Book: Child of God by Cormac McCarthy

I have either committed a serious error or done myself a great favor in making Child of God my first experience reading Cormac McCarthy.  For every moment in which I appreciated his technical and inventive skill as a writer, I found at least three moments in which I questioned his narrative and philosophical purpose...and not questioned as in - do I agree with his purpose and philosophy? - but rather - do I think McCarthy even displays purpose in this novel? 

I will attempt to sidestep-by-acknowledging the argument that art needn't possess a point.  Fair enough.  I do not propose that a creative work must have an underlying purpose, function or point.  I am a great fan of the creative thing existing for its own sake.  I suppose that I am, however, asserting that when the creative thing's existence alone is not compelling, and a subsequent search for a point of some sort proves equally fruitless, at least in the realm of my subjective experiences then, I lean toward a general analysis of the work as mediocre.  I didn't expect to find Cormac McCarthy mediocre, but there it is.  A talented writer telling a mediocre, if brutal, story.

For what it's worth, I actually began liking this book a tad more when the protagonist's anti-social cruelty escalated into serial killing, so the brutality I reference does not pertain to the acts that remove our main character from the ranks of the average individual.  I refer, rather, to the general tone of the novel which seems to carry an ultimate judgment of the world itself - it is no good place for life, and without an abnormal amount of sheltering (which, I'll agree with McCarthy, most of us get) all of nature's creatures will grow twisted...to some extent.  Maybe we will.  It's not veracity at issue, it's the meaningfulness of using an entire novel and not inconsiderable facility with words to make this, and no other, important observation.  No offense, Cormac, but yawn.  I've read The Birth of Tragedy, too.  A prime universal force is destruction - chaos - not chaotic, but chaos itself.  Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.  Monsters walk among us and we, who are not monsters, created them, and humans have spent millenia making up systems of thought to explain 'why' when there is no 'why', there just 'is'.  There is nature and there is us, and neither one consistently displays kindness as anything but an incidental trait.  Our core traits seem to be more amoral than immoral, and survival driven.  I am saddened by, but reluctantly have come to believe all of this.   However, in the face of these things, I have also found that beauty persists and so does kindness.  I'm more interested in the balance between these realities than in either extreme.

So can we get some Apollo in there to balance Dionysus?  Maybe, if I were in a more charitable mood after reading Child of God, I'd suggest that McCarthy's ability to use language inventively is the Apollo, the form, the beauty, that stands in contrast to the wicked chaos of the Dionysian truth of his story and makes it intelligible.  I almost changed my own mind in just writing that sentence...but I don't feel very charitable.  I feel disappointed because I wanted to read a great story by an author whom I have always meant to read and instead, at best, I read an ugly horror story and an historically-accurate depiction of an unfamiliar region.  These things are good, but not great.  At worst, I read a talented author trying to be shocking (I guess?  Maybe thought-provoking?) by portraying bald moral emptiness and pointing out that our "moral" society created it.  If I wanted to read this observation, I'd check out American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, a fine example of brutality with a purpose that elevates the whole to a meaningful work of art.  (Ellis pulled this off and he's not nearly the writer McCarthy is, by the by.  But he's a much better storyteller.)  Granted, Ellis is not concerned with literal isolation (figurative, sure) and isolation comprises the one remotely interesting theme in Child of God.  But McCarthy does not handle the theme with near enough nuance to make it anything but sad.

So, as I said, I either made a serious error reading Child of God first, in that I have needlessly soured myself on an author I might like if  I'd started with a different work...or I have done myself a great favor in figuring out early that I don't need to spend my precious read-time on any more of McCarthy's unredemptive prose.

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Book: In the Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick

In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex is, as the full title reveals, about the harrowing events surrounding the sinking of a whaleship named Essex.  This alarming and well-written piece of non-fiction concerns a maritime event that was as well known in the 19th century as the Titanic disaster is today.  And there is little to wonder about the story's erstwhile fame.  I finished this book a week ago and it still follows me around, creeps into my thoughts, demands that I pay some attention to it.  I knew I wouldn't be able to start reading anything else in earnest until I wrote this review and processed the whole thing a little bit.

