Saturday Review of Books: September 10, 2011

Sep9

“The primary duty of literature is to tell us the truth about ourselves by telling us lies about people who never existed.” ~Stephen King

If you’re not familiar with and linking to and perusing the Saturday Review of Books here at Semicolon, you’re missing out. Hereâ€™s how it usually works. Find a book review on your blog posted sometime during the previous week. The review doesnâ€™t have to be a formal sort of thing. You can just write your thoughts on a particular book, a few ideas inspired by reading the book, your evaluation, quotations, whatever.

Then on Saturday, you post a link here at Semicolon in Mr. Linky to the specific post where youâ€™ve written your book review. Donâ€™t link to your main blog page because this kind of link makes it hard to find the book review, especially when people drop in later after youâ€™ve added new content to your blog. In parentheses after your name, add the title of the book youâ€™re reviewing. This addition will help people to find the reviews theyâ€™re most interested in reading.

After linking to your own reviews, you can spend as long as you want reading the reviews of other bloggers for the week and adding to your wishlist of books to read. That’s how my own TBR list has become completely unmanageable and the reason I can’t join any reading challenges. I have my own personal challenge that never ends.

1909: The Arts

Sep9

Director Sergei Diaghilev brings his Ballets Russes to Paris featuring the dancers Vaslav Njinsky and Anna Pavlova and with choreographer Michel Fokine and designer LÃ©on Bakst. The Ballet Russes is regarded by some as finest ballet company of the twentieth century. When Diaghilev died in 1929, the ballet company was broken up, and the dancers scattered to other companies.

In December 1909, American architect Frank Lloyd Wright completes the famed Robie House in Chicago, one of the most important buildings in American architecture.

Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 is premiered in New York City on November 28, 1909.

1911: Art

Sep9

The “Blue Rider” group of artists led by Kandinsky and Franz Marc, has its first show in Munich Germany in September, 1911. This one is called Improvisation 19:

'Kandinsky, Improvisation 19, 1911' photo (c) 2008, Sharon Mollerus - license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

Kandinsky also wrote a treatise called Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Here are a few sample quotations from Kandinsky’s writing:

“Must we then abandon utterly all material objects and paint solely in abstractions? . . . There is no must in art, because art is free.”

“Colour is a power which directly influences the soul. Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammer, the soul is the piano with many strings. The artist is the hands which play, touching one key or another, purposively, to cause vibrations in the Soul.”

“Let the viewer stroll around within the picture, to force him to forget himself and so to become a part of the picture.”

“I let myself go. I thought little of the houses and trees, but applied colour stripes and spots to the canvas with the knife and made them sing out as strongly as I could.”

I think he’s trying to communicate something, but I’m not sure what. Kandinsky also wrote to Arnold Schonberg and said that he was trying to do in painting exactly what Schonberg had already accomplished in music: “The independent progress through their own destinies, the independent life of the individual voices in your compositions is exactly what I am trying to find in my paintings.”

1911: Popular Music

Sep8

Mark Steyn on the #1 Hit of 1911: Come Josephine in My Flying Machine.

NPR story on the song of the decade, “Alexander’s Ragtime Band”:

More Popular Songs of 1911:
“I Want A Girl (Just Like The Girl)” by William Dillon and Harry Von Tilzer.
“(On) Moonlight Bay” by Edward Madden and Percy Wenrich.
“Oh, You Beautiful Doll” w. A. Seymour Brown, m. Nat D. Ayer.

1910: Books and Literature

Sep7

Author Mark Twain died in on April 21, 1910. He was born in 1835 when the comet had last visited our solar system. Twain wrote in his autobiography: “I came in with Halley’s Comet in 1835. It is coming again next year (1910), and I expect to go out with it. It will be the greatest disappointment of my life if I don’t go out with Halley’s Comet. The Almighty has said, no doubt: ‘Now here are these two unaccountable freaks; they came in together, they must go out together.'”

Important books of 1910:
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House.
Sigmund Freud, Origins and Development of Psychoanalysis.
E. M. Forster, Howards End.

For children in 1910:
Maida’s Little Shop by Inez Haynes Irwin. One of Jen’s favorites: “Maida’s Little Shop was originally published in 1910, and was the first of a series of 15 books about the motherless daughter of a magnanimous tycoon, and her close-knit group of friends.”

Andrew Lang’s last fairy book, The Lilac Fairy Book, was published in 1910. In all, Andrew Lang published twelve fairy-tale collections, starting in 1889 with The Blue Fairy Book. You can listen to all of Lang’s fairy tale collection books at Librivox.

Also in 1910, American illustrator and author Rose O’Neill’s first childrenâ€™s book was published, The Kewpies and Dottie Darling. A few years later Kewpie dolls, based on Ms. O’Neill’s characters, became popular. There’s something about the Kewpie doll that I find disturbing. It’s supposed to be cute and innocent, but it seems . . . sort of sinister.

