I’ve recently read another of his wonderful volumes, this one entitled A Splendor of Letters (the name comes from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Although all this book forms a loose “series” with A Gentle Madness and Patience and Fortitude, the truth is that you don’t have to read them in any order, or even read one to appreciate the other. I’d recommend reading all three because they are utterly wonderful… but you can read only one or the other if that’s how your fancy strikes.
While Patience and Fortitude was a chronological work and organized a different way, A Splendor of Letters returns to the format I enjoyed in A Gentle Madness: it tells of specific incidents that are germane to the matter being discussed arrayed–although most are major historic events–as anecdotes within the supremely readable text.
So what, exactly, is the matter being discussed? As the subtitle suggests, it has to do with the way books have survived, sometimes by incredible coincidence, despite the number of forces arrayed against them.
So we’ve got stories of scrolls packed in jars, people attempting to read the charred library of Herculaneum, religious and political purges and social upheaval. How a change in technology meant that texts that weren’t considered important enough to update were lost to time, and library deaccessions.
In short, this book discusses a hundred different ways in which texts have been lost and, much more importantly, tells of dozens of texts that should have been lost, but that somehow survived. It’s a story of hope and resilience as much as it is one of danger and misfortune.
This book was written in 2004, and as such, it came before the current trend for attempting to rewrite the books of the past to fit the (possibly faddish) morality of today. As I write, there have been recent enormously misguided and unfortunate efforts to pander to a certain tiny but vocal minority and bowdlerize (with the help of special-interest groups as opposed to literary editors) the works of such luminaries as Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming to appease the hyper-sensitive among us.
Now, leaving aside the fact that anyone trying to make Fleming or Dahl politically correct is just too dumb to understand that this would alter the very nature of the work, one needs to remember that this kind of censorship is simply a continuation of the religious and political attacks on books that have happened in the past. We think it can’t happen today because we live in a civilized society where oppression seems to have fallen by the wayside, but don’t forget that, as recently as the 1980s, Soviet texts were often “backdated” by airbrushing photos of people who’d fallen out of favor. That isn’t that long ago.
So I guess in a couple of hundred years, there will be another book like this one which mentions the push to modify texts to fit our current fashions and will include that among the horror stories like the burning of the library of Alexandria.
And we’ll deserve the criticism for allowing a small, but loud bunch of bullies to do this to our great literary lights.
Gustavo Bondoni has recently completed the Emily Plair Trilogy with the final novel, Amalgam. Find out what happens to each of the characters in the satisfying conclusion, which you can purchase here.
It’s been a while since we last reviewed one of the 1001 films to see before you die, and today’s installment is Sansho the Bailiff, widely considered to be one of the greatest Japanese films of all time.
Technically, this is likely true. Even I could tell that something special was going on in the direction and filming that went into this movie. It’s easy to tell why the world enjoyed it so much.
Unfortunately, I didn’t like it as much as other people did, because I watch films mainly for stories to entertain me (or, occasionally, for characters to fall in love with). I prefer a happy ending (or even a bittersweet one that is somehow uplifting) to one that leaves an empty feeling or just a number of questions. So this just felt like a ponderous morality tale of medieval japan, probably intended as a pointed critique of Japanese society circa 1950.
In that sense, Sansho is the opposite of my favorite Japanese film of this golden era, Ikiru, whose message might be simplistic (especially compared to the much deeper philosophical weight that Sansho brings to the table), but which delivers it in such a delightful way.
This is one of the last Japanese films from the flurry of 1950s masterpieces and, though my wife will certainly breathe a sigh of relief that she won’t have to suffer through any more with me, I think I’ll miss them. They are so different from western executions along the same themes, and the acting is so absolutely strange to western sensibilities, that the films immediately become memorable. Regardless of origin, these are good films.
But with the 1001 Movies list, there’s always something new just around the corner, and often very different from what came before. We’re currently at 1954, and other than Westerns, which seem ubiquitous in this era, I’m not sure what new trend will replace the Japanese movies, or the large number of noir flicks that preceded them. One thing is certain: we’ll find out!
Gustavo Bondoni’s latest book is a collection of linked short stories in which characters unwittingly affect each others lives as they lead their own. From the bottom of the social ladder to the highest echelons of society, the tales in Safe and Sorry will make you evaluate life more fully. You can check it out here.
For today’s post we welcome back frequent contributor Stacy Danielle Stephens. We’re delighted to have her historically erudite and thought-provoking writing with us once more.
