10th Canadian Challenge - 34th Review - Not Wanted on the Voyage

I remember talking about Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage with a Canadian friend, and she said that it had been assigned reading in her high school.  Now I didn't probe and check whether it was the standard assigned text or just been on a long list of alternative readings.  Nonetheless, I thought that was somewhat shocking and fairly daring to promote this to high schoolers (and something that would not happen in the U.S., as the book is extremely critical of organized religion and is fairly preoccupied with feminist theory).  After all, there are still occasional protests by parents in Ontario saying that the sex ed curriculum goes too far and is too accepting of homosexuality and transgender identification.  Also, there is a fairly graphic molestation scene in the book that would definitely qualify as statutory rape.  It is certainly not presented as a positive, but its inclusion in the book is troubling nonetheless.

Before I get too deep into this review, I should note that Findley's novel was actually turned into a musical by the team of Neil Bartram and Brian Hill.  It had a special development at Northwestern University in 2010 (some info here) and then a couple of years later it was at the Goodspeed Musicals' 2012 New Works Festival, but it completely vanished after that.  I think that's a shame.  I thought it was an amazing musical (I saw it at Northwestern), but I can see it having trouble reaching a mass audience, precisely because it is so thoroughly inverts and subverts the story of Noah and the Flood.  I think it could probably succeed in a handful of liberal cities, but probably not on Broadway, given current Broadway economics.  While I don't really expect it to ever turn up again, I would certainly go if the opportunity arose.

It is pretty difficult to SPOIL the story of the Flood, as it is fairly well known.  However, Findley definitely alters or reinterprets the events related in the Bible and he adds quite a few characters not mentioned in Genesis.  I'm going to jump around and cover events from the middle and end of the novel, so a SPOILER warning is probably appropriate after all.

SPOILERS

The reader learns fairly early on that there is trouble at the Noyes household.  Japeth, the middle son, is moody because his child bride, Emma, won't have marital relations with him (this is an on-going issue/conflict even after the Ark is launched).  His skin has also been stained blue permanently, though this is not the root cause of Emma's refusal.  Mrs. Noyes is much put upon, though she manages to get through her days in a bit of an alcoholic daze (though this does come to an end after the Ark is launched).  She also lavishes attention upon her elderly half-blind cat, Mottyl (who is effectively the narrator for long stretches of the book).  Noah, and indeed Yaweh when he makes a personal appearance, is portrayed as a petulant, fairly tyrannous patriarch.  And perhaps here Findley does not actually depart that much from the text...

Anyway, Yaweh is impressed by a two-bit conjuring trick where Noah makes a penny in a bottle disappear by covering it with water, which is where Yaweh gets inspiration for the Flood.  What's a little off is that Yaweh insists that his two ancient cats accompany Noah on the Ark (it is strongly suggested that Yaweh decides to die -- and not resurrect himself -- after he sets the Flood in motion), but if the very pregnant Mottyl hadn't been snuck aboard the Ark, then cats would have died out as a species.  (As a total aside, it boggles my mind that there are still people who believe every word of the Bible is literal truth. I have no idea how they square the fact that people could only have emerged from incest over and over and over again (how many sisters did Cain have anyway?), to say nothing of the inbreeding that would have eventually killed off all the animals on the Ark.*)

One other major twist Findley adds is that Lucifer disguises himself as a 7-foot tall woman (named Lucy!) and marries Ham, the youngest son, so that he can escape the Flood.  Findley doesn't seem to be following the path laid down by Milton, i.e. Lucifer is in charge of Hell and only visits Earth from time to time.  In this version, after his rebellion, he landed on Earth for good.  His powers are much more limited, and he isn't Evil incarnate, just someone who instinctively sides with the underdog and rebels against authority.  (Actually, Lucifer seems pretty similar to Satan in the Book of Job.)

