Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

There is no substitute for the original
By now we all know the story, or do we? Dom Claude Frollo, Archdeacon of Notre Dame, develops a lustful obsession towards the beautiful gypsy girl Esmerelda, and decides he must either possess her or destroy her. He sends his adopted son Quasimodo, the deformed bell ringer of Notre Dame, to capture her. The attempt fails, however, and Quasimodo is taken by guards, tried for the attempted abduction, and sentenced to a public flogging. While undergoing his punishment, Esmerelda grants him a drink of water, a gesture of kindness the pitiful hunchback never forgets. Esmerelda is later tried for a murder she did not commit, having been set up by Frollo. Quasimodo rescues her from the gallows and carries her into the cathedral where, due to the law of sanctuary, she is immune from the persecution of the law.

Like another great classic, Moby-Dick, most people only experience this story in the form of a movie or a condensed children’s book, in which the ending is oftentimes either truncated or replaced by some sort of “happily ever after” resolution. The actual book Victor Hugo wrote contains little that is suitable for children, and as for the actual ending, I’m certainly not going to give it away in this review.

This is one of the greatest novels ever written. Why do so few people read the actual book? For one reason, it’s a tough read. Written in 1831, and taking place in 1482, the story contains a lot of medieval history. The names of unfamiliar historical personages of church and state are liberally tossed about, along with a fair amount of archaic terminology. While it may be possible to read Les Misérables without a single footnote, you’d be hard-pressed to read Notre-Dame without ample notes and a couple trips to Wikipedia. Secondly, like all great books of the past, and like so few books of the present, this novel contains a complex message. Over and above the more immediate lessons it teaches us about love, obsession, courage, devotion, and fate, Notre-Dame de Paris also laments the death of architecture at the hands of the printing press. Gothic cathedrals were the books of their day; their walls were the pages, their sculptures and stained glass windows were the texts which educated the illiterate masses. One of Victor Hugo’s personal interests was the preservation of historical architecture, in particular the remaining medieval buildings of Paris. Quasimodo’s hulking form is an embodiment of the monolithic architecture of the Notre Dame cathedral itself. The story takes place at the time when the printing press was gaining prominence in Europe. With the dissemination of printed materials, more inexpensive and easier to mass produce than hand-copied manuscripts, came a rise in literacy. This in turn heralded the passage from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, and led to the triumph of education over ignorance, reason over superstition, science over religion, and democracy over monarchy. A more educated and literate population no longer needed those ornate cathedrals to instruct them as to what’s right and what’s true; possessed of the power of literacy they could now decide for themselves. While I think it’s safe to say Hugo was on the side of literacy, Quasimodo is the incarnation of Hugo’s nostalgia for the beautiful but obsolete form of expression encapsulated in those Gothic cathedrals. Now is a particularly interesting time to read this book, while we are undergoing an equally monumental shift in the primary mode of information dissemination, from the printed word to digital media.

Notre-Dame de Paris is one of the few novels that rises above the sphere of literature into the realm of mythology. Hugo has written such a well-crafted story, so memorable, so elegant in its basic structure, so universal in its themes, yet so deep in its philosophical undertones, that it earns itself a place alongside some of the most ancient myths and legends. The elemental opposition between Quasimodo (ugly on the surface but possessing beauty of soul) and Claude Frollo (superficially pious but sinister underneath) could have been written thousands of years ago. It’s a testament to Hugo’s skill as a writer that Quasimodo, a deformed man of childlike intelligence, has become a household name along the lines of Odysseus, Hamlet, Sherlock Holmes, or Batman. Esmerelda is one of the greatest female characters in literature—part gypsy sex goddess, part street-smart urchin, part naive teenage girl. At times she’s a damsel in distress, yes, but she’s also a strong-willed protagonist, with a fierce independence that’s undermined by her flawed, shallow infatuation with a handsome, egotistical man who ultimately brings about her downfall.

