I have not read all of Leacock’s old humour books, yet. There were quite a few of them, not to men­tion var­i­ous col­lec­tions and omnibus­es. This 1916 vol­ume, in gen­eral, is a sharp falling off in qual­ity from the genius of Sun­shine Sketch­es . But it does con­tain two fine items. One is “The Retroac­tive Exis­tence of Mr. Jug­gins” whose fate is com­pre­hen­si­ble to any­one who has set out to sharp­en a pen­cil and end­ed up spend­ing three hours at it, or start­ed to study Gravity’s Rain­bow and end­ed up read­ing Beowulf. All of Jug­gins’ exis­tence is like that, and in the end we find him pass­ing “back through child­hood into infan­cy, and present­ly, just as his annu­ity runs to a point and van­ishes, he will back up clear through the Cur­tain of Exis­tence and die, or be born, I don’t know which to call it.” Read more »

This trav­el nar­ra­tive, focus­ing on the remote region of Afghanistan called Nuris­tan, has a won­der­ful back-sto­ry. Beal­by had been a bright, but book-hat­ing Eng­lish youth with a seri­ous read­ing dis­abil­ity. But his girl­friend was an avid read­er, and when she gave him a copy of Kipling’s The Man Who Would Be King , he forced him­self to read it. The sto­ry appealed to him, and even­tu­ally he became both an adven­tur­ous trav­eler and a pub­lished writer. His girl­friend came to a sud­den acci­den­tal death on one of their trips. Lat­er, still griev­ing, he found him­self watch­ing the won­der­ful John Hus­ton film of Kipling’s sto­ry. He vowed to under­take a jour­ney par­al­lel­ing that of the fic­tional Peachy Car­na­han and Dan­ny Dravot, to the remote land of “Kafiris­tan”, beyond the Hin­du Kush. This of course, is a per­fectly real place, the long, nar­row prong of Afghan ter­ri­tory that kept Pak­istan from bor­der­ing the for­mer Sovi­et Union. Bealby’s adven­ture took place in the 1990’s, the Pak­istan of the smol­der­ing bor­der war with India, and the Afghanistan of the Tal­iban. He had lit­tle appar­ent inter­est in pol­i­tics. What comes across in this book is his abil­ity to make him­self at home among strangers, and to instant­ly grasp the human ele­ment in a place that is for­eign to him. My friend Fil­ip, in Prague, is rather like him in this. I would glad­ly trav­el any­where with such a person.

Van het Reve is con­sid­ered one of the Netherland’s most impor­tant writ­ers, but I have to say this nov­el left a sour taste in my mouth. I just have no sym­pa­thy for writ­ers who iden­tify gay sex­u­al­ity entire­ly with sado-masochism, self-fla­gel­lat­ing guilt, and obses­sions about catholic doc­trine. No mat­ter how lit­er­ary and sophis­ti­cated it is made to sound, it is basi­cally just as sil­ly as teenagers in Okla­homa dress­ing up as goths and drink­ing cat blood, or any oth­er infan­tile behav­iour based on “blas­phemy”. I resent hav­ing gay sex­u­al­ity sta­pled to this stuff ― or any type of sex­u­al­ity, for that mat­ter. I real­ly couldn’t find any inter­est­ing ideas in this nov­el, or any pas­sages that gave me plea­sure, or images that did not seem trite. The “erot­ic” com­po­nent of the book was mere­ly depress­ing and pathet­ic. Per­haps the style has some par­tic­u­lar qual­ity in Dutch that I have no access to, which accounts for its fame. I have no idea why Van het Reve is though so high­ly of. The light­hearted, tol­er­ant and civ­i­lized atti­tude that most Dutch peo­ple have towards sex is the polar oppo­site of all this kind of stuff. Maybe they just find it so strange that they assume it must be sig­nif­i­cant. But in Eng­lish, there are acres of this kind of stuff in print, play­ing on the mor­bid and self-destruc­tive atti­tudes towards sex that pre­vail in much of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world.

This is the fourth play I’ve read this month by the Swiss writer Dür­ren­matt. All of them are clever and enter­tain­ing. The influ­ence of both Piran­dello and Thorn­ton Wilder are obvi­ous. I read the first just because it pur­ported to be about the obscure, last Roman emper­or in the West, Romu­lus Augus­tus. Well, the play is about as accu­rate his­tor­i­cally as the Flint­stones is a pic­ture of ear­ly hominids, but it is lots of fun. Dürrenmatt’s wit sur­vives trans­la­tion from Ger­man. The oth­er plays are equal­ly bizarre and enter­tain­ing. The Physcists involves two pos­si­ble mur­der­ers who respec­tively think they are New­ton and Ein­stein, and a sin­is­ter char­ac­ter named Möbius who may have a uni­fied field theory.

