I love to read, but it hasn’t always been like that.  Growing up, I preferred to spend my time outside with some kind of ball, throwing, kicking, hitting, or shooting it.  It has only been in the last five or so years that reading has become a near obsession.  Now, I won’t go so far as to say that books have changed my life (well, maybe some have) but they definitely have prompted me to think in new and interesting ways.  Believing, of course, that everyone should enjoy reading as much as I do, I wanted to share with you five books that have rocked my world or, as the title of this post says, at least rocked my boat (by the way, I completely ripped off the title of this post from an article my pastor once wrote — sorry, Aaron).  These aren’t necessarily my five favorite or even most influential books, but each has played a significant role in my life.  So, in no particular order…

To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee — This book is exceedingly cool on so many levels.  It is the only book that Harper Lee ever published and she has routinely refused to talk about it in public.  It’s a great story about relationships — a girl with her father, a black man with his racist persecutors, law with society, a pariah with his community, right with wrong.  Set in the segregated South, To Kill A Mockingbird tells the story of young “Scout” and her father Atticus Finch, a well-respected lawyer (yes, lawyer and “well-respected” in the same sentence) and man of integrity who represents an African-American man wrongly accused of assaulting a young white woman.  The book is infuriating, inspiring, thought-provoking, fun, and convicting all at the same time.  Sometimes we need to feel convicted.  This book fits the bill.

The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll — This book opens with, “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”  As a long time church-going, fried-chicken eating, committee-sitting, business meeting-attending, Bible-believing Southern Baptist Christian, I was told for most of my life that Bible was the gold-standard measure of how to live my life.  I believed it then and I believe it now.  Unfortunately, the baggage that often came with that advice was a rabid anti-intellectualism, a distrust of academia, a suspicion of any question.  This attitude, prevalent among many Christians (though, thankfully, not within my immediate family), has never sat particularly well with me.  In The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, Mark Noll discusses what he perceives to be the proper role of what he calls the “life of the mind” in the Christian life.  He outlines Christianity’s rich intellectual history which has, of late, been abandoned by the church at large in favor of what I call the poor man’s piety — a faith that doesn’t want to be explored.  Lamenting the anti-intellectualism that has often pervaded U.S. churches and pointing out the often dire consequences of these attitudes, Noll explores the rise of anti-intellectualism, its causes, and recent responses on the part of Christian scholars.  This book is, in large part, why I am in graduate school at the age of 38.  Christians need to reestablish themselves in the world of thought and ideas.  This book is a call to do just that.

Foucault’s Pendulum, Umberto Eco — This book changed nothing about my life.  I’m not a better person for having read it.  It didn’t inspire me to make the world a better place.  It didn’t kindle in me a fire to live a life of significance.  What this book did was to show me that it was possible to write a novel that was entertaining, engaging, complex and intelligent in a way that weaves together philosophy, theology, science, history, art, psychology, all in an impossible-to-put-down book.  Until I read Foucault’s Pendulum, I saw no value in reading fiction.  A lot of it was trite, unintelligent and formulaic.  Granted, some of the 19th century Russian authors wrote some pretty intricate stuff, but when I finished reading it I just wanted to jump off of a bridge.  And sure, there are some “classics” that engage me now but, honestly, what young adult whose main interests lie in college basketball and classic rock really enjoys reading Dickens’ cockney English or Mark Twain’s ramblings about a trip down river?  It’s only because of Foucault that I can now read some fiction without rolling my eyes.

Fear and Trembling, Soren Kierkegaard — Would you be willing to plunge a knife into your son’s heart as a sacrifice if you were certain God told you to do so?  Would you tell anyone what you were about to do?  Do we have a duty to God that transcends the ethical?  What is the nature of faith?  Is it the end or something to move beyond?  These are all questions that Kierkegaard, a 19th century Danish philosopher, addressed in Fear and Trembling.  Starting with the narrative of the aged Abraham preparing to sacrifice Isaac, the son through whom God promised Abraham he would be the father of many nations, Kierkegaard makes us think about ourselves and the nature and strength of our own faith in God and, indeed, the nature of God, himself — is He just, is He ethical, is He capricious?  While I don’t agree with all of Kierkegaard’s theology nor do I recommend this book to any Christian without a strong grounding in the faith, I highly recommend it for the mature Christian who wants to think deeply and carefully about this word we hold so dear and that is so central to our theology – faith.

Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis — “Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”  Imagine sitting by a fire, sipping hot chocolate, listening to your father tell you about the meaning of life.  Now, imagine your father is an Oxford professor who used to rub elbows with J.R.R. Tolkien.  Culled from a series of radio addresses, Mere Christianity is Lewis’ conversational defense of Christianity.  While sophisticated in its reasoning and eminently logical in its structure, its tone is that of an old-time Saturday night radio program or a winter’s fireside chat.  Beginning with an exploration of innate knowledge and ideas, such as how we know it is wrong to take someone else’s piece of fruit or why two things are equal, Lewis builds the case step-by-step for a creator, then God, and, eventually, Jesus the divine son of God.  Apologetics tends to be a field rife with subtle philosophical points and nuanced arguments that can easily escape those who aren’t geeky enough to become familiar with the terminology and structures of philosophical reasoning.  In Mere Christianity, Lewis unpacks the Christian apologetic for the lay audience, explaining very complex ideas in very simple terms while sacrificing very little in the way of precision.  Ultimately, Lewis, a one time atheist, concludes that Jesus was not a “madman or something worse,” but “was, and is, the Son of God.”  In addition to its generally edifying nature, this book has shown me the importance of combining razor-sharp reasoning with clear communication, because no matter how great our ideas, they are of no use if no one understands them.

I would love to hear from any of you about books that have influenced you in some way.  Leave comments, let me hear from you.  Until then, be well.

Mr. O'brien

I’m in the mood for ambitious fiction. Earlier this year I was blessed with a run of incredible reads,  topped off by Yvegeny Zamiatin’s masterpiece, We.

Mr. Zamiatin

Since then I’ve taken on more projects that inevitably have eaten into my reading time, and I am becoming more zealous in my quest for inspired reads. Ambition is the only flavor my literary palate wants to taste right now. I’m hungry for books that make me break out the booksdarts and re-read for pure pleasure. I want prose and plots that cause reactions, page turners that remind me how lucky I am to know how to read.

I’m compiling a list (in no particular order) of ambitiously written books and additions are requested in the comments section! I’d love suggestions for a 2010 reading list…

Mr. Baldwin

The Third Policeman by Flann O’Brien

Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh

The Inferno by Dante

Morvagine by Blaise Cendrars

Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Candide by Voltaire

The Electric Koolaid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe

Black Boy by Richard Wright

The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov

Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf? by Edward Albee

Bowl of Cherries by Milliard Kauffman

The Whapshot Chronicle by John Cheever (as well as many of his shorter works)

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin

The Iliad by Homer

If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino

Her by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Geek Love by Katherine Dunn

The Twits by Roald Dahl

Lolita by Vladamir Nabakov

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson

The Road by Cormac McCarthy

The Monkeywrench Gang by Edward Abbey

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Godfather by Mario Puzo

Peanuts by Charles Schultz

Mr. Abbey

more:

Bluebeard/Slaughterhouse 5 by Kurt Vonnegut

The Aeneid by Virgil

The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino

Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

Matilda by Roald Dahl

Catcher in the Rye by J.D Salinger

His Dark Materials Series by Phillip Pullman

At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O’brien

White Noise by Don Delillo

The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera

The Watchmen by Alan Moore

More..?

