April Reading (and Television Viewing)

April was not a great month for me for reading, at least in terms of volume.  In fact, looking back on the month, I'm a little shocked to find that I only finished four books last month.   Here they are:

1.  Lean In, by Sheryl Sandberg.   I wanted to read this book but I also needed to read it because the women at my firm decided to have a discussion about it at a brown bag lunch one day. And it turned out to be great discussion.

While I think that any woman could read this book and get something out of it, it clearly isn't directed to all women. Sandberg is pretty up front about that.   It will appeal more to women who see themselves in a career rather than a job, and will especially appeal to women like me who made the decision early on to climb some kind of ladder - either because that is what drives them or, like me, because I am in a career that is "up or out" (i.e. you either keep rising or you are asked to leave). Women whose priorities in life are not, and may never be, related to their job may not find themselves as interested in this book.

Our work discussion was great because all the women in the group were lawyers committed to practicing law for the rest of our lives.  While some have young children and have cut back on their hours temporarily, they do not see that as taking them off the career path (indeed it can't because, as I say, law firm life is generally "up or out" still, no matter how much people may deny that it still is).  These women fully expect to return to full time work when their kids are older.  And all of us, whether we have children or not, face the same issues during the work day.  When I say we discussed the book, it would be more accurate to say that we used the book as a jumping off place to discuss the many issues that we face every day in our work day. 

Sandberg does fill the book with a lot of helpful data (backed up by many pages of footnotes).  None of it was news to me but it was helpful to have it all in one place written in accessable language.  I found myself wishing that some of the MEN in my organization would read the book so that they could more fully understand what the women are up against from an institutional point of view.

I've read a lot of reviews of the book.  The negative reviews mostly seem to complain that it isn't a different book.  Many wished  that Sandberg had spent more time discussing how to change institutional barriers (and reviewers who say that she doesn't discuss them at all are totally off base - in fact, I found myself wondering if some of the people who wrote negatively about the book had even read the book.  Sandberg manages to touch on almost everything, she just doesn't explore everything).

This is definitely a book that focuses on women taking control of what they can control and helping them with some strategies for that.   That appeals to me and I found it appealed very much to the women in our discussion group.  But then, it would.  Women who go to law school tend to be self-starters, very independent, and, most of all, pragmatic.   We recognize that institutional barriers exist (oh trust me, we recognize it all the time) but, in the meantime, while we wait and hope and work toward removing them, we have to get on with our own careers.  Talking in practical terms about what we can do in the here-and-now to help those careers is always welcome.

I've gone back to one of reading groups I had temporarily dropped out of and they will be discussing this book next month.  It will be interesting to compare the discussions.  I recommend this book. 

2.   Cannery Row, by John Steinbeck.   As I said, I've returned to one of my reading groups and this was their choice this month.  I know that I've read Cannery Row before, many many years ago when I was on a John Steinbeck kick.  But I really didn't remember it, so it was all new to me.  I had a recollection that I loved the way Steinbeck wrote and wondered if I would feel the same 20 or 30 years later.  I did.  This novel is a series of vignettes of the people (most of whom are down on their luck but don't see it that way) living in a California coastal town whose main employer is the fish (sardine) canneries.   Not that any of these people work for the canneries except occasionally when they really need money. There isn't much in the way of plot, which is fine with me.  Lots of characterization - Steinbeck makes me think well of people who, if I met them in real life, I'd probably run away from.  And, oh how he can string together sentences.    Recommended.   Although if you've never read any Steinbeck, I'd recommend Grapes of Wrath instead.

3.  Ancient Lights, by John Banville.   I've been reading this through my NOOK app for a few months now.  It took me a long time to finish even though it is not a long book, partly because I used it as my lunchtime reading and I didn't have much time for lunch reading but also because I wanted to read it slowly.  Like Steinbeck, Banville is an expert at stringing together sentences.  I found myself re-reading paragraphs, sometimes aloud, just for the joy of his language (another reason it was hard to read at lunch unless I was alone).  There is, again, not much of a plot.   The book is written as a stream of consciousness memoir by an older character remembering the sexual relationship he had as a young boy with the mother of a friend of his (which at first gave me pause) combined with his more or less present day writing about a film he is in (he is an actor) and his thoughts on the death by suicide of his daughter.   I didn't realize until I reached the notes at the end that this novel is the third of a trilogy.  I might go back and read the first two books.  Recommended.

