The Creator - A Missed Opportunity

 I watched The Creator this weekend as I am a big sci-fi/ fantasy fan and although I didn't read the reviews I saw that the headlines were mostly positive. I am not sure what to think about the timing of the movie - it argues for a sympathetic understanding of AI at a time when Hollywood writers are striking against AI generated content and there is a cold-war like stance regarding AI between the US and China.

I would have been happy with this movie if it was made 20+ years ago but not now. This is a very superficial, lazy handling of ideas that could have become transformational if nuance was added in. In the midst of great visuals and lots of charisma from John David, and some wonderful acting by San Diegan Madeline Yuna Voyles, we forget the razor thin plot and ideas. But as soon as the movie ended I woke up from the trance and felt disappointed. It dawned on me that

The Creator = Apocalypse Now + Leon:The Professional + (Inverse)Terminator + (5%) of Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch novels + Rogue One

LA has been subjected to a nuclear attack by AI in 2065 and so the US is on a mission to wipe out AI which has not just found refuge but is also thriving alongside the population of "New Asia" - an amalgam of so many Asian cultures/ countries. "The Creator" has come up with a new machine called Alfie a simulant child who is programmed to not hate humans and bring machines under her mind control, which the US is out to destroy. John David is on this mission and will he or won't he is the question (but you see I threw in Leon in my equation so you know how it goes). So far so predictable. I expected to hear Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" but we got "Everything in its right place" instead. That was perhaps the only surprise.

Here are the misses.

• New Asia!!!! - How naive do we have to be to think that all of Asia seems to be a melting pot of languages and cultures all united with the common goal of defending AI from the US. Just throwing in a mix of Hindu, Buddhist religious symbols, motifs and music does not make it OK. Forget about erasing identities etc, that's not my main point. With so many cultures coming together it would have been nice to explore differences in how AI are integrated instead of this one big mish-mash. Please don't compare this to Dune (the book) and what it does to the Middle Eastern cultures - note: that Dune was written in the '60s and existed before Star Wars or any of the other sci-fi franchises and Dune was so inventive and full of ideas that set the stage for lots of scifi for the next 6 or 7 decades.
  
• All AI treated the same. This is a corollary to all Asians are treated the same. 2065 has a spectrum of people and machines. John David himself  has a bionic arm and prosthetics and on the other end are simulants. Then there are ugly, industrial looking C3PO like machines which unlike C3PO don't have a unique personality - what we would consider as traditional robots. Humans don't seem to be making any distinction between these robots and simulants in terms of how they love/hate them. Missed opportunity here - there could have been an interesting take on why we are OK with some types of AI vs others. What modifications do we find un/acceptable, at what point do we consider AI sentient. There is no room for any of those ideas. New Asians are equal opportunity lovers while Americans are equal opportunity haters of AI
• In-your-face Moralizing - we get it that the movie wants to give us a sympathetic understanding of AI. That doesn't mean we have to see Americans as in-your-face horrible people to make the AI look less menacing. The movie wants us to walk away feeling don't blame the tech, blame the humans as we are always bad (the nuclear war was a human error as Ken Watanabe says). How can we believe that the AI want to be accepted as sentient, want to protect their species, while at the same time believe that it was humans who made all the mistakes. 

These are just a few of the glaring issues that stood out for me. If sympathetic AI stories are going to come into vogue, then please Hollywood someone give the greenlight to a TV show based on Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books! Also can we get John David Washington a movie that he deserves instead of a hodge podge that The Creator is.

I guess in a roundabout way the movie is a success as we actually discussed it at our home (despite the spouse not being a scifi fan) and it did make me take the time to write about it. Now that Dune 2 is delayed Creator is a good stopgap for those who don't like Marvel movies but like scifi/action movies.If this is not your cup of tea, just wait a few more weeks for Killers of the Flower Moon.

From Octopuses to Hinduism - by way of Donne, Gandhi, and Upanishads

 This past month has been one of me dealing with physical separation from my daughter who is now a freshman in college far, far from home. This is the longest I have been away from her and I am dealing with the separation in the only way I know - turning inward with the help of books. And it so happens, some kind of alignment in the stars brought me into contact with the following books which on surface seem all disparate and disconnected but on contemplation all point to something at the core of human existence.

With the advent of Generative AI and LLM there seems to be a lot of discussion which falls into one of two camps - the destructive power of AI or how AI can change the world. In this context words like consciousness and sentience are thrown about and it has been hard to get a handle on these concepts. If the AI of the future gains consciousness and becomes sentient how would we co-exist in such a world? 

In The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler a species of highly intelligent octopi have been discovered in an archipelago bought out by a single corporation, forcibly evacuating the previous residents and sealing off the space to “study” the species. An Android called Evrim and a biologist Ha Nguyen are the two inhabitants of the island along with the security officer Atlantsetseg. In essence this is a “first-contact” story except that the first-contact is not with an alien from outside our planet, but just another species with a mind capable of symbolic language, culture and communication. While there are a number of interesting concepts covered by the story (which totally deserves all the attention it is getting) I was especially drawn to the question about why “other minds” make us anxious - whether they are seen in androids or octopuses. Stepping away from sci-fi/ fantasy, first-contacts even among humans have not ended well for at least one of the groups and xenophobia has always been part of the human condition. Isolation and indifference are two factors that stood out as contributing to this mistrust of other beings and connection and empathy seem to be the solution. How do you begin to develop this connection to all beings?

The answer was provided by John Donne, the 16th century English poet/ preacher whose famous words I quote here

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

 

I read Katherine Rendell’s vivid biography of John Donne called Super-Infinite. It is a fantastic biography and she traces the rise, fall, and rise of Donne from his cavalier days as a young misogynistic poet who wrote about bodies, love, sex and lust to his transformation into a popular preacher whose sermons were so popular and sought after. The poet and the preacher seem like two completely different people but they were the one and the same and he brought his keen intellect and his meditative mind to his oversexed poetry and to his moving sermons. 

As I read some of Donne’s writings, I could not help but think about some of the phrases in the Upanishads. I am reading the English translation by Patrick Olivelle and while I cannot claim enlightenment (very very far from it), I have been blown away by the concepts of self and consciousness seen in these texts that predate current developments in neuroscience by a few thousand years. The Upanishads ask us to turn inwards and analyze the nature of our own senses and minds. While the world around us as perceived by our senses change relentlessly there is an infinite, indivisible reality that pervades all. By tapping into this consciousness we are encouraged to meditate on the unity in diversity. I picked up the book unsure about what to expect and the first few pages of horse sacrifice kinda lost me, but I persevered and in that process discovered so many brilliant ideas like the 5 sheaths of knowledge (Taittriya), the states of the self and their relation to OM (Mandukya), the connection of the cosmic sphere to the bodily sphere or the macrocosm to the microcosm (Chandogya). 