I used to be a literature snob, bragging that I preferred writers who died before the 20th century ever rolled around. There were few exceptions, most notably Willa Cather and Harper Lee. Recently, I’ve found myself craving a different kind of story. Rather than life lessons, I read for distraction. An uncomplicated girl meets girl romance is a recipe for a successful, cozy afternoon/evening.

Taking it to a whole new level, I’ve recently developed a disturbing addiction to fanfic. Specifically Buffy/Faith fanfic, from the wonderful world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The writer in me feels the need to justify my obsession with the chosen two. I mentally catalogue the benefits of reading/writing fanfic. For example, it’s a great study in character development. These characters are established and well known. If the writer gets it right, she can put them into uncharacteristic situations that become believable because the reader believes the character. That takes some pretty impressive manipulation of character traits to make that happen.

I don’t see myself ever delving into fanfic (never say never), but I bet the exercise would be beneficial. Am I good enough to take someone else’s character and get it right? Hell, I have to fight to get my own characters right. I’d mangle the crap out of someone else’s.

On this fine Monday morning, I leave you with some recommendations for my all time favorites.

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Harper Lee’s classic novel of a lawyer in the deep south defending a black man charged with the rape of a white girl

One of the best-loved stories of all time, To Kill a Mockingbird has earned many distinctions since its original publication in 1960. It won the Pulitzer Prize, has been translated into more than forty languages, sold more than thirty million copies worldwide, and been made into an enormously popular movie. Most recently, librarians across the country gave the book the highest of honors by voting it the best novel of the twentieth century.

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

Set in a small Alabama train stop town in the 1930s, this gem of a book almost could have been shelved as just another light romantic comedy. Various women’s voices tell anecdotes of Whistle Stop, as the chapters jump back and forth through time. We hear from Mrs. Threadgoode, reminiscing fondly from her nursing home in the 1980s, and the chatty Dot Weems, editor of the gossipy town newsletter (1929-1969), and then listen in on spirited dialogue set in the town of Whistle Stop itself. The storytellers never find use for the label “lesbian,” nor do they see fit to take us behind closed doors, but this is nevertheless the irresistible story of a fierce and true love between two women, Idgie and Ruth. After Idgie saves Ruth from an abusive marriage, these two friends become partners in running the Whistle Stop Cafe, where no one, “not even hobos and colored,” is turned away for inability to pay. Readers are set down in the corner booth to eavesdrop on the comings and goings of an array of eccentric, ragtag characters who drop in for buttermilk biscuits, Big George’s barbecue, and, eventually, news about their own hometown murder mystery. Among revelations big and small, Fannie Flagg mixes direct and empowering confrontations with racism, sexism, and ageism with the colorful and endearing language of the depression-era South and the cafe’s recipes for grits, collard greens, and, of course, fried green tomatoes.

O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman,” writesWilla Cather in O Pioneers! The country is America; the woman is Alexandra Bergson, a fiercely independent young Swedish immigrant girl who inherits her father’s farm in Nebraska. A model of emotional strength, courage, and resolve, Alexandra fights long and hard to transformher father’s patch of raw, wind-blasted prairie into a highly profitable business. 

A gripping saga of love, murder, greed, failure, and triumph, O Pioneers! vividly portrays the hardships of prairie life. Above all, it champions the belief that hard work is the surest road to personal fulfillment. Described upon publication in The New York Times as “American in the best sense of the word,” O Pioneers!celebrates the men and women who struggled to build a nation that is both compelling and contradictory. 

Broken Wings by L-J Baker

In a magical world where being different is the norm, why must Rye Woods fear for her life if the truth about her hidden identity is revealed?

When Rye Woods, a fairy, meets the beautiful dryad Flora Withe, her libido, as squashed and hidden as her wings, reawakens along with her heart. But Rye is a poor builder’s labourer with a teenage sister to raise, while Flora is a wealthy artist-celebrity with a tree-top condominium and a sporty, late-model flying carpet. If those aren’t obstacles enough to the scorching attraction that rapidly develops, Rye lives under the pall of a dark secret that has made her a fugitive in the very land where she sought freedom. The more Rye reveals to Flora, the more vulnerable she is to her past catching up with her. Can she and Flora find their way to loving one another in the face of their social and cultural differences while struggling with the dark forces that threaten Rye?

Mine by Georgia Beers

What happens when you’ve already given your heart and love finds you again?

Three years after Courtney McAllister loses her partner in a car accident, she’s finally trying to move forward. She’s even dated halheartedly over the past year, but no one is able to penetrate her emotional barricades until she meets aggressive real estate broker Rachel Hart. Despite Rachel’s cool façade, Courtney is drawn to her—when she isn’t furious with her. Still, despite an undeniable attraction, Courtney has given her heart once and doesn’t have room for that kind of love in her life again. Rachel isn’t looking for love, especially not with a woman who belongs to someone else, and taking second place has never been her long suit.

Maybe Next Time by Karin Kallmaker

Sabrina Starling always believed in maybe next time . . . until now.

Sabrina doesn’t need love. She has fame as a brilliant violinist and unlimited options for female company. Nothing can shake her — except the memory of her very first love. Knowing that neither the teenaged nor adult Jorie will ever return her feelings, Sabrina has escaped into her music and the arms of other women.

When injury leaves her temporarily unable to perform, Sabrina finally finds the one woman who could free her forever from the memory of those stolen Hawaiian nights with Jorie. There’s one problem. The object of Sabrina’s desire, Diana, is deeply in love with Pam, the woman who has shared her life for the past eighteen years.

A family funeral calls Sabrina home to find that Jorie may want her, after all these years. But now the painful memory of Diana has left Sabrina certain that next time won’t be any different.

And the list wouldn’t be complete without  links to my favorite fanfic sites: http://buffynfaith.net/fanfictions/index.php

http://www.oralfxatn.com/updates.htm
Happy reading, folks!

I have read and re-read this book at least a dozen times, but the best time is now — I’m reading it out loud to my daughters who are reading it for a class.  The story is engaging, but it is the language that enthralls me — I love reading with a southern drawl (my daughters complain that I read to slow — but one cannot read this book quickly — one must savor each drawn out syllable.)

I used to be a criminal defense attorney, and have always admired Atticus’ commitment to represent those without a voice.  What an inspiration. . . .but it is Scout, that little girl with a huge heart and an independent spirit beyond her size that I hope will inspire my daughters.  I hope they will fight like she does and ignore convention when convention is wrong.  And I hope that they will see how awful it was for people of color in the Jim Crow South, and know how far we’ve come — but also know that there are still many fights to be fought, and they can be like Scout in fighting those fights.

After my previous post on a few things Book Group orientated and The Riverside Readers I said that I would come back with a post on my personal top Book Group reads as well as discussing my top Book Group tips. Those two things would actually make a bit of a Bible of a post and so I will do the top books today and a few tips and my own experiences for and of Book Groups on Thursday, so hopefully you are all still interested in all things Book Group related. Could I fit the words Book Groups in these previous sentences if I tried?