MORE SPOILERS

Perhaps not surprisingly, Mrs. Noyes, Lucy, Ham and Emma all rebel in one way or another from Noah's authority and end up locked up below decks.  Most of the novel is told from the perspective of people or animals low on the totem poll and oppressed in one way or another.  This is probably the most significant way that Findley's departs from Genesis.  The first rebellion fails, but a second rebellion partly succeeds, though ultimately it leads to an uneasy detente between the various factions.  By this point, the rain has stopped falling, but land has not been discovered, even though a number of doves have been set off to look for land.  Mrs. Noyes realizes that she doesn't think she can take another 100+ years of being oppressed by Noah.  The novel ends with her praying for rain.  I had forgotten just how downbeat the ending actually is.

I've compressed a lot, but I wanted to focus on the main themes of the novel.  This is definitely not a novel for anyone who wants to avoid an outright attack on Christianity specifically and patriarchy more generally.  But it is a very imaginative retelling of the Flood story with a number of memorable characters, particularly Mottyl, and I do recommend it to readers who like being challenged in their assumptions (or just those that want to give Biblical patriarchs a good kicking).

* Findley actually pokes a bit of fun at those who have no understanding of genetics by indicating that Noah carries a recessive gene that sometimes results in his offspring being born as apes or chimpanzees, sort of a reverse evolution, though Noah practices social Darwinism by killing off these offspring so they have no chance to reproduce.

Neil Bartram and Brian Hill

Neil Bartram and Brian Hill

More quilt updates (pt. 3)

The quilt is coming along fairly nicely.  I was able to integrate a few foxes and polar bears into the design. 

You can see the before (rows 4-6 here):

And then the after (rows 5-7 here):

I actually swapped the pink and yellow crosses, then made some other substitutions with the new fabrics (seen below).
 

I finished sewing the fourth row last night and cut out almost all the material for the 7th row.  The current plan is to stitch the rows together when I get the first six pieced together, which should be over the long weekend.  That would be just over a third of the top done, and I'll have a much better idea just how hard this will be but also how nice it all looks together.  After that, I'll just decide on whether to put on a border and how thick it should be.  A lot of work, but starting to feel worth it.

Starting late and running long

This was more of an issue Sat. but affected me to some degree on Sunday as well.  I had a meeting at 10 in the morning but I was running a bit late.  I saw from the Transit app that the bus was about 8 minutes away so I started walking up the hill.  I ended up waiting at the next stop, and the bus eventually turned up.  I was somewhat engrossed in starting on a new book (Mavis Gallant's The Moslem Wife) and I actually missed my stop (no one else got off at Danforth, which is kind of odd, and I had forgotten about walking up one stop). 

I decided to run back to the library, which in the end was a good choice, since I was able to drop off a very large and heavy book.  Also, in the book sale cart there was a very nice copy of Szabo's The Door (NYRB Classics) for $1.  I was worried about missing my appointment, but I think I got there right on time.  I was there to hear some feedback from one of the other writers in Toronto Cold Reads.  She basically thought some scenes should be compressed or combined, and also didn't think a couple of the characters stood out.  I thought most of her criticisms were good, though she really didn't get the point of The Pitch, and I may not make quite as radical changes to that as she suggested.  Anyway, her main advice was that I was rushing too fast into doing a full production and that I should settle for table reads and perhaps a staged reading.  This was not easy to take (and at least part of my interest is to get production experience for other projects), but perhaps it is the wisest course.  I'm going to talk to a few other actors and get their views, but I am leaning in that direction.  (If nothing else, it will cost much less and will actually require less time in rehearsals, so there is that to be said for it.)

I then set off for Fabricland, since they were having a sale.  I found the right kind of elastic, so I should be able to finish my son's pajamas this week.  I bought a few Christmas prints to supplement the left-overs from my daughter's quilt, plus bought some interesting patterns that could be used as borders or for a quilt with more of a fall feel.  This is what they look like after washing.

As a side note, I showed them to my daughter later on and she got a bit jealous, even though her quilt will be done long before any of the other ones, so I agreed to rework the pattern a bit and add in a few pluses of foxes and polar bears.  Fortunately, I hadn't gotten completely done with the cutting and sewing.  As of today, I have cut nearly all the pieces for the first six rows and sewn 3 and a bit of the 4th row.  My current plan is to get the first 6 rows assembled and then start sewing them length-wise.  I should be able to get to that by Canada Day.  I'm excited but a bit nervous at this undertaking.

