Slaughterhouse Five

 

Kurt Vonnegut’s voice is exceptional.  The main themes of Slaughterhouse Five are deadly serious, yet the story is rich in humor, both simple and mordant, and has a unique viewpoint that features time travel and intelligent aliens.  It’s a perplexing yet commanding combination.  The narrator of the frame story is Vonnegut himself, who was a prisoner of war and one of the very few survivors when Dresden was firebombed in World War II. But the protagonist is Billy Pilgrim, who travels in space and time with a view of his entire life.  Billy witnesses innumerable deaths, each commemorated by “So it goes”, from his unique whole-life perspective.  Fascinating, thought provoking, outrageously funny and heart-rendingly sad by turns.

Love and War in the Apennines

Love and War is Eric Newby's account of his experiences after being captured in Italy during World War II.  He was initially confined, along with other POWs, to an orfanotrofio (orphanage) in Fontanellato in the Emiglia-Romagna region.  The Armistice (really a surrender) of Italy to the Allies was declared two weeks before the Allies actually arrived in force, allowing the Germans to immediately send forces into Italy to prepare for the Allied invasion.  Accordingly, when Newby and the other POWs were released, they fled into the countryside to avoid being recaptured by the incoming German forces.  

Newby's story, then, describes his experiences of being harbored by the Italian farmers and mountain people who, at great risk to themselves, assisted him out of their admirable humanity and because they hated the Fascists.  Newby is humbled by their courage and generosity and views his experiences with sympathy and humor. 

Here are a couple examples of the humor:

Drink and supplementary food were bought on the black market, which was even more extensive and better organized than it was in Britain, and a special float of Red Cross cigarettes was kept for this purpose, and for the general corruption of the Italian camp staff, by responsible members of the British administration, ex-bank managers mostly, to whom this sort of thing was second nature.

She used to tell me the latest news about my friends………how one officer whose identity I never discovered had been hidden in the castello of a local principessa who had been so impressed by his girlish face that she had the brilliant idea of dressing him as a young woman of fashion and putting him on a train to Switzerland.  This she had done but, unfortunately, he looked so desirable on the train that some soldiers had “interfered” with him, as the News of the World used to put it, and discovered the truth, although one of them got punched hard on the nose in the process of doing so.

And, in an example of the humanity and generosity of the Italian country people, one evening, a few days after the Germans had made a surprise raid to search for hidden enemy soldiers or Italian deserters, Newby was invited to a dinner with some important people in the town.  This was dangerous and he had to take special care to arrive unseen. 

I was motioned to take a seat and a glass of wine was poured for me. There was no small talk. The Chairman of the Board, for that was obviously what he was, said carefully and very slowly so that I could understand, "We have been talking about you among ourselves for some days. Many of the people in this village and in the farms round about have sons and relatives who are being hunted by the Germans.  Three of them were taken the other day. Some of them have sons in Russia of whom, so far, there is no news and who may never return. They feel that you are in a similar condition to that of their sons who, they hope, are being given help wherever they are , and they think it is their duty to help you through the coming winter, which otherwise you will not survive. I speak for them because my father was born here, and they have asked me to do so. And as it has now become too dangerous to shelter you in their houses, they have decided to build you a house which no one except the people assembled in this room, our families and one other person, and he is a kinsman, will ever hear about. The work will begin at dawn tomorrow".

The descriptions of where the home was to be located and how it was built are extraordinary.  A truly wonderful book.

Beowulf - Headley and Heaney

 "Bro! Tell me we still know how to speak of kings!" - This first line of Maria Dahvana Headley's new translation seems inevitably to be the first line of everyone's review.  I certainly agree with the general consensus that Headley is fresh but not flip - her lengthy introduction shares her deep knowledge of the setting, language and implications of the poem.  And she brings to her version a strong and brilliant feminist perspective that speaks powerfully to current events. For example:

I don’t know that Grendel’s mother should be perceived in binary terms – monster versus human.  My own experiences as a woman tell me it’s very possible to be mistaken as monstrous when one is only doing as men do: providing for and defending oneself.

She also sees in Beowulf broader implications for our present society

There are also stories that haven’t yet been reckoned with, stories hidden within the stories we think we know. It takes new readers, writers, and scholars to find them, people whose experience, identities, and intellects span the full spectrum of humanity, not just a slice of it. That is, in my opinion, the reason to keep analyzing texts like Beowulf.  We might, if we analyzed our own long-standing stories, use them to translate ourselves into a society in which  hero making doesn’t require monster killing, border closing, and hoard clinging, but instead requires a more challenging task: taking responsibility for one another.

Seamus Heaney's translation (from 2000) is a masterpiece: more sober and traditional, frequently powerful and moving:

It was like the misery felt by an old man

who has lived to see his son's body

swing on the gallows. He begins to keen

and weep for his boy, watching the raven 

gloat where he hangs: he can be of no help. 

