Wagner: Die Walküre. Robert Gambill (Siegmund), Attila Jun (Hunding), Jan-Hendrik Rootering (Wotan), Angela Denoke (Sieglinde), Renate Behle (Brünnhilde), Tichina Vaughn (Fricka). Staatsoper Stuttgart and Staatsorchester Stuttgart conducted by Lothar Zagrosek. Naxos. $26.99 (3 CDs).
It is only in the second of its four operas that Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelung becomes a fully human story. In fact, it is only in the second opera that humans show up: there aren’t any in Das Rheingold. That first opera requires the audience to see the larger-than-life gods, dwarves, giants and other characters as driven by all-too-human impulses – but a direct human connection is missing (although skilled singing actors in the role of Alberich can make one).
Die Walküre, though, is the most human-focused opera in the cycle, and the one in which the gods themselves seem to be turning into vulnerable and doomed humans – something that really does happen to Brünnhilde at the end, when Wotan strips her of her powers as a Valkyrie and abandons her on the fire-surrounded rock to whatever man shall be bold enough to win her.
Aside from containing the most popular music in the Ring cycle – the “Ride of the Valkyries,” which is even more astonishing and effective in context than as a concert piece – Die Walküre contains the most famous (or infamous) incest ever set to music. The love music of Siegmund and his sister-bride, Sieglinde, is so soaring that it caused famed classical-music parodist Anna Russell to remark, “You can do anything in grand opera as long as you sing it.” And “sing it” with great fervor is just what Robert Gambill and Angela Denoke do, as the former’s search for his father (Wotan, who is also Sieglinde’s father) collides with the latter’s bitter unhappiness in her life with her husband, Hunding. The intensely human emotions swirling around the marital triangle are mirrored among the gods, with Wotan favoring Siegmund as the potential savior of the gods from the curse of Alberich’s ring; Fricka, his much-wronged wife and the guardian of marriage, favoring Hunding, the cuckold; and Brünnhilde, the rash and impetuous daughter, determined to do what Wotan wants even when Wotan commands her to do the opposite.
What a family drama this is! Wotan has fathered not only Siegmund and Sieglinde but also all the Valkyries – no wonder Fricka, a shrew if there ever was one, is determined to force Wotan to acknowledge some shred of sanctimony in marriage (even if not in his). Wotan can feel his doom, the doom of all the gods, approaching inexorably, and he knows that his craven theft of the Ring (in Das Rheingold) has set events in motion that even he cannot stop. Wotan’s role affords the most difficult acting job in Die Walküre, and if Jan-Hendrik Rootering does not quite plumb the depths of the part, he certainly sings it well. Tichina Vaughn never makes Fricka much more than a shrill conniver, but this is a particularly difficult role in which to try to garner any sympathy – and Vaughn’s vocal prowess certainly makes her a fine foil for Rootering. As Brünnhilde, Renate Behle has plenty of pluck and a voice that, if not perfectly suited to Wagner, is nevertheless effective and dramatically deployed. And in the thankless role of Hunding, so contemptuously swatted to death by Wotan immediately after Wotan allows him to kill Siegmund, Attila Jun is appropriately sly and unpleasant.
Lothar Zagrosek paces the choral and orchestral forces exceptionally well: the performance runs nearly four hours but never flags. There are multiple climaxes in this work – Siegmund and Sieglinde’s consummation of their love, Siegmund’s death, Wotan’s pursuit of Brünnhilde – but everything builds to the final scene, in which the opera ends quietly as the doomed Wotan abandons his most-loved Valkyrie daughter to the fate he has himself imposed on her. Zagrosek paces all the climaxes, including the final one, very well, drawing out the emotion of both the words and the music.
The one major flaw in this release is the lack of a dual-language libretto – not only in the box (that is understandable) but also online. Naxos does make a libretto available through its Web site – but in German only. This puts English speakers at a major disadvantage in a work whose words are every bit as important as its music: Wagner did not call his works “music dramas” for nothing. It’s worth the effort to track down a translation of the libretto – following it adds a lot to hearing this performance. It’s a shame, though, that the effort needs to be made.
October 26, 2006
October 19, 2006
(++++) SUPERCOMICS: THE POWERS OF CARTOONS
Everyday Mutts. By Patrick McDonnell. Andrews McMeel. $16.95.
Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! A “Pearls Before Swine” Treasury. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $16.95.
America Gone Wild! By Ted Rall. Andrews McMeel. $12.95.
From the gentle to the insidious to the pointed and nasty, comics and their cartoonists have been taking the medium far beyond the frequent tame wasteland in which it has long languished. Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts is the closest current strip to the spirit of warmth and tenderness that many comics readers fondly (if rather inaccurately) remember. McDonnell himself is a connoisseur both of comics and of art in general, often presenting amusing parodies of this work or that at the start of his Sunday strips. Everyday Mutts, the latest oversize “Treasury” collection of McDonnell’s work, is unusually generous to the artist, with only two (instead of three) weekday strips per page, lovely full-color and full-page Sundays, plus a few of McDonnell’s sketchbook pages and specialty drawings. Earl the dog and Mooch the cat remain at the center of this thoroughly lovable strip – the kids’-book picture of them as big-eyed babies topped with whipped-cream hats is priceless – but the large supporting cast is marvelous, too. Among the highlights are the “Mutts Summer Book Club,” some wonderful Sunday tributes to the old Popeye strip, and of course McDonnell’s trademark sentimental elements, from Guard Dog’s yearning to be unchained to the heart-tugging “Shelter Stories” promoting adoption. One extra-special color Sunday page features Frank, owner of Mooch (to the extent that one ever owns a cat), relaxing while reading a book of classic comics, whose characters appear in black-and-white scattered through the large central panel – including Ignatz of Krazy Kat tossing his traditional brick at none other than Mooch himself. Just lovely.
Stephan Pastis has neither the artistic skill nor the warmth of McDonnell – hey, Pastis started out as a lawyer, after all – but he does have a delightfully skewed sense of humor that makes Pearls Before Swine a consistently entertaining bit of bizarrerie (look it up). Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! is mostly made up, as “Treasury” books usually are, of previously published strips, but this second Pearls in “Treasury” form is enlivened by occasional commentary from Pastis (a technique he picked up from Scott Adams of Dilbert, who first brought Pearls to widespread attention). A back-of-the-book section called “The Good, the Banned, and the Ugly” presents some previously unpublished strips in unedited form, but in truth, they are not much stranger than the ones that made it into newspapers. Who but Pastis would send his character, Pig, on a date with a girl who works for an Internet service provider and whose face periodically turns into a pop-up ad promoting, among other things, Viagra and nude girls? Some Pastis puns still confuse readers, but at least he takes the blame and explains what he meant. Readers really should forgive him: no one else would have Rat place an eBay order and accidentally receive the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh.
Pastis’ occasional frays into politics are nothing compared with the work of Ted Rall, for whom vehemence and political intensity are a daily diet. Rall is one of the most controversial cartoonists working today, because of his take-no-prisoners style of satire. He is as cuttingly personal when taking on politicians as Thomas Nast was when attacking Boss Tweed. Rall, in keeping with our times, is far less erudite and far more willing to flail about to make a point, and his art often looks like the sort of thing you would see spray-painted on a wall. But that’s the point: Rall wants to shock, to inflame, to make people pay attention to things they would just as soon ignore. For the first 40-odd pages (some very odd) of the 168-page America Gone Wild! Rall discusses some of his more controversial strips and the reactions to them – one of the more printable ones being, “You are so ugly and mean spirited I hope someone puts a bullet in the back of your head.” Rall refuses to see Pat Tillman, the NFL pro killed in Iraq, as a pure patriot. He attacks widows who exploited their husbands’ deaths on September 11, 2001, as “terror whores.” After news comes out that a 20th hijacker missed one of the planes, Rall does a strip called “Jihad Slacker.” He shows Ronald Reagan in Hell, which Reagan is told is actually “Heaven…after your budget cuts and privatization.” Rall even shows how “the logic of preemption allows one to justify the invasion of the least threatening place on earth, Greenland.” Rall is a cartoonist you turn to for outrage – although, interestingly, some of his most effective work is slightly more soft-pedaled. One of the best cartoons here, “Freak-Show Politics,” shows the media focusing on flag burning, abortion and cloning while America’s real problems – represented by a man saying he has lost his job – are ignored. Rall is, if nothing else, very, very hard to ignore.
Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! A “Pearls Before Swine” Treasury. By Stephan Pastis. Andrews McMeel. $16.95.
America Gone Wild! By Ted Rall. Andrews McMeel. $12.95.
From the gentle to the insidious to the pointed and nasty, comics and their cartoonists have been taking the medium far beyond the frequent tame wasteland in which it has long languished. Patrick McDonnell’s Mutts is the closest current strip to the spirit of warmth and tenderness that many comics readers fondly (if rather inaccurately) remember. McDonnell himself is a connoisseur both of comics and of art in general, often presenting amusing parodies of this work or that at the start of his Sunday strips. Everyday Mutts, the latest oversize “Treasury” collection of McDonnell’s work, is unusually generous to the artist, with only two (instead of three) weekday strips per page, lovely full-color and full-page Sundays, plus a few of McDonnell’s sketchbook pages and specialty drawings. Earl the dog and Mooch the cat remain at the center of this thoroughly lovable strip – the kids’-book picture of them as big-eyed babies topped with whipped-cream hats is priceless – but the large supporting cast is marvelous, too. Among the highlights are the “Mutts Summer Book Club,” some wonderful Sunday tributes to the old Popeye strip, and of course McDonnell’s trademark sentimental elements, from Guard Dog’s yearning to be unchained to the heart-tugging “Shelter Stories” promoting adoption. One extra-special color Sunday page features Frank, owner of Mooch (to the extent that one ever owns a cat), relaxing while reading a book of classic comics, whose characters appear in black-and-white scattered through the large central panel – including Ignatz of Krazy Kat tossing his traditional brick at none other than Mooch himself. Just lovely.
Stephan Pastis has neither the artistic skill nor the warmth of McDonnell – hey, Pastis started out as a lawyer, after all – but he does have a delightfully skewed sense of humor that makes Pearls Before Swine a consistently entertaining bit of bizarrerie (look it up). Lions and Tigers and Crocs, Oh My! is mostly made up, as “Treasury” books usually are, of previously published strips, but this second Pearls in “Treasury” form is enlivened by occasional commentary from Pastis (a technique he picked up from Scott Adams of Dilbert, who first brought Pearls to widespread attention). A back-of-the-book section called “The Good, the Banned, and the Ugly” presents some previously unpublished strips in unedited form, but in truth, they are not much stranger than the ones that made it into newspapers. Who but Pastis would send his character, Pig, on a date with a girl who works for an Internet service provider and whose face periodically turns into a pop-up ad promoting, among other things, Viagra and nude girls? Some Pastis puns still confuse readers, but at least he takes the blame and explains what he meant. Readers really should forgive him: no one else would have Rat place an eBay order and accidentally receive the preserved body of Ho Chi Minh.
Pastis’ occasional frays into politics are nothing compared with the work of Ted Rall, for whom vehemence and political intensity are a daily diet. Rall is one of the most controversial cartoonists working today, because of his take-no-prisoners style of satire. He is as cuttingly personal when taking on politicians as Thomas Nast was when attacking Boss Tweed. Rall, in keeping with our times, is far less erudite and far more willing to flail about to make a point, and his art often looks like the sort of thing you would see spray-painted on a wall. But that’s the point: Rall wants to shock, to inflame, to make people pay attention to things they would just as soon ignore. For the first 40-odd pages (some very odd) of the 168-page America Gone Wild! Rall discusses some of his more controversial strips and the reactions to them – one of the more printable ones being, “You are so ugly and mean spirited I hope someone puts a bullet in the back of your head.” Rall refuses to see Pat Tillman, the NFL pro killed in Iraq, as a pure patriot. He attacks widows who exploited their husbands’ deaths on September 11, 2001, as “terror whores.” After news comes out that a 20th hijacker missed one of the planes, Rall does a strip called “Jihad Slacker.” He shows Ronald Reagan in Hell, which Reagan is told is actually “Heaven…after your budget cuts and privatization.” Rall even shows how “the logic of preemption allows one to justify the invasion of the least threatening place on earth, Greenland.” Rall is a cartoonist you turn to for outrage – although, interestingly, some of his most effective work is slightly more soft-pedaled. One of the best cartoons here, “Freak-Show Politics,” shows the media focusing on flag burning, abortion and cloning while America’s real problems – represented by a man saying he has lost his job – are ignored. Rall is, if nothing else, very, very hard to ignore.
(++++) KIDBOOKS FILLED WITH FUN
Ruff! Ruff! Where’s Scruff? Written by Sarah Weeks. Illustrations and paper engineering by David A. Carter. Harcourt. $13.95.
My Little Yellow Taxi. By Stephen A. Johnson. Red Wagon/Harcourt. $19.95.
Participatory books for young children are some of the most cleverly designed in the business. It often seems that the younger the target audience, the greater the effort made to reach it. When the attempt works, as it does in both these books, the result is pure enjoyment – for children and parents alike.
Ruff! Ruff! Where’s Scruff? is accurately subtitled, “A Lift-the-Flap Pop-up Adventure,” which means its movable pages make things happen in several directions. Sarah Weeks keeps the story very simple, as she should for the target age range of 2-5. But David A. Carter’s paper work is extraordinarily complicated – not in use (kids will find it extremely easy to use), but in design. This is the second collaboration of Weeks and Carter, and is even cleverer than Who’s Under That Hat? This time, Weeks starts by explaining that Scruff has just rolled in mud, “so now I have to clean him.” But Scruff can’t be found. He must be somewhere, but where? The narrator asks cows, pigs, sheep, ducks and rabbits if they have seen Scruff, but all the animals say no. Kids will know better – the joy of discovery, of finding something that the book’s narrator does not know about, is a big part of the charm here. Whenever a child lifts a flap – opening the door to the pigs’ sleeping area, for example, or moving aside the heads of lettuce where the rabbits are hiding – Scruff pops up somewhere. The dog’s location is not always obvious – it’s lots of fun for a young child to say “there he is!” But a little looking always reveals Scruff’s hiding place – until, at the end, the narrator gives up, and the reader lifts a flap shaped like a bale of hay to reveal Scruff right where he should be: in the bath. This is a great read-to-me book for young children, and one in which it is really fun to participate
My Little Yellow Taxi takes participation to an entirely more complex level. Intended for ages 3-7, it is Stephen A. Johnson’s third book of building, fixing up, and high-level creativity in high-strength cardboard. Like My Little Red Toolbox and My Little Blue Robot, Johnson’s new book is a study in interactivity. My Little Yellow Taxi – which, by the way, actually contains a removable taxi of the famous but now discontinued Checker Cab type – offers a series of interactive features related to getting a taxi ready to go on the road. Among the 16 play-along elements are such operational items as putting gas in the tank (without having to worry about the cost of fuel!) and checking the oil, plus such comfort-and-convenience items as adjusting the rear-view mirror and opening and closing the door. It’s hard to explain what Johnson’s books are – they lie somewhere between pop-ups and construction projects. Whatever you decide to call them, they are very well illustrated (the detailing of the taxi is impressive, and so is the detailing of every individual part), very sturdy, and very capable of standing up to the repeated uses to which they will undoubtedly be subjected.
