Category Archives: Books

Book Review: All She Ever Wanted

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All She Ever WantedAll She Ever Wanted by Lynn Austin opens with a stressed-out Kathleen Seymour. She’s just lost her job, and her daughter, who has always been given everything she ever wanted, has been caught shoplifting. Advised by a counselor to try to connect better with her daughter, Kathleen decides they should go on a road trip back to where she grew up, where she has not been for thirty-five years.

On the way, Kathleen opens up about her own dysfunctional, poverty-stricken childhood that she had kept carefully hidden, with a thief for a father, a mother with little energy and interest, and a Communist uncle.

Conversations with friends and relatives along the way also reveal to Kathleen much she didn’t know about her own mother and grandmother’s lives. Each woman had left home trying to escape her family or situation, each faced stumblingblocks and sorrows, and each made mistakes with her own children. Will they ever find “all they ever wanted,” or are their sins past forgiveness?

My thoughts:

Truly each person has hidden sorrows and struggles, and we need to be “quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger” (James 1:19). And, truly, God’s forgiveness is available to all who will accept it and believe in His Son, Jesus. And, truly, we all have enough of our own sins and foibles to deal with that should keep us from judging each other. And we all need to seek God’s will for our lives rather than navigating them on our own and making a mess of things. I was thankful for those emphases throughout the book.

Some readers would want to know that one of the women fell into extramarital sex, but nothing is explicit, and that does happen. It’s a believable part of the story, not there just for titillation.

Though it’s a good story, it’s not my favorite from Lynn. I’m having a hard time putting my finger on exactly why. It was a little disjointed with the back-and-forth timelines between the women. The next to last chapter, while good, and resolved in the ways I would have hoped, yet containing some surprises, seemed just a little too…pat, maybe. There were a couple of places I disagreed with the theology a bit. But none of these were big enough that I wouldn’t recommend the book, and I especially liked the last chapter.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Carole’s Books You Loved)

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Review: Cyrano de Bergerac

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Cyrano de Bergerac is a play written by Edmond Rostand in 1897 but set in 1640 Paris. It became an instant success and has remained so ever since. In one sense it’s a throwback to “France’s golden age—a time when men were musketeers, women were beautiful heiresses, and the wit flashed as brightly as the swordplay” (according to SparkNotes), represented in stories like The Three Musketeers, which was published 50 years before Cyrano. Cyrano even references The Three Musketeers in places. In another sense it’s a parody of such stories. Part comedy, part tragedy, the main focus is its title character, Cyrano.

Cyrano excels in almost every area. He’s witty, an excellent poet, a superb swordsman, and he commands the respect of almost all who know him. The one area where he lacks confidence is romantic relationships, and that’s due primarily to his extremely oversized nose. He thinks no woman would find him attractive or even give him a chance, especially his cousin, Roxanne, whom he confesses to one friend that he loves. When Roxanne sends him a message that she wants to meet with him privately, he begins to hope that perhaps she could love him, and he pours out his heart in a letter to her. But when they meet, he learns that she loves a handsome young man in his regiment, Christian, and she asks him to watch over Christian.

He agrees, and when he tells Christian that he is Roxanne’s cousin, Christian confesses that he loves her but he can’t approach her. Roxanne loves “flowing words,
Bright wit,” and Christian is tongue-tied and inarticulate. The men each lament their deficiencies:

CHRISTIAN:
Oh, to express one’s thoughts with facile grace!. . .

CYRANO:
. . .To be a musketeer, with handsome face!

Then Cyrano hits on an idea: they can combine their talents. He can teach Christian what to say, and that will give him an outlet for his own heart. He gives Christian the letter he had just written to Roxanne but left unsigned and tells Christian to send it to her in his name.

What could possibly go wrong with that plan?

The rest of the play shows how they each progress and carries them through various scenes, but I don’t want to give away any more details.

Some of the comedic sections are priceless, such as a lengthy exchange with Cyrano and another man who is trying not to look at or comment on Cyrano’s nose and then is questioned by Cyrano (“Is there anything extraordinary about it?…Is it soft and swinging like an elephant’s trunk? Is there a wart on the end of it? Or a fly?…Is it a phenomenon?”) When Christian, hoping for a kiss, wants to speak to Roxanne himself and can’t seem to come up with anything except, “I love thee,” Roxanne responds, “‘Tis the theme: embroider it,” and later “Gather up your scattered eloquence.” Here are just a few more samples:

Tradesman: You are not Samson!
Cyrano: I will be, my dear sir, if you’ll lend me your jaw.

Cyrano: Whom I love? Come now, reflect. The dream of being loved, even by a homely girl, is one forbidden me. Forbidden by this nose of mine that precedes me everywhere by fifteen minutes.

I enjoyed the comedy and the swashbuckling, but most of all I enjoyed the more earnest parts, such as when Cyrano is trying to coach Christian when they’re half hidden in the darkness under Roxanne’s balcony (reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet‘s balcony scene). Getting frustrated with the process, Cyrano pushes Christian out of the way and then speaks from his heart. The last few scenes, when Cyrano goes to visit Roxanne some fourteen years after the action in the previous scenes, is masterfully written. The time of day, the season, the double meaning to Cyrano’s words, and the development of the conversation all come together to form once of my favorite sections of literature with one of my favorite lines (which I can’t tell, or else you’d know the ending!)

I looked at SparkNotes and Shmoop‘s analysis a bit, and disagreed with Shmoop’s especially. They seemed to think the main theme was Cyrano’s lack of self-esteem, that if he had not been hung up on his one defect, he could have had a life of love (see the Shmoop heading “Why Should I Care?” for more on this).

But I think the theme has to do with the self-sacrificial nature of real love. A couple of times Cyrano had an opening to confess his love, but he abstained, for the happiness and then the honor of another. All the characters grow in their understanding of love, finding that it goes beyond handsome faces, stolen kisses, and “embroidered” words, but Cyrano embodies it the most.

