Reaching the End

After lunch, I'm going to walk over to Open Door Coffee Co. and finish Paul Auster's new novel, 4 3 2 1, a long, long novel (nearly 900 pages--big pages) that has taken me more than a week to read. I am not eager to see it end because I recognize that it is among the best novels I've ever read. I will write more about it tomorrow--"Sunday Sundries"--but as I've neared the novel's end, I've been thinking a bit about other experiences I've had like this--reaching the end of something.

I think the first time I was affected by this was back in the 1950s when, via the TV series Disneyland, I watched the three Davy Crockett installments in 1954 and 1955. The final one, which showed Davy swinging "Old Betsy" at the Alamo (but did not show him killed), was the true end of the series, even though Disney, with a hit on his hands, brought out two other episodes later--about events, obviously, earlier in Davy's life.

But I remember that Alamo episode so clearly. I was only ten years old, and Crockett had become my idol (an idolatry subsequently cooled when, years later, I read some authoritative biographies about him--the same with Jim Bowie). And in 1950s TV shows, heroes just did not die. I knew it was going to happen, of course--so this was probably my first intense experience with dramatic irony (when the reader/viewer knows what's going to happen but the characters don't). And I found it impossibly wrenching and emotional. I still do when, you know, I see Hamlet or something.

Anyway, back to what I'm getting at--arriving at the end ...

I have read all of Paul Auster's works (got to review a couple for the Cleveland Plain Dealer), and he is one of my favorites working today. He's about my age; we both have loved baseball; we lean lefty politically; etc. So I'm not just reaching the end of a book; I'm reaching the end of his works--and, as we see painfully in his new novel--more works are not necessarily forthcoming.

I've been through this experience numerous other times. I've become a compulsive complete-works reader as I've gotten older. I read some "series" books when I was a boy (the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew)--but not all of them: That was a mountain that kept getting higher, and I wasn't all that much "into" reading--or endless mountain-climbing--back then.

But in my adulthood? I have had the experience of reading the final work by Shakespeare, Dickens, Trollope, Thackeray. And then those writers nearer my own age who have passed on--or quit writing: Mailer, P. Roth, Vonnegut, Styron, Barth, and many others.

I've done the same with pop-culture writers, too: Raymond Chandler, Robert B. Parker (I will not read those novels written under his name, novels that are still appearing, even though he died on January 18, 2010).

And there are lots of contemporary writers whose complete works I've read--and whose new works I gobble up as soon as they appear. Joyce Carol Oates (and keeping up with her, my friends, ain't easy!), Tom Perrotta, Jim Harrison (RIP), Tobias Wolff, and on and on. I've read all of thriller-mystery writers John Grisham, Jo Nesbø, and numerous others.

And I'm currently working my way through all of Wilkie Collins and Faulkner (reading now the ones I haven't) and some others.

And today I was wondering why I do this to myself--why do I force myself to the end, the very end, of something that's given me such pleasure?

I remember, just before I retired from Western Reserve Academy (June 2011), I talked with one of my classes about the "end" of Harry Potter. They had all grown up with the books--in most cases had eagerly, obsessively snapped up the newest installment. And they talked about the mixed feeling of accomplishment and loss they experienced when they finished The Deathly Hallows and knew there would be no more.

Of course, some of it is just the old human end-of-the-road stuff--we being the only animals aware of our own mortality. And we see everywhere the metaphors of our evanescence--from the changing weather and seasons to, well, the end of reading an author's complete works.

So, in a way, I guess this kind of reading is also a kind of preparation, of some frail human hope that we will be more "ready" when the losses begin to accumulate, to deepen, to become unimaginable--to become something you do not even want to imagine, to become unendurable.

So ... this afternoon ... the end of 4 3 2 1. And then ...? Well, I will begin chanting to the gods in the hopes that Paul Auster will do some more. And I will pick up Let Me Be Frank with You, the final novel (so far) by Richard Ford, whose complete works I have been reading. I'm getting sad already.

