The Prairie - James Fenimore Cooper

"His dress was chiefly of skins, worn with the hair to the weather; a pouch and horn were suspended from his shoulder and he leaned on a rifle of uncommon length, but which, like its owner exhibited the wear of long and hard service."

I have returned, fell readers, and am now more master of one trade rather than merely jack of all. It has been a busy month but I am happy to say that I have successfully completed my M.A. degree at Cal State Long Beach. How does this affect you, you ask? Well now I have the time and motivation to consistently entertain you once again! So keep your eyeballs glued to your screen, keep your asses installed in your chairs, and don't touch that 'home' button!

I must apologize in advance for my over-excitement above since the text I will discuss today probably excites me as much as cold quiche. My introduction to James Fenimore Cooper took place in the context of two important influences: First I had been particularly familiar with Mark Twain's satiric essay "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses" and with my veneration of Twain's wit and narrative genius, I could not help but approach the novelist of the American frontier with some skepticism. Second I first read The Prairie in an American literature class that had just finished delving into the macabre hypnogogic psychology of E.A. Poe, an author whom most if not all will agree far outstrips the genius of the former.

The Prairie was an interesting choice for Dr. Desaegher to study in a survey course since it is the third and final installment in what is known as the Leatherstocking Series, Fenimore Cooper's trilogy surrounding the enigmatic and highly criticized grizzled white man Natty Bumppo. The novel itself is tragically aware of the popularity of this character and suffers terribly from what I call "The Leonard Nimoy Reveal."

Star Trek fans or pretty much anyone who knows who Spock is and has seen the most recent installment of the popular Sci-fi franchise will know what I mean. In an attempt to cross temporal boundaries and offer an alternative explanation for a different direction in the franchise J.J. Abrams managed to insert the old Spock, played by an aged Leonard Nimoy, into the film. In a moment of abject suspense undoubtedly designed to induce nerdgasm in overstimulated Trekkies the introduction of Old Spock was designed to prolong the moment between his entrance and the actual presentation of his instantly recognizable visage, at which point I'm sure most of the aforementioned Trekkies likely fainted in their seats. A similar moment occurs in the final episode of the X-files inspired show Fringe which reveals a mysterious character over the span of about thirty seconds of said character talking from the shadows before he is revealed to be portrayed by none other than Leonard Nimoy. Though this show was in no way connected to the Star Trek universe its audience is similar causing the significance of the character's revelation to be underscored by the cultural significance of the actor himself.

I include this illustration at length not to suggest that either film is faulty (since I like them both) but to show that posterity is likely negatively affected by such a temporal 'playing to the crowd.' Natty Bumppo is a character who had (despite Twain's distaste) excited and titillated the 18th century American audience and Fenimore Cooper, perhaps far too conscious of such an impact allows his narrative to make the same mistake that future generations of science fiction fans might find in Star Trek or Fringe. Though most Leatherstocking fans would be capable of assuming that the softspoken, wrinkled and aged rider in leather chaps was Natty Bumppo, Fenimore Cooper makes an overt effort to confirm the readers suspicions. Undoubtedly this technique would have been so very exciting to fans of the series but to a new reader with no context to the character and attempting to analyze the novel's literary value the technique makes the narrative hollow and contrived. No doubt it still chronicles a significant idealization of the American frontier but at the same time calling attention to just how idealized the concept had become.
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Fenimore Cooper, James. The Prairie. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.

The Master

As I'm sure you noticed, it has been longer than usual between posts. Though I would truly love to post soon, I just can't seem to find the time or motivation. There are two reasons for this:

1) The next time I post, I will have earned the title of 'Master.'...I guess not really, although it would undoubtedly fuel my ego if any of my readers called me that. In reality I have entered the last few weeks of M.A. classes, which means I am knee, nay, navel deep in studying and researching for both Comprehensive exams (the equivalent of a thesis) and final papers. At this very moment, in fact, I am procrastinating on finishing a particularly devilish annotated bibliography. Needless to say, I hope you will bear with me.

2) The next book on my shelf is James Fenimore Cooper's The Prairie... As I'm sure would be obvious to anyone familiar with the Leatherstocking Series, it is not a post that I have been overly eager to write...

The Canon

“The creator of Sir John Falstaff, of Hamlet, and of Rosalind also makes me wish I could be more myself. But that, as I argue throughout this book, is why we should read, and why we should read only the best of what has been written.” -Harold Bloom

As a student of English as well as an avid reader the issue of canon becomes very conflicted for me. This always seems to come up for me, at least internally, whenever I talk to...well, anyone outside of the academy about books. I can't remember how many times I've been talking to someone about some abstract idea and it comes up in the course of the conversation that a book they had read had been particularly insightful on the topic. The subsequent conversation goes something like this:
-Have you ever read [book] by [author]?
-No I haven't heard of it.
-Oh, you gotta read it. [author] talks all about [subject in context]. Its a great book. You would like it...