After seeing Novel Insights wonderful post on her personal top twelve books a group could read in a year I thought I would have a go. This isn’t plagiarism it’s simply joining in, ha. Having been in a few book groups (in fact I am currently in two though one is rather rogue and we only do one every so often when the whim takes us) I realised that I had a list of 38 books that I could choose from. Some of the books haven’t worked (Tales of the Jazz Age – we all had different editions which all featured a different selection of short stories), some have received indifference, some have been disliked and some have been loved, more on those in my list.

Though I haven’t featured the books that were indifferent or went wrong I have included one book which I didn’t care for but caused great discussion and that’s one thing I have noticed from book groups, I might not always like a book but that in itself when lots of people do can make for a great book group read as it causes debate. So what five things do I do in order to make a book group choice now, I may not have always done this in the past mind;

1. Books you wouldn’t normally read – one of the main points of a book group in my mind – but which are accessible, you don’t want to alienate your other group members.
2. Books which have been received with strong reviews/thoughts both positive and negative way when they came out, this could cause great debate.
3. Books that make you think and cause all sorts of discussions with yourself in your own head though you can’t always predict these in advance.
4. Authors you love and admire who other people might not have tried, though don’t be precious on these as they could get ripped to shreds.
5. Books that challenge and push you as a reader, if they are going to do this to you they probably will be to others.

Looking back at all the book groups I have been part of in the past which book would I recommend the most? Well after some whittling of the 38 I have read with book groups I came up with the final twelve (like Novel Insights I have chosen a years worth) that I think have caused the greatest discussion in no particular order.

• Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell
• The Bell – Iris Murdoch
• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote
• On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan (close tie with Atonement to be honest)
• The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
• To Kill A Mockingbird – Harper Lee
• Half of a Yellow Sun – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
• Animal’s People – Indra Sinha
• Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck (the one I didn’t like – discussion was great)
• The Book of Dave – Will Self
• Kafka on the Shore – Hariku Murakami

So there it is. You can see the full list of all 38 books now on the “new and improved” Book Group page where you can also see what the next book group read is. You may be wondering why some of the above list are in bold. Well my Gran wants a list of five books, as I mentioned on a previous post, she could put forward for her book group. I am actually going to send her a list of new books she and her group are less likely to have read along with the five above in bold. More book group musings on Thursday when I will be discussing Book Group decorum and what made me sensationally (love the drama of that word) leave a book group I started after two years! Let me know what you think of the final twelve too can you spot any themes in them? Also please do tell me of any great books you have done in a book group in the past.

P.S Sorry no picture on today’s post I am not a big fan of posts with no images, if it drives me to crazy will be the shot of The Riverside Readers again!

Il 15 novembre del 1959 – 50 anni fa – Perry Smith e Dick Hickock entrarono in una fattoria a Holcomb nel Kansas per rubare i 10mila dollari che pensavano di trovare nella cassaforte.
Usccisero gli abitanti della fattoria, Herbert, Bonnie, Kenyon e Nancy Clutter: un massacro che scolvolse la comunità di Holcomb e attirò l’attenzione di uno scrittore di New York: Truman Capote. Capote partì per Holcomb insieme alla sua amica Harper Lee e raccontò la storia del massacro, delle vittime e soprattutto degli assassini in uno dei più bei libri della letteratura del Novecento: A Sangue Freddo (In Cold Blood).

Il Guardian ieri (16 novembre 2009) ha pubblicato un reportage da Holcomb (“In Cold Blood, half a century on”): Ed Pilkington è andato nel villaggio del Kansas a ritrovare le tracce della storia dei Clutter e dei loro assassini e del passaggio di Capote che ha cambiato per sempre questo luogo.
Sì, perché è stato il libro di Capote a rendere universale l’incontro fra gli assassini e le vite vittime di Holcomb; a dare forza esemplare al male di questa vicenda.

Pilkington oltre ai  luoghi ha visto i documenti della polizia di Holcomb con le confessioni degli assassini e le foto delle vittime.
Ha parlato con l’ultima persona ad aver visto i Clutter vivi, Bob Rupp: aveva 16 anni allora ed era amico di Nancy. Sarebbero dovuti andare al cinema quella sera ma il Signor Clutter li convinse ad anticipare l’uscita alla sera prima. Così, quella sera guardarono la televisione e alle 10 Rupp se ne andò.

L’articolo che Capote scrisse per il New Yorker sul massacro dei Clutter e che poi sarebbe diventato la base del libro, si intitolava: “The Last to see them alive”. Anche il primo capitolo del libro ha questo titolo.

PS
Il giornalista del Guardian ci racconta anche che non mancano i pellegrinaggi sui luoghi di A sangue Freddo: pare che quest’anno fra i turisti ci fossero anche degli italiani (questo almeno secondo quanto dice lo sceriffo di Garden City, cittadina vicina ad Holcomb)

Fifty years ago today, the Clutter family was brutally murdered in their home by ex-convicts Perry Smith and Dick Hickock in the small town of Holcomb, Kansas.

Artist: Steve Schapiro

After driving across the state of Kansas on Saturday, November 14, 1959, Hickock and Smith located the Clutter home, entering while the family slept. After rousing the family, and discovering that there was no money to be found at the Clutters’ home, Smith, notoriously unstable and sociopathic, became enraged and slit Herb Clutter’s throat and then shot him in the head. As Smith recounted later, “I didn’t want to harm the man. I thought he was a very nice gentleman. Soft spoken. I thought so right up to the moment I cut his throat.”Kenyon, then Nancy, and then Bonnie were murdered, each by single shotgun blasts to the head.

The next day, the New York Times published an account of the murders. A thirty-five year old eccentric writer by the name of Truman Capote read the article and was instantly intrigued by it.  With his childhood friend, Harper Lee, he got on a train and traveled to Kansas to interview the locals and record the story and investigation. After the murderers were captured, Capote even interviewed them and would later witness their executions.

Capote’s account of the murders, investigation, and trial would become the 1966 bestseller known today as In Cold Blood. In began as a four part serial in the New Yorker which ran the first section in 1965. The book form was released by Random House in January 1966, nine months after the convicted were hanged.

The plot weaves a complicated psychological story of two parolees who together commit a mass murder, an act they were not capable of individually. Capote’s book also details the lives of the victims and the effect the crime had on the community where they lived. A large part of the story involves the dynamic psychological relationship of the two felons that culminated in this senseless crime. In Cold Blood is often regarded by critics as a pioneering work of true crime.

Through the years, the story itself along with Capote’s journey in conceiving it has inspired many films, Infamous being one of my favorites. Many argue it was probably Capote’s best work, and In Cold Blood definitely set the path for true crime writing today.  And as they say, the rest is history…

10. 1984
George Orwell

Orwell’s dystopian novel of a world controlled by Big Brother has become the quintessential cautionary tale for the far-reaching arm of government and the dangers of totalitarianism. Orwell has designed every corner of this futuristic world and transports us to a place where we may not want to be, yet cannot tear ourselves away from. It is a strong message about uniformity vs. individualism and makes us question what freedom really means while at the same time frightening us by showing that freedom may be slipping away from us as we speak.