I waited quite a while for a Dufferin bus to come by (that I could actually get on), but I finally made it to Dufferin and Queen.  I was planning on looking up a few of the galleries in the Scotiabank Photography event, but 1) most events had closed a few weeks back and 2) the map was appallingly bad.  I got so frustrated the third or fourth time that a gallery wasn't even on the right side of the street (and Gallery 401 was about 10 km out of place on the map!) that I chucked it in the garbage.  I ended up seeing a small gallery in Parkdale and then Gallery 401 and that was about it.

I did like the exhibits in Gallery 401 (and thought briefly about buying a painting with the money I "saved" by not spending it on producing theatre or buying U2 tickets from scalpers).  Then I grabbed lunch and went to see Guardians of the Galaxy #2.  It was pretty good, though not quite as good as the first in my view.  But it ran so long (and all the ads up front didn't help).  I was expecting to get done by 5:30, but I didn't get out and to the subway until 6:25! 

At this point, I wanted to get to a TCR writers' event, but it started at 7.  That meant I had to go directly there, rather than dropping stuff off at home.  I made it just a bit after 7, but they decided to hold off even longer, hoping that more women would show up to read the parts.  They didn't actually get going until 7:30.  Because I had so much stuff with me, I had to go home before heading back out to Lee's Palace, so I had to split at 8:30.  That was unfortunate.

Anyway, I hustled and made it to Lee's Palace just after 10.  The band I had come to see (Fujahtive) hadn't taken the stage.  As it turns out my neighbour is in the band, and quite a few people from the block turned up (10 or so).  They played from 10:30 to midnight, and I left after that, even though there was one more reggae band playing after them.

I didn't sleep in that long on Sunday, perhaps because I had a very disturbing dream that I worked in an office that basically looked like a concrete parking garage with all these weird angles.  I was complaining about the rain (and the fact that some homeless person was camping out in the cubicle next to mine) but really the problem was going to be getting through the winter.  I was definitely off my game, making all these mistakes in a presentation to the region-wide boss and I remember thinking that I was going to have to make another career/location move.  A lot of anxieties competing with each other in that dream...

I dawdled just a bit and got caught in the rain on the way home with the groceries, but it wasn't all that bad.  Eventually the rain cleared up, and I even managed to mow.

What was even better from a morale perspective is that I went to the Planet Fitness that just opened up in the mall.  While I visited gyms in Vancouver, I basically only ever went to swim.  I don't think I have gone regularly to a gym since the YMCA in Chicago.  It's definitely been too long.  I tried to take it easy, since there is nothing more discouraging than straining one's muscles when getting started.  But it felt good to be working out on the machines.  If only this place had a swimming pool or whirlpool it would be perfect.  I'll just have to make it over to the Regents Park Aquatic Centre more often.  It actually takes a lot of organization to start going to the gym, but I now have workout attire, new shoes, a new lock and even a new soap dish (since the showers are a bit spartan).  I really don't have any more excuses, and I will make a strong effort to go 2-3 times/week, especially since it has been raining so much this June.  Last week I only managed to ride my bike to work once, and this week doesn't look much better.  There is no point imagining I will ever be thin again (my lifestyle and genes are no help), but I can at least improve my cardio condition and lose some of the extra weight.  That is within my reach.

Confessions

I find that confessions, particularly public ones (i.e. not from a person directly to his/her spiritual ideal and/or made through a priestly intermediary), have a strange performative aspect to them.  You are confessing to an audience, so things quickly become unclear.  How much is genuine looking for forgiveness and how much is to salve one's conscience (or even to "embiggen" oneself) in a relatively painfree way?  It's the same sort of thing with the humblebrag, which operates on two levels.  Currently, most advice columnists are saying that confessions that will hurt another person should be avoided, though of course there is a large grey area (with others saying that without a confession some people cannot change their ways).  In my view, confession without genuine contrition is fairly pointless.

