pieces by dogs.

--George Seferis
PENTHEUS

Asleep he was filled with dreams of fruits and leaves;

Awake he was not permitted to pick one berry.

Sleep and wakefulness shared out his limbs to the Bacchae.

--George Seferis

My favorite lines from Sophocles' Oedipus the King, spoken by Oedipus himself, translated by Meineck & Woodruff:

But I see myself as a child of good-giving

Fortune, and I will not be demeaned.

She is my mother, the seasons my kin,

And I rise and fall like the phases of the moon.

That is my nature, and I will never play the part

Of someone else, nor fail to learn what I was born to be.

--Sophocles

Context, as usual, being everything.

The photos: Woad, Under--

Sculpture mix clay, blue and green glazing.

Ferry Point, Richmond, CA

Passages: "A Humbler and A Prouder Mind"

Here's a resonant passage from a historical novel, which I share for itself and as a model of the way I cherry-pick my way through what I read, finding the scenes, the moments, the words that I can appreciate or use in some way, in any way.

The context of the passage involves a formal occasion in the offing, a crisis about appropriate attire, and friendship. I pick the specific words here for the insight into character.

For his part, Tobias would have been content to go in a sack, or even (the weather being what it was) nothing at all; for he had both a humbler and a prouder mind than Jack--humbler in that he did not suppose that anyone would notice him at any time, and prouder in that he did not suppose that he could be improved in any way by gold lace and taffety. But he was very much concerned at Jack's distress . . . .

--Patrick O'Brian, The Western Shore

I believe--though I'd have to check after all these years--that The Western Shore was a precursor to the famed Aubrey and Maturin novels. We certainly get a pair of friends at the heart of this novel and of that series.