Doubling down on my plans to stick to award winners: here is In the Woods, Tana French's 2007 mystery debut that won the Edgar. This was a paperback that my daughter-in-law left here in July and I let it sit on my bedside table, thinking it was going to be some rehash of the Broadway play Into the Woods. So when the weather was bad and I was too fagged out to even make it to the library on a Saturday, I picked it up.
And it was difficult to put it down, even given other pressing deadlines like tax filings. 429 pages long ... how many other mystery writers have that much of plot twists to master. One villain did emerge clearly after page 300 or so, but my then I was so caught up in the detective team, their personal prior lives, and how that past biased their investigations.
And did I mention it is set outside Dublin? Just enough turns of phrase and idioms to make you know it is Irish but enough contemporary world issues that it still came off as current and timeless. (See I am still thinking like Heaney, having finished that short shrift blog in the last half hour.)
So I am analyzing the plot for its poetry in taking the intensely personal and making it resonate universally. Here is the murder of a child being investigated by a man who assumed another name and identity after his two best friends disappeared in the same "wood." As I am beset by having my staff and collaborators sign conflict of interest forms before the analyze information or negotiate with organizations, I question whether the real intent is to swear one won't profit from their assignments when it is impossible not to be influenced by what you know, the background and experience you bring to your desk, the very talents and past I pay highly for.
While investigating political corruption and suspected child abuse, French depicts another poignant subplot, paralleling the relationship between Rob (the surviving child of the 1984 crime), his partner Cassie and the newbie in the detective room, Sam, and that blissful childhood of Rob, with Jaime and Peter. Those three children at 12 were living an idyll, children on the cusp of boarding school; the three policemen have a similar care free equality in looking into the crime. Yet Rob cannot see the investigation leading to a parallel breakup of camaraderie. Rob's past is recreated in his withdrawal and trauma suppressed in the new investigation. Cassie can't successfully express her own earlier sufferings and studies to inform and convince the rest of the team.
The story makes cops human, well intended, yet still capable of well intentioned oversights. This is a mystery I will leave with my retired friend and book club founder as soon as possible, mystery junkie like myself. I will immediately go on the Net to see if the library has French's other books.
Saturday, April 9, 2016
The Redress of Poetry by Seamus Heaney
Well, more than I month since I wrote, but have done some reading, not enough but all I have the energy to do after challenging days with the new bureau.
So here is the best book I've read all year, maybe longer. Finishing up my delving into Heaney's works, I tackled his Literature Nobel Prize, a series of ten lectures at Oxford, The Redress of Poetry. Wow. Maybe the rest of my year should be devoted to prize winning books.
Flat out, Heaney composes as beautifully in prose as poetry. He makes me think about how much I miss reading for structure, voice, and intent instead of plot. He makes me break out old high school literary magazines when we were challenged to tackle a particular meter, style, voice or some little used challenging device and like eager Catholic teenagers in the mid '60s, we did. I can only quote verbatim and at length because these sections are not only thought provoking but exquisite.
"... Plato's world of ideal forms also provides the court of appeal through which poetic imagination seeks to redress whatever is wrong or exacerbating in the prevailing conditions .. whereas poets are typically more concerned to conjure with their own and their readers' sense of what is possilbe or desirable, or indeed imaginable ... It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality ... This redresssing effect of poetry comes from its being a glimpsed alternative, a revelation of potential ... denied or threatened by circumstances."
"...where the co-ordinates of the imagined thing correspond to and allow us to contemplate the complex burden of our own experience..."
"... reminded of a remark once by an Irish diplomat with regard to the wording of a certain document, "This ... is a minor point of major importance." In a similar way, the successful outcome of any work of art depends upon the seemingly effortlessness and surefingeredness with which such minor points are both established and despatched."
Some of Heaney's lectures focus on one or more poets, Marlowe, Wilde, Hopkins, but he always elevates his interpretation of them into something like this when he writes about his early love to Dylan Thomas: "...Thomas had gradually come to represent a longed-for prelapsarian wholeness, a state of the art where the song of the autistic and the acostic were extenive and coterminous, where the song of the self was effortlessly choral and its scale was a perfect measure and match for the world it sang it."