Ramachandra Guha’s biography of Gandhi is a great volume to read alongside the Upanishads. Every time I have doubts as to whether anyone can live like how the Upanishads recommend, I see something from Gandhi’s life that offers proof. I am not saying he was a saint and was infallible. If that was the case there is no point in learning from his life. He was human, made mistakes but was open about his mistakes, debated with those who held opposing views and was not afraid of changing his own assumptions. I am currently reading the sections on Gandhi’s battle against untouchability in the 1930s. There is no doubt that his views evolved over time and contact with Ambedkar accelerated his evolution. What amazes me is the flak that Gandhi got from all sides for forcing the issue of untouchability in the 1930s a decade before India obtained freedom and how he managed to retain his poise and his core values. The number of so-called “sanatanists” who protested at Gandhi’s meetings wearing black shirts and flags, and one time even trying to bomb his motorcade sounds eerily familiar to some of the militant Hinduism that is getting popular in India these days. When Gandhi’s son married Rajagopala Chari’s daughter he received hate mail from the so-called “Sanatanists” for promoting inter-caste marriage.

While I am writing this there is a raging debate in India about Sanatana Dharma and its relation to Hinduism. This was not something that was discussed at any meaningful depth at home while I was growing up. Most of us have very vague ideas about Dharma, whether it is Sanatana, Svadharma, or even Varnashtrama Dharma. The only thing that is eternal and unchanging in the Upanishads is the self - the atman which when it comes to realize Thou Art That - is the Brahman. If that is the only eternal and that is common to all beings and if the goal of every Hindu is to elevate themselves to this higher plane, I cannot but see caste violence, untouchability, sense of superiority as barriers to that evolution. And Gandhi’s way of purging these out of our individual lives is as important as Ambedkar’s way of making sure there is no room in the State for these practices.

A living religion also has to evolve with times and not constantly look back to the past. When the Roman Catholic Church talks about LGBTQ people as sinners, or stands against contraception or abortion rights they become an outdated institution in the face of the needs of modern human beings. The core message of Jesus was about love and that is somehow lost in all this muddle. Similarly if Hinduism is mainly defined by some rituals and practices left over from 3000 years ago that don’t make sense for the modern world then it starts becoming irrelevant to modern life. When I encountered the Upanishads for the first time I finally felt like there were treasures in there that spoke to me. Yes, there are some mentions of caste, horse sacrifice and rituals that don’t appeal to me as a modern being and mentions of sexual practices that are frankly scientifically wrong and offensive to women. The argument that Katherine Rundell makes for reading John Donne applies here. When I read Shakespeare’s Hamlet I am blown away by the playwright’s ability to go into the mind of a human being, while at the same time I am irritated by some of the digressions and how poorly Hamlet treats Ophelia. While I am not going to throw the baby with the bath water, the analogy holds good only if I can separate the baby from the bath water, and the bath water can be wiped away from the baby.

Hinduism has always accommodated a wide variety of views and practices, so I am annoyed when anyone tries to define what Hinduism is and is not for nearly a Billion people! I guess what I am saying is - let me be, let me make a choice as to what I want to adopt and follow as long as I don’t violate the rights of another being and respect the dignity of all beings. Gandhi felt that every religious person has to examine their own religious beliefs and be critical of those, prune those that don't work anymore and not simply point fingers at another's religion. I have come a long way from Octopuses to Upanisads. Ha Ngyuen, in The Mountain and the Sea defines consciousness as awareness which is not different from what the Upanisads show us. Awareness with empathy for other beings should be the basis of any belief system and that is the only kind of belief system that I can subscribe to.

Tracking Thoreau through Concord

There are very few heroes who can stand the test of time, whose moral arc didn't have to "evolve" but was just there all along. Thoreau was certainly one of those. While he had a complicated relationship with Native Americans it was mostly one of respect and admiration. A staunch abolitionist who not only believed in abolishing slavery but also in racial equality his courage to take a stance even if that meant standing alone was inspiring. Thoreau and Gandhi had a major similarity - they believed in personal liberation as much as in political liberation. It is not enough to speak up for political causes (something that everyone seems to do on twitter) but also focus on personal growth (something most of us don't seem to have an interest in or the time for). 

After dropping our daughter off at college I decided that tracing Thoreau's steps through Concord was one way to deal with the separation. The only tenet of Transcendentalism one has to adhere to is to enjoy walking outdoors. Given that I meet that criteria and am unabashedly a fan of Thoreau I think I can call myself a Transcendentalist. So like a true follower I criss-crossed the town of Concord on foot trying to travel back in time and trace my hero's footsteps. Here it is.

I began my journey at Walden - a book I re-read every few years - the pond which I visited for the third time. At the outset I want to clear up a common misconception about Thoreau's 2 years, 2 months, 2 days at Walden. He didn't claim to be a hermit. He was not a misanthrope. Concord's main street symbolized to him a very linear, unexamined life. One went to school, gets to Harvard, graduates with a job, makes money, settles down in marriage, makes more money for the future generations and hob nobs with like-minded people. Stepping away a few miles from the Main street and living in a shack in the woods was his way of breaking the linearity and taking the time to examine his life. So coming home to a Sunday dinner or getting his clothes washed at home were not acts of hypocrisy that took away from his experiment at Walden. With that out of the way, here is a replica of his cabin in the woods

The actual location is marked by a stone cairn (Alcott's way of honoring his dear friend)

 

The view from his cabin today looks like this

Here I must give a shout-out to my SIL who took me to Walden for the first time back in the winter of 2010. This was my third visit, the last two being in the summer months. She recommends I make it out there during the fall, and I am hoping I can do it.

Now that Walden was done, I went around looking for signs of Thoreau within the town of Concord. I first went to the Concord Museum and sure enough there were a lot of artifacts that gave me joy and goosebumps. Here are a few

A letter from Frederick Douglass to Thoreau's sister Helen who was very active in the AntiSlavery society. Douglass was a frequent guest at the Thoreau's and the Thoreau home was a stop on the underground railroad. Thoreau, besides speaking out against slavery and in support of John Brown, privately drove at least a couple of escaped slaves and put them on a train to Canada. He was also known to have made shoes for runaways.

The famous green desk that he wrote in. It graced his cabin at Walden and later the attic in his house. Simple, no-nonsense desk just like the writer.

