Parenting as performance art revisited

From "Mommy (and Me)" (yesterday's NYT):

It is a theme that recurs. Parents have never waited longer nor thought more consciously about having children, yet time and again the bloggers voice surprise and sometimes resentment about the unglamorous reality of bringing up baby.

"Honestly I had a lot of illusions about motherhood," said Eden Marriott Kennedy, who was 37 when she had her first child and now writes about him at Fussy.org. "You get settled in your ways. Until it's here, you really don't know how dehumanizing and ugly parenting can be sometimes. The blog's a place where all that stuff can go."

Dehumanizing? Ugly? Wow. I hope her son never reads her blog... or the NYT article in which she acknowledges that parenting him yields "all that stuff" of which her blog is made.

... But perhaps all the online venting and hand-wringing is actually helping the bloggers become better parents and better human beings. Perhaps what these diaries provide is "a way of establishing an alternate identity that makes parenting more palatable," said Meredith W. Michaels, a philosophy professor at Smith College and the co-author of "The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How It Has Undermined All Women." "You're turning your life into a story that helps answer the question, 'Why on earth am I doing this?'"

...

And of course the more parents blog, the less likely they are to get the attention and validation they seem to crave. "If every parent in the world has a blog, then maybe it really will be about the child rather than the parent," Ms. Waldman said. "Because at that point the child is the only one who's going to read it." [Emphasis added.]

Ah. The beast is unmasked. Parenting as performance art. We've covered it here.


M-mv on parenting
For oldies-but-goodies on the subject of parenting, check out the entries below.

An open letter (9.1.2004)

"And woe to the innocent bystanders." (7.27.2004)

The mommy wars continue, apparently (7.23.2004)

In which R.T., an M-mv fave, responds to... (7.23.2004)

More on mommy myths and wars (6.9.2004)

What motherhood does to and for you (3.31.2004)

For those of you following "The Mommy Myth"(s) (3.4.2004)

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming... (2.25.2004)

Parenting as performance art (2.20.2004)

Speaking of mommy myths... (2.12.2004)

"Shattering 'The Mommy Myth'" (2.10.2004)

Say you love them on Saturday

Send them into the sun and snow.
Don't fret when they get wet.
Lend them your favorite scarf; it's their favorite, too.
Greet their snowwoman like an old family friend.
Invite her to join you for cocoa when it's time to go in.
Duck your head good-naturedly when they chide you, "Oh, Mom! You're so silly! She will MELT!"


Warm them inside and out.
Fill their bath with bubbles.
Toast their socks in the dryer.
Serve them cocoa that's more warm than hot.


Paint their tiny toenails with more polish and sparkle than color, a nod to their femininity yet a preservation of their little-girlness.
Read them a soft, sweet, simple story.
Hold their hands when they nod off.
Pretend not to notice that, yes, they really did need a nap.
Kiss their fragrant heads.
Say, "I love you."
They can hear you, even when they're sleeping.

Links

In our first template (waaay back in October 2003), the links below appeared in the sidebar. We reposted them in May and October 2004; they're worth repeating. We've boldfaced those that you might want to consider bookmarking for regular visits.

The Hobbit Name Generator

Common-Place — "exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture"

Frog Guts — virtual dissections

Hieroglyphs

"TerraFly (R) changes the way you view your world"

Roger Ebert

Build your vocabulary "A Word a Day"

A Common Reader

American Science & Surplus

The Library of Congress

Hank the Cowdog's Official Web Site

The Underground Grammarian

Set daily puzzle

Amazon.com

Spotless mind

Is the "science" of Total Recall, Paycheck, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, well, scientific?

Um, no. Probably not.

An aside: How capricious of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to favor Kate Winslet with a nomination but not Jim Carrey. If you haven't seen Eternal Sunshine, by the way, do so. This weekend. Tonight.

Idea theft

From "Righting Copyright" (Feb/March issue of Bookforum):

Individual intellectual property rights are often in conflict with one another, and the only groups with a common interest in the direction of such laws are those corporations who want to lock up culture in perpetuity (or "forever minus a day," as former Motion Picture Association of America head Jack Valenti once suggested). Even following the twists and turns of the debate is difficult, since negotiations are seldom held in public. "This cultural war is almost invisible," writes David Bollier in Brand Name Bullies: The Quest to Own and Control Culture. "It is happening quietly and incrementally—in rulings by distant courts, in hearing rooms on Capital Hill and obscure federal agencies, in the digital code that Hollywood and record labels surreptitiously implant into DVDs and CDs."

M-mv on plagiarism
Just borrowning?

The recommended daily allowance

Plagiarism

Stopping by woods on a snowy evening (See the subhead "Stealing words.")

Scrapbooking = creepy

Or, Why I read "The Rage Diaries."

From an entry entitled "The life undocumented":

I've long contended that scrapbooking is the lumpenproletariat reaction to the media trend of excavating celebrities' personal lives. And I also suspect that it's a way of controlling the narrative of the past -- editing out what was, elevating or diminishing events according to the story you'd prefer to believe -- which automatically makes me wonder what the motivation for the editing is. In my more paranoid moments, I think it's a way to reinforce the offputting cult-of-motherhood business** that's risen up in the last few years.

Brilliant, Lisa, as always.

Strange deception

The sun has been a welcome if deceptive visitor these last few days. Deceptive? Yes. How else to describe the warm yellow it casts on our towering trees and snowy quilts? This country sun behaves as if it's staging spring and not the tail end of January. Where is its weak, white winter light? Never mind. Don't answer. We'll take the strange deception.



For some perspective on the photo above, click here. The young M-mvs are looking out on the small lake near the entrance of the Lake County Discovery Museum.


Lake County Discovery Museum (LCDM)
No, it's not the Field Museum, but the LCDM, as we've learned in our two visits, has its charms. (And, no, curious readers, we do not live in Lake County.) "Bringing the World Home," postcards from the Curt Teich Postcard Archives (re)captured the imaginations of the Misses M-mv, particularly the exhibit of entries in a contest to see who could pen the sponsor's slogan the greatest number of times on the space of postcard side. Yes, of course, the Misses M-mv spent a portion of the afternoon writing indecipherable messages to each other in a miniscule hand.



A corner of my imagination was tugged by a placard claiming Ray Bradbury as one of Lake County's own. Bradbury was born in Waukegan in 1920 and discovered books and reading in the Carnegie Library at the corner of Sheridan and Washington. The "Green Town" in his Dandelion Wine, a novel about his childhood, is Waukegan, according to the LCDM. This quote is attributed to the writer:

What haunts me personally is the smell of the air on a summer night in Waukegan, the lights and noises of a traveling country carnival... the brightness of the stars in a Midwestern sky.

It's funny that I can't think of Bradbury outside of a Southern California setting, yet he was born and raised in the midwest.

Later, a corner of my heart was tugged by a head-and-shoulders shot of an impossibly young Jerry Orbach. Yes, Lake County lays claim to him, too: Orbach attended high school in Waukegan.

[M-mv on Jerry Orbach "here" and "here."]


Ravinia
According to the LCDM, the Ravinia Festival began as a way to get people to ride the rails. And, oh, how it grew, huh?


Oedipus
Last night, Mr. M-mv, Master M-mv, and I were mesmerized by a production of Oedipus the King featuring Sir John Gielgud as Teiresias. Our discussion was suspended only long enough for us to sleep; Master M-mv and I revisited the text and our impressions of the staged play over strong cups of coffee this morning.

Don Taylor translated and directed The Theban Plays for television in the mid-eighties. (The production we watched is from this cycle.) From "Classics for Pleasure":

Don Taylor is not so much an elitist as an old-fashioned populist with a mission to liberate great literature, great drama, great opera from the preserve of the ruling or moneyed cliques and from the theatrical impresarios who count all Greek drama as box-office death.

“Art belongs to us all,” he says. “It is common heritage. And that has been my aim with my new version of the Theban plays, to make the works of Sophocles available to my own people, my own class.” For such an enterprise, the modern theatre is not suitable. Its audiences comprise “bourgeois intellectuals, students and tourists”. For Taylor, the rediscovery of Sophocles belongs on “what has become the whole nation’s medium – television”.

