The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Source of book: Borrowed from the library.

This was this month’s selection for our “Literary Lush” book club. One of the things I enjoy about this club is that I end up reading interesting books that I never would have discovered on my own.

Earlier in the year, the club read Miller’s second novel, Circe, and apparently everyone loved it. I was camping, and was unable to participate - I hope to catch up on that one later. 

I read The Iliad in my teens - we had to read the chapter on the death of Hector for school (along with, inexplicably, the departure of Telemachus for The Odyssey - easily the most boring section if read out of context - I think because it was a Fundie video course, the thought of sexual escapades was a bridge too far.) I decided to read both of Homer’s epics at that time. I have re-read The Odyssey several times since then. I haven’t returned to The Iliad, in part because there were whole chapters of battle scenes that I found tedious. The central story, though, is quite fascinating, and worthy of a new look.

Madeline Miller studied the classics (in the Greek and Roman sense) and went on to teach Greek and Latin to high school students. During that time, she started working on what became her first book. She credits Plato for the ideas in The Song of Achilles, which is a retelling of the myth of Achilles from the point of view of his friend (and lover) Patroclus.

I’ll give a bit of a spoiler here, assuming that is possible given that these myths are 2500 years old.

Achilles was a famous warrior, born to a human father and a minor goddess. She made him nearly (but not completely) invincible. When he came of age, the Trojan War erupted. Helen, the ultimate MacGuffin, has been kidnapped by (or ran off with) pretty-boy Paris, prince of Troy. Her husband, Menelaus, is determined to get her back. His brother, Agamemnon, smells an opportunity to get rich off the spoils. Because of an oath to defend Helen’s honor, all the kings of the Greeks sail to Troy to fight. Achilles comes of his own free will, seeking glory. He has been offered the choice of long life and obscurity or short life and glory. My choice would have been different, which is why I will never be the subject of an epic poem. After 10 years of mostly fruitless fighting, the war still hasn’t ended, and tempers are short. As The Iliad opens, Achilles has quarreled with Agamemnon. Both are proud. Achilles wants to be his own boss, and Agamemnon disagrees. When Agamemnon makes a bullheaded mistake which offends the gods and brings a plague on the Greeks, Achilles points it out and gets the wrath of Agamemnon, who seeks to take a woman won as a war prize from Achilles. As a result, Achilles refuses to fight for the Greeks and sits in his tent as the Trojans wreak havoc on the Greek ships. Seeking to save the Greeks, Patroclus puts on Achilles’ armor and fights, killing more than his skill level would indicate, before he is killed by Hector. Achilles is furious, and pursues and kills Hector. This is where The Iliad ends, but other legends carry forward the story. Because of a prophecy (and Apollo), Achilles loses his invulnerability after killing Hector, and he is killed by an arrow shot by Paris. With the playing field again even, a stratagem is needed. Odysseus invents the Trojan Horse, and the rest is history...I mean mythology.

Miller chooses to focus on a more human aspect of the story, and chooses the point of view of Patroclus. When I first read The Iliad, I could tell that Patroclus was more than a mere friend of Achilles - but it wasn’t spelled out. Later writers - Plato included - stated the obvious, that they were lovers. Miller starts the story early in Patroclus’ life, when he is a young boy and accidentally kills another boy who was bullying him. As a result, he is exiled and sent to live with Achilles’ parents. This much is part of the myth. Miller does take one liberty in making Achilles and Patroclus the same age, where the original myth put Patroclus as the older.

The Song of Achilles spends most of the first half telling of the boyhood, adolescence, and growing closeness of the two. After that, fate and circumstances intervene, and the rest tells of the events in Homer’s epic and its aftermath.

Knowing Patroclus’ fate, I was curious to see how that was handled. Did the book just end with his death? (That would have been annoying and missed the key events of the original story.) Would someone else tell the rest? Who?

Miller decided to have Patroclus continue to tell the story after death - he is a disembodied spirit seeking rest, who longs to be reunited with his lover. The book thus ends when he is able to, after Achilles mother intervenes.

Having not read Circe, I don’t have anything to compare this book to. I did find it enjoyable. Miller knows her myths, and does a good job of giving them a modern spin. By modern, I mean that the story is told with modern sensibilities. For example, rather than focus on all the famous ancestors of potential listeners that Achilles killed or fought alongside, Miller focuses on a personal relationship. Rather than telling of the gods and the fates and destiny as the main drivers of history, she looks at the human interactions and psychology. Homer assumed that everyone would understand why Achilles would get pissed. Miller delves into his more personal motivations. Homer took for granted that women were chattel to be won like war trophies. Miller, through Patroclus, questions that assumption and humanizes the women. The myths seem all too okay with human sacrifice, while Miller exposes the horror. And notes that women seemed to be the usual sacrifices, not men. And, perhaps most strikingly, Miller views the Achilles Patroclus relationship through the modern lens of sexual orientation even while accurately portraying the social aspects of same sex relationships in the ancient world. Thus, the relationship is a love match as we would understand it in the 21st Century, not a form of hierarchical male bonding. I don’t think Miller is unfaithful to the original myths, but the lens is different. An ancient Greek reading her book would not understand her point at all.

Since Patroclus is a barely-more-than-minor character in The Iliad, he is an ideal character to choose to reimagine. There is less baggage, so to speak. He is also ideal in that he was, by the terms of the myth itself, an outsider to masculine martial culture. He is exiled and disowned, a lousy fighter, drawn to healing rather than killing, and the opposite to Achilles. This is one reason they work as a couple. They are complementary.

