Texas Just BANNED These "Uncomfortable" Books
I logged into social media this morning to find that Beloved by Toni Morrison was in the news. It's being reported on in several outlets, but see for example, from CNN: Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' becomes latest flashpoint in Virginia gubernatorial race
I read Beloved in 2017, and reviewed it on this blog. So I can chime in with my 2 cents.
Before we started the book, Tom expressed the concern that this would just be another feel-bad novel about slavery.But this book is so much more than this. It's a ghost story, and Toni Morrison has succeeded at creating a very haunting atmosphere.I'm reminded of the review that the AVclub gave to the movie: 12 Years a Slave:If there was any doubt that this is a horror movie, Hans Zimmer’s score pounds and roars with dread—the appropriate soundtrack for the madness of history.The idea of slavery as a horror story is probably a more accurate description of Beloved.The story of the book is told mostly in flashback. Right from the beginning of the book, we hear the names of the former slaves that the main characters (Sethe and Paul D) once knew, but their gruesome fates are only hinted at.The mystery hooks the reader right in, and helps to add to the eerie atmosphere of the ghost story.Gradually, the novel gives us more and more hints, until we finally have the full awful picture of what happened at Sweet Home.
According to The Daily Beast, another problem was that the book was just too hard, and so the student stopped reading it. And I can believe this second part as well. To quote again from my 2017 review:
I didn't like Toni Morrison's writing style. It was too poetic for me, and I had to struggle to keep focused.
Granted, this is more reflective of me and my limitations as a reader than it is of the book. If you're the kind of person who likes a lot of poetic description in your novels, then you'll love this book.
Getting frustrated with one of the more poetic passages, I wrote down "Ugh, typical" in the margins next to this paragraph:
Denver was seeing it now and feeling it--through Beloved. Feeling how it must have felt to her mother. Seeing how it must have looked. And the more fine points she made, the more detail she provided, the more Beloved liked it. so she anticipated the questions by giving blood to the scraps her mother and grandmother had told her--and a heartbeat. The monologue became, in fact, a duet as they lay down together, Denver nursing Beloved's interest like a lover whose pleasure was to overfeed the loved. The dark quilt with two orange patches was there with them because Beloved wanted it near her when she slept. It was smelling like grass and feeling like hands--the unrested hands of busy women; dry, warm, prickly. Denver spoke, Beloved listened, and the two did the best they could to create what really happened, and how it was really was, something only Sethe knew because she alone had the mind for it and the time afterward to shape it: the quality of Amy's voice, her breath like burning wood. The quick-change weather up in those hills--cool at night, hot in the day, sudden fog. How recklessly she behaved with this whitegirl--a recklessness born of desperation and encouraged by Amy's fugitive eyes and her tenderhearted mouth.
If you like that, there's plenty more where that came from. But I found this almost unreadable. (To be perfectly honest, if this hadn't been a book club book, I think I would have given up on it. But because we were doing it for bookclub, I struggled through out of a sense of obligation.)
So, those are my thoughts on the book. I'll give my thoughts on the controversy below:
So, there's a new entry on the Revolutions Podcast feed, but it's not exactly an episode:
Episode 10.73 Episoded Delayed Until Next Week
You can click the link to listen to the audio explanation, or just see Mike Duncan on Twitter...
ALERT I just made a catastrophic mistake and erased the entire script for 10.73. I'm at square-zero. I also got a vaccine booster yesterday and feel like garbage, so I'm giving up and pulling the plug.
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) October 24, 2021
TL/DR: No new episode today. 10.73 delayed one week
It's unfortunate, but it doesn't ruin my day. I'll happily wait until next week. In the mean time, I've got other listening material to keep me busy.The irony being that the episode is meta-jokingly called "10.73- Zeno's Revolution" because it advances to the night of Oct. 23, 1917 but *still* didn't actually get us into the revolution proper. So we're just gonna keep going halfway to halfway for infinity lol
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) October 24, 2021
But I don't mind. The more details the better. Why is everyone in a hurry to get this revolution over with? Give me the long version, please!There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen etc etc etc https://t.co/sgGqHu74fg
— Mike Duncan (@mikeduncan) October 24, 2021
(Book Review--Land of Oz, Classics, Fantasy, Children's Books)
Baum's Woggle-Bug was a popular character at the time; he "became something of a national fad and icon...."[4] There were Woggle-Bug postcards and buttons, a Woggle-Bug song, and a Woggle-Bug board game from Parker Brothers.[5] Baum and Morgan's picture book was published in January 1905, to help publicize a new musical play, The Woggle-Bug, that was being mounted that year. (The play flopped.)
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One thing Berlin does which I thought was very interesting was that he emphasized the paradoxes in Marx’s legend. For example... how the German and Austrian communists, who followed Marx’s advice about organizing from the bottom up, were eventually overwhelmed by the fascists, where as the Bolsheviks, who committed the most un-Marxist act of a revolutionary coup, was the first (and for a time the only) successful Marxist revolution.