After DaVinci, Thoreau was the ultimate renaissance man. His musical ability with the flute was well known that Emerson would make him bring it to his gatherings to entertain folks. Below is the Aeolian Harp that he built

The Thoreau family made its money by making top notch pencils. Thoreau brought his engineering mind to the process and had a special technique for grinding the graphite. How many authors can claim to have also made the tool they used to write with?

His bed, walking stick and spyglass at Walden and also the rocking chair (one of 3 chairs in Walden). One chair for solitude, two for company, three for society was all he needed. 

 His friend Cholmondeley gifted him numerous books on Indian philosophy. Thoreau was well-read and was the first in the town of Concord to get his hands on Darwin's Origin of Species.

Thoreau's largest source of income was from surveying. His surveys of Walden pond are known for their accuracy. 

These were some of the artifacts preserved in the museum. I now set out to look for Thoreau by criss-crossing Concord. Luckily I met a guide who shared a similar liking for Thoreau and kindly pointed out to me important landmarks within the town.

The famous Colonial Inn of Concord has sections of the building dating back to 1716. This particular corner was once a home of the Thoreaus and they also had their pencil workshop here. 

The Masonic temple at Concord once was the site of the school that Thoreau taught in right after graduating from Harvard. When forced to inflict corporal punishment on his students, he complied just once. But the following morning he quit in protest!

This was the site of the famous prison where Thoreau was held for refusing to pay poll taxes to a Government that sanctioned slavery and went to war with Mexico. Gandhi had independently come up with his Satyagraha but later read Thoreau and was inspired by his writings.

This is the garden outside the Old Manse that Thoreau and Concord's African American resident John Garrison raised together for Nathaniel Hawthorne and his wife Sophia when they moved to Concord from Salem. Today the garden is still maintained and the three sisters are grown (corn, beans and squash) along with sunflowers.

This is the historic bell of the town that was rung on numerous important occasions. Thoreau rang this bell when Emerson stepped up to speak against slavery. Emerson needed some time for his views to "evolve" and Thoreau and the women of the Antislavery society of Concord were instrumental in nudging Emerson.

This is Emerson's mansion. Thoreau was frequently a guest at this home and when Emerson went on a speaking tour of the continent, Emerson's wife requested that Thoreau move in with them to help her raise the kids and maintain the house. Tutor, gardener, handyman, playmate for the kids - all rolled into one, Thoreau packed up from Walden and moved in here because of that request.

For my final stop I chose Sleepy Hollow. Thoreau designed and built the pond in the cemetery and many years after he died his grave was moved to the Author's Ridge section of Sleepy Hollow.

Surrounded by pines the Thoreaus are all remembered in this cemetery. He lies here with his beloved brother and his two brave sisters and his parents.

Many folks leave pencils at the graves in Author's Ridge. I didn't want to. I only had a crumpled flower and a pine cone with me. So I laid those on his grave. His gravestone is as simple as he was in his life. I sat in silence on a nearby bench. I could hear him say "Simplify, Simplify, Simplify." He made it look so easy. Walking all day in Concord I could see the contrast between an examined vs an un-examined life a life of courage vs a life that just goes through the motions. I have followed a linear path all my life as it was just too easy to do. I left Concord with a bit more inspiration to be more deliberate. How long the effect will last I don't know. It's one of the reasons I re-read Walden.

It was time to go and I asked my husband to drive by 255 Main Street, the house in which he died. Apparently it was sold for a cool $2.5M! I could see Thoreau shaking his head.

Learning to Become a Water Net

 "Parenting is easy," remarked the pediatrician we were interviewing prior to the birth of our daughter. "You get through the first two months, the terrible twos, the teenage years and you are done!" he joked. This week after having dropped off our daughter at college, I can say maybe parenting is done, but being a parent is most certainly not done. We walked away feeling very happy and excited for her as she is going to a place she really wanted to and we hope it lives up to her expectations, but at the same time we are saddened as we returned to our empty nest. Her old jacket lying on the floor (never hung up) caused a mini-flutter within me and I was expecting to hear her hollering "Mom! Where is my [insert whatever object comes to your mind]?." While I still expect a few hollering texts from across the country over the next few weeks as she settles down into a routine, it is not going to be the same, and I will miss the hollering from across the room.

I don't know which one was more nerve-wracking - bringing her home after birth or dropping her off a couple of thousand miles away for college. In the former case, the fear of being entirely responsible for a helpless new babe was at times terrifying. In the latter, accepting that I am no longer responsible for her and she has to take charge of her own reins is going to take some time for me to get used to. Don't get me wrong, we are lucky to have a child who is very reasonable, responsible, with great instincts and intuition. She has striven to remain authentic throughout her entire 18 years even if that meant swimming against the current most of the time, a quality that I admire in her the most.

So while I have no doubts that she is well-equipped for this solo-flight I will miss having a ringside view to this journey. I know that she will keep us in the loop but I will miss our daily evening walk when she would give me the run down of her day or sometimes brainstorm ideas for a piece she was writing.

She was late to the world of mobile phones, getting one only towards the end of her 8th grade. Maybe that's why she enjoys conversations and is a terrible texter - a characteristic that we loved when she lived with us and might come back to bite us now. She also never once asked us for our Netflix password because she rarely watched TV by herself. I have watched every show with her from My Little Pony, Littelest Pet Shop, Dragons Race to the Edge, Ninjago, when she was little all the way to the latest seasons of The Dragon Prince and Witcher, this summer. From Endeavor to Only Murders in the Building  half the fun of watching these shows was us figuring out together who the murderer could be. Every summer we would watch Avatar the Last Airbender from start to finish and still find things to discuss about the show. These past few years of high school meant we didn't have as much time as we would have liked to play board games together but we made the best of this summer and I think she is going to find newer, sharper companions than her old mom to match up against.

Yes I am realizing that I am selfishly moaning the loss of a way of life for me that has become a pattern these past 18 years. But it's been only 4 days and it is going to take time for both of us to get into new routines. One of the advantages of a long distance relationship is that I will be physically restricted from problem-solving for her - a tendency of mine that she has often pointed out as not being very helpful. Many times she has asked me to just listen and not jump to problem-solving. So I am going to put a positive spin on the distance of separation and the time zone difference and say it is going to help me practice listening when she is venting instead of trying to jump the gun. 

Robin Wall Kimmerer reminds us that fortunately our daughters are not our clones and we don't have to disintegrate to set them free. Instead she suggests we think of ourselves as water-nets. She says "A fish net catches fish, a bug net catches bug. But a water net catches nothing ... Mothering is like that, a net of living threads to lovingly encircle what it cannot possibly hold, what will eventually move through it." We are empty-nesters as of today, but that is an image that is not very helpful to me. So from now on if anyone asks me how it feels I am going to say I am not an empty-nester but just a novice water-net.