I'm thinking about this, as I have just finished St. Augustine's Confessions, and I'm about to start Rousseau's.  I obviously haven't read them, but many people seem to think Rousseau's confessions are kind of pointless, since he basically seems to be bragging about what he has done and that his confessions are just further feeding his ego.  Augustine's confessions are a bit different, where he seems to be offering them up and saying effectively, look at my example and avoid my sins, but even if you falter, you can still be saved...  Not that there isn't still quite a bit of egotism going on throughout Augustine's Confessions.  I did find it fairly tough slogging with one of the high points being the famous line "Give me chastity and continence, but not yet." 

What is not as publicized as well is that the confessions proper stop at chapter 10 and then he spends the last three going over the first chapter of Genesis tackling such issues as what did God do before he made the heavens and the earth.  I suppose this was very much on his mind, since it was puzzles like this that made it hard to convert skeptics, such as those trained in Greek philosophy.  I wasn't that interested in chapter 11 and chapter 13 was pretty unbearable, but chapter 12 was surprisingly interesting as he got into a discussion of the nature of time and wondered whether time was constant and eternal.  For instance, if a day is measured by the movements of celestial bodies and then the bodies are sped up, then does the unit of time change or not?  While Augustine ended in the wrong place (Einstein has shown that indeed the perception of time is relative to one's frame of reference), it was still a deep question.  I think it is a shame that a man with such an inquisitive mind should have ended his days pushing a dogma that ultimately discouraged reason and promoted faith in its place.

I don't feel like completely unburdening my conscience, though I can confess I treated my brother badly growing up, at least part of the time.  We fought quite a bit, at least until I hit high school.  I think more than anything I was very tightly wound up and he was an easy target for aggression.  I also regret that during high school I learned saxophone (his instrument) and mastered it quickly, causing him to give up the instrument.  In this particular case, I wasn't trying to show him up, but I really needed to learn saxophone to be part of the high school jazz band.

In general, I had boundary issues and wanted my friends' toys (pre-high school) and sometimes (often) didn't respect proper limits.  It's possible that I didn't really change my ways until after university.  I sometimes still cringe when thinking about things I did growing up.

I have gotten slightly better over the years, but while younger I needed everyone to know just how hard I was working.  I also usually wanted to be the smartest person in the room, though it was ok if I was the only one who knew it.  (I suppose I might as well admit that I don't really care about prizes or work certificates if I don't have any respect for the people giving the awards.  I only really want recognition from people I consider my intellectual peers.)  Now that I am older I usually try to deflect rather than going on and on about something I am interested in and/or am doing but seems designed to make me look smarter than everybody else.  That said, I still let it drop at work that I was reading Darwin and Freud.

Probably the worst academic thing I ever did was to run a survey but not return the results to the people who had gathered the data for me.  Basically, life overwhelmed me.  We had our second baby and decided to move back from England to Chicago; I just couldn't find the time to process the data and get it back.  Even up to a year later, I could have swallowed my pride and apologized for the unreasonable delay and gotten back to them.  And I just couldn't face up to it and get it done.  But this ended up being a self-inflicted wound, since now (10 years on) I don't have the right to do anything with the data, even though it could have resulted in an interesting paper or two.  After this move, I did somewhat drag my feet on wrapping up the documentation on a work project, which cost my former company some money, so I regret that as well.  On the whole, I was much better about picking times to leave companies so that I didn't leave them in the lurch.  Also I didn't finish up two book reviews for academic journals nor did I return the books, though this was a lesser issue, and I no longer feel as much regret as I once did.  There are plenty of other projects I never finished, but none of them was an actual obligation that I shirked or failed to deliver.

These days I certainly feel uncharitable towards people who don't share my core values and political beliefs and sometimes I do wish them ill.  However, I don't actually feel contrite about it (at least at the moment), so I don't see any prospect for changing any time soon. 

That's as deep as I am willing to go.  No more confessions for at least another week.  On to Rousseau...

Quiltsville II

I didn't go far from home on Sunday (partly because the weather forecast was for huge thunderstorms that never arrived).  I did a bit of reading and straightening up, and then spent the rest of the time on the quilt.

I stitched row #2 (short-ways).  It generally takes a bit less than an hour.  The first two laid out look like this.

