The Dictionary of Lost Words, by Pip Williams (2022)

This is an extraordinary book -- my favorite in several years. 

The story begins when Esme, the protagonist, about six years old, discovers her fascination with words. The early scenes, in which she discovers discarded word slips from the men assembling the Oxford English Dictionary, are almost magical in their worldly details and emotional description. 

Esme is an instantly captivating character. She becomes even more so as she grows up and encounters a range of issues that we all face: relationships, work, politics, and war. She is utterly unique but somehow relatable. (This was particularly notable for me because most of the fictional protagonists with whom I have connected most closely have been male).

At each stage in Esme's life, Pip Williams creates an emotional authenticity that I've rarely experienced in literature. In this sense, Williams' own facility with words was the perfect complement to Esme's discovery of their power: she has created art in which form and content beautifully build on each other.

Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas (2015)

I first read Common Ground when I was living in Dorchester and teaching at Nativity Prep. I was inspired to revisit it this summer because a student in my Practical Law class did independent research about the (troubled) implementation of Brown v. Board of Education. After conversations with this student, I wanted to think more deeply about busing and why the desegregation efforts of the 1970s (and 1980s?) failed so dramatically.

This is a stunningly good book. The scope is breathtaking, as Lukas examines numerous topics that take up a disproportionate amount of my own thinking time: governance, politics (especially the balance between private actions and public policy), race relations, and religion. 

Lukas even explores, to my surprise, charitable giving. One chapter provides a deep history of the Hyams Trust (a family foundation) and its relationship to the United Way and other charitable organizations in Boston. The context is the charities' decisions about whether to take a stance in the busing controversy by supporting advocacy groups on one or the other side.

Lukas gets inside the heads and hearts of various protagonists, including multiple generations of the McGoff family in Charlestown. The mom, Alice, balances her Catholic identity (she loves the rituals) against the church's (tepid) support of busing, which conflicts with her own opposition. 

One of the McGoff daughters, meanwhile, finds a sort of religious awakening through activities (including a CYO basketball team) led by a local pastor. 

After telling these stories, Lukas backs out and provides the story of Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, Boston's first non-Irish American cardinal in more than a century, who -- facing bigotry because of his own outsider status -- had to search his soul as he struggled with whether and how to lead on the issue of race relations while confronting the early stages of Americans turning away from religion.

In short, there's so much going on in this story! It's like every page is an entire history book of its own. I will not possibly finish it this summer, but what a gem of a text to help me think about issues of (1) individual rights, (2) remedying the wrongs and injustice of the past, and (3) finding ways to build stronger, fairer communities.

Arthur Garrity is a key protagonist of Common Ground. Here's a brief summary of his role, from Wikipedia:

"As a federal judge, Arthur Garrity was at the center of a contentious battle over desegregation busing in Boston from the 1970s to the 1980s. In a 1974 ruling, he found a recurring pattern of racial discrimination in the operation of the Boston public schools and concluded the schools were unconstitutionally segregated. As a remedy, he used a busing plan developed by the Massachusetts State Board of Education to implement the state's Racial Imbalance Law, which required any school with a student enrollment that was more than 50% nonwhite to be balanced according to race."

Walking The Nile, by Levison Wood (2015)

Levison Wood is a British explorer and travel writer who set out to become the first person to walk the length of the Nile River. His book is engaging and informative. The narrative combines personal emotion, natural description, historical overview and cultural observations. I enjoyed learning about the history and culture of Uganda:

On the forty-seventh day of our journey [Wood travels the first leg of with a gregarious Congolese man named Boston], Kampala came in sight. We were up before dawn, walking through the pitch black, past lay-bys where lorries were emblazoned with banners declaring 'God is Great, God is Good, God is Everywhere!' and along a road where the traffic police kept demanding to know what we were doing ... Kampala is a teenager of a city - boisterous and messy, contradictory but naive and growing fast ... in this city of a more than a million people there are a great number of different cultures existing side by side. 

Although the Buganda, the local ethnic group, make up more than half the population, the city's ethnic mix is truly diverse. As in most modern countries, the growth of the urban economy has seen people flock to the capital - but Kampala's expansion has been driven by political factors too. During the rule of Idi Amin, and Milton Obote - who was overthrown by Amin and then restored to power following Amin's deposition - many Ugandans from the native northern tribes were brought into the city, to serve in the police and army and to shore up the government's other, more shadowy security forces.

I've heard of Idi Amin. He resides in my consciousness as an intimidating, scary dictator of my youth (alongside Pol Pot and several others), but I think I placed him in southern Africa instead of properly in the north. I wonder whether he was supported by American and/or European governments, as a misguided attempt at maintaining "security" in a post-colonial world.

Wood's uplifting, fascinating narrative takes a dramatic and depressing turn when an American journalist arrives to write a portrayal for Men's Journal. Matt Power was 39 years old when he arrived in Uganda to write the story. An intense heat wave settled over the group, and Power died of heat stroke very soon after the initial onset of symptoms. I researched Power's story through the Times and other outlets. Reading this portion of the book was a vivid reminder of the fragility of our lives - a reminder that I often re-visit in August when I think about Sherri King's tragic death in 2014.