My Little Yellow Taxi. By Stephen A. Johnson. Red Wagon/Harcourt. $19.95.
Participatory books for young children are some of the most cleverly designed in the business. It often seems that the younger the target audience, the greater the effort made to reach it. When the attempt works, as it does in both these books, the result is pure enjoyment – for children and parents alike.
Ruff! Ruff! Where’s Scruff? is accurately subtitled, “A Lift-the-Flap Pop-up Adventure,” which means its movable pages make things happen in several directions. Sarah Weeks keeps the story very simple, as she should for the target age range of 2-5. But David A. Carter’s paper work is extraordinarily complicated – not in use (kids will find it extremely easy to use), but in design. This is the second collaboration of Weeks and Carter, and is even cleverer than Who’s Under That Hat? This time, Weeks starts by explaining that Scruff has just rolled in mud, “so now I have to clean him.” But Scruff can’t be found. He must be somewhere, but where? The narrator asks cows, pigs, sheep, ducks and rabbits if they have seen Scruff, but all the animals say no. Kids will know better – the joy of discovery, of finding something that the book’s narrator does not know about, is a big part of the charm here. Whenever a child lifts a flap – opening the door to the pigs’ sleeping area, for example, or moving aside the heads of lettuce where the rabbits are hiding – Scruff pops up somewhere. The dog’s location is not always obvious – it’s lots of fun for a young child to say “there he is!” But a little looking always reveals Scruff’s hiding place – until, at the end, the narrator gives up, and the reader lifts a flap shaped like a bale of hay to reveal Scruff right where he should be: in the bath. This is a great read-to-me book for young children, and one in which it is really fun to participate
My Little Yellow Taxi takes participation to an entirely more complex level. Intended for ages 3-7, it is Stephen A. Johnson’s third book of building, fixing up, and high-level creativity in high-strength cardboard. Like My Little Red Toolbox and My Little Blue Robot, Johnson’s new book is a study in interactivity. My Little Yellow Taxi – which, by the way, actually contains a removable taxi of the famous but now discontinued Checker Cab type – offers a series of interactive features related to getting a taxi ready to go on the road. Among the 16 play-along elements are such operational items as putting gas in the tank (without having to worry about the cost of fuel!) and checking the oil, plus such comfort-and-convenience items as adjusting the rear-view mirror and opening and closing the door. It’s hard to explain what Johnson’s books are – they lie somewhere between pop-ups and construction projects. Whatever you decide to call them, they are very well illustrated (the detailing of the taxi is impressive, and so is the detailing of every individual part), very sturdy, and very capable of standing up to the repeated uses to which they will undoubtedly be subjected.
(++++) FUN AND FASCINATION FOR ALL YEAR
2007 Calendars: Engagement – Dilbert; Day-to-Day – Duh!; Cartoons from “The New Yorker”; Space; Teacher’s Sticker-a-Day; Tangram Magnetic Puzzle-a-Day. Andrews McMeel. $12.99 (Dilbert); $11.99 (Duh!, New Yorker); $13.99 (Space; Tangram); $9.99 (Sticker).
Andrews McMeel is the feel-good calendar company, offering a catalogue replete with jokes, well-known comic-strip characters, uplifting quotations, self-help, and even – here and there – some insight. If you don’t feel good very often while working at your desk, it’s worthwhile giving up a little of your desktop to display a calendar to help lift your spirits. If you like to track your appointments on paper, in an open-flat, spiral-bound engagement calendar, consider using one that reminds you of how funny the office (okay, other people’s offices) can be. That would be the Dilbert Engagement Calendar, which for 2007 features Wally, the master of laziness, on the cover, saying, “I used the week to develop some new coffee-slurping noises.” How’s that for being successfully passive-aggressive? And if your boss notices you reading the Scott Adams cartoons – Wally teaching Asok to avoid work by walking briskly and pretending to be angry, Alice enduring a performance review, Dilbert pointing out that the company’s core competence is “sitting around a brown table” – you can simply start writing notes in the space on the left-hand page, or tracking meetings or phone calls on the right. See? You’re working!
Of course, engagement calendars take up a little more desk space than day-to-day ones, so maybe you would prefer something like Duh! The Dumbest Things Ever Said or Done. The out-and-out jokes here are not the funniest items – it’s the reality stuff that gets you: George W. Bush reminding C students that they can become president, or a store offering to sell stereo equipment for “299 bananas” (meaning dollars), then being forced to sell it to people who brought in 299 pieces of fruit.
Not quite intellectual enough for you? Then consider Cartoons from “The New Yorker,” that magazine repository of all things high-toned. Here are the usual subjects – money, sex, love, health, etc. – in typical New Yorker style, which means gunfighters arguing whether a garment is a shawl or a poncho, and dogs discussing whether it’s better to blog or just keep barking.
Prefer something more uplifting? You can lift your senses through the office walls and ceilings and all the way to the stars with Space, an assemblage of gorgeous photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Voyager and Viking missions, and other robotic spacefaring explorers. The calendar includes important space-related anniversary dates, information on planet and star activity, and captions that not only explain what the photos are but also show why Earthbound astronomers consider them important. For example, the Orion nebula, which is 1,500 light-years away, is one of the closest celestial regions where stars are being actively formed. Not a bad piece of information – and there are plenty more here.
Prefer something more interactive? The Teacher’s Sticker-a-Day and Tangram Magnetic Puzzle-a-Day calendars will engage both your brain and your hands. Sticker-a-Day makes a great gift for a favorite teacher, or you can use it yourself for your own kids at home – or for lightening up office life. Each page contains – in addition to basic date information – removable stickers that you can use to compliment someone’s work, dress up a memo or invitation, or just for fun. Hmm…might be a stretch to send back a memo to a colleague with a caterpillar sticker bearing the word, “Creative!” But remember: these are fine for home or school even if they don’t fit your particular workplace. As for the Tangram puzzle calendar, it’s wonderful anywhere – if you don’t mind getting pulled into spatial-awareness problems that are a lot harder than they look. Although often used by teachers and counselors in schools and therapy, Tangram puzzles can be just plain fun. The calendar includes seven magnetic pieces that you have to arrange into a different shape each day. Look simple? It’s not – don’t be surprised if you find yourself turning to the included puzzle solutions. But better to try the puzzles out with colleagues or even the boss – relaxing everyone and doing some networking at the same time. The result could be a year that’s just a little more interesting than it would otherwise be.
Andrews McMeel is the feel-good calendar company, offering a catalogue replete with jokes, well-known comic-strip characters, uplifting quotations, self-help, and even – here and there – some insight. If you don’t feel good very often while working at your desk, it’s worthwhile giving up a little of your desktop to display a calendar to help lift your spirits. If you like to track your appointments on paper, in an open-flat, spiral-bound engagement calendar, consider using one that reminds you of how funny the office (okay, other people’s offices) can be. That would be the Dilbert Engagement Calendar, which for 2007 features Wally, the master of laziness, on the cover, saying, “I used the week to develop some new coffee-slurping noises.” How’s that for being successfully passive-aggressive? And if your boss notices you reading the Scott Adams cartoons – Wally teaching Asok to avoid work by walking briskly and pretending to be angry, Alice enduring a performance review, Dilbert pointing out that the company’s core competence is “sitting around a brown table” – you can simply start writing notes in the space on the left-hand page, or tracking meetings or phone calls on the right. See? You’re working!
Of course, engagement calendars take up a little more desk space than day-to-day ones, so maybe you would prefer something like Duh! The Dumbest Things Ever Said or Done. The out-and-out jokes here are not the funniest items – it’s the reality stuff that gets you: George W. Bush reminding C students that they can become president, or a store offering to sell stereo equipment for “299 bananas” (meaning dollars), then being forced to sell it to people who brought in 299 pieces of fruit.
Not quite intellectual enough for you? Then consider Cartoons from “The New Yorker,” that magazine repository of all things high-toned. Here are the usual subjects – money, sex, love, health, etc. – in typical New Yorker style, which means gunfighters arguing whether a garment is a shawl or a poncho, and dogs discussing whether it’s better to blog or just keep barking.
Prefer something more uplifting? You can lift your senses through the office walls and ceilings and all the way to the stars with Space, an assemblage of gorgeous photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Voyager and Viking missions, and other robotic spacefaring explorers. The calendar includes important space-related anniversary dates, information on planet and star activity, and captions that not only explain what the photos are but also show why Earthbound astronomers consider them important. For example, the Orion nebula, which is 1,500 light-years away, is one of the closest celestial regions where stars are being actively formed. Not a bad piece of information – and there are plenty more here.
Prefer something more interactive? The Teacher’s Sticker-a-Day and Tangram Magnetic Puzzle-a-Day calendars will engage both your brain and your hands. Sticker-a-Day makes a great gift for a favorite teacher, or you can use it yourself for your own kids at home – or for lightening up office life. Each page contains – in addition to basic date information – removable stickers that you can use to compliment someone’s work, dress up a memo or invitation, or just for fun. Hmm…might be a stretch to send back a memo to a colleague with a caterpillar sticker bearing the word, “Creative!” But remember: these are fine for home or school even if they don’t fit your particular workplace. As for the Tangram puzzle calendar, it’s wonderful anywhere – if you don’t mind getting pulled into spatial-awareness problems that are a lot harder than they look. Although often used by teachers and counselors in schools and therapy, Tangram puzzles can be just plain fun. The calendar includes seven magnetic pieces that you have to arrange into a different shape each day. Look simple? It’s not – don’t be surprised if you find yourself turning to the included puzzle solutions. But better to try the puzzles out with colleagues or even the boss – relaxing everyone and doing some networking at the same time. The result could be a year that’s just a little more interesting than it would otherwise be.
(+++) WINTERS OF OUR DISCONTENTS
Life As We Knew It. By Susan Beth Pfeffer. Harcourt. $17.
The Gateway Trilogy, Book Two: Winter Door. By Isobelle Carmody. Random House. $16.95.
The Magician Trilogy, Book One: The Snow Spider. By Jenny Nimmo. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $9.99.
There’s nothing enjoyable about winter in any of these books, which use it for purposes from science fiction to fantasy. The best novel here, and the only one that stands on its own, is Life As We Knew It, which posits a bit of scientific absurdity but then handles the consequences with chilling (literally chilling) realism. Susan Beth Pfeffer, author of more than 70 books, here imagines a meteor striking Earth’s moon with enough force to knock the moon into a closer orbit – with disastrous consequences for Earth’s weather. It is best not to examine the premise too carefully, because it doesn’t stand up scientifically; but what Pfeffer really wants is a way to get into a story of unanticipated disaster and the reaction to it of ordinary people. The book is told as the diary of a girl named Miranda, who – with her mother and two brothers – lives through the lunar disaster, then tries to survive after volcanic eruptions and other disturbances have occurred and the Earth has settled into a deep, gray winter. It’s literally gray – the snow isn’t white anymore, and there is a lot of it – and everyday life becomes a series of harrowing struggles, never more so than when a flu epidemic hits and there is not much anyone can do but hope that some people will survive. Miranda is realistic enough to be depressed and unhappy much of the time – and worried about her father, whose new wife was due to have a baby around the time of the catastrophe. And Pfeffer is a good enough writer to leave plenty of loose ends at the novel’s conclusion – as would be expected in the diary of a teenager (Miranda turns 17 during the book). The oft-anticipated predatory behavior of humans after a disaster is absent here, perhaps unrealistically, as everyone hunkers down and tries to make it through just one more day. This is truly a winter’s tale.
Winter Door and The Snow Spider are, respectively, the second and first parts of fantasy trilogies, and are more formulaic than Pfeffer’s SF novel. Winter Door starts with the worst winter on record – though it does not compare with Pfeffer’s creation – and begins with one foot planted firmly in reality: Rage Winnoway is worried about her mother, who has still not fully recovered from a car crash, and is also increasingly worried about the school bully, Logan. But this book keeps its other foot firmly in fantasy, with Rage concerned about the effectiveness of the healing magic she has found, and disturbed because her only friend, Billy Thunder, has – again – turned into a dog. This is a story of two worlds, as was the first book of this trilogy, Night Gate. Rage is having dreams about a threat, unnatural creatures seem to be lurking in the woods, and even the snow seems somehow abnormal. It goes without saying – but Isobelle Carmody says it anyway – that Rage’s dreams are true and that there is again a threat that Rage must counter, even at high personal cost.
Personal cost is a mainstay of fantasy, and it appears as well in Jenny Nimmo’s The Snow Spider, originally published in England in 1986. Here we have a traditional fantasy plot: a spell has been cast on Gwyn’s family, and Gwyn may be able to break it with magic – if he truly has magical ability. Gwyn, who somewhat resembles a young Harry Potter (Gwyn is nine), has no real friends to turn to; even his parents are distant, ever since the mysterious disappearance of Gwyn’s sister, Bethan. Nimmo is most effective at portraying Gwyn’s loneliness, which only becomes more acute after five gifts from his grandmother reveal that he does indeed have magical prowess. His ability makes Gwyn more isolated than ever – there are no good friends versed in magic here. But there is plenty of wonder, including the spider of the title, whose name is Arianwen and who spins magical cities and flying ships. A strange young girl named Eirlys (“snowdrop” in Welsh) also figures in the wintry plot, which comes to a climax with a frightening rescue scene that hints of what is yet to come as The Magician Trilogy continues.
The Gateway Trilogy, Book Two: Winter Door. By Isobelle Carmody. Random House. $16.95.
The Magician Trilogy, Book One: The Snow Spider. By Jenny Nimmo. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $9.99.
There’s nothing enjoyable about winter in any of these books, which use it for purposes from science fiction to fantasy. The best novel here, and the only one that stands on its own, is Life As We Knew It, which posits a bit of scientific absurdity but then handles the consequences with chilling (literally chilling) realism. Susan Beth Pfeffer, author of more than 70 books, here imagines a meteor striking Earth’s moon with enough force to knock the moon into a closer orbit – with disastrous consequences for Earth’s weather. It is best not to examine the premise too carefully, because it doesn’t stand up scientifically; but what Pfeffer really wants is a way to get into a story of unanticipated disaster and the reaction to it of ordinary people. The book is told as the diary of a girl named Miranda, who – with her mother and two brothers – lives through the lunar disaster, then tries to survive after volcanic eruptions and other disturbances have occurred and the Earth has settled into a deep, gray winter. It’s literally gray – the snow isn’t white anymore, and there is a lot of it – and everyday life becomes a series of harrowing struggles, never more so than when a flu epidemic hits and there is not much anyone can do but hope that some people will survive. Miranda is realistic enough to be depressed and unhappy much of the time – and worried about her father, whose new wife was due to have a baby around the time of the catastrophe. And Pfeffer is a good enough writer to leave plenty of loose ends at the novel’s conclusion – as would be expected in the diary of a teenager (Miranda turns 17 during the book). The oft-anticipated predatory behavior of humans after a disaster is absent here, perhaps unrealistically, as everyone hunkers down and tries to make it through just one more day. This is truly a winter’s tale.
