Ridley Scott's Napoleon

Is Ridley Scott's Napoleon worth seeing? Yes. 

Is it a good film? Not really.

It's a blockbuster of sorts, with countless battle scenes full of shouting and explosions, but it's shot in what seems to be natural light, and most of the film has an unpleasant grayish tinge.

Interspersed amid these roaring scenes, Scott gives us extended looks at the time Napoleon spent "at home" with the Empress Josephine, but these scenes don't have much depth. Josephine found the arrangement expedient; Napoleon nurtured a sentimental affection during his time away, and wrote Josephine often. But he also wanted an heir, and it appears he overlooked no opportunity to bring such an event about when he wasn't charging across Egypt, Italy, Germany, and Russia in pursuit of an ever-shifting congeries of aristocratic opponents.

As a means of setting the scene politically, we spend the first part of the film watching brief episodes of mayhem during the early days of the Revolution, followed by the Convention, the Reign of Terror, a few back-room deals during the Directory, and the final coup d'état that brought Napoleon to power. That's a lot of ground to cover in a relatively short span of time, and beyond the inevitable Robespierre, the individuals involved will be strangers to most viewers: Sieyes, Junot, Barras. Who?

Perhaps I underestimate the educational level of the movie-going public, but I suspect most viewers will be unaware that Napoleon's enduring achievements have been omitted from the film entirely.  The Encyclopedia Brittanica summarizes his career as follow:

"Napoleon ... left durable institutions on which modern France was built up, including the Napoleonic Code, the judicial system, the central bank and the country’s financial organization, military academies, and a centralized university."      

A more detailed on-line source reminds us that the Code Napoleon "codified France’s confused jumble of laws and guaranteed property rights, equality before the law, freedom of religion, and the abolition of feudalism."

In time Napoleon's military conquests, which eventually included almost the entirety of Western Europe, obliterating numerous feudal and ecclesiastical states, and that led a generation or two later to the unification of Germany and Italy and the liberalization of legal codes throughout the region.

It would have been impossible, not to mention boring, to depict such bourgeois accomplishments in even a three-hour biopic, but without reference to these details, we're left with a feeble portrait of a strangely anemic personality, and that makes it difficult to accept the fact—though it is a fact—that Napoleon stirred the loyalty and devotion of hundreds of thousands of men, not only in France but throughout Western Europe, many of whom lost their lives as a result.

The best reason to see Napoleon, aside from the costumes and the military re-creations, is that it may kindle the desire to learn more about the real story. (When we got home, I pulled my copy of J.M. Roberts' History of the World off the shelf. I can't remember the last time I did that.)

Though Scott's Napoleon is never boring, as I watched it I was reminded of several other films on similar themes with greater depth but narrower focus. Erich Rohmer's The Lady and the Duke (2001) depicts the harrowing days of the Terror in Paris, when friends became enemies and no one could be trusted. In La Nuit de Varenne Italian director Ettore Scola dramatizes the phase of the revolution before Louis XVI was executed. And Start the Revolution Without Me, as you might guess from the title, is a spoof of the early days of the revolution starring Gene Wilder and Donald Sutherland. "I thought it was a costume ball ..."

And while we're at it, why not mention Woody Allen's early masterpiece, Love and Death, in which, amid lots of other silliness, Napoleon is outraged with his bakers because the Duke of Wellington's pastry-encrusted beef is a big hit, while his multi-layered pastry still isn't flaky enough.

Let me add that although Ridley Scott's depiction of the battle of Waterloo is grand, it might have been a good idea for him to remind viewers which side General Blücher was on. For my money, those expansive scenes are well worth seeing, but carry less of a punch than the famously chaotic literary passages in Thackerey's Vanity Fair and Stendhal's The Charterhouse of Parma, both told from the point of view of a bewildered foot soldier who has trouble finding the battlefield.   

*   *   *

To keep the flavor of the Revolution alive, after the film we drove downtown to a restaurant in the North Loop called Maison Marguax, where the starter for the sourdough bread has been kept alive for more than a century, so they say. The bar is a nice place to sit on a drizzly afternoon in mid-December. I found the jambon beurre baguette a little short on ham, but the "oui burger" was robust and buttery. The pomme frites, served in a shiny metal cup, were delicious, though it seems they forgot to add the tarragon to the béarnaise sauce. But it's possible my palate simply lacks the required finesse.

All of the servers wore vests covered with intricate blue brocade and several were wearing nose rings. One young women had recently completed a degree program in Madison in home economics and was now earning some money as she pondered her next career move. Another seemed to have a slight accent, and I asked her where she was from. Marseille?  

"You've probably never heard of it," she said. "I'm from Forest Lake."

"What? I'm from Mahtomedi, just down the road. We pass Hugo often on our way to O'Brien State Park."

"I love that park," she said.

____________________

And where, you might ask, does Jesus enter into all of this? 

Not only did the Napoleonic period advanced the cause of universal brotherhood by expanding citizenship and economic opportunity to Protestants, Jews, and free-thinkers, as I mentioned above, but at the same time, the incalculable violence and bloodshed of the period convinced many that the facile truths of the Enlightenment were grossly inadequate to the task of harnessing the energies involved in those social developments.