There are so many subplots and supporting characters in this book that never make it into the Disney or Hallmark Channel versions of the story. If you haven’t read Hugo’s version, you’re missing out on a lot. Treat yourself to one of the world’s greatest works of literature and start reading this book today.
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Religion for Atheists: A Non-believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion by Alain de Botton

A step toward a more productive atheism
Despite the title of this blog I do occasionally read a current book, this one having been released in the U.S. within the past month. I have never read any of Alain de Botton’s previous work, but I recently had the good fortune to hear him speak on the topic of Religion for Atheists, and afterwards I immediately purchased the book. 

I generally don’t enjoy reading books on atheism because usually the authors are telling me something I already know (evolution is real, the Bible contains inaccuracies, the Church has done bad things, etc.). De Botton, thankfully, has moved beyond this tedious bible bashing and has written a book that is actually useful. While the trend in philosophical thought in the past century has been towards a more analytical concentration on theoretical minutiae, far removed from the concerns of the general public, de Botton is one contemporary thinker who strives to find practical ways people can use philosophy to enrich their everyday lives. In this book, he applies this perspective to religion, asking what lessons can non-believers learn from the religious world that would actually be beneficial to their personal well-being and to society as a whole.

He acknowledges the given fact that religions are based on false mythologies, yet proposes that all religions were invented by humans and are thus humanistic in that they were created to address fundamental human needs. De Botton uses terms like “spiritual” and “soul,” a poor choice of terminology in an argument addressed toward atheists, but essentially he’s talking about basic psychological and social needs like community, mutual compassion, support through times of hardship and stress, and a healthy perspective towards the insignificance of one’s own problems. Even though atheists don’t believe in a deity, they still share these needs and must find a way to address them. The secular means of accomplishing this is through culture—philosophy, literature, art, and so on—yet no secular school of thought has ever attained the level of popularity, influence, or fervor enjoyed by the world’s major religions. De Botton investigates why this is so.

For simplicity’s sake, he only focuses on three religions: Christianity, Judaism, and Zen Buddhism. He is concerned less with the messages these religions have to offer than with the media by which their messages are disseminated, promoted, and propagandized. He cites examples of the ways religions use ritual, art, and architecture to reinforce their teachings, and examines their educational methods and institutional organization. De Botton goes on to propose specific steps he feels would be necessary for an atheistic or humanistic ideology to compete with or supersede the domineering influence of religion on society. This would involve revamping the world’s universities, art museums, and public architecture, and would also require some institutional organization on the part of an atheist movement. Organization is a frightening word to most atheists, as they envision de Botton pushing a new dogma to replace the old, which nevertheless would also repress free thought. In reality, however, he’s merely proposing a situation similar to that which existed in ancient Greece, in which philosophical schools like the Stoics, Cynics, or Epicureans encouraged community among like-minded individuals and mutual assistance in personal growth, as opposed to the state of atheism today in which everyone is holed up in their own apartments reading books, the contents of which will soon be forgotten. At no point does de Botton ever tell anyone what to believe. Instead he encourages individuals to construct their own belief systems by selecting relevant lessons from amongst the various schools of secular and religious thought.

De Botton’s writing is lively, entertaining, and crystal clear throughout. No extensive prior knowledge of philosophy or religion is required to enjoy this book or learn from it. Much of what de Botton has to say is common sense, but like a lot of great philosophy, if you concentrate enough common sense between the covers of one book, sometimes it approaches genius.

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The Conquest of Plassans by Emile Zola

