I reached voting age right in the middle of the former Yugoslavia's self-implosion, so that entire, painful conflict still looms large for me, just as a Cold War atmosphere defined my childhood. And in spite of following the bloody mess in depth at the time, these days, it's hard for me to keep straight who did what to whom when and why. I remember seeing, and loving, Cabaret Balkan-- just as much for the film itself as for the fact that I was watching it in a small theater in Paris-- and having a distinct feeling that I was part of "a time," as in "my time," when X particular historical events occurred, and Y particular qualities were often prevalent in people of a certain age.
Since then, my head's been filled with so many political, historical, personal, etc., etc., situations that I sort of lost the thread of that particular narrative. But then last night, I watched Emir Kusturica's Underground, and got so eager to sort things back out in my head that I reached for two books that've been on my shelf for way too long without being read: Ivo Andric's The Bridge on the Drina and Leslie Benson's Yugoslavia: A Concise History. Admittedly, the former will only give me an historical background, via fiction, to what led up to the Balkan conflicts of the late 20th century; the latter, published as it was in 2001, won't get me anywhere near where we stand today. But patience is not my forte, so of course, I just rushed in with what was at hand, polishing off a chapter of the novel before making a leap to pore over the maps in the history book. And since all of this was taking place way past my bedtime, predictably, I didn't get far-- so judgments about it all will have to be made later.
At any rate, that word debauchery was a welcome change from another volume that's been sitting on my shelf for a while, John Macquarrie's Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism. As part of TA'ing the same class for a couple of years, I was granted a free copy-- but irresponsibly, I never read it, since it was part of the "for further reading" section of the syllabus, and I had my own interests to pursue and a dissertation looming over my head. But after the Buber episode of last week, I decided to check it out. I'll finish it, but I was annoyed from the second I set eyes on the preface-- not for anything the author had done wrong at that point, but because there was one more dude thanking his patient wife for "preparing the material for the publishers." (1) I just didn't want to hear about one more lady apparently waiting around to type up her husband's manuscripts and do all the drudge work so that he could rest his delicate brain for the thinking of further big thoughts. I have never once read any female scholar thanking her husband for the same services, not because she was being miserly with her gratitude, but because that situation never ensued.
But I'll get off my gender-centered soapbox and talk about the aspects of the work itself that are bothering me: a theologian still being worried about so many "dangers" of potential flubs in doctrine, or of dismissing (probably not consciously) others' practices as unworthy means "of escape from the harsh realities of life into new and exhilarating areas of consciousness." (2) And then, there's the maddening refusal to get my man Nietzsche right when he alleges that the Übermensch "seeks and believes he can attain to domination over the world." (3)
Now, from what I hear, Macquarrie was a good egg, and was all in favor of everyone being able to practice his/her own religion without being condemned for it or being seen as a potential target of conversion. I think my grumbling is, more than anything, evidence of the fact that I should just stop reading theology, since I've imbibed enough for at least a few lifetimes, and can pretty much predict by now who'll make which tired argument, and who'll sprint right out into left field to try and save a tradition at all costs. Maybe I'm saying that I should just stick to good literature and complex civil wars and real-life, unimaginably horrible conflicts. At least with the former, the chances that any action that emerges out of personal frustration might actually make a bit of difference.
(1) John Macquarrie, Two Worlds Are Ours: An Introduction to Christian Mysticism (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2004), viii.
(2) 12. In this case, Macquarrie was partially referring to "the taking of the drug psilocin derived from a mushroom and inducing an expanded consciousness" in "some forms of religion" in Mexico, which he seems to see as illegitimate and insincere, and doesn't take the time to differentiate from a bunch of college kids going goofy on 'shrooms. Say what you will about Carlos Castañeda, but his field studies, and the people with whom he interacted, were hardly out to "escape from the harsh realities of life."
(3) 19.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
Buber Is Better
Well, it's always good to have a solid reminder not to be such a tool. This little book is not only jam-packed with arguments against such easy spirituality (1); it's also written with a dense sort of poeticism that refuses to let laziness or possible intimidation off the hook, respecting the reader enough to hold him/her to high standards by unapologetically laying down weighty ideas while also refraining from making those ideas purposefully inaccessible via labyrinthine language or big vocab words. I can't think of any other scholar or academic theologian who employs such a style-- and am additionally convinced that Anne Michaels must have read and absorbed the man's writing at some point in her life-- and if not, that she's benefited from otherworldly input from the dude when crafting her prose.
I loved what could only badly be described as Buber's non-fluffy, not-easy mysticism; his anti-dogmatism and assertion that encapsulating the Thou or telling anyone how to respond to it is impossible and misguided; and his valuation of real dialogue and relationship. But the book spoke to me most sympathetically via what felt like anachronistic support for what troubles me about the constantly networked nature of these here times. The philosopher might as well have been addressing the topic of grown adults obsessively checking in on Foursquare, and trying desperately to find some meaning and companionship in inarticulate texts while being too lazy or scared to actually talk to each other, when he wrote,
The self-willed man does not believe and does not meet. He does not know
solidarity of connexion, but only the feverish world outside and his feverish
desire to use it... When this man says Thou, he means 'O my ability to use,'
and what he terms his destiny is only the equipping and sanctioning of his
ability to use. He has in truth no destiny, but only a being that is defined by
things and instincts... He intervenes continually, and that for the purpose of
'letting things happen.' Why should destiny, he says to you, not be given a
helping hand? Why should the attainable means required by such a purpose
not be utilised?... Without sacrifice and without grace, without meeting and
without presentness, he has as his world a mediated world cluttered with
purposes... Thus with all his sovereignty he is wholly and inextricably
entangled in the unreal... he directs the best part of his spirituality to averting
or at least to veiling his thoughts. (2)
The book was written in 1923, and Buber was talking about much more than human interaction with any technology-- and so it would be dishonest of me to seize upon passages such as the lengthy one just cited and say, "See? See?! Take that, technophiles!" But methinks one of the hallmarks of any enduring examination of the human condition (whether that involves something transcendent or not) is its ability to relate, from beyond its author's grave, to changing times. And so, like Greek drama speaking to veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, or the story of Macbeth still offering frighteningly relevant insights into the desire for power and what it entails, "the feverish world outside and [one's] feverish desire to use it" to which Buber pointed almost a century ago continues to be able to take on new faces and characteristics while the way these things are described stay put in print.