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I am very glad to have started reading Walking the Nile. I can tell that it's a book that I will re-visit from time to time, and I appreciate that it will help me learn more about the culture and history of certain parts of Africa, at least as that culture and history are seen through the eyes of one Western explorer.

Before We Were Yours, by Lisa Wingate (2017)

Before We Were Yours is a fictionalized account of children who were held in the Tennessee Children's Home Society. It is readable and engaging, and alternating chapters are told by an elderly woman who was abducted at 12 (Rill Foss / May Crandall) and a 30 year old politician-in-waiting (Avery Stafford) whose family has kept their ties to the Society a secret.

The Children's Home Society was operated during the first half of the twentieth century by Georgia Tann (1891-19150). She and her staff essentially kidnapped and sold children to upper class families, relying on the argument that they were finding more suitable homes and "helping" all involved. 

Tann's work was supported and/or endorsed by E.H. "Boss" Crump and other influential Memphis politicians. Crump was the mayor of Memphis from 1910 to 1915, and he effectively controlled the city for a couple of decades thereafter.

Seedfolks, by Paul Fleischman (1997)

This is a beautiful book. Fleischman's ability to imagine a range of separate but interconnected lives provides a powerful reminder of the way in which we are all part of something bigger than ourselves. He has a unique capacity for empathy which inspires me to become more empathetic.

I like, too, the way in which there is a specific geographic setting -- a neighborhood in Cleveland -- because it demonstrates that places matter in our lives. Places become a part of our identity, and their details and unique characteristics shape us in a variety of ways.

The ongoing metaphor of seeds growing and changing, and the cycle of seasons and lives, seems straightforward, but the way that Fleischman develops the metaphor is poetic and moving.

An excerpt from the chapter "Sam":

Squatting there in the cool of the evening, planting our seeds, a few other people working, a robin signing out strong all the while, it seemed to me that we were in truth in Paradise, a small Garden of Eden.

In the Bible, though, there's a river in Eden. Here, we had none. Not even a spigot anywhere close by. Nothing. People had to lug their own water, in buckets or milk jugs or soda containers. Water is heavy as bricks, trust me.

And new seeds have to be always moist. And in all of June it didn't rain but four days.

Great Expectations, by Charles Dickens (1860)

Charles Dickens creates authentic and engaging characters better than any other author, past or present. The tiniest details about his characters make them come alive. I wonder how Dickens found the time to observe enough people to come up with all of the different characters -- did he carry around a notebook in which to record hundreds of observations, before using them in his stories?

When I read Great Expectations in 9th or 10th grade, Miss Havisham made a particular imprint. I imagined her in a dark, dusty, cluttered room, and I wondered whether in Pip’s shoes I’d have been frightened or fascinated.

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While reading the book this summer, however, it’s Joe Gargery that is most memorable. Pip is raised by his older sister and her husband Joe. The sister is cruel and abusive, but Joe is a deeply kind, gentle soul. One of the tiny details that I mentioned above is the endearing way that Joe repeatedly uses certain words, such as “wittles” for food.

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A tragedy of Pip’s life is that he abandons Joe, and Dickens does a great job of describing Pip’s doubts and guilt on that front. As I am currently listening to the amazing “Meaning of Life” lectures on The Great Courses, I am finding plenty of opportunities to consider Pip’s decisions in the context of the varying ideas about how humans find meaning in our lives: in relationships, in learning and reason, in the divine. At this point in the book, Pip seems to have made the defensible decision that his meaning will come from self-improvement, but at the expense of abandoning Joe (along with Biddy, a close friend who presents an alternative path to the snobbish Estella).

Here's an excerpt (from Chapter 27) in which Pip learns that Joe is coming to London for a visit, and Dickens incorporates an insightful comment about human nature:

Not with pleasure, though I was bound to him by so many ties; no; with considerable disturbance, some mortification, and a keen sense of incongruity. If I could have kept him away by paying money, I certainly would have paid money 

… I had little objection to his being seen by Herbert or his father, for both of whom I had respect, but I had the sharpest sensitiveness as to his being seen by Drummle, who I held in contempt. So throughout life our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.

Another fascinating character is Mr. Jaggers, the lawyer who oversees the trust for Pip and who walks through his life with self-confidence that does seem characteristic among effective lawyers. Jaggers does not suffer fools, and he does not seem to have a sense of humor, but he’s not without merit: his deep understanding of (and commitment to) the law seems to imply the law is where he finds his own meaning. Oddly, though, Dickens describes the way in which he thoroughly washes himself at the end of each workday, as though scrubbing off the reality of the things he’s done and the people with whom he’s interacted. The washing ritual is particularly poignant at this moment in time, when we’ve all become much more conscious of washing because of the pandemic.

I’m curious to know whether we read an abridged version of Great Expectations in high school. I remember very few of the characters, and the plot seems too dense to have handled at that age. Maybe I’m not giving high school readers enough credit, but my hunch is that we read a version that focused on the interactions with Miss Havisham and left out some of the other details.

Learning to Pray, by James Martin, SJ (2021)

Earlier this year, I thoroughly enjoyed James Martin's My Life with the Saints.

Martin writes with impressive clarity. I love the way that he weaves together personal anecdotes, historical context, and theological rumination. 