9. To Kill A Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To Kill a Mockingbird is a tale of racism and bigotry seen through the eyes of a child. At first, the novel works as a story of what it is to be young and free. Then the novel moves into issues of social justice as Scout and Jem have their eyes open to the larger world. Atticus Finch is a hero of morals and values who fights to do what is right even when he knows he will lose. The novel is rich with themes and characters which are almost impossible to forget once you have read it.

8. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
James Joyce

James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of this century, and this semi-autobiography led Joyce’s movement into modernist literature. This novel outlines the main characters journey to grow in his intellect, philosophy and spirituality. Joyce’s style here is inventive and thought-provoking and has made this one of the best novels of the last one hundred years.

7. The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

A tale told from the viewpoint of multiple characters, The Sound and the Fury is a masterpiece at describing the thought processes of humans. Faulkner damn-near perfected the stream-of-consciousness thinking. Faulkner moves us with his tale of the decline of a southern family and their struggle to maintain honour.

6. The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

Teen angst has never been so literary. Catcher in the Rye is one of the most popular books in the world. Its biting satire and well-constructed anti-hero have made this an exceptionally brilliant novel, definitely worthy in its inclusion as one of the greatest ever written.

5. The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

There may be no better written recording of the Great Depression than Steinbeck’s classic The Grapes of Wrath. It tells the tale of the Joad family on a quest for a better life in California and it is a tale of adversity and perseverance on a scale which sets the bar for all other American novels.

4. The Lord of the Rings
J. R. R. Tolkien

The Lord of the Rings has become a cultural phenomenon in the latter half of the twentieth century, a masterpiece of high fantasy on an epic scale in both scope and depth. Lord of the Rings is not a simple fantasy tale but is in fact a story rich in themes; loyalty, friendship, fate, duty, corruption, etc. Tolkien has created a world so full and complex you are immediately transported into it and become engrossed with every detail. Literary critics often dismiss The Lord of the Rings because of its genre, not able to look further to see that it is the masterpiece of its genre and is a work of genius.

3. Gravity’s Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

Perhaps the greatest piece of post-modern literature, Pynchon’s masterpiece is a story about post-war Europe and the production of the V2 rocket. Pynchon’s novel is complex in its plot and structure. Gravity’s Rainbow also uses a lot of science and mathematics in its story, adding a level of sophistication and even greater complexity. Many critics argue that this may be the greatest literary work on the last one hundred years, while other claim it is far too difficult to be read. Nonetheless it is a massive achievement in writing and storytelling.

2. The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Great Gatsby is often called “the great American novel”. Jay Gatsby is living the dream; riches, women, high society lifestyle. Everything seems to be going his way. Fitzgerald uses this character and situation to explore they areas of morality, materialism, and what it means to have wealth and worth. It is a true classic that was never recognized in its time, but grew into one of the most acclaimed novels of the modern era.

1. Ulysses
James Joyce

As almost any literary scholar what the work of the century is and you will almost get a unanimous decision: Ulysses. It seems to almost be a given that Ulysses is the best novel of the 20th century. Ulysses has strong characters, humour, technique, style; it is perhaps the most important piece of modernist literature. James Joyce is one of the greatest writers of the modern age and he has given us the greatest novel of the century.

One of the strangest things about the South is that we (“we,” meaning Southerners, as a whole) don’t talk about things.  The unwritten (and unspoken, for that matter) rule is that, everything is fine as long as you don’t talk about it.

Is Momma eat up with the cancer?  It’ll be okay – just don’t talk about it, and it’ll probably go away in a week or two.

Is your brother a staggering drunk?  That’s alright, just ignore it, and pass him a breath mint every once in awhile.

Is your son the biggest meth-head in the county?  No problem, darlin’ – just wonder in amazement at how good he looks since he started Jenny Craig and tell him he might want to switch dentists.

That’s what we do in the South – deny, deny, deny.  It’s the rule of non-existence.  As long as we don’t acknowledge the Dumbo that’s quietly picking its toenails over in the corner of the room beside Daddy’s Barcalounger, then it’s not really there, and it’s not really a threat.

Of course, this doesn’t always work very well.  Here’s an example…

“Sammie Jean, who ah those men in blue uniforms trompin’ through yo’ gladiolas?”

Sammie Jean stops fanning herself long enough to see the Union soldiers destroying her flower beds.  “What men?”

We Southerners are taught from a very young age that we should never air our dirty laundry.  Even if everyone in town knows the big secret we’re “hiding,” we are never supposed to speak of it.  Never, ever, ever break that fourth wall.

That’s something that Yankees with no home-raisin’ do.

But…

There’s a long list of Southern writers who have disagreed over the years and, unsurprisingly, they are all heroes of mine.

Tennessee Williams broke not only the fourth wall separating his audience from his characters, but he broke down the barriers separating his reality from his fiction.  Tennessee was Maggie the Cat.  It was tawdry, and embarrassing to the South’s old guard, and it made Tennessee giggle with drunken delight.

Truman Capote and his compatriot Harper Lee (or “Miss Nell,” as she is known around Monroeville, Alabama) both broke the taboo and wrote about their lives through fictional veils.  William Faulkner was guilty, too, and so is Pat Conroy.

The point of all this is to tell you that I edited myself today.  This is not the post I wrote this morning and intended to publish.  I’m not upset that I censored myself – I did so out of love and respect for someone close to me.

You see, I don’t believe in that fourth wall.  I used to, although I learned in my teens that I could tell people a mixture of “just enough truth” together with “a pile of bullshit” and they’d think they knew everything.

No one. Ever. Knew. Anything.

I’m now stepping through the fourth wall every day – whether it be through a computer screen or in person.  I’ve gotten so used to it, that I’m losing my ability to bullshit (I haven’t decided whether or not that’s a good thing).

I learned today, though, that just because I’m peeling my skin back so the world can examine my innards doesn’t mean that every Southerner I know is willing to do the same.  A lot of people are perfectly happy stepping over piles of steaming elephant shit and pretending not to see them, and I totally understand that.

It’s probably better than me, sitting there, picking through it, trying to figure out what the hell Dumbo had for breakfast and why he ate it.

I whited out my last name. See #19.

Oh, hello there Internet. It’s been a while. Two days, in fact. You see, I had Jury Duty. Except that I didn’t. Because, apparently, when you get Jury Duty, you may not have ACTUAL JURY DUTY. You might just wait around for two days in a Chinatown Courtroom, avoiding eye contact with, let’s face it, everyone. Which is what I did. And I’m so SAD. I wanted my 12 Angry Men moment! I wanted to fight for justice! I wanted to meet Atticus Finch! Instead, here are my accomplishments from Jury Duty, in no particular order.