And we've been struggling to maintain a balance between the ground of faith and the blue skies of liberty ever since.

Wordle Holiday

The New York Times recently ran a story about its popular word game, Wordle. The article offers little of interest, except to advise those who play the game to choose a starting word with a healthy mix of vowels and consonants.   Duh! Statistical analysis suggests that the most popular starting word, "adieu," isn't that great. Words like "slate," "crane," and "trace" are likely to lead more quickly to the correct solution.

Part of the appeal of Wordle, as far as I'm concerned, is that you can only play it once a day, there is only one solution, and the meaning of the words plays no part in the solution. Therefore, a good deal of whimsy can be involved in choosing an opening word. Every morning, around 5:30 or 6:00, I find myself lying in bed thinking of words such as WORSE, ASCOT, TRAIL, and CHORD, though by the time I make the coffee, do my morning stretching exercises, and get to the computer, the word I've chosen is long gone, and I have to start all over again.

I have a strip of paper here beside me listing the twelve most common letters, though on some occasions I start out with a word that includes an unlikely consonant such as W or P, just to see if I get lucky. I also tend to avoid using S and T, because I'd rather have those letters in reserve to slip in to the blank spots between the letters I happen to get right on my first guess.

If I do happen to get a few letters right on my first guess, there is a strong temptation to keep them in place and try to nail the correct  word on the next guess. That's not always the best strategy.  Better, perhaps, to select five new letters. You won't get the word right, but you'll learn more, and be in a better position to get the correct word on your third try.

The low point of my Wordle career came on the day when, after two guesses, I had correctly guessed four of the five letters and was faced with _INGE. Great! I hastily supplied what seemed to me to be the obvious missing letter. TINGE. Wrong!

Oh, how could I have missed it? The word must be HINGE. Wrong again!

By this time quite a few letters had been eliminated, and there seemed to be nothing left but BINGE. Bingo!

Well, getting a five isn't the end of the world. But clearly there was nothing at work here except bad luck. It happens, though some Wordle experts (such as the bot) would have come up with a word on the third guess that eliminated  all but one of the letters H, T, and B. Even now, I can't think of what that word might be. THROB?

The bot, in case you aren't familiar with the game, is a computer-generated feature that analyses your choices to determine the degree to which luck and skill figures in your success and how your performance measures up to the millions of other people who are playing the game. The bot also plays each game, rifling through every possible guess to figure out which one is best, so you can also see how you stack up against it.

The bot isn't infallible, however. On one day's event it ranked my skill level as lower than average, and also my luck level, when compared against the norm. Yet my score that morning was half a point better than the average. How could that be? 

So far I've played Wordle 621 times—it only takes ten minutes—and the statistics suggest I'm getting a little better at it. In fact, during the last two-week period, my score has been, on average, not only significantly better than the average NYT reader, but better than the bot. (see above)

I'm sure my luck won't hold out for long. And anyway, who cares?

Yet perhaps there is some deep meaning hidden within the progression of words: Tinge, Hinge, Binge.

 

A Promising Time for the Library

I got an email a few days ago from someone named Kristi bearing the title, "This is a promising time for your library." That struck me as a pleasant thought. I wasn't aware that anyone really cared much about my library except me; I wondered who Kristi was, and what she meant, exactly. 

It's true that several books have come my way recently via the de-acquisition cart in the lobby of the Golden Valley Library, including a handsome coffee-table book of Seth Eastman's paintings. And the other day, when Hilary and I were shopping for gifts at Magers & Quinn, I also picked up two books for myself: a collection of poems by Joyce Sutphen, Carrying Water to the Field; and Existential Monday by an obscure French philosopher named Benjamin Fondane.

To top it off, a few weeks ago I conceived the notion that it was necessary to have a decent hardcover edition of Samuel Johnson's writings at my disposal. I'm not sure why, though the Penguin paperback edition I own is looking pretty ratty. I consulted a used book consolidator online and discovered that Amazon was offering a recently compiled hardcover edition from Yale at half-price. How could I resist?

The book is handsome, but also formidable. It weighs in at a little less than four pounds, which makes it unwieldy and somewhat difficult to read. Selected essays from Johnson's two-penny sheets, the Rambler and the Idler, make up a good part of the book, and they've been arranged by theme—moral choices, men and women, war and imperialism—which is convenient.

Johnson was formidable himself, though he wasn't handsome. He's known today largely for his curmudgeonly one-liners about the weather, writing for money, and other commonplace subjects. Few read his works, I suspect. Many of the essays are occasional and short, which is good. But the language in which Johnson expresses himself tends to be wordy, syntactically complex, and riddled with specious generalities. Not so good. But right or wrong, suave or clumsy, you've got to give credit to an author who chooses a weighty subject, explores it in terms the common reader can understand, and arrives at a conclusion without unnecessary references, complications, or digressions.

The first essay I turned to happened to be about awe. It surprised me that Johnson would take up such a subject. Not so long ago young people referred to everything as "awesome," and I sometimes come upon articles offering tips about how to revive that precious yet elusive emotion. It doesn't strike me as a typically eighteenth-century topic. But his approach to that issue does fit the era in which he wrote, in which astronomic discoveries, steam engines, and spinning jennies were all the rage.

