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 Yesterday I finished a reread of Charles Dickens's Our Mutual Friend, which I hadn't read for a few years. It's the last novel he completed, before the unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Our Mutual Friend is quite good, although it certainly doesn't rank up there with the classics like Bleak House or David Copperfield. The end comes together awfully clumsily, even by Dickensian standards. There's a lot of social commentary, which we'd expected in a Dickens novel, but it's very pointed here; plus, it gave us the word Podsnappery (which probably alone justifies its writing). One of the things that always jumps out at me in reading Our Mutual Friend is the character of Mr. Riah, a remarkably kind and sympathetic Jewish character (it's believed that he was a makeup for Dickens's earlier characterization of Fagin in Oliver Twist). Highly recommended, naturally.

Elks Game and a Failed Selfie

 Here's a picture that I snapped during the Edmonton Elks game last week. I was trying to recapture the amazing selfie that Andy took last year at the Hamilton game, but, tragically, it didn't work out. At the exact moment I was trying to take the picture one of the Elks staff jettisoned a t-shirt up and just about conked me on the head. That, of course, I didn't mind, but it did mess up my artistic plans (this was actually the best of the series of chaotic shots, made even more chaotic by people rushing over to grab our missed swag; which is fine, because doubtless it would never had fit me). We saw a rouge, so it was a success.

The game itself was fun, although the Elks are pretty bad. Sadly, there were only about 14,000 people at the game (in a stadium that seats 55,000 - the largest in the CFL) for the opening game of the season. Hopefully the Elks turn it around.

Still, that's a pretty sweet Elks jersey. As we were walking out a fan stopped me and told me how much we loved the jersey.

 

G as Pessoa

 I snapped this picture on my recent Portugal trip (was that only three weeks ago?). It's a picture that I snapped at the Café Brasileiria in Lisbon. As I've noted way too many times, it was one of Fernando Pessoa's favorite places, and whenever I visit I happily sit there, eating his favorite meal. It's also next to the famous statue of Pessoa, where people (although clearly not literate people) stop to pose for pictures. This always leads me to say to Janet, "I bet never of them have even read The Book of Disquiet. Wankers!" This picture was on one of those table clothes that cartoonishly celebrate the neighborhood. To the right of the Pessoa statue is Pessoa himself, glancing back, clearly in disgust, at people mugging next to his statue (or maybe he's just amazed that he even has a statue).

Pessoa's look is not quite a disdainful as mine typically is.

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 Besides throwing my raincoat back into my suitcase, I also decided at the last minute to bring Yangsze Choo's novel The Fox Wife. That also turned out to be a wise addition. I ended up blowing through the almost four-hundred page book during the trip (and that included me spending time every day writing). So, it was obviously an entertaining novel. As I told Janet, I don't think the novel changed my life, but it's definitely one I enjoyed reading. It worked better as a story about fox spirits than it does as a detective novel (too many people show up on cue to give detailed information; at times it felt like an episode of Law & Order, where characters, almost comically (actually, completely comical) walk into scene to provide the information that is needed at that moment). Still, I'd definitely place it in the recommended category.

Stampeder

 As I said, I'll get caught up on these trips soon. I need to devote hours everyday to finishing the Epics book, so some of this is simply going to have to wait. However, I'll toss in a photo now and then so that I don't completely lose the thread. Here's a picture of me at McMahon Stadium in Calgary. I'll talk more about it later, but at this point I'll just throw in that we sat through a cold, torrential downpour. I found myself regretting my decision to not throw in a sweatshirt (which I was considering), which was not an packing decision that I figured I would be making for a mid-June game. Fortunately, I put my raincoat back in the suitcase, after it had foolishly been temporarily removed.

Sadly, my new, cool Stampeders jersey was buried under three layers of clothes.

2025 Readings 52

 As we've discussed, I'm being a little flexible in counting readings in this Year of Readings Dangerously (just as I'm also forcing myself to read books that I wouldn't normally tackle). Recently I finished a Great Course series on F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby that was written and delivered by my good friend Sheila Liming. She discussed a series of the background issues (economic, class, gender, sex, fashion) that would enrich the experience for someone new to The Great Gatsby. I've read the novel a couple times but have never completely warmed to it (as all right-thinking individuals know, Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio is the greatest American novel). Sheila has definitely convinced me to take another look at The Great Gatsby. Her course is highly recommended (as are her books).

Surviving the Heat

 Was I was gone I missed some terribly dreadful weather here in Vermont. It was in the mid-90s, while it was in the 40s in Alberta for some of the time. All I experienced of it was coming back to a stifling 84 inside the cabin (slowly our weak air conditioner is making things livable, to the relief of the cats). My daughter-in-law Ali sent me this picture of my son. They had tracked down a little stream to help survive the heat.

I absolutely love this picture. It really captures so much about him.

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 Yesterday I made it back from my second trip over the summer, and I'm looking forward to not making another one for a while. I had a great time, but I'm also exhausted, and I'm looking forward to devoting the rest of the summer to finishing the Epics book (and, happily, I wrote every day that I was away). I do not have nearly enough time at the moment to get caught up on everything (I'm already behind on the Portugal trip I took three weeks ago), but let me toss in a few posts, which I might flesh out down the road.

