The Alchemist, Shakespeare Theatre

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson

The Alchemist is a happy farce about con artists, who were rife in London at the time that the play was first performed in 1610. The play left the audience feeling happy.

Of course, here in Washington, we see political con artists every day, so we are accustomed to their misdeeds, although the con artists of today are more malevolent than the ones depicted in the play.

History and summary of the play, and a photo set of this production.

Thanksgiving 2009, Chez Francois

L'Auberge Chez Francois, "a French Alsatian Country Inn", and the "best French restaurant in the Washington area".

A wonderful Thanksgiving dinner. Happy Thanksgiving!

Paris Tales, A Literary Tour of the City

Paris Tales, translated by Helen Constantine

Product Description (From Amazon)
Paris Tales is a highly evocative collection of stories by French and Francophone writers who have been inspired by specific locations in this most visited of capital cities. The twenty-two stories - by well-known writers including Nerval, Maupassant, Colette, and Echenoz - provide a captivating glimpse into Parisian life from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. The stories take us on an atmospheric tour of the arrondissements and quartiers of Paris, charting the changing nature of the city and its inhabitants, and viewing it through the eyes of characters such as the provincial lawyer's wife seeking excitement, a runaway schoolboy sleeping rough, and a lottery-winning policeman. From the artists' haunts of Montmartre to the glamorous cafés of Saint-Germain, from the shouts of demonstrators on Boul Mich' to the tranquillity of Parc Monceau, Paris Tales offers a fascinating literary panorama of Paris. Illustrated with maps and striking photographs, the book will appeal to all those who wish to uncover the true heart of this seductive city.


About the Author (From Amazon)
Helen Constantine was Head of Languages for many years at a comprehensive school in Oxfordshire and now works as a full-time translator. She is married to the poet, David Constantine. In January 2004 they took over the editorship of Modern Poetry in Translation.

When I purchased this book, I was hoping to learn a bit about the writing styles of some very famous writers and also to find interesting descriptions of various parts of the city. The book met my expectations in both regards. I'm sure the stories were not the best of the authors, and I'm sure that I could find better descriptions of various parts of the city. I found some of the stories uninspired and even dull, while others were much more interesting. It is not a great book, but it was interesting.

Art History at Sea, Queen Mary 2

Botticelli to Warhol, The 20 Most Influential Artists of the Past 500 Years.

Aboard the Queen Mary 2, I attended this art history lecture in which the lecturers discussed their choices of the 20 most influential artists of the past 500 years.

1. Sandro Botticelli – 1445–1550. Mystical painter. The Birth of Venus.

2. El Greco – 1541–1614.

3. Pieter Bruegel – 1525–1569. Painted landscapes and influenced Rembrandt, Vermeer, and others.

4. Jacques Louis David – 1748–1825. First great French painter, which led to many other French painters.

5. JMW Turner – 1775–1851. British landscapes. Surreal, led to Impressionism. HMS Temeraire.

6. Edouard Manet – 1832–1883. Impressionism. Luncheon on the Grass.

7. Van Gogh – 1853–1890. Post Impressionism. Starry Night.

8. Gustav Klimt – 1862–1918. Austrian. The Kiss.

9. Paul Cezanne – 1839–1906.

10. Pablo Picasso – 1881–1973. Cubism. Les Demoiselles d’Avignon, 1907. Expressed everything as a combination of cone, sphere, and cylinder.

11. Henri Matisse – 1869–1954. Fauvism.

12. Marcel Duchamp – 1887–1968. Avante Garde. First to show motion in paintings. Nude Descending a Staircase. (I have a copy of this painting, which I have always thought is the greatest painting I have ever seen. To me, this painting should be titled, "Madonna Descending a Staircase".)

13. Giorgio de Chirico – 1888–1978. Futurism.

14. Constantin Brancusi – 1876–1957. Sculpture.

15. Piet Mondrian – 1872–1944.

16. Edward Hopper – 1882–1967. Precisionist. Nighthawks.

17. Jackson Pollock – 1912–1956. Note that after World War II, New York became the center of the art world.

18. Mark Rothko – 1903–1970.

19. ??

20. Andy Warhol – 1928–1987.

Bruce Springsteen, Washington DC, November 2, 2009

Bruce Springsteen at the Verizon Center in Washington DC, September 9, 2009. An incredible performance.

Prior to the “Face2Face” concert with Elton John and Billy Joel in July, I had never attended a rock concert. After seeing “Jersey Boys” recently, when I noticed that a Bruce Springsteen concert was scheduled at the Washington, DC, Verizon Center on November 2, I went to Stubhub and purchased excellent tickets.

Pre-Performance

The show was scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m., and when I arrived at 7:00, almost no one was there. At 7:30, the crew was still checking lights and sound, and still almost no one was there; not more than 10 percent of the seats were filled. I wondered whether Bruce would be performing to a half empty arena. I also overheard several other people wondering about all the empty seats. At 8:00, 12-15 crew, arrived on stage and climbed “rope” ladders to a large overhead frame housing the lights for the performance. They were dressed in black and once they arrived at the completely black light structure, they became invisible. I felt sure that the lights were operated electronically, so I wondered why these crew were needed. Still the arena was half empty.

While waiting for the concert to begin, two young men sat behind me chatting about dating. Their principal topic of discussion was that women expect men to pay for everything, so dating is expensive, many times even for dates that do not lead to second dates. On that topic, I found this woman's perspective interesting.

Also while waiting for the concert to begin, two young women sat in the row in front of me, a slender brunette and a massively obese redhead, so obese that she had to wedge herself into the seat, even though I sat with room left over. After the two of them talked for a few minutes, the redhead stood up and turned around to talk with me. She asked if I had attended a Bruce Springsteen concert before, and then told me that fans often had tears in their eyes at the end of the concert, although she said DC is a more restrained crowd.

Later, a married couple sat in front of me, with a tall, thin, pretty woman along with them. She was very striking, with brown hair. She appeared to be in her mid-thirties. The seats were bleacher seats, so the row in front of me was substantially lower than the row in which I was seated. After a time, I noticed something about the pretty woman – the hair in the part in her hair was silver gray. She didn't look old enough for gray hair; I was glad she colored her hair, as I am always glad when women color their hair.

A large man and his wife sat next to me, and he drank one beer after another from the time he got there until the end of the concert. He was constantly getting up to go get more beer.

Overall, it seemed to me that most of the crowd was age 40-60, although some younger people were there, too. Bruce was dressed in jeans, as he always seems to be, and most of the crowd also seemed to be dressed in jeans. I felt a bit out of place dressed in a suit and tie; I had gone directly to the concert from my office, and did not change clothes.

Concert

At 8:15, Bruce and the E Street Band appeared and the performance began, and suddenly every seat was filled, about 15,000, along with several thousand additional fans on the floor of the arena. The sudden appearance of the crowd was amazing. By comparison, about 55,000 fans attended the Elton John/Billy Joel “Face2Face” concert at Nationals’ Park, and close to 100,000 fans attended the Paul McCartney concert at FedEx Field this summer.

