The Wide Window

Posted on July 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

“It’s miraculous!” Klaus cried, as the flame took hold.
“It’s unbelievable!” Aunt Josephine cried.
“Fonti!” Sunny shrieked.
“It’s the scientific principles of the convergence and refraction of light!” Violet cried, wiping her eyes.
– page 180

The Wide Window finishes the three books that constitute Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, although the stories told unfold in a slightly different way. Once again the Baudelaire orphans are taken to a new home — one would hope a safer one. Alas, the home in particular hangs over a leech-filled lake, held up only by a few rotten beams. Their “Aunt” Josephine is positively neurotic, terrified of everything from falling sofas to realtors. The titular wide window resides in Aunt Josephine’s library (a large collection of books on grammar) and overlooks the lakeside. If living with Aunt Josephine wasn’t unpleasant enough — with her various neuroses and her obsession with grammar — the kids soon realize that Count Olaf is in pursuit of them, now in the guise of the aptly-named Captain Sham.

It is needless to say that Count Olaf once again connives a plan to make the Baudelaire orphans and their fortune his that is once again foiled by the constantly-maligned orphans — although this time Olaf’s plan is a touch more sophisticated than “Kill the legal guardian and take the kids”. It involves a forged letter and preying on the terror of Aunt Josephine. Although I already know how the story would unfold — this is part of the movie — I still enjoyed reading the book, as the narration is fun to read. Lemony Snicket’s humor is often dry, ironic, and a little subversive in that he talks to children as people instead of as children. Assuming the books are present in the library next week, I will be continuing in the series.

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Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar

Posted on July 10, 2009 by smellincoffee

Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar: Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes
© 2007 Thomas Cathcart and Daniel Klein
208 pages

I was quickly taken in by this book’s title, and was also interested in the intersection of philosophy and humor. The book attempts to be (and is, somewhat) both an introductory survey to philosophy in general while using jokes to demonstrate it. Although the authors do explain the meaning and (sometimes) relevance of philosophical matters, they do this in a silly and simple way that borders on being shallow and is definitely simplistic. Although I did encounter concepts I’d never heard of before — thus learning something — I found the treatment of many topics to be shamefully flat. Judging by the comments on Amazon, newcomers to philosophy find the book enjoyable, but I would not reccommend it as an introduction: the “…for Dummies” or “Complete Idiot’s Guide to….” philosophy books are probably superior. Still, some of the jokes are funny and at least at the beginning do demonstrate philosophy. As the book wears on, they go from being “relevant” to being “somewhat related”. The philosophy tag attached to this post should have quotation marks. If you read this, please do so with a large bag of iodine salt nearby.

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The Reptile Room

Posted on July 9, 2009 by smellincoffee

Count Olaf (as Stephano): Hello, I’m looking for Dr.Montgomery Montgomery. My name is Stephano, I am an Italian man.
Violet: You’re Count Olaf.
[…]
Count Olaf (as Stephano): Dammit. This was such a good character….
– from the movie.

When the bad beginning ended, the Baudelaire orphans — having become so when their parents caught fire — had managed to escape the clutches of their evil guardian Count Olaf when he shot himself in the foot. (Not literally — the book series may have ended then if that were the case.) Despite Olaf admitting to various crimes, his henchmen and he managed to escape the law’s clutches. Mr. Poe, the executor of the bank’s will (who author Lemony Snicket referred to as feeling like an “executioner” because he kept putting the children in danger), brings the children to their next-closest relative, a herpetologist who lives in the comparative middle of nowhere with a library and lots of snakes to keep him company.

Although snakes are often associated with villainy, Dr. Montgomery Montgomery (known to the kids as “Uncle Monty”) is a kind and generous fellow who values the children and immediately makes them at home. Lest we feel good for the orphans, our narrator informs us that soon they will once again be miserable and Uncle Monty will be quite dead. This comes about when Count Olaf becomes part of their lives once more under the guise of Uncle Monty’s lab assistant. Stephano/Count Olaf almost spirits the children away, but once more their courage and inventiveness allow them to escape from his clutches.

The book series remains humorous despite its dark nature, and The Reptile Room is as enjoyable as its predecessor.