I did not investigate translations like I did before reading Don Quixote, and I wish I had. I looked around a bit afterward and learned that one by Brian Hooker is considered the best. I was primarily looking for an audiobook version that read the actual play rather than an audio performance of it, and found that here, translated by Howard Thayer Kingsbury, and enjoyed it very much. It says it is narrated by Flo Gibson, but it is actually narrated by Grover Gardner, who did an excellent job. I also got this Kindle version translated by Charles Renauld and looked around it and the Gutenberg version, and didn’t like either of them as much, at least, as far as I compared them, which wasn’t much. For instance, where in the audiobook Roxanne tells Christian to “embroider” his words, the Gutenberg version says to “vary” them, and the Renauld version just says, “Amplify!” I don’t know which is closest to the original, but “embroider” sounds a lot better to me. But I do appreciate Renauld’s introduction and preface detailing some of the difficulties of translation, not only from a different language, but from the poetry in which the play was originally written, and his reasons for making the choices he did, ending with the admonition that those who would be critical should “Try the task!” While looking up information on translations, I came across this fascinating discussion with some examples of how different translations handle one of Cyrano’s speeches and this great article.

One place where translations differ greatly is near the end when Cyrano speaks of the one thing he can take with him when he dies that no one can take away from him. Some translations say “plume,” others say “panache.” The audiobook said “plume,” and I admit it didn’t make sense to me at first. Renauld says in his introduction:

Now, what is this panache upon which “Cyrano” sets such a high value? To understand it is to appreciate, to miss it is to miss the meaning of the play. An explanation of it is, therefore, not out of place in this introduction.

The panache is an external quality which adds colour and brilliancy to internal things already worth having for their own intrinsic value. Its main justification is personal bravery…The panache is literally a high plume, or bunch of plumes, that waves high above a commander’s head-gear…There is magnetism in the panache…Henry the Fourth said to his soldiers; “you will find it always on the path of honour and duty.” The panache, too, is essentially joyful. “Cyrano” is joyful, in spite of a life that would breed discouragement and bitterness in almost any heart but his.

That sheds light on this earlier speech of Cyrano’s when someone criticizes his clothes:

It is my character that I adorn.
I do not deck me like a popinjay ;
But though less foppish, I am better dressed :
I would not sally forth, through carelessness.
With an insult ill wiped out, or with my conscience
Sallow with sleep still lingering in its eyes.
Honor in rags, or scruples dressed in mourning.
But I go out with all upon me shining,
With liberty and freedom for my plume,
Not a mere upright figure ; — ’tis my soul
That I thus hold erect as if with stays,
And decked with daring deeds instead of ribbons.
Twirling my wit as it were my moustache,
The while I pass among the crowd, I make
Bold truths ring out like spurs.

And it also sheds light on one place where they are battling Spain, and a cadet comes in with “a collection of shabby hats spitted on his sword, their plumes bedraggled and holes through the brims,” “spoils of war” he gathered from the enemy’s camp.

So it does look like the theme has to do with panache, brave, magnetic, joyful flair. But I still think it has to do with love as well.

There are multiple film versions of the play – I’d love to check out Jose Ferrer’s, one of the most famous ones, if I can find it. I did find this scene of it:

I had seen this play at least once, maybe a couple of times, years ago, and remembered the basic story line, but I am so glad I read (or listened to) it now. There was so much to enjoy about it, and I feel sure I’ll read it again in the future.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)

 

Book Review: Fierce Convictions

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I really didn’t know anything about Hannah More when I first saw Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More – Poet, Reformer, Abolitionist by Karen Swallow Prior making the rounds a couple of years ago, but so many bloggers spoke positively of it that I requested it for the next gift-giving occasion. It turns out I am in good company: in his preface to this book, Eric Metaxas said he hadn’t know much about her, either, until doing research for his book on William Wilberforce, and then he got so excited, he tried to include as much about her as he could. When he met Prior and found out her doctoral dissertation was on More, he urged her to write a book.

Hannah was born to a family of five daughters in 1745. Her father being a teacher and her own thirst for learning led to her receiving an education beyond the norm for girls in that era. She and her sisters established a school together as they got older. Hannah wrote some plays for the students that were well-received. She was engaged for a long period of time, but the marriage never went forward. In a transaction common for the day, her former fiance offered her an annuity “sufficient to allow More to pursue a literary vocation as compensation for the time she devoted to him” (p. 37).

An influential friend sent a copy of one of her plays to David Garrick, a famous actor of the day; thus “the door to the literary capital of England was opened” (p. 49). Hannah became friends with a number of Londoners, including Garrick and his wife, Horace Walpole, Samuel Johnson, William Wilberforce, and a host of others. She was so close to Wilberforce that one of her anonymous publications was thought to be his. She was included in the Bluestocking Circle begun by “one of the wealthiest and most influential women of the day” (p. 76), Elizabeth Montagu. More’s influence and literary career grew.

But for various reasons, More became disenchanted with life in London and moved to Cowslip Green in between two villages.

More had always been bemused–and sometimes amused–by the excesses and superficialities she witnessed [in London]. So while the glistening of the fashionable life grew ever duller over several years, hints of More’s doubts about this fool’s gold can be found even from her earliest seasons there. It is clear that she was undergoing a greater sense of calling to more serious work, to more devotion in her faith, and with it to ministry in serving others (p. 95).

She was given a book of John Newton’s letters which she described as “full of vital, experimental religion” – vital meaning, according to Prior, “‘full of life,’ so opposite the stale, dead religion found in many Church of England members” (p. 105).

The word experimental alluded to the growing emphasis during the eighteenth century on the importance of individual experience in religious practice, the need of each person to have an authentic and personal faith rather than simply to adhere to rote tradition (p. 105).

Wilberforce had originally “thought that being a sincere Christian required withdrawing from the corrupt corners of human business” and was inclined to “retreat from public life in favor of a course devoted to piety.” John Newton encouraged him to “stay at his post, and neither give up work, nor throw away wealth; wait and watch occasions, sure that He, who put him at his post, would find him work to do” (p. 113). Later Wilberforce’s “influence dissuaded [Hannah] from her growing inclination to shrink from the world” (p. 117). Thank God that both of these people “stayed at their post.” “Even John Wesley sent Hannah a message through her sister: ‘Tell her to live in the world; there is the sphere of her usefulness; they will not let us come nigh them” (p. 203). The bishop of London asked her, “Where can we find any but yourself that can make the ‘fashionable world’ read books of morality and religion, and find improvement when they are only looking for amusement?” (p. 202).

