Cosmopolis

Weird!

The Ethics of Authenticity

What an amazing book! Written by Canadian Charles Taylor, this book changed the way I look at modernism, individualism, economics, and politics. Taylor is truly an advocate of a Buddha-like middle ground where we acknowledge the struggles that go on around us without feeling elation at the loss of power on one side or despair at our own idealogical losses. Brilliant! I'm back to longer posts now, so please excuse the tome, but I have to remember this for class.

Taylor begins his argument by defining three "malaises" that have gripped us concerning the onset and subsequent success of modernity. These three malaises are interrelated and overlapping, but for the sake of clarity, they are:
1. Individualism that slides into a narcissistic outlook on life.
2. The primacy of instrumental reason that promotes the most efficient and economical means as leading to the best ends.
3. A lack of participation in government resulting from a focus on individual contentment that allows the government to become a tutelary power over which the citizens have no control.
According to Taylor, the way to combat these malaises is to rediscover the moral sources from which these ideas come and work toward the moral ideal without getting caught up in the ears surrounding both sides of each argument. And each argument does have two sides!

Just as a side note, I wonder if the casual drop of "ends" and "means" is meant to remind us of Machiavelli who is most often misquoted as saying, "The ends justify the means." Regardless of whether or not Machiavelli actually says this (he doesn't), his book The Prince does support an outlook in which whatever means one uses to reach a good goal are thereby justified as good because the goal is good. This is an obviously controversial argument, but my concern here is how it can be used to explain the problems with instrumental reason. If for Machiavelli, the goal was of primary significance; then for instrumental reason, the means are of primary significance. However, instead of being a much more moral philosophy, this has degraded into a system in which the most efficient means lead to the best result: there is no justification for doing something the hard way, even if the end result is a higher quality product. This is at the extreme of course.

Teaching Adolescent Writers

Another book by Kelly Gallagher. I'm using this one to plan my lessons for ENG 080 and 090, which start in a couple of weeks.

The Princess Bride

I came to this book by way of my dear friend Christy. When we met early in our West Potomac teaching careers, we had plenty in common without discovering that we both loved fantasy and could quote extensively from The Princess Bride film. However, this interesting and probably rather common ability made for great entertainment in the faculty lounge.

Persepolis

Persepolis is easily one of the best books I have ever read. How a graphic novel like Watchmen got on to the 100 Best Novels of All Time when there are stories like this one in the medium, I'll never know. The story of a villified country as told by a young girl, Persepolis chronicles the Iranian conversion to Islamic extremism in a comprehensible way.

Batman: The Killing Joke

I wonder why I insist on calling Alan Moore Michael Moore. This is a mystery to me, except that I think both their faces are obnoxious to me. I suppose this is beside the point.

So, why am I reading traditional superhero comics? I am hoping to go to a conference in Wilmington, NC this October and present on terrorism in comic movies and fantasy novels. I picked this graphic novel up because I wanted

Fables: Legends in Exile (Vol. 1)

Our favorite Grimm characters come to the modern world to escape the adversary who has taken all their lands. Snow White's sister Rose Red fakes her own murder to get out of a pending engagement with Bluebeard.

Whys and Wherefores (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 10)

When I went to pick up these last four books at Plan 9 Comics in Boone yesterday, the man said he thought Y: The Last Man was the best graphic novel series out there. I am really interested in why this is the case. This series was really quite brilliant, but I thought the ending was a little anticlimactic. I wonder if men really enjoy The Last Man series because Yorick ends up fairly free of women?

Motherland (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 9)

Kimono Dragons (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 8)

Yorick and crew spend some time in Japan.

Paper Dolls (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 7)

Girl on Girl (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 6)

355, Dr. Mann, and Yorick board a heroin trafficking cruise ship captained by Kilina, a comparative literature major turned sailor. An Australian submarine attacks the ship, killing Kilina and commandeering the last y-chromosome crew. 355 and Dr. Mann give a romantic relationship a first try. We hear from Beth in Australia, but her storyline is still convoluted.

Ring of Truth (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 5)

Yorick meets Beth, a former flight attendant, who helps get him out of his dry spell. He, 355, and Dr. Mann make it to San Fran where they isolate a possible reason for Yorick's continued existence. For a few moments, they believe it's Beth's engagement ring. Hero rejoins the fold despite her continued internal conversations with Victoria. Flashbacks abound. :)

Hellboy: The Chained Coffin and Others

Mike Mignola must be an interesting man. I don't have much experience in comics, but I haven't seen any where the artist and the writer are the same person until this one, of course. He seems to have a penchant for European folk tales: almost all of the Hellboy stories in this volume are based on some folk tale. I really enjoy the artwork! It's not cartoony, but it's not realistic either. It's edgy but not gross. I think I could get addicted to it.

Safeworld (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 4)

Yorick spends some time with Agent 711 in order to overcome his more dangerous shortcomings. A I-40 roadblock in Arizona leads Dr. Mann to admit her true motivation for cloning and leaves yet another friendly woman dead.

One Small Step (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 3)

The Israelis catch up to Yorick as he attempts to save three astronauts who have been on a space station. Yorick, 355, and Dr. Mann continue to California while their newfound Russian friend cares for the sole survivor from the shuttle crash. A group of actors writes a play about the last man on earth.

Cycles (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 2)

Yorick finally meets up with his sister, Hero. The Amazons lose their leader, Victoria, and 355 suffers a head injury that leads her to admit her attraction to Yorick.

Lioness Rampant (Song of the Lioness 4)

The conclusion to the Song of the Lioness quartet.

The Woman Who Rides Like a Man (Song of the Lioness 3)

The red-headed, purple-eyed knight spends time in the desert with the bedouins.

In the Hand of the Goddess (Song of the Lioness 2)

In this second installment of the Song of the Lioness quartet, Alanna comes into her own in a big way. The second story is more well structured than the first, but in essence it was a continuation of the first story. Alanna meets the Goddess on her way home from an errand she's running from her overlord (Prince Jonathan). The Goddess tells her she has three fears she must overcome, and the rest of the story details how she overcomes those three fears. Her first fear is of the Ordeal that she must undergo in order to become a knight. The second is her fear of love, and the third fear is her fear of Duke Roger. By the end of the story, Alanna has developed a romantic relationship with Prince Jonathan, undergone the Ordeal for Knighthood, and defeated Duke Roger. It wraps up well.

Alanna The First Adventure (Song of the Lioness 1)

What is it about the idea of fantasy education that fascinates me so much? I don't know. All I know is that there are innumerable reasons why I think educators can learn from the fictional schools created in fantasy novels. One thing I have learned overall is that we coddle our students way too much. Students appreciate a business-like manner in the classroom. They enjoy a challenge. From Ms. Tamora Pierce I have learned that theoretical education is best done in the mornings and physical activity in the afternoon. Another lesson that echoes what can be learned in Rowling's series is that a theoretical education, not balanced by practical application is evil. I will explain, but not in this post. I'll save this one for why I enjoyed this first installment in the Song of the Lioness series.

