F is for Family: "Rappaccini's Daughter" by Nathaniel Hawthorne

 3-128

Other F Ideas: Fate and Form

Summary: "Rappaccini's Daughter is made of mad plant science." 

Bonus: 

There's camp, and then there's Camp.

Commentary: I remember reading and enjoying "Rappaccini's Daughter" in undergrad. Before I reread it, I want to say that the summary I have in my head is, "Rappaccini's Daughter is made of mad plant science."  Excited to see if that's still correct, I'm misremembering, or it's a entirely different story all together. (Edit: I was right.)

Hawthorne emphasizes, "It was strangely frightful to the young man’s imagination to see this air of insecurity in a person cultivating a garden, that most simple and innocent of human toils." We often see gardening as a refuge in fiction, so it is interesting to see the opposite here. Also, the phrase, "her virgin zone" exists, as in:

She looked redundant with life, health, and energy; all of which attributes were bound down and compressed, as it were, and girdled tensely, in their luxuriance, by her virgin zone.

Top pull quote of the month so far. Drop that at parties to sound cultured. 

The foreshadowing is heavy here. Lots of "she and the plant were as the same", "Other absurd rumors there be, not worth talking about or listening to",  and things of that nature.

"RD" is an interesting combination of Hawthorne's very literary writing style with very pulpy mad scientist tropes. Obviously these weren't particularly developed in the 1840s (it wouldn't surprise me if Rappaccini is the basis for some more modern mad scientist characters), but the weirdness of the combo makes him seem even crazier.

"He cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge."

It doesn't get much more mad sciencey than that. When did we stop using the mustard seed as a unit of measure? I feel like I used to see it often. It's the 19th century banana for scale.

Cellini gets a cameo! Classics crossover!  (Also, the obvious Beatrice refence to Dante, who is also mentioned.) 

“Was it a hard doom?” asked Giovanni, fixing his eyes upon her.

“Only of late have I known how hard it was,” 

3/5 Even better than I remembered it. Go read your literary mad science.

I am thankful for Family in general, but especially my wife, who I will now go snuggle before bed.

 

Bonus Sunday 1: "The Telltale Heart" by Edgar Allen Poe

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Summary: Murder! Guilt! Spooky!

Bonus: Christopher Lee

Commentary: Got back from a convention, grabbing a quickie. As anyone whose followed the blog since the beginning will know, I like Poe quite a bit. I read "The Telltale Heart" years ago (undergrad?) and it's a bit different than I remember. I thought there was more of a reason to the murder, and the cops were there for longer. On the topic of Poe, I saw (supposedly) the actual raven that inspired "The Raven" at a library in Philadelphia once. Seems questionable, but cool either way. 3/5 solid story. Very effective for such a short story.

E is for Emotion: "A Passion in the Desert" by Honoré de Balzac

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Other words for E: Education, Element, Eternity, Evolution, Experience

Summary: A guy lost in the desert befriends and kills a panther.

Bonus: Dated memes

Commentary: The idea of this one is that you can tame an animal using its desires. That's a fair topic for a story (though a little close to last night's), but the execution here is kinda meh. The guy pets a wild panther into submission, then kills it when it plays a little rough with him. Feels kind of obvious, and short on details. 1/5 Not a great story.

I am thankful for absolutely nothing related to emotions. A bad word to pair with a bad story.

D is for Desire: "The Darling" by Anton Chekov

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Other words for D: Definition, Democracy, Dialectic, Duty

Summary: A woman has no opinions except those of the men she's with.

Bonus: Wessels

Commentary: I 100% picked this one just to read some Chekov. It's weird to see someone using "sent to Siberia" unironically, it's become such a joke for us.

"please don’t butt in! It’s really annoying!" sounds very modern for the rest of the story. Probably just a translation quirk.

It's interesting to read a story from a long time a go and another culture (it's interesting in and of itself to have a Russian story in a "Western" anthology) about codependency. I something I think of as more modern (the word doesn't really exist until the early 80s). I've said before that this is one of my favorite parts of reading these selections, seeing how issues we think are new actually existed for years and in other places. 2/5 Good story, but not a must read or anything.