Johnson's theory is that the awe we feel in the face of an unusual phenomena is the result of our ignorance as to how it works. "The awful stillness of attention, with which the mind is overspread at the first view of an unexpected effect, ceases when we have leisure to disentangle complications and investigate causes." Johnson reiterates this argument several times and also seems determined to castigate those who are simply too lazy or too conceited to humbly and patiently investigate the inner workings of things. "To expect that the intricacies of science will be pierced by a careless glance ... is to expect a peculiar privilege, a power denied to the rest of mankind; but to suppose that the maze is inscrutable to diligence ... is to submit tamely to the tyranny of fancy, and enchain the mind in voluntary shackles."

It's worth reminding ourselves that in Johnson's day, many words had different shades of meaning than they do today. For example, nowadays the word "awful" carries connotations of disgust, whereas Johnson defines it in his famous dictionary as "that which strikes with awe, or fills with reverence." But it seems the primary association of awe with reverence hasn't changed much from his day to ours.

On the other hand, Johnson's notion that awe is inspired by ignorance, and evaporates once we've familiarized ourselves with a phenomenon, strikes me as doubtful at best. Our modern world is full of mechanical and electronic devices the workings of which remain incomprehensible and mysterious, yet we rarely hold any of them in awe. Maybe we should.

Meanwhile, I have found that if I do happen to develop a layman's understanding of how something works, it usually increases the admiration and awe I feel for it. Just now I pulled my copy of the plates created for Diderot's encyclopedia, which were designed to illustrate how everything from plate glass and rope to upholstery and marbled paper was made. Incredible.  

Nothing is more likely to inspire fleeting feelings of awe than aspects of the natural world. But perhaps this supports Johnson's thesis, insofar as such phenomena will forever remain largely inexplicable. Evolutionary theory can offer clues as to how the myriad life forms that surround us came to be, generally speaking, but it will never be able to "explain" the miraculous presence of a deer who beds down at nightfall in the back yard, much less a particular being whom we have come to know and love. 

By the same token, even a lifetime of astronomical study will do nothing to dissipate the awe we often feel when we contemplate the depths of space.   

The poets of Johnson's day had hardly begun to explore this realm of beauty and mystery. Wordsworth's "Westminster Bridge" and Keats "To Autumn" were still a long ways off. 

Johnson himself was perhaps wary of what he calls "the tyranny of fancy." I wonder what he, who loved words so well, would have made of this brief poem that I came across in the second of my purchases, Joyce Sutphen's Carrying Water to the Field:

It's Amazing

 

Another word for that is astonishing

or astounding, remarkable, or marvelous.

 

It's also slightly startling, which leads to

shocking and upsetting, perhaps a bit

 

disquieting, and that is troubling and

distressing—you could say outrageous

 

and deplorable, which leads to wicked

and more precise equations such as

 

sinful and immoral or just plain bad

and wrong. It's amazing, which is just to say

 

bewildering and unexpected, that

it happened out of the blue, and that we went

 

all the way from miraculous to absurd,

within the syllables of just one word.

 

Opening my third purchase, the slight volume of essays by Benjamin Fondane called Existential Monday, I suddenly found myself immersed in a realm driven not by awe and reverence, but by anxiety and dread. This is entirely understandable, given that Fondane was a Romanian Jew living in Nazi-occupied Paris. But Fondane's theories predate that dreadful circumstance by several decades. Writing in the zany Dada era and drawing heavily on the theories of Kierkegaard and the obscure Romanian philosopher Lev Shestov, Fondane emphasizes that every philosophic system, and especially Hegelianism and it's cartoonish offspring Marxism, will miss the mark unless it not only recognizes but also emphasizes the significance of the maverick, the outcast, the unique individual, and the once-in-a-lifetime event that shatters all systems. For example, the Resurrection. 

Fondane refers to Shestov so often that I requested a few of that thinker's books from the Hennepin County Library. And they actually had some! Now there is an amazing institution.

Meanwhile, taking a closer look at the email I mentioned above, I see that it comes from Kristi Pearson, executive director of the Hennepin County Library system. It was her library she was referring to, not mine. Then again, her library is also mine. 

She wants me to contribute, lend them of hand. Gladly. 'Tis the season.  

Thanksgiving Conversations

It's a frosty pre-winter morning, and I'm luxuriating in pleasant thoughts of Thanksgiving recently past but ever-present. I'm also listening to some random tunes by C. P. E. Bach played by jazz pianist Keith Jarrett.

The Thanksgiving holiday may have gotten started a few weeks ago during a Sunday morning breakfast with my cousin Pat. She always has good stories to tell about her high-stress position in the banking world, her daughter Natalie's horse ranch, and the perils and rewards of her volunteer activities at the nearby animal humane society. "I'm a dog-whisperer," she says. And I believe her. After years of volunteering, she has also finally reached the rare status of having her own locker.

