Terry Teachout has just done me the courtesy of linking to one of my posts, and as I haven’t mentioned his blog in a while I’d like to put in a plug for it.

Granted, this is like putting in a plug for the 2 Blowhards–is there really anybody who comes here who doesn’t regularly go there as well?

But I digress. Terry Teachout is the arts critic for the Wall Street Journal, and he’s recently started writing a daily blog which is a lot more fun that I’d have expected that a New York art critic’s blog could be. Terry’s got a down-to-earth style, delightfully lacking in jargon, and and while much of what he writes is of little interest to me (I don’t live in New York) there’s always something I find interesting.

He updates his blog every weekday. Go take a look.

Wonder of wonders, Iam Hamet has posted something after a two-week breather. Go, thou.

And right at the top of his post (in fact, I’ve not yet read the rest of it) is a link to this parody of Jane Eyre, which is very much worth your time–even if you’ve never read Jane Eyre, as I confess I haven’t.

Chapter 32 and Chapter 33 of my novel Through Darkest Zymurgia! are now available for your delectation at Once-Told Tales.

This week: the dangers of romance!

This is the second volume of Brust’s epic
The Viscount of Adrilankha, which (like
The Lord of the Rings) is really a single novel in three
volumes. It’s just as delightful as its predecessor–in fact, it’s better–and I’m eagerly awaiting the publication of the third volume in the set.

For those who came in late, Brust has long been working on a series of
historical novels set in the same world as his Vlad Taltos books. Yes, I
said historical novels; they are (supposedly) written by a citizen of
that world, Sir Paarfi of Roundwood, a verbose and increasingly testy
academic; by the time of the current volume, his books have become quite
popular in Dragaera and one senses that he’s letting it go to his head.

If you like fantasy, and you haven’t read any books by Steven Brust, then
you need to do something about that. This, however enjoyable, is not the
book to start with. Not only is the middle third of a single novel, but
The Viscount of Adrilanhka, taken altogether, is the third
novel in a larger series which Brust has written as an homage to
Alexandre Dumas‘s Three Musketeers saga. These books are by no
means simple retellings of Dumas’ classic works–the plots are entirely
different–but there are decided and amusing parallels. You can go to
our Steven Brust page to find the other books.

And then there are the Vlad Taltos novels; start with Jhereg,
or the more recent omnibus edition, The Book of Jhereg, which
groups the first three or so Vlad novels.

I’ve got an interesting history with this novel. If you go use the
search box on my Ex Libris
Reviews site, you’ll see that a guest reviewer reviewed this book in
the most glowing terms some years ago. A guest reviewer who never
reviewed another book for me, whose initials were JB, and who, oddly,
shares an e-mail address with John Blumenthal, the author of the book. I
discovered this a few months ago, when Mr. Blumenthal sent me some e-mail
asking if I’d like a review copy.

A digression: every so often, someone will contact me asking if I’d like
a review copy of something or other. I almost always say no; life is too
short to spend my time reading books I don’t like, and if I accept a
review copy I feel like I need to read it. I’ve gotten burned that way a
couple of times, and now I’m fairly cautious.

Anyway, I called Mr. Blumenthal on his imposture, and he not only ‘fessed
up but did so so handsomely that I
agreed to read his book and tell you all what I think of it. And now
I’ve read it, and I’m at somewhat of a loss as to what to say about it,
as it’s really not my usual thing.

So let me tell you a little about it.

To begin with, it’s a novel in the proper sense: it’s about characters
and how they change. Most of the fiction I read–indeed, most genre
fiction in general–falls into the romance category: stories that are
remote in place or time and concern adventure, heroism, mystery, and so
forth. This, on the other hand, strikes me as more a Woody Allen/John
Updike sort of thing. (That’s not a compliment, by the way…the one
time I tried to read an Updike novel, I failed.)

