Recharging

I am trying to fight off some illness that is creeping up on me. Surely it is mostly stress related (and maybe a tiny bit related to having several mixed days of mostly overcast and clammy weather after 4 days of solid sunshine). The new offices are terrible. They were not ready in time. More worrisome is that the background support seems much worse. The internet didn't work properly for 2 days and they are still on the backup system. One day I had no problem doing the remote log-in, but now it isn't working again, possibly because they are trying to get the main internet system running. That doesn't help with my short term issues, however. And for my personal work style, the fact that they have gone with small and inefficient printers/copiers is a huge blow. I was trying to do something on Sat. that would have taken 90 minutes tops (at our previous offices on the old machines), and I gave up after 3 hours. There are only so many times I am going to try to remove the jammed paper from the fuser area. I guess the only good news is that this will affect the admin assistants even more than me, so we might get some movement on it when they pressure the executive team. Anyway, I am totally demoralized and alienated. If Plan B doesn't work (going to raise it Tuesday), then I will definitely be moving on. Possibly that means moving to Toronto a year early, which wouldn't be all bad.

On the cultural side of things, after tackling a bunch of longer books, I have two quite short books to help me recharge. (Basically, I used the trip to SF last weekend to get most of the way through Dostoevsky's The Idiot, which I rate as probably his least interesting novel.) I am really looking forward to the fact that they are short (just over 200 pages each). Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping sort of reads like a true-life story (from the OWN network) where the narrator records her abnormal childhood, though presumably this is all fictional. Her sister is struggling in growing up in an irregular household and wants home-life to be more conventional. (This kind of thing is tolerable in small doses, but not if it were stretched out to over 400 pages.  It looks like I will be done with this book tomorrow.)

Next I am reading Achebe's Things Fall Apart, which I've actually never read before, though I've owned a copy in one form or another for ages. I find it odd that the 50th Anniversary Edition doesn't have anything new, not even a new introduction, compared to the original novel. Then I will be back to a number of really long works over the summer -- Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, Mahfouz's Cairo Trilogy and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Certainly an ambitious reading schedule to say the least, which is why it is so important to recharge now.

Actually, given that the computer is still acting up, I might go off and take another nap...

Post 101 - Somewhat meandering thoughts

Through a series of unlikely Google searches, I stumbled across the blog What is Stephen Harper Reading, which can be accessed here.  I was actually searching for some information on Wajdi Mouawad, whose Scorched is a pretty amazing, powerful play, drawing deeply on Greek tragedy and updating it in a way that worked quite well.  I was fortunate enough to see a great performance in Chicago, one of the best plays I saw that year.  There is also a movie version (Incendies), though I have to say I think for this material, the live performance is more effective, though obviously few people will ever have the opportunity to see it live.  What I didn't realize is that Scorched is one of a loose tetralogy (I much prefer the faux-term quadrilogy and will probably use that going forward), comprised of Littoral/Tideline, Incendies/Scorched, Forêts/Forests, and Ciels.  The local library has all, though Ciels is still on order, with the translation having just been published a few months ago.  So I will try to read them in short order and will probably just publish a massive review of all 4 plays.  (At the moment, I have no idea why only one of the 4 would be made into a movie, though perhaps it is the one most firmly in the classical tradition.  Perhaps it will make more sense after I have read all of them.)

Anyway, the list was proposed by Yann Martel, who essentially was trying to shame Harper into taking a more active interest in the arts (and thus continue government support for artists and writers), though I suspect it didn't succeed.  The format reminds me just a bit of the title story from The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, which was really the most successful of the stories in that collection.  The essays can be fairly interesting in their own right, and in fact were collected into 2 books once Martel wrapped up the series at 101 recommended readings.  As it happens, this is my blog post #101 as well, so I have some sense of how hard it is to keep up with these things, and how they do accumulate into something fairly interesting (perhaps).  Would I be better off taking all this energy and spend it on writing short stories instead?  Perhaps, though as I indicated elsewhere, just writing anything, including blog posts, tends to lead to writing other things when one is ready.  I do think I want to try to expend some effort on that poetry series I was working on.  That was supposed to be 40 or 41 sestinas, and I totally blew that off...

Speaking of meandering, I am just back from San Francisco, where I made a shortish stop at City Lights Bookstore.  I've managed to make it there on nearly all my visits, and I managed to find an inexpensive book (of Baudelaire's prose poems) published by City Lights to celebrate my visit.  I did not pick up their newly reprinted edition of Frank O'Hara's Poems Retrieved.  I didn't feel I needed to buy this book, since I read it a long time ago when I was studying O'Hara for my Honors Thesis.  What I didn't recall was that he had an irregular sestina very much like the ones I am writing periodically.  I was more consciously emulating Ted Berrigan (and his irregular sonnets) but it is possible that in the back of my mind I was drawing on this O'Hara poem, as I certainly would have read it back in the day.  Well, perhaps I should have picked up Retrieved Poems as there is supposely little or even no overlap with the Collected Poems (at least the earlier editions of Collected Poems), but I am in no great hurry.  In any case, I will make a copy of this poem "Green Words, A Sestina," so I can study it a bit more closely. 