4.  Arcadia by Lauren Groff.   When I first started practicing law I worked with a woman who had lived in a commune in the 1970's.  I never talked about it with her, other people told me.  I remember thinking "How horrible.  I would never want to live in a commune." This novel about a boy who grows up in a commune in upstate New York was not, therefore, something that I expected to really find myself relating to.   And I didn't.  Groff did keep my interest through the first two sections which covered the main character's childhood and adolescence at the commune.  But it was downhill for me from there.  The third part takes place years later after the commune fell apart and his own marriage has fallen apart.  Since I couldn't see the joy of communal living and certainly didn't see the appeal of the character's missing unstable former drug addict wife, I kept waiting for him to come to his senses and just move on. The fourth part takes place in an apocalyptic near-future when the climate has changed so much that some food is no longer available and some kind of flu is wiping out much of the population.  I think it was 2018 (which I found hard to buy into since that is right around the corner).  I disliked that section intensely in terms of plot and characters.

Groff writes well which is why I kept going.  And I can't say that her characters were caricatures - she made them very real to me.  And she certainly didn't portray the commune as a utopia, nor did she portray it as a terrible place (at least not until the end).  Her portrayal seemed even handed to me.  The truth is that I have, and have always had, a viscerally negative reaction to the kind of people are most likely to think living in a commune is a good thing and especially to the kind of character who, after escaping from one, would actually miss it.  That's really just me and not a problem with Groff.  So while I can't recommend this novel since I mostly just wanted it to be over by the last part, people who don't have the kinds of issues I have might enjoy it.

And that was it for April.  One of the reasons I read fewer books was because I became caught up in a number of television series.  Oddly, all of them were on cable and I don't have cable.   But the descriptions intrigued me enough that I bought iTunes season passes for them.  They included:  (1)  Spies of Warsaw, based on a novel by Alan Furst that I read last year; (2) Top of the Lake, an original Sundance Channel series directed by Jane Campion, set in New Zealand and starring Elizabeth Moss and Holly Hunter; (3) Vikings, an original scripted drama from The History Channel (!) about, well, Vikings and based on Scandinavian sagas about Ragnor Lothboke; (4) Doctor Who ('nuff said); (5) Orphan Black an original BBC America series about a group of human clones all played by Tatiana Maslany; and (6) Defiance, set in a post-apocalyptic, post-alien invasion, St. Louis (how could I not watch it, if only to see how they kept the Arch still standing despite missing a chunk). I enjoyed and recommend all of them.

I wasn't wild about the novel Spies of Warsaw when I read it, I thought it moved kind of slowly and didn't have a real ending.  The television show is much better (and has more plot than the novel; I think I read somewhere that the screenwriters also used parts of other Furst novels), although it still moves slowly and doesn't have a real ending.   Top of the Lake reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks.  It was full of odd characters and, in many ways, the actual solution to the mystery wasn't all that important - although it did manage a few surprises for me at the end. 

I truly loved Vikings and am thrilled it is coming back next year.  It is violent but not gratuitously so - after all it's about ... Vikings!  Someday, someone should adapt Dorothy Dunnet's epic novel King Hereafter as a series.  It takes place about 200 years after this television show, during the late days of the Vikings, after Scandinavia becomes nominally Christian.

Of all the shows I've watched, the one I can't stop telling people to watch is Orphan Black.  Tatiana Maslany is doing amazing work playing human clones who look alike but have completely different personalities (including characters impersonating other characters).   In a just world she would get an Emmy.  And the story is odd and entertaining. I regularly think that this series is what Dollhouse should have been and wonder if Joss Whedon is watching it.  I might write about it when it is over.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Defiance has just started and while it seems somewhat derivative of other science fiction shows, I love this kind of science fiction.  Hopefully, once the writers set the stage and establish all the characters it can develop a unique voice.  And they still haven't explained the Arch fix yet.

Doctor Who - well,  Doctor Who.  :)

March Reading

I'm a little late putting this up because ... well, I don't really have a reason or an excuse.

I ended up reading fewer books in March than the preceding months because I took a little over a week to re-watch the first season of Veronica Mars and then I took another week to re-watch the first five episodes of Bunheads.  Here's what I did read in March:

 1. NW by Zadie Smith. Believe it or not this is the first Zadie Smith novel I've ever read. I keep meaning to read her so when I saw this on the New Fiction shelf at the library I picked it up. I know it got mixed reviews but I quite liked it as a study of the lives of three people who grew up in the same estate (housing project) and never moved far.  I will definitely find and read another Zadie Smith novel.  Recommended.

2.  One Last Strike by Tony LaRussa.  This is a book about the surprising 2011 season of the St. Louis Cardinals.  I read it while I spent a weekend in Florida on spring break.  That seemed appropriate.  But despite being a huge Cardinals fan, I found this a surprisingly dull book.  Too many details and too little baseball "magic".   Not recommended.