Heaney does quote entire poems or whole sections to make his points on how readily a poet creates redress. His lecture that I read at the same time I was reading The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a translation of pyramid hieroglyphics,a chapter entitled Joy or Night about man's understanding of life and death, included all of Yeats' The Man and the Echo, that drew a marginal note of WOW. I never heard of much less read Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court, written in 1780 and still echoed loudly in the demeanor of the Irish women I encountered beyond the pale 200 years later.
I am passing this book on to my most literate book club members and then leaving on the shelves within easy reach to reread almost like seasonal psalms.
So here is the best book I've read all year, maybe longer. Finishing up my delving into Heaney's works, I tackled his Literature Nobel Prize, a series of ten lectures at Oxford, The Redress of Poetry. Wow. Maybe the rest of my year should be devoted to prize winning books.
Flat out, Heaney composes as beautifully in prose as poetry. He makes me think about how much I miss reading for structure, voice, and intent instead of plot. He makes me break out old high school literary magazines when we were challenged to tackle a particular meter, style, voice or some little used challenging device and like eager Catholic teenagers in the mid '60s, we did. I can only quote verbatim and at length because these sections are not only thought provoking but exquisite.
"... Plato's world of ideal forms also provides the court of appeal through which poetic imagination seeks to redress whatever is wrong or exacerbating in the prevailing conditions .. whereas poets are typically more concerned to conjure with their own and their readers' sense of what is possilbe or desirable, or indeed imaginable ... It is the imagination pressing back against the pressure of reality ... This redresssing effect of poetry comes from its being a glimpsed alternative, a revelation of potential ... denied or threatened by circumstances."
"...where the co-ordinates of the imagined thing correspond to and allow us to contemplate the complex burden of our own experience..."
"... reminded of a remark once by an Irish diplomat with regard to the wording of a certain document, "This ... is a minor point of major importance." In a similar way, the successful outcome of any work of art depends upon the seemingly effortlessness and surefingeredness with which such minor points are both established and despatched."
Some of Heaney's lectures focus on one or more poets, Marlowe, Wilde, Hopkins, but he always elevates his interpretation of them into something like this when he writes about his early love to Dylan Thomas: "...Thomas had gradually come to represent a longed-for prelapsarian wholeness, a state of the art where the song of the autistic and the acostic were extenive and coterminous, where the song of the self was effortlessly choral and its scale was a perfect measure and match for the world it sang it."
Heaney does quote entire poems or whole sections to make his points on how readily a poet creates redress. His lecture that I read at the same time I was reading The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a translation of pyramid hieroglyphics,a chapter entitled Joy or Night about man's understanding of life and death, included all of Yeats' The Man and the Echo, that drew a marginal note of WOW. I never heard of much less read Brian Merriman's The Midnight Court, written in 1780 and still echoed loudly in the demeanor of the Irish women I encountered beyond the pale 200 years later.
I am passing this book on to my most literate book club members and then leaving on the shelves within easy reach to reread almost like seasonal psalms.
Saturday, March 5, 2016
Don't Count this One: Utopia Parkway the Life and Work of Joseph Cornell
The is a review of a book that instead of not being able to put down is a book that I must admit I cannot bring myself to pick up. It is already several weeks overdue at the library so I feel I must write something and bring the damn thing back and pay the fine tomorrow.
Now I do not fancy myself to be an art critic and my limited undergraduate electives in American Art History (and my subsequent not accepting my offer for a graduate program at U Delaware/Winterthur) certainly does not qualify me as understanding any American artist after 1900. I never heard of Joseph Cornell and took out the book primarily because of my silly six degrees of separation meandering when I saw it was Utopia Parkway (heavens prevail I actually never have to go to Queens).
So what did Joseph Cornell do? He made boxes of trinkets with some surreal or esoteric theme, like a tribute to female movie stars or ballerinas, chock block full of pieces of tutus and sequins and old playbills. Apparently back in the days of Dali and Duchamp, he was regarded as a valid if somewhat lesser star, NYC gallery shows and all that. But mostly in the smaller, back rooms where is boxes where shown almost as trinkets and appropriate holiday gifts.