Another thing that comes to mind is that, despite the unlikelihood of these posts being accumulated into a book like Martel's (or Ebert's reviews for that matter), they will be out there in the internet forever.  (I am still surprised and gratified that I have hit 7000 views, even if some of them must be automatic pings.  You never know which posts become the most viewed, though clearly writing about Atwood always draws a crowd.)  There are a few posts I came very close to writing something that I would quickly regret, so I'll just have to remember to keep some things to myself.  I don't, however, regret writing somewhat negatively about Vancouver's cultural scene, and I'll probably write about Cassandras and Pollyannas somewhere down the line, but the rest of the explicitly political thoughts will be kept under wraps (probably).

It looks like I have read 26 or so of the 101 books that Yann was promoting, and a handful are in a books to read pile.  I don't want to look too closely at the rest of the list, since I don't want to add any more to my own reading lists until I have made some significant progress on the first one at least.  There are some amazing things on there that still need more exposure (Ficciones by Borges) and some odd choices: Calvino's Mr. Palomar (instead of Invisible Cities?).  Martel ends his endeavors by saying that he is going to divert this excess energy into reading Proust, which he has never read in French or in English.  While I don't expect to stop blogging, Proust is slowly coming towards me from my TBR pile, most likely arriving during the summer.  Some of the others on the list that I expect to get to after swallowing and trying to digest Remembrance (picture the elephant in the boa from Le Petit Prince, which is of course on the list) are Gabrielle Roy's The Tin Flute, Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God, Jeanette Winterson's Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit (sort of skimmed this and would like to read properly) and possibly Elizabeth Smart's By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now, and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (though I have to admit this looks a lot less appealing to me than her Housekeeping, but I may give it a go anyway).

What I need to find is more balance.  More balance between work and life (far too heavily skewed towards work), more balance between writing and consuming of other people's work (and certainly of mucking about on the internet -- getting slightly better about not just wasting time -- there are a multitude of sites I won't even visit because I know they are time-suckers (but I make too much of an exception for "news" sites), and probably better balance between buying and using products.  Even now there are movies (and TV shows) where I rush off to buy them if it is a good deal and yet I probably will never get around to watching them.  Perhaps I need a new rule that I can't bring home any more DVDs of TV series until I have actually watched the same number from the collection I already have.  The kids are old enough to watch some of the G and perhaps even PG level TV shows, so we are slowly working our way through some series.

Anyway, that is enough meandering for tonight.  I do have a few key things to work on (work-work and then writing some short pieces for SAGE) before getting a quick cat nap and heading back out to the new offices.

Jacques Tati -- an appreciation

This actually is my 100th post on this blog, so I thought I would make it a special one.

I recently (late April-early May) went on a Tati spree.  I rewatched M. Hulot's Holiday, Mon Oncle, Playtime and Trafic (and the 3 main shorts) over a 2 week period.  I'd seen all of them before, most two or three times before (actually this was the first time through for the short Cours du soir where Tati is doing a mime class with a couple of clips of his other movies like the bicycle plunging into the water).  I'm still debating whether to watch some of the documentaries on the bonus DVDs.  In general, once you've read up on the general outline of his life and seen one extended interview, that seems sufficient.  He was remarkably consistent in his views.  I had the kids watch and they liked parts but were certainly bored for long stretches...  To be honest, I think Trafic gets a bad rap, but is just not that different from Playtime.  If anything it is marginaly more linear.  I would accept that it tries too hard in places, like the crazy car crash that is definitely over-choreographed.  I suppose it is karmic justice that in the end Hulot is blamed for all these things he had no control over whereas in the earlier films he created all this chaos and more or less skated away free.  But that doesn't mean it is any easier to swallow.  (Curiously, Tati did not care for the darker turn that Chaplin took in Limelight, yet seems to be at least heading in the same direction.  He particularly objected to "old clowns" not leaving the stage in time, and yet look at Parade...)

Speaking of Parade, in a week or so, I plan to watch it and decide whether it is a trainwreck or not.  It doesn't really strike me as something that will hold my interest (despite Rosenbaum trying desperately to make the case that it was a radical yet productive new direction that Tati was heading in).  I have to say, from what I have read, Tati really made things harder than they needed to be -- actually cutting out very funny bits from Trafic and even Playtime in the service of his view (encroaching on an ideology) that watching the funny behavior of the "every men" in these films rather than watching Hulot as the main character was somehow a "better" film experience.  Clearly, audiences didn't agree.  My impression is that he just got too rigid about it.  Another undercurrent is that he was a bit of a control freak, like Chaplin, but then also quite disorganized and thus not able to work with collaborators (and certainly not with studio bosses).