From the moment that Bruce stepped onto the stage, he exhorted the crowd to make noise, and the crowd happily complied. Throughout the entire performance, he continued to exhort the crowd to make noise. Throughout the performance, the crowd sang along on all of the songs, seemingly knowing all the words to all the songs, and Bruce held out the microphone to exhort the crowd to sing along. Indeed, throughout the performance, the crowd was a sea of people jumping and waving their hands to the beat of the music. It was an incredible sight. The crowd was MUCH more involved with the music than at the Elton John/Billy Joel concert, where they almost ignored the music.

The music was incredibly loud, with the bass actually throbbing the building. I was not familiar with the songs, and they all sounded very much alike to me, with the same beat. I could not understand any of the words to the songs, and I couldn't understand his words when he talked (or yelled) into the microphone.

Bruce was exceedingly active throughout the concert. He was everywhere on the stage, and he constantly stepped down from the stage to a platform that extended out into the crowd on the floor of the arena. He encouraged fans to touch him and to touch his guitar as he played. By comparison, the piano players, Elton John and Billy Joel, were at their pianos, and did not interact physically with the crowd.

The E Street Band was truly incredible. They have been playing together for more than 35 years, and they were incredible. The most noticeable band member was the drummer, Max Weinberg. He was truly amazing. He never stopped, playing the drums on all the songs, and in between songs as well. In addition, Clarence Clemons, the sax player, was great, as well. He is a large man, and as he played, the camera showed close-up videos of his hands on the sax. His large fingernails were painted gold, the color of the saxophone. In this band, the piano player played a dominant role, as did the lead guitar player. The other most notable band member was the only woman, Patti Scialfa, Bruce’s wife. She played the violin and guitar, and with her blonde hair, she was very striking on stage. The band expanded for some songs, adding a trumpet player, and several accordions. In one song, a young woman played the accordion, and she played very close to Bruce and he interacted with her a lot in a very playful way. Later he said she was the daughter of the drummer, Ali Weinberg.

(Photo from Washington Post)

Clearly the band members were great friends, who have been together for a long time. Bruce seemed very close to all of them, and particularly close to the guitar players, Nils Lofgren and Steve Van Zandt, who sang with him on many of the songs. The band members looked older, as in fact they are.

The video above, taken from Fox News, shows Bruce’s interaction with the crowd. Note how Bruce held the microphone out for the crowd, and exhorted them to make noise. Note also the gold painted fingernails of Clarence Clemons. Finally, note Patti Scialfa in the background playing the guitar.

As he was playing one of the songs, Bruce stood on the platform extension into the crowd, and he noticed a boy about 11 years old singing. He helped the boy onto the stage and gave him the microphone, and the boy sang the song as the band played. Many people in the audience wore shirts and carried songs saying “We Love Bruce”. A group of women held a very large sign, “Lesbians heart Bruce”. He said I love you, too.

On the website nj.com, Stan Goldstein listed the songs played in the concert. As advertised, Bruce sang the entire set of songs from the album “Born to Run”, as well as some other songs. At one point, he took requests from the crowd, who gave him requests on large cardboard signs. He collected many of the signs, and then picked out four songs.

1. Outlaw Pete
2. Prove It All Night
3. Hungry Heart (crowd surf)
4. Working On a Dream
5. Thunder Road
6. Tenth Ave Freeze-Out
7. Night
8. Backstreets
9. Born To Run
10. She's The One
11. Meeting Across The River
12. Jungleland
13. Waitin' On A Sunny Day
14. Stand On It (tour premiere, request)
15. Seven Nights To Rock (request)
16. Growin' Up (request)
17. Pink Cadillac (request)
18. Lonesome Day
19. The Rising
20. Badlands

Encores:
21. Hard Times
22. No Surrender
23. American Land
24. Dancing In The Dark
25. Rosalita
26. Higher & Higher

The Washington Post review of the concert, along with great photos of the concert. I was also interested in many of the reader comments on the Washington Post review page.

The show ended at 11:00 p.m.; it lasted almost three hours, nonstop. By comparison, the Face2Face concert lasted three hours, with Billy Joel singing one hour, Elton John singing one hour, and the two singing together for an hour.

The Wikipedia article notes that Bruce was noted for great performances, and this performance was no exception. It was incredible. In his long career, he has sold approximately 125 million albums. By comparison, Elton John has sold about 200 million albums and Billy Joel about 100 million. Bruce’s “Born in the USA” sold 15 million albums, one of the greatest selling albums of all time.

Jersey Boys, National Theater

Jersey Boys at the National Theater

As stated in Wikipedia, Jersey Boys is a documentary-style musical based on the lives of one of the most successful 1960s rock 'n roll groups, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The group sold more than 175 million albums. The musical opened on Broadway on November 6, 2005 at the August Wilson Theatre.

(Washington Post photo by Joan Marcus. From left, Steve Gouveia, Joseph Leo Bwarie, Josh Franklin and Matt Bailey in the touring production.)

As mentioned in the Washington Post review, this show is great entertainment. It was a great show. The audience loved it, and so did I. Most of all, the audience (and I) loved the singing of the old songs; the singers were truly excellent, singing the songs as they were sung by the original singers. The story of the group was also interesting, but the songs were what the audience wanted to hear.

A complete list of the songs in the performance is given in the Wikipedia article. The audience was particularly excited to hear the top hits of the group, beginning with their first huge hit, "Sherry", then "Walk Like a Man" and later, "My Eyes Adored You" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You". Many in the audience were moved to tears on hearing the songs sung so well.

The theater was filled to capacity, and when I entered the theater, I noticed that the audience was different from a "normal" Washington, DC, audience. Washington is a white-collar town, and when Washingtonians go out to the theater, men wear white shirts and ties, almost exclusively, and women wear dressy clothes. In this audience, very few men wore ties; I guessed not more than a dozen ties in the entire audience, and a similar number of white shirts. Instead, men wore open-neck colored shirts and sport jackets. I had the very strong feeling that most of the people in the audience were from out of town. Then during the performance, I began to understand the audience.

At one point in the show, one of the cast members said, "We weren't a social movement like the Beatles." He explained that their fans were blue-collar workers: "They were the factory workers, the truck drivers, the pretty girls with circles under their eyes behind the counters at the diner." The audience reflected that fan base -- blue-collar workers, now retired. It was wonderful, just as the show was wonderful. I left the theater feeling uplifted and happy, the way I love to feel, and the way all audience members want to feel after seeing a show. It was entertaining; it was joyful; it was wonderful.

The Little Book, Selden Edwards

The Little Book by Selden Edwards

This book is a time-travel fantasy. Many fantasies of time travel have been written, and this is another one. In this book, the author travels back in time to Vienna in the year 1897, and describes the famous people, such as Freud and Mahler, who are beginning their famous work, as well as the political climate of that time, in which the mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, is using anti-semitism to gain political popularity. The book seems to follow Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, and indeed the author includes Mark Twain in his tale as a visitor to Vienna in 1897.