However, from this episode, I learned that the Bolsheviks were on their way to gaining control over the Soviet even before the coup. So it sounds like they were still on their way to gaining power one way or the other.
* Final note: There's some brief mention about the sailor's revolt in Germany, and how Lenin believed they were on the eve of a European wide-socialist revolution. Mike Duncan doesn't say anything more about what was happening in Germany at the time, but I hope in later episodes he is able to circle back around and talk about the revolution in Germany that was happening at this same time--because it's interesting, firstly, and secondly because my understanding is that it really did influence Lenin's thinking at the time.
Full Title: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There
(Book Review--Fantasy, Classics, Children's Literature)
I was in the bookstore once, and I saw a book called "The Annotated Alice" (W), which has extensive margin notes explaining everything. I regret to say I didn't buy it. But if I ever read this book again, I think I should get the annotated version.
...but, I've since decided that when you live abroad, you can't be picky about which edition you read--you just have to grab the books in whatever form you find them. But maybe someday in the future, I'll re-read both of these books with annotations, if I can find a suitable edition.
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| John Tenniel's original illustration--page 133 in my edition |
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| From page 193 in my edition. There's a picture like this every couple of pages, which really makes the story come alive. |
“Then I hope your finger is better now?” Alice said very politely, as she crossed the little brook after the Queen.
“Oh, much better!” cried the Queen, her voice rising to a squeak as she went on. “Much be-etter! Be-etter! Be-e-e-etter! Be-e-ehh!” The last word ended in a long bleat, so like a sheep that Alice quite started.
She looked at the Queen, who seemed to have suddenly wrapped herself up in wool. Alice rubbed her eyes, and looked again. She couldn’t make out what had happened at all. Was she in a shop? And was that really—was it really a sheep that was sitting on the other side of the counter? Rub as she could, she could make nothing more of it: she was in a little dark shop, leaning with her elbows on the counter, and opposite to her was an old Sheep, sitting in an arm-chair knitting, and every now and then leaving off to look at her through a great pair of spectacles.
“What is it you want to buy?” the Sheep said at last, looking up for a moment from her knitting.
“I don’t quite know yet,” Alice said, very gently. “I should like to look all round me first, if I might.”
“You may look in front of you, and on both sides, if you like,” said the Sheep: “but you can’t look all round you—unless you’ve got eyes at the back of your head.”
But these, as it happened, Alice had not got: so she contented herself with turning round, looking at the shelves as she came to them.
The shop seemed to be full of all manner of curious things—but the oddest part of it all was, that whenever she looked hard at any shelf, to make out exactly what it had on it, that particular shelf was always quite empty: though the others round it were crowded as full as they could hold.
“Things flow about so here!” she said at last in a plaintive tone, after she had spent a minute or so in vainly pursuing a large bright thing, that looked sometimes like a doll and sometimes like a work-box, and was always in the shelf next above the one she was looking at. “And this one is the most provoking of all—but I’ll tell you what—” she added, as a sudden thought struck her, “I’ll follow it up to the very top shelf of all. It’ll puzzle it to go through the ceiling, I expect!”
But even this plan failed: the “thing” went through the ceiling as quietly as possible, as if it were quite used to it.
The White Queen offers to hire Alice as her lady's maid and to pay her "twopence a week, and jam every other day." Alice says that she doesn't want any jam today, to which the Queen replies, "you couldn't have it if you did want it. The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday—but never jam to-day." This is a reference to the rule in Latin that the word iam or jam—which means now, in the sense of already or at that time—cannot be used to describe now in the present, which is nunc in Latin. Therefore, "jam" is never available today.[7] This exchange is also a demonstration of the logical fallacy of equivocation.[8]
Well, that went right over my head. (I obviously don't remember my schoolboy Latin very well). There are probably a lot of references like that in this book that went right over my head. I really need to read "The Annotated Alice" one of these days.
Kazurahara Beach in Kamae (Kamae Town, Oita Prefecture, Japan)
There's a limit to how quickly you can scale up EXISTING tech. We can achieve 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 & 100% by 2050 by scaling up *existing* clean energy & storage tech (+ implementing energy efficiency). Discussion & links to the lit: https://t.co/9hZFWBlabo https://t.co/wfAqAsttmq
— Prof Michael E. Mann (@MichaelEMann) October 19, 2021
But... we the oil and coal companies don't want to let us. From Reuters.com: Big fossil fuel producers' plans far exceed climate targets, U.N. says
And, the oil and coal companies are controlling politics:
West Virginians Getting Crushed By Energy Prices While Politicians Get Rich Off Price Gauging
War and Peace: This book has come up a lot on these Q & As, but I don't recall ever hearing your opinion on Tolstoy's view of history. (Apologies if I missed it.) Do great men shape history?
