Frankenstein Sundae, 346

In March 1843, Mary and her party sailed from Rome aboard a small but well-built and quick steamer.^[1] Once again she was returning to a place she and Bysshe had lived—the spring of 1819, when she discovered that she was once again pregnant. I found it odd that when they passed Leghorn—on whose beach Trelawny and others had cremated the drowned remains of her husband, Edward Williams, and Charles Vivian in July 1822—she mentioned nothing, save this: The view from the sea near Leghorn is not sufficiently praised.[2] Perhaps her mild retreat here into the passive voice indicates her choice to withdraw?

Their arrival in Rome could hardly have been more portentous: She and the others noticed that the Romans all seemed to be looking heavenward. So Mary looked. A comet. According to observers, it was visible in broad daylight and it remained visible after nightfall for a while longer. Its brilliance earned a named—The Great Comet of 1843 or Great March Comet—and if you want to see it again, it’ll return some 513 years after Mary saw it.[3]

Mary was very impressed with the comet’s appearance in Rome—although it was already past its prime. She writes of a long trail of glowing light … it is bright, yet the stars shine through its web-like texture, which, composed of thin beams, is stretched out, and you may see delicate sea-weeds—or aquatic plants in a stream, though a large space of the heavens.[4]

In Rome, Mary and the others toured, again, the most popular sites, even today; she notes that the Coliseum remains a favorite, especially the view from it of the Pyramid of Cestius, which, no coincidence, stands right outside the Protestant Cemetery, the place where lie Bysshe, their son (William, three and a half, who died in June 1819), and John Keats. (Trelawny’s remains would journey there, too, and he now lies near Bysshe.) Mary mentions none of this—only to say that this view is one I am never tired of contemplating.[5]

---

[1] Ibid., 213.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Gary W. Kronk, Comets: A Descriptive Catalog (Hillside, NJ: Enslow, 1984) , 35–6.

[4] Rambles, 214–15.

[5] Ibid., 226.

Great Comet 1843

Pyramid of Caius Cestius, Rome

Climate Change in TV Viewing

I just realized something this morning: I no longer watch cable TV; everything I see is either a DVD or streaming. Everything. I should hop (!) online and cancel my cable subscription--except for Internet services, of course.

What a change ... what changes in my lifetime!

I was born in north central Oklahoma in 1944. I remember not having a TV set at all--and I remember the first one I ever saw at a friend's house. The screen was round. Black-and-white. Blurry. Absolutely amazing. A wooden console set that looked--except for the circular screen--like the full-size wooden radio consoles we had--and my grandparents had. The one in the photo I stole from the Internet is dated 1952. That's about right. I was 8 then--though it must have been earlier because I saw this before we owned a set..

We got our first TV in the early 1950s, too--not long before Dad was called  back into active duty--the Air Force--for the Korean War. We got as far as Amarillo, Tex., the Air Force Base there. We were there a little under two years.

Anyway, back in Okla., our first set--also wooden but with the square/rectangular screen--wooden case. We had only a couple of stations we could access--one in Oklahoma City (when the weather and antenna cooperated), one in Enid, where we lived. Both signed off at 1 a.m., and nothing but what they called a "test pattern" ran all night. Can't believe I just found this image online--it's the pattern of the very Okla City station we watched!

When we moved to Amarillo, we took our set with us, but it sat quietly, unused, the whole time we were there. No TV stations in Amarillo at the time. Our set was just another piece of furniture. So we listened to radio programs on the big wooden radio--Fibber McGee and Molly, The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, etc.

Back in Enid in 1953, our set went back on, and we used the radio only for events that were not telecast. I still remember listening to Rocky Marciano fights on the wooden radio in our grandparents' house. And baseball games. My older brother and grandpa listened to the Saturday opera broadcasts at the Met.

But still ... just two TV channels.

And need I say that all of this was in black-and-white? Color sets were rare--were special. On family car trips I remember seeing large signs outside of motels: COLOR TV! I remember that we once stopped for the night at such a place, only to discover, sadly for us kids, that the only COLOR TV! was in the motel lobby.

We didn't get our first color TV until I was in high school--now living in Hiram, Ohio, where we could get (aerials and/or rabbit ears cooperating) the three Cleveland stations--one for each of the major broadcast networks: ABC, CBS, NBC.