At this point in the conversation I have two options; 1) take the high road and tell the person that I will definitely look it up. I don't like being insincere but I don't want to burst their bubble since the topic is clearly exciting to them. 2) If I have the time and the listening ear of my audience I expound my philosophy on selecting books as outlined at length here:

When I was very young my grandmother set aside a set of old paperbacks for me that she had bought years before for my mother. The set fit perfectly inside of a plastic case, each book fitting evenly next to the other to form a complete collection. The set consisted of childhood classics like Black Beauty and Treasure Island, a set undoubtedly designed to introduce a young audience to what is termed generally 'Classic Literature.' I think one of the important aspects of this set (sadly lost, now) was that its construction attempted to collect the essential representatives of literature in one compact space, building, to me, an odd hierarchy of literature, as if there were a certain number of important books that one must read in order to be considered 'well-read.'

To a certain extent I will agree that there are certain books that are unanimously part of what we now call The Canon; we can't imagine American Literature without Mark Twain and we can't conceive of British Literature without Shakespeare. But it is 'everything else' that becomes difficult to define. My bookshelf represents one person's attempt at defining this thing called 'Canon' but it is something different to everyone. The same attempt is made by numerous book publishers, as can easily be seen in some of the supposedly 'complete' collections printed by Everyman's Library, Penguin Classics, and The Modern Library. New critical modes have even further eroded this concept of Canon with theories like New Historicism placing the legal records of an English burgh on par with The Second Shepherd's Play as literary artifacts. As a result we, as readers, have to learn to lower our noses when a supposedly non-literary person suggests a book since, who knows? It may just be important.

That said: If I will return to Harold Bloom's suggestion above that we should only read the best of what is written, I am forced to admit that literary texts do tend to form a sort of hierarchy and be it a result of Westernization or academic preference Shakespeare is on top and Marlowe will forever be in his shadow; Fenimore Cooper simply cannot live up to Twain's brand of Americana. Whenever I am placed in the awkward situation above I am subsequently forced to admit two things: the first silently, that I am very aware where the book being suggested is on the literary totem-pole, and the second out-loud, that with my particularly long list of books to read (many more of which are on Bloom's list merely as a factor of my chosen profession) I highly doubt that I'll ever have a moment to read a book about a drug-addict's recovery or the history of a 60's folk musician hangout (apologies to Taylor and John).

The Moonstone - Wilkie Collins

"In justification of the highly unprofessional sacrifice to mere curiosity which I thus made, permit me to remind anybody who may read these lines, that no living person (in England, at any rate) can claim to have had such an intimate connexion with the romance of the Indian Diamond as mine has been"

At first the lines above seem a little bit like the musings of Watson before recounting one of Holmes' great adventures. But this novel becomes somewhat awkward when we understand that these words are put in the mouth of the simple groundskeeper whom Collins has chosen to narrate his tale. But more on that in a moment.

The Moonstone is another one of those books on my shelf that has a good story attached to it. In my last two years of my undergraduate degree it was Victorian Literature much more than Medieval that had grasped my fancy. Motivated by the Gothic and Romantic vein of The Picture of Dorian Gray and Frankenstein I had developed a great affinity for the literature of England's most decadent and most depressing literary eras. Resultingly I developed quite a rapport with my department's Victorian specialist, a professor for whom I have a profound degree of respect for both her strong Feminist beliefs as well as the purposeful strictness with which she ran her classroom. Around graduation time it was customary for the English Department to hold a little luncheon which gave faculty and students a chance to mingle in a less formal setting as well as say their farewells. As is fitting for the English folk, most of these farewells were delivered in the forms of books. Tragically my professor was not present but she left this book in the care of our Department Chair to present at the luncheon. Accordingly it was the first book I read during my summer as an unemployed graduate...

If I were to describe the book in a single sentence I would say that I imagine this to be the result of Charlotte Bronte having read a great deal of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Moonstone takes place on an aristocratic estate and involves the mystery and intrigue surrounding the theft of a precious gem that had been stolen while a group of characters had been on a military tour in India. There is a love story intertwined and the cathartic death of the villain but the most significant aspect of the novel in my memory was its narrative mode.

The story was related in the first person by a man named Betteredge, a groundskeeper/butler to the estate on which the book is set and an unaccountable fanatic of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. It is his words which appear above. Now, I have read Robinson Crusoe and despite its supposed fame as one of the first modern English novels I cannot say much to the book's moral or aesthetic merit. Yet the narrator, this Betteredge, whenever events become confusing or difficult, rather than turn his eyes to some religious or philosophical text, somehow manages, within the context of his narration, glean insight from a tale about a man trapped on an island and describing every boring detail of his survival... Now if said butler had been reading Paradise Lost or The Divine Comedy I might understand but Defoe? I'm really not sure what Collins was thinking. The only thing I can imagine is that Crusoe maybe had some kind of contemporary cultural significance that is currently lost on me. But be that as it may, I can't say that this at all interferes with the book. Collins' novel is quite fun, slightly slow at parts and not as difficult a mystery as most of Doyle's work, but entertaining nonetheless and an undoubtedly interesting study in Victorian pop-literature.
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Collins, Wilkie. The Moonstone. New York: Barnes and Noble Classics, 2005.