She and Hilary always have lots of books in common to talk about. (I don't.) Family stories are also likely to emerge, though they're sometimes about people I never met. The names sound vaguely familiar... 

At our recent breakfast Pat's stories turned to someone I knew quite well: her dad. I had no idea how many different lines of work he pursued, dragging the family along with him to Colorado, Oregon, and elsewhere, before finding his calling as a forest ranger supervising firefighters in the Gila National Forest of southern New Mexico.

We had Hilary's family and a few family friends over on Thanksgiving, and it was a lively scene. I enjoyed listening to my brother-in-law David describe a trip with his wife, Debbie, to visit her family in Florida and South Carolina in an antique camper they purchased recently. 

David was also excited about a new book by Pete Jesperson, long-time manager of The Replacements, who first played in a rock-n-roll band in the Sylvestre family basement. "My parents were the only ones in the neighborhood who could stand the noise."

At dinner Hilary's mother, Dorothy, who's now 97, described to me in some detail a documentary she watched recently on our local public television station. (Now I'm the one who can't remember what the show was about!).  

It was also fun hearing Miles describe how it feels to be "in the zone" on the basketball court. Brother-in-law Jeff shared some photos on his phone of his family's newly remodeled kitchen, and we reviewed the career of film director Ridley Scott together in light of his upcoming film about Napoleon. 

After dessert several of us at the far end of the table got into a lively discussion of language usage. It ranged from the difference between "supper" and "dinner" to the excesses of the  "periodic style"--with difficulty I refrained from fetching my new copy of the Yale Selected Works of Samuel Johnson from the other room to illustrate the point. We also explored the use and misuse of the semicolon and the egregiousness of the phrase "one of the only... ."  

At one point Nora's mom, Mary, said, "My mother would have loved this conversation."

With the average age being  in the mid-sixties, of course there was also plenty of health talk: dreadful migraines, expensive medications, dietary restrictions, sore knees and hips and necks. Many of us were nevertheless eager to take a postprandial walk around the block before we fetched the pies from their cache on top of the piano.  It's a family tradition.

Back at the table, but for the most part sitting in different places, conversation continued for quite a while before everyone headed for home. To my ear, the din of multiple voices exchanging views on a variety of subjects in a single room is one of the most beautiful sounds on earth.

A long Minnesota goodbye

Later, with darkness encroaching outside the windows, while Hilary and I were doing the dishes, the phone rang. Cousin Laura had left her cell phone behind. She and her husband, Rick, stopped by the next morning to fetch it, and we sat in the living room in front of the fire chatting once again. We told a few stories about our recent trip to Duluth. Rick, stimulated by the fire, told a few stories about splitting cords of wood with a maul back in the days when he and Laura managed a sheep farm in Vermont. We discussed the likelihood of the northern lights putting on a show and the new Native American photography exhibit at the institute. Rick, a professional photographer, didn't think much of it; the rest of us found it was well worth a visit. On these and other subjects, including the dangers of "post-truth" that Rick's brother Charlie is pushing on his Boston website, we spent the morning.

But we weren't quite done with the Thanksgiving conversations. The next afternoon we drove out to Lake Minnetonka to visit my cousin Rich and his wife, Sarah. A few years ago they bought a house in Mound just down the street from their daughter Willa's place, and during their visits from Lincoln they've been spending quite a bit of time dealing with the house's sub-standard wiring and plumbing. "I know the man at the hardware store a lot better than any of the neighbors," Rick says with a grim chuckle. 

Coffee and conversation, the classic combination

We discussed a few detective novels set in Southern France and the widespread popularity of Aperol in northern Italy. And it was just our good luck that Willa stopped by on her way home from shopping—we hadn't seen her in years—and we got a chance to find out what's been going on in her life, how the boathouse remodel is coming along, and how the kids are doing. The big question facing her daughter Clare, now a fifth-grader, is: basketball or hockey? (She's going with basketball.)

On a brief foray into family history, I confirmed with Rich a vague notion I had that grandpa Toren, who had a fine tenor voice, served as cantor at the synagogue in Lincoln on Saturdays, while also singing at the Swedish Covenant church he and grandma attended on Sunday. It's true.

We also touched briefly on Grandpa Toren's role as a secretary at a Palestine peace commission of 1918. A few years ago Rich scanned all the letters grandpa sent home from Europe and sent me copies.

These are a very few fragments of the many connections and conversations that filled the holiday. Such things are hard to remember except in random snatches, and harder still to describe or recreate, unless you happen to be a novelist. The snatches above are grossly inadequate to capture or do justice to the family spirit. 

But there's no harm in trying.

In Our Hands - Native American Photography

The exhibit currently on view at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, "In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now," offers a hodgepodge of themes and styles, as we might expect, considering the span of time involved. Biting ironic collages about westward expansion hang next to staged ceremonial tableau, arrays of abstract religious symbols, and black-and-white photos of family groups. Some of the pieces might be referred to as ethnographic, while others draw their appeal from the spectacular colors available to any modern photographer. The result is a wonderful show, needling a white viewer like me to think a little more deeply about how Indians see the world while also confirming the notion that the aspects of indigenous cultures that I find most appealing are often the ones that native artists also value highly about themselves.  

