Platypus of Truth

My wife and I noticed while watching a BBC production of Jane Eyre from the 1970s that Rochester consistantly calls Miss Ingram "Dona Biancha."  Now, this makes sense since her name is Blanche and the French "blanche" in English is "white."  So transposed into Italian we get "Dona Biancha" or "Lady White."  However, in English folklore a "white lady:" is a common ghost in old castles or mansions.  Thornfield does in fact boast a "white lady," though Mrs. Fairfax tells Jane that she's never heard of the house being haunted.  That "white lady" is the very tangible Bertha Mason.  This point highlights a close resemblance between Blanche and Bertha.  Both are haughty, imperious, locally renowned for their beauty, olive-skinned, and drawn to Rochester.  We might say that in choosing Blanche to make Jane jealous, Rochester is also acting out for her a rejection of his first wife as she was in her prime.  It ...

Poor Quintus of Smyrna Is a scripta minora Because all he wrote Is only a footnote (To Homer)  After finishing The Iliad , my wife and I weren't quite ready to quite the plains of windswept Troy.  The problem, of course, is that Homer is only interested in narrating a small section of the ten-year conflict.  Granted, much that came before and much that comes after the few days he narrates is included in the poem, but there is a still greater amount of material that Homer either excludes as not pertinent to his story or simply assumes that the audience knows and so only alludes to in the text.  Enter Quintus of Smyrna and his Posthomerica . The Posthomerica is a late and minor work that attempts to arrange in narrative form material covering the resumption of the conflict after Hector's burial to the homecomings (nostoi) of which The Odyssey is the most memorable.  As I said, it is a minor work of considerably less skill and power than The Iliad . ...

This post will cover chapters 6 and 7 of The Elf Queen of Shannara by Terry Brooks. *Begin Spoilers* Our adventure continues with our intrepid heroes slashing their way into the heart of the mysterious jungle of Morrowindl.  Beset on all sides by strange beasts, fever-ridden swamps, and pursued by the horrific Wistron, Wren struggles to unlock the terrifying mystery of the elven island in secret hope that it will also unravel the enigma of her own origins.  However, such an undertaking seems beyond even the prodigious skills of Wren and her faithful retainer Garth, Rovers though they be.  Surely, they would have succumb to the danger of the In Ju swamp had not a fortuitous meeting with a splinterscat named Stressa given them a much needed guide.  This prickly product of magical mayhem offers to guide them through to the elven castle on the condition that our heroes return with the mysterious creature to the Four Lands. And that's about the shape of it. ...

Today's post will cover chapters 4 and 5 of Terry Brooks' The Elf Queen of Shannara . *Spoiler Stuff* Five chapters in, and I think I know what genre Brooks is channeling this time.  From the odd blend of High Fantasy and Science Fiction that is The Druid of Shannara , we've now landed in the world of Turn-of-the-Century Pulp.  Wren is the dazzling young heiress with her mysterious legacy, Garth her taciturn and faithful retainer, and Tyger Ty (I do have to confess that the name makes me wince whenever I read it) the gruff old flying ace who gets them there.  I'm seeing shades of H.R. Haggard all over this stuff.  We've even got the mysterious jungle island where prior adventurers have disappeared.  Now that I've got a better feel for what Brooks is doing, I hope I can get more into sympathy with the work.  We've also made it to the beach of Morrowindl now, so the main plot ought to start picking up.  Maybe the next fifty pages will be a bit more...

Last night, my wife and I were able to sit down and watch Studio Ghibli's The Secret World of Arrietty , a film based on the Borrowers series by English writer Mary Norton.  I've never read the books (miseducated, I know), so I can't say how faithful an adaptation it is, but the film more than stands on its own merits.  Like all Studio Ghibli films, The Secret World of Arrietty combines strong, simple storytelling with incredibly lush and imaginative animation (there are moments when the color and detail in the film are almost painful).  The animation is worth the price of a rental (or a netflix slot) alone, but the story also is well worth the time being enchanting, heart-felt, and delightfully free of the irony and self-consciousness that permeates American film.  Speaking of culture, The Secret World of Arrietty does a wonderful job of synthesizing the British world of the book with the Japanese world of Studio Ghibli.  The story, the visuals, and the sou...