I like a man who knows how to use the word comprise correctly. I wince and shudder whenever I see "comprised of" in print.


Common sense
R.T. sent a link to an article by Philip Pullman. (Thank you for your recent messages, R.T. and M. As always, you both made me think.) From "Common sense has much to learn from moonshine":

It begins with nursery rhymes and nonsense poems, with clapping games and finger play and simple songs and picture books. It goes on to consist of fooling about with the stuff the world is made of: with sounds, and with shapes and colours, and with clay and paper and wood and metal, and with language. Fooling about, playing with it, pushing it this way and that, turning it sideways, painting it different colours, looking at it from the back, putting one thing on top of another, asking silly questions, mixing things up, making absurd comparisons, discovering unexpected similarities, making pretty patterns, and all the time saying "Supposing ... I wonder ... What if ... "

The confidence to do this, the happy and open curiosity about the world that results from it, can develop only in an atmosphere free from the drilling and testing and examining and correcting and measuring and ranking in tables that characterises so much of the government's approach, the "common sense" attitude to education.

What I read today
The Sun-Times (of course)
The Winter's Tale (Shakespeare)
Adventures with a Hand Lens (Richard Headstrom)
Anthem (Ayn Rand)

Speaking of "happy and open curiosity about the world," Master M-mv was sprawled in the old green chair in the front windows, the sun warming his back. Anthem was on a notebook beside the chair. He looked up at me. "I needed to introduce Equality 7-2521 to "Harrison Bergeron," you know what I mean?"

Oh, yes. Yes, I do. When your reading life is as rich as Master M-mv's, text is informed and transformed by the text that came before... and after. And sometimes, introducing characters through rereading is the simplest way to link experiences.

From "Harrison Bergeron":

The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren’t only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General.

Finally, lest we seem too cerebral...
I offer this photo, which, perhaps, M., an original and card-carrying member of the M-mv best and perfect audience, will appreciate most.




A note to our regular readers: We'll be taking one and two (maybe three?) -day breaks over the next few weeks, but nothing overly long or ominous. Many thanks for your continued loyalty to and support of "Mental multivitamin."

The view

Yes, we chose the house because of the trees. In a stroke of great fortune, though, the structure is sturdy, the rooms spacious, the interior clean, the insulation sufficient, the heating system efficient, and the views unobstructed.

We are aware of our great and good luck.

Last night, the bright moon blue-washed the white snow, and we crushed a single-file path to the place where the tree branches part for the constellations' show. The owl who visits us spoke once, twice, three times as we mentally connected starry dot to starry dot. No one spoke until the space between his third call and his anticipated next stretched so long it snapped, and then we noisily picked our way over the same single-file path back into the warmth of the house that has become our home.

More important than all of Einstein's theories?

Don Quixote? That's what Simon Jenkins thinks. In January, readers and thinkers celebrate both the anniversary of Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity (1905) and that of Miguel de Cervantes's Don Quixote (1605). But the former is grabbing most of the headlines, news specials, and exhibits, and this isn't right, argues Jenkins. From "A windmill I won't tilt at" (Times Online):

[I]f Einstein had not existed, physics would sooner or later have invented him. I am sure of that. His theory of relativity was an understanding of nature. It lay over the cosmic horizon, awaiting discovery by the first genius to pass its way. Einstein was its Columbus.

Not so Miguel de Cervantes. He surveyed the landscape of post-medieval Europe and asked, but where is Man? He grasped at valour, love, loyalty, triumph and mortification and, like his contemporary, Shakespeare, compressed them in a human frame. He told a tale like no other man. If Cervantes had not existed, he could not have been invented. There would be a hole in the tapestry of Europe.

Pondering this is a worthy way in which to spend one mug of coffee and part of Saturday morning, no?

Hey, for a lighter take on Cervantes, read this entry over at "Magnificent Octopus." And while you're at it, just bookmark the site.

[A] man not without his reasons

Have you read Roger Ebert's review of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice?

Yet Shylock is an intense, passionate character in a great play, and Radford's film does them justice. Although Shylock embodies anti-Semitic stereotypes widely held in Shakespeare's time, he is not a one-dimensional creature like Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," but embodies, like all of Shakespeare's great creations, a humanity that transcends the sport of his making. Radford's Shylock, played with a rasping intensity by Al Pacino, is not softened or apologized for -- that would deny the reality of the play -- but he is seen as a man not without his reasons.

The film also features Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes. Too bad it's not playing within sixty-five miles of my "oh-my-god-are-we-in-the-country-or-what" zip code. Ah, well. I trust it will be worth the time and gas.


Lost in the meritocracy
Another reason to subscribe to The Atlantic. From Walter Kirn's piece, which is subtitled "How I traded an education for a ticket to the ruling class":

We'd been discussing books, at his request. He'd looked me up that night for this very purpose. While I'd been off at Princeton, polishing my act, he'd become a real reader and also a devoted Buddhist. He said he had no one to talk to, no one who shared his interest in art and literature, so when he'd heard I was home, he'd driven right over. We had a great deal in common, Karl said.

But we didn't, in fact, and I didn't know how to tell him this... I couldn't quote anyone. I'd honed more-marketable skills: for flattering those in authority without appearing to do so, for ranking artistic reputations according to the latest academic fashions, for matching my intonations and vocabulary to the background of my listener, for placing certain words in smirking quotation marks and rolling my eyes when someone spoke too earnestly about some "classic" work of "literature," for veering left when the conventional wisdom went right and then doubling back if the consensus changed.

Flexibility, irony, class consciousness, contrarianism... these... are the ways to get ahead now....

But I kept all this to myself; I didn't tell Karl. He was a reader, a Buddhist, and an old friend, and there were some things he might not want to know. I wasn't so sure I wanted to know them either.

Kirn's essay concludes, "Alone in my room, exhausted and apprehensive, I no longer cared about self-advancement. I wanted to lose myself. I wanted to read. I wanted to find out what others thought."

In short, he became a reader, a thinker, a writer, an autodidact. Read the entire piece, even if, no, especially if it means a trip to the library. (January/February issue, p. 142)


Common-place
The new edition is finally available. Visit this terrific resource here.


What I was reading before I logged on
The Sun-Times (of course)
The Atlantic
Anthem (Ayn Rand)
The Complete Essays (Michel de Montaigne)

From "That to Study Philosophy Is to Learn to Die":

Cicero says "that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die.

Montaigne notes, "I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the thing itself."

Ayup.

Oh, that we could dispense with "those terrible ceremonies."

Death be not proud

Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadfull, for, thou art not so,
For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,
Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,
Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,
Rest of their bones, and soules deliverie.
Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,
And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,
And better then thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;
One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

John Donne (1572-1631)

"[W]hat you don't know and need to know"

From "A Visit with Historian David McCullough" -- a transcript of an interview hosted by National Endowment for the Humanities chairman Bruce Cole:

Cole: Do you find the research or the writing harder? I think writing is just an agony that we're all addicted to.

McCullough: To me it's very hard. There are days when you just can't get it right. But I love both. There's an awful temptation to just keep on researching. There comes a point where you just have to stop, and start writing. When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it's when you start writing that you really find out what you don't know and need to know. [Emphasis added.]

Link found at "Thought of the Day".


Shakespearean insults
Thank you to Miz Booshay of the gentle spirit garden that is "Quiet Life." She gave us a heads-up (via email) about some Shakespearean fun, so we did a little poking around and came up with these links:

Ye Olde Official Shakespearean Insult Kit

Shakespeare Insults

Elizabethan Insults

Create Your Own Shakespearean Insults

Visit this site for a random insult. I was put in my place with "A fool go with thy soul, whither it goes!" (Henry IV, Part I)

While chuckling over well-turned verbal affronts, I stumbled on "Shakespeare in Education," which, on cursory inspection, anyway, looked helpful.


Martin Luther King
Listen.