(I would also be disingenuous in condemning tout court contemporary information technology; this is a blog, after all, and I'm giddily thankful for the interaction that ensues here, even if I'd rather be talking live, in the same geographical location, with the people who pop in. But I so often get the sense that all this information hoarding has spun wildly out of control, and you end up having to get out of the way of Borg-like people wearing Google Glass because reality as-is just doesn't offer up enough thrills.[3])
Anyway, to summarize, Buber: better than imagined. Making judgments about something before checking it out yourself: folly. Finding disembodied support, when one often seems to be existing in a world unintentionally apart: priceless.
(1) For example, there's the person, Buber says, whose "spiritual" leanings are essentially another form of self-involvement that engages in what Kant would call using things and people as means-- whose approach to being in the world "lays bare the shame of the world-spirit which has degraded to spirituality." Martin Buber, I and Thou, 2nd ed., transl. Ronald Gregor Smith (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons), 66.
(2) 60-1.
(3) If you've never come across someone wearing a pair of these things, it might be difficult to a) erase from your memory his/her undead stare that never seems to meet your eyes; b) wonder if you were being recorded, and for what purpose; and c) get Gil Scott-Heron's "Whitey on the Moon" out of your head.
Monday, May 26, 2014
A Filmic Semi-Diversion
Child of the '80s though I am, I somehow managed to get through that decade and the two-plus succeeding ones without having seen Purple Rain, in spite of loving Prince and having thoroughly enjoyed one of his performances right after college (in which his numerous costume changes enhanced even further some already amazing dancing). I remedied that gap this weekend, and wow: it was bad. Incredibly bad; shittily so, in fact. Not that I was expecting a life-altering experience, but-- well, I'll just lay my general dumbfoundedness out on the table, and will be glad to engage in exchanges of disbelief and wry laughter, should anyone care to take part.
But as I find happens frequently when I'm involved in reading/viewing/discussing multiple cultural products at the same time, a weird thread or connection between them peeps out every now and then. In this case, Prince's mode of dress during his Purple Rain phase-- and the periodic plot and/or motivational gaps in the film that threw me into brief bouts of confusion-- seemed a perfect match for the baroque style of the book I'm currently reading, José Lezama Lima's Paradiso.
Given, the latter work is in no way crappy, campy, or even potentially culty. But I could picture The Purple One reading some of these flowery passages in his frilly poet's blouse, and being entirely unconcerned about the fact that, say, a conversation between our young hero and his classmate, whose favorite pastime is poking his fellow students in the butt with his pen, involves dialogue more appropriate to foppish university philosophes who use approximately 75% more words to express their confused thoughts than are necessary. It's true; youths often don't have a very good sense of what they're saying, or even trying to say, and might comically puff up their language to try and make themselves sound more sophisticated-- and so, although Lezama's probably making a point with all of these words, so far, I'm unconvinced by his characters' ownership of their own verbiage.
To link back to another film, my experience with this novel up to this point is similar to the emperor's reaction, in Amadeus, to a performance of one of Mozart's pieces: "There are simply too many notes." I'm having some nebulous thoughts about why this is so for Paradiso and not for David Foster Wallace, whose style is sometimes jam-packed, but without using one word too many. I'll have to get to the end of Lezama's text, though, before I'm willing to take that thought any further.
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| Source: Nicolas Genin |
Given, the latter work is in no way crappy, campy, or even potentially culty. But I could picture The Purple One reading some of these flowery passages in his frilly poet's blouse, and being entirely unconcerned about the fact that, say, a conversation between our young hero and his classmate, whose favorite pastime is poking his fellow students in the butt with his pen, involves dialogue more appropriate to foppish university philosophes who use approximately 75% more words to express their confused thoughts than are necessary. It's true; youths often don't have a very good sense of what they're saying, or even trying to say, and might comically puff up their language to try and make themselves sound more sophisticated-- and so, although Lezama's probably making a point with all of these words, so far, I'm unconvinced by his characters' ownership of their own verbiage.
To link back to another film, my experience with this novel up to this point is similar to the emperor's reaction, in Amadeus, to a performance of one of Mozart's pieces: "There are simply too many notes." I'm having some nebulous thoughts about why this is so for Paradiso and not for David Foster Wallace, whose style is sometimes jam-packed, but without using one word too many. I'll have to get to the end of Lezama's text, though, before I'm willing to take that thought any further.
Friday, May 23, 2014
A Story that Might Be on the Move
Ho hum. Spring pollen has me committing so many of my energy-bearing resources to the struggle simply to stay awake that my ability to put two coherent thoughts together, much less post them, has been significantly impaired. But I did manage to finish the little two-novella collection I was reading by Gottfried Keller, The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula.
What a great read-- maybe because the initial feeling that you're entering into a world of old-school starched collars and self-conscious diction soon gives way to the sense that something transitional is going on here, and that Keller, trained as a painter and for a time, at least, into radical politics, probably wouldn't have enjoyed sitting around in stiff salons and drinking very proper tea. The author is considered a literary realist, but something about the first story, at least-- that vaguely transitional "something" I mentioned and that almost seems to catch a glimpse of modernism on the horizon-- keeps it from exemplifying that school.
(What follows are purely personal interpretations, which I know would be slammed by any literature scholar worth the name, but here goes.) Young Karl in "Upright Seven," for example, seems too tickledly detached from everything except Hermine, and the couple somehow too good-naturedly airy, or aware of the slight goofiness of their infatuation and situation, to fall in with the creations dreamed up by the Big Russians (except, maybe, for Chekhov). What really fascinates me about this story, though, is its ending. (Insert obligatory spoiler alert here.) Our young couple has finally overcome the objections of their fathers, and is sharing a happy post-proposal moment, when a former military colleague of Karl's shouts out to them in recognition. And then, "[t]he betrothed sat down on the steps at his feet and chatted with him for a full half hour, before they returned to the company."(1) End of story. This pair, who's been sneaking around and scheming ever since the tale began, and who's cocooned into a little universe all its own, suddenly pops out of it and goes to hang out with a guy Karl doesn't know all that well anymore. There's something-- I don't know what-- about the fact that it was a "full half hour," and not just a half hour, that's also contributing to my reaction of "Huh? Interesting." Sure, it would've been rude not to have acknowledged the sentry's presence, and the couple was probably bursting with eagerness to broadcast the engagement all over the place. But that apparent ability to snap out of one engrossing emotional situation, right into another, and thereafter to head back to the oldheads, is curious, even if young adults were probably just as flighty in their own way then as they are today.