It almost goes without saying that the artwork on display is often better than the accompanying interpretive texts, which too often traverse the familiar ground of exclusion, marginalization, and misunderstanding between cultures, without illuminating it much. Many of the images are simply "cool" to look at, and hardly need interpretation. For example, the start of a race, which interested the photographer because, as he admits in the text, he'd never seen anything like it before.

In another fascinating photo we see chunks of whale blubber spread across the ice, and are informed in the text where the whale came from and why it has been ceremonially butchered.

One image from the 1950s (if I remember correctly) is a portrait of an Indian sitting near a pueblo wearing high-top tennis shoes. According to the text, there was a time when many viewers were more interested in analyzing why the man was wearing those shoes than in appreciating the striking character of the photo. Not today.   

One large piece, maybe 3 by 6 feet, that I found appealing carries this note by Will Wilson, which I have edited slightly due to typological limitations:

Diné photographer Dakota Mace's chemigrams blend the language of Diné symbology with the elements of silver-based photography. These unique prints, made by manipulating light-sensitive photographic paper and chemicals, stand as remarkable unions of symbolic language and material interaction. As Mace observes, central symbols—Spider Woman, Mountain, Whirling Log, and  the concept of four—are ever-present yet ever-shifting within the land. Each print, inspired by traditional narratives, designs, and symbols, echoes the unique yet interconnected essence of Diné philosophy. Mace's innovative approach embodies simplicity and elegance, harnessing form and concept to evoke  the Diné concept of balance and harmony.

Some photos are appealing due to the colors, regardless of the artist's intent in taking them. For example, this vivid overhead scene of seal butchery was taken by a drone.

Another image was staged to make some sort of statement about the exploitation of Native women. I couldn't quite follow the logic of the text, but I thought it looked "cool."

Some of the images offer a fascinating glimpse into bygone customs and lifeways, in the manner of Edward S. Curtiss.

Others, though obviously staged,  are hauntingly evocative.

And others still, whatever their intended message, reminded me of the good-natured humanity that often shines through between people, regardless of ethnicity, grievance, or misunderstanding.

You may argue that I would have gotten more from the show by reading the text more carefully. Maybe so. But it strikes me that the "intentional fallacy" is sound: it's a mistake to lean too heavily on an artist's analysis of what he or she has done. Better to take in what's right in front of you first.

The exit from the show leads out into the Native American rooms of the MIA's permanent collection, which is also fine. But in light of the unusual and varied images we'd just come face to face with, it seemed not only familiar and conventional, but also strangely stale.

Our final stop was Quang, that ever-popular Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks away. I ordered the Hu Tieu Bo Kho. Not quite the lamb and hominy stew we'd been served in the two-room adobe home of a local family at San Ildefonso Pueblo years ago, after witnessing an Easter deer dance together. But it was close enough.

New Book Out

The Roman poet Horace once advanced the theory that an author ought to wait nine years before publishing a book. He referred to this maturation process as "building soil." At least, that's how I remember the remark. I made an attempt to double-check the quotation online and came up with a link to P.M. Agricultural Sources in Horace, North Dakota.

All the same, Horace's point is well-taken, though a little extreme. Nine years is a long time for anyone but a locust, or a geologist. Yet every so often I take a look at something I wrote a few years ago and am surprised at how cogent it is. I also notice, more than occasionally,  a few unnecessary adjectives and frivolous asides. "This would not be bad, if someone cleaned it up a bit," I say to myself.

All of which is a roundabout way of saying that a new collection of essays appeared on the market recently bearing my name. My intention, when putting it together, was to gather a few pieces together that were perhaps on the more serious side, as a complement to the breeziness of my previous collection, Cabin in the City.

The title I came up with was "A Metaphysical Bent." Confident that such a collection would appeal to few readers, my plan was to upload the files to a print-on-demand site, so that the book would become available on Amazon, in case anyone happened to be interested. I might give away a few copies myself. Christmas is right around the corner!

Ernst Cassirer

Hilary advised me to change the title. She also read through the manuscript and suggested that I remove a few pieces. For example, she questioned whether anyone would get excited about an essay called "The Conceptual Sympathy of Ernst Cassirer." Good point. She also found the essay about my struggles with ilio-tibial span syndrome (sore hip) a bit self-referential, not to mention BORING.

"Why don't you add a few fun essays?" she said. "Travel? Music? Food?" She also suggested that I move the last, and longest, essay in the book, "Metaphysics for Beginners," to the front. I found that encouraging.

The revised and much improved collection now carries the following description on the back:

Fresh from the backyard ruminations of Cabin in the City, essayist John Toren here turns his attention to all manner of earthly and cosmic speculation. Driven by the belief that philosophic thought should be clear, accurate, and emotionally gratifying, he takes up such questions as whether the universe will continue to expand forever, what it means to be “moved,” and why it is that a common cold can significantly undercut our mood, and hence our view of life. Dipping into the Western canon, he takes Blaise Pascal to task for some of the views he advances in his Pensées on both probability and faith, and makes a valiant attempt to come to grips with Dante’s Divine Comedy, before becoming waylaid by the challenge of choosing among the many competing translations. Lydia Davis’s “flash fiction,” Glenn Gould’s search for the perfect piano, the history of agriculture in the Mediterranean basin, and Swedish entomologist Fredrik Sjöberg’s unusual perspective on the natural world—these are just a few of the subjects under review in this curious and delightful collection.