From Shakespeare to Sci-Fi

I spent this past month time traveling through three time periods - Tudor England, early twentieth century America, and thousands of year into the future in the Imperial Radch empire. Emma Smith (inspired by Stephen King) called books "portable magic" and this month proved to me they truly are. Here are the 3 books that delivered magic to me.

Shakespeare's Book by Chris Laoutaris:

I first heard about Laoutaris' book through the Shakespeare Unlimited podcast from the Folger Library and went out and grabbed this book right away. This year marks the 400th anniversary of the publication of the First Folio, the book that transformed Western literature by preserving many Shakespearean plays for the first time in a book format. Laoutaris gives us a history of the Folio which was published after both Shakespeare and his leading man Burbage died. With the death of the man who embodied Shakespearean heroes and gave life to his words, the remaining King's men, especially Hemminges and Condell felt an urgency to collect all of Shakespeare's plays and publish them as a Folio. What follows is a story of how a collective of men came together, some motivated purely by financial incentives, others because of their connection to the Players, some brought in purely by geographical proximity and triumphed against all odds. They had to navigate complicated copyright laws - in Tudor England the playwright did not own the rights to the play when it was published. Rather it was the printer or publisher. Some previously unpublished plays were owned by the King's Men themselves, others had to be bought out from less scrupulous printers/publishers in complex financial arrangements. Then there was the process of transcribing and printing the works in which the compositors played a significant role. While we revere the Folio akin to revealed Holy Scripture today, Laoutaris points out that the compositors and printers made their own edits to the works, adding/editing stage directions, rearranging a few lines etc. So the works we now enjoy are not actually 100% from the hands of the Bard but have the touches of unknown editors. Added to all these complications was the political intrigue of the time. Under James I there was more tolerance towards Catholicism and an interest in a Spanish match for the Prince Charles. The King's Men's patron (and a large section of the public) was against the Spanish Match so the Folio publishers had to walk a fine line so that they would not be shuttered completely. Despite all these challenges they triumphed and brought out a book which was one of the most expensive product of its time.

Today, we take the Folio for granted and most of us only encounter Shakespeare in the printed form although that was not how the plays were intended to be consumed. As I write this, our family just watched Twelfth Night at The Old Globe. It was a fabulous production and I couldn't believe I was watching a play that Elizabeth I had also watched 400 odd years before me. I owe my experience to the First Folio as without it plays like Twelfth Night would have been lost.

A Pipe for February by Charles Red Corn

In 2018 I read Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann. Until then I knew nothing about the Osage murders and how the FBI was formed. At that time I also heard that Martin Scorsese had picked up the rights for the book and I have been waiting for the movie ever since. Now that the movie trailer is out I can't wait to see it on the big screen this October. I watched an interview with Scorsese about how he adapted the book for the screen. He has shifted the point of view from that of the FBI to that of the Osage themselves and mentioned A Pipe for February as one of the books he read to get that point of view. So I decided to read the book before the movie came out. Written by Charles RedCorn who was a member of the Peace Clan in the Osage Nation, this work of fiction captures the Osage experience through the eyes of John Grayeagle. The story had me in grips and was very poignant. While the youth of the Osage nation grew up with many luxuries they also grew up seeing many of their family members murdered for the wealth and headrights. The remaining elders try to teach the young Osage how to stay together and support each other and balance their two worlds and the young actually listen to their elders as they struggle to stay alive with a killer in their midst. Every conversation between John and his cousins with the elders moved me visibly. It is a terrific book and I am sure Scorsese would do it justice as he clearly has respect for the source material. As a frequent visitor to the the Getty museums in LA, I too owe the Osage nation indirectly as Paul Getty made his money from the oil he leased off the Osage nation. Reading their stories and learning their history is just a small thing I can do to show my gratitude.

Translation State by Ann Leckie:

I have been waiting for this book for quite some time so I got it on the day it was released and it took me two days to finish it. I am a big fan of the Ancillary Justice books or what is referred to as the Imperial Radch trilogy. I did my final M.A. capstone on these books back in 2018. Leckie is a force to reckon with in the world of Sci-Fi especially in the space opera sub-genre. What I love about her books is her unique take on alien species and how she visualizes AI. These days there seem to be only two viewpoints about AI  - 1) they are a great tool and with every tool it is about who wields them and for what purpose. So don't blame the tool 2) AI can lead to extinction of the human species so we need to halt its development until we can put structures in place to prevent this potential catastrophic event. Leckie's fictional books offer a different vision that is not often seen in popular discourse. In her books AI are treated as "significant species" and she discusses how we can be companions to each other. Most people remember her books also for her interesting take on gender much before trans became a hot button issue. Translation State takes us back to the Imperial Radch and this time it is more about how humans deal with alien species, specifically the Presger. In that process they also deal with questions of who is a human, what constitutes a family, what does it mean to belong. She borrows widely from our everyday life so there are groups of people who are Presger-deniers, there are people in power who exploit a common threat for their own benefit, and then there are characters who just want to live their lives but find themselves caught in a maelstrom because of what they are. Translation State can be read as an independent novel although there are a few nods to the Imperial Radch books for the fans (cameo from Sphene got me excited!). While Ancillary Justice remains my favorite novel of Leckie's I liked this one a lot and expect to see it on all the awards shortlist this season.

After these three great books I am on the look out for my next set of reads. I am hearing great things about The Witch King. Will see if that can grab me. For now my Tardis has arrived with The Dawn of Everything so I guess I am going back in time to the very beginning.

PS-2 (Ponniyin Selvan 2) - A Total Triumph!

 Just finished watching PS-2 and I have no hesitation in calling it a complete triumph for Maniratnam! The true hero of this movie IMHO is Jeyamohan. The screenplay was flawless. He managed to condense 3 books into a 3 hours movie and still hit all the major plot points. I know the movie took a lot of liberty with the books and I am completely fine with that. I am a hardcore fan of the books but this movie still has a place in my heart. It is like seeing many different adaptations of Shakespearean plays. I have seen so many versions of Henry V and have read it and these days I watch to see how each director/actor makes it their own (if interested just see the Crispin Day speech as delivered by Kenneth Branagh, Tom Hiddleston and Mark Rylance). So in that sense this movie will stand as a terrific adaptation of the novels and I always have the novels when I want the whole thing.

The major deviations (without spoilers) are as follows:

• Who killed Karikalan - Made very explicit in the movie while the book tries to keep everyone guessing until the very end
• Who is Nandini's father - Once again the movie gives a very clear answer while the book leaves it a bit more open.
  
