Another day in paradise
This little book of about a hundred pages consists of two short stories by Polish author Henryk Sienkiewicz, winner of the 1905 Nobel Prize in Literature. The first story is the title selection, “Sielanka: An Idyll,” followed by a story entitled “Orso.” These two pieces were translated into English by Vatslaf A. Hlasko and Thomas H. Bullick and published together in an 1898 edition. This is not to be confused with an 1899 book entitled Sielanka: A Forest Picture, translated by Jeremiah Curtin, which contains 17 short works by Sienkiewicz. The Hlasko and Bullick edition is the one I’m reviewing, and it’s the one that’s available as a free Kindle file on Amazon.
The subtitle tells you most of what you need to know about “Sielanka.” It describes the idyllic life of a father and daughter who reside in a picturesque forest glade, surrounded by flowers, birds, and insects. All is pretty and pleasant in this little world. A young man shows up, obviously very much in love with the girl, and they spend the day together gathering herbs in the forest. The story has almost no plot, but it’s not without its charms. It starts out with some very beautiful depictions of the natural environment that are a joy to read. In the latter half of the narrative Sienkiewicz introduces more religious imagery. It eventually became too much for me when the trees, birds, and humans all began offering their vociferous prayers to God. Sienkiewicz at times is an overtly Christian author, which is great for some readers, but not my cup of tea.
The second story, “Orso,” is set in America, where Sienkiewicz lived from 1876 to 1878. It describes a paradise of a different kind: Southern California. It’s harvest time in Anaheim, and the population, mostly of Mexican and Native American origin, are celebrating with a fair. Part of the festivities includes a traveling circus. The main attraction among the performers is Orso the strong man, a teenage half-breed Hercules. His partner Jenny, whom he loves dearly, is a petite young acrobat billed as the world’s most beautiful girl. Fed up with the abuse of the ringmaster, these two long to escape from the circus and start a new life. Sienkiewicz sets the stage beautifully by describing the setting in a vividly naturalistic style, reminiscent of the writing of California author Frank Norris in such pieces as “The Santa Cruz Venetian Carnival.” More than just a pretty picture however, the story is also very engaging, and the reader becomes quite taken with this young couple and their hopes and fears.
Sienkiewicz is known for his epics, but these two stories illustrate that he could also write compelling fiction on a smaller scale. Stylistically, he straddles the line between romanticism and realism, taking what he needs from both and combining them as needed. Neither of these two stories is an earth-shattering masterpiece, but together they sure do make for a pleasurable hour of reading. “Orso” in particular is a gem that makes me want to seek out more of Sienkiewicz’s writings on America.
Stories in this collection
Sielanka: An Idyll
Orso
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Deep waters run still
Hermann Hesse’s 1943 novel The Glass Bead Game, also known by the title Magister Ludi, is set in a utopian future. Following the brutal wars and cultural decay of the 20th century, mankind sanctions the formation of a brotherhood to act as stewards to the world’s intellectual heritage. This secular priesthood is headquartered in the European province of Castalia, a sort of secular Vatican. The Castalians do not create new art, science, or literature, but rather analyze, interpret, and preserve existing cultural artifacts. Their highest ceremonial act of intellectual “worship” is the Glass Bead Game. This Game utilizes a sort of gigantic alphabet in which various intellectual concepts like a passage of music, a mathematical theorem, or a philosophical postulate are signified by graphic symbols akin to Chinese characters. With this vocabulary of symbols, the players artfully construct a drawing or map which illuminates parallels and relations between interdisciplinary fields of thought. The novel relates the fictional biography of Joseph Knecht, a member of the order who rose to the high office of Magister Ludi, or Master of the Glass Bead Game. The future biographer expresses admiration for Knecht as a model Castalian, but illustrates that he was also in many ways a rebel and an iconoclast.
