My son is doing a paper for an English class and typical of students aiming towards Engineering, finding he doesn't have (or thinks he doesn't have) the right sort of mind to analyze a poem.
"There's really nothing there," he says. "Just the poem, and a bunch of people giving their opinions on it. Nothing definite."
Math and physics are definite. This is what makes them easier to do. But college also teaches us to write about things we will never understand. And so he is writing about Frost's "The Road Not Taken." It's a lovely poem, simple of imagery and rhythm and rhyme, and as a well for pondering, bottomless. I'm reading it so I can better proofread his paper later. I enjoy reading it. Rhyme and rhythm assist the mind in framing concepts. Freeform poetry also has its place, but honestly, a lot of freeform poetry is little more than offhand prose written by a lazy poet.
My simple take? Choices are choices. We always have roads not taken. Once done, our sigh may be of regret or relief, but the choice itself cannot be wrong. It's the choice we make and that makes it right. What we do on the road now chosen, how we seize it and make the most of it, is what makes all the difference.
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 01, 2009
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Cabeza
Recently somewhere else I said I needed to quit the online life. There are good reasons for that. Very good reasons. Maybe someday I'll write a blog post about it.
Not today. The online world is still good for a few things. Yesterday afternoon as I ambled slowly back to the office after being dismissed from jury duty -- I was dismissed for good reason, and ambled very slowly -- I stopped at Borders and browsed History and found a book that told me about the amazing adventure of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The early years of European exploration of the outer world are fascinating, not least for the aura of magic and wonder that surrounds every account. This one attracted me not only on its own merits but the time and place provide for a fanciful connection with an idea I've been percolating for some time in the way of historical fiction. Wanting to know more, I looked him up today on the web, and found someone made a movie. Reading a review of the movie, it's fairly clear that my standards for accuracy in historical fiction are ridiculously high. I'll keep to them anyway.
This was supposed to show that the online world is still good for something. It does not. All of this would be more effectively pursued with pencil and notepad at the library. All right then. Adios. And yes, up top, that was an attempt at humor.
Not today. The online world is still good for a few things. Yesterday afternoon as I ambled slowly back to the office after being dismissed from jury duty -- I was dismissed for good reason, and ambled very slowly -- I stopped at Borders and browsed History and found a book that told me about the amazing adventure of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca. The early years of European exploration of the outer world are fascinating, not least for the aura of magic and wonder that surrounds every account. This one attracted me not only on its own merits but the time and place provide for a fanciful connection with an idea I've been percolating for some time in the way of historical fiction. Wanting to know more, I looked him up today on the web, and found someone made a movie. Reading a review of the movie, it's fairly clear that my standards for accuracy in historical fiction are ridiculously high. I'll keep to them anyway.
This was supposed to show that the online world is still good for something. It does not. All of this would be more effectively pursued with pencil and notepad at the library. All right then. Adios. And yes, up top, that was an attempt at humor.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Can't Believe I Haven't Read It Yet
Here's a synopsis:
For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.Name that book! (Hint: A survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated it as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.)
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
Casino Royale
I don’t have to tell you what sort of icon James Bond has become. International adventure, sex, bad humor, fast cars, gadgetry -- ever since Ursula Andress came dripping out of the surf in the first major film and the bad guy got the point. The movies were always entertaining, but got steadily more ridiculous from there.
I’ve always been fascinated with the real Bond, the original, as told in the novels and short stories written by Ian Fleming. After watching the most recent movie on DVD, Casino Royale, I was curious to see how closely it followed the book. I read it years ago. Times have changed, I’ve changed – it was time to read it again.
It is Fleming’s first novel, written in 1952 when he had no idea if the effort would pay off. Often I’m much more interested in an author’s early work, produced before his imagination is spoiled by success. My copy is a Signet paperback, fifty cents new, printed in 1964 after Fleming’s death but before his last novel, which “will be published in the spring of 1965.” I got it used about thirty years ago, at Holmes Books down in Oakland, a wonderful old store piled with old books moldering away in the grimy windows’ dim daylight.
The best thing about reading old Bond books, beyond the writing itself, is the necessity to disconnect this James Bond from the caricature that has developed since the 1960s. The real James Bond was a World War II vet, a naval commander with some experience in behind-the-lines espionage, not too far removed from Fleming himself. Going only from this book, I’d say he was born somewhat before 1920 – this because he bought his first car in 1933, a slightly-used supercharged Bentley (analogous perhaps to a modern Bond starting out with, say, a 1985 Rover Vitesse), and he must have been at the least a precocious teenager by then. Thus for the book he’s in his early to mid thirties and has had the unfortunate experience of having had to kill a couple of men late in the war – thus the double-oh distinction. He was not chosen for the assignment because of his mad secret agent skilz and ability to slaughter a dozen bad guys while seducing countesses and straightening his tie. He was chosen because he was known to be a good and serious gambler, especially at cards, and a gambler was what the assignment called for.
I love the simplicity and the absurdity of this story. Le Chiffre was a stateless man, one of many thousands wandering about Europe in those days, whose country of origin either no longer existed or was simply deemed irrelevant by those who took post-war chaos as an opportunity to reinvent themselves. His earliest known address was Dachau, June, 1945. His role was as paymaster to a communist organization in control of various French labor unions. He invested Soviet money into a chain of brothels and lost his ass when the French upgraded their blue laws. In a bid to recoup his employers’ losses and save his own neck, he sets up a high-stakes game of baccarat at Casino Royale on the French coast. It’s Bond’s job to beat him.