A little more Steinberg
From today's column:

Since today is Martin Luther King Day, I thought I would prepare by reading something written by the great civil rights leader. This year I chose his "Letter from Birmingham Jail." In it, he wrote something that reminded me of last year's senatorial campaign, when Alan Keyes was criticized for hailing from outofstate. King -- who I am not comparing to Keyes in any way, shape or form, except perhaps for their both being bipeds -- wrote, "I am cognizant of the interrelatedness of all communities and states. . . . Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to live with the narrow, provincial 'outside agitator' idea. Anyone who lives inside the United States can never be considered an outsider anywhere within its bounds."

He is, of course, right. Which means that, should Keyes run again, God forbid, while we may correctly criticize him as a fanatic, a loose cannon and a demagogue, we should give the whole "outlander" bit a rest. It makes us look provincial.

Heh, heh, heh.


The recommended daily allowance

Egocasting and grazing

In an article entitled "The Age of Egocasting" (The New Atlantis), Christine Rosen ponders the television, the remote, and "the personalization of technology."

Taken together, the remote control, combined with the proliferation of entertainment options generated by cable TV, encouraged a new kind of viewing behavior: grazing. Recounting his surveillance of one typical user, researcher Paul Traudt recorded his subject saying the following: “Okay ... I’m lookin’ for something that’s catching my eye. I’ll just hold the plus channel and I just go right through all the ... every channel until I see something.... I say, ‘Okay, let’s stay here for a couple of seconds to see what’s going on.’"

From later in the piece:

Questions about the erosion of cultural standards inevitably prompt charges that the critics are unduly pessimistic or merely hectoring. After all, most Americans see no looming apocalypse in the fact that some of our favorite pastimes are watching television and downloading music from the Internet. Aren’t our remote controls, our TiVos, and our iPods simply useful devices for providing us with much-deserved entertainment? “Americans love junk,” George Santayana once noted. “It’s not the junk that bothers me, it’s the love.” But few Americans have ever shared this sentiment. We like our cheesy reality TV shows and our silly sitcoms. We love the manufactured drama of The Wire and The Sopranos. What could be wrong with technologies that make our distractions more convenient? But as the critic Walter Benjamin once noted, “the distracted person, too, can form habits,” and in our new age of personalized technologies, two bad habits are emerging that suggest we should be a bit more cautious in our embrace of personalized technologies. We are turning into a nation of instant but uninformed critics and we are developing a keen impatience for what art demands of us.

Rosen references Postman's Amusing Ourselves to Death (an M-mv recommendation) and "Television Addiction Is No Mere Metaphor" (M-mv on television addiction), as well as Umberto Eco (who "once praised the remote as a device that allows people to 'transform something that was meant to be dogmatic—to make you laugh, to make you cry—into a free collage'”), Pavlov ("Meat powder made Pavlov’s dog drool; television does something similar to our brains"), and others.

Make time to read the entire piece... before settling in to watch.

My thoughts? Well, I grow more critical of television and, by extension, more stingy with my time with each step I take closer to the grave. When one is a teen or twenty-something, the "time remaining" measure is heavier (or seemingly so) than the the "time spent (if not, wasted)" measure. One can almost be forgiven hours spent basking in the glow of flickering screens, and some folks find the ability to hum, whistle, or sing myriad old television jingles and show theme songs if not charming, then certainly amusing. But when one is closing in on year forty-one, the scale is either balanced or tilting in the favor of "time spent (if not, wasted)." And a thinker must wonder, "Is this the best use of my time?"

Look, you'll never catch me waving an "Extinguish the Great American Campfire!" sign, but you probably won't catch me in front of the television much, either. "Law & Order," my unabashed and unabated addiction? I haven't watched since the three shows went into reruns for the holiday season. Repeats, Jerry Orbach's death, other things to do Sundays at 8 p.m., and Tuesday and Wednesday at 9 p.m. -- and so an avid fan becomes an absent fan. Cold turkey, just like the Dew.

"Outer Life," a blog I've recommended a few times before, speaks about stepping away from technology:

It was only after I shut off the TV for good and experienced the withdrawal symptoms of a mind so deadened to original thought that it couldn't bear to be left alone with itself that I realized the damage I was doing to myself. After my TV recovery, I gave up computer and video games, I stopped listening to the idiotic but hypnotic pop music that formed the soundtrack of my life, I cut spectator sports, I started to rue the time I'd spent reading the same book over and over, tired rehashes of the same old conventions in the same old genre forms.

Then, as my mind gradually cleared, and my thoughts started reasserting themselved into my consciousness, I questioned my need to read newspapers and magazines. With all I was getting from them, was I getting understanding? I concluded not. I still follow events, but from afar, waiting for the shine of the new to fade, revealing what's truly worthy of my attention.

Read. Think. Write. Learn. Laugh. Play. These are verbs to live by. Watch? Not so much... unless it's birds at the feeders, stars on a clear night, your children. Television? In ever smaller doses.

More Steinberg

From his column Friday:

Thursday, 9:27 a.m.
Walking north on Franklin, against the rain, I paused at Randolph to wait for the light to change. From my left came a tall man in a blue raincoat, a businessman, apparently, carrying the smallest parasol I have ever seen outside of the circus. A child's umbrella, the size of a pizza, bright blue and decorated with Flintstones cartoon characters.

As he passed, I pursed my lips to call out, "Wouldn't you rather just get wet?" But then I saw his face, a hound dog look dripping with fatigue, resignation and sorrow. Recognizing a fellow sufferer, I silently watched him recede into the gray, wet day.

The Mary Poppins Bag

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Best Literary/Book Blog

This uncharacteristic M-mv entry comes to you by way of a request posted at [insert forum name here]. If you're looking for book talk, click here.

The bag pictured above was purchased at an Eddie Bauer store in Southern California in November 1993. It is not the only Mary Poppins Bag (MPB), just the last in a short line of rucksacks, backpacks, and cool totes I've favored.

(And that trunk? A wedding gift from a college friend. She purchased it from an antiques dealer in South Jersey nearly two decades ago. The trunk is more than a century and a half old and has endured a move from one coast to another and halfway back. Yes, it is among my favorite possessions.)

A partial MPB contents list
Paper and notebooks
Colored pencils (sharpened)
Number 2 pencils
Pens
Boxes of crayons
Tissues
Wet wipes
Disinfectant wipes
Plastic bags of assorted sizes
A Magna Doodle
A magic erase board
A rotating crop of Dover coloring books
A read-aloud book
"Surprise" articles, books, magazines, etc.
A travel-size Connect Four
Extra socks and spare t-shirts
Rain ponchos
A small umbrella
Breath mints
Snacks
A secret stash of cash
Off and sprayable suncreen
A bottle of hand sanitizer
A disposable camera
Little surprises (e.g., tiny treats from the dollar store for long waits or car rides)
A pack of batteries for the Nikon Coolpix 900

I've been carrying one or another version of the MPB for years and never cease to be amazed by mothers who travel with young children without one. No crayons! No snacks! No pads! No wipes! Wow. Where'd you get your Mother License? Wal*Mart?

[Insert a carefully worded rant (not unlike my "An open letter" entry last fall) here.]

That's what's known as good-natured ribbing, folks. Don't get your Jockey briefs in a bunch, okay?

Anyway, I realized that I no longer needed the bag the day my middle child scolded my oldest: "You left the house without a book?!? How could you?!" So now I just tuck things like hand sanitizer into my own knapsack and keep a small tote with wipes, tissues, Off, sunscreen, etc. in the car. The Misses M-mv also keep an art bag there -- a knapsack holding the rotating crop of Dover coloring books and Magna Doodle, etc. that I once toted about.

All right?

This concludes our brush with mommy-blogging.

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)

As promised, we tossed the joint yesterday, checking on nightstands, under pillows (and beds), in knapsacks, under chairs, on the library table, and in the bathroom. Here are just a few of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations.

Oedipus the King (Sophocles)
Oedipus Tyrannus (Sophocles)
Master M-mv likes to compare versions and translations. Stephen Berg's translation has earned his praise, but the notes and commentary in the Norton Critical Edition are, as Master M-mv says, "just that -- critical."

From the Berg translation:

If I could, I would have walled my ears so they heard nothing,
I would have made this body of mine a wall.
I would have heard nothing, tasted nothing, smelled nothing, seen
nothing.
No thought. No feeling. Nothing. Nothing.
So pain would never reach me any more.