This post will cover chapters two and three of Terry Brooks' Elf Queen of Shannara . *Spoiler Warning* When you grow up in the North East and rarely travel outside it, there are things you're going to miss.  I don't know what I imagined the Blue Divide to look like back in Jr. High, but it's now obvious to me (having lived there) that the coastline he's describing is that of Southern California.  This doesn't disappoint me, rather it helps to establish a richer picture of the setting.  I haven't been to Hawaii, so maybe my vision of Morrowindle will be correspondingly impoverished. In other news, I find it hard to make the switch from The Druid of Shannara to The Elf Queen of Shannara .  The sudden change in tone -getting dropped back into serial adventure land- jars after the more complex world of the previous book.  The writing is still smooth and the characters are lively, but there's a feeling that something missing, that we've passed bac...

Interesting article here composed of three short essays by three Christian Historians reflecting on the nature of the historical discipline. 

The shield of Achilles, I believe, gives us the Homeric worldview in microcosm.  The shield is first an image of the Homeric cosmos with its round plate symbolizing the earth bounded by the ocean (the waters below) and the stars (the waters above).  Upon this miniature cosmos, the drama of human life plays out in a series of ordered and unordered conflicts: man against man, and man against nature.  In the scene with the law court, we see ordered conflict of man against man, with due process and restraining an argument that might otherwise turn murderous.  Notice also that the struggle is not just between the two bringing the suit, but also between the judges who strive to win the prize for the "straightest" judgement.  The final image of the dancers also has the aura of a competition as only the most beautiful are allowed to compete and the men dance with daggers at their sides.  The companion image is of men in unordered conflict as shown by the image of...

This post will begin a series of reflections on The Elf Queen of Shannara by Terry Brooks.  Each reflection post will follow a reading session and attempt to record my thoughts and feelings on what I have just read.  I hope that this will allow me to give greater attention to detail in reviewing the book as well as producing a record of the effects of certain passages "as read" without time for further knowledge of the plot (where possible, I did read these back in Jr. High) to interfere.  I have thus far pursued this tactic with The Elfstones of Shannara , The Wishsong of Shannara , The Scions of Shannara , and The Druid of Shannara .  The overall goals of this project are to gain insight into the process of authorial growth and hone my skills as a literary critic by studying a simple and popular set of books by a bestselling author with a long publishing history.  I claim nothing more than amateur status in either of these pursuits. *Spoiler Material Ahead...

Today's post will sum up my read-through of Terry Brooks' The Druid of Shannara .  As this is the "final thoughts" post, I will try to focus on the merit of the work as a whole rather than simply evaluate the last portion of the story. *Massive Spoiler Effect* At the time of its writing, I believe The Druid of Shannara was the most complex and polished book in the series.  It is the first novel in which we get a sense that the Four Lands has its own cosmology and created order.  It is also the first novel to feature a cast of older and more mature characters.  Finally, The Druid of Shannara makes the leap from pacing driven novel to one driven by tone. Terry Brooks never set out to create a "thick" world full of Tolkienesque depth and detail.  Nevertheless, since 1977 his sheer output has forced him to create one.  The novels of the Heritage Series come with almost two-thousand pages of pre-made history by way of the original Shannara Trilogy....

Throughout the Iliad, Homer invokes the aid of the muses to help him to recall and tell all the splendid deeds of Trojans and Achaians before the walls of wind-swept Troy.  The most moving of these comes early on where the bard declares: And now, O Muses, dwellers in the mansions of Olympus, tell me- for you are goddesses and are in all places so that you see all things, while we know nothing but the report... (Book II Samuel Butler Trans.).  The sense of loss and futility is almost palpable.  Here we are reminded that the Greeks constituted themselves as a culture of forgetting; that memory is something that belongs to the gods while mere rumor belongs to men.  Elsewhere, Glaukos tells Diomedes that his genealogy is irrelevant since the generations of the sons of men are no more than leaves blown away by an Autumn wind.  The great fear that Achilles wrestles with is one of memory: is it worth a life of pain and an early death in order to be remembered? This ...

Having finished Jane Eyre and watched to 2011 film, my wife and I have moved on to Homer's Iliad .  We're using the Fitzgerald translation this time (sorry Fagles) and are about half way through the book.  My wife hasn't read the Iliad since college and I haven't read it in three years so the story feels nice and fresh.  Homer was also meant to be spoken, so we're also enjoying the chance to experience the story as an oral performance.  We haven't put together any graduate thesis abstracts yet, but we did come across a couple things that I thought I'd share: 1. Diomedes is the foil for Achilles.  Watch Diomedes closely the next time you read through.  He performs prodigies, but always backs away when the gods put their foot down.  He's scrupulous in obeying the immortals and knows how to take and give flack to his superiors, particularly Agamemnon.  You'll also find him actively seeking out and learning from the older men, particularly Odysseu...

Well folks, we're nearing the end of the book and today's post carries us all the way to chapter 26.  I don't know what that will mean for the rest of the Heritage Series.  There should be time for at least one more volume.  Once the school year starts up again, I may have to abbreviate my review of The Talismans of Shannara into a post or two.  Congratulations to all of you who have stuck with this odyssey thus far.  Remember, if the day to day report gets to be too much, you can always skip to the "Final Thoughts On ..." post to get the gist of my take on the book.  Without further ado, then, let's dive in. *Spoiler Reminder* Let's begin with the Wren episode.  With the brief return of Garth and Wren, we get a little more fast paced intrigue and action.  I think Brooks did include this chapter here to give a tonal and emotional break from Eldwist on the chance that it might be burning his audience out.  That seems like a gamble as th...

Jess over at Homemaking Through the Church Year has some interesting thoughts on the U.S.'s current zombie fad from a Christian perspective.  I hope she will follow this post up with more of the same!  If that peaks your interest, follow the link here .

Another brief post today bringing us up to the beginning of chapter 22. *Spoilers* Much of novel writing is the art of taking characters and putting them in situations that push them to the breaking point.  When the cast is an ensemble, this also means pushing the company to its limits as well.  The Fellowship of the Ring ends with "The Breaking of the Fellowship."  In the stone city of Eldwist, Terry Brooks pushes his own "little company" to its limits leading to a lesser "breaking of the fellowship."  Having sundered his company into three groups (Pe Ell, Morgan/Dees, Quickening/Walker/Carisman), Brooks then makes the interesting decision to break away from his sundered fellowship and take up the story of Wren Ohmsford. Wren is the odd man out through the first two books getting (I think) only four chapters to herself.  It's ok, she's an interesting and easy-going enough character to put on the back burner for a while.  The threat, however...

This will be a brief note today, but I've had some break-throughs in my thinking about Terry Brook's The Druid of Shannara , and I wanted to commit them to writing.  Today's post will only cover up to the end of book 19. *spoilers* Tone.  It all comes down to tone.  In prior Brooks novels, it is the pacing that drives the book.  Mistakes can be forgiven because episode follows episode in such a flood of action and intrigue that the reader doesn't have time to set the book down.  This is the old way of it, and masters of the pulp genre like Burroughs, Moorcock, and Zelazny, all used it to great effect (though they certainly knew the necessity of tone as well!).  With The Druid of Shannara , however, Brooks makes the break-through of holding the reader's attention by virtue of tone.  There's a delicious rainy-day melancholy to The Druid of Shannara that keeps you reading even though there's very little action compared to the earlier works.  T...

There's something transfiguring about rain.  It changes all the colors, mutes the sounds, slows our pace, turns our reflections inward.  Rain shows us things we've missed before: they were there all the time, but the light wasn't right for seeing them. I went for a walk with my wife this morning in the public gardens.  Since it was wet and drizzly, we saw almost no one.  Those few we did see didn't linger.  They passed us and were gone.  By ourselves, then, we wandered as we pleased; watched a crawfish, followed butterflies, searched for lizards, looked out over the lake from the safety of a Japanese Tea House.  With the grey sky, all the colors were deep and rich.  The greens were almost iridescent. My grandfather was a gardener.  He worked with Gallic stubbornness in the rocky New England soil until he made it fruitful.  I remember when he visited us in California and stopped dumb-struck at the size of the neighbor's roses.  W...