This Bond has no gadgets; there is no Q Branch presided over by a doddering über-engineer. He has only his small Beretta .25 under his arm. Vesper Lynd does not start out as some winking Bond Girl but is a bureaucratic fellow employee who grows on him naturally. In other words, they don't immediately like each other, but after a bit of personal sparring he admits to himself he wants to get her into bed -- as any self-respecting reader in the golden age of men’s adventure magazines would expect. In time he actually falls in love with her and decides to quit the service and marry her.
This plan falls through.
Meanwhile, Le Chiffre and his two henchmen, their rickety old Peugeot, the ill-kept rental house where Bond is tortured (just as in the recent movie), are all decidedly and unpretentiously low-tech. The only honest gadget in the entire book, apart from a botched bomb plot early on, is a cane gun such as you used to be able to buy in any novelty firearms shop. There isn’t even any cheating at cards -- Orson Wells and his x-ray specs are not to be found.
Like old movies, old books are time machines. I love my Bond trips into the 1950s. I’d love to see a period movie based strictly on one of the original novels. It would be so very back to basics. For all its half century of updating, the recent film follows the book reasonably well, and this is a major reason why it is one of the best of the James Bond movies.
* * *
I was at work trying to organize my crap when I found this little essay, written several months ago. I had an intent to say more about the Bond character and illustrate it with some juicy quotes. But in retrospect that would be superfluous, so here and done. Now to go organize more of my crap.
I’ve always been fascinated with the real Bond, the original, as told in the novels and short stories written by Ian Fleming. After watching the most recent movie on DVD, Casino Royale, I was curious to see how closely it followed the book. I read it years ago. Times have changed, I’ve changed – it was time to read it again.
It is Fleming’s first novel, written in 1952 when he had no idea if the effort would pay off. Often I’m much more interested in an author’s early work, produced before his imagination is spoiled by success. My copy is a Signet paperback, fifty cents new, printed in 1964 after Fleming’s death but before his last novel, which “will be published in the spring of 1965.” I got it used about thirty years ago, at Holmes Books down in Oakland, a wonderful old store piled with old books moldering away in the grimy windows’ dim daylight.
The best thing about reading old Bond books, beyond the writing itself, is the necessity to disconnect this James Bond from the caricature that has developed since the 1960s. The real James Bond was a World War II vet, a naval commander with some experience in behind-the-lines espionage, not too far removed from Fleming himself. Going only from this book, I’d say he was born somewhat before 1920 – this because he bought his first car in 1933, a slightly-used supercharged Bentley (analogous perhaps to a modern Bond starting out with, say, a 1985 Rover Vitesse), and he must have been at the least a precocious teenager by then. Thus for the book he’s in his early to mid thirties and has had the unfortunate experience of having had to kill a couple of men late in the war – thus the double-oh distinction. He was not chosen for the assignment because of his mad secret agent skilz and ability to slaughter a dozen bad guys while seducing countesses and straightening his tie. He was chosen because he was known to be a good and serious gambler, especially at cards, and a gambler was what the assignment called for.
I love the simplicity and the absurdity of this story. Le Chiffre was a stateless man, one of many thousands wandering about Europe in those days, whose country of origin either no longer existed or was simply deemed irrelevant by those who took post-war chaos as an opportunity to reinvent themselves. His earliest known address was Dachau, June, 1945. His role was as paymaster to a communist organization in control of various French labor unions. He invested Soviet money into a chain of brothels and lost his ass when the French upgraded their blue laws. In a bid to recoup his employers’ losses and save his own neck, he sets up a high-stakes game of baccarat at Casino Royale on the French coast. It’s Bond’s job to beat him.
This Bond has no gadgets; there is no Q Branch presided over by a doddering über-engineer. He has only his small Beretta .25 under his arm. Vesper Lynd does not start out as some winking Bond Girl but is a bureaucratic fellow employee who grows on him naturally. In other words, they don't immediately like each other, but after a bit of personal sparring he admits to himself he wants to get her into bed -- as any self-respecting reader in the golden age of men’s adventure magazines would expect. In time he actually falls in love with her and decides to quit the service and marry her.
This plan falls through.
Meanwhile, Le Chiffre and his two henchmen, their rickety old Peugeot, the ill-kept rental house where Bond is tortured (just as in the recent movie), are all decidedly and unpretentiously low-tech. The only honest gadget in the entire book, apart from a botched bomb plot early on, is a cane gun such as you used to be able to buy in any novelty firearms shop. There isn’t even any cheating at cards -- Orson Wells and his x-ray specs are not to be found.
Like old movies, old books are time machines. I love my Bond trips into the 1950s. I’d love to see a period movie based strictly on one of the original novels. It would be so very back to basics. For all its half century of updating, the recent film follows the book reasonably well, and this is a major reason why it is one of the best of the James Bond movies.
* * *
I was at work trying to organize my crap when I found this little essay, written several months ago. I had an intent to say more about the Bond character and illustrate it with some juicy quotes. But in retrospect that would be superfluous, so here and done. Now to go organize more of my crap.