This is definitely going to be a massive quilt (and I actually scaled it down just a bit!).  I haven't quite decided when to start sewing the rows together.  Maybe when I have five or six of the rows ready.  I'll definitely need to iron the seams first though.  I'm just trying to visualize how I'm actually going to sew this.  Probably adding one at a time and then sort of rolling up the rest is the best approach.

Towards the end of the day, I did the cutting for rows 3 and 4 and even a bit of row 5.   Starting to look pretty good!

I should have enough material for all the squares I need for this quilt, but the material probably won't stretch to another quilt.  So maybe I'll end up back at Fabricland after all (or the fabric store in Stratford, since I have an hour or two between the shows on my visit in mid July).

But one thing at a time.  My goal is to have the top all sewn by the end of summer, and I'd say I am on track for that.

On the Shaw bus and back

I thought I would report on the Shaw shuttle bus in its inaugural season.  While I have been trying to spread the word, it is definitely a bit of an insiders' secret.  The bus was not quite half full.  Interestingly, one of the actors from Dracula was on the bus Instagramming it.  He came over and took my photo and asked some questions, but I think he was having a lot of trouble either logging in or with a weak connection, since several of the photos and videos had to be taken twice.  In the end, my photo didn't get loaded, so my moment in the glare of social media was avoided.

I was really glad not to have to drive, but they played the soundtrack to Me and My Girl on the way in (eventually dropping the volume a bit) and then a video covering the entire season.*  This made it very hard to focus on reading, so next time I will have to bring my iPod.  I don't think Shaw quite gets that we don't want to be overloaded with Shaw stuff on the bus, we just want to get to the Festival.  That is my main complaint about the bus.

I was there to see Shaw's Saint Joan.  I thought the staging was stark and interesting.  I was kind of surprised at how little attention was paid to Joan's success on the field of war.  We basically see her gearing up to raise the siege of Orléans and then we see the aftermath after she is captured (at Compiègne about a year later).  Shaw's decision is interesting and not wholly successful in my mind.  The political intrigue that ends the first act is too long.  Also, the Inquisition scene also dragged quite a bit.  I thought the dream sequence that ended the play was reasonably successful, particularly when Joan threatens to resurrect herself and all her admirers suggest it better that she stay in Heaven.  There are not too many playwrights who are quite so political (or as "talky") as Shaw, though I suppose Kushner is a direct descendant of Shaw, though Kushner is a bit better at exploring the emotional side of things.  To some extent, the machinations of the Church reminded me a bit of Brecht's Galileo, though that is actually a more interesting play since you see Galileo recant under pressure to save his skin.  Joan is actually a very one-note character, and while she is spunky, I actually was fairly bored by her.

But of course, I don't take religion seriously at all, other than the fact that others take it so seriously that it often imposes itself on my life.  To sort of complement Saint Joan, I was reading St. Augustine's Confessions on the bus ride.  I hoped to get a bit further, but in the end I only made it halfway through.  While there are a few interesting moments, in general it was too much (sort of like if John Donne had given up the poetry and spent all his time blogging...).  I find it tragic that an intelligent man ends up throwing away his critical facilities and goes in for the line that this omniscient being is so beyond reason or providing any kind of proof, that one must just have faith in it (completely leaving aside the issue of why God needs all this acknowledgement from his creations**).  In general, Augustine's discussion of his struggles over the the issue of the presence of evil in the world are so general and vague that I don't see how anyone would be convinced by them.  For some reason, he takes nearly the last 100 pages to discuss Genesis, so I suppose that at least will be more detailed.  It is a little hard for me to swallow that this is actually a masterpiece of world literature, since there is so little of interest for anyone who is not Christian.  But I wouldn't have known that if I hadn't actually read it.  Soon I can cross it off my list and donate it to someone who will appreciate it more.

Back to this Shaw season, there are two plays (1979 and the musical Me and My Girl) that I would consider if they transferred to Toronto, but I am not willing to make the trek back, even with the bus.  I really don't like Niagara-on-the-Lake.  I find it tacky and completely overrun with tourists.  Stratford is just so much nicer, and I always enjoy my time there.  I'll just have to see what next season at the Shaw has to offer.  I'd probably go see Man and Superman, but in general there are not that many plays by Shaw that I am dying to see.