I'm grateful for having Desires. Sometimes it's hard to muster them, but life is better when you do.

C is for Courage: "Mowgli's Brothers" by Rudyard Kipling

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Summary: Prometheus Mowgli steals fire and is banished.

Bonus: There's really only one choice here.

Commentary: Not super impressed with this one. Kipling's writing is awkward (ye is well out of date compared to the rest of his vocabulary), the story's not particularly exciting (Mowgli never really seems to be much threatened by Shere Khan), and he's probably the least developed character in his own story. 1/5 not worth its pages in the collection.

I'm grateful for all the people who have had the courage to stand up for the rights we (mostly) enjoy today.

B is For Beauty: "How Should One Read a Book?" by Virginia Woolf

5-5

B is for: beauty and being (surprisingly slim pickings)

Summary: Read however you want, but keep an open mind.

Bonus: Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? 

Commentary: Apparently I need to read another one of these. Or I'm just a masochist. I think that's 3 "How to read..." articles and a whole book, plus the intros from the Gateway (which, btw, I recommend over pushing through all of How to Read a Book unless you have a good reason).

Woolf is more flexible than Adler. While he offers some options in the exact technique you go about reading and marking a book, he's fairly specific on what the questions you should ask, what you should mark, etc. Woolf opens as follows:

Even if I could answer the question for myself, the answer would apply only to me and not to you. The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions. 

"Squirting half the house to water a single rosebush," is a great metaphor for doing things carelessly. All of you should use it in your blogs this month, let's get it into the lexicon. 

Both Adler and Woolf emphasize working with the author to understand their writing, and waiting to criticize until you've read and understand, though both agree criticism is an important part of reading (Woolf is more forceful here). We often talk about how good writers need to read a lot, but I think Woolf is the first person I've read recommending that a reader try writing to get an idea of the process. 

I don't know how I feel about her contention that most non-fiction isn't art. Is a portrait or a landscape of a real thing not art, but fantasy art is? 

I think I'm getting close to the part of my classics journey where she talks about starting to find books that relate to our tastes in other books. I was thinking about doing either the full Gateway or maybe a Norton Anthology, but I think my to read list seems long enough to just dive in. 

This accidentally paired nicely with last night: the art of writing and that of reading. Another 3/5 on the Classics scale (the Classics scale is very judgey. "Good" starts at a 2.)

I'm grateful for all the Beautiful books I get to read.

A is for Art: "On Style" by Art Schopenhauer

FIRST DAY OF A TO Z! 5-124

Real fast version if this is your first time here. This blog is, mostly, me reading and commenting on various pieces of classic literature. Last year, year I did The Harvard Classics; this year, I'm doing The Gateway to the Great Books. Every day I take a word from the editor (Mortimer Adler)'s list of "Great Ideas" that goes with the day's letter. I'll grab one or two readings from it that add up to ~15 pages and tell you about them. Just for fun, I'll also list the other possible words. The numbers in parenthesis above indicate the volume and page number. I'm working from the pdf here.

A: Angels (not included in The Gateway), Animal, Aristocracy, and Astronomy. 

Summary: Write honestly, and make sure you have something to say. 

Bonus: With style!

Commentary: One of the things I appreciate about The Gateway compared to last year is that I mostly get to read, if not complete pieces, at least complete sections.

"Style is the physiognomy of the mind, and a safer index to character than the face. To imitate another man’s style is like wearing a mask."

I've written before about the tenuous relationship between writers and "artists." I think this is less true now than it was a decade or two ago, but there was a time where it seemed pretty common to not consider writers artists, or to consider them a sort of "fringe", as opposed to painters, musicians, etc. I think Schopenhauer's piece is a great rebuttal of this. He explains how writers have styles, just as other artists do, and how they develop and present that style is how they make their art. But this isn't just a puff piece for writers. It also has some good advice, and plenty of take downs of writers who try to disguise their lack of knowledge or otherwise puff themselves up. Great piece, should be mandatory reading in writing classes. 3/5 on the Classics scale (most people should read it, but not earth shaking.)

I'm grateful to be able to, in my own small way, help the next generation of artists. I got a creative writing elective approved at my school for next year, and I'm very excited for it.