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Petrarch
This is my blog page. Many posts will be saved to individual pages.
I stay at home, as Pascal advised:
I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.
Blaise Pascal. Pascal, “Pensées” – 139. Divertissement. Texte et commentaire – Eclairement
And see Just Stay at Home and Read a Book!
Gally Maxwell
28 April 2024
In the early Renaissance and no doubt before then, books, mostly held in monasteries, were very valuable. To deter theft, bloodcurdling curses were written into them, such as (see modern version below):
“For him that stealeth, or borroweth and returneth not, this book from its owner,” one of these curses runs, “let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not, and when at last he goeth to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.”
Modernised:
“For the man who steals, or borrows and does not return, this book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no cease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw his entrails in token of the Worm that does not die, and when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him forever.”
My goodness! Don’t mess with another person’s books!
Gally Maxwell
27 April 2024
Original text from Greenblatt, Stephen. The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began (p. 38). Random House. Kindle Edition.
Well, y’all. Sure ‘scaped my attention that there was such interest in brands out there in the crazy world. Down home here in Texas, we love ours. This lil’ pitcher[1] shows my fav’rits and reminds me of a nonsense story I made from them.
“I leave my favourite pig, Lazy Nine, in the Pig Pen, pick up my Pitchfork and Spade and head on back along the Turkey Track, Running F[ast], Flying U[ntamably], and Rocking H[oarsely] my version of Springsteen’s Born to Run. I pass the two watering-holes in town, The Two-Pole-Pumpkin and the T-Down Bar, then the O-In-A-Hole Golf shop, finally skirt Big Bill Diamond’s Circle Diamond ranch, arriving home in time for Seven-Up with Barbecue ribs. We’re the Williams family, known as the W-Lazy-Five.”
Thank you kin’ly for the interest in our fascinatin’ cattle brands. And here’s ours, at Breakheart Ranch:
Ezra Lucas Williams III, Rancher, Heartbreak County, TX.
27 April 2024
[1] Copyright Encyclopedia Britannica, it seems to read.
Very fast and highly successful bank robber.
Gally Maxwell
27 April 2024
Like many older people, I have read a great deal about the Holocaust, from memoirs such as If This is a Man by Primo Levi through history books and of course fiction.
In recent months, I returned to the work of Martin Amis. I had fallen out with him after Yellow Dog, which I deeply disliked. Lionel Asbo was funny but attitudinally thoroughly unpleasant. The Pregnant Widow was more fun.
I had left The Zone of Interest on the shelf – Holocaust books had become too upsetting after graphic films such as Schindler’s List and Sophie’s Choice – but finally decided to see what Amis had to say. It is a masterful work, full of horror and insight. Shame that the film is said to be only loosely based on it, even though by all accounts it is an outstanding work itself. I am not sure whether I can watch it: the use of sound only to evoke the horrors nearby is a stroke of genius and I fear would haunt me.
I returned to a book that I had disliked on first reading and which, I had forgotten, was an early Amis Holocaust novel: Time’s Arrow. I understood it much better this time. One of my objections partly remains: the story is told backwards. Not just in reverse chronological order but events happening past-first: you have to find the start of dialogue a few lines or more ahead and read backwards. I think Martin Amis said at the time something like it was the only way he could come at the difficult subject. I didn’t and don’t find that very convincing.
The backward storytelling was a great opportunity for Amis to exercise his powerful imagination and literary skills. Many aspects are unexpected and even amusing. For example, the protagonist, a guilt-ridden ex-Nazi in hiding under a new identity, buys toys and gives them to children in the street. In Amis’s rendering, this becomes a child handing him a toy, which he takes to a shop where they give him money. Sex begins riotously and ends calmly. Love affairs are similar: shouting and tears at the beginning, tender scenes at the end. People grow younger rather than older, eventually taken back into the womb. A Navy helicopter ‘twirls upward from the ocean and crouches grimly on the deck of the aircraft-carrier, ready to fight.’[1] (49) [Don’t ask about eating…]
To enable the narrator to observe, and not understand, he is a vague concept: the protagonist and yet not; perhaps his soul or conscience; or his disassociated self.
The core of this is Auschwitz-Birkenau-Monowitz and there is a sick sense of ‘if only’ in Amis’s conception: land is dug up and bodies come out of it, they are transported to the gas chambers where the gas brings them back to life, they dress, meet a new family and board a train with them to leave. Typically, he takes this all the way: the intent, it seems to the narrator, is ‘To dream a race. To make a people from the weather. From thunder and from lightning. With gas, with electricity… with fire’.[2] A horrific irony: that the Germans rescued the dead and created a vibrant Jewish community.
Does this work? Does it tell us anything? Most of the book takes place in the USA and is an extended experiment in consequences of seeing things back-to-front in time. Because of that, there would not be much story, or a very different story, if it were told chronologically: the narrator’s escape from Germany followed by his life in the USA. It’s not clear why we should care about the fantasy of Auschwitz back-to-front. It tells us nothing.
