May 05 2016

The Thirty Years War by C.V. Wedgwood

As their dates of publication recede into the past, books of history increasingly become artifacts of what they chronicle. They illuminate two periods: the one about which they are written, and the one in which they are written. With academic or more specialist works, this process is faster and more conscious; monographs are written in dialog with other histories in a particular field, which moves along through the years. Works written for a more general audience can reflect scholarly consensus at the time, or an author’s iconoclastic perspective, or topics that are of wider concern at the time of publication.

Nearly 80 years have passed since C.V. Wedgwood wrote her classic history, The Thirty Years War. The current day is as distant from Wedgwood’s Germany and Central Europe as hers was from when Austria and Prussia were still contending for mastery in the German lands, when Bismarck was Chancellor to the Prussian king and not yet to the German emperor. Looking back, those nineteenth-century struggles have far more in common with their counterparts two hundred years previous than the conflagration that consumed Europe so soon after Wedgwood’s book appeared.

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May 01 2016

The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell

I love historical fiction. I don’t often read it (and too often fall into the trap of reading historical fantasy, which I’ve found to be an extremely problematic genre,) but I’m usually pleasantly surprised by how good historical fiction is. Perhaps that has to do as much with the nature of the author who goes into this kind of thing as with anything else: meticulous research often means conscientious writing, which sounds like it ought to be boring but isn’t, because it understands that the primary goal of fiction should be to entertain the reader. And The Last Kingdom by Bernard Cornwell is wildly entertaining, hewing closely enough to the written records to make me feel immersed in the era, and highlighting the personal drama of its protagonist, Uhtred, in a very accessible manner while still allowing for enough period flavor to make it all seem exotic. And that last, I think, differentiates this book from lesser examples of the genre. Mr Cornwell knows exactly how to balance the melange so that I’m not glazing over with boredom at all the historical facts he’s unearthed and is excited to share. Historical facts and tidbits of culture and language are blended in extremely well with a thrilling tale of battle and inheritance, as young Uhtred seeks to claim his birthright without compromising his identity.

Another nice thing about this book, which will sound a bit more tepid in its praise tho honestly I don’t mean it that way, is that I didn’t feel compelled to run out and plunge immediately into the rest of the series. The Last Kingdom ends when Uhtred is 20, having covered his childhood and coming-of-age, and there are still many plot threads to follow (such as Kjartan!! I need to know what happens there!!) but it was an immensely satisfying novel on its own, discussing not only history and politics and battle but also the very personal issues of identity and maturity and faith. It was nice to see a hero who is aware of his own changeable nature, and who grapples with it without falling into an existential slough of self-pity. Overall, a terrific book and an outstanding example of the genre. I’m definitely looking forward to reading more of the series, eventually.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/05/01/the-last-kingdom-by-bernard-cornwell/

Apr 29 2016

Dshamilja by Tschingis Aitmatow

Louis Aragon swore that it was the most beautiful love story in the world. Dshamilja is beautiful, and it is a love story, among other things, but I am not sure I would go as far as Aragon. On the other hand, Aragon was a committed Communist, and Dshamilja is a story of love among the heroic workers providing food for the front during the Great Patriotic War, so there is perhaps an additional motive for his exorbitant praise.

Dshamilja is set in Kyrgyzstan, where the mountains give way to the steppes, and at a time when the traditional ways had not completely gone over to Soviet methods. Said, the first-person narrator, is likewise on the border, childhood giving way to adult concerns. The characters all live in a traditional settlement, an aul as Said calls it throughout the book, but they work on a collective farm, a kolkhoz. All of the men of military age have gone away to the war, leaving the farm work to women, youngsters, old men, and returned soldiers whose wounds prevent them from fighting. Several of Said’s older brothers are at the front, and one of them has left behind his young bride, the eponymous Dshamilja.

She is a free spirit, but also a model daughter-in-law. She is strong, and fierce, beautiful, and full of laughter and mischief. If that all sounds too good to be true, well, the reader sees her through Said’s eyes, and will have guessed how he feels about her long before he knows it himself.