I also thought that Miller did a nice job of drawing out the sexual politics of wealth, aristocracy, and sexism in the ancient world. All too often, the past is glorified and sugar coated. Miller points out the blindingly obvious: in that world, slaves were sexual chattel. And that goes for males and females. A wealthy heir would typically marry early - but have had lots of experience raping the slaves first. And it wouldn’t have been understood as rape - women in general didn’t have the right of sexual self-determination. This is one reason why I shudder whenever partriarchal sorts wax nostalgic at the old days, and try to return us there. And, of course, blame “Feminism™” for our modern problems. I guess if women would just know their place… (And don’t get me started on all the nastiness of the Abortion Wars - and the growing war on birth control and female autonomy in general. I grew up in that nasty subculture and don’t want it to win this fight.)

The character of Odysseus was rather interesting in this book. He comes across as somewhere between a prick and a snake. Which is probably somewhat accurate. Although I guess he kind of had to be to survive as a small fish among the Greek kings. I am curious to see how he is portrayed in Circe. One line near the end is pretty funny. Achilles’ son Neoptolemus, aka Pyrrhus has joined the battle - and he seems to have all of Achilles’ weaknesses with none of the charm. He, like his grandmother, hates Patroclus and doesn’t want Patroclus to be buried with Achilles and share his fame. Odysseus tries to persuade him otherwise, but he refuses to listen, being devoid of both sense and empathy. Odysseus’ response is intriguing.

“But fame is a strange thing. Some men gain glory after they die, while others fade. What is admired in one generation is abhorred in another.” He spreads his broad hands.” We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory. Who knows?” He smiles. “Perhaps one day even I will be famous. Perhaps more famous than you.”

You think?

But it is the first part of that which is most thought provoking. Tastes change. And our understanding of ethical behavior evolves and grows. And thus it was that the wily Odysseus is better remembered than the brutal and entitled Pyrrhus, who is mainly remembered in legend for stealing Orestes’ wife Hermione and getting whacked for his trouble. And allegedly being the ancestor of Alexander the Great, so there is that.

I think there is a bit of a lesson in this. It is bad enough to be a person of one’s time, and subject to the weaknesses of that era. But far worse is to be worse than one’s time. That sort of thing rarely ages well. I wish that a lot of the older right wing sorts in my life understood that. History will not be kind.

All good stories are worth reexamination, in my opinion. The power of myths isn’t that they are unchanging in meaning, but that they speak to us in our own times and our own frameworks. The point of reading The Iliad isn’t to resurrect martial honor culture, or make women back into chattel, of course. It is to reimagine and reinvigorate the timeless truths of human nature and experience. We can recognize ourselves in Achilles, in Patroclus, in Briseis, in Andromache. We can wrestle anew with the great questions of meaning and truth and justice and honor. I felt that Miller did a good job of remixing the myths and seeing the ancient from a new viewpoint.

The writing is mostly good - I am told that Miller finds her voice better in Circe - I guess practice helps. But The Song of Achilles is a worthy effort, and I found myself enjoying reading it.  

Happy City by Charles Montgomery

Source of book: I own this – a gift from my brother-in-law

I was born and raised in a Los Angeles suburb - specifically the San Fernando Valley (of Valley Girl and Free Fallin’) on the north side of the city. Southern California is pretty much ground zero for car culture - and traffic. And, in fact, traffic has gotten substantially worse since I left in the early 1990s. And even more than that, sprawl has accelerated, to the point where many are making commutes of two hours or more. Meanwhile, California has a huge housing shortage in the coastal cities, which has caused housing prices to soar out of the reach of most middle class people, let alone working class. Los Angeles is estimated to have between 50,000 and 100,000 homeless. This is, shall we say, not sustainable.

Happy City is a look at urban planning, and what increases, rather than decreases, human happiness in our urban areas. Montgomery looks at cities around the world, and draws some fascinating conclusions. 

It should be no surprise that our current American approach to city planning is terrible. Long commutes, pollution, and traffic are hardly conducive to happiness. But problematic too are the smaller-level issues. With the exception of a few downtown areas (which tend now to gentrify and become unaffordable to most), our cities are not walkable. You either own a car, or you end up isolated, essentially housebound. I can attest to this from my professional experience. Bakersfield is practically one big suburb, with a pathetic bus system which only works if you live and work near a stop AND can hit exact times to get on and off. Or you can easily wait an hour or longer for another. And that is all we have as far as public transportation. And good luck if you want to live in a dense area. We have (by my count), all of two residential buildings of more than three stories - in a metropolitan area with 800,000 people. And those two buildings are a public housing apartment tower, and a senior living complex. Oh, and I think we only have three commercial buildings more than five stories high. Density is not our thing, which is why farmland has disappeared at an alarming rate.

I mention all this to just give a bit of a picture of the problem. Happy City gets much more into the details, of course, and looks at both the root causes of and ways to fix the problem.

To begin with, Montgomery notes that we have seen a massive privatization of public space. For example, roads once were open to everyone, regardless of their method of travel. Now, that space is mostly reserved for private cars. Urban design itself has been remade to favor automobiles: mandated parking, which increases distance between buildings; neighborhoods built around car ownership rather than walkability; segregation of shopping, employment, and housing; gated communities to keep parks private rather than public; and so on. Here in Bakersfield, the results are pretty obvious. It is nearly impossible to function without a car, we have a high pedestrian and bicycle rider fatality and injury rate, we have some of the highest pollution in the nation, and the cost of maintaining our roads means our pavement is crumbling.

The social costs are high too. Compared to my childhood, I really don’t know my neighbors that well, and kids don’t tend to play in the streets. (Obviously, technology and overscheduling are factors, but so is the trend toward front yards being for show, not common use.)  Oh, and commutes don’t help either. When people aren’t home, they can’t really interact.

