August 20, 2008
On this day were two events dealing with the fall of man: one poetical, the other scientific:
* The Stationers' Register records on this day in 1667 an entry for "Paradise Lost," a poem in blank verse by John Milton, who was in a sad state at this time of life. He was 59 and had been blind for 15 years. He had buried his first wife 15 years ago and his second six years after that. His support for Oliver Cromwell and the Commonwealth nearly cost him his head. Instead, it cost him his published works, some of which were burned in his stead.
But there were bright spots. He had married the 24-year-old Betty Munshull, and with the help of her and paid assistants, had spent six years on "Paradise Lost," an epic poem of the Fall of Man into which he poured his religious and political beliefs, as well as encoded references to the principles of the Commonwealth.
* On this day in 1858, the Linnean Society of London published two papers in its magazine that had been presented at a meeting six weeks before. By most accounts, it had been a dull gathering on July 1. The members seemed more interested in honoring the death of the society's former president than to engage in scientific inquiry. Eight scientific papers were read from the podium, and during the socializing afterwards, one visitor noted that there was "no semblance of a discussion." In fact, the president of the society observed that the year observed that 1858 had not "been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, the department of science on which they bear."
It's understandable why the papers didn't make a splash. The titles were long: "Extract from an unpublished Work on Species, consisting of a portion of a Chapter entitled, ‘On the Variation of Organic Beings in a state of Nature; on the Natural Means of Selection; on the Comparison of Domestic Races and true Species' and "On the Tendency of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type." They took up five pages in the magazine, and were accompanied by a letter written in the long-winded style of letter writers with plenty of time on their hands. Sitting in the audience in an overstuffed hall listening to the drone of the speaker, one can understand why most of the people were not paying much attention. But they would, later.
Of course, the theory the two scientists — you probably recognize by now I'm talking about Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace — were proclaiming was evolution, and the idea that natural selection and not the hand of God determined what traits were passed from generation to generation, became the biggest bombshell that exploded in western civilization since Galileo and Copernicus rearranged the planets in their orbits.
Also from the Reader's Almanac:
Born: Edgar Guest, poet, humorist, Birmingham, Warwickshire, 1881;
Paul Tillich, theologian, philosopher, Starzeddel, Germany, 1886;
H.P. Lovecraft, horror author, Providence, R.I., 1890;
William Gresham, noir novelist, Baltimore, Md., 1909;
Jacqueline Susann, novelist, Philadelphia, 1921.
Died: Martin Opitz, poet, literary theorist, Bunzlau, Silesia, 1639;
Charles Sedley, poet, playwright, wit, London, 1701;
Friedrich von Schelling, philosopher, essayist, Bad Ragaz, Switzerland, 1854;
Dan Andersson, poet, Stockholm, Sweden, 1920;
Leon Trotsky, revolutionary, Coyoacán, Mexico, 1940;
A(braham) Moses Klein, poet, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1972.
August 19, 2008
This is what comes from promising daily publication of the latest magnus opus: the day when you hit the wall.
Today's my turn. Look at the list of possible topics: ugh. Hunt through the usual source materials: double ugh.
Although, writing this reminded me to check a book I had neglected, and there's something interesting in there.
No details, of course. You'll find out tomorrow if I went with it or if I fell back on plan B. Or C. But it's past one o'clock and I got to get something going, or else the wife will wonder what I've been doing all morning.
Here's one thing I did: take a picture of the front garden.
This is the sidewalk I laid to connect the main sidewalk which runs to the street to the driveway. Helpful to the postman, useless to everyone else. I can't name the plants. My wife keeps telling me, and the names keep going in one ear and out the other.
Where did I find time to photo that? While waiting for the bagels to finish in the oven, of course:
This has been my latest project. Supplementing the pantry with baked goods. We eat a lot of bagels here, and now that they're over three bucks a bag, I've started learning how to do it. Tried it the cookbook way, with the water bath. Between that and the freezing, the bagels came out like flattened hockey pucks. Fabulous if you're heading to Mount Doom, but we wanted something a little more spongy.