• Manimekalai - She is completely cut out of the movie. Some people love her character. I never did, so it was not a huge loss for me. 
• Senthan Amudhan's story arc and its intersection with Mathuranthaka Devar's - this would have made the movie even longer. While this was a nice twist in a serialized novel it would have been too much for a movie and frankly Kalki himself was riffing a bit too much on this character in his novels.
  

Full points for the following:

• ARR's background score - while the movie deserves peak Illayaraja, PS-2 was much much better than PS-1 in terms of the background score 
• Nandini Vs Karikalan scene - Aishwarya Rai and Vikram at their best
• Visuals - stunning with all the nods to the book at the right places; the secret chamber from which Vanthiyadevan sees the Nandini/Karikalan interaction was beautifully done, so was the monastery scenes, and the escape from Lanka on the boat.
• Never in my wildest dreams did I think that Jeyam Ravi would one day play Rajaraja!! But for 3 hours I believed he was. 

Minor quibbles

• Sound editing could be improved but this is a problem with most movies including Hollywood. The fight scenes are just too loud
• Parthibendran - that guy can't act and probably had the worst diction
• I didn't like any of the songs in PS-2 except for Shankar Mahadevan's Veera. The songs didn't add to/ take away from the movie, but having a good album associated with the movie would have been nice
  

 Overall, very pleased with PS-2 and will watch it again when it gets released on Prime. Our family enjoyed it a lot and it was a terrific mother's day gift for me!

A Rosebud for Posterity

 

 Although a man of few words, you loved language. Even after all these years, when I see you in my mind’s eye you are always with a book or the newspaper in one hand with a pencil poised in the other. You would be so still when reading that if I didn’t see your foot shake occasionally, I would think you were the Buddha himself meditating. Sometimes I would pick up a book that you read and simply go through all your highlights and notes because I was lazy, and it also felt like prying into your thoughts. 

When I was thirteen you invited me into the magical world of The Hindu crosswords, a daily ritual for you. You showed me how to spot anagrams, when to look for hidden words and when to read a word backwards. Soon I was learning all the masonic codes - AB for the able-bodied men at sea, BA for the bachelor. You will have the first shot before you leave for work at 7:15 a.m. after which I had the paper until I had to leave for school at 8:30 a.m. We both would spend the day spinning some of these clues in our minds, you working with the paper at your office, me coming home for lunch to get a second chance to look at the clues again. I will be on tenterhooks awaiting your return from work especially on those days when I would have almost finished the puzzle. My greatest pride was when you agreed with my answer and would allow me to write with a pen on top of the pencil - firming up the answer - set in stone now. 

Work took me to other cities and countries far from home. There was always one constant in my rapidly changing life. You will be at the train station or the airport when I come home for the holidays. I could spot you anywhere, waiting patiently even if the train was delayed by a couple of hours as they often were back then. I knew you would always be there, and the crossword would be there with you. During the pre-internet days we wrote letters as I traveled around the world and saw those sights that you introduced me to, through your books. Our crossword solving became a long-distance sport. Me, on the other side of the world working on the online Hindu a day later than you did and writing out solutions on email.

I was totally unprepared when cancer came calling on you. But you took it in your stride. I would come every few months and stay with you during your chemo. We would still do our crosswords together. Just when they declared you were cancer-free and things were looking up you suffered a relapse. We knew you were heading to a point of no-return. You bore the pain gracefully and asked to be put in a hospice. As the days went by there was only one-way communication between us as you could no longer talk, and you needed a pen and a diary next to you to communicate with the rest of us. You made me promise to not make these frequent long-distance trips every time you took a turn for the worst. Instead, you asked me to make peace, say goodbye and just await the final call - and you specified that it had to be from my brother and he had to confirm that you were indeed gone - and then come to India.

When the inevitable call finally came and I got home, your absence was stark when I noticed the pile of The Hindu with unsolved crosswords. I came home to your writings from the last month of your life - simple instructions to us on what to do with the money, moments of lightness when you saw or heard something funny, asking the nurse at the hospice for the cricket score and your handwritten final letter to me. You were always known for your penmanship, but the last few pages of your diary do not resemble your writing one bit. They reveal the pain you were in and the energy you needed to muster to trace even a single letter. 

And a single letter was your final cryptic clue for me -  a series of repeated scratches that appear shaped like the alphabet “P” - the first letter of my name. I wasn’t at your bedside to solve it. Remember you made me promise that I would come only after you were gone. Were you calling for me? Apparently not, as that was the first thing that crossed everyone’s mind and you shook your head vigorously to indicate it was not. People, Pain, Positive, Paati … they all called out every word that started with P in both tongues that came to their minds. I heard you gave a sigh and gave up your breath reconciling to the fact that your last clue will never be solved. 

 

“Can any word explain a man’s life?” Citizen Kane, a movie we watched together many, many years ago, asked us. I never dreamt that you would leave behind a rosebud for me, a missing piece of a jigsaw puzzle as the movie called it. It’s been twenty years and I have not picked up The Hindu since. The P still haunts me sometimes. During the pandemic my daughter walked in on me staring at The Guardian Quiptic.  “I never knew you did crosswords”, she exclaimed. “Your mom used to be so good at it” said my husband proudly. “Can you show me how?” I paused. Could “P” be posterity after all? “A naughty child is an imp,” I began with a smile.

Why Ulysses?

Why read Ulysses? 

Most people do it to signal to others that they are smart. However, Joyce didn't intend his book to be read only by elite academic types. He was very open to ideas and engaged with anyone and everyone from the window cleaner to the waiter at his favorite Parisian haunts. He did want to keep the professors busy but he truly believed that this book would speak to everyone. 

The second type of people to read the book are those motivated by the transgressive nature of the work - against religion, against "decency" and "morality." Anne Enright talks about why her mother didn't want her to read it at the age of 14 - it was full of "scatology" from picking noses to making water to the unholy noises our bodies make. Not to mention the sex (mostly implied). Molly's soliloquy at the end can be read as the work of a protofeminist on women's sexual liberation or as the work of a misogynist. But these are debates held in universities where Joycean professors have mystified the work to the extent that no average person wants to read it out of the fear they will never be able to understand it.

In the last post I said it was totally worth reading Ulysses. In this one I plan to elaborate why. But before I get into that here is a quick primer

Background:

Recount the main events of The Odyssey - which at its crux is about the warrior Odysseus reuniting with his son Telemachus and his faithful wife Penelope after 20 years. He fought in Troy for 10 years and when Troy fell he starts on his return to Ithaca which takes him another 10 years. It takes that long because he is held captive by Calypso, has to deal with one-eyed Cyclops, Lestrygonians, Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, gets blown off course by Aeolus and has numerous other (mis) adventures.