3. Where's You Go Bernadette by Maria Semple.  I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this novel.  It is told as a young middle school aged girl tries to figure out why her mother disappeared by going through a file of emails and memos from the last months before the disappearance.  So it had a resemblance to an epistolary novel using emails.  I love epistolary novels because writers of letters (and emails) are always unreliable narrators.  For one thing, they are choosing a personality when they write - and that might not be their real personality or at least not their entire personality.   This novel kept me guessing.  And it was FUNNY in a snarky way.   Recommended.

4.  This is Running for Your Life by Michelle Orange.   I found this book of essays very uneven.  Some of the essays kept my interest and others made my mind wander.    Partially recommended - pick and choose.

5.  A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood.   I inadvertently read this very short novel over the two day period when the Supreme Court was considering gay marriage.  How appropriate!   I had seen the movie with Colin Firth and really enjoyed it.  The novel is wonderful.  I loved Isherwood's style. Highly Recommended.

6. Leaving Everything Most Loved by Jacqueline Winspear.   This is the latest Maisie Dobbs novel.  Winspear seemed to intend this book to be a transitional book.  I won't spoil anything but Maisie is definitely changing direction.  I continue to have a hard time warming up to Maisie as a character although I like Winspear's style and I like the period she is choosing to write about.  The last 25 pages or so of this novel were more rambling than I would have liked but the first part of the book was well written.  Recommended.

That was it for March.  I'm still slowly reading John Banville's Ancient Light.  It isn't that long of a book but I made it my "lunchtime reading" book and I haven't had much time to read over lunch.   I also have Lauren Groff's Arcadia on my night stand. 

250 Years Ago* ... The Jesuits

In honor of the new Jesuit Pope Francis, this seems as good a time as any to remember how important the French Jesuits were in the founding of French Colonial North America and talk about what was happening with them 250 years ago.  In short, 250 years ago the Jesuits lost a fight in France that would lead to them being banished from North America within the year.  The people of the Illinois country were poised to lose their King and to come under the dominion of a Protestant regime.  They were also poised to lose nearly every priest that they had.  But that wasn't the fault of their English conquerors.  I'm not an expert on Jesuit history but I'll tell you what I know about the Jesuits in the Illinois Country.

As many newspaper articles have pointed out since Francis became Pope, the Jesuits have never been the type to stay-at-home.

We can certainly expect a truly global papacy, not just because of Francis’s birthplace but also because taking the Christian message to far-flung foreign climes has always been a Jesuit obsession. 

The Jesuits came to America early.  For anyone interested in the history of the French in Colonial North America, the Jesuits are a godsend.  They were not only literate but, beginning in 1632 and throughout their stay in colonial North America, they wrote lengthy annual missives back home to France, which were then published for general consumption.  Today those missives are compiled in a multi-volume set called the Relations des Jésuites de la Nouvelle-France or the Jesuit Relations.

Originally written in French, Latin and Italian, The Jesuit Relations were reports from Jesuit missionaries in the field that were sent to their superiors to update them as to the missionaries’ progress in the conversion of various Native American tribes. Constructed as narratives, the original reports of the Jesuit missionaries were subsequently transcribed and altered several times before their publication, first by the Jesuit overseer in New France and then by the Jesuit governing body in France. The Relations gradually became more focused on the general public as its readers, in terms of a marketing tool to procure new settlers for the colonies, while simultaneously trying to gain the capital to continue the missions in New France.

For those doing genealogical research, the Jesuit Relations can also be helpful in filling in details.  For instance, I know that one of my Canadian ancestors, Antoine Desrosiers, had a servant who was killed by the Iroquois.  It happened on August 7, 1651.  The servant was out in the early morning along the St. Lawrence river, killing crows. He was found in the road with two gunshots in him and a hatchet in his head.  How do I know that?  The Jesuits reported it.

The Jesuits and the fur traders were the first Europeans to explore what is, today, the American midwest.  Sometimes they did it together.  The most famous pair was Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette and explorer/trader Louis Jolliet.  The pair set out in 1673, paddled down the Mississippi from the Wisconsin River as far as Arkansas and then paddled back up.  The Native Americans told them that, going back, it would be easier to head up the Illinois River towards the Lake of the Illinois (Lake Michigan) rather than go back up the Wisconsin River.  Today, at the confluence of the Illinois and Mississippi rivers there is a lovely Illinois state park named ... Pere Marquette Park.  Oh and note that it is "Pere" Marquette, not "Pierre" Marquette.  His name was not Pierre, it was Jacques. The French word for "Father" is Pere, which is pronounced "pear" - so the park name in English is "Father Marquette" park.  Sorry for the lecture but this mispronunciation is a pet peeve of mine.