It’s a novel about a screenwriter named Martin Dorfman. He’s sold six
scripts, none of which have managed to be filmed. He’s trying to sell a
seventh script. He’s worried that his career is nearly over. And he’s
nauseated. Seriously, deeply, falling-down nauseated. He’s sick. His
doctor can’t find anything wrong with him. The specialists can’t find
anything wrong with him. His doctor thinks that his trouble is all
stress-induced. His father (a retired doctor) thinks it’s neurological.
Unless it’s stomach cancer. The tests are all negative. He tries other
doctors. He tries a variety of alternative medical regimens. Nothing
works. He’s getting no better, and neither is his career. Meanwhile,
he’s reminiscing about growing up with a father for whom death by
bacillus lurks around every door.

I find it very difficult to judge this book. It’s supposed to be funny,
and in places I found it so–but Dorfman’s upbringing and world are very
different from mine. I suspect that I don’t have the background to appreciate
where he’s exagerating and where he’s telling the plain truth–and where
for those in the know it’s laugh or cry. (What can I say, I grew up in a
functional family.) I suspect it would be funnier if I came from the
right background.

So did I enjoy it? Yes, somewhat. It was mildly engaging, and I was
genuinely curious to see how it came out–I have no quarrel with Mr.
Blumenthal’s story-telling skills. While the book necessarily included
the discussion of a plethora of bodily functions and symptoms, it wasn’t
nearly as gross as I feared it would be. And I do have to congratulate
Mr. Blumenthal on Martin’s liaison with the Other Woman–his handling of
it was delightfully refreshing (I can say no more with spoiling it).

Will I re-read it, ever? Probably not.

But if you’re the sort who likes books about neurotic people struggling
to overcome both their own neuroses and those they inherited from their
parents, you might like this. It’s not my cup of tea, so I suppose the
fact that I found it mildly entertaining anyway can be taken as high praise.

From 1933 to 1951 Herman Charles Bosman wrote many short stories and
essays about life in South Africa, and particularly about life in a
region called the Marico Bushveld. Though of English descent, his
characters and narrators are staunchly Boer, and though the stories are
written in English they are filled with Boer words: veldshoen, voorkamer,
predikant, mealies, and many others. This book is a collection of
twenty-two of his best stories.

Bosman is pretty well unknown here in the States–at any rate, I’d never heard of him
before, and his books certainly aren’t in print here–but he’s become a
classic in South Africa. It so happens that I have a friend in South
Africa; he enjoyed Bosman’s tales as a kid and enjoys them still as an
adult, and thought Jane and I would like them, so he sent us a set of
Bosman books: this one, and another containing Bosman’s best humourous
stories.

After the first two stories, I was both fascinated and somewhat
repelled–the first two in the book are both really depressing, though
well-written. They were his earliest tales, though, and after that he
developed a lighter (thought not necessarily less serious) hand. Bosman
was a shrewd observer, and many of the stories are moving and hilarious
by turns. I enjoyed them thoroughly over the period of about three weeks.

I think they might be hard-going for the average American reader, as they
are set in a time and place very foreign to us: the South African veld.
Many are concerned with the Boer War of a hundred years ago, distant now
but not so distant then, and of the later veld of the 1930’s and ’40’s.
Even though I’ve read books about South Africa and the Boer war I still
found much that was exotic, particularly the words in Afrikaans. On the
other hand, there’s much that’s familiar–it’s as though the Wild West
had been settled by Dutchmen.

Fortunately, my friend Craig came to the rescue. I’d specifically asked
him what “mealies” were. One of Bosman’s characters talks about growing
them, and the word had popped up in several of the history books I’d
read, but I’d never seen a definition. Here’s what Craig had to say:

You would call it corn!

While not indigenous to Africa, it has become the staple food
of most Africans. Ground to a flour — mealie-meal is used in most
African diets. The Afrikaans for cooked mealie porridge is “pap” (now
adopted into most indigenous languages) — and the phrase “pap en vleis”
(porridge and meat) is commonly understood in all South African languages.

Depending on what part of the country you come from, so your
preference for how it is prepared differs. I’m from Zululand so we grew
up on “krummel pap” (crumbly porridge). Up North I had to get used to
“stywe pap” (stiff porridge). Most school hostels serve a runny version
of the stuff – which you either love or hate. If eaten for breakfast, you
usually add milk and sugar (yuk!), if with the main meal, it’s usually
eaten with a gravy (African equivalent of Yorkshire pudding, I suppose)
— although also with “morogo” — a wild leafy vegetable that is boiled
(closest equivalent is spinach). If you eat pap as a snack (as I
often do – and now am in the mood for some) you make it crumbly with lots
of butter and salt added !!!