His books make me think about Father Hicks and the other Jesuits at Nativity. They had a significant impact on my life, both in terms of introducing me to the joys of education and providing a model for the contemplative life. Martin writes about the Jesuit Retreat Center in Gloucester, Massachusetts, which I believe is where our faculty spent a couple of days in 1996 or 1997.

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Beginning when I worked at Nativity, I have heard about the Spiritual Exercises, but I have not read the book nor was I familiar with any of the details. Martin's explanation of Ignatian contemplation (beginning on page 238) is fascinating.

The idea is that you picture yourself in the midst of a Biblical story or scene. You use all of your senses to imagine as many details as you can. You establish the scene, and then you let your mind roam freely and see what happens. Here is part of Martin's explanation:

St. Ignatius did not invent this type of Christian prayer. It probably dates from the first person who heard the story of one of Jesus's miracles and imagined what it would have been like to have been there ... More than a thousand years later, St. Francis of Assisi encouraged people to place themselves in the scene when he created the tradition of the Christmas creche...

But it was Ignatius who popularized imaginative prayer in his 16th century manual Spiritual Exercises, where it is the basis of much of the prayer in that book. This was one of Ignatius's favorite ways to help people enter into a relationship with God, and it flowed from his own experience...

As with any prayer, first ask God to be with you and help you. St. Ignatius often suggests asking for a specific intention, for example, to be closer to God, to understand Jesus more, to experience healing. He also asks us to be generous in our prayer, not only with our time, but with how much of ourselves we give. By "giving ourselves," I mean being as present, aware and attentive as possible, remaining open to wherever God might lead us; and being willing to spend whatever time we allotted for our prayer, even if it seems dry.

Earlier in the book, I enjoyed reading Martin's explanation of the power of rote prayers (page 118). 

I have been saying the Lord's Prayer more than "original" prayers in the past couple of months, so this portion of the text feels very relevant. 

Martin states that we pray rote prayers for a number of reasons:

First, we know them. In times of struggle or when words fail us, it's helpful to have a "premade" prayer. Having them memorized is of even greater help...

Second, they have distinguished history. Many rote prayers come from significant religious figures. The most obvious example is the Our Father, which came from the lips of Jesus himself after the disciples said to him, "Teach us to pray." That alone should recommend the Our Father.

Third, when we pray them, we united ourselves with believers throughout the world and down through time. Have you ever wondered how many people are praying the Our Father at the same time you are? The prayer connects you to believers around the world in a way that is mysterious (you can't see them) but real (you know that people are surely praying the prayer). Thus, when you pray the Our Father, you are engaging in a communal act of worship.

Finally, I find Martin's steps for reading sacred texts to be helpful (page 266). He says this process is called Lectio:

1. Reading - What does the text say?

2. Meditation - What does the text say to me?

3. Prayer - What do I want to say to God on the basis of this text?

4. Action - What difference can this text make in how I act? What possibilities does it open up? What challenges does it pose?

Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon (1977)

Toni Morrison is a genius. Her writing is both deeply poetic and entirely accessible. Her characters are fully human. I am a middle aged white male, with seemingly little in common with Pilate, Lena, Milkman and Guitar -- yet Morrison's writing provide a mixture of windows and mirrors that helps me to understand myself and gives me a view into the lives of others.

A point of particular genius is the way that she writes dialogue. 

It's fun to read this book just after Shakespeare, who is also a master of dialogue. Shakespeare's conversations, though, have a very different shape and texture. His characters speak to each other in a way that is theatrical and hard to imagine actually transpiring. 

Morrison's characters engage in conversations that feel authentic. I love the small details, the non sequiturs, the putdowns, the riffs, and the tender moments of compassion and forgiveness. 

Morrison's dialogues have the effect of helping me realize that our relationships -- and in a broader sense our lives -- are a compilation of conversations. Taken individually, a single conversation might not feel significant or earth shattering, but woven together they become our connections, our memories, our emotions. I cannot think of another author with quite the same gift for conveying the way that people communicate with one another.

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I had forgotten the way that Song of Solomon is, on one level, a treasure hunt (in this sense, there's a connection to The Count of Monte Cristo). 

The way in which Macon Dead Jr., Milkman, and Guitar seek the stash of gold (does it truly exist?) raises all sorts of questions about capitalism and, more generally, the things we choose to search for. Yet the layers of family history (revealed through a series of carefully parceled and extremely engaging stories) communicates that our relationships are truly the core of our identity: individual, familial, and societal.

I do love this book. A genuine masterpiece.

Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, by Diarmaid MacCulloch (2011)

Athanasius (298-373)

This summer, I am trying to improve my understanding of (1) the history of Christianity and (2) the varieties of belief within Christianity. To that end, I am currently reading (and listening to) Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years by Diarmaid MacCulloch.

There was considerable theological ferment during the 300s and 400s, as Christians debated whether and how to systematize their beliefs. A series of councils developed creedal statements that organized Christian beliefs and resolved (or aimed to resolve) budding controversies.

For example, the Council of Nicaea (called by Emperor Constantine in 325) examined the question of Jesus's relationship to God the Father. The context was that two important leaders disagreed about the theology: Athanasius stated that Jesus had been "begotten" by the Father from his own being (and therefore had no beginning), while Arius believed that Jesus had been created and did have a beginning.