A perfect stocking-stuffer? A light-weight companion for a North Woods getaway? 

You can pick up a copy here.     

  

Does Aging Improve Brain Function?

The New York Times reported recently that researchers have discovered significant differences in the way young people and middle-aged people process information and solve problems. When young people undertake a cognitive task, the part of the brain they activate tends to be "highly localize." Older people draw upon a broader spectrum of cognitive facilities when approaching the same task.

The researchers—who probably wish they were still young, so they could be doing something  more fun than looking at brain scans—have come up with a perversely inaccurate acronym for this phenomenon: HAROLD. This stands for "hemispheric asymmetry reduction in older adults." According to the article, most researchers agree this phenomenon represents "a general reorganization and weakening of the brain’s function with age."

Weakening? I'm afraid it represents nothing of the kind. Unless it can be established scientifically that the solution arrived at most rapidly, and using the least amount of brainpower, is invariably the best, which I doubt. I think it's more often the other way around. Young people tend to have plenty of energy, but they often mistake their own infinitesimal corner of the world for the world itself, and as a result, they make snap judgments that often prove to be inaccurate and can sometimes be personally harmful.

Older people, tempered and enlightened by years of experiences, are much better at seeing the connections between things, reserving judgment, pondering alternatives. Due to these qualities--which, prior to the age of acronyms, went collectively under the name "maturity"--older men and women often become adept at charting a safe, effective, creative, and reliable course between A and B.

Rather than burdening older folks with yet another dreadful syndrome, HAROLD, researchers ought to be studying, and celebrating,  HEART—this is, Hemispheric Equilibrium and Reflective Temper.

(And by the way, have you notice how this gray weather has been bringing out the muted brilliance in the multicolored leaves, especially when a bit of sunlight makes them glisten with moisture?)

On the methodological level, the study once again reminds us that it isn't easy to design experiments involving the complex tasks that people typically have to deal with, where one of the options might be wait, or to ignore the task altogether.

I've become adept at such delayed responses. For example, a few weeks ago the "check engine" lit up on the dash of our 2015 Corolla. Our go-to mechanic tracked it down to an aging carbon canister, and proposed a $700 replacement. "You don't really have to do it," he told me, "if you don't mind looking at that light."

The "occulus" in the new Vesterheim visitors' center.

We pondered the expense all the way to Lanesboro, and on to Decorah, Iowa, to see the new visitors' center at the Vesterheim Museum. On the way back, somewhere near Zumbrota, the light went out. It stayed out. Problem solved. (For now.) 

Meanwhile, it may also be worth pointing out that the brain does lots of things besides solving problems. The "hemispheric asymmetry reduction" that the researchers refer to as a defect might be just the thing that many of us are looking for. Books appear almost daily giving us advice as to how to find serenity and inner peace. Centuries ago Spinoza and Marcus Aurelius followed the same track. It's matter of learning how to see the world, and our place in it, as an ensemble of more or less harmonious elements rather than the interminable series of crises that the purveyors of news are so good at describing hourly.

But there is one thing to avoid: it would be a mistake to become too adept at counterbalancing this and that, adjusting to every situation, putting things off, staying "in the moment," while slowly sinking into a quietistic stupor.

On some occasions, there really is something wrong with the car. And there are always more than a few things wrong with the world.         

Rain Taxi Book Festival 2023

I dropped in at the Twin Cities Book Festival once again the other day, where you never know what books you'll discover, what old friends you'll run into, or what new friends you'll make. The day is usually cold and blustery, making the two-block walk up the hill to the event refreshing, and this year was no exception. As I approached, the smell of mini-donuts filled the air—a pleasantly bitter-sweet reminder that we hadn't gone to the State Fair this year.

The Nodin Press booth no longer occupied its prime position by the front door, due to an administrative mix-up, but it was only one row down, still next to the main aisle. It was perhaps a better location: just as prominent as usual but less exposed to the elements. I said hi to Norton and poet Sharon Chmielarz, who was there to sign copies of her new book, Duet in the Little Blue Church, and promised to be back soon.

A few booths down I spotted a new novel by Will Weaver, Power and Light, on the Holy Cow Press table. "One of my favorite books," I told the rep standing there, "is Weaver's The Last Deer Hunter. I'm not a deer hunter myself," I hastened to add. "Then again, neither is he."

"What? Did someone say my name?" came a voice from down the way. It was Will himself.

"I was just conveying my appreciation for The Last Deer Hunter," I said. "It's got the farm, back-woods, and out-state urban flavor, but also Santa Cruz. I'll never forget the scene where you bring your girlfriend from Madison home to meet your parents, and wonder what she'll think of all the frozen fox carcasses in the barn. Hilarious."

"Thank you," he said with a smile. "Though the book is called The Last Hunter."

