Seven Storey Mountain

What is up with the formatting of Blogger today?  Why can't I write up top?

Last night, while working, I finished reading Merton's autobiography of faith.  He has such an amazing ability to construct an autobiography that I had to keep reminding myself this was his true story and not a well written novel.  It is an easy mistake to become absorbed in this book, especially since Merton seems to never have forgotten anything in his life.  The small details that he recalls in his memoir is quite extraordinary.  I often was left wondering if he either embellished the narrative for a more novelistic feel, or he truly remembered everything up to and including his childhood.  As wit any good story there is struggle, sadness, and an ultimate happiness at the end.

If a reader wants to read a truly 3-dimensional character I would recommend this book as a readerly experience.  And it is also a spiritual salve for those wanting a more ponderous reflection on personal spiritualism.  His story is the story of most people and their desire to find meaning.  His meaning and life was for God, and that brought him happiness, but I think his journey has an application beyond his own experiences.

The Insatiable Foil

So while I wait for Thomas Middleton I keep reading his contemporaries.  I don't know why, because they continue to make me feel dreary.  Webster whirls he audience on a trip to chaos and perdition.  And my latest reading was a strange mix of comedy and tragedy, and both styles leaving me drained once again.  I think I'm satiated right now, but tonight during the long hours of the silent morning I might just pick up Webster again and delve right into The Duchess of Malfi.  I will attempt restraint.

So I just finished The Insatiate Countess by William Barksted and Lewis Machin.  Collaborations were common in renaissance drama.  Even Shakespeare collaborated with others as well, though those people are not given much credit!  I have trouble calling this a play.  It is more like two shorter plays with the same theme of adultery and lust combined, kind of similar to Grindhouse.  The tragic short play is an absurd story about a countess whose love is flighty and shifts from one paramour to another.  Even on her wedding night her love drifted to another man and they ran off together.  She keeps doing this and eventually her name is slandered so she uses her sexuality to dupe a man into killing the slanderer.  Her sexuality is so powerful that it is likened to sorcery, and her victims are excused of their crimes (murder) because they were put under a sexual spell.

The other half of the play was comedy about two rivals in business who try and cuckold the other on the same night.  It is just as absurd a story and the other half of the play.  The loyal wives realize what their husbands are up to and trick the men into thinking they are cheating.  Of course  the portrayal of women are less that flattering in this play. --or plays?  So these two wives talk about sex the whole time and crack jokes on how their husbands were so much better when they thought they were with another man's wife.  Some of it was quite funny.

Most of the play was lewd talk about sex and about having sex.  It was borderline pornographic, which makes me wonder how this was received at the time.  I don't think I am being prudish in making this observation.  All said, I found the mix of the two plays uncomfortable.  The characters from one half did not interact with the other half.  The only structural connection was that the Duke of the city they both took place in was the judge of both sides.  He was kind of the Deus ex Machina at the end that united the two halves in judgement.

One could also judge the play as an extreme example of a playwright going way out of his way to create a moral foil.  In this case the foil of the tragic half is the comic half.  Half of the total play was used to create foils!

Keeping up with Bybee

Reading Naked Without Books and all this talk of resolutions for a new year of reading, I felt I too should try and focus my reading list and not keep getting distracted with science fiction and fantasy novels.  Though they are fun, I felt I read too many the previous year.  So here are my resolutions (many of which are shameless ripoffs of Bybee's.)

1.  Limit myself to no more than 10 SF or Fantasy novels.  This will be a challenge as I have just rediscovered Douglas Adams, and I continue to read Pratchett.  These are my reward books for having trudged through something like La Morte D'Arthur.  I already have one completed, I will have to ration these books from here on out.

2.  My Oregon challenge.  I am aiming for a half-dozen of these little gems.  This is a much better attempt than my measly 1 from 2011.

3.  As I am preparing for more college (hoping beyond hope I get accepted) I am going to read at least 10 academic books pertaining to my area of study.  As much as I want history books about Rome and Byzantium to count, I cannot accept those.

4.  Thomas Middleton.  10 of his plays (A full third of his oeuvre!)  As I write this I have a package waiting for me at the post office...

5.  Read more contemporary authors.  The majority of the books I read in 2011 were pre-1900, and the ones that weren't were history books describing the pre-1700s.

6.  This is a big one.  Read all of H.P. Lovecraft.  I am not using this for my SF or Fantasy resolution.  I have the complete Lovecraft with me in Yellowstone, so why not?

I think this should cover me for the year, and help direct my reading.  I wonder how long this will last before I start dismissing these resolutions and breaking them without regard?

The Devil with John Webster

So I've been on a renaissance literature kick now since I discovered that Thomas Middleton was a nice alternative to Shakespeare.  It's really like Shakespeare had a slightly less talented brother (or sister!) and wrote a whole bunch of plays.  So naturally I decided to read the other dramatists of the time, and not only that, I decided to stick solely to tragedy.  I ordered the complete Middleton, which contains all 30+ of his plays and his long poems and masques, but it is taking such a long time to get here, so I have had to find my renaissance fix elsewhwere.  Which leads me to John Webster, whose play, The White Devil was my latest foray into ren. lit., and to be quite honest my mirth is drained.  If tragedy is cathartic, as Aristotle assures me daily, then I think I have overdosed on catharsis.

