FRANKENSTEIN SUNDAE--finally uploaded!

I have finally uploaded to Kindle Direct my memoir about chasing Mary Shelley for decades; I serialized it here (for more than three years!) as Frankenstein Sundae, and that is how it appears now. It will soon be available on Kindle Direct on Amazon's site ($4.99)--and you do not need a Kindle device to purchase/read the book. Kindle apps are free for your tablet and/or smart phone.

Here's the Preface ...

Preface

This is not a biography of Mary Shelley—except when it is. It is, principally, a memoir about my decades-long obsession with her, an obsession that commenced in the early to mid-1990s. A lot of biographical material is here, of course, because I can’t assume that readers will know much about her (though some surely will), and one of a writer’s most essential jobs is to dispel, not summon, confusion. (I’m sure I’ve done a lot of both here. Oh well.)

As you will read, the fire of my obsession was hottest in the mid-1990s and on into the early 2000s. It cooled a bit after I published a YA biography of Mary in 2012 (Kindle Direct). Then, a few years later, I decided to write this memoir, which began as a series of blog posts (dawnreader.blogspot.com), then blossomed (?) into thrice-weekly installments—a process that greatly increased my admiration for those Victorians (Dickens, Trollope, Collins, et al.) who serialized entire novels (in some cases—more than one at a time!). Readers can Google those posts to see the many pictures I included. The serialization consumed more than three years of my life—from April 28, 2014–August 23, 2017.

By the time I finished, I had a draft so rough that Rough objected and said it would not allow its name to be associated with such a work. (Something about damaging its reputation.) And so began a long, slow, sometimes tedious revision. One of the biggest problems? Repetition. Because the serialization had continued for so long, I had to keep reminding readers who characters were, reminding them about what the key events had been. I’ve tried to remove all/most of this, but I’ve no doubt that some redundancy remains here and there.

Complicating my task? So much scholarly work had appeared about Mary and her circle since I had (temporarily) abandoned them. Not to mention the novels, the movies, and other cultural contributions. Complicating it more? This year—2018—is the two-hundredth anniversary of the original publication of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus. And so all sorts of other tributes and publications have appeared.

In recent months, I’ve read Kathryn Harkup’s Making the Monster: The Science Behind Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (2018), Ahmed Saadawi’s novel Frankenstein in Baghdad (2018), and an older novel (recommended by a friend), Peter Lovesey’s The Vault (1999), a mystery/thriller which involves the city of Bath, where Mary wrote much of the novel, the novel that plays a key role in the mystery.  And there’s a wonderful book—chockablock with pictures and illustrations—Christopher Frayling’s Frankenstein: The First Two Hundred Years (2017).

Oh, and then SP Books published this year a replica of the Frankenstein manuscript, a publication I had to have (of course). It cost a … bit. But it is wonderful, looking through those pages, seeing the notes of Mary, the notes and suggestions of her husband, Percy Bysshe Shelley.

And, of course, I realized all of this was impossible. Purely impossible. There was no way I could keep up with it. (As I type these words—May 31, 2018—there is about to be published a new biography of Mary, In Search of Mary Shelley: The Girl Who Wrote Frankenstein, by Fiona Samson. Which I’ve ordered. And will read. But I’m not sure how much of it—if any—will find its way into this text.)

And so … here we go.

I enjoyed this journey about as much as anything I’ve ever done in my life. And I hope you will find the trip pleasant, as well, despite the many detours I take down by-ways that sometimes lead to stunning vistas, sometimes to culs-de-sac, sometimes to dead ends.

And as I type this, I realize: I have assembled this publication by borrowing pieces of history, of memoir, of biography, of … whatever. Attaching them. And now I wonder: Can I bring this creature to life? And if I do, will it turn out to be a monster?

A final word (before many more words ensue): I have been as careful as I can be, proofreading, but I know in such a complicated work that typos and other goofs will inevitably escape even a most assiduous eye. Forgive me. I will fix all that I subsequently learn about—and trust that you, dear reader, will be … understanding.