Alanna, one of twins born to a nobleman who loves his books more than his children, decides to switch places with her brother Thom. Thom has always wanted to be a sorcerer and Alanna has always wanted to be a knight. Forging their father's signature, Alanna becomes Alan and heads to palace for page training, and Thom heads to the convent to be trained in magic. Alanna experiences great success in her ardous training as a page. She makes friends with the Prince (Jonathan) and one of her better teachers (Myles). She defeats her childhood nemesis Ralon, heals Jonathan from the sweating sickness that has been sapping all the healers of their strength, and eventually helps Jonathan to defeat the Ysandir of the Black City. Along the way, Alanna makes a much more adult enemy in the form of Duke Roger who wants to replace Jonathan as heir to the thrown of Tortall.

Alanna is a very strong character, but much of her strength lies in her youth and naivte. Her belief that she can do things seems to be enough to get them done. Often confused as to why she succeeds at tasks she sets for herself, Alanna is not proud or overly confident. She just does things without thinking about the possibility of failure. She has to be told that she is likable and doesn't need to try so hard to be like everyone else. By the end of the first novel, however, she seems to have grown in to her abilities to some extent, as she admits to Jonathan that she would make the best squire for him. One of the best features of the series is Alanna's fear of her own magic. She has the Gift, as they call it in the book, and instead of using it to her advantage at every opportunity, she shuns it and has to be forced to use it by extenuating circumstances. What Alanna achieves in this novel, she achieves with her own strength and the sweat of her brow.

Jonathan, Raoul, Gary, and Myles are fun background characters full of honor and a willingness to jump in on the side of the righteous and the weak. Myles is my favorite though because he is a teacher who manages to make History come alive for his students. He is also modest, though he drinks too much for the respectable knight. Duke Roger is an understandable villain with realistic motives, but he has yet to seem really evil. Alanna hates him inexplicably, but she follows her gut and steers clear of him as often as she can. I hope that we will find him to be more evil and less sympathetic in future books.

I look forward to finishing the Song of the Lioness quartet and returning them to Christy before I leave for Greensboro next month.

Fantasy Lover

Okay, so I have to admit the Greek mythology thing was pretty cool. I am not normally a romance novel fan. A few of the conventions in the genre really get under my skin. It's not the predictability that bothers me: as I've been trying to convince my nearest and dearest for ages, there is predictability in every genre, even our coveted "literary fiction." It's just that the predictability in the fantasy genre (namely that it will adhere to the guidelines of the heroic medium) is something I look forward to; whereas, the prediction that somehow the new boyfriend will run into the old boyfriend who mistreated the woman involved and fight him is not something I look forward to. It's a personal preference, but...I digress.

The main plot of Fantasy Lover is that Julian, a Macedonian general son of another general and Aphrodite, is trapped as a love slave for all eternity by his older brother Priapus(?). Grace Alexander and her friend Selena conjure him from his book where he has been imprisoned for over a 100 years. Grace doesn't believe in magic and thinks the whole thing is a joke until Julian actually appears in her house. She is shocked to find the demigod wanting nothing other than to please her, and she rejects him entirely for a bit. A sex therapist by training, Grace insists that Julian tell her about himself. When she realizes how torturous the curse is and how little Julian cares for his lot in life, she can't help but want to help him. The book is the story of their attempt to break Julian's curse in the month he is staying with her. Obviously, they also fall in love.

What did I like about it? I liked the fact that the Greek gods and goddesses we meet were very much like the personalities you find in any other book of mythology. Vain and arrogant, they walk the earth messing with each other and the humans they encounter. It's amusing. I also liked Grace, either because of or despite her ridiculous need to help people and her inexperience in bed (yes, I did say she was a sex therapist). I liked Julian. He was stoic and insanely masculine, but caring and tempered by his imprisonment. I even liked the main plot. The idea that there could possibly be a man sex slave who didn't enjoy it was laughable and yet somehow realistic.

What could I have done without? Rodney Carmichael. One of Grace's temporary patients who stalks her without reason in the middle just to give Julian the chance to act the hero. Peter, or whatever Grace's ex's name was. He was an extraneous feature in a book that should have been about Julian's development.

Would I recommend it? If you like this sort of thing, sure, pick it up. Then get a copy of Jennifer Cruise's Faking It. Now that was a fun romance novel.

Watchmen

Uh, yeah. So NOT interested in the conventional superhero stuff or its demise. I guess the fact that I don't read superhero comics and never have really jarred my reading of Watchmen. I expected a few things I didn't get out of the reading, namely: a happy ending and a character I liked. Bummer for me.

There is nothing basic about this book, so it's unfair to start a sentence with, "The basic premise here is..." or whatever. I'll just tell you what I got out of it, and you'll have to pick it up if you want to know all the things I missed. Edward Blake, The Comedian is brutally murdered in his home. Rorschach believes there is a plot to kill off masked heroes and tells Daniel (Nite Owl), Dr. Manhattan, Laurie (The Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (Ozymandias) about it. They are fairly unconcerned. Laurie and Dr. Manhattan (Jon) split up, and Dr. Manhattan leaves earth for Mars. Apparently Dr. Manhattan was the only thing keeping the Russians from beginning World War III, and the war threatens to begin. Laurie hooks up with Daniel. Laurie has issues with her mother and Edward Blake, which she attempts to resolve during the course of the book. Rorschach gets arrested, but Daniel and Laurie free him. Together the three of them uncover an awful plot, but no one is really sure what it's all about. At the end, we discover who's behind the awful plot and what it's all about. Jon returns to earth. There is a horrible moral dilemma. A great evil resolves another great evil. Everyone is left dirty, impotent, and evil. The end.

Obviously I haven't told you who the mastermind was behind the plot. Knowing that would make the book not worth reading, and it is really worth reading. I didn't like it, but it's worth reading. I also have not scraped the surface of the complexities of the book. There is a tremendous amount of philosophy in the book, and it does much to demean the superhero medium in a sadistic, make-you-want-to-shoot-yourself kind of way.

I will concede that it is laudable. If you are looking for stories in the graphic medium that are also literary but aren't interested in intensely disliking every character you meet (with the possible exception of Rorschach), read Sandman!

Unmanned (Y: The Last Man, Vol. 1)

I accidentally got sucked into this at my boyfriend's house this weekend. I'm reading Watchmen, but he gave me Hell Boy and this Unmanned (Y: The Last Man) to entertain me as well. Now, my big priority will be getting my grades done with all this interesting stuff to read. :)

I got "some" grades done today, so I thought I would catch up a bit on my blog. When I say I accidentally got sucked into this book, I mean it. I was lying in bed when my boyfriend brought me a few new books to look at. I flipped through Hell Boy (I really like the artwork in Hell Boy) and then I flipped through Unmanned. Only it wasn't like flipping through at all. The next thing I knew I was done with the first trade. I even stopped a couple of times to talk to Wade about what I was reading.

The first page grabbed me. In the final two frames, a female police officer points out that all the men are dead just before putting her gun to her temple. And I really think that's what my reaction would be to such a catastrophe. I'm not sure I could weather the world with only female company, though I've spent my fair share of time around girls. I went to an all-girls school for two years in Hawaii, and after my husband and I split up, the great majority of my time was spent with my two girls, my mother, and my sister. I hope I would try to keep things together for them, but my gut reaction would be to get out...fast.