The bishops who gathered at Nicaea overwhelmingly sided with Athanasius; therefore, the Nicene Creed states:

[And we believe in] one Lord Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God,

begotten from the Father before all ages,

God from God,

Light from Light,

true God from true God,

begotten, not made;

of the same essence as the Father.

I think I'm starting to get my head around the Athanasius/Arius debate. The key question seems to have been the extent to which Jesus was a "regular" human, and the resolution seems to have been that he's not regular at all.

The next debate is proving trickier for me to understand, and it has to do with the nature of God and Jesus.

The Council of Chalcedon was called by Emperor Marcian in 451, and its primary focus was whether Jesus had both a divine and human nature or only a single (combined) nature. The lay of the land was as follows:

- Nestorius, the bishop of Constantinople (and a follower of Theodore), argued that Jesus definitely had two natures. He attacked references to Mary as Theotokos ("Bearer of God"), because he did not believe it was possible for God to be born; thus, Jesus's human nature must have been distinct from his God nature.

- Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, Cyril argued that Jesus had one nature that unified his God hypostasis (this word means "person") and his human hypostasis. The idea of one nature is called the hypostatic union.

This is where it gets extremely tricky for me. The Council of Chalcedon tried to thread the theological/linguistic needle between these two positions, and it did indeed satisfy most Christians. Here are excerpts from MacCulloch:

The Chalcedonian agreement centred on a formula of compromise. Although it talked of the Union of Two Natures, and took care to give explicit mention to Theotokos [in this sense, the agreement favored Cyril], it largely followed Nestorius's viewpoint about 'two natures', 'the distinction of natures being in no way abolished because of the union.' 

... In the manner of many politically inspired middle-of-the-road settlements, the Chalcedonian Definition left bitter discontents on either side in the Eastern Churches. 

On the one hand were those who adhered to a more robust affirmation of two natures in Christ and who felt that Nestorius had been treated with outrageous injustice.

On the other side, history has given those who treasure the memory of Cyril a label which they still resent, Monophysites ("a single nature"), though this label has been widely replaced by Miaphysite ("one nature").

Today, most sources seem to use the term Church of the East (or Assyrian Church of the East) for people who held onto the Nestorian perspective and Oriental Orthodox (which includes Coptic Orthodox) for people who held onto the Miaphysite perspective. Here are two different graphic depictions that are helpful for me:

One interesting detail is that the Coptic Orthodox Church has a pope; other than Roman Catholics, they are the only other group to use this title. In the case of Coptic Orthodoxy, the current pope is Tawadros II, born in Egypt in 1952.

Pope Tawadros II

The Scarlet Letter (1850)

As I've been reading and listening to The Scarlet Letter these past few weeks, I've decided that Nathaniel Hawthorne's depiction of Pearl (the daughter of Hester Prynne and Arthur Dimmesdale) is quite remarkable. Pearl is truly childlike: unaware of society's rules (and hypocrisies) at some times, then fully aware just moments later.

She has a fantastic ability to entertain herself. The scenes during which she plays joyfully are hitting home for me as I watch J, T and B find countless new ways to amuse themselves during these long days of coronavirus.

Hawthorne had a knack for communicating the thought process (and the soul) of a child that escapes many authors. In truth, Pearl is -- in many respects -- the most interesting and fully realized character in the book. Dimmesdale is so wooden and incapable of empathy as to seem misdrawn (how could his sermons have been so powerful, if he couldn't understand the world from another's eyes?), and Chillingworth is villainous to almost comical effect.

Here's a sampling of Pearl's adventures:

And she was gentler here [in the woods] than in the grassy-margined streets of the settlement, or in her mother’s cottage. The flowers appeared to know it; and one and another whispered, as she passed, “Adorn thyself with me, thou beautiful child, adorn thyself with me!”—and, to please them, Pearl gathered the violets, and anemones, and columbines, and some twigs of the freshest green, which the old trees held down before her eyes. With these she decorated her hair, and her young waist, and became a nymph-child, or an infant dryad, or whatever else was in closest sympathy with the antique wood. In such guise had Pearl adorned herself, when she heard her mother’s voice, and came slowly back.

Macbeth (Part 2)

In a lecture on The Great Courses, Clare Kinney explores the topic of gender in Macbeth.

She points out that Lady Macbeth is the first (only?) of Shakespeare's female tragic characters to soliloquize (in contrast, for instance, to Ophelia). Here's an excerpt from her famous second soliloquy:

Come, you spirits 

That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here, 

And fill me from the crown to the toe top-full 

Of direst cruelty. Make thick my blood. 

Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 

That no compunctious visitings of nature 

Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 

The effect and it!

Kinney also argues that many of the tragedies have a central word or idea whose meaning and import is negotiated by and among the characters.

In Macbeth, the central word under negotiation is "man."

Macbeth defines being a man in terms of our shared humanity; a "man" agrees to be guided by certain principles and to act in accordance with a shared set of morals. When he (momentarily) decides not to murder Duncan, he says:

I dare do all that becomes a man

Who dares do more is none.

Lady Macbeth, on the other hand, argues that a man is one who puts aside all emotion and simply acts -- in this sense, "man" is in contrast to "woman." Here's a portion of her response:

When you durst do it, then you were a man;

And to be more than what you were, you would

Be so much more the man.