I think for some movie-goers, particularly myself, an appreciation for Tati sort of creeps up.  M. Hulot's Holiday (or Jour de Fete) are certainly the most outright comic films, and they seem quite in line with Chaplin or Keaton films, if slightly less manic.  Some of the stunts that Tati films seem just as dangerous as anything that Keaton did, and I still can't get over the shot of him riding a bike off a small hill into a lake.  It's not that hard at all to imagine either Chaplin or Keaton being transplanted to France and making these films with their incidental background music (and repeating themes!) and little dialogue.  There are snatches of conversation, but it is exceedingly rare that the dialogue propels the plot forward.  My daughter still has some trouble reading subtitles, and yet I very rarely had to read them or explain what was going on.  Of all the films, I think they had the most trouble following Mon Oncle actually.

Anyway, there is no question I didn't really get what Tati was going for in Playtime the first time around.  It didn't help that I was watching it on VHS!  And consequently, I remember passing on the Tati films in the Criterion collection at J&R Music World in lower Manhattan. Then I felt a bit stupid when they quickly went out of print (and started fetching such high prices).  But later, I saw that a local cinema was presenting it in 70 mm (this must have been part of the "tour" that Criterion set up to promote its greatly enhanced DVD set).  Many of the visual jokes made much more sense when presented on the big-screen.  And I was simply more receptive to the film the next time around.  In many ways, the films of Tati stay with me much longer than other films; my mind kind of returns to them (perhaps as if they were unsolved puzzles) the way a dog worries a bone.  Quite possibly it is their open-endedness and reluctance to go for a conventional, linear structure that makes them compelling.  At the same time, they can feel like they drag.  Every shot is superfluous to the plot, as it were, so you can often feel a bit fatigued after watching one of the films.

In the end, I think Tati was too rigid about not centering Playtime on M. Hulot.  Films generally do work better when the audience has someone to latch onto, rather than just presenting a bunch of random passers-by and showing how funny the average person is.  Democracy in humor seems a real oxymoron, particularly when perpetrated by one of the more notorious control-freak directors in the business!  For me, Playtime is certainly the most interesting of the bunch, simply because there is so much to take in, and I do think it is a shame that Tati had so much trouble getting further films made.  Who knows what might have come about with a bit more financial freedom (a la Kickstarter)?

Anyway, it appears that the Region 1 DVDs and Blu-Rays are all OOP again, so I won't provide any links.  There are used copies floating about.  BFI has a really nice Tati set with all the films except Trafic, so that is the way to go if you can watch Region 2 DVDs.

Actually, as a quick addendum the one aspect of Playtime that pretty much everyone enjoys is the chaotic aspects of the restaurant/night club on its (premature) opening.  They are shooing the workers away just as the first customers arrive.  That is pretty much my experience this morning when we arrived at our new offices in New Westminster.  There are a few severe kinks still to be worked out, but in general the move has gone smoother than feared.  I have a couple of shots of workers working on the kitchen, and I just missed the workers cleaning out the foyer (just have the stepstool left behind).  I should be able to post them tonight.

I can't actually find any stills of Playtime with the restaurant workers; they may only make sense in context of the rest of the scene.  In any case, this was still in our lobby later this morning.

And here we can see another working installing the dishwasher in the kitchen.  Refrigerator still missing at the end of the day, and no working water filter!  So not quite ready for prime time.  The shattered glass in the stairwell is a particularly nice touch for those that recall the chaos towards the end of the night club scene where Tati manages to smash a glass door and then holds onto the door knob, miming that it is still there.

6th Challenge - 21st review - Galore

I have such mixed feelings about Michael Crummey's Galore.  I thought it missed in a lot of places, but it was ambitious, and I usually award a few points just for that.  The ending is especially audacious, and while it doesn't really work for me, I can see some people would really dig it.  I'll get around to that after the appropriate spoiler warnings.

Anyway, it is hardly a spoiler to say that a whale plays a huge role in setting off an unlikely chain of events, given that one graces the cover.  I alluded elsewhere to Tarr Bela's film Werckmeister Harmonies, which also features a whale washing up on a lightly inhabited coast.  I really have to find the time to watch that soon.  I tried to put in a jump to the Book of Jonah at the bottom of the post, but I couldn't get it to work, so scroll down all the way down if you want to go to the original source material (and yes, a man emerges alive from the belly of the whale in the opening section of Galore).

I'm not sure whether it should count as a spoiler or not that the family tree reveals quite a number of odd pairings.  It also omits one marriage with subsequent offspring, so perhaps Crummey thought that that should not be spoiled -- or that the couple were essentially outsiders to this fairly closed community.

Going by the family trees, there are two main families in this desperately poor fishing community Paradise Deep, Newfoundland (it's hard to say just how far it is from St. John's, but some of the community end up there when life gets too hard in Paradise Deep, though the really ambitious end up going to New England).  King-Me Sellers is a semi-prosperous merchant who owns much of the land, and the Sellers tend to be on the snooty side.  The Devine clan are much poorer, generally just scraping by, but they are much closer to the heart of the village and are generally are the most successful fishermen and so forth.  Devine's Widow is an old, wise woman often considered to be a bit of a witch.  I'll circle back to her after the spoiler warning.  Anyway, according to the genealogy, Seller's daughter Lizzie ends up married to Callum Devine, and on the next page, we find that their daughter, Mary Tryphena couples with her first cousin, Absalom Sellers.  So clearly there will be some juicy goings-on in this novel.

