Uniquely Magic

“Books are a uniquely portable magic.”
Stephen King

“I'm not saying that you have to be a reader
to save your soul in the modern world.
I'm saying it helps.”

~ Walter Mosely ~
[Thanks Chris Jarmick]

*****************

"I consider reading the greatest bargain in the world. A shelf of books is a shelf of many lives and ideas and imaginations which readers can enjoy whenever they wish and as often as they wish. Instead of experiencing just one life, book-lovers can experience hundreds or even thousands of lives. They can live any kind of adventure in the world. Books are their time machine into the past and also into the future. Books are their "transporter" by which they can beam instantly to any part of the universe and explore what they find there. Books are an instrument by which they can become any person for a while — a man, a woman, a child, a general, a farmer, a detective, a king, a doctor, anyone.

"Great books are especially valuable because a great book often contains within its covers the wisdom of a man or woman's whole lifetime. But the true lover of books enjoys all kinds of books, even some nonsense now and then, because enjoying nonsense from others can teach us to also laugh at ourselves. A person who does not learn to laugh at their own problems and weaknesses and foolishness can never be a truly educated or a truly happy person. Also, probably the same thing could be said of a person who does not enjoy learning and growing all their life." [pronouns adjusted for inclusivity]

~ Gene Roddenberry ~
from Letters to Star Trek
[Thanks Lynn Zentner]

*****************

Allowed to read during church
-- those lucky kids!

See also:
Power of Reading

Once Upon a Cat ~ Halloween Version

Halloween Version
[and Christmas]
of my favorite tin cat signs

"Winter was back with a vengeance. The sunset colors were violent and a racing wind boomed angrily across the sky. Next door to the mystery house a large cardboard carton had been put out for the garbage collectors, and its top flapped wildly in the wind. . . .

The house remained silent, blind, its blank shaded windows giving back only the red reflection of the setting sun."

from Ginnie and the Mystery House, p 53

The Perfect Halloween
might be sitting home quietly,
with cats in lap & books in hand!

Perhaps perusing some
childhood favorites
for old times' sake:
Ginnie and the Mystery Doll
Ginnie and the Mystery House
both by Catherine Woolley

I Will Go Barefoot All Summer for You
by Katie Letcher Lyle

Winter at Cloverfield Farm
by Helen Fuller Orton

I reread this one because the picture of the horse-drawn sleigh on the front made me wonder if it was the long lost story about wishing away time that I've been trying to locate. But, no, it wasn't.

The Diamond in the Window
by Jane Langton

The introduction by Gregory Maguire (Wicked) -- explaining why this was his favorite childhood novel -- is very inspiring. However . . .

. . . after waiting over 50 years to reread these books, I would have to say that now, for me, they all seem not just sadly but also weirdly dated. Sorry, I can't even make an exception for Jane Langton and The Diamond in the Window, no matter how beloved. These titles may have spoken to my heart in the 1960s, but I certainly would not pick them today for a growing girl.

Trying to Make Sense

Cartoon by Hartley Lin

*****************

"I tried to make sense of things.
Now that I think about it, I have always tried.
It could be my epitaph.
LEO GURSKY: HE TRIED TO MAKE SENSE."

From The History of Love (121)
By Nicole Krauss

And so have I!
Which is why I keep writing these posts!

*****************

My mother had . . . "that cross inquiring look, as if she was going to pull up shortly and demand that everything make sense." (107)

My friend Jerry . . . "hated people using big words, taking about things outside of their own lives . . . trying to tie things together. Since these had been great pastimes of mine, why did he not hate me?" (241)

"The hope of accuracy we bring to such tasks is crazy, heartbreaking. And no list could hold what I wanted, for what I wanted was every last thing, every layer of speech and thought, stroke of light on bark or walls, every smell, pothole, pain, crack, delusion, held still and held together – radiant, everlasting." (276)

"I read 'The Life of Charlotte Bronte' . . . and . . . dreamed a nineteenth-century sort of life, walks and studying, rectitude, courtesy, maidenhood, peacefulness." (212)

From Lives of Girls and Women
By Alice Munro

[and from Who Do You Think You Are?]

*****************

On the other hand . . .
"In one of the first teachings I ever heard, the teacher said, “I don’t know why you came here, but I want to tell you right now that the basis of this whole teaching is that you’re never going to get everything together.” I felt a little like he had just slapped me in the face or thrown cold water over my head. But I’ve always remembered it.

He said, “You’re never going to get it all together.” There isn’t going to be some precious future time when all the loose ends will be tied up. Even though it was shocking to me, it rang true. One of the things that keeps us unhappy is this continual searching for pleasure or security, searching for a little more comfortable situation, either at the domestic level or at the spiritual level or at the level of mental peace.”