We may well leave it to the instincts of that common humanity which a beneficent Creator has implanted in the breasts of our fellow-men of all countries to pass judgment on a measure by which several millions of human beings of an inferior race, peaceful and contented laborers in their sphere, are doomed to extermination, while at the same time they are encouraged to a general assassination of their masters . . . Our own detestation of those who have attempted the most execrable measure recorded in the history of guilty man is tempered by profound contempt for the impotent rage which it discloses.
-Jefferson Davis, January 12, 1863, in an address to the Confederate Congress
You probably know already that the first year of the American Civil War did not go well for Abraham Lincoln. His attempt to restore the Union wasn’t merely a failure, it had been a spectacular failure. So spectacular, in fact, that both the British and French empires were edging toward formal recognition of the Confederate States of America as an independent nation, with the implication of material support if Lincoln did not begin to negotiate peace terms on the heels of this recognition. The Royal Navy would end the Union blockade of Confederate ports, and the French army was already engaged in a land war in Mexico; an alliance with the Confederacy would be a natural next step, and with French support, the Confederate States could extend westward at their leisure, and might in time annex California. Lincoln was a desperate man in desperate circumstances, and could only resort to desperate measures. Since he could not win the war he was engaged in, he doubled down, and made it a different war entirely. If the rebels would lay down their arms and return to the Union by the end of the year, they could keep their slaves. If not, this war of reunification would irrevocably become a war against slavery as well. Lincoln’s disclosure of his impotent rage worked. Because Britain had outlawed slavery in 1833, and France had outlawed slavery (for a third and final time) in 1848, it would be politically impossible for either empire to oppose a war against a slave state. Although the American Civil War would continue for another two and a half years, the Confederacy would have no foreign recognition and no foreign support.
Now if you read and/or write Steampunk or SFF, you’re probably content with that first paragraph. Old Honest Abe, who had promised at his inauguration that he wouldn’t interfere with slavery, went back on his word and pulled an effective trick out of his hat, or maybe out of his septic tank, and managed to win the war in the third book of the trilogy. What’s next in the TBR stack?
But if you write historical fiction, you’re wondering how it was possible that two empires with centuries of history, and both key players in the international slave trade, could have outlawed slavery while it still existed in the United States, a relatively new nation, where it was purportedly held to be self-evident that all men were created equal. Actually, if you write historical fiction, you’ve probably already looked at this question, and it may even be a significant undercurrent in everything you write.
But first, let me tell you how it happened. Two unrelated things occurred in the early 19th century. The Napoleonic wars and the invention of the cotton gin. Because of the former, continental Europe had been blockaded, and could not import sugar. So Europeans had to resort to growing sugar beets, and producing sugar for themselves. After both the war and the blockade ended, domestically produced beet sugar continued to dominate the European sugar market, making the importation of cane sugar, which depended on slave labour, impractical. In turn, slavery itself became infeasible throughout the colonial empires. And because there was no longer any great profit in slavery, moral indignation against it was no longer a luxury, but a practicality. Meanwhile, the cotton gin made it possible for plantation owners in the US to sell literally all the cotton they could produce. This, in turn, made slavery obscenely profitable, and opposition to it a luxury which no one concerned with making a great deal of money would feel they could afford.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork, let’s suppose you’re writing about slaves. The first wrinkle to be smoothed out is the question of technology. You see, slavery existed in Ancient Rome because there were no machines. Slaves did the hardest work, as well as the most dangerous work, If your world has heavy machinery and labour-saving devices, slavery will be an expensive anachronism. So what absence or deficiency of technology in the world you’ve built would make slavery feasible? For that matter, why would a society maintain slavery if they could use immigration law to create a class of disadvantaged workers willing to do the worst work at the greatest risk, and then deport these workers when they’re no longer needed?
While you’re mulling that over, what are the rights of slaves in the world you’ve built? And what are the responsibilities of slave owners? Although the particulars varied, every slave state in the US had laws spelling out the rights of slaves as well as the obligation of slave owners toward both their slaves and to the state. It was, for instance, illegal to free a slave who was unable to work. This was actually more pragmatic than humanitarian; no state wanted to assume responsibility for such persons, and so wrote laws to ensure that they would not have to.