Essentially, in 1820, several thousand miles off the west coast of South America and well into the Pacific, a sperm whale, purposefully, struck and sunk the Essex.  The crew, 20 men, piled into three small whaleboats - the 25-foot low-draft vessels carried by the larger whaleship and normally used for pursuing and harpooning whales.  At the end of a nearly 3-month ordeal, there would be 8 men left alive, 3 recovered from an uninhabited island in the Pacific and 5 recovered from two of the whaleboats.  There are oh so many appalling, thrilling and morbidly fascinating details to convey about this story, but one should read them.  Philbrick has done a wonderful job and it is his method I would most like to discuss.

In order to reconstruct the fascinating saga of the Essex, Philbrick draws heavily from narratives penned by two of its survivors - the first mate, Owen Chase, and the cabin boy, Thomas Nickerson.  Additionally, Philbrick examines more general cultural sources of the period in order to present a really complete picture of this moment in history when whale oil still powered the industrial revolution, when Nantucket was the bustling center of whaling, and when whalers were just beginning to follow their quarry into the vast Pacific Ocean.

Ever since I read Carlo Ginzburg's The Cheese and the Worms, I have been an absolute sucker for good microhistory.  Very few historical methods (with the exception of good old, traditional narrative history) put you in the moment and in the minds of individuals the way microhistory does.  Philbrick's microhistorical retelling of the Essex saga painstakingly reconstructs the context of the ship, its crew and of the whaling industry in general.  First, he draws a picture of life on Nantucket at the zenith of whaling while also providing a history of how it became the center of that industry.  Next, he moves on to life on the ships themselves and what the work of whaling actually entailed.  And then, Philbrick begins his recounting of the Essex's last voyage and what occurred in the wake of its sinking.

As I indicated above, I won't be spilling many beans about what happened to these unfortunate men after the whale sank their ship, but suffice to say its retelling gives Philbrick opportunity to reconstruct for his reader such details as what happens to a human body suffering from extreme thirst or how cannabilism by necessity (that is, non-ritualized cannablism) is usually performed and psychologically dealt with.

In dropping his readers into the world of the crew of the Essex, Philbrick opens up questions about, among other things, man's exploitation of nature, of the connection between commerce and religion, of the way xenophobia prefigured man's movement around the globe and the human ability to withstand some really spectacular adversity.

I devoured this book in a relatively short amount of time and bothered Nick daily by sharing some of its more morbid details.  It is definitely a book that hangs around and needles you after you've read it.  In fact, I rather spontaneously painted a picture of the Essex in the moments before its sinking.  It was only after this cathartic exercise that I was able to move on to other reading...a novel about a serial killer, as it happens.  *deep breath*

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Of Fresh Spring Rolls and Goofballs in the Kitchen

I felt adventurous on Saturday and had made a trip to Hong Kong Market, so Nicholas and I devoured my first attempt at fresh spring rolls this weekend.  Not bad and waaaay easier than I thought they would be.  (NB: Easy does not necessarily mean fast -- this is one of those cases.)  I used Slow Cookery for inspiration.  Here's the instructional video.  I find the Slow Cook pretty dandy, but I'm a sucker for goofballs.

What I Did
I took,

1 c cabbage, thinly sliced
1 c fresh basil, chopped
1 c beansprouts
1 carrot, coarsley grated
1/2 cucumber, seeded and julienned
and mixed them in a bowl with the following vinaigrette,
1/2 c rice vinegar
2 T sugar
1 t salt
a few squirts of sriracha

Stir well and let this set.

Then I sliced the tofu and marinaded it in a little soy sauce.