Cornell was an underemployed adult, living in Queens with his mother, scavenging remnants and old books to make his three D collages in the basement. His work comes across as a miniaturist, a collector and because the author Deborah Solomon writes what appears to be the seminal biography of a little remembered artist, I made me question the merit of my own hobbies: why do I obsess in perfect rooms for my multitude of doll houses, especially when I am the only female within miles of our family members? Why did I spend years needle pointing both sides of pillows? I know I am a crafter and do not intend to display my efforts (even though Monday I am bringing the only needlepoint I made ever to win a first place to hang in the new office space) (hey, office art is pretty awful anyway and I have not budget for amenities).
But to validate as higher are a medium that never moved beyond a niche genre in an almost 400 page book with another 25 pages of bibliographic notes was too much of a time investment for little return. I made a valiant effort to get to page 178. Why does the library keep calling me for its return ... who else could possible have put it on hold?
I have to juxtapose Utopia Parkway against Interlock because I cannot expand my mental concept of art to include highly personal trinket boxes and political corruption flow charts. Call me a bore, call me someone who does not get modern art. I don't. I just had a flashback to Hammagrael and I going to the Skidmore Tang museum this summer to look at 1980s hard edge acrylics. Now, I admit I took a class in hard edge acrylics and anyone with a roll of blue painters' tape can try it out themselves. But these newer medium do not inspire, do not reveal lofty human questions.
Sorry, readers. I will search for another "C."
Now I do not fancy myself to be an art critic and my limited undergraduate electives in American Art History (and my subsequent not accepting my offer for a graduate program at U Delaware/Winterthur) certainly does not qualify me as understanding any American artist after 1900. I never heard of Joseph Cornell and took out the book primarily because of my silly six degrees of separation meandering when I saw it was Utopia Parkway (heavens prevail I actually never have to go to Queens).
So what did Joseph Cornell do? He made boxes of trinkets with some surreal or esoteric theme, like a tribute to female movie stars or ballerinas, chock block full of pieces of tutus and sequins and old playbills. Apparently back in the days of Dali and Duchamp, he was regarded as a valid if somewhat lesser star, NYC gallery shows and all that. But mostly in the smaller, back rooms where is boxes where shown almost as trinkets and appropriate holiday gifts.
Cornell was an underemployed adult, living in Queens with his mother, scavenging remnants and old books to make his three D collages in the basement. His work comes across as a miniaturist, a collector and because the author Deborah Solomon writes what appears to be the seminal biography of a little remembered artist, I made me question the merit of my own hobbies: why do I obsess in perfect rooms for my multitude of doll houses, especially when I am the only female within miles of our family members? Why did I spend years needle pointing both sides of pillows? I know I am a crafter and do not intend to display my efforts (even though Monday I am bringing the only needlepoint I made ever to win a first place to hang in the new office space) (hey, office art is pretty awful anyway and I have not budget for amenities).
But to validate as higher are a medium that never moved beyond a niche genre in an almost 400 page book with another 25 pages of bibliographic notes was too much of a time investment for little return. I made a valiant effort to get to page 178. Why does the library keep calling me for its return ... who else could possible have put it on hold?
I have to juxtapose Utopia Parkway against Interlock because I cannot expand my mental concept of art to include highly personal trinket boxes and political corruption flow charts. Call me a bore, call me someone who does not get modern art. I don't. I just had a flashback to Hammagrael and I going to the Skidmore Tang museum this summer to look at 1980s hard edge acrylics. Now, I admit I took a class in hard edge acrylics and anyone with a roll of blue painters' tape can try it out themselves. But these newer medium do not inspire, do not reveal lofty human questions.
Sorry, readers. I will search for another "C."
Sunday, February 21, 2016
And Yet by Christopher Hitchens
Talking with Hammagrael the other day, when we were comparing what we are reading, and I mentioned Hitchens' essays. "That atheist!" was the retort. How was I to know ... I don't remember ever reading anything which probably says a lot about my not regularly reading Vanity Fair, Slate and the Atlantic. I guess most honorable blog member remembers his god Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything."