Maybe I've undermined my own initial assertions about the tale's impatience with its assigned genre. Oh well. The only other observation I have is that with "Ursula," Keller managed to make a fictional account of mass Reformation nuttiness interesting-- maybe because he let the implications of religious upheaval play themselves out without really overtly discussing religion in general.
So: a short-ish review of a short-ish book. That seems appropriate for a Friday, especially one on which the ol' nasal passages are suffering fits of ticklishness. In that spirit, I'm setting down the metaphorical pen and going in search of some Kleenex.
(1) Gottfried Keller, "The Banner of the Upright Seven," in The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula, transl. Bayard Quincy Morgan (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974), 67.
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| Zentralbibliotek Zürich |
What a great read-- maybe because the initial feeling that you're entering into a world of old-school starched collars and self-conscious diction soon gives way to the sense that something transitional is going on here, and that Keller, trained as a painter and for a time, at least, into radical politics, probably wouldn't have enjoyed sitting around in stiff salons and drinking very proper tea. The author is considered a literary realist, but something about the first story, at least-- that vaguely transitional "something" I mentioned and that almost seems to catch a glimpse of modernism on the horizon-- keeps it from exemplifying that school.
(What follows are purely personal interpretations, which I know would be slammed by any literature scholar worth the name, but here goes.) Young Karl in "Upright Seven," for example, seems too tickledly detached from everything except Hermine, and the couple somehow too good-naturedly airy, or aware of the slight goofiness of their infatuation and situation, to fall in with the creations dreamed up by the Big Russians (except, maybe, for Chekhov). What really fascinates me about this story, though, is its ending. (Insert obligatory spoiler alert here.) Our young couple has finally overcome the objections of their fathers, and is sharing a happy post-proposal moment, when a former military colleague of Karl's shouts out to them in recognition. And then, "[t]he betrothed sat down on the steps at his feet and chatted with him for a full half hour, before they returned to the company."(1) End of story. This pair, who's been sneaking around and scheming ever since the tale began, and who's cocooned into a little universe all its own, suddenly pops out of it and goes to hang out with a guy Karl doesn't know all that well anymore. There's something-- I don't know what-- about the fact that it was a "full half hour," and not just a half hour, that's also contributing to my reaction of "Huh? Interesting." Sure, it would've been rude not to have acknowledged the sentry's presence, and the couple was probably bursting with eagerness to broadcast the engagement all over the place. But that apparent ability to snap out of one engrossing emotional situation, right into another, and thereafter to head back to the oldheads, is curious, even if young adults were probably just as flighty in their own way then as they are today.
Maybe I've undermined my own initial assertions about the tale's impatience with its assigned genre. Oh well. The only other observation I have is that with "Ursula," Keller managed to make a fictional account of mass Reformation nuttiness interesting-- maybe because he let the implications of religious upheaval play themselves out without really overtly discussing religion in general.
So: a short-ish review of a short-ish book. That seems appropriate for a Friday, especially one on which the ol' nasal passages are suffering fits of ticklishness. In that spirit, I'm setting down the metaphorical pen and going in search of some Kleenex.
(1) Gottfried Keller, "The Banner of the Upright Seven," in The Banner of the Upright Seven and Ursula, transl. Bayard Quincy Morgan (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Co., 1974), 67.
Tuesday, May 20, 2014
The Father of Analytical Psychology: What a Guy
How to sum up a really fantastic collection of C.G. Jung's writings? Overall, this volume, edited by Anthony Storr, gives the impression of a guy completely devoted to others' mental health, and to figuring out how best to achieve it, even if that meant risking the ridicule of scientism, via open-minded explorations of mythology and the psychological aspects of alchemy. I get a sense of a much more compassionate, curious, and humble individual than, say, Freud, and of a foundational figure who would probably bemoan the stats-laden and -dependent "behavioral sciences" we get to deal with today.
(Exemplary aside, re: an obsession with statistics: A few years ago, I got assigned to a miserable "research committee" headed by a statistics-worshipping chair. I told the woman she'd probably have to school me in some of her terminology, as well as explain to me why she was using only stats to address particular issues, since my philosophy-ethics-religion-literature background often approached the human condition in entirely different ways. She cheerfully said even I could make great use of statistics in pondering the state of the soul: "You can ask someone, for example, how many times he's read Dante's Inferno." Probably rudely, I replied, "Which would tell me nothing." Not that long before, a business prof had made a similar pitch to me, re: statistics' ability to be of use in existential investigation: "You can use them to keep track of church membership.")
Anyway, my only true beef with the guy's thought is centered around his assumptions regarding gender and its easy division into two clearly differentiated types. Given, from what I understand, what Jung defines as the anima/animus isn't prescriptively advocating for a particular idea of what a woman or man is, but instead, is a sort of historical "spiritual" conglomeration of assumptions about what constitutes "feminine" and "masculine"-- and so of course, each of these figures would largely be made up of baggage (whether well- or ill-founded) that's been carried through the collective unconscious since, essentially, the beginning of time. What I'm wondering is whether, according to Jung, as collective beliefs about the characteristics of biologically male, female, or other (a category not really extant at the time of his writings) are transformed, images and characteristics of the anima/animus are thought to change as well-- and whether, in the light of such changed beliefs, our psyches will continue to operate according to gender-based polarities, when such things grow ever less relevant or acceptable in the public sphere.
There's really too much in this book to explore in one post, and so I'll probably be coming back to it in the next few days and/or weeks. (I did go out and buy Answer to Job, and I'm particularly excited about it.) But far from being a lamentable state of affairs, the abundance, and potential overload, of so much rich material, is a real joy; I wish I came across such things much more often.
(Exemplary aside, re: an obsession with statistics: A few years ago, I got assigned to a miserable "research committee" headed by a statistics-worshipping chair. I told the woman she'd probably have to school me in some of her terminology, as well as explain to me why she was using only stats to address particular issues, since my philosophy-ethics-religion-literature background often approached the human condition in entirely different ways. She cheerfully said even I could make great use of statistics in pondering the state of the soul: "You can ask someone, for example, how many times he's read Dante's Inferno." Probably rudely, I replied, "Which would tell me nothing." Not that long before, a business prof had made a similar pitch to me, re: statistics' ability to be of use in existential investigation: "You can use them to keep track of church membership.")