More joined with Newton, Wilberforce, and others involved in fighting the slave trade.

As a goldfish swimming in a bowl doesn’t know what water is, so a person living in eighteenth-century Great Britain–immersed in an economic and social structure built on the slave trade–could not easily, if at all, see slavery for what it was. To do so required, it seemed, a certain kind of perceptiveness of mind and spirit. Hannah More was one of the few who possessed it (p. 108).

Even Wilberforce acknowledged that the fight against slavery could not by won in Parliament alone, that “more is to be done out of the House than in it,” that “changing the minds in Parliament would require changing the heart of the nation first” (p. 128).

The battle against slavery was, in many ways, led by the poets–and other writers and artists–who expanded their country’s moral imagination so it might at last see horrors too grave for the rational mind to grasp (p. 128).

Hannah used her influence and her pen to fight against slavery, a fight which took over forty years. She also used it to encourage education, especially for girls and for the poor, and to provide edifying reading material. Prior explained that tracts or pamphlets at that time were like blog posts today, and Hannah used them for educational, religious, and sometimes political causes, eventually leading to the establishment of Cheap Repository Tracts.

But she did more than write. She and her sisters started a number of schools for the poor, financed by Wilberforce, fighting against the opinion of the time that the poor should not be educated or taught to read (some thought the poor would have no use for it: others thought it might disturb the order of things). She became one of the few female members of what was called the Clapham Sect – not a sect as we think of it today, but a group of influential “like-minded believers, ‘bound together by shared moral and spiritual values, by religious mission and social activism, by love for each other, and by marriage,’ [who] changed history as they sought to serve God in every area of their lives, personal and public, at home and abroad” (p. 167). “The efforts of the Clapham community were three-pronged: they aimed at alleviating the suffering and oppression of the lower classes, reforming the excessive and negligent behaviors of the upper classes, and advancing Christianity at home and throughout the world” (pp. 173-174).

She was not flawless. Some of her views would have modern readers scratching their heads, and Prior does an excellent job explaining them in the context of Hannah’s times. But she yielded herself, her influence, her energy, her finances, and her pen to God and was used mightily by Him. One quoted source said, “What Wilberforce was among men, Hannah More was among women” (p. 240).

Somewhere between Birrell’s hatred and Roberts’s hagiography is a woman who was at once ordinary and remarkable. She was a woman with virtues and flaws, faith and fears, vision and blind spots. But she was also one whose unique gifts and fierce convictions transformed first her life and subsequently her world and ours (p. 253).

To Walpole, More was testimony, in the words of one of her early biographers, that “the most implicit faith and the most devoted zeal in Christianity could consist with the highest mental attainments; and that the most devoted piety was no obstacle to cheerfulness and humor” (p. 170).

In the epilogue Prior also shares some reasons why More is not more well-known today, among them the modernist movement, which “rejected the values that most defined the Victorian age: duty, family, piety” (p. 252). In addition, her one novel “is practically unreadable for most readers today. tastes have changed, and the art of the novel has progressed toward more nuance and complexity than the plain didacticism of More’s novel” (p. 235). But I am glad that Prior brought her to our attention and shared her life with us.

It took me just a little while to truly get into the book. I am not sure if it took that long to get into the rhythm of Prior’s style or if it just got more interesting to me around the time that Hannah went to London, and more so when she decided to leave. I especially appreciated Prior’s couching everything into its historical setting so that we weren’t getting just the facts, but truly understanding how historical events and beliefs affected Hannah and how she in turn affected them.

And on a completely separate note, one of Prior’s explanations helped me better understand Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility:

During the so-called long eighteenth century (1660-1830), a “cult of sensibility” arose that exalted the outward manifestations of emotional sensitivity–weeping, fainting, and the like–as the marks of morality and refined character, to the point that sensibility became more important than benevolent or moral actions (p. 185).

In context, Prior said this about More’s writing concerning animal cruelty. She sought to raise awareness of some of the brutal practices of the day in order to stop them yet did not devolve into “emotional indulgence” and “inordinate affection” the “cult of sensibility” employed towards animals (p. 197).

I’ll close with a few favorite quotes from More herself:

It should be held as an eternal truth, that what is morally wrong can never be politically right (p. 136).

I am at this moment as quiet as my heart can wish. Quietness is my definition of happiness (p. 69).

Atrocious deeds should never be called by gentle names (p. 205).

God can carry on his own work, though all such poor tools as I were broken (p. 247).

The more I see of the ‘hounoured, famed, and great,’ the more I see of the littleness, the unsatisfactoriness of all created good; and that no earthly pleasure can fill up the wants of the immortal principle within.

Bible Christianity is what I love…a Christianity practical and pure, which teaches holiness, humility, repentance and faith in Christ; and which after summing up all the Evangelical graces, declares that the greatest of these is charity (p. 155).

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)

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Book Review: The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

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Jeckyll and HydeIn a way it’s too bad that most modern readers know the premise behind The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson. We miss a lot of the build-up of the mystery the other characters are trying to solve. But it’s still an enjoyable story.

It begins in Victorian-era London when a lawyer, Mr. Utterson, is taking a walk with his cousin when they pass a door that stirs a memory for the cousin, Mr. Enfield. Once Enfield was walking in the same area when he witnessed a young girl being trampled by a man. He and the crowd around them insisted that the man pay the girl immediately for damages, and the man went into the particular door they’re now passing to obtain a check written on the account of a reputable man in the city. Enfield describes the man negatively, saying he seemed deformed, though Enfield couldn’t put his finger on exactly what was wrong with him. When he mentions that the man’s name is Hyde, Utterson stops him, for he knows who Hyde is and wishes to avoid gossip.

But the incident increases Utterson’s concern. His friend and client, Dr. Jekyll, has just changed his will to leave everything to Hyde, and Utterson feels sure that the account Hyde drew on was Jekyll’s. He fears Hyde may be blackmailing Jekyll, but Jekyll says Hyde is no one to worry about.