Shortly after publishing this book, Hesse won the Nobel Prize in Literature. This was his final book, and it definitely feels like the culmination of his career, as it combines so many themes from his earlier novels. Here we have the critique of the educational system from Beneath the Wheel, the coming of age story from Demian, the spiritual journey of Siddhartha, and the conflict between scholarly and worldly pursuits from Narcissus and Goldmund. The Journey to the East can be seen as a sort of prelude to this book, and events from that earlier novel are in fact mentioned in the first chapter of this one. The Glass Bead Game is the quintessential Hesse novel, summing up his life’s work, but that doesn’t mean it’s his best piece of writing.
Four words continually sprang to my mind as I read this novel: Get on with it. Hesse delves so deeply into the minutiae of Castalian hierarchy and policy that often the book reads exactly like what it pretends to be—an institutional history. Hesse examines Knecht’s personal life with the same fine-toothed comb. Knecht has four or five close friends over the course of his life, each of which brings out certain qualities in him, and vice versa. While these relationships are important elements of the book, Hesse belabors them to the point of tedium. The novel could have been shortened considerably by eliminating all the redundant conversations. The idea of Castalia is a brilliant concept, and Hesse does a great job establishing setting and atmosphere, but he doesn’t put the same degree of effort into the plot, and the novel suffers as a result. Though the philosophical concepts are quite thought-provoking, the story itself is a bore.
Following the conclusion of the novel, there is another hundred pages of supplemental materials, billed as the writings of Joseph Knecht. Included among these are several poems and three “lives”—short stories penned by Knecht during his student days. Each is a piece of historical fiction that describes the personal spiritual and ethical journey of its protagonist. These three stories are better than the actual novel itself and call to mind Hesse’s great novels Steppenwolf and Siddhartha. While The Glass Bead Game is a good book, it’s not quite in the same league with those two exceptional works.
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Slapstick before science
In the village of Iping in West Sussex, England, a stranger shows up at the door of the local inn. After coming in from the cold to rest beside the fire, he refuses to remove his overcoat and gloves. While this in itself may not be so unusual, the stranger’s face is almost completely obscured by a wide-brimmed hat, dark glasses, beard, and a wrapping of bandages around his head. The curious locals, surprised by this concealment, assume the stranger has some hideous disfigurement and allow him his privacy. After a short time lodging in the inn, however, he begins to show erratic behavior and becomes more difficult to ignore. He seems to be conducting scientific experiments in his room. What could this peculiar man be up to?
The first several chapters of H. G. Wells’ novel The Invisible Man, originally published in 1897, have the makings of a well-crafted mystery story, but for the fact that the title of the book gives away the big secret. There’s an invisible man on the loose, of course. When the locals finally discover this, a series of chase scenes follows in which the villagers stumble over one another in pursuit of their slippery foe while marveling at objects floating in mid-air and falling prey to blows from unseen fists. All this is rendered in the slapstick style of an old Keystone Cops film. While Wells’ earlier novels The Time Machine and The Island of Doctor Moreau worked hard to establish a theoretical basis for their incredible premises, the author makes little attempt to do the same in The Invisible Man. There’s only one chapter in the middle of the book in which the science of light and optics is discussed, but much of the phenomenon of the title character’s transparency is merely left unexplained. The last few chapters of the book take a turn for the better, as Wells switches to a darker and more suspenseful tone. If only the whole book had been written in this manner. Instead, too many chapters are wasted on frivolous humor that only seems hackneyed and obvious to today’s reader.
Wells was not the first author to write about invisibility, but his take on the subject was original enough to spawn countless imitations and film adaptations. Today’s reader, having no doubt seen more than a few of such movies, will find that reading Wells’ descriptions of floating pistols and disembodied voices just can’t compete with actually seeing such images brought to life through the visual wonder of special effects. The story would have improved immensely if Wells had delved deeper into the theoretical concepts behind visibility and invisibility. The book needs more scenes in the laboratory and fewer silly chases through the streets of Iping. In his better works, Wells has proven to be a visionary who’s capable of making the impossible seem plausible, even when the scientific basis behind his theories may seem antiquated by 21st-century standards. The Invisible Man, however, is not one of his better works. There’s just not enough science in this science fiction. For a better fictional take on the science of invisibility, see Jack London’s short story of 1903, “The Shadow and the Flash.”