Wednesday’s Word of the Week: Snollygoster

Sep7

Snollygoster: Popularized in the 1890s by H.J.W. Ham, a Georgia Democrat, a snollygoster is someone who wants political office at any cost â€” regardless of principles or platform. Itâ€™s possible the word came from the German phrase schnelle geister, which means quick spirit.

Maggie Galehouse at Bookish included this word in her post about the book Slinging Mud by Rosemarie Ostler.

There’s a tendency these days to assume that all politicians are snollygosters–at least to some extent. All candidates for political office are corrupted, and every word they say, every action they take is calculated for effect and to get votes. So you get statements like this one from The Daily Beast about Michele Bachman:

“On Monday, Bachmann didnâ€™t talk a lot about her religion. She didnâ€™t have toâ€”she knows how to signal it in ways that go right over secular heads.”

She’s a snollygoster, using her Christianity, covertly, to get votes. Kinda like a Christian fanatic undercover secret agent gal. Or maybe that’s Sarah Palin.

President Obama is accused of “pandering” to get votes–to the black community, to the gay community, to feminists, to Hollywood, to almost any group he even acknowledges or speaks to. He’s just a snollygoster who wanted to be president no matter what he had to say or do to get there.

Or Mitt Romney is a snollygoster because he changed his position from pro-choice to pro-life.

Rick Perry is a snollygoster who stays as quiet as possible and enters the race as late as possible so that he doesn’t say anything that will get him NOT elected.

If they’re all snollygosters with no fixed principles and no core character, what’s a citizen voter to do? I think we’ve become way too cynical. Maybe Rick Perry is trying to be thoughtful, not evasive. Maybe Mitt Romany truly changed his mind about abortion. Maybe Obama believes in gay rights and truly wants to help the black community, and he’s doing the best job he knows how to do as president. Maybe Michele Bachman quotes the Bible because she gets her ideas and core principles from Scripture, and she’s not trying to send secret coded messages to the Christians while retaining the secular conservative vote.

And maybe I’m naive and credulous. But it’s a lot easier to assume the politicians are telling the truth about what they believe and about what they want to accomplish, and then I can decide on the basis of what they say they believe which one best fits my values and political philosophy. And if you’re a snollygoster, well, the truth will out. You can’t fool all of the people all of the time.

1911: Books and Literature

Sep6

The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica (eleventh edition of the encyclopedia) is published as a 29-volume reference tool with articles written by some of the leading scholars of the time: Algernon Charles Swinburne, Bertrand Russell, T.H. Huxley, Ernest Rutherford.

Copyright Act in Britain: Britain establishes six copyright libraries to which copies of all books published in the country must be sent: Bodleian Library (Oxford); British Library (London); National Library of Scotland (Edinburgh); National Library of Wales (Aberystwyth); Trinity College, Dublin; and Cambridge University Library.

Frances Hodgson Burnett publishes the children’s classic, The Secret Garden. Mary Lennox, a ten-year-old girl, is born in India to British parents. Spoiled and with a temper, she is unaffectionate, angry, rude and obstinate. A cholera outbreak kills her parents, and Mary is sent to England to live with her uncle. As Mary begins to experience the outdoors and the garden and the companionship of her cousin, Colin, and the housemaid’s little brother, Dickon, she grows into an unselfish, but still strong-minded, young lady. She is also able to help Colin to grow out of his fear of death and his invalidism.

Z-baby listened to the Focus on the Family Radio Theater audio version of The Secret Garden so many times that we all almost had it memorized. It’s a full-cast drama with actress Joan Plowright doing the narration, and it’s quite well done.

G.K. Chesterton publishes the first collection of “Father Brown” short stories. Father Brown is a nondescript, humble Catholic priest in London who has a knack for solving crimes.

Edith Wharton’s new book is Ethan Frome, the Edith Wharton book that everyone gets to read for English class because it’s short. I read it a long, long time ago for English class, and I don’t remember anything about it except for the snowy New England setting. Was there a skiing or sledding accident? Or was that some othr short novel set in New England? If you want to read Edith Wharton, read House of Mirth or Age of Innocence.

1910: The Arts

Sep6

Go here to look at some amazing photographs from Tsarist Russia, taken in color circa 1910. I have a tendency to think that people lived in black and white that long ago whereas the beautiful colors of God’s world existed then, too. Look and see if you don’t have to keep reminding yourself that the photographs are of real people from the early twentieth century, not actors dressed up as Russian peasants.

Tango fever sweeps Europe and the United States as fashionable young people learn to dance the tango, a dance that originated in the slums of Argentina.

I’m not sure why this couple is dancing about on the edge of some kind of pier or marina, but you can see why many found this new dance to be quite shocking and suggestive.