1. Learned things about Siberia* until I realized a book described as “A cinematically evocative, often heartbreaking account of one of the world’s wildest, loveliest places” probably isn’t the best book to keep me entertained for hours on end.
2. Changed my phone’s wallpaper photo from “Rogue Pigeon that attacked me in Atlanta” to “Yankee Stadium circa July 2009″
3. Learned that tin foil-wrapped bagels WILL cause metal detectors to go off.
4. Washed my hands 9,000 times (Don’t mess around with H1N1, people).
5. Spilled coffee on the floor and had nothing to wipe it up with.
6. Read an interesting article on circumcision in New York Magazine.
7. Debated circumcision with Claire and Tyler via blackberry-enabled G-Chat (both are “pro”; I am “undecided”)
8. Fell asleep three times, but only once did I drop my book. Success!
9. Figured out (via Claire) how you keep a Gingerbread house from falling down (the frosting serves as a glue).
10. Made plans to build a Gingerbread house on Friday.
11. Found a sample John Mayer music video in my cell phone media file.
12. Got nasty looks for accidentally blasting a John Mayer music video in “Quiet Juror Lounge A”
13. Learned how to delete videos from my phone.
14. Told the deli worker that she needed better penmanship, because it looked like Lunch Special #2 (Honey Turkey and Avocado on a roll with Lettuce, Tomato, and Honey Mustard dressing) came with “a can of coke & chips” instead of a can of coke OR chips. She apologized.
15. Corrected Tyler on Ikea’s origins (Swedish, not Swiss).
16. Spent about a billion dollars at Starbucks.
17. Realized the three different sizes of tootsie rolls (small roll, long roll, and 3D rectangle “roll”) taste radically different.
18. Bailed on plans with both Emily and Mazall because of complete and utter exhaustion. Justice is hard.
19. Had a stalker moment in the “TV Lounge” when I accidentally made eye contact with a guy at the exact moment I was licking cream cheese off a bagel. After this, the creeper wouldn’t stop watching me eat.
20. Consulted Tyler on appropriate vs. inappropriate reaction to aforementioned creeper (I wanted to take his picture in case I needed to ID him. Tyler said to make out with him).
21. Moved out of “TV Lounge” to “Main Juror Lounge Room 362″
22. Lost my camera.
23. Found my camera, at security, where I had left it because it wasn’t allowed in the courthouse.
24. Noticed the coffee I spilled on Monday had in fact been cleaned up by Tuesday.
25. Had Tyler find me an application for my blackberry that would take a picture without making the “I’m taking a Picture” sound.
26. Installed said application (the trial version).
27. Took a photo of this guy:

*Things I learned about Siberia:

In Kolyma (Siberia), the temperature drops to -97 degrees Fahrenheit.
If Siberia were detached from Russia, it would still be the largest country on the Earth.
The Gulag might still be buried there, under snow.

Thomas Hodd of the University of Guelph-Humber issued a ringing declaration in the Toronto Star a few days ago: no high school student in this country should be assigned to kill a mockingbird. I’ll say. While the range of the northern mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, does extend into southeastern Canada, they’re probably not all that easy to find, and in any case it seems perverse to send our high school students out to shoot songbirds of any description when they could be broadening their minds with the help of great literature or at least experimenting with stimulants of a less intellectual kind out behind the…

Oh, hang on, I’ve left out some italics and capital letters. Hodd was actually protesting against overuse of a certain novel by Harper Lee in the Canadian high school curriculum. Apparently some parent objected to the book, which prompted Hodd to write:

The reason for the parent’s complaint was not mentioned, but I suspect it has something to do with Lee’s use of racialized language. And while I respect the board’s concern over the dangerous precedent this might set, I would go a step further to suggest that no high school student in this country should be assigned To Kill A Mockingbird.

Hodd makes it clear, to his credit, that he doesn’t have much sympathy for the kind of knee-jerk, politically correct censorship that a complaint about “racialized language” would be intended to invoke. Nevertheless, he really does want to see a lot less of To Kill a Mockingbird, and for an interesting reason:

In almost every English-speaking Canadian province, in practically every high-school curriculum, we have been assigned to read To Kill a Mockingbird or Lord of the Flies or both. Why? What relevance do they have to the education of Canadian teenagers? One is about the racial history of the United States in the South in the late 1930s. The other is about British private school boys who find themselves on an island and struggle to maintain some semblance of their British class system.

Hodd, then, is on a crusade to get more Canadian literature into our classrooms. I’m broadly in favour, but his remarks seem to veer into unjustified literary xenophobia. It’s true that a Canadian teenager is unlikely to end up marooned on a desert island with tasty pigs, murderous choirboys and a clever bespectacled asthmatic, but I don’t believe this is such a common experience among British teenagers either. Even the most realistic piece of fiction is to some extent a journey of the imagination, and journeys of the imagination don’t have to be constrained by national boundaries – in fact, I can see a lot of merit in exposing students to translated works from nations far more culturally remote than Britain or America.

With that said, there’s also obvious value in fiction with roots a bit closer to home, as Hodd points out. Novels set in Canada can introduce aspects of our geography, culture and possibly history from a literary perspective. Even books that are set in foreign (or imaginary) countries, but are by Canadian writers, can show students what it’s like to look into the distance through a Canadian lens. The real trick is striking a balance between the truly foreign, the only slightly foreign (books from the rest of the English-speaking world, or from France in the case of Québécois students) and the domestic.

I think my own high school English classes got the balance about right, perhaps because the teacher (ironically a Brit, I think from Northern Ireland) insisted that Canadian literature was “the most underrated literature in the world” and gave it a prominent place in his classroom. I remember that we did W. O. Mitchell’s Who Has Seen The Wind, Hugh MacLennan’s Each Man’s Son, and John Marlyn’s Under The Ribs of Death. However, we also read our way through Albert Camus’ The Stranger, some Shakespeare and George Bernard Shaw, and yes, Lord of the Flies (though I don’t recall anything about mockingbirds). Without the Canadian books, the syllabus would probably have seemed deracinated; without the foreign ones, it would have been narrow and impoverished. Our classrooms, and our bookshelves, really should have room for both.

I have two fundamental problems with Malcolm Gladwell’s piece in the New Yorker concerning To Kill a Mockingbird: one is philosophical/moral, and the other aesthetic. The philosophical/moral problem is that incrementalism is not necessarily an invalid approach to major social injustice. Gladwell says:

Old-style Southern liberalism—gradual and paternalistic—crumbled in the face of liberalism in the form of an urgent demand for formal equality. Activism proved incompatible with Folsomism.

That’s true: but it doesn’t mean that the James Folsom approach—who was progressive by southern standards in the first of the twentieth century—wasn’t an improvement over what came later as part of the unjustified backlash. Gradual change can set the stage for radical change, as it did with the Civil Rights movement, and pragmatism is sometimes more effective than attempting to radically alter social, economic or political life.

The Stanford Encylopedia of Philosophy describes the philosopher Richard Rorty this way: “Rorty is a self-proclaimed romantic bourgeois liberal, a believer in piecemeal reforms advancing economic justice and increasing the freedoms that citizens are able to enjoy.” Rorty gives a convincing defense of those piecemeal reforms in his various books, and I’m not wholly convinced of Gladwell’s interpretation that To Kill a Mockingbird is problematic for that reason.

And this idea applies to more than politics. Megan McArdle just posted a piece on Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernacke that ended, “As it says in To Kill a Mockingbird, Bernanke did the best he could with what he had. It was not perfect. But looking around at the mostly employed people on the streets, I’m glad he was there.” From what I understand of the recent financial crisis, I basically agree with her assessment: Bernacke and the other players in Washington did the best they could given the information they had at the time, which is based on pieces like The Final Days of Merrill Lynch in The Atlantic and Inside The Crisis: Larry Summers and the White House economic team in the New Yorker.