Anyway, my only true beef with the guy's thought is centered around his assumptions regarding gender and its easy division into two clearly differentiated types. Given, from what I understand, what Jung defines as the anima/animus isn't prescriptively advocating for a particular idea of what a woman or man is, but instead, is a sort of historical "spiritual" conglomeration of assumptions about what constitutes "feminine" and "masculine"-- and so of course, each of these figures would largely be made up of baggage (whether well- or ill-founded) that's been carried through the collective unconscious since, essentially, the beginning of time. What I'm wondering is whether, according to Jung, as collective beliefs about the characteristics of biologically male, female, or other (a category not really extant at the time of his writings) are transformed, images and characteristics of the anima/animus are thought to change as well-- and whether, in the light of such changed beliefs, our psyches will continue to operate according to gender-based polarities, when such things grow ever less relevant or acceptable in the public sphere.
There's really too much in this book to explore in one post, and so I'll probably be coming back to it in the next few days and/or weeks. (I did go out and buy Answer to Job, and I'm particularly excited about it.) But far from being a lamentable state of affairs, the abundance, and potential overload, of so much rich material, is a real joy; I wish I came across such things much more often.
Friday, May 16, 2014
The Best Theologians Might Be Psychologists
Due to a ridiculous schedule that precludes writing anything of substance, I'll give an all-too-brief recommendation: read Carl Jung's exegesis of the Job story. It's the most insightful-- and hilarious-- deconstruction of the entire thing I've ever read, and that's coming from someone who's completed far too much graduate work in religion.
Behold, teasers:
"[Yahweh's] faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose, although Yahweh is convinced of Job's faithfulness and constancy, and could moreover have assured himself beyond all doubt on this point had he taken counsel with his own omniscience." (1)
"The plea of [Yahweh's] unconsciousness is invalid, seeing that he flagrantly violates at least three of the commandments he himself gave on Mount Sinai." (2)
This whole analysis wonderfully brings out Yahweh's off-base argumentative approach to the entire situation, along with all the bluster and blindness involved: "... he comes riding along on the tempest of his almightiness and thunders reproaches at the half-crushed human worm: 'Who is this that darkens counsel by words without insight?' In view of the subsequent words of Yahweh, one must really ask oneself: Who is darkening what counsel? The only dark thing here is how Yahweh ever came to make a bet with Satan." (3) And: "Altogether, [Yahweh] pays so little attention to Job's real situation that one suspects him of having an ulterior motive... Job is no more than the outward occasion for an inward process of dialectic in God. His thunderings at Job so completely miss the point that one cannot help but see how much he is occupied with himself." (4)
Really, I'm going to have to go back and read this excerpt (it's part of the collection, The Essential Jung), as well as the whole damn book from which it came (Answer to Job), three or four times, probably gaining ever more enjoyment out of each subsequent reading. Who says psychology can't be downright and profoundly hilarious?
(1) "From Answer to Job," in Carl Jung, The Essential Jung, Selected and Introduced by Anthony Storr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 310.
(2) 311.
(3) 312.
(4) 313.
Behold, teasers:
"[Yahweh's] faithful servant Job is now to be exposed to a rigorous moral test, quite gratuitously and to no purpose, although Yahweh is convinced of Job's faithfulness and constancy, and could moreover have assured himself beyond all doubt on this point had he taken counsel with his own omniscience." (1)
"The plea of [Yahweh's] unconsciousness is invalid, seeing that he flagrantly violates at least three of the commandments he himself gave on Mount Sinai." (2)
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| William Blake |
Really, I'm going to have to go back and read this excerpt (it's part of the collection, The Essential Jung), as well as the whole damn book from which it came (Answer to Job), three or four times, probably gaining ever more enjoyment out of each subsequent reading. Who says psychology can't be downright and profoundly hilarious?
(1) "From Answer to Job," in Carl Jung, The Essential Jung, Selected and Introduced by Anthony Storr (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 310.
(2) 311.
(3) 312.
(4) 313.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
A Curious Footnote Speaks Volumes (Maybe)
Sometimes, a translator's inner pedant escapes and just has to rear its little homunculean head. I found the tracks of such a creature in last night's reading of The Banner of the Upright Seven (by Gottfried Keller, translated in 1964 by one Bayard Quincy Morgan, apparently known in sporting fashion as "B.Q," and, I would assume, entirely comfortable with utterances such as "old chap").
Behold, at the bottom of page 41, the description of a dinner party receives the following note:
"Feminine readers may be interested in the cakes which Keller specifies, and which are as follows: Hüpli and Offleten, crisp brown cookies of flour, cream and sugar; both are very thin, but the former are rolled into small tubes, while the latter are flat and frequently stamped with a decorative pattern, or with the coat of arms of the family... [etc., etc.] TRANSLATOR."
Before examining the amazed guffaw that issued from yours truly, I first have to state that I love the biblical-style, all-caps-smaller-font signature B.Q. was granted here, much like THE LORD gets any time HE makes an appearance in Old Testament get-togethers.
But seriously, folks, "feminine readers"?
Yep, this was 1964, before the longhairs were running roughshod over innocent America and the women's libbers were trying to bring civilization to its unstockinged knees. But just a year earlier, Betty Friedan had published The Feminine Mystique. And here begins the wild speculation that was going through my head just a few hours ago: it's hard to believe something that made the splash Friedan's book did wouldn't have crossed the path of a well-informed Stanford Emeritus Professor such as our intrepid translator.
Maybe he and the publisher thought this little uproar was just a phase. (It's more likely they didn't think about it at all, in relation to the dumb footnote, but let's keep going, just for fun.) Morgan was in his eighties when Upright Seven came out; he was born in 1883, and I'm sure he'd seen enough to know that the world usually doesn't change drastically overnight, especially as the result of a book. But the way in which B.Q. assumed what sort of audience would (and would not) be interested in his footnote (especially when footnotes had thankfully been almost non-existent up to this point), and the way in which he addressed that audience, places him solidly in line with pre-Friedan attitudes.
Would there be something wrong with a man interested in knowing just what all these pastries were? If interested, would he be counted as "feminine"? Was Morgan using the adjective, not as an indicator of gender, but as a one-word label of bundled assumptions involved in a standard view of a particular gender? Did he use "feminine readers" in place of "ladies," for example, because he was aware that these days, only certain types of women-- those paragons of their "sex" still committed to the home and to "femininity"-- were remotely concerned with impressing the guests at their next dinner party?