And then one day a stranger comes to the aul. Danijar, a soldier returned from the fighting with a limp, and a thousand-yard stare, and a brooding silence. At first, Said and Dshamilja make fun of him. The village boys ask him to tell them about the war, but all he will say is that they should pray to God they never experience it. They are unexpectedly abashed, and thereafter leave him in peace on that question. After a particularly cruel trick that Said and Dshamilja play on him, Danijar opens up, not by talking to anyone, but by singing on nightly trips back to the aul from where they have delivered grain by horse-drawn wagon. He sings old songs, revealing his love of the land, suggesting to Said and Dshamilja that this clanless wanderer has unknown depths in his soul.

There aren’t any surprises in the plot. The book is vividly written, conjuring the valleys of Kyrgyzstan tumbling out onto the Kazakh steppe, showing the dust and hard work of a collective farm during the war. And it’s a love story, so I suppose it would be unfair of me to note all of the things from Soviet collective farms during that era that aren’t portrayed in the book: violence, near-starvation, drunkenness, denunciations to the secret police, and more. Even the act of noting those absences probably marks me as too versed in the history to appreciate the book as just a love story and a coming-of-age tale. It’s slight, beautiful, and translated into English as Jamila, with the author’s name transliterated as Chingiz Aytmatov. In 2009, Kyrgyzstan issued a stamp commemorating the work with motifs from the story.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/29/dshamilja-by-tschingis-aitmatow/

Apr 27 2016

The Just City by Jo Walton

What if people took Plato’s Republic seriously enough to attempt putting it into practice? What if two of those people were the Greek deities Apollo and Athena, who have the power to make Plato’s implausible starting conditions real? Those are the premises underlying The Just City by Jo Walton.

The Olympians, as Walton describes them, can hop about through mortal time, although there are certain limits about being in the same time more than once. They have other divine powers as described in the Greek myths, and mortals can sometimes reach them through prayer. Apollo, for his own reasons, is considering becoming mortal for a while. He approaches Athena to discuss his notion.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/27/the-just-city-by-jo-walton/

Apr 26 2016

The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon by Alexander McCall Smith

One of the pleasures of reading deeply into a series is the sense of stories arising naturally from the personalities of the characters as the author has shown and developed them over the course of many books. The banter between Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin is freighted with but not weighed down by the oceans they have crossed together, the scrapes they have helped each other out of, and the times they have nearly come to blows. Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax have their differences, and their different ways of witching, but neither is complete without the other. The interlocking stories that take place over the course of The Minor Adjustment Beauty Salon, the fourteenth book in Alexander McCall Smith’s series about the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, show the established characters being very much themselves. One of them has a great change in her life over the course of the book, but she is true to herself in trying to limit how much that change will shape her life; I am looking forward to the next books in the series (the fifteenth and sixteenth have already been published) to find out whether she does.

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Apr 22 2016

The Song Of The Lark by Willa Cather

The Song Of The Lark is the story of how a small town girl becomes a famous opera singer by staying true to her instincts and artistic vision. Thea Kronberg is a difficult person to like: her talent and sensitivity mark her as a tall poppy to her detractors, but also attract the interest of those who can, and do, help her along on her path to education and success. It’s an interesting novel in that most protagonists celebrated in this way are men. Despite my own dislike of Thea’s personality (supposedly, she’s the kind of woman who gets along better with men than with other women, which made me roll my eyes each of the several times it was mentioned,) I enjoyed the fact that she was not punished merely for being female. Which isn’t to say that she doesn’t suffer the indignities flung at women from time immemorial: just that she was allowed to be evaluated on her talent and personality as opposed to her gender. I’m honestly not used to that from books of the period or earlier, so it was refreshing.

I was also impressed with Willa Cather’s ability to dissect what it means and how it feels to possess a restless talent. Her depiction of Thea’s drive and self-doubt but ultimate determination was encapsulated perfectly in Thea’s speech here to a benefactor/lover, as they are on the brink of a new chapter in their lives, “The past closes up behind one, somehow. One would rather have a new kind of misery. The old kind seems like death or unconsciousness. You can’t force your life back into that mould again.” Speaking of lovers, tho, I thought it odd how Thea kept attracting married men, and why this was never discussed in terms of her personality.

