Wednesday Who Never Arrived
Oct. 14th, 2020 05:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
evelyn_bTechnically still on Wednesday! It's been a while. I don't know what happened! Actually, I do, but it's 100% real life and extremely dull to everyone but me. So let's get back to
What I've Been Reading
I've finished reading the massive and affable Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon, which closes on a note of stirring optimism in 1921, shakes its head sadly at itself in a postscript called "Seven Years Later," then resumes in the voice of Van Loon's son, in 1956, to tell the story of the next Great War and what happened after. The best thing about this book, besides its napkin maps, is that it keeps getting updated. The most recent revision was 2014! I can only hope that it keeps on growing forever, like Doctor Who, taking on new hopes and disappointments, and that the editors take care to clip off a few more of the racist asides each time.
The only real complaint I have about my 1956 edition is that someone cut out the bibliography! Van Loon spends 800 pages hurrying through the centuries, promising us we can read more about everything in the wonderful books listed at the back, and then there are no books listed at the back! This is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the 1956 editors that I hope has been corrected since.
Let the Hurricane Roar is Rose Wilder Lane's first novel, based on the same material she and her mother used to write the Little House books. Let the Hurricane Roar tells the story of Charles and Caroline, a couple of crazy kids who marry young and head out West to start a life in a sod house on the prairie, only to have all their wheat eaten by locusts and other memorable episodes from the later series. It’s easy to see why it was a bestseller in 1933, and equally easy to see why it hasn’t had the lasting cultural impact of the Little House books. The characters aren't especially memorable, except when they're being excruciatingly independent, and we sweep through the impressive horrors of pioneer life like a scouring but not unusually observant wind. There are some good passages, too. You really can't go wrong with a locust swarm, and the moment when Caroline's only neighbors within a day's drive learn that their bees have killed all their young because there's nothing left to feed them is top-notch despair. It was reissued in the 70s under a new title with the names changed.
What I Sincerely Regret that I Feel Compelled to Report
The New York Times Book Review cartoon this past Sunday was really bad. So bad that I wondered if I was missing something, some dried pea of sophistication secreted under its pillowy dumbassedness. Am I? Probably not, but who can tell? The conceit is, "what if FAMOUS WRITERS were living in COVID TIMES" and all the punchlines are things like "A hundred years of solitude?? Sure feels like it this week, ha ha ha ha," and I know it's not the job of the New York Times to cater to my elitist cartooning preferences, but come on.
What I'm Reading Now
Still Rose Wilder Lane's letters, which are probably more interesting if you're slightly more invested in the history of 20th century libertarianism than I am, plus a book called Fire Upon the Deep which starts with a newly empowered AI getting geared up to kill all humans, and has swerved over into some (to me much more enjoyable) non-AI worldbuilding (or is it?). I've just gotten started.
I've also started reading a very friendly book called Making Things Grow which is a guide for the perplexed about keeping houseplants in 1974.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'll probably mostly just be catching up next week. HOWEVER, the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was announced sometime in the past few weeks (congrats, Louise Glück). That's as good an excuse as any to declare this a NEW YEAR and start my Nobel Prize reading project! I already have an anthology of French verse that includes some of Sully Prudhomme's poems in English. Poor thing has NO complete book translations in English, as far as I can tell with limited resources, and the library catalog was so unhelpful that I had to physically plunge into the stacks and start opening books in order to find him. But between this book and the good people of the internet, we'll do what we can.
What I've Been Reading
The tremendous emotion of the great revolutionary era had influenced the character of the people of that day in a strange way. Men and women who had lived through twenty years of anxiety and fear were no longer quite normal. They jumped whenever the door-bell rang.
I've finished reading the massive and affable Story of Mankind by Hendrik Willem van Loon, which closes on a note of stirring optimism in 1921, shakes its head sadly at itself in a postscript called "Seven Years Later," then resumes in the voice of Van Loon's son, in 1956, to tell the story of the next Great War and what happened after. The best thing about this book, besides its napkin maps, is that it keeps getting updated. The most recent revision was 2014! I can only hope that it keeps on growing forever, like Doctor Who, taking on new hopes and disappointments, and that the editors take care to clip off a few more of the racist asides each time.
The only real complaint I have about my 1956 edition is that someone cut out the bibliography! Van Loon spends 800 pages hurrying through the centuries, promising us we can read more about everything in the wonderful books listed at the back, and then there are no books listed at the back! This is an unfortunate oversight on the part of the 1956 editors that I hope has been corrected since.