The play starts off normal enough for a tragedy, most of the main characters are either evil, sadistic, or whores (which is how women are addressed in the play.  I wonder if this was a term of endearment Webster used frequently?)  Even the characters that are supposed to be good tend to be annoying, or have some flaws.  Flamineo was the funniest character despite being evil incarnate.  He managed to kill his brother in front of his mom and then make his sister think she killed him and then tried to kill his sister.  All the while cracking jokes and pandering his sister to a duke.  And when his sister thought she killed him, she was cackling and mocking him in his supposed death.  This was a long play, with each scene chocked full of insults, anger, hatred, duplicitous behavior, and everything else that stings of a ren. tragedy.  My urge to read another tragedy at this point is waning fast.  Please Middleton, why is Amazon being so slow in getting you here?  Will I have to read another Webster to pass the long days?  Get here soon.  I miss you.

A holistic reading.

So begins another year and my quest to break the 100 book barrier.  If anything I will try and break 80 and go for the legendary 81.  My quest will be fraught with distractions, lethargy, and indifference, and all other manner of eldritch evils.  Though I may not be an Arthurian knight errant, I can still apply the allegory to myself.

First up, and taking a mere three days to read ON THE JOB.  At a staggering 303 pages I read what will probably be the funniest book I read all year.  Few books are funnier than a Douglas Adams book, and few books are written by said Douglas Adams.

The title includes the word holistic, which is the approach Dirk Gently takes to understand any of life's mysteries to show how all things are connected to each other.  He describes it as taking quantum mechanics and applying it to a detective agency.  This simple mystery of who shot who includes ghosts (human and alien), time traveling Cambridge dons, messing with famous poets and ruining their inspiration, and of course saving all of humankind from destruction.  It even has a couch impossibly lodged in the stairwell that even well written computer programs cannot un-stuck.  I don't think I ruined the plot so long as all is forgotten that I wrote.

I understand there is a sequel, which I will probably be reading in about a month.

#79 and #80

These are my last books of the year.  I finished them in December, I just neglected posting them.  This will put me at 80, which is twenty shy of my goal.  But I still think a noble effort.

A Hugo winning science fiction book by the same writer that brought you Starship Troopers, which is on my reading list.  This book started off as political in nature and then turned into an orgy. I have the suspicion that the author was shamelessly writing his own sexual fantasies and trying to pull it off as reasonable and shameless.  But this was written in the early sixties during the time of 'free-love', or as I understand it to be 'free-love'.  His writing was informed enough and he was definitely willing to take risks as an author which makes me want to read another book of his.
438 pages.

My second book by Bernd Heinrich this year, and though not as fun as Mind of a Raven, it is definitely as informative, if not more so.  How do some small animals survive in harsh winters, like mice and Kinglets?  Though it explains the science of the animal's body, it does not use scientific language.  I enjoyed it and will try and read more of Heinrich in the years to come.
316pages.

#77 and #78

I decided it is coming close to the new year and I am so far away from 100 that I will shoot for 80.  My reading has been tragically slack these last 3 months.  I account this to playing video games and watching TV.  Though now I have stopped watching TV, I am still playing video games, which I will probably stop shortly.

My latest entries are two plays, both from the book titled, Jacobean Sex Tragedies.  Who can see that title and at least not take a look inside?

#77 First up is the second play I've read by Thomas Middleton, and by no means the last as I am finding in him a skilled craftsmen comparable to Shakespeare in language, but not quite in dramatic construction.  In his "The Maiden's Tragedy" the focus is on the good woman who kills herself rather than be a forced wife to the Tyrant (actual name in the play).  Of course in all renaissance drama there must be a foil.  And her name is the Wife, and she sleeps around and is tricked into killing her paramour.  There are so many foils in this play it almost feels like two different plays, with real world characters and bizarro world characters.

I do love when a play goes into the weird and unexpected, which this play almost certainly does.  Just after the good woman kills herself the king takes her body back to his quarters and starts the first instance of necrophilia I have read about from Renaissance drama.  As if necrophilia was not enough, the lady's ghost visits her true love and lets him know that her body is currently being defiled.  So of course he must now kill the king for sleeping with the corpse of his love.  And in the process the bad Wife accidentally kills her lover, then her husband comes home and kills the servant, then his wife, and then the servant's lover.  It is a bloodbath at the end.  I must say that I quite liked this play.

#78  This play I chose because the name was so similar to the first one.  The Maid's Tragedy, by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher is about a woman that is sleeping with the king and then is married to another who she refuses to sleep with because of a tryst she made with the king.  And of course complications arise, foils are set, and tragedy ensues.  This play is not as well made as the first one.  Some of the action is unbelievable, the characters at times are flat, and some scenes just do not make sense.  For example one female is dressed as a man and there is no explanation whatsoever for this wardrobe change??!!!!!  People die and the play ends.  I guess this play was more for the masses than a regular Shakespeare play would have been.  You can tell this was a crowd pleaser with constant sexual innuendo and on stage antics that somehow did not go with the tone of the play.  It wanted to be comedy and tragedy and ended up being farce.