This series, while illustrated by a woman, is written by a man (Brian K. Vaughan), and at times this male perspective shows through. Yorick, the last man,

Persuasion

Persuasion was harder to get into than Sense and Sensibility, but definitely worth the additional effort. The first few chapters deal entirely with Sir Walter Elliot and his eldest daughter Elizabeth, and they are both horrible, annoying people. I was really quite concerned that Austen's focus on the ridiculousness of societal stratification would weed me interest right out of the reading. However, she eventually in the third or fourth chapter begins to focus on Anne, who is a delightful, if slightly confusing, character.

When I was about halfway through Persuasion, I asked a colleague in the lounge (she looked like a Jane Austen fan) if she had read it. I was right; she was a Jane Austen fan, and Persuasion was perhaps her favorite of Austen's works. I was curious about this because Pride and Prejudice has always been mine, but she pointed out some salient facts. Not the least of which is Anne is twenty-seven. I guess I should have attached myself to that earlier, as I am also twenty-seven, but it sort of slipped through my mind. Also, Anne is a middle child in a family where only the youngest is married. All this is rather unusual for the time period, but it seemed quite normal to me until Ms. Summers pointed it out. She also mentioned that this book was the most autobiographical of Austen's works, and she felt that Austen might have been writing the alternative ending to her life. This is, of course, a simultaneously pleasing and depressing thought. How sad that she lived alone, desiring male company, but how wonderful that she could create a world in which her deepest desires were manifest.

In terms of my unadulterated reaction to the book, I worried about Anne throughout. She seemed to read things into Captain Wentworth's actions that I would never have been so bold as to read there. I guess that's why it always came as a surprise to me when a guy was interested in me, I could never read the signals correctly. Still, I spent a great deal of the novel waiting for Anne's arrogance to be toppled by Wentworth's engagement to someone else. Thankfully, this was not the case, and everything ends up okay at the end. I will give Ms. Austen credit for her creation of another dashing male character. Wentworth is a rival for Darcy, to be sure. :)

Sense and Sensibility

Pride and Prejudice has long been one of my favorite books. As a senior in high school, I read Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Pride and Prejudice. I can imagine it was a torturous reading list for the average seventeen-year-old boy, but I was in heaven. All this dramatic romance tickled me and, in many ways, rekindled my faith that literature could be fun to read. I had always done well in English, but years of Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest had left me slightly unwilling to take my required reading to bed with me. The texts I read in my senior year did much to make up for the more depressing things we read.

In any case, I digress. I've always loved Pride and Prejudice, but I think I was too young at the time to be concerned with the relentless societal commentary contained within its pages. The utter ridiculousness of Elinor's and Marianne's positions in Sense and Sensibility blind-sided me. I little expected the heavy sarcasm that dripped from the pages describing the two sisters. Having watched Emma Thompson's film but not read the book, I expected to identify as much with Elinor on the page as I did on the screen. This was definitely not the case. I felt very strongly that Marianne was too emotional and Elinor too sensible to be even slightly realistic. Elinor hides every struggle from her family, while Marianne falls physically ill from her severe depression. Everyone was just a bit over the top. However, I can't help but love the language with a passion that approaches Marianne's devotion to Willoughby. I want to make it very clear that none of the these things I have mentioned is a criticism of Austen, only of myself. I found the book delightful, and though I don't think I can approach it with the same naivete that I approached Pride and Prejudice the first time, it was still an engrossing and enlightening read.

The only thing I missed about this story was an engaging male lead. None of the men approach Mr. Darcy in all his dashing glory. Willoughby is obviously the counterpoint to Wickham and was even slightly more sinister, but neither Edward Ferrars nor Colonel Brandon seemed to be the combination of fabulous qualities that Darcy was. While Marianne ends up very well off, Elinor is basically living as a servant on her sister's grounds. I honestly can't remember what happens to Jane by the end of Pride and Prejudice, but I'm sure that she doesn't end up married to Darcy's employee. Still, the girls are both happy, as is their mother. It was a pleasant ending, beautifully written. I heartily wish this was the case more often with our "literary fiction."

J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography

An April post! I'm so excited! I was getting so worried! Now I just need to clean up the mess I left behind last month and then I can write all about what I learned about Ronald Tolkien! :)

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Okay, so maybe I can't clean up March as efficiently as I thought I could, so I better write about what's fresh in my mind while it is. I haven't finished a biography since I was in grade school, and I was under the impression that I found the genre rather dry over all. I have a biography of George Washington on CD in my car, but I just couldn't get through it. The long drives to North Carolina and fro necessitate books that catch my interest entirely or else the voices of the actors just lull me into a generally sleepy state. So, I listen to Harry Potter usually. I LOVE Harry Potter, but I digress. I didn't find Tolkien's biography boring at all, and it might be because it's not godawful long. Humphrey Carpenter kept it together well, only giving us the basic sense rather than the full picture of each day, month, or year. At only 260 pages, it was really quite manageable. I even felt myself completely pulled into the latter sections, feeling deep anxiety over his publication woes and his concerns over his ability to finish his great work The Silmarillion.

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The deal with Tolkien is that, as a man, he reminds me very much of men that I respect but could never be. He reminds me of my grandfather and especially of one of my professors at Appalachian: one Captain McGowan. Tolkien was born in South Africa (a fact I knew not at all when I wrote my thesis about LOTR last year), and he was orphaned by age thirteen. His father (Arthur Reuel Tolkien) died in South Africa while his mother (Mabel Suffield) and the two brothers (Ronald and Hilary) were visiting England. Tolkien was five. The small family stayed with his mother's family until she decided to get lodgings of her own. She also made the decision to severely displease her Anglican family by converting to the Catholic faith. A widow, with not much income, she risked a great deal by following her heart and allowing her family to disown her. Rather than feel resentful of the position of she had put him and his brother in, Tolkien always idolized her for this choice. Tolkien's devotion to Catholicism was part religious fervor but also a large part respect for his dead mother. She died only a few years later, but Tolkien's ties to the Catholic Church were strong by this time.

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A priest, Father Francis, took responsibility for their guardianship so that the Suffield's would not keep the children from going to mass. He moved them around to various lodgings, but while in one of them Tolkien met Edith Bratt, a woman three years his senior who was also orphaned and living in an other's home. They were very close, and at the young age of nineteen, Tolkien had already decided he was going to marry this woman. Father Francis, when he heard about the blossoming romance, moved Tolkien and forbade him from seeing Edith until he turned twenty-one. Tolkien obeyed, but he kept his love for her alive in journals for three years - the same first three years he was at Oxford. When the separation was concluded, he found her and proposed. Edith, though engaged to someone else, accepted. Unfortunately Edith was Anglican too, and Tolkien insisted that she convert even though she too would be without support until their marriage. Honestly, I thought this was rather cruel of him. She did it. They were married during the war, where Tolkien contracted trench fever. He didn't serve for long, but he served as an officer and a signal specialist, losing several of his closest friends in the process.

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I'm being too feminine here though. Many other things happened in Tolkien's life as well. He became an expert in Philology. He invented a number of languages from remaining fragments in Finnish, Welsh, and others. He was an expert in Anglo Saxon, Middle English, and Icelandic. He formed a few societies with male friends. His homo social relationships were extremely important to him, and as the war took many of his friends from his first society, the second group of men were increasingly important in his life. He was dear friends with C.S. Lewis (Jack) and Charles Williams, but their relationships were not without conflict. While he was a successful professor and often an administrator of various sorts at Oxford, his life's work was in creating a mythology for England, which was to remain unfinished at his death (The Silmarillion).