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Can you see the real me? Can you?
Pete Townshend has always been one of rock’s most intelligent and articulate songwriters, so when he published his memoir Who I Am in 2012, fans of The Who may have expected an epic masterpiece. The result, however, is adequate at best. Those looking for insight into the personal dynamics and conflicts within The Who will unfortunately be disappointed. From reading this book, you would think that The Who was a power trio consisting of Townshend and two guys named Kit and Chris (Lambert and Stamp, respectively, the band’s managers). Almost every paragraph of the book is peppered with these two names, while Townshend’s bandmates are rarely mentioned. The only time Keith Moon and John Entwistle receive more than cursory treatment is in discussion of their deaths. Roger Daltrey is a shadowy figure lurking around the periphery, possibly because he’s still alive and therefore potentially litigious.
Over the years Townshend has kept personal journals, which you would think would aid in the narrative, but instead this practice has resulted in a morass of tangential detail. He remembers every gig he ever played, what he drank afterwards, whether or not he vomited, and which woman he pursued that night. The length of the biographical narrative could have been cut in half if Townshend had simply provided four appendices: the first for a list of every car he’s ever bought; a second for boats; a third for houses and their furnishings; and a fourth for recording equipment. In matters of music and love, Townshend has an irritating propensity for the melodramatic. Every time he has a great idea, he attributes it to a vision from God or a choir of angels. Such lofty rhetoric hinders our understanding of the man. Why he decided to devote his life to the Indian guru Meher Baba, for example, is never adequately explained, so the motivations behind many of his subsequent actions are baffling. Equally mysterious is why he’s spent so much of the past quarter century rehashing the same three ideas—Tommy, Lifehouse, and Quadrophenia—rather than making new music.
While every autobiography has an agenda, Who I Am is more manipulative than most. It’s constantly apparent that Townshend is striving to mold the reader’s opinion of him. He wants so much to be liked. This is most blatantly manifested in the way he repeats every word of praise that he’s ever received, dropping famous names left and right, and then somehow finds a way to heap more plaudits upon himself. Not wanting to appear egotistical, however, he tries hard to paint himself as a lovable loser, a sensitive soul who’s socially awkward and unlucky in love. There’s an awful lot of personal disclosure, but the sincerity behind it is often questionable. After he’s boasted about all the coke he’s snorted and the tail he’s chased, it’s hard to take him seriously when he expresses regret for cheating on his wife. Ultimately, one comes away from the book with an image of Townshend as an emotional child, desperate for approval, who happens to have millions of dollars at his disposal.
As a writer, Townshend has an excellent command of the English language and can turn a clever phrase. Like a bag of chips, his prose can be addictive but in the end yields little nourishment. Avid fans of The Who can’t help but come away from this book with a boatload of trivia, but what it all adds up to is less than satisfying. Rather than renew my interest in Townshend and his music, Who I Am may have actually diminished my admiration for the man and his accomplishments.
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Get some northern exposure
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| Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson |
This collection of Scandinavian short fiction was originally published in 1899 by Charles Scribner’s Sons as one of ten books in their Stories by Foreign Authors series, each volume of which focuses on a different nation or region of Europe. Most of the books in the series have been scanned and are now available for free online through sites like Project Gutenberg, Hathi Trust, and Amazon. Of the authors featured in this volume, the only name that’s likely to be recognizable to today’s English-language readers is that of Norwegian writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, simply because he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1903. After having previously read a mediocre novel by Bjørnson, I was pleasantly surprised by his two exceptional pieces in this collection. In fact, five of the six stories included in this volume are very good; only the final entry disappoints.