In 1966, when my parents left for Drake Univ. in Des Moines, Iowa, and when I began my teaching career in Aurora, Ohio, they left me the old b&w set and the rabbit ears; that set adorned my little bachelor pad in Twinsburg, Ohio, where I watched my favorite shows (rabbit ears cooperating): Mannix was one I liked, a CBS detective show. The Virginian (I'd read the eponymous Owen Wister Western novel in high school study hall).. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Etc. That old set was ... temperamental. Sometimes I had to slug it in the side for the picture to sharpen.

The first color set I owned was a hand-me-down from Tom and Annabelle Coyne, whose daughter, Joyce, had mysteriously agreed to marry me late in 1969. We watched that one for quite a while.

And  then we bought our own sets. Cleveland, by then, had added a UHF station (channel 43) to compete with the VHF regulars.

I can't remember when we got our first cable connection. But we loved it--watched all those incredible HBO shows (The Sopranos!) and so many movies ...

Soon, there were so many cable stations--so many options--that it was absolutely overwhelming. What to watch? And why? 

Soon, we got a DVR, courtesy of the cable company, and were thereby able to watch shows that weren't ... convenient ... at the time. SNL (too late!) + other shows we'd decided to watch at our convenience. (Don't dare use the cliche "sea change" here--do not say "see change," for Shakespeare, who used the phrase in The Tempest, will be disappointed in you!)

And then ... video stores (buh-bye) ... and Netflix discs (still get them occasionally) ... and streaming services. (PS: Spell-checker just recommended I replace "Netflix" with "needfuls.")

And, as I said, we never watch cable now.

So, okay, I agree: It is a See Change. (Sorry, Will.)

Frankenstein Sundae, 325

Late in October 1842, Mary and the others left Venice and headed on to Florence—where she and Bysshe had lived twenty-three years earlier. (And where—as I related many, many pages ago—a Gypsy woman picked my pocket—with ease!—outside the main train station on April 22, 1999. Happy Earth Day—and welcome to Florence!)

In Florence, Mary and her party did what many (most?) tourists do today: visit the art galleries and museums. And she has quite a bit to say about it. To read sublime poetry, she writes, to hear excellent music, to view the finest pictures, the most admirable statues, and harmonious and stately architecture, is the best school in which to learn to appreciate what approaches nearest to perfection in each.[1]

And I—a grumpy former public school teacher—ruminate and (inwardly) rant about how schools today quickly cut the arts first when funding gets tight. In other words, we close, in a way, what she called the best school.And pat ourselves on the back for “saving money.” For being prudent. (For being stupid!)

Mary Shelley—whom, like her mother, the public considered a “fallen woman”—could wax a little prudish at time. Considering the works of Michelangelo, for example, she writes, His love of the naked was carried to a curious excess. In the Tribune [Tribuna of the Uffizi—a room in that world-famous gallery], is a Holy Family, into which he has introduced a variety of naked figures in different attitudes that have not the smallest connection with the subject of the picture, but intrude impertinently to mar its effect.[2] She was most likely talking about Michelangelo’s Doni Tondo, completed very early in the 1500s.

In March, Mary and her party sailed from Rome aboard a small but well-built and quick steamer.[3] Once again she was returning to a place she and Bysshe had lived—the spring of 1819, when she discovered that she was once again pregnant.

---

[1] Ibid., 140.

[2] Ibid., 154.

[3] Ibid., 213.

That Dude, Will--the Bard ...

We started streaming this last night--the new TNT miniseries Will, about young Will Shakespeare heading off to London to try to begin a life in the theater. We watched only about fifteen minutes of the first episode, not because we disliked it (though that may yet be possible!) but because it was very near the time in the evening (9-ish!) when my brain says: That's enough for today ... I am shutting down! I'll try some more this evening--or soon.

Here's a link to a trailer for the series.

Episode One begins in Stratford-upon-Avon, where a harried Ann Shakespeare (his wife) is dealing with their children (three at the time); she is not at all happy that he is going off to London, about 100 miles southeast, a distance that would take several days in the late 1500s. Ann comes across as a bit of a grouch in this portrayal--although we have absolutely no evidence about how she actually felt. But--alone with three little ones?--I get it ...

Then we see Will walking, approaching Elizabethan London, where the street life quickly sweeps him up, and where a street urchin leeches on--and steals something and runs. We paused where Will is entering a large drain to pursue the lad. I'm guessing the odor wasn't too pleasant, since sewage treatment lay far, far in the future.