Some time later, a maid witnesses Hyde killing a man in the street who turns out to be a member of Parliament and another of Utterson’s clients. Hyde seems to disappear after that, and Jekyll says he has cut off ties with him. But then all of a sudden Jekyll stops going out and receiving visitors. One day when Utterson happens to see him through a window and stops to talk for a while, Jekyll seems glad to see him at first, and then suddenly with a look of horror slams down the window. Then one night Jekyll’s butler, Poole, come to Mr. Utterson to say that something is terribly wrong: his master has been locked in his laboratory for days and now doesn’t sound like himself. Utterson comes with Poole, and they decide to break down the door. What they find I will leave you to discover, but a couple of letters left for Utterson explain what has been going on.

As most readers know (and if you don’t know and don’t want to, skip this paragraph!), Hyde and Jekyll are the same man. What’s perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book to me is Jeckyll’s reasons for his experimentations. He had struggled with the conflicting parts of himself wanting to do good or evil, and decided to see if he could separate them – not in order to filter out the bad and therefore conquer it, but so the bad side could do what it wanted without restraint and without consequences such as marring the good name of Jekyll.

I had learned to dwell with pleasure as a beloved daydream on the
thought of the separation of these elements. If each, I told myself, could be housed in separate identities life would be relieved of all that was unbearable: the unjust might go his way delivered from the aspirations and remorse of his more upright twin and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path doing the good things in which he found his pleasure and no longer exposed to disgrace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.

When Jekyll becomes alarmed at how far Hyde has gone and resolves not to let him out any more, Stevenson masterfully describes incomplete repentance which isn’t true repentance.

It was Hyde, after all, and Hyde alone, that was guilty. Jekyll was no worse; he woke again to his good qualities seemingly unimpaired; he would even make haste, where it was possible, to undo the evil done by Hyde. And thus his conscience slumbered.

Yes, I preferred the elderly and discontented doctor, surrounded by friends and cherishing honest hopes; and bade a resolute farewell to the liberty, the comparative youth, the light step, leaping impulses and secret pleasures, that I had enjoyed in the disguise of Hyde. I made this choice perhaps with some unconscious reservation, for I neither gave up the house in Soho, nor destroyed the clothes of Edward Hyde, which still lay ready in my cabinet.

As the first edge of my penitence wore off, the lower side of me, so long indulged, so recently chained down, began to growl for licence.

I sat in the sun on a bench; the animal within me licking the chops of memory; the spiritual side a little drowsed, promising subsequent penitence, but not yet moved to begin.

Elisabeth Elliot once wrote that she was dealing with guilt over something she had done and was astounded by it, thinking, “That’s just not me.” She was brought up short by the realization that it was indeed her fault, that she couldn’t blame it on provocation or circumstances. Even if she had been provoked, she could have looked to God for help to respond rightly. That jarred me, because I was too prone to blame my bad reactions on the circumstances that caused them rather than my innate sinfulness. It’s telling that Jekyll blamed Hyde’s wrongdoings on Hyde alone as if he were a separate being rather than actually himself. The first step in gaining any kind of victory over the Hyde in each of us is to recognize and own the fact that he is us.

I don’t know much about Stevenson himself. A quick perusal of the Wikipedia article about him says he grew up in a religious home but declared himself an atheist in his twenties. He recognized just how horrible what the Bible calls our “old man” or “flesh” could become, and seemed to realize that it couldn’t be reigned in just with conscience. I don’t know if he ever knew that we could be completely liberated from its penalty and power only through Christ: “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 7:24-8:1a).

This is a short book: paperback copies are less than 100 pages, and the audiobook I listened to was only 2 hours and 19 minutes. So for those who might like to read classics but are intimidated by their length, this one might be good to try. Even though I knew the basic story, I gained much by reading the book. I started out listening to an audiobook, but though the narrator was fine in the narrative, he was terrible with the character’s voices, so I switched to the 99 cent Kindle version. I chose it for the horror/Gothic category of the Back to the Classics challenge. I’m not into horror at all and thought I might skip this category until I read Rebekah’s review of this book. I am thankful for both of those influences leading me to read a book that I would have been unlikely to pick up otherwise.

(Sharing with Inspire Me Monday, Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Carole’s Books You Loved)

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Book Review: Until We Reach Home

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Until We Reach Home by Lynn Austin is the story of three sisters from Sweden in 1897. Their mother died, then their father committed suicide, which in that time and culture went beyond its own tragedy to be considered a disgrace to the family. An aunt and uncle move in to “help” but ended up taking over the farm. To protect her sisters from a danger which only she knows about, oldest sister Elin accepts another uncle’s invitation to come to America.

Elin is the take-charge mother hen of the group. The danger she wants to keep them from has made her wary, nervous, and sad, which irritates her sisters because they don’t know what’s behind it.

Kirsten is the free-spirited, adventurous, independent middle child. She doesn’t want to move to America at first, but when she learns that her relationship with a young man will never advance because of her father’s disgrace, she breaks up with him and wants to leave.

Sophia is the shy youngest, attached to the farm and thoroughly unwilling to go to America. She often visits her mother’s grave and wants to stay near it. But she doesn’t want to be separated from her sisters, either.

The trip via trains, ferries, and finally a ship, is harrowing, especially in the crowded conditions of steerage. Seasickness hits them all, and then a mysterious disease breaks out. Then their arrival is not what they had anticipated when two of them are detained at Ellis Island and even when they finally get to their aunt and uncle’s home. Almost entirely on their own, they have to scramble to find work and a place to live.

Elin and Kirsten both carry weighty secrets from their past. When Sophia is faced with the one thing she fears most, she rediscovers the faith of her mother.

Will they all find release from their burdens? Will life always be a hardscrabble struggle, or will they ever find their new start in this new land? Will they ever find a true home?

My thoughts:

New beginnings are almost never easy, even when they’re excitedly anticipated. But starting over under the conditions that they did and at the time they did made it all the harder. So many immigrants came from hard conditions to make a better life and faced so many hardships both in travel and then supporting themselves once they got here. Like the pioneers, persevering through hardships made hardy stock of them – or maybe they were to begin with. This book was quite enlightening, and I enjoyed it very much. As one character says, “Life with God is often very difficult. But life without Him is unendurable.”

