Musings: Frankenstein

Peeps, it has been forever since I participated in a blog tour.  I am thrilled to once again join that well-read legion of book bloggers that participates in the Classics Circuit.  This go-round, the theme is Gothic literature, and I signed up to read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which was not at all what I expected it to be.

First off, Frankenstein is not (in the purest, physical sense of the word) the monster in this novel.  He is the science-crazed, obsessed, but still quite intelligent, attractive and philosophical student who creates the monster.  And the monster himself (who I don't believe was ever given a name, but we'll call him Adam) wasn't all that monstrous.  In fact, he was really well-spoken and had great capacity for kindness and eloquence.

Anyway, the story!  Victor Frankenstein grows up in an affluent household in Switzerland, where he is quite taken up with the study of physical sciences.  He pursues these studies in college and somehow discovers the miracle of life.  Thrilled with this (and completely heedless of the consequences, I might add), he does God only knows what sorts of things to obtain body parts and then gives that body life.  But as soon as his creation wakes, Frankenstein realizes just what a thoughtless thing he's done (bad sense of timing) and quite literally runs screaming from the room and falls into a Decline.  He falls into several more Declines over the course of this novel, none of which really accomplish anything.  When he finally deigns to speak to his "abhorrent" creation Adam (this conversation is interspersed with more "Begone!s" than in all the other stories I have ever read.  Combined), he is actually impressed with the man's eloquence and concedes to create for him a wife.  But then he thinks maybe this isn't such a great idea, Adam gets very angry, and the story continues on its suitably Gothic horror-esque path.

[TSS] Interlude: Johnny Appleseed

October is by far my favorite month of the year, and one of the major reasons for that is apples.  Gosh, they are so delicious.  I love going to apple orchards, I love the cider mills attached to those orchards, and I love the doughnuts those mills make.  I was astonished when I visited New Zealand a few years ago to find extremely subpar apples.  Perhaps I was there at the wrong time of year, but there were very few varieties, they were all small and pockmarked, they were soft and mushy, and they were clearly not popular with the locals.  Understandably.

But apples in season are uh-mazing.  They are crispy.  They are juicy.  They are tart or sweet.  They are red or green or red AND green, or yellow.  You bite into one and it tastes like autumn because the apple itself mirrors the colors of the leaves on the trees.  They are absolutely amazing.

Apples came to America with the pilgrims, but nearly every American schoolkid learns about the real hero in American apple history, Johnny Appleseed.  This man did so much to give us the myriad variety of apples that grow all over the United States today.  He seems so much larger-than-life, so Paul Bunyan-esque, that it's hard to believe that he really existed.  But he did.  And he really did take apples everywhere.

But that's not the whole story.

Musings: Understood Betsy

One of my absolute favorite things about having a Kindle is that it gives me the opportunity to read old, somewhat obscure books very easily, whereas finding them in a bookstore or library would be fairly difficult.  I am sure that not all of these books will be a hit with me, but so far I've really enjoyed these forgotten classics.

One of these books is Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.  It's a children's book about 9-year-old Elizabeth Ann.  Elizabeth Ann's parents died when she was very young and she was taken in by her wealthy city relatives, Aunt Harriet and Aunt Frances, who cared for and loved her but also ensured that she led a very coddled and sheltered existence.  Thus, Elizabeth Ann is scared of practically everything, is very shy, and often cries, just to ensure that she gets her aunts' full sympathy and attention.

But one day Aunt Harriet is taken ill by scarlet fever and Elizabeth Ann must be taken care of by someone else.  She is sent to the dreaded "Putney cousins" in Vermont, and is terrified of what she will find there.  She's heard often enough that her Uncle Henry, Aunt Abigail and Aunt Ann are very backwards people who do horrible things like chores, and she has no idea what she will find in a life with them.

But Betsy finds, as you may expect, that life is very pleasant with her new-found relatives, who give her room to grow and learn and gain a great deal of self-confidence.  Really, considering the number of books with this theme, one would think that all little city girls in the Victorian era wanted to up and move to a farm somewhere to live an idyllic, happy existence of churning butter, popping corn and eating frozen maple syrup.  I thought that I would be immune to this sort of story and would end up rolling my eyes a lot, snorting with smugness and sighing with disbelief, but I DID NONE OF THOSE THINGS.  I was, in fact, completely enamored and now am very interested in learning exactly how milk becomes butter.  If I move to a quaint and lovely rural home in Vermont with a rosy-cheeked, smiling grandmother-like figure to show me the ropes, will I too gain a lot of gumption and become a self-sufficient young woman who can take charge of the apples and butter for every meal?  I think it's possible.