Let the Hurricane Roar is Rose Wilder Lane's first novel, based on the same material she and her mother used to write the Little House books. Let the Hurricane Roar tells the story of Charles and Caroline, a couple of crazy kids who marry young and head out West to start a life in a sod house on the prairie, only to have all their wheat eaten by locusts and other memorable episodes from the later series. It’s easy to see why it was a bestseller in 1933, and equally easy to see why it hasn’t had the lasting cultural impact of the Little House books. The characters aren't especially memorable, except when they're being excruciatingly independent, and we sweep through the impressive horrors of pioneer life like a scouring but not unusually observant wind. There are some good passages, too. You really can't go wrong with a locust swarm, and the moment when Caroline's only neighbors within a day's drive learn that their bees have killed all their young because there's nothing left to feed them is top-notch despair. It was reissued in the 70s under a new title with the names changed.
What I Sincerely Regret that I Feel Compelled to Report
The New York Times Book Review cartoon this past Sunday was really bad. So bad that I wondered if I was missing something, some dried pea of sophistication secreted under its pillowy dumbassedness. Am I? Probably not, but who can tell? The conceit is, "what if FAMOUS WRITERS were living in COVID TIMES" and all the punchlines are things like "A hundred years of solitude?? Sure feels like it this week, ha ha ha ha," and I know it's not the job of the New York Times to cater to my elitist cartooning preferences, but come on.
What I'm Reading Now
Still Rose Wilder Lane's letters, which are probably more interesting if you're slightly more invested in the history of 20th century libertarianism than I am, plus a book called Fire Upon the Deep which starts with a newly empowered AI getting geared up to kill all humans, and has swerved over into some (to me much more enjoyable) non-AI worldbuilding (or is it?). I've just gotten started.
I've also started reading a very friendly book called Making Things Grow which is a guide for the perplexed about keeping houseplants in 1974.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'll probably mostly just be catching up next week. HOWEVER, the 2020 Nobel Prize in Literature was announced sometime in the past few weeks (congrats, Louise Glück). That's as good an excuse as any to declare this a NEW YEAR and start my Nobel Prize reading project! I already have an anthology of French verse that includes some of Sully Prudhomme's poems in English. Poor thing has NO complete book translations in English, as far as I can tell with limited resources, and the library catalog was so unhelpful that I had to physically plunge into the stacks and start opening books in order to find him. But between this book and the good people of the internet, we'll do what we can.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 12:22 am (UTC)WHAT. A travesty. I too can only hope that the most recent edition corrects this, because otherwise what is even the POINT.
(Despite my Newbery project I have never actually read The Story of Mankind, being unable to face the prospect of eight hundred pages of probably-racist history, but you make a compelling argument in favor of reading it... if the most recent edition has restored the bibliography.)
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 02:01 pm (UTC)The racism is bad when it shows up in acute form, but it shows up mostly in asides that would be easy to reword or just lop off entirely. The book as a whole is a "western civ" history that takes the typical wandering path through Egypt to Greece and Rome and west to the realms of the Pope, etc., partly justified by its claim to be a history for Van Loon's children about "your own distant cousins." You wouldn't want it to be the only book about history a kid ever reads, but that's true of every book.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 08:08 am (UTC)Wow. They mean, like Shakespeare, who lived through several outbreaks of the plague that closed theatres and killed thousands of Londoners? Classic mid 19th C writers who lived through the Cholera epidemic? Or 20th C writes who lived through two world wars and a flu pandemic? Somehow I think they'd be less thrown than we are.
declare this a NEW YEAR and start my Nobel Prize reading project!
That is a very impressive aim! I hope it goes well for you. Even if people don't apparently think winning the Nobel Prize warrants translation into English.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 01:44 pm (UTC)And thank you! I wouldn't be surprised if there was an English translation of one of his books that just went out of print before WorldCat existed and doesn't happen to be held by any US libraries on the system (or if there is one and I just gave up before I found it). I also wouldn't be that surprised if the translation just hadn't happened; I'd guess that the overlap between "English speakers who want to read French poetry" and "English speakers who read French more or less comfortably" was significantly bigger in 1901 than it is today, and maybe a little bigger still twenty years before when M. Prudhomme was doing more writing.
It was a controversial pick for the first Nobel Prize. Lots of people angry it didn't go to Tolstoy, some who just didn't think Sully P. deserved it.
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 05:06 pm (UTC)Lots of people angry it didn't go to Tolstoy, some who just didn't think Sully P. deserved it.
Well, in that case he can't expect translations, I suppose!
no subject
Date: 2020-10-15 02:45 pm (UTC)