From Start Where You Are:
A Guide to Compassionate Living
By Pema Chodron

[emphasis added]

Johnny Tremain and Other Heroes

In his essay, "Thank You, Esther Forbes," American essayist George Saunders (b 1958) attributes his love of literature to his third grade teacher, Sister Lynette, who suggested that he read Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes (1891 - 1967).

This childhood classic becomes the dividing line in his life: "Before Johnny Tremain, writers and writing gave me the creeps." But after reading it . . .

" . . . the world, suddenly and for the first time, transformed into something describable, with me, the Potential Describer, at the center.

The world, I started to see, was a different world, depending on what you said about it, and how you said it. By honing the sentences you used to describe the world, you changed the inflection of your mind, which changed your perceptions. . . .

Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). If we learn what a truthful sentence looks like, a little flag goes up at a false one.

. . . But this process takes time, and immersion in prior models of beautiful compression.

Forbes was my first model of beautiful compression. She did for me what one writer can do for antoher: awoke a love for sentences. . . . Reading Johnny Tremain, I felt a premonition that immersion in language would enrich and bring purpose to my life, which has turned out to be true.

So thank you, Esther Forbes . . . that boy made out of words, changed things for me forever" (62 - 64)

It turns out that George Saunders is not the only American talent whose formative years were shaped by Johnny Tremain; there's also Ted Lasso.

Ted: "When I was in fifth or sixth grade, there was this book called Johnny Tremain, and our homework for, like, a month was to read this book. At the end of the month, I hadn't read a lick of it, you know. And we had a test, big test, like, the next day. And the night before, I was anxious as all heck, and I couldn't sleep, and my dad starts getting after me about that. And I start crying. And he's like, "Whoa, buddy. What's wrong? What's wrong?" And I tell him what's up. And he says, "Hey, don't worry about it, okay. Just go up to your room, lay your head on your pillow and think about something you're looking forward to."

So that's what I did. Next morning, I wake up, and he says, "Hey, you ain't gonna ride your bike to school. I'm gonna drive you." And I'm like, "All right." And on the way to school, he talks me through the entire book, like it's a bedtime story or something. Because he stayed up all night, the whole night, reading the whole damn thing, 'cause he didn't want his little boy stressed out over some stupid, silly test. And I ended up getting an A. Boom.

He was a good dad. And I don't think he knew that."

From: Season 2, Episode 10:
"No Weddings and a Funeral"

Despite its widespread influence, Johnny Tremain was somehow absent from my own grade school reading program. As for my children, I remember buying them a copy when the title appeared on their summer reading list, but I can't say for sure that they actually read it.

George Saunders' high praise of Esther Forbes inspired me to correct the oversight at long last. When I went to find Johnny Tremain on our Adolescent Lit Shelf, I pulled down a couple of others as well, that I remember my son Sam reading and reporting on the 6th grade:

Ghost Cadet and Ghost Soldier
both by Elaine Marie Alphin (1955 - 2014)

Thanks Elaine, and Rest in Peace.
We were honored to meet you at the
Happy Hollow Middle School Book Fair.
How we wish you had not died young.
Alphin, like Forbes, wrote novels of American history but with the added component of apparitions and time travel -- always a plus! It's worth taking a moment to look back in time at the conflicts faced by Apprentice Jonathan Lyte Tremain, Cadet Wm. Hugh McDowell, and Private Richeson Francis Chamblee, three earnest protagonists whose stories are fun and mind - expanding, requiring Patriots to be understanding of Loyalists, and Yankees to be tolerant of Confederates.

Another young American hero that Saunders cannot speak too highly of is Huckelberry Finn:

"Huck and Tom represent two viable models of the American Character. They exist side by side in every American and every American action. America is, and always has been, undecided about whether it will be the United States of Tom or the United States of Huck.

The United States of Tom looks at misery and says: Hey, I didn’t do it. It looks at inequity and says: All my life I have busted my butt to get where I am, so don’t come crying to me. Tom likes kings, codified nobility, unquestioned privelege. Huck likes people, fair play, spreading the truck around. Whereas Tom knows, Huck wonders. Whereas Huck hopes, Tom presumes. Whereas Huck cares, Tom denies. These two parts of the American Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the nation, and come to think of it, these two parts of the World Psyche have been at war since the beginning of the world, and the hope of the nation and of the world is to embrace the Huck part and send the Tom part back up the river, where it belongs." (203 - 04)

Both essays --
"Thank You, Esther Forbes" &
"The United States of Huck" --
can be found in The Braindead Megaphone:
Essays by George Saunders (2007)

****************

Previously

"Tolstoy thought well of you
– he believed that his own notions
about life here on earth would be
discernible to you, and would move you.