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He wrote stories for his children as a lark, and The Hobbit was penned in the same vein. It was accidental success for Tolkien. He spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what the sequel would be at the demands of his publishers. Thus The Lord of the Rings was born. He started out trying to write another hobbit story but ended up with some mix of his original children's tale (The Hobbit) and his great mythology. It took him sixteen years to write, and the resulting fame never settled with him well. He and Edith had four children, only one of whom followed in Tolkien's footsteps. Christopher Tolkien, who many Tolkien fans know of as he has control of the rights for all his work, entered Oxford as his father was getting ready to retire. One of his other sons was a priest; the other a teacher. His daughter studied as well but not with the enthusiasm of Christopher. His legacy was left in Christopher's hands.

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While I deeply appreciated the knowledge that Tolkien's perfectionism got in the way of his work and his works to a long time to gestate (both facts which bring me hope at the ripe age of twenty-seven that I may still create something of lasting value), the real object lesson in this biography was Tolkien's wife Edith. I almost cried when I read the lines:

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"'What were the women doing meanwhile? How should I know? I am a man and never spied on the mysteries of the Bona Dea.' So writes C.S. Lewis in The Four Loves while speculating on the history of male friendship. This is the inevitable corollary of a life that centres on the company of men, and on groups such as the Inklings: women got left out of it." (156)

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As a woman, a mother, and an intellectual, the thought that doors are closed in these societies simply because I am such makes it difficult to breath and my heart hurt. I have to continually remind myself that this is a different time, and I have support that these other women didn't have. But the real problem for Edith was that she didn't finish her education. She knew little of her husband's work, and though she was the inspiration for one of his more romantic poems, she couldn't discuss the minutia of philology with him, nor could she help him prepare his lectures or discuss anything other than family matters with him. God I hope this never happens to me. Of course, I always want to be studying my own work, creating my own lectures, engaging others in discussion myself, but I always want to be able to keep up with those around me at the very least. I don't want to be left out, sitting in the play room with the children while the men discuss the hottest topics of the night. The thought is downright painful.

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Not that I don't want to spend time with my children too. Maybe I'll get lucky, and my girls will be intellectuals too. :) That would be awesome!

Inkdeath

What to say about Inkdeath? It's been a month since I read it, and though I should have written on it immediately, I, of course, did not. I still think my earlier criticisms of the books stand. She has too many characters. I feel like she could have spent a lifetime developing the characters in this book into a longer series or even multiple series. She has some wonderful ideas, but they are way too condensed.

On the Road

A year and a month ago I took off for Savannah, Georgia with two really fabulous people. I didn't really want to go. I didn't have my same sense of adventure at the time that I have now. I had been plotting all week about how to get out of it. I would be leaving my two children with my mom and my sister for three nights and four days. I was fairly recently separated, and I just wasn't in the mood for fun. But for all that, I think I shall never have a similar experience again. I was so shocked to have such an amazing time. Every moment there was new in a way that can probably never be repeated. And 100% honestly I did nothing illegal or even immoral (in my twisted sense of morality anyway) while I was there. No drugs (just a lot of alcohol) and no sex.

In any case, that trip birthed what we now call "the burning roman candle club." It was named a few weeks later by one of our number for the lines in Jack Kerouac's On the Road:

"the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!'" (Kerouac 5-6).

Of course we came back from Savannah and dived right back into our normal (or not so normal) lives as graduate students at ASU. I had comprehensive exams to study for and a thesis to write. Kevin was bumming around Boone, much the same way he is now; although, I hear he's quit drinking, and Elitza was busy teaching and studying much the same as I was. My life would never be quite the same, and that was mostly because I decided I deserved a little fun before I got old. But I promised myself I would eventually read the book from which these lines came. And so I have, just tonight.

Amusingly enough, my friend Kamy told me that these lines are immensely popular among the ladies. "They ALL have them on their facebook pages," he tells me. It really doesn't surprise me. The only thing that's unique about any of us is that we are all unique, I suppose. Except when you're reading a book like this where all the characters are both unique and amoral. I say that with the highest sense of regard for Sal Paradise and Dean Moriarty.

There isn't much of a plotline in this book, but more ground is covered than in say, Catcher in the Rye. Still, basically Sal hears about a guy named Dean. They meet up when Dean comes to New York with Mary Lou, his first wife. They become good friends and the rest of the novel is the story of Sal and Dean travelling around together and some separately. They go from New York to Denver to San Francisco, back to New York and even to Mexico. Dean is a completely free spirit, and it's hard not to like him, even though by the end of the book he is a virtual pariah in his social group because he leaves impregnated women behind everywhere he goes. He seems to care for people deeply but is too lost in his own little world to take on any responsibility at all. He takes three wives in the book, and he ends up with the second one. He becomes unreasonably angry with the first because she ends up sleeping with a number of other men. I can't imagine why that bothers him, but I guess he feels like these women are really his property once he has them.

Sal, who is a much easier character to get along with, supports Dean until the end, even after being left in Mexico extremely sick. Sal eventually "settles down" in New York, with what he considers a perfect woman for him.

I have seriously mixed reactions to this book. Part of me is soooo jealous that I wasn't born a man or at least hadn't kept myself unburdened long enough to behave like these men did for a while. But, another part of me feels like there is a (yuck) moral in there somewhere about burning the candle at both ends. Their life isn't sustainable. And Dean's biggest problem is that he keeps it up too long. I can totally see why this would be a guy's favorite book though. There is a great freedom in the way the guys behave, and somehow I feel like it should be some people's right. I don't judge Dean as harshly as say Galatea does, but I still feel like his woes were the reasonable consequence for his actions. He lived life hard, which would have been fine, if he could have left women out of it. But once you swear undying love, take marriage vows, and impregnate someone, you're kinda responsible for them. It's a sad truth, and the acceptance of the sad truth is the tragedy of Dean's life. Sal, on the other hand, either does not know who he impregnated along the path or did not actually impregnate anyone, so he escapes the majority of the censure that is heaped upon Dean.

Somehow, though, the whole book feels like an elegy for the way Dean lived his life, as if in some alternate universe it really should have been okay with everyone. And even though Sal settles down in the end, it doesn't feel like some great giving in to societal expectation but rather a rest after a hell of a roller coaster ride. I enjoyed reading this book though. There was relatively no conflict through most of it, but it was really an interesting read, especially for someone trying to understand the male mind.

The Catcher in the Rye

The Catcher in the Rye is one of those books that sits on your shelf and whenever you told people, "I've never read it," they looked at you with this shocked look, and ask, "Are you really an English major?" So, I caught up with Salinger, and I read The Catcher in the Rye. It was really quite interesting.

When I brought the list of the 100 Best Novels from the Modern Library down to our work room, several of the teachers made the comment that they love J.D. Salinger, but hate Holden Caulfield. They called him "whiny" and "irritating." I do hate ever so much to disagree with my colleagues (they really are excellent people), but I really kinda liked Holden. I felt terribly sorry for him, but I liked him alright. I have to admit that he was overprivileged and spoiled, but he seemed to genuinely dislike cruelty in all its manifestations, and I do too!