Wherever slavery has existed, there have been slaves purchased for sexual purposes, and the “sex” has always been rape, at least by coercion, or more often by some degree of physical force. Keep in mind that the perpetrator in these situations has almost no outside restraint, and will rarely have more than minimal self-restraint. That is the very essence and nature of slavery. For me, this has always been the most repugnant aspect of any fiction I’ve read in which slaves are portrayed or depicted. Not the actual presentation of such things, which is typically dreadful enough, but the absence of them, which I find to be abysmally worse. There is too often an easy willingness on the part of authors, particularly white authors, to ignore this most hideous reality of slavery; or even an eagerness to romanticize such relationships, to translate the unthinkable brutality into a gently benevolent condescension. If sex between a slave owner and a slave is not forced for the perpetrator’s scintillation, than it is to some degree forced by the circumstance itself, by the slave’s knowledge that they can be whipped or sold or sent to do the worst work, or the same could be done to members of their family. And this will be particularly true if the slaves are of a different ethnic/racial group, or from a different planet.
Assuming that you can somehow avoid both the Scylla and Charybdis of this most odious aspect of slavery, there are further considerations. Slaves of an inferior social class (serfs) will be mistreated to a lesser extent than slaves who were captured in war, who will be mistreated to a lesser extent than a class of slaves expressly captured for the purpose of being sold as slaves. This last class of slaves are treated the worst because there will be no other rationale for their enslavement than that they are believed to be inferior, and behavior toward them will reinforce this essential belief. Also, if slaves are regarded as racially inferior, anyone too poor to own a slave would usually make a point of treating slaves badly in public/social situations, and would consistently do anything necessary to demonstrate that they were better than a slave, especially if they really weren’t. The key factor here is the “free” person’s self-esteem.
But regardless of which class of slaves exist in the world you’ve built, keep in mind that there will be a “pecking order” among slaves, and the distinctions slaves make among themselves will be more pronounced and inviolable than the distinctions their owners make. A slave who does skilled work regards himself as superior to a slave who works in the field, a slave who does house work is the next step up, a slave who does professional/technical work is the next step, and a slave kept for sex will be a psycho with an attitude. Essentially, the more time a slave spends near the owner, the more often the owner speaks to a slave for any reason, the more highly that slave will be regarded by all other slaves, even if they resent that slave’s superior standing. They will hate, loathe, despise and respect that slave, and they will curry that slave’s favour.
Keep in mind that slaves could be rented or leased, and that a skilled slave rented out for some purpose will probably do additional work on the side for less than the rental rate, and keep the money for himself. A slave used for unskilled labour won’t have the opportunity to do that.
If slaves are not regarded as racial inferiors, a child born of a slave might be generally regarded as the equal of a child born of a free woman, if the father wishes it, and there will be much less social stigma for a free woman who becomes pregnant by a slave. Everyone will gossip about her, yes, but no one will lynch her.
If you have determined what forces created slavery in your world, and what forces sustain it, you must then ask yourself what are the forces that oppose it, aside from moral indignation? Bear in mind as you consider this that during the American Civil War, New York City considered seceding from the union (and from the State of New York) because slavery was very profitable to businessmen dealing in cotton, even though they themselves did not own slaves, and did not care to. But on careful consideration, New York City realized that without an Army and Navy of their own, they could not survive as an independent city, and that the expense of raising and maintaining armed forces would more than offset the profit realized in supporting slavery.
Also consider that when cotton became inexpensive and widely available, growing flax to spin and weave linen at home became impractical. This left more land available for other crops, and left women, who had done most of the spinning and weaving, with more time for other activities. How will slavery in the world you’ve built have similar effects?
Finally, and most importantly, if you are writing about slaves and slavery, you must ask yourself why. This is particularly true if you are white, and even more so if you are American. Slavery is so much a part of who we are, yet even those of us who will admit it are hard-pressed to fully and honestly acknowledge it, almost to the point of breaking. I cannot say that the lingering residual effects of slavery are worse for white Americans, but must observe that they are more insidious. if only because we have the privilege of pretending that slavery hasn’t affected us at all.
So why did I write about slaves and slavery? Because 165 years ago, when my great-grandmother was a little girl in Ohio, a slave trader who had caught a runaway spent the night in her family’s home. Throughout the night, she was awakened again and again by the rattle of chains, and a man sighing and weeping quietly. That hopeless agony has been an integral part of me all my life. I can never excise it, but can only try to express it as clearly as I am able to.
