The Allure of Immorality, Criminality, & Evil in Fiction

Satan, repellent to Christians, but stood as a Romantic figure post-Paradise Lost and as a counter-culture icon in the 20th century. Evil can be equated with rebellion, and may attract.

We love villains.

Villainy, in contrast to heroism, can paradoxically be both revolting and appealing. Throughout history, civilised societies have always been fascinated by violence, from the Roman gladiator pits, to public executions, and to the French theatre of Grand Guignol – and this is a fascination that has carried over into literature. Subversive literature dealing with immoral characters and criminal behaviour fascinates and entertains because they exist outwith the traditional hero’s journey. Literary depictions of immorality have held fast because mankind has continuously questioned and struggled with morality, and successive generations have always re-evaluated the acceptable and the intolerable. Yesterday’s villainy could be today’s heroism, or vice versa. The novels and actions of the Marquis de Sade, though not seen as moral novels and actions today, have been rehabilitated somewhat over the centuries, and can acceptably be distributed and sold. De Sade argued against laws criminalising atheism and blasphemy, and claimed that, “A republic is not in the business of prescribing morality ... what is more immoral than war? And how can a state which must perpetuate immorality to fulfil its sole reason for existence turn around and insist that its citizens live morally?” The struggle between judicial law and evolving common senses of justice were reflected in proletariat literature and informed its readership of a particular movement’s creed. In this respect, tales of criminality may be enjoyed because they rally against perceived injustices.

However, not all stories of immoral behaviour are so mission-orientated. They may be written to explore the psychology of villainy in itself [as in Dostoyevsky], to exploit villainy to thrill readers with dastardly characters [as in some of Shakespeare’s comedies], to follow criminal character on the path to redemption [as in Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables], or may even feature behaviour that, in the society under which it is written, is conceived to be examples of virtue and bravery, but to a later society is interperated as ancient barbarism. When Homer composed The Iliad, he was telling a story of heroes and glory, but to modern sensibilities, the Trojan War is a war of folly, not glory, and its hero, Achilles, more mercurial, vain, and selfish than Homer may have intended. Though the story remains entertaining and widely read, to a modern audience the Olympian worshipping Greeks of Homer may be little more than warring invaders, though it is not to be mistaken that ancient audiences cheered on Achilles simply because he was a powerful protagonist, but rather because he was a successfully violent and merciless one, [Shakespeare would later parody the Greek ‘heroes’ in Troilus and Cressida.]

Literary villainy hit a stride in the Middle Ages and the Reformation, at a time of ecclesiastical upheaval and reform. In an age obsessed with sin and wary of pleasures, suffering was given reign over festivity.

“The history of human pleasures -of festivity, games, jokes, and amusements- has seldom met with the same dignified attention accorded the history of human suffering ... This imbalance reflects a standard interpretation of experience: that suffering is perpetual, fundamental to human life, and hence worthy of discourse ... In Goethe’s words, ‘the most lively and exquisite delights are, like horses racing past, the experience of an instant only, which leaves scarcely a trace on our soul.’”
Terry Castle, Masquerade and Civilisation: the carnivalesque in eighteenth-century English Culture and Fiction, (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1986) p.1.

Many works of fiction which explored immorality were tinged with the supernatural [for example, the story of Faustus], and other tales of criminality were derived from actual events, or at least paralleled them. John Webster’s The White Devil derived its plot from the real-life murder of an Italian woman named Vittoria Accoramboni [Vittoria Corombona in Webster’s story] and the play further explores murder, infidelity, and revenge. Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment explored criminal behaviour through the character of Rodian Romanovich Raskolnikov, who decides to rob and murder an elderly pawnbroker, ostensibly to help his family and to allow himself to return to university. The question of whether a criminal act such as murder can be justified is raised to the reader: Raskolnikov and his family are in need, and his intended victim is “an ugly, nasty, parasitical hag.” Raskolnikov commits his crime and the story goes on to explore the character’s underlying motivations and subsequent guilt, all in a thriller format to captivate the reader. When the novel was sent to his publisher, a real-life murder paralleling the crime of lead character Raskolnikov occurred in Moscow. So great was the public’s interest in the macabre that upon the book’s release, the odd similarity and timing between the real and fictional murder even “helped to publicise the novel.” Crime was commerce, especially real crime, and Dostoyevsky’s novel turned out to be his most popular to that point, [of course, his literary ability is not to be diminished.]

But depictions of villainy can do more than stretch or explore the boundaries of the acceptable; they can also reinforce conventional notions of morality. When, in Webster’s Duchess of Malfi, the Duchess refuses to lower her integrity when faced with assassination at the hands of the wicked [if not conflicted] Bosola, it affirms the power of respectability -and heroism- rather than degrades it, even though the pious character is killed at the hands of the villain. In Renaissance and Shakespearean tragedy, villainy represented typical assumptions about immoral characters – they are ugly, unfit, and detestable, such as Shakespeare’s Richard III, and characters who stray from a good path invariably become unwell or divorced from good health, such as Hamlet, who wrestles with a moral dilemma and is unable to force his hand, becoming ever more reluctant in his actions and who may or not be tinged with madness.