We haven't yet seen much of Will as a writer--just a moment at the very beginning when he scratches out with his pen something that he didn't like. Oh, those writers! Never happy with their words ...

The recent review in the New York Times was not all that positive, though I merely skimmed it because I wanted to watch the shows for myself,  but here's a link to what the NYT said yesterday. I've clipped it and will read it more carefully after I've watched more for myself ...

We do love to mess with the Bard, though, refashioning him over the decades and centuries to make him conform to our ideas about what he needs to be. For us. So, just in recent years, we've had the gay Shakespeare, the lover-boy Shakespeare (Shakespeare in Love), the pot-smoking Shakespeare, the devoted-husband Shakespeare, the unfaithful husband Shakespeare, the crypto-Catholic Shakespeare, the atheist Shakespeare, the former-soldier-and/or sailor Shakespeare, the ignorant-country-kid-who-never-could-have-written-Shakespeare Shakespeare, ad infinitum. And this will go ever on.

Joyce and I (as I've written here before) have now seen performed (live and onstage!) every play the Bard wrote. Some of them we've seen many times (the ones most commonly produced: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Richard III, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet--you know). And we still go each summer up to the Stratford Theatre Festival in Canada for a week (soon, soon--health permitting--we'll be headed up there again). And we have been constantly delighted, surprised, even thrilled by the different ways contemporary directors stage the productions--each, of course, showing a different view of the Bard.

In recent years, for example, we've seen productions of Midsummer Night's Dream that were set in the era of Sgt. Pepper (complete with Beatles' music), on a different planet, as entertainment at a wedding reception, on a bare stage with an emphasis on the pure darkness of some of it, and on and on.

But here's what I've learned: All of these productions--all of these re-visions--are just different ways of tilting the mirror that Shakespeare, 400 years ago, crafted so that we, now, can see--with humorous and disturbing clarity--ourselves.

And so I will continue with Will--how could I not?--and will post more about it here from time to time.


Here's a link to TNT's website info about their series.

Frankenstein Sundae, 324

Mary’s subsequent letters in Rambles deal with her touring of famous sites in Venice—museums, palaces, canals, churches, islands; one letter deals entirely with the class system in the city—and she notes That reading does not flourish here, may be gathered from the fact that there is no circulating library, nor any literary society, such as are frequent in country towns in France and England where people subscribe among one another for the supply of books. And she muses further in a way that has some unpleasant parallels to our lives in twenty-first century America: Meanwhile to live among people who do not read—who do not desire to learn ….[1]

Of course, Mary could not really claim that the people of Venice do not read ... do not desire to learn: There were surely thousands of people there who were doing both—and happily so—just as there are millions in our country who read, who desire to learn. It’s too easy—and always has been—for cultural critics to glance around and see what they want to see.

I notice, for example, very few people reading in the coffee shops I frequent … but can I leap from that to condemn the country? I am fairly sure—no, positive—that Americans no longer read in the numbers that they formerly did. But I am also fairly sure—no, positive—that there remain millions of us who prefer a book to Twitter, a poem to Facebook. But many of us lurk underground these days when having an education, having a passion for studying and learning are signs to (too many) others that we are “elitist.”

I’m not “elitist”: Reading and studying and writing are simply the activities I prefer in the late autumn of my years. And these activities do not, by the way, exclude any interest I have in, oh, Facebook (where I post often), in movies (we go nearly every week), in TV series we like to stream (virtually every night), in baking (as often as I can), in exercising (which has become harder, more unpleasant in recent years), in spending as much time as I can with my wife, in … You get the picture …

Late in October 1842, Mary and the others left Venice and headed on to Florence—where she and Bysshe had lived twenty-three years earlier. (And where—as I related many, many pages ago—a Gypsy woman picked my pocket—with ease!—outside the main train station on April 22, 1999. Happy Earth Day—and welcome to Florence!)

---

[1] Ibid., 105.

Florence & the Arno--April 1999

Sunday Sundries, 149

1. AOTW: (a) Runner-Up. The entrance/exit from our grocery-store parking lot has three lanes: (i) enter, (ii) exit left, (iii) exit right (onto somewhat busy Ohio 303). This morning--the AOTW Runner-Up was in the right exit lane with his left blinker on; we were directly behind him, planning to turn right. And we had to wait and wait and wait until 303 was clear in both directions before the AOTW-RU managed to make his left turn. (b) Winner. Daniel Osborn Dyer. Last night, Joyce and I were heading over to Kent to do a little shopping for our son's birthday next Sunday. I reached an intersection, wanted to turn left, saw the light was green, turned left--failing to notice that it was not just a green arrow that was on (the way we usually turn), but it was all-green, both north and south. An oncoming car very nearly T-boned us, and, as we drove on (shaken), I imagined the other driver was screaming: "There's the AOTW!" And he was so, so right.