The second problem is aesthetic: like Nabokov, I don’t think novels need to play the role of social arbiter or champion. A novel that is sufficiently abhorrent—like one that actively praises segregation in the fashion that Soviet novels would advance inaptly named social realism, or one that shills for retrograde religious ideals—would probably be bad by virtue of their social commentary, but I think To Kill a Mockingbird is subtler than that, and to me the novel’s most interesting component is the development of Scout as a person. That’s inherently tied up with morality and politics, of course, but how and whether the novel succeeds in that respect ought to be the major consideration in evaluating a novel.

In other words, once the novel passes the relatively low bar of not being actively abhorrent, it should be judged on other principles than whether it conforms to what appear to be a person or age’s moral norms.

That’s one of my favorite quotes from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.  Spoken by Mayella Violet Ewell to Atticus Finch as he questions her about Tom Robinson allegedly raping her, it is, in my opinion, one of the most riveting scenes in the book and the movie.

Collin Wilcox, the actress who played Mayella in the movie, passed away of brain cancer earlier this week at her home here in North Carolina.  Although she was never one of Hollywood’s elite, I think her performance in Mockingbird was one of the best ever given in a movie.

And now, ”I got somethin’ to say” of my own.  Those of you who click on the above link should know that the quote in the article, which is credited only to “Popeater Staff,” is wrong.  It has been shortened and sanitized, leaving out quite a few words, including a highly offensive one at the beginning of Mayella’s speech.  I don’t know why they shortened it, but I can understand why they left out that word.  Still, changing Harper Lee’s words without letting the reader know is almost as offensive to me as hearing the word they left out.  Also, the quote is “if you fine fancy gentlemen…” not “if you fine, fancy, damn…”  Huh?  Beyond being wrong, that just flat-out doesn’t make any sense!  I don’t read many Popeater articles, and judging by this one, I can see why.  They are in serious need of an editor.

One more thing and “then I ain’t gonna say no more.”  Rest in peace, Ms. Wilcox and thank you for gracing us with your exemplary performance of Mayella in the movie version of my favorite book.

ETA–New York Times article is not only better written, it’s much more informative!

Sista dagen i soliga maj 2006 träffades vi för att prata om denna bok, utgiven 46 år tidigare. To kill a Mockingbird handlar om sydstatsliv, rasism, barnuppfostran, lek, sommarlov och om att bli stor. DLK giller relationerna, familjen och barnperspektivet bäst men tycker eventuellt att det är för många personen inblandade och lite för mycket action.

Citat: Ska vi leka Boo Radley?

Mat:

Watching Seymour Hoffman play Capote, is something out of the ordinary, weird, but out of the ordinary.

The film follows Capote’s life during the making of his acclaimed book, In Cold Blood. It shows the stories behind the main story and Capote’s relationship with the prisoners that are being wrote about.

The film paints a fascinating human portrait of this mysterious but ver loveable author, Truman Capote. The one great element of this story shown is how one Capote soon falls in love with one of the prisoners, Perry, and the film shows his love for him but also his need for him to die. Because if Perry doesn’t die Capote has no story.

If you would’ve told me this was directed by Scorsese or Mann, I would’ve believed you but this directorial debut from Bennett Miller is so well done. Bennett Miller shoots some the scenes with such a look that you can feel the emotion that Capote is feeling at that time during the scene. May biographical films are usually dry and familiar but Capote, on the other hand, is full of life and in praise of joy for this great writer.

This is honestly one of the greatest performances in the past 10 years of any film. Philip Seymour Hoffman gives this landmark performance, and the amazing thing about his performance is that he’s not simply doing an impersonation but he is getting to the heart and the core of Truman Capote. Mostly making us feel what he is feeling at that particular moment in time. Surely a very marvelous performance that defensibly deserved the Best Actor win. Also im very suprised they put Harper Lee’s character in, but im also pretty glad because Catherine Keener does a very good job at portraying her with such sensibility and a person who can see right through Capote and who’s also very critical of him cause she knows what he is capable of doing.

Though this film is great it’s not perfect. Bennett Miller may show a small flair with certain actors, but there’s a flatness to the manner in which he frames some of the scenes. I also felt the film dragged in spots. At times I didn’t feel to absorbed by Capote’s real world that he lived in, which could’ve been a game breaker for me.

This film boasted by a speechless performance from Seymour Hoffman, and a well-written portrait of a unspoken author. Capote succeeds in many ways that many should see, even if it does drag at times.

9/10=Full Pricee!!!

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

My rating: 5 of 5 stars
To Kill a Mockingbird is a book about growing up, civil unrest, racism, hatred, love, friendship — it’s about life. It’s a classic that most kids read in high school. I had a friend who refused to read fiction, but he read and liked this one.

Perhaps it’s the way that Lee lays bare not only the thoughts, but the very heart of a young girl growing up in the Civil-Rights-era South. It’s remarkable how reclusive Harper Lee was able to so perfectly capture the voice of young Scout Finch.

Told from the perspective of a young tomboy (the aforementioned Scout Finch), the book is by turns funny, maddening, and heartbreaking. It’s a complete picture of Scout’s life — everything from acting out the stories about neighborhood mystery Boo Radley to the trial of Tom Robinson and the toll that it takes on the entire town.

It’s a great reminder that, although times are different now, people are essentially the same, families are essentially the same, friendship is essentially the same, and growing up is essentially the same. Whether you learn from television or from events unfolding in your own hometown, there comes a point where you realize that the world can be a cold, unfair place, and there’s no going back to the way things were.

But the book ends on a hopeful note — the world can be pretty harsh, but if you have people who care about you and that you care about, you’ll be okay.

Seriously. Must read.

View all my reviews >>

The Sunday Salon is a virtual gathering of booklovers on the web, where they blog about bookish things of the past week, visit each others weblogs, oh — and read

I just got back from the movie Fish Tank and we have some catching up to do on Day 7 of the television series 24 before we got to leave for tonight’s Nouvelle Vague concert. So I’m keeping this short

I finally managed to write my review of To Kill a Mockingbird and send the bookcrossing book off to its next reader. Now I’m 1 review down for my Classics Challenge! I even learned something new: there’s a subgenre in American literature called Southern Gothic..!

I’m currently reading Be With You, by Takuji Ichikawa. I haven’t gotten very far yet but I really love it. I feel like writing down whole pages because the passages are so beautiful! You might be surprised to know this book is part of no challenge or book group read whatsoever The story, but also my mini-chillenge for October’s Hello Japan!, has made me think of Strangers by Taichi Yamada a lot, so I recycled a review I sent to my virtual book group in 2005. It is mostly in Dutch but I plan to translate that sometime soon.

That’s all folks. Next weekend: the 24 hour read-a-thon! You can read all about that in last week’s salon post.

I must have been very young, because I was sleeping in the small, pale-purple bedroom, the dimmest room of our dark, light-eating house. That was the first room I slept in as a baby, when my bed still had fence railings on the sides. It lies at the heart of the ancient core of our house, one of the original rooms, occupied by generations of people who were not us. (It’s now my storage room, sealed away from the light behind doors with deadbolt locks, piled high with cases of my moldering books, the only room in which no human foot now walks.) When I was little, I remember calling it “the Spook Room” — for no real reason, except that it was so old and dark and quiet. I don’t think it was haunted, but if any room in our house should be, that’s the one I’d pick. The only negative memories I have of that room are nightmares of gorillas coming from the woods and standing over me, their sagittal crests brushing the ceiling.