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The Time Machine

Posted on July 9, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Time Machine

© 1895 H.G. Wells
108 pages


I was not expecting The Time Machine to be such a short read. The Great Illustrated Classics treatment of it was the first bit of science fiction I ever read, and I remember it being a fairly thick read and was surprised to find that my library’s only copy of the work was bound in a collection with The Invisible Man. Much of that book from my childhood sticks with me: the Time-Traveler staring at two wilted flowers, the titular machine that looked more like an amusement park ride than a time-traveling device, the way it made me want to find out what “mutton” tasted like, since the Time Traveler found it so appealing when he returns from his first trip — and the haunting image of him staring at a bloated sun that filled the sky on a cold and dying Earth.
You may have surmised at this point that The Time Machine is a novella about a man who goes time-traveling. It begins at his home in England as he talks with his friends about the reality of four dimensions and the fact that time is as real as width or depth. (I found this very interesting when I was a child, given that science classes at the elementary level consisted of memorizing definitions of things.) He then states that he has found a way to move forward through time, and demonstrates with a little model of a time machine to prove this to his skeptical friends, most of whom are known only from their occupations — as is the Time Traveler. Most of the story is told from his point of view: a week after he demonstrates his little model, he returns from a more extended time-traveling trip, most of which he spends in the far future.
He spends most of his time in the year 802,701, in which he discovers (in England) two races of people whom he believes are the descendants of humanity, the first being a childlike race of people living in vast communal structures who spend their time eating fruit, singing songs, and dances. At first the Traveler believes these people to be the fulfillment of human evolution — they have completely conquered Nature, and now can enjoy the fruits of their labor. The problem with this, as the Traveler soon discovers, is that these people (the Eloi) are not enjoying the fruits of their labor. They do nothing other than sleep, eat, and enjoy other sensual pleasures. They don’t grow food or make clothing — so where are their generous supplies of fruit and simple tunics coming from? Our Traveler finds this out when he discovers the second race of men, the Morlocks: they live underground, fiddle with machines, and prey on the Eloi like humans treat cattle.
The Traveler’s explanation for the evolution of the Eloi and Morlocks is grounded in then-contemporary social conditions and historical materialism: he believes that the Eloi and the Morlocks are the ancestors of the bourgeaouise and working class respectively. I assume that since the laborers were treated like animals, they became so. Our Traveler is quick to admit that this explanation, however plausible, could be wrong — just as his initial thoughts about the Eloi were. As he explores the landscape — eventually venturing into the Morlock underworld — he befriends an Eloi named Weena. She seemed to be less present in the actual novella than in the children’s book I read,but perhaps as a child I simply gave her more attention. Eventually the Traveler leaves the world of 802,701 to witness Earth’s end, and quickly returns to his present to tell his friends of his story. The novel has a slight twist ending.
What is remarkable for a book written in 1895 is how utterly readable this novella is: Victorian language can be a bit dense at times, but this was easy to read as a magazine article. The story has its charm as well.
Lead picture is from The Big Bang Theory.
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The Bad Beginning

Posted on July 8, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Bad Beginning

© 1996 Lemony Snicket
162 pages
One of my favorite movies is Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, starring Jim Carry (click here to see the trailer). The movie is based on the first three books in author Lemony Snicket’s series of books about the misfortunes that befall the Baudelaire orphans, three children who were left to fend for themselves when their house and parents suddenly caught fire. Things go downhill from there for Violet (14), Klaus (11 or 12) and Sunny (perhaps 2)_when the bank forces them into the hands of Count Olaf, who Mr. Poe judges to be their closest relative in that he lives just across town in a decaying mansion that just may have more grime in it than the average sewer. Sadly for the orphans, Olaf does not neglect his new wards in the same way that he neglects his home: indeed, he sees them as his access to the Boudelaire fortune and a source of domestic work. When the children are not chopping wood, repairing windows, and preparing dinners for Olaf’s acting troupe, they are stashed away in a small room. The children find some small comforts in their new next-door neighbor’s library, but these are cut short by the book’s plot development in which Count Olaf attempts to marry Violet, having pushed her into it by threatening to drop her little sister Sunny from a very high tower.
The story is told by narrator Lemony Snicket, who feels obliged to render an account of the orphans’ woe even though he hopes sincerely that no one would actually read such a dreary tale. Snicket’s narration explains “big words” for young readers, typically offering a synonym: in at least one instance, he humorously offers a word young readers wouldn’t know to replace one they would — “feigned” for faked. Adult characters in the book do this at well, leading one of the children — Klaus, typically — to interrupt and say “We know what it means!”. This adds to the sense that children are quite alone in their world save for each other, the memory of their parents, and the occasional kindness of strangers. Although the book is written for children, I think its tone makes it enjoyable for adults as well.
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This Week at the Library (8/7)