Master M-mv and I have recently finished our self-styled "Job cycle" -- beginning with Rob Lacey's The Word on the Street, moving to Stephen Mitchell's pitch-perfect translation, and concluding with Archibald Macleish's J.B.: A Play in Verse.

From J.B.:

Listen! This is a simple scene.
I play God. You play Satan.
God is asking where you've been.
All you have to do is tell him:
Simple as that. "In the earth," you answer.

Only it's never as simple as that, is it?

We've also begun discussing Ayn Rand and objectivism; our family book club selection for February is Anthem.


[Added at 8:30 a.m.: We interrupt this entry for a bit of shameful self-promotion. "Mental multivitamin" is currently first in the Best of Blogs 2004, Best Literary/Book Blog category. This cannot last, not without your help, anyway. May we have your vote? Many thanks. We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

Update (added at 10:59 a.m.): And now we're down by thirty votes. How in the world did that happen? Perhaps it would best to step away from the monitor and to resolve to purchase the Kate Atkinson book for myself. That is, after all, the only reason I've been "campaigning" -- Case Histories is listed as one of the prizes for first place. Carry on.]


"For fun," Master M-mv is revisiting some Crichton; Aunt M-mv said she'd send him State of Fear when she's done.

Mr. M-mv is studying for certification exams (again) and has opted for some light fare for his commute: Dan Brown's Digital Fortress. So what do you think? I asked him. "Well, he is not a great writer, but the story's neat, I guess. The author feels like he has to remind us at the beginning of each chapter why the protagonist is in the lab. We already know! Get on with it! The chapters are eight paragraphs apiece, so it's, like, Chapter 80 when he reveals 'The Big Secret,' which we figured out in, oh, Chapter 3. But it's okay."

Don't hold anything back, man. Tell us how you really feel. Heh, heh, heh. Mr. M-mv is always happier when Master M-mv or I select his books for him. For example, he adored Great Expectations, Watership Down, and every other family book club selection. Note to Mr. M-mv: We'll make you a list.

I'm still working on Michael Dirda's An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland, Alberto Manguel's A Reading Diary, and Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom Be Found?

From Bloom:

I have only three criteria for what I go on reading and teaching: aesthetic splendor, intellectual power, wisdom. Societal pressures and journalistic fashions may obscure these standards for a time, but mere Period Pieces never endure. The mind always returns to its need for beauty, truth, and insight.

From Manguel:

There are books that we skim over happily, forgetting one page as we turn to the next; others that we read reverently, without daring to agree or disagree; others that offer mere information and preclude our commentary; others still that, because we loved them so long and so dearly, we can repeat word by word, since we know them, in the truest sense, by heart.

Reading is a conversation.

From Dirda:

If Agatha Christie provided my introduction to "grown-up" fiction, then Fyodor Dostoyevsky deepened the casual relationship into a love affair... Never in my life did a long book move so quickly. Children's stories might allow the occasional speculation about a young hero's pluck or his playground fears, but in [Crime and Punishment] thinking -- brooding, really -- turned out to be as important as talk or action. This was a journey to the center of the self.

Let's see... Einstein: The Passions of a Scientist (Barry Parker) and John James Audubon: The Making of an American (Richard Rhodes) are in queue. Regular readers might already know that Rhodes is one of my companions (which is how I selected his biography of Audubon over this one) and that Family M-mv has begun amassing a collection of bird books and resources. (See photo below.)



The Misses M-mv only gave me two books for our photo shoot, An Illustrated Treasury of Read-Aloud Poems for Young People and The End of the Beginning (Avi), the latter of which they used for a phenomenal readers' theater exercise earlier this week. They're reading other things, some of which I covered here and here.

There are other books; there always are. I'm out of time, though, so I'll leave you with this: According to Sir William Osler, "It is much simpler to buy books than to read them and easier to read them than to absorb their contents. Too many men slip early out of the habit of studious reading, and yet that is essential...."

Don't slip out of the habit, readers, thinkers, and autodidacts. Just. Don't.


Previous "On the nightstand" entries
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

Now I've done it.

A cat picture. What's next? A link to an inane quiz?

So, yeah, I'm staging the books for this month's "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry, when I notice the cat lounging on Master M-mv's copy of Oedipus Tyrannus (and, yes, the Cliffs Notes).

He was begging me to take his photo, folks.

So I did.

This would probably be a bad time to ask for your vote, huh?

Dress up

The Misses M-mv persuaded me to bring my wedding dress out of the attic. It didn't take much.

I am certain that mothers can be loosely divided into two sorts:

1. the sort whose wedding dresses were expensively preserved and stored so that their adult daughters might wear them one day; and

2. the sort whose wedding dresses were expensively preserved and stored, which makes it damned hard to get them out of the boxes neatly when their young daughters want to play princess bride.

I am, of course, the latter sort.

Yes, that's a friendship bracelet on her ankle. The Misses M-mv wear theirs there because otherwise the bracelets catch on things; the rest of us wear them more conventionally.


On reading
This is, by some accounts, anyway, a literary/book blog, so I offer this reminder (both to myself and M-mv's regular visitors): Our January entry of "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" will be published this weekend... I think.

I can tell you what I'm reading this afternoon, at least:

Michael Dirda's An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland (Still.)

Harold Bloom's Where Shall Wisdom Be Found? (Not surprisingly, in Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Montaigne, among others.)

The issue of the Atlantic that arrived in yesterday's mail.


The Shakespeare Project of Chicago
We've written about these folks before. In a month, they'll present The Winter's Tale directed by Laura St. John.

Saturday, February 12
at 10 a.m.
Newberry Library
60 West Walton Street
Chicago, IL

and
at 2 p.m.
Wilmette Public Library
Corner of Park and Wilmette Avenues
Wilmette, IL

Sunday, February 13
at 2 p.m.
Duncan YMCA, Chernin Center for the Arts
1001 West Roosevelt Road
Chicago, IL

Visit SPC's site here.

Star graves
And finally this afternoon, from "Evidence for Milky Way's Long-Theorized Stellar Graveyard Found" (Scientific American):

A supermassive black hole, known as Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*), resides at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Findings presented yesterday at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society in San Diego, Calif., indicate that it, in turn, could be surrounded by a swarm of smaller black holes that have accumulated over billions of years. The results suggest that the smaller black holes will eventually fall into the supermassive black hole, increasing its size and helping astronomers better understand how such black holes grow.

If weather permits tonight, folks, look up.

Why I read the Sun-Times

I've actually covered this topic pretty thoroughly (here), but a flurry of pieces recently reminded me why I chose the so-called working-man's newspaper.

From "Meth users can look forward to gumming their food" (1/11):

One offshoot of methamphetamine abuse also appears to be insatiable appetite for high-caffeine, high-sugar sodas, particularly Mountain Dew. That can combine with the frenetic nature of the drug, letting users go for long periods without good hygiene.

I've been off the tinkly green stuff since December 30. Ayup. Cold turkey. If I were seeking a reason beyond (a) being much too old to drink sugar and (b) the five pounds that have fallen off my fanny, this is it. My personal weakness was like the meth addict's "insatiable appetite for high-caffeine, high-sugar sodas"?!? Eek!

From "Dino flick lands local student in flying film fest" (1/11):

When Columbia College grad Jason Klamm needed to demonstrate how dinosaur fossils form for a student film, he found a little dated inspiration in a certain wholesome Mormon family who once proclaimed they were a "little bit country" and a "little bit of rock 'n' roll."

Two plastic toy dinosaurs named "Donny" and "Marie" duke it out in Klamm's seven-minute "Dinosaurs: They Certainly Were Big." "Marie" is fatally mauled and a bespectacled Klamm deadpans: "Little Marie here would soon begin to decompose, her bones being the last remaining evidence of her once shining career."

I am a fool for quirky but intelligent creativity. Watch Klamm's short here.

From "The New Adult" (which was adapted from Zaslow's piece in the Wall Street Journal (here)) (1/10):

Ages 18 and 21 are no longer the true entry points into American adult hood, as more young people today take soul-searching breaks after college or put off starting their "grown-up" lives. A 2003 poll by the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center found that most Americans think adulthood begins at about age 26. Understandably then, many parents don't know when and how to disengage, which can leave their kids overly dependent into their thirties and forties.