My boyfriend is writing his master's thesis on this really depressing film maker and how his films reflect 20th and 21st century masculinity, and I couldn't help but think of all the things he's writing about when I was reading this book. I keep arguing that while the original ideas of what makes a man masculine are really abhorrent and there have been a lot of negative effects on the concept of masculinity because of femininism, there are some genuine positive aspects of the modern man. Holden struggles against a lot of the societal expectations of manhood. The thought of being a "phony" drives him mad, and he would much rather be poor than have to pretend to be something that he's not. Unfortunately, his disgust with the world extends to his academic diligence, and he has failed out of numerous schools in the last few years. He's sixteen, but he's not on his way to graduate any time soon.

The basic plot is ridiculously simple. Holden's been kicked out of Pencey and is to return home when winter break starts on Wednesday. He begins his tale on Saturday night, when he goes to see his professor, fights with his roomates, and leaves the school early on a train. He goes to New York, and he stays in a hotel; he calls up a girl named Sally and takes her to a show. He gets too drunk Sunday night and returns to his old English teacher's house, but not before he visits his sister Phoebe at his parents' place. On Monday, he decides he's going to run away from home, tries to say goodbye to his sister, and when she insists on accompanying him, he changes his mind and goes home. There is no climax or heroic journey: just Holden telling us about a couple of days last winter. But he really does tell us a lot.

One of the reasons I wanted to read this book is because when I worked in the UWC (University Writing Center) last year, one of my clients had written a paper on it for an English course. I'll never forget how she really made me like Holden, even before I had read about him. She kept talking about how he was with the nuns and his thoughts about Jane Gallagher. He really was a sensitive and caring guy, and if any of that was valued by his culture, he might have been alright.

Holden is exactly the kind of guy I wish I could have made friends with when I was younger. He's very intelligent and probably just needs someone fairly intelligent to fawn over him. I was exactly that kind of girl. I always thought I could change somebody's life by making them see their own worth. Anyway, it never worked, but I really do feel bad for Holden.

Inkspell

I can't say that I am entirely enthralled with Ms. Funke's characters here. Inkspell did take place in another world, which is more my kind of thing than Inkheart, but there was still something missing from its pages. I think it might have too many characters. I know that's a weird criticism, but hear me out.

I've read several books where the narrator changes throughout the work. It was the case with parts of Twilight, and it happens in some really great works like The Member of the Wedding. I like getting a fresh perspective on things from a new character's point of view, but in the Inkheart Trilogy, the story is told in the third person, and the focus shifts from one character to another or one group of characters to another without any rhyme or reason except that we need to know what's going on with other people. It's a sort of spatial organization that I'm not all that into. I also think it's a kind of sloppy narrative technique because there are other ways of finding out what other characters have been up to. Story time, flashbacks, etc. So, I still felt a little lost by the end of this book. I felt like I still didn't know any of the characters as well as I would like to, and thereby hadn't really gotten close enough to anyone to want to run out and buy the third book.

Plot wise, we're dealing with similar issues. Yes, Capricorn is dead, but Meggie decides she wants to read herself into what she has christened the "Inkworld" that her mother has told her so much about. As Dustfinger has already been read back home, Farid brings Meggie the piece of paper that took Dustfinger home, and she reads both herself and Farid into the book. We haven't heard the last from Basta or Mortola (obviously) and these two almost interesting villans show back up to seek revenge on Mo and Resa. They are all read back into the book. So, the major portion of the action takes place in "Inkworld," but it's basically the same deal. Basta and Mortola are after Meggie, Mo, and Theresa (Resa). Dustfinger is trying not to die because he knows the original story dictated his death, and Farid is trying to stay as close to Dustfinger as possible. In the "Inkworld" things have gone awry since Capricorn was read out of the book. The Laughing Prince becomes The Prince of Sighs after his son's death, and the Adderhead is preparing to take over the land. The geography of "Inkworld" doesn't seem too vast, so this is a lot of royalty and a lot of government for such a small place. In any case, Fenoglio (read into the story in Inkheart) is trying to fix things by writing and getting Meggie to read aloud. It all gets jumbled and messy, obviously.

What is great about this book? Dustfinger. In the first book, he was simply a quasi-villain. He had sympathy for the heroes, and he had a good motivation for working with the bad guys, but he was a traitor and rather annoying with his constant drive toward his own world. In this book, he is attractive, daring, loving, inventive, brave...you know, all those great hero traits. He's still slightly Byronic--he hasn't been a good father or husband, he loves fire more than people, but he really does show an amazing capacity for self sacrifice. And the self sacrifice culminates in the final scenes. Farid is stabbed in the back by Basta (this did not upset me, but I would be admitting some rather personal prejudices here to explain), and Dustfinger is crushed. Even though he loves his wife, Roxanne (the most beautiful woman in the land), he gives himself to the "white women" (harbingers of death) in order to restore Farid's life. Farid's a whiny baby. Ugh.

So, as if the whole slightly flat characters, spatial organization, and abundance of government didn't put me off enough, she's now killed off one of the most interesting of the flat characters. Needless to say, I didn't run out to by Inkdeath. I'm reading The Catcher in the Rye now, and I'll pick up Inkdeath when I have more money.

Inkheart

I was a junior in college when my mother called me and told me she wanted me to watch the first Harry Potter film with her over Thanksgiving break. I laughed and told her that I could not as I had not read the book. "English majors' rule," I said. The next day I found myself begrudgingly buying the book in a local shop. The rest, as they say, is history. I fell in love with Harry Potter and went so far as to write almost forty pages on the series in my master's thesis. The "English majors' rule" has become somewhat of a joke. I know a lot of English majors who appreciate film as much as books, and almost all of them realize that it's a completely separate medium that needs to be viewed differently than the printed word. Still, when my mother asked me recently to see Inkheart with her, I made a mental note to buy the book. I bought it on Thursday evening, and I finished it just now.

It's no Harry Potter, but it was entertaining. The basic premise (as I'm sure we all know by now from movie trailers) is that Mo can read characters out of books. Nine years before the story takes place, he read Capricorn and Basta out of Inkheart, a fantasy novel by a man named Fenoglio. Capricorn and Basta have set up their evil villian camp in our world and have been trying to catch Mo to have him read more villians out of the book. They like money and inspiring fear in the people around them, especially fear that results in their gain. However, the book felt like cops and robbers while I was reading it. When a story is 534 pages long, I should not be able to summarize ALL the major action in two basic compound sentences, but I can. Capricorn and his men capture Mo, Meggie, Dustfinger, and Elinor, but Dustfinger helps them all escape. Capricorn and his men recapture Meggie and Fenoglio (the author), and they make Meggie read a monster out of a book. It dragged a little at times. The second time we were caught by Capricorn's men, I couldn't help but wonder what we needed the previous capture for...plotwise that is.

I am also complaining because I like my fantasy to take me to another world, and this one did not. Several supernatural things happened, but they all happened here in our own world. Speaking of setting, the setting was weird. The book apparently takes place in Italy, but there is no nod to the language at all. It seems as if everyone in Italy is just running around speaking English. I found it a little disconcerting. I thought it was otherwise well written, and I like the characters (Mo and Meggie, especially, but Elinor also), so I have picked up Inkspell in our school library, and it seems as though we might get another world after all, from the maps at the opening at least.