Don Quixote - Miguel de Cervantes

"He so immersed himself in those romances that he spent whole days and nights over his books, and thus with little sleeping and much reading his brains dried up to such a degree that he lost the use of his reason"

I must preface this post by mentioning that I haven't actually read Don Quixote. Now before you all lambast me for writing about something that I haven't read let me remind you that English majors are professionals at that very thing. But really, despite the fact that I haven't read Don Quixote (I assure you, it is near the top of my 'when-I'm-done-with-my-masters' list) I am well aware of its literary impact and artistic significance. But first lets describe the books themselves.

I have two copies of Cervantes' master work. The first was a fantastic impulse buy from the wonderful Barnes and Noble imprint. This version is a huge, backpack-defying tome, worth it not only for its price but moreso because it includes those wonderful Gustave Dore engravings I've discussed before in this blog. This will likely be the book I'll read when I get around to it, despite the fact that if I read it in public I'll likely get the question readers of big books often get when reading such tomes: "Are you reading the Bible?" (Can anyone explain why 'large book' automatically means 'Bible' to so many people?).

The second version of Don Quixote would be somewhat more difficult to read as it is a complete Spanish edition. Despite the fact that I've retained my Spanish fairly well since high school I don't think this particular language ability is quite up to par with Cervantes'. What makes this book significant is that it was purchased for me by my sister Tamara who spent a semester abroad in Madrid. My family and I had the good fortune to take nearly three weeks to visit her last year. This brings me to my justification for blogging on a book I haven't read.

There is so much about reading books that is augmented by context. Stories, by nature, are meant to carry you to another time and place and allow your imagination to recreate something with which you may not be familiar; literature brings far-off lands to you in a way that no picture or movie can and while there is much to be said for such an experience having context begins to make that experience particularly literary. During our trip to Spain we spent a few days driving through the countryside of La Mancha and I made sure to keep my eye out for windmills. As it turned out, Cervantes' picaresque knight practically came to me. Not only did we happen upon a fantastic statue of Don Quixote himself, but one of our stops was a castle surrounded by period windmills. In fact, my bookmark for my future reading experience will be a Spanish national parks brochure that has a Don Quixote countryside tour map printed within its leaves...so yeah, I have context, which I expect will undoubtedly enhance my experience of one of the greatest tales of blind idealism in the face of a world that is slowly turning its back on the old codes of honor.

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Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quixote. Trans. David Stuart Davies. [city?] Barnes and Noble. 2007
Cervantes, Miguel de. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha. [city?] Lunwerg. [date?]

Alice in Wonderland review postponed

For the sake of continuity I would have liked to discuss the new Tim Burton film for this week's blog but I just haven't found the time (or the marital cooperation) to go and see it. I will probably just end up moving on this coming week but I will keep you posted whenever I get a chance to see it.
In the meantime, wæs hæl!

Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass - Lewis Carroll

"Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe."

In light of the new Tim Burton film I though it providential that I have arrived at the letter 'C' in my semi-alphabetical exploration of my bookshelf. Hopefully next week's post will be about the film which I hope to have seen by then but today I am writing of the particularly confusing opus of Lewis Carroll's known as Alice in Wonderland (and we'll go ahead and include Through the Looking-glass as well).

This book is one of the most special books in my collection as it was a gift from my late grandmother, the woman to whom I can attribute a great portion of my love for reading. What's more, as you will see from the picture below, she seems to have anticipated my love of reading and of books before anyone else. When I was quite young Grandma Jane used to pick me up from school every Wednesday, bring me home, and read with me. Unbeknown to me each week she had spent nearly the whole week prior deliberating over what book she would read with me. Though I have books that are older and even ones that have been in the family longer it is particularly heartwarming to know that this was the first ever book in my collection (by that standard I have been collecting books for 25 years!).

Since I've started at the beginning so far I have to not that the first experience of this book that I ever had were its pictures. I'm not sure of John Tenniel or Henry Holiday's status among readers of Carroll but their art has defined for me the quintessential look for the book's pinafored protagonist. Before I could understand the book (an ironic statement which I will discuss below) I used to flip through its pages just examining the confusing but expressive features of each of the strange characters depicted there. I even remember wondering how the Jabberwock fit into the plot. Now that I have read both Alice books, I smile wryly at this notion.

When I first read Alice I could not help but hope that there was something really important going on, as if the convoluted plot and colorful cast held some deep secret that could be unlocked with the proper key. I have since been dissuaded from this opinion (which I still feel is a loss-of-innocence moment for me) and rather consider wonderland and its inhabitants to merely represent an early exploration of modernism or absurdism in which the point is that there isn't one. Being at this point a medievalist and tending to study literature with a sort of Ent-ish view of the written word (medieval writers don't tend to say anything unless its worth taking a long time to say) Carroll's narrative is a bit disappointing and even somewhat annoying. That said; I want to clarify that it doesn't make me love Alice any less since her and her hatters and mock turtles are a fun crew for leisurely reading. But if someone out there has this key that I mentioned that will unlock the absurdist mystery I would love to hear it.
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Carroll, Lewis. The Best of Lewis Carroll. [city?]: Castle, 1983