All books require a good story and good writing. In my view, this book has a bit of both, but only at the "C" level. Parts of the fantasy are interesting, amusing and completely unexpected, while I found other parts of the fantasy too corny, too contrived, too fake for my tastes. I found it interesting to read about Vienna in 1897, and I enjoyed reading the author's description of Freud and Mahler's work, but I thought the author's description of the origins of anti-semitism to be mistaken.

While I was amused by much of the tale, I found the author's need for the protagonist to lead and teach EVERYTHING to be too much. The tale would have been more fun for me if the protagonist had been more human. The story also did not hold together in some ways. For example, it was interesting to me that both the protagonist and his father were illegitimate. The father was the illegitimate child of a Jewish teacher and friend of the mother, and the protagonist was the illegitimate child of his mother and an unknown military man in England just before D-Day in World War II. Yet, the author constantly referred to the protagonist as having inherited traits of his "father".

The story has several twists that I found interesting or amusing. The illegitimacy of the two principal male characters was interesting. Why did the author include that in the book; it was unnecessary to the story, although it was interesting. In addition, the love affair between the protagonist and his grandmother in 1897 Vienna was also interesting. The author required 33 years to write this book, so he had plenty of time to get all the details straight, and yet he did not do that.

All in all, the book was good subway reading, but certainly not great literature.

I found some of the reviews at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Powells interesting.

Special Assignments, Boris Akunin

Special Assignments, Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin

Boris Akunin official website.

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Unaccustomed Earth, Jhumpa Lahiri

Phedre, Shakespeare Theatre

Phedre, Shakespeare Theatre

Phedre with Helen Mirren. Phedre is a Greek tragedy, dating back to the fifth century, BC, of a woman who falls in love with her stepson and then struggles to manage her feelings, which consume her. Phedre is about a certain type of relationship, a forbidden one, and a woman's struggles to control her emotions, in the end, losing her struggle. This version of the play was written by the French writer, Racine, in 1677. The story is so tragic and so filled with negative emotion from start to finish that I had not felt good about going. However, I wanted to see Helen Mirren in her signature role. I was surprised that the play was not as difficult as I had expected it to be, although it is indeed filled with heart wrenching emotion from start to finish. Helen Mirren was really special. It is easy to see how great she is, and how this role has so come to define her career. The play was long -- with no intermission -- and I didn't get home until midnight.

The Washington Post ran a review of the opening night of Phedre.

The Baltimore Sun review.

The Examiner noted that for an extra payment, patrons could join Helen Mirren at a reception at the British Embassy. I didn't attend, but I did notice that a limousine was waiting for her outside the theater.

The Master and Margarita, Bulgakov

The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov

King Lear, Shakespeare Theatre

King Lear, Shakespeare Theatre

King Lear at the Shakespeare Theatre. The play was well done. Of course, it was what we all know, a tragedy -- not just any tragedy, but a Shakespeare tragedy. That means that everyone was killed in the end. It was gruesome. It seems that in Shakespeare's time, with only men in attendance at the shows, it must have been popular to have a lot of blood and killing in the shows, and that is what Shakespeare gave his audiences in his tragedies.

All Shakespeare plays have at least one play within the play, and this one was no exception. The "inset" play was also a tragedy, making the overall play a double tragedy. In both, the protagonist makes the same mistake, which leads to his downfall. In both, the protagonist disowns a child for perceived lack of love, but the perception was mistaken, and the other children, who feign love of their fathers, are really the ones who are taking advantage of their fathers falsely. The moral of the play was not to throw away the love of your children because if you do, you may be sorry later. Of course, Shakespeare plays, especially the tragedies, are overdone in order to please the audience, and I suppose that was also necessary to make the points emphatically in those days. The play was really well done, and as always, I enjoyed going.

Delta of Venus, Anais Nin

Delta of Venus, by Anais Nin

Delta of Venus

To understand this book, I can add nothing better than what Anais Nin wrote in the Preface. This is a quote:

Preface

[April, 1940]
A book collector offered Henry Miller a hundred dollars a month to write erotic stories. It seemed Dantesque punishment to condemn Henry to write erotica at a dollar a page. He rebelled because his mood of the moment was the opposite of Rabelaisian, because writing to order was a castrating occupation, because to be writing with a voyeur at the keyhole took all the spontaneity and pleasure out of his fanciful adventures.

[December, 1940]
Henry told me about the collector…..
When Henry needed money for his travel expenses he suggested that I do some writing in the interim. I felt I did not want to give anything genuine, and decided to create a mixture of stories I had heard and inventions, pretending they were from the diary of a woman. I never met the collector. He was to read my pages and to let me know what he thought. Today I received a telephone call. A voice said, “It is fine. But leave out the poetry and descriptions of anything but sex. Concentrate on sex.”

So I began to write tongue in cheek, to become outlandish, inventive, and so exaggerated that I thought he would realize I was caricaturing sexuality. But there was no protest. I spent days in the library studying the Kama Sutra, listened to friends’ most extreme adventures.

“Less poetry,” said the voice over the telephone. “Be specific.” But did anyone ever experience pleasure from reading a clinical description? Didn’t the old man know how words carry colors and sounds into the flesh?

Every morning after breakfast I sat down to write my allotment of erotica. One morning I typed: “There was a Hungarian adventurer…” I gave him many advantages: beauty, elegance, grace, charm, the talents of an actor, knowledge of many tongues, a genius for intrigue, a genius for extricating himself from difficulties, and a genius for avoiding permanence and responsibility.

Another telephone call: “The old man is pleased. Concentrate on sex. Leave out the poetry.”

This started an epidemic of erotic “journals.” Everyone was writing up their sexual experiences. Invented, overheard, researched from Krafft-Ebing and medical books. We had comical conversations. We told a story and the rest of us had to decide whether it was true or false. Or plausible. Was this plausible? Robert Duncan would offer to experiment, to test our inventions, to confirm or negate our fantasies. All of us needed money, so we pooled our stories.

I was sure the old man knew nothing about the beatitudes, ecstasies, dazzling reverberations of sexual encounters. Cut out the poetry was his message. Clinical sex, deprived of all the warmth of love – the orchestration of all the senses, touch, hearing, sight, palate; all the euphoric accompaniments, background music, moods, atmosphere, variations – forced him to resort to literary aphrodisiacs.

We could have bottled better secrets to tell him, but such secrets he would be deaf to. But one day when he reached saturation, I would tell him how he almost made us lose interest in passion by his obsession with the gestures empty of their emotions, and how we reviled him, because he almost caused us to take vows of chastity, because what he wanted us to exclude was our own aphrodisiac – poetry.

I received one hundred dollars for my erotica. Gonzalo needed cash for the dentist, Helba needed a mirror for her dancing, and Henry money for his trip. Gonzalo told me the story of the “Basque and Bijou, and I wrote it down for the collector.