I could take this opportunity to talk about how farm life in the late 19th century was probably not so idyllic, but I do not want to ruin the happy place in my mind wherein the butter churns perfectly, popcorn is made on the stove and never burns and everyone loves my homemade apple sauce.  I thought this book was a lovely way to show a girl learning how to stand on her own two feet, and really bloom into (very young) adulthood by being given the opportunity to make her own decisions and learn from them.  It's a light, sweet read reminiscent of Pollyanna, Heidi and all those types, and really makes me wish that we could all have a few years living the Little House in the Big Woods lifestyle.  But alas, we cannot.  So instead, I shall continue to download books that give me the opportunity to live vicariously through other people.

[TSS] Interlude: The Voynich Manuscript

The Voynich Manuscript, on first description, seems pretty typical.  The manuscript is named for a book dealer who acquired it in 1912, and now it's safe and sound at Yale University's rare book center.  It was written in the 15th century, is about 240 pages long (probably originally over 270 pages long) and is illustrated on almost every page.  Most people believe it is a medical text.  So what's so mysterious about it?  No one can read it.  The author, script and language remain completely unknown, and because people are generally certain of exactly which languages existed in Europe at the time, people commonly believe that the manuscript is written in a cipher.  But if so, it's one tough cipher- while many cryptographers have tried to crack the code, no one has been able to do so.  Currently, there are no other known examples of this writing. 

Let me just pause for a moment here to say how awesome is that?!  I love it.  I am, of course, of a more romantic turn of mind, and prefer to think of this manuscript as being from a tiny, closed society that was at the forefront of medicine and science, but has since been forgotten by the world.  It would be so glorious to find that there was a whole language so different from any other, a culture no one even knows about, and it all happened right in Europe, where we have the most documentation of anything.  Granted, this probably is not at all what really happened, but I can pretend.

Musings: Wonderstruck

Brian Selznick's Wonderstruck is a new illustrated novel by the author of The Invention of Hugo Cabret.  I really enjoy the way Selznick incorporates visuals into his stories.  He's heavily influenced by cinematic techniques of zooming in and out, and his illustrations are really quite captivating.

Wonderstruck takes place in Minnesota and New York, alternating between 1927 and 1977.  Ben is a young boy growing up in backwoods Minnesota in the 1970s.  His mother has recently passed away and he misses her horribly.  He never knew his father.  One night, going through his mom's old things, he comes across a few clues that may lead to his father.  Impulsively, he hops on a bus and goes to New York, hoping to find his father.

Running concurrent to this is Rose's story, told in lovely pencil sketches.  Rose is a deaf girl growing up in 1927 Hoboken, NJ.  She loves silent films, but leads a lonely existence.  Her mother and father are divorced and neither pays her much attention.  She is close to her brother Walter, but he lives in New York.  One day, she, like Ben, gets up and goes to New York to visit her mother.

[TSS] Interlude: Cahokia Mounds

One of my all-time favorite books is Charles Mann's 1491.  It describes what America was like before contact with Europe, and it's fascinating.  In the book, Mann describes an ancient American city called Cahokia, which surprisingly enough is in my home state of Illinois.  I have never been there, but I want to go (even though, depressingly, it is probably the only World Heritage Site that has a four-lane highway and billboards going through it), and I thought it would be a great place to highlight for this week's Sunday Salon interlude.

Cahokia is situated close to St. Louis, outside Collinsville, IL, and is considered to be one of the greatest civilizations North America has ever produced.  It's a National Historic landmark and one of only 21 World Heritage sites located in the United States.  It is home to the largest prehistoric earthen construction in the US and Canada.  The largest mound in the park is about ten stories tall.  It's believed that there were originally 120 mounds in existence in this city, and currently about 80 remain.  They are shaped differently, some conical, some flat, some with ridges, and are thought to have served different purposes.

Miss Representation

This is important. Watch it.

Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

Musings: Lady of the English

Lady of the English is Elizabeth Chadwick's most recent novel.  Set in the first half of the 12th century, it revolves around two royal women:  Empress Matilda and Queen Adeliza.  Matilda is called back to England after her husband, the German emperor, passes away without heirs.  She returns to meet her father, Henry I, for the first time in many years and is introduced to her step-mother, Adeliza, who is just about the same age as Matlida herself.  The two become fast friends, even though they are so different.  Matilda is rigid and firm and does not suffer fools, whereas Adeliza is kind and ethereal and devoted to her charity works.

