Big Brother Thinks You Should Take Underwater Basket-weaving

If this program becomes mandatory . . . I'm so horrified at this idea, I can't even think of a "then" for my conditional statement. Yes, it makes sense for the number crunchers and loan-givers to track how well college students are doing, but what if this information is then used to create some kind of "national curriculum"? It's bad enough that the national government has its fingers in local education with the No Child Left Behind Act, but to track what adults are learning and how they are learning it? Pick your distopian setting, 1984, Brave New World, Communist China: this program seems like a definite step in that direction.

On the plus side, 62 percent of Americans surveyed thought this college student tracking idea was a bad one. On the down side, I wish that figure were higher.

The King of Bad Jokes

Hello. My name is Christopher, and I suffer from paranormasia.

The Pleasures of Purple Prose

I can’t believe I never picked up any Conan stories when I was younger. After I read The Lord of the Rings, heroic fantasy was my bread and butter, the water I drank, the air I breathed. But as much as I enjoy the stories now, I wonder if I would have gotten as much out of them when I was a teen.

As a teen, I would have enjoyed the adventure and the violence in the stories. Conan isn’t stupid, and while he is cunning in how he applies force, part of the fun in these tales is knowing that Conan will always have to use his prodigious strength to fight his way out of whatever jam he finds himself in.

As an adult, I like the adventure and the violence, but I also find myself marveling at Robert E. Howard’s style, his adept way with adjectives, his versatility with verbs, his nuanced use of nouns. His prose can be flowery, but the intent is always clear, the vigor always rippling across the page like waves blown before a hurricane (to borrow a Howardian metaphor).

I don’t know many authors who could get away with such a baroque style today. Howard published the Conan story “Red Nails” in the magazine Weird Tales in 1936. In the age before television, words were given more weight, respected more: at least, that is my sense of things. Whether a writer in that era tended toward verbosity (a la F. Scott Fitzgerald) or toward minimalism (a la Hemingway), the writers expected their readers to mine as much value as possible from every word put to paper.

In this excerpt from “Red Nails,” the intrepid wanderer Conan and the beautiful pirate Valeria have been cornered on a tall rocky outcropping by a dinosaur-like dragon. In a cunning attempt to defeat the creature, Conan fashions a spear from some tree branches and his poniard, coats the blade with the juice of a poison fruit, and then leans over the edge to taunt the beast into attacking.

There was more of it, some of it couched in elegance that made Valeria stare, in spite of her profane education among the seafarers. And it had its effect on the monster. Just as the incessant yapping of a dog worries and enrages more constitutionally silent animals, so the clamorous voice of a man rouses fear in some bestial bosoms and insane rage in others. Suddenly and with appalling quickness, the mastodonic brute reared up on its mighty hind legs and elongated its neck and body in a furious effort to reach this vociferous pigmy whose clamor was disturbing the primeval silence of its ancient realm.

Conan spears the dragon in the mouth, and thus facilitates his escape with Valeria.

The thrill of watching Conan use both brain and brawn to overcome this first obstacle in the story is entertaining enough, but what would otherwise be a fairly pedestrian scene—Conan fashions a spear, taunts the dragon, stabs it—becomes almost lyrical in Howard’s hands. Phrases like “profane education,” “incessant yapping,” “more constitutionally silent animals,” “bestial bosoms,” “mastodonic brute,” vociferous pigmy,” and “primeval silence” add a color and vibrance that makes the images and our emotional associations with them fairly leap off the page—so what if said color is perhaps a dark purple?

The Iliad, the Odyssey, Beowulf, the Ring Cycle, et. al.: these tales have set the standard for ornate, colorful phrasings. Howard was writing for pulp magazines, it is true, but he was also writing in a grand tradition of larger-than-life heroes, monsters, villains, women, and adventures with all of them. His larger-than-life language is certainly not only appropriate, but necessary to convey the full grandeur of a hero like Conan.

Bloody Finished

When I started reading My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, one of the first things I noticed was the almost complete lack of imagery or figurative language. There is no artistry in this book other than Sanchez's willingness to plow forward with his story and tell it in as straightforward a manner as he can. It is unfair to compare this book with, say, The Great Gatsby or The Old Man and the Sea or Anna Karenina--or even any of the Conan stories of Robert E. Howard--but the stylistic flourishes in those books were never far from my mind as I read a book that has almost none of them. It didn't make the book any less enjoyable for me--Sanchez's tale is at times mesmerizing--but it did point out to me what I have come to expect from the books I read. I might call it the "overly-educated reader phenomenon." Or I could just call myself a book snob (and I have).