Father Marquette later returned to the tribes on the Illinois River  near the Great Village of the Kaskaskias, and founded the Mission of the Immaculate Conception.  But unfortunately he contracted dysentery and died at the age of 37. The always indefatigable Jesuits, however, sent new missionaries. In 1689 Father Jacques Gravier was assigned to work in the Illinois Country among the Kaskaskia Indians. 

Gravier's most enduring work was his compilation of a Kaskaskia-French dictionary, with nearly 600 pages and 20,000 entries ... It is the most extensive of dictionaries of the Illinois language compiled by French missionaries. The work was finally edited and published in 2002 by Carl Masthay, providing an invaluable source of the historic Kaskaskia Illinois language.

Fr. Gravier traveled extensively around the Illinois country and couldn't always be at the official mission, so the Jesuits sent even more missionaries to the Illinois country to join him.  In 1698 Jesuit Father Pierre-Gabriel Marest was assigned to the Illinois.  He too was known to have a talent for local languages.  In 1700 the Kaskaskia Indians decided to leave the Illinois River and relocate south. Fr. Gravier and Fr. Marest relocated with them.  They ended up at the confluence of the Mississippi and the Kaskaskia River and there the Mission of the Immaculate Conception began to build a permanent church.  In 1705 Fr. Gravier was wounded by an arrow and left to return to France. Fr. Marest died in 1714, the victim of an epidemic.

But by that time more Jesuits had come to Kaskaskia, among them Father Jean Mermet who joined the mission in 1702.  The year he arrived he was told told to travel with a group of traders who intended to start a tannery operation along the Ohio River, trading French goods for deer skins brought by the local tribes.  Father Mermet was to serve the local Indians (and probably keep an eye on the French traders).   The tannery failed and eventually Mermet returned to Kaskaskia.  He died in 1716.

Father Jean-Antoine Le Boullenger came to the mission in 1719.  The following year French administration arrived in Illinois in the person of the Sieur de Boisbriant and his troops.  One of the first things Boisbriant did was establish a village for the Kaskaskia Indians that was separate from the French village.  The village church became the Parish of the Immaculate Conception but the Jesuits also served the Indian village.

When Fort de Chartres was established, a chapel called Ste. Anne was also established by the Jesuits.  Eventually a full church was built but a dispute arose between the Jesuits and the Recollect priests of the Seminary of Foreign Missions based in Cahokia as to who was to be in charge of this new parish and the two offshoot "chapels" that were also established: the Chapel of the Visitation in the village of St. Philippe north of Fort de Chartres and the chapel of St. Joseph in the village of Prairie du Rocher.  Although the Recollects were officially in charge, the Jesuits appear to have remained in control of the Fort's chapel.

In any event, in 1720 Fr. Boullenger moved to Fort de Chartres and was there until 1726.  During this time my ancestors Jean Baptiste Nicolas Becquet and his wife Catherine Barreau first came to the Illinois country and would have known Fr. Boullenger.  In fact, on October 24, 1725 Fr. Boullenger baptised their son, and my ancestor, Jean Baptiste.

When Fr. Boullenger left he was replaced by Fr. Beaubois, who was the first Jesuit assigned to the area by the Jesuits in New Orleans.  Until this time all the Jesuits had come through Canada.  Fr. Beaubois ended up traveling back to France on a recruiting mission and he took with him four Indian chiefs, including the chief of the local Mitchigamia tribe.   It is said that he created a sensation when he presented the chiefs to the King.  And he recruited a number of young Jesuits to come back to Illinois with him.  Over the years there were a number of Jesuits who served in the Illinois country.  But by mid-century trouble was brewing for the Jesuits back home in Europe.

Part of the irony in having a Jesuit Pope here in the 21st century is that back in the 18th century Pope Clement XIV suppressed the Jesuit order, following the lead of France, Spain and Portugal.  Although at first the Jesuits were strongly supported in North America by the French crown, this began to change in the 1750's.   

In the sixteenth century the English crown had found an effective means of controlling religion by separating the Church of England from the unity of the Church of Rome. By the eighteenth century, the monarchies of Portugal, Spain, and France began their campaigns to free their "national churches" from Roman influences. In the Society of Jesus, with its traditional loyalty to the papacy, they saw a stumbling block to their goal.

It was the Seven Years War that caused part of the problem.  The English navy wreaked havoc on French commerce and that included the commerce that some individual Jesuits were engaged in.