So picking up Hitchens (was he hitch-hiking) seems to run contrary to my last blog that said I was pursuing the need to write poetry with the human need to discover the divine. But thankfully, there is little religion baiting in this collection of essays, other than a rant against commercialized months long Christmas. But then again, maybe if I had read the back flap of awards he received, to wit, the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace (oddly post-mortum) and his teaching at the New School and Berkeley, I might have returned the book unread to the library.
So there are essays herein that are dated, that opine on political events that still fail to pique my curiosity, but there are enough fantastic ones that I repeatedly passed it on to whichever family member was sitting across the table from me as I laughed out loud or commented on a right-on interpretation of something on subsequent history.
But first for the laughs: the book includes three personal essays On the Limits of Self Improvement. Part I Of Vice and Men which begins with his self assessment of his physical features at 59. I will quote the pieces and parts that cumulatively had me laughing out loud:
"...as glimpsed in the shaving mirror ... only a respectable minimum of secondary and tertiary chins ...the fabled blue eyes and long, curled eyelashes ... somewhat obscured by the ravages of rosacea ... which ... lend a flaky aspect to the picture ... and at other times give the regrettable impression of a visage that is actually crumbling to powder like a dandruffed scalp ...The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called 'British:' ... unevenly spaced ... an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations ... a thickly furred chest, that together with a layer of flab, allows the subject to face winter conditions with an almost ursine insouciance ... the upper part of this chest, however, has slid deplorably down to the mezzanine floor."
Sounding almost like I wanted to find in Dorothy Parker, Hitchens conitnues "Smoking is a vice, I will admit, but one has to have a hobby ... There now exists a whole micro-economy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words to disprove Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives." Immediately, Hitchens starts to describe his adventures at spas: "... The trouble with bad habits is that they are mutually reinforcing. And just as a bank won't lend you money unless you are too rich to need it, exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside baggy garment. In my case, most of my bad habits are connected with the only way I know how to make a living. In order to keep reading and writing, I need the junk energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply." You see where this is not going. Yoga, smoking cessation programs, Brazilian wax treatments, facials and saunas and excuses galore. "I also take the view that it's a mistake to try to look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be a register of a properly lived life. I don't want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield ..."
On to Part II - Vice and Versa, Hitchens begins ".... My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless." But this essay avoids smoking cessation (it will take many more quips and pages to reach that decision) and details his torture of getting dental veneers and depilation. Part III subtitled Mission Accomplished where he finally accedes that "... all cosmetic questions had become eclipsed by the need to survive in the very first place." Obviously Part III has taken on a much less flippant tone.
Before I hit page 169 however,and a few times thereafter, there were other essays I liked tremendously "Bring on the Mud" from 2004 about nasty politics followed by a 2005 Vanity Fair article about suspicious election results in Ohio which was timely given the coin flipping in Iowa; another article from The Atlantic in 2006, Blood for No Oil, which has me redrawing my six degrees of separation with The Devil's Chessboard and Interlock; a 2008 essay that should be republished monthly titled "The Case against Hillary Clinton;" another Atlantic essay from 2009 'Barack Obama: Cool Cat" which after his veiled reprisal against Chuckie Chuckie Chuckie by cutting New York's anti-terrorism funds and his appalling bad breeding in not attending Scalia's funeral makes the top feline qualities that emerge as those related to clawing, scratching, biting and otherwise spreading toxo coupled with the sphinxlike qualities of absolute reign, aloofness and caste superiority.
I hope dear Hammagrael that this review might spur you to thumb through And Yet. I hope to track down his National Book Critics awarded autobiography Hitch-22.
So picking up Hitchens (was he hitch-hiking) seems to run contrary to my last blog that said I was pursuing the need to write poetry with the human need to discover the divine. But thankfully, there is little religion baiting in this collection of essays, other than a rant against commercialized months long Christmas. But then again, maybe if I had read the back flap of awards he received, to wit, the Lennon-Ono Grant for Peace (oddly post-mortum) and his teaching at the New School and Berkeley, I might have returned the book unread to the library.
