Look Homeward, Angel

Be very careful about revisiting the classics of your youth. I tore through Thomas Wolfe when I was 20-21 years old and thought that Look Homeward Angel was the Great American Novel. Now I am greatly disappointed with it and not quite sure why.

Maybe since I read this together with Time and the River and You can't Go Home Again and The Web and the Rock, I thought that it was about Eugene Gant and I identified with the writer's life back then. I even took up smoking a tobacco pipe after seeing Gregory Peck as F. Scott. But while Eugene dominates the last half of the book, it's really about the family, which is a lot more dysfunctional than I remember. Or maybe I saw Gant, the father, as an overblown George Robert. His rants about "Mountain Grills, Mountain Grills!" has the flavor of some of dad's put downs of the Panhandle, although he never really denigrated granddad in the manner of Gant excoriating the Pentlands.

As an interesting aside, one article that I came across derives the "Mountain Grill" epithet from Edmund Spencer, for whom a grill was a porcine fellow who ate all the time, who seemed to derive that from Homer. Is this another instance where Wolfe throws in subtle literary allusions, taking delight in his own comparative language? And so could a comparison be made to T. S. Eliot shoring up the ruins of his life with literary allusions in the Waste Land? I was certain struck with the similarities at some points with The Portrait of An Artist as a Young Man when the book hyper-jumps into stream of consciousness, as when Eugene and his father are walking to the movie theatre.

Perhaps part of my disappointment comes from the narration of the audiobook. Much of the book's jumping back and forth between characters and thoughts is signaled in print by paragraph breaks which is missing in the audio version, making it needlessly confusing at times--a pause, a change in voice and/or inflection might help here. It's just a book that does not do well in a audio version.

Ultimately, all the characters in the book, including or especially Eugene--are buffoons. In that regard, it's a comic novel. The brunt of the comedy often comes with Gant's heaping of abuse and invective on Eliza and here family that is at once humorous but also selfish, mean spirited, and cruel. It's a love less marriage, almost complete devoid of any tenderness, and this is reflected in the way the children end up. Only Daisy seems to escape. Grover dies young; Ben becomes hateful and cynical until he, too, dies. Helen verges on hysteria, and Luke has a load of anger lying just become the surface that occasionally explodes on other members of the family. Eugene also comes off as both hateful and naive. His explosion against the family when he gets drunk for the first time is probably even the most hateful and selfish episode in the book, and he becomes so taken up with himself and his sense of self-entitlement. So is "Look Homeward, Angel" really about adolescent angst and is that why I was so taken with it?

Finally, what to make of the "O Lost" passages? Are they literary and overblown flourishes? They just seem a bit silly now.

Interestingly, as I pick up the book and read the print version, the voices speak more naturally to me, the characters seem more familiar, the asides more realistic. I should really go at it again, this time solely as print, and see how it strikes me.

Author: Wolfe, Thomas

Date Published: 1929

Length: 22hr 22min

Narrator: Sowers, Scott

In Search of the Dark Ages

This book was written to accompany Michael Woods' first history special for the BBC back in the late 80's, and it has all the virtues and vices of a television script. It is written in a breezy style and is very readable, but it is pretty shallow in depth. However, I did learn about about the rulers of Britain from the Roman conquest until the coming of William the Conqueror, and I have a better idea why the British think of themselves as Anglo Saxon, even though the latest genetic evidence shows that the majority of the people have genes that predate even the coming of the Celts.

Woods begins with Boudica's revolt, showing how Roman many of the major cities in Britain had become. Even when the Roman government fell--after Constantine (the Brit, not the Great) took off to the mainland to try and claim the Roman empire as his own--the British still saw themselves as heirs to the Roman government and way of life, at least until the conquest by the Danes later in the first millennium. England fell into a number of small kingdoms and chiefdoms, with the Angles, the Saxons, and later the Jutes invited to serve as mercenaries for some of the warlords and kings. This was also the period that produced the Arthurian legends, but Woods can find no concrete evidence for Arthur's existence, considering the legends really more the product of a later myth making and story telling time. The Angles and the Saxons slowly gain power as Britain coalesces around three major areas: West Saxons, East Angles, and Mercia, with Northumbria kind of a wild card.

The book is really speculation on some of the major personalities of British history during this time: Aethelstan, who was really the first king to be recognized as such by the majority of the smaller kingdom, Alfred, who ran a successful guerilla campaign after the Danes invaded the island and threatened to completely overrun it, and Ethelred the Unready, who appeared to vacillate during the last invasions of the Danes until Britain fell to Canute in 1013. But Northumbria was already pretty much under Danelaw at that point, being part of the Norse trading kingdom that extended from Denmark/Norway through England and Dublin to Greenland, fueled mainly by the slave trade.