The book kicks off with a very brief piece by Bjørnson entitled “The Father.” It concisely encapsulates one father’s relationship with his son in an unconventional and touching way. “When Father Brought Home the Lamp” by Finnish author Juhani Aho is the best story in the book. When a rural family buys a brand new oil lamp, freeing them from the necessity of burning wood chips, it immediately elevates their social status within their rural village. At times it has the same tongue-in-cheek, warmly nostalgic flavor of the movie A Christmas Story. In “The Flying Mail” by Danish author M. Goldschmidt, a bachelor lawyer writes a love letter to his ideal dream girl and casts it to the wind, letting fate decide his romantic future. The rather whimsical premise stretches the boundaries of credibility, but still it’s an engaging piece. Bjørnson’s second offering, “The Railroad and the Churchyard,” is another very strong work. When two lifelong friends disagree over a matter of local politics, it brings years worth of envy and resentment boiling to the surface. “Two Friends” by Alexander Kielland deals with a similar falling out between two old friends and business partners. Though the author is Norwegian, the story takes place entirely in Paris.
The final piece in the book, entitled “Hopes,” is by Swedish author Frederika Bremer. It’s a stream-of-consciousness narrative from the point of view of a poor man with neither enough food to eat nor wood for a fire. He doesn’t mind his lifestyle all that much, until he begins to feel an uncontrollable longing to be loved. Bremer tries hard to be clever, but mostly it’s just a rambling string of unintelligible drivel. The stories in this book represent a period at which Scandinavian literature was making its transition into modernism. The first five stories all have a naturalistic style that’s reminiscent of the literature of French writer Emile Zola. The Bremer story, on the other hand, feels more modern than the rest, and suffers from the pointlessness of experimentation for experimentation’s sake. For a more successful attempt at the same style and subject matter, read Norwegian author Knut Hamsun’s novel Hunger.
These days Scandinavian literature is undergoing a bit of a renaissance, thanks in large part to the murder mystery genre, but beyond Henrik Ibsen the classic authors of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland are still largely unfamiliar to English-language readers. This volume provides a good introduction to some worthy authors who deserve greater notoriety. Had they been born in France or Russia, perhaps they’d be household names. Based on the stories included here, Bjørnson, Aho, and Kielland definitely deserve further investigation.
Stories in this collection
The Father by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
When Father Brought Home the Lamp by Juhani Aho
The Flying Mail by M. Goldschmidt
The Railroad and the Churchyard by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson
Two Friends by Alexander Kielland
Hopes by Frederika Bremer
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Indigenous tales well-told
I recently made my first trip to the city of Vancouver, and in preparation for the journey I wanted to read some literature on the area. I heard that Legends of Vancouver by E. Pauline Johnson was the quintessential Vancouver book and one widely read among the locals. Published in 1911, this book is a collection of 15 short stories based on legends of the Native American tribes (or as they say in Canada, First Nations) of the British Columbian coast.
Johnson was born in Ontario, of mixed European and Mohawk Indian ancestry. She is not only the author but also the first-person narrator of these stories, in which she describes herself as an Iroquois. In a typical story, Johnson travels around the Vancouver area meeting various chiefs or tillicums (tribal members) of the Squamish, Haida, or other indigenous peoples of the area. These Indian acquaintances then grace her with one of the traditional legends of their people, usually related to a specific mountain, rock, or lake in the vicinity and how it came to be. As far as Indian legends go, there are no epics here. These are very brief and simplistic tales, almost like a Native American variation on Aesop’s Fables. Each relates a tale of love, loyalty, bravery, or revenge, often concluding with God turning someone into a rock. Thus are explained the origins of such landmarks as Siwash Rock, Point Grey, Deadman’s Island, the two mountains known as “the Lions,” and more. The final story has nothing to do with Vancouver at all, but rather gives an account of Prince Arthur of England’s visit to the Iroquois tribes of Ontario.