"Tolstoy imagined you generously,
you rose to the occasion."

~ George Saunders ~

Willa Cather Summer

"A pioneer should have imagination,
should be able to enjoy the idea of things
more than the things themselves."
(O Pioneers! 28)

The Song of the Lark (1884)
by Jules Breton (1827 – 1906)

Cover Design & Illustration
by Wendell Minor (b 1944)

Cover art unattributed,
likely Wendell Minor

In order of publication:
O Pioneers! (1913)
The Song of the Lark (1915)
My Ántonia (1918)

I love the way these book covers capture Willa Cather's sweeping vision of frontier life. Cather looks deep into both the interior psyche and the exterior landscape inhabited by the settlers of the North American Great Plains. The pioneers may be surrounded by stunning natural vistas, yet their hearts are often troubled by conflict and anxiety.

For further reading ~ click here ~
Most are brief, as novels go,
so you needn't be daunted by the project
of assigning them all to yourself as a
summer reading challenge.
Back in 1977, I was required to read My Antonia, which I loved and have re-read a few times over the years, especially the beautiful Christmas chapters, and the segments that remind me so much of my own great - grandmother's descriptions of homesteading in Nebraska.

I don't know why it took me so long to read more of Willa Cather's elegant, evocative historical fiction. However, I knew it was time when, within days of each other, one friend (Antoinette) recommended Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927) and another (Claude) recommended One of Ours (1922). In turn, I suggested these titles to my friend Megan, also an avid reader.

When I asked Megan if she had read My Antonia in high school or college American Lit, she wrote back: "Yes I literally had to choose my own book to do a book report on in high school, and I chose My Antonia. I've never re-read it. I'm usually a one and done reader, movie watcher, husbands -- haha! Good for you to go deep into an author. Then you really know their voice, right?" Megan always gets it!

In the same way that My Antonia coincides with the experience of my ancestors in Nebraska, numerous details in One of Ours echo the letters that my grandfather and his brother sent home from France during World War I. A month before he died, my Great Uncle Sam wrote to his mother:

"I surely hope you are not worrying about me and trust you are not because I am faring fine so be easy as possible. I figure this is a cause worthy of an easy mind, although the outcome might be unfortunate for a boy, it is well worth whatever loss he meets, is simply why I can set steady in the boat. I want you to see it is so, not for the good old US alone but for humanity's sake in general, and I know you do of course and . . . see where we are fighting for Right and it's not near as much trouble for you. For me, I am not bothered a bit -- can't be bothered haha!"

Informative background sources reveal timely connections between the current war in Ukraine and Cather's portrayal of World War I. This particular analysis is uncannily consistent with Sam's letter home and with recent testimonials I have read from determined young Ukrainian soldiers:

"Whether or not one agrees with those who create wars — the politicians — men and women do go to war, fight, and die out of a sense of patriotism, honor, and duty, because of some sense of a higher truth or greater cause. Because war is horrible, some do become disillusioned with the experience; some are traumatized forever. Some, like G. P. Cather [Willa Cather's cousin] and Claude Wheeler [Cather's main character in One of Ours], die before their illusions or ideals are destroyed.

" . . . a statement made by one of Cather’s most critical contemporaries in the same year she began work on “Claude” [to be retitled "One of Ours"]: 'how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out and old and illusions shattered' (Baker 52). That was young Ernest Hemingway."

from " 'Pershing's Crusaders':
G.P. Cather, Claude Wheeler, and the AEF Soldier in France"
by Richard C. Harris

An unexpected connection:

"In those days Claude had a sharp physical fear of death. A funeral, the sight of a neighbour lying rigid in his black coffin, overwhelmed him with terror. He used to lie awake in the dark, plotting against death, trying to devise some plan of escaping it, angrily wishing he had never been born. Was there no way out of the world but this? When he thought of the millions of lonely creatures rotting away under ground. life seemed nothing but a trap that caught people for one horrible end. There had never been a man so strong or so good that he had escaped. And yet he sometimes felt sure that he, Claude Wheeler, would escape; that he would actually invent some clever shift to save himself from dissolution. When he found it, he would tell nobody; he would be crafty and secret. Putrefaction, decay . . . . He could not give his pleasant, warm body over to that filthiness!" (p 27)

from One of Ours
Chapter 1: "On Lovely Creek," Part VII

and from an unrelated work,
which I happened to be reading
coincidentally the same week
that I pulled out all the Cather novels:
"Men especially dislike the thought that after each one ceases to exist, others will continue in the usual way, soon filling the empty space. Along this line of thought a man is pushed toward the conclusion that no matter how precious his life is to him, no matter how he strives, accomplishes, and hoards to validate that life and protect it against every assault, still in the cosmic scale it weighs no heavier than the life of a hyena or a scorpion." (p 28)

from The Crone: Woman of Age, Wisdom, and Power
by Barbara G. Walker

In conclusion,
a few favorite highlights from

Death Comes for the Archbishop:
1. The Long Nights of Lent
2. Hue, Value, Intensity
3. Like a Coloured Map
4. Missing Ancestors
5. Softly, softly

