Still, although I know it wasn’t my library’s fault, I feel really let down that the ILL thing didn’t work out. I mean, it’s amazing that ILL exists at all, that someone in Dallas mailed a book to Ann Arbor just so that I could read it.

Penguin Classic: I only got halfway through Le Grand Meaulnes before I had to return it. It was an ILL and it came all the way from Ripon College in Wisconsin, no possibility of renewing it. Okay, this is an admittedly obscure title, but jeez, it’s a Penguin Classic, it’s not exactly out of print. And there was no copy closer to Ann Arbor MI than Ripon? Well, anyway. I sort of enjoyed the half that I read, but I was definitely handicapped by my lack of familiarity with the customs & mores of late 19th century rural France. There were a lot of descriptions of clothes that I’m sure were significant, but the significance escaped me entirely. For example, all the guys were wearing smocks. Smocks. Now I know they weren’t wearing oversized men’s shirts, backwards, with the sleeves cut off at the elbows. I know they weren’t fingerpainting. But there’s got to be some reason why these smocks (?) were mentioned so frequently. Honestly, I never thought I’d say this about any novel, but this one could have used some footnotes, or at least an introduction. Still, I’d like to go back and finish it some day. Despite the smocks, it was a vivid portrait of adolescent boys, coming of age, friendship, first love, etc. And, to answer your burning question, Meaulnes rhymes with moan, and it’s the main character’s name.

Book Group: We’re reading Beloved. I’m halfway through. How did I manage to miss reading this before? It’s really good. Really good! Query: why is “magical realism” so unpalatable in Latin American fiction and yet so perfect and true when Toni Morrison is the author?

Slaves of Golconda: I totally missed out last month. The book was The Island of Dr. Moreau. However, I felt like I joined them in spirit, anyway. During the last week of August, when I should have been reading and writing about Island, I was instead watching the first season of Lost on DVD. Yeah, that was the week before school started, when I should have been getting organized and Steve should have been working on lesson plans. And instead we were staying up until one in the morning every night for a week, watching three or four episodes per evening. I understand season two is out on video now, too. We are going to try to hold off for a while.

From the Nonfiction Department: I read The China Study. Actually, I should probably save this one for a separate post. It’s a detailed and very compelling treatise on the health benefits of a vegan “whole foods, plant-based diet.” We are working on it. I have discovered that Silk brand soy yogurt is sooooo good! Better than regular yogurt. Other than that, as I say, we’re working on it.

From the Library: Remember the contraption that allows me to browse in the adult fiction section? Well, a book called The Darwin Conspiracy caught my eye at once. This novel purports to answer the real-life question of why, after his legendary voyage in the Beagle, Darwin never travelled again, became anxious and sickly with myriad vague, psychosomatic ailments, and waited more than twenty years to publish his theory. Can you imagine a better premise for a novel than that? I’d never heard of this book, or the author, John Darnton, but there were glowing blurbs on the back from Ann Arbor’s own Nicholas Delbanco and also Elie Wiesel. So it must be good. Right? Wrong. I don’t know who paid Nick and Elie to write these glowing encomiums but they couldn’t possibly have read it. Here’s a sample. Get your barf bag ready.

And then [young Charles Darwin] had returned home to find the offer waiting for him, a bolt from the blue that could change his life forever, provide it with meaning. And to be denied it! To have his hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How could he endure it?

This book is supposed to remind us of Possession. It goes back and forth between the present (researchers fall in love while uncovering the mystery), and the past (Darwin’s life). Here’s a bit from the present. You might need another barf bag.

That was back before Victor left [the Galapagos island where they're doing field research -- copped straight from The Beak of the Finch, I might add]. At first it was a relief to be alone — solitude was what he had been looking for, part of his penitence — but as weeks stretched into months, the loneliness he had sought became almost too much to bear. Then when the rainy season didn’t come and the lava island turned into a black frying pan stuck way out in the ocean, at times he actually wondered if he could keep going. But of course he did. He had known he would — in that way at least, in brute staying power, he was strong. It was his psyche that was brittle.

No! He actually wondered if he could keep going? Thank goodness he had that brute staying power, because you know, that lava island was just like a black frying pan. And not just any old black frying pan, but one that stuck way out in the ocean.

Boy, what a mean-spirited review. I am sorry. But honestly? I was sooooo excited about this plot idea. The disappointment is bitter. In fact . . . to have my hopes elevated so high and then dashed the very next moment! How will I endure it? ;)

So, Esther is this young woman full of radical modern ideas who falls in love with an Episcopalian priest. She falls in love but she cannot reconcile her freewheeling ideas with her fiancé’s church. “I never saw you conduct a service,” she tells him, “without feeling as though you were a priest in a Pagan temple, centuries apart from me. At any moment I half expected to see you bring out a goat or a ram and sacrifice it on the high altar.” The novel is about her inner struggle. Will she subsume herself and marry him? Will she find a way to reconcile her beliefs with his, and make a happy marriage without squashing herself or him? Will the force of his charismatic preacher personality lead her to see the light and renounce her views and make a happy marriage that way? Will the force of her charismatic strong-woman personality induce him to leave the church? Or will she keep the courage of her convictions and break off her engagement?