I think my mom will enjoy the movie though, if that counts for anything! :)

Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12

Touch Base Night at West Po High School is the equivalent of parent conferences speed-dating style. Parents stand in a line in front of their students' teachers and wait their turn for a five minute opportunity to discuss grades, behavior, and attendance. It's a testament to how ridiculous our society has become that many of the parents use the five minutes to haggle with the teachers over a few points here or a few points there. I have so few parents show up for Touch Base that I normally get to read or grade papers during the two hour conference marathon. I decided last night to use the 110 minutes to catch up on my professional development, so I finished reading Deeper Reading: Comprehending Challenging Texts, 4-12. This book is by Kelly Gallagher, an English Teacher celebrity! I saw him speak earlier this year, and it was truly humorous how much actual fawning took place around him.

That being said, the man does do everything. After reading his book, I know that he

• Teaches high school English full time
• Teaches at a primarily Latino school
• Runs a faculty book club
• coaches softball for this girls
• reads voraciously on a variety of topics
• writes books - at least three that i know of
• gives presentations and workshops around the country

He is also apparently still successfully married, and this is a feat in and of itself. I can see why people admire him so much. He does seem like a totally regular guy though, and while I thought most of his ideas were stellar, I also found myself disagreeing with him from time to time (and I think that's healthy).

His book has 10 chapters in it, and it is not really a sequel to Reading Reasons, but it is definitely about teaching "challenging texts" as opposed to teaching people how to read. This is an important distinction. Almost all high school teachers are trained to help students access texts well above their grade level, but almost NONE of them are trained to help students learn to read. The course that I teach now is supposed to increase reading level, and I've found that I have no idea how to do that...hence reading this book. I plan to read others as well. If I choose to stay in this line of work, I will also probably want to take a few classes as well.

The first chapter, "Why Reading Is Like Baseball," is Gallagher's metaphor for deeper reading. He explains how many people know the basic rules of baseball, but they do not read the game on a sophisticated level. Since I am not a sports fan, I understood this analogy perfectly. Every time I have ever tried to talk sports with anyone who knew the sport, I have come up woefully lacking in knowledge. The second chapter outlines his method for teaching deeper reading, which includes focusing the reader, helping with effective first-draft reading, deepening comprehension through second-draft reading, making time for collaboration with peers, using metaphor to deepen comprehension, and leading students to meaningful reflection. Each of the next six chapters takes one of those topics and goes into it more deeply. In the interest of space and time, I'm just going to share some of the ideas that were most enlightening to me.

The Indigo King

Incidentally, I also finally finished The Indigo King last night. I started reading this book last month, and put it down when I started The Sandman series. I really, really enjoyed being drawn into a fantasy plot again, and though the plot was often complicated, it was an engrossing read compared with the forced nonfiction I've been battling.

In this book, Jack (C.S. Lewis) and John (J.R.R. Tolkien) meet with their friend Hugo Dyson to investigate a mysterious book delivered to them as Caretakers of the Imaginarium Geographica. The book is dated from the 6th century, but it has modern English writing on it in Dyson's hand. Little of this novel actually takes place in the Archipelago, instead the majority of the action takes place in Albion, the catastrophic "would be" England had Mordred been king rather than Arthur. A poorly educated man named Chaz also replaces Charles as the third Caretaker for the bulk of the novel.

The central question the plot seeks to answer is what is Mordred's (who is also the Winter King - see Here, There Be Dragons) true name. Like Paolini's Inheritance Cycle and other fantasy novels of some note, names are extremely powerful and important. They have the power to bind one to the servitude of another. Aided by the absent Jules Verne, the three men (and two badgers) go through time via a special projector with slides into the past. In the first slide, their mission is complicated considerably by the knowledge that Mordred is one of a pair of twins. They also find out that his other twin is the Cartographer of Lost places. Misguided by this knowledge, their journeys through four more slides encompass their efforts to turn the mapmaker against his brother.

As with the other stories, literary references abound. Mordred and his twin (Merlin) are the sons of Odysseus and Calypso, and their line intertwines with that of Jesus (and his mythical -- perhaps it's all mythical -- children). At one point, Chaz mispronounces the Argo as Aragorn, and anyone who is familiar with The Lord of the Rings will see what Owen is playing with there. A huge portion of the complicated plot is so because of the intricacies of time travel. Owen seems to prefer to blend science fiction with fantasy rather than delineate between the two.

I enjoyed this book, but I have discoverd that it is not a trilogy. Owen can continue to write these books indefinitely (although I imagine he is not a young man). I'm not sure that I will be looking for his next release, but if I find it accidentally in my future book buying ventures, I'll pick it up again.

Cracking the GRE Literature Subject Test

To be fair, I should mention (even though there's a picture) that this book is by The Princeton Review people. :)

I ordered this book yesterday after registering earlier in the week for the April 4th test. I read the entirety of the book, but I did not take the practice exam yet, as reading the book took most of the day (I have a lot of distractions at my place). It was very interesting. I've never used a book to help me study for a test before, and this one really confirmed my suspicions that these books put a lot of emphasis on test taking strategies rather than learning content. However, when one is faced with the whole of Western literature from Beowulf on...

The book is divided into five parts. I read the first three today. The fourth is the practice test, and the fifth is the answer key with explanations. I will take those tomorrow (when I'm fresh--haha), and I'll edit the blog if my opinions change drastically.

I learned in the first part "The Big Picture" that the GRE Literature in English Subject Test is actually designed for students just finishing their undergraduate degree in English. This should be a comforting fact for me, given the fact that I have just finished my Masters degree, but I can't help but feel that there were entire periods of English Literature that I avoided all together. And this is true, but I didn't realize which ones until the third part, so I'll save it. Over all, the test has three types of question (all multiple choice--good news for me as I am not a good writer on tests---maybe I'm never a good writer, but whatever). Only a very few questions are not attached to a passage and are merely identification. There is some grammar on the test, but it's minimal and easy. The three types of questions are standard form, variations on standard form, and super process of elimination questions. It's nice to think of the format that way, as it demystifies the process for people like me who tend to make things harder than they really are.

The second part "Cracking the System" explains how the test is scored. Only 78% of the questions need to be answered correctly to score in the 90th percentile, for example. It also explains their "two pass"system, which involves going through the test at least twice. This second section also emphasizes the limitations the test makers have for creating a test that should conceivably cover what most undergraduates should have learned. Obviously impossible. Anyone who has worked in an English department knows that politics and factions abound, and that they have their effects on reading lists.

The third part contained the actual reading lists. They have an A list, a B list, and a C list. Thankfully I was at least mostly familiar with all the works on all the lists; however, this is where I found my gaps immediately. I know almost nothing about Victorian Literature. Everything after Milton and prior to the Romantics is a big gap for me. It's a mess. I have a lot of surface level reading to do before I go to Winston for the test in six weeks.

I found the summaries of the books I had read to be entertaining. Fun refreshers is what I will call them. I also found the summaries of books I had not read to be very enlightening: I have been reading Pope wrong for YEARS. Haha. Anyway, I will definitely edit to explain how helpful the book was after I take the test and receive my scores. Scores that I hopefully will not need, but alas, that's a blog for another day....