So there are essays herein that are dated, that opine on political events that still fail to pique my curiosity, but there are enough fantastic ones that I repeatedly passed it on to whichever family member was sitting across the table from me as I laughed out loud or commented on a right-on interpretation of something on subsequent history.
But first for the laughs: the book includes three personal essays On the Limits of Self Improvement. Part I Of Vice and Men which begins with his self assessment of his physical features at 59. I will quote the pieces and parts that cumulatively had me laughing out loud:
"...as glimpsed in the shaving mirror ... only a respectable minimum of secondary and tertiary chins ...the fabled blue eyes and long, curled eyelashes ... somewhat obscured by the ravages of rosacea ... which ... lend a flaky aspect to the picture ... and at other times give the regrettable impression of a visage that is actually crumbling to powder like a dandruffed scalp ...The fanglike teeth are what is sometimes called 'British:' ... unevenly spaced ... an alarming shade of yellow and brown, attributable perhaps to strong coffee as well as to nicotine, Pinot Noir, and other potations ... a thickly furred chest, that together with a layer of flab, allows the subject to face winter conditions with an almost ursine insouciance ... the upper part of this chest, however, has slid deplorably down to the mezzanine floor."
Sounding almost like I wanted to find in Dorothy Parker, Hitchens conitnues "Smoking is a vice, I will admit, but one has to have a hobby ... There now exists a whole micro-economy dedicated to the proposition that a makeover is feasible, or in other words to disprove Scott Fitzgerald's dictum that there are no second acts in American lives." Immediately, Hitchens starts to describe his adventures at spas: "... The trouble with bad habits is that they are mutually reinforcing. And just as a bank won't lend you money unless you are too rich to need it, exercise is a pastime only for those who are already slender and physically fit. It just isn't so much fun when you have a marked tendency to wheeze and throw up, and a cannonball of a belly sloshing around inside baggy garment. In my case, most of my bad habits are connected with the only way I know how to make a living. In order to keep reading and writing, I need the junk energy that scotch can provide, and the intense short-term concentration that nicotine can help supply." You see where this is not going. Yoga, smoking cessation programs, Brazilian wax treatments, facials and saunas and excuses galore. "I also take the view that it's a mistake to try to look younger than one is, and that the face in particular ought to be a register of a properly lived life. I don't want to look as if I have been piloting the Concorde without a windshield ..."
On to Part II - Vice and Versa, Hitchens begins ".... My keystone addiction is to cigarettes, without which cocktails and caffeine (and food) are meaningless." But this essay avoids smoking cessation (it will take many more quips and pages to reach that decision) and details his torture of getting dental veneers and depilation. Part III subtitled Mission Accomplished where he finally accedes that "... all cosmetic questions had become eclipsed by the need to survive in the very first place." Obviously Part III has taken on a much less flippant tone.
Before I hit page 169 however,and a few times thereafter, there were other essays I liked tremendously "Bring on the Mud" from 2004 about nasty politics followed by a 2005 Vanity Fair article about suspicious election results in Ohio which was timely given the coin flipping in Iowa; another article from The Atlantic in 2006, Blood for No Oil, which has me redrawing my six degrees of separation with The Devil's Chessboard and Interlock; a 2008 essay that should be republished monthly titled "The Case against Hillary Clinton;" another Atlantic essay from 2009 'Barack Obama: Cool Cat" which after his veiled reprisal against Chuckie Chuckie Chuckie by cutting New York's anti-terrorism funds and his appalling bad breeding in not attending Scalia's funeral makes the top feline qualities that emerge as those related to clawing, scratching, biting and otherwise spreading toxo coupled with the sphinxlike qualities of absolute reign, aloofness and caste superiority.
I hope dear Hammagrael that this review might spur you to thumb through And Yet. I hope to track down his National Book Critics awarded autobiography Hitch-22.
The Cure at Troy by Seamus Heaney
After reading his translation of Antigone for the Abbey Theater, I found that the only other Greek tragedy Seamus translated was Sophocles' Philoctetes. As with Antigone, this is a slim book of beautiful poetry that, like an amuse bouche, is a pleasurable diversion from the tomes I typically carry around.