2. Some of you who visit this page now and then know that we are (slowly, slowly) streaming/DVDing our way through all of the Coen Bros. films. This week we finished No Country for Old Men (2007--link to film trailer), based on the eponymous Cormac McCarthy novel (2005). We'd seen the film when it came out (ten years ago!) but had forgotten what incredible tension builds in that thing. And what impressed me this time was what the Coens did not show--some of the murders are off-camera. (Shakespeare used to do that--offstage deaths (e.g., Lady Macbeth).) And I remained so impressed with the Coens' ability to mix grimness and humor--a gift. I was laughing as much as I was trying not to, you know, lose it. Last night we started Burn After Reading (2008).

3. I finished three books this week ...

     a. The first was Powdered Eggs (1964--the year I turned 20!) by Charles Simmons, a longtime book critic for the New York Times, a novel I'd not ever heard of until I saw Simmons' obituary in the Times about a month ago (he died at 92 on June 7--link to obit). So I thought I'd read the book--maybe read some of his others, too. There are only a few more.

Tis an odd novel. Written in the form of letters (sans date, sans salutation and the other "letter parts" that teachers drummed into me in elementary and junior high school), the story is about a guy writing a novel--and the letters comprise pieces of the novel (as well as accounts of the writer's current doings). Near the end--and this is amusing--we get a speculative book review of his novel--the sort of things critics would/might say about it.

The narrator has some attitude--and some sweetness. For the latter, how about this--oh, one of the odd things: one of his girlfriends is named Prudence, my mother's name: "But Prudence's home has that deepness that comes to things used by people with good hearts" (60). Awwwww ...  Oh, and for the former quality (i.e., his "attitude"), he calls a priest (silently) "this four-eyed, peckerless little vacuity opposite me ..." (104).

I enjoyed the book--laughed, mused, wondered, admired. And I probably--down the road--will read the rest of his novels

   b. The second (which I'd been reading slowly in bed at night) was The Thirst (2017) by one of my favorite thriller writers, Jo Nesbø, a Norwegian novelist who has become a massive best-seller, principally because of his novels about Detective Harry Hole (sounds better in Norwegian, I bet).

In this latest novel Hole--who is semi-retired and teaching investigative technique to younger cops (including Oleg, the son of his lover)--emerges to take on a case of a "vampirist"--a guy who goes around with a set of iron teeth biting young women on the neck, drinking their blood, leaving them dead.

I don't want to give anything away, so I won't--but let's just say that the novel's not really over when you think it is. I enjoyed, by the way, nerd that I am, the multiple references to Othello scattered throughout, and a character also quotes a famous line from The Tempest, uttered by young Miranda when she sees handsome young men for the first time in her life (she has grown up on a remote island populated only by her old father, Prospero, and grungy, animalistic Caliban): "O brave new world, that has such people in it" (5.1).

These Shakespeare allusions have an even greater resonance because Nesbø is the author of one of the forthcoming modernized/novelized plays of Shakespeare published by the Hogarth Press; he's doing Macbeth, scheduled for 2018. Can't wait.

   c. And, finally, the wonderful 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Olive Kitteridge (2008), by Elizabeth Strout whose works I've only recently begun to read (I started with her most recent, My Name Is Lucy Barton, 2016). But after Olive I'm a-gonna read em all!

The style of Lucy and Olive is similar--a series of semi-connected stories. Sometimes Olive is the focus, sometimes not; sometimes she is merely an allusion in someone else's story and/or conversation. But as the novel advances, things change in Olive's life: her son (her only child) marries and moves to California (Olive lives in a small town in Maine); her husband suffers a stroke that puts him down; she chafes more and more about those around her and about Life in general--Olive, a retired 7th-grade math teacher, has attitude, and she is not hesitant to share her feelings with those whom she encounters. Other crises arise--but I'll not spoil the story any more with a summary.

I love this style that Strout has developed and perfected. And I'm going to read her other novels now--and eagerly so.