Stacy Danielle Stephens – is the great-great-niece of Edward Eggleston and the great-granddaughter of a character in Willa Cather’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning roman à clef One of Ours. As heiress to two of America’s most profoundly groundbreaking literary traditions, she strives to write as Picasso painted, using an ink metaphorically distilled from the blood, sweat, and tears of a great cloud of witnesses seldom interviewed by a more typical author.
The Dog Who Knew Too Much (Omnium Gatherum Media) For homicide investigator Stefanie Tricarico, an anticipated weekend in South Central Nebraska, to be spent quietly with family on the farm her Bohemian ancestors homesteaded, becomes a remembrance of things past in the worst possible way when she learns that her long-estranged younger brother has become a regional leader of the White Supremacy movement.
When I went to WorldCon in Dublin in 2019, I was expecting to meet people I’d only interacted with online, make new friends, learn a lot about both the art and the business of writing. I was also expecting to find interesting people from across all walks of life.
Although I was expecting very different people to be part of the experience, I believed that everyone I had longer conversations with would be part of the SFF genres in some way, shape or form.
I was wrong on many counts, but perhaps the most memorable was John Ruddy’s wonderful stand where he was selling his Manny Man-themed books and merchandise in general, but with a special focus on Irish-themed things. Is spoke to him the first day I was there (his stand was diagonally across the aisle from the Guardbridge Books stand).
I spoke to John and immediately realized he was, apart from looking the part, a student and promoter of Irish history and culture in the deepest sense of the word. I loved his cartoon people, and the book Manny Man Does Revolutionary Ireland 1916 – 1923, caught my eye… but I didn’t buy it right away because I was afraid that, loaded down with all the SF books I was going to buy (plus my contributor’s copies of Off the Beaten Path, my luggage would be overloaded.
So I went about my WorldCon business, but this little hardcover with the wonderful cartoons pulled at me and, on the Sunday, I approached John again and asked if he still had a copy. There was one, reserved for someone who hadn’t shown up… so I bought it.
And man, am I glad I did.
Irish history, especially the Revolution, is a fraught subject. Emotions still run high nearly a century after most of these events took place. At the same time, Irish history with its unmatched glorious peaks and tragic valleys is one of those things I’m a sucker for (in my mind, only Polish history comes close, hitting many of the same beats).
The book takes this tremendously complex and difficult period and not only gives the uninitiated reader a surprisingly detailed course in the events of the period but does so in an impartial and informative way, looking at the different viewpoints. Don’t be fooled by the cartoons on the cover: this is a serious book, and the conversational tone and cartoon humor do not detract from the learning in the least.
What those things do achieve, on the other hand, is to make reading the book a pleasure. I really couldn’t put it down, with even the most political of the questions becoming interesting in Ruddy’s capable hands. And the cartoons made me laugh out loud a couple of times… albeit it’s easier if you have a well-developed sense of dark humor.
So I’d recommend this one to history buffs who want to learn more about the Irish Revolution… but don’t want to get bogged down in a dry academic text… or simply want the serious issues involved to be tempered with humor. Actually, I’d recommend it to anyone, but those interested in history will absolutely love it.
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine writer whose work is published in English all over the world. The book he launched at WorldCon in Dublin is a collection of short stories that mainly take place outside the usual science fiction and fantasy settings. So no Western Europe or Continental USA in these. Check it out here.
I’m a fan of Paul Theroux’s work. It started back in 1993 when I was preparing an English A-Level and was utterly bored by the Shakespeare we were studying. The Bard himself wasn’t to blame (for my opinion on Shakespeare, see here), as Much Ado About Nothing is always good. Rather, my classmates were. The problem is that, while I grew up in English-speaking countries, they were studying English as a second language, so their pace was a bit slower than mine.
Having read the play, I took advantage of where I usually sat in class (at the very back where I could lean my chair against the lockers) to randomly pull out a book from the lockers. The only thing available was a Penguin copy of The Mosquito Coast, which I read over the course of a couple of weeks of class while everyone else was discussing Benedick, Beatrice and Hero.
It was a wonderful book.
My next experience with Theroux happened a couple of years ago when I picked up a free copy of The Great Patagonian Express. This one was equally good and once again, I loved it. I especially enjoyed reading a travel book from the era when one could clearly and openly state how foreign cultures looked to a First World eye. It’s a refreshing change from today’s excess of sensitivity.
Unfortunately, third time was most certainly NOT a charm.