The Professor's House:
1. Going to the Lake
2. Taking Death Seriously
3. In Art As It Is In Heaven

My Antonia:
Thus Far Our Experience

And numerous other references on
The Quotidian Kit

Sweet Serenity But Not Enough Time

Thanks Gene Ziegler & Dozen Best Books

“The love of learning, the sequestered nooks,
And all the sweet serenity of books”
(stanza 21)

from
"Morituri Salutamus: Poem for the 50th Anniversary
of the Class of 1825 in Bowdoin College"

by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

****************

Last week, I was translating
this same phrase: Hail, Caesar!

"Avē Imperātor / Caesar moritūrī tē salūtant"
["Hail, Emperor / Caesar,
those who are about to die salute you"]

In addition to appreciating the sweet serenity of books, Longfellow also grasped the frustrating impossibility of ever completing one's "to - do" list. He doesn't mention books specifically, but you know they are there, waiting to be read, everywhere you turn: "By the bedside, on the stair"! And all those amazon deliveries: "At the threshold, near the gates":

Something Left Undone

Labor with what zeal we will,
Something still remains undone,
Something uncompleted still,
Waits the rising of the sun.

By the bedside, on the stair,
At the threshold, near the gates,
With its menace or its prayer,
Like a mendicant it waits:

Waits, and will not go away, —
Waits, and will not be gainsaid.
By the cares of yesterday
Each to-day is heavier made,

Till at length it is, or seems,
Greater than our strength can bear, —
As the burden of our dreams,
Passing on us everywhere;

And we stand from day to day
Like the dwarfs of times gone by,
Who, as Northern legends say,
On their shoulders held the sky.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807 - 1882)
poet and an educator best known for
"Evangeline," “Paul Revere’s Ride,” “The Song of Hiawatha,”
and "I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day"

*******************

It seems that Longfellow has captured the
19th Century version of the Pink Floyd song:

Time

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your hometown
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine, staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long, and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I'd something more to say

Home, home again
I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It's good to warm my bones beside the fire

Far away across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells

Life Stories

Classy Gift from a Classy Friend
an intriguing mystery in verse,
complete with whimsical illustrations
and this stylish cover design!

Thanks to my friend Megan --
a good sport, a good writer, an intense reader,
and a guest blogger -- for the above clever diversion
and for following serious suggestions:
Megan: I am delving into autobiographies and biographies right now. Listening to them when I'm out walking daily is a great way to enjoy them. I was doing podcasts before that and decided to try some audiobooks:

First I tried Einstein's but found it too technical! Haha!

Warren Buffett's 800 pager was great in my opinion.

Melinda Gates: The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World was excellent and I highly recommend.

Now I'm on The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race by Walter Isaacson (Re CRISPR).

Megan: One of my favorite thrift stores has softcover books for 25 cents & hardcover for a dollar. I'm thankful that there seems to be a biography reader in the neighborhood!

I have Mark Twain's autobiography sitting on my nightstand -- several tomes! I'm sure they'll be really entertaining though.

Just finished Johnny Cash's short biography. Tina Turner's is sitting here as well, coincidentally since she had just passed away this week. My neighbor was throwing those out so I grabbed them, even though musicians are not a typical choice for me.

I read Audition: A Memoir by Barbara Walters earlier in the year, before she died. That was super interesting since I knew all the famous players that she was interviewing and had stories of! Couldn't believe she died a short time later and that she was 93! What a life she had, a groundbreaker for women in journalism and in the world!

I've also noticed that there seems to be a Larry McMurtry reader in the neighborhood too. I read one of his novels a long time ago for a book club and found him to be a beautiful writer; but these are cowboy stories, not biographies, so I'm passing on McMurtry for the moment.

My friend Beata
recommends this one:

One more bio / autobio
for summer reading:
Thanks to our friends Michele & Stephen,
and to Gerry for sharing this one with me:

Favorite passage:
"I enjoyed the rhythms [of the flight drills],
the poetry, the meditative chant of it all.
And I found deeper meanings in the exercise.
I'd often think: It's the whole game, isn't it?
Getting people to see the world as you see it?
And say it all back to you?" (127)

Interesting comparison of Harry's book
to Bridget Jones' Diary

I find this connection especially appropriate
because no one wrote more sensitively about
the death of Diana than Helen Fielding did in
the sequel: Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason