Borges' Library

Letters from the Silk Road

In Japan, the Silk Road has been held up as an alternative form of globalization. Japan was, after all, on the terminus of the Silk Road and the nation experienced its greatest cosmopolitan flowering during the Nara period, when the Silk Road was in its heyday. In contrast to the modern "melting pot" of pluralistic societies we see today, people during Silk Road times are described as having interacted with each other from standpoints of their own unique city-cultures. I think it was UNESCO’s Eiji Hattori who really gave this Japanese idea form when he created his draft for UNESCO’s Silk Road Project, which saw a wonderful number of research projects and publications from 1988-1997 (22). With two doctorates (one from Kyoto University and the other from the Sorbonne), Hattori has an impressive academic background. And yet, rather than entering academia, he chose instead to join UNESCO at their Paris headquarters, where he served for 21 years as a director of the cultural events section—and the Silk Roads project really was his crowning glory.

Put forward as an alternative to the "Globalization as Americanization" model, his project positioned the “Silk Road” in opposition to something he called “Empire” (or “pax”); so that:

Pax/Empire                  versus                          Silk Road

Monopoly                                                       Two-Way Trade/International Relays

Monologue/Propaganda                                  Dialogue

National                                                           Cities/International

Robbery                                                          Mutual Profit/Equal Partnership/

Co-Dependence 

Hattori's main point is that during Silk Road times, dialogues between cultures were two-way. That is, it was not a power relationship dominated by one side talking/dictating/taking/imposing but rather held up a model for a more two-way dialogue based on trade; one in which trade was an international accomplishment achieved by people from many nations working for mutual benefits cooperatively; not done by one nation alone.

Hattori suggested that no one economic system or historical perspective reigned supreme above all the rest during the Tang dynasty. People interacted with each other from the framework of their own various local city-cultures. This is the famous cosmopolitanism of the Tang. When you consider that what was arguably the greatest of all empires of the time, the Tang actually built mosques and churches in their capital city to welcome the many traders who came from afar-- well, it cannot help but impress. A mosque already stood in “Canton” during the Prophet's lifetime. Flourishing and highly cosmopolitan cities connected the dots along these ancient trade routes, from Nara to Chang’an to Baghdad, Aleppo, and Constantinople.

This is a theme much held up in Japan. Two years ago, I was working on a translation of an interview with one of Japan's greatest living composers—who now sadly is deceased. Like Yo Yo Ma, Miki Minoru is best known for his work on Silk Road music. When asked why he held up the Silk Road as a symbol of mutual cooperation and peaceful coexistence, Miki had this to say:

The Silk Road was a uniquely peaceful trade route. Connecting Rome with Chang’an, it was a route that served to promote peaceful exchanges and mutual cooperation between Eastern and Western places. It is interesting that while in Asia the Silk Road holds great interest and dreams, in the west it seems to be mainly of interest to archaeologists. As a person who fundamentally rejects the current uninteresting state of affairs whereby as the world Westernizes we are seeing more and more of a mono-culture, what I can do in my own projects is to choose artists whose own sense of identity is not that of “international” 

Japan, with its vibrant peace and ecology movements, has taken up these reflections of the Silk Road like perhaps no other people. Having lived the past two decades through its self-proclaimed “Silk Road boom,” I have been so impressed by both the approach of Silk Road history scholars (like those at Ryukoku University) as well as the surprisingly long term enthusiasm of the general public for what was a time of cosmopolitan civism. Obviously, no one is really talking about how things actually may have been during the heyday of the Silk Road; for indeed, we have also seen the Silk Road used as a slogan for aggressive multinational corporations wanting to get a piece of the energy pie in that part of that world as well. But, in Japan-- at least-- the Silk Road has been overwhelmingly taken up as a symbol of mutual cooperation and co-flourishing which is viewed ultimately as a symbol for anti-"globalization" and world peace.

Miki, in his interview said that while there will always be imbalances of power between different peoples over the stretch of time, when that imbalance of power tilts too far in one direction that it is this overwhelming dominance of one group over another that has shown itself to have tremendous power in generating the kind of hate that leads to violence. It was his belief that it is only through harmonious exchanges and collaborative efforts between people that genuine peace can be established.  But how is this possible without stepping back and looking at things on a more local level? 

This is not to say that universalism is categorically problematic, but rather it is a question of balance and degree. Hannah Arendt looked at universalism as being behind much of the political pathologies of her time and felt that being derived from abstract reasoning, which stands apart from the world, the universalist thinking aims to create blueprints for how we think the world “ought” to be; and that this becomes a political project that aims to manipulate how the world is to change it to how one thinks it should be. In that way, she urged people to be engaged with the world as it is—and it seems that in order to do that one must start with the local and the particular.

I am a great fan of the writing of William Dalrymple. In 2009, he had another great article in The Guardian about the future of travel writing. One paragraph in particular caught my attention:

"It's no accident that the mess inflicted on the world by the last US administration was done by a group of men who had hardly travelled, and relied for information on policy documents and the reports of journalists sitting interviewing middle-class contacts in capital cities. A good travel writer can give you the warp and weft of everyday life, the generalities of people's existence that are rarely reflected in journalism, and hardly touched on by any other discipline. Despite the internet and the revolution in communications, there is still no substitute" 

Reading this I thought that nothing much has changed since the last Administration either and that US policy remains in the hands of a cabal of monoglots and cultural provincials. As Eiji Hattori said in a 2004 UNESCO speech, “Civilizations never clash. Ignorance does clash”.  Therefore we may say that true internationalism should be a kind of dialogue, whereby one is open to the world from the rootedness of one’s own culture. One approaches the rich sources of other traditions from one’s own worldview, but without any intention and effort to impose one’s cultural presumptions. In other words, a healthy respect for the particular keeps one grounded and respectful of other local diversities.  

This is why I think it is so important to give cities a voice—to recognize them as gardens which bear the flowers and fruit of their own unique cultural sensibilities and values; so that even in the world’s largest and most complex urban metropolis, we find at its very roots a somehow transience, sudden transformations and unthinkable disaster; something that has flowered into the great social achievements of optimism and resilience that define the spirit of Tokyo .

From Paper given at Spirit of Cities Conference in 2012, Shanghai.

Travels with Henry Adams: Saint Sernin

Traveling to France with Henry Adams is to journey on the pilgrim's way-- in the company of one's uncle. And not just any uncle, but an uncle who knows everything under heaven. And an uncle always endeavoring to enchant rather than merely educate, Adam's tells tales of miracles. And that is exactly what we found in: 

The miracle of Mont Saint-Michel and the Miracle of Chartres Cathedral.

Mont Saint Michel: that fairy island with its fortress abbey, in days past reached across deadly mudflats and quicksand (known as the path to paradise) is a monument, he declares, to masculinity. The Archangel Michael, weigher of human souls was, of course, the great commander of the armies of God. And this fortified island abbey was his command center.

And Chartres. How could anyone resist seeing it as the castle of the Queen? 

I wrote about our travels to these two monuments here (Mont St. Michel) and here (Chartres)

But there is another miracle that Adams refers to in his book as well. And this is my favorite holy place in France by a long shot. And that is Saint-Sernin in Toulouse. 

In terms of age, no place beats the Mont. Though one probably wouldn't immediately guess this to be the case, the abbey at Mont Saint-Michel, dating from 1020, is so old that Adams insists that a person would be hard-pressed to come up with many buildings of this stature that predate it. The West Porch of Chartres, for example, did not go up for another hundred years. And Saint-Sernin is younger still, dating to the 13th century.