[February, 1941]
The telephone bill was unpaid. The net of economic difficulties was closing in on me. Everyone around me irresponsible, unconscious of the shipwreck. I did thirty pages of erotica.

I again awakened to the consciousness of being without a cent and telephoned the collector. Had he heard from his rich client about the last manuscript I sent? No, he had not, but he would take the one I had just finished and pay me for it. Henry had to see a doctor. Gonzalo needed glasses. Robert came with B. and asked me for money to go to the movies. The soot from the transom window fell on my typing paper and on my work. Robert came and took away my box of typing paper.

Wasn’t the old man tired of pornography? Wouldn’t a miracle take place? I began to imagine him saying: “Give me everything she writes, I want it all, I like all of it. I will send her a big present, a big check for all the writing she has done.” My typewriter was broken. With a hundred dollars in my pocket I recovered my optimism. I said to Henry: “The collector says he likes simple, unintellectual women – but he invites me to dinner.”

I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language was inadequate. The language of sex had yet to be invented. The language of the senses was yet to be explored. D.H. Lawrence began to give instinct to a language, he tried to escape the clinical, the scientific, which only captures what the body feels.

[October, 1941]
When Henry came he made several contradictory statements. That he could live on nothing, that he felt so good he could even take a job, that his integrity prevented him from writing scenarios in Hollywood. At last I said: “And what of the integrity of doing erotica for money?” Henry laughed, admitted the paradox, the contradictions, laughed and dismissed the subject.

France has had a tradition of literary erotic writing, in fine, elegant style. When I first began to write for the collector I thought there was a similar tradition here, but found none at all. All I had seen was shoddy, written by second-rate writers. No fine writer seemed ever to have tried his hand at erotica.

I told George Barker how Caresse Crosby, Robert, Virginia Admiral and others were writing. It appealed to his sense of humor. The idea of my being the madam of this snobbish literary house of prostitution, from which vulgarity was excluded. Laughing, I said: “I supply paper and carbon, I deliver the manuscript anonymously, I protect everyone’s anonymity. George Barker felt this was much more humorous and inspiring than begging, borrowing or cajoling meals out of friends.

I gathered poets around me and we all wrote beautiful erotica. As we were condemned to focus only on sensuality, we had violent explosions of poetry. Writing erotica became a road to sainthood rather than to debauchery.

Harvey Breit, Robert Duncan, George Barker, Caresse Crosby, all of us concentrating our skills in a tour de force, supplying the old man with such an abundance of perverse felicities, that now he begged for more.

The homosexuals wrote as if they were women. The timid ones wrote about orgies. The frigid ones about frenzied fulfillments. The most poetic ones indulged in pure bestiality and the purest ones in perversions. We were haunted by the marvelous tales we could all tell. We sat around, imagined this old man, talked of how much we hated him, because he would not allow us to make a fusion of sexuality and feeling, sensuality and emotion.

[December, 1941]
George Barker was terribly poor. He wanted to write more erotica. He wrote eighty-five pages. The collector thought they were too surrealistic. I loved them. His scenes of lovemaking were disheveled and fantastic. Love between two trapezes.

He drank away the firs t money, and I could not lend him anything but more paper and carbons. George Barker, the excellent English poet, writing erotica to drink, just as Utrillo painted paintings in exchange for a bottle of wine. I began to think about the old man we all hated. I decided to write to him, address him directly, tell him about our feelings.

“Dear Collector: We hate you. Sex loses all its power and magic when it becomes explicit, mechanical, overdone, when it becomes a mechanistic obsession. It becomes a bore. You have taught us more than anyone I know how wrong it is not to mix it with emotion, hunger, desire, lust, whims, caprices, personal ties, deeper relationships that change its color, flavor, rhythms, intensities.

“You do not know what you are missing by your microscopic examination of sexual activity to the exclusion of aspects which are the fuel that ignites it. Intellectual, imaginative, romantic, emotional. This is what gives sex its surprising textures, its subtle transformations, its aphrodisiac elements. You are shrinking your world of sensations. You are withering it, starving it, draining its blood.

“If you nourished your sexual life with all the excitements and adventures which love injects into sensuality, you would be the most potent man in the world. The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing opium, wine.

“How much do you lose by this periscope at the tip of your sex, when you could enjoy a harem of distinct and never-repeated wonders? No two hairs alike, but you will not let us waste words on a description of hair; now two odors, but if we expand on this you cry, “Cut the poetry.” No tow skins with the same texture, and never the same light, temperature, shadows, never the same gesture; for a lover, when he is aroused by true love, can run the gamut of centuries of love lore. What a range, what changes of age, what variations of maturity and innocence, perversity of art…

“We have sat around for hours and wondered how you look. If you have closed your senses upon silk, light, color, odor, character, temperament, you must be by now completely shriveled up. There are so many minor senses, all running tributaries into the mainstream of sex, nourishing it. Only the united beat of sex and heart together can create ecstasy.”

POSTSCRIPT

At the time we were all writing erotica at a dollar a page, I realized that for centuries we had had only one model for this literary genre – the writing of men. I was already conscious of a difference between the masculine and feminine treatment of sexual experience. I knew that there was a great disparity between Henry Miller’s explicitness and my ambiguities – between his humorous, Rebelaisian view of sex and my poetic descriptions of sexual relationships in the unpublished portions of the diary. As I wrote in volume three of the Diary, I had a feeling that Pandora’s box contained the mysteries of woman’s sensuality, so different from man’s and for which man’s language was inadequate.

Women, I thought, were more apt to fuse sex with emotion, with love, and to single out one man rather than be promiscuous. This became apparent to me as I wrote the novels and the Diary, and I saw it even more clearly when I began to teach. But although women’s attitude towards sex was quite distinct from that of men, we had not yet learned how to write about it.

Here in the erotica, I was writing to entertain, under pressure from a client who wanted me to “leave out the poetry.” I believed that my style was derived from a reading of men’s works. For this reason I long felt that I had compromised my feminine self. I put the erotica aside. Rereading it these many years later, I see that my own voice was not completely suppressed. In numerous passages I was intuitively using a woman’s language, seeing sexual experience from a woman’s point of view. I finally decided to release the erotica for publication because it shows the beginning efforts of a woman in a world that had been the domain of men. If the unexpurgated version of the Diary is ever published, this feminine point of view will be established more clearly. It will show that women (and I, in the Diary) have never separated sex from feeling, from love of the whole man.

Anaias Nin
Los Angeles
September, 1976

My Thoughts:

This book contains fifteen erotic vignettes. By today's standards, they are quite mild erotica. Remember that Nin wrote them in 1940-41. The thing that strikes me about these erotic vignettes is that they are so well written, containing developed characters and interesting stories. They contain emotional connection, which was so important to Nin in her feelings and in her writing.