A hidden treasure

This is the fourth novel in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series about life during the Second Empire in France. Unfortunately, it is a lesser-known work, long out-of-print (though one can find it in ebook form now). While this book is not one of Zola’s masterworks, it certainly doesn’t deserve the level of obscurity into which it has fallen. The story takes place in the fictional town of Plassans, in Provence. A new priest comes to town, Abbé Faujas, and he and his mother rent a room in the home of the Mourets (François Mouret of the Macquart family, and his wife Marthe Rougon). At first stand-offish and shy, Abbé Faujas soon learns the amount of social and political influence that a clergyman can wield in a small town, and he starts to get more and more involved in the affairs of Plassans. He also starts to insinuate himself more and more into the lives of his landlords, much to the chagrin of François Mouret. It’s an election year, and as various politicians and church officials play a kind of chess game for the votes of Plassans, the once meek and mild Abbé becomes more power-hungry. Is it possible his previous mild-mannered behavior was just an act to conceal a hidden political agenda? This book has a light-hearted satirical tone overall; it’s not one of Zola’s deep, philosophical works. Those who have read The Fortune of the Rougons will enjoy the depiction of Plassans and the further development of some of the characters that appeared in that first book. The characters are engaging and the plot has some surprises in it. Zola seems to have had fun writing it, and it is a fun ride for the reader.
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The Prairie Print Makers by Barbara Thompson O’Neill, George C. Foreman, and Howard W. Ellington

A fine tribute to Kansas’s greatest artists
This beautiful little volume, a slim 60 pages, may be the best book available on the Prairie Print Makers. Officially formed in 1930, this confederation of print makers was founded by ten Kansas artists: C. A. Seward, Birger Sandzén, Leo Courtney, Charles M. Capps, Lloyd C. Foltz, Herschel C. Logan, Clarence Hotvedt, Edmund M. Kopietz, Arthur W. Hall, and Norma Bassett Hall. The book begins with an introduction describing the formation, mission, and activities of the group, along with a brief synopsis of its history. This is followed by short biographies of the ten founding artists. Most of the founders started out as graphic artists working for print shops in Wichita or Topeka, with the notable exception of Sandzén, an art professor born and educated in Sweden who became one of the greatest artists ever to call Kansas home. The art that the Prairie Print Makers produced was of a regional realist style. They worked in all print media: woodcut, linocut, etching, aquatint, drypoint, lithography, and even serigraphy in the later years. Their by-laws stated that art produced for the organization should be derived from nature, thus landscapes of Kansas were prevalent, but many of the artists also had connections to the Taos, New Mexico art scene, so southwestern imagery was also common. Eventually the group grew to include artists from all over the U.S. and even Canada, including Luigi Lucioni, Stow Wengenroth, Clare Leighton, and Maynard Dixon. The book does not discuss these later members in detail, only lists their names, but it does include about a dozen images from artists outside the original ten.

This brief 9 x 12" saddle-stitched booklet is well designed and printed in two colors, black and tan, on high quality paper. The 72 illustrations are reproduced big and beautiful in black and white, with some duotones. (Norma Bassett Hall was the only founding member to print extensively in color.) This book was published by a gallery in Wichita, and for that reason is probably intended to serve more as a collector’s guide than a biography of the group. Thus the accounts of the artists are entirely positive with copious details of their accomplishments, sometimes reading more like resumés than biographies, but they are penned in a sufficiently lively style that genuinely inspires enthusiasm for these artists and their accomplishments.

The Prairie Print Makers produced some of the finest art ever to come out of the American midwest. They deserve a full-length scholarly monograph with 200 full-page illustrations. Until we get that, this is the best reference on the subject. The authors did an admirable job with this book. It is a valued volume in my collection.



Birger Sandzén, Smokey River, lithograph, 12 x 18"



Herschel C. Logan, Fodder in the Shock, blockprint, 5 x 7"



Charles M. Capps, Moonlit Mills, aquatint etching, 7.5 x 9.5"


For more information on the Prairie Print Makers, and more images of their work, see the web site of the Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence:
http://www.spencerart.ku.edu/exhibitions/ppm/

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Nature by Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mankind’s metaphysical, ethical, and aesthetic relationship to the universe
Originally published in 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay Nature had a profound impact on American literature and philosophy. Prior to this work, the arts of the Western world had been built upon centuries of cultural history, and American culture was little more than a redundant reflection of past civilizations. Emerson argued that, with the abundance of raw, untouched wilderness in the New World, American writers, artists, and scholars possessed a rare opportunity to build a uniquely American aesthetic, based not on the achievements of the past but drawn directly from nature itself. At the time, the concept of nature was little developed in the public psyche. Most people thought of nature simply as the provider of meat, produce, and timber. Emerson championed the appreciation of nature not only for the value of its commodities but also for the sake of its moral and spiritual benefits.