Of course, like Chartres, Saint Sernin's real origins date all the way back to Roman times. Saint Sernin is the French version of Saturnine--an African name. And this Saturnine, it turns out was supposedly one of the 72 disciples and first bishop of Toulouse. His story comes down to us from the early 5th century text, Passio Sancti Saturnini and tells the story of how he came to be martyred. Toulouse of that time was part of the Roman empire and Saint Sernin had the misfortune of living under Emperor Decius' reign. Decius is infamous for his harsh treatment of Christians. As part of this overall harassment, Decius decreed that all people across the empire must perform pagan sacrifices in front of officials. Well, as Bishop, Sernin probably did not feel able to comply and so as punishment, he was tied by his feet to a sacrificial bull and the bull was whipped into a frenzy. Sernin was dead within minutes, they say. 

When I was visiting the basilica, three different people I met mentioned how it was women who collected his body and hastily buried it. They then kept vigil and venerated the spot where he was martyred. This spot would later be the location of the greatest Romanesque church in all of France (it remains the largest brick building from the medieval period in the world). And Saint Sernin is very much on the road to Santiago. 

I read once that people often feel strongly drawn to either gothic or romanesque architecture--never to both. I definitely prefer the Romanesque style --all of my favorite churches are Romanesque from San Stefano in Bologna to the great Cathedral at Durham--with Saint-Sernin being my favorite above all. In one of my pilgrimage books on the Way to the Field of Stars, the writer mentions that he has found it to be that young people often much prefer gothic, while it is the elderly who are fond of Romanesque--and he continues, while one gawks in gothic churches, one prays in the Romanesque--for it comforts us that God is here on earth, enfolding us as if we are being covered in a warm blanket. And yes, Toulouse has long been on the road to Santiago. When I was there, I saw pilgrims with conch shells dangling around their necks; leaning on their walking sticks. On the camino to the field of stars-- Saint-Sernin is built in a style very much reminiscent of the great cathedral in Santiago. 

Early on, Saint-Sernin grew into a very significant pilgrimage place. By the middle ages it had quite an array of relics in its possession (at one time the finest in all of Europe!) and the building itself had to be renovated to turn it into a pilgrimage cathedral--which means it had a very wide ambulatory so thousands of pilgrims could circumambulate the crypts without disturbing the Mass performed in the main part of the basilica. In the possession of relics of Saint James, it was on the Way of St. James – the Long Road to Heaven –which continues to be among the most important Christian pilgrimages, together with Rome and Jerusalem.

I was, of course, thrilled at the prospect of seeing what they had on offer. So, I paid my way into the crypt to partake in what used to be known as the "tour of bones."

The guidebook suggested visiting the ambulatory in the morning, when it flooded with the light and you can see the carvings. That is precisely what I did and the carvings were surprising. They are very old and I could not help but compare them to Gandharan Buddhist sculpture-- also influenced by Greco-Roman art. At a glance I would have thought it was Buddhist. My favorite is shown right. Carved in stone, Christ's hands held in a mudra, he is flanked by symbols of the four evangelists. 

Despite its current lack of advertising, the basilica still offers an absolutely stunning program of sacred relics. But you need to go down into the crypt. And as I headed toward the steps to the crypt, a little girl was working up her nerve to go down into the depths to the delight of her parents, who had chosen to stay above ground in the ambulatory. Gracefully navigating the slippery stone steps, she turned around to smile mischievously to her parents to show that she was definitely not afraid. 

Not one to be outdone, I followed her down. 

It was definitely creepy down there. Underground and it smelled of wet rock. The apostolic relics were held in individual bays. Each bay was carved out of the rock and the cave entrance roped off. Other than one light shining on the wooden casket there was nothing else. There were pews to kneel in veneration at each bay, I think. Maybe... but it was surprisingly sparse. There was James, Phillip, Simon and Jude, each in a sarcophagus carved in wood or marble and sitting strangely on what resembled sawhorses. (picture below).

There were candles flickering and it was a spooky kind of place.

Leaving I saw the relic of the true cross in its Limoge box. The enamel painting on the box was very pretty and depicted how the basilica came to possess this holy relic.

I was just kicking myself that I had left the teenager back in the apartment. He was probably still sleeping. When I had asked him to go relic hunting with me the night before, he had said, "Thanks, but no thanks.." And now there I was kicking myself that I had not brought him. But I was fortunate enough to meet a young novice attached to the church named Pierre who gave me an extensive tour of the interior of the basilica after I emerged from the crypt. 

The altar was of particular note. Standing at an incredible six feet tall, if is directly above the supposed remains of Saint Sernin and was consecrated in 1096 by Pope Urban II (of First Crusade fame).  

The basilica is also home to one of the most important pipe organs in France. That is why many people visit. And as "luck" would have it they were tuning it that morning. Talk about loud! This is not music but very jarring single notes that had some English speaking tourists asking if it was some kind of alarm!

(The basilica, by the way, used to be covered in colorful frescoes. In the context of the Chartres renovation, Saint Sernin was cited by one scholar as being a case where leaving the walls bare was a mistake since it made the place strangely cold... it was never supposed to be like that and if you look carefully you can see the old pigment in bits and pieces here and there around the basilica). 

A writer I like a lot, Tom Bissell, visited Saint Sernin as part of his travels to all the tombs of the Apostles and he had this to say about the pilgrim's path in general, 

Christianity, like Judaism before it and Islam after it, has always been and always will be a less than ideal way to understand the world and our place in it. At the same time, I know no purely rational way of understanding the world. A thousand irrational spasms daily derange us all. God is part of the same formless reality as thought, as real as bits of data that float invisible in the world, somehow creating output. In this sense, all that moves through us is real. To explain the realness which we cannot see, we turn to stories left behind by evangelic writers, working behind their veils of anonymity. The footprints they left behind lead us to places we want to be led.

A few years ago, my friend Mark described a kind of religious or spiritual feeling he had had in a shrine to a saint in Kiev (I think it was in Kiev--maybe Saint Andrew shrine?)

He described a kind of trembling and an awakening of his heart there.

That is how I felt at Saint Sernin. Like for Mark in Kiev, this place was a kind of miracle for me. 

After coming up for air and leaving the crypt, I walked over to an absolutely stunning Romanesque Crucifix standing in a shadowy spot in the northern apsidal chapel. In any other place, the crucifix might have been more prominently displayed but Saint-Sernin Basilica was just so rich in treasures that this exquisite work of gold and metal-work was hiding away in the corner. It was so beautifully-wrought. Pierre had told me that its jewels had been stolen and replaced with fakes in the 18th century when a parishioner had offered to clean it for the church. It really doesn't matter as the face of the Christ is so moving in this work of sculpture. As I knelt down to pray, the eyes of the Christ locked on to my eyes and I had the strangest experience of seeing my father's face perfectly and unmistakably mapped onto Christ's. And I felt a few moments of peace. The only moments of peace I have felt in what has been several isolating and emotionally tumultuous years. 

I had actually never visited my father's grave until returning back from France last spring. He died twenty seven years ago, and I left very shortly after to Japan. My family does not have a custom of visiting graves or holding memorials for death so in many ways my dad's memory had faded more than it should have. It was always something that bothered me. 

I actually had intended to honor the memory of my favorite Aunt at Saint Sernin basilica. I had entered the church to light a candle in her honor. When she passed away, my friend Eric said, "May her memory be a blessing." I have always loved that expression and feel it captures the way that in remembering our departed loved ones, we are filled with the blessing of their memory. At the same time though, I believe the actual Hebrew expression means that in remembering them we are in prayer with them--sending them our blessings. (May their soul rest in peace, etc. ご冥福をお祈りします).

So, with that in mind, I was not surprised to experience that strange moment of great peace. It was uncanny the way my dad's face morphed onto the Christ. Like a hallucination. And returning home, Chris and I visited dad's grave. I had felt guilty for this neglect for years and the relief of finally going and praying at the grave (which was perfectly cared for being in a veteran's cemetery) was enormous.

Books: Romanesque Churches of France: A Traveller's Guide, by Peter Strafford

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE MIRACLE OF CHARTRES CATHEDRAL

[Posted at 3 Quarks]

Once upon a time, the world was full of miracles. 

And oh, that was the miracle of those two spires of Chartres Cathedral! Separated in time by some four hundred years, the spires can still be glimpsed past fields of wheat, rising up over the low town; a town which itself has somehow retained its old medieval quality. Very much like the legendary first view of Mont Saint-Michel one gets from a distance, it is the unexpected vision of those cathedral spires arising out of the clear blue sky that makes arriving at Chartres so emotionally stirring an experience. 

We were following in the footsteps of Henry Adams. 

The son of Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to London, it wasn't just his father who was a great man; for Henry Adams' grandfather and great-grandfather were US presidents. A historian and man of letters, I had never realized until I stumbled on his book about Chartres that Henry Adams was a Harvard-trained medievalist. And an excellent one at that. His book, Mont Saint-Michel and Chartres is written in the finest 19th century classical essay style. Engaging and filled with all manner of playful and dazzlingly-told medievalisms, the book became the blueprint for our own journey in Northern France this past summer. 

So, since Adams begins his travelogue with Mont Saint-Michel--so did we.

I've already written about our stay on the Mont in my July post Benedictine Dreams. Even now, I cannot get the sound of the seagulls and church bells out of my mind: or of walking across the bridge of dreams toward that fairy palace shimmering in the summertime air. It was utterly otherworldly. Its infamous mudflats and quicksand, which pilgrims of old had to cross in order to reach the Mont, were known in the Middle Ages as the "path to paradise." And it's true. The Mont is, as they say, one of the great wonders of the western world. Everyone should try and go see it someday. Henry Adams was also much beguiled by the vision of the great fortress abbey, perched on top of a granite rock in the middle of the strongest tidal currents in Europe. He describes it as a monument to the masculine. And in his book, he sets up Mont Saint-Michel as a kind of "yin" to Chartres' "yang." 

He has a point; for if the massively fortified Mont was dedicated to the archangel Michael, commander of the army of God and weigher of human souls;  Chartres, by contrast, has always been dedicated to the Virgin Queen. 

Indeed, even before there was a cathedral at Chartres, this place had already been known as a holy place in the Druid cult of the divine feminine. 

[Joan Sutherland "Casta diva" from "Norma"]

But how did this cathedral survive intact for so long?

Only think of what happened to Notre Dame in Paris during the French Revolution. Or the way the people in Chartres dismantled all those thousands of pieces of original 12th and 13th century glass to hide them away during WWII--only to have to somehow reassemble them again after the War! To this day, the cathedral of Chartres stands as one of the best preserved 13th century Gothic churches in France--if not in all the world. There was, of course, the great fire in 1194, when everything but the Western facade (pictured above) was destroyed. The people were in great dismay since Chartres is home to one of the most important relics in all of Christendom. The Sancta Camisa, believed to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary at the time of the Christ's birth, was said to have been brought back from Jerusalem by Charlemagne (never mind that Charlemagne had never actually stepped foot in the Holy Land). It was then later donated to Chartres by his son, Charles the Bald. It was this relic that put Medieval Chartres on the major pilgrimage map.

That so, it was a source of great wealth to the town. Seeing the cathedral burning down in front of their eyes, the people became panicked over the fate of the revered relic. Waiting till the fire died down, people probably didn't dare to hope that a piece of cloth could emerge unscathed. So, imagine how their anguish turned to delight when the priests brought out the cloth unscathed from the smoldering ruins of the cathedral! Not surprisingly, this was thought of a sign from the goddess that she was not done with the people of Chartres quite yet. And so they embarked in great enthusiasm to build her a new temple. 

In one of my favorite descriptions of the cathedral, Adams describes Chartres as, "A toy house to please the Queen of Heaven--to please her so much that she would be happy in it,--to charm her till she smiled." I suppose some will find his fanciful description of the Virgin Mary offensive. What? Because she is a woman, he assumes she loves dolls and finery? Well, Henry Adams died a long time ago. So, we will perhaps have to cut him some slack. Also, one might admit that there is something really appealing about seeing this great cathedral, which has always stood as a shrine to the Virgin, as a castle fit for a queen: 

The Queen Mother was as majestic as you like; she was also absolute; she could be stern; she was not above being angry; but she was still a woman, who loved grace and beauty, ornament--her toilette, robes, jewels; who considered the arrangements of her palace with attention, and liked both light and color, who kept a keen eye on her Court, and exacted prompt and willing obedience from the King and Archbishops as well as from beggars and drunken priests. 

A castle indeed. And even castles sometimes need to be cleaned right? Well, I suppose by now everyone has heard of the kerfuffle over the recent renovations of the interior at Chartres?

The "debate" began making international news in 2014 when the painting was just under way. And, the renovations are still in the news today. Yes, that's right. We are not talking about comparatively uncontroversial window cleaning or even of the cleaning of walls and pillars but rather the renovation project is seeking to bring the cathedral back to its glory days by painting the interior a light beige with other accent colors--since, well, that's actually how it used to be. 

As you can see in the picture just left, the change is quite dramatic. That is because the cathedral had accumulated on its walls and pillars a very thick coating of soot and grime. And it simply has to be added that Chartres had become in modern times appreciated precisely for the romantic and mysterious quality of its filthy walls-- recalling to modern minds an exquisite patina or fine bottle of very old wine.

But despite great public outrage, the scholars in charge of the restoration continued to insist that this was the color that the cathedral used to be. In fact, on the day we were there, we were so lucky to get to participate in one of world-expert Malcolm Miller's tours of the cathedral. Miller is a legend in his own right ---and some claim he knows more about the cathedral than anyone in the world. Well, Miller reminded us of the media row and declared the naysayers to be ridiculous as not only is the whitewashing authentic to the 13th century but now, at last --in the new brighter interior-- you can see the windows in all their clarity.

And, it is true, for the windows shine very brightly in the lighter interior. As Miller pointed out the stained glass windows were meant to be read and that is something that is now possible thanks to the cleaning. Watching videos of the restoration process, you can see for yourself how the restorers in removing the layers and layers of grime, literally pealed back time to show the whitewashed color that used to be there--as well as the marbled effect that was created on some of the pillars. 

But, as American architecture critic Martin Filler lamented in the New York Review of Books blog, what are they going to do next re-attach arms to the Venus de Milo?

Even the cathedral’s iconic Black Madonna had been repainted white. We know that ancient Greek temples and sculpture were all likewise painted in bright colors, so are we to bring back everything to its original polychrome state? Should all the ancient marble statues in the Louvre, for example, be likewise repainted? 

Speaking for myself, I felt very much as if seeing the Venus de Milo painted and with arms or Winged Victory painted and with a new head. For me, all I can say is that I was not prepared for the white-washed interior. I found it garish and ugly. But, of course, I can claim ignorance to what things were like back then in the era that was being highlighted (13th century). And that is a point to be considered since the cathedral has looked differently during various periods in its history; so that in prioritizing the 13th century colors, they were neglecting some beautiful Renaissance painting that once also graced the cathedral--not to mention our modern dark but mysterious much-admired patina.They were trying to bring back a certain period of time in a very long stretch of history.  

This 2015 Apollo article is excellent. It pits the Chartres restoration project yeasayers against the naysayers in the voices of two scholars, Jeffry F. Hamburger (Yea) and Adam Nathaniel Furman (Nay). It is a wonderfully engaging discussion, and I highly recommend it. I am sure its true, as Hamburgers declares, that people complained when the Sistine Chapel painting was restored and that no matter what, the corrosive particulates simply had to be removed. But there is also a question of limits. I was pleased that one of the scholars (Furman) brought up the work of Svetlana Boym, about whom I wrote in these pages last year. Boym, who sadly passed away in 2015, wrote a brilliant book on the concept of nostalgia--and her unpacking of the notion is quite pertinent to the question of Chartres.