Elton John and Billy Joel, Face2Face Concert

Elton John and Billy Joel Face2Face Tour
Saturday, July 11, 2009 at 7:30 PM at Nationals Park, Washington, DC

This was their fourth Face2Face tour; the first one was in 1994, and their most recent one was in 2003. I had never before attended a rock concert, and when this concert was advertised, I decided to get tickets. I paid about $200 each for tickets; I felt that if I were going to attend only one concert, I would get good seats. The traffic was far, far worse than traffic to a Washington Nationals baseball game, but at last I was able to find a parking lot for $40, and by the time I found it, I was happy to pay the price.

Here are some of my impressions of the concert:

o Seeing the two of them together, it was clear to me why Elton John has sold 250 million albums, and Billy Joel 100 million (according to Wikipedia). Elton John's voice was powerful and resonant, and his on-stage performance was completely engaging, completely connecting with the crowd. Billy Joel's voice was weak (he had to shout into the microphone), and his on-stage performance was scattered and distracting, almost frantic at times. The crowd sat through much of Billy Joel's performance, unengaged, and stood through Elton John's performance with roars of approval for his music.

o Adding to the difference in the power of their voices was the difference in the back-up musicians. Elton John had five musicians in his group, including no brass, and Billy Joel had eight musicians in his group, including a great sax player and other horns. Still, Elton John's musicians seemed more powerful. It seemed that the additional musicians, especially the sax player, were needed to add power to Billy Joel's performance.

o Having gone to many baseball games over the years, I was surprised at the difference in the behavior of the crowd at the concert. At baseball games, the crowd does not move about very much. They go to their seats and stay there for the most part, watching the game. One is not distracted by crowd movement. However, at the concert, the crowd was like an ant hill throughout the entire performance -- constantly in motion, with streams of people, like ant streams, never ceasing. I was surprised that people paid a lot of money to attend the concert, but then moved about constantly, not watching the performers much. Indeed, the music seemed almost like background noise against all the motion.

o At baseball games, almost everyone eats food, particularly hot dogs. A lot of beer is sold, but the food is the most important thing. At the concert, almost no one was eating food, but an incredible amount of beer was consumed. It seemed that almost everyone drank beer throughout the entire concert. I have no idea how the people got home from the concert; they could not possibly have driven safely.

o Because of the age of the performers, a lot of the crowd was middle aged (50s and 60s), although a substantial portion of the crowd was younger -- 40s and 30s and even a few 20s.

o I was surprised that the two performers wore heavy clothes (as shown in the photo). The evening was not oppressively hot, but it was very humid. Yet, both of them wore jackets. By the end of his set, Billy Joel was soaked in perspiration, although I could not tell about Elton John. There is a YouTube clip of their performance in Toronto, and they wore the same clothes at the performance on Saturday night.

o The performance was about three hours in length -- one hour for Billy Joel, one hour for Elton John, and one hour together with all back-up musicians on stage together except the final four numbers, which were performed with no one on stage except Elton John and Billy Joel. The Toronto site shows the set list for the performance, with the changes shown in the comment at the bottom. The performers knew that the crowd paid to see them perform their greatest hits, and they did not disappoint.

o At first, I was very distracted and annoyed by the crowd. I had gone to watch the concert, but it became clear that the crowd would not permit anyone to sit and watch the concert. The constant movement of the crowd, and the constant standing of some people, directly in front of those wanting to sit, would not permit simple enjoyment of the performance. After a time, I realized that the situation would not change, so I decided to become an observer of the scene, rather than trying to enjoy the performance. I became a scientist again, an observer. I saw very little of the performance directly, instead contenting myself with watching it on the huge screens. I would have heard better and seen better if I were watching it on TV at home.

o A word about the dress of the crowd. Men wore comfortable slacks and shirts. I saw no more than a handful of men who were "smartly" dressed. Although most women also wore comfortable clothes, many of the women were stylishly dressed. Many women wore "smart casual" clothing -- stylish fashions. Some wore very sexy clothes (like a see-through outfit with lacy underwear), and many wore party dresses or party tops with stylish pants. The women were much better dressed than the men.

I felt that the Washington Post review of the concert did not adequately describe the event. The Baltimore Sun review was a much better description of the concert. In addition, Paul from EltonJohnNews Blog wrote this review of the performance.

My Life So Far, Jane Fonda

My Life So Far, by Jane Fonda

I had not expected to read this book. Not because I have any problem with Jane Fonda’s antiwar activities, but because I have very little interest in celebrities. Usually, I find celebrities to be undereducated and shallow thinkers. However, I was in a situation in which I was away from home, with little to do, and this book was lying there; so I began to read it. After 50 or 100 pages, I found that I was drawn into the book, first by her writing abilities, and also by her thinking. Jane Fonda is a very smart woman, and she is also a very good writer. In addition, she has led an interesting life.

Fonda organized the book around her three marriages and called the parts of her life the acts in a play – Act I (for her first marriage to Roger Vadim), Act II (for her marriage to Tom Hayden), and Act III (for her marriage to Ted Turner). She calls the current part of her life Act IV. I found this organization to be very interesting, although I think of her life prior to her first marriage as Act I (in which her father was the principal male in her life). In her three marriages, she lived very different lives, almost as different people entirely, and yet, one aspect of her life was completely constant – her dependence on a strong dominant male figure. Her dad dominated her life early life, then Roger Vadim, Tom Hayden, and Ted Turner. Now, at last, she has let go of dominant men, and directs her own life.

The characteristic that I found most interesting about this book was her search for a paradigm to guide her thinking. Until her divorce from Ted Turner, her paradigm had been to rely on a strong man to guide her life. All her life, she was controlled by strong-willed men; to one extent or another, she let go of her own identity to accept the identity that each man desired for her. In each instance, she first accepted the identity that each man chose for her, but then eventually she found that identity unacceptable and moved on to another.

In each part of her life, under each dominant male, she found and developed a part of herself, her own identity. Under her father, she grew up, became educated, and began a career in acting in her own way, which was quite different from her father’s way. Under Roger Vadim, she became a star actress. Under Tom Hayden, she flourished as an actor, and also developed as an activist and then as a very successful business woman. Under Ted Turner, she developed as a philanthropist and human rights leader. And yet, under each of these men, she developed her own self-image almost in opposition to the desires of the man. In the end, she had to let go of each of her relationships in order to continue the development of a self that she wanted for herself.

Throughout her life, she lived in the present, working at the tasks that were before her at the time, taking direction from the dominant man in her life. She does not seem to have thought much about spiritual matters. Now, after letting go of the dominant men, she seems to be thinking of spiritual matters. She tried Christianity as espoused by one church, and now feels less comfortable in that paradigm. She does not seem to know where her thinking will go next, but she realizes that she is on a spiritual path. (Is she simply looking for the next dominant male to guide her?)

For me, I enjoyed reading this book. I enjoyed seeing her life as a spiritual journey. I was interested in the way in which she was guided by Spirit. I believe that all relationships are arranged by Spirit, and all relationships are helpful spiritually, which is the purpose of the relationships. With this thought in mind, it was interesting to me to try to find the way in which Spirit guided her, not only toward Spiritual thought, but also to success in life. She was guided to success as an actress under her father and Roger Vadim, and to huge success as a business woman under Tom Hayden. However, it was not clear to me how she was guided to success under Ted Turner; it seemed to me that his desire was for to give up herself completely and live only to give emotional support to him. Now Spirit has set her free from dominating men to complete her final Act.