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I took the practice test, and (not that I'm likely to forget this humiliating score) I thought I would post before I forget. I got 83 out of 230 questions wrong! My raw score was 126.25, and my scale score was a 530 (YIKES!). This puts me in the 45th percentile. So, I am dejected, obviously. I am going to try to study for the next six weeks, and this blog will probably turn into a GRE Subject Test review :(. However, if I am not doing considerably better by the end of it, I'll call in sick on test day and choose a new career :).

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Just an update: I did not do much other studying for this test, and I scored in the 81st percentile. :)

The Sandman: Endless Nights (11)

I also finished Endless Nights last night. Two graphic novels in one day! I probably need to get a life, or figure how to get paid to read. :)

Endless Nights is a collection of seven short stories with one short story for each of the Endless. I keep using the horror label for these books, but they've gotten less horrific progressively through the series. However, this book needs another label, and I'm not sure I know what it is. It's a very sexual book. I would normally say "graphic" but since they are graphic novels, that term doesn't seem to apply. Anyway, it's adult fiction.

Death is the focus of the first story, "Death and Venice." It's about a young American who meets Death on an island outside of Venice as a child. When he returns to Venice, he meets her again and travels with her to destroy an enclave of celebrating Venetians who have locked out time for over two hundred years. The man ponders the idea that he has been in love with Death since he first saw her as a child, which seems to be a common theme with Death. She's the cutie that every guy falls in love with. Perhaps if that happened more to Desire, she wouldn't be so bitter. I really liked this story. It was mostly cute, and it seemed like a reasonably favorable depiction of the soldier, despite the fact that he is shown sneaking up on and killing an unarmed man at the end. Life is complicated, and I don't think Gaiman shies away from that fact at all.

The second story, "What I've tasted of Desire," is about a young woman who tames the village playboy. However unrealistic it seems, she manages to fall in love with him after a brief encounter, refuse him for long enough that he wants her, and then marry him. It's pretty impressive. Unfortunately, she does not keep him for long. He leaves on tribe business, and the enemies bring back his head and place it on her table. She is really an impressive figure: she ignores the head and manages to serve the enemies for long enough to wait for her village's men to get back and kill them. I will say that I really think Desire's story is a lot cooler than she is. She is really quite mean, and while I know that the Buddha said that desire was the enemy of nirvana, I just don't think she would be that off putting. Just a theory.

"The Heart of a Star" is the third story, and the story of Dream's first love. In it we see Desire's first attempt to hurt her brother for fun, in which she succeeds amazingly well. Dream is naive and adorable, but he doesn't even come close to Delight. Delight is really cute in this piece. The woman, Killalla of the Glow, is really quite charming until you see how fickle she is. She falls in love with her own sun just moments after she finds out that Dream is in love with her. I felt really, really bad for Dream. I think that can only happen so many times before you swear off for good. It seems Dream's immortality would have been spent much more pleasantly if he had come to my conclusion rather than to keep trying.

"Fifteen Portraits of Despair" was not a story. I have a very obnoxiously structuralist definition of story, and it includes a beginning, a middle, and an end. It may have been poetry. Maybe. I really liked portrait #13 though. It was a test. I think I will take it someday and post it here. It would be interesting to see how I respond to despair.

The fifth story featured Delirium and was as unlike the adorable Delirium that we met as Desire's story was unlike her nasty personality. I'm not sure I said that well, but I know what I mean. In this story, a group of "crazy" people are recruited to help Barnabas and Dream reclaim Delirium who has gone inside herself. Matthew helps too. At least one of the "crazy" girls finds sanity in her efforts. I liked the happy ending, and I liked that the new Dream (Daniel) was helping out with his siblings willingly. Barnabas is a cool dog. I'd like a dog like that, but you have to train it and everything. I just don't know about that.

"On the Peninsula" was a story about an archeolgoical dig of the future. Apparently, Delirium did something that made time do something weird. Destruction was told to look after her. I'm not sure if this story took place after Morpheus's death or before, but I guess it's too much to hope that Destruction returns to his family again, even if he did like the new Dream. I will say that there were some weird wordless panels on page 131 that I wouldn't mind having explained to me.

"Endless Nights" is also NOT a story about Destiny. It's perhaps an illustrated expository essay. I did not feel that it was in any way a satisfactory conclusion. I would have prefered Destiny's "story" came first.

I really enjoyed Endless Nights more than I enjoyed the last three books, I think. It has a simplicity of structure that was found in the earlier books but got slightly lost as the plot thickened. Also, this book could be read at any time. It's not necessary to read Dream's saga first.

The Sandman: The Wake (10)

I finished The Wake just now. Just this second. I have spoken to no one about its contents. This is an instant reaction, a far cry from the last few posts. I wonder what I thought it would be. No, I don't. I know that I thought I would be introduced to the new Dream, but I was not. He is a minor character in these stories. In many ways it seems these are the stories that didn't fit anywhere else. Gaiman writes on the page after the last of the story that he is good at goodbyes. I am not. I am a little confused. I think there is some sort of memory thing I am supposed to be cherishing with the last tale, but all I can think is: he's dead, let him be.
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The story begins with the actual wake for the Dream who has just died: Morpheus. I truly enjoyed Matthew's journey from denial into acceptance. I really identify with Matthew. The new Dream (Daniel) who we meet briefly is actually quite charming. He is very sympathetic, and his sense of duty seems mingled with doing what is right by others. This is a change from the last Dream who did what was his duty, but did not always seem to consider the well-being of the others around him. Only five of the Endless show up for the wake and funeral. Destruction visits Daniel, but he does not visit his siblings. I like him less for that. Mostly I am disappointed that we don't hear what Death says, only that "her words make sense of everything. She gives you peace. She gives you meaning." I want peace and meaning! I feel a little cheated by that. This story/episode/whatever breaks the fourth wall and makes use of the second person. It's rarely done in modern lit, and it's always disconcerting to me. We were all there, supposedly, but I have no memory of it. It's a strange blending of realities.

After the wake and funeral have concluded, we catch up with our friend Hob Gadling. He has found new love and still does not desire death, even though he knows Morhpeus is dead. He is an interesting character. I like him. I like the fact that when he falls asleep he dreams that Dream and Destruction walk with him on a beach. When his girlfriend asks him how the story ends, he says, "Well, there's only one way to end a story, really." I love the contrasting worldviews here. Amidst this great tragedy, someone random tells us the only way to end a story is happily. It's my kind of worldview for sure.

Gadling's story is followed by a weird Chinese one that seems to have happened in the past, but I think Daniel is the Dream rather than Morpheus. You can't really tell from the artwork, but at one point it says, "Flames flicker in the whiteness of his robe," and that sounds like Daniel to me rather than Morpheus. Besides, Daniel gives the man an open invitation, which does not seem like something Morpheus would do. Once rejected, Morpheus seems to be incapable of renewing the offer. Daniel is much more human, as one of the introductions pointed out (not this one because I haven't read it). I think though, that the ability to retain one's humanity once you become a god might diminish with age. Death is very cool, but not everyone can have her upbeat personality. Definitely most people would be jaded by immortality. I think even my boyfriend, but who knows.