According to Boym there are two kind of nostalgia: restorative and reflective. While restorative "stresses nóstos (home) and attempts a transhistorical reconstruction of the lost home. Reflective nostalgia thrives in álgos, the longing itself, and delays the homecoming—wistfully, ironically, desperately."

Australian philosopher Jeff Malpas has a great chapter on "philosophy's Nostalgia" in his book, Heidegger and the Thinking Place

Nostalgia is a combination of the Greek nostos, meaning home or the return home, with algos, meaning pain, so that its literal meaning is a pain associated with the return home. Part of this inquiry will involve a rethinking of the mood of nostalgia and what that mood encompasses. Rather than understand the nostalgic as characterized solely by the desire to return to a halcyon past, it is explored through the connotations suggested by its Greek etymology as precisely a longing for the return home—a return that cannot be achieved—a form of homesickness, and so as unsettling rather than comfortable, as bringing with it a sense of the essential questionability of our own being in the world.

Indeed, we know from how the word is used in other cultures that the concept of nostalgia involves not just a longing for home or a longing for something from the past, but rather it is a longing and deep sadness for something that is actually gone forever--and implies a kind of homelessness or groundlessness.

This is without a doubt perfectly embodied in Andrei Tarkovsky's film, Nostalghia.

Anyone who has lived abroad for a significant period of time will probably understand Tarkovsky longing to go home; for like Tarkovsky they too will almost surely discover that the home they are longing for no longer exists. And it is in that moment, I would argue, that the real pain begins. Reconstructed versions of some lost golden age will simply bring more pain. And this is precisely the point Furman tries to make about Chartres. That in the end, the imposing of an idealized version of a particular time in history in the name of restoration is an act of absolutism.

It is also futile--as the past can never be brought back.

Would Henry Adams agree with Furman? He would have to, I think. For Adams, was in exile. Deeply alienated from his own time period, he sought refuge in the medieval riches of his own imagination. The Chartres of his experience (like the Chartres of my experience) existed at that precise intersection between the physical reality and human imagination. His vision of Chartres was no more "real" than his understanding of the 13th century Catholicism as a moment of great unity--in contrast to the chaos of everything he felt was happening in the world of his own time (19th century Boston). While he never converted to Roman Catholicism, he instead found solace in the ambiguity of Chartres; for in its murky and open-ended "patina" he found, as Furman so eloquently suggested, a perfect place to "think about the passing of time and of things." And this was possible precisely because no one particular vision of "the past" was being imposed upon us. 

The restoration at Chartres is none of my business. I only wish I had had a chance to see Chartres prior to 2017-- for all these reasons I am sure my experience there would have been quite different. 

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Recent article in the Guardian with "black Madonna" (in my photo above still untouched) now white 

My post on Mont Saint-Michel: Benedictine Dreams

Wonderful article on the world of ancient Greek colors here

Henry Adams' Mont Saint Michel and Chartres 

Video below of some pictures from the trip. (My brooding teenager is seen crossing the mudflats--if only the quality of the video was better, you could see all the pathos of the teenage "pilgrim" in his dark expression....woe is he who is forced on a family trip to Europe with their parents at 16...)

James Clerk Maxwell Foundation

Richard Feynman once said that, "From a long view of the history of mankind -- seen from, say, 10,000 years from now-- there can be a little doubt that the most significant event of the 19th century will be judged as Maxwell's discovery of the laws of electrodynamics."

I picked up the book,  Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics, by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon, in preparation for a trip to Edinburgh last June. 

This is the story of a theory and is told through the lives of the two great scientists who worked it all out. It is such an amazing story. But what really struck me the most about the book was learning about how incredibly kind-hearted the two men were. I was thinking about how most biographies of great men and women portray such complicated geniuses, each with their strong points and their weak points. Scientific and artistic geniuses are notoriously difficult people. So, it was really pretty charming to read a story about such lovely human beings, who also happen to be great geniuses. Faraday was perhaps the more extraordinary man given his background. But both were, as the author describes, them pretty much the nicest people you'll ever hope to meet.

I loved the book so much and came to have such affection for both Maxwell and Faraday that I thought it would be fun to visit the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation while we were in Scotland. And so I arranged a tour. 

Housed in Edinburgh's New Town, I think the entire area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We remained in the Old City for our entire time in Edinburgh so I wasn't totally prepared to cross the bridge into new town and see before my eyes this incredibly well-maintained and harmonious specimen of Edwardian planned urban development! Arriving in a downpour, the director was late and there was nowhere to find shelter (as you can see). Luckily another resident of the building took pity and let us in. We looked like drowned rats waiting in the hall when Mr Farrer arrived, apologizing profusely for keeping us waiting. 

Anyone who knows me will know I have an incredible soft-spot for the playful, quirky, sleepy, and under-produced.

A few years ago, I wrote this post over at 3Quarks on two of my favorite small museums:

CABINETS OF WONDER: THE SHROUD OF TURIN & THE MUSEUM OF JURASSIC TECHNOLOGY

I put both of these places in the company of some of my other favorite museums, like the Brera Museum in Milan (home to one of the most splendid art collections I've seen) or the Saint John Hospital in Bruges (probably my favorite art museum on earth). Like the Groeningemuseum (also in Bruges) and the Sabauda in Turin (which not only lacked audio guides but didn't even have a gift shop!), these museums seem to have more humble aims; that of preserving and exhibiting their collections. In all these places, I found the other museum-goers visiting these galleries to be startlingly enthralled by .... yes, the art. What I am trying to say is that, the entertainment aspect of modern museums have not quite reached these places yet. And it makes for a particularly moving experience. 

Well, I can say that the James Clerk Maxwell Museum would fit right in with the above. Housed in the place where Maxwell was born (he did not grow up here, though the house stayed in the family), it is filled with all kinds of exhibits, demos and portraits. 

Maxwell was a Renaissance man--interested in all kinds of subjects and Mr. Farrar took great pleasure whipping off the cloth covers off the demos to show us this or that-- especially fun was a replica of Maxwell's color wheel. We saw many portraits of family members (Maxwell comes from a line of very bright men and women) and one highlight that my astronomer loved was the Stairway Gallery of Illustrissimi, a chronological series of engraved portraits of famous physicists and mathematicians, many of which are from the personal collection of Sir John Herschel.

Occasionally, Atlas Obscura says, some of Maxwell’s original experimental apparatus (on loan from Cavendish Laboratory) are also included in the foundation’s exhibits.

Peter Higgs is the honorary patron and they have a wonderful newsletter (Spring 2018 here).

Also if you are interested, this book is kind of fun too: The Scottish Enlightenment: The Scots' Invention of the Modern World, by Arthur Herman

A Poisoner Chalice (Last Read of the Year)

In September 1776, in the fairytale-like Swiss town of Zurich, a plot believed to be of a diabolical nature took place in the city's main church.

Someone, it seems, had put poison in the Communion wine.

That something like this could happen in a place as orderly as Zurich-- and that it would have occurred on one of the most important festival days of the German Protestant Church, the Day of Repentance and Prayer; but that this crime took place in the city's main church, the very place where the ruling elite routinely gathered to pray, quickly turned the case into a great late 18th century cause célèbre.

It was not by mere chance that I had picked up historian Jeffrey Freedman's wonderful book on the case, A Poisoned Chalice, on the day after Christmas. For I had myself come down on Christmas night with the worst case of the flu I have had in living memory. No one else was ill in the family, and I had spent the week preceding Christmas home alone sitting by the fire reading. How could I have gotten this sick and where could I have picked it up? Pondering things, a creeping doubt entered my head: Had I gotten sick from Christmas Eve service during Communion? I felt sheepish even considering this since, well, can one get sick from the wine made holy??? 

