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.