I boiled about 3 oz of vermicelli noodles, drained and rinsed them, and ground up about a 1/3 c cashews.  I arranged everything, including a pie plate filled with water to soak my rice paper wrappers, and I was ready to roll.

The rolling went better than I thought it would, although I will need to make these plenty more (*shucks*) to get a really tight, easy-to-eat roll.  I suspect the soaking time of the wrapper is key in getting good pliability and stickiness, but minimizing the chance for tears.  Overall, I found the wrappers much easier to work with than I'd expected.

So, first you soak a wrapper until it becomes transparent and soft, 20-30 seconds is all.  I did my rolling on a clean firm surface.

First, I laid four strips of tofu on the wrapper situated where a mouth would be if the wrapper were a round face.  I topped the tofu with a few noodles.

Next, I spooned on some cashews (I used cashews because I had them, but the recipe really calls for peanuts, which are probably even better in this capacity).

Then, on went the vegetables.

Finally, it's time to roll.  Pull the bottom of the wrapper as tightly as possible over the contents.  Try not to tear the wrapper, but you can still give it a good pull, it's quite pliable.

 

Essentially, just keep the wrapper as taut as possible around the contents, folding in the sides of the wrapper as you go.

The wrapper is so sticky that it will seal simply by pressing the edge down against the roll.

We ate ours with a few sauces - the leftover vinaigrette, the leftover vinaigrette cooked into a thick sweet & sour sauce, and some satay mixed with soy sauce.

It looks like a lot, but Nick and I made quick work of this mountain of fresh spring rolls.  Most delightfully, I have a bunch of rice paper wrappers left, so we'll be having these again soon!

Of Art Projects and Feeling Productive

I have finished a number of projects in the last month and thought I'd leave some record of my fleeting satisfaction, before that familiar feeling of not doing enough with my time creeps in.

Project, the first.  Esplanade Neutral Ground as a Medieval Garden

Most of New Orleans' big and broad avenues, and even several of its smaller streets, possess neutral grounds - these are strips of ground that separate the directions of traffic flow.  A neutral ground is something more than a median, for while it can be a scant few feet wide, it can also stretch as wide as several lanes of traffic.  Indeed, many of the neutral grounds of New Orleans' main boulevards and avenues are more like park space with growing things, joggers, loungers, the works.  I am fortunate enough to live on an avenue with a particularly gorgeous neutral ground.  In the spring and summer (and into the fall - thanks, subtropics), it blooms with an array of flowers, huge elephant-eared greenery uncoils its broad leaves, squirrels, butterflies and cicadas make their homes in its live oaks.  It delights me endlessly.  Add to this delight, inspiration from a religious icon I found at a second hand store.  I adore and am fascinated by medieval art and I had already been knocking around the idea of trying my hand at some sort of cityscape in a medieval style.  It occurred to me that gardens also served as a medieval artist's trope.  I finally moved the project from my head to the outside world.   I think I did okay.

First I made the framework and doors out of oven bake clay, then painted and sealed them.  Then I began sketching and masking portions of the picture that I didn't want to receive color with my first wash of paint.  I removed the masking and finished the painting, glued the paper to the frame and, finally attached the doors and added a little wallhanger.  At left is the only process picture I have, alas.

And voilá.

Project, the second.  Reliquary of St. Apollonia

The Baton Rouge Gallery issued a call for artists to stock their 2nd Annual Surreal Salon.  This information meandered my way a week before the application deadline and I cranked out this reliquary.  It didn't make the cut, but I still like it.  I got the idea for a reliquary, agian, because I heart medieval art and had been wanting to make one for some time.  I had two of my own extracted wisdom teeth laying around from a few years previous.  I tend to save this kind of thing.  One never knows when one will want human teeth.  And so I searched for an appropriate saint, one who's reliquary would likely contain teeth.  I found St. Apollonia, the saint to invoke in case of toothache.  Apollonia of Alexandria was martyred by having her teeth knocked or pulled out of her face.  She is usually depicted, as are most saints, carrying the instrument of her martyrdom, in Apollonia's case, plyers.