Posted on July 8, 2009 by smellincoffee

Books this Update:

  • The Gospel According to the Son, Norman Mailer
  • The Prince and the Pauper, Mark Twain
  • Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, Robert Pirsig
  • You Don’t Have to Be Wrong For Me to Be Right, Brad Hirschfield
  • The Art of Travel, Alain de Botton
I began the week with a novelized version of the Christian gospels. Jesus’ story is told through the first person point of view. His take on the traditional gospels is right in line with Orthodoxy, although he does mention that the Gospel writers tended to add things here and there. The book adds a little to the authoritative texts, although for me the story never really came into its own with a few exceptions. Judas and Satan are two of the better developed characters, which makes sense given that the rest of the disciples (save Peter) just hang around. If you like the canon Gospels, you’ll probably enjoy this — but if not, give it a pass.
During my childhood I read a lot of ‘classic’ works through the Great Illustrated Classics series for children. I think a given author’s style of writing is important by itself, and so I’ve decided to re-read some of the classics in the author’s own words. I decided to start with something by Twain, and so I checked out The Prince and the Pauper — the story of two young boys in the time of Henry VIII, one a prince born in a palace and the other a pauper who lives in the streets. Poor Tom Canty dreams of royalty and makes his way to the palace to ogle it, where he is noticed by the prince and invited it. The two are dead ringers for one another and decide to change clothes on a lark — inviting the plot, in which Prince Edward is thrown onto the streets and Canty is trapped in the palace. Twain uses the “fish out of water” plot device to make royalty see what life is like outside of the palace gates and criticize social woes and royal indifference.
Next I read the highly-acclaimed Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which I approached with anticipation. I thought it would be about the intersection of philosophy and everyday life, and had heard it accomplished this in the form of a traveling journal — which interests me. The book is indeed a bit of both: the author and his son join friends of the author as they go on a motorcycle trip across the northern Midwestern and western states of the US. Pirsig blends accounts of his with lectures on philosophy. Sometimes the two threads are joined, as they are when he uses a story of his troubleshooting motorcycle problems and an explanation of the scientific method and intellectual organization. For me the book was very much a mixed bag: I found it interesting at times and very dull at times: it’s not that I found the lectures exciting and the memoir dull or the reverse, but that some parts of both were interesting or dull.
Brad Hirschfield’s You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right was a welcome relief from the heavy reading that preceded it. Hirschfield is a Jewish rabbi who offers advice on interpersonal conflict that arises from opposing views on personal issues. Although this advice is rendered at first about religious things and maintains a religious flavor throughout, the advice throughout most of the book can be applied to nonreligious conflicts. I think more secular readers like myself can enjoy this, but would probably prefer this kind of advice in a book that is — from my perspective — limited by tradition.
Lastly I read Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel, a collection of nine essays dealing with various aspects of travel. de Botton examines travel — why we do it, where it takes us, what it can do for us — while relying on various historical personalities to guide both he and the reader in certain subjects. The essays often rely on pictures — art prints and photographs — within the text. The book hits its high point late, with de Botton’s essays on art and travel. In one particular paragraph, he writes on how drawing and writing “word pictures” can force us to become more aware of what we see and make the experience more lasting. I thought the book a treat.
Pick of the Week: Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel.
Next Week:
  • The Time Machine, H.G. Wells. I’m continuing a project I began with The Prince and the Pauper in reading classics I haven’t read since childhood.
  • Plato and a Platypus Walk Into a Bar, Thomas Cathcart
  • Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary; Marcus Borg. Borg and Bishop Shelby Spong are two of the men who interested me in comparative religion and humanistic Christianity.
  • Jennifer Government, Max Barry. I started to read this back in the early “Aughts”, but I don’t think I ever finished.
  • Lemony Snicket’s The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. Books 1-3 of the Series of Unfortunate Events. I’m finally going to read the book series that inspired one of my favorite movies.
  • And Zen Buddhism for Beginners by Jean Smith, as I don’t know what separates Zen from regular ol‘ Buddhism.
If that list looks daunting, it really isn’t. All of these books are shortish, especially the Snicket ones.
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The Art of Travel