“[Sir Francis Bacon] condemns revenge as a ‘wild justice,’ a necessary result of mental unhealthiness: ‘A man who studies revenge keeps his own wounds green, which would otherwise heal and do well.’ ... That the revenger was thought to be not merely diseased but also allied mentally and spiritually with supernatural forces of evil is abundantly clear in Bacon, who sees such figures as living the ‘life of witches.’”
Molly Smith, The Darker World Within: Evil in the Tragedies of Shakespeare and His Successor, (USA: Associated University Press, 1991) p.49.

John Wilks, in The Idea of Conscience in Renaissance Tragedy, points out that for one to “‘smile and smile, and be a villain,’ was a phenomenon bafflingly unnatural to the Elizabethans, for it sundered the correspondence between soul and body.” Shakespeare’s villains were either as physically repulsive as they were morally repugnant, or they were treated comically, and protagonists who were morally divided or inconclusive often met with misfortune. Comic villains usually carried out their misdeeds with zest, and “several of Shakespeare’s blackest villains are virtuosos in their art, dedicated to the endless pleasure of the game, and alarmingly witty in their frank verbal revelations of technique.” The marriage of evil and comedy did not serve to undermine or soften wicked characters; rather it made such characters devilishly appealing to readers and spectators, and it confirmed to the audience what they had always believed – that villains were ugly, and found great glee in being so.

Bad and ugly. Shakespeare's deformed Richard the III.

The belief that wickedness could be predicted physiologically was a variation on an ancient, earlier idea that cowardly figures were likewise physically detestable, expressed in Homer’s The Iliad through the character of Thersites, who is “the ugliest man that had come to Ilium,” as well as a coward. This was carried over into Middle Age storytelling, but the hag was no longer cowardly, but wicked and perhaps in league with supernatural forces. John Milton’s Paradise Lost continues this notion, presenting an initially statuesque Satan, who by the time of his lowest ebb crawls in the dust. And still, the public regarded Milton’s handsome Satan as an anti-hero, which drove William Blake to famously proclaim: “[Milton] wrote in fetters when [he] wrote of Angels and God and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, [because] he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it.”

By the time of the nineteenth century, thoughts of mental impurity spelling physical impurity [which had also stemmed into Elizabethan medicinal belief] had crumbled somewhat, resulting in Dostoyevsky’s handsome but morally defective Raskolnikov. Today, this progression has resulted in two clichés; the ugly villain and the suave criminal, but Dostoyevsky offers a more complete view of immorality than his Elizabethan predecessors or many of his successors. His Raskolnikov is not a deformed, witty Richard the III-like villain, but handsome and “the very opposite of cowardly and downtrodden.” Nineteenth century Russia had laid aside the fallacious idea that wickedness was expressed physiologically, as we see in the character of Raskolnikov, and the reader enjoys exploring his failure of conscience because Raskolnikov is more than a Middle-Age caricature: he is a man, though prone to a Napoleon-complex, physically like any other walking the streets of modern Moscow. For Dostoyevsky’s readers, the thought [coupled with the coinciding real-life murders] was tantalising. The idea of immoral characters fascinates and entertains so much because it is inextricably tied to the shifting times and attitudes of the populace.

Dostoyevsky's Raskolnikov. Not a thumb-twiddling, moustache-curling pantomine villain.Raskolnikov was inspired by a real-life murderer. In August 1865, Gerasim Chistov murdered two eldery women during a robbery. Chistov belonged to a religious denomination known as the Old Believers, for which the Russian word was raskolnik. A later, similar murder helped publicise the novel.

Evil continued to evolve throughout the Enlightenment and Romantic periods. The rise of the novel and the later Gothic genre helped usher in less fantastical portrayals of villains and introduced greyer moral characters, specifically the anti-hero. The anti-hero is of course a synthesis of the hero and villain. Often, we find him/her as a character who, despite their moral flaws, are usually appealing, limited in/ignorant of their wickedness, and ultimately serve to at least explore immorality. One example would include Dostoyevsky's aforemetioned Raskolnikov, and one of the earliest examples in literary fiction is Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders, though a more infamous example may be that of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. In Shelley’s novel, the character of Victor Frankenstein is our protagonist, but as the tale unfolds we question his purity as a ‘hero’ and we question his Monster’s role as ‘villain’. Frankenstein is ultimately a story of two initially pure characters who propel each other into madness and murder; though we shouldn’t forget that it is Victor Frankenstein’s neglect and temperament that spurs the initially innocent but dejected creature into misery and murder. “I had feelings of affection, and they were requited by detestation and scorn,” the Monster claims. In fact, Victor’s creation turns out to be more thoughtful and considerate than he is, but realises that he is “a blot upon the earth, from which all men fled and all men disavowed.” Victor makes no secret of the fact that it is his Creature’s ugliness that causes him to repel it, not its nature. So, who is the real villain here?