Last Post about My Eyesight (I Hope)

I've learned via Facebook that lots of my friends there have undergone the same cataract/lens-replacement surgery that I recently "enjoyed." I guess I'm not really surprised. As I wrote the other day, the waiting room at the Cleveland Eye Clinic was jammed this past Tuesday when I arrived for surgery on my second (left) eye. It was weird, sitting there, watching all sorts of people walking--tentatively, tentatively (they were "coming down" from the drugs)--out of the building, all of those folks wearing the same brand and style of dark sunglasses that the Eye Clinic had given me a couple of weeks ago following the work on my right eye. The same dark sunglasses I'll be wearing outside until next Tuesday: my one-week requirement.

Anyway, I want to say just this: I see better now than I have since I was in my twenties. Distances are clear and bright and colorful. And reading?  For the past ten years or so, reading has become increasingly difficult for me: blurry print, shadows and ghosts of words. It was driving me mad!

But even with only the right eye cleared up, I was reading far better than I had in a decade. As the second eye has cleared up, post-surgery, it's even better.

Last night we went to Walgreen's, where I picked up a pair of reading glasses (1.5 magnification), and, later, when I settled in to read in bed, I nearly wept when I saw the clarity and stability of the images I was seeing. It was, well, miraculous.

My local optometrist (who handles all my follow-up from the Cleveland Eye Clinic) tells me we will wait a bit to see how it all settles out before we consider the sort of eyeglasses I will need--if any.

But I am so used to glasses (I began wearing them in my early 30s) that I'm already finding it a bit annoying to go find my reading glasses when I want to read something--when I want to work on the computer--etc. Additionally annoying: looking up from such work and seeing a blurry world that clears only when I remove the glasses.

So ... later ... I will probably get bifocals--clear on top, mild reading correction on the bottom. And I will sail into senescence, my sails billowing with gratitude.

And then, of course, Mr. G. Reaper will appear and present me with his orders. Which, at least, I will be able to read clearly. Before I foolishly try to run away ...

Another School Year ... Already?

I see on Facebook that some schools are starting this week (or have started). Early August!?! Oh, how times have changed.

As I posted here the other day, when I was a kid, school started the day after Labor Day, ended right after Memorial Day. That greatly expanded as I went through school, both as a student and a teacher. When I retired from public school teaching in January 1997, we were beginning in late August, ending in mid-June.

I'm not sure why this expansion exists. To make provision for snow days? To allow more in-service time for teachers? To accommodate longer vacations?

That's something else that has changed--vacations. When I was a student, there was none of this two-weeks-at-Christmas stuff, no week (or more) for spring break, etc. Thanksgiving was Thurs-Fri. Christmas was usually a week (depending on its position that year in the weekly calendar). Spring break? Didn't exist. We got Good Friday and--if we were nice--Easter Monday.

And we walked 10 miles to school each way, snow up to our armpits, even in May ... you know?

I've often thought in recent years about how I really could not make it as a teacher in this era of Test-Test-Test. As I've mentioned here before, my elder grandson (about to enter 8th grade) has already taken more standardized tests than I did, K-Ph.D. That seems a little ... excessive ... doesn't it?

And when it's not just kids that the tests supposedly measure but teachers, schools, school districts, well, I'd say that things were generally Out of Whack.

Diagnostic testing, I'm all for (within reason). But endless rounds of achievement tests? Pointless. Destructive.

The scores become all anyone cares about. This began to happen before I retired--the Ohio Proficiency Tests were rearing up like the Kraken to dominate the curriculum. And many people--kids, parents, teachers, administrators--realized this, and very quickly so: that if the scores are what really matter out there, well, then, let's get those damned scores up! No matter what!

And so, over the decades, education has been morphing into test-preparation. And I'm reminded of Dickens' novel Hard Times, serialized (and published as a book) in 1854. The novel begins with this speech (to a teacher) by Thomas Gradgrind, who runs a "model" school:

‘Now, what I want is, Facts.  Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.  Facts alone are wanted in life.  Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.  You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.  This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children.  Stick to Facts, sir!’

The teacher is the aptly named Mr. M'Chokumchild.

And, oh, what a dreary, dreary place this school was. And is--for Gradgrind's philosophy has emerged, for the nonce,* as the one we've decided to embrace in our own public schools. And so our children, like the schoolboy to whom Jaques alludes in As You Like It, are "whining" and "creeping like snail unwillingly to school" (2.7). Where it's once again time to, you know, prepare for the test. For that's what education is, isn't it? Choking our children?