There were times I felt myself wishing Sanchez had used just a little more creativity in describing the pain and horror of his six years in a gang (from the age of 12 to 18). There was the occasional simile, "I drank wine like it was water," or "I ran like a crazy man," but nothing that pushed the envelope any more than that. There was nothing colorful about his descriptions or this book. And that seems to have been the point. One imagines that Sanchez would read his prose out loud as if it almost pained him to do so, but he still felt compelled to voice his experiences as if reciting "Our Fathers" and "Hail Marys" while working his way through the rosary. To indulge in any kind of literary flamboyance would seem, in a way, like an endorsement of the life Sanchez finally found the courage to quit.

Joss Whedon is Brilliant

And I'm not just saying that as an adoring fanboy who owns all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, all five seasons of Angel, the one tragically short season of Firefly and the Lazarus-like Serenity (a movie based on the too-soon-cancelled TV show Firefly) on DVD. I'm saying that as a fanboy, English teacher, and as-yet-amateur-but-someday-professional writer who listens with rapt attention when Joss Whedon pontificates about the process and art of telling a story. OK, so, by his own admission, Whedon isn't so great at "sensitive family drama." He is a creature of genre. But the man knows how to put a story together. Almost every audio commentary he has ever done--for Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Serenity--is a veritable list of best practices for storytelling. And he drops some more pearls of wisdom in this interview by Marvel Comics scribe Brian Bendis for Wizard, the comic industry magazine.

Sure, much of what Whedon and Bendis discuss will fly right over the heads on non-Whedonphiles, but still, the moments when Whedon talks about writing should speak to anyone who has ever put pen to paper.

Impressions of a Bloody Life

Everything in My Bloody Life: The Making of a Latin King, by Reymundo Sanchez, is everything I quit teaching for CPS to get away from.

At the time Sanchez was attending Clemente High School on Chicago’s West Side, in the early 1970’s, the Latin Kings were the biggest Puerto Rican gang in Chicago. Perhaps it still is. At the very least, it’s active. I’m sure I had students who were either members or closely affiliated with the gang.

The book is a frank and unvarnished memoir of gang life. Sanchez writes:

My Bloody Life is by no means a justification for gang involvement or gang crime. It is not an attempt to glorify any one gang or its members’ actions. Nor is it intended in any way as the confession of one person’s crimes. My Bloody Life is the story of a lifestyle and the destruction it creates.

I’m only 40 pages into it, and already Sanchez has described a world so alien from my experience that it seems unreal. I don’t want to believe that someone’s mother could beat her son as often and with as much amoral indifference as Sanchez’s mother beat him. I cannot comprehend being so afraid of my uncaring mother and my raging stepfather that I would routinely hide under my bed just to escape the beatings. And that’s just Sanchez’s home life. He feels more comfortable on the streets, where he is beginning to realize that people get shot with alarming frequency, just for belonging to a rival gang, or for no apparent reason at all.

As I read, I think about the students I left behind when I quit my job teaching on the South Side. I have to take Sanchez’s word that what he is describing is accurate and truthful, and I don’t know with certainty how much of his story applies to my students’ lives, but based on what I remember seeing and hearing and feeling every day when I walked into my school, I get the impression that Sanchez could be telling the life story of almost any one of my students.

Reading about it is almost as depressing and frustrating as seeing the surface of it every day.

Something I just learned: it seems Old-English style letters are a hallmark of the Latin Kings. One of my brightest and sweetest students (even if she rarely came to school) was in the habit of drawing Old English letters—entire alphabets—on her notebooks. She was quite a talented artist. Her letters were good. Now I can’t help but wonder at her interest in Old English letters.

Reading this book is like driving past a terrible car wreck—it’s grisly and disturbing, but at the same time so fascinating that I can’t look away. I knew of this book from other CPS teachers, but I’m reading it now because one of my community college students wrote about it in her reading journal—it’s one of her favorite books.

Anna vs. Conan

In a straight-up fight, who would win: Conan . . . or Anna Karenina?

OK, that was a trick question: Conan's sense of barbaric chivalry prevents him from taking arms against women (unless, of course, they are angry Amazons out to flay the skin from his bones), so the fight I proposed in the first sentence would never actually happen, especially since Anna would be too caught up in her doomed love affair with Vronsky to take Conan seriously.

Still, when it comes to which character wins when I want a little comfort reading, you'd think it would be Conan--the stories are straightforward, uncomplicated adventure yarns; "Anna Karenina" is a profound tale of a passionate love so intense it consumes its participants.

But lately, Anna is winning.

I don't just like a story for its plot--I also pay attention to the style of the writing. I notice how long the paragraphs are, how detailed the descriptions are, how deep into the characters's thoughts we get to delve, and a million other minute details of authorial signature. Tolstoy and Howard both have styles appropriate to their subject matter: Tolsoty paints detailed, psychologically nuanced pictures of his characters and their surroundings; Howard's prose is as lithe and sinewy as his massively-muscled main character.