In William Golding’s 1948 novel Lord of the Flies, evil is less a character and more of a state of mind or circumstance. For Golding [disturbed by his WWII experiences] mankind had the natural tendency for evil and only needed the appropriate environment to be let loose, [a theme explored in the writings of Joseph Conrad, though Flies arguably owes more to Ballantyne's Coral Island than Heart of Darkness.] Pessimistically, it is the characters’ ability for destruction that saves them. Where the boys are unable to keep a signal fire lit to save themselves, it is in their burning of the island to flush out one-time leader Ralph that attracts the attention of rescue. “The island was scorched up like dead wood ... with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart...”

Looking back, finding a villain who is so successfully evil that the reader/viewer is unable to even like him for all his wickedness is a difficult task. People love to hate dastardly characters. We don’t have to look further than the horror genre to see the idolisation of villains. Some may argue that the villains in horror movies are usually better defined and likeable than their victims, and it is true for the most part, though we shouldn’t forget that movies such as Halloween, Alien, Aliens, and The Terminator featured acclaimed [and much loved] heroes as well as villains, as did 2001: A Space Odyssey and Star Wars:  it would be a stretch to say that HAL 9000 and Darth Vader -both murderers and subjugators- are even mildly disliked among fans. To the contrary, they are loved. Michael Myers, the silent face of evil, is more mystical than detestable, and Freddy Krueger a figure of fun. One of the closest examples of a detestable villain may be Kevin Spacey's John Doe, from the David Fincher film, Seven. Again, it's hard to separate Spacey the actor with John Doe the character, but Fincher keeps Doe out of the spotlight until near the end of the film, whereas other films involving serial killings often introduce us to the killer before he meets the hero, and usually attempts to humanise the character somewhat, [Silence of the Lambs, another film that features a loved, if not loveable, serial killer in Hannibal Lector.]

Seven is a meditation on evil - where most people are too comfortable with [and thrilled by] evil in most movies, what Fincher does in Seven is give a no holds barred presentation of ruthless evil. There's a story that one day, Jean-Luc Godard woke up and realised that he hadn't made a film he liked; hadn't made a film that was truly affecting. People saw movies and the messages within them - then went on to their ordinary lives! Fincher shook people with Seven, and showed murder and immorality as it should be seen - as disgusting, life-destroying, and gut wrenching. The last thing Seven does is represent John Doe [standing in for evil itself] as being likeable, poseable, hip, cool, or an action figure, or even as vanquishable in a Hollywood-styled action sequence. It also presented the killing of a villain as a defeat for morality. Brad Pitt's character seals his doom by wreaking revenge as Morgan Freeman pleads for clemency. Most Hollywood movies celebrate heroes ruthlessly killing villains. For a change, viewers were left hoping for mercy, but evil proves to be too distorting, disturbing, and uncharacteristically too evil for movies.

Good[?] and evil in David Fincher's Seven.

For some, exploring criminal behaviour in fiction can be more than a beacon of the times; it can also be progressive, an indication of a fermenting changing attitude. One of the first Grand Guignol plays, Mademoiselle Fifi, was the first theatre production to put a prostitute on the stage, an act which saw the play shut down by the authorities. The gory productions were wildly successful in the interims between the two World Wars, and it is perhaps telling that the Guignol theatres met their decline after World Word II, to which the last of the Guignol directors commented, “We could never compete with Buchenwald.” French society had graduated beyond the excesses of the theatre through the brutal oppression of the Nazi’s. Molly Smith, in The Darker World Within: Evil in the Tragedies of Shakespeare and His Successors, postulates that literary depictions of wickedness and immorality are precursors to societal change:

“The violence of the 1640’s may be seen in socio-psychological terms from society’s viewpoint as the ‘temporary retrogression into chaos’ that precedes every movement towards wholeness ...  it is precisely this delving into the psyche by the collective mind of the age, by its creative artists, that made the creation of a new social environment possible ... Stuart fascination with evil, therefore, provides an instance of what Victor Turner characterises ‘plural reflexivity,’ in which groups ‘strive to see their own reality in new ways,’ ... one might characterise Stuart fascination with evil as transformative and creative.”
Molly Smith, The Darker World Within: Evil in the Tragedies of Shakespeare and His Successor, (USA: Associated University Press, 1991) p.22-23.