None other than Adam Smith (whose legacy has been co-opted by Social Darwinist economists) pointed out that our human conscience comes from our social relationships. If you want to understand at least a part of our current hate-filled xenophobic moment, it helps to realize that we don’t really live with each other that much - we live in our cubicles and our cars, and then in front of our televisions. (Or books in my case…) Our cities do not, by and large, foster interaction. The author quotes Aristotle on this point:

He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.

I very much agree that our social connections are in many ways contracting. The internet has actually worked against the general trend, by giving alternate ways to connect, but the problem itself existed before the internet. It was created in significant part by our design around cars - everyday interactions happen less when you go from garage to garage to parking lot to parking lot.

Montgomery also examines why we ended up with cities carefully segregated. And I don’t mean primarily by race, but by function. Careful separation of the commercial and industrial from the residential. Careful separation of low income tenement housing from the wealthy - can’t have the dirty poor infect you, right? And yes, the use of redlining, zoning, building regulations, and other methods to keep the skin colors separate. (There is a section on this exact issue.) What this has come to mean is that there is really very little freedom when it comes to how cities grow and develop. Things stay the same by the force of law, custom, and habits. The author quotes Georgia Tech professor Ellen Dunham- Jones:

“We have not had a free market in real estate for eighty years. And because it is illegal to build in a different way, it takes an immense amount of time for anyone who wants to do it to get changes in zoning and variance. Time is money for developers, so it rarely happens.”

The result, the author points out, is this:

Together, these rules and habits have ensured that the American city is as separated and static as any Soviet-era housing scheme. They have ensured that first-generation suburbs closer to downtowns do not grow more diverse or dense. They have pushed new development out to the ever-expanding urban frince and beyond...and they have ensured that these new developments will, in turn, resist most efforts to change or adapt them over time.

The factors compound each other too. In one chapter, the author mentions a study that put the ideal commute time at about 16 minutes. Which I agree with, by the way. That number is also my typical commute - for all its sprawl, Bakersfield hasn’t yet developed crippling traffic. I have considered alternatives to my car, but they are not great. Biking in lawyer clothes isn’t feasible, and I don’t have a shower at work. But even during the good weather (we top 105 regularly during the summer), I worry I would get hit by our inattentive drivers. And I already mentioned the sorry state of our transit.

Come to think of it, why IS transit so poor most places in the United States? Again, we have a self-feeding loop. Because transit sucks, the only people who use it are those who have no choice. Which then means low ridership and a stigma in the bargain. And without riders, budgets are low, so the equipment tends to be bare-bones. As the author puts it:

When transit is seen as a handout to the poor, politicians tend not to invest beyond the most basic levels of service.

In contrast, in a city where everyone rides, there is a shared commitment to making transit work well. The one metro area in California where this works at least a bit is the Bay Area, which has sufficient busses, trams, and trains to serve at least the city centers. It is possible to leave one’s car and take transit all day in San Francisco - we have done it often when we visit. Even better are European cities - I have never driven a car in Europe, because the transit is good and the cities are walkable.

Another point by the author that I strongly agree with is that we have become far too fixated on astronomically expensive subways, rather than looking at the obvious: we have plenty of places to run trams, trains, and busses: we just need to remove the cars from them. If I could run the city of Los Angeles, that would be my approach. Shut down a bunch of lanes - and roads - and run transit. Speeds would be far faster than the gridlock they have right now, and cost would be far lower.

The main obstacle to this kind of thinking is, of course, that those entrenched interests who benefit from our current subsidies of car ownership aren’t all that interested in giving way for anyone else. The author ties this into a general problem of the last 50 or so years, where we assume that private wealth has more right to our space than everyone else.

Who should share in the public wealth of the city? Who should have access to parks and beautiful places? Who should have the privilege of easy mobility? The questions are as much political as philosophical.

The author quotes one-time mayor of Bogota and reformer Penalosa as advocating for a radical vision of fairness.

“One of the requirements for happiness is equality. Maybe not equality of income, but equality of quality of life and, more than that, an environment where people don’t feel inferior, where people don’t feel excluded….We’re telling people, ‘You are important - not because you’re rich, but because you are human.’”

This is so very true. And, given our national history of obsession with making people feel their inferiority, it is easy to see why reform has been so difficult.

I also loved Montgomery’s recognition of who suffers most from these inequalities. The elderly and children lose safe mobility. Minority neighborhoods tend to lack sidewalks, crosswalks, and signals, making them more dangerous. He notes that this has led to a much higher pedestrian fatality rate for African American children in Atlanta - because crosswalks might require a detour of two miles, children would dash across the busy roads.

In what should come as no surprise, a major force against reform in urban design turns out to be...wait for it...the Tea Party movement! (Did you see that coming? I certainly did.) Here in California, it is the Right which opposes pretty much any spending on public transit. Or even raising gas taxes high enough to cover road maintenance costs. Those Republicans LOVE their welfare - the heavy subsidies of their lifestyles. And, they turn out to actually love near-totalitarian government...when it benefits them. As already noted, our city planning is centralized, and strict, and the pure opposite of free. (This whole chapter is fascinating - and the conspiracy theories spouted by the Tea Partiers are nuts.)

I have experienced this first hand, living in a fairly conservative city. (Very conservative by California standards.) You wonder why we have no high apartment buildings? Well, that’s because getting a permit for one is practically impossible. Not just because of regulations, but because the NIMBY contingent will come out and protest anything that looks like letting low income people live near them. And that includes building low-rise apartments next to single-family detached homes. Seriously! Or the most ridiculous one yet: our local state university, which was once at the edge of town, but is now mostly surrounded, has a large amount of undeveloped space - intentionally, so that it could expand. They are building some dorms. On their own land. To house college students. And the nearby residents are losing their shit over it. God forbid a college houses college students on campus!