Winter Door and The Snow Spider are, respectively, the second and first parts of fantasy trilogies, and are more formulaic than Pfeffer’s SF novel. Winter Door starts with the worst winter on record – though it does not compare with Pfeffer’s creation – and begins with one foot planted firmly in reality: Rage Winnoway is worried about her mother, who has still not fully recovered from a car crash, and is also increasingly worried about the school bully, Logan. But this book keeps its other foot firmly in fantasy, with Rage concerned about the effectiveness of the healing magic she has found, and disturbed because her only friend, Billy Thunder, has – again – turned into a dog. This is a story of two worlds, as was the first book of this trilogy, Night Gate. Rage is having dreams about a threat, unnatural creatures seem to be lurking in the woods, and even the snow seems somehow abnormal. It goes without saying – but Isobelle Carmody says it anyway – that Rage’s dreams are true and that there is again a threat that Rage must counter, even at high personal cost.
Personal cost is a mainstay of fantasy, and it appears as well in Jenny Nimmo’s The Snow Spider, originally published in England in 1986. Here we have a traditional fantasy plot: a spell has been cast on Gwyn’s family, and Gwyn may be able to break it with magic – if he truly has magical ability. Gwyn, who somewhat resembles a young Harry Potter (Gwyn is nine), has no real friends to turn to; even his parents are distant, ever since the mysterious disappearance of Gwyn’s sister, Bethan. Nimmo is most effective at portraying Gwyn’s loneliness, which only becomes more acute after five gifts from his grandmother reveal that he does indeed have magical prowess. His ability makes Gwyn more isolated than ever – there are no good friends versed in magic here. But there is plenty of wonder, including the spider of the title, whose name is Arianwen and who spins magical cities and flying ships. A strange young girl named Eirlys (“snowdrop” in Welsh) also figures in the wintry plot, which comes to a climax with a frightening rescue scene that hints of what is yet to come as The Magician Trilogy continues.
(+++) AN OLD, OLD TALE TOLD ANEW
Gilgamesh: A Verse Play. Poetry by Yusef Komunyakaa. Concept and dramaturgy by Chad Garcia. Wesleyan University Press. $22.95.
The world’s oldest known narrative, Gilgamesh is a magnificent story of gods, men and god-men, of friendship and triumph and death and despair, of the search for immortality and the consequences of finding it. It is also a tale whose story of a great flood drowning all humans, except one favored couple and the animals they saved, is eerily parallel to the biblical tale of Noah’s ark. This 4,000-year-old epic is storytelling on the grandest possible scale.
Gilgamesh: A Verse Play is, in contrast, modest in scope and in accomplishment. It chooses only selected episodes from the epic, focusing attention on the friendship of Gilgamesh and the wild man, Enkidu, and what happens when that friendship is sundered by Enkidu’s death. In its structure, it brings an intimacy to the story that is out of keeping with the tale itself, but it also brings dramatic cohesion to a work that, in its original form, sprawls – albeit magnificently.
This play will be enjoyed most by those who like Yusef Komunyakaa’s language and the choice ways he turns phrases, as when half-god Gilgamesh – in his arrogance, early in the tale – speaks with his mother, Ninsun:
Ninsun: You used to venture/ to the edge of the woods/ and return with the most/ wounded bouquets.
Gilgamesh: A king does not pick flowers/ especially a king who is part god.
Komunyakaa and his collaborator, Chad Garcia, retain one of the heroic deeds done by Gilgamesh and Enkidu after the two find each other and fight to a standstill: they attack and destroy the monstrous forest guardian, Humbaba. But the other major deed of the two heroes, their killing of the Bull of the Gods, is omitted, presumably to keep the focus tight. The bull attacks in the first place because Gilgamesh has refused to become the consort of the goddess of love, and it could certainly be argued that the introduction of that element would complicate this play unnecessarily. Still, the omission will be obvious and disappointing to those familiar with the story.
Komunyakaa and Garcia use three choruses to help move the action ahead and provide linking material, and the approach works well. They allow Gilgamesh a soliloquy after Enkidu’s death, in which the line “And I sit here” is repeated again and again, like a death-bell tolling – to fine effect. And they retain some of the fascinating characters of the original, such as the temple priestess who literally seduces Enkidu to leave the wild; the mountain guards, Scorpion Man and Scorpion Woman; and Siduri, “a barmaid/ at the brink, between/ worlds,” who helps the hero on his quest for eternal life. They also retain, although without its original wry humor, the story of Gilgamesh’s failure, when the herb of eternal renewal that he finds is eaten by a snake, which from that time is eternally renewed by shedding its skin. This is a respectful adaptation, its free verse free-flowing, but it is an adaptation without grandeur. It does, however, approach pathos from time to time, as when Gilgamesh, defeated in his quest and back home with Ninsun, hears her say, “Sometimes we learn the music/ of our hearts too late.” And he replies, “But it would be worse/ if we never learned it.” This is not Gilgamesh the epic, but it is a worthy variant of the story.
The world’s oldest known narrative, Gilgamesh is a magnificent story of gods, men and god-men, of friendship and triumph and death and despair, of the search for immortality and the consequences of finding it. It is also a tale whose story of a great flood drowning all humans, except one favored couple and the animals they saved, is eerily parallel to the biblical tale of Noah’s ark. This 4,000-year-old epic is storytelling on the grandest possible scale.
Gilgamesh: A Verse Play is, in contrast, modest in scope and in accomplishment. It chooses only selected episodes from the epic, focusing attention on the friendship of Gilgamesh and the wild man, Enkidu, and what happens when that friendship is sundered by Enkidu’s death. In its structure, it brings an intimacy to the story that is out of keeping with the tale itself, but it also brings dramatic cohesion to a work that, in its original form, sprawls – albeit magnificently.
This play will be enjoyed most by those who like Yusef Komunyakaa’s language and the choice ways he turns phrases, as when half-god Gilgamesh – in his arrogance, early in the tale – speaks with his mother, Ninsun:
Ninsun: You used to venture/ to the edge of the woods/ and return with the most/ wounded bouquets.
Gilgamesh: A king does not pick flowers/ especially a king who is part god.
Komunyakaa and his collaborator, Chad Garcia, retain one of the heroic deeds done by Gilgamesh and Enkidu after the two find each other and fight to a standstill: they attack and destroy the monstrous forest guardian, Humbaba. But the other major deed of the two heroes, their killing of the Bull of the Gods, is omitted, presumably to keep the focus tight. The bull attacks in the first place because Gilgamesh has refused to become the consort of the goddess of love, and it could certainly be argued that the introduction of that element would complicate this play unnecessarily. Still, the omission will be obvious and disappointing to those familiar with the story.
Komunyakaa and Garcia use three choruses to help move the action ahead and provide linking material, and the approach works well. They allow Gilgamesh a soliloquy after Enkidu’s death, in which the line “And I sit here” is repeated again and again, like a death-bell tolling – to fine effect. And they retain some of the fascinating characters of the original, such as the temple priestess who literally seduces Enkidu to leave the wild; the mountain guards, Scorpion Man and Scorpion Woman; and Siduri, “a barmaid/ at the brink, between/ worlds,” who helps the hero on his quest for eternal life. They also retain, although without its original wry humor, the story of Gilgamesh’s failure, when the herb of eternal renewal that he finds is eaten by a snake, which from that time is eternally renewed by shedding its skin. This is a respectful adaptation, its free verse free-flowing, but it is an adaptation without grandeur. It does, however, approach pathos from time to time, as when Gilgamesh, defeated in his quest and back home with Ninsun, hears her say, “Sometimes we learn the music/ of our hearts too late.” And he replies, “But it would be worse/ if we never learned it.” This is not Gilgamesh the epic, but it is a worthy variant of the story.
(++++) MUSICAL POLITICS
Johann Strauss I Edition, Volume 9. Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina conducted by Christian Pollack. Marco Polo. $9.99.
In Marco Polo’s latest volume of the works of Johann Strauss Sr., we find the composer at the top of his form – attuned equally to the musical styles of the day and to its political realities. Nearly every work on this CD is a winner, filled with charm and gaiety and that unique Straussian lilt that set his works apart from those of his contemporary and sometime rival, Joseph Lanner. Yet there is more than music here: there is a touch of the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the mid-1800s. Again and again, we find these Strauss pieces prepared for and dedicated to a Habsburg nobility increasingly interested in distracting the populace from the revolutionary currents taking form in Europe by encouraging people to dance, celebrate and make merry at every opportunity.
Thus, the majestic Huldigungs-Walzer (“Tribute Waltz”) was a homage to newly installed Emperor Ferdinand I; the Grazien-Tänze (“Dances for the Graces”) were dedicated to the wife of the powerful State Chancellor, Prince Metternich; the Philomelen-Walzer (“Philomel Waltz”) was dedicated to a princess who was a fine singer and known as the Nightingale of Baden, her home town; and so on.
Even more interestingly for modern listeners, many of Strauss Sr.’s works drew heavily on the favorite operas of his time – and on other then-well-known music, too. Musikalischer Telegraph 5, by far the longest work on this new CD, shows this especially clearly: it is a potpourri that starts with Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra overture, ends with a touch of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and in the middle tosses out bits of Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Hèrold, Auber, Mozart and a number of Strauss Sr.’s own works. It sounds a bit like the sort of thing Peter Schickele came up with when he created “P.D.Q. Bach,” but it is so tuneful, fast-moving and elegantly structured that it comes across as a tribute, not a parody.
Other, shorter works here focus on themes taken from individual composers and developed in Straussian style. The Furioso-Galopp, on themes by Franz Liszt, is especially effective, as are two galops based on music from Meyerbeer’s famous Les Huguenots. (Speaking of the place where politics and music intersect, one of these is called the “Ghibelline Galop,” because Viennese censors would not at first let Meyerbeer’s work appear until the libretto was revised and the title was changed to The Ghibellines in Pisa.)
Of the remaining three works on this 10-track CD, the “Wings of Mercury Waltz” is the only disappointment – it is simply ordinary, if pleasant enough. The “Indian Galop” has nothing to do either with India or with American Indians, but is simply a somewhat exotic-sounding quickstep. And the Gedanken-Striche Walzer (“Dash Waltz”), whose name was picked by the audience that first heard it, is smooth, cheerful and effective – three adjectives that not only describe Strauss Sr. at his best but also apply to the excellent playing that his works consistently receive at the hands of Christian Pollack and the Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina.
In Marco Polo’s latest volume of the works of Johann Strauss Sr., we find the composer at the top of his form – attuned equally to the musical styles of the day and to its political realities. Nearly every work on this CD is a winner, filled with charm and gaiety and that unique Straussian lilt that set his works apart from those of his contemporary and sometime rival, Joseph Lanner. Yet there is more than music here: there is a touch of the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the mid-1800s. Again and again, we find these Strauss pieces prepared for and dedicated to a Habsburg nobility increasingly interested in distracting the populace from the revolutionary currents taking form in Europe by encouraging people to dance, celebrate and make merry at every opportunity.
Thus, the majestic Huldigungs-Walzer (“Tribute Waltz”) was a homage to newly installed Emperor Ferdinand I; the Grazien-Tänze (“Dances for the Graces”) were dedicated to the wife of the powerful State Chancellor, Prince Metternich; the Philomelen-Walzer (“Philomel Waltz”) was dedicated to a princess who was a fine singer and known as the Nightingale of Baden, her home town; and so on.
Even more interestingly for modern listeners, many of Strauss Sr.’s works drew heavily on the favorite operas of his time – and on other then-well-known music, too. Musikalischer Telegraph 5, by far the longest work on this new CD, shows this especially clearly: it is a potpourri that starts with Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra overture, ends with a touch of Beethoven’s Fidelio, and in the middle tosses out bits of Meyerbeer, Donizetti, Hèrold, Auber, Mozart and a number of Strauss Sr.’s own works. It sounds a bit like the sort of thing Peter Schickele came up with when he created “P.D.Q. Bach,” but it is so tuneful, fast-moving and elegantly structured that it comes across as a tribute, not a parody.
Other, shorter works here focus on themes taken from individual composers and developed in Straussian style. The Furioso-Galopp, on themes by Franz Liszt, is especially effective, as are two galops based on music from Meyerbeer’s famous Les Huguenots. (Speaking of the place where politics and music intersect, one of these is called the “Ghibelline Galop,” because Viennese censors would not at first let Meyerbeer’s work appear until the libretto was revised and the title was changed to The Ghibellines in Pisa.)
Of the remaining three works on this 10-track CD, the “Wings of Mercury Waltz” is the only disappointment – it is simply ordinary, if pleasant enough. The “Indian Galop” has nothing to do either with India or with American Indians, but is simply a somewhat exotic-sounding quickstep. And the Gedanken-Striche Walzer (“Dash Waltz”), whose name was picked by the audience that first heard it, is smooth, cheerful and effective – three adjectives that not only describe Strauss Sr. at his best but also apply to the excellent playing that his works consistently receive at the hands of Christian Pollack and the Slovak Sinfonietta Žilina.
October 12, 2006
(++++) DRESSING UP YOUR DESK FOR 2007
Engagement Calendars: The ECOlogical Calendar; B. Kliban Cat Calendar; GoreyRARE: Thirty-Two Little-Known Works by Edward Gorey; Robert Bateman: Animals of the World. Pomegranate. $16.99 (ECOlogical); $14.99 each (all others).
365-Day Calendars: Shakespeare’s Insults; Latin for the Illiterati; The New York Times Crossword Puzzles; M.C. Escher. Pomegranate. $11.99 each (Shakespeare; Latin); $12.99 each (Crossword; Escher).
With so many people keeping track of appointments on cell phones, personal digital assistants and laptop computers, it’s fair to ask what a desktop engagement calendar still adds to one’s life. The answer, at least in the case of Pomegranate calendars, is: beauty, interesting information, something offbeat for every day, or some combination of these. Beauty, to be sure, is not enough when it comes to spiral-bound engagement calendars, although it can be for wall calendars. Desktop planners take up valuable work space and need more than attractiveness to justify their existence. So the question is what you want from a calendar that will cover, when left open, some 112 square inches of your desk.
If you want a calendar to help transport you away from the office, to help you see yourself in the context of the world and the universe, to assist you in understanding that ticking-clock time is only a small part of the progress of the year, then consider The ECOlogical Calendar, in which every two-page weekly spread gives a cross-section of that time of year, with annotations explaining what is happening to planets, stars, meteorological phenomena and more. This calendar is similar to Pomegranate’s wall calendar of the same name, but takes up much less space. However, if you want it for planning purposes, look at it carefully before buying: right-hand pages list the days of each week, Monday through Sunday, but do not say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on; and the amount of room in which to write is limited.