The wisdom of age is worthless to him.

Morning after morning, he wakes to remember

that his child is gone; he has no interest

in living on until another heir

is born in the hall....

A great pleasure to read these two translations side by side.

The Decameron

Lauren suggested we get together each week via Zoom, to read stories from the Decameron - a wonderful choice, both because of its parallel to the COVID-19 pandemic (it's an account of stories told by ten young noblewomen and men during the plague of 1348 in Italy and Europe) and because these young people escape from a place we know and love: Firenze!

The ten young Fiorentini each tell a story a day for ten days, making 100 total stories - a decameron!  We have been reading a couple stories per week and recording our observations in a Google Drive document - here we will just record our progress toward all 100 stories, but it's worth saying that the stories are generally excellent - entertaining and thought-provoking, though including a few that are strange or  forgettable. Overall, we are really enjoying them!

MARS 24/7

 Just finished re-reading Kim Stanley Robinson's masterful Mars Trilogy.  Thoroughly enjoyed it again - so much so that I wanted to review it again!  (Note original review).

Once again, perhaps to an even greater degree, I found Robinson's conception of the settlement of Mars, involving issues and conflicts surrounding conservation, development, governance, medical advances, senescence and memory to be comprehensively considered and deeply woven into the narrative. Robinson is justly honored for his rigorous accuracy in the scientific detail - which includes an overflowing vocabulary of technical terms and there are very detailed descriptions of Martian geology or the stages of ecological development from fellfields to climax forests. But these are punctuated by the actions of fascinating characters and unexpected, thrilling episodes.

The Bears' Famous Invasion of Sicily

This children's book, written and illustrated by Italian journalist and author Dino Buzzati, is delightful!  It's an account of how the bears, living in the mountains of Sicily (long-since vanished), and driven by a bitter winter and resultant starvation, decide to go down to the valley to attack the humans, who have food and shelter in abundance. 

The story includes the bears' King Leander, his missing bear cub Tony, a wizard, a vicious sea-serpent, and

The bears eventually triumph in their battle with the men,  and King Leander's rule comes to be appreciated by both bears and men.  But....

...it displeased Leander to see the bears changing under his very eyes. Once modest, simple, patient and easygoing, they were now proud, ambitious and full of capricious fancies.  Not in vain had they lived thirteen years among men.

The story is entertaining and satisfying at every turn!

The Oresteia

 

In the resolution of Logicomix, the authors, who are participants in the story, attend a performance of the Oresteia....prompting me to re-read the trilogy by Aeschylus, which describes the murder of Agamemnon by his wife Clytemnestra, the revenge murder of Clytemnestra by their son, Orestes, and his trial for this murder, conducted in Athens by Athena, with the prosecution led by the implacable Furies and the defense led by Apollo, who originally revealed to Orestes that he must avenge his father's death.  

I decided to read and compare three translations and this proved to be very interesting.  Robert Lowell's was meant to be a very readable version in which he intended the three plays to be performed in one evening.  In an Introduction, he explains that he did not (in this case) translate from the original Greek, but rather distilled and personalized translations by other poets - his version is thus simple and powerful.  Hughes' translation is fuller and starker.  Anne Carson was charged by an editor to create an unusual Oresteia by translating not the three plays by Aeschylus, but Agamemnon by Aeschylus, Elektra by Sophocles and Orestes by Euripides. This sequence by the three authors, written over a period of more than a hundred years, reflects some evolution in the traditional structure of the tragedy and also changes in Greek society. 

One comparison shows the differences in style.  When Agamemnon returns from Troy, he is greeted lavishly by Clytemnestra, who praises and honors him.  Then she leads him into their home and, almost immediately, murders him.  She then emerges from the house and is defiant toward the people and CHORUS:

Lowell:

Clytemnestra:  You see I have lied to you and betrayed your king.  So be it.  I unsay my lies.

Hughes:

Clytemnestra:  You heard me pronounce the words required by the moment.  The moment has passed.  Those words are meaningless.

Carson:

Clytemnestra: I said a lot of things before that sounded nice.  I'm not ashamed to contradict them now.

Lowell is magisterial, Hughes is precise, and Carson is flip and energetic.  Fun to compare!