Joyce took the Odyssey and made a few tweaks. Replace:

• 10 years with 1 day - June 16th 1904 - the day Joyce walked out with his future wife Nora who to put it nicely brought love into his life - the day that is celebrated all over the world as Bloomsday
  
• Greece with 1904 Dublin
• Odysseus with Leopold Bloom, a 38 year old middle-aged Jewish ad agent who is very ordinary
  
• Telemachus with Stephen Dedalus a 23 year old struggling writer who is looking for a father figure in his life (think of him as a younger Joyce)
  
• Penelope with Molly Bloom the 34 year old singer and wife of Leopold Bloom who is going to commit adultery at 4pm on June 16th

Now take the traditional novel form and dismantle it completely. Throw in a bunch of references to Shakespeare, Dante, Mozart and Verdi, Catholicism, Irish Nationalism, Colonialism etc. Use stream of consciousness to narrate the inner thoughts of the lead characters, eliminate punctuation, get rid of chapter titles, write each chapter in a new form, throw in parodies and don't hesitate to include references to scat and sex liberally - what do you have - the most modern and timeless epic written for modern times. A book that broke every barrier and liberated all writers. A book that inspired everyone from Hemingway to Scott Fitzgerald all the way to every modern Irish writer.  A book that remains so gosh darn difficult to read while at the same time has some of the most beautiful sentences in the English language and is capable of making you laugh, feel disgusted, angry but also warms your heart and teaches you a number of life lessons along the way. 

When I finished the book and tried to think of what it meant to me I realized that it moved me because it celebrates the everyday life of the average human being who is not a hero in any sense of the word and whose world is filled with ordinary events. As I near my 50 I realize I have lived an ordinary life and have achieved nothing extraordinary but have mostly tried to do my best with the cards I have which is just about what almost everyone else (except for the heroes amongst us) is trying to do too. So the book is for the bourgeois, the average people and how we deal with life. Along the way there are invaluable lessons - lessons on grief - what it means to lose a parent, a child - the effect of loss of a child on relationship, friendships, infidelity, what it means to be an outsider, a citizen, what does civic engagement look like, how do you talk to people who are unlike you, how to repair relationships, how can you be non-violent in a violent world and what it means to make and enjoy art.

Bloom has numerous problems of his own - he is an outsider whose loyalty to Ireland is constantly questioned, people are mocking him behind his back as he is a cuckold, he is not the most educated man one could meet and had never been to university. He is dealing with his father's suicide, the death of his son and the effect that had on his marital relationship. His daughter has recently moved out of his house to make her own way in the world. He has to satisfy unhappy bosses and deal with people he has loaned money to. He is weird and has a number of weird fetishes and also harbors illusions about his own talent. But despite all this he is engaged with the world - he hasn't rejected it. He still has time to check in on a friend struggling to give birth after a hard 3-day labor, worry about the financial well-being of a family that lost its main breadwinner and contribute to a fund to support that family, come up with half-baked ways to improve Dublin's transportation system, its hospitals and even its brothels. He talks to people who hate his guts because that is what we do to stay engaged in our communities. And he picks up young Stephen and shows him a way to engage with his life not with great philosophy but by just being there and offering a cup of cocoa. Stephen is angry at everyone - his so called friends, the headmaster at the school he teaches, at Ireland for not recognizing an artist like him, at the two masters who rule Ireland - England and Rome. But anger and rejection are not enough and that perhaps is the biggest lesson to take from Ulysses. 

When we think of climate change, extreme polarization, racism, sexism or our personal/ professional disappointments it is very easy to become paralyzed. Joyce's earlier work Dubliners captured this paralysis beautifully. But as Joyce matured and wrote Ulysses under terrible physical pain, mental stress and financial and legal troubles he is calling on us to affirm life - the life around us today, right now, with all its imperfections. Is it any surprise that the book ends with a resounding Yes!

Sailed Into Ithaca - After 20 years!

 Today marks a day of a personal achievement for me. I finally finished James Joyce's Ulysses! My third attempt in 20 years. Just like Odysseus I set out on this path about 20 years back just because everyone who was anyone said this was a must-read. In my first attempt I didn't get past Proteus. When Stephen waxed on about "Ineluctable modality of the ineluctable visuality"I decided that those who claim to have read the book belonged in a "paradise of pretenders" and I wasn't going to be one of them. The unfortunate aspect of giving up this early was that I didn't even encounter Bloom - the Ulysses of the book. Second time around I picked it up because I read Joseph Campbell's Mythic Worlds, Modern Words and he showed me how much there was to mine in Joyce's work. So I picked it up again and this time was going to read along with Frank Delaney and his "re:Joyce" podcast. Unfortunately he passed away in the middle of it and I gave up but I went further along than I ever imagined with Delaney as my guide.

I thought I would pick it up again in 2022, the 100th anniversary of the publication of the book but didn't get around to it.  I have always wanted to visit Ireland but had decided long back that I would do it only after I read Ulysses. I love Irish writing and have read many from the who's who of Irish literature - Oscar Wilde, Bram Stoker, J.G. Farrell, John Banville, Colm Toibin, Anne Enright, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle, Flann O'Brien, Seamus Heaney, Joseph O'Connor all the way to Sally Rooney. But the crown jewel was still missing. Although I have read Joyce's Dubliners there was a Ulysses shaped hole in my bookshelf. Suddenly I realized I was a year away from turning 50 and it made me think - if not now then when?

So I decided to give it a go hoping that third time will be the charm. I remembered Joseph Campbell saying that The Odyssey was a feminine book, while The Iliad was a masculine one. The reason it took 10 years for Odysseus to get back to Penelope in Ithaca was that he had to purify himself of all the bloodshed and violence and get ready to meet the eternal feminine. The 10 years was prep work for him. Well, I believe the last 10 years was prep for me to read Ulysses too without realizing it. Here are 5 ways in which the world prepared me for Ulysses:

1. I am now middle-aged and therefore closer to Bloom's than to Stephen's age and have had more experience with life in general
   
2.  Maybe because of #1, I have spent a lot of free time reading Shakespeare and listening to opera by Mozart and Verdi and these helped me catch quite a few references in the book.
3. Coincidentally my daughter had to read Emily Wilson's The Odyssey for her 9th grade English and it was an amazing refresher for me. 
4. I have been meditating for a year or so and it gave me an insight into how random thoughts arise in our brain. Joyce's stream of consciousness technique is similar to watching my thoughts during meditation and once I understood that, the reading became so much easier.
   
