The Reader Travels

Even with its long history, English writers are always looking to the future. Mary Shelley is sometimes credited with writing the first science fiction novel, and H.G. Wells helped to popularize the genre and make it what it is today.

I’ve read at least four different versions of London’s future, and they’re all thought-provoking adventures with lots of political, religious, sexual and social commentary. So I thought I’d do a short tour of alternate reality London, give us all some things to think about.

When you’re looking on the future, you’re looking on the unknown. You can look at it through the eyes of hope or the eyes of fear. Of course, fear makes for better story-telling. Also, you can’t deny that fear sells.

Join me. Don’t be afraid.

My fifth trip for the The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge took me to the island of Crete, one of the many treasures of Greece. Since Zorba the Greek was written before the tourist industry started booming in Crete, Nikos Kazantzakis gives us an unspoiled look at the land and the culture. We see beautiful blue waters, birds and carob trees. We take a trip up into the forested mountains to a burned out monastery, along the coast to a convent and into some ruins left by the ancient inhabitants of the land.

Zorba the Greek is at once a celebration of and an apology for the misogyny that had its roots in ancient Greece and gained a new flavor with the transition to Christianity. I never read a book that had more to say about how wretched and disgusting women are. Zorba who claims to love women can’t say enough about how evil, and at the same time pathetic, they are. He takes pity on them.

We see all of this feminine vileness as a contrast to the beauty of the Platonic ideal of two men, one older, one younger, sharing a higher love with one another than could ever be achieved with a woman. Zorba the Greek explores the history of Greece, from the ancient religion to the philosophies of Plato to the Greek Orthodox faith to the politics of nationalism.

The book is thin on plot but strong on characterization. It seems as though nothing really happens until the last four chapters of the book, and then it’s over, back to the philosophical meanderings of the narrator.

On the other hand, the vivid characterization of Zorba makes him a perfect candidate for both stage and screen. He is Zeus and Dionysus and Eros, his life a celebration of women and wine and song. He is to be immortalized.

My fourth review for the The Armchair Traveler Reading Challenge explores a book of poetry by Robinson Jeffers, poet of Big Sur. Rock and Hawk: A Selection of Shorter Poems gives us a nice look into the poet’s prolific but not always popular career, spanning his life along the California coast with images of Carmel, Point Lobos, seals, otters, hawks and cormorants.

This is a book to own, one to read at leisure and revisit again and again. It is not one to read as I did, crammed into a plane trip from Texas to California and back, trying to absorb as much imagery as I could on a weeklong trip filled with fast cars, family and frenzy.

The collection starts with a nice introduction by the editor, Robert Hass, who spoke of Jeffers’ appreciation for the beauty of wholeness, where wars and violence are but one part of the whole of creation that includes the majesty of nature. He also spoke of Jeffers’ Puritan upbringing, his lifelong guilt over an adulterous affair and his politics of isolationism in a time when US imperialism was in its infancy.

The book includes selections from a number of smaller volumes of poetry, and though there are similar themes that unite Jeffers’ entire body of work, you lose the concentration and power of a compact book of poetry by piling it all up together like this. It’s much like listening to a greatest hits album. You lose a little of the power of the art by ripping it apart. Regardless, it’s still pretty powerful stuff.

The Puritanism and the guilt made me want to hate Robinson Jeffers. I had also received warnings from other poetry enthusiasts that he was depressing, obsessed with death and way too political. So the first poem was read with a pretty strong bias.

I may not have liked Robinson Jeffers as a person, but he was an undeniable talent as a poet. I was amazed at how he could look out at the beauty of nature and see in it the wretchedness of mankind. When many isolationists would see themselves as looking inward, he saw himself as looking outward, to God.

And all that stuff about death… righteous.

We took our little dog for a walk in the park last weekend, and as we were leaving, I looked out the window and said, “Golly, are those men playing cricket?” And indeed, they were.

Cricket may have originated in England, but it comes to Dallas/Fort Worth by way of India. Certainly, imperialism has its evils, but a world of common language and common sports can be a beautiful thing.

It makes me think of the movie Lagaan, if only because it’s about British people teaching Indian people how to play cricket. The story itself is a classic sports tale of underdogs beating their oppressors, all with the color, music, energy and long-lasting entertainment of Bollywood.

It was a strange thing for me to see cricket in Texas, so I had to look it up to find out how widespread the sport is here. It seems that lots of people are playing cricket in the Big D. And suddenly, I’m having the urge to buy the world a Coke, but only the kind you can buy outside of the US in places where they don’t put high fructose corn syrup in everything.

What a world.

Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway considers the meaninglessness of gossip and high society gatherings in comparison with all the wars, conquest and politics happening in the world.

Clarissa Dalloway is fluttering about all day worried about the party she is throwing that night, while her former suitor, Peter Walsh, walks around town thinking about how shallow and pretentious she’s become since he first fell in love with her. He’s gone off to India, become a world traveler, and here she sits with her cushy, sheltered life worried about her guest list. And that guy she married, what a simpleton he is.

Really, Peter’s just bitter that she didn’t pick him. And he’s a hypocrite, too. She may be consumed with her place in society, but he’s really no better. He reads the news and thinks about the importance of his own frivolous interests…

“But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important. He could never help reading about cricket. He read the scores in the stop press first, then how it was a hot day; then about a murder case.”

A man has to have priorities.

Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch is autobiographical, all about his life-long obsession with the Arsenal soccer team. After all, football is life to many Londoners. The book has been made into two different movies, an English version that stays true to Arsenal, and a US version that finds a common truth in Boston Red Sox baseball.

I look at fashion and high society sometimes, and I wonder how people can be so obsessed by something so entirely meaningless. Other people look at sports that way. But they’re both a form of art, imitating life, representing life on a stage, in caricature.

I had the pleasure of watching part of a Red Sox playoff game last weekend with a friend from Boston. Baseball is a game that takes dedication to really appreciate it. With so many psychological factors at play, if you don’t understand the subtleties, you won’t understand the art. On the surface, it just looks like a slow, boring game to be tolerated, and only enjoyed when accompanied by lots of beer.

But he made it fun. He talked about the rabid Red Sox fans, and we cheered when a Boston boy grabbed the ball just before it hit the opponent’s glove. He gave us full explanations of what was happening beyond the pitching and the batting and the running and the fielding, and through his words, I had a new taste for the sport.

I guess sometimes the best of life is in those details, in frivolous passions and common joys.

Oh, and one last thing? Go Cowboys!

I suppose my insensitivity is a defense mechanism. I use logic to keep my emotions in check. If I have a loved one who is suicidal, my logical side wonders which is more selfish, for him to put me through the pain of losing him this way, or for me to want him to stay alive in so much pain. It’s a sadomasochistic situation, no matter which way you look at it. Someone will be hurt. Plain and simple.

So my logic says, don’t take things personally. Let him go if he wants to go. Let him make his own choice. Doris Portwood’s book, Common Sense Suicide: The Final Right, argues that senior citizens should have the right to choose their own death without the risk of stigmatizing themselves. After all, they have lived a full life and they’re old enough to make these decisions for themselves. And why does it have to be a “sin”?

Early in the book, she talks about the history of our current attitudes toward suicide, in somewhat ironical terms. Isn’t this silly, then?

“In England in the 1860s, a man who had cut his throat was arrested for the crime and condemned to die by hanging. A doctor pointed out that such a procedure would open the slit throat, admit air – and foil the noose. But the hanging went on regardless, with the authorities determined to do their duty toward the sinning would-be suicide. His throat did open, as predicted, but he was bandaged and patched up sufficiently to keep life within him just long enough for it to be snuffed out by the prescribed punishment.”

Of course, the mistake I make again and again is in thinking that logic has anything whatsoever to do with it.

I learned the hard way that when a friend tells me she’s ready to kill herself for real this time, the correct response is not to say, “Oh, okay, so if this is the last time I’m going to see you, I guess I should make the most of the day.” We were shopping at the local mall, and I tried to make it a fun day for her.

When I tried on a bra at the Victoria’s Secret, she laughed as she saw my feet leave the ground under the stall. I had to jump up and down to see if it was going to do the job, right? Looking through the sale rack at The Gap, all they had was size zero’s, and I said a little loudly, “I guess anorexia is out of fashion this year.” Then I showed her a farewell card in the Hallmark store, which I’m sure was like salt in her wound, and not nearly as funny as I thought it would be.

She told her therapist what I’d done, and her therapist assured her that she didn’t need friends like me. I’m sure her therapist was right. But I’m also glad to say she didn’t kill herself.

Maybe I was calling her bluff. Maybe I was insensitive not to take her pain seriously. Maybe I need my own therapist. But really, what are you supposed to say to that?

I spent a little time in London this year, an adventure that started on the roof of a “Toppers’ House” on New Year’s Eve, a place where people go to off themselves. A Long Way Down was the first Nick Hornby book I’ve read, but it won’t be the last.

It was a quick, fun read, mostly dialogue, and I can see why his books translate so well to movies. I’ll have to read High Fidelity and About a Boy and Fever Pitch, sometime in the future when the movies aren’t so fresh in my memory.

Anyway, Hornby has a way of turning tough situations into comedy. I have a small obsession with the subject of suicide, so I really loved how he handled the topic in A Long Way Down.

Every one of the characters is suicidal and sad, each in a unique way. I have never been suicidal, but I have a lot of loved ones who have been plagued with thoughts of suicide. So, I often wonder what makes them feel that way, other than having a crappy life in general.

Although A Long Way Down is funny, all four of the characters are well drawn, real people with real motivations. I guess it really helps to step back and laugh at yourself sometimes, stop taking yourself so seriously. Or consider some good medication anyway.

It took me just under three months to watch The Last King of Scotland. Netflix shipped it to me on July 3, and I mailed it back to them on October 1. As I look back on my journeys here, I found that I started my tour of Africa on July 7. Yes, it really is time to move on. And I’m glad I finally watched the movie.

You might ask yourself why it took me so long to watch this film. After all, I love Forest Whitaker, and from the first trailer I saw, I knew that Idi Amin was the part of a lifetime for him. Also, Mr. Tumnus is hot. Even as a paraplegic in Rory O’Shea Was Here, he was hot.

It’s just all that crimes-against-humanity stuff that’s hard to stomach, you know? Instead of watching The Last King of Scotland, here are some of the movies I did watch while I was waiting to find just the right mood for bloody massacre:

• Blades of Glory
• Running with Scissors
• House of Fools
• Hot Fuzz (twice)
• Knocked Up
• Hoodwinked
• Pootie Tang
• Let’s Go to Prison
• Fever Pitch (the British version)
• Stranger Than Fiction

Happy, happy thoughts. Now, let’s go to London, shall we?