A Hard Bargain

The Public Library in my community is the kind of library I used to dream about during the years I lived in Japan. Letters from friends in the US occasionally spoke of library services available to local residents, and I absorbed the information with great envy. The system is very different in Japan, and unless you visit specialized libraries in inconvenient locations, the number of books in English is always small. As far as English goes, well-known classics are not rare, but contemporary writers remain poorly represented in most Tokyo libraries.

Now I find myself in library heaven, awash in a dozen or so member services, and overloaded with books, magazines, newspapers, music on CD and movies on DVD. There are at least two dozen computers provided for patrons, and for those bringing a laptop the WI-FI is free. Several services are offered via home computer, things like renewals, reservations and requests to other branches—all of which thrill me with their quick efficiency. It’s probably quite ordinary to people long familiar with the local library system in the US, but to me it seems like free candy.

Along with the huge collection of DVDs—movies, including foreign films, documentaries and television series—the service I enjoy most is the sale of donated books. There is a large box-like receptacle at the entrance for those who want to get rid of old (or new) books from home. Each time I go to the library, probably four or five times each week, my first stop is at the big cache of donated books. They are not free for the taking, but must first be processed by library personnel before being added to the shelves of the far from small library “bookstore.”

I have found a method to get the books I want after a wait of several days. I’m not sure if other patrons use the same method, but it has yet to fail me. I take the book I am interested in to the desk and ask that they hold it for me until the processing is complete. The only worry is the possibility that the person processing the book might scribble a price on the front cover with pen, pencil, or in one case grease pencil.

In this manner, I have gotten a first edition hardback of Walter Mosley’s 1996 A Little Yellow Dog, another first of his 2002 book, Bad Boy Brawly Brown, and a first edition of the newest Barbara Kingsolver novel, The Lacuna. At the point I found this last book in the library box, I was very near buying a copy at Barnes & Noble for $26.99. Except for the seemingly indelible grease pencil price scrawled across the front cover, the book is as new and unmarked as anything in Barnes & Noble. I paid $3.30. The two Mosley books were a dollar each.

But these three books pale in comparison to my ‘Find of the Year.’ Last week I was casually looking through a stack of donated books when I found beneath an old Danielle Steele book something that made my heart stop. First thing I did was look over my shoulder to see if another book lover was hovering nearby. The book in my hand was a hardback 1960 J.B. Lippencott first edition of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird—in fine condition. To my slight disappointment, I saw printed on the inside flap the words, ‘Book Club Edition.’ Unfortunately, those three little words take a few thousand off the book’s value. However, it’s still worth considerably more than the outrageous price the library charged me for the book three days after reserving it. I went through the usual process and reminded them I would return in a few days.

Upon my return, and following a few minutes of heavy bargaining, I realized they weren’t going to come down on the price. When I finally said okay, that I would pay what they were asking, the little old lady librarian snatched up a pen, millimeters away from scratching the price on the book’s front cover, when I dropped to my knees, hands raised in prayer shouting, “PLEASE DON’T!!” She smirked, said okay and wrote the price on a scrap of paper. I took the first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird to the desk and paid the full price—30¢.

Allusion

This morning I was reading in James Lee Burke’s novel, Pegasus Descending when I came upon a passage I recognized as an allusion, but one I couldn’t identify. Burke’s sentence was this: ‘Our appointment in Samarra is made for us without our consent, and Death finds us of its own accord and in its own time.’ Appointment in Samarra is the title of a 1934 John O’Hara novel, which uses as an epigraph an earlier story taken from Somerset Maugham. Burke’s line took on a clearer and richer meaning after reading a short synopsis of the old story — In Baghdad, a merchant sends his servant to the marketplace, but the servant soon returns pale and trembling, saying that he jostled a woman he recognized as Death, that she made a threatening gesture. He flees to Samarra, where he believes Death will not find him. Concerned abut his servant, the merchant goes to the marketplace, finds death and asks about her threatening gesture to his servant. She answers that her gesture was, on the contrary one of surprise at seeing the servant in Baghdad, and continuing…“Surprised because I have an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

Not many many pages later Burke alludes to the Robert Frost poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” when he writes, ‘But I still had miles to go before I slept,’ hinting at a similar complexity that had troubled the Frost character. Most fans of Burke will agree that his frequent use of allusion heightens the impact of his stories.