I realize I've gone off on a zany tangent here that many will find ridiculous. But-- time for a little self-disclosure-- since I am a translator, I know 1) word choices loom incredibly large, whether bringing a text into another language or selecting the right phrasing for a margin note or clarification, and 2) my colleagues and I, at least, tend to make sparing use of footnotes. B.Q. had, so far, stayed true to point #2, and so I find it especially curious that he took the time here to seek out his lady friends, who, had they really been that interested in what was on Herr Frymann's table, probably would have done their own research.
And then: the text itself will bear with it its own date-stamp; how much do you, as a translator, want to 1) insert yourself into the text and/or 2) mark your own interventions with an additional era-indicator, thus (probably) leaving that much more excuse for someone else to come along and improve upon your own dated production?
I feel I've been a bit hard on ol' B.Q., who really was a mover and shaker in the world of translation, a world to which he was deeply committed. And I can at least recognize that his little comment was more apropos in the mid-'60s than it would be today-- and be thankful that, even though hearty strains of sexism still assume I'd rather be shopping and taking advice from The Millionaire Matchmaker, most people I know would laugh just as nuttily as I did upon reading that little gem at the bottom of page 41.
Behold, at the bottom of page 41, the description of a dinner party receives the following note:
"Feminine readers may be interested in the cakes which Keller specifies, and which are as follows: Hüpli and Offleten, crisp brown cookies of flour, cream and sugar; both are very thin, but the former are rolled into small tubes, while the latter are flat and frequently stamped with a decorative pattern, or with the coat of arms of the family... [etc., etc.] TRANSLATOR."
Before examining the amazed guffaw that issued from yours truly, I first have to state that I love the biblical-style, all-caps-smaller-font signature B.Q. was granted here, much like THE LORD gets any time HE makes an appearance in Old Testament get-togethers.
But seriously, folks, "feminine readers"?
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| Source: Motif Magazine |
Yep, this was 1964, before the longhairs were running roughshod over innocent America and the women's libbers were trying to bring civilization to its unstockinged knees. But just a year earlier, Betty Friedan had published The Feminine Mystique. And here begins the wild speculation that was going through my head just a few hours ago: it's hard to believe something that made the splash Friedan's book did wouldn't have crossed the path of a well-informed Stanford Emeritus Professor such as our intrepid translator.
Maybe he and the publisher thought this little uproar was just a phase. (It's more likely they didn't think about it at all, in relation to the dumb footnote, but let's keep going, just for fun.) Morgan was in his eighties when Upright Seven came out; he was born in 1883, and I'm sure he'd seen enough to know that the world usually doesn't change drastically overnight, especially as the result of a book. But the way in which B.Q. assumed what sort of audience would (and would not) be interested in his footnote (especially when footnotes had thankfully been almost non-existent up to this point), and the way in which he addressed that audience, places him solidly in line with pre-Friedan attitudes.
Would there be something wrong with a man interested in knowing just what all these pastries were? If interested, would he be counted as "feminine"? Was Morgan using the adjective, not as an indicator of gender, but as a one-word label of bundled assumptions involved in a standard view of a particular gender? Did he use "feminine readers" in place of "ladies," for example, because he was aware that these days, only certain types of women-- those paragons of their "sex" still committed to the home and to "femininity"-- were remotely concerned with impressing the guests at their next dinner party?
I realize I've gone off on a zany tangent here that many will find ridiculous. But-- time for a little self-disclosure-- since I am a translator, I know 1) word choices loom incredibly large, whether bringing a text into another language or selecting the right phrasing for a margin note or clarification, and 2) my colleagues and I, at least, tend to make sparing use of footnotes. B.Q. had, so far, stayed true to point #2, and so I find it especially curious that he took the time here to seek out his lady friends, who, had they really been that interested in what was on Herr Frymann's table, probably would have done their own research.
And then: the text itself will bear with it its own date-stamp; how much do you, as a translator, want to 1) insert yourself into the text and/or 2) mark your own interventions with an additional era-indicator, thus (probably) leaving that much more excuse for someone else to come along and improve upon your own dated production?
I feel I've been a bit hard on ol' B.Q., who really was a mover and shaker in the world of translation, a world to which he was deeply committed. And I can at least recognize that his little comment was more apropos in the mid-'60s than it would be today-- and be thankful that, even though hearty strains of sexism still assume I'd rather be shopping and taking advice from The Millionaire Matchmaker, most people I know would laugh just as nuttily as I did upon reading that little gem at the bottom of page 41.
Monday, May 12, 2014
The Book Wins Out!
I'm über-glad I stuck with A Thousand Acres. The thing really picked up in the second half, and of course, the book was much better-- more nuanced; more willing to go more in-depth into more dark places; more cognizant of the resident seeds of evil hanging around in even the most lamblike of us-- than the movie. I was especially impressed with the way Smiley had the narrator grow up and out of her meek cluelessness, without feeling pressured to bring the story to a victorious, trumpets-and-sunshine end.
The one thing the movie adaptation did well? Cast Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Rose. And I can't remember at all how the cinema version brought things to a close, but at least from what I recall seeing, Jessica Lange was also a good choice for Ginny, at least in pre-epiphany mode.
So: one more win for the book over the movie. While considering this competition, though, I was reminded of those rare times when each version of a story is equally as good as the other. I'm thinking about two examples in particular: 1) the account of Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. I first learned about it from the documentary that detailed it all, Man on Wire. Absolutely brilliant. It sent me straight to the protagonist's own written original, To Reach the Clouds. Even though I knew what would happen, and how, the latter had me biting my nails to the end.
2) The Harry Potter series is an entirely different animal for me, and constitutes one rare, collective instance where I'm content to let each genre exist as a set of completely unique products-- maybe because all of them were of high quality, and because, given the length of the later books, I was willing to allow for some excising in the later films.
That's all I have to say about that, though, other than the fact that I would like to check out Peter Brook's lengthy version of The Mahabharata. The time, though! There have to be five hours free somewhere...
The one thing the movie adaptation did well? Cast Michelle Pfeiffer in the role of Rose. And I can't remember at all how the cinema version brought things to a close, but at least from what I recall seeing, Jessica Lange was also a good choice for Ginny, at least in pre-epiphany mode.