But this is writ large all across our state. California desperately needs to increase density as our population grows - particularly in the coastal cities where the jobs are booming. But get this:

80% of our residential-zoned land is zone for single family homes only.

Say what?? We have some of the most populous urban areas in the world, to say nothing of the nation, and it’s nearly all sprawl. So far, attempts to force localities to allow five story apartments near transit have not succeeded. Eventually, I believe they will, because something has to give. If you already own a house in LA, I guess you are set, but younger people cannot afford to live there. So people are living in cars, RVs, and on the streets.

These are all complex issues with difficult solutions. But ultimately, the status quo cannot be sustained - and my children’s generation know this. What is needed is what they have: a shift in the way of thinking. As the author puts it, our current system seems designed as though the city existed purely for commerce, rather than for the people that commerce was thought to enrich. The city needs to belong to all of us.

To get there, we need to stop measuring the success of a city by its median income, or its property values, but by the happiness of those who live there - and that means everyone, not just the wealthiest.

I highly recommend this book as a starting point for the discussion. While Montgomery shows the problems well, and offers a look at ways they have been addressed around the world, this book isn’t intended as a detailed blueprint. And it is unclear if a single blueprint will work everywhere. Montgomery’s central point is excellent, however. We have made poor decisions in how we plan our cities, and have created a situation where fixing them will be difficult.

Overcoming regulation, inertia, and public opinion will be a tough task - but the conversation is already shifting as it becomes obvious that the status quo is unacceptable, particularly for the next generation. California has started to explore some options, as our very success as the world’s fifth largest economy has exposed the weakness in our current model. But we have the opportunity to find ways to make positive and innovative change, as we have in the past.

***

Just a fun article that is related: what if, instead of designing our cities around male breadwinners commuting to a 9-5 job, we built them around everyone else? After all, there are more women, children, and elderly than working-age males...

***

One more thing: I actually like cars. I love driving, for the most part. I wrench on my own vehicles, and drive a stick shift.

But by “driving” I mean propelling the car forward at a reasonable speed on the open road. I do not mean sitting in traffic, because that just plain sucks. And, for that matter, while I don’t mind driving to and from work (as I said, I have a short commute and flexible hours, so traffic is rarely an issue on an average day), I would be fine with catching transit or biking to work - I’ve driven that road a lot.

I also HATE trying to find parking. Which is why my preference would be to use transit in San Francisco (or other major cities) whenever possible. Now if LA would just get its act together…

Les Miserables (National Tour - Hollywood Pantages)

I have a bit of a history with Les Miserables. I didn’t see the original tour run, although the billboards were everywhere in the Los Angeles I grew up in. However, in high school, I played some of the music for one of our concerts, and loved it. Later, I went on a law school trip to London, and we had our afternoons and evenings free. A few of us got some cheap scalped tickets for three nights of shows: The Mousetrap, Phantom of the Opera, and Les Miserables. While all were good, the best was definitely the last.

When I left for that London trip (and the week and a half on the continent which was my first real parent-free adventure), I had been going out with Amanda for a couple of weeks. She was jealous as heck about Les Mis, because she love the book, and had the musical pretty well memorized - but had never seen it in person. We started reading through the book together - aloud - and got to somewhere in the never-ending Waterloo digression before we got distracted by moonlight walks and the like. I probably need to go back and read it from the beginning.

Anyway, Amanda has wanted to see it live for forever, so when we saw it was coming to the Pantages, we were all over it. And decided to take the kids. (And yes, they all enjoyed it - it was their first truly big-budget show.)

It was interesting to see a rather different production than the one I saw in London. The music was the same (although orchestras are smaller these days, alas - at least there was one), and the book was the same. However, the sets were quite different. In the original, it was a rotating stage and two tumbling elements which could be configured to provide everything from the ship to the barricade. The new version definitely had more moving parts, and a huge variety of settings. Obviously, they were determined to use the entire budget. I made for an impressive spectacle which rivaled movie special effects - without the CGI.

The most impressive scene from a technical point of view was Javert’s suicide. In the original I saw, a trapdoor, fog, and projected ripples provided a dramatic result. But not like this one. The pieces of the bridge set were pulled up to make it look as if Javert was falling. And then, well, it is hard to explain, and I am not sure how they did it. Projected imagery combined with careful lighting and positioning by the actor made it feel as if our perspective rotated from a side view to a top view as he plummeted faster and faster. It was a moment that made you gasp.

And that was just the best part. Throughout, the technical stuff was amazing - and fascinating to my older son, the engineer (and also live theater geek since age 6…)

I also wanted to mention a few performances. This is, of course, a high-level professional troupe, so we expected and got generally excellent work. The only bit that bothered me a bit was that in the first half, Fantine (Mary Kate Moore) leaned just a bit sharp. It was weird because she would be fine on the long notes, but the connecting notes were just a tiny bit off. Now, I know I am a picky listener - most of us violinists have good pitch (if not always perfect intonation...it’s a lifetime battle) so I noticed small faults that others might not notice. Also, she was better in the second half, so I wonder if she had a bad ear monitor - that would certainly make sense.

One thing that little faults like this make clear is that a show like this is indeed live. No lip syncing. Indeed, there were the usual tiny vocal cracks and nuances that characterize live performance and make it so much better than even a good recording. As a performer myself, I appreciate the tremendous effort and hours of preparation which go into something like this - and I enjoy it as a result.

The Thenardiers (J. Anthony Crane and Allison Guinn) were good - and doing songs like that in dialect while still remaining intelligible is tough. The other parts were generally good - including the kids. The harmonies in the ensemble singing were top notch - very enjoyable.