The B. Kliban Cat Calendar has charms of a very different sort, but it too has design elements to think about before purchase. Kliban’s cats spread out all over the pages, in bright colors: packed like sardines, or searching for dropped keys, or barbecuing pineapples using “mousquite charcoal.” You needn’t be a cat fancier to find these offbeat illustrations charming. But here’s the rub: each week is split between two pages, with Monday through Wednesday on the left and Thursday through Sunday on the right. And because of the design, Wednesday has almost no space in which to write anything. Be sure your work style will let you enjoy this layout.
Somewhat more conventional in format are the GoreyRARE and Robert Bateman calendars. True, some two-page spreads have weeks on both sides, without illustrations; while elsewhere, some weeks appear on the left and some on the right. But each day has equal writing space, and the layout makes these calendars easy to use for tracking appointments, meetings, phone calls, and so on. GoreyRARE is a gem, featuring almost three dozen of the artist’s ever-slightly-askew views of whatever world he was living in, all with outstanding use of crosshatching and highly detailed portrayals of some characters who are very strange indeed. From “The Pedalling Palludinis” (a color portrait of the riders of what seems to be a bicycle built for seven) to an Escheresque scene in which a huge plant peeks out of a doorway, outside of which stands a four-legged skeleton, while a dreamy-eyed woman stares out a window that is surrounded by plumbing, these unusual drawings show Gorey at his best. As for Bateman, he is at his best in the beautiful nature paintings presented in his 2007 calendar – each accompanied by his brief explanation of what occasioned a work (“one winter day I observed this pair of Canada geese as they lifted off”) or what gives it meaning for him (“the jaguar…stands as a symbol of the disappearing rainforests”). Bateman says his calendar can be used for “a journaling of thoughts and nature observations” as well as for tracking appointments – a thoughtful suggestion.
Unlike engagement calendars, 365-day ones have no reason for being other than enjoyment. Each weekday, Pomegranate gives you something else to contemplate – with a single page for both weekend days. Shakespeare’s Insults is a perennial charmer, if “charmer” is the right word: “Not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he has none,” wrote the Bard of Avon in Cymbeline. Best not to say these out loud while at work – although if you work in academia, the temptation may occasionally prove overwhelming. As for Latin for the Illiterati, it may be a bit of an acquired – or rarefied – taste, but there are so many delights in this compendium of Latin phrases and comments that even the non-scholar (and non-lawyer) will find much to enjoy. This is by no means all erudition: you can invite a colleague out for an after-work drink by saying, Bonum vinum laetificat cor hominis (good wine makes men’s hearts rejoice), and develop quite an interesting relationship if he or she accepts.
Shakespeare and Latin both find their way into The New York Times Crossword Puzzles now and again, and if puzzles are a way you keep your mind nimble – and manage the down time that is inevitable during any work day – this calendar will be a year-long delight. One of its best features is that it progresses as the week goes on: Monday’s puzzle is fairly straightforward, Tuesday’s is harder, Wednesday’s more difficult still, and so on. Plan to take the Saturday-Sunday puzzle page home – it’s the toughest of all. And if all these verbal gymnastics – Shakespeare, Latin, crossword puzzles – make you long for a much more visual calendar experience, you can scarcely go wrong with the new M.C. Escher offering, which includes a generous selection of details from his woodcuts, watercolors, pencil and ink drawings, and more. Actually, there is verbiage here, too: each weekend page includes an excerpt from Escher’s writings, revealing some of the thinking that went into his art and artistry. The whole calendar is a feast for the intellect – sure to help keep you sharp throughout 2007.
365-Day Calendars: Shakespeare’s Insults; Latin for the Illiterati; The New York Times Crossword Puzzles; M.C. Escher. Pomegranate. $11.99 each (Shakespeare; Latin); $12.99 each (Crossword; Escher).
With so many people keeping track of appointments on cell phones, personal digital assistants and laptop computers, it’s fair to ask what a desktop engagement calendar still adds to one’s life. The answer, at least in the case of Pomegranate calendars, is: beauty, interesting information, something offbeat for every day, or some combination of these. Beauty, to be sure, is not enough when it comes to spiral-bound engagement calendars, although it can be for wall calendars. Desktop planners take up valuable work space and need more than attractiveness to justify their existence. So the question is what you want from a calendar that will cover, when left open, some 112 square inches of your desk.
If you want a calendar to help transport you away from the office, to help you see yourself in the context of the world and the universe, to assist you in understanding that ticking-clock time is only a small part of the progress of the year, then consider The ECOlogical Calendar, in which every two-page weekly spread gives a cross-section of that time of year, with annotations explaining what is happening to planets, stars, meteorological phenomena and more. This calendar is similar to Pomegranate’s wall calendar of the same name, but takes up much less space. However, if you want it for planning purposes, look at it carefully before buying: right-hand pages list the days of each week, Monday through Sunday, but do not say Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and so on; and the amount of room in which to write is limited.
The B. Kliban Cat Calendar has charms of a very different sort, but it too has design elements to think about before purchase. Kliban’s cats spread out all over the pages, in bright colors: packed like sardines, or searching for dropped keys, or barbecuing pineapples using “mousquite charcoal.” You needn’t be a cat fancier to find these offbeat illustrations charming. But here’s the rub: each week is split between two pages, with Monday through Wednesday on the left and Thursday through Sunday on the right. And because of the design, Wednesday has almost no space in which to write anything. Be sure your work style will let you enjoy this layout.
Somewhat more conventional in format are the GoreyRARE and Robert Bateman calendars. True, some two-page spreads have weeks on both sides, without illustrations; while elsewhere, some weeks appear on the left and some on the right. But each day has equal writing space, and the layout makes these calendars easy to use for tracking appointments, meetings, phone calls, and so on. GoreyRARE is a gem, featuring almost three dozen of the artist’s ever-slightly-askew views of whatever world he was living in, all with outstanding use of crosshatching and highly detailed portrayals of some characters who are very strange indeed. From “The Pedalling Palludinis” (a color portrait of the riders of what seems to be a bicycle built for seven) to an Escheresque scene in which a huge plant peeks out of a doorway, outside of which stands a four-legged skeleton, while a dreamy-eyed woman stares out a window that is surrounded by plumbing, these unusual drawings show Gorey at his best. As for Bateman, he is at his best in the beautiful nature paintings presented in his 2007 calendar – each accompanied by his brief explanation of what occasioned a work (“one winter day I observed this pair of Canada geese as they lifted off”) or what gives it meaning for him (“the jaguar…stands as a symbol of the disappearing rainforests”). Bateman says his calendar can be used for “a journaling of thoughts and nature observations” as well as for tracking appointments – a thoughtful suggestion.
Unlike engagement calendars, 365-day ones have no reason for being other than enjoyment. Each weekday, Pomegranate gives you something else to contemplate – with a single page for both weekend days. Shakespeare’s Insults is a perennial charmer, if “charmer” is the right word: “Not Hercules could have knocked out his brains, for he has none,” wrote the Bard of Avon in Cymbeline. Best not to say these out loud while at work – although if you work in academia, the temptation may occasionally prove overwhelming. As for Latin for the Illiterati, it may be a bit of an acquired – or rarefied – taste, but there are so many delights in this compendium of Latin phrases and comments that even the non-scholar (and non-lawyer) will find much to enjoy. This is by no means all erudition: you can invite a colleague out for an after-work drink by saying, Bonum vinum laetificat cor hominis (good wine makes men’s hearts rejoice), and develop quite an interesting relationship if he or she accepts.
Shakespeare and Latin both find their way into The New York Times Crossword Puzzles now and again, and if puzzles are a way you keep your mind nimble – and manage the down time that is inevitable during any work day – this calendar will be a year-long delight. One of its best features is that it progresses as the week goes on: Monday’s puzzle is fairly straightforward, Tuesday’s is harder, Wednesday’s more difficult still, and so on. Plan to take the Saturday-Sunday puzzle page home – it’s the toughest of all. And if all these verbal gymnastics – Shakespeare, Latin, crossword puzzles – make you long for a much more visual calendar experience, you can scarcely go wrong with the new M.C. Escher offering, which includes a generous selection of details from his woodcuts, watercolors, pencil and ink drawings, and more. Actually, there is verbiage here, too: each weekend page includes an excerpt from Escher’s writings, revealing some of the thinking that went into his art and artistry. The whole calendar is a feast for the intellect – sure to help keep you sharp throughout 2007.
(++++) THE TOUGHNESS OF THE DELICATE
Fragile Things: Short Fictions and Wonders. By Neil Gaiman. William Morrow. $26.95.
Coraline. By Neil Gaiman. Illustrations by Dave McKean. HarperCollins. $15.99.
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. By Neil Gaiman. Pictures by Dave McKean. HarperTrophy. $7.99.
Neil Gaiman is a continuing astonishment. Not fully satisfied with producing super-successful novels, such as Anansi Boys and American Gods, he persists in creating marvelous short stories and poems as well. Fragile Things is his latest gift to readers – and the particular astonishment here is how much strength Gaiman finds within the notion of fragility. He tells readers so: “The peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how very strong they are.” But more importantly, this amazing tale spinner shows readers the strength that underlies delicacy.
True, this is not a new concept. Ask any scientist familiar with eggs, and he or she will point out that these containers of life are really amazingly tough in their own way. Or listen to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, which gives the lie to the notion of the easily breakable human heart: “Hearts do not break – they sting and ache.” Yet Gaiman demonstrates again and again, in works from the emotional to the sarcastic to the science-fictional to the indescribable, that apparent fragility is by no means the same as actual fragility.
Sometimes the protection of what is fragile comes at a cost, as in “How Do You Think It Feels?” – in which a gargoyle is created to protect a man’s heart rather than a cathedral, and does so somewhat too successfully. Sometimes the heart’s fragility is merely the flip side of its durability, as in the very strange “Harlequin Valentine,” where reality and commedia dell’arte intersect through a peculiar form of cannibalism. Cannibalism in the flesh appears in this book, too, in “Feeders and Eaters,” which originated as one of Gaiman’s nightmares and shows how thoroughly the author’s own fears can be transmissible to readers. Gaiman has other nightmares in Fragile Things, too: “Other People” is a snake-eating-its-tail story of Hell, in the Fredric Brown mode; “The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch” is both a horror story and a highly unusual abduction tale, if “abduction” is the right word; “The Problem of Susan” is a sensitive but still horrific reconsideration of a significant flaw in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books; and “Keepsakes and Treasures” is violent and deeply disturbing on multiple levels.
Gaiman is a fluid stylist with the rare talent of creating empathy for his characters even in a very short tale. He also has a seriously skewed imagination that can unite the most unlikely themes: “A Study in Emerald,” the lead story in Fragile Things, would be a masterpiece of its kind if it were possible to figure out what its kind is. It is no less than a joining of the ultra-rational world of the Sherlock Holmes stories with the tales of gibbering, utterly irrational fear from beyond the stars created by H.P. Lovecraft.
Rather oddly, some works in Fragile Things are for children, or occasioned by Gaiman’s relationship with his own kids: “Locks,” a retelling of a retelling of the Goldilocks story, and “Instructions,” which tells you what to do if you ever find yourself inside a fairy tale. It seems worthwhile to remember that what Gaiman considers appropriate for children is not necessarily what most parents would want to give their kids. Think, for example, of Coraline, a creepily scary 2002 novel that Gaiman said could be read by kids as young as eight. Hmm. Probably not. This is a book in which the young title character innocently enters a chilling world of otherness in which a being claiming to be her “other mother” insists she stay – and have her eyes replaced with buttons, as the other being’s eyes are. Coraline’s parents disappear, the “other mother” turns out to have engineered several successful entrapments before going after Coraline, and the whole scenario – abetted by Dave McKean’s ghoulish illustrations – plays out as something scary enough to give most younger children nightmares lasting well into adolescence.
Yet it is worth noting that Gaiman and McKean can collaborate on an amusing, offbeat book that is thoroughly appropriate for kids as young as five – and has only a hint of darkness at the end. That would be The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, first published in 1997 and now available in a new paperback edition. This book shows Gaiman filtering autobiographical elements (which he explains at the end) through the unique distorting lens of his mind. It’s a simple enough story, and an amusing one: a boy trades his father (who never pays much attention to anything) for two goldfish, but when his mother insists he reverse the trade, it turns out his father has already been traded for something else, and then for yet another thing, and so on. The boy, dogged by his little sister, has to walk farther and farther to reverse all the exchanges and try to get his father back. The siblings have several adventures along the way, with the little sister usually getting the better of her older brother – a state of affairs that leads to a final McKean illustration that is the only piece of looming fright in the book. Elsewhere, the illustrations are harmless but downright strange – stranger than the story, in fact. They spill over into each other, and the words flop from picture to picture, and tiny bits of realistic drawing keep encountering outright absurdity (such as the Queen of Melanesia, who makes a cameo appearance wearing an entire sailing ship). This book is about as close as Gaiman and McKean are ever likely to get to a romp.
The bottom line to all this is simply enough stated: Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller – 31 times in Fragile Things, many times in earlier books, and certainly (one can confidently predict) in the books he has yet to write.
Coraline. By Neil Gaiman. Illustrations by Dave McKean. HarperCollins. $15.99.
The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish. By Neil Gaiman. Pictures by Dave McKean. HarperTrophy. $7.99.
Neil Gaiman is a continuing astonishment. Not fully satisfied with producing super-successful novels, such as Anansi Boys and American Gods, he persists in creating marvelous short stories and poems as well. Fragile Things is his latest gift to readers – and the particular astonishment here is how much strength Gaiman finds within the notion of fragility. He tells readers so: “The peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how very strong they are.” But more importantly, this amazing tale spinner shows readers the strength that underlies delicacy.
True, this is not a new concept. Ask any scientist familiar with eggs, and he or she will point out that these containers of life are really amazingly tough in their own way. Or listen to Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado, which gives the lie to the notion of the easily breakable human heart: “Hearts do not break – they sting and ache.” Yet Gaiman demonstrates again and again, in works from the emotional to the sarcastic to the science-fictional to the indescribable, that apparent fragility is by no means the same as actual fragility.
Sometimes the protection of what is fragile comes at a cost, as in “How Do You Think It Feels?” – in which a gargoyle is created to protect a man’s heart rather than a cathedral, and does so somewhat too successfully. Sometimes the heart’s fragility is merely the flip side of its durability, as in the very strange “Harlequin Valentine,” where reality and commedia dell’arte intersect through a peculiar form of cannibalism. Cannibalism in the flesh appears in this book, too, in “Feeders and Eaters,” which originated as one of Gaiman’s nightmares and shows how thoroughly the author’s own fears can be transmissible to readers. Gaiman has other nightmares in Fragile Things, too: “Other People” is a snake-eating-its-tail story of Hell, in the Fredric Brown mode; “The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch” is both a horror story and a highly unusual abduction tale, if “abduction” is the right word; “The Problem of Susan” is a sensitive but still horrific reconsideration of a significant flaw in C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books; and “Keepsakes and Treasures” is violent and deeply disturbing on multiple levels.