Texas Tuesday: Oh, Those Harper Girls! by Kathleen Karr

Sep6

A few years ago I read Kathleen Karr’s The Great Turkey Walk out loud to some of the urchins, and I remember us deriving immense enjoyment from the humorous story of a simple boy named Simon and his turkey drive across the Midwest. Well, I would love to read this book, Oh, Those Harper Girls!, to my younger children sometime when we’re studying Texas history. I’m sure they would love getting to know the six Harper sisters: March, April, May, June, Julie, and Lily. (Lily, the youngest was born in April, but that month had already been taken. Hence, Lily.)

The Harper girls live in Texas, in 1869, just after the Civil War, with their refined mother and their ne’er-do-well daddy on the Double H Ranch. Unfortunately, the bank is going to foreclose on the Double H if the Harpers can’t come up with enough money to pay off daddy’s bank loan. Fortunately, Daddy H has a plan. Unfortunately, the plan involves rustling some of the neighbor’s cattle and re-branding them with the Double H brand. Fortunately, the girls fail at cattle rustling. Unfortunately, Daddy has another plan . . . etc, etc, etc.

Oh, Those Harper Girls! is a wonderful comedic farce set in frontier Texas. I think kids and adults together could read this one and enjoy the broad humor as well as the subtle touches or irony and understated absurdity. For instance, the Double H, which is falling apart and mortgaged to the hilt, has a backyard full of “black ooze that kept creeping up around the plants no matter what Mama did to get rid of it. Disgusting, thick, sticky stuff. . . Wouldn’t you know her daddy would pick just such a site to build his ranch on. Poor Daddy never did do the right thing.” Only thirty years too soon.

For some Texan hijinks with a little comedic romance and jail-breaking and a stage tour and stagecoach robbery and even a foiled bank robbery all thrown in for free to keep the story moving along, you can’t go wrong with Ms. Karr’s portrait of six sisters trying to survive and thrive in heat- and poverty-stricken Central Texas. Near Fredericksburg. But the sisters eventually get to go to New York and go on stage at Tony Pastor’s Opera House. (We’ll join the Astors at Tony Pastor’s/And this I’m positive of/That we won’t come home/That we won’t come home/No, we won’t come home until we fall in love!)

His Other Wife by Deborah Bedford

Sep5

There was a certain man from Ramathaim, a Zuphite from the hill country of Ephraim, whose name was Elkanah son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.He had two wives; one was called Hannah and the other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had none. Year after year this man went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the LORD Almighty at Shiloh, where Hophni and Phinehas, the two sons of Eli, were priests of the LORD. Whenever the day came for Elkanah to sacrifice, he would give portions of the meat to his wife Peninnah and to all her sons and daughters. But to Hannah he gave a double portion because he loved her, and the LORD had closed her womb. Because the LORD had closed Hannahâ€™s womb, her rival kept provoking her in order to irritate her. This went on year after year. Whenever Hannah went up to the house of the LORD, her rival provoked her till she wept and would not eat. Her husband Elkanah would say to her, â€œHannah, why are you weeping? Why donâ€™t you eat? Why are you downhearted? Donâ€™t I mean more to you than ten sons?â€ NIV

His Other Wife is the story of a divorced woman, Hilary, and her son, Seth, and Seth’s “other family”, his father, the woman his father is now married to, and their children. The horrible effects of divorce and desertion are not soft-pedaled, but the story manages to jump from one character’s viewpoint to another and make the reader understand to some extent why everyone did what they did. Eric, the dad in the story, is a selfish adulterer, but he’s also a father who loves his son and wants to connect with him. The other wife, Pam, is competitive with an uncontrolled tongue, but she’s also fragile and insecure and trying to make a family with her husband, Eric. Hilary is lonely and way too dependent on her son for her own emotional stability, but she’s a good mom and a persistently loving one. Seth has his own issues, but he’s too busy keeping mom afloat and trying to make her happy to deal with his own emotional needs.

Then, tragedy breaks the entire family dynamic wide open. The story is loosely based on the family dynamic in Hannah’s story in I Samuel. But whereas Hannah and Peninah were rivals in having children, Hilary and Pam are competing for the love and attention of their children, especially Seth. The characters and their interactions are well-written and engaging in this book, and the calamity that brings out all the hidden dysfunction in the family makes the story move along and continue to grab the reader’s attention all the way to the end.

This novel is published by FaithWords, and there is some Christian content and teaching embedded in the story. Hilary’s faith both sustains and challenges her, even though she doesn’t think of herself as much of a Christian, just a semi-regular church-goer who prays emergency “help!” prayers when things go wrong. But in the book, God honors even those simple prayers and brings stability and peace into Hilary’s life when she is desperate enough to look to Him. It wasn’t over-poweringly preachy to me, but others may disagree with that assessment. His Other Wife was a good, thoughtful read which put great characters into an arresting situation that brought out the best and worst in each of them. Good dialog and good psychological insights complete this solid story of two families who must come together for the sake of a son who is suffering a life-changing trial.