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!

A Legacy of Spies

Written in 2017, this is an interesting sequel to The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Le Carré's breakout novel published in 1963, at the height of the Cold War.  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was a masterpiece,  a dark portrayal of the cynical ends-justify-the-means view of the espionage services on both sides of the Cold War.  A Legacy of Spies revisits the events of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold from the perspective of 50 years afterwards: the children of Alec Leamus and Liz Gold (the protagonists of Spy), now grown and deeply embittered, attempt to sue and/or extort the British Secret Service (and especially the very likable Peter Guillam, right-hand junior to George Smiley) for the wrongs done to their parents. 
This backward look is an interesting idea (see Le Carré's piece in The Guardian on how he came to write Spy), and it does effectively highlight some cultural changes in attitudes toward secret services, but the issues at stake are not as powerful as those in almost all of Le Carré's other books and, accordingly,  I did not find it as satisfying. 

Just Kids

I really enjoyed Just Kids by Patti Smith (thanks to Jillian!), which is full of vivid anecdotes, gritty wisdom and the story of her very close relationship/lifelong friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe. I’d call it a rags-to-richness story…richness, less in the sense of wealth than in the variety of her experiences, her achievements and the astonishing number of accomplished, interesting people she met or became friends with.  In all of this, she remained an unusually simple and fresh person.  Here’s a small but surprising example of her openness (although taken from M Train, rather than Just Kids):

September was ending and already cold. I was heading up Sixth Avenue and stopped to buy a new watch cap from a street vendor.  As I pulled it on an old man approached me.  His blue eyes burned and his hair was white as snow.  I noticed that his wool gloves were unraveling and his left hand was bandaged.

 --Give me the money you have in your pocket, he said.

  Either I am being tested, I thought, or I have wandered into the opening of a modern fairy tale.  I had a twenty and three singles, which I placed in his hand.

 --Good, he said after a moment, and then returned the twenty.

  I thanked him and continued on, more buoyant than before.

Patti’s  openness unlocked paths that remain invisible to more conventional souls (me).  Like, she goes to a Holy Modal Rounders concert and becomes interested in the drummer, Slim Shadow:: “..and as he slammed the drums, I thought, This guy truly embodies the heart and soul of rock and roll. He had beauty, energy, and animal magnetism.”  She decides to write an article about him for the rock magazine Crawdaddy, and, over the autumn months, they start seeing each other, as friends.  As winter comes, the impoverished Patti becomes anemic and her doctor advises her:

…to have red meat and drink porter, advice given to Baudelaire when he trudged through a winter in Brussels sick and alone.  I was a bit more resourceful than poor Baudelaire.  I donned an old plaid coat with deep pockets and lifted two small steaks from Gristede’s, planning to fry them in my grandmother’s cast-iron pan over my hot plate.  I was surprised to run into Slim on the street and we took our first non-nocturnal walk.  Worrying the meat would go bad, I finally had to admit to him I had two raw steaks in my pocket.  He looked at me, trying to detect if I was telling the truth, then slid his hand in my pocket and pulled a steak out in the middle of Seventh Avenue.  He shook his head in mock astonishment, saying “Okay, sugar, let’s eat.”

  We went upstairs and I fired up the hot plate.  We ate the steaks out of the pan.

Slim becomes concerned about Patti’s health and takes her for a lavish lobster dinner at Max’s Kansas City.  Patti begins to worry that this “handsome hillbilly might not have the money to pay the check.”  But a stunned friend of Patti’s sees her with Slim and, motioning her to meet in the ladies’ room, saying “Honey, you don’t know who he is?”  She soon informs her that “Slim” is Sam Shepard: “he’s the biggest playwright off-Broadway. He had a play at Lincoln Center.  He won five Obies!”

The heart of the book, though, is the story of the remarkable friendship/partnership between Patti and Robert Mapplethorpe, a friendship that seemed fated from the beginning.  For many years, they lived together, collaborated on art projects, and were true friends until Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS.  Early in the book, Patti says

We headed home holding hands.  For a moment I dropped back to watch him walk.  His sailor’s gait always touched me.  I knew one day I would stop and he would keep on going, but until then nothing could tear us apart.

Just Kids is Smith’s tribute to Mapplethorpe and their friendship and it’s funny, fascinating, and deeply touching.

NB:  9-19-2019 NY Times just ran a piece on Patti Smith