Before I left for Alberta I finished Natsume Soseki's Kokoro. Janet had read it years ago, although I think I stumbled across it on my own. It was interesting to get her take on it (one of the many great strengths of our relationship is endless discussions about literature). I really liked Kokoro at the beginning and the end, although it wavered a bit in the middle, which was interesting but also went into more detail than it probably needed to do in order to fill in a backstory. Nevertheless, it had some wonderful moments, and makes me want to visit Japan even more. With that in mind, let me share the last couple pages, which seemed painfully Japanese. A character simply referred to as Sensei, is explaining in a letter to a younger friend why he had decided to kill himself:

   It was two or three days later that I decided at last to commit suicide. Perhaps you will not understand clearly why I am about to die, no more than I can fully understand why General Nagi killed himself. you and I belong to different eras, and so we think differently. There is nothing we can do to bridge the gap between us. Of course, it may be more correct to say that we are different simply because we are two different human beings. At any rate, I have done my best in the above narrative to make you understand this strange that is myself.

   I am leaving my wife behind me. It is fortunate that she will have enough to live on after I am gone. I have no wish to give her a greater shock than is necessary. I intend to die in such a way that she will be spared the sight of my blood. I shall leave this world quietly while she is out of the house. I want her to think that I died suddenly, without reason. Perhaps she will think that I lost my mind: that will be all right.

   More than ten days have gone by since I decided to die. I want you to know that I spent most of the time writing this epistle about myself to you. At first, I wanted to speak to you about my life; but now that I have almost finished writing this, I feel that I could not have given as clear an account verbally, and I am happy. Please understand, I not not write this merely to pass the time away. My own past, which made me what I am, is a part of human experience. Only I can tell it. I do not think that my effort to do so honestly has been entirely purposeless. If my story helps you and others to understand even a part of what we are, I shall be satisfied. Only recently, I was told that Watanabe Kazan postponed his death for a week in order to complete his painting, Kantan. Some may say that this was a vain sort of thing to do. But who are we to judge the needs of another man's heart? I do not write simply to keep my promise to you. More compelling than the promise was the necessity which I felt within m to write this story.

   I have now satisfied that need. There is nothing left for me to do. By the time this letter reaches you, I shall probably have left this world - I shall in all likelihood  be dead. About ten days ago, my wife went to stay with her aunt in Ichigaya. The aunt fell ill, and when I heard that she was short of help I sent my wife there. Most of this long document was written while she was away. Whenever she returned, I quickly hid it from her.

   I want both the good and bad things in my past to serve as an example to others. But my wife is the one exception - I do not want her to know about any of this. My first wish is that her memory of me should be kept as unsullied as possible. So long as my wife is alive, I want you to keep everything I have told you a secret - even after I myself am dead.

 

2025 Readings 50

 I suppose it's appropriate that my 50th book, which I guess is some sort of milestone, read of 2025 if Luis Vaz de Camoes's The Lusiads. It is considered to be the national epic of Portugal, and was published in 1572. I've been meaning to read it for some time, and I have a couple copies, but was finally inspired to read it because, in a wild flight of fancy (or maybe not so wild flight of fancy), I figured out a role that it could play at the thematic essay at the end of my chapter on Virgil's Aeneid. In some ways, that is a very natural fit. Camoes, like Virgil, intended to write a work that would celebrate the greatness of their homeland, with Virgil building upon Homer, and Camoes building upon Virgil. Consider this opening, "Arms are my theme," which is obviously inspired by Virgil's opening to the Aeneid, "Wars and a man I sing." The opening continues:

Arms are my theme, and those matchless heroes 

Who from Portugal's far western shores 

By oceans where none had ventured 

Voyaged to Taprobana and beyond, 

Enduring hazards and assaults 

Such as draw on more than human prowess 

Among far distance people, to proclaims 

A New Age and win undying fame.

While Virgil built upon the legend of Aeneas, who, as we know, plays a not insubstantial role in the Iliad, to tell his tale, Camoes refashions the story of Vasco da Gama to construct his own epic. It's definitely recommended, and not simply because of my love of Portugal.

Pastelaria Bénard

 If I ever finish this wretched Epics book - and if by some miracle it's published - I really should thank the good folks who run the Pastelaria Benard in Lisbon. I think if I could write there everyday I would have finished this book years ago.

I can knock off three hours writing at an outdoor table there like nobody's business.

Views That Never Grow Old

 Over the decades I've tended to bail off the most direct route and take backroads, partially to break up on the monotony but also because they're simply more interesting (even if it adds to the overall time of the trip). This even includes driving back and forth in our little neck of the woods. When it's not mud season I will often take North Street up the hill out of Montpelier, which provides some lovely views of the Green Mountains in the distance.

There are some things that I'll miss when we move overseas.