The very best, though, were Eponine (Paige Smallwood) and Jean Valjean (Nick Cartell) Smallwood was unquestionably the best female vocalist on stage, and I mean no disrespect to the other fine singers. Smallwood was just a cut above, with power, range, and emotion. I could have listened to her all day.

 Paige Smallwood as Eponine

Nick Cartell as Jean Valjean

Except when I was listening to Cartell, who delivered as fine of a live theater performance as I have ever seen. His level of vocal control was amazing - I couldn’t believe his ability to hold notes in awkward ranges without needing operatic volume. There were some moments I had a dropped jaw. You wouldn’t know it from this performance, but he is a fairly young guy. Obviously, the aging was done well by the makeup people. But he nailed the physical aspect as well as the vocal gravitas.

I did want to talk about the story itself a bit too. The story is, after all, the best part. Victor Hugo does have some of the usual Victorian faults: long winded writing driven by financial concerns, extended digressions, overearnest naivete, bathos, and so on. But he also writes a powerful and empathetic story. He was perceptive about the complexities of human motivation, too, and created several timeless characters in Les Miserables. Also timeless is his uncomfortable look at the institutionalization of impoverishment - and indeed the criminalization of poverty. For those of us in the United States of the 21st Century, this seems all too familiar. Our national character is to grind the faces of the poor - it is no accident that we have the highest incarceration rate of ANY country in the world, as well as, far and away, more total prisoners than any other country.

We are a nation of Javerts.

Ah, Javert. I think if I had read Les Miserables as a kid, I would have missed his motivation. Seeing him for the first time as a law student, I think he made the greatest impression on me of any character. After all, he is the villain who could have been the hero in another book. The upright man serving faithfully and doing his duty. So why is he the villain? (Or at least a villain - he’s not the only one in the book.)

Hugo makes a few points here. One, of course, is that Javert is a cog in an unjust - and malevolent - system. That the Jean Valjeans of the world were (and are) imprisoned for being poor and human is the result, not of their own failings, but of a system which is designed to crush them. Javert participates, and not as an ignorant bystander. He is close enough to the action to see that the system is failing vulnerable humans.

But Javert doesn’t care - and why he doesn’t care is a key point. Javert is sure that God will love and reward him because he ruthlessly punishes those who fail to live up to his high standards. Javert isn’t a hypocrite in the strict sense - he doesn’t appear to indulge the vices he punishes in others. But he also has never had to face the hard choices his victims do. He will never watch his own child starve to death. He will never be a woman abandoned or fired from her job. He will never be run out of a town because of his past, or cheated of his wages. He always gets his - sucks to be the poor.

But Hugo goes far deeper than that. The climactic scenes are so powerful because we get to see Javert’s inner dynamics. Because Javert cannot extend grace to others, he cannot accept it for himself. In his mind, he has always deserved his good fortune and good life. He earned it, one painful choice at a time. That this is probably not a reflection of reality does not enter his head.

Thus, when the tables turn, Javert, who believes that Jean Valjean will always be a thief and a bad person, is left to face a horrifying truth:

Jean Valjean is a better man than Javert.

When Javert’s sense of self-worth crumbles, he has nothing left. His identity was as the “good guy,” and he constantly proved this to himself by his zeal to punish the “bad guys.” And then, when he is extended unexpected mercy by someone he believes to be his inferior, he can’t handle it.

And so he chooses annihilation.

I have mentioned in a few places that I don’t believe in the Evangelical version of hell. I won’t get into all the reasons here, but just that C. S. Lewis and Neil Gaiman both have influenced my views. But also, I should credit Victor Hugo. It was that viewing of Les Miserables that let me see a terrifying truth:

There are many who would choose annihilation rather than give up the pleasure of self-righteousness.

In fact, I tend to think these days that a lot of white Evangelicals will be like that. Particularly the white males in positions of authority. They have built their entire self-conception out of “I thank God I am not like other people.” For them to find out in the end that they were the bad guys, and all those gays, African Americans, refugees, impoverished people, and women they were so eager to put in their place and persecute were the “greatest in the Kingdom” all along, they will be like Javert. And choose to cease to exist rather than give up that comforting sense of self-righteousness they have clung to with bleeding fingers even as everyone around them outside the bubble turned away in disgust. That’s sad. But I think it is true.

Hugo, like many brilliant authors, had the ability to portray those on the margins of society with empathy and yet without making them into one-dimensional saints. One thing that struck me this time around is the way he captures the way that desperation makes humans turn on each other. The factory women, living tenuous lives for starvation wages, can’t resist the opportunity to slut shame Fantine. Other peasants turn on Jean Valjean. The prostitutes, even, don’t rally against an abusive john, but leave Fantine to her fate. Unfortunately, this is how the powerful and abusive stay in power.

Les Miserables also highlights another sad truth of most of history: women have always been treated as disposable. It isn’t just the prostitutes. The factory women are just cogs. Madame Thenardier has her fiefdom, but she is still treated like crap by her drunk abusive husband. Fantine can be tossed aside by her lover as soon as she becomes inconvenient. Eponine is useful to her parents as long as she gives unquestioning obedience - and she too is thrown away when she is no longer useful. It’s not just women. The working poor are treated as disposable. But women are particularly vulnerable.

It was good to experience this one again after a 20 year gap - I think my perspective has matured a bit - and current events have stripped more than a few illusions away. For example, I can’t really believe that Evangelicalism is any better than Javert. If anything, they relish cruelty for cruelty’s sake, which is further than Javert would go. (Sorry, I can’t un-hear or un-see things…) I am glad that the kids got to go. It was a splurge for us - we take the kids to local stuff all the time, but this was definitely more pricey. All those amazing sets and effects and the orchestra don’t come free. But there is something fun about an immersive spectacle. And Hugo’s story continues to reverberate today.