5. I told myself that I don't have to get all the references and insights in this reading and it was OK to not understand/ even skip the occasional, obscure passage in the book (the book could have used a great editor)
   

 Of course even Odysseus couldn't have done it without his guide Athena and I needed other guides to help me along. Here are the resources that helped me in my journey.

1. Kevin Birmingham's The Most Dangerous Book - although this has nothing to do with the plot of Ulysses this is a dramatic tale of how the book got published in the US and the Court battles the book faced because of its "obscenity." This is a terrific book to read to understand a bit about Joyce and all the brave women who helped publish this book by taking on the US Post Office and Censorship regimes. This is a gripping page-turner of a book and will make you want to read Ulysses.
2. Patrick Hastings' The Guide to Ulysses is a terrific resource for first-time readers as it gives you a chapter by chapter summary and key highlights to look out for. Hastings has been teaching Ulysses to high school Seniors so he knows a thing or two about how to help someone read this tough book.
3. Harry Blamires' The New Bloomsday Book is the one must-have guide to get through the text
4. Don Gifford's Ulysses Annotated is for those who want to get every single reference in the book. It is the most exhaustive guide out there and pairs well with the Modern Library version of "Ulysses"
5. Quick refreshers on Joyce's Dubliners, Shakespeare's Hamlet and Homer's Odyssey are very helpful too
   

One does not need any of these guides to get through the book, but I personally felt the top 3 made my reading more pleasurable. I know I am going to be re-reading this book a few more times at least and some day I hope to be in Dublin for Bloomsday to celebrate the heroic aspects of the mundane, everyday, ordinary life.

I guess some of you might wonder - was it worth it?

yes i said yes (sorry I couldn't resist)

March 21st, 2023

Reading Women

It just occurred to me that March is Women's History Month and coincidentally I have been reading a lot of women writers. In fact this year it looks like my reading pile was filled mostly by women. Of course I am still working through Ulysses (have the final two chapters to go) and it has been very rewarding, but will come to that later when I am actually done. For now I wanted to share my thoughts on 4 books by 4 women writers.

Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton: After The Luminaries which made Catton the youngest Booker winner, the expectations for Birnam Wood were very high. Luminaries is one of my all-time favorite books in the last 15 years, so I have been waiting for Birnam Wood from the time the book was first announced many, many years back. I read this one in two days. It is an action and ideas packed novel and is a commentary on contemporary conflicts. At the heart of the novel is a cash-strapped guerilla gardening group called Birnam Wood whose path crosses with a billionaire setting up a survival bunker in New Zealand. The eco-idealists are led by Mira who is a modern Austen's heroine Emma-like character and the tech billionaire Lemoine is a Mission Impossible-villain + Peter Thiel type. Can eco-idealists and techno-capitalists forge a happy union for the betterment of the planet? Well, the title of the book is from Shakespeare's Macbeth and you know how that ends! But it is how the whole thing unravels that makes it a gripping thriller. Catton shows how even the most well-intentioned ideals can be ruined by petty fights, poor communication, and power struggles. The key message seems to be 1) We are all Macbeths 2) We are all complicit 3) We need to communicate better instead of just virtue signalling and blaming each other if we want to bring about changes to how the techno-capitalists treat the planet. 

My thoughts: I loved the writing and the plot. The dark comedy had the right tone to it. However, I felt disappointed in the end. We are all in collective despair and understand that we are complicit and the novel captures that beautifully while managing to be a great page-turner, but there are no deeper insights here. It seems to suggest that all the mix-ups could have been avoided if the misguided idealists just communicated better - seems too simplistic to me. The Luminaries is a novel that has many layers which lends itself to re-re-reading. Birnam Wood while a gripping thriller and a page-turner lacks those layers that I have come to expect from Catton.

Magnificent Rebels by Andrea Wulf: Andrea Wulf's previous work The Invention of Nature brought Alexander Humboldt to life and it was an amazing read that totally deserved the Royal Society's Prize for Science writing.  During the pandemic I read a biography of Wordsworth by Jonathan Bate and I learned how instrumental the German intellectuals from Jena were to the English Romantics. So when I heard that Wulf's book was going to be about the "Jena Set" I was very eager to read it. The Jena Set comprises of  Schiller, Schlegels (3 of them including Caroline), Schelling, Fichte and Novalis with a cameo appearance by the Humboldt brothers and Hegel at the very end. Goethe was the older, wiser mentor who connected all these young philosophers and worked hard to preserve unity among them. Jena is a small University town in the middle of Germany which saw an explosion of new philosophical ideas between 1794 to 1806 that led to the invention of the self. The rebels were mainly the women - especially Caroline Schlegel (later married to Schelling) who had a fiery intellect and can be credited with making Shakespeare cool again! They came up with a new way of communal thinking called "symphilosophising" and brought to the forefront the "I" - not in a selfish way but in a way of communing with nature. As Wulf says "At the heart of the Magnificent Rebels is the tension between the breath-taking possibilites of free will and the pitfalls of selfishness." Germany (not the country but referring to the region as a whole) was very fragmented in those days where there were many regional rulers and therefore rules which meant that a number of different ideas could develop without the fear of an outright ban across all regions. Germany also had more universities per capita unlike in England which had two main ones. All this led to Jena becoming a birthplace for many interesting ideas that are still relevant. 

My take: This book was a good read just not as great as her book on Humboldt. After a point it became a book about who slept with whom and who had an open marriage and who had kids out of wedlock - I guess it contributed to the chief characters becoming rebels, but I wanted to learn more about the philosophy. Goethe is my favorite character and I would love for Wulf to do a book just about him. 

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich: Louise Erdrich's previous works especially The Plague of Doves, The Roundhouse, The Painted Drum are all some of my favorite novels. The most recent one I read was The Nightwatchman which was also wonderful. The Sentence unfortunately did not work for me. The main character Tookie works in a bookstore not unlike Erdrich herself and so there are a lot of references to other books which I loved! The novel is highly contemporary and incorporates the pandemic, George Floyd, and the 2020 elections. Maybe because these things are so immediate and am still processing these incidents it probably felt a bit odd to read about it in an Erdrich novel. The writing was also not very lyrical to me. I appreciated the appendix of the book which lists all of "Tookie's" favorite books. I will use that list to discover more writers for sure.