Pondering my situation, I remembered Freedman's book on the poisoned chalice. (I like to buy any book with the word chalice in the title and have had this one for quite some time).

What sounds like a TV detective novel is actually a wonderfully-written book of serious history. They call it micro-history, where a small event in time is analyzed in order illuminate larger themes and currents. Freedman is a dazzling writer and this book is a real page-turner!

First, I should assure you that no one actually died after drinking from the Cup-- but such was the fuss around the foul taste of the wine and other hints at intrigue that an inquiry was undertaken. This was the city's main church, after all, where all the prominent townspeople came to worship. So doctors were called in to analyze the contaminated wine and it was concluded that someone had indeed put arsenic in it. 

How did one come to such a conclusion in the days before chemical analysis? Simple, they heated it up and sniffed the vapors. Arsenic gives off a telltale garlic stench.

Freedman doesn't dwell on this fact but I think it does bear to keep in mind that this all happened in what was Ulrich Zwingli's church, the famous Zurich Grossmünster. Last year in Zurich, out on a walking tour of the city, our guide pointed to the church from across the river and said, Under Zwingli this city was a theocracy. They were religious fanatics like the Taliban. And that over there, he said still pointing at the church, was Taliban headquarters. Zwingli and his revolution was all almost two hundred years in the past by the time of the case of the poisoned chalice--but it is interesting to note (and historically ironic) that events took place in this church-- of all churches. Zwingli, considered the father of the Reformed tradition, is less well known these days than Calvin, who came in after Zwingli's death to shape the new traditions, which would eventually sweep across southern German and France, and then on to Holland, England and Scotland among the Congregationalists and Presbyterians,--before traveling further still over to the New World. We very much live in Zwingli reformed world. 

Preaching from the Grossmunster, this ancient church, believed to have been founded by Charlemagne in the 8th century, was stripped of all its stained glass and treasures and was reborn as a reformed church. A kind of ground zero, if you will. Doing away with Lenten fasting and encouraging the clergy to marry, Zwingli's most radical stand was concerning the Eucharist. Differing from Martin Luther, who believed that Christ's presence was contained "in, with, and under" the bread and wine, Zwingli begged to differ. Believing that it was rather a commemoration of the last supper, he insisted the wine and bread to be solely symbolic. 

In 2016, I was auditing a religious studies class at Caltech with a small group of undergraduates in which the professor brought in a dialogue from the Marburg Colloquy. Called in 1529 by the German ruler, Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse, who had hoped to unite the various Protestant thinkers of the age so as to unite the Protestant states into a political alliance, many famous thinkers of the time were present--from Martin Luther and Ulrich Zwingli to Philipp Melanchthon, and Andreas Osiander. In class, I was given the part of Luther and will never forget the awkwardness of the undergraduates--all future scientists-- trying to read out the lines of this debate that was utterly incomprehensible to them.

ZWINGLI: I insist that the words of the Lord's Supper must be figurative. This is ever apparent, and even
required by the article of faith: "taken up into heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father." Otherwise, it
would be absurd to look for him in the Lord's Supper at the same time that Christ is telling us that he is in
heaven. One and the same body cannot possibly be in different places....

LUTHER: I call upon you as before: your basic contentions are shaky. Give way, and give glory to God'

ZWINGLI: And we call upon you to give glory to God and to quit begging the question! The issue at stake is
this: Where is the proof of your position? I am willing to consider your words carefully-no harm meant! You're
trying to outwit me. I stand by this passage in the sixth chapter of John, verse 63 and shall not be shaken from it.
You'll have to sing another tune.

LUTHER: You’re being obnoxious.

Indeed! 

And so here we were again.

Despite the fact that no one died, that someone would do such a thing hinted for the people of Zurich of a moral depravity that defied reason. This was only two decades after the infamous mega-quake of 1755, the Lisbon Earthquake. And as if the earthquake wasn't enough, the massively devastating earthquake was followed by fires and then a great tsunami that caused the complete destruction of one of the world's greatest cities of the time. Indeed, the human suffering was so terrible that the disaster sparked philosophical and religious debates on the nature of Evil that continued across Europe for a long time afterward; Voltaire's Candide being perhaps among the most famous. In one of the vivid scenes of the novel, as Candide is lying there trapped under the rubble, he begs for wine and light. The sailor has gone off to pillage-- but what of Candide's companion Pangloss? Well, our man Pangloss is too busy philosophizing to be of any real help. Though thousands have perished, he tells his friend lying under the rubble, still everything is just as it should have been, for: "How could Leibnitz have been wrong?"

How indeed?

At the time the Lisbon earthquake had a profound affect on the collective imagination, and theologians and philosophers across Europe struggled with the question of evil and God (if God was Omnipotent and All-Loving how could he permit suffering of this scale? Either he is not omnipotent or his is not all loving). The case of the poisoned chalice struck the people of Switzerland and then Germany in a similar manner. What was the nature of evil? Preachers gave fiery sermons on the diabolical meaning of the crime for simply no rational person would ever want to murder hundreds of fellow church-goers.There was also a social aspect to the crime since people came together in trust. The Protestant rite was conducted for both clergy and people (not only priests but all participated), with the Cup being passed from hand to hand within the congregation. So social cohesiveness was also being undermined.

Everything we know about cases like this calls out for a scapegoat. I was surprised that the Jewish community was not quickly targeted until Freedman explained that there were no longer any Jewish people living within the walls of the city, as they had all been driven out a hundred years earlier after a supposed poisoning of a well. Not surprisingly a suspect was found: the church grave digger and bell ringer. In Freedman's words, this was always considered a lowly occupation and in this case could serve as a replacement scapegoat for the crime. A well publicized trial was then conducted. Not enough evidence was found and the accused was eventually released but much like with the Lisbon earthquake the crime touched on a nerve an a great debate was sparked in conversations taking place in newspapers and journals across Germany in Switzerland about the case in terms of Enlightenment philosophy--that starting from questions concerning the nature of evil led to a questioning of truth itself. 

It's a wonderful book that I cannot recommend enough. 

 

Top photo from Wikipedia and below from Steffen Jacobs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New York 2140, by Kim Stanley Robinson

The future: devastating rising water levels and shocking inequality

The truth is that the First Pulse was a profound shock, as how could it not be, raising sea level by ten feet in ten years. That was already enough to disrupt coastlines everywhere, also to grossly inconvenience all the major shipping ports around the world, and shipping is trade: those containers in their millions had been circulating by way of diesel-burning ships and trucks, moving around all the stuff people wanted, produced on one continent and consumed on another, following the highest rate of return which is the only rule that people observed at that time. So that very disregard for the consequences of their carbon burn had unleashed the ice that caused the rise of sea level that wrecked the global distribution system and caused a depression that was even more damaging to the people of that generation than the accompanying refugee crisis, which, using the unit popular at the time, was rated as fifty katrinas. Pretty bad, but the profound interruption of world trade was even worse, as far as business was concerned. So yes, the First Pulse was a first-order catastrophe, and it got people’s attention and changes were made, sure. People stopped burning carbon much faster than they thought they could before the First Pulse. They closed that barn door the very second the horses had gotten out. The four horses, to be exact.

It was that ocean heat that caused the First Pulse to pulse, and later brought on the second one. People sometimes say no one saw it coming, but no, wrong: they did. Paleoclimatologists looked at the modern situation and saw CO2 levels screaming up from 280 to 450 parts per million in less than three hundred years, faster than had ever happened in the Earth’s entire previous five billion years (can we say “Anthropocene,” class?), and they searched the geological record for the best analogs to this unprecedented event, and they said, Whoa. They said, Holy shit. People! they said. Sea level rise! During the Eemian period, they said, which we’ve been looking at, the world saw a temperature rise only half as big as the one we’ve just created, and rapid dramatic sea level rise followed immediately. They put it in bumper sticker terms: massive sea level rise sure to follow our unprecedented release of CO2! They published their papers, and shouted and waved their arms, and a few canny and deeply thoughtful sci-fi writers wrote up lurid accounts of such an eventuality, and the rest of civilization went on torching the planet like a Burning Man pyromasterpiece. Really. That’s how much those knuckleheads cared about their grandchildren, and that’s how much they believed their scientists, even though every time they felt a slight cold coming on they ran to the nearest scientist (i.e. doctor) to seek aid.