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Carole’s Books You Loved)

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Book Review: Don Quixote

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The only thing I really knew about Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes was the famous tilting at windmills scene. When one of the categories for the Back to the Classics challenge was a classic published before 1800, as I searched titles, this was one of only a couple that I was interested in. I was dismayed to see that the audiobook was 36 hours! One paperback copy I saw was 992 pages! But I plunged in.

Don Quixote starts out as nobleman Alonso Quixano in Spain. He loves reading about tales of chivalry to the point that he loses his senses, believes the stories to be true, and decides to bring back knighthood by becoming a knight errant himself, much to the dismay of his niece and housekeeper. He chooses the name Don Quixote for himself (or Don Quixote de La Mancha in full) and finds an old suit of armor and cleans it up. When he discovers the helmet has pieces missing, he constructs them out of pasteboard. He renames his old horse Rocinante. Every knight has to have a lady love, so he chooses a farm girl from a neighboring village, unbeknownst to her, and renames her Dulcinea del Toboso (at the beginning it is said that he was once in love with her, but later he confesses that he has never even seen her).

Thus he sets off to seek adventure. But most of his encounters meet with little success. People think he is crazy, so some of them fight against him. Other times he mistakes what’s going on, like thinking windmills are giants or sheep are an army of invaders. Once he got so caught up in a puppet show that he began to think the action was real and slaughtered the villainous puppets. When confronted with reality, he concludes that some enemy enchanter changed things, like making the giants into windmills at the last moment.

Along the way he also encounters other people and hears their stories. My favorite one of these involved a well-to-do woman renowned for her beauty. All sorts of men fell in love with her, but she wouldn’t have them and went off to live alone as a shepherdess. She’s thought to be cruel since she won’t return anyone’s affection. Don Quixote comes upon a funeral of a shepherd who died over his love for this woman and her lack of love for him. While the other shepherds are telling the story, the beautiful shepherdess comes upon the scene and delivers what I have dubbed The Lament of Beautiful Girls Everywhere, saying, in the modern vernacular, “Look, I can’t help it if I am beautiful. God made me that way: it’s through no effort of mine. I can’t fall in love with someone just because he falls in love with me, so give me a break already!” One of the more famous of these is the tale of Lothario, who was unwillingly drafted by his friend to woo his wife, thinking that if she passed this test, he would be sure of her love. Lothario resists at first, then lies saying he has made attempts when he has not, and finally the inevitable happens and he falls in love with his friend’s wife, leading to a “lothario” in our day meaning a man who seduces women.

The book we have today contains two parts. Cervantes wrote the first and was in no particular hurry to write the second, until someone else wrote a book about Quixote. Then he wrote the second part in which he makes many digs at this interloper and his work and ends it in such a way that no one can credibly write any more about his character. Nowadays both parts are published in one book.

Quixote takes three journeys, or sallies, two in the first part and one in the second. He goes alone the first time, but for the second two he takes a farmer as a squire, Sancho Panza. Sancho goes back and forth between admiring Quixote in some ways, particularly his bravery, to wondering about his sanity. He stays with him, though, mainly because Quixote has promised his an island to govern at some point.

The story is told by a narrator as if studying the works of a Cide Hamete Benengalie and his research on Quixote, lending a supposed air of authenticity to the story.

My thoughts:

It’s obvious that the story is meant as a farce. Just the mental picture of what translator Ormsby calls the “unsmiling gravity” of Quixote in old banged up armor with a pasteboard helmet (and later a barber’s bowl for a helmet) on an old horse talking in lofty language like a knight of old is comical, as are Sancho’s lamentations over what Quixote is doing or wants him to do and Sancho’s constant stringing together of proverbs.Cervantes even pokes fun at himself: in one scene, Quixote’s friends are going through his books and getting rid of the books of chivalry most likely to cause the Don the most problems and come across one by Cervantes and comment on it. Then in the second part, he addresses some mistakes in the first part tongue in cheek (like Sancho’s mule, Dapple, being stolen and then appearing in Dapple with no explanation) by saying it was a mistake of the printer, and so on. I enjoyed this kind of humor.

I particularly liked some of the phrasing. Cervantes, in the scene above describing his book that Quixote supposedly read, is said to have “more experience in reverses than verses.” Quixote is often described as lean, even gaunt, and one line speaks of “cheeks that seemed to be kissing each other on the inside.” One girl “did not measure seven palms from head to foot, and her shoulders, which overweighted her somewhat, made her contemplate the ground more than she liked.” My absolute favorite line is: “With a blunt wit thou art always striving at sharpness.”

But a lot of the humor is not to my taste. For instance, in one chapter, Quixote and Sancho and another man are sleeping in something like a stable of an inn. The other man is waiting for a woman to join him. Quixote sees her come in and thinks she is there to test his virtue, so he sets her down beside him to tell her why he must remain true to Dulcinea. The other man sees the Don holding the woman there apparently against her will and starts fighting him. Quixote thinks it is an enemy and fights back. The woman is thrown onto Sancho’s bed, and he, being startled, starts punching her, not realizing she’s a woman. It ends up a free-for-all, Three Stooges style. In fact, there is quite a lot of beating up in the first part.

In both parts there is a lot of setting Quixote up for situations and then laughing at him behind his back, but it’s more concentrated in the second part. Just about all the major characters in the book, even Sancho and the Don’s closest friends, have no trouble deceiving him and laughing at him. In fact, when a friend comes to deceive Quixote into coming home for a year in the hopes that his “madness” might thereby be cured, he is told by someone else, “May God forgive you the wrong you have done the whole world in trying to bring the most amusing madman in it back to his senses. Do you not see, senor, that the gain by Don Quixote’s sanity can never equal the enjoyment his crazes give? … if it were not uncharitable, I would say may Don Quixote never be cured, for by his recovery we lose not only his own drolleries, but his squire Sancho Panza’s too, any one of which is enough to turn melancholy itself into merriment.” And this laughing at someone who is impaired plus setting him up for further laughs is not my kind of humor, either.

It’s a little crude in a couple of places.