‘Allusion’ is a word we have taken from the Latin alussio meaning ‘to play with, to touch lightly upon,’ Most of us learned somewhere during high school or college that an allusion is a figure of speech that makes reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, or work of art, sometimes directly, sometimes by implication.

Modern writers, for the most part, have pretty much abandoned the use of allusion in their writing, but a great many earlier writers (particularly the more classical) relied upon allusion to add depth and erudition to their writing. It was also a way to draw parallels in linking one writer’s thought to another, to broaden the basis of a position or argument. In modern terms the parenthesis to allusion might be something like, ‘the great so and so said the same thing, like this…’ Allusion was in fact a common tool for classical writers, and while its use among modern writers has declined, it certainly hasn’t disappeared, and we can still enjoy the extra richness it brings to our reading, fiction or otherwise.

Another recent example that sent me off to the reference desk comes from Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin. In a section about one of his main characters, he writes… ‘In Hartford as a junior counsel he would walk along the narrow paths with Wallace Stevens, of all people, both men in sleeveless shirts. It did not give of bird or bush, like nothing else in Tennessee.’ I was confused by this sudden non-sequitur in italics, and so typed it into Google. The line comes from the Wallace Stevens poem, “Anecdote of the Jar,” a rather difficult work to fathom, but somewhere in there is the idea of authority. By no means a Eureka! type of unveiling, but I did finally conclude that McCann’s use of the line was probably an allusion to the authority of his character’s position as a New York judge. Once again I felt as though the allusion had added some salt to the character, as well as to the story.

One last example is the history-making 1963 speech by Dr Martin Luther King, “I Have a Dream,” a veritable gold mine of allusions to literature, song, drama, Bible and historical documents. At one point in his speech King alludes to Shakespeare’s Richard III in saying, ‘This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality.’ In the final lines he calls up the words of a traditional African-American spiritual when he says, “Free at last, free at last; thank God Almighty, we are free at last,” knowing that the majority of his listeners will be able to quote with him the final words of his speech.

Frankly, Dr King’s speech would have been weakened without his powerful use of allusion.

Phileas Fogg’s Namesake

Starting to reach bottom in the collection of fountain pens entrusted to me for cleaning and evaluation by a friend. Today I looked at pen number eight, a Waterman Phileas in red marble, a design from the 1990s. The pen is named for the character Phileas Fogg in Jules Verne’s 1873 book, Around the World in Eighty Days, and from that name Waterman has managed to spin a tale connecting pen and book. (Neither Waterman nor fountain pens existed in the 1870s, of course.)

Waterman, along with several of their vendors like to say that the Phileas reflects the art deco look of the 1930s, but that claim is something of a stretch. This pen has what anyone would call a handsome design, a traditional design, but it does not really evoke anything of the art deco era. The barrel and cap are plastic resin with a brass liner. The ebony black crown on the cap looks especially good with the gold band and pocket clip. The Phileas comes in several colors. There is the solid black model, and then the designs in faux marble finish, either blue, green or red. The nib, in either fine or medium is a wide two-toned, partially gold-plated steel nib, with a gold fan motif just over the usual Waterman hexagon with ‘W’ in the center. This gold fan motif is repeated on the pen’s barrel band. The Phileas uses either cartridge or a Waterman piston-fill converter.

I have heard the pen described as a good starter pen for the beginning fountain pen user. You can never be sure how cheaply a certain pen will sell for on ebay, but buying the Phileas brand new is a little more expensive that what most beginners want to pay. Not too long ago I mentioned to a non-enthusiast that a certain pen cost only $60, and the reaction was closer to shock than pleasant surprise. My opinion is that the Waterman Phileas is too expensive to be called a ‘starter pen.’

To be brief, the Phileas fine point nib I have here writes well, rather closer to medium than fine. It’s very smooth and wet enough, though not too wet. The feeling is unlike other steel-nibbed fountain pens, or at least that was the case in the one page I wrote using Iroshizuku Ajisai (hydrangea) ink. Good behavior on the 90g Clairefontaine paper with this ink. I have to give high marks to Waterman for this good looking, smooth writing and moderately priced fountain pen.