Thirties? Forties? Egads!

From Neil Steinberg's column (1/5):

A lot of new laws came into effect Jan. 1, and the one that strikes me as the most ill-conceived is the law requiring most students to stay in school until they reach the age of 17.

That is a mistake. The schools are already overpacked with delinquents who do not want to be there. They make it hard for the teachers and hard for other students. Rather than compelling attendance, the government should encourage students who want to drop out to do so. Rather than be raised to 17, the age of legal departure should have been lowered to 15. Not everyone should go to college. Lots of kids spend their youths in a determined trek toward prison, and the quicker they get there, the better for all.

In fact, all our educational woes would be solved if the state expelled every student who didn't show up at school at 6 a.m. the day of their 16th birthday with a hand-written three-page essay titled, "Why I want to graduate high school and lead a productive life.''

But we aren't going to do that. Are we? No, expecting nothing from our children, we get even less.

Ayup.

Long overdue

Many thanks to Rich of "Shockingly Provincial." Master M-mv applied some rudimentary online research skills to learn who nominated "Mental multivitamin" for the BOB Awards 2004, Best Literary/Book Blog (hey, better late than never), and, well, Rich, many thanks.

[M-mv on "Shockingly Provincial" here and here.]

And, again, thanks to the folks who selected M-mv as one of the ten finalists. We've gained new "regulars" because of the contest.

Winter scenes

Some days, dawn yields to a ten-hour dusk, and then night arrives. An endless round of gray days can be wearying.



Michael Dirda's An Open Book: Coming of Age in the Heartland and the Sun-Times joined me for today's first cup of French roast.

______________________

Just some links today, I think.

From "Toys have lasting impact on brain" (BBC News):

Scientists found skills learned very early in life may trigger permanent changes in the structure of the brain.

The findings, based on a study in owls, underline the importance of choosing the right toys for children, even at the earliest stages of life.

Heh, heh, heh. I wonder what said scientists would make of the Misses M-mv's sprawling collection of Little Ponies. What permanent changes have the diminutive equines rendered on their gray matter?

From "The Little Prince" (Times Online):

Rumours about Andersen’s true parentage have swirled around Denmark for a century or more. The most persistent, championed in books published there by Jens Jørgensen and Rolf Dorset, is that he was the illegitimate son of Countess Elise Ahlefeldt-Laurvig by Crown Prince Christian Frederik, the future King Christian VIII. If true, it was not just Andersen’s king who died that January, but also his father.

Many Andersen experts dismiss this theory as preposterous. It relies on circumstantial evidence, gossip and guesswork. Royal patronage does not prove royal parentage, and without a DNA test it remains pure supposition. But it does raise some intriguing questions about the accepted “fairytale” of Andersen’s life.

So I read this article, with great interest, and then spent the remainder of the afternoon singing, "It's wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen!" Gosh, I love that movie.

From "The irresistible, singable, stick-in-your-mindable jingle is dead" (Boston Globe):

But the jingle, as anyone with a television knows, is a vanishing art form. It is too quaint, too corny, too oldschool for our ironic times. Naming your product in a commercial for your product is just tacky, say advertising executives. Modern pitchmen prefer pop songs that create a mood or spark an emotional association or conjure up some sort of vague but potent lifestyle-oriented craving that, if all goes as planned, attaches to a product and translates to a sale.

"Our ironic times," eh? For some reason, reading that phrase felt like drying off with a wet towel. Bleah.

Tracking

Last weekend, we learned the rudiments of animal tracking at a class offered by [insert name of state Department of Natural Resources (DNR) site here]. We learned, for example, that to identify a critter by its clues alone, we must not only look at its print, but at its track (series of prints), its straddle (width of the track), and its stride (the distance between prints) or leap (the distance between sets of four prints made by hopping or bounding animals). Other clues to the animal's identity include the composition of nearby scat (nature talk for sh-, um, excretement) and the direction of its trail; for example, if the tracks lead into a snow tunnel, think vole or mink.

No, we're not in Chicago any more.

But we continue to learn. Life in the country has not (as I think we feared even as we celebrated our new home and its potential) arrested our autodidactic development.

We grabbed our tracking books and the handouts from our class when we returned to [insert state DNR facility here] today. The snow makes tracking easier, so much easier. We identified muskrat, racoon, squirrel, and deer tracks, found remnants of a hawk's prey, and discovered that the bullfrog's metamorphosis can be much longer than that of a Grow-a-Frog: Three bullfrog tadpoles darted between the ice and the boardwalk of the trail, plump, lively tadpoles -- in January!

For more about tracking, our favorites:

Track Pack: Animal Tracks in Full Life Size (Ed Gray)
The Complete Tracker: Tracks, Signs, and Habits of North American Wildlife (Len McDougall)
Track Finder (Dorcas Miller)

Since moving to the country in August, we've also had the time (and inclination) to learn more about birds. It was as simple as putting out feeders and leaving the binoculars close to the back windows. As I mentioned in our 8.24.2004 "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" entry:

Field Guide to the Birds of North America (National Geographic)
The Sibley Guide to Birds (David Allen Sibley (National Audubon Society))
Yes, one can bird-watch in Chicago, but how wonderful that the birds — so many, many of them! — come to our simple bird feeder in the backyard. The guides above have been constant companions (in addition to said birds)....

It's almost dark now. Another pot of coffee is burbling, and each of us is the process of creating a personal cocoon -- staking a claim in the living room with a favorite quilt or blanket and a book with which to while away the rest of this Sunday afternoon.

Read. Think. Write. Learn. Discuss. Laugh. Challenge. Play.

We are.

Books on tape

From "My Secret Stash of Books on Tape" (Chronicle of Higher Education, January 7):

Perhaps there is something psychologically reassuring about listening to someone read a story. Hardly a day has passed in the last 30 years in which I have not heard a spoken-word recording of one kind or another. I go to sleep every night with the soothing sounds of a recorded book.

Books on tape are a Family M-mv staple. I can't begin to imagine, for example, "reading" Shakespeare without seeing and hearing it first. We have developed a pattern of study in which we read a summary of the play to familiarize ourselves with its plot and then settle in with one (or more) filmed productions. (We've also been fortunate to see staged productions at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and theatrical readings given by the Shakespeare Project of Chicago.) After playing the role of beloved groundlings, we read the play to the sonorous accompaniment of an unadbridged audiobook. The Arkangel are among our favorites (the local library owns the complete set), but Caedmon, BBC Radio Presents, and Naxos Audiobooks also deliver.

Thomas Benton concludes the Chronicle piece:

In the past, the ability to concentrate on an unadorned text for long periods of time was largely possible because of a lack of more appealing alternatives. These days, many -- perhaps most -- undergraduates could only get through Crime and Punishment if they were locked in solitary confinement for two months.

There is no way to rewind history. The minds of our students are different from those of previous generations. But a lifelong love of literature is a good thing, even if it is experienced by other means than a solitary encounter with the printed page.

In the case of Shakespeare, a lifelong love is probably best grown from an experience other than a solitary encounter with the printed page. The beloved groundlings didn't read Hamlet; they saw and heard it. We should, too. Only then will we be prepared for the printed page.

M-mv on Hamlet, well, Polonius, really.

The recommended daily allowance

A typical day, atypical entry

We stayed up late last night to watch and discuss Woody Allen's masterful Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Professor Levy: We're all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale; most of these choices are on lesser points. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are, in fact, the sum total of our choices. Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to be included in the design of creation. It is only we, with our capacity to love, that give meaning to the indifferent universe. And yet, most human beings seem to have the ability to keep trying and even try to find joy from simple things, like their family, their work, and from the hope that future generations might understand more.

I'm no college coed, so late nights make me a little fuzzy around the edges, but not so much so that I didn't catch Miss M-mv(i)'s observation that the Chopin that underscored first breakfast was "Wonderful! It sounds like we're in a cafe where people are eating and softly talking. And outside? It's dark, and snowflakes are swirling down."

Where does she get these ideas?