Gaiman is a fluid stylist with the rare talent of creating empathy for his characters even in a very short tale. He also has a seriously skewed imagination that can unite the most unlikely themes: “A Study in Emerald,” the lead story in Fragile Things, would be a masterpiece of its kind if it were possible to figure out what its kind is. It is no less than a joining of the ultra-rational world of the Sherlock Holmes stories with the tales of gibbering, utterly irrational fear from beyond the stars created by H.P. Lovecraft.
Rather oddly, some works in Fragile Things are for children, or occasioned by Gaiman’s relationship with his own kids: “Locks,” a retelling of a retelling of the Goldilocks story, and “Instructions,” which tells you what to do if you ever find yourself inside a fairy tale. It seems worthwhile to remember that what Gaiman considers appropriate for children is not necessarily what most parents would want to give their kids. Think, for example, of Coraline, a creepily scary 2002 novel that Gaiman said could be read by kids as young as eight. Hmm. Probably not. This is a book in which the young title character innocently enters a chilling world of otherness in which a being claiming to be her “other mother” insists she stay – and have her eyes replaced with buttons, as the other being’s eyes are. Coraline’s parents disappear, the “other mother” turns out to have engineered several successful entrapments before going after Coraline, and the whole scenario – abetted by Dave McKean’s ghoulish illustrations – plays out as something scary enough to give most younger children nightmares lasting well into adolescence.
Yet it is worth noting that Gaiman and McKean can collaborate on an amusing, offbeat book that is thoroughly appropriate for kids as young as five – and has only a hint of darkness at the end. That would be The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, first published in 1997 and now available in a new paperback edition. This book shows Gaiman filtering autobiographical elements (which he explains at the end) through the unique distorting lens of his mind. It’s a simple enough story, and an amusing one: a boy trades his father (who never pays much attention to anything) for two goldfish, but when his mother insists he reverse the trade, it turns out his father has already been traded for something else, and then for yet another thing, and so on. The boy, dogged by his little sister, has to walk farther and farther to reverse all the exchanges and try to get his father back. The siblings have several adventures along the way, with the little sister usually getting the better of her older brother – a state of affairs that leads to a final McKean illustration that is the only piece of looming fright in the book. Elsewhere, the illustrations are harmless but downright strange – stranger than the story, in fact. They spill over into each other, and the words flop from picture to picture, and tiny bits of realistic drawing keep encountering outright absurdity (such as the Queen of Melanesia, who makes a cameo appearance wearing an entire sailing ship). This book is about as close as Gaiman and McKean are ever likely to get to a romp.
The bottom line to all this is simply enough stated: Neil Gaiman is a master storyteller – 31 times in Fragile Things, many times in earlier books, and certainly (one can confidently predict) in the books he has yet to write.
(++++) CUTENESS WITH A PURPOSE
Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse. By Leo Lionni. Knopf. $16.95.
Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences. By Richard Wilbur. Harcourt. $10.95.
Reprints provide a wonderful opportunity to reassess a work for children, seeing whether its style and message retain their effectiveness after a few years or many. Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, first published in 1969, has held up very well indeed. It’s one of Leo Lionni’s charming and charmingly illustrated stories, whose lovely collage artwork gives the simple tale greater style than the words alone possess. Actually, in this case, the words themselves are pretty good: Lionni tells of a real mouse who is always chased and who constantly risks mousetraps when all he wants is a few crumbs of food…and a wind-up mouse who can move only when the humans wish, but who is constantly cuddled and cared for at those times, welcomed with warmth and joy as a beloved toy of a girl named Annie. Alexander, the real mouse, becomes very friendly with Willy, the wind-up mouse, but a little jealous as well, wishing he too could be a wind-up toy and “be cuddled and loved.” It turns out that there is a way to do just that, through the offices of a magic lizard, so Alexander sets off to find the lizard and do what he must to get his wish. But the wish changes form when Alexander finds out that Willy and a number of other old toys are going to be thrown away – because Annie got a lot of new toys for her birthday and wants to play with them now. This realization causes Alexander to change his wish – and there is, after some age-appropriate drama, a happy ending and a celebration of friendship. Kids and parents alike will enjoy both the gently uplifting message and the wide variety of art, from the broom with which Alexander is chased to the dark but full-moon-illuminated night during which Alexander rushes home after making his wish.
Richard Wilbur’s drawings are simpler and more amusing than Lionni’s, and his poems reach for a wider age range through their puns and word play. But Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences, originally published in 2000, seems a trifle stale and a little too slick for its own good: “What is the opposite of fleet?/ Someone who’s slow and drags his feet./ Another’s an armada that’ll/ Engage the first fleet in a battle.” Or: “I wonder if you’ve ever seen a/ Willow sheltering a hyena?/ Nowhere in nature can be found/ An opposition more profound:/ A sad tree weeping inconsolably!/ A wild beast laughing uncontrollably!” Wilbur seems so fond of his cleverness that he creates a book whose intended audience is difficult to discern: “The opposite of doughnut? Wait/ A minute while I meditate./ This isn’t easy. Ah, I’ve found it!/ A cookie with a hole around it.” Give the book a (+++) rating for sheer bounce and liveliness, but thumb through it carefully before buying to decide if you and your family will enjoy this sort of thing.
Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences. By Richard Wilbur. Harcourt. $10.95.
Reprints provide a wonderful opportunity to reassess a work for children, seeing whether its style and message retain their effectiveness after a few years or many. Alexander and the Wind-Up Mouse, first published in 1969, has held up very well indeed. It’s one of Leo Lionni’s charming and charmingly illustrated stories, whose lovely collage artwork gives the simple tale greater style than the words alone possess. Actually, in this case, the words themselves are pretty good: Lionni tells of a real mouse who is always chased and who constantly risks mousetraps when all he wants is a few crumbs of food…and a wind-up mouse who can move only when the humans wish, but who is constantly cuddled and cared for at those times, welcomed with warmth and joy as a beloved toy of a girl named Annie. Alexander, the real mouse, becomes very friendly with Willy, the wind-up mouse, but a little jealous as well, wishing he too could be a wind-up toy and “be cuddled and loved.” It turns out that there is a way to do just that, through the offices of a magic lizard, so Alexander sets off to find the lizard and do what he must to get his wish. But the wish changes form when Alexander finds out that Willy and a number of other old toys are going to be thrown away – because Annie got a lot of new toys for her birthday and wants to play with them now. This realization causes Alexander to change his wish – and there is, after some age-appropriate drama, a happy ending and a celebration of friendship. Kids and parents alike will enjoy both the gently uplifting message and the wide variety of art, from the broom with which Alexander is chased to the dark but full-moon-illuminated night during which Alexander rushes home after making his wish.
Richard Wilbur’s drawings are simpler and more amusing than Lionni’s, and his poems reach for a wider age range through their puns and word play. But Opposites, More Opposites, and a Few Differences, originally published in 2000, seems a trifle stale and a little too slick for its own good: “What is the opposite of fleet?/ Someone who’s slow and drags his feet./ Another’s an armada that’ll/ Engage the first fleet in a battle.” Or: “I wonder if you’ve ever seen a/ Willow sheltering a hyena?/ Nowhere in nature can be found/ An opposition more profound:/ A sad tree weeping inconsolably!/ A wild beast laughing uncontrollably!” Wilbur seems so fond of his cleverness that he creates a book whose intended audience is difficult to discern: “The opposite of doughnut? Wait/ A minute while I meditate./ This isn’t easy. Ah, I’ve found it!/ A cookie with a hole around it.” Give the book a (+++) rating for sheer bounce and liveliness, but thumb through it carefully before buying to decide if you and your family will enjoy this sort of thing.
(+++) FANATICISM IN THE ASCENDANT
God’s Terrorists: The Wahhabi Cult and the Hidden Roots of Modern Jihad. By Charles Allen. Da Capo. $26.95.
Written with a scholar’s eye for detail and a popular historian’s flair for the dramatic, God’s Terrorists does a remarkable job of exploring and elucidating the story of Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, his fanatical followers, and the ever-increasing fanaticism of those who expanded and precision-honed Wahhabism after its rise in the 18th century.
This is an excellent book of history but a very poor guide to policy, even though it is for policy guidance and information that most readers are likely to turn to it. For Wahhabism pervades Saudi Arabia and the terrorists it has spawned, including the followers of al Qaeda; and it underlies the Taliban in Afghanistan and its collaborators and supporters in Pakistan. Allen forthrightly says, “This history offers no solutions,” and it is perhaps unreasonable to expect policy suggestions from an academic, no matter how skilled a historian he may be. Yet at a time when Wahhabi-fueled jihad is among the greatest destabilizing forces facing humanity, it seems not unreasonable to expect an expert in the rise, spread and development of that force to have some ideas regarding any possibility of countering it.
Were the spread of terrorism not so urgent an issue, it would be unfair to criticize the book for what it is not. Yet were that issue not so important, it is questionable that this book would have been published at this time and have risen quickly to best-seller status in England, a country whose growing Islamic population certainly contains a small but significant number of Wahhabi followers committed to destroying the land where they live and the people with whom they interact daily.
Allen shows with clarity and care how Wahhabism, originating as a reform movement not unlike Puritanism (which was responsible for some excesses of its own), spread from the Arabian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent. It was in the 1920s that Wahhabi leaders helped the Saud clan rise to power, creating the super-strict Islamic society of modern Saudi Arabia and indirectly sowing the seeds of hatred in such followers as Osama bin Laden, whose rage is directed as much (if not more) at modern Saudi Arabian rulers as at the West. It is crucial for anyone trying to understand Wahhabism to realize that this is a movement dedicated to what its followers see as a purified form of Islam. All who oppose Islamic purity, including Moslems deemed moderate by the West but considered apostates by Wahhabi followers, are appropriate targets for death in holy war. Wahhabism truly believes that God (Allah) is on its side, and only on its side, and that all who say otherwise are by their nature opposed to Allah and worthy only of death.
Allen’s book makes these points through exhaustive research and academically careful explanations of who did what to whom, when and why. This can make for an unpleasantly didactic style at times: “The pusillanimity of the Government of Bengal in failing to order the disarming of the sepoys in Dinapore and in turning its back on Commissioner Tayler’s actions has to be set against the shared determination of the Governor-General of India and Lieutenant-General of Bengal not to further alienate the Indian public, which for the most part had watched the [Sepoy] Mutiny unfold from the sidelines, waiting to see which way the struggle went before coming forward to profess loyalty to the winning side.” Allen’s balance and care in presenting the various elements of Wahhabism’s rise and spread is admirable, and his knowledge of the 18th- and 19th-century events crucial to the group’s spread is encyclopedic. But his book is not an easy read, and although historians may welcome its perspective on the development of a dangerous, fanatical cult whose strength continues to surprise Western policymakers, the general reader is likely to find the level of detail excessive and the deliberate lack of attention to the modern consequences of Wahhabism’s spread quite frustrating.
Written with a scholar’s eye for detail and a popular historian’s flair for the dramatic, God’s Terrorists does a remarkable job of exploring and elucidating the story of Muhammed ibn Abd al-Wahhab, his fanatical followers, and the ever-increasing fanaticism of those who expanded and precision-honed Wahhabism after its rise in the 18th century.
This is an excellent book of history but a very poor guide to policy, even though it is for policy guidance and information that most readers are likely to turn to it. For Wahhabism pervades Saudi Arabia and the terrorists it has spawned, including the followers of al Qaeda; and it underlies the Taliban in Afghanistan and its collaborators and supporters in Pakistan. Allen forthrightly says, “This history offers no solutions,” and it is perhaps unreasonable to expect policy suggestions from an academic, no matter how skilled a historian he may be. Yet at a time when Wahhabi-fueled jihad is among the greatest destabilizing forces facing humanity, it seems not unreasonable to expect an expert in the rise, spread and development of that force to have some ideas regarding any possibility of countering it.
Were the spread of terrorism not so urgent an issue, it would be unfair to criticize the book for what it is not. Yet were that issue not so important, it is questionable that this book would have been published at this time and have risen quickly to best-seller status in England, a country whose growing Islamic population certainly contains a small but significant number of Wahhabi followers committed to destroying the land where they live and the people with whom they interact daily.
Allen shows with clarity and care how Wahhabism, originating as a reform movement not unlike Puritanism (which was responsible for some excesses of its own), spread from the Arabian peninsula to the Indian subcontinent. It was in the 1920s that Wahhabi leaders helped the Saud clan rise to power, creating the super-strict Islamic society of modern Saudi Arabia and indirectly sowing the seeds of hatred in such followers as Osama bin Laden, whose rage is directed as much (if not more) at modern Saudi Arabian rulers as at the West. It is crucial for anyone trying to understand Wahhabism to realize that this is a movement dedicated to what its followers see as a purified form of Islam. All who oppose Islamic purity, including Moslems deemed moderate by the West but considered apostates by Wahhabi followers, are appropriate targets for death in holy war. Wahhabism truly believes that God (Allah) is on its side, and only on its side, and that all who say otherwise are by their nature opposed to Allah and worthy only of death.
Allen’s book makes these points through exhaustive research and academically careful explanations of who did what to whom, when and why. This can make for an unpleasantly didactic style at times: “The pusillanimity of the Government of Bengal in failing to order the disarming of the sepoys in Dinapore and in turning its back on Commissioner Tayler’s actions has to be set against the shared determination of the Governor-General of India and Lieutenant-General of Bengal not to further alienate the Indian public, which for the most part had watched the [Sepoy] Mutiny unfold from the sidelines, waiting to see which way the struggle went before coming forward to profess loyalty to the winning side.” Allen’s balance and care in presenting the various elements of Wahhabism’s rise and spread is admirable, and his knowledge of the 18th- and 19th-century events crucial to the group’s spread is encyclopedic. But his book is not an easy read, and although historians may welcome its perspective on the development of a dangerous, fanatical cult whose strength continues to surprise Western policymakers, the general reader is likely to find the level of detail excessive and the deliberate lack of attention to the modern consequences of Wahhabism’s spread quite frustrating.
(+++) NOT QUITE THE WORLD WE KNOW
Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars, Casebook No. 1: The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas. By Tracy Mack & Michael Citrin. Orchard Books/Scholastic. $16.99.
The World of Eldaterra, Volume 1: The Dragon Conspiracy. By P.R. Moredun. Eos/HarperCollins. $7.99.
New worlds open up in the 19th century in both these series starters – worlds with a whiff of reality, or what we think is reality, but with just enough difference to carry along the plots and the characters swept up in them.