"My wife and I travel around the state a lot, and a few years ago we took a turn through your neck of the woods: the Smoky Hills. There's not a whole lot there."

"It's subtle," he said with a laugh. "Very subtle."

Turning back toward the Nodin booth, I ran into a young woman I vaguely recognized. "I think you're one of the famous authors that will be reading today," I said. "But I don't remember your name."

"I wouldn't say famous," she laughed. "I'm Kathleen Rooney. From Chicago. Right now I'm looking for that Robert Bly book. Oh, there it is.  I love Bly."

I couldn't resist mentioning that I'd edited and designed that book."

"Well, I reviewed it for Laurie Hertzel."

"Thanks very much. Laurie had a great book page, don't you think?"

So we talked about Laurie, and I mentioned that I'd reviewed a few books for the Star Tribune back in the Dave Wood era. (Kathleen was probably an infant then.) But Laurie knew a lot of book reviewers,  and drew from a far wider pool. 

I mentioned that I'd also reviewed quite a few books for the Rain Taxi Review. While we were discussing the virtues of that publication and the ways that Rain Taxi keeps the local book scene bubbling, Kathleen spotted Norton's bushel basket of crabapples, and that got her going on some of the orchards just east of Madison, WI, where they've succeeding in bringing back some heirloom species.

"I'm sure you know that the U of M is a sort of apple breeding capital," I said. "Haralson, Fireside, Honey Crisp."

"Yeah, well, that's not quite the same thing." True enough.

And I'm thinking now, isn't this what the book fest is all about? Individual authors and regional proprietors? Niche audiences? Intimate associations?

It's been quite a while since I met such a disarmingly friendly young person, who actually seemed eager to chat. I looked Kathleen  up online when I got home, and was introduced to the astonishing array of her literary endeavors  as both author and publisher. Yet she never mentioned any of them.

My next stop was the used book stall in the far corner of the building, where books were arranged at random in a few broad categories: fiction, biography. non-fiction, poetry, art, travel. I glanced at a few titles as space between browsers permitted. On the "non-fiction" table, which was relatively open, I came upon a weighty hardcover volume titled Bach's Musical Universe by Christoph Wolff, Harvard professor and former director of the Bach Archive in Leipzig. It looks a little technical—not a book to read cover to cover, perhaps—but I'm pretty sure he'll offer enlightenment about any particular piece I want to find out about. What? Only $5.

Less than a minute later I hit upon a paperback edition of The Size of Thoughts by Nicholson Baker. Essays. The pages were yellow, but the title was intriguing. And it was only $1. Why not?

But I drew the line at a $2 copy of Kenneth Rexroth's autobiography. I knew of the book, but had never seen a copy before. But the type was SO SMALL. I knew I'd never read it.

One very long table was devoted to LPs. The dust jackets looked ragged, the artists stale. Who cares about Cream or the Turtles these days, much less Peter Frampton or Styx?  "Where are the CDs?" I asked the nearest Rain Taxi volunteer.

"We don't do CDs," he said dismissively. "But next year we'll have cassettes." Are you joking?

Wandering the aisles, I spent some time chatting with Bookmobile prepress guru Sean Nickerbocker about his printing strategy for the series of graphic novels he's been publishing. And in the next aisle, I reintroduced myself to Carla Lomax, with whom I worked on the newsletter of the Professional Editor's Network many years ago. I passed junior colleges promoting their writing programs, individual authors hawking their self-published books, university presses where the books were lined up in a row between bookends (as if they didn't really want you to look at them), library organizations, and used book stores.

In one aisle I stopped to chat with a gentleman tending a booth for St Paul's East Side Freedom Library. By coincidence, I  had looked up the location of this branch just a few days earlier because some local poets had been scheduled to do a reading there.

I told the man that I knew almost nothing about the East Side, though I'd been up and down Arcade a few times as a youth on my way into St. Paul, before the freeways were built. He told me a bit about the neighborhood's immigrant heritage. What I learned just now, a few minutes ago, online , is that the East Side Freedom Library isn't part of the city system. Though it's located in what looks to be a beautiful Carnegie library building, it's an independent institution dedicated to labor history.  

 Among the most pleasant encounters I had, naturally, were with Rick Johnston, Richard Stegal, and Annie Klessig, old friends from Bookmen days. We used to chat often at the warehouse when business was slow, and occasionally at a happy hour after work. Here we were, striking up the same humorous banter as if it were thirty years ago.  It was a rare treat.

Back at the Nodin Press both I sat with Sharon while Norton went off to get some lunch. We chatted while she signed a few copies of her new book, Duet in the Little Blue Church, for fans and strangers. I mentioned that I'd been talking with a man from the Freedom Library. "I love that library," she said. "Such lofty windows. That man was poet Clarence White."

The festival also sponsors author appearances throughout the day. I was intrigued by the morning's opening event, which featured Josh Cook, author of The Art of Libromancy: On Selling Books and Reading Books in the Twenty-First Century. Cook, a youngish used book dealer from Cambridge, Mass, would certainly have had some interesting things to say about the future of the book trade. But consulting the online catalog of the Hennepin County Library before the fest, I noticed that a copy of his book was available, and I placed a hold. It will arrive in a few days, and I can ponder his theories at my leisure. (Stay tuned.)