Literary evil, more than being a sign of the times, actually helps to usher in moral and social progression. Such tales invoke and question the current social climate and are enjoyed because they are emblematic of the population’s everyday, and incoming, problems. By writing, staging, and developing immorality in fiction, societies can slowly come to terms with terror and overcome their suspicion of change. Tales of immorality do not fade because society does not stop changing, and tales of immorality do not stop being enjoyed because they act as symbols for evolving notions of good and evil; because they parallel the real world; predict changes in attitude; satisfy a wish fulfilment on the part of the reader or audience to see an impious character punished; satisfy a need to confront and overcome wickedness in a safe manner; and because they, more often than not, are presented in characters who can be enjoyed – either through comedic interpretations of a scheming villain, or through a villain who, though morally reprehensible, is reprehensible and knows it.

And we will continue to enjoy.

Bibliography

Gillette, Paul J. and Yankowski, John S. (trans.) Marquis de Sade, The Complete Marquis de Sade Volume 1, (Los Angeles: Holloway House Publishing Company, 1966).

Castle, Terry, Masquerade and Civilisation: the carnivalesque in eighteenth-century English Culture and Fiction, (London: Methuen & Co. Ltd, 1986).

Hingley, Ronald, Dostoyevsky, His Life and Work, (London: Paul Elek Limited, 1978).

Smith, Molly, The Darker World Within: Evil in the Tragedies of Shakespeare and His Successors, (USA: Associated University Press, 1991).

Wilks, John, The Idea of Conscience in Renaissance Tragedy, (London and New York: Routledge, 1990).

Spivack, Charlotte, The Comedy of Evil on Shakespeare’s Stage, (London: Associated University Press, 1978).

Rieu, E.V., (trans.) Homer, The Iliad, (England: Penguin Books, 1950).

William Golding, The Lord of the Flies, (London: Faber & Faber, 1948).

Agnes Pierron, ‘House of Horrors’, Grand Street magazine, (1996), http://www.grandguignol.com/grandstreet.htm

The Nearer Home, The Deeper Our Fears Increase

In Omeros, Derek Walcott takes themes from both the Iliad and the Odyssey to build a new and resonant story.  Achilles sets out on an unlikely odyssey: a fishing expendition off the coast of Saint Lucia in the West Indies turns into a journey across the centuries to his ancestral homeland on the coast of West Africa.  They journey through unfamiliar lands, across the boundaries of space and time.

I sing of quiet Achile, Afolabe's son...
whose end, when it comes, will be a death by water.

Throughout this book, different characters and communities (including Africans living in Santa Lucia, Indians, and British colonials) struggle with the meaning of being displaced from their homelands and with their tentative efforts to find their homes again.  As Walcott writes:

     The nearer home, the deeper our fears increase,
     that no house might come to meet us on our own shore.

The large tragedies of Black slavery and the destruction of American Indian communities are paired here with, as Walcott writes, "the interior, unwritten epic fashioned from the suffering of the individual in exile."

Those of you have been reading my classics posts know that I was shocked by my love for The Iliad and somewhat disappointed by The Odyssey (which I had read once before). In many ways, Omeros combines the more appealing plot line of The Odyssey with the depth I found in The Iliad--leaving me profoundly unsettled and also deeply moved when I closed the book.

Walcott's writing here is gorgeous--luminous poetry throughout, with gentle unobtrusive rhymes.  It begs to be read slowly, aloud--listened to, thought about.  Omeros is a beautiful tribute to Homer and an intensely powerful work of literature in its own right.

An Odyssey Through The Odyssey

This week, I'll be posting about a few modern books inspired by Homer's The Odyssey. Do you have any favorite examples? Please give me your suggestions in the comments!

I'll start off with a non-fiction book sometimes called a literary travelogue: Scott Huler's No-Man's Lands: One Man's Odyssey Through The Odyssey.  After Huler reads James Joyce's Ulysses more or less on a dare, he decides to read Homer's epic.  He already knew the basic story, as most of us in this culture do, since "its content creeps into our minds through back channels, like the symphonies we learn by snatches as background music in Bugs Bunny cartoons."  But only as a mature adult does Huler really read the story of Odysseus.  He is stunned by its power to speak directly to him.  As he writes, "by the time I finished, I felt the book had sought me out, that my need for The Odyssey had manifested itself and brought the book to me."  He continues, "I came to see the passage of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca as a metaphor, a series of adventures in which Odysseus demonstrates what he needs to learn--or unlearn--to live his life."

Huler became so obsessed with Homer's epic that he decides to make his own journey through the Mediterranean and explore the history of the epic.  "I wanted to go where Odysseus went," he writes, "to learn what Odysseus learned."  Like Odysseus, the author travels without knowing exactly what is coming next, letting the winds (metaphoric winds in Huler's case) carry him where they may.  Like Odysseus, his travels keep him away from his wife.  His desire to be back home is clear and profound--but he also admits to the wanderlust and excitement that also tempts Homer's hero.  (Huler doesn't have quite the same kind of temptations in his path.  As he says, "depressingly few goddesses demanded my sexual favors.")