Of course, apologies to my classicist son, I had no idea who Philoctetes was (although I think my pronunciation of Greek names has improved tremendously under his tutelage). And his carrying around all of Homer as a teenager at least lets me recognize the cast of characters.
But what I enjoy most about these two short plays are: (1) Seamus' poetry. The thought just flitted through my head that he is sort of a precursor to the current hip hop version of Hamilton on the Broadway stage in that he seamlessly converts history into something that a contemporary audience can understand, appreciate and feel its relevance to their lives. Like Antigone, Philoctetes is a victim of war crimes and bad politicians ... what could be more au courant? Issues of forced isolation, betrayal of alliances, and conspiracies over powerful weapons unfortunately resonate now and someone unfamiliar with the Iliad and Odyssey could misread the story as contemporary anti-war propaganda. But back to the meter and rhyme: I'd love to see either play produced but on the blank page, his verses are beautiful.
The chorus introduces the theme "Between the gods' and human beings' sense of things. And that's the borderline that poetry operates on too, always in between what you would like to happen and what will -- whether you like it or not." I think these lines alone tipped the scale for me to order The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a book that translates the hieroglyphics of the pyramids. I peaked into the prologue yesterday to find "Poetry and religion arise from the same source, the perception of the mystery of life." Susan Rind Morrow notes the importance of how a writer says something as vital to what is said; of course, her work is overlaid with pictures as well. I am meandering here, but these thoughts are directing my readings beyond biographics this year into how things are written and expressed and why humans need to verbalize the common questions on life and death, loyalty and treachery, will and group reins, manhood and deity.
But back to Heaney quotes.moving freely between classic theatrical iambic pentameter, Seamus has the chorus shift into almost a doggerel of six beats to lines of five verses that almost seem like a syncopated rap:
"Human beings suffer
But not to this extent:
You would wonder if it's meant.
Why him more than another?
What is the sense of it?"
The more lofty lines of IP becomes more "street culture" and the audience sees themselves with the chorus trying to relate this tale of war to their own personal issues. Heany also drops in straight prose paragraphs so that Philoctetes curse of Odysseus sounds like a dictum, completely void of the finesse of poetry. I wish there were Heaney translated plays to read but I have been led to read his Nobel prize winning series of lectures at Oxford and also further explore the relationship between the need for poetry vis a vis the search for the spiritual.
Of course, apologies to my classicist son, I had no idea who Philoctetes was (although I think my pronunciation of Greek names has improved tremendously under his tutelage). And his carrying around all of Homer as a teenager at least lets me recognize the cast of characters.
But what I enjoy most about these two short plays are: (1) Seamus' poetry. The thought just flitted through my head that he is sort of a precursor to the current hip hop version of Hamilton on the Broadway stage in that he seamlessly converts history into something that a contemporary audience can understand, appreciate and feel its relevance to their lives. Like Antigone, Philoctetes is a victim of war crimes and bad politicians ... what could be more au courant? Issues of forced isolation, betrayal of alliances, and conspiracies over powerful weapons unfortunately resonate now and someone unfamiliar with the Iliad and Odyssey could misread the story as contemporary anti-war propaganda. But back to the meter and rhyme: I'd love to see either play produced but on the blank page, his verses are beautiful.
The chorus introduces the theme "Between the gods' and human beings' sense of things. And that's the borderline that poetry operates on too, always in between what you would like to happen and what will -- whether you like it or not." I think these lines alone tipped the scale for me to order The Dawning Moon of the Mind, a book that translates the hieroglyphics of the pyramids. I peaked into the prologue yesterday to find "Poetry and religion arise from the same source, the perception of the mystery of life." Susan Rind Morrow notes the importance of how a writer says something as vital to what is said; of course, her work is overlaid with pictures as well. I am meandering here, but these thoughts are directing my readings beyond biographics this year into how things are written and expressed and why humans need to verbalize the common questions on life and death, loyalty and treachery, will and group reins, manhood and deity.
But back to Heaney quotes.moving freely between classic theatrical iambic pentameter, Seamus has the chorus shift into almost a doggerel of six beats to lines of five verses that almost seem like a syncopated rap:
"Human beings suffer
But not to this extent:
You would wonder if it's meant.