Henry makes Matilda his heir, set to be Queen of England, but then sends her off to marriage in Anjou with a man half her age whom she strongly dislikes.  And he continues to make no promises or stand true to his word, playing factions against one another to consolidate his power.  It works well for him, but when he passes away, he leaves England with no strong contender for the crown and it is taken by Stephen, his nephew who had previously promised fealty to Matilda.  This sets off a long, bitter war between Stephen and Matilda, with all of England to suffer between them.

[TSS] Interlude: Mahatma Gandhi

I've been asking people for suggestions on people or events to feature in these weekly Sunday Salon posts I write.  This past week, two people separately recommended Mohandas Gandhi to me, calling my attention to two separate issues about him that people rarely talk about.

Hopefully, Mahatma Gandhi needs no introduction here.  He was the creator of the satyagraha movement, fighting for Indian independence from the British through civil disobedience and non-violence.  He was trained as a lawyer but never held public office.  He praised Indian self-sufficiency above all, leading a salt march to protest the British monopoly on selling salt in India and encouraging Indians to make their own clothing.  He was highly educated and charismatic, quite religious and highly respected. 

It's difficult, especially in India, to speak in any way negatively about Gandhi.  He has such a revered status there, almost like a god (in fact, some believe him to be an avatar of Vishnu), that to speak negatively of him is to incite anger, intense scrutiny and criticism.  Razi Ahmad, secretary of a museum dedicated to Gandhi in the Bihar city of Patna, said, "We are of the view that any attempt to tarnish the image of national heroes should not be permitted."  But this one-dimensional, cult-like acceptance of Gandhi (and, according to Ahmad, any person that a country might deem to be a hero) as a man without flaws hides the true complexity of a brilliant mind who did change and influence the world in ways that are amazing to contemplate.  Gandhi truly was a mahatma, a great one.  But he also made many decisions that left others uncomfortable, and as he was so open about those aspects of his personality and life, then he probably wouldn't believe that sharing the information would "tarnish" his own reputation.

Joint Musings: The Night Circus

The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern, is one of the most-anticipated novels of the year.  In it, two highly skilled magicians, Celia and Marco, are unwittingly ensnared into competition with each other.  Celia has been raised by her very self-absorbed father to be the greatest magician possible.  Marco, an orphan brought up by an emotionally unavailable man, has trained his whole life for the same thing.  Their venue?  The Night Circus, an incredibly imagined and gorgeously executed idea that they use to share their magical prowess with the world and with each other.  But as Celia and Marco become more intrigued by each other, the circus begins to wobble, and the two must choose whether to be together when everything they've worked for may collapse, or to collapse themselves under the strain of the circus itself.

Erin Morgenstern was an artist before she was an author, and so her descriptions of The Night Circus are stunning.  It's a fully realized and fascinating place.  I loved reading about it, but that was one of the few things that I truly loved about this novel.  Unlike many, I was not swept away by this book.

I read it with one of my best blogging buddies, Zibilee, and chatting with her about the book was so rewarding and really opened up many more doors to interpretation and discussion than I had originally anticipated.  Below is the second half of our joint review of this book.  Check out Raging Bibliomania for the first half.

[TSS] Interlude: Henry Ford

"I will build a car for the great multitude. It will be large enough for the family, but small enough for the individual to run and care for. It will be constructed of the best materials, by the best men to be hired, after the simplest designs that modern engineering can devise. But it will be so low in price that no man making a good salary will be unable to own one – and enjoy with his family the blessing of hours of pleasure in God's great open spaces."

On October 1st, 1908, full-scale production began at the Ford plant on the Model T.  The Model T was the first car to be affordable for most people and changed the automobile industry from one that catered to wealthy elites to one that gave mobility to the masses.

Growing up in the Midwest and now attending school right outside of Detroit (where so many of the buildings and streets have been named after bigwigs in the auto industry, especially Fords), it is impossible to overstate the effect the auto industry has on the local economy.  It's been such a huge part of the infrastructure and identity of the region for so long- since the early 20th century, in fact, when Henry Ford opened his manufacturing plant.  The Model T is a historical icon now, and rightfully so.

But who was the man behind the magic?  What did Henry Ford think about the world and how it should be run?  Many now think of him as one of America's most successful industrialists, rising from nothing to become a titan of history.  But there was much more to him.