So: one more win for the book over the movie. While considering this competition, though, I was reminded of those rare times when each version of a story is equally as good as the other. I'm thinking about two examples in particular: 1) the account of Philippe Petit's high-wire walk between the Twin Towers in 1974. I first learned about it from the documentary that detailed it all, Man on Wire. Absolutely brilliant. It sent me straight to the protagonist's own written original, To Reach the Clouds. Even though I knew what would happen, and how, the latter had me biting my nails to the end.
2) The Harry Potter series is an entirely different animal for me, and constitutes one rare, collective instance where I'm content to let each genre exist as a set of completely unique products-- maybe because all of them were of high quality, and because, given the length of the later books, I was willing to allow for some excising in the later films.
That's all I have to say about that, though, other than the fact that I would like to check out Peter Brook's lengthy version of The Mahabharata. The time, though! There have to be five hours free somewhere...
Saturday, May 10, 2014
When Cinema Gets to You First
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| Larry D. Moore CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Probably because my sister had subjected me to the film at the same time she also sat me down in front of One True Thing, the two got jumbled in my mind, and the former took on the name of the latter. (I'm not sure what happened in the ol' mental nether regions to the Anna Quindlen tale so rudely stripped of its identity.) But now that I know what I'm dealing with, I'm not really excited about seeing this through, in spite of the fact that Smiley's a good writer. I'm trying to pump myself up with things such as reminders that Greek tragedy is really just the same stories everyone already knew down to the last detail, but necessarily shaped into something original by each successive playwright who took on some heroic tale or gods-ridden nightmare. And I love me some Aristophanes and Sophocles, so what's the problem here?
The probable problem is the fact that I saw the Hollywood version of whatever Smiley produced first, and most likely in much better fashion. And so, if nothing else, I'm going to read this thing through to the end, in an attempt to establish the authorial superiority of the original. (Let's hope it happens.) There's a nagging reminder, though, of films that in my humble opinion, won out over their written source materials: Gone with the Wind, Old Yeller, Where the Red Fern Grows, The Firm. (Those middle two hold tenuous places in this list, since I watched and read all available versions of each multiple times-- but, with the exception of some vague hunting episode in Red Fern, when I think of both today, all I can come up with are scenes from the movies.)
So: I'll do my best to keep Michelle Pfeiffer et al out of my head while reading. (Already, I'm picturing the father with features completely unlike Jason Robards', so I'm optimistic about the success of said aim-- but, while looking this thing up on IMDB, was amazed to find that Colin Firth has a significant part in the film. Nice going, crappy memory.)
Thursday, May 8, 2014
The Clash of Genres
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| Courtesy erinc salor |
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| Courtesy Library of Congress |
The latter impression may have had a lot to do with the fact that I'd been watching Incident at Loch Ness-- the epitome of just excellent foolery.
Wednesday, May 7, 2014
Instructive Snippets and Possible Allegories (Seasoned with Some Crotchetiness)
I truly enjoyed getting through Julio Cortázar's Cronopios and Famas, even if, as happened with Beckett, I sometimes wasn't sure whether I possessed the necessary sophistication, let's call it, to be able to walk away and enlighten unversed readers with a confident exposition upon the significance of every last detail. What the hell, though; the collection was fun and often insightful.
I loved "The Instruction Manual," parts of which I read in a literature class in college, but didn't fully appreciate until this second time around. What may seem like simple quirkiness hides telling hints of the human condition-- as in "Instructions on How to Cry." Here, we're told that "In order to cry, steer the imagination toward yourself, and if this proves impossible owing to having contracted the habit of believing in the exterior world, think of a duck covered with ants or those gulfs in the Straits of Magellan into which no one sails ever." (6, italics in original)
Other than that curious-yet-effective reference to the lonely gulfs in the Straits of Magellan, what caught my attention is "the habit of believing in the exterior world." It doesn't sound to me like any sort of anti-empiricism, but an acknowledgment, rather, that what passes for being really important (what everyone says, the year's ten best buys-- "the exterior world") is all just a lot of bunk that distracts us from more essential things, such as self-knowledge and being at home in one's skin. You would think that an age of "personalized experiences" and Big Data, which encourages us to glorify ourselves and our immediate wants, wouldn't have to think twice about "steer[ing] the imagination toward yourself." But (and I'm about to give even more evidence that once a piece of writing escapes its creator's pen, it's fair game for public interpretation) this new version of self-centeredness seems to be displaying a pretty sad ability to imagine anything; in addition to the consumerism that makes us believe that uniqueness comes down to which mass-produced products we choose, imaginative capacities seem to be on the wane, when faced with cradle-to-grave screen time. (Among other reports/commentary, see here and here.)
Look, too, at what many of these instructions are for: naturally occurring actions such as crying, singing, being afraid. They're interspersed with activities, such as "dissect[ing] a ground owl," that seem to come out of left field. The jumble of natural and artificial and just plain weird advice seems to communicate just how much our contemporary screwed-up selves are in need of assistance in differentiating our proverbial asses from our elbows.
"Cronopios and Famas," too, was grand, with its cheerily clueless bourgeois famas, confident in their own goodwill. But what's been sticking with me today is "A Small Story Tending to Illustrate the Uncertainty of the Stability within Which We Like to Believe We Exist, or Laws Could Give Ground to the Exceptions, Unforeseen Disasters, or Improbabilities, and I Want to See You There." This little fictional world is filled with so many constantly productive scribes that the oceans, saturated with their output, turn to pulp, a phenomenon these hard workers then feel compelled to explain via more treatises, and so on and so forth. Whether Cortázar had academia or written output in general-- or neither-- in mind when he wrote this (in the early '60s), this mushy world, in which the overabundance of the written word is so unworthy of remembrance that the pages are used for building materials, seems to be an eerily apt allegory of the Information Age the author wouldn't live to see in its full flowering. What would he have done with the facts and sham-truths flying all over the place, accompanied by the voices of a thousand different commentators (why not include this blog in that mix?) who all feel obliged to put in their two cents, which in turn don't really contribute anything to the conversation, and will be forgotten within a matter of hours? What for the pre-digital world were mountains of wet paper, somewhat limited by the availability of materials, has now turned into a flood of disembodied data whose continual assault both pushes everyone into panic mode, thinking they have to stay on top of and contribute to it, and burdens everyone's spirit with the sheer, intangible weight of it all.