The novel is heavily, heavily reliant upon Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to the point one might call it a kind of cod magic realism (sorry).  Things that sort of made sense in the hot, florid jungles of Marquez's imagination do seem a little off in the cold, near arctic waters.  I think I could have swallowed Jude being rescued from the whale, but then the fact that he never lost the stink, even after 50+ years?  Or the fact that the whole village could see the ghost of this jealous husband?  Or some of the other odd goings on, that insisted that some kind of magic was taking place?  Overlaid on top of this was a bit of a treatise on inter-church politics, which really felt out of place.  I guess he wanted to write a book rife with magic realism, but drawing more on the wondrous nature of early, quasi-folk religions (but again the ghost and some of the other doings just seemed out of place). Crummey over-stuffed this novel, and indeed, many times the characters didn't have believable motivations but were moved about like pawn pieces (or maybe just checker pieces) primarily by King-Me Sellers or Divine's Widow (who most of the time came out on top).  Ok, that's probably enough before the spoiler warnings.

SPOILERS AHEAD

In general, epic multi-generational novels end up not being able to go deep into that many characters.  Another problem is that the focus has to shift at some point from one of the older generation, to a newer generation.  Crummey switches from Mary Tryphena (in my eyes anyway the focal point of the first half) to an outsider doctor in the second half (shades of Northern Exposure perhaps?).  Maybe it isn't a complete surprise that there is just slightly a change in tone and fewer miraculous or semi-miraculous things happen in the second half.  Of course, Crummey may also be making a point how the modern world was catching up, even in the remote parts of Newfoundland, and certainly a number of men and boys are caught up in the War (this must be WWI).  Technological progress was slow in coming to Paradise Deep, but it was coming, though as far as I can remember radio hadn't made it into the village and it was far too small to have a working cinema.  One recurring event is the Mummers going around to each house (around Christmas and before Lent) and that was pretty much the height of amusement in the village. And of course gossiping about other villagers.

One of the main problems I had was just how inconsistently religion seemed to be treated.  The Widow Devine was a wise woman/witch (basically just any woman with more than the usual amount of common sense), but in her private thoughts (not that often expressed in Galore), she viewed herself as just a regular Catholic, but then her other actions (like invigorating some heathen practice of passing babies through a mystical tree and imagining some cosmic bond between Jude and her grandson Michael that made her sacrifice her granddaughter) made little sense.  The only religious figure that Crummey seems to have any affection for is a wild Catholic priest who turns up periodically in the first half of the book.  The other priests start sectarian fights that deeply divide the village, and in the second half of the book, the Catholic bishop acts decisively against the villagers' self-interest by trying to forbid them from joining unions.  Perhaps this is historically accurate (in many ways the Catholic church has been fairly parasitical upon lower-income immigrant communities), but it did come across as somewhat jarring and maybe unnecessary in this book, which already had plenty of conflict within its pages.  Anyway, the Devine clan try to drive out the official Catholic priest (from Italy!) and when that fails, basically they all turn Methodist.

Where Crummey really lost me as a reader was when the Widow Devine seems to be working out these deals with various town officials.  So the rumour is that she manages to keep Jude from being hung, but only by marrying him off to her granddaughter, Mary Tyrphena. And later she cuts some deal with the Catholics that involves the wild priest being excommunicated and driven from the parish.  And then a final deal has Jude sentenced to life in a mental institution.  But while witches may have had some clout in a village like this, it was more of a negative power -- avoid her or else -- but it just strains credulity that she could work out these political deals with the powers that be.  Anyway, I didn't buy any of it, and I found it unlikely how she could keep outmaneuvering King-Me Sellers -- and quite odious how she would force Mary to get married to this stinking, mute fish-man (Jude).  I think she was only about 16 or 17 at the time!  I guess you don't have to like the people in fictional stories, but I sure lost sympathy for the characters right about then and never really recovered it.  I also thought it was a bit of unnecessary, if perhaps latent, sexism that Crummey threw in a few comments about how Mary forced Jude to sleep outside in a separate cabin, but every now and again she would have this craving for his huge member and have sex with him, hating herself afterwards.  (She also seems to really hold it against him when, late in life, she learns that he could write (but still not speak) but never told her (or rather notified her).  As if she had actually fallen in love with him and didn't understand why he wouldn't share his private life with her.)

I guess it isn't a huge surprise that King-Me Sellers and the Widow have quite a back history.  He brought her over from Ireland as a servant and fell in love with her, but then she wouldn't marry him.  Then he banished his daughter when she fell in love with the Widow's son.  And then down the chain a bit, Mary Tyrphena had a one-time fling with her cousin, Absalom Sellers, which produced a fairly hopeless lad, Hensley Devine.  Hensley's main part in the story is to further divide the Sellers and Divine clans, but also to produce a son (Harold) with the child-bride, Bride.  Bride shows flashes of the Widow Devine's competence, though they aren't actually related.  After Hensley's death during a fishing trip, the doctor manages to convince Bride to marry him and apparently they have a few children, who are not part of the main story at all.  They are reasonably happy and content, and thus aren't part of the overall narrative.