I found myself real­ly enjoy­ing this book, which is first in the sto­ry chronol­ogy of the Nar­nia books, but the last to be writ­ten. Last month, I read a biog­ra­phy of C. S. Lewis, and the man’s per­sonal life was fresh in my mind. One thing is clear: Lewis despised and resent­ed the British class sys­tem as much as George Orwell did, and it comes across strong­ly in this book. He also shared Orwell’s hatred for his Pub­lic School expe­ri­ence. In the char­ac­ter of the Magi­cian, who is mer­ci­lessly flayed with sharp lit­tle razor-cuts that a child can eas­ily decode, he demon­strates his loathing for the amoral tech­nocrats whom he obvi­ously felt were tak­ing over the world. Lewis and Orwell form an inter­est­ing pair to com­pare. They both wrote scathing denun­ci­a­tions of total­i­tar­i­an­ism, both in adult sci­ence fic­tion and children’s fan­tasy. Yet, by the ide­o­log­i­cal con­ven­tions of the time, they were sup­posed to be ene­mies of each oth­er. Orwell wrote rather snide­ly of Lewis’s radio broad­casts. How­ever, they pret­ty much feared and opposed the same things. Where Orwell thought he could fight those things with per­sonal hon­esty and a humane, sec­u­lar, demo­c­ra­tic social­ism, Lewis some­how man­aged to see the same val­ues in a kind of car­toon ver­sion of the Church of Eng­land. His ver­sion of Protes­tant Chris­tian­ity will be rather hard for fun­da­men­tal­ist protes­tants in the Unit­ed States to deal with, if they exam­ine it close­ly, and I won’t be sur­prised if the Nar­nia films end up caus­ing con­fu­sion and dis­ar­ray among them. Those raised in the easy-going protes­tant church­es that dom­i­nate in Cana­da will feel more at home with it.

The series as a whole shifts in sen­ti­ment and style from one vol­ume to anoth­er. One thing I noticed is that, as he puts basic ideas of Chris­tian­ity into the form of a fable, the very process of doing so brings out the log­i­cal prob­lems inher­ent in those beliefs. Is Aslan the one deity, the shad­ow of a deity, or mere­ly the agent of a deity? If Aslan has all this pow­er, why does he seem to use it so incon­sis­tently and capri­ciously? Why, in fact, is the White Queen able to get away with any of her dirty deeds if she is not a pow­er in some way com­pa­ra­ble to the good pow­er? The implied solu­tions in the fan­tasy are def­i­nitely not ortho­dox Chris­t­ian doc­trine. It would be impos­si­ble to make sat­is­fy­ing fan­tasy fic­tion of any that were. Lewis would almost cer­tainly have found him­self burned as a heretic in any world actu­ally con­trolled by the Church that held his alle­giance. In this, he is like most lit­er­ary con­verts to some tra­di­tional faith. Lewis was an ardent non-believ­er and cyn­i­cal “ratio­nal­ist” for the first half of his life, of pre­cisely the kind that you just know is head­ed for con­ver­sion to piety. But such types almost always end up writ­ing up a faith of doubt­ful ortho­doxy, no mat­ter how des­per­ately they want to belong to what they pre­vi­ously despised and now embrace. 

For some strange rea­son, I nev­er read the Madeleine L’Engle books when I was young. I knew about them. They were in every library, and peo­ple I knew had read them. They were high­ly thought of. I real­ly don’t know why I didn’t check them out. Well, I was def­i­nitely miss­ing some­thing. The prose of A Wrin­kle in Time is delight­ful. The book deals with inter­est­ing ideas, pre­sented in a man­ner that chil­dren can under­stand, but only if they are will­ing to stretch their minds a bit. At it was writ­ten, none of these ideas were embed­ded in pop­u­lar cul­ture, as they are today. I would rank A Wrin­kle in Time with the best Hein­lein juve­niles as books that respect a child’s intel­li­gence and treat the read­er with­out con­de­scen­sion. I’m sor­ry I missed out. 