The author's odyssey is of course rambling and shallow compared with the magical and magisterial journey taken by Odysseus.  Nevertheless, the two both learn lessons about the deep ties of home and family.  Odysseus traveled for years and was "so weary of travel and excitement that he hopes to never leave home again."  Huler hopes for the same commitment: "I aspired to even a tiny piece of Odysseus's weariness, his gladness to be through with adventure, to be home at last..., Wouldn't it be grand to feel so complete, so finished?"  The author returns home from his trip to his pregnant wife June--about to give birth to a little boy.  He promises that together they will embark on their next adventure: raising their child.

I enjoyed this book very much and found Huler's personal take on Homer to be a fascinating way to approach the text.  Sometimes he stretches the parallels between his odyssey and Odysseus's journey a little too much.  Sometimes I was irritated that Huler left his pregnant wife and talked about the temptations of other women (just as I was irritated by Odysseus).  But overall, I found his insights into Homer creative and thoughtful, his narrative appealing, and his efforts to make ancient literature seem relevant to our lives today highly laudable.

The Awesumm wala trip's travelogue Day 5!!

Day 5!! I know this is coming very delayed…so might miss a point or two. Don’t think you would complain. Being a travel day, with people dozing off and sun beating down, there aren’t any pics either to write home about.

So day 4 ended with Neelu crying like a 4 yr old “Mela acha waala chhabun kahan gaya?” (or something like that), disturbed sleep for many, chest congestions for Santosh and me.

So Day 5 began with…yeah again heaps and pile of idli, dosas and poori bhaji, for which Santosh, Anish, Body and I couldn’t be part of this time. Santosh and I went to see a hospital. Actually a single room (maybe 15’X15’) divided into 4 by partitions. After 45 minutes of wait, we realized doctor isn’t coming to clinic now and the doctor present, an obstetrician, wouldn’t have been able to help much.

We got Aneesh for company and marched towards the Mahavir Jain bhojnalaya from Day 4. By 12 we had to leave the cottage and munnar. Deepika utilized the rest of morning in catching some sleep, which Daisy and Neelu, by the music produced by their respiratory tracks, denied her in night.

The next destination was Kodaikanal and by some heroic search by Blackberry boys, we had found ourselves a place to stay in KK. In couple of jeeps, we started. The jeeps would take away only to a destination from where we could get a bus.

The destination, the name of which I have forgotten by now, had a very good biryani place. And people hogged upon delicious biryani, with Divya complaining about non-availability of Nimbooz. With stomachs full, nobody was in the mood of topsy-turvy ride of the bus, equivalent to erstwhile blulines of Delhi. So we hired a couple of Sumos, and reached KK by late eve.

Again a day had been lost in travelling and that had been point of contention when Neha and Chiru got involved in minor altercation, which I being most responsible of all, sorted out peacefully (by telling both of them to shut up). I have seen it before. Large group, long trip, tired legs and minds do create some disturbances. Nothing to blame people about. And by same standard the trip was “extremely peaceful” :)

I, Santosh, Neha, Deepika and Daisy decided to stay back at the hotel, while people went for dinner. Dinner wasn’t playing on our (santy's and mine) mind when we understood we had to walk uphill 1 km, on way back. L But the guys didn’t let us starve and we relished upon chicken fried rice and chilly chicken brought by them. In the meantime India somehow managed to win against Netherlands in a group match.

There was a hurry to sleep in rooms not occupied by either of snorers, the group that was now joined by Anish and Body as well.

Although I slept early owing to bad cold, but people did have fun in late night’s poker session, the details of which can be sought by the participants. The cold has been a nemesis. It has taken away from me, much more than the CFO position that day. I announced Neelu as my successor, for good or bad it remained to be seen…
End of day 5....

The Literature of the Ouija Board

Picture by Jessie Terwilliger

I've been having a grand time reading Paul Collins's wonderful book Sixpence House (which I will discuss in an upcoming post).  Today I want to share a story he tells about Patience Worth.  "Her name is forgotten today," Collins begins, "but at one time she--or her spirit, at least--was very famous indeed."

In the early years of the 20th century, Caspar Yost claimed that he had discovered "a new poet and novelist; or rather, ... a very old poet an novelist."  Using a Ouija board, Pearl Curran--a St. Louis housewife--communicated with the spirit of Patience Worth, a Puritan woman who, as Collins writes, soon became "a veritable Oprah's Book Club in spirit form."

During the 1920s, a whole Patience Worth industry arose.  Worth authored a series of novels and poems, all written via Ouija board, and all of which were extremely popular.  As Collins writes, "People believed it--even, amazingly, after Patience Worth wrote a Victorian family melodrama.  Considering that neither Victorians nor novels had existed in Worth's day, this was an impressive achievement indeed."