Père Antoine La Vallette, superior of the Martinique [Jesuits] ... began to borrow money to work the large undeveloped resources of the colony, and a strong letter from the governor of the island dated 1753 is extant in praise of his enterprise. But on the outbreak of war, ships carrying goods of an estimated value of 2,000,000 livres were captured and he suddenly became a bankrupt, for very large sum. His creditors were egged on to demand payment from the [Jesuit] procurator of Paris, but [the procurator], relying on what certainly was the letter of the law, refused responsibility for the debts of an independent mission, though offering to negotiate for a settlement, for which he held out assured hopes. The creditors went to the courts ...

The courts ruled against the Jesuit procurator and ruled that the order must pay the debts of the individual priest.  On the advice of counsel, the Jesuits appealed.  This was a mistake.  They not only lost but the process brought all of their enemies out of the woodwork. 

... the Constitution of the Jesuits ... was publicly examined and exposed in a hostile press. The Parlement [French high court] issued its Extraits des assertions assembled from passages from Jesuit theologians and canonists, in which they were alleged to teach every sort of immorality and error. On August 6, 1762, the final arrêt was issued condemning the Society to extinction, but the king's intervention brought eight months' delay and meantime a compromise was suggested by the Court. If the French Jesuits would separate from the order, under a French vicar, with French customs ... the Crown would still protect them. In spite of the dangers of refusal the Jesuits would not consent.

250 years ago today, on April 1, 1763, the Jesuit colleges in France were closed.  By July of 1763 the council in Louisiana would issue an order expelling the Jesuits from the colony.   By 1773 Pope Clement XIV suppressed the entire order.  Only in non-Catholic countries like Russia was the order ignored and the Jesuits retreated to those countries.

In 1814, Pope Pius VII restored the Order and the Jesuits would eventually, after many years, return to the American midwest.  They would eventually found teaching institutions like St. Louis University.  They would, once again, be part of everyday life.  And, eventually, there would even be a Jesuit pope.

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

The View from my Window 2013

I've said before that if I look out my office window and crane my head to the right I have a beautiful view of the Gateway Arch and the Mississippi River . But if I just look out my window straight, this is what I see:

Not quite so pretty huh?   You can see a bit of the Arch grounds over on the far right and one of the bridges in the background.  But mostly I just see buildings. 

But today I had something to watch.  The building with the "KMO" on top is actually the KMOV television building.  It used to be known as the KMOX radio building, even though KMOV was also in there, and it had no letters on it to identify it.  But KMOX radio moved to a new building so I guess KMOV gets to call the shots now. The workmen were putting the letters on top of the building today and it took them most of the day.  Actually they put the "K" up yesterday and the rest of the letters today. 

Here they are hoisting the final "V" up the building:

And here is the final "KMOV" in place:

It doesn't really improve the view.   If I look over to the left I can see the dome of the Old Courthouse.  I'll take a picture of that some day and post it.

February Reading

Summarizing my whole month of reading worked out well for me in January so I thought I'd continue it (until I get tired of doing it).  In February, I read the following books:

1.  Proof of Guilt by Charles Todd.  I continue to love the Inspector Rutledge mystery series.  Rutledge, a Scotland Yard detective, is a World War I survivor who suffers from PTSD.   The series moves slowly.  The first book occurred just after the end of the war and each mystery takes no more than about six weeks (often less) to solve.  This latest installment (the 15th) brings us up to the summer of 1920.  The mystery, as usual, isn't the big draw for me (and might even be my least favorite of all the mysteries so far).  The draw for me is Rutledge and how he is progressing.  In this novel he still hears the voice of Hamish but not as often as in previous books and he seems to be dealing with "him" much better.  I like how Rutledge seems to be getting better very slowly because that seems realistic to me.    And I really liked one of the female characters (who Rutledge also liked) and I hope we see her again.

2.  The Walnut Tree by Charles Todd.  This was a holiday story that was published using the same universe as the Bess Crawford books (which are the same universe as the Inspector Rutledge books, but earlier in time).  I didn't care for it very much, I found it predictable.  I also disliked that Todd created a sympathetic figure that the reader had no choice but to wish bad things would happen to in order for the heroine to end up with the right man.   I also disliked the whole British aristocracy part of the novel --  Americans have a hard time writing about lords and ladies in a realistic way I think .  It took Elizabeth George a number of books to get Lynley right, in my opinion, and she only did it when she finally stopped focusing on the fact that he had a title.  Lady Elspeth just didn't ring true to me.  So far I haven't been particularly wild about any of the Charles Todd books that feature women as central characters.