It is with the 5th generation that Crummey brings up homosexuality, as if it would only come up once the story hit the early 20th Century.  Anyway, Eli Devine is a bit of a closet case, being more than a little in love with his second cousin, Harold Devine.  They have some schoolboy trysts, which Harold outgrows.  Eli never does.  I didn't think this was handled terribly, but again it just seemed like a bit too much for a story that was already over-detailed.  Eli does eventually marry (later in life) and produces Abel Devine, but then falls hard for an older man, who happens to be the union organizer, and more or less abandons (emotionally at least) his wife and child.  Harold has a more conventional marriage and produces a daughter, Esther, who goes off to Europe and is an opera star for a while, before her voice gives out.

Esther returns to her home village and is everything you would expect of someone "ruined" by decadent Europe -- basically a drug addict who can barely get out of bed.  Abel (10 or so years her junior) is tasked with looking after her and getting her cleaned up.  I guess they are also second cousins (hard to tell).  He falls in love with her, and she lets him.  They do have a brief affair.  Then he is guilted by his mother into dropping Esther and by his father into signing up as an enlisted man in WWI.  (There is some extraneous business about how the union was trying to keep its members out of the war, so they needed some volunteers/sacrificial lambs.)  Anyway, after drawing a bit on Findley's The Wars, Crummey has Abel coming home to Newfoundland on a troop ship, thoroughly shell-shocked and more or less mute.

FINAL SPOILERS

Now things get really weird.  I hadn't quite realized what Crummey was up to, but he was planting these hints that Abel looked like the spitting image of Jude -- and that like his grandfather, Patrick, when he got upset, he gave off a terrible odor.  Well, sure enough, now that the war has caused him to lose his voice and temporarily the use of his legs, a great big whale turns up and opens his mouth, and Abel goes forward (in a wheel chair over the railing) to meet his destiny.  I guess it is supposed to be this big Mobius strip where Abel is actually his great-grandfather Jude.  And perhaps the baby Abel plants in Esther is the original Devine (and the Widow was correct about the cosmic bond).  I couldn't quite tell if Crummey wanted this to be literally science fiction a la Looper (or perhaps the more humourous backstory of Lister in Red Dwarf) or he was just commenting on how legends have to operate in closed worlds -- and that the legendary aspects of life in Paradise Deep were coming to an end with the arrival of modernity.  So what better way to keep the legend going by folding it over onto itself?  (One thing I forgot to mention is that Jude one day simply disappears from his cell in the mental institution -- duh duh daah -- so he is sort of this endless loop in the narrative.)  It was really a disconcerting ending, though I will say it was kind of audacious.  I don't think I'll easily forget the book, but I wasn't really satisfied with it for various reasons I have outlined.

This is my 21st review of the 6th Challenge, and it will probably be my last.  I have a list of very long, non-Canadian books coming up for summertime.  I don't think I will be back to reading Canadian lit. until late August or even Sept., when I should be able to tackle MacLennan's Two Solitudes and Roy's The Tin Flute as my first reviews of the next Challenge.






Jonah Book 1:

1 Now the word of the LORD came unto Jonah the son of Amittai, saying,

2 Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and cry against it; for their wickedness is come up before me.

3 But Jonah rose up to flee unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD, and went down to Joppa; and he found a ship going to Tarshish: so he paid the fare thereof, and went down into it, to go with them unto Tarshish from the presence of the LORD.

4 But the LORD sent out a great wind into the sea, and there was a mighty tempest in the sea, so that the ship was like to be broken.

5 Then the mariners were afraid, and cried every man unto his god, and cast forth the wares that were in the ship into the sea, to lighten it of them. But Jonah was gone down into the sides of the ship; and he lay, and was fast asleep.

6 So the shipmaster came to him, and said unto him, What meanest thou, O sleeper? arise, call upon thy God, if so be that God will think upon us, that we perish not.

7 And they said every one to his fellow, Come, and let us cast lots, that we may know for whose cause this evil is upon us. So they cast lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah.

8 Then said they unto him, Tell us, we pray thee, for whose cause this evil is upon us; What is thine occupation? and whence comest thou? what is thy country? and of what people art thou?

9 And he said unto them, I am an Hebrew; and I fear the LORD, the God of heaven, which hath made the sea and the dry land.

10 Then were the men exceedingly afraid, and said unto him, Why hast thou done this? For the men knew that he fled from the presence of the LORD, because he had told them.

11 Then said they unto him, What shall we do unto thee, that the sea may be calm unto us? for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous.

12 And he said unto them, Take me up, and cast me forth into the sea; so shall the sea be calm unto you: for I know that for my sake this great tempest is upon you.