Kowloon Tong is a book whose premise had potential. It focuses on a British family in Honk Kong, tied to the colony by ownership of a factory, in the days leading up to the handover of the territory to China.
It’s a situation fraught with melancholy, the loss of a unique way of life, one which can’t be created in the modern world and doesn’t seem to have been improved upon by the new communist regime (at least judging by recent events). As the great Peter Egan once said: wherever the British planted their flag, you most often ended up with democracy, safe drinking water and a decent lifestyle.
But the book falls flat on its face. In the tradition of A Confederacy of Dunces, the characters are intentionally made to be unlikable. And like Confederacy, I enjoyed it very little.
Without giving spoilers, it’s a novel of human weakness and the duller, less interesting sordid side of humanity. Instead of going for the huge gesture, the major statements, the characters in this book are wet, uninspired and small.
Which is a pity, because the loss of the unique anachronism that was British Hong Kong deserved a great monument.
Perhaps that monument exists, but this isn’t it.
Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer fascinated with exotic places and interesting cultures. He celebrates human differences instead of trying to minimize them, and nowhere is this more evident than in his collection Off the Beaten Path, where science fiction, fantasy and non-Western civilizations combine in a unique and heady mix. You can check it out here.
Choosing a favorite among the three universally accepted colossi of the 19th-century female writers is supposed to be an exclusive proposition. You can only like one–Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë or Jane Austen–while being severely critical of the rest.
Of course, that only applies to superfans, the kind of personality who will force perfectly normal people to choose between Star Wars and Star Trek, or between Twilight and Harry Potter.
If forced to dance to this music, I’ll go with Austen, followed by Emily. Charlotte would be close… but third.
Even among the Brontë’s themselves, I have gone on record as preferring Anne to her more famous sisters.
Elizabeth Gaskell, were she alive, would disagree.
A famous novelist herself (North and South), Gaskell was friends with Brontë while Charlotte was still alive. She was therefore perfectly placed to write the authorized biography of the author of Jane Eyre. In fact, she was so perfect that Brontë’s father was the one who asked her to write it.
Being that close to the subject brought very many advantages–the knowledge of the people and places really brings the resulting book, The Life of Charlotte Brontë, to life. Unfortunately, it also means that Gaskell withholds important information and pulls her punches somewhat.
The basics are well covered. Gaskell’s style paints an incredible picture of the six motherless children growing up in an isolated village, and you cry with them as they lose the two eldest sisters, leaving probably the greatest concentration of literary genius every gathered under a single family’s roof in the persons of the three surviving girls (the one boy, Branwell, was never able to get it together and was basically an anchor and a source of anxiety, nothing more).
If you wrote a fictional account this poignant, no one would believe it, and you’d be laughed at.
But it’s real. One by one we watch the women of the generation drop in the clutches of tuberculosis, fortunately after producing immortal masterworks. Emily is the one felt strongest in this particular book. The personality we guess at from Wuthering Heights appears fully present here, walking the moors.
In fact, this book reinforced my thinking that, if I had a time machine, I would probably go back and give Emily a TB vaccination as an infant. I would really want to see what she, the genius of a family full of them, would have done with a little practice under her belt. She’s the one I’d save if I could only save one.
On the debit side of the ledger, the Life completely conceals the episode of Charlotte falling in love with the (married) owner of the school she studied and worked at in Belgium. That is because Gaskell had a hero worshipper’s view of Brontë. She considered Charlotte a model of Christian mores and suffering, and this view was inconsistent with any possibility of that kind of inappropriate behavior.
In fact, had it been any other life, I’d say the suffering angle was way overblown by a natural dramatist… but when your mother and siblings drop like flies out in the moorlands, I’m inclined to give Gaskell the benefit of the doubt.
Of course, some people didn’t, and despite the care to omit names, the publishers were threatened with lawsuits, most notably by the owners of the school that killed the eldest siblings through unsanitary conditions and the woman who was Branwell’s (the brother) lover, and also the wife (later widow) of one of his employers. Fortunately, the first edition went out unexpurged, and we can record her name here for posterity: Lady Lydia Robinson Scott. We do this not because we think she did anything wrong in taking a lover, but because she lawyered up when caught. Yawn.
There have been more factually accurate biographies of the Brontë’s, but I doubt there will ever be any more powerful. Gaskell could write, and the material in her hands was dramatic indeed. Recommended.