Due to my lack of desire to make tiny pliers, I instead made a set of tiny rosary beads...

 and a tiny votive candle.

I also made a desembodied head - my personal favorite component of this piece.

I made the bits interchangeable because that's just cooler than having them stuck in one position forever.

P.S.  In good medieval fashion, I practically hid the actual "relics"...the teeth are suspended by gold thread in the base of the reliquary.

Project, the third.  Mortimer the Pocket Dinosaur
There's not much to say about Mortimer.  He's small and needlefelted and he cutes me out.

For these and more items, visit my Etsy minishop, The Celery Museum.

Of Art Exhibits and the Importance of Good Manners

Nicholas and I recently visited the New Orleans Museum of Art to take a gander at the American impressionist, William Woodward, who lived and worked in New Orleans and environs.  NOMA is an attractive building - it looks deco-y to me, but I'm too ignorant of architectural styles to venture a real guess - and it is located in a gorgeous spot, the edge of City Park, near water, swans, and glorious live oaks.  Additionally, and this is no small thing to those pinching their pennies as are we, all but the feature exhibits are free to Louisiana residents (and students, I believe).  It is always a pleasure to visit.

This visit held a particularly delightful surprise for us.  As we made our way to the second floor and began searching for the Woodward exhibit, we happened upon a Käthe Kollwitz exhibit (at right, "The Downtrodden").  I knew it was in NOMA's line up, but I had no idea it was already there, so we took that in first.  The etchings, lithographs and sketches in the exhibit all came from a collector in Shreveport, bless her.  In addition to Kollwitz's work, it contained prints from a publication known as the Hunger portfolio, which included works by Otto Dix, Paul Völker, Otto Nagel and other German expressionists, in addition to Kollwitz.  I believe the portfolio was originally published to raise funds for the needy.   

On of my very favorite pieces on display was "Death and the Woman" (left).  Altogether, the exhibit was astounding.  Kollwitz's empathy for her subjects, usually working class people, the poor, war-torn or ill, emanates from her images.  We were especially intrigued by the printmaking processes evidenced in this collection - her lines ranged from seeming almost careless, as in her crayon lithographs, to showing meticulously fine detail, as in her line etchings. 

From there we moved on to Woodward.

Nick is a great fan of impressionism, a New Orleans history buff and a lover of architecture, so century-old impressionist paintings of New Orleans architecture seem like a tasty and decadent dessert to him and NOMA's collection did not disappoint.  It did, however, surprise.

Many of the images we had seen reproduced in publicity pictures for this exhibit turned out to be oil crayon on cardboard and not oil painting at all. (at right, "House for Napoleon, St. Louis & Chartres).  We agreed that, while amazing to see skillfully rendered so many French Quarter buildings and spaces (many that no longer exist), the oil crayon medium does not delight us aesthetically as much as oil painting.  Most of the of the paintings in the exhibit appeared to be landscapes in and around Biloxi.  I liked these especially well.  Nick's favorites were a handful of black and white etchings of the French Quarter and some other locations.

All in all this would have been a tremendously enjoyable visit to our local museum...if it had not been for the loud talkers.  Okay, we obviously came on an event day, for caterers were loudly setting up tables and things and all of their commotion echoed rather horribly throughout the museum.  But as much as this didn't please me, it didn't annoy me the way the loud talking of my fellow museum visitors did.  I am not particularly well-traveled, but I have been to a handful of pretty reputable museums from L. A. Country Museum of Art to the Viennese Kunsthistorisches and Belvedere Museums and the only thing keeping NOMA from providing as enjoyable an experience as do these museums is their complete lack of docents or other personnel to periodically tell the ruder visitors to shut the f*&# up.

