NY Times Book Reviews of the Week

One thing I love about reading book reviews is learning about fields other than my own.  This eclectic learning pattern is one of our goals for you.  One dimensional people are not very interesting; if nothing else, you should be an interesting person.

Here's a review about the fascinating birth of meteorology.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/books/review/the-weather-experiment-by-peter-moore.html?ref=review&_r=0

With over a billion people, China merits some study and understanding.  Start with a good book review to open your mind to this vital part of the world:

"The China Challenge" http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/26/books/review/the-china-challenge-by-thomas-j-christensen.html?ref=review

A Long Hardwood Journey

This story is so well-written that I have to share it with you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/19/sports/a-long-hardwood-journey.html?_r=0

NY Times Book Review of the Week

You have to read it:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/12/books/racism-of-atticus-finch-in-go-set-a-watchman-could-alter-harper-lees-legacy.html?_r=0

It may disappoint you or you may find the older Atticus more realistic than the saintly father in To Kill a Mockingbird.  Nevertheless, you have to know.

More Exciting Than American Ninja Warrior: a Letter in Persuasion

Yesterday afternoon, I finished reading Persuasion, and last night I watched over two hours of American Ninja Warrior: US vs the World.  Austen's work was more intellectually more titillating.

The Ninja show is basically an obstacle course with water underneath that sets off bursts of fire when the competitors reach each new stage.  There's lots of hanging, swinging, jumping and dangling.  Winners tend to be former gymnasts or rock climbers, not black belt karate competitors.  A European rock climbing champion beat out a stock trader from Tennessee, who had reached the final with the help of his teammate, who had been identified merely as a "stay-at-home dad."

There's good work if you can get it.  Captain Wentworth, similarly, has the sole job in Austen's novel of winning the affection of Anne Elliot.  His final obstacles to traverse include jealousy of the final fool, her cousin Mr. Elliot, Anne's learning from an old friend that said cousin is a terrible, hypocritical, social-climbing jerk, and, finally, Anne engaging in a battle royal of feminist debates with Wentworth's fellow naval officer, Captain Harville.

The Harville vs A. Elliot throw down occurs over the topic:  who forgets their loved ones faster when they die--man or woman?

With Wentworth in the corner of the room engaged in correspondence, Anne and the Captain H. engage in a spirited exchange with Anne saying women hang on longer than men.  With Captain Benwick as her example who is remarrying after the passing of his wife, Anne states "it must be nature, man's nature." (ch XXIII)  Men can move on because they "have difficulties, and privations, and dangers enough to struggle with" whereas women "Live at home, quiet, confined, and our feelings prey upon us."  While Harville attempts to dissipate the energy of this discussion by claiming, "we shall never agree upon this question" his Navy buddy has dropped his pen, "striving to catch sounds, which yet she did not think he could have caught."

This plot trope of the overheard conversation gets significantly more play in British literature than American as leading families in large estate houses are overheard by servants who relay messages to other servants and then back to the principal characters.  Here, the servants are the once abandoned hearts of Anne and Wentworth.  Rightly fearing the direct contact with the source of his desire, Captain W. surreptitiously pens a note to Anne with the delightful paradox of their love laid bare:  "You pierce my soul.  I am half agony, half hope."  He has clearly been listening to the argument and writes, "dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death."  Then in a most Austen-like post script he closes with the line "I shall return hither. . . A word, a look, will be enough to decide whether I enter your father's house this evening, or never."

Those who go directly at their desire--in Austen's world, they are fools and scoundrels.
Those who judge by appearances-like Anne's spendthrift father-are soon to lose whatever they consider of value.
And those, like Anne and Wentworth, who suffer for their love, humbly serve greater causes than their own, and strive resolutely in the direction of their beloved--these noble few are rewarded with happy marriages.

The Last Fool

As Jane Austen sets up Anne to return to her original goal--once foiled by her class-conscious father--winning the love of Captain Wentworth, she encounters the final sign posts in the desired direction:  the intense affection of her cousin, Mr. Elliot.

While sitting at a concert hosted by Lady Dalrymple, "Mr. Elliot's speech too distressed her" (ch 20) because he haugtily comes on to her as if she has always been the object of his desire.  This fellow who once hardly recognized her at Lyme, now claims "The name of Anne Elliot . . .has long had an interesting sound to me. Very long has it possessed a charm over my fancy; and, if I dared, I would breathe my wishes that the name might never change."  In other modern American words, "You're mine!  You've always been mine!  The proof is we have the same name."  The fact that they're cousins should freak us out more today than at that time.  Entire royal families were made up of cousins until they realized that genetic abnormalities such as hemophilia resulted in such intermingling. 

Anne, genetics aside, does not like forwardness.  That love of the implied, the indirect, the subtle is what sets the sensible folk in Austen's works apart from the nonsensical, e.g. Sir Walter.  Austen points out that even Sir Walter is catching on to the fact that Captain Wentworth is the man to marry for his daughter as the author captures the simulatenous conversation of Sir Walter with Lady Dalyrmple: "a very well-looking man," he says of Captain Wentworth, thus giving his highly superficial stamp of approval to his middle daughter's desire.