The philosophy that Emerson espouses in Nature reads like a mixture of the dualistic idealism of Plato and the monistic pantheism of Spinoza. Like Plato, Emerson believed that there is a higher reality, a divinity, that exists outside of the physical universe we perceive with our senses. Emerson refutes the assertion by many idealists, however, that sensual nature is simply a deceptive illusion which conceals true reality from us. Instead, Emerson insists that nature is the medium through which the divine speaks to us, that it is only by observing and loving nature that we can truly experience God. By accumulating empirical data of the natural world around us, we are able to ascertain the laws which govern the universe. It is through this exercise of reason that mankind is truly able to glimpse the divine. Thus, religions that emphasize an unseen kingdom of heaven over the perceptual world of nature do a disservice to man. Though Emerson was a Unitarian minister, the God of which he speaks does not resemble the Judeo-Christian deity, but rather a pantheistic universal soul which is synonymous with reason. Divinity is present throughout the universe, in all things, including humanity. Mankind must accept the fact that they themselves are a part of God, and having done so must live up to their own godliness. Emerson talks much of Spirit, which would lead one to believe he held a dualistic view of the universe, but since he provides a pantheistic conception of Spirit as an all-embracing unity that permeates the entire universe, it would seem, arguably, that he considers Spirit an inherent property of matter, and that the two substances of matter/spirit exist within one entity, rather than in separate realities.

Nature serves as the de facto manifesto of the Transcendentalist movement, as it is the most concise and comprehensive encapsulation of that movement’s ideals. To contemporary readers, the most familiar expression of Transcendentalism is Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. The appeal of Emerson’s work has not held up as well over the years as that of his protégé Thoreau, primarily because the language Emerson uses is far less accessible. Emerson liked to couch his philosophical concepts in poetic metaphor, and in Nature he even goes so far as to confess that he finds ambiguity more inspiring than clarity. Hence, Nature makes for a difficult read. To some extent it’s too poetic to be good philosophy, and too philosophical to be good poetry. Nevertheless, this brief book is loaded with passages of extreme beauty, eloquence, and wisdom. The time spent deciphering this complex work will be handsomely compensated by a rich yield of inspiration and enlightenment.
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Children of the Frost by Jack London

London hits his stride
This is Jack London’s third collection of short stories, first published in 1902. As with his two prior collections, all of the stories are set in northwestern Canada or Alaska at the time of the Klondike gold rush. The common thread uniting these ten stories is that they all prominently feature Native American or Inuit people. London’s treatment of Native American characters is somewhat paradoxical. On the one hand, he was one of the first authors to treat Indians as human beings with real thoughts and emotions, even giving them starring roles in some of his best stories. On the other hand, he often inserts a paragraph or two extolling the superiority of the white race, the destiny of the Anglo-Saxon man to triumph over the Indian, the preferability of a white woman’s charms over those of an Indian maiden, and so on. London considered the white conquest of the Americas to be inevitable, yet he still sympathized with the plight of the Natives and lamented the loss of their culture. Because of the touchy subject of Native/White conflict, often his best Indian stories are those that don’t feature white characters at all. Thankfully, this collection features several of such stories, and in general the questionable ideas on race are kept to a minimum. For the most part these are very well-crafted and exciting wilderness adventure stories which begin to show the Darwinian-based philosophical beliefs that London famously presented in The Call of the Wild. To reinforce his obsession with “the survival of the fittest” and “the law of tooth and claw,” London uses the Indians as a symbol of a people and culture less removed than the whites from the natural order of things, and thus less removed from the brutal impartiality of life and death inherent in the wild.