3.   Listen to This by Alex Ross.  This is a series of essays that began as articles in the New Yorker.  If you like classical music you will love this book.  He covers so many topics:  Marian Anderson, Verdi, Schubert, Brahms.   If you are a classical music lover, this is a must read.  My favorite of the essays is Verdi's Grip in which he talks about my favorite moment in one of my favorite operas:  Amami Alfredo from La Traviata.  The courtesan, Violetta, after experiencing the only happiness she has ever known, living in the country with Alfredo, has been secretly convinced by Alfredo's father to give Alfredo up for his own good and leave him forever.   Right before she leaves, after some frantic dissimulation on her part, she looks right at Alfredo and says "love me, Alfredo".  When sung by the right soprano, a live performance of this moment literally makes the hairs on my arms stand on end.  It is the strangest sensation to be sitting in a dark theater, caught up in the dramatic moment and have such a physical reaction to the music.  Ross writes:

Verdi's writing for voice is a camera that zooms in on a person's soul.  Consider the moment in Act II of La Traviata when Violetta, the wayward woman, leaves her lover, Alfredo.  Alfredo believes that she is merely going into the garden, but he will soon receive a letter from her saying that she is gone forever.  "I will always be here, near you, among the flowers," Violetta says to him, "Love me, Alfredo, as much as I love you.  Goodbye!" Amami Alfredo, quant'io t'amo.  When a great soprano unfurls these phrases -- I am listening to Callas live at La Scala, in 1955 -- you hear so much you can hardly take it all in.  You hear what Alfredo hears, the frantic talk of an overwrought lover:  "I love you even though I am going into the garden." You hear what Violetta cannot bring herself to say out loud:  "I am leaving you, but will always love you."  And you hear premonitions of her deathbed plea, at the end of the opera: "Remember the one who loved you so."

This matrix of meaning is contained in a simple tune that you already know even if you have never seen an opera:  a twice-heard phrase that curves steeply down the notes of the F-major scale, followed by a reach up to a high B-flat and a more gradual, winding descent to a lower F. Beneath the voice, strings play throbbing tremolo chords.  ... So significant was "Amami, Alfredo" in Verdi's mind that he made the melody the main theme of the opera's prelude, even though its only appearance in the opera proper is in these eighteen bars of Act II.  There is no more impressive demonstration of Verdi's lightning art:  the audience hardly knows what hit it. 

 Callas's execution of "Amami, Alfredo" on the 1955 set is among the most stunning pieces of Verdi singing on record.  In the tense passage leading up to the outburst, the soprano adopts a breathless, fretful tone, communicating Violetta's initially panicked response to the situation - vocal babbling, the Verdi scholar Julian Budden calls it.  Then, with the trembling of the strings, she seems to flip a switch, her voice burning hugely from within.  When she reaches up to the A and the B-flat, she claws at the notes, practically tears them off the page, although her tone retains a desperate beauty. Her delivery is so unnervingly vehement ... that it risks anticlimax.  Where can the opera possibly go from here? When you listen again, you understand: Violetta's spirit is broken, and from now on she will sing as if she were already dead. 

Here's Renee Fleming's version.  I like that she portrays Violetta as suffering the affects of tuberculosis in this scene; most performances I've seen save that for the third act:

4.  A Village Life by Louise Gluck.  This is Gluck's 11th collection of poems. I read it slowly through the month, a couple of poems before bed each night.  Gluck takes ordinary life in a small  Italian village and makes poetry of it.  It wasn't my favorite collection of her poems, although I enjoyed it while reading it.  However, I found that there wasn't any particular poem that I wanted to share. 

5.  Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  I blogged about this novel here. 

6.  The Hand That first Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell,  I fell in love with Maggie O'Farrell's novel, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox.  Because of that I was hesitant to read another novel by her; I doubted it could live up to my expectations.  This one didn't, although I did enjoy it.   I guessed early on what the connection between the characters was and thought the key plot point was somewhat unbelievable (a guy who is only slightly younger than me has NEVER seen his birth certificate?  In this day and age?)  I cared about what happened to the characters despite the fact that I didn't really like any of them.  If I had any specific complaint it would be -- too much breast feeding.

7.  Anatomy of Murder by Imogen Robertson.  Last month I read Robertson's first novel.  I blogged about it here.  This month I read the sequel and in many ways I liked it even better.  The story was better and a little less (although not much) melodramatic.  I will definitely read her next novel.  But ... one of the things I liked in the first novel was that the heroine was a happily married woman so there was none of the sexual tension nonsense with her investigative partner.  I'm pretty sure Robertson is caving to pressure and intending to go with sexual tension because the end of this novel sets that up.  I find that very disappointing.

8.   The Art of Fielding by Chad Hardwich.   I blogged about it here.   Let's just say I really liked it.

Right now I'm reading NW by Zadie Smith as well as Ancient Light by John Banville.   I also have Tony LaRussa's latest book about his life in baseball and am resisting starting it until next week.