So I'm baking them, sans water bath, and boxing them for the countertop rather than freezing. We go through a batch in a week, easily.
Now I'm off to post this, and wonder more about Lileks' Bleat today. "A personal and professional betrayal." Whatever could that mean? Yes, it's nosey and probably improper. Yes, his life is also far more interesting than mine. I'll leave it to you to decide what that implies.
Spanish songs
in Andalucia
The shooting sites
in the days of ‘39
Oh please leave
the vendanna open
Federico Lorca is
dead and gone"
— "Spanish Bombs," The Clash
Federico Lorca was a namecheck on a Clash album
(excerpt) that also gave shout-outs to Montgomery Clift and Stagger Lee. I listened to the album quite a lot in my student days, but while I knew something of the Spanish Civil War — mostly through Hemingway — I knew nothing about Lorca.
So, who was he?
* Federico Garcia Lorca was born in Andalusia, and he held a lifelong love for the region and its main city, Granada: "It formed me and made me what I am: a poet from birth and unable to help it."
* As the result of a fever, he did not speak until he was three or four, and thereafter walked with a slight limp.
* He was a precocious child. He carried on conversations with his toys and give them names. He learned to imitate the fiery speeches of the priest. He loved the traveling gypsies, when they would come through with their puppet shows and marionettes.
* He studied law at the University of Granada, but he was an indifferent student. He preferred creating poems and paintings. He read the 19th century Spanish romantics, Shakespeare, classical plays and contemporary literature.
* Moving to Madrid in 1919, he formed relationships with painter Salvador Dalí and filmmaker Luis Buñuel. With other young poets, they became known as the "Generation of ‘37".
* His first play, written when he was 21, dramatized the love between a cockroach and a butterfly. It opened in Madrid. It lasted one performance before it was hooted off the stage.
* In the 1920s, his three collection of poems with a Gypsy theme made him popular in Spain. However, he hated being categorized as a Gypsy poet: Gypsies are "a theme. Nothing more. I would be the same poet if I wrote about sewing needles or hydraulic landscapes."
* Lorca spent a year in New York City, where he studied English at Columbia University and immersed himself in theater. He hated the city, perhaps in part because he was depressed and isolated because he knew little English, but he loved the African-American spirituals and the plays.
* During the 1930s, with a government subsidy, Lorca created a traveling theatrical troup that performed classics of Spanish drama in the villages. He also wrote a trilogy of "rural" plays that drew attention to the plight of women in Andalucía's villages: "Blood Wedding," "Yerma," and "The House of Bernarda Alba."
* Lorca hated politics. Sometimes, when asked about his political beliefs, he'd say, "I am on the side of the poor." As Spain edged closer to civil war, he said, "I will never be political. I am a revolutionary because there are no true poets that are not revolutionaries. Don't you agree? But political, I will never, never be!"
* In 1936, he declined offers to visit Mexico and Columbia and returned to Granada for the summer. Four days after his arrival, the army garrison there revolted. Within a few weeks, Lorca's brother-in-law, the mayor was arrested. He was shot. Lorca had gone into hiding, but he was caught and held for several days. On August 19, he was taken to a grove of olive trees somewhere between Víznar and Alfacar, shot, and buried in an unmarked grave.
* The truth behind his killing is still unknown. It could have been political; over the next four years, pro-Franco facists killed 4,500 people in Granada alone. It could have been because Lorca was homosexual. It could have been because he was an intellectual.
* After General Francisco Franco took over Spain, Lorca and his works were banned until 1953. Despite this, Lorca's reputation grew, and now he's known as one of Spain's most revered poets.