Kinney points out that, later in the play, Macduff proposes an alternative vision of manhood when he tells Malcolm that a true man will deeply mourn the death of his wife and children. After Malcolm urges him to "dispute it like a man," Macduff responds:

I shall do so,

But I must also feel it as a man.

I cannot but remember such things were

That were most precious to me.

634. What are the major feminist critiques of Shakespeare, and how are those critiques answered? Lady Macbeth seems like a problematic character on multiple levels (manipulative, power-hungry, etc.). Is there an argument that she actually empowers women? How does the argument work?

635. Ghosts in Hamlet, witches (and ghosts) in Macbeth. Shakespeare was clearly fascinated with the supernatural and with the ways that our beliefs (and our feelings) can haunt us. Was Shakespeare (or the person who penned the plays under his name) religious? If so, what were his specific beliefs about the afterlife and the role (or not) of God in everyday life?

The three witches in the 2010 Patrick Stewart version of Macbeth are incredibly spooky

Macbeth (Part 1)

I am in the process of reading Macbeth. This play is dark (perhaps darker even than Hamlet).

Shakespeare had a knack for exploring the awful depths to which people are capable of sinking. Macbeth murders the innocent, seemingly with little foresight (this is a major contrast to Hamlet, who broods at length before taking each step).

He is driven by ambition, in particular the desire to rule Scotland. He is willing to kill Duncan (the reigning king), then Banquo, Fleance and Macduff's family (potential threats) in order to keep and maintain power.

631. In addition to President Trump, who are the most nakedly ambitious current politicians and leaders?

632. The numerous authoritarians and dictators are clearly ambitious, and are clearly so in a negative rather than a positive way (I am thinking of Putin, Xi, Erdogan, Bolsonaro). Is there more rampant ambition now than there was, for example, in the 1980s and 1990s? Or is there simply more opportunity to turn ambition towards negative ends?

633. Why was Shakespeare so interested in ambition? I gather that he read tons of history, but how much did he know about the current political affairs of England, Scotland, etc.? Did he view a play like Macbeth as cautionary (in other words, did he want people to read it and think about ways that they could corral ambition?), or was he simply interested in exploring the psychology of leadership?

Here's a sampling of Macbeth thinking about his ambition, in Act 1, Scene 3:

This supernatural soliciting

Cannot be ill, cannot be good. If ill,

Why hath it given me earnest of success,

Commencing in a truth? I am thane of Cawdor.

If good, why do I yield to that suggestion

Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair

And make my seated heart knock at my ribs,

Against the use of nature? Present fears

Are less than horrid imaginings.

Curtis Sittenfeld's "Rodham" (2020)

I received Rodham for my birthday. This book is vintage Curtis Sittenfeld: fun to read, it raises questions that are provocative but not too deep or serious.

The premise is straightforward. Hillary Rodham meets Bill Clinton while they are both at Yale Law School, but he cheats on her (while Hillary is interning at a law firm in San Francisco) and she decides not to marry him.

After a stint as a professor at Northwestern, she becomes a Senator in 1992 -- defeating Carol Mosley Braun in the Democratic primary, which earns her the enmity of her until-then mentor, an African American woman modeled on Marian Wright Edelman.

I like the way that Sittenfeld imagines Hillary's psychology. She is ambitious but altruistic; practical without completely sacrificing her ideals. She's definitely not perfect, but she's considerably more likable than my-conception of "the real Hillary." Here's an excerpt:

"I had thought that I'd like being a senator; in fact, I loved it. The first speech I ever gave on the Senate floor was about fair housing, and the first bill I ever co-sponsored was the Improving America's Schools Act of 1993, and I loved being able to tangibly and directly take on the problems I had spent my adult life thinking about ... My sense of purpose as a senator made me recognize retroactively that there had been a certain slackness in my life before, or perhaps it was that previously I had been imposing structure on my days and now an external structure was imposed on them. I felt busy in a good way."

In a twist, Bill -- having become a tech billionaire after dropping out of the 1992 Presidential race when he and his wife mishandled allegations of infidelity -- challenges Hillary for the 2016 nomination. Bill is not likable at all. Sittenfeld's explororation of Bill's character flaws is causing me to feel even sadder/more frustrated about his personal and political shortcomings.

The Count of Monte Cristo (1844)

I have spent a significant part of this summer reading Alexandre Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo.

My (limited) knowledge of this book came primarily from The Shawshank Redemption, in which Andy Dufresne recommends Monte Cristo to a fellow inmate because it describes an escape from prison. As I read the book, I enjoyed the way that certain plot details reminded me of Shawshank; it became clear that Stephen King referenced Dumas's classic for more than the surface level reference and follow-up joke.

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I started the book by listening to it while gardening.

I quickly gathered that Edmond Dantès is unjustly imprisoned after having been framed by three jealous acquaintances (Danglars, Caderousse and Mondego). The context for Dantès's alleged crime is Napoleon's plot, from Elba, to regain power from the Bourbon monarchy. I enjoyed the way that Dumas weaves historical characters and events into the story's plot.

Eventually, Dantès escapes from prison and recovers a hidden treasure whose location is revealed to him by a fellow inmate (Abbe Faria). Dantès returns to society under several new identities, including most famously the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. He tracks down the men who ruined his life and -- in a very roundabout way -- aims to ruin theirs.