My problem with the Conan book I just finished, Conan the Buccaneer, is that Robert E. Howard didn't write it. L. Sprague DeCamp and Lin Carter collaborated on this novel as a way of filling in some gaps in the timeline left by Howard's original stories. It has all of the trappings of Conan--a beautiful and strong-willed princess in peril, sinister socerers, dark magic, fearsome creatures, stunning swordplay, and magnificent displays of machismo . . . but the prose just doesn't have the same resonance as Howard's. The tale is all action, no heart. Sure, I still read it. I have a weakness for heroic fantasy. But lately, "Anna Karenina" has been the more satisfying read--even as an escape.

My Savory Summer Project

Famous first lines (there will be a quiz afterward):

All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Quick, what famous Russian novel starts with that sentence?

I'll admit, I'm sure I've heard that line somewhere before, but until I started reading Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina last week, I wouldn't have gotten that right, either.

It's a rather large novel: 332,757 words. According to the "text stats" listed for it on Amazon.com, 99 percent of novels have fewer words. One of the most recent Robert B. Parker Spenser mysteries, for example, Cold Service, is 50,247 words. I can (and have) read an entire Spenser novel in less than 24 hours (that's what happens when you're addicted, I guess).

I will not be plowing through Anna Karenina in one day. Or even several. This might take me most of the summer, and not only because this is a long and complex novel. I'm gonna want to savor this.

The titular character, although mentioned in Chapter II, does not appear until Chapter XVIII, so that when she does finally make her entrance, the delay, and the resultant expectation, only heightens Tolstoy's subtle yet evocative description of her:

The trained insight of a Society man enabled Vronsky with a single glance to decide that she belonged to the best Society. He apologized for being in her way and was about to enter the carriage, but felt compelled to have another look at her, not because she was very beautiful nor because of the elegance and modest grace of her whole figure, but because he saw in her sweet face as she passed him something specially tender and kind. Her bright grey eyes which seemed dark because of their black lashes rested for a moment on his face as if recognizing him, and then turned to the passing crowd evidently in search of some one. In that short look Vronsky had time to notice the subdued animation that enlivened her face and seemed to flutter between her bright eyes and a scarcely perceptible smile which curved her rosy lips. It was as if an excess of vitality so filled her whole being that it betrayed itself against her will, now in her smile, now in the light of her eyes. She deliberately tried to extinguish that light in her eyes, but it shone despite of her in her faint smile.

And, as Vronsky's passion for this strange woman begins, without him even being conscious if it, so too is the reader drawn to this enigma, of whom we know very little, but whom we also seem to be intimately familiar--or, at the very least, want to.

Sledge-O-Matic Memories

I've been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories lately, and the following passage stuck in my head for some reason:

Akhirom climbed to the top of the wall, balanced an instant, and dove off, spreading his arms like wings. His body described a long, steep parabola downward, missing the edge of the roof and plunging on down, the wind whistling in his garments, until he struck the stones of the courtyard below with the sound of a melon hit by a sledgehammer.

(from "Hawks Over Shem," by Robert E. Howard and L. Sprague de Camp, collected in Conan the Freebooter. Ace Books, 1968).

Thanks to Gallagher, I have a pretty good idea of what that would sound like.

Rowling Kudos

In my first blog, I described how my attitude toward Harry Potter changed from sick-of-the-hype to reading The Half-Blood Prince in two days.

Well, I got some more props to send J.K. Rowling's way. Here is an excerpt from the very fine Mendeleyev's Dream: The Quest for the Elements, by Paul Strathern:

A few alchemists even published their memoirs, one going so far as to describe his successful quest. In his Exposition of the Hieroglyphicall Figures the Parisian scrivener Nicolas Flamel tells how he set out on an alchemical pilgrimage through France and Spain, where he met a certain Master Canches, a Jewish physician.

Strathern goes on to quote Flamel's account of creating the fabled Philosopher's Stone, and using it to turn a small quantity of mercury into gold.

Those of you who are Harry Potter fans are already sitting up and taking notice, I'm sure. You're having the same thought I did: "Nicolas Flamel was an actual historical figure? A real person? Holy crap!"

OK, I'll explain for those two of you who haven't read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (or, as it was originally titled in Great Britain: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone).

First, a quote from that first Harry Potter novel:

Harry unwrapped his Chocolate Frog and picked up the card. . . . Harry turned over the card and read: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE, currently headmaster of Hogwarts. Considered by many to be the greatest wizard of modern times, Dumbledore is particularly famous for his defeat of the dark wizard Grindelwald in 1945, for the discovery of the twelve uses of dragon's blood, and his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. Professor Dumbledore enjoys chamber music and tenpin bowling.

So, yes: J.K. Rowling worked some actual history of chemistry into her very fictional Harry Potter novels. According to his Wikipedia entry, Nicolas Flamel was quite the alchemical giant in his day. I'm sure some chemistry majors out there knew that already, but this is one of the things I love about reading: coming across a new connections to things I've read in the past.