Don Quixote seems pretty foolish at first, but by the end of the book I had grown quite fond of him. More than anyone else in the book, he maintains his integrity. He has his flaws, but he operates under the laws and ideals of chivalry unwaveringly, even when it costs him. As is said of him near the end of the book, he “was always of a gentle disposition and kindly in all his ways, and hence he was beloved, not only by those of his own house, but by all who knew him.”

So while the book will probably never go down as one of my all-time favorites, I am glad to have read it. I enjoyed much of the writing. It’s nice to know the full story now, especially as cultural references to Quixote abound. I’m listening to Cyrano de Bergerac now, and even that references Quixote. And then there is this recent cartoon from xkcd:

When I was trying to discern which translation would be best to read, I came across this discussion, which said that a newer one might be more accessible to the modern reader, but an older one like John Ormsby’s catches more of the nuances of the original language. And if I am going to read a classic like this, I want those nuances. 🙂 I found a Kindle version of Ormsby’s translation which I would highly recommend, especially his preface. He also gives a brief biography of Cervantes, telling how his travels supplied some of the characterizations and scenes and how he he was a captive in Algiers for a time, which comes out in the character of a soldier in the same situation in the book. He describes how even the geography of La Mancha, for those who know it, lends itself to the irony of the book with what he calls its monotonous landscape with “nothing venerable” about it as being an unlikely place for launching a glorious hero.

I primarily listened to the audiobook narrated superbly by Roy McMillan, with some dipping into the Kindle version already mentioned. The only thing that would have made it better would have been if it had been read with a Spanish accent – that would have enhanced the Spanish flavor of the book. But he did a wonderful job with the different characters’ voices and perfectly portrayed the “unsmiling gravity” of Don Quixote.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Carole’s Books You Loved)

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Book Review: Finishing Our Course With Joy

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At 99 pages, J. I. Packer’s Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging  is not a total treatise on aging. Its main thrust is that modern society tends to put older people on the shelf for a life of indulgence and idleness, but Christians should continue growing in our relationship with God as well as our ministry to others. Our ministry may look different from what it did in our youth, but God still has a purpose for us being here. He acknowledges that one fourth of the “oldest old” (over 85) will have some degree of dementia, but:

These pages address those who, by God’s grace, still have their faculties intact; who recognize that, as is often and truly said, aging is not for wimps; and who want to learn, in a straightforward way, how we may continue living for God’s glory (p. 14).

He says that for years, people have viewed older age as a state of decline, but we should view it as what he calls “ripeness” or maturity.

We know the difference between ripe and unripe fruit: the latter is sharp, acid, hard, without much flavor, and sets teeth on edge; the former is relatively soft and sweet, juicy, mellow, flavorful, leaving a pleasant taste in the mouth” (p. 18).

The Bible’s view is that aging, under God and by grace, will bring wisdom, that is, an enlarged capacity for discerning, choosing, and encouraging (p. 19).

[Racers] always try to keep something in reserve for a final sprint…so far as our bodily health allows, we should aim to be found running the last lap of our Christian life, as we would say, flat out. The final sprint, so I urge, should be a sprint indeed (pp. 21-22).

He discusses various ways to do that, living one day at a time as if it truly might be our last, with glorifying God as our “constant goal,” avoiding excessive daydreaming and nostalgia, ready to go whenever God calls us home.

The fact that one is no longer under any pressure to use one’s mind in learning things, solving problems, or strategizing for benefits either to oneself or to anybody else, will allow intelligence to lie permanently fallow, and this, so they tell us, may very well hasten the onset of dementia. The agenda as a whole turns out to be a recipe for isolating oneself and trivializing one’s life, with apathetic boredom becoming one’s default mood day after day (p. 30).

He discusses some of the temptations of old age, such as “going with the flow” of everything declining, even spiritually, or not acknowledging any decline due to pride and becoming “tyrannical” with family and friends after having to leave one’s sphere of work (pp 45-46).

He discusses how the church’s view too often mimics the world’s views of retirement:

Yet the common expectation, undiscussed but unchallenged, is that retirees will not continue the learning and leading that were big in their lives while they were at work. The most that the church will expect of them now is that they will continue to support from the sidelines, as it were, the modes of ministry in which others engage (pp. 62-63).

By moving us to think this way, however, Satan undermines, diminishes, and deflates our discipleship, reducing us from laborers in Christ’s kingdom to sympathetic spectators…(p. 63).

Still taking their cue from the world around, modern Western churches organize occupations, trips, parties, and so forth for their seniors and make pastoral provision for the shut-ins, but they no longer look to these folks as they do to the rest of the congregation to find, feed, and use their spiritual gifts. In this they behave as though spiritual gifts and ministry skills whither with age. But they don’t; what happens, rather, is that they atrophy with disuse (pp 63-64).

He encourages churches to balance acknowledging that there is bodily decline and ministering as needed to seniors with seeking to “cherish and continue to harness the ministering capacities” of older saints (p. 64). “And elderly Christian themselves should press on in the worship and service of God and in pastoral care for others, up to the limit of what they can still handle…” (p. 64).

“The challenge that faces us is not to let that fact [that our bodies are slowing down] slow us down spiritually, but to cultivate the maximum zeal for the closing phase of our earthly lives” (p. 72). He then spends several pages discussing zeal and quotes J. C. Ryle as saying that “Zeal in religion is a burning desire to do his will, and to advance his glory in every possible way” (pp. 74-75).

He urges balance in families as well, encouraging seniors not to be “dictatorial” or “invade family circles unasked,” remembering that “loyalty to one’s spouse should trump the claims of parents,” and encouraging families not to “ignore mature wisdom that is available…in [their] older relatives and friends” (p. 97).

He also discusses nurturing the hope of heaven, letting that be a guide and inspiration as well as a testimony, and remembering that we will give account at the judgment seat of Christ that Christians will face (different from the judgment that unbelievers face).