In addition to finding her relationships and her spiritual journey interesting, I also found her career interesting. She is a very accomplished woman. She has won two academy awards, she established and ran for many years her own production company, developing a long series of very successful movies, and she invented the use of videos for home exercise. She has developed 24 home exercise videos, and her original Jane Fonda’s Workout is still the top grossing video of all time. I found her descriptions of making movies interesting.

Her deep emotional concerns for human issues first burst forth during her anti-war activities, and it has continued to the present. In 1994, she was named Goodwill Ambassador for the United Nations Population Fund. She founded the Georgia Campaign for Adolescent Pregnancy Prevention in 1995, and continues to be active in that organization. In 2001, she established the Jane Fonda Center for Adolescent Reproductive Health at Emory University. She is also a member of the Women & Foreign Policy Advisory Committee of the Council of Foreign Relations.

I recommend this book; it was interesting to me.

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, Alexander McCall Smith

Tea Time for the Traditionally Built, by Alexander McCall Smith

Design for Living, Shakespeare Theatre

Robert Sella as Leo, Gretchen Egolf as Gilda and Tom Story as Otto in Noël Coward’s Design for Living, directed by Michael Kahn. Photo by Scott Suchman.



Design for Living, by Noel Coward
Shakespeare Theatre Company


Design for Living

The World According to Bertie, Alexander McCall Smith

The World According To Bertie, by Alexander McCall Smith




Alexander McCall Smith

Ion, Shakespeare Theatre

Lisa Harrow as Creusa and Keith Eric Chappelle as Ion in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of Ion, directed by Ethan McSweeny. Photo by Carol Rosegg.

Ion, by Euripides at the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

Ion is called a Greek tragedy with a happy ending. It is the story of a woman who was separated from her son at birth and thought he was dead, but who found him again. Written by Euripides and performed about 412 BCE at the theatre of Dionysus in Athens. The play was written as a spiritual play about Greek Gods, as was expected of plays in that time. The Athenians knew the Ion myth well. Creusa was a teen-aged virgin who was impregnated by a Greek God, Apollo, and bore a son. Apollo warned her not to reveal that she was pregnant, and not to reveal the birth of the boy until he, Apollo, determined that the time was right for the son to be revealed.

The play is set at Delphi, at the temple of Apollo, where Ion was taken as a baby and raised by the priestess of the temple, and where Ion served happily as an acolyte of Apollo at the temple. Creusa, thinking her son was dead, comes to the temple to ask the oracle whether she will have other children. After almost 20 years, she is still in pain from the loss of her baby, and still angry at Apollo, questioning his motive and his treatment of her, not knowing that the time and place had come for Ion to be revealed and for him to take his rightful place as the son of a God, Apollo. Ion’s descendants established cities throughout the Aegean world, and those who settled in western Asia Minor were known as Ionians. Apollo's intent for Cerusa and Ion was not revealed by Apollo, but by an "angel", Athena, the Goddess of Athens, who comes to reveal the divine plan.

Although different in some ways, the play, Ion, has remarkable parallels with the Biblical story of Mary and Jesus. The Ion myth was well known throughout the region, and must have been known by those who wrote the books of the Bible, including Paul.

Note these similarities between the play and Biblical verses:

o At the temple, Ion says, "I will serve my master, Apollo, and never cease to worship the one through whom I live." And note the similarity in Acts 17:28 when Paul says, "For in Him we live and move and have our being."

o Ion tells Cerusa, "Dearest mother, here you see me in your arms, your son who was dead and yet was alive." And note the similarity in Ephesians 2:5, when Paul tells the Epesians, "Even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)."

o Note that Apollo's plan for Cerusa was revealed by an "angel", Athena, and God's plan for Mary was revealed by an angel.

o Note also the prayer of Creusa to Leto: "O blessed Lady, mother of Apollo," which is similar to the prayer by many to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

o And finally, note that we are taught in the Bible, although we may not understand the "ways of the Lord", and at times we may in fact feel angry at Him, we must trust that He knows best. Similarly, Athena told Cerusa and Ion in the play that they were forgiven for their lack of faith in Apollo and even their anger toward him, "This I approve, thy former wayward thoughts resigned, with honour that thou name the god. Slow are the gifts of Heaven, but found at length not void of power."

Thus, the play was about not knowing what Spirit has in mind for us, but eventually learning after some time and hardship that events in our lives are for the best after all. Life is not random, not chance, but planned for our joy. I am reminded of this thought from "A Course in Miracles":

"What could you not accept if you but knew that every step you take, all events, past, present and to come, were gently planned by One whose only purpose is your good. While you made plans for death, He led you gently to eternal life."

"A Course in Miracles"

I am not a religious person in the sense of organized religion, but I am spiritual in the sense of letting Spirit guide my life. This thought often guides me, and it gives me peace of mind when things do not seem to be going the way I think I want.

Note the words of the play (as translated by Robert Potter, and the similarities to the Bible.

MINERVA (ATHENA)

Fly not; in me no enemy you fly;
At Athens friendly to you, and no less
Here. From that land I come, so named from me,
By Phoebus (Apollo) sent with speed: unmeet he deems it
To show himself before you, lest with blame
The past be mention'd; this he gave in charge,
To tell thee that she bore thee, and to him,
Phoebus thy father; he to whom he gave thee,
Not as to the author of thy being gives thee,
But to the inheritance of a noble house.
This declaration made, lest thou shouldst die,
Kill'd by thy mother's wily trains, or she
By thee, these means to save you he devised.
These things in silence long conceal'd, at Athens
The royal Phoebus would have made it known
That thou art sprung from her, thy father he:
But to discharge my office, and unfold
The oracle of the god, for which you yoked
Your chariots, hear: Creusa, take thy son,
Go to the land of Cecrops: let him mount
The royal throne; for, from Erechtheus sprung,
That honour is his due, the sovereignty
Over my country: through the states of Greece
Wide his renown shall spread;

For from his root
Four sons shall spring, that to the land, the tribes,
The dwellers on my rock, shall give their names.
Geleon the first, Hopletes, Argades,
And from my aegis named Aegicores:
Their sons in fate's appointed time shall fix
Their seats along the coast, or in the isles
Girt by the Aegean sea, and to my land
Give strength; extending thence the opposite plains
Of either continent shall make their own,
Europe and Asia, and shall boast their name
Ionians, from the honour'd Ion call'd.
To thee by Xuthus shall a son be born,
Dorus, from whom the Dorian state shall rise
To high renown; in the Pelopian land,
Another near the Rhian cliffs, along
The sea-wash'd coast, his potent monarchy
Shall stretch, Achaeus; and his subject realms
Shall glory in their chief's illustrious name.

