Notes on "The Rainbow" by D. H. Lawrence

I have been listening to The Rainbow, by D. H. Lawrence, but I am giving up on it about half way through. I have become impatient with Lawrence's narrative style. Many novels are written from an omniscient perspective. Lawrence writes from a perspective of universal sympathy. He understands, and describes in detail, the inner emotional turmoil of his characters. Pages and pages pass without dialog, direct interaction among characters, or event. The microscopic examination of psyche feels unauthentic to me. It made me feel more remote from the characters, like they are chess pieces being moved on a chess board. Such intimate sympathy does not make me feel more involved in the internal lives as Lawrence may have intended. It makes me feel they are slaves to the author's will and whim.

That being said, The Rainbow has not been without rewards. The prose, particularly when describing the external world, can border on the poetic. The book recounts three generations of the Brangwin family, owners of a small farm near Nottingham. Here is a passage near the start describing the life of on the Brangwin Farm:

But heaven and earth was teeming around them, and how should this cease? They felt the rush of the sap in spring, they knew the wave which cannot halt, but every year throws forward the seed to begetting, and, falling back, leaves the young-born on the earth. They knew the intercourse between heaven and earth, sunshine drawn into the breast and bowels, the rain sucked up in the daytime, nakedness that comes under the wind in autumn, showing the birds' nests no longer worth hiding. Their life and interrelations were such; feeling the pulse and body of the soil, that opened to their furrow for the grain, and became smooth and supple after their ploughing, and clung to their feet with a weight that pulled like desire, lying hard and unresponsive when the crops were to be shorn away. The young corn waved and was silken, and the lustre slid along the limbs of the men who saw it. They took the udder of the cows, the cows yielded milk and pulse against the hands of the men, the pulse of the blood of the teats of the cows beat into the pulse of the hands of the men. They mounted their horses, and held life between the grip of their knees, they harnessed their horses at the wagon, and, with hand on the bridle-rings, drew the heaving of the horses after their will.

Hearing this, I thought I was in for a story bound to the English countryside, with rich and detailed descriptions of farm life, but the author seems to lose interest. We hear comparatively little of the work the do, or the practicalities of life.

The Librivox book is beautifully read by a single reader, Debra Lynn, who has a slightly incongruous, but level and pleasant midwestern accent. She kept me listening long after I would have otherwise stopped.

- J

Notes on "Tragedy: a Tragedy"

In Tragedy: a Tragedy by Will Eno, a new play at the Berkeley Rep, something cataclysmic has happened and we are in the last night. Or maybe not. But, the news team of a local station is on the case. There is an avuncular anchor, a man on the street reporter, a human interest reporter, a political reporter, and a "witness". The content free commentary of these reporters who really do not know anything is pitch perfect and very funny. As the play proceeds, we watch the reporters collapse under the strain of trying to report on a world they believe has turned upside down. Very 9-11.

-- J

Notes on "The Souls of Black Folk" by W. E. B. Du Bois

I thought I was an educated man and understood at least the basic history of race in America, but The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, was a revelation. There were many points while reading this book where I wondered, "could I have been sleeping in class that day?" The Civil War, of course, was about freeing the slaves. I know about the Civil War. I, after all, watched the Ken Burns miniseries. I should think I would know more about what happened regarding the slaves. I should think I would know that freeing of slaves occurred in the midst of the battlefield, because of course the battlefields were among farms and plantations. I should think that I would know that some Union Generals responded to black men escaping to Union lines by ordering the ir return to their "rightful" owners or by effectively enslaving them themselves. I must have been asleep in school when these facts were discussed.

Du Bois said at the beginning of the last century, "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line." He meant by this more than the white/black issues in the United States, but all the encounters and conflicts among the races throughout the world. This proved prescient, of course. These conflicts continue, in the twenty first century to occupy us. The Souls of Black Folk, except for its title, reads as a very modern book.

- J

Notes on "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind"

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind is a film based on the Chuck Barris autobiography of the same name. Chuck Barris was a creator of trashy game shows for television -- The Dating Game, The Newlywed Show, The Gong Show. In his autobiography he claims to have led a double life as a CIA assassin. The movie plays it straight, except that the actor playing Barris plays his role rather broadly. The movie was a project of George Clooney, who directs and acts. It was a well paced movie, never boring, but unsatisfying. The movie seemed to be making some important point about Hollywood, but I didn't get it. Maybe it would make sense to people in the business.

- J

Farley's Blend

Farley's Blend. You can still get it at Peet's, even though it is not on the board. They have to blend it on the spot. Most Peet's blends, it seems to me, are either all Arabica(Asia or Africa) or all Robusto(Americas). This one blends both.

- J

Rubber Rooms

I heard a This American Life story last night about Rubber Rooms. It can be heard here. These are temporary "Reassignment Centers" for teachers in the New York City public school system. Teachers may be pulled from the classrooms for any of a variety of reasons and assigned to a Rubber Room, where the have to show up each workday and sit for seven hours to get paid. Some people are assigned this purgatory for years. It is a bizarre and arbitrary system. In these circumstances, apparently, people quickly begin to behave like people in prison. They played a snippet of what it sounded like on a typical day. It sounded just like a High School classroom when the teacher is out.

- J

Crossed Paths

I have been listening to the Librivox edition of The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois. In the final chapter he introduced a brief autobiographical moment with "My grandfather's grandmother was seized by an evil Dutch trader two centuries ago; and coming to the valleys of the Hudson and Housatonic, black, little, and lithe, she shivered and shrank in the harsh north winds...." I thought, "I wonder..."

We have traced one branch of my wife, K's, family back to Hugo Freer, one of the twelve patentees of New Paltz, New York, in the late seventeenth century. They were French Huguenots fleeing religious persecution. They obtained their patent from the Dutch colonists. When we visited the Huguenot Street Historic Site in New Paltz we were shocked to learn that the original families kept slaves, whom they obtained in trade with the Dutch. Du Bois is obviously a French name. I wondered if K's ancestor and Du Bois's ancestor crossed paths.

There is this: Per Wikipedia, "W.E.B. Du Bois is said to be grandson of a loyalist descendant of Louis Du Bois' brother who left for the West Indies." Louis Du Bois is another New Paltz patentee. Louis Du Bois, himself owned six slaves, according to records. So, maybe. K's ancestor and Du Bois's ancestor may well have crossed paths.

Strange to think that people fleeing oppression would turn to oppressing others. Strange to think this occurred in the "enlightened" north. New York did not completely ban slavery until the 1820's.

- J

A New Tack

I have not been happy with the direction of this blog lately. It has become limited to mini-reviews. I meant the blog to be an exploration, and it has ceased to be that. So, I am going to try making an entry each day on something from that day.

To that end, we enjoyed a nice dinner at a new Italian restaurant in Fremont -- not a chain! -- named Federico's. On Mowry Blvd. It was pleasantly buzzing, and apparently successful. I hope it continues to enjoy success and to inspire other independent restaurants.

- J

Notes on "Once"

Once is an Irish film in which a street singer and a struggling immigrant woman from the Czech Republic meet and rescue one another through music. The film is mostly told through the music, although it is not a musical in the normal sense. The immigrant woman is strong in a way that immigrants are often forced to be, and this one fact causes the film to have a rhythm and trajectory that is counter to that of most films.

- J