Frankenstein Sundae, 286

Anyway, Mary takes us back twelve years and tells us Lord Lodore’s story. He’d taken his three-year-old daughter, Ethel, to Illinois (a wilder place in them-thar days), where they lived in solitude in the wilderness. He threw himself into study and reading—just as Mary herself had done at the most painful times of her life. (Just as I have done.) Mary tells us about Lodore’s education of Ethel, and my notes show that I was reminded when I read the book both of the widowed Godwin teaching little Mary—and, of course, of Prospero’s educating Miranda in The Tempest.

Then we flashback even farther—to Lodore’s own boyhood and education (he’d ended up at Oxford). But he was a loner—and, as we’ve seen, would remain so.

Back to the “present”: Lodore and Ethel, now 15, are leaving Illinois to return to England. And then … the scene at … Niagara Falls!

I can’t type those words—Niagara Falls!—(with an exclamation point) without thinking of that old Abbott and Costello film Lost in a Harem (1944), where they performed a famous vaudeville skit in which Niagara Falls! is the trigger. (The scene is easily available to watch on YouTube—and the comedy pair repeated it on some other occasions.) In the film, Lou is in jail with a derelict, who, when he hears the words Niagara Falls, freaks out, for it reminds him of chasing down the lover of his wife, finding him at the Falls … and … (Link to video clip.)

And I guess this connection (Mary Shelley and Niagara Falls and Abbott and Costello) shows—about as well as anything else—the massive clutter in my mind, the mixture of high and low, of pop culture and “high” culture, of the sublime and the ridiculous, of my fourth-grade self and my Ph.D-self; yes, my mind is an eccentric's attic jammed with cartoons and comic books, the Cleveland Orchestra and my love of “Ape Call” (that 1956 hit by Nervous Norvus), Shakespeare plays and 50s TV shows (especially cowboy shows!), of memories of visits to literary archives and boyhood trips to Saturday morning double-features in Enid, Oklahoma—front row: Coke, popcorn, Snickers, newsreels, cartoons, Westerns (The Three Mesquiteers, Johnny Mack Brown, Bob Steele) … and on and on and on and on.

Blue

I don't remember much about my 8th grade Ohio history class--Hiram (Ohio) Schools, 1957-1958, Mr. Walter Wolfe (whose daughter, Debbie, was in our class, too). Mr. Wolfe was one of the most, well, different teachers I had encountered. He was very opinionated about politics--and school and local affairs. He somewhat disdained college professors (a town-gown thing), claiming now and then that they had "no practical knowledge." I kept my mouth shut but thought otherwise: My dad, a professor at Hiram College, had grown up on a farm and was a living refutation.

Still ... I was a bit wussy at the time. Stayed mute. Mr. Wolfe also said he preferred "a gentleman's C" from an all-round student to an A from a nerd (not his word--but his idea). Now that I could relate to! I'm not sure how much of a gentleman I was, but I gathered lots of C's in junior high--something I kept secret from Joyce (a valedictorian of a huge Akron high school) until after we were married.

Anyway, in his class, we had a Current Events Day each week; we had reports to do on geography and history. And one of the places I remember talking about a bit was a place called Blue Hole in Castalia, Ohio.

For some reason, this came up the other day in a conversation with Joyce. She'd never heard of the place, so out came the iPhone, and here came Google.

Some background. I had never seen the Blue Hole--could not (quickly) find Castalia on an Ohio map (got a C on the quiz, probably). So ... here's a map image for you ... about seven miles southwest of Sandusky.

I found on Google some images of the place on some old picture postcards.

I had this vague memory of learning in Mr. Wolfe's class that it was presumed bottomless, but I see on some of the sites I visited that it is far from so--about 43-45 ft. says the Wikipedia article (I know, I know). But it was bright, deep blue--and very clear. And oxygen-free (no fish or monsters swim and/or lurk below.) And a constant temperature, year-round, from 45-48F. And so ... an attraction. For years.

But not no more.