*My friend Chris, who's from the U.K., told me yesterday that nonce has a slang meaning in England. I checked it out in the OED, and here's what I found: It dates to 1971 and means ...

A sexual deviant; a person convicted of a sexual offence, esp. child abuse.

That's not good ... but I, of course, was using it in its more common (here) meaning (which goes back to about 1400):

For the particular occasion; for the time being, temporarily; for once.

Still, thanks to Chris, I'll be more careful about how I use the word--at least for the nonce.

Some (More or Less) Random Thoughts about Yesterday

Yesterday--as I've posted--I had cataract surgery on my left eye (the right one was two weeks ago) at the Cleveland Eye Clinic in Brecksville. This morning, things seem very good. In fact, I've not "seen" the world look like this since I was in my twenties. Clear. Bright. Colorful. (My left eye is a little teary; that will subside.)

Some things I remember from yesterday, some things I've thought a bit about ...

• I remember very little of the surgery itself. Earlier, they'd given me some drugs to hold under my tongue and allow to dissolve. By the time they wheeled me into the operating room, I was pretty much out of it. I remember seeing no one; I remember seeing no thing. I did hear some voices (can't tell you what they said) and some, strange, strange, strange lights.
• Oh, I do remember one thing--something like this: "Your old lens is out, your new one in ... we're just cleaning you up."
• My surgery was scheduled for 10 a.m., and we were told to arrive at 8:40. We did. The waiting room was full. And as I looked around the room, I realized something: Virtually everyone there was, well, older (elderly, even), and this is now my "new demographic." Most of my days I spend around people of all ages (coffee shop, health club, other public places), so it's odd to be in a room full of people, all of a certain age. In a way, it was the feeling I first had in kindergarten ... a feeling I'll have again if I must go to an assisted-living or nursing facility.
• The people waiting for surgery displayed a variety of physical health. Some shuffled as they walked; some needed canes. Some were enormously heavy; some were frail and bent. And I understood--again!--how fortunate I am. Although I am 73 now, although I am dealing with metastatic prostate cancer, although I have a number of other medical/physical "issues," I am still (relatively) mobile and (evidently) "healthy." For the nonce, of course--always "for the nonce."
• I would say that virtually everyone there, waiting, was on Medicare. (As I am.) The original Medicare law passed in July 1965 (I had just finished my junior year at Hiram College), and so for my entire career I paid into the system. But ... I have already spent far more than I ever paid in. Far, far, far, far more. Hell, the immunotherapy I underwent last winter consumed alone more $$ than I ever paid into Medicare!
• Because of Medicare (and my supplemental policy via the Ohio State Teachers Retirement System--STRS), the surgery (and subsequent meds) cost me only about $220 out-of-pocket. Total.
• And this is what insurance is all about, you know: everyone pays; most everyone benefits (to some degree); some (like me) benefit heavily. We help one another. It's what this country is supposed to be about; it's what a government is for. "To promote the general welfare," as the Preamble to our Constitution says ... Promote, not deny, decrease, diminish, denigrate--and some other d-words I could think of.
• In my mind, people who work to eliminate Medicare and Medicaid--people who work to take away and/or diminish health insurance for others--are, well (let's be kind), cruel. Inhumane. (It's pretty safe to say that those who advocate such things are not the uninsured?) To me, the idea that you have to deserve health care is pompous and morally blind. And, in my view, anti-American.
• About those drugs they gave me ... back home, I napped like a tired baby, almost all afternoon. Last night, I slept like a person with no conscience. And I realized I'd love to have that drug every day, every night.
• Naw ... that's addiction, right?

Eye See

In a little over an hour, Joyce and I will drive over to the Cleveland Eye Clinic in Brecksville for Eye Slice #2. Yes--as he did with my right eye two weeks ago--my surgeon will slice open my eye (the left one this time), remove the lens clouded by cataract, insert a new one (plastic! perhaps crafted from discarded drinking straws?), clean me up, shove me out the door (after collecting more than a few $$--worth it; I'm not complaining), and I will return--I hope--to a world that is bright and clear and colorful.

Which is what it has not been in recent years.

I wrote here on Saturday about that first surgery and about how, over the past two weeks, the right eye is now showing me a world that I'd nearly forgotten.

My sight was blurred--not safe to drive at night--pages drifted in and out of focus as I read.--etc. Very frustrating.