Mealies are always eaten on the cob. Usually they are roasted over the fire,
and then pulled off with the fingers as it is eaten. If you’re doing this at a
sit-down dinner, then they’re usually boiled. Mealies (and pap) are common at a
braai (BBQ).

There you go, more information than you ever asked for!!

Crumbly with lots of butter and salt…darn, it does sound good. Craig
goes on to define a number of other terms of interest:

voorkamer: (literally, front room). Our equivalent of the sitting room or parlour.
By contrast the ‘agter-kamer’ (back room) is more like the living room
(nowadays, the family room) with access to the kitchen and bedrooms. The
bathroom (if there is one) and toilet are outside.

The house I currently live didn’t have power or running water when built (76
years ago) – the loo used to be in the corner of the garden. Thankfully, all
that’s changed!

commando: military units of civilian soldiers — each
providing his own horse and gun, and could come and go as he chose.
Really came into their own in the Boer Wars – only now being disbanded
under the current government. Very controversial.

veldkornet: cavalry officer with the commandos, but also
functioned in a ‘law and order’ capacity — more like a marshall than a
policeman.

dominee or predikant: both refer to a minister of religion;
the latter literally means ‘preacher’. Usually in reference to ministers
of the Dutch Reformed Church. There’s a lovely story (not sure if you
have it) that explores religious bigotry re Reformed and Catholic.

kroes: the curly hair of indigenous African people.
With the various liaisons of the early explorers and settlers, etc.
attempts at dealing with people of mixed race gave birth to the whole
Apartheid classification system — in which “kroes” hair was a “sure
sign” of an ancestor on the wrong side of the sheets (from a white
perspective)!! School inspectors used the notorious “pencil test”
to determine which school children should be going to. It’s only since
living in the Cape (where the first settlers settled) that I discover how
preoccupied here people were (and are) about this, literally tracing
mixed race to the sixteenth degree!! (4 generations). Now that our
Apartheid legislation is scrapped, together with the racial
clasifications, the new implementation of equity and preferment bills
with affirmative action has made racial divisions more bitter than they
used to be. It would be quite funny, if it wasn’t so sad, how topsy turvy
things have become — especially as people who tried to claim white
heritage are now trying to claim black heritage.

I’m holding off on the second Bosman book for a while; his stories are
worth reading a little at a time, so as to make them last longer.

I’ve not read The Da Vinci Code, but Sandra Miesel has, and she pretty much takes it to pieces. Given the book’s popularity, its revisionist view of history raises it to the stature of a Big Lie–and Sandra has the goods. I’m not an expert in the area, but I am a bit of a history buff, and so far as I can tell she’s dead on in her criticisms.

(Via Eve Tushnet)

This is a mixed bag of Lewis’ essays and other short pieces on the
general topic of fiction, including nine pieces that have previously been
collected and eleven that have not. It includes his original reviews of
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, reviews of
works by Charles Williams, H. Rider Haggard, and
George Orwell, a tribute to Dorothy L. Sayers,
and a variety of ruminations on the importance of story in fiction, the
difference between novels and romances, and advice on Which Books Not To
Review. As always, his words are a delight to read, and gave me much
food for thought.

I could easily quote at length from any of the pieces in this book; I’ll
settle for his advice on Which Books Not To Review, because it’s so
topical. If you’ll look back a month or so, the publication of
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix triggered a number of
articles about how the popularity of Harry Potter was a sign of infantilism
and bad judgement among the reading public. These essays were soundly fisked all around and about the Blogosphere at the time; and it was with a sense of wonder
that I realized that all of those fiskings could have been replaced (and
all the original articles prevented) by the following quote from
Lewis’ essay “On Science Fiction”:

For I am convinced that good adverse criticism is the most difficult
thing we have to do. I would advise everyone to begin it under the most
favourable conditions: this is, where you thoroughly know and heartily
like the thing the author is trying to do, and have enjoyed many books
where it was done well. Then you will have some chance of really showing
that he has failed and perhaps even of showing why. But if our real
reaction to a book is “Ugh! I just can’t bear this sort of thing,” then
I think we shall not be able to diagnose whatever real faults it has. We
may labour to conceal our emotion, but we shall end in a welter of
emotive, unanalysed, vogue-words–“arch”, “facetious”, “bogus”,
“adolescent”, “immature”, and the rest. When we really know what is
wrong we need none of these.