It closed its gates to the public in 1990 and is owned by a private trout club--Blue Hole has no trout itself, of course, but it's on land with waterways that do. One source says there's a sign now that says: Private property--keep out.

Let's resist the temptation to talk about the current urge among some to privatize public lands and parks, shall we?

So ... what have  I learned.

• I should have gone to see it before 1990.
• I can't see it now.
• I know where Castalia is. (Population 852 in 2010.)
• Castalia was a nymph, who, chased by Apollo (hmmm ... wonder why?), leapt into the spring on Mount Parnassus near Delphi. She became part of the waters--some say because Apollo transformed her on the spot. (Source: The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature)

Two more memories of Mr. Wolfe.

1. While I was in his class, we learned that the Hiram Schools would have a new Executive Head (i.e., superintendent). Won't tell you his name (you'll see why). Several of my classmates and I clipped from the Kent-Ravenna Record-Courier the story, with picture, about the appointment. I asked Mr. Wolfe if I could put it on his bulletin board (where resided the Current Events stories he liked that week). He promptly snapped: I don't want that Fish-Face on my wall!
2. A year later, in ninth grade, I had Mr. Wolfe for a study hall teacher one period. He liked to slip out and have a smoke now and then. One day while he was out, I was getting ready to snap--with a very long rubber band--the back of my older brother, who sat in front of me, studying (no gentleman's C's for him!). Mr. Wolfe came in at that moment. The hush in the room was my warning. He signaled for me to join him in the hall, where he gave me two whacks with his wooden paddle. Both hurt. And it was very loud. I somehow managed not to cry when I returned to study hall. And, of course, my brother told my parents ... more trouble.

1800

It seems purely impossible to me: This is DawnReader post #1800. Eighteen hundred. One thousand eight hundred. How can this have happened? It seems just the other day that I decided to start this blog, and (stealing its name from the title of the first chapter of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield) wrote the first post, "I Am Born." (Link to that post on January 6, 2012.)

In that initial post, I talk about why I picked "DawnReader," my reading habits, my teaching career, my family. And I ended that post with this: Be patient: I'm starting slowly here, trying to figure out what to put on this site.  What to say.  I hope I'll be what I've always been: informed, annoying, entertaining, annoying, and annoying.

I'm sure I've accomplished three of these things (all starting with the letter a). And I'm still trying to figure out what to put on this site.

Anyway, it's been my custom when I arrive at each new "hundred" to take a look and see how many people have been visiting the site. So, I'm going to look right now ... [PAUSE]

... 320,075. That works out to about 178 hits/day--though I'm very aware (as a closer look at the stats confirms) that the numbers go up, sometimes dramatically so, when I write about political issues--which I don't really do all that often.

But as I've said before, I'm not really concerned about the number of hits; I do it for myself--to get it down while I still can. (The same reason, sort of, that I still exercise regularly--keep doing it until I can't.)

As my posting has evolved over the years (five!), I've come to use M-W-F to post installments of the latest publication I'm working on. Rough drafts. (And I do emphasize the word rough!) Currently, it's a long, rambling memoir about my ten-year pursuit of Mary Shelley, a volume I've titled Frankenstein Sundae in honor of a great sundae I had at Castle Frankenstein (Burg Frankenstein) in Germany, overlooking the Rhine (in the far distance) in 1999. And, of course, the pursuit itself has been like a sundae for me.

On Sunday (!), I do "Sunday Sundries," a sort of potpourri of brief entries about what I'm reading, seeing at the movies and on TV, what Joyce and I have been doing, and, of course, a regular feature--The AOTW, a weekly award to the person(s) earning by behavior the A part of the AOTW.

That leaves T-Th-Sat, when I've been posting pieces on all sorts of things--family history, education issues, politics (not all that much), oddities that I've noticed (or have occurred), dreams, my cancer battles, whatever. Sundries, really.

I have to say that I'm still enjoying this--otherwise, of course, I would stop. Most days I look forward to it, and I have not missed all that many days--travel, illness, and depression are the principal reasons for not doing my homework. (I have no dog to eat it, no dog, in other words, to blame.)