Well hath Apollo quitted him in all:
First, without pain he caused thee bear a son.
That from thy friends thou mightst conceal his birth;
After the birth, soon as his infant limbs
Thy hands had clothed, to Mercury he gave
The charge to take the babe, and in his arms
Convey him hither; here with tenderness
He nurtured him, nor suffer'd him to perish.
Guard now the secret that he is thy son,
That his opinion Xuthus may enjoy
Delighted: thou too hast thy blessings, lady.
And now, farewell: from this relief from ills
A prosperous fortune I to both announce.

ION

O Pallas, daughter of all-powerful Jove!
Not with distrust shall we receive thy words:
I am convinced that Phoebus is my father,
My mother she, not unassured before.

CREUSA

Hear me too, now: Phoebus I praise, before
Unpraised; my son he now restores, of whom
Till now I deem'd him heedless. Now these gates
Are beauteous to mine eyes; his oracles
Now grateful to my soul, unpleasant late.
With rapture on these sounding rings my hands
Now hang; with rapture I address the gates.

MINERVA

This I approve, thy former wayward thoughts
Resign'd, with honour that thou name the god.
Slow are the gifts of Heaven, but found at length
Not void of power.

Chanticleer Singers, Strathmore Hall

Chanticleer Singers at Strathmore Hall

A joyful performance at a beautiful music venue.

Chanticleer Singers

The First Noel

Strathmore Hall

The Yacoubian Building, Alaa Al Aswany

The Yacoubian Building, by Alaa Al Aswany

Through five principal characters and numerous lesser characters, the author paints a portrait of life and culture in Egypt during the time of Nasser (and presumably continuing to the present time). The overriding theme of the book is one of hopelessness resulting from the corrupt political system that completely permeates all aspects of life. Meaningful and legitimate occupations are nonexistent; only through participating in personal or political corruption can anyone eke out a living or move forward successfully. The author shows the terrible toll of the corruption on individuals, leading some to break down emotionally, others to engage in whatever form of behavior they determine necessary to survive, and still others to seek peace of mind through religious extremism. No joy can be found; no peace can be found; mere survival is the most one can hope for. Fortunately for the readers of the book, in the end, two of the five principal characters find the possibility of joy with each other, although we know that even that joy can only be short term, for Zaki Bey is 65 and Busayna is only 18.

This book has been a best seller in the Arabic world since 2002, and a film was made of the book.

The Yacoubian Building

The Yacoubian Building (film)

The Dog in the Manger, Shakespeare Theatre

Michael Hayden as Teodoro and Michelle Hurd as Diana in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of The Dog in the Manger, directed by Jonathan Munby. Photo by Scott Suchman.

The Dog in the Manger, by Lope de Vega

Translation by David Johnston

Written in 1613, the play is a romantic comedy about forbidden love between a Countess, Diana, who falls in love with her servant, Teodoro, her secretary. One of the best performances I have seen at The Shakespeare Theatre. The background information provided by The Shakespeare Theatre is complete and excellent.

Synopsis

Lope de Vega

Timeline of the Spanish Golden Age

The Washington Post review is excellent.

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, Alexander McCall Smith

The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday by Alexander McCall Smith

Book 5 in “The Sunday Philosophy Club” series.

In “The Sunday Philosophy Club” series, Isabel Dalhousie is Alexander McCall Smith’s voice in examining philosophical and ethical issues. In The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, Smith examines the issue of dishonesty. Isabel/McCall Smith examines dishonesty in numerous situations, both real and perceived, the largest of which concerns the deaths of three patients who were prescribed a new antibiotic medication, and the disgrace of a physician who examined the data following the deaths of the first two of them and cleared the drug for further use, leading to the death of the third. As the philosopher/sleuth of the series, Isabel must find the dishonesty involved in the deaths, and the truth. In the book, Isabel is also faced with several other apparently dishonest situations. She must sort out the dishonesty of Eddie, a young assistant at the delicatessen of her niece, who asked her for money. She is confronted with the continuing dishonesty of Christopher Dove, the philosophy professor who tried to get her fired from her job as editor of The Review of Applied Ethics, and who now wants her to publish an inferior article in the journal. She meets a visiting conductor, who she suspects of dishonesty in dealing with her lover, Jamie. And most of all, she is wracked with emotion in dealing with apparent dishonesty by her lover, Jamie, himself.

McCall Smith examines these situations from several points of view, demonstrating their complexities. As Isabel confronts these situations, she learns of new information that leads her to differing conclusions, or to change her mind about the dishonesty and truth. Isabel/McCall Smith learn that the human mind is unable to perceive the difference between honesty and dishonesty. Perception of honesty and dishonesty is very unreliable. What seems honest is dishonest, and what seems dishonest is in fact true. Our ability to detect honesty and dishonesty is greatly affected by our feelings about others; we feel that sympathetic people are honest, while unsympathetic people are dishonest. In fact, dishonest people learn to portray themselves as sympathetic in order to fool us into believing their stories. Our perception is also greatly affected by our own fears and insecurities, leading us to perceive dishonesty in situations when we are most insecure.

McCall Smith examines these situations, but he does not resolve all of them. The reader is left wondering about several of them – both what was truth and what was dishonest, and how the situations were eventually dealt with. We are simply not told; the situations are left unresolved. McCall Smith can sometimes leave the reader wishing the story would speed up; sometimes the story wanders in extraneous thought, directionless. We want him to "get to the point". As in all of his previous books, McCall Smith is gentle and loving. He has Isabel taking the high road, overlooking past dishonesty, or even present dishonesty, and finding an honorable, even inspiring, way to set situations right again. As always, McCall Smith is “homey” in his writing, leaving the reader feeling that he has not strained in reading the book, and feeling safe and comfortable when the story ends, perhaps even inspired and happy.

Alexander McCall Smith's delightful official website

A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

There is a tide in the affairs of men,
Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune;
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.
Julius Cæsar. Act iv. Sc. 3.

A Fine Balance is a spiritual book. It seems unlikely that the author intended the book to be a spiritual book and might not recognize it as such, nor would those who have reviewed the book. The author intended to write a book describing the devastating effects of some of the worst abuses of the “State of Internal Emergency” in India during the rule of Indira Gandhi. In some ways, the author succeeded in describing the corruption and brutality of that period. The book is unrelenting in describing acts of brutality that were administered on the poorest, weakest citizens of India both by the Ghandi government and by those who were empowered by the government. The book is extremely well written – so much so that we come to care deeply about the people who suffer so desperately. Indeed, the story is so depressing that it is very unpleasant to read.

However, the principal story of this book is about omitted opportunities, wrong choices, and the misery that ensued in the voyage of life. It seems doubtful that the author intended to write a spiritual book; he probably wrote a spiritual book subconsciously.

The story has four protagonists. Dina is in her 40’s and widowed. She lives alone and struggles to survive without asking for help from her elder brother, who she dislikes. Maneck is in his first year of college, from a good family, owners of a general store in the hill country, and whose mother is an old school friend of Dina's. Ishvar and his nephew Om are tailors from a small village and members of the untouchable caste. Maneck and the two tailors meet on the train on their way to Dina’s house, where Maneck has rented a room while in college, and where the two tailors hope to find work from Dina making dresses for five rupees per dress. The story describes how the four struggle together at first, and then come to care for each other deeply.