 

But okay, you can’t really imagine a catastrophe will hit you until it does. People just don’t have that kind of mental capacity. If you did you would be stricken paralytic with fear at all times, because there are some guaranteed catastrophes bearing down on you that you aren’t going to be able to avoid (i.e. death), so evolution has kindly given you a strategically located mental blind spot, an inability to imagine future disasters in any way you can really believe, so that you can continue to function, as pointless as that may be. It is an aporia, as the Greeks and intellectuals among us would say, a “not-seeing.” So, nice. Useful. Except when disastrously bad.

 

So the people of the 2060s staggered on through the great depression that followed the First Pulse, and of course there was a crowd in that generation, a certain particular one percent of the population, that just by chance rode things out rather well, and considered that it was really an act of creative destruction, as was everything bad that didn’t touch them, and all people needed to do to deal with it was to buckle down in their traces and accept the idea of austerity, meaning more poverty for the poor, and accept a police state with lots of free speech and freaky lifestyles velvet gloving the iron fist, and hey presto! On we go with the show! Humans are so tough!

 

 Bill's wonderful blog post

 

Top Reads in 2017

It was a great year of reading! In addition to being completely bowled over by Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom; this year saw a lot of reading on topics ranging from climate change and dark skies to works  related to three classes I audited at Caltech this year (one on Galileo's Trial; one on Einstein; and finally one on Columbus and imperialism). Other topics of interest included, Scipio's Dream by Cicero; uchronia and early church history (inspired by Carrere)--as well as discovering a kindred spirit in the author Ilan Stavans--recommend his memoir to all translators. My Christmas gift-giving book this year was Wesley the Owl, which I absolutely loved! (Tons of links below)

Top Reads: My top read: Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom. Other notables: best non-fiction was Learning to Die in the Anthropocene; best fiction was Galileo's Dream by Kim Stanley Robinson; biggest surprise of year was discovering the writing of Ilan Stavans and best science was Faraday Maxwell and the Electromagnetic Field by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon 

Biggest possible mistake was the Time Thief, by Terry Prachett.

And my Christmas gift-giving book this year was Wesley the Owl.

Most thought-provoking (game-changing): Vegetarian Myth and Learning to Die in the Anthropocene 

 

++

Year's Top Read: Emmanuel Carrère's The Kingdom was hands-down the most brilliant book I read in 2017.

More than anything, this work calls to mind Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov; a book which just happens to be my favorite novel of all time. The author himself referred to the Brothers Karamazov several times, so I suppose he was self-consciously modeling his work on Karamazov on some level.

But is The Kingdom, like Karamazov, a philosophical novel in the old tradition?

Or is it rather a memoir gone mad?

Critics call it "genre-bending." Carrère himself repeatedly insists that he hopes this will be his magnum opus (nothing wrong with this man's ego, by the way). Regardless of genre, this is a book written by a French intellectual about God and the meaning of life--And it is deeply moving.  

God, did you say?

His early church story is dazzling. And it set me off on a wild reading frenzy about anything I could get my hands on regarding early Christian history, which I know little about. Re-read "The Grand Inquisitor" chapter in Karamazov. Also inspired by The Kingdom, I read--and loved-- Amos Oz's Judas and Roger Caillois' Pontius Pilate.

++

My top non-fiction was Learning to Die in the Anthropocene.

Ostensibly about climate change, Learning to Die in the Anthropocene is really a Buddhist meditation on death. Convinced there is no rolling back the damage, the book is about finding ways of facing the end of civilization. And Scranton wants us to learn from Rome. We don't want to have to rebuild like those shipwreck survivors of the early middle ages trying to frantically recreate all the knowledge that was lost. And so much has already been lost. We must, therefore, make a concerted effort, he says, to conserve our ecological and our civilizational heritage. We need to look at the big picture. For such a short book, it really carried a big punch. I haven't been able to get it out of my mind all year (It was one of the first books I read in 2017).  3Quarks posts here and here.

I read about Learning to Die in Amitav Ghosh's Are We Deranged? (Also highly recommended!)

Lierre Keith's book, Vegetarian Myth was recommended by a friend and for me, it was also a game changer for me.

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My top work of fiction in 2017 was Kim Stanley Robinson's Galileo's Dream. It was an absolute tour de force. The portrait of Galileo is inspired. As one reviewer stated so well, "This is a "warts and all" look at Galilei Galileo. 
I read this as part of an absolute flood of books on Galileo, read for a class I was auditing over at Caltech on Galileo's Trial. Professor loved the novel as well. 

My full review on the novel is here. Unfortunately, I can't find my copy of the book for the picture so I put Kim Stanley Robinson's New York 2140 in its place. Also read this year as part of my climate change in fiction reading frenzy, my review on that book is here.

++

Ilan Stavans was the biggest surprise of the year. I stumbled on his memoir, On Borrowed Words early on in 2017 and wondered: Where has he been all my life? His memoir resonated so deeply with my own experiences thinking and dreaming in a foreign language--and then imagine my surprise when I realized he had written on Columbus and Don Quixote as well--both being other classes I am auditing at Caltech. I wrote about his memoir in my favorite 3 Quarks post of the year, Romance of the Red Dictionaries.

And my review of his Columbus book is here. 

About Columbus, I read so many great books. My favorite in the end was Dante, Columbus and the Prophetic Tradition. 

Scipio's Dream being another major theme of the year (including the original work by Cicero and Macrobius/ famous commentary; as well as the novel by Ian Pears). 

I wrote about Scipio and Learning to Die in a 3Quarks post called Dreaming in Latin.

Oh yes, and speaking of surprises. A mistake is a surprise by another name. But when my friend mentioned the book Time Thief was one of her favorite books, I mistakenly assumed it was the book by Terry Prachett--not the mystery by Tony Hillerman!!  

What to do?

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In history of science: This year, I read an uncountable number of science books. I audited a class on Einstein at the Caltech Einstein Papers Project and we read so many wonderful books (I loved especially Quantum Generations, which I forgot to write a review about--but highly recommend). Also noteworthy was Isaacson's biography on Einstein. I also loved Einstein in California, which was published to coincide with the Skirball exhibition. For my Galileo class, I read even more, and there were so many great books! Especially noteworthy was Heilbron's Galileo biography and this one on the trial by Shea and Artigas. I also loved On Tycho's Island by Christianson and Kitty Ferguson's very readable book, Tycho and Kepler. 

3 Quarks posts included, my top comment-generating post of all time (challenge people's preconceived notions and they get agitated): The Galileo Trial and Faux News from the 17th Century and my post on galileo, Kepler and SCHRÖDINGER'S CAT: Shut Up and Calculate --Oh and this one on Tycho Brahe: On Tycho's Island.

I wrote this on Einstein's Brain.

Also to prepare for the eclipse I read these eclipse books--the American Eclipse being particularly noteworthy. 

Thinking about it, Paul Bogard's book The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light should probably be included as one of my top reads of the year--since it was so deeply meaningful to me. I picked the book up at Moab National Park and the ranger at the cash register told me I was buying an important book. It really is. I might even go out n a limb and say if I could recommend one book to you, it would be this one. 