* Leonard Cohen translated Lorca's poem "Pequeño vals vienés" and set it to music. "Take This Waltz" went to No. 1 in Spain. Cohen admired Lorca; he named his daughter Lorca Cohen. It's a beautiful, surreal song, matching a serene backing chorus with Cohen's rumbling singing voice.
Listen for yourself.
Also from the Reader's Almanac:
Born: John Dryden, poet, critic, Aldwinkle, Northamptonshire, 1631;
Samuel Richardson, novelist, Mackworth, Derbyshire, 1689;
Ogden Nash, poet, Rye, N.Y., 1902;
James Gould Cozzens, novelist, short-story writer, Chicago, 1903;
Josephine Jacobsen, poet, Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, 1908;
Ring Lardner Jr., screenwriter, Chicago, 1915;
Gene Roddenberry, television producer, El Paso, Texas, 1921.
Died: Blaise Pascal, mathematician, physicist, moralist, Port Royal, France, 1662;
Federico García Lorca, poet, playwright, Granada, Spain, 1936;
Frances Cornford, poet, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, 1960;
Hugo Gernsback, inventor, sci-fi publisher, New York City, 1967.
August 18, 2008
Agrim procession landed on an isolated windswept beach near Viareggio, Italy. A group of Italian workmen leapt from the boats and hauled them onto the shore. Among the party were two Englishmen, an Italian health official and several soldiers. In the boat was what looked like an iron bedstead, a number of long-handled tools with spikes and hooks on the end, and larges pieces of wood.
They were there to cremate a poet.
Five weeks ago, Percy Bysshe (pronounced "bish") Shelley drowned in his schooner during a sudden storm. With him were his friend, the retired Navy officer Edward Williams, and Charles Vivien, a boatboy. More than a week later, their bodies washed up on shore in separate places. Fearful of spreading disease, Italian health officials ordered the bodies to be buried where they were found until someone could dispose of their remains.
This task fell to Shelley's friend, Edward Trelawny. He had intended to follow Shelley in his boat, but problems with his official papers forced him to stay behind. Now, after having identified the bodies when they were found, he had to go back and dispose of them.
Nowadays, this would have been done with a phone call and writing a check, but performing the same task in 1833 required Trelawny to organize an expedition. Fear of disease meant the bodies would have to be burned, so arrangements had to be made with Italian health officials. A furnace was ordered to be made "of iron bars and strong sheet-iron, supported on a stand." Fuel was gathered. Workmen were hired. A message was sent to Lord Byron, Shelley's friend who lived nearby, letting him know of the arrangements. The widow, Mary, would not attend.
On the 16th, under the gaze of spectators from the nearby village, Williams' grave was found, his body exhumed and burned. Digging him up was a ghastly task. Fearful of touching the corpse, the workmen used long-handled tools that had spikes and hooks on the ends. To Trelawny, they looked like "implements of torture devised by the holy inquisition."
A week in the water had not done the body any good. Williams had been partially eaten by the fish, "the flesh, sinews, and muscles hung about in rags, like the shirt, exposing the ribs and bones." He was identified by his boots.
Byron was appalled by what he saw. "Is that a human body? Why, it's more like the carcass of a sheep, or any other animal than a man: this is a satire on our pride and folly." He asked Trelawney: "Don't repeat this with me. Let my carcass rot where it falls."
The next day, it was Shelley's turn. His body had not been abused as badly. The face and hands had been stripped away, but Trelawny knew who he was looking at: "the tall slight figure, the jacket, the volume of Aeschylus in one pocket, and Keat's poems in the other, doubled back, as if the reader, in the act of reading, had hastily thrust it away, were all too familiar to me to leave a doubt in my mind that this mutilated corpse was any other than Shelley's."
Byron asked Trelawney to preserve the skull for him, but he said no. The last skull Byron got ahold of was made into a drinking cup.