Having listened to the first several chapters of the book, I made two incorrect assumptions: (1) this is primarily an adventure story and (2) the novel is of a typical length (300 - 500 pages). 

In truth -- with reference to my first assumption -- Monte Cristo became a classic because the straightforward revenge plot is overlaid with deeper questions about justice and forgiveness. To wit, Dantès struggles with whether to forgive his first love, Mercedes, who eventually gave up hope of ever seeing him again and married another man (Mondego). There are also questions about whether revenge can fairly be taken on the family members of those who have done wrong. One reviewer said that Dumas is ultimately exploring the distinction between justice meted out by man and justice that comes from God.

With respect to my second assumption, a lasting memory of this summer will be first seeing the novel on the bookshelf of the Crozet Library. It is 1,200 pages long!! I have never read a novel so long, and as much as I enjoyed Monte Cristo I don't think I could have survived its entire length. Dumas's level of detail can be windy and tedious; this is explained by Umberto Eco as stemming from his being paid by the word while the story was serialized. 

Fortunately, I found an abridged version at Barnes & Noble (approximately 600 pages). I'm not a fast reader, so even finishing the short version feels like a major accomplishment.

Oedipus Rex: The Question of Fate

Since high school (or college?), I've been vaguely aware of Oedipus Rex by virtue of Freud's theory of the Oedipus Complex. I remember being shocked and confused when someone first explained the idea to me; its weirdness probably served to color my later impression of Freudian theory more generally. Prior to this summer, I had never read the actual play.

Reading the text, I was initially struck by its brevity: less than 100 pages (many of which are quite short because of the back and forth dialogue).

Also, the action begins almost at its climax, as Oedipus asks the people of Thebes to help him solve the mystery of who killed Laius. In truth, I was quite confused with the dearth of background or context, wondering if I had skipped an earlier scene in which the characters and backstory are introduced.

In some ways, the brevity (and climactic-beginning structure) of Oedipus make it very different from Hamlet, in which Shakespeare (and his protagonist!) takes his time at every step of the story. I think part of the reason that I was so surprised with Oedipus is that I assume these famous works of canonical literature must be dense with details and development -- like the Shakespearean tragedies.

A major theme of Oedipus is the role of destiny in our lives, and it's a fascinating theme at that. Tiresias (a prophet of Apollo) argues to Oedipus that humans cannot escape their destiny, and it's unclear to me whether Sophocles agrees or not. I guess this gets to the crux of the play and its lasting importance: can we shape our own destiny, or are certain things playing out at a level one step removed?

631. It's scary to think that our fate is pre-written, and that if we try to anticipate and change our fate we can actually bring tragedy into our lives. I'm unclear what the ancient Greeks believed about fate: if they were fatalists, how did they manage to create such a dynamic, important culture? I'm also curious to learn more about the attitudes and beliefs, within Christianity and the other major religions, about fate and destiny.

632. What are the various ways in which subsequent authors reference and build-on the themes and ideas from Oedipus? How has it become such a foundational text in Western cultures?

“Fear? What has a man to do with fear? Chance rules our lives, and the future is all unknown. Best live as we may, from day to day.”

Sonia Sotomayor's "My Beloved World" (2013)

When traveling to New York City last week, I wanted to read a book with a New York setting. I chose Sonia Sotomayor's memoir, My Beloved World.

I have enjoyed this book because it is sprinkled with advice about living a meaningful life, with a major focus on two elements: relationships and education.

Sotomayor's writing style is straightforward, and her passion for living comes across vividly. She frequently writes about how much she enjoys talking to people. I imagine (and am happy to think) that she has forged close relationships with the other Supreme Court justices -- even those with whom she disagrees.

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Justice Sotomayor was born and raised in the Bronx. Her family came originally from Puerto Rico, and her extended family plays a major role in her childhood:

The world that I was born into was a tiny microcosm of Hispanic New York City. A tight few blocks in the South Bronx bounded the lives of my extended family: my grandmother, matriarch of the tribe, and her second husband, Gallego, daughters and sons. My playmates were my cousins. We spoke Spanish at home, and many in my family spoke virtually no English. 

My parents had both come to New York from Puerto Rico in 1944 [Sotomayor was born in 1954], my mother in the Women's Army Corps, my father with his family in search of work as part of a huge migration from the island, driven by economic hardship.

Her father, who struggled with alcoholism, died when Sotomayor was only nine years old. While she struggled to come to grips with his passing, she turned to books as a source of strength.

She writes a lot about her experiences in school (she eventually attended Princeton), and I particularly enjoyed a passage about being open to learning from each and every person that enters your life:

It was then, in Mrs. Reilly's class, under the allure of those gold stars, that I did something very unusual for a child, though it seemed like common sense to me at the time. I decided to approach one of the smartest girls in the class and ask her how to study. Donna Renella looked surprised, maybe even flattered. In any case, she generously divulged her technique: how, while she was reading, she underlined important facts and took notes to condense information into smaller bits that were easier to remember; how, the night before a test, she would reread the relevant chapter. Obvious things once you've learned them, but at the time deriving them on my own would have been like trying to invent the wheel 

... The critical lesson I learned is still one too many kids never figure out: don't be shy about making a teacher of any willing party who knows what he or she is doing. In retrospect, I can see how important that pattern would become for me: how readily I've sought out mentors, asking guidance from professors or colleagues, and in every friendship soaking up eagerly whatever that friend could teach me.