Miss M-mv(ii) is more literal-minded. She read "The Tortoise and the Ducks" aloud today (this edition). "And what is the moral or lesson of that story?" I asked. With not a hint of irony or sarcasm, she replied gravely, "Not to talk if you're holding a stick in your mouth and friends are carrying you. You'll fall! And die!"

Master M-mv is not without his insights, mind you. "You know, reading a great book -- or even seeing a great movie, really -- is like having a conversation with Professor Levy [yes, the philosopher in Crimes and Misdemeanors]. Sometimes, it's hard to understand, at first, but then? You're there! And you don't want to interrupt, you just want to listen and listen. And then think. Maybe ask questions. And listen again. A great book or movie, even if only in a small way, changes you forever."

Yes, he's reading and watching Shakespeare again. And some Woody Allen. And one of his favorite books is Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Great? You decide.

Heh, heh, heh.

Funny kids.

Knowing them makes me want to be the best possible version of me. Even when it means staying up past my bedtime and feeling fuzzy in the morning.

Happy weekend, autodidacts. Read. Think. Learn. (And don't forget to laugh, too.)

Dark-eyed junco

"Just tell me why, oh, why the dark-eyed juncos, the woodpeckers, and the cardinals flee just before I 'Click!'?" I mused (okay, whined) in this entry. "I have come to the conclusion that birds are telepathic," A. explained. A., then, perhaps more than any other M-mv reader or visitor, will appreciate the above photo, amateurish though it may be.

Nineteen Theses on Literature

That's Roger Shattuck's Candor and Perversion on the foot rest. My snow day selection. Shattuck's "Nineteen Theses on Literature" would make a compelling poster for the walls of thinking undergrad lit students, no? These two, in particular:

IX. Like our terrestrial environment, our literary, intellectual, and moral environment needs to be wisely cultivated and protected. We have as many strip miners and clear cutters operating in the areas of literature, philosophy, and history as we have operating on the planet Earth. You know their names and their schools. Some of them believe that we, who devote ourselves to literature and inquiry, are an endangered species — and should fade away. We, for our part, are resolved to survive and to flourish. [Emphasis added]

And:

XI. In the fullness of time a poet-oracle came forth upon the mountain top, whence one could see a great distance in all directions. To the innumerable questions put to this fierce yet gentle seer, only two answers have come down to us:

1. "Everything exists in order to end up in a book."

2. "Nothing will survive unless it has been uttered."

A few days ago, in an ongoing correspondence with a virtual pen-pal, I noted that for some of us, as Mark Edmundson posits in Why Read?, for example, literature, the "good stuff," the stuff to which we return again and again, is a religion of sorts. According to Edmundson:

[I]t is possible for some of us, and maybe more than some, to use secular writing as the preeminent means for shaping our lives. That means that we might construct ourselves from novels, poems, and plays, as well as from works of history and philosophy, in the way that our ancestors constructed themselves (and were constructed) by the Bible and other sacred texts.

Ayup.

Reading literature saves some of us, I continued. (It also maps the geography of our imaginations, defines and redefines our perceptions of self, and begins to answer, far more satisfactorily than any other tool, device, or process, the central questions of our existence: Why am I here? What is the nature of being human? Who am I? But I didn't include this assertion in the aforementioned correspondence.)

Reading literature saves some of us. That's simply some people's truth. It's certainly my truth.

[M-mv on Why Read?: here and here.]

Related in an unrelated sort of way... we received this note from L.R. this morning:

I have been reading your blog for several months now, and I just wanted to say how very much I appreciate it... I have learned so much from you. Many of the articles you link to are so interesting and thought-provoking. The first blogs I ever stumbled upon were the "mommy-blogs" you have described, and I thought, "Why would anyone want to do this?" Being somewhat of a loner and an introvert, myself, I could not for the life of me understand why someone would want to keep nothing more than an online diary - available to the public. But, when I found your "un-blog," I knew I had found something different. Thank you for educating me and also for inspring me to carve out more time from my busy schedule (3 children under 5 years old, a construction business to run, and a home to make) for reading and continuing to educate myself. Making time for self-education does take "mental fortitude" in our busy lives, but it is important. My children need me to inspire them and help them to fall in love with learning, as well.

Thank you, L.R.

Snow fairies

Oh, I love the touch of snowflakes
landing on my nose.

It feels like tender fairies
dropping by to say, "Hello!"

Illustration and poem by Miss M-mv(i)

About us

Click button to vote for M-mv!

Best Literary/Book Blog

The BOB Awards have brought many new visitors to the un-blog. (Thank you again, folks.) We decided to move this (re)introduction up front for those who are new to M-mv. So...

Welcome!
Among other things, we believe that fogged memory and slowed wit are not the inevitable consequences of , say, becoming a parent and/or growing old(er). Exercise your brain — read, play River Crossing, solve the New York Times crossword puzzle, learn Latin.

And take "Mental multivitamin," of course.

The recommended daily allowance
M-mv often includes "The recommended daily allowance," which features descriptions, quotes, and synopses from books (and occasionally films, cds, software, and artwork) that can have the same effect on gray matter as juicing can have on the rest of a getting-older-and-wiser body. If a title tantalizes you, dear reader, thinker, autodidact, click on the link.

On the nightstand
Once a month, we also cobble together "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)," a snapshot of the books that have recently become a part of the geography of our imaginations. You can find those entries at the links below. Our next installment of this feature is currently slated to run mid-January.

Previous "On the nightstand" entries
12.21.2004
11.21.2004
10.12.2004
9.13.2004
8.24.2004
7.19.2004
6.12.2004
5.19.2004
4.22.2004
3.12.2004
2.15.2004
1.26.2004
12.31.2003

Write to us
We appreciate your comments, questions, and recommendations, so direct your (civilized) remarks and inquiries to the folks at "Mental multivitamin" by clicking here.

Subscribe to M-mv
Save time. Enter your email address in the box labelled "Subscribe" (in the sidebar), and we'll advise you when new entries are posted. This free service is provided for your convenience and is certainly not required.

Search the un-blog
The search box in the sidebar is a more effective way to search the un-blog than the engine provided by Blogger.

Shameless self-promotion
If a purchase that can be made at Amazon.com is in your future, please use one of the links here at "Mental multivitamin" (like this one!). No, we're not in this for the money, but it certainly is helpful.

From deep in the archives
If you're trying to get a sense of what we're about (beyond "On the nightstand"), check out one or more of these older entries.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled programming...

Parenting as performance art

"Diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit diddit didda."

The recommended daily allowance: "An opinion cannot hurt you."

Defining creativity

In the time it takes to read this paragraph...

On your nightstands or, What you're reading right now (some survey results)

Book wars

(Re)thinking

Revisionist history 101?

About college

A blog entry about blogging or, a meta-blog entry

Just borrowing?

It's like a muscle: Use it or lose it.

And what are those books in the photo?
They are friends and companions.

Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)

Rape: A Love Story (Joyce Carol Oates)

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Lynne Truss)

In Our Defense: The Bill of Rights in Action (Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy)

Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers (David Edmonds and John Eidinow)

Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (Nicholson Baker)

Behind the Scenes at the Museum (Kate Atkinson)

The Deptford Trilogy (Robertson Davies)

The Faith of a Writer: Life, Craft, Art (Joyce Carol Oates)

Cat's Cradle (Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

Middlemarch (George Eliot)

Asimov's Guide to Shakespeare (Isaac Asimov)

Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human (Harold Bloom)

The Complete Pelican Shakespeare

"Endings are a catharsis."

From Saturday's San Francisco Chronicle:

Endings, by their nature, are exquisitely torturous. We're all psychologically primed to crave resolving climaxes, and simultaneously inclined to doubt, mistrust, reject and even fear them.

Catharsis -- in drama or a therapist's office -- is both. Aristotle called it recognition and reversal. Theater audiences, readers, music lovers and filmgoers feel it in their bones, their flesh, their communal DNA.

Endings define and disappoint, gratify and frustrate. They confer meaning and confirm the structure of what's come before -- in a movie, a sonata, a work of fiction. But they also kill off pleasure, snap us out of the dream and clamp down order on experience that we, as citizens of the modern world, believe to be open-ended, ambiguous and unresolved. It's a delicious paradox.