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer. He is fascinated by how the human mind responds in emotionally charged situations. One of his books explores this in great depth, and is, unsurprisingly entitled Love and Death. You can check it out here.
Thor Heyerdahl isn’t exactly a household nametoday, but readers of National Geographic in the second half of will remember his particular brand of science. Essentially, he was the precursor of the Mythbusters, except he didn’t use a safety net. His crazy experiments were extreme examples of science at work.
And they were fascinating. From the perusal of an National Geographic in grade school–already old when I saw it–I was aware of the Ra expeditions in which he tried to sail across the Atlantic in a boat of ancient Egyptian design.
Apparently, he also sailed from the American coast to Polynesia on a raft of even more ancient design. That takes a certain amount of balls.
What brings us here today, however, is his 1950s expedition to Easter Island (and other places as well, but Easter Island, as you can see from the cover, is the main course). The book is entitled Aku-Aku, and it’s a fascinating glimpse into what happens when an archaeological expedition is led by someone who thinks outside the box.
Now, before we talk about the aliens, I want to say that I don’t think I could ever be an archaeologist. Though I’m not claustrophobic, I would not willingly jam myself into a cave where I can only advance by shrugging my shoulders. Not for a few ancient artifacts, anyway.
Heyerdahl does this quite often.
But he also teaches us about how an archaeological expedition to cultural sites with a nearly westernized local population was run in the 1950s. It’s interesting to see the combination of sensitivity to local people while at the same time recognizing and acknowledging that superstitions and certain behaviors belong to the past for a reason. I wonder if a modern expedition would be that honest.
If you enjoy archaeology, or learning about ancient civilizations, this book is a good read. Not necessarily a textual joy (although I can’t comment on the merits of the original Norwegian version), but a wonderful look at a team obsessed with looking into the past.
Now, some of Heyerdahl’s conclusions about the origin of the Easter Island natives has been challenged by a genetic study (limited in scope, so there may be hope yet), but one thing is no longer in doubt: aliens had nothing to do with the construction or transport of the island’s famed stone faces.
Essentially, he just told one of the townsfolk on the island descended from the statue-building part of the population that he’d give him a hundred dollars if he stood one of the stones in its pedestal.
So the man did. I won’t tell you how because that is the ultimate spoiler for this book, but the method he used was something that any ancient civilization with access to rocks and a dozen workers could have managed.
When asked to show how the huge stone blocks could have been transported, they used an equally simple and ingenious method.
While this doesn’t prove that the method illustrated is necessarily the one that was employed, it makes it clear that anyone insisting that aliens had something to do with this is worse than a kook… he is an ignorant kook!
So if any of that seems like it might interest you. Go forth and get yourself a copy. You’ll enjoy it.
At the very least you can show the photos to your local alien apologist and watch him go into deep denial. That should be worth the price of admission.
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist. His novel Timeless serves as an outlet for his love of ancient culture. Set in a monastery complex in Greece, it’s a fast-paced, sexy thriller. You can check it out here.
In watching the 1001 movies in order, I will admit that, every once in a while, you come across a film that makes you ask why anyone would film it. Did the director hate other human beings? Did he belong to some sect that believes that humanity can only be saved it it falls into the deepest pit of utter despair?
The answers are never forthcoming, but all I can say is that Vittorio de Sica‘s Ladri de Biciclette (The Bicycle Thief) is one of those films. It took me a couple of days to drag myself out of bed after watching it (OK, I’m exaggerating, but not all that much).
An Italian realist film in the mold of Roma, Citta Aperta, it has little of that film’s historical interest. This one does have some interesting shots of postwar Rome, and looks at the lives of its citizens, but that’s about it.
What it does have, unfortunately, is melodrama by the trowel-load. Heaping one “woe is me” cliché onto the next, it meanders from suffering to suffering until it ends with a walk-away scene lifted straight from The Little Tramp. Subtle, this thing was not.
Don’t believe me? Let’s glance at the checklist. Father who needs a job to support his young family? Check. Supportive wife who does everything she can to help, but is about to fly apart under the strain? Check. Young boy who puts a brave face on everything, both the stuff he understands and the stuff he doesn’t, and also helps to support the family by working 12 hours at a service station? Check. Indifferent world that crushes everyone under its wheels? Oh, yeah.