That aside, I enjoyed Ms Cather’s incisiveness and overall generosity in depicting the majority of the supporting characters. Maybe it’s just Asian Daughter Guilt, but I was comforted when Thea’s mother says to Dr Archie, “The children you don’t especially need, you have always with you, like the poor. But the bright ones get away from you. They have their own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter they are, the farther they go.” Of course, this doesn’t apply to all children in all families, but it was nice to have this thought to counterbalance the fear of a lack of familial piety, particularly in the service of an ambition, even one so commonplace as personal happiness.

Anyway, not a book I would recommend to just anyone, as it’s a long, not entirely simple read. But definitely the kind of book to give to someone with a talent who might be afraid of pursuing it. Probably a good book for opera lovers, as well. Oh! And I found this fascinating article on the woman who inspired the book, and her relationship with Ms Cather, which was a great supplement to the novel.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/22/the-song-of-the-lark-by-willa-cather/

Apr 17 2016

Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett

Fourteen books into Discworld, Lords and Ladies is the first time Terry Pratchett deemed it necessary to put in a note connecting the event in the book at hand to a previous volume. It hasn’t hurt that I have been reading them in order of publication, but it hasn’t been particularly necessary either. And in fact, it’s not terribly necessary to have read Witches Abroad, whose events lead directly into those depicted in Lords and Ladies. There are a few pieces of information it is helpful to know—there are witches not only abroad but also involved, indeed at the center of the action; the youngest of them had reached, or at least hinted at, an Understanding with the local king—but truth to tell, those aren’t all that necessary either.

Lords and Ladies is the fourth Discworld book centered on the witches: Granny Weatherwax, Nanny Ogg, and Magrat Garlick. One of its strengths is that Pratchett doesn’t have to spend time establishing either the characters or the particular part of the Discworld where the story is set; he can get straight on with the tale, which happens at the intersection of the characters’ characters and external events in the small kingdom of Lancre.

The witches return from abroad, and Magrat finds that the king has not only accepted their Understanding, he has set wedding preparations in motion and advanced them to quite an advanced degree. The wedding will take place on Midsummer, just a few days hence. Guests are already converging on Lancre, including a deputation from the Unseen University, led by the Archchancellor, who turns out to have his own connection to the kingdom from long ago in his youth. Jason Ogg, one of Nanny’s numerous progeny, is shown in his smithy. As a smith, he is privy to a special and very old kind of magic, closer to that of witches than of wizards, but not dependent upon either. He is a particular kind of smith, who can shoe anything someone brings in, but at the cost of being required to shoe anything someone brings in. Pratchett plays the ability once for laughs by describing how Jason once shoed an ant. Then he gives a darker twist, showing one night when Jason shoes a horse for someone who isn’t named, but whom Discworld readers recognize BY THE WAY THAT HE SPEAKS.

Pratchett basically gave up on cheap japes about fantasy after The Light Fantastic, but in Lords and Ladies he plays with a fantasy staple, elves, in a more serious way.

Elves are wonderful. They provoke wonder. Elves are marvelous. They cause marvels. Elves are fantastic. They create fantasies. Elves are glamorous. They project glamour. Elves are enchanting. They weave enchantment. Elves are terrific. They beget terror. The thing about words is that meanings can twist just like a snake, and if you want to find snakes look for them behind words that have changed their meaning.

Long ago, elves were driven out of the Discworld and into a reality next door, but they would like to come back for some fun. In their own particular view of what fun entails. There are some places where the realities are closer to each other; one of them is a hilltop not too far from Lancre town, a hilltop demarcated by a particular group of standing stones. There are times when the realities are closer to each other; Midsummer, for example. And there are things that can call to the Lords and Ladies, the fair folk; young women chafing at the confines of a small kingdom and playing at witchcraft by dancing near certain standing stones, for example, or a smith and his friends—rude mechanicals all—rehearsing in that same place the Entertainment for a king’s upcoming wedding.

There’s the danger, more keenly felt for being on the intimate scale of Lancre, and for the unwitting, normal behavior that put all of the characters in harm’s way. Whether and how Lancre escapes from its peril is the rest of this well-told tale.