Admittedly, I may be feeling a little too biased toward the negative here, as my occasional book review gigs remind me of just how little of what gets hyped and fawned over will remain in the collective memory, much less continue to exercise any sort of influence one way or the other. But with such a small percentage of all this verbiage not even worth the time it takes to read it, I am heartened by the fact that Cortázar's often wacky meditations have continued to shoulder their way past huge mounds of effluvia.
I loved "The Instruction Manual," parts of which I read in a literature class in college, but didn't fully appreciate until this second time around. What may seem like simple quirkiness hides telling hints of the human condition-- as in "Instructions on How to Cry." Here, we're told that "In order to cry, steer the imagination toward yourself, and if this proves impossible owing to having contracted the habit of believing in the exterior world, think of a duck covered with ants or those gulfs in the Straits of Magellan into which no one sails ever." (6, italics in original)
Look, too, at what many of these instructions are for: naturally occurring actions such as crying, singing, being afraid. They're interspersed with activities, such as "dissect[ing] a ground owl," that seem to come out of left field. The jumble of natural and artificial and just plain weird advice seems to communicate just how much our contemporary screwed-up selves are in need of assistance in differentiating our proverbial asses from our elbows.
"Cronopios and Famas," too, was grand, with its cheerily clueless bourgeois famas, confident in their own goodwill. But what's been sticking with me today is "A Small Story Tending to Illustrate the Uncertainty of the Stability within Which We Like to Believe We Exist, or Laws Could Give Ground to the Exceptions, Unforeseen Disasters, or Improbabilities, and I Want to See You There." This little fictional world is filled with so many constantly productive scribes that the oceans, saturated with their output, turn to pulp, a phenomenon these hard workers then feel compelled to explain via more treatises, and so on and so forth. Whether Cortázar had academia or written output in general-- or neither-- in mind when he wrote this (in the early '60s), this mushy world, in which the overabundance of the written word is so unworthy of remembrance that the pages are used for building materials, seems to be an eerily apt allegory of the Information Age the author wouldn't live to see in its full flowering. What would he have done with the facts and sham-truths flying all over the place, accompanied by the voices of a thousand different commentators (why not include this blog in that mix?) who all feel obliged to put in their two cents, which in turn don't really contribute anything to the conversation, and will be forgotten within a matter of hours? What for the pre-digital world were mountains of wet paper, somewhat limited by the availability of materials, has now turned into a flood of disembodied data whose continual assault both pushes everyone into panic mode, thinking they have to stay on top of and contribute to it, and burdens everyone's spirit with the sheer, intangible weight of it all.
Admittedly, I may be feeling a little too biased toward the negative here, as my occasional book review gigs remind me of just how little of what gets hyped and fawned over will remain in the collective memory, much less continue to exercise any sort of influence one way or the other. But with such a small percentage of all this verbiage not even worth the time it takes to read it, I am heartened by the fact that Cortázar's often wacky meditations have continued to shoulder their way past huge mounds of effluvia.
Monday, May 5, 2014
George Steiner: Yeah, He's the Man
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| The master and his dashing red jacket, courtesy of CiênciaHoje. |
As only one example, take his assertion about the effects of language used in advertising and mass media-- that political speech (in this case, Eisenhower's) "was intended neither to communicate the critical truths of national life nor to quicken the mind of the hearer," but "to evade or gloss over the demands of meaning."(1) It not only nails contemporary (U.S.) political discourse; it also fits in well with a mental consortium of media critics such as Noam Chomsky, especially in his Manufacturing Consent. But Steiner goes further than Chomsky, or at least makes more explicit the almost spiritual effects technological changes do and will have on human beings. Foreseeing upcoming advances in mass communication-- although not visualizing, of course, the particulars of our current constantly connected world-- he comes right out with "behind the technical change [in literature and its form/s] lies the metaphysical shift" involved in closer identification with and formation by collective understandings and assumptions. (2)
Steiner knows and admits that much of his criticisms, at least about literature, are subjectively based, and that there's no way to prove, as opposed to those who buy into social scientism, that one work is better than another. And he's also not willing to sing the joys of art for art's sake, or to add his voice to a sort of "save the humanities" campaign based on the argument that good art/literature makes one a better person. His examination of cultivated Nazis and the artistically civilized milieux from which they came is too insightful to wave such a simplistic literature-boosting banner.
There's just too much in this collection of essays to address in any sort of satisfactory fashion.* But two little parts stood out for me, which somehow represent 1) what Steiner's about and 2) what his role may, fortunately or un-, be. First: in his discussion of nationalism ("the venom of our age") and the general situation of Jews, he declares that "The earth grows too crowded, too harassed by the shadow of famine, to waste soil on barbed wire." (3) Somehow, I feel as if Steiner's entire critical undertaking is devoted to some better, more truly humane world, a utopia to which we might be able to find our way through the Word.
But then, how many people really listen to highbrow essayists and literary critics, or care, other than the choir already set to sing their praises? When he describes Kafka's place in life, via a quote from Kierkegaard-- "An individual cannot assist or save a time, he can only express that it is lost"-- it seems that Steiner's describing his own efforts. (4) There's absolute value in such expression; among other things, that includes making 20th-century hold-outs like me feel a little less alone. Maybe that's why I feel so strongly drawn to this principled and intimidating (I'd be too terrified to meet the guy) giant of letters. He's one of a dying breed, and I can only hope the connection-addled world he foresaw in the 1960s doesn't become so distracted that it forgets the spirit of what Steiner represents.
*Because there really was no place to put this comment, I thought I'd include separately Steiner's claim that "The American writer... has found it difficult to achieve continuity, to make individual acts of invention part of a natural growth and completion... The history of the writer who produces a stunning first novel, whose second book is either a nervous pastiche of his own success or a botched fling at something new, and whose later work moves erratically between quality and routine, is almost an American cliché." (5) What I heard loud and clear in those couple of phrases was "Mark Z. Danielewski." House of Leaves: absolute brilliance, and among my top three favorite novels. His later stuff? Heartbreakingly unreadable, probably because it seemed to this humble reader that the guy thought he'd found a gimmick, and would just go with it.
(1) "The Retreat from the Word," 27.
(2) "Literature and Post-History," 387.
(3) "A Kind of Survivor," 152, 153.
(4) "K," 123.