I’ve just posted the September Issue of my book review page, Ex Libris Reviews. For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, it’s a monthly book review column; most of the reviews are posted first on this weblog, but there’s always something new as well.

I picked this book up in a used bookstore in Washburn, WI, a very small town
on the shore of Lake Superior just south of Bayfield. The year-round
population can’t be more than 500 but when we drove by and I spotted it, the
store looked so interesting we had to stop. And it was nearly the best used
bookstore I have been in for ages. They had everything from lit crit to
Roman history to regional stuff to a dynamite sci-fi section that my son
mined with glee. And they had a coffee shop attached so I could sip an iced
French roast coffee while browsing. What more could a girl ask for?

Anyway, I read the entire Lord Peter Wimsey series some years ago before the
kids went to school and I had two hours of naptime every single afternoon to
do with as I pleased. This one stuck with me as the best of the lot and, as
I recall, seemed to me more a feminist tract than a serious murder mystery.
When I saw it on the shelf I wondered whether my perception of it had
changed with the passing of time and my ever changing taste in books.

Essentially, it still strikes me as feminist in tone, though having recently
read Sayers’ essay on education and having read more about her classical
studies and work, I can see the emphasis on education and serious scholarly
work for women that she puts into the book. Originally I thought it just a
vehicle for her ideas about women and work. Now I see the emphasis on higher
education for women and allowing women the same respect for academic
achievement that is afforded to men. All of this is very dated, of course.
She was writing preWWII when college and work for women was a choice of the
upper class only and not taken more seriously than a way to bag a well
educated husband. It’s the same argument that Virginia Woolf makes in
A Room of One’s Own, another book I read about the same time.

The plot is quite simple on the surface. Harriet Vane has gone down to
Oxford for a reunion of graduates called a “Gaudy Night.” She has just
returned from a tour of the continent designed to give her some breathing
space from Wimsey’s attentions and allow her to come to some decisions. There
she meets old classmates, some who have married and given up intellectual
life and some who have gone on in their studies and missed marriage and
kids. On her way out, she finds a piece of hate mail tucked into her gown
sleeve and, thinking it the work of some belligerent undergrad, burns it and
travels back to London–only to be called back to Oxford when the
notes continue with other members of the college along with obscene graffiti
on the bathroom walls and burning gowns in the commons. The head of the
college wants it stopped with a minimum of fuss and, more importantly,
publicity so she calls on Harriet as a detective fiction writer to help them
out. She comes to Oxford under the pretense of doing research on Sheridan Le
Fanu and quietly tries to figure out who is doing it.

To a point, I really enjoyed the book. The mystery aspects of it were well
done. Although half way thru the book, I suddenly remembered the ending, I
still could follow the laying out of clues and the setting up of the plot
with enjoyment. The Oxford setting was interesting also since I now have a
dear friend who attended Oxford in the 50’s and has told me stories about
women in the academic setting there. What bugged me this time is that having
set the book up as feminist in tone, she cops out at the end and brings Wimsey
in to save the day. Ok, he IS the detective in the series and I have to
admit, I found him a compelling suitor for Harriet. I kept wanting to tell
her to quit thinking so much and just give him a kiss, you twit. On the
other hand, to be consistent, Wimsey shouldn’t have come into it until
Harriet had the whole thing figured out. After I finished it and thought
about it a bit, I was disappointed in Sayers for doing that.

However, I wasn’t disappointed enough to bypass the bookstore on the way
home rather than stopping and picking up some more in the series. I have to
find out if she marries him or not.