The concept of Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars is a clever one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually created the Irregulars in the original Sherlock Holmes tales: street urchins who helped Holmes by going places where he, for all his mastery of disguise, would be noticed. The boys – six of them – appeared in A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four and The Crooked Man, and the name of their group was later adopted by numerous gatherings and clubs of Holmes fans. Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin are creating a series telling “previously untold” Holmes stories from the perspective of the urchins – and, of course, targeting readers of around the Irregulars’ ages, which is to say preteens. Mack and Citrin (who, incidentally, are married) bring some very clever twists to their first case, The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas. They even make it a point to reach out to girls, by having a young gypsy named Pilar join the Irregulars and provide crucial help to Holmes. The authors retain some of Holmes’ character, including his having little use for women or girls, but they eliminate elements that are not politically correct, such as his addiction to cocaine. Also, to keep the focus on the Irregulars, Mack and Citrin have Holmes make some errors that the original Conan Doyle character would not have made – an irritant to anyone familiar with the Holmes stories, perhaps, but not to the intended audience for this book. The book is over-clever in parts, though, notably in an introduction by its purported “real” author, whose name is revealed through a series of capital letters inserted into the pages at intervals – but who could not possibly have been privy to all the events of the story, as those events themselves show. As for the circus-death mystery itself, readers will likely connect the dots well before Holmes does (Conan Doyle would have shuddered). But the book is nicely paced and atmospheric, and its appendices are fun – especially the introduction to Cockney rhyming slang, which receives some use within the story itself.
The World of Eldaterra features late-19th-century investigators, too, primarily Chief Police Inspector Corrick and his Belgian assistant, Inspector La Forge. But the murders that these characters are looking into in the year 1895 start to come into focus only in 1910, when 14-year-old James Kinghorn discovers the entrance to an older world than our own – called, of course, Eldaterra (not a very creatively chosen name). The story actually starts in 1910 and flips back and forth between that year and 1895, as the human characters uncover a frightening conspiracy and find themselves in the midst of beings such as the magically endowed Frau Colbetz, a wizard named Sibelius (presumably no relation to the composer), and such creatures as warrior dwarves and “parlanimals” (two of whom James befriends). The Dragon Conspiracy feels more like a series setup than a fully realized story in its own right, and P.R. Moredun writes as if his adventure could tip over into humor at any time (why name a character “Herr Dorpmuller”?). Also, some of the supposedly intense magical elements come across as hokey, such as a poem whose final line’s meter is completely wrong: “One step forward if one steps away/ The path lies here and there one goes/ But in this emptiness one must stay/ To work in silence and shadows.” Still, there are undeniably exciting moments here, and if the complex plot begins to fit together better in later books, The World of Eldaterra may reach an appreciative audience. A wait-and-see attitude is in order.
The World of Eldaterra, Volume 1: The Dragon Conspiracy. By P.R. Moredun. Eos/HarperCollins. $7.99.
New worlds open up in the 19th century in both these series starters – worlds with a whiff of reality, or what we think is reality, but with just enough difference to carry along the plots and the characters swept up in them.
The concept of Sherlock Holmes and the Baker Street Irregulars is a clever one. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle actually created the Irregulars in the original Sherlock Holmes tales: street urchins who helped Holmes by going places where he, for all his mastery of disguise, would be noticed. The boys – six of them – appeared in A Study in Scarlet, The Sign of Four and The Crooked Man, and the name of their group was later adopted by numerous gatherings and clubs of Holmes fans. Tracy Mack and Michael Citrin are creating a series telling “previously untold” Holmes stories from the perspective of the urchins – and, of course, targeting readers of around the Irregulars’ ages, which is to say preteens. Mack and Citrin (who, incidentally, are married) bring some very clever twists to their first case, The Fall of the Amazing Zalindas. They even make it a point to reach out to girls, by having a young gypsy named Pilar join the Irregulars and provide crucial help to Holmes. The authors retain some of Holmes’ character, including his having little use for women or girls, but they eliminate elements that are not politically correct, such as his addiction to cocaine. Also, to keep the focus on the Irregulars, Mack and Citrin have Holmes make some errors that the original Conan Doyle character would not have made – an irritant to anyone familiar with the Holmes stories, perhaps, but not to the intended audience for this book. The book is over-clever in parts, though, notably in an introduction by its purported “real” author, whose name is revealed through a series of capital letters inserted into the pages at intervals – but who could not possibly have been privy to all the events of the story, as those events themselves show. As for the circus-death mystery itself, readers will likely connect the dots well before Holmes does (Conan Doyle would have shuddered). But the book is nicely paced and atmospheric, and its appendices are fun – especially the introduction to Cockney rhyming slang, which receives some use within the story itself.
The World of Eldaterra features late-19th-century investigators, too, primarily Chief Police Inspector Corrick and his Belgian assistant, Inspector La Forge. But the murders that these characters are looking into in the year 1895 start to come into focus only in 1910, when 14-year-old James Kinghorn discovers the entrance to an older world than our own – called, of course, Eldaterra (not a very creatively chosen name). The story actually starts in 1910 and flips back and forth between that year and 1895, as the human characters uncover a frightening conspiracy and find themselves in the midst of beings such as the magically endowed Frau Colbetz, a wizard named Sibelius (presumably no relation to the composer), and such creatures as warrior dwarves and “parlanimals” (two of whom James befriends). The Dragon Conspiracy feels more like a series setup than a fully realized story in its own right, and P.R. Moredun writes as if his adventure could tip over into humor at any time (why name a character “Herr Dorpmuller”?). Also, some of the supposedly intense magical elements come across as hokey, such as a poem whose final line’s meter is completely wrong: “One step forward if one steps away/ The path lies here and there one goes/ But in this emptiness one must stay/ To work in silence and shadows.” Still, there are undeniably exciting moments here, and if the complex plot begins to fit together better in later books, The World of Eldaterra may reach an appreciative audience. A wait-and-see attitude is in order.
(+++) TRIFLING
Elgar: Piano Music. Ashley Wass, piano. Naxos. $8.99.
Offenbach: Piano Works, Volume 2. Marco Sollini, piano. CPO. $16.99.
Anyone who thinks classical piano music must by definition be serious and heavy should spend a few minutes with these CDs. A few minutes are all that will be required – between them, these two CDs contain only one piece that is more than 10 minutes long. These are all works of more charm than substance, works never intended to cement their composers’ reputations or to storm the heights of musical accomplishment – but planned merely to provide some enjoyment for a little while. And perhaps “merely” is the wrong word: these were not time wasters but time fillers in an age before television, before non-participatory entertainment, when small groups gathered around the piano to enjoy themselves by playing and talking well into the night.
Edward Elgar is known today for his large-scale orchestral works, and indeed they provide the most important part of his legacy. But thinking of Elgar in purely monumental terms misses the point, as Ashley Wass shows with his adept handling of works that Elgar composed as early as 1882 (when he was 25) and reworked as late as 1930 (he died in 1934). One piece is called Une Idylle, but several have an idyllic character, such as Dream Children, Carissima, May Song and Douce Pensée (Rosemary). There is somewhat more verve in Echo’s Dance, which Elgar adapted from his ballet, The Sanguine Fan (what a title!). There is an interesting melding of the exotic and the properly English in Sérénade Mauresque, the second of Elgar’s Three Characteristic Pieces. And there is pure charm in the early Sonatina in G Major. Also included here, and played with panache by Wass, is Elgar’s own piano transcription of his Enigma Variations – a piece that takes up almost as much time on the CD as all the others put together. This well-known orchestral showpiece sounds a bit thin on the piano: a listener familiar with the work will keep trying to hear the broad strokes of Elgar’s orchestration. Like all the pieces on this CD, the piano version of the Enigma Variations is interesting and pleasant to hear occasionally, but is unlikely to become a staple of the piano repertoire or of most people’s everyday listening.
Jacques Offenbach, for his part, never intended his piano works to have any particular staying power. In fact, he reused themes, sections of pieces, and sometimes whole works as the occasion demanded (giving a piece a different title when he played it in a new city, whose audiences would not have heard it before). Offenbach also used his little piano pieces to pay tribute to his wife and the other women in his life – not only lovers but also theatrical performers. Marco Sollini gives Offenbach’s brief pieces – there are 16 on the new CPO release – just as much attention and seriousness as they deserve, and no more. It is possible to have analytical fun with these trifles if one wishes – for example, by noting that the waltz Le Fleuve d’or and the Polka du mendiant (“Beggar’s Polka”) are based on the same melodic material. But Offenbach himself would likely have dismissed the notion of paying too much attention to these works. They are for enjoyment only. Sollini makes all of them enjoyable, from the moderately well known (the waltzes Abendblätter and Les Belles Américaines) to the very little known (the polka Souvenirs de Londres and the waltz Les Contes de la Reine de Navarre) to the entirely unknown (Valse composée au château du Val le 9 août 1845, which exists only in an autograph copy). There is nothing here to strain the ears, and much to delight them.
Offenbach: Piano Works, Volume 2. Marco Sollini, piano. CPO. $16.99.
Anyone who thinks classical piano music must by definition be serious and heavy should spend a few minutes with these CDs. A few minutes are all that will be required – between them, these two CDs contain only one piece that is more than 10 minutes long. These are all works of more charm than substance, works never intended to cement their composers’ reputations or to storm the heights of musical accomplishment – but planned merely to provide some enjoyment for a little while. And perhaps “merely” is the wrong word: these were not time wasters but time fillers in an age before television, before non-participatory entertainment, when small groups gathered around the piano to enjoy themselves by playing and talking well into the night.
Edward Elgar is known today for his large-scale orchestral works, and indeed they provide the most important part of his legacy. But thinking of Elgar in purely monumental terms misses the point, as Ashley Wass shows with his adept handling of works that Elgar composed as early as 1882 (when he was 25) and reworked as late as 1930 (he died in 1934). One piece is called Une Idylle, but several have an idyllic character, such as Dream Children, Carissima, May Song and Douce Pensée (Rosemary). There is somewhat more verve in Echo’s Dance, which Elgar adapted from his ballet, The Sanguine Fan (what a title!). There is an interesting melding of the exotic and the properly English in Sérénade Mauresque, the second of Elgar’s Three Characteristic Pieces. And there is pure charm in the early Sonatina in G Major. Also included here, and played with panache by Wass, is Elgar’s own piano transcription of his Enigma Variations – a piece that takes up almost as much time on the CD as all the others put together. This well-known orchestral showpiece sounds a bit thin on the piano: a listener familiar with the work will keep trying to hear the broad strokes of Elgar’s orchestration. Like all the pieces on this CD, the piano version of the Enigma Variations is interesting and pleasant to hear occasionally, but is unlikely to become a staple of the piano repertoire or of most people’s everyday listening.
Jacques Offenbach, for his part, never intended his piano works to have any particular staying power. In fact, he reused themes, sections of pieces, and sometimes whole works as the occasion demanded (giving a piece a different title when he played it in a new city, whose audiences would not have heard it before). Offenbach also used his little piano pieces to pay tribute to his wife and the other women in his life – not only lovers but also theatrical performers. Marco Sollini gives Offenbach’s brief pieces – there are 16 on the new CPO release – just as much attention and seriousness as they deserve, and no more. It is possible to have analytical fun with these trifles if one wishes – for example, by noting that the waltz Le Fleuve d’or and the Polka du mendiant (“Beggar’s Polka”) are based on the same melodic material. But Offenbach himself would likely have dismissed the notion of paying too much attention to these works. They are for enjoyment only. Sollini makes all of them enjoyable, from the moderately well known (the waltzes Abendblätter and Les Belles Américaines) to the very little known (the polka Souvenirs de Londres and the waltz Les Contes de la Reine de Navarre) to the entirely unknown (Valse composée au château du Val le 9 août 1845, which exists only in an autograph copy). There is nothing here to strain the ears, and much to delight them.
October 05, 2006
(++++) A YEAR OF ART FOR YOUR WALLS: 2007
The ECOlogical Calendar; Georgia O’Keeffe; Frank Lloyd Wright; Edward Gorey: Mystery; Bruce McCall: Serious Nonsense; Classic Crumb; M.C. Escher: Uncommon Ground; M.C. Escher Mini; Wolf Kahn Mini. Pomegranate. $14.99 (ECOlogical); $13.99 each (all other full-size); $6.99 each (mini).
The most interesting, consistently highest-quality wall calendars around come year after year from Pomegranate, which produces each one as if it were a book of attractive prints – which many of these calendars are. There is also considerable creativity in theme selection and design of Pomegranate calendars, resulting in a very wide range of styles and ideas – presented with a level of visual interest that you will enjoy looking at day after day and month after month.
For 2007, Pomegranate has produced the third version of its highly unusual ECOlogical Calendar, which is not a touchy-feely environmental-handbook kind of thing but an attempt to redefine the way we view the world: instead of a boxy format featuring grids, this calendar includes three-foot-long panels depicting each season, with information on seasonally visible constellations, tides and moon phases, notes on astronomy and natural history, poetry, multicultural holidays and more. If this sounds complicated, it is: a six-page booklet is included to explain how the calendar works. Many people will not want to put this much work into looking at a calendar, but the point here is to look at one – and at the world at large – in a new and different way. If that gives you a changed outlook on day-to-day life, so much the better. This nontraditional calendar concept is not for everyone, but it provides a highly creative approach to the year for anyone seeking something outside the norm.
Pomegranate’s many wall calendars in traditional format are creative and beautiful in their own way. Georgia O’Keeffe showcases the powerful simplicity of the artist’s extreme close-ups of flowers, in pictures from as early as 1919 (“Red Flower”) and as late as 1952 (“Pink and Yellow Hollyhocks”). Frank Lloyd Wright displays beautiful photos of famous and less-known Wright architectural wonders, including two homes with the iconic name of Taliesin, the strikingly simple Pope-Leighey House in Virginia, Wright’s own home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, and many more.
One of Pomegranate’s most interesting calendar categories is called “Artful Humor,” which is where Edward Gorey: Mystery fits in. Actually, Gorey’s work doesn’t quite fit in anywhere, which is a big part of its charm. His sense of line is unusual, his lighting effects peculiar, and the detail of his cross-hatchings utterly remarkable. The 17 Gorey illustrations here have no titles, but scarcely need them: all are on the macabre side of things, all are rendered with excruciating detail, and all will make you wonder just what is going on (why are there two feet sticking up from the urn that lies within the arch from behind which several people are peeking?).
Bruce McCall: Serious Nonsense is artful humor of a different kind. McCall offers city scenes with a distinct difference: huge apes reading newspapers while waiting to try out to climb the Empire State Building; a Donald Trump White House with glittering gold apartment tower on top of the traditional structure; ice fishing through the skating rink at New York City’s Rockefeller Center; and many more slightly skewed views of things. None of them, though, is as skewed as the work of Robert Crumb, of which Classic Crumb offers a year’s worth. Famous creations of this most famous of underground cartoonists (Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural) appear in some months; there is one full Crumb story (“Mr. Natural Meets God”); and there are covers of such well-known (at least in certain circles) comics as “Zap No. 1” and “Despair.” Although these are some of Crumb’s milder panels, this calendar is not for the easily shocked or those who think “underground” refers to comics created in tunnels.