By the time I left the morning had warmed, but not much. Yet I had been warmed in all kinds of ways. I don't think anyone bought any of my books, but little matter. Though when one visitor to the Nodin booth approached our cigar box checkout table with a copy of Jim Gilbert's beautiful Minnesota State of Beauty under his arm, I couldn't resist mentioning that I'd designed that book and taken more than a few of the photos.

"Really?" he said. "Would you sign it for me?"

"Surely you're joking?" I said.

"Not at all. Please sign it 'to Ted.'"

 

Schubert Club Gems - Ah, Human Voices

The British a capella vocal group Stile Antico came to town Tuesday night to present a program devoted to the music of the Renaissance English composer William Byrd on the 400th anniversary of his death. This group has been making waves for a good long time now, though I'd never heard of them until they appeared on the Schubert Club Mix schedule a few months ago. 

My tendency is to lump Byrd in with Thomas Tallis, John Dowland, and Orlando Gibbons as agreeable composers of mostly rich, somber, and ecclesiastical music from the era when "standard" chord progressions did not yet exist. The musical lines, so I thought, tended to fold back upon themselves in peculiar ways, in ever-shifting cadences, all within a narrow range of intervals, rather than marking out an exposition, a secondary theme, a variation or two, a return, a coda, and a finale.

The pieces in Stile Antico's program confirmed that assessment. Which is not to say they were bad. On the contrary. It was as if we had entered a musical world based on an entirely different set of suppositions, the result being less like narrative adventures suitable for a Buster Keaton movie and more like ever-changing waves of sound, with voices rising and falling, appearing and disappearing, and harmonies squeezing into odd shapes as the individual voices followed their distinctive paths.

The textbook term for this musical approach is "polyphony," as we were reminded during the "pub quiz" during intermission,  but it's worth pointing out, I think, that the polyphony of the Renaissance is far more peculiar than that of the Baroque. (The harmonic patterns of Machaut and Dufay, from an earlier period,  are stranger still. ) Bach later made use of the same approach, and arguably brought it to an unparalleled expressive peak, but his works have far fewer of those bizarre harmonies and surprising cadences than do the works of Byrd and his contemporaries. Bach's music always seems to be going somewhere. Byrd's often seems to say, "Let's turn back and relish what we've already got." And more than occasionally they get caught up in harmonic eddies and backwaters offering no obvious means of escape. Yet escape they do.

Such theoretical niceties are difficult to discuss, and I suspect I've made a hash of it here. Which may explain why the interpretive material in the Schubert Club program and the review in the Star Tribune a few days later focused less on the musical elements of the performance than on the challenges Byrd faced as a practicing Catholic in the protestant court of Queen Elizabeth I.   

We left the Landmark Center enriched and subdued. I'm sure I'll never hear Byrd sung better—though I think back fondly to a performance of the Concert of Music with Emma Kirky in the basement of a church in Edinburgh, circa 1983.

But I think the stuff they were singing was Italian. 

Two days later we were back at the Landmark Center in St. Paul to hear a free courtroom recital by mezzo-soprano Clara Osowski and pianist Ahmed Anzaldúa in a program featuring Brahms, Catalan composer and pianist Federico Mompou, and several local composers. Clara is one of our favorites, and I was also looking forward to the crisp sound of a piano, after all those gorgeous waves of Renaissance vocal shape-shifting. The performance did not disappoint.

To my ear the Mompou pieces were the best of the lot. They had just the right amount of strange modernist digression in the piano line, and the lyrics were sheer poetry, though a bit over the top:

Above you are only the flowers.

They were like a white offering:

The light that they shone on your body

will never again belong to the branch.

An entire life of perfume

with their kiss was given to you.

You were radiant in the light,

treasured by your closed eyes.

That I could have been the flower’s sigh!

Given myself, like a lily, to you, that my life

might wither over your breast.

And never again to know the night,

that from your side has vanished.

The texts chosen by the other composers concerned themselves with red-winged blackbirds, a feather, and rabbits. Several of the poets involved were in the room, and MC Abbie Betinis invited them up to discuss their work, which is often difficult for a poet to do. But little matter. Clara's rich, soaring vocals held our attention in any case, and in the context of these fresh, modern works, the three Brahms pieces at the end of the program sounded tuneful and harmonically straightforward, almost like folk songs.

On our way back to Minneapolis we stopped in at Gai Noi, a new Laotian restaurant facing Loring Park that's been getting a lot of press. By an utterly strange coincidence—we don't eat out much—we had already been to chef Ann Ahmed's two other restaurants, Lat 14 and Khaluna. Here the food is just as good (or almost) and both the prices and the tipping practices are more reasonable.

Our waiter was a boy wonder: attentive, articulate, knowledgeable, and gracious. The afternoon was gray, and looking out from our table at the window, I almost got the impression it was going to snow. 

We don't get down to Loring Park much these days, and it was a pleasure simply to walk past the gardens on the way to our car, watching a flock of white pigeons swooping back and forth amid the trees.