250 Years Ago* .... What French Sounded like in Missouri

Back in the days before St. Louis existed and for a long time after that, the European language that was spoken in the region was French. There is an interesting interview on the Archaeology website in which Dennis Stroughmatt speaks about the French of Old Mines Missouri.   While you click through to read in another tab, you might want to listen to Dennis playing:

Oh, who is Dennis Stroughmatt?  From his website:  "A vibrant blend of Celtic, Canadian and Old Time sounds, this music bridges the gap between contemporary Canadian and Louisiana Cajun styles. Preserved by families in the Ozark foothills, the music remains largely intact and true to the traditions that have been passed down for over three centuries..It’ll make your soul jump, your head spin, and your heart glad to know that it is still here ... As they say in the hills, “On est toujours icitte: We are still here!”"

The linked interview is interesting.  Most people don't know that the French culture lasted in Missouri as long as it did, especially in the very rural parts prior to World War II, after which the young people moved out and began to forget, leaving only the older generation:

When I went into the mines in the late [1980's] there were probably nearly a thousand French speakers in the entire Old Mines region from Festus, you know, to Potosi, and as far west as, you know, farther west of Richwood, east to Bonterre. There were French get-togethers within the church. You'd find them in retirement homes, getting together and at houses and the parties that I went to. A lot of the French were there. They were elderly, but still very strong, getting out. Many of them were in their 60s, 70s. Some of them, probably the most intensive speakers were in their 80s. Even early 90s. Fact, I interviewed one time, videotaped an herbalist by the name of Robert Robard, who was 94. This was in 1992. And French was his first language, and he chose to speak French rather than English. But, like I say, that sort of dates where they were age-wise over a decade ago. 

 But the French spoken at that time didn't sound exactly like standard French today.  I thought this part of the interview with Dennis was really interesting.  He tells about visiting Quebec for the first time:

... It was really strange at first, because, I say I didn't really, I say I was illiterate. I had taken a couple courses in French at one point or another, here and there, but I spoke Creole French, and when I got there, the Québecois thought that, they thought that I was actually Cajun, because of my dialect. And the only reason I say that they thought I was Cajun when I got there was because I had spent so many years in Louisiana and around Cajuns that my dialect had been influenced in some ways. And of course actually Missouri French is an interesting language in itself, because, via its accent, it's very much more close to Canadian French than it is Louisiana French. But the vocabulary used by the Missouri French is almost identical to that of Louisiana, and that stands to reason because Missouri is Upper Louisiana, in that sense. And I guess, when I did go to Québec, in a lot of ways I really did feel like I was home. I used to sit down...I lived with a family there, and I remember many nights where I would sit out in the backyard at a campfire with the father of the household, and we would just sit and talk, and every now and again I would say words and he would get on me for using certain words. Because he would say "that's Old French," he said, "We don't use that anymore.”

 

I remember one night, probably the very first night that happened. I remember it was a little cold, because when I got there it was the early part of the year and it was cold at night. And I said something like, "Mais, ca fait fraitte dehors," like "man it's cold outside." And he looked at me, he agreed, he said, "Yeah, yeah, it's cold." Then he stopped and he said, "Wait a second. Why do you know that word?" I said, "What word?" He said "cold," but of course "fraitte," which is a Missouri word. A Missouri French word for froid, for cold. But it's an old, old, old word that hasn't been...I didn't know this at the time, but it's a word that hasn't been in use in the language for hundreds of years. And he asked me where I learned this, and I told him where, and he said, "That's impossible." He said, "There are no French speakers in the Midwest. That's impossible." You know, and I got out the map, we got out the map of Illinois and Missouri, and started looking at it, going over all the little place names. Rivers, town names. And he set back and I remember him just looking at me like, "Wow, I never knew." He said, "I never would have guessed that there were French there." And I said, "Well, that's where I learned my French." And he told me, he said, "Well, you know, I've always found it really weird," because, he said, "You're not from Canada. You're not anywhere near from Canada, but yet your accent is strangely familiar." And the only thing I can say on that is that accent is coming through from the Missouri French. So, because there is a great similarity. I would go down to the pub and I would sing songs with some of the local bands that would come in, and it amazed me that I was able--and even playing the fiddle, I would sit in and play with them--that I was able to play tunes that I had learned in Missouri, play with them almost note for note. And this is a separation of what, a thousand miles? Fifteen hundred?

Here's another video where Dennis and his wife explain the difference between the French dialect of the Pays des Illinois and standard French:

I always thought that the reason we massacred the French names of streets around here was because of the German and Irish influx of the nineteenth century.  And, sure, that's probably the main reason.  But another reason might be that the original French didn't pronounce it the way it would be pronounced in French today.