Critics, of course, loved it. They called it the best movie ever, and have been calling it one of the best since (which scares me a bit, because the fact that it lost first place must mean there’s something even more depressing out there). They called it a very adult movie (which I kind of agree with; kids would be ruined by it forever) and also the most communist movie ever (which is interesting since communism is something more associated with idealistic adolescents than with adults).
Anyway, unless you’re planning to be a film director, give this one a miss and do something less depressing.
Gustavo Bondoni is a novelist and short story writer whose debut novel, Siege, has garnered good reviews (and one notable terrible review). You can check it out here.
A couple of years ago, I read one of the most delightful nonfiction books I can remember: A Gentle Madness by Nicholas Basbanes. So it was with enormous pleasure that I began his second major volume.
Patience and Fortitude, as most people are aware, are the names of the two marble lions that guard the entrance to the New York Public Library, which makes the title of this book particularly apt for what turned out to be (I intentionally avoided reading any synopsis) a history of the evolution of the library in the Western world, told in Basbanes chatty, anecdote-sprinkled style.
As with the first Basbanes book, I found this one engrossing. It has the advantage that it deals with a subject that has a much wider appeal than insane book collectors but, at the same time, loses a little bit of the charm that the quirkier topic brought with it.
Nevertheless, it’s a wonderful volume which, in a mere 550 pages, gives you an overview of how ancient knowledge was stored and replicated and reached us, as well as telling us what a modern library looks like, and the issues facing it in the future (as seen in 2001, when the book was published).
I’d say the Basbanes is the right volume for those who’s like to read character-driven history of libraries. The Campbell – Price for those who are a bit more visually oriented. Both are wonderful, so don’t chose one or the other, buy them both and enjoy them.
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist and short story writer. The plot of his thriller Timeless centers around a book and an ancient monastery, but it still manages to avoid resembling The Name of the Rose in any way. You can check it out here.
In 1789, a bunch of people in France decided their nobles were a bit too tall and began shortening them by use of the guillotine. A little over a hundred years later, bored Russian intellectuals raised an army and killed off the Romanovs for want of anything better to do (the above might be a slight simplification of actual historical events).
In both cases, the earlier aristocratic way of life was wiped off the map, supposedly forever.
Of course, by the time of the Russian Revolution, the French had replaced their aristocracy with captains of industry who drove enormous motorcars and drank expensive champagne and made the court of Louis XVI look like a bunch of unwashed yahoos (all right, the French are always unwashed, but you know what I mean).
I suppose that if one takes a socialist view of things, you could say that it’s only natural that the capitalist society born of the Industrial Revolution would spawn gross inequalities, but that would also be a lie. If one looks at the Soviet state a few years later, one would find the same inequalities between the Party elite and everyone else. Within the limits of the disastrous Soviet economy–communism is not a system that motivates people to generate wealth–there existed an aristocracy. Sure, they had crappy cars and their Dachas were not particularly sumptuous, but compared to everyone else, they lived like kings.
And the pattern is repeated everywhere. Among every single group of humans whether living in free market economies or closed systems there arises a group that everyone else envies, that has more stuff than others, or access to a more enjoyable form of life.
An aristocracy in all but name.
Why, though. Weren’t aristocrats supposedly a cancer on society that the countless revolutions were aimed at eradicating?
Supposedly. But reality says that the revolutions only succeeded in changing the names, not the structure. There is still a tiny portion of the world that has all the fun while everyone else is on the outside looking in, resentment growing day by day.
And this is why I never listen to the people who argue for the redistribution of wealth on a global scale. They’re ignoring every lesson history has ever taught, and expecting everyone else to blithely ignore them as well. Of course, fanatics always have a “Yes, but that was a special case” argument, but when every single time turned into an exception, one begins to suspect that those exceptions are actually the rule, and that the utopians are a bit misguided.
So, instead of spending our time trying to give the wealth of the planet to a completely different minority group, I propose that the readers of Classically Educated dedicate their lives to hedonism and itellectuality. You can’t see the flaws of the world through the bottom of a bottle, and, as Blake said, we should open the doors of perception (the substances you use for that purpose are your own business…).
I know this isn’t my greatest insight ever, but one needs to understand that it’s Monday morning, and you can’t expect too much.
Gustavo Bondoni is an Argentine novelist whose latest book, Timeless, has a lot of hedonism wrapped up in the trappings of intellectuality (a romantic thriller hinging around a book written by a monk is almost the definition of that combo). You can check it out here.
Classically Educated 