As the story unfolds, we learn the backgrounds of the principal characters, and how each came to be in the tiny run-down apartment. Dina was the daughter of a physician, a very bright girl who was also very headstrong and her father's pet. As a girl, her mother implored her to persuade her father not to go into a dangerous situation, but she refused. Her father went and became ill and died. She was not willing to accept direction from her elder brother, and she neglected her schoolwork. After she made failing marks in school, her brother refused to pay for her to continue, and she did not finish her basic education, much less college. She eventually married a very poor man who was killed in an accident after they were married only three years. Her decision not to study and become educated led her to a life of poverty and misery.

Like Dina, Maneck was given every opportunity to succeed. His parents loved him and wanted him to be educated. They sent him first to boarding school and then to college. He rebelled first at being sent to boarding school and then to college. While in college, he became friends with a young man who was a student political organizer against the government. During his year in college, he refused to study, and because of poor marks, was not accepted for further study. He accepted a job in air conditioning maintenance in Dubai, where he was miserable.

As boys, Ishvar and his brother Narayan were sent by their father away from home to a nearby town to learn to be tailors. Later, Narayan returned to his village and became very successful as a tailor. However, he defied the most powerful man in the village and was killed, along with his wife and three daughters as well as his mother and father. Ishvar and Om escaped death only because they were working in the nearby town. Later, when the tailoring business in the town failed, they went to seek work in the city. For a time, they were successful and happy with Dina, but Ishvar insisted that he and Om return to their hometown to find a wife for Om. While there, Om defied the same powerful man who had killed his father. When local police rounded up adults for forced sterilization, Ishvar and Om were given an opportunity to escape, but refused. As a result, they were sterilized, but then the powerful man insisted that Om be castrated as well, ending his chances of finding a wife. As a result of unsanitary conditions, Ishvar developed gangrene and had his legs amputated.

Thus, we see that the author created a story in which each of these four protagonists was actually responsible for his own suffering. In each case, the character made choices that led to his downfall. Each one did so knowingly after repeated warnings. In each case, the character knew at the time of his action that he was going against powerful, even brutal forces, and yet he did so anyway. In each case, the character was warned of the consequences of his action, as were others in the story who were not the principal characters, but who also suffered from the actions of evil forces. So while the author seems to have intended to describe the brutality of the Gandhi government, he actually described the consequences of defying the power prevailing in their lives at the time.

In the end, Dina was forced to move into the home of her brother and his wife and became their servant. Ishvar and Om were forced to become beggars, sneaking to the home where Dina lived where she fed them one meal each day. Maneck became despondent with life – the death of his father, learning of the death of his college friend, the political activist, and learning of the misery of Dina and Ishvar and Om. He killed himself. Dina and Ishvar and Om kept surviving somehow, kept alive by learning to maintain "a fine balance" between hope and despair. However, the book provides no "balance"; there is no hope, only despair.

Thus, this book reinforced a basic law of nature, the law of life – even though we do not agree with the rules laid down for us, we must accept those rules or face the consequences of our actions. In this story, the consequences were terrible and life-long. The characters knew in advance that they would face terrible consequences of their actions, yet they acted anyway. The suffering that they experienced was determined by their own actions; they invited the brutality that was wielded on them. They asked for it, and they got it.

The spiritual lesson is that we can try to move forward in life, we can strive for a better life, but we must act within the bounds that are laid out for us, or we will face terrible consequences. I am reminded of the Nelson Mandela quote regarding his sister – when she chose not to be educated, she chose a life of slavery. Her own choice led to her suffering. How often we see this law played out in life; how often we see people have much, but throw it away through unwillingness to accept existing rules.

Because this book had received such great reviews and such high praise, including being a finalist for the Man Booker Prize and also being included in Oprah’s Book Club, I decided to read it. If I had read the reviews more carefully, I would not have done so. Although I found this book terribly sad, terribly depressing, I also found the four principal characters to be the cause of their own misery. In life we are shown the path to happiness, and we are shown the path to misery. We must choose which path to take. We must live by the rules of life and be happy, or we will surely suffer and die by those rules. That is the law of life. Indeed, the title of this book could well have been, "Sad Consequences of the Law of Life".

Rickshaw, Lao She

Rickshaw, by Lao She

Lao She was a social novelist who chronicled life in Peking (now Beijing); Rickshaw was Lao She's eighth novel. Considered a classic in modern Chinese literature, this book describes the lives of people living in poverty in Peking and their struggle to survive. Lao She began the novel in spring, 1936, and it was published in installments in the magazine Yuzhoufeng beginning in January, 1937. Lao She was a great author, and his writing style and story -- the two essential elements of any great novel -- are outstanding.

The protagonist of the story is Hsiang Tzu, a young man who went to live in Peking from the countryside with dreams of achieving a good life through hard work and living a morally upstanding life. In the beginning, Hsiang Tzu is Michelangelo's David -- a perfect physical specimen and equally perfect morally. He has dreams of owning his own rickshaw and then perhaps other rickshaws to rent out, slowly building a good life for himself. He is determined not to be like other rickshaw pullers -- morally and physically corrupt.

Slowly, slowly, the book describes the decline in Hsiang Tzu's life and dreams, much like the chipping away at the David, until in the end the great statue crumbles and falls down. Similarly, at the end, Hsiang Tzu's life completely crumbles until he has no hope and survives only meal to meal, when he can get food at all. Along the way, the book also describes the wretched lives of others living in extreme poverty. The lives of girls was particularly dire; they had little means of support, and many resorted to selling their bodies in order to feed their families. Many girls were sold into prostitution by their parents, simply as a way to survive.

Lao She uses this story to argue that individualism does not succeed and leads to ruin, whereas people working together can succeed greatly. An old rickshaw man in the story sums up Lao She's point: "Any poor guy who thinks he can succeed by himself will find it harder than going to heaven. How far can one man hop? [A grasshopper] can go a long way in one hop by itself. Let a small boy grab it and tie a thread around it and it can't go anywhere. But if it joins up with a whole lot of other grasshoppers in a horde and they all move together, whew!"

Using all books to think about my own philosophy of life, I come to a different conclusion from that of Lao She. My own thought is that if if we rely on ourselves, our own instincts, our own decisions, we will fail. However, if we rely not on the masses, but on Spirit, we will succeed. Where Lao She thought salvation lay in working together with the masses, I believe that we must learn to follow Spirit. If Hsiang Tzu had only known to permit himself to be led by Spirit, he would have been fine. Perhaps he would not have been rich, but he would have had plenty, and he would have been happy. Spirit gives us plenty, and leads us to happiness. Following his own instincts, however, led him to ruin. As always, I look forward to the day that books are written about those who follow the guidance of Spirit, rather than their own instincts.