Anyway, on the evening in question, I must have been taking a nap there. I remember my mom waking me up and saying, “There’s someone here to see you.” I opened my eyes, and standing beside my bed was the devil.

Yes, the devil: all red, with horns and a tail, a pitchfork, and a glittering, sequined red mask (at least that’s the way I remember it). A part of my mind screamed in horror at the notion that my mom was cheerfully handing me over to the devil.

But within a few seconds, I realized that the arch-fiend was my nextdoor neighbor Chris, wearing a Hallowe’en costume. (Chris, do you remember that?) That, I believe, is my earliest Hallowe’en memory.

We humans have always had a thing for disguising ourselves — for wearing clothing, paint, and/or masks that make us seem to be what we’re not — and we do it for all sorts of reasons. Probably the most ancient has to do with religious beliefs and practices. Shamans wore masks and became something more than the mysterious wise ones who lived in the caves up the slope. Dancers wore feathers and grasses and painted masks, and metamorphoses occurred as gods and spirits moved about the fires.

In European werewolf legends, the transformation from man to beast was often accomplished by a person putting on a wolf skin — donning the skin of a wolf and becoming a wolf. Or the strange, beautiful brides of fishermen would one day throw seal skins about their shoulders and return to their parents’ kingdoms under the sea.

We’ve talked before on this blog of Max in Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. (It’s recently been made into a movie, I understand.) The book is built upon the fact that Max puts on his wolf suit and acts like a Wild Thing — to the disgruntlement of his mother — and thus begins his adventure into the realm of the Wild Things. It is a costume that launches it all.

I was thinking of the uses of costumes in works of literature and film. . . . The first that comes to mind, of course, is the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, in which Jem and Scout are dressed as agricultural products and begin a harrowing journey through a dark and deadly wood. And I thought of the movie A Perfect World, starring Kevin Costner, in which an armed fugitive (Costner) takes a young boy hostage, and the two develop an unlikely friendship during their few days on the run, when they journey through the borders of “a perfect world” — a fantastic journey enhanced by the boy (Philip)’s stealing of a Casper the Friendly Ghost costume, which he wears constantly. The costume sets him free, in a way: Philip, like Max, becomes something he wants to be; he enters a realm of experience beyond the usual.

When I was very young, I remember coming home with my parents late on a dark, windy night. For some reason, the talk turned to “burglars” who might be hiding in the trees. I couldn’t rest until I’d checked out all our trees with a flashlight. To enable myself to do this, I put on what I called my “Willer-de-Woost” costume. (I think the name came from the Uncle Remus/Br’er Rabbit stories — that was what those characters called a will-o’-the-wisp.) My Willer-de-Woost costume involved a silver hardhat, goggles, and heavy gauntlets, which made manipulating the flashlight very difficult. (The goggles were tinted and made seeing difficult, especially at night. I guess the hardhat didn’t hinder me much.) My dad forever after claimed I said, “If there are burglars, I’ll scare the h*ll out of ‘em!” — but I don’t remember saying that. But I do remember that the costume gave me the courage to prowl all through our dark, windy yard, shining my light up into every tree. I was more powerful than my ordinary self: I was the Willer-de-Woost!

Do you remember the excitement of Hallowe’en costumes? I remember having that electric, jittery thrill in my stomach when I contemplated how cool it was going to be to wear my costume. (The actual experience of wearing the costume was almost always sweaty, confining, awkward, and uncomfortable; but that was all forgotten well before the next year rolled around.) Mom laughed in later years regarding how, at my insistence, we always had to start on Hallowe’en in the middle of the summer — thinking of ideas, planning just how we were going to engineer the costume, and visiting junk shops and second-hand clothing stores, scouting for materials.

I won’t bore you with the details, but here’s a list of all my costumes that I can remember (I’m probably leaving some out):

ape soldier (from The Planet of the Apes)

Cornelius (ditto)

Sinbad (the sailor, not. . . .)

a dragon (My mom was a knight, fighting me — a giant knight and a little green dragon.)

the shark from Jaws (My neighbor Randy was Brody, wearing a sandwich-board Orca boat.)

Gandalf

a gorilla

a Skull-Bearer (from The Sword of Shannara)

C-3PO

(and as an adult, after coming to Japan) Eliot Ness, a native American, a scarecrow, a silver man, a hideous bird-creature, the Terminator, Mr. Spock, and Loft [a character of mine from a work in progress]

But I think my very best costume when I was a kid was an amazing Three-Legged Man. We had an odd, jointed stick lying around our house. I suppose it was originally something a tailor would use, because it was the length of a (smallish) human leg, with a rectangular “foot” board attached at the bottom. This stick had a perfect, functional knee-joint in the middle. I got two identical pairs of pants and put one on normally. Then I put my right leg into the left leg of the other pair, so that I had a spare, empty pants-leg dangling at my right side. Into this leg we inserted the stick and padded it, so that the pants were filled out, and I found three ambiguous shoes to put on my three feet. I kept my right arm inside my shirt and down along my side to hold onto the top end of the fake leg. Then we padded out the right arm of my shirt, and I had gloves on my real hand and the fake hand. I wore a rain poncho that hung down to just above my knees, so no one could see what was happening with the waists of the pants. Then I learned to walk convincingly, putting my middle leg forward, then bringing my two outer legs forward for the next step, and so on. The effect was quite unsettling. People stared long and hard, trying to figure out which leg was the fake.

So . . . I guess there are two possible springboards for discussion:

1.) Are there other uses of costumes in books, movies, or stories that we should talk about? Why are those uses memorable and effective?

2.) Do you have any costume stories? Something you wore, perhaps, or something you helped design for your kids? Did it work? Was it a disaster?

Or anything else on the topic of costumes is quite welcome. Ooh, here’s one: what’s the scariest mask you’ve ever seen?

Meanwhile, let’s not yet abandon last week’s post! It’s still wide open — let’s keep using those great lines in scary paragraphs or scenes! And thank you to everyone who has written in!

Let’s close out with a few lines from my story “The Bone Man” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, December 2007):

“Black bushes, spreading trees — there seemed more of them at night, with glowing plastic lanterns strung among the last brittle leaves: lanterns in the shapes of jack-o’-lanterns, white ghosts, green-faced witches. (Whoever came up with the idea that a witch should have a green face?) It was dark ahead of him, though fire still hung in the vanished sun’s wake. Slowly the sky’s lavender changed to a deep blue, and stars glittered.

All around him, it was as if veils dropped away, and Conlin was walking back into the streets of his childhood. Here, under the breeze-shivery maples and oaks slouching toward cold, it was no longer the age of the Internet and little phones in your pocket that took pictures and movies; it seemed more the era when cars had lock-levers like golf tees, phones had round dials, and TVs were controlled by big, stubborn knobs on the front. Conlin passed over sidewalks that veered to accommodate trees, some concrete sections pushed up into humps by the roots. Trees owned these prairie towns, he mused: trees’ crowns were crossbeams above; their roots shot far into the earth and spread beyond the last houses; their trunks were spikes that held the community to the land.