I love Collins's snappy sarcasm--but his telling of this strange story is also full of insight.  He points out that Worth's popularity emphasizes how much we want to believe that "all writers are somehow vessels for Truth and Beauty when they compose."  He compares this to our desire to imagine characters who develop their own will and "take over a book."  But as Collins points out, "The reality tends to involve a spare room, a pirated copy of MS Word, and a table bought on sale at Target.  A character can no more take over your novel than an eggplant and a jar of cumin can take over your kitchen."

I am thrilled to find that there is an entire book about the Patience Worth story, written by Irving Litvag: Singer in the Shadows: The Strange Story of Patience Worth.  I think this must go on my Halloween reading list.  This definitely gives a whole new meaning to the genre of "spiritual" writing!

Classics for Pleasure

In his introduction to Classics for Pleasure, Michael Dirda acknowledges that many people believe that classic books are "difficult, esoteric, and a little boring."  We grow up being told they are as good for us as cod-liver oil.

But in reality, Dirda says, classics are classics not because they somehow improve us but because "people have found them worth reading, generation after generation, century after century.  These books "speak to us of our own very real feelings and failings, of our all-too-human daydreams and confusions."  And they connect us and our emotions with the parallel feelings of people thoughout the history of humanity.

Dirda relates that he found a copy of Clifton Fadiman's The Lifetime Reading Plan when he was young boy.  The book shaped his future reading profoundly: "This Fadiman guy made great books sound just as exciting as Green Lantern comics or the latest Tarzan paperback."

After working his way though most of The Lifetime Reading Plan, Dirda began to branch out in his reading and discover many more classic books that he seeks to share with his readers.  "Classics for Pleasure deliberately ignores most of the authors discussed in that [updated, more multicultural] 1997 Fadiman-Major edition," says Dirda.  "It seemed more useful--and fun--to point readers to new authors and less obvious classics."  The entries in Dirda's book proceed to do exactly that--introducing readers to authors from Edward Gorey and Italo Calvino to S.J. Perelman, from Elizabeth Gaskell to Eudora Welty.

Dirda's entries are not simply listings or summaries as Fadiman's are, or as Murnigan gives us.  Instead, they are mini-essays which explore larger themes and make his observations personal.  He connects the books to each other, across time and place, allowing them to have a conversation.

This book is not so much as an introductory guide as a lovely exploration of ideas--perfect before or after one has read the books discussed.

Shakespeare Behind Bars

As I nurse my sore and purple toes, I've been reading haphazardly and watching films on Netflix.  One movie I especially want to share with you is the extremely moving Shakespeare Behind Bars.  This documentary tracks inmates of Kentucky's Luther Luckett maximum security prison as they prepare for a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest.  It is a profoundly heart-wrenching and thought-provoking film which I highly recommend.

The inmates are brought together under a prison program run by an open-hearted teacher/facilitator who not only helps them understand Shakespeare's language and themes but explore their own identities and their own pasts.  The characters in The Tempest share a surprising amount with the prison inmates.  Like Prospero, many of the incarcerated men suffered from abuse or cruelty which led at least in part to the rage that allowed them to commit the crimes for which they were imprisoned. They too are isolated on an imprisoning island, removed from the outside world.  Just as Prospero must let go of his defense mechanisms in order to reintegrate into society. 

Many of the men involved in this production of The Tempest are facing parole hearings in their very new futures.  As they struggle to make sense of their anger and their guilt, as well as their ability to imagine themselves within the framework of humanity, they turn to the bard's words to help them grow.  What they eventually find through their work with the Shakespeare play is a script for redemption. 

As Prospero declares in his final lines,

As you from crimes would pardon'd be,
Let your indulgence set me free.

Interlude

I just returned from a wonderful weekend in the midwest--meeting an adorable young man who was far more interesting than the books I brought for the weekend.  This 7-month old baby is my fictive nephew--the son of a dear friend who is (at least as far as my parents and I are concerned) a part of our family.

What a joy to watch B. begin to point at our noses, sit up so confidently, and work on learning to crawl!  My son loved playing Scottish tunes on his violin while B. danced in his doorway jumper, keeping the beat.  I loved reading to him from his assorted board books.  (His favorites this weekend were a 3-page rhyme about pandas and a one-word-a-page color book with pictures of babies on each page.)

I'm afraid we had a little fun at his expense, too--dressing him up with a cabbage-leaf hat as we prepared dinner:

Unfortunately, as the visit ended, I tripped while emerging from the bathtub and seem to have broken a couple of toes.  They are swollen and purple--and elevated and iced.  I'll be spending the day on the couch with a couple of light books.

My brain right now is mush--from the combination of cuteness overload (good) and toe pain (bad).  I hope to be back to bookish blogging very soon.