13 Nevertheless the men rowed hard to bring it to the land; but they could not: for the sea wrought, and was tempestuous against them.

14 Wherefore they cried unto the LORD, and said, We beseech thee, O LORD, we beseech thee, let us not perish for this man's life, and lay not upon us innocent blood: for thou, O LORD, hast done as it pleased thee.

15 So they took up Jonah, and cast him forth into the sea: and the sea ceased from her raging.

16 Then the men feared the LORD exceedingly, and offered a sacrifice unto the LORD, and made vows.

17 Now the LORD had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.


Jonah Book 2:

1 Then Jonah prayed unto the LORD his God out of the fish's belly,

2 And said, I cried by reason of mine affliction unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.

3 For thou hadst cast me into the deep, in the midst of the seas; and the floods compassed me about: all thy billows and thy waves passed over me.

4 Then I said, I am cast out of thy sight; yet I will look again toward thy holy temple.

5 The waters compassed me about, even to the soul: the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head.

6 I went down to the bottoms of the mountains; the earth with her bars was about me for ever: yet hast thou brought up my life from corruption, O LORD my God.

7 When my soul fainted within me I remembered the LORD: and my prayer came in unto thee, into thine holy temple.

8 They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy.

9 But I will sacrifice unto thee with the voice of thanksgiving; I will pay that that I have vowed. Salvation is of the LORD.

10 And the LORD spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.

This is from the King James Bible, which remains the most poetic version.  At one point, I took a "Bible as Literature" course at university, but for some odd reason the professor insisted on using the Revised Standard Version, since it was a better and more reliable translation.  That should have been my tip-off that he took the Bible far too literally.  The whole point of studying the Bible as literature would be to use the King James version, since that is what roughly 80-90% of British and U.S. writers would have drawn upon, and those are the connections that matter, not what a truly "accurate" translation says.

6th Challenge - 20th review -- Ferry Tales

It is such a disappointment when a book that we think will turn out well ends up being not as good as we hoped.  Maybe the disappointment is even greater than reading an even worse book about which we had no preconceptions.  In any event, I found Ferry Tales: Mobility, Place, and Time on Canada's West Coast by Phillip Vannini to be a significant disappointment.  I had actually seen Vannini present some this research at a conference (in Victoria actually), and it was pretty interesting.  He had a slick presentation with video of the ferry and interviews with some of the passengers. There is website still up and running with much of the multi-media content, and that is worth a look here.  To me, this is closer in spirit to that presentation and is definitely the most enjoyable part of the Ferry Tales experience.

It's hard to pinpoint where the book goes wrong, but I'd say a large part of it is Vannini's adherence to postmodern social science.  There are certainly important things to be said about the difficulty of true objectivity, particularly when interviewing subjects (i.e. doing traditional ethnography); however, in many cases (and particularly this book) it actually seems like a cheap move to end up talking ad nauseam about the observer and his (or her) decisions about how to go about informing participants of their involvement in a study.  In this case (and a few others that I can recall), all this concern about the motivations behind doing a study just ends up putting the author at the centre in a way that isn't actually very enlightening.  I knew far more than I wanted to about Vannini and his step-kids and their trips on the ferry (and waits for the same) than I really wanted.  I know that Vannini really did interview scores of other passengers, but not enough of that comes across.

More fundamentally, I can't tell what he really is recommending with regards to ferry service off the B.C. coast.  Perhaps I found his style so annoying by that point that I no longer was very receptive to his proposals, but it really did seem to boil down to B.C. Ferries = bad.  He seems to want B.C. Ferries reorganized as a kind of non-profit cooperative or something.  He doesn't like that they cut back service and raised fares and essentially wants a bottomless subsidy to the ferry system.  From my perspective, this is unreasonable.  People do make decisions on current conditions, but they also have to be aware that things change.  They in turn have to make new decisions (like moving to a different (and closer) island with more service) if the new conditions are no longer suitable.  I don't feel it is my obligation to support people who want to pretend that they are Robinson Crusoe with a perpetual subsidy.  (And I didn't find Vannini's comparisons of supporting the highway network as the same thing as supporting ferry service to be convincing.)  Frankly, I can't quite understand why Vannini doesn't encourage the islanders to start their own informal ferry service(s), since surely most or at least many of them do have their own boats.  That seems to fit much more in the spirit of what he thinks is suitable for the islands -- and would promote independence and "agency" for these folks, rather than just being bound to an agency like B.C. Ferries and the vagaries of provincial financial support for ferry service. 

I should say this isn't a terrible book and it contains some interesting nuggets, but I was expecting so much more.  I would recommend poking around on the website and if you really enjoy that, then consider checking out the book, but be aware that you may know more about Vannini than you want by the end.

Since this is my blog and not a supposedly objective academic book, I will enclose a few photos of my family trip on the main ferry from Vancouver to Victoria.  We lucked out and had a really nice time on the ferry -- windy but sunny.  Even the return trip wasn't too bad, though a little overcast.  Getting to and from the ferry (via bus) was by far the worst part of the trip.