Posted on July 8, 2009 by smellincoffee
The Art of Travel
© 2002 Alain de Botton
255 pages
I recently discovered that a short six-episode series on philosophy and its relationship to happiness hosted on YouTube were based on host Alain de Botton’s Consolations of Philosophy, a book on the same theme. I was surprised and delighted to find that my local library contains one of de Botton’s books, and thus I came to read his The Art of Travel. The book consists of nine essays regarding travel, divided into five sections based on their general themes. De Botton muses on why we travel and what it can do for us. The book contains within it full-page (and sometimes, full-spread) pictures — photographs and prints of art. (His essay featuring van Gogh’s work includes both the artist’s renderings of cypress trees and photographs to compare them to.)He draws on these directly: in one essay, de Botton comments on the travel-related work of Edward Hopper, including “Automat”. De Botton is never alone in his essays: each has one or more “guides” or other people whose lives and work he will draw on. Sometimes these historical personalities have encountered the same physical ground de Botton is writing on: sometimes, just the same metaphorical ground. For me, the book hit its high point late, in his two essays on art where I found myself riveted by one paragraph and realized there was a quality about this book I hadn’t anticipated. It was a treat to experience and a splendid way to finish off the week.
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You Don’t Have to be Wrong for Me to Be Right

Posted on July 7, 2009 by smellincoffee
You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism
© 2007 Brad Hirschfield
271 pages
You Don’t Have to be Wrong For Me to Be Right is a very readable book by Brad Hirschfield that on the surface addresses ways in which people who hold firm to religious traditions can get along with one another. His angle is not to interpret various religious texts to fit his views — indeed, the Bible and Koran are touched on very little. His book is more generally focused on ways that people who hold strong and very personal views on subjects can find common ground — or at least find a way to hear and respect one another. In Hirschfield’s words, “This book is for each of us who feels the continuum of conflict that is part of all of our lives and seems to loom larger for so many of us everyday […]. We live in a moment of polarized politics, angry rhetoric, and increasing violence, often pushed into the unfair choice between fanatical commitments that make us crazy and openness that is so loose it leaves us lonely. […] Perhaps it is too much to promise that we can resolve all of our conflicts, but it’s not too much to promise that with the right approach we can at least address them more constructively.” Separate chapters examine villain/victim dichotomies, empathy, working around disagreements, talking to people rather than talking at them, making judgements without being judgemental, the necessity of idealism, and more. Hirschfield’s style is conversational: it was for me a very brief read, but often touching. I found it to be a gentle reminder of ways I’ve been trying to approach conflict anyway. (I’ve been thinking a great deal on how to deal with difficult people in an empathetic way: this book addresses that.)
Its appeal to religious audiences seeking a way to communicate is obvious. Although I think more secular readers can enjoy it for its conflict-resolution and interpersonal advice, they would probably enjoy a similar book with a less religious context. For me, the least enjoyable parts of the book were when Hirschfield attempted to explain or justify his peculiar form of Judaism. His attachment to the Orthodox branch is obviously very personal, and his attempt to keep the tradition while living in the modern world evidently puts him through a lot of self-conflict. At one point he confesses that he thinks God will one day give him a slap on the back of the head for not being imaginative enough to reconcile some parts of his religion and life.
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Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