Those of us who were book worms growing up know what it is to have literary role models.  I'm not talking about every geek who wants to be the next Tolkien (something I was fervently guilty of as a kid).  Instead, I mean that those who love to read as children often find themselves selecting characters that they wish they could be like; characters that show them one possible image of themselves.  The Magus Zoroaster, my dead child, / Met his own image walking in the garden. / That apparition, sole of men, he saw.   So, when I was in Jr. High, I always wished I could be like Walker Boh.  He was introverted, learned, intuitive, got to dress in black, loved nature, and was respected as a natural leader.  In short, he was a kind of cool that very awkward and uncool Jr. High me could envision being one day.  Nowadays, I dress in black, have a beard and both my arms.  Make of that what you will. Onto the review.  We're covering up through about h...

More great Tolkien musings from Herch over here .  This time, the subject is "mingling."  Follow the tag on the post for additional worthy musings on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien from Herch as well.

I'm thirteen years old, sitting in a car parked near a little cemetery in western Massachusetts.  It's Summer, and the trees are waving in the breeze, splashing light and shadow like water.  A man with peppery-gray hair and wiry frame, a seasoned, old-time Methodist lay-preacher (the kind that sang songs like they meant them and gave altar calls) taps on the window.  He's a guest speaker at the Methodist Summer Camp I've just been attending and he's heard that one of the rougher boys had given me a hard time.  As a teacher now, I know what that means from the adult side of the equation.  Back then, I'm just a kid with his nose stuck in a book.  I step out of the car and hear his apologies and answer his questions.  As a polite note, he asks what I'm reading.  I tell him it's The Scions of Shannara by Terry Brooks.  He nods and saunters off to speak with my mother.  I get back in the car and keep reading.  The leaves continue to spi...

The discipline of History, in the United States, fought for some time and with some vigor to be considered one of the sciences.  In the end, sociology got the coveted slot with its studies and quantifiable data and history was shoved firmly in the Humanities (stuff that isn't real and that we don't know why people get paid to study it since it's really just an elitist private hobby).  I'm told that in Germany, however, History has been firmly considered a "craft" in the "Humanities" since time immemorial.  Following the idea of history being a "craft" led me to think of the arts.  In music, the point is not to learn all the notes and thunk out endless renditions of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," but to be able to sit down and enjoy hearing Bach rolling out from your fingers.  Or take learning a language.  Is the purpose of learning Greek really to be able to rattle off declensions and puzzle through some Aesop, or to be able to...

We were visiting with the Game Guru and Co. for a few days so there hasn't been much time for reading.  However, I think I've gotten through enough material for another post.  This review, then, should take us from chapter 8 up through the beginning of chapter 12. *Stuff You Might Not Want To Know If You Haven't Read The Book* Let's carry the plot forward then. We've learned a little more about the fate of the two Ohmsford brothers.  Coll is a prisoner in Southwatch.  Rimmer Dall tells him this is for his protection as Par is a Shadowen and could hurt Coll if he doesn't learn to control his powers.  Coll, of course, plots his escape.  Par, meantime, eventually gets over his bought of insanity brought on by the belief that he killed his brother.  Damson does lots of reassuring and the Mole keeps things suitably Gothic.  Once Par comes back to his senses, he begins exploring the mysteries of the Sword of Shannara, but he can't figure out how ...

Chugging along in my efforts to keep up wit my degree (M.A. History), I've been working my way through a pile of books on Ancient Greece for over a year now.  Some of them are old favorites (Francois Hartog's Memories of Odysseus , The Cambridge Companion to Homer ), some have been new works by favorite authors (Robin Lane Fox's Travelling Heroes in the Epic Age of Homer ), and some have been completely new (Vassos Karageorghis' Early Cyprus ).  Then there's also that matter of learning to read Greek (we'll see how that goes).  Anyhow, all this study has opened my eyes to things I ought to have picked up earlier, or that maybe I had but was too busy to put into words.  Very few people are born researchers.   It usually takes decades to produce a real historian, and there's no reason to suppose that I'm any different.  In fact, the one admonition I received at Oxford that always stuck with me was "you need to take more time to think."  So here...