I sometimes smile when I think what would have happened (and how I would have felt) if someone had assigned me the writing of 1800 blog posts. Ha! Ha! No way!

Way.

Because here we are, and tomorrow I'll start off toward 1900 and hope that my health and my energy (and whatever) will allow me to get there. I mean, I gotta make 2000, don't I?


**In Coincidence Land--This week, Joyce posted our 1800th book for sale on the site (ABE), where we're selling books from our personal library--now called DJ Dooldebug Books. Check them out here: LINK TO SITE.

Tuesday Sundries

No, I'm not starting another "series"; there are just a few little things that have come up that I wanted to write about--but not an entire post about any of them. So ... here goes ...

• Frederick Douglass has been in the news recently (link to video of Pres. Trump talking about him). I have no political comment to make here--but just a very odd coincidence to record. In yesterday's Akron Beacon-Journal was a story by local historian Mark Price (no, not the Cavs' star of yesteryear) about a commencement speech Douglass made at Western Reserve College here in Hudson--July 12, 1854. (The college campus is now Western Reserve Academy, where I taught for about a decade; the university moved to University Circle and is now Case-Western.)  Joyce and I have known about the speech for a long time--have read it and referred to it now and then. Anyway, here's a link to Price's fine story.
• Now ... here's the coincidence ... I've been reading The Book That Changed America: How Darwin's Theory of Evolution Ignited a Nation (by Randall Fuller, 2017). I read
  
  about 10 pp a night, and last night, I opened to the bookmark on p. 91 and began reading:
• On a sweltering day in July 1854, Douglass gave a commencement address at Western Reserve College in Hudson, Ohio. This in itself was remarkable: black people in antebellum America were not invited to speak to graduating white students. ...
• Fuller goes on for a couple of pages more to talk about Douglass, about Darwin and the difficulty he presented for white people (i.e., white racists), etc.
• So ... on the same day that the Beacon-Journal has a feature about Douglass in Hudson, I read, at night, about that same event ... what are the chances?
• I've been reading Paul Auster's LONG (and amazing) new novel, 4 3 2 1 (about which I'll blog more when I've finished). One of the characters loves baseball and, living in the NYC area in the late 40s and early 1950s, talks about the time when there were three Major League teams there--Yankees,
  
  Giants, Dodgers. And I got to wondering: Why are they called the Dodgers? I was thinking of the Artful Dodger in Dickens' Oliver Twist. The Brooklyn Conmen? Hustlers? That didn't make sense. I checked the dictionary: no help. So ... I headed to the ever-reliable Internet, where I found on the ever-reliable Wikipedia the information that the team--many years ago (1895)--had the nickname "Trolley Dodgers." Getting to the games, it seems, presented some danger for some people because of the trolleys in the area. Newspapers referred to them as the Trolley Dodgers, so, later, they dropped the "Trolley" and changed from "Brooklyn Grays" to "Dodgers." And so it goes in Nickname Land!
• I never owned a motorcycle, have ridden on one only a couple of times. And last night ... I dreamed about one. I was riding it (very professionally, I might add, except for a moment when I misjudged the braking power at a stoplight and had to slide in front of a car I otherwise would have hit. That car looked like a late 40s Chevy, and the driver looked an awful lot like my dad). I didn't recognize the town I was in--but I seemed to be on a mission to find Joyce, who was in a RR freight car somewhere with a bunch of kittens--or it could have been puppies. I didn't find her before I woke up--though, after I did wake up, I found her there, right in bed where she belongs. (No sign of kittens--or puppies. Or a RR car.) I have one other bizarre memory about it: Some young woman tried to hop on the back when I slowed for some crossing pedestrians. I shoved her off ... kindly, kindly, kindly.
• Finally--a complaint I've written about before--and which I noticed yesterday, again, on multiple occasions: the failure of drivers to use turn signals, to turn on their headlights in the gloaming. What on earth ...!?!?!?!?