There is a lot packed in this short little book, and it’s encouraging to be reminded that God still has things for us to do for His glory as we age.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Literary Musing Monday, Carole’s Books You Loved)

Book Review: A Proper Pursuit

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Proper Pursuit A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin takes place in Illinois in the late 1800s, where 20-year-old Violet Rose Hayes, recent graduate from Madame Beauchamps’ School for Young Ladies, learns that her father plans to remarry. She is confused, because she has been told for years that her mother has been ill in a sanitarium all this time. Her father had to confess that, no, she actually left the family and divorced him a long time ago, but he thought it would be easier for Violet to think that she was sick.

Upset and angry, Violet asks if she can visit her grandmother in Chicago, with whom the family has not had much contact in years. Her father reluctantly agrees, but what he doesn’t know is that Violet is planning to secretly look for her mother at the last address she had for her.

Violet’s grandmother and aunts are a variety of sisters. Her grandmother is a vibrant, active Christian, working among the poor in inner city Chicago. Her Aunt Matt supports women’s suffrage and attends meetings and protests in that cause. Her aunt Agnes married into elite society and takes Violet calling, hoping to snag a rich husband for her. Her aunt Bertie is living in the past, believing that her husband is away fighting in the Civil War and wondering why she hasn’t heard from him in so long. But unfortunately, none of them will discuss her mother with her, feeling it is her father’s place to do so. So Violet goes sleuthing on her own.

This coming-of-age novel reflects on the pathways open to women. Violet accompanies her grandmother on several of her missions, begins to move out of her self-centered viewpoint to see the needs of others, yet is repulsed by the sights, sounds, and especially smells of poverty.  She loves her aunt Agnes’s rich lifestyle, but over time begins to feel its shallowness. She can see many of the points her Aunt Matt makes about the need for women’s votes and voices, but carrying placards in public isn’t her style. Each of the women has her flaws, but also her strengths: in some ways they each are striving for the same goals, though in different ways. Violet can learn from each of them, yet she has to find her own way, though she isn’t sure what that is at first.

And on top of everything else, her father and two of her aunts have someone they want her to marry, all very different from each other and none of them just right.

It’s written from Violet’s point of view, which is sometimes immature, but other times quite funny.

If the art of conversation was like a graceful tennis match, then I had lost track of the ball, the racket, and the score. Worse, I felt as though I had become entangled in the net.

I delivered a threat without raising my voice. Madame Beauchamps would have approved.

I had never washed a dirty dish in my life, and I had no desire to disturb my record.

Mary rummaged through the picnic basket as if searching for her ticket out of this conversation.

My thoughts:

I thought the initial premise that Violet would believe that her mother was ill and hadn’t communicated with them for eleven years was a bit weak, even for someone as naive as Violet. And I thought Violet was a bit melodramatic, but chalked that up to her age – though I would think it characteristic of a younger teenager rather than a twenty-year-old. But later in the story another explanation comes up for that. There were a couple of theological points that made me wince just a little bit, but, again, I think that’s owing to Violet’s initial ignorance of such things.

But otherwise, I enjoyed the story and Violet’s growth very much as she finds out about herself, the world in general, and God, and contemplates what He would have her do.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Carole‘s Books You Loved, Literary Musing Monday)

 

 

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Book Review: Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

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Some years I go I saw, somewhere, a poem that I really loved. I looked up the author and found she had written a whole book of them, so I got it, I think possibly from a used book seller on Amazon. But it’s hard to just pick up a book of poems and start reading through, so it sat undisturbed on my bookshelf for a very long time. Then one day I saw it and noticed the author’s name again, and thought it looked a little familiar. I looked it up, and …yes, the author of Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, was also the author of a book I dearly loved, The Yearling. So that put the book higher on my to-be-read list! I finally put it on my desk, where I’d pick it up in between doing other things and read a couple to a handful at a time.

Rodger L. Tarr edited the book and explains in the introduction that the poems were originally in a newspaper column that Rawlings wrote in the NY Rochester Times-Union between 1926 and 1928. He includes a few pictures of the column, which sported the icon and typeset he used on the cover. It came about at a time when newspapers wanted to expand beyond just the news and provide entertainment as well. They were published mostly six days a week over two years until she moved to Florida, resulting in some 495 poems, about half of which are published in this book.

Tarr goes into a brief history of her writing career (her first story was published when she was eleven) and family life. She was writing feature articles for the newspaper when she proposed a weekly poetry column for women, particular housewives. Her editor was “skeptical at first” (p. 4), but finally let her try. The poems became a “cultural phenomenon” (p. 1). Sometimes readers asked her for a poem on a specific subject.

She explained her perspective in an interview:

I was brought up to believe in the modern myth that housekeeping is only drudgery, and the housewife is a downtrodden martyr. I thought that any seemingly contented housewives were only ‘making the best of it.’ When I first began housekeeping in my own home, I felt that I had entered the ranks of the mistreated.

After a time I began to realize, to my amazement, that I didn’t feel at all downtrodden, and that I was thoroughly enjoying myself. I began to look at other domestic ‘martyrs’ from a new angle, and I have learned many things.

I have found that there is romance in housework: and charm in it; and whimsy and humor without end. I have found that the housewife works hard, of course–but likes it. Most people who amount to anything do work hard, at whatever their job happens to be. The housewife’s job is home-making, and she is, in fact, ‘making the best of it’; making the best of it by bringing patience and loving care to her work; sympathy and understanding to her family; making the best of it by seeing all the fun in the day’s incidents and human relationships.

The housewife realizes that home-making is an investment in happiness. It pays everyone enormous dividends. There are huge compensations for the actual labor involved…

There are unhappy housewives, of course. But there are unhappy stenographers and editresses and concert singers. The housewife whose songs I sing as I go about my work, is the one who likes her job (pp. 6-7).

She was writing at a time when feminism was coming to the fore, and she “was fully committed to a woman’s right to share equally in the workplace…Yet she also took the firm position that women who choose to stay home are also professionals” (p. 7).

Tarr divides the poems into six categories and at the bottom of each shares the date when it was originally published. They cover the gamut from cooking, family happenings, housework, friends and relatives, “philosophical nuggets,” and nature. Sometimes they express kind of a smiling frustration: usually they’re cheery.

The poem that started it all for me was “The Symphony of Supper-time”

I like the sound of silver
When the table’s being set,
In the early Winter twilight,
With the lamps unlighted yet.