Some sentences that got to me for one reason or another ...

• "Hope was a cancer inside her" (45).
• "... that must be the way of life, to get something figured out when it was too late" (60).
• "... it's her soul, really, that is wearing out" (71).
• "... what did they have now, except for each other, and what could you do if it was not even quite that?" (139).
• "It baffled her, the world. She did not want to leave it yet" (270).

There were more, many more ...

4. We didn't go to the movies this week--nothing we really wanted to see. So we streamed some of "our" shows--Doctor Blake, Suspects, and a recent Netflix comedy special with Chris D'Elia, who cracks me up--not just with his stories but with his very expressive body--he's like a piece of wire! A bit raunchy but humorously rather than grossly so.

5. Final Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day suppliers ... a  proper noun I've long known--but did not realize it could be a verb, as well ...

     - Robinson Crusoe

PRONUNCIATION: (ROB-in-suhn KROO-soh)

MEANING:

verb tr.: To maroon, to isolate, or to abandon.

noun: A castaway; a person who is isolated or without companionship.

ETYMOLOGY:

After the title character of Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe. Crusoe was a shipwrecked sailor who spent 28 years on a remote desert island. Earliest documented use: 1768. Crusoe’s aide has also become an eponym in the English language: man Friday.

USAGE:

“I had not seen any people ... while I was Robinson Crusoed out there on the wet international border.”

Robert Wehrman; Walking Man: The Secret Life of Colin Fletcher; BookBaby; 2016.

Loose Canon, Coda

I've written here a couple of times this week about the evolution of the literary canon in my lifetime--about the books/writers that were once standard in school and college but that now, especially in the former, are fading away--like a vision of Brigadoon or Camelot.

One of the reasons I didn't mention before--or not too much--is the advent of standardized testing--and lots of it--in the public schools. (I've said in other posts that my older grandson, about to enter seventh grade, has already taken more standardized tests--by far--than I did, K-Ph.D.) Test scores have become the all-in-all. Scores figure heavily in the evaluation of teachers as well as kids and curricula and administrators and schools--and even states. And when tests matter the most (as they now do, I fear, in far too many places), then they become the curriculum.

If it ain't on the test, in other words, we ain't teachin' it!

So, if it's a mere reading score that matters--not what you've read--then why teach Moby-Dick when Willy the Whale will do? (I'm not sure there is such a book; I should write it!)  And--as a result--Willy splashes happily in the pool of the public-school curriculum, and Moby sulks out in the ocean somewhere. (Does his white flush red with jealousy?)

Another big change in recent years: the equation of education with elitism.* It seems that so many Americans look upon the well educated among us as people who believe they're superior to others. And, to be fair, some (much?) of the blame does lie on the shoulders of the well-educated, people who sometimes ridicule rather than inform. So issues like climate change and evolution and vaccination and all sorts of other public issues remain issues of emotion and belief rather than issues subject to fact and/or convincing theory.

In my father's generation--the Depression/WW II generation--an education was something prized, something to be proud of. He came off an Oregon farm, endured the Depression, served in both theaters of WW II (earning a bronze star), and was proud to take advantage of the GI Bill to earn his graduate degrees (including an Ed.D. from the University of Oklahoma after the war). He was proud of what he'd done. Proud of where he'd gone to school. Proud to the last conscious moment of his life.

Nowadays, public figures have to be almost apologetic if they went to a fine university. Politicians can't really even mention any higher education for fear of being branded an "elitist." Have we really reached the point at which our level of higher education is something to be ashamed of? Is something to conceal?

I recall the snide comments about Pres. Obama and Harvard ...

Again ... I want to repeat that sometimes the educated bring disdain on themselves with their snotty, dismissive attitudes about others. No doubt about it.

But have we really gone from a country--the country that my father knew--that revered education to one that scorns it?

And all of this, I believe, has a deadening effect on the curriculum. We can't have kids going around spouting Shakespeare, you know!

Still ... without a little Bard, even a common comic will have little resonance. This was from the paper yesterday (July 7, The Flying McCoys)--the opening line of Sonnet 18, which I used to encourage (okay, force) my 8th-grade students to memorize.

Well, I realize I am holding up my hand to stop a tsunami. Cultural change occurs whether we like it or not. And with this current change? The decline of the literary canon? I am firmly a NOT.


*This is not really new--just a resurgence: See Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1963!). You can get it online now as a .pdf. (Link to the book.)