A Tip for the Hangman by Alison Epstein: This is not a book I would have read on my own, but I participate in the Folger Shakespeare Library's online book club and this was their selection for last month. This was a great read for anyone interested in Tudor times and the life of Kit Marlowe. Was Marlowe a spy for Walsingham? Was he killed in a barroom brawl or was he assassinated by his political enemies? Epstein uses this as her background to give us a colorful portrait of Marlowe's life with Shakespeare playing a small cameo. Overall a good book but not as good as the choices for previous book clubs (Booth by Karen Joy Fowler or Shadowplay by Joseph O'Connor) or the one I am reading now for next month's book club - Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. 

So that's 4 of my reads for these past two months from 4 very talented writers who happen to be women. 3 of them were known to me and these are writers whose books I will pick up irrespective of their reviews. The fourth writer is very talented and I will keep an eye out for her other books. Now it's time for me to get back to Ulysses as he is returning to Ithaca finally.

Portable Magic - The Joys of Bookhood

Emma Smith's Portable Magic has been on my reading list for months and I finally got hold of it this past week. I have listened to her podcast on Shakespeare many times and so I was eagerly awaiting this book and it didn't disappoint. Just like her lectures she raises thought-provoking questions about books for the reader to ponder over. The subtitle for this wonderful book says "A History of Books and their Readers" and that in a nutshell is what the book is about. It borrows the title from Stephen King's famous statement "Books are a uniquely portable magic" and as Emma Smith elaborates it is not just the content but the form that makes books unique - a form that has remained practically unchanged for millennia. In the introduction she says that her goal is to help her readers appreciate "book giss, the bookhood of (y)our own life and library" and I can certainly say it did for me! The book is a collection of essays and they are full of interesting facts and anecdotes.

Smith opens her essays with Gutenberg as it seems like a very good place to start but she is quick to point out that, "seen from a global perspective the question about Gutenberg seems less, "How did you do it?" and more "What took you so long?"." Chinese and Korean print pioneers preceded Gutenberg by many centuries but the Gutenberg myth is firmly enshrined in our minds and is said to mark a turning point for book culture at least in the western world. It was interesting to note it wasn't the Bibles but his anti-Turkish material following the wars with the Ottomans that opened the floodgates and drove the demand for print technology across Europe.

Another war a few centuries later provided a boost for popular books. During the Second World War American infantrymen were given books to take along with them into the battlefield to read in the trenches. This created a new format called the American Services Edition which served as a forerunner for the modern paperback - cheap editions of non didactic, non controversial books. Apparently without this edition, The Great Gatsby would have never become the classic it is today. Following the end of the war, books became a tool of Cold War, Anti-Communist propaganda - to spread western values of freedom and democracy in Germany and France. 

ASE The Great Gatsby

Books have always been part of a “strategic self-presentation” and while this was true for countries it is also true for us as individuals. Smith talks about the pandemic trend of using bookcases as zoom backgrounds to signal erudition. She has an interesting piece about “shelfies” and uses three women as examples. Unfortunately she didn’t have any images in her book but here are the three images and they say a lot about the person and how they wanted to be perceived by the world. In the painting of Lady Anne Clifford we see her with books at different stages of her life and every book is painted in detail and is not simply a filler. 

The Great Picture by Lady Anne Clifford

In Boucher’s painting of Madame Pompadour we see how the mistress of Louis XV is portraying herself as an intelligent woman, a true reader with an impressive collection of books and then we have the photograph of Marilyn Monroe reading perhaps the most difficult modern book ever. What is she trying to communicate? Is she like those celebrities who have had their zoom backgrounds curated by professionals or is she truly reading Molly’s soliloquy? Maybe what you infer says something about you rather than her.

Boucher's Madame Pompadour

Monroe reading Ulysses

Another fascinating essay was about books as diasporic objects and what happens when objects are removed from their place of origin and should they be repatriated. From Bacon’s Essaies that drowned along with the Titanic to the Kennicott Bible that traveled along with expelled Jews from Spain to Bibles carried by modern migrants documented by Tom Kiefer’s magnificent photographs, books seem to be quintessential diasporic objects with portability being a primary factor for that. One of the key innovations towards portability was the development of the codex which was a huge improvement over scrolls and codex made the Bible truly portable. She describes the conflict surrounding the Codex Sinaiticus (331 CE) which was taken from its monastery by a German scholar and ended up with Stalin who sold it to the British Library to raise funds for his 5 year plan. Does the Codex need to be repatriated? A successful case of repatriation happened when Denmark returned the Poetic Edda Saga to Iceland. 

Tom Kiefer El Sueno Americano

There are a number of other interesting essays that focus on how books are anthropomorphized and even a section on anthropodermic binding which is the practice of using human skin for binding (??!!). She also discusses book burnings and how they are associated with the Nazis and the May 1933 burnings. However, book burnings did not start or end with the Nazis. People have always been burning books in their private homes or in public as in the case of Cardinal Wolsey burning Luther’s books during the reign of Henry VIII. Following WWII the US issued a ban on a number of books including Mein Kampf and found itself in a tricky position. On the one hand the Nazis were portrayed as anti-freedom, book-burning fascists and on the other the Allied countries were banning books that didn't align with their values. We see this in modern America where a vocal minority is calling for banning books that don't align with their cultural values. What shocked me was also the publishing industry’s habit of pulping returned books. Unsold books all meet the same fate and apparently the British M6 highway’s noise absorbent layer is made from 2.5 Million copies of Mills and Boons novels!

The section on Empire Writes Back deals with colonialism and its impact on non-English cultures. Specifically she discusses Puritan New England and the zeal of John Eliot who arrived in the 1650s to spread the gospel among the Alongonquin tribes. Working with a native who was a first-language convert he created the first Wopanaak Bible. These Bibles were used to establish praying towns in New England which led to the elimination of Algonquin cultures. One such Bible owned by a native man named Ponampam shows how he straddled his indigenous culture with that of the settlers. These Bibles are now used by the Wampanoag linguists to aid their language reclamation project.

Finally Emma Smith asks us to consider what a book is and why we have an attachment to this object. As I type up this blogpost I look around my own room and see books everywhere. Some of them I have read multiple times and some have not been opened at all and haunt me in my nightmares! I love the kindle and find it convenient when on travel and to read in bed but I still long for the physical book especially if it is beautifully illustrated or if the subject matter is too complicated. I lost nearly all of my late father’s books during a move but managed to salvage his copy of A History of Modern Times which he received as an award during his B.A. - one of the very few objects of his that I own, but have never read.

 I recently calculated that at my current rate of reading 30-40 books per year I probably can only read about 1000 books in the next 30 years which is not much given the number of books that get published every year. It was fitting that I read Emma Smith’s ode to books while making my way through Joyce’s Ulysses, a book that is challenging and rewarding at the same time and reminding me of the pleasures of bookhood!