“The Law of Life” is one of London’s absolute masterpieces. As an Indian tribe packs up their camp to move to winter hunting grounds, one feeble elder is left behind to die. In his last moments, he meditates on life and death with neither fear nor bitterness, for such is the law of life. “Keesh, Son of Keesh” tells the tale of a young Indian male ostracized by his own kind for adopting the non-violent ways of the white man’s Christianity. London vividly depicts the clash of cultures within one man’s soul, with surprisingly brutal results. In “Nam-Bok the Unveracious,” a more light-hearted tale of culture clash, a long lost young Indian male returns to his village on the Bering Sea. As he regales his kinsmen with tales of the white man’s world, they respond with incredulity and suspicion. In “The League of Old Men” London tackles the subject of white conquest by offering the point of view of an Indian, on trial for murdering white men, who justifies his crimes as a defense of his endangered native culture.

There really are no bad stories in this book, just a couple below average efforts that are far outnumbered by the good and the great. Children of the Frost is a strong collection of stories, a treat for lovers of London, and a good introduction for those who have never read his work.

Stories in this collection:

In the Forests of the North

The Law of Life

Nam-Bok the Unveracious

The Master of Mystery

The Sunlanders

The Sickness of Lone Chief

Keesh, Son of Keesh

The Death of Ligoun

Li-Wan, the Fair

The League of Old Men


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Selected Stories by Lu Hsun

A challenging but rewarding read
Lu Xun (a.k.a. Lu Hsun) is considered the father of modern literature in China, and his work has had a profound influence on the arts of his native land. For the Western reader, the more you know about Chinese history and culture the more you will understand and enjoy these stories. This is best illustrated by Lu Xun’s most famous work, “The True Story of Ah Q”. Considered a masterpiece in China, it tells the story of a clueless ne’er-do-well who stumbles his way through the transition from an old imperial regime to a new revolutionary government, suffering a series of humiliations along the way. It’s obviously a satirical piece, though Westerners with little knowledge of Chinese history and politics may have trouble figuring out what exactly is being satirized. While some of the broader themes in the story are apparent, for the most part I felt like a Tibetan yak herder trying to make sense of Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, or Candide. The same holds true for the last two stories in the book, “The Flight to the Moon” and “Forging the Swords”. Both are based on myths or folklore, and in both cases, the metaphor escaped me.

Despite these few moments of culture shock, throughout the remainder of the book Lu Xun’s skill as a storyteller is evident, and his keen perception of the human condition imbues these stories with a universal appeal that defies cultural boundaries. Most involve a first-person narrator, an educated city-dweller, presumably Lu Xun himself, who travels back to his home village to visit his family. There he meets an old friend, relative, or acquaintance who reminds him of a lost memory from his past. These are often bleak tales emphasizing the negative aspects of Chinese society in the early 20th century: peasants held down by a restrictive class hierarchy (“My Old Home”), women locked into a system of marital customs little better than slavery (“The New Year’s Sacrifice”), intellectuals persecuted for their political leanings (“The Misanthrope”), and the relentless futility of folk medicine and traditional religious practices in solving people’s problems (“Medicine” and “Tomorrow”).

Though Lu Xun was a radical leftist, his stories do not carry any blatant overtures in favor of communism or any other political creed. They are, however, loaded with blatant condemnation of the old feudalistic order of the Qing Dynasty. When Lu Xun writes about his childhood, he does show some fond nostalgia for the old Chinese customs (most notably in “Village Opera”), but as an adult intellectual he clearly advocates the abandonment of the antiquated social order in favor of more modern, Western-influenced ideas. This collection presents a fascinating view of Chinese culture at a revolutionary turning point. Any lover of literature with an interest in China will appreciate these well-crafted and emotionally moving stories.

Stories in this collection:

Diary of a Madman

Kung I-Chi

Medicine

Tomorrow

An Incident

Storm in a Teacup

My Old Home

The Story of Ah Q

Village Opera

The New Year’s Sacrifice

In the Wine Shop

A Happy Family

Soap

The Misanthrope

Regret for the Past

The Divorce

The Flight to the Moon

Forging the Swords


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