Gabe Habash, of Publishers Weekly, has an interesting article this week about seven authors who almost died. I think the one who strikes me the most is Feodor Dostoevsky (though I’m awfully glad all the others survived too). I studied Russian literature in university (I majored in Russian for a few years), and I just can’t imagine the world without The Brothers Karamazov. The thought is kind of boggling.
Read the article, to discover some of the others (Pearl Buck! George Orwell! Ernest Hemingway!), but check the comments also. People have been adding to the list.
For anyone who’s a history buff and especially interested in European history (from about AD 1000 onward), this is an absolute must-see. The shifting borders of the European countries are mesmerizing, and the music doesn’t hurt the drama either.
I kept watching Poland come and go, and waiting for the Ottoman Empire to go and for the Soviet Union to appear. But really, every bit of this is fascinating.
Update: Apparently the original YouTube video posted below [and its even more fascinating slower, longer version] has been taken down. (I’ve minimized its size, but haven’t deleted it, because sometimes these taken-down videos reappear if problems get sorted out.) But the three-minute version, complete with dramatic music, is still around for the moment. It’s at the Huffington Post: Europe History Time Lapse Map Goes Viral.
If you’re not into babies–as I’m not into babies much–I bet you will still love these baby pics. Which have resulted in a book, a calender, and probably much more.
First, as Adele Enersen explains on her blog, Mila’s Daydreams, she was home on maternity leave with her new baby girl, Mila. When Mila went down for her naps, Adele would quickly create little fantasy scenes around her, and take a photo of the baby in the midst of the fantasy.
The fantasy photos were sweet and beautiful. And what has resulted is a book published by HarperCollins: When My Baby Dreams. I’m very tempted to get this book even though, as I said, I’m not into babies particularly. But I love the little fantasies! As an online friend said, these are the best baby photos ever. And now there’s going to be a calender too, available in July of 2012.
Want to see some of the photos? There’s also a beautiful video. Watch it–I bet you’ll like it.
Yes, I must have been the only person on the planet who had not read anything Maurice Sendak read. So when I heard that he had died two days ago, I understood what he meant to so many people and recognized that his passing was a loss, but it didn’t affect me personally.
But I heard so many parents talk about his book, Where the Wild Things Are, that I had already decided I should find it an read it. So imagine my delight when one of my Facebook pals recommended this video, with Christopher Walken reading the book. It’s very entertaining–though perhaps not entirely in ways that Mr. Sendak originally intended.
Rest in Peace, Mr. Sendak! And I will catch up–promise.
It’s very long, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but that depends on your tastes.
It’s a dream book for a folklore/legend scholar.
It’s ending unfortunately doesn’t live up to the long, intricate buildup.
However, I’d say that Kostova’s second book, The Swan Thieves, has gone some distance toward resolving those problems. I would recommend this novel to anyone who might have felt daunted or put off by points #1-3 above. To begin with, it’s closer to “typical” novel length (whatever that is). And while it, like the first book, involves hunting for the intricate history behind a mystery, it has a more realistic and somewhat more satisfying resolution.
The narrator, Andrew Marlow, is a psychiatrist trying to discover why a new patient, the painter Robert Oliver, tried to slash a painting in the National Gallery in Washington, DC. This is especially difficult because Oliver refuses to speak (doesn’t speak for an entire year, in fact), which means Marlow has to get his story in pieces from Oliver’s ex-wife and ex-girlfriend. On top of that, Oliver now obsessively paints one woman only, a figure from the nineteenth century. We suspect (well before Marlow does) that she’s related to a female painter from the Impressionist period, whose letters Oliver had in his possession when he was taken into custody.
So Kostova’s modus operandi is similar in this book to what she used in her first novel: the narrator goes on his own journey of discovery while also piecing the story together from letters, personal accounts, and eventually, sketches and drawings. Kostova appears to be fond of this sort of story-by-research, and I’ve discovered that I rather like that method too. Of course, as Kate Taylor pointed out when reviewing this book in the Globe and Mail (There’s an art to writing historical novels), garnering information via mysterious old letters isn’t exactly a new plot element. But Kostova appears to enjoy reviving older genres and motifs, as we saw in The Historian.
I found Marlow’s growing romantic entanglement, which reaches fruition near the end of the book, to be the only implausible part of the book. Or rather, not necessarily implausible, but I wasn’t entirely convinced. However, I don’t really think that detracted too much. And if you’re interested in the artistic world in general, and the Impressionist era in particular. you’ll really learn a lot from this story. I think this was a fascinating novel, and I would gladly recommend it.
That link goes to an article that describes how the map was created and what it does, while this is the site of the map itself. If you click on the map, you get to the interactive part. You’ll see that you can enter your start and end location, your mode of travel, and other details like the time of year you’re travelling and whether you want to go by the fastest route or the cheapest.
Once you “Calculate Route” (that little tab on the top left of the panel where you enter all your options), you get a pop-up window that says stuff like, “The cheapest journey from Roma to Luguvalium in July takes 32.5 days, covering 3502 kilometers. ” And it gives you the various prices and so on.