Other passengers enjoying the view

Max Beckmann's Triptychs

I promised I would produce a blog post on Max Beckmann's triptychs.  He completed 9 with a 10th unfinished.  The critic Anette Kruszynski suggests that The Carnival (1920), The Night (1918-19) and The Dream (1921) could be assembled to make up an early triptych, with The Night as its centerpiece, but of course it was never displayed that way.  It might have looked something like this (definitely worth looking up the originals of course):

Given that the official triptych images won't display properly unless I push them way down the page, let me provide a bit of additional background on Max Beckmann.  He was denounced by the Nazis in 1937 and left Berlin immediately for Amsterdam.  In that sense, he left before things got completely untenable in that country for those that the Nazis turned on.  I definitely share with him this belief that when things start going bad, you don't stick around to find out how they turn out.  I generally don't find things take much of a turn for the better.

Beckmann is definitely an unusual artist for his times, still working in figurative modes though clearly much of his work isn't conventional.  It draws on myths and dreams, and the larger paintings are usually overstuffed with symbols.  There are no easy answers to what the paintings mean.  While the look is quite different, I find many similarities with Marc Chagall (another artist from roughly the same era, whom I also admire).  I may rate Beckmann slightly higher than Chagall, but quite possibly only because he is a bit more obscure, so you get more "cred" for knowing about Beckmann.  Anyway, much as I like both of them, they still don't quite rate as highly as Picasso or Matisse, who both moved back and forth from figurative and abstract modes in their later periods.

Many of Beckmann's late works are in museums in the U.S., with the greatest single collection in North America at the St. Louis Art Museum.  I was pretty blown away when I finally made it down there to see the museum.  I hadn't been aware of quite how many they owned, or I would have made a special trip sooner.

It appears that all 9 of the triptychs are in public museums (with 7 of the museums located in the U.S.).  I had the opportunity to see 5 at one time at an amazing Beckmann retrospective at MoMA Queens in 2003.  I actually managed to schedule a work trip to NYC around the Beckmann exhibit, and it was totally worth it.  Seeing these huge triptychs in one place and going back and forth and trying to soak in all the details was, frankly, overwhelming.  I only recently learned that there was an earlier exhibit at Guggenheim SoHo in 1996 that focused on Beckmann's later career (see review here).  Seven of the 9 triptychs were on display!  That is a bit disappointing that I missed it, but I was a poor grad student (relocated to Chicago) and I definitely couldn't fly back for such a thing, even had I been aware of it.  My understanding is that the retrospective at MoMA Queens was a much better overall exhibit, even if I missed out on a couple of the triptychs.

It really varies at each institution how frequently their Beckmann triptych is on display.  For years, you could see The Beginning at the Met, but it wasn't on view on my last two trips.  Departure is usually on view at MoMA, especially since their massive expansion.  I think the smaller museums do display their Beckmann's, but these are huge paintings, forcing 3 or 4 other paintings into storage.  At the National Gallery of Art, The Argonauts is typically on display, but Falling Man (1950) rarely is.  I don't recall seeing it there since the late 90s, but I also am not that frequently in D.C.  I think the last time I saw it in person was at the 2003 MoMA Queens exhibit.  Though it isn't a triptych by any means, I'll go ahead and post Falling Man here and then move on to the triptychs themselves.  I think they are pretty incredible but are really beyond my ability to explicate them.  (There is also now a postscript with some Beckmann news if you scroll all the way down.)

Falling Man (1950)

Departure (1932-5)

At MoMA (On display at the MoMA Queens exhibit -- obviously.)



The Temptation of St. Anthony (1937)

At Bayerische Staatsgemaldesammlungen, Munich.  I have not seen this in person and am somewhat unlikely to at this point.  I guess I will just have to see if it ever turns up on a North American art "tour."


The Acrobats (1939)

I had been given info that this was in a private collection in St. Louis, Missouri, but it actually went into the St. Louis Art Museum collection in 1983 (a good reminder that you do need to check what is on the internet).  Well, that's certainly good news (that is it in a public collection).  I wonder if it was part of the Guggenheim show from 1996 that I missed.  I have been to the St. Louis Art Museum twice, but I simply can't remember if it was on display.  Most likely it was, but I'll see if I can verify somehow.  In any case, I will check to see if it is on view the next time I visit St. Louis (not that this is likely to be anytime in the next couple of years.)


Perseus (1940-41)

At Museum Folkwang, Essen (On display at the MoMA Queens exhibit.)



The Actors (1941-42)

 At the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard (On display at the MoMA Queens exhibit.)



Carnival (1943)
Apparently at the University of Iowa Museum in Iowa City but on extended loan to the Figge Museum in Davenport until Spring 2014. While it is not that likely I will make the trip to Davenport or Iowa City for that matter, I will keep it on my radar.

Still, it does not appear that this was in the big Beckmann show at MoMA Queens, which does somewhat increase the odds that I try to view it in person, though I might wait until it is back in Iowa City -- perhaps I should set up a trip for the kids to discover their (other) Midwestern roots.