(5) "Building a Monument," 288.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
More Márai
I'm not sure whether George Steiner has said anything about Márai (cursory investigations aren't turning anything up), but it would be interesting to hear his thoughts on the man and/or his work. I'm nearing the end of Steiner's Language and Silence, and although I can only take so much of literary criticism (an attitudinal stance I feel Steiner himself might oddly enough share or have shared at some point), his sometimes-curmudgeonly analysis of pretty much anything never fails to be engaging.
Friday, May 2, 2014
A Book Haul Aids in Rediscovery
Well, I got up early today and headed down to one of the city's convention spaces, where I queued dutifully with the other committed book dorks eager to get into a clearance event that actually required all the room set aside for it. Admittedly, it was mostly junk-- but I'm always willing to spend a couple of hours poring through supermarket pulp if I know there'll be gems tucked away between the latest teen vampire schlock and the mommy porn that acts as a follow-up to it.
I did score some excellent finds, and was glad to have them along when it was time for me to hand over my part of this give-and-take day. After my sport of a dad spent most of his time sitting off to the side, waiting for me to scrutinize every offering, I was well-armed with literature to get me through my own bench-dwelling at his natural gardening mecca. Finding a niche for myself among exuberant greenery, I opened up my $2 Flannery O'Connor collection, and was greeted, appropriately enough, by "The Geranium." OK, so the plot really had nothing much to do with plants at all, but I'll take neat coincidences when they come.
It's only been semi-recently that I've revisited O'Connor's stuff. Up until my early thirties, I just couldn't handle her characters and the situations they got into; even though I didn't grow up in her Southern gothic world, it felt all too familiar, in a very unwelcome way. Even an adored grad school prof's theological rapture at all these weird and disheartening goings-on-- which were most assuredly foreign to this Welshman-- did nothing to change my mind. But then a few years ago, a creative writing friend had me read "Good Country People"-- and the way O'Connor crafted that thing blew a mental gasket for me. It was almost as if the characters were simultaneously central and incidental, and I could almost see how the author had been laying out a brilliant step-by-step map for us the entire time.
Since then, I've approached her with ever less hesitation. An excerpt from her journals, featured in The New Yorker in September, more or less cured my case of the willies, even if I don't share her metaphysical viewpoint/s. And so, it was superb to have time today to let myself fall into "The Geranium" and "The Barber," the latter of which I found remarkable in its ability to convey the insecurities and not-quite disinterested liberal self-perception of the main character.
The strangely appropriate, though differently dated, feature of this whole situation was the fact that I was surrounded by rich neo-hippies out digging the floral vibes and doing what happens all too often in my hometown: namely, being assertively laid-back and super demonstrative about the fact that one is really digging the music being played, and hence, being true to the area's pride in valuing tunage, all the time, everywhere. (The book sale, for example, featured a band who kept trying to get the noses-in-spines crowd to get into the music.) The oddly apropos atmosphere made the blaring selection of Supertramp being piped through the tastefully hidden speakers a little easier to bear, able as I was to place at least a few inhabitants of real life in the barber's chair in lieu of Rayber.
All in all a good day, even if it brought out some of that snark that I wish could be more easily overcome with grace and understanding. I'm sure if I keep reading O'Connor, though, and read her truly, she'll be able to target my flare-ups of self-satisfaction with a nice dose of comeuppance.
I did score some excellent finds, and was glad to have them along when it was time for me to hand over my part of this give-and-take day. After my sport of a dad spent most of his time sitting off to the side, waiting for me to scrutinize every offering, I was well-armed with literature to get me through my own bench-dwelling at his natural gardening mecca. Finding a niche for myself among exuberant greenery, I opened up my $2 Flannery O'Connor collection, and was greeted, appropriately enough, by "The Geranium." OK, so the plot really had nothing much to do with plants at all, but I'll take neat coincidences when they come.
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| Source: Cmacauley |
Since then, I've approached her with ever less hesitation. An excerpt from her journals, featured in The New Yorker in September, more or less cured my case of the willies, even if I don't share her metaphysical viewpoint/s. And so, it was superb to have time today to let myself fall into "The Geranium" and "The Barber," the latter of which I found remarkable in its ability to convey the insecurities and not-quite disinterested liberal self-perception of the main character.
The strangely appropriate, though differently dated, feature of this whole situation was the fact that I was surrounded by rich neo-hippies out digging the floral vibes and doing what happens all too often in my hometown: namely, being assertively laid-back and super demonstrative about the fact that one is really digging the music being played, and hence, being true to the area's pride in valuing tunage, all the time, everywhere. (The book sale, for example, featured a band who kept trying to get the noses-in-spines crowd to get into the music.) The oddly apropos atmosphere made the blaring selection of Supertramp being piped through the tastefully hidden speakers a little easier to bear, able as I was to place at least a few inhabitants of real life in the barber's chair in lieu of Rayber.
All in all a good day, even if it brought out some of that snark that I wish could be more easily overcome with grace and understanding. I'm sure if I keep reading O'Connor, though, and read her truly, she'll be able to target my flare-ups of self-satisfaction with a nice dose of comeuppance.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
A Hungarian Turn
After my adventures in Beckett, I've moved on to Sándor Márai's The Rebels, which I grabbed at a library sale a few years back. As happens with a lot of such purchases, at best, I'll skim the back or inside cover, but don't pay all that much attention to it, lest any surprises be ruined by a publisher's teaser and/or summary. And so, I'm not sure whether or not having dutifully imbibed the rundown before cracking this thing open would have made any difference to my expectations-- but after tooling through the first chapter with a three-star (out of five) rating in my mind, I was pleasantly intrigued to find in chapter two that this little story has moved in an unexpected, and possibly disconcerting, direction. Unfortunately, the page-turning marathon of the night before left me too tired to keep going last night, so I'll have to put my curiosity on hold for another few hours.
Is it wrong to keep my fingers crossed for sinister developments? I don't really think they'll ensue from this group of pretty average, restless boys-- but Márai's creepy-crawly signature, featured here on a statue dedicated to him in Košice, gives me the (unfounded) hope that such things will unfold:
Is it wrong to keep my fingers crossed for sinister developments? I don't really think they'll ensue from this group of pretty average, restless boys-- but Márai's creepy-crawly signature, featured here on a statue dedicated to him in Košice, gives me the (unfounded) hope that such things will unfold:
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