Frankenstein Sundae, 285

Lodore remains in print (as do Mary’s other books—though some are print-on-demand), and my copy, which I bought and read very early in my research (May 1997, only about six months after I retired from public-school teaching and began spending most of my time reading about Mary and her circle). Edited by Lisa Vargo (and published by Broadview, 1997), the volume features a photograph from ca. 1855 (an unknown photographer) showing a formally dressed man (complete with an Abe-Lincoln top hat) sitting on Table Rock, which has, due to various collapses, considerably diminished from its once expansive dimensions. In 1850, a huge chunk fell. At the time a man and his carriage were on it; he escaped; the carriage didn’t.

Lodore has a scene at Niagara Falls—and we’ll get to that in a bit—and to the various ways that Niagara Falls figured in the lives of some people she knew well, especially Edward John Trelawny, the bold braggadocio who had helped with the cremation of her husband in 1822 and whose life and writing intertwined with Mary’s until her death in 1851—and even beyond.

Lodore—as was the custom at the time—appeared in three volumes. There was a reason for these many multi-volume publications. The private lending libraries—popular and pervasive at the time—could satisfy more customers by checking out the volumes in sequence so that one reader, say, didn’t hog the entire book for weeks on end.

Volume I begins, writes Mary, in the flattest and least agreeable part of the county of Essex, about five miles from the sea ….[1] A small village. A mansion, rarely inhabited by the Fitzhenry family. Henry Fitzhenry—also called Lord Lodore—married a beautiful and mysterious woman—An angel bright with celestial hues, breathing heaven, and spreading a halo of calm and light around ….[2]

Mary, Mary … a bit excessive, eh? Florid?

Anyway, Lord Lodore’s young wife—who seems to have stepped from the pages of a contemporary romance novel—has died. And Lodore disappears, leaving only his sister, Elizabeth, behind in the house. Years have passed, and he is now fifty years old.

Mary, I’m sure, used the number fifty as a way to communicate age—being old—but I, seventy-two as I write these words, can think only of the youth of fifty years!

---

[1] Ibid. 49.

[2] Ibid., 52.

Sunday Sundries, 130

1. AOTW: I had a couple of candidates this week, but the Clear Winner emerged just yesterday. I was at the gas station on the corner of busy Rt. 91 and Norton Road. There's a stoplight. But the AOTW seemed to believe that stoplights are for wusses, so while I was getting gas, he, heading west on Norton Rd., decided he didn't want to wait for the light and zoomed through the gas-station lot, instead, about 40 mph, taking the hypotenuse over to Rt. 91. I'm glad I was looking at him: He missed me by only feet--and when I say "me" I mean me, not my car!

2. As some of you know, I recently did a series of three posts about an odd portion of a bookshelf in my study ("Self on a Shelf"). I just noticed, though, that I failed to mention one of the items (see pic below).

Dead center, in the foreground, is a yellow pin. The large print on it says POE MUSEUM. (Inside the O is a raven ... wonder why?) And on top it says Richmond; below, Virginia. I got that button when Joyce and I visited that museum on Friday, June 11, 2004--one of our summer trips to see a bunch of literary sites--and there are a lot of Poe-related ones in Richmond. The Allans adopted him there after his mother died (Dad was long gone somewhere ... no one's sure), and he grew up in the city. Anyway, the museum was great, and I got that pin--as well as about 500 other things.

3. I finished just one book this week--reading too many long ones right now! Richard Ford's 2012 novel, Canada, revisits the terrain he used in his earlier works--the West. Montana, in particular. It's narrated fifty years after the events when the narrator was fifteen years old and living in Great Falls with his parents. Things are not going well financially, and Dad decides, Hey, let's rob a bank! (The son is unaware of these preparations between Dad and reluctant Mom.) So ... off his folks go to pull the job in North Dakota--and, of course, they're quickly caught and head off to prison.