Beowulf on the Beach

Jack Murnighan's Beowulf on the Beach is a terrific introduction to reading the classics outside of the classroom.  His writing is quick, hip, and immensely readable.  What I like best is the author's emphasis on reading literature for the joy it brings.  As Murnighan writes, "Once you open yourself to the humor, drama, adventure, sex, poignancy, elegance, tragedy, and beauty of the great books, you'll see why they've long been considered among the most inspiring and engaging things ever written.  He continues, "I want you to feel these books in your heart, in your soul, and maybe even below the waist."  Yes--Murnigan is the same guy who wrote The Naughty Bits: The Steamiest and Most Scandalous Sex Scenes from the World's Great Books--but this book is a lot more than that. It is "an attempt to show you what's in the great books that make them really matter."

Make sure you don't miss "Tips on Reading Classics," a short section at the end of the book.  (In fact, I suggest reading it immediately after you finish the brief introduction.)  Although his advice is simple, it will really help you organize your reading.

Although he does not refer to the concept by name, Murnighan encourages us to join the Great Conversation.  "Put yourself in dialogue with some of the most brilliant minds, sensitive hearts, quick wits, vivacious spirits, and wise teachers the world has ever known," he says.  "The greatest men and women of all of history are speaking to you--and you can hear them."

The majority of Beowulf on the Beach is a compendium of annotated books, listed in chronological order. Murnighan includes offers a basic introduction the the author and the context in which the book was produced, a brief discussion of plot, and even a discussion of sections to skip or skim. His reviews are funny, irreverent, and utterly charming.

A couple of examples:

1. He calls the Iliad the "origin and apex of virility lit." What a wonderful coinage to add to "chick lit"!

2. When talking about the Odyssey, he says that Penelope's rowdy suitors are turning Odysseus's house in Ithaca "into a Cornell frat."

Finally, I like Murnighan's take on choosing which texts he uses in his book. As he points out, it is hard to choose what is the most influential or iconic books of all time. So he started his selection by asking people what they "felt kind of bad about" never reading seriously. In other words, "communal remorse dictated [the] first list." He then added a few additional items that critics and scholars have placed "among literature's finest achievements." He also included books that "carve out corners of literature that no one else occupies."

One could quibble with Murnighan about his choices. Perhaps because I read Fadiman so recently, I noticed the relative absence of classic Asian books. But unlike Fadiman, Murnighan never suggests that his desire would be for a complete list. "As to the so-called Great Books debate, i.e. whether we teach the dead white guys are keep opening up 'his-story' to other voices, call me a conscientious objector. He loves the classics, but he loves any books that help any individual reader feel connected to books and to life.

He makes a point that I find remarkably compelling: of course it is true that comic books or postmodern novels can be just as significant as Shakespeare or one of the other "great books"--but it is equally true that we can enjoy reading Shakespeare just as much as we enjoy reading the contemporary stuff. I think many readers of my generation believe that the classics are dry and useless, something boring only to be endured in the classroom.  Beowulf on the Beach heals us from those assumptions and gives us a great path for enjoying these books.

THE CHILD`S EYE

THE CHILD`S EYE PICTURES

Brief story :

Stranded in Thailand because of political upheaval and the closing of the airport in November 2008, Rainie and his friends can not return to their city. Saturated, they lived in an old hotel and unkempt. From the moment they entered the hotel, they met three strange little boy and a puppy. Soon, strange supernatural events take place

MACHETE The Movie

Machete Movie :
Brief Information :
Director: Ethan Maniquis, Robert Rodriguez
Author: Robert Rodriguez
Producer: Robert Rodriguez
Genre : Action
Production Company: Hyde Park Entertainment
Homepage: http://www.machete-movie.net/
LSF Rating: Mature (adult)

This film tells the story of Federales dagger expert contracted by some groups to kill a senator. But when he wanted to commit crimes, he realized that he had been framed. He managed to escape the bullets target shooters and eventually into the action back to the previous Federales former boss, with the help of old friends, Cheech Marin, who has become a priest and took the oath of non-violence.

Irish Short Story Week

Mel U of the blog The Reading Life has proclaimed this week to be Irish Short Story Week.  I've been enjoying all the posts over at The Reading Life over the last few days.  Mel's recent posts have whetted my appetite to try some works by Dublin-born Elizabeth Bowen--the author of such novels as The Heat of the Day and The House in Paris. Although her novels are extremely well known, she is equally highly regarded for her shorter works.  As Newsweek said, Bowen is "quite simply one of the best short story writers who ever lived."

Until today, I had not read any of Bowen's stories or novels--though I have some battered volumes on my shelves which I picked up at a library discards sale a few years ago.  Her collection of stories has called to me for some time.  I'm looking forward to reading through the entire volume, inhaling her stories about life in England during the 1920s and 30s, through the war years, and beyond.