Yes, it is. And I suppose rereading James Joyce's "The Dead," with its exquisitely painful ending, is, as Steve Winn posits, therapeutic.

Generous tears filled Gabriel's eyes. He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love. The tears gathered more thickly in his eyes and in the partial darkness he imagined he saw the form of a young man standing under a dripping tree. Other forms were near. His soul had approached that region where dwell the vast hosts of the dead. He was conscious of, but could not apprehend, their wayward and flickering existence. His own identity was fading out into a grey impalpable world: the solid world itself, which these dead had one time reared and lived in, was dissolving and dwindling.

A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.

[A recent M-mv musing on Joyce.]

Cathartic endings were also a tool in the chest of essayist (and American treasure, in Family M-mv's opinion, anyway) E.B. White. Consider the closing paragraphs of his essay "Once More to the Lake":

One afternoon while we were there at that lake a thunderstorm came up. It was like the revival of an old melodrama that I had seen long ago with childish awe. The second-act climax of the drama of the electrical disturbance over a lake in America had not changed in any important respect. This was the big scene, still the big scene. The whole thing was so familiar, the first feeling of oppression and heat and a general air around camp of not wanting to go very far away. In mid-afternoon (it was all the same) a curious darkening of the sky, and a lull in everything that had made life tick; and then the way the boats suddenly swung the other way at their moorings with the coming of a breeze out of the new quarter, and the premonitory rumble. Then the kettle drum, then the snare, then the bass drum and cymbals, then crackling light against the dark, and the gods grinning and licking their chops in the hills. Afterward the calm, the rain steadily rustling in the calm lake, the return of light and hope and spirits, and the campers running out in joy and relief to go swimming in the rain, their bright cries perpetuating the deathless joke about how they were getting simply drenched, and the children screaming with delight at the new sensation of bathing in the rain, and the joke about getting drenched linking the generations in a strong indestructible chain. And the comedian who waded in carrying an umbrella.

When the others went swimming my son said he was going in too. He pulled his dripping trunks from the line where they had hung all through the shower, and wrung them out. Languidly, and with no thought of going in, I watched him, his hard little body, skinny and bare, saw him wince slightly as he pulled up around his vitals the small, soggy, icy garment. As he buckled the swollen belt suddenly my groin felt the chill of death.

Scholars (and AP English teachers) make much of Joyce's use of epiphany as a literary device. Richard Ellman (whose exquisite biography of Joyce we recently recommended here) notes:

The epiphany did not mean for Joyce the manifestation of godhead, the showing forth of Christ to the Magi, although that is a useful metaphor for what he had in mind. The epiphany was the sudden "revelation of the whatness of a thing," the moment in which "the soul of the commonest object... seems to us radiant." ... These are moments of fullness or of passion. Sometimes the epiphanies are rewarding for another reason, that they convey precisely the flavor of unpalatable experiences. The spirit, as Joyce characteristically held, manifested itself on both levels. They vary also in style: sometimes they read like messages in an unfamiliar tongue; their brilliance lies in their peculiar baldness, their uncompromising refusal of all devices which would render them immediately clear. At other times they are deliberately unenciphered, and lyrically biased.

It would seem that White was capable of the deliberately unenciphered and lyrically biased ephinany, too, no?

Endings. And here is mine.

Here, in the country, the snow is falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling upon all the living and the dead at the rate of one inch per hour.

And it's terribly beautiful, like an ending should be.

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Recommended reading

Between "The recommended daily allowance" entries (example) and our monthly "On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.)" feature, we recommend a lot of books. Oh, and all of the books we mention in other entries, too. It adds up.

It's fashionable to eschew year-end and/or best-of lists, but they have their place, no? Here's our list of favorite recommendations from the past year.


Non-fiction
Snobbery: The American Version (Joseph Epstein)
Education and Jobs: The Great Training Robbery (Ivar Berg)
The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America (Louis Menand)
Confessions of a Philosopher (Bryan Magee)
Call of the Mall (Paco Underhill)
Meditations for the Humanist (A.C. Grayling)
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Steven Pinker)
Genius: A Mosaic of One Hundred Exemplary Creative Minds (Harold Bloom)
Wittgenstein's Poker: The Story of a Ten-Minute Argument Between Two Great Philosophers (David Edmonds and John Eidinow)
The Words We Live By (Linda R. Monk)
In Our Defense (Ellen Alderman and Caroline Kennedy)
Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation (Lynne Truss)
Socrates Cafe: A Fresh Taste of Philosophy (Christopher Phillips)
Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books (Azar Nafisi)
Candyfreak (Steve Almond)
Will in the World: How Shakespeare Became Shakespeare (Stephen Greenblatt)
Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America (Garry Wills)
How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry (Edward Hirsch)
Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics (Simon Blackburn)
How to Read Literature Like a Professor: A Lively and Entertaining Guide to Reading between the Lines (Thomas C. Foster)
Why Read? (Mark Edmundson)
The Best American Essays 2004
Shakespeare After All (Marjorie Garber)
A Scream Goes Through the House: What Literature Teaches Us About Life (Arnold Weinstein)


Fiction
Interpreter of Maladies (Jhumpa Lahiri)
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal (Christopher Moore)
Great Expectations (Charles Dickens)
Jim the Boy (Tony Early)
What Was She Thinking [Notes on a Scandal] (Zoe Heller)
The Space Merchants (Frederik Pohl)
Little Children (Tom Perrotta)
Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)
The Picture of Dorian Gray (Oscar Wilde)
The Great Fire (Shirley Hazzard)
The Falls (Joyce Carol Oates)
Gilgamesh: A New English Verson (Stephen Mitchell)
The Good Nanny (Benjamin Cheever)
The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula LeGuin)
Housekeeping (Marilynne Robinson)


Books for younger readers
Wolf Story (William McCleery)
The Mennymns (Sylvia Waugh)
The Mother Owl (Edith Thatcher Hurd)
When the Circus Came to Town (Laurence Yep)
Black Beauty (Anna Sewell)
Freddy and the Perilous Adventure (Walter R. Brooks)
Silverwing (Keith Oppel)
The Mouse and His Child (Russell Hoban)
A Child's Christmas in Wales (text, Dylan Thomas; illustrations, Chris Raschka)

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Leap of faith

From "God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap" (today's New York Times):

"What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?"
...

I believe in the existence of life elsewhere because chemistry seems to be so life-striving and because life, once created, propagates itself in every possible direction. Earth's history suggests that chemicals get busy and create life given any old mix of substances that includes a bit of water, and given practically any old source of energy; further, that life, once created, spreads into every nook and cranny over a wide range of temperature, acidity, pressure, light level and so on.

Believing in the existence of intelligent life elsewhere in the galaxy is another matter. [Kenneth Ford]

Registration is required to read the NYT online, but it's free, quick, and painless.

Speaking of painless
"Mental multivitamin" was named a finalist in the Best of Blog (BOB) Awards, Best Literary/Book Blog. Cast your vote for M-mv here. Apparently, it is, as they say, a new democracy every day: One may vote for his or her favorite blogs every twenty-four hours until January 17. Use that information as you see fit.

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The recommended daily allowance

M-mv fave R.T. writes:

I've been mourning Sontag's death all weekend. But in my current life, I am only in contact with a few who would know of her, and none who would care. Her words, thoughts, ideas, passion for art and human insight, inspired me in my former career. She was a brilliant observer, and she could put those keen insights into words in new and economical ways that would cause the reader to sit up and wonder, and the artist to think more deeply about the integration of many mediums of expression, nature and thought and how that is perceived. I highly recommend, although I haven't read all of her books, Against Interpretation: And Other Essays.

In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, conformable.

Rife with the trivial and banal

From M., an original and card-carrying member of M-mv's best and perfect audience, "[s]ome comments on recent M-mv entries, perhaps even 'rife with the trivial and banal'":

10:17 a.m. on Christmas eve:

Six hours for the stew, which would have been ready at 3 p.m. had Mrs. M-mv remembered to turn it on after mixing in all of the ingredients.

Turn it on?! Sounds like a crockpot to me... so where's the recipe?