. . .

Then, with a sound like an approaching stampede, costumed children exploded onto the scene.”

It’s a sin to kill a mockingbird [..] They don’t do one thing but sing their hearts out for us.

Thanks to a bookcrossing book ring I have finally read Harper Lee’s 1960 classic To Kill a Mockingbird. It had been on my wishlist for quite a few years and became part of two challenges: the 2009 Classics Challenge and my personal 2008-2009 challenge. There has been written a lot about this book so I’m just going to add my personal view. Well.. and a little about the story for people who haven’t read it (yet).

To Kill a Mockingbird is a novel in which a female attorney, Jean Louise — Scout — Finch, looks back on her childhood during the Great Depression in the fictional town of Maycomb, Alabama.

Maycomb was an old town, but it was a tired old town when I first new it. In rainy weather the streets turned to red slop; grass grew on the sidewalks, the court-house sagged in the square. Somehow, it was hotter then: a black dog suffered on a summer’s day; bony mules hitched to Hoover carts flicked flies in the sweltering shade of the live oaks on the square. Men’s stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o’clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft tea-cakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum.

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County. [p.11]

The story focusses on the events of a certain summer, that morally and socially shaped Louise into the adult she became. Because of this, the book is considered a Bildungsroman. Although Harper Lee used a lot of autobiographical elements, the novel is fiction.

I am very glad I got to read the book. I don’t think it will end up in my 2009 top 5 list, but it was a quick, entertaining read: the story immediately grabbed me and I liked the atmosphere of doom, suggesting that ’something was going to happen’. The first paragraph sets the tone:

When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right -angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident.

The reader now knows that the rest of the book will tell about the events leading up to Jem’s accident. But like in a court case where seperate witnesses have different truths, the sibling’s have different points of view on where it all began.

In my online Boekgrrls book group there was some discussion whether or not the quote above contains vivid imagery. I think so Some people didn’t find it evocative — worse, they thought it gawky because they had to physically try the position of the arm. I rather like it that everywhere around the world and through time, people are swinging their arms while reading

Some women also didn’t find it believable that children were accepted into the courtroom. Well, it was a long time ago… And honestly, isn’t it really harder to believe that black people were treated as lesser humans? And they were! Even though you know that it’s true, it is still shocking to read about this kind of racism. To Kill a Mockingbird was published 5 years after Rosa Parks had refused to give up her bus seat for a white passenger (also in Alabama); Harper Lee had been writing on the book for a few years.

Aside from the main storyline (which I am not writing down because it is broadly known and when you’re in the dark about it you might want to keep it that way), you can feel how Scout grows into her later profession even though that was not yet common for women of that time.

“There are lots of reasons. For one thing, Miss Maudie can’t serve on a jury because she’s a woman –”
“You mean women in Alabama can’t –?” I was indignant.
“I do. I guess it’s to protect our frail ladies from sordid cases like Tom’s. Besides,” Atticus grinned, “I doubt if we’d ever get a complete case tried — the ladies’d be interrupting to ask questions.”
Jem and I laughed. Miss Maudie on a jury would be impressive. I thought of old Mrs. Dubose in her wheelchair — “Stop that rapping, [judge] John Taylor, I want to ask this man something.” Perhaps our fore-fathers were wise. [p.225]

After Jem and his sister have sneaked out to watch the court case, some Southern ladies tease Scout afterwards:

“Watcha going to be when you grow up, Jean Louise? A lawyer?”
“Nome, I hadn’t thought about it..” I answered, grateful that Miss Stephanie was kind enough to change the subject. Hurriedly I began choosing my vocation. Nurse? Aviator?
“Well…”
“Why shoot, I thought you wanted to be a lawyer, you’ve already commenced going to court.”

Recently To Kill a Mockingbird became #1 on the list of the best 60 books of the past 60 years. Maybe not because Harper Lee is the most skilled writer of recent history, but because her book is about the equality of Man.

“Well how do we know we ain’t Negroes?”
“Uncle Jack Finch says we really don’t know. He says as far as he can trace back the Finches we ain’t, but for all he knows we mighta come straight out of Etiopia durin’ the Old Testament.”
“Well if we came out durin’ the Old Testament it’s too long ago to matter.”
“That’s what I thought,’ said Jem, ‘but around here once you have a drop of Negro blood, that makes you all black [..]“ [p. 165]

John Sutherland remarks in his article about the list of 60 books:

“[..] as Henry James said, the house of fiction has many rooms. One important room is reserved for fiction that expresses the basic ideals of its time: such as Oliver Twist, or The Grapes of Wrath. To Kill a Mockingbird will always have a high place in that company.”

Ha! I have just finished John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which is also on my challenge list (review pending). That book is more about equal rights for ‘poor’ white people from the East of the US migrating to the West in the same period as To Kill a Mockingbird. Both books won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in the year after they were published (respectively 1940 and 1961). And both books play in the American South.

Have you ever heard of Southern Gothics, a sub genre of the gothic novel and unique to American literature? I hadn’t. But To Kill a Mockingbird is (by some) considered to belong to this genre.

“Like its parent genre, it relies on supernatural, ironic, or unusual events to guide the plot. Unlike its predecessor, it uses these tools not for the sake of suspense, but to explore social issues and reveal the cultural character of the American South.

[..] the writer takes classic Gothic archetypes, such as the damsel in distress or the heroic knight, and portrays them in a more modern and realistic manner — transforming them into, for example, a spiteful and reclusive spinster, or a white-suited, fan-brandishing lawyer with ulterior motives.”

Lawyer. Heroic knight. That’s why Atticus, Scout’s father, seems a bit too good to be true sometimes! But I think it is also because most of the story is told through the eyes of a child — don’t young girls often look up to their fathers, seeing them as hero’s?

I had to think about my father a lot whilst reading this book. He was a great fan of Gregory Peck, who played Atticus in the 1962 movie adaptation. But he was also born in the same year as Harper Lee and had a huge sense of morality, of justice. He would have liked to become a lawyer. Hee hee, maybe he even looked a little bit like Gregory Peck

I couldn’t help but think of another film as well: Mississippi Burning. Some marvelous actors playing in it: Gene Hackman, William Dafoe, Frances McDormand (I’ll leave it to you to look them up if you don’t know them I would definitely like to see that movie again soon! I don’t feel the need to see To Kill a Mockingbird. But I liked reading this classic enough to want to have a copy of my own. I’ll be on the lookout for a nice edition!

Mockingbird sound recording courtesy of The Quomma.

For #44 I wanted to read one of the books by my writing professor, Kerry Madden. I decided to go with a copy of her biography on Harper Lee first, after finding it at the library.

Kerry tells about Harper’s (Nelle’s) early life in Monroeville, Alabama, her lifelong relationship with Truman Capote, and most importantly, her world as everything about it was transformed by the publication of a book called To Kill A Mockingbird. The amount of research Kerry conducted is astounding, especially keeping in mind the fact that Harper has rarely allowed for interviews.

The voice is fresh and simple, written with grades 7-12 in mind. Older readers, though, will also find it refreshing. For me a reprieve was much-needed, after trying to wrap my mind around the latest Pynchon novel (I abandoned Inherent Vice, which will unfortunately not make the mark for #45).