The likely crime of the main character (Tod Friendly – Tod means death in German) is relatively clear, its horror carefully foreshadowed by Tod’s nightmares) but the detail held in reserve. I think that, ultimately, Amis has come up with a strange, challenging idea – the Jewish community being created by the Germans – flowing from the reverse chronology, but the rest is padding. Inventive, intelligent, powerfully written, but really an extended literary exercise.
Towards the end, Amis sums up brilliantly. The various restrictions on Jews have been slowly and now completely lifted. The narrator is courting Herta (who we know he will later marry). The Nazi’s real name is used. Here we also see the narrator commenting on the protagonist even though ‘they’ are the same person
‘I’ve come to the conclusion that Odilo Unverdorben,[3] as a moral being, is absolutely unexceptionable, liable to do what everybody else does, good or bad, with no limit, once under the cover of numbers. He could never be an exception; he is dependent on the health of his society, needing the sandy smiles of Rolf and Rudolph, of Rüdiger, of Reinhard. On Krystallnacht [sic] when we all romped and played and helped the Jews, and the fizzy shards swirled like stars or souls, and when Herta bent to wipe her lips with a pink handkerchief – before [kissing me][4]. Is it somehow the Jews’ fault? That lock of her hair he had kept in a pill box – why did he return it?[5] Now I can exactly see the shape and size, the perfect fit, of the loneliness[6] that is approaching. She gives me flowers, but she loves me not. She loves me not.’[7]
There is genius here. Note that tucked away description of the broken glass of Kristallnacht: ‘fizzy shards swirled like stars or souls’. So easy to read quickly and take in that the broken glass was like stars and miss the profound ‘souls’. The broken glass of that terrible day representing the souls of the Jewish people.
And slipped in, apparently irrelevant to the rest of the section: ‘Is it somehow the Jews’ fault?’
Does the book entirely work? No, not really. Is it worth reading? Of course. Everything Martin Amis wrote is spectacular in different ways. I write this review to help you decide.
Gally Maxwell
26 April 2024 (updated 27 April)
[1] Martin Amis (1991) Time’s Arrow. London, Penguin, p49.
[2] Page 128.
[3] The surname means ‘unspoilt’ or ‘pure’. There are differing claims for Odilo but one is ‘fortunate’ or even ‘fortunate in battle’. Liked his little jokes, Mr Amis.
[4] That is, after the kiss she wipes her mouth.
[5] This is in fact him receiving it and placing it in a pill box.
[6] The time before he was with Herta.
[7] Page 164-165.
Gally Maxwell
26 April 2024
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you discover the reason why.”
Mark Twain
You will see this aphorism all over the internet.
Mark Twain never wrote or said it.[1]
Its origin is unknown, first recorded usages beginning with the non-specific, ‘It has been said’ and so on.
Setting that aside, the statement resonates with many people. When it was debunked on the Mark Twain studies website, one comment was: ‘I don’t care who said it, I still maintain that it was one of the most trenchant comments about real life ever made.’ Fair enough. The absence of a source for an aphorism doesn’t make it invalid as someone’s thought.
Personally, I think it is empty. Why is your birthday one of the (two) ‘most important days in your life’? It happens. You have no awareness of it, no control, no memory. You didn’t cause it, biology did. Joyous though the birth of a child is, it is also universal and banal.
The starting problem is what does ‘the most important day of your life’ mean? Very little, in my view, as becomes clear when we briefly review what people say about it.
Psychology Today
“What’s the most important day of your life? The answer to that question is simple. Today.”[2]
Helen Keller
“The most important day I remember in all my life is the one on which my teacher, Anne Mansfield Sullivan, came to me.”
Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, Chapter Four.[3]
A blogger
One blogger begins with the Mark Twain “quote” but refines it into a credible position; that the most important day of his life was when he found God:
“The most important day of my life
After praying that prayer, immediately I felt a tremendous sense of relief. I could feel the guilt and the weight of my sin and my lostness lifted from me. I had a deep experience of God’s love for me; that He really was now my Heavenly Father. A peace I had never known settled into my soul, which was quickly followed by great joy. … I’ve been doing my best to follow Jesus for many decades now, but I will never forget that night. It was the most important day of my life because it changed me from spiritually lost and dead to found, made alive, and gave me my purpose.[4]
The question was asked of Redditors: What was the most important day of your life? Of 160 responses, here is the first page, with extraneous comment, names etc, removed, and numbering added. Bear in mind that the page is live and the following was downloaded about 9pm onwards on 30 March 2024.
1. The day I randomly decided to fly to California for the cast party of an online musical I acted in. In the same night I:
-Met my now-husband
-Met my best friend (who officiated for our wedding)
-Met each member of my now 4ish year long DnD game I run
-Got to meet (and get drunk with) several of my personal acting/gaming heroes who showed up to the party as a surprise
-Had one of those actors tell me they had an inside joke about how much they liked my performance in their personal group text
And now, 6 years later, I am living in California with the love of my life, in a good career that I never would have joined if I had stayed in my home state. All from one night.