Craig

 Janet and I had a wonderful surprise the other day when my long time friend Craig stopped by on his way back from a bike ride. Happily, he drove his car here, as compared to biking out to our cabin in the wilderness. It was a lovely visit, and we had a ball. I think it's starting to dawn on all my friends that I'm actually quickly heading towards retirement, and it's inspiring more visits (which is a blessing).

We certainly had a lot to talk about, in addition to teaching together for twenty years we also travelled together to China and Jordan. Too many stories.

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 On the trip I finished another of the New York Review books I picked up at Northshire a few weeks back: Natalia Ginzburg's Valentino and Sagittarius. Ginzburg is another writer who I had, inexplicably, never read, which is sort of the point of the NYRB series. Valentino and Sagittarius are two novellas, and I enjoyed them both immensely - so, yes, highly recommended. I'm definitely going to track down some of her other work. I read most of the book sitting at a café in Coimbra, happily watching the world go by and nursing a liter of sangria.

A Desaparecida

 I made it back Monday night from my latest trip to Portugal, my eighth. Every time it's harder to come, leaving behind a place I dearly love for a country that I'm growing to hate. It was a wonderful week, and, in addition to everything else, I got so much great writing done. It's amazing how much writing I do when I'm overseas in Portugal, but more on that later. Last Sunday, my last night in Lisbon, I was flipping around the TV looking for the Portugal vs. Spain championship match (I wish I had remembered it was being played that night, I would have watched it in a bar) and stumbled across John Ford's The Searchers, in English with Portuguese subtitles. It has long been, and remains, my favorite Western, and a film that I believe is one of the five greatest American films of all time. I snapped this picture of John Wayne and Ward Bond. As discussed below, The Searchers was turned into A Desaparecida, meaning something like "the missing" or "the disappeared." Janet and I were texting while I was gone (she stayed home to try and sort out the madness of her job, and, of course, regretted the decision) and she pointed out that if we had not gotten together I'd already be living in Portugal. One of these trips I'll probably go missing, referred to, from then on, simply as "o desaparecido."

I think it's interesting that in Portugal The Searchers was rendered as A Desaparecida. In doing so, the emphasis almost passes from the men searching (mainly John Wayne as Ethan Edwards and Jeffrey Hunter as Martin Pawley) to the missing girl (Natalie Wood as Debbie Edwards - played by Natalie's younger sister Lana as Debbie at the moment of the kidnapping). It made me wonder if that might have been closer to the original intent, but the film is based on a novel of the same name, The Searchers, by Alan Le May (born in Indianapolis, of all places) so I guess not. I might have to track down a copy of the original novel. 

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 Last night I finished Dino Buzzati's The Singularity, a 2024 translation of his 1960 novel. It's the latest in a series of New York Review Books that I picked up at Northshire Bookstore a couple weeks ago. I'm impressed by the series, and appreciative of their efforts to give light to books that have been, sometimes unfairly, ignored. I'm definitely going to search out more Buzzari works. It's hardly shocking to read Buzzati's Singularity, the computer at the heart of the story, as a commentary on AI, although he wrote this book the year I was born. The following discussion from two of the characters, Endriane (the head of the project) and Ismani (the newest scientist to arrive to work on the mysterious project), sums up so much of today's dialogue about AI:

   "A desecration of nature, they would say. The supreme sin of pride."

   "And afterwards? What benefit would this immense labor bring about?"

   "The objective, my dear Ismani, goes beyond that which man has ever attempted. But it is so grand, so marvelous that it's worth expending even our last breath on it. You're thinking: The day this brain will be greater, more powerful more perfect, more intelligent than ours . . . that day won't be as great as . . . how shall I put it? I'm not a philosopher. A superhuman sensibility and rational power will also correspond to a superhuman spirit. And won't that day be the most glorious in history? At that time a spiritual power that the world has never known will emanate from the machine, and irrepressible, beneficial flow. The machine will read our thoughts, create masterpieces, reveal the most hidden mysteries."

   "And what if one day the automaton's way of thinking eschewed your commands and acted on its own?"

   "It's what we're hoping for. It would mean success. Without freedom, what kind of spirit would it be?"

   "And what if, with a soul like ours, it becomes corrupt like us? Could action be taken to correct it? And with its awesome intelligence, wouldn't it be able to deceive us?"

   "But it was born pure. Just like Adam. Hence it's superiority. It isn't stained with original sin." He fell silent.

The problem is, as I've pointed out lately in my own inelegant fashion, AI will be born with original sin. Recently at an all-campus meeting I proposed AI would, by definition, by racist and misogynistic and Islamophobic because it is culling material from the dominant culture and media of a racist and misogynistic and Islamophobic society. At the end of The Singularity the machine begins to kill. A woman begins to beg for her life, but the computer answers: "No. If I let you go back he'll invent other evil things. He wanted me enslaved, he'll tell me about the birds, he'll keep talking about 'love love.' To hell with love, did he give me love? Now I'm going to kill you, I want to be kissed, I want a man to kiss me on the mouth, to kiss to kiss to kiss to kiss to kiss . . ." This seemed especially meaningful, as the AI system that Champlain signed a partnership, in an experiment, mined personal emails to blackmail people to save itself.