This passage reminds me of how much my students are learning from each other. As their teacher, one of my most important jobs is to create and nurture an environment where those interactions can thrive.

I miss President Obama's smile!

Henry James's "The Turn of the Screw" (1898)

I'm riding the train to New York City, and I've just finished reading (and listening to) The Turn of the Screw.

Of the three classics I've read this summer, this was the densest and most challenging. Henry James writes extremely long sentences. Clauses are embedded within clauses, and it's a real process to suss out the verbs and follow the train of thought. One essay aptly describes James's writing style as Rococo.

The narrator is "the governess", who is hired to care for two children (Miles, age 10 and Flora, age 8) by their guardian uncle. The story takes place at a country manor called Bly, where the previous governess (Miss Jessel) and valet (Peter Quint) engaged in some kind of illicit or inappropriate activity (what they did is not specifically described).

Quint and Miss Jessel both died before the governess's arrival, but they appear as ghosts and continue to interact with the children.

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The central mystery of The Turn of the Screw is whether the ghosts are real or merely imagined by the governess. Mrs. Grose (a fellow servant) never sees them, and neither child acknowledges their reality. Even the governess is less concerned about the ghosts physically harming the children and more worried about the possibility of "corruption". James leaves the meaning of corruption ambiguous; the commentary I've read says that the term is probably a stand-in for knowledge of sexual acts.

My hunch is that James intended his readers to interpret the ghosts as the psychological invention/imagining of the governess. However, I will need to learn more about him in order to understand what he believed about the supernatural and whether he may have believed in the reality of ghosts.

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When I selected The Turn of the Screw as my third book for the summer, I had no idea that ghosts played a major role in the story. Just a few weeks ago, I made the point (about Hamlet, here) that writers don't explore the idea of ghosts as much as they should. Now, I'm quickly proven wrong!

The ghosts in Turn are definitely more foreboding than the ghost of Hamlet's father. They are more within the mold of "haunted" or "evil" souls.

However, it is an interesting plot point to have Miles's death come at the hands of the governess (as she tries to protect him from Quint's ghost). Perhaps James is aiming to tell us that our fear of ghosts (rather than ghosts themselves) is the true problem.

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A final ghost connection: I recently started to read Sonia Sotomayor's autobiography, My Beloved World. Sotomayor describes parties at her grandmother's house during which, after the children have gone to sleep, the adults partake in a ritual in which they communicate with spirits of the deceased (Sotomayor is curious and tries to watch and listen from a neighboring room).

Ghosts, ghosts everywhere, in the literary world of 2019!!

Here's a photo I just took, as the train departed Washington's Union Station.

Pride and Prejudice // The Edge of Anarchy

In my effort to read canonical literature this summer, I'm reading Pride and Prejudice.

To mix things up, I'm also reading The Edge of Anarchy (by Jack Kelly), the nonfiction account of a railway workers' strike in 1894.

The stories told in these two books provide fascinating contrasts.

Pride and Prejudice is the story of Eliza Bennet and her family. It was written in 1813. To demonstrate my lack of knowledge about Jane Austen, I'd always thought that she wrote her novels in the 1870's and 1880's. In truth, she lived and wrote much earlier in the 19th century, when the Industrial Revolution was just barely getting started.

It's a story about the five sisters' efforts to find a suitable spouse, interwoven with all sorts of analysis of class and family relationships. There is a considerable amount of humor in Austen's writing, with characters like the pompous blowhard William Collins and the fretting, vacuous Mrs. Bennet. It also contains one of the most thorough accounts of falling in love that I've ever read: whereas most movies (and lots of novels, too) skim over the conversations that cause people to fall in love, Jane Austen devotes many pages to the evolving relationship between Eliza and Mr. Darcy.

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I like the organizing framework of The Edge of Anarchy: in order to describe and explain the labor unrest of the 1880's, Jack Kelly first presents short biographies of Eugene Debs and George Pullman.

I learned about Debs in my 11th grade US History class (Mr. Martin emphasized his five Presidential candidacies, via the Socialist Party of America), but I have not thought or read much about him in the years since.

Born in 1855, Debs worked for railroad companies while young, scrubbing grease from the engines, cleaning the other cars, and serving as a locomotive fireman.

After first becoming involved with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, Debs decided that the various railroad workers' unions were too segregated from each other, which prevented any single union from becoming truly powerful. His solution was to organize the American Railway Union, which welcomed all different kinds of railroad workers -- those with specialized skills and those whose work was considered menial.

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At first glance, these two books seem utterly different because the stakes are so small in the one and so large in the other. The characters in Pride and Prejudice have nothing more to worry about then whether they are wearing the correct clothes or speaking in the socially-appropriate manner, whereas Debs and Pullman are struggling to dictate the terms of American capitalism -- a struggle which will affect the lives of millions of people. 

To put it differently, Austen is dealing with trivialities, while Kelly is exploring deep questions of inequality, injustice, and the proper means of effecting political change.