And our narrator, Dell, goes to Canada (see title!) to live with some acquaintances, principal among them a guy named Arthur Remlinger, who runs a hotel in a small town. Dell works there at the hotel (and does some other jobs--e.g., helping geese hunters)--but doesn't go to school. Then ... he discovers a dark secret in Remlinger's life ... and the plot roars to its conclusion.

Ford is so damn good--and I'm sad that I'm nearing the end of my journey through his complete works. He has somehow found the key to the human heart--to all of our hearts--and roams about in them making discoveries and observations that are deeply emotional, often shattering, always true. And there is a flow to his prose, his plots. Things just seem to move along "normally"--until, of course, they don't.

4. Good News/Bad News

• GOOD: This morning, in Heinen's (local grocery store), I ran into a former student whom I'd taught in seventh grade, 1967-68. I've seen him, oh, a half-dozen times since. Today he approached me, and I called him by name! (What a memory!) I even remembered the names of his brother and sister.
• BAD: This morning, shaving before we headed out, I stopped before the first stroke and tried to remember: Do I start with a down- or an up-stroke? I've been shaving the exact same way since the early 1960s, and today I could not remember what that way was! I tried a down-stroke (I always begin on the left side of my neck, by the way--that I remembered) but knew immediately that that was wrong. Now ... will I remember how to do it the next time? (I'm bearded and shave only my neck and my upper cheeks, in case your curious--twice a week: Thursday, Sunday. Habit, habit, habit-- / A most predictable rabbit.)

5. We saw the wonderful film Moonlight on Thursday night--we realized it was going to be in Kent only a week, so off we went on a weeknight. Not crowded, by the way. Joyce and I both loved it--a three-part story about a young African American; we see him in boyhood, youth, young manhood. And his dawning awareness that he's gay. It's a love story in many ways--learning to love yourself as you realize you love another. And it's a fairly stark look at the "streets"--at the drug culture, about how even good people can be drawn into it.

The performances--by all--were stellar. We've seen two films with just astonishing performances by young boys--Lion and now this. Amazing. (Link to film trailer.)

Joyce and I were talking about how absurd a "Best Picture" Oscar is. Those nominated this year are so different from one another--have different aims, accomplish different things. Calling one "best" is a bit much, I think.

6. Streaming the most recent season of Portlandia. Don't think I've ever seen a series more odd--and more fun to watch. (One episode, with Louis C.K., is a dazzler.)

7. Last Words--Some words I liked from my various online word-of-the-day providers.

     - from Oxford English Dictionary

brumation, n. A state or condition of semi-dormancy exhibited by reptiles and amphibians in response to cold weather, characterized by lethargy and a decrease in metabolic activity. Cf. aestivation n. 3.

Brumation differs from hibernation in the degree of dormancy and the metabolic processes involved.

Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymon: -ation suffix.

Etymology: < classical Latin brūma winter (see brumal adj.) + -ation suffix 

1965   W. W. Mayhew in Compar. Biochem. & Physiol. 16 103   The term brumation is proposed to indicate winter dormancy in ectothermic vertebrates that demonstrate physiological changes which are independent of body temperature.

1976   Amer. Zoologist 16 731/1   A typical female [of the salamander Desmognathus ochropheus] emerged from brumation in April with reduced lipid reserves and enlarged ova.

1996   D. Wagner Boas 44/2   Brumation is more common in animals living in areas where winter temperatures do not remain below freezing.

2015   Hays (Kansas) Daily News 5 Apr. b4/5   With warmer weather, more snakes are coming out of brumation.

     - from dictionary.com

whiffler \HWIF-ler, WIF-\ noun

1. a person who frequently shifts opinions, attitudes, interests, etc.

2. a person who is vacillating or evasive in an argument.

Quotes

Ay, ay; he's a whiffler, but a good man on a sea-elephant.

-- James Fenimore Cooper, The Sea Lions; or, The Lost Sealers, 1849 

Origin of whiffler

Whiffler has a sense that is now sadly obsolete, “one who smokes tobacco,” dating from the early 17th century. Its current sense dates from the mid-17th century.