Fickle Sky

The rumble of thunder wakens me early in the morning. Eyes blink open at the same moment a sweep of rain slaps against window glass, and a second later wind beats the palm trees into an angry clatter. Sitting up, I get a wide angle view through an unshuttered window that offers a view of sky, ocean and sand melting together, a view severely limited by the wet turmoil of water and cloud.

I stand at the window wondering about this stormy violence, trying to gauge a path or direction it might follow. In this climate weather is fast moving, here in a moment and blown away after a few agitated minutes. This time the storm has found a comfortable center, a place to stop and pound itself against land and water, flinging defiance at the smug assurances of local weathermen who smile and promise sunny beaches.

Thirty minutes pass before the wind and rain blow themselves out and off to a farther stretch of beach. It’s enough to fool me. I am unwilling to easily give up my routine walk and so hurry out to the soggy sand and point my feet south. From there the view is clearer, stretching away north and south. Apart from myself, not another person is in sight for miles in either direction. A half mile offshore isolated walls of rain stretch from dark clouds to a darker ocean, but rays of light have found a way through the gloom to etch portions of sky and cloud with silver lining. There is no rain now and I settle into an unthinking pace across sand that is smooth but spongy.

From behind, or far ahead—I can’t tell—a soft growl of thunder catches me off guard and eyes swivel in each direction looking for the flicker of lightning. Few want to be on a beach in a lightning storm, and I take comfort in the absence of any ominous winks or flares. Walking is still easy and seemingly safe, so I ignore a second roll of thunder and the light sprinkle of almost-rain that begins spotting my T-shirt.

A mile from home the light sprinkle has a sudden personality change, and instantly, magically becomes a torrential wall of water that drenches me in the blink of an eye. The rain pounds craters in the sand all around me and poor visibility takes away everything but the fifteen or twenty feet of space I stumble through. Still no lightning, but there’s little room for comfort in this predicament. And now I have the good sense to turn back toward home.

Water sloshes in my shoes, trunks and T-shirt like a second skin plastered tight against my body, and I am worried now the water is going to wreck the iPhone in my pocket. Phone be damned, it’s the loss of pedometer, camera and half a dozen other functions that unsettles me more.

Some distance ahead I vaguely make out the palm trees that landmark home. The rain is no longer pelting, less a curtain than ordinary hard rain. I notice that the birds, the sanderlings and the willets are untroubled by this weather and without pause go about their business of darting through the receding surf, eye out for a sand hopper or small pigfish. Sky once more morphs into puffs and swirls of clouds doing a light and dark waltz. The light wins out and then with the flick of a switch the rain stops. I am fifty feet from home.

I climb the stairs relieved to have something more substantial than sand under my feet. For a minute I stand and stare out at the settling face of ocean and beach. Looks like it might be a beautiful day.

The Captain’s Table

‘All flesh is grass: and it has been said that the man who finds out how to make two blades of grass grow where one grew before serves the republic admirably well.

It may also be said that a woman who causes two dishes to stand upon an American table is more valuable than the hero of any election. This is particularly true when the second dish is that noble pudding, a spotted dog, gleaming on its plate and accompanied by true egg custard.’ — Patrick O’Brian, France 1997.

These words come from the Forward of a delightful companion book to Patrick O’Brian’s twenty-one volume collection of novels. The book is called Lobscouse & Spotted Dog—Which It’s a Gastronomic Companion to the Aubrey-Maturin novels. One of the many joys of reading the 6,510 pages of O’Brian’s series is the detail surrounding the food and meals eaten on a 19th century English sailing ship during the era of the Napoleonic Wars. In their book, Anne Chotzinoff Grossman and Lisa Grossman Thomas have compiled a collection of recipes for the numerous and often humorous dishes served to captain and crew, as well as honored guests in the pages of the Aubrey-Maturin anthology. The description of the meals, the pervasiveness and importance of food entranced the two O’Brian fan-writers, as it probably has many, many others. Like most of us, they wondered about things like lobscouse, burgoo and spotted dog. Their book is the result of that curiosity.

‘Bless me,’ cried Jack, with a loving look at its glistening, faintly translucent sides, ‘a spotted dog!’