Trelawney wrote:
After the fire was well kindled we repeated the ceremony of the previous day; and more wine was poured over Shelley's dead body than he had consumed during his life. This with the oil and salt made the yellow flames glisten and quiver. The heat from the sun and fire was so intense that the atmosphere was tremulous and wavy. The corpse fell open and the heart was laid bare. The frontal bone of the skull, where it had been struck with the mattock, fell off; and, as the back of the head rested on the red-hot bottom bars of the furnace, the brains literally seethed, bubbled and boiled as in a cauldron, for a very long time.
When the flames receded, there were fragments of bone, grey ashes, the jaw and skull, and Shelley's heart. As the health officials were looking elsewhere, Trelawney snatched it off the pyre, burning his hand badly. Later, he gave the heart (which some contend was actually his liver, but never mind) to Mary Shelley, who kept it with her the rest of her life.
Perhaps believing that death would soon be upon him, Shelley was intensely interested in the subject. "How wonderful is Death. / Death and his brother Sleep!" he would write. And he rhapsidized about the Protestant Cemetery in Rome: "The cemetery is an open space among the ruins, covered in winter with violets and daisies. It might make one in love with death, to think that one should be buried in so sweet a place."
Shelley ashes are buried there.
Also from the Reader's Almanac:
Born: Elsa Morante, novelist, short-story writer, poet, Rome, 1918;
Alain Robbe-Grillet, novelist, film-maker, short-story writer, Brest, France, 1922;
Paula Danziger, children's author, Washington, D.C., 1944.
Died: Andrew Marvell, poet, satirist, London, 1678;
Honore de Balzac, novelist, short-story writer, Paris, 1850;
William Hudson, author, London, 1922;
Anita Loos, novelist, screenwriter, New York City, 1981.
August 17, 2008
It's Sunday and the relatives are in from out of town, and even though I'm writing this on Friday, I'm stopping off just long enough to send some link love your way.
Creeping deeper into copyright infringement: The news that Bob Randisi
has sold the film rights to his Rat Pack mystery triggered a question in my beehive of a brain. The mystery lists are full of detectives based on real people: Oscar Wilde, Edward the Prince of Wales, Groucho Marx and Elvis Presley come to mind. If that's legal, assuming no one sought clearances from their estates, what's to stop one from writing a Rat Pack book in which Frank Sinatra is based closely on his portrayal in Kitty Kelly's biography? Or a short story in which John Edwards is running around on his wife and investigating a mystery at the same time? Or one about Hillary Clinton, Vince Foster and Bill and Monica? What's the difference between using Fred Astaire to sell vaccuum cleaners and to sell mysteries? One suspects that, if there's enough money involved, someone's going to sue, and we'll all find out.
Building characters: Jane Espenson
shows the difference between describing a character from the inside and from the outside. The first: good. The second: FAIL.
A true test of friendship: Sling Words goes lists the definitions of
true friendship.
Two posts on promoting your work on the Intertubes: First,
from Joe Konrath; second, using pings to promote from Sling Words:
part one and
part two.
How to fake caring: Lifehacker gives you
10 conversation hacks.
Death of a city: In this case,
a block in St. Louis (Thanks,
Ed Champion)
Born: Davy Crockett, frontiersman, politician, memoirist, Hawkins County, Tenn., 1786;
Samuel Goldwyn, movie producer, wit, Warsaw, Russian Empire, 1882;
John Hawkes, novelist, short-story writer, playwright, Stamford, Conn., 1925;
Ted Hughes, poet, Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, 1930;
Alix Kates Shulman, novelist, near Cleveland, Ohio, 1932;
V(idiadhar) S(urajprasad) Naipaul, novelist, Chaguanas, Trinidad, 1932.
Died: Conrad Aiken, poet, short-story writer, critic, Savannah, Ga., 1973;
Jean Piaget, psychologist, author, Geneva, Switzerland, 1980;
Ira Gershwin, lyricist, author, Beverly Hills, Calif., 1983;
Carlos Drummond de Andrade, poet, journalist, short-story writer, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1987.
