1. HBOTW: Not long ago I posted a query on Facebook: Who had left by one of our trees out front a pair of nicely painted rocks? Some speculations came--no definite answers. But the other day, reading in the front room, door open, I heard a woman telling her kids to pick up a couple of rocks from the mass of them lining a nearby driveway. I went out on the porch, asked her if she'd been the one to place them by our tree earlier. She said, "Yes." I said, "You deserve the Nobel Prize"--and I wasn't kidding. Such a kind thing to do--to bring a little joy into this world. And so ... she and her two little ones: Human Beings of the Week.
2. I finished three books this week ...
- The first (via Kindle) was the final volume of Ken Bruen's series The White Trilogy--this one called The McDead (2000). These cop thrillers feature a hard-ass named Detective Sergeant Brant, who is not exactly the most politically correct officer of the law you'll ever encounter. He's crude, violent, judgmental, and funny. Oh, and sexist, too.
Bruen's style is what's fun--lots of dialogue (funny dialogue), brief chapters, allusions to things you wouldn't expect (like books and famous writers!), and the bad guy(s) (this time, the killer of a cop's brother) generally get what they deserve, though not in the most, uh, democratic way.
It's eerie, reading a book like this in a time like this. Published twenty years ago, it could have been published yesterday.
- The second was a book I started over a year ago--then set it aside: Jonathan Bate's How the Classics Made Shakespeare (2019). I don't usually do that--put a book aside. And when I do, I hardly ever pick it back up again.
But I didn't put this one aside because I didn't like it (my usual reason) but because I got too engrossed in some other writers. But it was still in my backpack (like something in a cluttered mind that's trying to forget), so when I saw it there the other day, I resolved to finish it. And did.
Bate is one of the most renowned and respected Shakespeare scholars in the world, and in this volume he talks about the influence of Latin classics in the Bard's plays and poems--classics he would have been aware of because of his years in the Stratford school and because of their pervasiveness in the culture of the time. As he writes near the beginning, "Storytelling was Shakespeare's method of making sense of the world, and no stories gripped him more fully than those of classical antiquity" (8).
And off we go on a journey through some of those classical stories--through the Bard's plays, sonnets, and poems--to see exactly how he employed those ancient stories.
I confess: I couldn't follow some of it (dotage?), but I did gain a new respect for how Shakespeare, pretty much an autodidact, devoted himself to his profession, to his storytelling.
Bate ends with this observation about Shakespeare: "He is our singular classic" (276). I concur.
- The third was Colum McCann's 2020 novel, Apeirogon (a word that means an infinitely sided polygon--and don't ask me a thing more about that!--I was an English teacher, remember?).
This is a novel about the Middle East, specifically about the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict--and the horrors it has produced--on both sides.
McCann focuses on two men--one a Palestinian, one an Israeli--both of whom have lost a daughter in the violence. One, a nine-year-old was shot in the head with a rubber bullet by an Israeli officer; the other, a teenager killed in a suicide bomb explosion.
Based on true events, the novel shows us how the two fathers met, became allies in the peace process, devoted themselves to ending the violence that killed their daughters.
The style is unique. Very short sections, sometimes telling about the victims (slowly the entire episodes unfold), sometimes talking about the birds in the region, the history, the geography.
It is indeed a grim story (an overlooked eyeball is found at the bombing scene after it had been "cleared"), but it is also, ultimately, a hopeful one. Common ground can be found--common ground based on family and hope and heart and the profound wish for all the violence to stop.
3. We're still hanging in there with Perry Mason on HBO--but it's become more of a habit now than a passion. I like seeing how characters from the old TV show (characters like Della Street, Mason's secretary, and Paul Drake, a private eye in the old series) are making their way into the HBO story in significant ways.
But I have to admit that I'm not caught up in it--watching more out of curiosity than obsession.
4. We're still doing virtually all of our grocery shopping online with the local Acme store. We wait in the parking lot; they bring our order to the car, put it in the trunk. Oh, occasionally one of us will dash into the store to get something we neglected to order, but we rival The Flash in speed, I'll tell you! Yesterday, I made such a dash--and was pleased (surprised?) to see that everyone was masked!
5. Monday is Joyce's birthday. And every day since I met her has been a gift to me.
6. I recently vowed I would quit clipping and filing articles from newspapers and magazines, articles related to things I used to teach. I break that vow almost every day.
7. Confession: I'm streaming (before Joyce joins me in bed) Horrible Bosses--again.The dumb thing just makes me laugh. When Joyce comes in, I immediately pause it--then stop it. (Not that I fooled her: She has ears as well as eyes. I'm blessed that she tolerates these ... diversions ... from My Normal, though she probably knows that before I met her, it was more like MY NORMAL.) Being with her for more than fifty years has reduced this trait into lower-case!
8. Last Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...
- from wordsmith.org (from same Latin root as the adj. strident)
stridor (STRY-duhr)
noun: A harsh, grating or creaking sound.
ETYMOLOGY: From Latin stridere (to make a harsh sound). Earliest
documented use: 1632.
NOTES: The word is often used for the harsh vibrating sound produced
when breathing with an airway obstruction.
USAGE: “Abruptly the stridor yielded to a cadence of almost
tender mellowness.”
Curt Maury; The Glitter and Other Stories; iUniverse; 2010.
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