That’s the whole story. There’s no subplot to speak of, and only a handful of characters. Reading it was excruciating. Esther’s dilemma is not resolved until the very last page. The. Very. Last. Page. This book was either going to SUCK (if she caved) or ROCK (if she didn’t). There couldn’t be anything in between. I debated with myself whether or not to reveal here which way the book went. I don’t want to give any spoilers, but in this case I don’t think it would spoil anything if I tell you that Esther indeed rocks. In fact, I wish the suspense hadn’t been such a huge factor in my reading. I will have to come back to this again some day.

Aside from the suspense, there was much to enjoy in this book. Every single character, including the minister, was sympathetic and likeable. Esther’s invalid father was sheer delight. Here’s a bit of flavor: “‘I was just wondering,’ said he, ‘whether I could read five minutes longer without a stimulant. Do you know that indiscriminate reading is a fiendish torture. No convict could stand it. I seldom take up a book in these days without thinking how much more amusing it would be to jolt off on a bright day at the head of a funeral procession. Between the two ways of amusing one’s-self, I am principled against books.’” Ha ha!

* * *

So that was Penguin Classic novel number two. Next up, and already ordered through inter-library loan, is Le Grand Meaulnes by Henri Alain-Fournier, translated by Frank Davison. I know nothing about the book or its author except the brief description in the Penguin Classics Complete Annotated Listing, which says that it “follows a young man killed in action in World War I, and is a masterly exploration of the transition from boyhood to manhood.” All righty! Anyone know how to pronounce “meaulnes?”

* * *

At the new branch library, you know, the one where I can actually browse the first couple of shelves of adult fiction while Daniel plays with the contraption, the one I seem to write about in every other post? Well, today I found Paul Auster’s The Red Notebook. And read it in one sitting. I’ll post about it just as soon as I can gather my thoughts. Wow! WOW!

* * *

I am also planning to write a post in which I regale you with my, uh, garden. The title of that post will be “Pearls Before Swine.” The pearl being this incredible earthworm-rich, carefully-amended, well-aerated soil we inherited from the master gardener who used to live in our house. The swine, of course, is yours truly.

Martha Beck and her husband were high-powered fast-track ultra-competitive super-rational PhD students at Harvard when she accidentally-on-purpose became pregnant with their second child. Amnio came back positive for Down Syndrome, a particularly devastating diagnosis for this couple whose entire value system revolved around intellectual achievement. The memoir details the course of her pregnancy, during which she had numerous mystical/spiritual experiences that led her to the realization that life isn’t always rational, slow down and smell the flowers, enjoy each day, etc.

I must confess I had a strong aversion to this book before I even opened it. Because of the title. Have you noticed how many recent book and movie titles take the form of “Transitive verb ending in -ing” plus “Proper noun”? Those two-word titles are a sure warning that herein lies trendy pretentiousness. That’s my theory, anyway, and this particular Verbing Noun book did not prove me wrong.

Mainly, I did not like the flip, breezy tone. I felt at times as though I was reading a blog. As a blog, I’d have probably bookmarked it; it was indeed entertaining. But given the profound, life-changing nature of her story, the flippancy felt inappropriate. Other members of my group pointed out that her reason for writing the book was to convince other super-rational intellectual overachievers that she was not some wacko accustomed to having visions of angels, hence the snarky humor. Whereas I, who am quite open to the possibility of such things, need no convincing and would have preferred a deeper and more respectful exploration.

Also, the veracity of this “memoir” has been called into question. Was her marriage as happy as she portrayed it? Or was it dissolving even as she wrote? Etc., etc. According to the introduction, she originally wrote it as a novel and no publisher would accept it. Only when she called it a memoir . . . sound familiar? John Baker commented yesterday that “we, as readers, depend on categories to shape our understanding of texts.” Certainly that’s true for this book.

Next month’s book: Invitation to a Beheading.

* * *

I know I’ve probably lost all credibility in the late-nineteenth century American novel department because I actually liked The Virginian despite its flaws, but I just have to tell you that so far (page 60) Esther and I are getting on like wildfire.