Why him more than another?
What is the sense of it?"
The more lofty lines of IP becomes more "street culture" and the audience sees themselves with the chorus trying to relate this tale of war to their own personal issues. Heany also drops in straight prose paragraphs so that Philoctetes curse of Odysseus sounds like a dictum, completely void of the finesse of poetry. I wish there were Heaney translated plays to read but I have been led to read his Nobel prize winning series of lectures at Oxford and also further explore the relationship between the need for poetry vis a vis the search for the spiritual.
Sunday, January 31, 2016
Madness in Civilization by Andrew Scull
I guess I should have read the full title of the book ... Madness in Civilization - A Cultural History of Insanity from the Bible to Freud, from the Madhouse to Modern Medicine.
Yes that describes the book. I was hoping (delude?) into thinking it would be more like my favorite one word history books, Salt, Cod, and would give more of a global, multinational national, or at least geographic summary of how various cultures regarded the "mad." The book is heavily Western Civilization focused and the cultural aspect deals with art and poetry, not a sociological, immediate and extended family analysis or summary.
I wanted a historical reprise showing how families, tribes and towns deal with the mad. At what point did abandonment or exile become succor and care? How does a community change its group response based on the mad individual's behaviors? Are the reclusive dealt with better than the accusatory?
Instead, I am left with an impression after 400 pages that the expedient response of hiding the mad away, whether to save a family's reputation or to protect a village from violence, was universally chosen.
Scull splits the mad early on into the melancholic and the maniac mad and one is left concluding that spectrum of behaviors may well be many more than one mental illness. His history of how the behavioral aspects of syphilis were long in being identified and helped institutions at least properly categorize if not treat their patients.
I (compulsively?) dog-eared too many pages to reprise Scull's observations or interpretations so I will go directly to the book's last paragraph:
"...much of Western medicine embraced ... that madness had its roots in thee body ... at least for the most severe forms of mental aberration .. biology will not prove to play an important role in their genesis. But will madness, that most solitary of afflictions and most social of maladies, be reducible at last to biology and nothing but biology? ... The social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders ... are unlikely ... to prove to be nothing more than epiphenomenal features of ... human experience"
There was a short article in the New York Times this past week about some research into the early onset or accelerated degeneration of the ends of chromosomes and a lack of adequate telomerase to repair them as a factor in mental illness. Like a discovery that proteins building up in the brain was a cause of Alzheimer's, where will this finding lead? Does it trigger Big Pharma to make synthetic telomerase or does it lead the medical community to a conclude it is a chronic disease that cannot be reversed or halted?
So I am questioning how best do humans care for someone they care for with "madness." I have resolved that madness or mental illness is used too broadly (Scull's chapters on the evolution of the diagnostic manuals surely emphasizes that the more "diseases" identified, the more cures doctors and druggists need to work on. Similarly, his perspective on the increased labeling of autism and attention deficit in children appalls me as a mother when there are centuries of parents who could modify family life and distract or engage a child who was a live wire or shrinking violet.
Finally, Scull does not discuss the most current sociological or at least common cultural pressures to accept behaviors that in days of old were considered "mad" or threatening to community morals. If we define mental illness as thought patterns that deviate substantially from the "accepted norm," isn't it a person's brain rather than their physical features and hormones that is telling them what gender they are and/or whom they should mate with? Are addictions and substance abuse in part a function of availability of misused chemicals? Scull discounts the theory of prior centuries which in essence deemed madness as a consequence on the child for the sins of the father ... why is there no discussion about latter centuries, the present, where society is attempting to abolish the recognition of dissimilar or in fact, unique physical attributes and traits to the demise of genealogical heritage, yet minutely striating mental expressed phenomena to a point where almost everyone can be labeled as deviating from the "norm." We will all be the same ... uniformly crazy.
Yes that describes the book. I was hoping (delude?) into thinking it would be more like my favorite one word history books, Salt, Cod, and would give more of a global, multinational national, or at least geographic summary of how various cultures regarded the "mad." The book is heavily Western Civilization focused and the cultural aspect deals with art and poetry, not a sociological, immediate and extended family analysis or summary.