Then, the final stage of the chapter, finds the official non-winner of the night, Mr. Elliot, busting up an attempt at conversation between the delightfully indirect Captain Wentworth and Anne.  Our heroine had just turned around the flagging spirits of the naval hero (way to go Anne, you cheer up all the downtrodden), when her goofy stuffed-shirt cousin comes up to ask her for an Italian translationof the  upcoming song.  Wentworth hurries off with a sorry line--"there is nothing wothy my staying for"--and Anne immediately realizes her ultimate dream in this act of jealousy.  "Jealousy of Mr. Elliot! . . .For a moment the gratification was exquisite." (ch 20)

Now the endgame of the novel is set.  Anne must solve this all-too-gratifying riddle of how to ditch her cousin and turn Wentworth's passionate envy into a life-time of love.  

The game is on!

Watch For the Buffoons

Keeping track of what's going on in a world where everyone buries the truth behind social propriety, decorum, and years of class prejudice can be difficult.  So watch for the buffoons to see what they have to say.  In a similar manner, Shakespeare would often send out a Fool or clown to spout off in the face of the main characters and let the audience get some mixture of truth and laughter.  Remember the watchman who rails off in a drunken fashion as he goes to answer the door in Macbeth, directly following Macbeth's killing of Duncan.

Before I introduce this quote, it should be noted that in the 19th century British sense of the phrase "to make love" means to court or date someone.  Admiral Croft, a most ridiculous fellow now living in Anne's house because her father foolishly mismanaged the family fortune, talks with Anne about Louisa's unfortunate faceplant off the stairs on the beach.  Croft says to Anne, "A new sort of way this for a young fellow to be making love, by breaking his mistress's head!--is not it, Miss Elliot?--This breaking a head and giving a plaster, truly!" (Ch. XIII)

The process of the novel is to steer Anne clear of likely, but imperfect suitors, such as her cousin Mr. Elliot, and also, slowly but surely find ways for Captain Wentworth to lose his chances with other women like Louisa.  Admiral Croft follows with some nonsense about how they no longer keep the umbrellas in the butler's pantry before dropping an Austen UM (universal message):  "One man's ways may be as good as another's, but we all like our own best." (Ch. XIII)  

The ways of the upper class, laid bare by Austen's writing, demonstrate for her largely middle class readers that the few wise ones among the advantaged class have the same sense and sensibility as the middles, who earn their way through life--either the middle class or the middle children like Anne.

NYTimes Book Review of the Week

As always, you can go on the NYTimes yourself and pick out interesting reviews to read and on which to make your quick commentary, but here's a couple that I picked out for your edification:

In non-fiction, A Billion Dollar Spy, provides a fascinating look inside the spy vs spy world of the Soviets vs the US.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/06/books/review-in-the-billion-dollar-spy-david-e-hoffman-recalls-a-cold-war-spy.html?ref=books

The build up to the release of Harper Lee's sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird, namely Go Set a Watchman has been of some interest to me.  The following article gets into the nitty gritty of how it was "discovered".

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/03/books/harper-lee-go-set-a-watchman-may-have-been-found-earlier-than-thought.html?ref=books

Whom do you want to slap?

Another fun thing to do while reading Jane Austen is to find the person you would most likely slap across the face.

In the case of Persuasion, the slapee would definitely be Anne's sister Mary.  She's a perpetual whiner, who can't manage her own children, demands Anne's constant attention, and then inadvertently sets up the beginning of her sister's reconciliation with Captain Wentworth.  Mary snivels away at the Harville's home to insist on her caring for Louisa when every one knows that Anne would most effectively care for their friend with a head injury.   Austen describes Mary as "so wretched, and so vehement, complained so much of injustice in being expected to go away instead of Anne . . why was not she to be as useful as Anne?" (ch xii)

Within the vectors of the social physics in this novel, the buffoons, bastards, and witchy women set contrasts for the noble, honorable, kind, beautiful, and humble Anne.  

Louisa seemed nice enough, and Captain Wentworth seemed to have settled on her as the acceptable Musgrove sister to marry, so Austen has her knocked out of contention while playing around on the stairs at the beach.

The all-too-virtuous Anne would never have let herself be alone in the carriage with her ex-boyfriend, now-returned hero, Captain Wentworth except her silly sister Mary selfishly wanted to avoid facing the Musgrove parents with the bad news about their daughter.  So Anne gets steered by fate (or by Austen's scheming pen) into the rather subtle, but highly commendable consultation with the Captain.  In the stressful moments before arriving at the Musgrove's home, he talks to his old girl friend.  As Austen puts it, "the remembrance of the appeal remained a pleasure to her--as a proof of her friendship, and of deferrence for her judgment, a great pleasure; and when it became a sort of parting proof , its value did not lessen." (ch x ii)

Remember that Anne is the persona through which the author guides you the reader's experience through the social mileu of the British upper class, most of whom are pompous fools, but not you, dear reader, and certainly not Anne.  Defer to her judgement in assessing the characters, and see this odd little world through her virtuous eyes.  Even as you want to slap Mary, feel confident that the direction Anne gets pushed due to her sister's foolish ways will make Anne a little bit closer to her silently held goal.