Posted on July 5, 2009 by smellincoffee
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
© 1974 Robert M. Pirsig
417 pages
I prefer reading anonymous books — that is, books that don’t really have a reputation. This is not one of those: I’ve heard of it at various intervals throughout my life, typically touted as being profound or (as the author describes it in his afterword) “culture-bearing”. The title itself reminds me of a phrase I’ve only heard in Only Begotten Daughter, “hermeneutics of the ordinary”. (Julie Katz’s father is described as wanting to write a book with said title on the meaning of everyday things.) I predicted that this would be about the intersection of philosophy and everyday life, and I had the general impression that it involved a road trip. While my prediction was somewhat accurate and that general impression was correct, that doesn’t quite sum up the book. The author introduces it as a “Chautauqua”, a…lecture of sorts about things that matter. The book covers what is described as a month-long motorcycle trip across the United States, and Pirsig’s recollections of this are intermixed with lectures on various subjects. Pirsig will often use his memories to set up the lecture, combining the two: for instance, while crouched beside his bike in South Dakota in a troubleshooting attempt, he talks at length about the scientific method, logic, categories, and organization. When approaching the mountains of Colorado, he uses them in a somewhat poetic sense to muse on the few people who have climbed to the highest steeps of thought, to a point where they are lost in meaning and meaningless.
The road memoir and the lecture series are the dominating threads in this novel, but contained within the lectures are biographical episodes about a character named Phaedrus. At first, I thought this was a Greek thinker who Pirsig was referencing in his lectures, but Phaedrus started to comment on Enlightenment thinking and then appeared teaching in a northwestern university, at which point I began to realize he was some sort of alter-ego for the author: the character of who he once was. Adding to the memoir bits are Pirsig’s recollections of dealing with his son, and what emerges is a strange (and for me) uncomfortable relationship. The accounts typically end with his son crying and Pirsig just sitting lost in his own world but wishing he could connect with his son. There are also a few dream-like episodes that are even stranger.
It’s a busy book with a lot going on. He does talk about philosophy and everyday life, looking into the sense of alienation in the mid-20th century — and he also spends a lot of time talking about philosophy in general. Some people tout the book as bringing the history of philosophy to people who would have never otherwise encountered it. It seems to inspire strong opinions, but I don’t have one. I appreciated parts of it, disliked parts, and was completely lost in parts. I’ve been experiencing it for a number of days now — reading, thinking on it, re-reading, re-thinking, arguing with myself — but all I can say is that I don’t know what to say about it. Although I’ve read all of its pages, I’m not done with it yet.
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The Prince and the Pauper

Posted on July 4, 2009 by smellincoffee

The Prince and the Pauper: A Tale for Young People of All Ages

© 1882 Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)
212 pages
In my youth I read many “classic” works of literature, but I did so through a series of children’s books that made the language of works such as Great Expectations easier to read and included plenty of pictures for illustration. In the years since I’ve read one or two of those books again in their original format — The Call of the Wild, for instance — but not many. Since the basic memory of those books is slipping away, and since it seems that I should have read books like Great Expectations by this point, I think I will be trying a few in what remains of this summer. I’ve been meaning to start with Twain, as I have many memories of reading through works like The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court with my father late at night. Twain is regarded as one of the quintessential American authors.

It’s been many years since I heard the story of The Prince and the Pauper. I still remembered its basics, as I imagine most people do: it is the story of two young boys, one a prince and the other living in a place aptly called “Offal Court”. Young Tom Canty, despite his very humble and very unpleasant surroundings, has higher pretensions. He conducts himself in a noble manner, making his family and friends think he really could be royalty. Such is his fascination for royalty that he finds himself at the palace gates one day, peering through the iron bars that protect England’s royal family from the rabble. His curiosity does not amuse the palace guards, who begin to rough him up before being stopped by Prince Edward. Edward is curious about the pauper and invites him in. As it it happens, the boys look very much alike and they decide to swap clothes on a lark. As this is tempting fate, Edward is promptly thrown out of the palace by the guards and poor Tom Canty is left to cope with being royalty.
Knowing this as I did, I figured it would be a story about how “the good things in life aren’t things”, that Tom and Edward would both realize that the love of a family, however poor, is superior to all the wealth in the world. I suppose (in retrospect) that this is too romantic and aesopy for Twain. Tom Canty is in no position to learn about the love of family: his father and grandmother are downright abusive, as Prince Edward will learn when he’s picked up by Tom’s father. Edward will spend most of the book trying to escape his hateful father’s clutches. The book is social criticism: by forcing a child of luxury to live in the streets and view them through alien eyes, and by allowing a child of the streets to see the royal government’s operations through an everyman perspective, Twain criticizes the class differences and the uncaring and impotent governments of the time. Twain as narrator is present in the story: his mid-19th century language is far different from the 17th century language his characters use, and he often addresses the reader directly.
Although I enjoyed the story, it took more attention than I expected to get through some of the chapters. I suppose that may caused by when the book was written, but I’ve read plenty of 19th century texts and find them to be more easily readable than this particular work of Twain’s.
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