But that Danish overlordship comes to an end in 1066 when William, himself just two generations removed from being Viking invaders in France, defeats Harold Godwinson at Hastings. Godwinson had just marched the length of England after beating off another invasion force led by Harold Hadrada. But somehow Godwinson was seen as the last of the Anglo Saxon kings that had ruled Britain since Offa's reign in the 780's. The Norman invasion represents a real turning point in power and redistribution of wealth as the thegns, former petty rulers and "nobility," become second class citizen. The people really saw themselves as Anglo-Saxons in language and culture, by then, an identity forged by Aethelstand and Alfred and fostered greatly by Bede's Ecclesiastical History. The Normans were seen then primarily as invaders and interlopers from the continent ruling a foreign peoples.

Author: Woods, Michael

Date Published: 1987

Length: 250 pp

print

Hadrian and the Triumph of Rome

I dunno. I found Hadrian boring. Maybe I find Roman life boring--but I did enjoy the Claudius books. I do have a much better handle on the history of the early empire now, although I'm still a bit fuzzy on the civil wars that preceded Domitian's rise to emperor. The reign of Hadrian marks the zenith of the Roman empire at its greatest power and influence. It was Hadrian, also, however, that set the limits to Roman growth after Trajan found that he could hold Parthia after he had defeated its army.

There are only two points of interest for me in Hadrian's life--his fondness for Grecian culture and his relationship with Antinous. Hadrian was something of an intellectual dilettante, and in some way the height of his intellectual curiosity came when he was given the chance to participate in the Elusinian mysteries. He also studied Stoicism, which gained greater status with Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius, in addition to being a great patron of the arts, temple building, and great public works all over the empire. Everit makes it clear that Hadrian had a loveless marriage, and, following Trajan, much preferred the boys. There is some indication that he may have scored political points early in his career with his choice of bed fellows. At the same time, he had a complex relationship with Trajan's wife, who could have been his adoptive mother. She may have fabricated the story of Trajan's choice of Hadrian to succeed him as emperor.

Hadrian may have fallen in love with Antinous when Antinous was about 13, and they were inseparable in the last few years of Antinous' life. Everitt suggests that Hadrian may have had Antinous sacrificed, however, when they were in Egypt, as part of a magical cure for erypsalis. Also, there is some hint that Antinous may have resisted getting buggered by Hadrian. Hadrian was following the classical Greek model of eronimous--the elder man who takes a young boy as a student and a lover--pedagogy and pederasty. Everitt includes an interesting discussion towards sex and same sex relationships in Rome--it was OK to be the penetrator but not the penetratee.

Antinous' death signals Hadrian's going over the edge. He had Antinous deified by the Senate and then put into a mausoleum near his villa on the estate that he built just outside Rome.Yet, it seems that Hadrian spent most of his time away from Rome, whether in the Danube region or the Rhine or Egypt or Britain, or especially Greece. There is a lot of insight into how the empire was governed as Hadrian's corp of administrators and functionaries followed him on his journeys.

The signal event in his career was the brutal suppression of the Jews. He passed a number of laws trying to eradicate Judaism, including building a statue to Jupiter over the temple mount, and eventually completed the diaspora by forbidding any Jews to come near to Jerusalem. In the process the Legions took heavy casualties and lost a full legion in one season of campaigning.

Finally, Hadrian had some of his closest advisors put to death near the end of his reign. By then, he was out of control, perhaps caused by the constant pain that dogged him for a number of years. Hadrian was not a popular ruler, haughty and overbearing at times, full of himself and his sense of entitlement. He had had four senators put to death at the beginning of his reign, and the senate never forgot nor forgave. Everitt makes it clear that the Roman empire went downhill after Hadrian, probably through Marcus Aurelius' campaigns for expansion on the Rhine.

Author: Everitt, Anthony

Date Published: 2009

Length: 14hr 25min

Narrator: Curless, John

The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age

Sometimes I should know when to stop. I was really taken up with Dame Yates' exposition of Giordano Bruno and the whole development of Renaissance Neo-Platonism as developed through Ficino and Pico. I was a little less impressed by the Arts of Memory, but I really dug into the Rosicrucian Enlightenment.