2. In 1981 I stopped by a jewelry store to get a new watch battery installed. I recognized the young woman behind the counter as a co-worker at a theme park from five years before. We reminisced about those days and went out for lunch together. Coming up on 41 years of marriage! It was a good day.
3. The day I innocently messaged this girl on Facebook that I wished I’d gotten to know her better before graduating college. We’ll soon celebrate our 12 year wedding anniversary, have 3 kids, and I’m as infatuated with her as the day we went on our first date. If not for that message, we very likely would never have seen each other again.
4. My high school crush (no joke! He was the classic jock. I was a nerd.) messaged me on Facebook 19 years after we graduated. I friended him first. But, I wouldn’t have ever messaged him. We’re celebrating 6 years together in April.
5. The day I became sober from drugs and alcohol. October 24th 2022.
6. When I boarded a red eye flight to a city I’d never been to under the pretense of getting sober. My life now is completely different (for the better) because I did what was necessary to be on that flight when it left the gate. I don’t have a shred of doubt that getting on that plane saved my life.
7. The day that I decided not to transfer from my university to a different, arguably better school purely for purposes of more fun and more life experiences. …
8. The day i was born.
9. The day I bet on myself, applied and interviewed for a management position in my company. …
10. My first date with the woman that is now my wife. I was planning to commit suicide and met her about a month before the date I had picked.
11. The day my fiance [sic] proposed.
12. The day my parents signed the adoption papers. In the most important sense, that was when my life began, my first six months have nobody who knows any details, including me.
13. When my daughter was born. My wife almost died …
14. The day my wife and I started going out.
15. I know it sounds silly but when I was 11 my best friend invited me to an all girl sleepover and it was one of the best nights of my life. I had been struggling with my gender identity and why I felt the way I did, and it was one of the only times I was able to forget about it all and just be myself. …
16. Daughters [sic] birth…
17. Transferred from community college to a university and one of the first days we had people discuss internships in DC.
All of these are understandable and valid. The most important days in our life are the milestones: meeting our partner, having a child, overcoming addiction. One not mentioned here but probably in earlier comments: the day of your terminal illness is diagnosed. To assert that one’s own birth and finding out why you are here are the two most important days is disrespectful to those who have a different view.
A large part of the problem is that word ‘important’. The thoughtful people on Reddit mostly identify transformational moments, a change in their life. ‘Significant’ days would be better than ‘most important’ and there should be no assertion as to what they are for everybody. To paraphrase the Reddit question, we should ask: What have been the most significant days in your life?
If someone (see number 8) thinks it is the day they were born, fine. That’s their privilege.
Okay, I’ll step up. The most significant days in my life (positive and negative) include: the choice I made about what subject to study, English or Law; leaving private practice; the first date with my future wife; moving to the alien South…; walking away from a very well-paid job for the sake of my health; the day I was told my cancer was at Stage 4. There was a peace then, an acceptance.
Gally Maxwell
25 April 2024
[1] https://marktwainstudies.com/the-apocryphal-twain-the-two-most-important-days-of-your-life/ and https://quoteinvestigator.com/2016/06/22/why/
[2] https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/proceed-your-own-risk/202210/the-most-important-day-your-life
[3] https://www.holloway.com/g/helen-keller-the-story-of-my-life/sections/chapter-iv
[4] https://medium.com/koinonia/the-most-important-day-of-my-life-ef7e1e6db157
32 years ago.
I get out in another 21 years.
I will be 93.
So… how do you ….ing think it worked out?
Gally Maxwell
25 April 2024
That is the title of a substack essay by Elle Griffin on The Elysian. As an avid reader and buyer of books, I expected to disagree. (The lady who comes to help us with cleaning said to my wife that I should not buy any more books: I added a sign to my door, A room without a book is like a body without a soul, Cicero; and a sign, Too Many Books? No, not enough bookshelves. Yes, I can be irritating…)
But there is no chance of disagreeing with Ms Griffin.
Her essay is unusually and very firmly based on evidence: literally. Namely, the evidence given to the court in the proposed (and denied) merger of Penguin Ransom House and Simon & Schuster.
Many senior people in publishing described how they work: books by celebrities are the priority; backlists generate much of their income; 96 per cent of books sell less than 1,000 copies.
I guess it might have appeared in the evidence, but it is notable that the word “literature” is not mentioned in the essay and “literary” only comes up when attached to agent or agency. Publishers don’t prioritize literary merit then?
The underlying research achievement is hugely impressive in itself, but the essay is an excellent meditation on the results and what they mean.
I have subscribed to The Elysian.
Gally Maxwell
24 April 2024
Miss Prism is a novelist. She is asked about one of her books:
The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.
Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest, start of Act 2.
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