Quotes for the Day:
"I leave this rule for others when I'm dead, Be always sure you're right — then go ahead."
—
Davy Crockett, who was born today in 1786
"Anybody who goes to see a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined."
—
Samuel Goldwyn, who was born today in 1882
August 16, 2008
Today, the Reader's Almanac is on hold due to the weekend and the lack of noteworthy literary activities.
SPEEDLINKS
Model who writes a book discusses cheap promotional ideas
Mash notes sent to Lord Byron
are surfacing at last.
For some reason, the notion that Kafka kept p0rn
has outraged German scholars.
Not that I care, since I haven't seen any of the Harry Potter films, but the studio is
delaying the next one until well into 2009.
Congratulations Duane Swierczynski: A production company
picked up the rights to his latest book, "Severence Package." I liked his debut novel, "The Wheelman," quite a bit, and SP's notion of dueling outsourced workers appears to combine "Dilbert" with Quentin Tarantino. (Thanks
Bill Crider)
Born: Bernarr MacFadden, fitness promoter, magazine publisher, Mill Springs, Mo., 1868;
Hugo Gernsback, inventor, sci-fi publisher, Luxembourg, 1884;
Georgette Heyer, novelist, Wimbledon, Surrey, 1902;
Wallace Thurman, editor, critic, novelist, playwright, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1902;
William Maxwell, novelist, short-story writer, editor, Lincoln, Ill., 1908;
Beatrice Schenk de Regniers, children's author, Lafayette, Ind., 1914;
Charles Bukowski, poet, short-story writer, Andernach, Germany, 1920.
Died: Joe Miller, comic actor, London, 1738;
Ramakrishna (ps. Sri Ramakrishna Parmahansa), mystic, philosopher, essayist, Calcutta, India, 1886;
Margaret Mitchell, novelist, Atlanta, Ga., 1949;
Elvis Presley, singer, Memphis, Tenn., 1977.
We were going through our expenses this year and discovered how much the rise in gas prices have hurt us.
Our gas usage has remained fairly consistent. I drive to work; my wife goes grocery shopping twice a week, with smaller trips here and there. Twice a year, we drive to Delaware to visit relatives. All this is spread out over the year, so the increase in what we're paying is due almost totally to the rise in gas prices.
The first number is the total amount, followed by the average monthly amount:
2002: $1,048.08 / $87.34
2003: $1,082.23 / $90.19
2004: $1,209.54 / $100.80
2005: $1,477.61 / $123.13
2006: $1,654.57 / $137.88
For the first half of 2008, we've already spent $1,446.39, an average of $206.63 a month. Gas prices are falling slightly — it's down in my neck of the woods to about $2.50 a gallon after hitting $3+ — but we're still on course to break the 2006 mark.
Now, my job's salary is not princely, but thanks to other sources of income, we can afford to outfit a family of five and own our home. My wife does not work, but she's a great guerilla shopper and very careful with the money. But we don't have cable TV, our cars have been paid off for years, we don't travel. We do not eat out. I bag my lunch at work. My indulgences have been this Web site and books; my wife gardens and sews.
We lost the extra tax break last year when No. 1 son hit 18. That cost us $1,000.
So, in total, between the lost tax break and the rise in gas prices, this year, $1,840 will be diverted away from discretionary spending. That's $1,840 that will not go toward books and the authors who write them. It will not go toward DVDs and the people who make them. We will not buy a whole-house fan or install sheet vinyl in the basement like we had planned, so the contractor, his workers and Armstrong-Congoleum Corp. will not get a share of that money. We won't celebrate the kids returning to school with breakfast at the Hershey Pantry, so that's $45 out of their income stream.
And we've noticed that food prices have gone up, so that's more money diverted from the things we usually buy.
So, while we're not ready to apply for welfare, we are tightening our belts, like everyone else, and that means, until my income goes up, or gas prices come down, we're going to be dealing with this situation for a long time to come.
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