Mel's comments about one particular short story, "Oh, Madam..." really caught my eye.  Like Mel, I find this story to be immensely powerful.  The story takes place in London during World War II--specifically on the morning after a fine house has been damaged by a bomb.   The narrator of the story, a housemaid who has lived and worked in a home for many years, leads the mistress of the house through the damage, keeping a monologue as the two women survey the damage all around them.

I'm fascinated by the voice in this story.  In some ways, reading it feels like listening to a one-sided telephone conversation where the other part of the dialogue is obscured.   In addition, the protocol of servant-master manners limits what the maid can say aloud to her mistress.  The words seem immediate and disjointed, just as in need of a reader to sort the meanings all out just as the house is in need of the housekeeper to clean up the fallen plaster.  By focusing only on the maid's words and thoughts, Bowen is able to highlight her emotional response to the devastation rather than muddling it with the response by her well-heeled mistress.  What shines through the rubble of broken house and the broken lives is the maid's deep and complex connections to the house and to the family.

Have any of you read this story?  What did you think?  Any other favorite Bowen stories?

The Awesumm wala trip's travelogue Day 4!!

I was definitely amongst the stupid ones to not see in advance how cold munnar could have got. Early morning wind were the chilliest I had experienced in a long time (I did give delhi winters a miss because of our IIMK academic schedule).

The cottage caretaker came to take order for the breakfast and I asked him to bring 5 of each of the items he named. Of course there was a rush for bathroom as hot water wouldn’t have continued for eternity. And considering we had been travelling entire day before nobody except Neelu could have thought about skipping the bath.

We literally pounced upon the food when it arrived. Everybody was so hungry that we had to repeat the order. Neha, meanwhile got angry as people didn’t leave anything for Daisy (and Devakee) as they were busy under shower when food supplies came. Second food suppiles came and got finished in no time. Morning coffees and teas never felt so good against the chilly wind blows of Munnar. I had 3 cups of coffee, a personal record.



We had called for two commander jeeps to take us around in town. After having loads of jokes cracked on Daisy and Neelu over their snores, we made a move to explore the hill station. There are three directions roads take us to in Munnar. We could at most cover two directions in one day.

The first destination was some screwed up flower garden. Why I said it was screwed up, was the fact that they wanted us to shell 20-30 Rs (plus 50 for each camera that we take inside), to see a place with randomly grown plants, some of which had few colored something at their branch ends. We stopped there to provide for holistic satisfaction of shutterbugs accompanying us. Of course they were seeing the first of million tea gardens that we saw on our trip.



The next 3-15 (I can’t remember the number) destination were named as “'X' Point”, with X standing for words like Photo, shoot, 'Y' View (with Y standing for words like valley, moutain etc), chunnu, munnu, tilli, villi etc. ‘Pleasantly surprised’ was my reaction when people unanimously decided to skip all of those. With that pace we could have made the record of going in all three directions in a single day.
The next point we stopped for was some Elephant ride place. Chiru’s troubles got a positive reinforcement by seeing elephants shitting all over the place. We could see the unrest clearly on his face (Santosh claimed he saw unrest over his lower tummy too).



Next we made way for the damn oops Dam.


Everybody tried their “Shooting Balloon” skills. Three people actually managed to hit the balloons they were aiming for. Divya looked very funny with her shooting stance, barrel over her shoulders.


There was another smaller Dam, where few of us chose to enjoy a pony ride. Others including me, found a dhaba serving delicious vegetable maggi, omlette and another dish (which I can’t recall now). Divya had been crying to go to this place, where adventure sports were being held. So we had to make an early move from the place. We stopped at another view point with Santosh daring to taste chocolate tea from a stall named after Anish.



We faced our first dissentment as Neha, Daisy, Chiru, Deepika and Devakee found the adventure sports idea too risky. And santosh rejected the idea to split. And Body, Divya and I wanted to go for the adventure rides. (The reason that they were for free was another incentive). Finally we split up and group of 6 left for the adventure sports, but it was joy to find out later rest 6 turned up to. After 2 hours (most of it involved in waiting for our turn), we made our move back to the cottage. We stopped at a place called Mahavir Jain bhojnalaya for dinner, where food was of decent quality. Santosh disagreed (dying to dig his teeth into something meaty)

At night it was heavily debated, in a light tone of course, what to do with the snoring people. I had troubled cough sequence everytime a joke was cracked, which in all probability ended with Neelu maiking an entry in his diary!! :P


We somehow managed to sleep. By this time snorers campaign had claimed two more victims in form of Body and Anish. The four distinct yet rhythemic sounds, with their unique composition could have put even Yanni to shame. Deepika couldn’t appreciate an orchestra of such great quality and finally surrendered by moving into common room, finding respite on a chair.


to be continued.....