Museums ought to be like libraries or churches.  They are places where one comes to contemplate something grander than oneself, perhaps where one connects, (dare I suggest it?) through concentration, to an interior place.  People ought not have to be told to use their inside voices in such places and to turn of their cell phones for crying out loud.  But this is an imperfect world so I will not expect visitors to naturally behave with consideration for their fellow visitors.  Is it, however, really too much to ask for NOMA to provide the staff to gently remind visitors that good manners are appreciated?  Apparently.  I have had this experience multiple times at this otherwise solid museum.

And so I had to launch a minor rant.  Still, they can't take Käthe Kollwitz away from me.

Book: Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy

I would feel like a doofus spending too much time writing a review of a classic work of literature, about which scholars have composed dissertations for over a century, but I loved this book too much not to shamelessly use this forum to help me digest it. 

I will underscore with a cursory mention a few oft-noted aspects of the novel:  the elegance and philosophical sagacity with which Hardy writes; the pointed critique he offers of Victorian social, especially sexual, mores; the empathy and depth with which he portrays his female protagonist.  I noted these same components in the first novel of Hardy's that I read, Jude the Obscure (I seem to be working my way backward through his body of work). 

Something I hadn't initially noted in Jude - something I only just realized retrospectively in light of Tess - is the care and detail Hardy puts into describing the quotidian of 19th-century English vocations.  In Jude, it is Jude Fawley's occupation as a mason.  In Tess, our protagonist holds a number of rural and agricultural jobs that Hardy depicts with even greater relative attention.  Tess works, for example, tending birds, as a dairy maid, and at the much heavier tasks involved in turnip-growing and processing grain.  The action of the novel primarily occurs during these out-of-doors occupations and, indeed, Tess' relationship with nature and "the elements" comprises a major component of her personality for Hardy.  In this way, though an individuated character of depth, Tess serves also as a symbol for traditional rural life in England at the cusp of full industrialization.  Throughout the novel, Hardy depicts this tension between traditional country life and steady modernization,  which saw an inversion of the old relationship between human and machine.  Previously, machines were tools used by humans according to human natural rhythms and requirements, whereas with industrialization, humans became tools to serve a machine's requirements according to its rhythms.

In one scene, Tess must help feed a threshing machine.  Hardy writes:

"The old men on the rising straw-rick talked of the past days when they had been accustomed to thresh with flails on the oaken barn-floor; when everything, even to winnowing, was effected by hand-labour, which, to their thinking, though slow, produced better results.  Those, too, on the corn-rick talked a little; but the perspiring ones at the machine, including Tess, could not lighten their duties by the exchange of many words...for Tess there was no respite; for as the drum never stopped, the man who fed it could not stop, and she, who had to supply the man with untied sheaves, could not stop either..."  (345-5)*

Just as Tess of the d'Urbervilles is a critique of repressive Victorian social codes and a sympathetic plea for the "fallen" woman, so, too, it is a lament for the passing of a way of life that was tied to nature and worked with its cycles and tendencies rather than against them.  Indeed, Hardy links the natural world to a freer attitude toward sex.  Tess, in having sex without being married, "had been made to break an accepted social law, but no law known to the environment in which she fancied herself such an anomaly." (101)  It is the social law that is out of accord with nature, not Tess.

Whether discussing sexual mores or agricultural practices, Hardy mourns for the unnecessary discord humans create between themselves and nature.  In doing so, he keenly observes the web in which we have caught ourselves, the strands of which are comprised of our own dual aspect - as children of nature and as would-be masters of it. 

*In the 1964 Signet Classic paperback version.

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Of Fundraising and the Value of Things

A dear friend of mine works as the executive director of a good and worthy non-profit, Save Our Cemeteries, which, as it sounds, works to preserve the unique cultural heritage of the cemeteries of New Orleans.  Every year the SOC holds an All Saint's Soiree featuring a fundraising auction, food and drinks galore.  This year the soiree was held on October 24, 2009 in one of the largest and most interesting cemeteries in New Orleans, Metairie Cemetery.  Nick and I both volunteered to help out by serving wine and French 75s.  I also donated a couple of dolls that I made to be auctioned off in a kids' package, Lot 9, so I was kind of excited to see how the bidding would turn out.