‘We thought as how you might like one, sir,’ said Pullings. ‘Allow me to carve you a slice.’ — from The Ionian Mission

SPOTTED DOG

The authors describe this as a handsome object, brown and appetizing; it has a moist, dense, cake-like texture; it is sweet but not too sweet, spicy but not too spicy, and altogether satisfying.

Ingredients:

4 cups flour

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon salt

1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

1¾ cups dried currants

½ pound suet, finely grated

1 cup milk

2 eggs, lightly beaten

Preparation: In a large bowl, mix the flour, sugar, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Stir in the currants. Mix in the suet. Add the milk and eggs, and work the mixture thoroughly with your hands. Scrape the batter into a greased 6-cup pudding basin. Tie a well-floured cloth over the pudding. Place the pudding in a pot of boiling water, cover and steam for 2 hours. Unmold and serve hot, accompanied by custard sauce.

MUSHROOM KETCHUP

A terrible sounding concoction from the section on condiments from the galley and ship’s hold…

This ‘condiment’ is not supposed to require refrigeration, but after a few weeks it grows a fur that can be skimmed off, whereupon the ketchup is perfectly usable.

Ingredients:

1 pint strong stale beer

10 anchovies, or 1 can of fillets, rinsed

4 large shallots, peeled and coarsely chopped

5 ounces large flap mushrooms

1 two-inch knob fresh ginger

1 teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon mace

10 whole cloves

Preparation: Put all ingredients into a saucepan, bring to a boil and simmer gently about 30 minutes, or until liquid is reduced by half. Strain and bottle.

One interesting—perhaps amazing and altogether unbelievable—list offered in this book is one taken from the sixth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series, The Fortune of War. Suspected of espionage by his American captors, Captain Aubrey offers explanation of some questionable papers:

‘These are victualling notes,’ he said. ‘compiled according to a system of my own. You will see that they add up to a yearly consumption of one million eighty-five thousand two hundred and sixty-six pounds of fresh meat; one million one hundred and sixty-seven thousand nine hundred and ninety-five pounds of biscuit and one hundred and eighty-four thousand three hundred and fifty-eight pounds of soft tack; two hundred and seventeen thousand eight hundred and thirteen pounds of flour; one thousand and sixty-six bushels of wheat; one million two hundred and twenty-six thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight pints of wine, and two hundred and forty-four thousand nine hundred and four pints of spirits.’

Freedom

Jonathan Franzen just might be the hottest name in publishing this month. His long-awaited new novel flooded bookstore shelves at the end of last month, with people lined up to grab a copy of Mr Franzen’s first book since his 2001 National Book Award winner, The Corrections. Nine years is a long wait, but I will waste no time in saying that it was worth the wait. The new book is Freedom, and should surprise no one if it too racks up a list of prizes.

But why the nine years between books? Some of the reasons come out in the Time magazine cover story by Lev Grossman, which appeared last August 23. Franzen described the writing process as even more difficult than the seven years he spent writing The Corrections. In his words, “It was a bitch. It really was.” There is always some backlash to success, and Franzen’s post-National Book Award days were no exception. His situation was also complicated by a flap he had with Oprah Winfrey after she picked his book for her book club. He took a beating in the press for what commentators described as disrespectful remarks about Ms Winfrey. In the end, she uninvited him from her show, though left her all-important ‘Oprah’s Book Club’ seal on The Corrections.

Progress on Freedom was further held up by problems of theme and voice. The writer began with the idea of a novel about the environment written in the first person. That didn’t work for him, so he dropped it. It may then have been the death of his best friend, novelist David Foster Wallace that lifted Franzen over the hump and gave him the energy and inspiration he needed to finish Freedom.

This is a huge novel in the sense of its characters and its themes. Again, as he did in The Corrections, Franzen builds his story around a family. But the singular is misleading here, because the incredible depth of the story involves the people of four families. Basically, Freedom is the story of Patty and Walter Berglund, their long marriage, their emotional struggles and the myth of ‘freedom’ that we Americans hold so dear, and by which our values have become so ignominiously distorted. It is a novel too, of politics and environment, and how one has mercilessly plundered the other.