Do you hear the people sing?

Lost in the valley of the night

It is the music of a people

Who are climbing to the light

For the wretched of the earth

There is a flame that never dies

Even the darkest night will end

And the sun will rise.

They will live again in freedom

In the garden of the Lord

We will walk behind the plowshare

We will put away the sword

The chain will be broken

And all men will have their reward!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing?

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?

Who will be strong and stand with me?

Somewhere beyond the barricade

Is there a world you long to see?

Do you hear the people sing

Say, do you hear the distant drums?

It is the future that we bring

When tomorrow comes!

***

Music clips!

This interview with Paige Smallwood includes a clip of her singing. The sound quality sucks, and doesn’t do her justice. But you can get a feeling of it. Believe me, in person, she was amazing.

The second is Nick Cartell. This clip is much better quality, and shows off his gorgeous voice quite well.

***

I do want to share this: my very first experience of Victor Hugo was this powerful poem.

After The Battle

MY father, hero of benignant mien,

On horseback visited the gory scene,

After the battle as the evening fell,

And took with him a trooper loved right well,

Because of bravery and presence bold.

The field was covered with the dead, all cold,

And shades of night were deepening : came a sound,

Feeble and hoarse, from something on the ground ;

It was a Spaniard of the vanquished force,

Who dragged himself with pain beside their course.

Wounded and bleeding, livid and half dead,

'Give me to drink - in pity, drink!' he said.

My father, touched, stretched to his follower now

A flask of rum that from his saddle-bow

Hung down : 'The poor soul - give him drink,' said he

But while the trooper prompt, obediently

Stooped towards the other, he of Moorish race

Pointed a pistol at my father's face,

And with a savage oath the trigger drew :

The hat flew off, a bullet passing through.

As swerved his charger in a backward stride,

'Give him to drink the same,' my father cried.

Harmonium by Wallace Stevens

Source of book: I own the complete Wallace Stevens in a Library of America edition - a gift from my in-laws.

I first discovered Wallace Stevens nine years ago when I read a delightful book on mathematics (specifically, the history of zero as a placeholder), The Nothing That Is by Robert Kaplan. The title for that book - which I highly recommend - is drawn from a Wallace Stevens poem, “The Snow Man.” Which I then read, and loved. More recently, at a faculty concert for our local state university, I got to hear a modern work, a song setting of “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and was again entranced. Needless to say, when I received this book for Christmas last year, I knew I had to dive in and read some.

I think that musicians are particularly likely to enjoy Stevens’ poems, because his use of the language is highly musical. (You DO read poetry out loud, right? It isn’t the same otherwise…) Stevens wasn’t a musician by trade, however. He was, of all things, an insurance executive. Furthermore, he didn’t write his first published poem until age 35, and didn’t publish a collection until his mid 40s. He was a late bloomer to be sure. He did, however, write regularly thereafter, making him unusual as poets go in that many of his major works were written when most people have retired.

As I have tended to do for my poetry project of the last 10 years, I started with the first collection by the author. In this case, that would be Harmonium - I also included the poems added to the revised edition of that collection. In this case, I think I made a wise choice, because the two poems I mentioned above are in this collection, and I got to re-read them in context.

Stevens is a bit of a modernist; definitely a contrast to his contemporary Robert Frost in form, despite occasional overlap in themes and topics. For the most part, his poems do not utilize rhyme in the traditional sense, but they often have a recognizable meter. He also uses consonance and alliteration extensively, and both internal and end rhyme - the latter in unexpected ways, such as when a particular ending sound is used at irregular, but thematically significant intervals. If you just scan his poems, you might miss a lot of this, unless you are really searching for it. But read them out loud, and they will jump out of their hiding places on the page into life in a delightful and striking way.

For the most part, I loved this collection. I should mention one sour note, though. Harmonium was first published in 1923, and it reflects some of the attitudes of its time, unfortunately, in a few poems. Specifically, Stevens indulges in some racial stereotyping that is wince worthy in the 21st Century. It reminds me of reading Rudyard Kipling, or some of Mark Twain’s books. In Stevens’ case, it doesn’t seem malicious - he isn’t trying to denigrate anyone. He just...stereotypes. In a few poems, I just read it and moved on, disappointed.

This flaw aside, however, I found Stevens to be fascinating. In addition to the wonderfully creative use of language and rhythm, he has a knack for creative metaphors, deeply philosophical thinking, and unexpected twists on everyday reality. He is a good example of the way that poets do what prosaic philosophers cannot: express the inexpressible, fathom the imponderable, and speak truths which cannot be reduced to plain words. It is a way of expressing meaning and life shared with music: it is truth felt rather than intellectualized.

I selected ten poems from Harmonium that I really liked. As usual for me, I gravitated toward poems with nature or humanity in them.

Let’s start with this one. It is the second in the collection, and grabbed my attention sharply, both for its provocative title and its negative approach. Rather than eulogize nature to make a philosophical point, it disses the lovely and graceful swan - but in the end, undermines his own premise. It’s almost a negative hyperbole, a psychological mind trick. And it is poetry.

“Invective Against Swans”

The soul, O ganders, flies beyond the parks

And far beyond the discords of the wind.

A bronze rain from the sun descending marks

The death of summer, which that time endures

Like one who scrawls a listless testament

Of golden quirks and Paphian caricatures,

Bequeathing your white feathers to the moon

And giving your bland motions to the air.

Behold, already on the long parades

The crows anoint the statues with their dirt.