I wrote about it at length here, in RIVER OF HEAVEN" (天の川)

There are a ton of links at the bottom of the post. Tyler Nordgren is a really interesting thinker and I cannot recommend enough his Guide to Astronomy in the National Parks. Finally, I haven't written my review on this one yet but Michael J West's book on the telescopes on Mauna Kea is wonderful!!!

So--drum roll..... 

Of all the science books I read this year, one stands out for me. Faraday, Maxwell, and the Electromagnetic Field: How Two Men Revolutionized Physics
by Nancy Forbes, Basil Mahon. You can read my review here. 

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And last but not least:

My gift-giving Christmas book this year was Wesley the Owl. 

It reminded me a bit of the the TV show, Durrell's on Corfu (and the books by Gerald Durrell who also loved animals so much) in how totally uplifting the story was. Indeed, we are living in such sad times that like the famous Wendell Berry poem about the Peace of Wild Things, this story really did make me feel hopeful. Just reading it, I could feel something like the poet described of:

"For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

The author had to struggle through an illness and it was heartbreaking to imagine what she was going through--but she had these friends who would do seemingly anything for her and then this glorious owl, who adored her more than anything in the world. My favorite parts of the book, in fact, involved those quiet moments when she looked into his eyes and described the peace and quiet she felt. In fact, she said, his eyes led her to God. It is such a beautiful story of a magnificent and dignified creature and a deeply compassionate and intelligent lady. 

Anyone interested in Caltech will love the tidbits about Feynman and life on campus at a time when physicists worked nude or someone could walk around in a medieval jester's costume and still command respect. She described the trolls who live down below in the labs and her descriptions of the biologists were really engaging. I loved the book and really recommend it to everyone (am buying it for Christmas gifts this year). 

My favorite quote of all:
'Live your life not by staying in the shallow, safer waters, but by wading as deep into the river of life as possible, no matter how dangerous the current. We have only one chance at this life.'

Last year's Christmas book was Pictures and Tears, by James Elkins. I re-read it last week and loved it even more the second time! I wrote at length about it here, in Eyes Swimming with Tears.

What a great year in reading!!!!

 

 

 

Take My Camel, Dear...

By, Leanne Ogasawara

[Originally Published at 3 Quarks Daily]

There were not many things that drew me back to America, but the thought of joining a bookclub seemed like one potential perk of moving back. I am not sure if bookclubs exist to this extent in other countries, but in the US they are incredibly popular! More and more people I know had been joining, taking part and talking about their bookclubs... And, I became --slowly but surely--intrigued. 

So, when the time came and I found myself back in Los Angeles, I started thinking about--and really started heavy-duty dreaming about-- joining one. And not just any bookclub, but I was imagining a kind of glittering evening gathering, which could take place in various refined rooms filled with books and art. And obviously, there had to be alcohol. And definitely my bookclub needed men. Part of my fantasy involved a blurring of bookclub, cocktail party and supper club. I had visions of Turin-style appertivo; discussing Nietzsche over our campari; or a dinner inspired by the gourmand extraordinaire, Detective Mantalbano--featuring my famous caponata (in my fantasy, my caponata is legendary). 

My longings finally reached a crisis point last November when I read a really charming post at aNewscafe about a ladies' monthly bookclub in Northern California. The post was about the bookclub's most recent read: A Gentleman in Moscow, about which I was also reading and imagining a dinner party of my own. In my fantasies, I would have prepared a lavish dinner beginning with (of course) champagne and blini and then moving on to the mouth-wateringly-described Latvian stew with Georgian wine of the novel. The author of the blog post, Hollyn Chase, seemed to have it all--a gorgeous dining room filled with books, a fabulous menu plan and best of all, great friends.

Hollyn described her bookclub like this:

My book club started in 1993. There used to be eleven of us, but Linda moved to Seattle. Now there are 10. What I’ve learned over the years is that how people react to books reveals their core character and quite a few of their secrets.  After all these years, I can almost always predict who will like the book and who won’t and why. From an outsider’s perspective, we’re not very diverse. We’re all white woman of a certain age and privilege who have the luxury of being able to spend a bit of  time reading novels and entertaining.  But, we run the spectrum of deeply religious to atheist, very liberal to quite conservative. And there is almost a generation of difference in age from youngest to oldest. Each of us has been shaped over many years by many factors. We have seen our children grow—and some die—we have married, divorced and widowed. We have shared a lot; we understand each other. But we do not always agree.

This was last year, remember. She was therefore concerned about the then President-elect....who, she feared, would be the topic of the day (supplanting all discussion of the novel).

Reading her delightful post, I realized how old-fashioned bookclubs can be. In the old days, people broke bread and acted in "neighborly" ways with those whom they didn't always agree. Neighbors are neighbors--even if they aren't on the same page as you politically and otherwise. There is something great in this idea of friendship that moves beyond narrow requirements. I would say it has more of a chance element (like you can't choose your neighbors, your kids or your family...?) There are deal breakers, don't get me wrong, but I've always really felt it is important to break bread with people I do not see eye-to-eye with. And, there is the idea that family and friendships do "trump" politics and religion. Not long ago in these pages, I had written about my mom's gourmet club... those ladies have sat down to share meals for over thirty years --month in and month out; and like Hollyn's group, they range from Hillary to Bernie to Trump supporters; a rainbow of religions and backgrounds. And yet every month they sit down together. And more incredible, they can eat whatever is served--if there are dietary restrictions, no one makes a big deal. I overheard my mom's friends once remarking that they feel their own kids are incapable of this kind of flexibility (one kid is a vegan and the other has allergies and so on and so on...) Shared meals, they lament, are a thing of the past. Even within families, it is becoming harder and harder. A sense of play and flexibility, not to mention tolerance, seems to have disappeared from our world, where people take themselves more and more seriously.

Anyway, enough was enough, I thought. I need to join a bookclub.

Not knowing where to look, I checked out Caltech and discovered not one but two (as a "faculty spouse" I was already a member of the women's group first).

Okay, it didn't meet many of my "requirements." But beggars can't be choosers, right?

First off, it was all women.

Fine, I thought.

But also no alcohol.

Challenging-- but I was still up for it. But get this: it meets at 8am. OK, this was totally and completely crazy. 8am???? But, still I went forward! My strategy involved repeated cups of coffee starting two hours before I leave the house at 7:30 am and then a race out to campus hoping the cold morning hour will help revive me. And while there is food involved (breakfast), it is a restaurant situation at the Caltech Athenaeum, where each person can order what they like. (Also unfortunately, we don't meet in the library--pictured above-- but in a small room next door).

I must say, all these issues above were nothing when faced with the real problem: I didn't get to choose the books! Yikes.... (This was turning out to be more challenging than I had imagined!)

I should have thought of this because I am incredibly picky about what I read. For example, I don't read a lot of American fiction. Much of what I read is history, philosophy or novels in translation. And what is worse, I quickly found myself in the strange position of complaining to the other ladies about how I dislike "women's fiction."....(Did I really say that??)

Here was our list:

• November 14 Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End, by Atul Gwande
• December 12 Astonish Me, by Maggie Shipstead
• January 9, 2017 This Life, by Karel Shoeman
• February 13 Rise of the Rocket Girls: the Women Who Propelled Us From Missles to the Moon to Mars, by Nathalia Holt
• March 13 The Wright Brothers, by David McCullough
• April 10 Miller’s Valley, by Anna Quindlen
• May 8 The History of Great Things, by Elizabeth Crane

I should say, all the books were recognizable great-sellers, many with New York Times reviews and no one could deny people love these books. So what went wrong? Well, I was bored to near death by Gwande, Holt and McCullough--but it was the novels by Shipstead, Quindlin and Crane that truly became my cross to bear. Reading these novels felt something like punishment (for a crime that must have been very bad indeed). Astonish Me in particular traumatized me--because the characters were such a perfect blend of unkindness and utter banality. A boring book filled with total narcissistic and petty jerks. One character more mediocre, petty and lowly than the next. But Miller's Valley and Great Things were also really challenging for me (those two in particular killed me because I had to put down this fabulous book called Galileo's Dream twice to catch up with the bookclub readings). As a woman, it felt like a form of betrayal to announce that I never read women authors but these books were not just written by women but they were for women (as all the reviews were overwhelming by women). I simply couldn't stand the over-focus on relationships in lieu of the world-creating novels of great ideas that I preferred. But it was, I suppose mainly that these novels reminded me of the romance novels I devoured when I was in my early teens (I was very precocious at 13 and luckily that stage only last a few years). 