I knitted a little girl doll.

Then I made a smaller doll to be the little girl doll's toy.  I sewed and knitted the clothing, embroidered and sewed the faces, spent an alarming amount of time threading all that hair...

...and needlefelted a tiny bear for the apron pocket of the little girl doll's doll. 

We arrived around 6:30 p.m. to witness a truly gorgeous sunset over the tombs of the cemetery.

The attendees began funneling in and over to the food and drinks tables, including ours.  We were soon busy pouring drink after drink to this very thirsty, but not always pleasant crowd.  NB: Rich people really do have a proclivity to greed and rudeness in small matters - I noticed this when I worked at an upscale guest ranch as well.  My apologies to the monied folks who have excellent manners and generous hearts (of whom there are many, I am certain), but there are among you entitled sourpusses who are no fun to interact with.  Boo.

Okay, that said, Nick and I were relieved of our duties after an hour-and-a-half and we were able to take a carriage ride through the darkened cemetery.  Beautiful!  I also enjoyed some delicious oysters on the half shell and some great conversation.

My only let down was that the auction lot of which my dolls were a part went for a measley $50.00.  Not only was this not exceedingly helpful to the cause, but I found it depressing considering that another lot, which contained bottles of liquor that you could buy at any reasonable liquor store, went for a few hundred dollars.  Talk about disappointing -- still, I dream my dolls found a home with a child or collector who will love and value them.  I enjoy picturing complete strangers interacting with objects I have manipulated and fashioned with care, perhaps appreciating that I brought something into creation that didn't exist before. 

Book: Edda by Snorri Sturluson

Snorri Sturluson wrote his Edda, also known as the "Prose Edda", around 1220.  Sturluson's work contains his versions of numerous Norse/Icelandic myths as well as a fair catalogue of tropes, motifs and "kennings" of skaldic poetry.  This work derives from a really fascinating liminal period in European history between pagan and Christian culture and oral and written culture.  It is a written work that seeks to preserve an oral tradition.  Additionally, it was written by a Christian author about the not-so-distant pagan past of his people.  These tensions between the written and the oral and the Christian and the pagan wind their way throughout the book.  I find particularly interesting Sturluson's relatively sympathetic treatment of the pagan beliefs of his own culture.  Medieval Christianity has scarcely been noted for its patient toleration of diverse beliefs, but Sturluson strikes an expository tone that is without condescension.  In fact, he practically offers an apology and asks indulgence for the Norse people's pagan past by portraying these beliefs as rather misinterpreted versions of true Christian (and latinized) beliefs.  For instance, he equates the Aesir (the stock of the Norse pantheon) with the inhabitants of ancient Troy and hypothesizes that these migrating kings from Asia simply, if mistakenly, came to be revered as gods by the Norse people.  Sturluson's entire work ranges from interesting to extremely entertaining, but the sleight of hand he continually exercises in blending Norse pagan myth with latinized Christian tradition is what really stood out to me about this book.  Having read a good many primary sources from the Middle Ages, I found Sturluson's Edda particularly sensitive and clever.  The latter portions of the book, which focus so exclusively on skaldic poetry and its language are, perhaps, of greatest interest to specialists who wouldn't be reading the Edda in translation anyway.  However, I still found delightful kernels of myth and story interlaced into these more didactic chapters.  The entire thing is really worth a read and especially for those, like myself, who delight in the historian's sensibility wherever it is found.  Sturlson may have been explicating poetry, but he did so with the attention and perspective of an historian.  And, of course, only fairly recently have these two disciplines been separated from each other as though unrelated.  Sturluson's Edda provides a beautiful example of poetry as history and history as poetry.

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