* While in general, the AD seems like a fairly reasonable person, he says that the Shaw festival audience is the best in the world.    What a crazy thing to say, and how hard it will be to live down if he ever applies to work at Stratford...  Anyway, I thought I would relate that the woman next to me spent the entire first act knitting!  While it wasn't actually loud, it was still very distracting and incredibly rude.  Fortunately, there were quite a few empty seats in the balcony and I was able to move over.

** In particular, the God of the Old Testament is incredibly thin-skinned and insecure like a schoolyard bully.  And what he gets up to in the Book of Job is so unreasonable that I can't understand how anyone who took it seriously would remain a Christian.  I'm glad that Ursula Le Guin, at least, agrees with me.

Dreaming of Brando

This was another one of those over-stuffed dreams where I was off in a hotel in another city, probably Montreal.  It only became obvious a bit later on why I was there, which was as the producer of a play (or at least evening entertainment).  It was one of those things where everything only came together at the last minute -- so (according to movie plot logic) it would either be an amazing triumph against all odds or a disaster.  It was looking like a looming disaster.

The director only turned up on the day before.  He was keeping it a secret who the lead actor was!  Due to the lateness, there was going to be one rehearsal combined with the dress rehearsal.  I was trying not to get too nervous over this, but obviously, this seemed like a bad idea.  I don't think we even had enough copies of the script, though we had a few printed in book form, which was only moderately helpful.  Marlon Brando was name-checked in the script, which I somehow knew.

I was sitting at a table in the hotel dining room and realized that the man at the next table over was Marlon Brando, and he was the secret actor.  What a coup!  But he hadn't rehearsed either, so I went over and tried to get him to read the book version of the script.  Marlon was toward the end of the mid-point of his career, so he had shaggy white hair, but hadn't completely blimped out, like he did at the end.  He looked basically like this, but slightly older and with wilder hair.

I decided to move on and hang out in a different part of the lobby where there was a large toy structure.  While some children were playing with it, there was also an older German? professor-type, explaining something about its aesthetic merits.  I realized that I really ought to be putting on Ibsen's A Doll's House, rather than whatever play we were going to attempt that evening.  As I was leaving the hotel and walking down the fancy staircase, it came to me that the actors would probably expect me to pay for their hotel stay (this wasn't explicit in their contract, however) because of their likely humiliation on stage.  It struck me that this would end up being quite an expensive adventure.

There are two anxieties very present in this dream (not even properly pushed into the subconscious realm).  First, I am obviously stressing a bit over what will unfold in November, even though I have quite a bit of time to prepare.  Still, unless I start locking in a few more actors, I am going to worry.  But I have to remind myself that this is supposed to be a good time, with funny scripts that aren't supposed to be taken all that seriously.  On those terms, it should work out reasonably well.

The other is a second-hand anxiety, fortunately.  We have been extremely pressed at work, and in fact four of us stayed until 8:30 last night.  I was the first of the group to leave, and I realized it was going to start raining, which hadn't really been in the forecast.  In the past, I have almost made it to the bridge by the time it starts raining, but I was definitely further behind and only made it to Shuter when the first drops started falling.  However, instead of being a bit of a shower, ramping up, it just poured and there was even lightning.  I was definitely not happy, but there really were no good rest stops along the way nor was I close enough to the TTC to just ride the rest of the way.  So I was thoroughly unhappy when I came home and obviously didn't do any shopping.

Anyway, due to all this pressure, one of my co-workers hasn't really prepared for a conference where he is due to present on Sunday.  Or rather it is a joint presentation, and he will largely hand over the mike to others.  But he somehow forgot to register for the conference, so he is just going to have to show up and see if he can get into his panel.  The registration fee was kind of shocking, so I feel badly for him, but can't imagine letting myself fall into that situation.  Of course, maybe I will have to eat my words as the various expenses pile up for my theatrical experience.  Still going in with my eyes open and trying to be prepared for these eventualities should help me avoid some of the things that happened in the dream.