It all made me think of something I read in Tom Robbins' memoir, Tibetan Peach Pie, in which he also complained about the current state of American publishing. After all, he asks, “How many protagonists can one watch come painfully of age, how many bad marriages resolve or dissolve; and after a while who really gives a damn if the butler did it?” I was, in the end, saved by a French lady in the bookclub, who hated the books every bit as much as I did and would complain about what a bad mood they put her into and about how "banal" and "pathetic" the characters were. Phew! Totally agree. Anna Karenina was about a dysfunctional marriage, after all, but I think the individual stories about people are not the main focus, but rather are the hinge around which an entire world, religion, philosophy, great themes of humanity are explored. It is the narrowness of these “women’s” books, their lack of creativity, uplift, inspiration, unexpectedness, nobility, exploration, playfulness, etc.

Anyway, the good news is I love the group so much!! And this year I can have a part in choosing what we will read --and, and being mightily embarrassed by my pronouncement about "books for women," I certainly want to recommend one of my absolute favorite novels of all time, which happens to be by a woman--but definitely not for women only! 

Have any of you read Towers of Trebizond, by Rose Macaulay?

Friends with EM Forster and Virginia Woolf, Rose Macaulay's novel is counted by Anthony Burgess as one of the twenty top novels of the century and by Joanna Trollope as "the book of a lifetime". The 1956 novel is fabulous and funny; delightful and inspired!

It also has one of the most famous opening lines in modern literature:

'Take my camel, dear,' said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

A novel about love and the mysteries of faith, you could be forgiven for missing its main themes since the entire novel is mainly taken up with the details of the characters' Alice in Wonderland-like travels around Turkey on a camel. Yes, they travel by camel! Traveling about with Aunt Dot, who is there to convert the natives to female emancipation, and a priest (with the last name of Pigg), who is there to check up on the progress of his rivals Billy Graham and a gaggle of Seventh Day Adventists; the story takes a slight turn when the priest and Aunt Dot up and disappear across the Iron Curtain, leaving main character Laurie to ponder alone the problems of trying to be religious in the modern world (not to mention love and adultery). We are never even sure whether Laurie is male or female till the very end of the book--though we find out quite a lot about the camel as well as all manner of wonderful details of Trebizuntine (is that a word?) history along the way!

Oh, to be able to see the frescoes and painted dome ceilings of the basilicas of Trebizond ~~and the magical forests of Armenia, which she wrote about so beautifully....But suddenly, thanks to this wonderful lady writer (so nice to be reading female novelists!), I have it in my mind to try and see its westernmost edge. To travel along the southern banks of the Black Sea, wouldn't it be an adventure to head east toward Georgia to try and discover what is left of this vanished Greek-Byzantine-Ottoman civilization.....famed for its gravity-defying cliffside churches and Byzantine tunnels and fortresses. In the novel, the camel journey ends all the way in Jerusalem--Yes, all roads lead to Jerusalem.... 

It sounds like a real dream journey, doesn't it?   

 

  **

Picture of another favorite lady writer, Rumer Godden

Favorite novel of 2015: Relic Master

Favorite Novel of 2016: Laurus

Favorite novel of 2017: Galileo's Dream

Other Favorite novel of 2017: Carrere's The Kingdom

More on communal activities: Heaven and Hell in Modena

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pictures & Tears

Pictures & Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings
by James Elkins

 [Originally posted at Goodreads]

One of my all-time favorite books about art:

Have you ever been moved to tears by a painting?

There is a wonderful letter, in James Elkins' Pictures and Tears, about museum goers looking at a landscape painting in Japan. The lady who wrote the letter to Elkins was in Tokyo as part of an Andy Warhol exhibition. Unable to speak the language and perhaps not all that knowledgeable about the culture, it had to be based on some kind of misunderstanding that she came to believe that the painting of a waterfall on rare display at the Nezu Museum, called Nachi Waterfall, was "a picture of God."

This painting is a National Treasure of Japan and is not displayed so often (I never managed to see it in 22 years there). So, not surprisingly, the exhibition was jam-packed full of people there to see it.

In the letter, she described how beautifully dressed the people were, many in formal kimono and some looked to be college professors. She said it was like going to the Met, except that when she finally got near the picture, she found the people around her to all be silently standing there crying.

It is an extraordinary story in an extraordinary book.

Has that ever happened to you? Have you ever been overcome to tears by a painting? (It has to be a painting and it has to be tears).

James Elkin (my new favorite writer) is obsessed by Stendhal Syndrome--and since I am obsessed by Jerusalem Syndrome, I couldn't help but find myself increasingly intrigued. I never knew that-- unlike Mark Twain (who has a malaise named after himself too)-- that Stendhal, like so many others at that time period, had become so utterly enraptured by the art he saw in Florence that he became dizzy and had heart palpitations. In fact, apparently, he had to seek medical help. Elkins says that in the old days, it was much more common to be moved to tears by art.

In fact, as far as emotional response to paintings, we are living in a bit of a dry age, he insists.

Wesley the Owl

Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl
by Stacey O'Brien

[Originally posted at Goodreads]

This is an amazing love story of a barn owl and his girl. It will make you cry-- for it is so incredibly sweet and moving. Before starting this book, I didn't know a lot about owls. I never realized how intelligent they are; never realized they mate for life or what dedicated fathers the males make! If someone had told me that one could form a bond and be able to communicate with an owl as one can with a dog, for example, I might not have believed it...

The story of the owl and his girl begins when the owl is only four days old. Author Stacy O'Brien is a lab assistant working in the owl lab at Caltech when her supervisor asks her to take on the baby owl. The owl was badly injured and would have died otherwise. She is tasked to adopt it and try and learn as much as she can about this remarkable creature. And he *is* remarkable!

He thinks of her as mommy. And later as mate!!! And Stacy O'Brien is very convincing in how well Wesley the owl can communicate. Interesting to imagine an owl can understand, "in two days" or "in a few hours.."

For me, this book went beyond the amazing story of the animal. It reminded me a bit of the the TV show, Durrell's on Corfu (and the books by Gerald Durrell who also loved animals so much) in how totally uplifting the story was. Indeed, we are living in such sad times that like the famous Wendell Berry poem about the Peace of Wild Things, this story really did make me feel hopeful. Just reading it, I could feel something like the poet described of:

"For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free."

The author had to struggle through an illness and it was heartbreaking to imagine what she was going through--but she had these friends who would do seemingly anything for her and then this glorious owl, who adored her more than anything in the world. My favorite parts of the book, in fact, involved those quiet moments when she looked into his eyes and described the peace and quiet she felt. In fact, she said, his eyes led her to God. It is such a beautiful story of a magnificent and dignified creature and a deeply compassionate and intelligent lady.

Anyone interested in Caltech will love the tidbits about Feynman and life on campus at a time when physicists worked nude or someone could walk around in a medieval jester's costume and still command respect. She described the trolls who live down below in the labs and her descriptions of the biologists were really engaging. I loved the book and really recommend it to everyone (am buying it for Christmas gifts this year).

My favorite quote of all:
'Live your life not by staying in the shallow, safer waters, but by wading as deep into the river of life as possible, no matter how dangerous the current. We have only one chance at this life.'