Here's a link to another interesting article about French History and Language in the American Midwest.

*Part of my continuing blog series leading up to the 250^th anniversary of the founding of St. Louis in February 2014.

The Art of Fielding by Chad Hardwick

Henry Skrimshander is a baseball prodigy; a shortstop with an arm that can throw out anyone and pinpoint accuracy. But as a senior in a small town high school, with no hope of going to college, it looks like his baseball career is almost over.   Mike Schwartz plays college ball for the mediocre Westish College Harpooners.  He loves Westish and he loves baseball. The summer after Henry's senior year in high school, Mike Schwartz spots Henry during a Legion Ball tournament and recruits him to Westish.

Henry played shortstop, only and ever shortstop -- the most demanding spot on the diamond.  More ground balls were hit to the shortstop than to anyone else, and then he had to make the longest throw to first.  He also had to turn double plays, cover second on steals, keep runners on second from taking long leads, make relay throws from the outfield .... He's spent his life studying the way the ball came off the bat, the angles and the spin, so that he knew in advance whether he should break right or left, whether the ball that came at him would bound up high or skid low to the dirt.  He caught the ball cleanly, always, and made, always, a perfect throw.

 The Art of Fielding is Chad Hardwick's debut novel, and it is one of the best debut novels I've read in a long time.  Hardwick describes baseball with the combination of facts and poetry that baseball deserves, but this is not The Natural or Shoeless Joe.  This is no novel about baseball as a fantasy; there are no magic bats or ghosts in the cornfields.  There bad hops, and errors, and strikeouts.  If games are won, they are won the hard way.  And a hot prospect one day can be dismissed by the major league scouts the next.  More than anything, this novel explains what head-cases baseball players can be and why that is so.

But baseball was different.  Schwartz thought of it as Homeric -- not a scrum but a series of isolated contests.  Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball.  You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.  You stood and waited and tried to still your mind.  When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was.  What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see. 

 Henry's bible is a book called "The Art of Fielding" written by the (fictional) legendary Cardinals shortstop, Aparicio Rodriguez.   (No, the fact that the St. Louis Cardinals are the primary major league baseball team in this novel did not influence me.  Well, maybe a little.)  It is as much a book of philosophy as a book of rules about baseball:

3.  There are three stages:  Thoughtless being. Thought. Return to thoughtless being.

33.   Do not confuse the first and third stages.  Thoughtless being is attained by everyone, the return to thoughtless being by a very few.

 In some ways, the story of Henry is the story of Henry trying to put the rules of "The Art" into effect.  It is not always easy.

 There were, admittedly, many sentences and statements in The Art  that Henry did not yet understand.  The opaque parts of The Art, though, had always been his favorites, even more than the detailed and extremely helpful descriptions of, say, how to keep a runner close to second base (flirtation, Aparicio called it) or what sort of cleats to wear on wet grass.  The opaque parts, frustrating as they could be, gave Henry something to aspire to.  Someday, he dreamed, he would be enough of a ballplayer to crack them open and suck out their hidden wisdom.

Although this is a great novel, it is not a perfect novel - what novel, especially what debut novel, is?  It might have been perfect if Harwick had stuck only to the baseball story.  But Henry and Mike are college boys and this is a college novel.  Hardwick does the college story well enough but not really any better than anyone else and the characters and the college storyline seemed derivative to me.  Especially the requisite older academic having an affair with a student storyline.  The fact that this particular affair involves the academic engaging in his first gay relationship isn't really enough, in my opinion, to differentiate it from all the other college novels with older academics having affairs with students.

Hardwick does a good job creating the character of the older academic but is less successful, in my opinion, with Henry's "gay mulatto roommate" Owen Dunne who ends up in the affair with the older academic.  I never really understood what made Owen tick, he seemed more of a device to me than a real character. 

One reason that it took me so long to pick up this novel, despite it being prominently displayed in bookstores, is because the blurbs made think that it would be too ... male ... to interest me.  And it is very male-oriented.  Hardwick throws in one female character (the older academic's "wild" daughter who never finished high school and instead ran away with yet another older academic, but who is now running home to dad).  Frankly, in many ways, her character didn't make a lot of sense to me. Every time I thought I was getting a handle on who she was, she would do something that seemed out of character.   There were times that I thought this was intentional -- that this is how men (especially college age men) see women -- as unpredictable and not wholly understandable.  But if that was the purpose, Hardwick undermined it by writing entire chapters from her point of view.  Again, she seemed more of a device than a real character.  He did give her a great name -- Pella.   

But none of that really mattered.  The story of Henry, Mike and baseball overwhelmed all the other stories.  I look forward to Hardwick's next novel.  I hope it is something entirely different.