To employ that word again, huge is an apt term for Franzen’s canvas. It is almost misleading to say that the book is about Patty and Walter Berglund, because Franzen’s lens is so wide. He gives us not only the minute facets and multi-layers of their lives, but their entire culture, political conditions and social history as well. Grossman in his Time interview used a particularly good phrase to describe the Franzen perspective: ‘…a devotee of the wide-shot, the all-embracing, way-we-live-now novel.’

Franzen has the rare skill of making his characters and pages gripping without resorting to slam dunk plot maneuvers. He writes in a way that puts the reader on tenterhooks in merely following a description of someone boiling water or setting out the cups and saucers. The writer shapes his words and story fully aware of the need to hold onto his reader, that the distractions for a reader today are pounding on every door and window. Television, cell phones, email and Internet are the novelist’s competition in today’s world, and Franzen seems well equipped to take them on. The characters in his books are densely, almost microscopically conceived, in a way that we never for a moment question their authenticity. There are times when their presence on the page is as real as the person on the other side of the bed. It is these characters that bind us to a story sprawling, diverse and crossing decades as effortlessly as state lines.

Beneath all the supporting themes in Freedom, more driving than sub-themes of environment, celebrity, gentrification, politics and personal freedom, is the love story of the two central characters. In the words of Patty Berglund, theirs is “a terrible confusion of the heart,”

This is a great novel which will probably win for Franzen another armload of awards—Oprah has already put her sticker on the book, passing out copies to her studio audience—but it must be said that portions of the book slip into soap box sermonizing by the author. A number of Walter’s passions are those of Franzen himself, and we see the writer behind the Walter persona. Anyone who has read one or two Franzen interviews could most likely tell you that the writer, like Walter Berglund, is vehemently against such things as free roaming bird-killing cats, consumerism, iPods and texting. But these sometime appearances of the writer speaking through his characters is not anything that seriously impairs the achievement of an impressively crafted novel of astonishing dimension.

Buy it or borrow it; read it and then try to convince someone you were bored. Little likelihood such will be the case.

Boots & Bras

Forty-five minutes of walking on the beach will yield a bucketful of either trash or treasure. On Tuesday you may stumble across a left shoe (usually the wrong size), and on Wednesday wonder at the slightly sandy and very salty brassiere that catches on a toe when eyes are focused on other than the sand. On those pristine beaches where we see few or small numbers of people, the bits and pieces are more often than not something natural and organic to the area, but it just may be that such unblemished beaches are more and more a product of Hollywood fantasy. The ugly footprint of humanity is fast becoming the dominant signature on white sand everywhere.

I live on what anyone would describe as a clean and beautiful stretch of white sand beach, a long shimmering ribbon of foaming surf, sea turtles, countless birds and seashells—a national park under the protection of not just county and state, but federal government as well. It is monitored daily by the Beach Patrol, marine biologists and trash collectors as well. Each day that I walk on the beach I encounter all three. My point is, the beach is not left to itself, but is patrolled and well looked after.

Unfortunately, it would take more personnel than is possible to keep it all looking like a retouched postcard or vacation brochure. The thing is, a large number of people are either careless or uncaring during their time at the beach. No, certainly not everyone, and thankfully not anywhere near a majority. But you might be surprised at what a weekend crowd can do to soil a beach. Technology being what it is today, most of the litter is in the form of non-biodegradable materials—plastic bottles, caps, bags, Styrofoam, twine and cigarette butts. One of the regular trash collectors explained that the largest amount of litter is in the form of plastic bottle caps, and the labels, also plastic, on water and soft drink bottles. It’s my guess that from his elevated seat on the dune buggy he drives, he either misses or ignores the ever-present cigarette butts. No question in my mind that butts are the most prevalent form of litter, on either beach or street. I’ve yet to see here in the US the little device that is growing in popularity in Japan. It is a small, lightweight, fireproof pocket-sized butt case for use on streets and in parks, and helps to keep public areas free of discarded cigarette butts. No reason this handy little item couldn’t be used on beaches as well as streets and parks.

Might not be a bad idea to strive toward lessening the human footprint everywhere, beaches or otherwise.

The photos…

Top photo is an example of the natural beauty that can be found on a thirty minute beach walk; bottom photo is also the fruit of thirty minutes collecting on even a ‘clean’ beach.