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/17/lords-and-ladies-by-terry-pratchett/

Apr 16 2016

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein

I remembered three things from when I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress long, long ago: the taxonomy of jokes (not funny, funny once, and funny always), that dropping rocks onto earth from the moon was an important part of the revolution, and the significant death at the end. I also remembered liking the book a great deal, enough to have retained a rough outline of the plot and a few significant aspects more than 30 years later. But that was about it, and I am sure that I hadn’t re-read it in at least 20 years, more likely 25 or more.

Re-reading, I can see the book that I liked then, and I saw some of the things that made it stand out back in the 1960s. I also saw the reasons it’s much more of a period piece than its near contemporary, The Left Hand of Darkness — and just look at that run of Hugo winners: 1967 The Moon is a Harsh Mistress; 1968 Lord of Light; 1969 Stand on Zanzibar; 1970 The Left Hand of Darkness. From falling rocks and computing trajectories with the Heinlein straight into a mashup of SF and Indian deities, followed by an explosive stylistic masterpiece, and an anthropological look at power and gender. Only three years later, Moon was already looking a bit old-fashioned.

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Apr 15 2016

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin

Like the human aliens of the planet Gethen, The Left Hand of Darkness is first one thing and then another, encompassing all of them yet remaining bounded by its humanity.

The inhabited worlds of Le Guin’s interrelated Hainish novels are tied together by membership in the Ekumen, eighty-odd planets in something like a trading federation, linked by communication that is faster-than-light communications but travel that is relativistic. When an inhabited world is newly discovered, the Ekumen sends scouts who work discreetly; when they want to make formal contact, they send a single person to act as an envoy.

Genly Ai, a Terran man who is described as dark-skinned but whose ethnic background is not otherwise specified, is the Envoy to the planet Winter, known to its inhabitants as Gethen. The planet is in the depths of an ice age; the human nations there all struggle against the cold, have adapted to it in various ways, and have some customs in common that cross barriers of culture because all cope with harsh conditions. The story opens just before a ceremonial event in the capital of Karhide, a city known as Erhenrang. (The name is very close to German for “rank of honor,” though Le Guin does not, to my knowledge, otherwise play much with alien names that have meanings in Earth languages.) The first chapter is cast as part of Genly’s report back to the Ekumen.

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/15/the-left-hand-of-darkness-by-ursula-k-le-guin/

Apr 13 2016

The Ballad Of Black Tom by Victor LaValle

I haven’t actually read much Lovecraft, so wasn’t aware of how problematic some of his works, such as The Horror At Red Hook, are in terms of dealing with minorities and immigrants. When this novella was recommended to my Ingress Book Club, I felt that, as a matter of due diligence, I ought to read first the short story it was based on. I’m not, if truth be told, the biggest fan of tales of eldritch horror, and THARH had little to make it noteworthy to me besides the unrelenting bigotry of the story. That said, I was curious to see how Victor LaValle could possibly make something decent out of the source material, and pleasantly surprised when he far exceeded my expectations.

The Ballad Of Black Tom not only subverts the ugly prejudice of THARH but creates a stunning commentary on the rage of the disenfranchised. I had only two real quibbles with it: first, the utter disappearance of Mrs Suydam in the retelling, and second… well, I guess this isn’t a quibble so much as a point of philosophical discomfort. When Black Tom goes to visit the Victoria Society once again, he realizes that the respectability he’d been striving for was there all along, a conclusion that I was totally down with. However, it concerned me that Black Tom, in his melancholy, then seemed to favor a policy of isolation, as if staying insular would have protected him and his loved ones from the terrible things that had happened to them. Perhaps avoiding a life of crime would have spared them police attention, but that doesn’t mean that brutality comes only to the wicked and to the ones around them. Apart from that, a terrific novella overall, and one I wish could have been longer (especially since a longer version might have included a reinterpretation of Suydam’s honeymoon instead of just ignoring it.)

Permanent link to this article: https://www.thefrumiousconsortium.net/2016/04/13/the-ballad-of-black-tom-by-victor-lavalle/