The Indian tales that serve as Johnson’s raw material are underwhelming at times, but they are elevated considerably in quality and effect by the storytelling skills of the author. Johnson’s writing bears a striking resemblance to the Indian stories of Jack London in their campfire atmosphere, but without all the machismo, the racism, and the gratuitous violence. Her descriptions of the natural environment are strikingly painted, and she displays a great deal of reverence for the local landscape. She also spins a good yarn, giving the reader a vivid glimpse into what life may have been like in Vancouver before the “Palefaces” arrived. There’s never a surprise ending, but though the plots may be predictable the stories are often uplifting and inspirational in their honest and forthright illustrations of human nature. Johnson’s opening remarks about Coastal Indian culture are frequently more fascinating than the stories themselves. She describes how these Indians value kindness above all qualities—even over strength, intelligence, and bravery; how they appreciate the value of a good mother more than the power of a great hunter or warrior; how they venerate the trees for all the gifts they provide; and how they have a strange fascination with Napoleon Bonaparte.
I can see how residents of Vancouver would be quite taken by these stories, for they deal in the lore of places and sites that they see every day. For outsiders, however, this is not an essential read by any means. Don’t expect to gain any insight into the modern city or its history, or you’ll be disappointed. Those who are predisposed to literature of the West, however—like the stories of London, Bret Harte, or Frank Norris—will appreciate Johnson’s naturalistic storytelling and enjoy this picturesque look back at the early days of the Pacific Northwest.
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Zola’s sketchbook
Emile Zola’s first book, published in 1864, was Contes à Ninon, a collection of short fiction of various styles, tones and subject matter. The stories are ostensibly narrated by a writer who has just left Provence to try his fortune in Paris. He dedicates the stories to Ninon, the love that he left behind. Ten years later, Zola published a second collection of short writings, Nouveaux Contes à Ninon. In this volume’s address to Ninon, Zola speaks as a writer who has experienced some success in his field, but also some persecution for his unconventional style. While the first volume of Contes was a hodgepodge produced by a writer finding his way, in Nouveaux Contes it is evident that Zola has come far in the development of his mature Naturalistic style.
The last two pieces in the book are novella-length works, but the other thirteen entries are all very brief. One hesitates to call these very short works stories, because in many cases they are merely sketches and feel like disembodied scenes lifted from a novel. The most successful of these brief pieces, surprisingly, is “The Paradise of Cats” (and I am not a cat lover), primarily because it is one of the few that has the structure of a complete story: a beginning, a middle, and an end. As for the rest of these brief sketches, many of them are attempts to be cute and clever, and the humor falls flat. The best offerings in this category are the ones in which the social consciousness Zola is famous for shines through, such as “My Neighbour Jacques” and “The Blacksmith,” both studies of working men, or “The Slack Season,” a tragic depiction of mass unemployment.
The piece entitled “Souvenirs” (“Memories,” in French) is a hundred pages of rambling thoughts divided into fourteen sections. These are neither fiction nor essays, but rather subjective reflections. Zola starts out with rather frivolous and tiresome pieces on birds, flowers, hunting, or public bathing. In these vignettes he seems merely to be flexing his descriptive muscles for the sake of literary exercise, and it’s all quite modernist in its pointlessness. The last three pieces, however, in which Zola discusses his personal memories of war, are quite moving and do much to redeem this disparate assortment as a whole.
The final piece, “Jean Gourdon’s Four Days,” is a novella of about 80 pages that’s divided into four chapters, each of which describes a day in the life of the title character, a Provençal farmer. Each day takes place in a different season of the year, and each represents a different stage in a man’s life. Though the days are spaced decades apart, the reader gets a sense of the full arc of Gourdon’s life. Though the fourth day is weaker than the rest of the book, overall it’s a very powerful and moving piece that celebrates the life cycle of the natural world and dignifies man’s place within it.
As a collection overall, Nouveaux Contes à Ninon is a mixture of the good and the bad. The one must-read piece here is "Jean Gourdon’s Four Days." As for the rest, there’s not much here that’s indispensable. Only the most avid Zola fans need read this collection in its entirety.
Stories in this collection:
To Ninon
A Bath
The Strawberries
Big Michu
The Fast
The Shoulders of the Marchioness
My Neighbour Jacques
The Paradise of Cats
Lili
The Legend of Cupid’s Little Blue Mantle
The Blacksmith
The Slack Season
The Little Village
Souvenirs
Jean Gourdon’s Four Days
