2025 Readings 74

 For a person who loves the Aeneid, it's sort of amazing that I never managed to read Virgil's Eclogues or Georgics. Happily, I found a lovely Oxford University copy that included both. In this case I suppose I was finally driven to do it by the endless and exhausting demands of the Epics book (a very cruel mistress). There was a great passage in one of the Eclogues that fit in beautifully with my Aeneid chapter; it discussed how much better the world would be under Roman leadership. It served my purpose because I was trying to discuss that what Virgil was celebrating in the Aeneid was not Roman power, but instead the role that Rome would serve in bringing order and light to the world. So, I may have finally read it for selfish reasons, but in the end I loved it for the beauty of Virgil's words. There are many beautiful passages, but let me just include one, right at the end of the Georgics Book I:

   "Surely the time will come when a farmer on these frontiers 

Forcing through earth his curved plough 

Shall find old spears eaten away with flaky rust, 

Or hit upon helmets as he wields the weight of his mattock 

And marvel at the heroic bones he as disinterred. 

O Gods of our fathers . . ."

I think I must have been moved by it so much because it reminded me of what I hope the Epics book accomplishes, waking people to these extraordinary works that are sadly ignored yet existing right beneath the surface.

Oceanario de Lisboa

 On June's trip to Portugal I went out of my way to visit a couple places that I had considered visiting before - and should have visited before. One of them was the Oceanario de Lisboa, Lisbon's wonderful and world-class aquarium. I have no idea why I had never gone there before, and please, if you go to Lisbon, don't follow my foolish example and avoid it. It was especially appreciated on a brutally hot day. If I were actually fit enough to lead a student trip to Portugal I'd certainly include it.

Maybe later I'll actually get into my camera and download some other pictures and include them. Not surprisingly, none of the shots I snapped can begin to do justice to the aquarium. I'm sure this attempt was another of my never-ending - and never-successful - efforts to produce a truly aesthetic shot.

 

2025 Readings 73

 A while back I finished Dino Buzzati's The Singularity, which I remember saying I definitely needed to read again because I wasn't quite certain what happened at the end. Last night I completed Buzzati's The Stronghold, which I'll also certainly again, although this time more surely because I liked it so much. This was another in the New York Review Books Classics series, which features works which simply haven't been given been given - or are no longer being given - the attention they deserve. I'm very happy to have stumbled across this series, as I've liked most of them immensely. The Stronghold (originally released as The Tartar Steppes) tells the story of Giovanni Drogo, an ambitious soldier sent to Fortezza Bastiani, a remote fortification  in the mountains. He initially plans to leave immediately, then agrees to stay for four months for bureaucratic reasons, but then never actually leaves. Drogo keeps waiting for heroism to find him in the form of an expected invasion, which never arrives (at least the heroism). As a man whose career is drawing to a close, with far more of a whimper than a bang, I can appreciate the metaphor. However, it much more than a metaphorical one trick pony, and the images that Buzzati painted of the Fortezza Bastiani will stay with me. Recommended.

2025 Readings 72

 Early in this year of reading I made my way through Proustian Uncertainties, and now I've followed it up with Roger Shattuck's wonderful Proust's Way: A Field Guide to In Search of Lost Time. Essentially, I figure that if I read Proust's In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past - eventually I'll train myself to use ISLT) enough times - and read enough books about Proust - I'll eventually understand it/him. Shattuck's work is a classic, and while I don't completely understand some of his more murky literary analysis, I also learned a lot about the subcurrents that run throughout Proust's masterpiece. As I've mentioned previously, last year I purchased all seven volumes of the new translation, so I guess I do have at least one more reading in me. If you've read In Search of Lost Time once, I suppose it just be that you're pretentious, but if you've read it four times (soon to be five) then you clearly love the story. 

Here's a lovely section where Shattuck is helping the reader understand the relation between the novel and the actual life of Proust:

     This fission-fusion process explains why it is so unsatisfactory to keep asking if Marcel or the Narrator represents Proust. There can be no doubt that the Search embodies a version - both revelation and disguise - of Proust's life. The links are too evident to discount, from the setting and action to details like the Narrator having translated Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies. But Proust's disclaimers are equally powerful. He insists that his book be read as a self-contained story and not as autobiography masquerading as fiction. It would be foolish to insist on one of these approaches to the exclusion of the other. Toward the end of the novel one comes upon an odd passage that makes a tiny step toward reconciliation. There is nothing like it elsewhere in the Search.

"In this book, in which every fact is fictional and in which not a single character is based on a living person, in which everything has been invented by me according to the needs of my demonstration, I must state to the credit of my country that only Francoise's millionaire relatives, whop interrupted their retirement in order to bring their needy niece, are real people, existing in the world." (III 846/vi 225)

Here, I believe, Proust is pointing out to us a kind of vestigial navel cord, a detail which proves that his vast work does not coincide with actuality but was born from it. Images of slow gestation and final parturition do greater justice to the novel's origins than concepts of literal imitation or of complete autonomy. (Shattuck, 17-18)

These observations from a true scholar of Proust (as compared to a pseudo-scholar of Proust such as myself) are invaluable. Shattuck's work might not appeal to everyone, but if you're one of that small legion of true Proust-lovers then it is essential.

Male Friendship Decline

 This statistic popped up in my social media (such as it is) feed this morning. It was from a story in Psychology Today, which had to deal with a man trying to get over the loss of his wife and his intentional and growing ability to make and keep friends. Now, what I thought of when I saw the statistic was my male students, the ones who can't look up from the screens and who are increasingly and painfully socially awkward. I'd hate to think of how many of them fall into the category of those who have no close friends (I'm sure it's over 15%; and it will only grow once they leave the artificial bubble of college). I feel bad for them, but I can't help but think about how it makes them easy pickings for the radical right, who are selling a manufactured and false sense of community and masculinity.

Janet's comment in response to these stats (as usual, I was pestering her with stuff I'd read as soon as she grudgingly opened her eyes) was that I'm definitely the exception to this rule because I have so many friends. That's definitely true, and it's something that I put work into. I'm sure my friends wonder why I send them so many texts about articles or videos or random ideas, but a big part of it is the constant "work" of maintaining friendships.

2025 Readings 71

This installment is a product of my recent completion of Forever Calais. Yesterday I finished Mark Bushnell's Hidden History of Vermont. As I begin to more and more consider life after-Vermont, it's not at all surprising that I begin to reflect upon  my time in Vermont. All of the chapters are four pages long, and they provide an amusing introduction to a number of peculiarities related to this decidedly peculiar state. Some of the stories I knew, but many I didn't. For instance, I knew that someone had "finished" The Mystery of Edwin Drood by channeling the spirit of Charles Dickens, I just didn't know, or didn't make the connection because I first heard about it before I moved to Vermont, that it was Thomas P. James from Brattleboro. I'd also forgotten the Vermont connection to the stories of William and Horatio Eddy and their spiritualism. The story of the rich and famous who frequented Neshobe Island was kookier than I realized. Anyway, it didn't change my life for the better, but Bushnell's Hidden History of Vermont was definitely a fun summer book to read.

Friday Nights at the Coop

 This is an odd picture, I guess, but I like it anyway. The last couple weeks I've grilled at the Adamant Coop, as part of our summer Friday night cookouts. We do it to raise money to support the Coop, and keep us open during those lean summer months (or those weeks during mud season when trucks sometimes can't make deliveries - yes, it happens). As I'm driving to the Coop I always grouse about giving up part of my Friday for the cookout, but I always have good time and end up happy that I contributed and spent time with the community.

Our little protector sits on top of the pizza oven, watching out over his flock.