On the nightstand (under the pillow, in the knapsack, etc.):
I really like that blue bird wallpaper!

Autodidacticism:
I liked the excerpt, but then I read the entire article and -- I don't know -- it has this fake sentimentality about the plight of the working classes at that time. The late 1800s through the early 1900s was before the advent of the welfare state, when capitalism was supposedly “purer.“ I’ve seen this misplaced nostalgia before in other conservative writers (such as Mark Helprin in A Winter‘s Tale, and later in his opinion pieces for the Wall Street Journal). No, these workers were not lucky to live in such times, even if society was perhaps more literate and primary education was “better.” And, no, a rich intellectual life does not compensate for a 12 hour workday in a coal mine or textile mill with no social safety net whatsoever. According to my husband (English, working class, and a son of a weaver), the autodidacts described in the article slipped through the cracks of the educational system, and would not have done so if they had lived in England after WWII.

Brain backslide:
R.T. must have grand-jeted and what not-ed her adolescence away in the dance studio, when she could have profitably spent her afternoon hours in front of the television. Because any viewer of "Star Trek" re-runs in the 1970s knows that while the brain continues to evolve at an accelerating pace, the body will wither away. In addition to a plethora (that was in honor of [insert mutual name of virtual acquaintance here]) of aliens with pumpkin-sized heads, there was an episode featuring an incredibly advanced civilization of brains only, residing under individual glass domes. As an extremely uncoordinated teen, I was excited to imagine such a future -- it was right up there with being Mrs. Spock.

For the record, the bird wallpaper came with the house. It's clean and the Misses M-mv like it. I'd rather read a book than redecorate. So the blue birds (and a few of the house's other, shall we say, "signs of character" (e.g., the mirrored shelving in the dining room) stay.

In the company of books

The material below was culled from a piece that was published in 2003. The photo was taken yesterday.


My parents owned about twenty books. We children were roundly scolded if caught touching or — gasp! — reading them. I was once upbraided for dipping into a gilt-edged set of Shakespeare’s complete works. “You’ll ruin the pages!” cried my mother as she swooped in to “save” the books and promptly return them to their purely decorative function as knickknacks on her colonial-style drum table. Oh, sure, there were a dozen or so books on the toy chests in our rooms — Nancy Drew, a couple of “How and Why” books, and a collection of bible stories. But this bibliophile must, however reluctantly, say, “Thank goodness for public schools!” Without them, I might have learned to recite the weekly television schedules by rote, but I never would have become a reader.

To folks who passionately love books and learning, mine must seem to be a rather grim beginning. But I am reminded of it today because I found my middle child held captive by the one book largely responsible for preventing my young mind from atrophying in my parents’ blue-collar, “we-have-the-largest-newest-clearest-color-television-in-the-neighborhood” home: Children’s Guide to Knowledge.

The subtitle of the book is Wonders of Nature, Marvels of Science and Man, and it was published by Parents’ Magazine Press. An aunt gave it to me when I finished third grade. Her inscription notes that the book would help me complete fourth-grade reports. Thirty-two years after its publication, Children’s Guide to Knowledge continues to deliver a compelling world of animals, plants, history, geography, and scientific achievement (through early space exploration, anyway). The spine is crumbling, and the book has a damp, forgotten smell, but it still seduces.

So, here we are in a home of thousands of books, and my daughter and I are courting a musty volume that most people would finger disdainfully at a used book sale. The reading life is funny, no?

Of course, my children have a much richer reading life than I did as a child. As a result, they are fast friends with books that I didn’t meet until much later in my development — and it makes all the difference in their vocabulary, their writing, their thought processes, their ability to make connections between one piece of literature and another.

Mine are not “gifted” children, at least not per the tortured definition educators now ascribe to that poor word. They are simply children who have always lived in the company of books. And, oh, how lucky they are!

I am reminded of their great fortune every time we visit a library. I cringe upon entering the children’s room, where colorful posters urge parents to read to their children twenty minutes a day. The primary problem with this exhortation is that the folks who need to be reminded to read aloud to their kids probably don’t visit the library and, hence, never see the posters. And twenty minutes? It’s nowhere near enough. We’ll have heard at least three hours from the world of words before bedtime — not including all of the, as my daughters call it, “reading in our minds.” Then again, mine was a book-barren childhood, and, as the saying goes, I turned out all right. Hmmm. “All right” is not exactly a lofty goal, is it?

Enough from me. I must visit a dear childhood friend: Children’s Guide to Knowledge. My daughter has reacquainted us after a too-long separation.

One hundred years of Einstein

Photo from Free Stock Photos.

"A century after Einstein's miracle year, most people still do not understand exactly what it was he did. Here, we attempt to elucidate." ("Miraculous Visions," The Economist)

The recommended daily allowance

What was it that the defrocked priest had said? "We are all members of one another. "What had the holy-sounding fraud meant by that? Why had several snickered then and not one had laughed out from the heart? Bednar hadn't understood then and could not let himself understand now. It had been too long since he himself had laughed from the heart.

Yet the words had left him with a secret and wishful envy of every man with a sentence hanging over his head like the very promise of salvation. Leaving him with no recourse save to swallow his own dark guilt, like a piece of spoiled meat in the throat, and turn out the chargesheet lamp.

Kurt Vonnegut on Nelson Algren.


A gentle reminder
More than 155,000 people have died in East Africa and South Asia in the aftermath of the earthquake and resulting tsunamis on December 26. The American Red Cross reports that emergency assessment and first-aid teams were on the ground quickly and are already working with local groups to support relief efforts. If you would like to make a financial donation to the American Red Cross, you can use the Amazon Honor System. (See the button below.) According to Amazon, one hundred percent of donations made will go to the American Red Cross disaster relief efforts.

Thank you.

Coffee in bed

A Reading Diary (Alberto Manguel)

Neuromancer (William Gibson)

Know Your Bird Sounds, Volumes 1 and 2 (Lang Elliott)

The Tombs of Atuan (Ursula LeGuin)

Stiff: The Curious Uses of Human Cadavers (Mary Roach)

Shakespeare After All (Marjorie Garber)

The House Next Door (Anne River Siddons)

New Year's Eve

Night arrives before five now.

Early dinner.

Baths.

Master M-mv pursues virtual aliens with state-of-the-art weaponry.

Mr. M-mv provides a male perspective (and voice) in the Misses M-mv's imaginary play. ("You can be the man who builds the houses our dolls design, okay?")

I nod in and out. It's not Manguel's fault; I am tired.

But later...

Pulling big sweaters, warm scarves, and thick socks over pajamas, we party. A star party on flat prairie terrain, ugly to some, but beautiful to us. Unobstructed views. Little light pollution.

We are the most amateur of amateur astronomers. Like happy tourists in a new town, we find delight in realizing, "Ah, yes! This is the right road. We were here just yesterday, right?"

"The Winter Circle," one of us breathes, orienting us -- again. "Rigel, Sirius, Procyon, Pollux, Capella, Aldeberan," we softly recite, filling in if one or another of us falters in naming the six stars.

"Betelgeuse in Orion's shoulder."

"There's Cassiopeia."

"Gemini."

"Ursa minor. And major!"

Ticking off the constellations that have become familiar. Repeating the stories. "Cassiopeia was punished by Poseiden for thinking she was prettier than a god's daughters. For half the year, she hangs in the sky upside down to learn to be humble."

"But it only gives her a headache!"

Our star parties are simple affairs: cinnamon crackers and milk, the shuffle of planispheres and Skywatch (now) '05, the scratch of note-taking by the red glow of the flashlight, the giggles and squeals, and countless in-family jokes and stories.

And then inside for coffee and hot milk and thirty minutes of The Muppet Christmas Carol. ("Mother always taught me: 'Never eat singing food.'")

And then the young M-mvs sleep.

And one year ends and another begins.

Despite what some may think, though, little else changes. And on Saturday morning, it's coffee (and the Sun-Times and books and maybe a toasted English muffin) in bed.

Reading. Thinking. Learning.

And remembering to look up. And to play. And to laugh.

Working. Living.

This is how our days pass, week to month to year.

Happy New Year.