I wanted a historical reprise showing how families, tribes and towns deal with the mad. At what point did abandonment or exile become succor and care? How does a community change its group response based on the mad individual's behaviors? Are the reclusive dealt with better than the accusatory?
Instead, I am left with an impression after 400 pages that the expedient response of hiding the mad away, whether to save a family's reputation or to protect a village from violence, was universally chosen.
Scull splits the mad early on into the melancholic and the maniac mad and one is left concluding that spectrum of behaviors may well be many more than one mental illness. His history of how the behavioral aspects of syphilis were long in being identified and helped institutions at least properly categorize if not treat their patients.
I (compulsively?) dog-eared too many pages to reprise Scull's observations or interpretations so I will go directly to the book's last paragraph:
"...much of Western medicine embraced ... that madness had its roots in thee body ... at least for the most severe forms of mental aberration .. biology will not prove to play an important role in their genesis. But will madness, that most solitary of afflictions and most social of maladies, be reducible at last to biology and nothing but biology? ... The social and cultural dimensions of mental disorders ... are unlikely ... to prove to be nothing more than epiphenomenal features of ... human experience"
There was a short article in the New York Times this past week about some research into the early onset or accelerated degeneration of the ends of chromosomes and a lack of adequate telomerase to repair them as a factor in mental illness. Like a discovery that proteins building up in the brain was a cause of Alzheimer's, where will this finding lead? Does it trigger Big Pharma to make synthetic telomerase or does it lead the medical community to a conclude it is a chronic disease that cannot be reversed or halted?
So I am questioning how best do humans care for someone they care for with "madness." I have resolved that madness or mental illness is used too broadly (Scull's chapters on the evolution of the diagnostic manuals surely emphasizes that the more "diseases" identified, the more cures doctors and druggists need to work on. Similarly, his perspective on the increased labeling of autism and attention deficit in children appalls me as a mother when there are centuries of parents who could modify family life and distract or engage a child who was a live wire or shrinking violet.
Finally, Scull does not discuss the most current sociological or at least common cultural pressures to accept behaviors that in days of old were considered "mad" or threatening to community morals. If we define mental illness as thought patterns that deviate substantially from the "accepted norm," isn't it a person's brain rather than their physical features and hormones that is telling them what gender they are and/or whom they should mate with? Are addictions and substance abuse in part a function of availability of misused chemicals? Scull discounts the theory of prior centuries which in essence deemed madness as a consequence on the child for the sins of the father ... why is there no discussion about latter centuries, the present, where society is attempting to abolish the recognition of dissimilar or in fact, unique physical attributes and traits to the demise of genealogical heritage, yet minutely striating mental expressed phenomena to a point where almost everyone can be labeled as deviating from the "norm." We will all be the same ... uniformly crazy.
Thursday, January 28, 2016
The Burial at Thebes
Aah, a 79 page book that I could read while dinner was baking. Yesterday's New York Times reviewed a production of The Burial at Thebes. The critic panned the costume and scenery as chintzy and a distraction to the beautiful translation of the tale of Antigone by Seamus Heaney.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
That was all I needed to read to jump on the library's web site, reserve it and pick it up on the way home from work (a transaction that was just as smooth and efficient as on-line orders of cases of wine at Empire).
It really was a nice intermezzo to all the political intrigue I have been plowing through in The Devil's Chessboard and then Interlock. Also a bit of a segue to Madness in Civilization which I hoped to have finished last night but didn't. Obviously, Antigone is the daughter of Oedipus so there's the interlock between books and her plight is a confrontation with absolute governmental authority versus human laws.
And of course, Seamus is magnificient. Greek drama in a brogue. The explicit conscientiousness of meter determined by character. This morning I just ordered this play The Cure at Troy (Sophocles Philoctetes). Plan also on looking online for copies to send to Houston for those lucky prep school scholars who my son treats to Greek after they finish Latin IV by midterm.
So a review as short and sweet as the playscript. All the world's a stage and the plot is always recurring.
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