This book occupies a place between Bruno and the Rosicrucians, a fascinating period, especially for some of the implications of the influences. But overall, this book as a real disappointment. Yates repeats herself over and over and uses some pretty tenuous connections between images to bolster her arguments. This book could have been much shorter and I suspect that it would not withstand serious scrutiny by someone really familiar with the sources.

In any case, she begins her exposition with Pico and his cabalistic theses. Pico sought to Christianize Cabala, combining it with neo-platonism and hermeticism to come up with the new renaissance philosophy of man--made famous in his oration on the dignity of man. He was a magus who felt that it was safe to call down daemons and astral influences since the Cabala would guard from any evil influences. These ideas was taken up by the Franciscan monk Giorgi but really developed by Agrippa who also dabbled in alchemy. John Dee picked up on Agrippa's ideas and used them to further the cult of Elizabeth as the purifier of religion and the leader of a new world order. His ideas were influential on Raleigh, Sydney, and Spencer, but his star fell after his mission to Bohemia, where his ideas crystallized into Rosicrucianism, and Elizabeth pulled back from some of her foreign adventures.

When James took the throne, believing in the reality of evil and witchcraft, Dee's ideas became suspect. The witch hunts of the counterreformation really took off about this time, and Dee's influence on the continent waned with the crushing of Rudolf and the beginning of the Thirty Years War. The heart of the book then develops influences on Spencer’s Faerie Queen, reaction by Marlowe who ridiculed Dee and Agrippa in Faustus and stirred up strong antisemitism in the Jew of Malta, and Shakespeare's play with the ideas of the magus and Rosicrucianism in the Tempest. Yates also points to parallels with Bacon's New Atlantis, and Milton's use of the ideas of inspired melancholy in his poetry. Also interesting connections to the reintroduction of the Jews in England after Cromwell and the Puritan emphasis on the Old Testament, perhaps inspired by sympathy with Cabalism. A lot of interesting connections and influences, but certainly not in the league with her other books.

Author: Yates, Francis

Date Published: 1979

Length: 222 pp

print

The Philosophy of the Enlightenment

This is supposed to be a classic, but like all classics, I eventually ran out of steam. I did OK until the last chapter on aesthetic problems and then the reading seemed to take forever. Cassirer is at pains to show that the enlightenment of 18th century thought is quite a bit different, although heir to, seventeenth century thought, which culminated, really, with Newton. Newton was the culmination of thought begun with Bacon, Kepler, Galileo and Spinoza. Newton formulates the observations of others into mathematical laws wholly devoid of authority and revelation.

But in discovering the natural world, the new empiricism really discovers the mind, and in so doing, begins to criticize itself. If there is no guarantee of the uniformity of nature and experience, then how do we know what we know? It leads thence to Hume and to Kant. "What we call objectivity or truth or necessity has no absolute but merely a relative meaning." (p. 115)

In essence, the Enlightenment was about attitude, or as the essay once said, freeing man from the horse latitudes of faith. And yet it runs into it's own issues of epistemology even while seeing "from the advancement of knowledge a new moral order and a new orientation of the political and social history of man." (p. 214) Quite a tall order, but the foundation of all of our thinking. Diderot was characteristic in rejecting all conceptual schemes and seeking a dynamic view of the world in which present knowledge is but a transitory view or a "resting point" to be overturned as new knowledge becomes available.

Author: Cassier, Ernst

Date Published: 1932

Length: 360 pp

print

Comanche Moon

A much better book than Dead Man's Walk, it's McMurtry telling a good story. Second only to Lonesome Dove in the series, and better than the Berrybender series, I think. It's filling in the gaps with Gus and Call, but with some memorable characters in their own right, especially Buffalo Hump, Ahuamado, Inish and Inez Scull, Famous Shoes, Kicking Wolf. Gus and Call develop into the characters we know and love in Lonesome Dove, and the rest of the major cast is set for the book: Dietz, Pea-eye, Clara, of course, although not as prominently here as Dead Man's Walk, Jake Spoon, and Newt. Call's life with Maggie is outlined here, and presages his relationship with Newt in Lonesome Dove. Inish Scull is an interesting character that reminds me faintly, of the Judge (Holden) in Blood Meridian, without the evil. The scenes hanging in the cage and carving Greek hexameters from Homer into the stone wall to pass the time are very good, although his ability to catch doves and to survive in the situation is pretty far fetched. Overall, a very enjoyable experience for me.

Author: McMurtry, Larry

Date Published: 1997

Length: 23hr 57min

Narrator: Muller, Frank