This inci­dent, prob­a­bly lit­tle known to the pub­lic in the U.S., was a big issue in Cana­da. Cana­di­ans, on the whole, approve of hav­ing a mil­i­tary pres­ence in Afghanistan, and of fight­ing against the Tal­iban. The Cana­dian armed forces were eager to get into a clear-cut com­bat sit­u­a­tion, after decades of nerve-wrack­ing peace­keep­ing mis­sions where they faced con­stant dan­ger, but couldn’t go on the offen­sive. The issue of fight­ing under U. S. or British direc­tion, how­ever, has always been a touchy one for Cana­di­ans. Nev­er­the­less, there was a huge pop­u­lar back­ing at home for a Cana­dian pres­ence in Afghanistan, which is still felt, despite this inci­dent. The bulk of the Cana­dian pub­lic sees this as an absolute­ly dis­tinct issue from Iraq: the war against Osama and the Tal­iban is war against ter­ror­ism, while the war in Iraq is a dis­gust­ing swin­dle by a lying, trai­tor­ous George Bush regime and inter­na­tional oil car­tels, which Cana­di­ans nev­er want­ed any part of. Read more »

Gold­en Slum­bers by Nara­sura of Kashi

This is an anthol­ogy of song lyrics rang­ing from medieval times to the mid­dle of the nine­teenth cen­tury. It was pub­lished by Rout­ledge in a stur­dy lit­tle blue bind­ing in 1927. Some­times you come upon a book which is a plea­sure to read because of its con­tents, and almost as much because the phys­i­cal feel­ing of the book itself gives plea­sure. This one was a delight­ful find in at a Good­will store. Even the editor’s name is charm­ing… I don’t think I’ve ever come across the name “Edmon­stoune”.

The first song is, of course, “Sumer is icu­men in”, the old­est Eng­lish song for which we have a cer­tain melody. This ver­sion dates from about 1250, but the song must have been old even then, and it’s earthy, pagan images make it feel like it echoed off the lin­tels of Stonehenge.

Groweth sed, and bloweth med
And springeth the wude nu
Sing cuc­cu!

The bulk of the songs in the book are from the Tudor era. Lots of nightin­gales and fa-la-las. Many are cred­ited to Eliz­a­bethan drama­tists, includ­ing Shake­speare, who cer­tainly liked a good pop song and stuffed many of them into his plays. Poets were still of this earth, and liv­ing among us, rather than pur­su­ing the abstruse goals they have for the last cen­tury. They prop­erly expect­ed their vers­es to be bel­lowed by drunks stag­ger­ing out of tav­erns, stut­tered by ner­vous teenagers try­ing to get laid, and sweet­ly sung by women hang­ing out the wash. But it’s the anony­mous, straight-from-the-pubs-and-the-fields songs that have the strongest impact:

One time I gave thee a paper of pins
Anoth­er time a tawdry lace
And if thou wilt not grant me love
In truth I die before thy face.
Where­fore, cease, make no delay
And if you’ll love me, love me now
Or else I seek some oth­er way
For I can­not come every day to woo. 

In Eliz­a­bethan Eng­land, love obsessed even the hum­blest, and it struck like lightning:

I did but see her pass­ing by
And yet I love her till I die. 

The songs before the Eng­lish Civ­il War are almost all about love, in a back­ground of nature. Reli­gion creeps in with the Puri­tans, and War comes with it. Love songs nev­er van­ish, but by the 18 th cen­tury they com­pete with polit­i­cal satire, patri­o­tism, war songs, and cyn­i­cal obser­va­tions on social climb­ing and greed. The Eliz­a­bethans were cer­tainly no less vio­lent than their suc­ces­sors, but they appar­ently did not feel a need to sing about it.

Domes­tic love fig­ures as strong­ly as the pur­suit of poon­tang. Some of the sweet­est of the songs are lul­la­bies. Here is one cred­ited to Thomas Dekker, one of Shakespeare’s com­peti­tors ― which you will almost cer­tainly have heard with­out know­ing it:

Gold­en slum­bers, kiss your eye
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep, pret­ty wan­tons, do not cry 
― And I will sing a lullaby. 

It is, of course, sung near the end of the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road. . The Liv­er­pool Boys not only knew a good thing when they saw it, but they them­selves were far more the legit­i­mate heirs of Shakespeare’s tongue than most prize-win­ning poets.

I will no doubt be dip­ping into this book for years.