This novel by Henry Adams is my current Penguin Classic and it is a trip! Though published in 1884 it feels quite contemporary: it’s full of witty banter, religious skepticism, social satire, and a strong feminist streak. And if that’s not enough to suck you in, one of the characters is a paleontologist! :) Interestingly, Adams originally published this novel under a female pseudonym. I would be very curious to know how Jane Austen fans (I’m not one) would feel about this book. Esther is a slim volume and an easy read; I’d love it if anyone would care to join me. Here’s a little taste, from page one. They are at church.

[The biblical King] Solomon was a brilliant but not an accurate observer; he looked at the world from the narrow stand-point of his own temple. Here in New York he could not have truthfully said that all was vanity, for even a more ill-natured satirist than he must have confessed that there was in this new temple to-day a perceptible interest in religion. One might almost have said that religion seemed to be a matter of concern.

Heh heh!

* * *

Do I seem to be contradicting myself? I censure Expecting Adam for its flippant treatment of spiritual matters while I praise Esther for the same. Ah, but there’s a world of difference between the two. I shouldn’t have put them together in the same post. Anyway, like Walt Whitman, I contain multitudes.

This was an odd little . . . volume. I can’t really call it a novel, although it’s certainly novel. It takes place in a world where — well, A. Square describes it better than I can:

Imagine a vast sheet of paper on which straight Lines, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and other figures, instead of remaining fixed in their places, move freely about, on or in the surface, but without the power of rising above or sinking below it, very much like shadows — only hard and with luminous edges — and you will then have a pretty correct notion of my country and countrymen.

That is, it’s a world with only two dimensions. The first half of the book (60 pages) consists of the description of this world. It’s written like a treatise. No dialogue, all exposition. It covers everything from the floor plans of their houses to the details of their sexist, classist society. Abbott intended this to be a satire of Victorian society, and it is so extremely scathing that it’s actually painful to read. The Flatland class hierarchy is based on the number of sides a person has — the more the better, with Circles at the very top (infinite sides). The wider your angles, the more intelligent you are. Bottom of the heap are Isosceles Triangles, who suffer the added indignity of not having all their sides the same length. They make up the very lowest class, and are considered to be disposable, expendable — the red-shirts, if you will. And women? They’re Straight Lines. No angles at all! Which of course makes them lower than the lowest Isosceles. ‘Nuff said!

The second, more interesting, half of the book (58 pages) is also treatise-like, but now the subjects are math and philosophy. A. Square discovers Lineland, a world of only one dimension, and then a three-dimensional entity — a sphere — discovers him. There are some funny moments here, such as this bit of dialogue:

“Pardon me,” said I, “O Thou Whom I must no longer address as the Perfection of all Beauty; but let me beg thee to vouchsafe thy servant a sight of thine interior.

SPHERE. My what?

I. Thine interior: thy stomach, thy intestines.

SPHERE. Whence this ill-timed impertinent request?

A. Square initially considers the sphere to be the Perfection, etc., because a sphere comprises an infinite number of circles, and Circles are the pinnacle of Flatland society. But it occurs to him that if there are worlds of one, two and three dimensions, couldn’t there also be worlds of four, five, or six? And wouldn’t a four-dimensional being comprising an infinite number of spheres be even more perfectly beautiful than a mere three-dimensional sphere? Ad infinitum? And the most interesting part of the whole book is the Sphere’s reaction to this idea: even though the Sphere is well aware that there are worlds of one and two dimensions, he is so angered by A. Square’s assertion that he evicts him out of Spaceland forever. Is this a wry comment on the way we humans cannot see ourselves as anything less than the crown of creation?

One of the strangest things about this book is its half-and-half structure. Stories are supposed to be divided in thirds, not halves. Beginning, middle, end. Just two feels unstable, unfinished. I liked the math, though. I actually found myself awake in the middle of the night after I finished it, pondering geometry. I tried to remember the formula for calculating the measurements of the angles of regular polygons. I came up with this: if n is the number of angles (or sides), the measurement of each angle is (n-2) times 180, all divided by n. Then I attempted some calculations in my head . . . and soon drifted off to sleep.

* * *

This reminds me, too, that I have another anecdote about Cousin Ward. (Please click on the link to refresh your memory about Cousin Ward; he’s well worth the effort.) Anyway, I’m sitting next to him at Easter dinner. Conversation with him is awkward because he’s a mathematician, but I do my best. I ask him how his grandkids in Pittsburgh are doing. They are well. The older one is, what? 8? 9? Neither of us can remember.

“It’s hard to tell them apart at that age,” says Ward.

“Very true,” I agree, going off into a little reverie about kids getting older. When they’re babies, a difference of three months seems insurmountable, but the older they get the less it matters. My train of thought is heading toward Maudlin.

“Because, you know,” he continues, “one is two to the power of three and the other is three to the power of two.”

I love this guy. Betcha he’s read Flatland.