In keeping with my interest in folklore and mythology–and, coincidentally, my various blog posts about fairy tales and related story and myth–I’m really enjoying a series on these subjects, written by a friend of mine whose nom de plume is Jas Faulkner. Her series is called Grimm Surrealities, and she’s exploring fairy tales in their original forms (do we even know those?) as well as the more modern resurrections of the same stories. Why did they resonate back then–and why do they still resonate today?
There’s nothing pretty or princessy about the characters you’ll find in the stories as collected by the Grimm Brothers and others. Even Andrew Lang’s allegedly nursery-bound Colour Fairies series of books is far darker and redder in tooth and claw than the Golden Books of our childhood.
In upcoming columns, we’ll take a look at sources that have preserved and shaped how we view those tales.
Her second column is just out: Grimm Surrealities: My, what big eyes you have! In this one, she tackles the tale of Little Red Riding Hood. Now, there’s a whole can of worms! I’m amused at her description of how people hae handled this story:
The story of Little Red Riding Hood is littered with psychosexual landmines that have rendered two centuries of lit-crit pros and archetypal psychology scholars into quivering masses of self-doubt. Once fierce verbal gladiators of the classroom and the seminar tug at their collars and swallow hard while they wonder when they left the shining path of dashing young turk academia for the more shadowy back alleys inhabited by a thousand lupine Humbert Humberts.
Lots of good stuff there about the telling of that tale, both in the past and in more recent treatments. And the squirming of the critical and psychological interpreters of the story. (And then there’s the latest interpretation I’ve seen, on the TV Series, Once Upon A Time, which turns the whole story entirely on its head.)
If you enjoy explorations of fairy tales and the rich subconscious, interpretive ocean from which they arise, keep watch for more of Jas’s columns. Can’t wait to see what she does with Cinderella! Or with Prince Charming — who really gets around, when you think of it.
French depiction of Little Red Riding Hood, by Fleury Francois Richard - painting in the Louvre
You need to be pretty dedicated to read it, though. While I have no problem whatsoever with Very Long Books, this one builds fairly slowly from the beginning. It really gets going in a big way only by the time it’s already reached the length of some entire modern novels–so if you’re looking for immediate, intense action and a quick resolution, this is not the book for you. If you love history, though, and you love the idea of studying the history of folklore, especially the folklore of Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire, oh my, you will love this book!
It focuses on the story of Vlad Tepes, the prince of Wallachia (now part of Romania) whose story morphed into the tale of Dracula. A sixteen-year old girl traces the steps her parents took before her birth, searching for the tomb of Tepes by unearthing legends and histories all over Eastern Europe. We learn both their history and hers, as her progress is intertwined with excerpts from her scholar father’s letters. And before long, we realize that that there’s a reason why the folk tales and legends about Dracula and others like him have appeared in many different places and times: it’s possible that he was real, and that he is still alive. In finding his tomb, the characters in this book might find more horror than they bargained for.
This sounds like “just another Gothic novel,” or perhaps a “horror story lite.” There are threads of both in this book, but it’s so much more than that. I suspect that all the tales and legends that Ms. Kostova explored along the way are genuine stories from the times and cultures she sets them in. Which does raise the question: why do they appear everywhere and everywhen? With the explorations in The Historian, Kostova takes us on an actual scholarly exploration. Which I, being that sort of scholar at heart, lapped up eagerly. And the closer the protagonists get to their answers, the more unnerving and tense the novel gets.
The only disappointment I have with the book is that the ultimate problem the characters face is resolved fairly simply and with such brief work. And the reason that most of them were, in fact, chosen (unbeknownst to them) to set out on this quest is kind of a lame one. With all the difficulty of their search, over so many years and across half the continent of Europe, I would have hoped it would be for a more powerful reason, and I would also have expected the resolution to be a lot harder and take longer.
I did love the journey, though. Following the history of the Dracula story (or tales of vampires) through time and through all those lands was like a big feast for me. Despite the rather disappointing ending, I’d say Kostova did a great job of her first published novel.
I used to skip phys ed in high school and read poetry or the encyclopedia in the library. My aunt had a 1955 version of the Encyclopedia, in a special two-shelf bookcase, with a slot in the back where a huge atlas stood. It looked exactly like this, except that the wood was darker (see farther below):
My beloved Britannica
I loved my aunt’s set with a mad love. And then one day — she gave it to me.
I was deliriously happy. I moved several times over the years, and that set went with me everywhere. Even though by the time she gave it to me, of course it was long out of date. Who cared? I loved it.
And then, twelve years and three weeks ago — I moved to Toronto. I gave away a ton of stuff between the Near Year and March 1st, when I was to fly, and packed up the rest and put it into a rented storage compartment. And my beloved encyclopedia set didn’t fit.
I tried everything I could think of. No library would take a set that old. No second hand bookstore was remotely interested. I didn’t have a vehicle, so I couldn’t try to take it farther afield.
In the end, on the day that I left my apartment for the last time, there was only one option left. The entire set went into the dumpster. It absolutely broke my heart, but there was nowhere else I could put or take it. It was devastating.
And now the hard copy of the dear Encyclopedia Britannica will be no more, at all. More than ever, I miss my old set and wish it had been humanly possible to keep it and preserve it.