And the soul, O ganders, being lonely, flies

Beyond your chilly chariots, to the skies.

Every time I re-read it, it thrills me.

This next one is a master class in poetic use of sounds and words. You MUST read it aloud to get the effect. Whether you choose to read it as an ironic satire of romanticism in art - particularly early cinema - or as a less cynical tribute to the role of art in refreshing the human soul will depend on your mood.

“The Ordinary Women”

Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry catarrhs, and to guitars

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

 They flung monotony behind,

 Turned from their want, and, nonchalant,

 They crowded

 The nocturnal halls.

 The lacquered loges huddled there

 Mumbled zay-zay and a-zay, a-zay.

 The moonlight fubbed the girandoles.

 And the cold dresses that they wore,

 In the vapid haze of the window-bays,

 Were tranquil

 As they leaned and looked

 From the window-sills at the alphabets,

 At beta b and gamma g,

 To study

 The canting curlicues

 Of heaven and of the heavenly script.

 And there they read of marriage-bed.

 Ti-lill-o!

 And they read right long.

 The gaunt guitarists on the strings

 Rumbled a-day and a-day, a-day.

 The moonlight

 Rose on the beachy floors.

 How explicit the coiffures became,

 The diamond point, the sapphire point,

 The sequins

 Of the civil fans!

 Insinuations of desire,

 Puissant speech, alike in each,

 Cried quittance

 To the wickless halls.

 Then from their poverty they rose,

 From dry guitars, and to catarrhs

 They flitted

 Through the palace walls.

The juxtaposition of “guitars” and “catarrhs” - and the way they are reversed at the end, is just one of the great wordplays in this poem. There is near continual internal rhyme, repetition, and a wash of sounds that I just love.

Also amazing for its use of words is the long narrative poem, “The Comedian as the Letter C.” Generally believed to be a kind of fable of Stevens’ own career and attempts at self-discovery and reinvention, it is certainly a humorous look at the idea of traveling to find one’s self. It is far too long to quote here, but worth reading in its entirety. I want to quote the first bit, though, just for the fantastic writing.

Nota: man is the intelligence of his soil,

The sovereign ghost. As such, the Socrates

Of snails, musician of pears, principium

And lex. Sed quaeritur: is this same wig

Of things, this nincompated pedagogue,

Preceptor to the sea? Crispin at sea

Created, in his day, a touch of doubt.

An eye most apt in gelatines and jupes,

Berries of villages, a barber's eye,

An eye of land, of simple salad-beds,

Of honest quilts, the eye of Crispin, hung

On porpoises, instead of apricots,

And on silentious porpoises, whose snouts

Dibbled in waves that were mustachios,

Inscrutable hair in an inscrutable world.

Only a genius could come up with “Socrates of Snails.” I love that phrase.

This next one is definitely a favorite. It needs no comment, really.

“The Curtains in the House of the Metaphysician”

It comes about that the drifting of these curtains

 Is full of long motions, as the ponderous

 Deflations of distance; or as clouds

 Inseparable from their afternoons;

 Or the changing of light, the dropping

 Of the silence, wide sleep and solitude

 Of night, in which all motion

 Is beyond us, as the firmament,

 Up-rising and down-falling, bares

 The last largeness, bold to see.

I love poems that paint a vivid, yet amorphous, picture like that. Here is another. Each of the six sections could stand alone as a poem. I couldn’t decide which parts to quote, so I quote the whole. The last is particularly delightful.

“Six Significant Landscapes”

I

 An old man sits

 In the shadow of a pine tree

 In China.

 He sees larkspur,

 Blue and white,

 At the edge of the shadow,

 Move in the wind.

 His beard moves in the wind.

 The pine tree moves in the wind.

 Thus water flows

 Over weeds.

         II

 The night is of the colour

 Of a woman's arm:

 Night, the female,

 Obscure,

 Fragrant and supple,

 Conceals herself.

 A pool shines,

 Like a bracelet

 Shaken in a dance.

         III

 I measure myself

 Against a tall tree.

 I find that I am much taller,

 For I reach right up to the sun,

 With my eye;

 And I reach to the shore of the sea

 With my ear.

 Nevertheless, I dislike

 The way ants crawl

 In and out of my shadow.

         IV

 When my dream was near the moon,

 The white folds of its gown

 Filled with yellow light.

 The soles of its feet

 Grew red.

 Its hair filled

 With certain blue crystallizations

 From stars,

 Not far off.

         V

 Not all the knives of the lamp-posts,

 Nor the chisels of the long streets,

 Nor the mallets of the domes

 And high towers,

 Can carve

 What one star can carve,

 Shining through the grape-leaves.

         VI

 Rationalists, wearing square hats,

 Think, in square rooms,

 Looking at the floor,

 Looking at the ceiling.

 They confine themselves

 To right-angled triangles.

 If they tried rhomboids,

 Cones, waving lines, ellipses --

 As, for example, the ellipse of the half-moon --

 Rationalists would wear sombreros.

Here is another one that I love.

“Tattoo”

The light is like a spider.

 It crawls over the water.

 It crawls over the edges of the snow.

 It crawls under your eyelids

 And spreads its webs there—

 Its two webs.

 The webs of your eyes

 Are fastened

 To the flesh and bones of you

 As to rafters of grass.

 There are filaments of your eyes

 On the surface of the water

 And in the edges of the snow.

This is one of several poems which explicitly draws an unexpected connection between nature and humanity - human nature as a metaphor for nature, rather than the other way around. Here is another, which I find striking.

“The Wind Shifts”

This is how the wind shifts:

 Like the thoughts of an old human,

 Who still thinks eagerly

 And despairingly.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like a human without illusions,

 Who still feels irrational things within her.