But I was afraid, you know, of some dude slicing my eyeball. It's like a scene in a horror film ... in fact, didn't it happen in A Clockwork Orange? (Maybe not, but I know I've seen it.)

[Pause for Google search.]

Okay, it seems the film I was thinking of is Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusian Dog), 1929, a surrealist film (short) by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dali. YouTube has links to the scene (and the whole film), but I'm too nice to ... nah. Here's a link. Don't think I'll watch it this morning, if you don't mind.

And there are a couple of websites devoted entirely to eyeball scenes in horror films. Geez ...

Not to mention Oedipus and King Lear and others ...

Oh, and we mustn't forget that great film masterpiece, The Vikings (1958), with Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine and Kirk Douglas, who loses an eye when a falcon (trained--ordered to do so) claws it out. (Link to scene if you have nothing better to do.) I remember seeing this masterpiece at the Hiram College Cinema; I was 14. (Just checked: Director Richard Fleischer got a nomination for Best Director from the Directors Guild of America; Vincente Minnelli won it for Gigi.)

Anyway, I'm actually looking forward to this morning. I know what's going to happen (well, I know what's supposed to happen), so I am much less anxious than I was two weeks ago.

So, I guess the only thing to say about today is "We'll see."

Sunday Sundries, 198

I know; I know. It's Monday. Couldn't post yesterday. So ... deal with it!

1. AOTW: This one is easy! Even the trees on the street where it happened cast their votes--unanimously. Okay, we were heading east out of Hudson on Aurora Street; until you leave the village limits, the speed limit in 25 mph. I was going 29 (cruise control!). A car with a couple of young men pulled up behind me, "right on my bumper" (as the saying goes). I resolutely stuck to 29. In the mirror I saw a young man's hand out of the passenger-side window. He was showing me three fingers, then five; three fingers, then five. (I considered showing him one ... but didn't.) They seemed to think the limit was 35 (it's not), but when we reached the village limits and I zoomed up to 39 (in a 35), they seemed ... happy (insofar as any tailgater can ever be happy!). Fortunately, they soon turned off, but the votes were in: Unanimous this week.

2. On Saturday night, Joyce and I drove over to the Kent Cinemas to see The Spy Who Dumped Me. There were more respectable things to see (the film about Christopher Robin, which we will see), but we were both in the mood for some silliness ... and some popcorn ... and we got both.

We both have long enjoyed Kate McKinnon on SNL, and we wanted to see how she'd do in a more extensive role. She did fine. As did Mila Kunis. The film, though, could easily have shed, oh, a half-hour without anyone's really noticing. And some of it was a bit too predictable. And lots of folks died (in a comedy!). But ... have to say ... I had some guilty pleasures, always savory ... (Link to film trailer.)

3. I finished one book this week--Fanny: A Fiction, 2003, by the talented Edmund White. It's supposedly a "lost' manuscript by Fanny Trollope (1779-1863)--writer, novelist, and mother of a more celebrated son, Anthony, whose 47 novels I read over a ten-year period a while back. This "manuscript" is about Fanny's friendship (its ebbs and flows) with another Fanny--Frances "Fanny" Wright (1795-1852)--a very liberal woman born in Scotland, a woman who came to America and saw much hope, a woman who developed a plan in the mid-1820s to end slavery in the U.S. (a plan that obviously failed), a plan that involved a small settlement she established near Memphis, TN--Nashoba (Choctaw for "wolf"; the Wolf River runs near the settlement site), a settlement where Wright proposed to train slaves she had purchased, train them for careers, etc. so that they would be "ready" when she liberated them.

Whew! That's complicated.

I'd become interested in both Fannys during my Mary Shelley research because both of them knew Mary, had met her; both had tried to convince her to go with them to Nashoba. She declined. Joyce and I actually drove to the Nashoba site of July 28, 2001, saw the historical marker, walked along the Wolf, endured the fierce Tennessee heat that day ...

Anyway, I bought White's book some years ago but forgot I had it until I began working more seriously on Frankenstein Sundae, getting it ready to upload to Kindle Direct (soon, soon, soon). And I realized I'd not read it.

Oops.