I was particularly moved to read the trilogy because of my deep interest in two major societal issues. One is whether a country or society in which corruption is deeply entrenched can ever transform into a fairer system based on rules and merit.  The other, dealt with explicitly in the Oresteia, is whether a society can ever durably overcome hatreds of long-standing based on deep divisions in, for example, religion or ethnicity.   Wikipedia says " The principal themes of the trilogy include the contrast between revenge and justice, as well as the transition from personal vendetta to organized litigation" and therefore I was eager to see how the trilogy addresses, and resolves, these conflicts.  The Furies are resolute in their demand that Orestes be punished for the murder of his mother - and they bitterly promise revenge when they anticipate the possibility that Orestes may be found innocent. Indeed, when the vote of the jurors is tied and Athena then casts the decisive vote for acquittal, the Furies are (further) enraged and make terrible threats against Athens.  How does Athena resolve this bitter, seemingly impossible dilemma?  Interestingly, it's carrot and stick - a bit of stick and a lot of carrot. She first alludes to the fact that, as daughter of Zeus, she has the power to bring down thunderbolts upon the Furies if they do not cooperate.  But her major approach is to offer the Furies an equal role in the governance and caretaking of Athens, saying (here in the beautiful poetry of Robert Lowell) that they will be honored and respected:

ATHENA: 

Old powers of darkness, you cannot complain

that a young Athena exiled you.

If you can believe persuasion's in my voice,

stay with us -- then you'll not afflict your host.  

FURY:

What is this place you promised?

ATHENA:

One without sorrow and yours

FURY:

If I take it, shall I have power?

ATHENA:

No house will prosper without you.

FURY:

Will I be stronger then?

ATHENA:

Yes.

FURY:

For a day or forever?

ATHENA:

Now and always.

FURY:

O queen, you are persuasion.  I fear my hate is going.

What song shall I sing in praise of our Athens?

ATHENA:

Say nothing of evil succeeding;

sing of the land, the Aegean,

mild breezes airing

a landscape shot with sunlight,

human seeds, all things that grow.

All yours for the asking,

as a gardener works for love. 

In our time, a similar resolution between bitter enemies was that engineered  by Nelson Mandela between the blacks and their former apartheid masters in South Africa - and here too the vehicle, The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, employed a bit of stick and a lot of carrot. Such outcomes are, however, rare in human history, as it seems almost impossible for us to set aside the weapons of revenge and instead offer the satisfaction of respect and shared power. Sigh.

But the ships are sailing....sailing..... by Chiyono Sugimoto Kiyooka

A Daughter of the Samurai, originally recommended by Lauren, was reviewed here previously – it’s a fascinating and charming book by Etsu Inagaki Sugimoto, who describes her upbringing in a strict Samurai family in the late 19^th century and then her experiences in America, after moving here to join her husband.  Two daughters were born here and attended schools in Cincinnati and, later, The Horace Mann school in New York.  The younger daughter, then called Chiyo, also lived for many years in both America and Japan.  She became an English-Japanese translator after World War II, working for the Occupation Authorities. 

But the Ships are Sailing…Sailing… is Chiyono Sugimoto Kiyooka’s personal account of the devastating effect of World War II on Japan and also describes many interactions between Japanese and Americans – it has a quaint feel, but is thoughtful and interesting in contrasting the two cultures.  Especially inspiring is the spirit that motivated her family, over almost a century, during peacetime and wartime, to promote understanding between these two very different ways of life.

Postmortem

Cornwell's first mystery and first in a series featuring Dr. Kay Scarpetta, chief medical examiner for the Commonwealth of Virginia.  A little uneven, and occasionally gruesome (well, she's a medical examiner!), but generally a good, interesting story of how forensic evidence combines with standard police detective methods and psychological profiling to identify a serial rapist and killer. Maybe, maybe, I'll read more in the series.

Logicomix

Logicomix is a fascinating and unusual graphic novel by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, with art by Aleco s Papadatos and Annie Di Donna.  The subtitle, An Epic Search for Truth, signals the story's thread: an account of the development of logical thought, from the late 1890's up through the 1950's, using Bertrand Russell as narrator and his life story as the frame.  Russell came from a privileged and illustrious family - his grandfather was a Prime Minister of England - but also a secretive one, with skeins of madness and promiscuity.

Thus, Russell's earliest passions were to discover hidden truths, with certainty, which drove his interest in logic.  He spent roughly a decade collaborating with Alfred North Whitehead in developing a logical basis for arithmetic, with the goal of placing mathematics on a secure foundation.  Although the methods they developed in their Principia Mathematica were highly influential, they never succeeded in their goal and Russell felt that this effort had been a failure.  Eventually, as recounted in this book, Kurt Gödel relied heavily on the methods of Russell and Whitehead, to prove conclusively that the effort to axiomatize arithmetic is inherently flawed.  John von Neumann was in the audience when Gödel presented this work, and famously said "It's all over".

Russell was also a passionate pacifist, and the human cost of the wars and revolutions of the 1900's is a second major theme of the story, serving to underscore the tension between rational versus emotional or ideological approaches to human interaction.  The authors appear in the book as themselves, discussing the ideas and themes and, especially, how the book should end.  So as not to spoil the ending, I will simply say that the authors and illustrators attend a performance of the Oresteia, and draw conclusions from the ending of the play, which is visually exciting and emotionally powerful.  A very interesting and thoughtful book....and I am now reading the Oresteia!