 The wind shifts like this:

 Like humans approaching proudly,

 Like humans approaching angrily.

 This is how the wind shifts:

 Like a human, heavy and heavy,

 Who does not care.

The next poem is way too long too quote, but I will link it here. It is remarkable to me because it has an element of legalese in it. Each section shares form and words - but Stevens has “filled in the blanks” so to speak, with different pictures. The poem appears to have been inspired by a cruise Stevens and his wife took along the coast of Mexico. Both of them wrote diaries of the voyage, and Stevens borrowed some phrases from her impressions. Some critics have seen the poem as an extended metaphor for Stevens’ sexual relationship with his wife, which I find a bit of a stretch. (There was a time not that long ago when literature - and particularly poetry - was given the Freudian treatment. While there is plenty of eroticism in poetry, it got a bit out of hand, in my opinion.) Perhaps this poem has a hidden double meaning. Or maybe many meanings. In any event, it is one worth reading for its ever-shifting view of the effect of clouds reflected on the ocean.

I already mentioned the last two poems as ones I enjoyed before reading Harmonium. I love them enough to quote them again.

“Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”

I

Among twenty snowy mountains,   

The only moving thing   

Was the eye of the blackbird.   

II

I was of three minds,   

Like a tree   

In which there are three blackbirds.   

III

The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.   

It was a small part of the pantomime.   

IV

A man and a woman   

Are one.   

A man and a woman and a blackbird   

Are one.   

V

I do not know which to prefer,   

The beauty of inflections   

Or the beauty of innuendoes,   

The blackbird whistling   

Or just after.   

VI

Icicles filled the long window   

With barbaric glass.   

The shadow of the blackbird   

Crossed it, to and fro.   

The mood   

Traced in the shadow   

An indecipherable cause.   

VII

O thin men of Haddam,   

Why do you imagine golden birds?   

Do you not see how the blackbird   

Walks around the feet   

Of the women about you?   

VIII

I know noble accents   

And lucid, inescapable rhythms;   

But I know, too,   

That the blackbird is involved   

In what I know.   

IX

When the blackbird flew out of sight,   

It marked the edge   

Of one of many circles.   

X

At the sight of blackbirds   

Flying in a green light,   

Even the bawds of euphony   

Would cry out sharply.   

XI

He rode over Connecticut   

In a glass coach.   

Once, a fear pierced him,   

In that he mistook   

The shadow of his equipage   

For blackbirds.   

XII

The river is moving.   

The blackbird must be flying.   

XIII

It was evening all afternoon.   

It was snowing   

And it was going to snow.   

The blackbird sat   

In the cedar-limbs.

There is a lot of the haiku in there - in influence, not in specific form. Speaking of blackbirds (or, perhaps, black birds, I can think of eleven that I have seen locally), from the giant California Condor down to the European Starling. Each is a perspective in itself.

I’ll end with the one that started it all. This image has stuck with me for the last decade, and I keep finding myself returning to read the poem over and over. Do we really know anything? Can we perceive reality apart from ourselves and our perspectives? There are layers to this poem that reveal themselves only on repeated reading. I hope it resonates with you too.

“The Snow Man”

One must have a mind of winter

To regard the frost and the boughs

Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time

To behold the junipers shagged with ice,

The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think

Of any misery in the sound of the wind,

In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land

Full of the same wind

That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,

And, nothing himself, beholds

Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

The Time Hackers by Gary Paulsen

Source of book: Audiobook from the library

This is a short, comedic book by Gary Paulsen. We have enjoyed a variety of his other books. Here is the list:

Brian’s Return

Brian’s Winter

Flat Broke

Hatchet

Masters of Disaster

Mudshark

The River

Vote

Woods Runner

***

This book is, like others of his short, humorous books, not particularly deep, but just light entertainment. Of the ones we have read, this is probably the fluffiest, although it does have an interesting premise.

The idea is that someone found a way to bring holograms of things back from the past, which has led to, among other things, a total revision of the history curriculum. The problem is that eventually, strange things start happening to Dorso (the narrator) and Frank (his comedic wingman.) First, they are fairly harmless, like Dorso’s locker at school being filled up with dead rats - who mysteriously disappear a minute later. But eventually, they get serious, with Dorso and Frank getting suddenly transported to the past - and nearly getting killed. It turns out that someone - two someones actually - have hacked time, so to speak, and are playing a deadly game with time travel. (As in, can one of them alter history and violate the “grandfather paradox” before the other can set it right and prevent dire consequences up to and including the annihilation of the universe.) The problem for Dorso and Frank is that they have no idea what is going on or how they got involved. Or, for that matter, how to stop it, particularly since the cyber-authorities don’t believe them.

Things of note about this book: First, I think Paulson is excellent at setting the stage for a complicated technology without using too much space. He has a lot to do, and he does it gradually through the first few chapters - but he does it clearly and concisely. The entire book is all of two and a half hours of audiobook, so it is short. Paulsen can’t waste time on wordy descriptions, and has to be frugal.

Second, Paulsen uses the two essential Jr. High sources of humor: gross stuff, and nude girls. The book starts out with the discovery of an old medical cadaver in Dorso’s locker and a girl who faints at the smell. There is more of the same sort of stuff throughout. Because stinky stuff is funny. Just ask my younger kids.

The other running gag is that Frank keeps trying to circumvent the censorship of the time-web in order to see naked women. For “research,” of course.

As with all Paulsen books, it is tightly plotted, internally consistent, and modest in length. I didn’t find it quite as funny as, say, Masters of Disaster, which has comedic timing down to an art. But it was a diverting audiobook for our drive, and made the younger kids laugh. It is pretty hard to go wrong with Paulsen.