So I read it last week, wondering what White had to say about Mary Shelley (not much--a couple of allusions to her). But, oh, did I enjoy myself! He perfectly captures the slicing tone of Trollope in her first book, about her American visit, a book that propelled her into celebrity in England, into notoriety here (she was not impressed with most of the Americans she met): Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832).

Here's a few zingers that White/Trollope delivers in Fanny--should give you a taste of the salty text:

• about poet Robert Browning: "His conversation is like his poetry, but comprehensible" (69).
• "American men are bluff, gruff creatures who turn to women only for actual breeding and otherwise prefer one another's company ..." (85).
• about the slaves of Thomas Jefferson: "many of whom bore a curious resemblance to Jefferson himself" (93).
• aboard ship to America: "the belching, wind-passing, vomiting, mewling mass of our fellow passengers" (127)

I was laughing aloud as I read a lot of this stuff--some genuine LOL.

White has Trollope do some things she never did (like having sex with a former slave, whom she adores). But I had so much fun reading it.

4. Tomorrow morning (Tuesday) I go back to the Cleveland Eye Clinic in Brecksville to have cataract surgery on my left eye (right eye was two weeks ago). Right eye is doing very well, so I'm hopeful for the left. I am a lot less anxious this time: I know what to expect (always a plus!).

5. Last Word--A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from wordsmith.org

bathophobia (bath-uh-FO-bee-uh)

noun: A fear of depths or of falling from a height.

ETYMOLOGY: From Greek bathos (depth) + -phobia (fear). Earliest documented use: 1903. A related term is acrophobia. The p-headed word is pathophobia (an irrational fear of disease).

USAGE: “The self-accusing mind’s bottomless well, bathophobia. Falling and falling and falling.”

Tom LeClair; Well-Founded Fear; Olin Frederick; 2000.

"I Can See Clearly Now ..." (Sort of)

Johnny Nash

That song--"I Can See Clearly Now"--was released in 1972, the year our son was born--in fact, it was released on June 23, just a few weeks before his birth on July 16. Here's the odd thing: After an infant is born, you don't see clearly now--at least I didn't--for, oh, a few decades. (Link to that song by Johnny Nash.) Your world, you realize, has begun to orbit someone else ...

Anyway, re: seeing clearly ...

I did not start wearing glasses until I was in my 30s--and then, reading glasses only. That changed as the years and decades rolled on. I still remember my first pair of bifocals: Sitting in the old Saywell's Drug Store (and soda fountain), trying to read the Plain Dealer, I wept because I had not yet adjusted to the bifocal design and feared I would never see well again. But I soon did, my eyes and brain grudgingly adjusting.

And then--about age 60 (when, for me, things began to disintegrate)--my sight began getting worse and worse. New Rx almost every year. And then even a new Rx didn't help. Cataracts. Blurry vision, double vision at times. Shadows and ghost letters on the pages I was reading.

The surgery/remedy sounded too grim to contemplate: slice open my eye, remove the old lens, insert a new one--a plastic one! ... the thought of it.

But I was becoming so frustrated with my inability to see--to drive safely--to read--that I figured, Aw, go ahead and cut open my damn eyeball!

And so they did. About two weeks ago, Joyce and I drove over to the Cleveland Eye Clinic in Brecksville early in the morning. A Tuesday. I was one of many there for the same surgery. A drug under my tongue. And the only thing I remember clearly is being wheeled out of the room; the next thing I knew I was back in the room, and it was over. And I could see. The surgery had taken about ten minutes.

I had to wear dark sunglasses outside for a week; I had to sleep with a plastic guard taped over my right eye for a week; I had to be careful in the shower; I am still taking eye drops.

But my right-eye vision has improved ... dramatically. In fact, today, I have worn no glasses (though I do keep reaching up to adjust them).

They will "do" my left eye on Tuesday, and we'll see how it all settles out, but it looks as if I'll need only a very basic Rx--if any--in the near future.

The world is brighter, more colorful now. More ... clear. My brain (I think) has recognized that my left eye is a goofball and has permitted the right eye to become dominant (it is the one that can see well!), and so I assume there will be another period of adjustment after Tuesday's surgery.

We'll see ... as they say.

Meanwhile, Johnny Nash's voice is in my head, and I am wondering why in the hell I didn't do this years ago!


PS--Johnny Nash is four years older than I ... wonder if he can see clearly now?