I like to hear the kitchen door
Swing slowly out, and then,
When Mary passes, laden, through,
Swing slowly back again.

I like to hear the kettle sing;
The hissing of the roast;
The children coming in from play,
A hungry, noisy host.

I like to hear the murmurings
When my dessert appears.
The symphony of supper-time
Is music to my ears! (p. 35).

With so many poems so many days in a row, not all of them are winners. But I marked several that I particularly liked. Here are a few:

A Prayer for Housewives

Let me have endless patience, first of all,
And not grow weary when the quick doors slam,
Or when small fingers stain the new-washed wall.
Let me ignore the mud tracked o’er the jamb!

Let me be tireless, for the hours are long.
Let me be merry, when I want to weep.
And if my days may not move like a song,
Grant me, at night, the healing touch of sleep.

May I remember small, important things–
An empty cookie jar is such a crime!
Is it too much to pray at times for wings?
How else, some days, to have the meals on time!

And if there’s any fun to come my way,
Or any laughter due me, Lord, decree it!
And where there’s beauty in the every-day,
Oh, let me not be blinded! Let me see it! (p. 102).

“Mistress and House” begins:

A gracious mistress for this gracious place,
She moves in harmony with flowers and birds;
Her voice is gentle, filled with gentle words
And there is sunlight on her quiet face.

It ends with “She crowns its beauty with her womanhood” (p. 111).

In “Treasure,” she says she’ll let her son, Tom, off from chores for a bit because he’s deep into reading Treasure Island, and closes with

He treads the ground unseeing, starry-eyed;
Plays, eats and sleeps and studies in a trance.
His mind consorts with pirates and with ships,
In high adventure. He has found romance.

Not mine the voice to call him from the realm,
Where sailors’ parrots cry and silver gleams!
He has found treasure past life’s power to steal.
He’s keeping company, these days, with dreams (p. 155).

In “Aunt Ida’s Letters,” after discussing her “ramblings” and picturing what she looks like as she writes, she says:

And through her talk of life, and things,
The beauty of her spirit sings.
And when her letter-writing’s done,
There will be somehow less of sun (p. 156).

After describing “A Peaceful House,” she closes with:

I knock. And in the mistress’ eyes
The source of this sweet peace is seen.
Her love has made her calm and wise–
Her love has made this house serene (p. 191).

After discussing various aspects of dealing with “Old Clothes,” she concludes, “Old friends forgive old clothes, because/Friendship is never out of style! (p. 198).

After describing a host’s gracious “Hospitality,” she concludes:

But did you know these things material
Welcomed me less than those that have no form?
It was your kindness that was beautiful,
It was your spirit’s grace that kept me warm.

You called me friend. You made me one of you.
I was no more a stranger and apart.
You give to hospitality a clue–
Finer than open hands, the open heart (p. 226).

I could empathize with the last stanza of “Fooling Myself”:

I fool myself elaborately,
Some other line of work pursuing.
I seize each task so eagerly–
Except the one I should be doing!

Tarr says that to Rawlings, “Nature is a representation of God’s favor, although God as a concept seldom enters directly into her poems. Instead, she relies upon faith, which she sees as a transcendental force that runs through nature. There is a large element of Thoreau in Rawlings….Nature is divine, or at least a reflection of divinity” (p. 11). I would disagree with that view of nature, believing instead that God created it and it points us to Him (Psalm 19:1-6; Romans 1:18-23). But I didn’t really see that philosophy reflected in the poems about nature included here. Most of them just show a pleasure in and enjoyment of nature.

A few of her poems would not be politically correct today. In one ode to her cook stove, she calls it her “black slave, humble and low” (p. 123). Some are a little gossipy. In one, she asserts that, just like in poker, “A full house beats a pair” at home, meaning that a home full of noisy children was better than “quiet, childless homes” with their “sedate and stupid choices” (p. 117), odd since she had no children of her own, but made up one for the persona of her columns.Maybe she regretted not having children – or maybe she was just catering to the way she thought her audience would feel. But it seems more than a little insensitive.

Most of her poems, however, bring a smile or a moment of thought or sweet reflection. I can imagine eagerly looking up her column in a newspaper each day. The quiet, kind, serene “mistress of the house” she portrays in many of the poems make me want to be more more like that kind of homemaker. These may not be the highest form of poetry, but for the most part they convey truth, beauty, perspective, understanding, and fun, a worthy goal of any artistic expression.

(Sharing with Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books, Wise Woman, Literary Musing Monday,  Carole‘s Books You Loved)

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What’s On Your Nightstand: June 2017

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What's On Your Nightstand

The folks at 5 Minutes For Books host What’s On Your Nightstand? the last Tuesday of each month in which we can share about the books we have been reading and/or plan to read.

It’s nearly the end of June (already!), so it’s time to summarize this month’s reading.

Since last time I have completed:

The Sweetest Thing by Elizabeth Musser, reviewed here. Two girls with different personalities, lifestyles, families, economic situations, and religious persuasions become closest friends and help each other through the trials in their lives. Very good,

Though Waters Roar by Lynn Austin, reviewed here. A girl lands in jail for breaking the Prohibition laws her grandmother fought for and reflects on the heritage of strong women in her family and their causes, wondering what her part in it all is. Very good.

Grow Old With Me by Melinda Evaul, reviewed here. A middle-aged bed and breakfast owner with looming physical issues meets a middle-aged man horribly disfigured from a fire. Good.

No Little Women: Equipping All Women in the Household of God by Aimee Byrd, on the need for women to grow in discernment and knowledge of God, reviewed here. Good.

I’m currently reading:

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes. Almost done!

Fierce Convictions: The Extraordinary Life of Hannah More by Karen Swallow Prior and Eric Metaxas

Songs of a Housewife: Poems by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, edited by Rodger L. Tarr

A Proper Pursuit by Lynn Austin

Finishing Our Course with Joy: Guidance from God for Engaging with Our Aging by J. I. Packer

Up Next:

The Illusionist’s Apprentice by Kristy Cambron

The Story Keeper by Lisa Wingate

Threads of Suspicion by Dee Henderson

The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, spurred not only by the Back to the Classics Challenge but also Rebekah’s review.

What are you reading this summer?

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