One of the most consistently interesting calendar series from Pomegranate features the work of M.C. Escher, such as M.C. Escher: Uncommon Ground for 2007. That’s a great title, since Escher’s work relies on foreground/background conflation (among other things) for its unique effects. The 2007 wall calendar highlights some of Escher’s best-known works in large and impressive format: “Belvedere,” that confusion of inside and outside; “Drawing Hands,” the famed image of creator and creation inextricably intertwined; “Waterfall,” where up and down become interchangeable; “Hand with Reflecting Globe,” Escher himself being the reflection; and more. Escher’s puzzles are the puzzles of the world and the way we see it – always something worthwhile to think about during any year.
If you don’t have room for the full-size Escher calendar, consider the excellent seven-inch-square mini calendar for 2007, which includes the wonderful “Reptiles” as well as several symmetry and circle-limit drawings. You’ll still get most of the impact of Escher in this smaller size. And if Escher is not your cup of tea, there are other fine mini-size calendars available as well. For example, Wolf Kahn focuses on a contemporary artist whose works – done in intense and slightly strange colors – tread the line between reality and something else. The mini calendar includes such gems as “Invented Foliage” and “In the Land of the Giant” (trunks of trees so tall that their tops are outside the picture). Whatever size space you have, whatever your preference in art, one or another of these calendars should help improve your view of 2007 every time you look at the wall.
The most interesting, consistently highest-quality wall calendars around come year after year from Pomegranate, which produces each one as if it were a book of attractive prints – which many of these calendars are. There is also considerable creativity in theme selection and design of Pomegranate calendars, resulting in a very wide range of styles and ideas – presented with a level of visual interest that you will enjoy looking at day after day and month after month.
For 2007, Pomegranate has produced the third version of its highly unusual ECOlogical Calendar, which is not a touchy-feely environmental-handbook kind of thing but an attempt to redefine the way we view the world: instead of a boxy format featuring grids, this calendar includes three-foot-long panels depicting each season, with information on seasonally visible constellations, tides and moon phases, notes on astronomy and natural history, poetry, multicultural holidays and more. If this sounds complicated, it is: a six-page booklet is included to explain how the calendar works. Many people will not want to put this much work into looking at a calendar, but the point here is to look at one – and at the world at large – in a new and different way. If that gives you a changed outlook on day-to-day life, so much the better. This nontraditional calendar concept is not for everyone, but it provides a highly creative approach to the year for anyone seeking something outside the norm.
Pomegranate’s many wall calendars in traditional format are creative and beautiful in their own way. Georgia O’Keeffe showcases the powerful simplicity of the artist’s extreme close-ups of flowers, in pictures from as early as 1919 (“Red Flower”) and as late as 1952 (“Pink and Yellow Hollyhocks”). Frank Lloyd Wright displays beautiful photos of famous and less-known Wright architectural wonders, including two homes with the iconic name of Taliesin, the strikingly simple Pope-Leighey House in Virginia, Wright’s own home and studio in Oak Park, Illinois, and many more.
One of Pomegranate’s most interesting calendar categories is called “Artful Humor,” which is where Edward Gorey: Mystery fits in. Actually, Gorey’s work doesn’t quite fit in anywhere, which is a big part of its charm. His sense of line is unusual, his lighting effects peculiar, and the detail of his cross-hatchings utterly remarkable. The 17 Gorey illustrations here have no titles, but scarcely need them: all are on the macabre side of things, all are rendered with excruciating detail, and all will make you wonder just what is going on (why are there two feet sticking up from the urn that lies within the arch from behind which several people are peeking?).
Bruce McCall: Serious Nonsense is artful humor of a different kind. McCall offers city scenes with a distinct difference: huge apes reading newspapers while waiting to try out to climb the Empire State Building; a Donald Trump White House with glittering gold apartment tower on top of the traditional structure; ice fishing through the skating rink at New York City’s Rockefeller Center; and many more slightly skewed views of things. None of them, though, is as skewed as the work of Robert Crumb, of which Classic Crumb offers a year’s worth. Famous creations of this most famous of underground cartoonists (Fritz the Cat, Mr. Natural) appear in some months; there is one full Crumb story (“Mr. Natural Meets God”); and there are covers of such well-known (at least in certain circles) comics as “Zap No. 1” and “Despair.” Although these are some of Crumb’s milder panels, this calendar is not for the easily shocked or those who think “underground” refers to comics created in tunnels.
One of the most consistently interesting calendar series from Pomegranate features the work of M.C. Escher, such as M.C. Escher: Uncommon Ground for 2007. That’s a great title, since Escher’s work relies on foreground/background conflation (among other things) for its unique effects. The 2007 wall calendar highlights some of Escher’s best-known works in large and impressive format: “Belvedere,” that confusion of inside and outside; “Drawing Hands,” the famed image of creator and creation inextricably intertwined; “Waterfall,” where up and down become interchangeable; “Hand with Reflecting Globe,” Escher himself being the reflection; and more. Escher’s puzzles are the puzzles of the world and the way we see it – always something worthwhile to think about during any year.
If you don’t have room for the full-size Escher calendar, consider the excellent seven-inch-square mini calendar for 2007, which includes the wonderful “Reptiles” as well as several symmetry and circle-limit drawings. You’ll still get most of the impact of Escher in this smaller size. And if Escher is not your cup of tea, there are other fine mini-size calendars available as well. For example, Wolf Kahn focuses on a contemporary artist whose works – done in intense and slightly strange colors – tread the line between reality and something else. The mini calendar includes such gems as “Invented Foliage” and “In the Land of the Giant” (trunks of trees so tall that their tops are outside the picture). Whatever size space you have, whatever your preference in art, one or another of these calendars should help improve your view of 2007 every time you look at the wall.
(++++) PINT-SIZED HEROISM
Steal Back the Mona Lisa! By Meghan McCarthy. Harcourt. $16.
Is There Really a Human Race? By Jamie Lee Curtis & Laura Cornell. HarperCollins. $16.99.
Kids ages 4-8 can be heroes, too. That’s the message of both these books – but they communicate it in very different ways. Meghan McCarthy’s Steal Back the Mona Lisa! is very minimally based on the actual theft of the famous painting in 1911 (details are provided at the back). The book is cast as a very funny secret-agent romp, in which “Secret Agent Jack” has to get the Mona Lisa back from “a few crooked crooks.” The story is all about Jack overcoming obstacles and learning all the things he can do, at least in his own vivid imagination. He is awakened one night by a flying old-fashioned radio, finds only brown suits and brown hats in his closet when he goes to get dressed, gets a special-agent watch that will help him out of a jam later, and finds that he can drive the fast car that’s waiting for him outside his home. Then it’s a race to France to prevent the nefarious plot of the crooks, who intend to put a mustache on the Mona Lisa as soon as they can decide which design to use. Crooks keep interfering with Jack’s plans, first dumping him in Russia rather than France and later poisoning his juice and kidnapping him, forcing him to “watch videos of chickens dancing – OVER and OVER again!” But Jack escapes, catches the crooks, rescues Mona (who smiles at him), smuggles the painting back to the Louvre, and uses “secret methods too treacherous to mention” to get back home, safe and sound. The book is fun throughout, and Jack always looks like a young boy who is in slightly over his head but comes through just fine – a great message for the children for whom the book is intended.
Is There Really a Human Race? is clever, too, especially in its title and in a few of Laura Cornell’s illustrations: babies in hospital bassinets filled with sports equipment, and a “world yearbook” at the back featuring kids labeled “clog dancer and nuclear physicist,” “oatmeal factory,” and “medical aesthetics.” The rhyming text by Jamie Lee Curtis starts out well, as a young boy asks his mother lots of questions about what “human race” means: “Is the race like a loop/ or an obstacle course?/ Am I a jockey,/ or am I a horse?” The best of these questions is: “Why am I racing? What am I winning?/ Does all of my running keep the world spinning?” The mom’s response to her son, unfortunately, is not written nearly so cleverly – it’s rather insipid: “Sometimes it’s better not to go fast./ There are beautiful sights to be seen when you’re last.” Still, the lathered-on inspirational message takes up only a small part of the book, and sensitive parents can reinterpret the words so they sound less preachy and more upbeat. There are many better alternatives to such lines as, “Make friends and love well,/ bring art to this place.” Despite the disappointing conclusion, this is a lovable book, its illustrations filled with activities done by people of all shapes, sizes, colors and costumes – including kids doing small heroic deeds, such as helping “save the park.” The inclusiveness of the pictures and the occasional soft-pedaled sociopolitical messages (a man in Arab costume playing “go fish” with one dressed as a devout Jew) create plenty of opportunities to discuss the real meaning of “human race” with any young child.
Is There Really a Human Race? By Jamie Lee Curtis & Laura Cornell. HarperCollins. $16.99.
Kids ages 4-8 can be heroes, too. That’s the message of both these books – but they communicate it in very different ways. Meghan McCarthy’s Steal Back the Mona Lisa! is very minimally based on the actual theft of the famous painting in 1911 (details are provided at the back). The book is cast as a very funny secret-agent romp, in which “Secret Agent Jack” has to get the Mona Lisa back from “a few crooked crooks.” The story is all about Jack overcoming obstacles and learning all the things he can do, at least in his own vivid imagination. He is awakened one night by a flying old-fashioned radio, finds only brown suits and brown hats in his closet when he goes to get dressed, gets a special-agent watch that will help him out of a jam later, and finds that he can drive the fast car that’s waiting for him outside his home. Then it’s a race to France to prevent the nefarious plot of the crooks, who intend to put a mustache on the Mona Lisa as soon as they can decide which design to use. Crooks keep interfering with Jack’s plans, first dumping him in Russia rather than France and later poisoning his juice and kidnapping him, forcing him to “watch videos of chickens dancing – OVER and OVER again!” But Jack escapes, catches the crooks, rescues Mona (who smiles at him), smuggles the painting back to the Louvre, and uses “secret methods too treacherous to mention” to get back home, safe and sound. The book is fun throughout, and Jack always looks like a young boy who is in slightly over his head but comes through just fine – a great message for the children for whom the book is intended.
Is There Really a Human Race? is clever, too, especially in its title and in a few of Laura Cornell’s illustrations: babies in hospital bassinets filled with sports equipment, and a “world yearbook” at the back featuring kids labeled “clog dancer and nuclear physicist,” “oatmeal factory,” and “medical aesthetics.” The rhyming text by Jamie Lee Curtis starts out well, as a young boy asks his mother lots of questions about what “human race” means: “Is the race like a loop/ or an obstacle course?/ Am I a jockey,/ or am I a horse?” The best of these questions is: “Why am I racing? What am I winning?/ Does all of my running keep the world spinning?” The mom’s response to her son, unfortunately, is not written nearly so cleverly – it’s rather insipid: “Sometimes it’s better not to go fast./ There are beautiful sights to be seen when you’re last.” Still, the lathered-on inspirational message takes up only a small part of the book, and sensitive parents can reinterpret the words so they sound less preachy and more upbeat. There are many better alternatives to such lines as, “Make friends and love well,/ bring art to this place.” Despite the disappointing conclusion, this is a lovable book, its illustrations filled with activities done by people of all shapes, sizes, colors and costumes – including kids doing small heroic deeds, such as helping “save the park.” The inclusiveness of the pictures and the occasional soft-pedaled sociopolitical messages (a man in Arab costume playing “go fish” with one dressed as a devout Jew) create plenty of opportunities to discuss the real meaning of “human race” with any young child.
(++++) SILLY SEASON, ADVENTURE TIME
Key Lardo: A Chet Gecko Mystery. By Bruce Hale. Harcourt. $14.
Arthur and the Forbidden City. By Luc Beeson. HarperTrophy. $5.99.
Bruce Hale, inveterate punster and lover of old hard-boiled movies, makes it an even dozen mysteries for Chet Gecko with Key Lardo, which bears not even a passing resemblance to John Huston’s great Bogart-and-Bacall film of 1948, Key Largo. The odds that Hale’s target audience of 8-to-12-year-olds will know the film are vanishingly small, but the title is just one of Hale’s many jokes aimed less at preteens than at their parents. After all, this is a book featuring characters named Charles de Gull, Elise Navidad and Conjuncti Vitus (mercifully called Connie most of the time). Lots of the puns may go over the heads (or under the radar) of the intended readers, but the unending silliness of the situations faced by grade-school detective Chet Gecko and his sidekick, mockingbird Natalie Attired (ouch!), continues to hit the mark every time. Which is more than one can say for Chet, who gets hit more often than he hits. You might say he gets Hale bopped, but not even astronomy buffs are likely to let that cometary pun pass. In any case, Key Lardo is one of the best-plotted of Hale’s tales, featuring the arrival at Emerson Hicky Elementary of a new student: a penguin named Bland – James Bland. Bland he is, and a braggart to boot, but most importantly, he claims to be a detective – one whose suave manner and apparent ability to out-sleuth Chet make the plucky gecko the most likely suspect when Bland disappears shortly after his moment of triumph. Chet has to clear his name and find the real culprit before the no-kidding police are called (except that Hale does nothing but kid about Officers Frick and Frack). Readers must negotiate chapter titles such as “On a Wing and a Player” and “Wild Wild Nest” while trying to pick up clues faster than Natalie picks up Chet to fly him away from a particularly sticky situation. The book’s conclusion, truth be told, is not quite as neat as the endings of some other Chet fests, but taken as a whole, the book’s still a winner. Taken as a hole – that is, a bottomless pit – so is Hale’s humor.
The adventure is more serious in Arthur and the Forbidden City, although Luc Beeson’s writing is still on the light side: “It should be mentioned that Arthur’s eyes were not so much on the chasm as on Selenia. It should also be mentioned that Selenia was very pretty. Even from behind you could tell she was a princess.” Beeson’s book has many elements of modern “quest” fairy tales, such as the names: Betameche, Boulaguiri and Cachflot appear on a single page. It also has twists on the genre: Arthur’s adventures take place in his own back yard, except that it is not really a yard but the world of the Minimoys – and Arthur, himself transformed into a Minimoy, needs to face the world’s monsters and enter the forbidden city of Necropolis to free his grandfather. This means dealing with the evil wizard, Maltazard the Cursed – a tall order for a 10-year-old. It is Beeson’s writing style, more than the adventures themselves, that keeps the book interesting. For example, just after Princess Selenia’s father says thanks for an answer to his prayers, Beeson writes, “Grandma would also have liked to have her prayers answered. She was on her third since morning, with no results yet.” Eventually, the book does end happily, and with the promise of further adventures – an answer to the prayers of the many fans of Beeson’s series.
Arthur and the Forbidden City. By Luc Beeson. HarperTrophy. $5.99.
Bruce Hale, inveterate punster and lover of old hard-boiled movies, makes it an even dozen mysteries for Chet Gecko with Key Lardo, which bears not even a passing resemblance to John Huston’s great Bogart-and-Bacall film of 1948, Key Largo. The odds that Hale’s target audience of 8-to-12-year-olds will know the film are vanishingly small, but the title is just one of Hale’s many jokes aimed less at preteens than at their parents. After all, this is a book featuring characters named Charles de Gull, Elise Navidad and Conjuncti Vitus (mercifully called Connie most of the time). Lots of the puns may go over the heads (or under the radar) of the intended readers, but the unending silliness of the situations faced by grade-school detective Chet Gecko and his sidekick, mockingbird Natalie Attired (ouch!), continues to hit the mark every time. Which is more than one can say for Chet, who gets hit more often than he hits. You might say he gets Hale bopped, but not even astronomy buffs are likely to let that cometary pun pass. In any case, Key Lardo is one of the best-plotted of Hale’s tales, featuring the arrival at Emerson Hicky Elementary of a new student: a penguin named Bland – James Bland. Bland he is, and a braggart to boot, but most importantly, he claims to be a detective – one whose suave manner and apparent ability to out-sleuth Chet make the plucky gecko the most likely suspect when Bland disappears shortly after his moment of triumph. Chet has to clear his name and find the real culprit before the no-kidding police are called (except that Hale does nothing but kid about Officers Frick and Frack). Readers must negotiate chapter titles such as “On a Wing and a Player” and “Wild Wild Nest” while trying to pick up clues faster than Natalie picks up Chet to fly him away from a particularly sticky situation. The book’s conclusion, truth be told, is not quite as neat as the endings of some other Chet fests, but taken as a whole, the book’s still a winner. Taken as a hole – that is, a bottomless pit – so is Hale’s humor.
The adventure is more serious in Arthur and the Forbidden City, although Luc Beeson’s writing is still on the light side: “It should be mentioned that Arthur’s eyes were not so much on the chasm as on Selenia. It should also be mentioned that Selenia was very pretty. Even from behind you could tell she was a princess.” Beeson’s book has many elements of modern “quest” fairy tales, such as the names: Betameche, Boulaguiri and Cachflot appear on a single page. It also has twists on the genre: Arthur’s adventures take place in his own back yard, except that it is not really a yard but the world of the Minimoys – and Arthur, himself transformed into a Minimoy, needs to face the world’s monsters and enter the forbidden city of Necropolis to free his grandfather. This means dealing with the evil wizard, Maltazard the Cursed – a tall order for a 10-year-old. It is Beeson’s writing style, more than the adventures themselves, that keeps the book interesting. For example, just after Princess Selenia’s father says thanks for an answer to his prayers, Beeson writes, “Grandma would also have liked to have her prayers answered. She was on her third since morning, with no results yet.” Eventually, the book does end happily, and with the promise of further adventures – an answer to the prayers of the many fans of Beeson’s series.
(+++) MANY KINDS OF COOL
Rush Hour IV: Reckless. Edited by Michael Cart. Delacorte Press. $10.95.
Playing It Cool. By Joaquin Dorfman. Random House. $15.95.
Prizefighter en Mi Casa. By e. E. Charlton-Trujillo. Delacorte Press. $15.95.
First-time authors, contemporary authors, new voices – whatever you call them, they all seem to be preoccupied, in one way or another, with the importance (and the consequences) of being “cool.” The word is a longtime slang term – there’s a song with the single-word title in West Side Story, and it dates back well before that – but the ways of being cool continue to change. The consequences often don’t.
Being reckless is often part of being cool, at least for certain people of a certain age. The fourth installment of Rush Hour, the sort-of-book, sort-of-magazine featuring contemporary writers and artists, uses the word Reckless as a centering point, just as the first three volumes used Sin, Bad Boys and Face. Like the earlier volumes, the Reckless anthology is very much a mixed bag, with work of widely varying interest and quality. Terry Quinn offers an intense urban-experience poem called “See Ya,” about a woman watching “as a neighbor she’s yet to meet/ becomes a corpse. Her first.” Benjamin M. Foster’s autobiographical “Concept” is about staying in a “therapeutic community” with other “fucked-up teenage kids who cut school and smoked a lot of pot.” Kirsten Smith’s “Three Poems about Bobby” deals with reckless love choices: “You open the car door for me/ and I want some of your bad boy/ to rub off on my hands like newsprint.” Tommy Kovac’s strange comic-strip-style story, “The New Girl,” is about a “date with the dead.” Especially interesting is an E-mail interview with Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, who suggests that writing itself is a reckless act – a very different viewpoint from the others in this collection.
Playing It Cool and Prizefighter en Mi Casa are debut novels – in the case of the former, actually a “solo debut” novel. Both are about teenage and young-adult recklessness, and the cost of choices made and choices unchosen. Joaquin Dorfman, coauthor of Burning City, here offers a book about a “fixer,” someone who solves intractable problems in subtle ways (for instance, getting someone a date or stopping a suicide). Sebastian Montero has a way with people: “’Have a giraffe,’ I offered, extending the stuffed animal. Matilda let her lips curl up and laughed, braces and all. She took the giraffe from me and held it close. Rocking just a little bit, the timeless reassurance of all things soft and fuzzy.” But in a new city, where he does not fully understand the quid pro quo, Montero meets a fixer who is more powerful than he – and may be able to help him, if the price is right.
The author of Prizefighter en Mi Casa spells her name “e. E. Charlton-Trujillo,” and if that’s not a bid for coolness, what is? Chula Sanchez, heroine of the novel, wants both to be cool and to be healthy: she has had seizures since a car accident that also left her father paralyzed. The family is poor, and the father hopes to do something about that by sending to Mexico for a prizefighter named El Jefe, who can win local boxing matches. But the matches are illegal, the police show up, Chula’s brother helps her get away but is himself caught, and then the apparently steel-hard El Jefe shows an unexpected emotional side that only confuses matters further. Neither Dorfman’s novel nor Charlton-Trujillo’s is entirely effective or entirely believable, despite interesting picaresque qualities in one and a kind of hard-bitten determination in the other. The books are intriguing rather than compelling; and if they are not really “cool,” they do both have touching moments that, in the long run, will count for more.
Playing It Cool. By Joaquin Dorfman. Random House. $15.95.
Prizefighter en Mi Casa. By e. E. Charlton-Trujillo. Delacorte Press. $15.95.
First-time authors, contemporary authors, new voices – whatever you call them, they all seem to be preoccupied, in one way or another, with the importance (and the consequences) of being “cool.” The word is a longtime slang term – there’s a song with the single-word title in West Side Story, and it dates back well before that – but the ways of being cool continue to change. The consequences often don’t.
Being reckless is often part of being cool, at least for certain people of a certain age. The fourth installment of Rush Hour, the sort-of-book, sort-of-magazine featuring contemporary writers and artists, uses the word Reckless as a centering point, just as the first three volumes used Sin, Bad Boys and Face. Like the earlier volumes, the Reckless anthology is very much a mixed bag, with work of widely varying interest and quality. Terry Quinn offers an intense urban-experience poem called “See Ya,” about a woman watching “as a neighbor she’s yet to meet/ becomes a corpse. Her first.” Benjamin M. Foster’s autobiographical “Concept” is about staying in a “therapeutic community” with other “fucked-up teenage kids who cut school and smoked a lot of pot.” Kirsten Smith’s “Three Poems about Bobby” deals with reckless love choices: “You open the car door for me/ and I want some of your bad boy/ to rub off on my hands like newsprint.” Tommy Kovac’s strange comic-strip-style story, “The New Girl,” is about a “date with the dead.” Especially interesting is an E-mail interview with Yann Martel, author of Life of Pi, who suggests that writing itself is a reckless act – a very different viewpoint from the others in this collection.
Playing It Cool and Prizefighter en Mi Casa are debut novels – in the case of the former, actually a “solo debut” novel. Both are about teenage and young-adult recklessness, and the cost of choices made and choices unchosen. Joaquin Dorfman, coauthor of Burning City, here offers a book about a “fixer,” someone who solves intractable problems in subtle ways (for instance, getting someone a date or stopping a suicide). Sebastian Montero has a way with people: “’Have a giraffe,’ I offered, extending the stuffed animal. Matilda let her lips curl up and laughed, braces and all. She took the giraffe from me and held it close. Rocking just a little bit, the timeless reassurance of all things soft and fuzzy.” But in a new city, where he does not fully understand the quid pro quo, Montero meets a fixer who is more powerful than he – and may be able to help him, if the price is right.
The author of Prizefighter en Mi Casa spells her name “e. E. Charlton-Trujillo,” and if that’s not a bid for coolness, what is? Chula Sanchez, heroine of the novel, wants both to be cool and to be healthy: she has had seizures since a car accident that also left her father paralyzed. The family is poor, and the father hopes to do something about that by sending to Mexico for a prizefighter named El Jefe, who can win local boxing matches. But the matches are illegal, the police show up, Chula’s brother helps her get away but is himself caught, and then the apparently steel-hard El Jefe shows an unexpected emotional side that only confuses matters further. Neither Dorfman’s novel nor Charlton-Trujillo’s is entirely effective or entirely believable, despite interesting picaresque qualities in one and a kind of hard-bitten determination in the other. The books are intriguing rather than compelling; and if they are not really “cool,” they do both have touching moments that, in the long run, will count for more.
(++) REFERENCE BOOKS IN THE OLD STYLE
Scholastic Book of Lists. By James Buckley, Jr. and Robert Stremme. Scholastic. $9.99.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Special Edition 2007. By Mary Packard and the Editors of Ripley’s Entertainment Inc. Scholastic. $14.99.
Despite the continuing expansion of the Internet, there remains a place for old-fashioned reference books of certain kinds – concordances, for example. But books like these two, although they contain some interesting material, are a type whose time is passing increasingly quickly. Scholastic Book of Lists consists of 11 sections focused on History, Numbers, Science, Words and more. Within each section, every entry is short and presented in multiple type styles and type sizes, in an obvious attempt to make the information more interesting in our age of highly visual communication. But the approach does not work very well, because it makes the pages of little use to students doing serious research – while making them not especially attractive for anyone simply paging through the book for fun. Under “The Arts,” for example, a page called “Famous Orchestras” first explains, in small type, what an orchestra is; then lists, in large type, 12 famous orchestras (with no explanation of how or why they were chosen); then, at the bottom of the page, next to a meaningless graphic design, says a little about Vienna, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Vienna Philharmonic. So what does a reader take away from all this? The answer, unfortunately, is: not very much. Reading a Wikipedia entry on orchestras and following its hyperlinks is a more interesting approach, and it leads to many more connected (or unconnected) facts. On the plus side, the basic information in this book remains as solid as in its earlier editions, and some of the facts are really fascinating. For example, the book names Shakey as the first robot able to navigate by itself (1966), and Unimate as the first robot arm used in an assembly line (no date given). But these machines are part of a “Famous Robots” page that also includes cartoon character Astro Boy and C-3PO of Star Wars. There’s no way to find facts that are so thoroughly mixed with fiction. So even though Scholastic Book of Lists contains accurate and often interesting trivia (check out “Weird U.S. City Names” and the “Brag About Bricks” page, which describes building terms), it’s a book whose format may not have staying power much longer.
The Ripley’s Believe It or Not! franchise, complete with its exclamation point, is already long past its prime. For many years a great place to learn (albeit in a patronizing way) about other cultures, customs, and the strange ways of human genetics (what used to be called “freak shows”), Ripley’s is now merely a pale imitation of Guinness and other record-oriented publishing. The oddball stuff of yore is gone, replaced with entries about the world’s largest tomahawk, the oldest pet cemetery in the United States, and the largest community of spiritualists. Entries called “Ripley File” are supposed to delve into interesting facts from the past, but “past” here is broadly interpreted to include the years 1994, 1999, even 2005. When there is a truly old entry, it is not necessarily even tied to its time period: one dated “1.18.1930” (for no apparent reason) says that the flying snake of Java can flatten itself and sail from tree to tree – which is true, but just as much so today as it was then. The 3-D cover and “Special Edition 2007” designation are intended to make this book seem modern and up to date. But in truth, the whole thing creaks of an earlier time and an archaic approach to what are now known as factoids.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Special Edition 2007. By Mary Packard and the Editors of Ripley’s Entertainment Inc. Scholastic. $14.99.
Despite the continuing expansion of the Internet, there remains a place for old-fashioned reference books of certain kinds – concordances, for example. But books like these two, although they contain some interesting material, are a type whose time is passing increasingly quickly. Scholastic Book of Lists consists of 11 sections focused on History, Numbers, Science, Words and more. Within each section, every entry is short and presented in multiple type styles and type sizes, in an obvious attempt to make the information more interesting in our age of highly visual communication. But the approach does not work very well, because it makes the pages of little use to students doing serious research – while making them not especially attractive for anyone simply paging through the book for fun. Under “The Arts,” for example, a page called “Famous Orchestras” first explains, in small type, what an orchestra is; then lists, in large type, 12 famous orchestras (with no explanation of how or why they were chosen); then, at the bottom of the page, next to a meaningless graphic design, says a little about Vienna, Mozart, Beethoven, and the Vienna Philharmonic. So what does a reader take away from all this? The answer, unfortunately, is: not very much. Reading a Wikipedia entry on orchestras and following its hyperlinks is a more interesting approach, and it leads to many more connected (or unconnected) facts. On the plus side, the basic information in this book remains as solid as in its earlier editions, and some of the facts are really fascinating. For example, the book names Shakey as the first robot able to navigate by itself (1966), and Unimate as the first robot arm used in an assembly line (no date given). But these machines are part of a “Famous Robots” page that also includes cartoon character Astro Boy and C-3PO of Star Wars. There’s no way to find facts that are so thoroughly mixed with fiction. So even though Scholastic Book of Lists contains accurate and often interesting trivia (check out “Weird U.S. City Names” and the “Brag About Bricks” page, which describes building terms), it’s a book whose format may not have staying power much longer.
The Ripley’s Believe It or Not! franchise, complete with its exclamation point, is already long past its prime. For many years a great place to learn (albeit in a patronizing way) about other cultures, customs, and the strange ways of human genetics (what used to be called “freak shows”), Ripley’s is now merely a pale imitation of Guinness and other record-oriented publishing. The oddball stuff of yore is gone, replaced with entries about the world’s largest tomahawk, the oldest pet cemetery in the United States, and the largest community of spiritualists. Entries called “Ripley File” are supposed to delve into interesting facts from the past, but “past” here is broadly interpreted to include the years 1994, 1999, even 2005. When there is a truly old entry, it is not necessarily even tied to its time period: one dated “1.18.1930” (for no apparent reason) says that the flying snake of Java can flatten itself and sail from tree to tree – which is true, but just as much so today as it was then. The 3-D cover and “Special Edition 2007” designation are intended to make this book seem modern and up to date. But in truth, the whole thing creaks of an earlier time and an archaic approach to what are now known as factoids.
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