Blindman's Buff (1945)

At the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.  While I probably saw this on a previous trip to Minneapolis, I am not 100% sure.  Someday I will surely take another trip to the Twin Cities, and I'll check ahead to confirm that this is on view at MIA.


The Beginning (1946-49)

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC (On display at the MoMA Queens exhibit.)



The Argonauts (1949-50)

At the National Gallery of Art (On display at the MoMA Queens exhibit.)

Newsflash: this news is actually less than two weeks old (as of today).  The Cleveland Museum of Art just purchased a late painting by Beckmann called Perseus' Last Duty (1949) -- story here.  This is a powerful, challenging work with some clear connections to both The Argonauts and obviously Departure.  I haven't been to the Cleveland Museum in probably 5 or 6 years, when I was there for work on a semi-regular basis, so I obviously haven't seen this painting in Cleveland and don't believe it was on display at the NYC art dealers I occasionally visited.  While unlikely, it is possible it would have made its way to the massive annual art fair at Chicago's Merchandise Mart, since the painting has been on the market for a while.  I probably won't make it back to Cleveland for another 5 or 6 years, but I will try to make a stop by the museum if I am ever in town (and hope this on view).

Here is the work:

I can't quite get over this idea that I have seen this painting somewhere, possibly in Chicago or New York in 2001 when it was up for sale by Sotheby's (before this more recent sale to the Cleveland Museum of Art).  I assume that Beckmann is referencing Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère, though here the trick mirror is showing a slightly earlier point in time before the maidens were killed.  (I honestly have no idea what part of the Perseus legend Beckmann is referencing, since it doesn't seem these women are Medusa and her sisters -- seems more like Odysseus coming back and killing all the household maids.)  The dog(?) with the big breasts seems to have wandered in from some Egyptian myth, but perhaps provides a linkage to the dark, busty angel from The Temptation of St. Anthony.  Anyway, quite a fascinating picture, and I will try to get to see it someday.  I think it's great that it is in a public museum (and probably will be on display a lot more regularly than Falling Man for example).

Edit (2/22/2019): I probably should have updated this a while ago, but just didn't get around to it.  In the 6 years(!) since I wrote this post, I did make it to St. Louis, Minneapolis, Davenport, Cambridge, MA and even Cleveland (to see the Impressionist in the Garden exhibit).  I have definitely seen all of the triptychs in person (at least once) with the exception of The Temptation of St. Anthony, which is held in Munich.  However, I still haven't seen Falling Man again, as it appears to be in deep storage at the National Gallery (incidentally The Argonauts is also not on view at the moment, though I've seen it periodically since 2013).

Futurama cancelled again

Sad day.  This is one of my favorite shows of all time.

There is a small chance that Groening will find another outlet for the show, but it looks a bit unlikely (animation budgets are probably still a bit out of Netflix's reach).  There appear to be 13 unaired episodes that come out this summer (though not in Canada in any reasonable timeframe -- boo hiss).  So that is something to look forward to, though watching them will be a bit overshadowed by the knowledge that these are the last.  Un peu de melancholie, peut-etre?  Apparently the final episode can double as a series finale, and it sounds great, but I promise not to put any spoilers in this post.

I guess my favorite 10 episodes (in rough order) are:
Space Pilot 3000 (the first episode naturally -- they sure squeezed a lot in there!)
Godfellas
The Late Philip J. Fry
The Farnsworth Parabox
Roswell That Ends Well
Parasites Lost
Brannigan, Begin Again
Jurassic Bark
The Luck of the Fryrish
Where No Fan Has Gone Before
        
From the last two seasons, I thought these were the best (except for The Late Philip J Fry, which is in my top 10 of all time):
Möbius Dick    
Law and Oracle
Viva Mars Vegas
Overclockwise
The Prisoner of Benda

In general, the last two seasons (and the movies) didn't quite live up to expectations, but I gave it a lot of slack, given that I was so glad it had come back from the dead, so to speak.  And there were definitely some dog episodes in the first 4 seasons (ironically, Jurassic Bark was one of the best).  I agree with some random internet critic who said that the average episodes of New Futurama were maybe a bit worse than Classic Futurama, but when they were on, they still hit it out of the park.  I'm still glad they had more episodes to squeeze in more of the universe (but why they didn't really explore more of the universe -- and make more deliveries! -- is an eternal mystery).

I have most of the comic book spins offs, though I have gotten a bit bad about keeping up with them.  I may need to get some back issues.  I definitely stopped getting the toys after a while, but still I have plenty to play with.

(Bender after my daughter used him as a chew toy! You can see he is missing "little Bender."  While I was a bit upset (ok, a lot upset), I decided I would just pretend I have a limited edition Bender from the "I, Roommate" episode.)

Ironically, I bought PS2 solely to play the Futurama game but barely broke it out, and now I can't even find the console (I think I can track down the game cartridge).  Probably my kids would get a kick out of playing this, if I can ever get it all together in one place and (space)time.