The final story returns to Shakespeare, and it is about the writing of The Tempest rather than A Midsummer Night's Dream. We meet Judith and Anne. Anne is horrible, but at one point Judith points out that she was really heartbroken when her husband left for London. She at least allows him to sleep in his house and see his daughter. It is, perhaps, more than I could have done. I can't harbor ill will towards her. Shakespeare is a little whiny in this piece, and I wonder what critics have made of that. He is very concerned with his afterlife in a way that upsets me a little. I guess one of the coolest things about Shakespeare is that we know so damned little about him. We can make him whatever we like. There is also some amazing hubris in the idea that Gaiman's Morpheus inspires Shakespeare. Shakespeare admits to borrowing tales and speeches. Isn't that enough?

I am keenly aware now of the fact that I have finished the series. I felt like I had finished it with Worlds' End. By the time, I got to The Kindly Ones, I had already accepted Dream's death. Now, I feel like I have mourned him and am ready for a new distraction/fascination. As far as book exchanges go though, this one was way more my thing than Stephen King's Dark Tower series, although I enjoyed that too in my own way. I find more and more that reading is a way for me to get through hard times. I know I am probably escaping rather than dealing, but I don't see a need to fight every battle. Lonliness and disappointment need not be thought about so much; there isn't really much one can do about them anyway. Lesson planning is necessary, however, and I must think on that now. :) Blessed with work and blessed with children. That I am.

I forgot to mention that in this book we figure out who Dream has been brooding over! It's Thessaly/Larissa the witch!!! I hate to sound gossipy (kind of), but I just can't believe she's his type. How could he ever be fooled into thinking she had a heart? Okay, I'm done now.

The Sandman: The Kindly Ones (9)

Yes, yes. I'm behind. I finished The Kindly Ones this evening, and I still need to write about the last three books. Yikes! Maybe Sunday afternoon I'll have time to catch up.

So, it's Sunday afternoon, and I'm catching up. :) The Kindly Ones was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, and I truly believe it will someday be regarded as such by people much more important than myself. Our basic plot: Dream has killed his son, Orpheus, and the Kindly Ones (the Furies) are now at liberty to pursue him because they are "allowed" to avenge blood debts. Hippolyta Hall (mother to Daniel) has her son stolen, and she blames Dream, despite the fact that Dream does not steal her son initially. She is the one who awakens the furies wrath against dream, and it only spirals downward from there. We also discover in this volume that Nuala is in love with Dream, and we see the reappearance of Thessaly as Larissa. She kind of falls in love with Dream too. Dream is one of those tortured souls that attracts women apparently. I wouldn't say I'm in love with him, but I can certainly see the attraction. So Dream dies, but Death spares him being tortured further by the furies. My favorite characters were definitely Matthew (the raven), Rose Walker, and Delirium. In some ways, Dream ceases to be a character in this book, but I'm not sure I could explain why. He just reacts to things rather than actually initiating action himself.

This book was definitely less sad than it might have been without the preparation of the previous two books. Still, the end of a myth is sad no matter what, even if it's a myth we've only known briefly (just this month, in fact). I did keep hoping throughout that Dream wouldn't die. I know that's childish, but I don't think it's fair to expect my readings to be that different than the average person. I'm sad when Romeo and Juliet die too. I keep wishing that they will work it out differently no matter how many times I read the tale.

Okay, so all that being said, I want to mention artwork. This volume was very "cartoony." I'm sure there's a technical word for this style of artwork, but I don't know what it is. The best way I know to describe is that the curves are more emphasized than the lines. It makes everyone seem less sinister and more innocent. There's nothing really hideous here: even the scene where "A makeshift barge made of dead flesh is slowly poled down a river of cold semen" becomes more about the words than the image this way. I normally really like cartoons, and I like that style of artwork. But, it definitely does not do the horror genre as well as some others. For the first time since reading this series (a pitfall of having several different artists), I felt like I was reading an illustrated story rather than a graphic novel. However, this is also the first book I've read in which I've found panels that I would blow up and hang in my bedroom...actually, I might just do that. It could be my next art project :).

I'm thinking about writing a longer blog on the series as a whole. I want to discuss this issue of dying mythologies at length, and it doesn't really fit with the purpose of these individual "reviews," if that's even what they can be called. We'll have to see if I make time to do it.

The Sandman: Worlds' End (8)

So much for quitting Sandman for a while. I was in a weird mood last night, so I picked up World's End, and I finished it today after I exported my grades. I have a bad feeling about this one, and I want to remind myself to talk about the artwork again. But, quite obviously, I still need to finish my blog on Brief Lives, so one thing at a time, eh?

Oh the perils of blogging out of order once the plot thickens! My first thought about this book is that it is out of order! Haha, what I mean to say is that the events in this book take place after the events in the next book. One of the introductions mentions that Gaiman is meticulous about time, but I really beg to differ. Perhaps he knows when all the events take place, but it would take a thesis to figure out the timeline for The Sandman.

Worlds' End is another collection of stories. I guess it's a function of the medium. They were produced monthly, and every once in a while, it must be nice to buy your comic once a month and have the story actually be self-contained. Dream is in most of the stories, but not all. Still the book is about him, and that becomes clear at the end of The Kindly Ones. No matter. The basic plotline is that a large group of travelers are stuck in an inn at the Worlds' End (a place where all the worlds end) because there is a reality storm. We don't know why there is a reality storm, but if we read Brief Lives (and we did), we can surmise that the reality storm might have something to do with Dream having killed Orpheus. The main characters are: Charlene Mooney, Brant Tucker, Klaproth, Cluracain, Jim (only he's really a girl named Peggy), and Petrefax. I say these are the main characters because we learn their names, but really they are only fleeting characters in the greater drama. In any case, much like The Canterbury Tales, each traveler must tell a tale to pass the time at the inn. Actually I think this makes it more like The Decameron.

Mister Gaheris tells a tale of a dreaming city and the man who roamed its streets. Cluracain tells a story of envoy to Aurelian, a city where the position of Lord Carnal and Psychopomp have been usurped by one individual. Cluracain's story is interesting because the climactic moment occurs when he decides to tell the truth about something. He says of his species, "Sometimes we will say true things. And these things we say are neither glamour nor magic, neither prediction nor curse: But sometimes what we say is true." Again, we come back to that recurring theme in Sandman about truth being something other than what has really happened. It's different from reality. Anyway, Jim tells a story titled "Hob's Leviathan," which features our friend Hob Gadling. This story was kind of interesting because of the possibilities for gender analysis. Hob tells Peggy that he is "Old enough to hae learned to keep my mouth shut about seeing a bloody great snake in the middle of the ocean," and somehow this is evidence that Peggy can trust him with her secret as well. The idea of the great submerged snake and the great submerged secret have some possibilities. The next story is told by an unknown slightly Asian looking man, and it is about Prez Rickard, the boy President. There was something very cool about the folding of mythologies, but other than that the story was a little weird. I might have to give it some more thought. The final story was told by Petrefax, and it was about Litharge, the Necropolis. There were a few tales imbedded within this one, and I enjoyed it. There is an interesting foreshadowing/warning about having the tale about the Necropolis in this book. The citizens of the Necropolis are supposed to respect the dead, respect the passing of life, and it is certainly placed so that we heed their beliefs.

The ending of the book is the part most worth writing home about, however, at least in terms of the larger Sandman plot. At the end of the book you see a funeral procession where the Endless are pallbearers. I admit to having read the wikipedia page on The Sandman early in the series, so I had a pretty good guess who was in the casket. I won't say more about it now, but it will come up again in The Kindly Ones.