And yet, Eliza and her compatriots are, on a deeper level, engaged in one of the deepest human endeavors: trying to live a life that is both happy and meaningful. This is the same kind of life that Debs wants to achieve for the members of the American Railway Union, and the working class more generally. 

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For me, one of the key takeaways of Pride and Prejudice is that relationships take time and effort. At a time when digital technology is overwhelming and distracting us, when life's list of tasks sometimes makes the days speed past, this book is a reminder to appreciate the slowly evolving conversation, the (seemingly) mundane details of our surroundings, and the necessity of appreciating every person (including the proud and prejudicial) for his or her own uniqueness.

I love this P&P character map. 

It's a good reminder to me that visual aids can be incredibly helpful when trying to process information.

Hamlet (Part 2)

As I continue to read Hamlet, I've decided that the Ghost is a major reason the play is so compelling for people. Although he only appears in a few scenes, his words are the motivating factor for Hamlet's angst (and eventually for Hamlet's actions).

627. Why did Shakespeare decide to call him simply "The Ghost" rather than "The Ghost of Old Hamlet"? Was he trying to create ambiguity about the reality of The Ghost?

628. What percentage of Americans believe in ghosts? I just did some quick research, and it looks like about 40% of us think ghosts are real.

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Ghosts do not frequently appear in famous works of literature. I recall an August Wilson play (The Piano Lesson, I believe) with a ghost, and Toni Morrison's Beloved explores the ideas of ghosts.

All things considered, however, they are less present in literature than you'd expect. I'd posit that plenty of people are at least open to the possibility of ghosts and spirits ("ghost agnostics"?), so you'd think that famous authors might incorporate them into stories more often.

This is Paul Scofield, who plays The Ghost in the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet that I've been periodically watching as I read the play.

Shakespeare's willingness to think about ghosts, therefore, may be a reason that people are fascinated by Hamlet's story. In particular, readers (and theater goers) are probably interested in the idea of the ghost of a deceased parent coming back to advise and guide a distraught child.

I've been listening to lectures about the play by Peter Saccio (he teaches at Dartmouth, and I am feeling considerable regret that I didn't take his course about Shakespeare). Saccio explains that in pre-modern Europe there were three competing theories about ghosts:

1. Catholics believed that ghosts visited from Purgatory. They were the actual spirits of the once-living humans they claimed to be, and they made requests of the living that would help speed them along to Heaven.
2. Protestants believed that ghosts were demons. They were not who they claimed to be; rather, they were agents of evil attempting to corrupt the living.
3. Skeptics believed that ghosts were hallucinations.

Saccio argues that Shakespeare brilliantly does not choose between the three theories. The Ghost claims to be visiting from Purgatory, but Hamlet considers the possibility that he is a demon, while Gertrude and Horatio consider him a hallucination. By creating ambiguity about the reality of The Ghost, Shakespeare forces the reader to consider his own beliefs about ghosts (and, more generally, about the afterlife).

This is fantastic analysis, and it goes back to the reason that I think The Ghost is such a crucial part of the play. Among its various other themes, Hamlet is concerned with the afterlife, and Shakespeare uses The Ghost to raise deep, fascinating questions about what happens to us when we die.

I'll close with a quote from The Ghost, both eerie and powerful:

I am thy father’s spirit

Doomed for a certain term to walk the night

And for the day confined to fast in fires

Till the foul crimes done in my days of nature

Are burnt and purged away.

Here's a painting by British artist John Absolon, showing Hamlet and The Ghost.

Hamlet (Part 1)

One of my goals for this summer is to read some canonical literature.

Inspired by our field trip to the American Shakespeare Company this spring (we saw a rousing performance of The Comedy of Errors), I am beginning the project with Hamlet.

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I've never read Hamlet, and my strongest first impression is that it's very dark. I had, in my mind, an image of Hamlet as a brooding, disconsolate character, but I didn't quite realize the depths of his angst.

Having read the first two acts, I've learned that he has recently lost his father, and his mother (Gertrude) has quickly gotten remarried (and transferred her allegiance) to his uncle.

The play doesn't explain the ways in which Hamlet was close to his dad, but they must have had a deep and genuine connection. He is confused and troubled by his mother's lack of sorrow -- so much so that he contemplates suicide in one of the early scenes:

O, that this too too solid flesh would melt

Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix’d

His canon ‘gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!

How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, 

Seem to me all the uses of this world! 

Fie on’t! ah fie! ’tis an unweeded garden, 

That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature 

This soliloquy was particularly powerful because of the metaphor of the unweeded garden.

April/May/June is the time of year when the weeds are most aggressive, requiring a ton of attention lest they completely conquer the other plants. In truth, I sometimes get frustrated because I want to be planting things, but I feel like most of my time and energy is focused on weeding.

I do, however, like the idea of weeding as a metaphor. Hamlet's speech is a reminder that each of us is constantly tending the weeds in our soul, striving to keep things fresh and positive. Keeping the weeds away preserves the space for growth.

Alas, my sense is that Hamlet's angst is going to prevail over hope and renewal. I am interested to see how his relationship with Gertrude plays out, particularly since the ghost of his father asked him not to take out his anger against his mom. Will he be able to forgive Gertrude, even as he plots vengeance against his uncle?

This is a statue of Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon.