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Palace of Illusions by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a 2008 novel retelling the events of the Mahabharata* from the perspective of its central female character, Draupadi, who, in the novel, prefers her loconym, Panchaali. It feels like a YA/New Adult(ish) work designed to put a feminist spin on an intro to the Mahabharata, and it does that well. I think its target audience is young women of culturally Hindu descent. NB: as a middle-aged white woman, I am not the target audience.

I think this book’s greatest enemy is its length. Adapting one of the world’s longest epics in under 350 pages is not really doable. In this case, the first 100-plus pages read like a YA novel in which Panchaali is trying to find her place in the world. The rest mostly reads like a summary of the Mahabharata from Panchaali’s point of view. The novel loses a great deal of force in skimming over almost the whole story. But it also covers a lot of ground clearly, including some story beats I had never known before, so I’m grateful for that. Overall, for Mahabharata fans or newbies, it’s worth a read. It’s not mindblowing, but it stimulates thought about a venerable and massive philosophical work, and that’s very worthwhile.

Spoilers for the Mahabharata and the novel ( Read more... )

Lodore is a Romantic novel by Mary Shelley published in 1833. It concerns the fortunes and interpersonal relationships of the family of Lord Lodore, and is divided into three volumes, the first focusing on the life of Lodore himself; the second on his daughter, Ethel; and the third (I’d argue) on his wife, Cornelia, though Ethel is still important.

As a fan of Mary Shelley, I bought this book out of curiosity, thinking it might give me some insight into Mary’s post-Percy life. It does, but, to my pleasant surprise, I also found it utterly engrossing on its own merits. I would describe its main theme as the way that miscommunication, lack of communication, and personal bias can create huge, damaging rifts, and how a broadened perspective can sometimes rapidly mend them.

Now that I’ve oversold it, some caveats. The writing style is very old fashioned, definitely pre-Victorian. In addition to the older prose, it has a narrative technique that strongly prioritizes “telling” over “showing.” It may well have more paragraphs discoursing on people’s psyches than it has actual scenes of people doing and saying things. Often, it reads more like a modern fan essay on characters from a beloved story than the story itself. (But I like that kind of fan essay, so it worked for me!)

The writing style aside, the content has two signal strengths. 1) It is deeply psychologically insightful. 2) Despite what some critics have said, it is strongly feminist. It is, however, feminist in quiet, personal way. It depicts female characters as complex and fully human as the male characters. It often centers women’s experience and relationships with each other. It refuses to confine itself to the usual domain of the 19th-century “woman’s” novel: how the girl won the man (or died). It involves some of this, but it’s mostly concerned with people’s lives after marriage. It also does some incisive “showing” and “telling” about the disempowerment of women; it’s just not polemical about it. The point of the book is to examine human lives, and unfair trials loaded on women, in particular, are a piece of that. Make no mistake, though: this is truly a book by Mary Wollstonecraft’s daughter.

Lodore has been called Shelley’s most Jane Austen-like book, but, in truth, it makes me think more of Oscar Wilde. To be clear, Shelley and Wilde have utterly different styles: where Wilde is witty, Shelley is invariably earnest. (For a modern reader, however, there is some unintentional hilarity, like "A smile irradiated her face.”) But both Wilde and Shelley are concerned with the exacting and shallow expectations of “society” and how the superficiality of "reputation" can damage relationships and hollow out people’s better selves.

Light Spoilers Follow:( Read more... )

Better late than totally belated, here's my annual post. (Today was the first day of the teaching term and I almost forgot this in the hectic rush.) In the great crossover 'verse in my head, this one makes Frodo 97. Bilbo has passed away, but do that math if you want.

Out of sheer exhaustion, I'm posting an essay I wrote a couple of years ago for the degrowth master's program on the economy of the Shire and the need for a just economy to meet people's needs.

The Most Absurd Line in The Lord of the Rings
And How It Calls Us to Change Our Economy

When we think of the Tolkien’s marvelous metal, mithril, we might recall Bilbo’s mithril shirt saving Frodo from an Orc spear in Moria. Just as thematically important, however, is a scene shortly before this, in which Gandalf and Gimli discuss the value of mithril to the Dwarves who mined it. Gandalf says of Bilbo’s shirt, “I never told him, but its worth was greater than the value of the whole Shire and everything in it” (Tolkien, Fellowship 414).

This, I submit, is the most absurd statement in The Lord of the Rings. Read the rest at my Substack, but comments are very welcome here.

I previously posted this as part of a longer post, and then I lost it! I just spent 10 panicked minutes running through all my files looking for it. So I'm putting it here as a separate post. (Side note: the search on my Mac STILL isn't working, even after doing the whole update thing that basically made no-to-worse difference in my Mac's operation.)

Why Frodo Makes a Good Ringbearer

Frodo was shaped, I think, by having an intense trauma in his youth within the context of a loving, healthy, and secure family in a healthy, secure society. The trauma was his parents sudden death in a boating accident, compounded by his being an only child and the only Baggins in a sea of Brandybucks, which necessarily isolated him in his loss. However, it’s clear that his Brandybuck relations loved and accepted him, while the Shire itself is a stable society, well-balanced with nature, where even the poorest have food and shelter and the richest are not so rich as to be divided from daily interaction with the common people. Pre-War, there’s essentially no precarity, no real insecurity. And, of course, Frodo is then adopted by Bilbo, with whom he has a warm and close connection.

As a result of all this, he grows up to be a well-adjusted, mature person who is neither inflated in his sense of self nor self-flagellating, who is conscientious and compassionate, and who knows how to love and knows himself to be loved. And he also grows up at arm’s length from most hobbits (partly down to native introversion), slightly avoidant in his attachment patterns and agile in rapidly adjusting to having his whole world ripped out from under him (verging at times into a tendency toward hopelessness). I think the reasons he’s able to agree to exile himself from the Shire with the Ring within, like, a couple hours of talking to Gandalf are threefold: 1) his true conscientiousness and love for the Shire; 2) the agency of the Ring, which makes him inclined to stick with it; 3) that ability to rapidly accept radical loss, which he learned from the death of his parents; [EDIT: 4) He wanted to follow Bilbo! I can believe I felt this out]. I could go on, but I’ll stop and say, this is a nuanced, psychologically realistic representation of a Very Good Person.

I have written a modest Substack rant about ST:TNW showing MAGA-style thinking with its recurrent prioritization of in-group loyalty over other moral considerations.

I've saved my less polished rant on season 4, episode 4 for here (spoilers for the ep.):( Read more... )

I've been sorting through a box of mainly art supplies inherited from my dad. Conversation with Glenn:

Me: Do you want these dowels?

Him: Sure.

Me: Popsicle sticks?

Him: Okay.

Me: The giant safety pin? (Which I had showed him for interest's sake and he started to wander off with.)

Him: Mm hm.

Me: Should I just give you the whole box?

Him: Maybe.

(The safety pin about four inches long and almost one inch across. Why did my dad have that??)

I loved this season. It gave an enjoyable lead with Lestat and a lot of psychological and interpersonal content to delve into, stylishly executed. I’d love to hear what others think.

Spoilers for the series and book, The Vampire Lestat, and bits of other TVC( Read more... )

A bit belated, here's a repost of my Substack post extolling Vienna Teng:

I’ve been sinking into Vienna Teng’s song cycle, “We Got You,” and drawing daily strength from it. The cycle is made up of two core songs, “Spark” and “Comfort,” both centered on the theme “we got you.” In “Spark,” the words are used in the sense of “You inspire us. You are our ally.” In “Comfort,” the sense is “We’ll keep you from falling.” Together, the songs describe the two necessary faces of activism or any movement committed to transformation despite the risk: we need strength and we need refuge.

She, then, combines the two songs into one track, encapsulating the totality of this kind of struggle. I highly recommend listening to all three and, if you like them, buying them: Teng deeply deserves the financial recognition for what she’s given us.

(See the rest and links to videos of her songs on my Substack.)

“Who in the world cares for you? or who will be injured by what you do?”

Every once in a while I need to write an essay on T. E. Lawrence, and while this is not a good historical moment to write about a “white savior” figure associated with the Middle-East, fear not: I’m going to write about his mother. (Spoilers for Jane Eyre, oddly enough.)

I was recently rereading some information about T. E. L.’s background, and I realized I’d never fully appreciated that powerhouse who was his mother. I think in studies of T. E., Sarah Lawrence usually surfaces as the religiously strict, domineering parent who beat him rather mercilessly as a child and, thus, probably had a hand in his growing up to be so ascetic and concerned with overcoming pain. And all this may be true enough, but it’s an incomplete picture.

What struck me most in my recent reread was how alike mother and son were. T. E. himself remarked on this in a letter to Charlotte Shaw, who apparently said she didn’t see the (psychological) resemblance. They were both incredibly forceful people, bold, courageous, and committed to getting their way. They were also both highly conscientious and turned much of their forcefulness on themselves with exacting moral strictness, which they failed to live up to. Both must have carried a great deal of guilt and spent much of their lives in what might be described as penance.

One anecdote from Mack’s biography illustrates these characteristics in Sarah. When she was in her nineties, she broke her leg and insisted on getting in and out of her wheelchair unassisted, reportedly saying, “It’s good for me!” (p. 9). ( Read more... )

PSA: Someone is sending out phishing emails mimicking my Sonic email address. Please delete!

This is partly review, mostly idiosyncratic personal response. Disclaimers: I am a picky reader. My discontents often reflect more on me than the book. Summaries may contain very light spoilers.

Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie
Book’s quality: Good
My enjoyment: So-so
( Read more... )

Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb
Book’s quality: Quite good
My enjoyment: Good

( Read more... )

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Book’s quality: Quite good
My enjoyment: frustrated! Such a near miss.

( Read more... )

Hm, my attempt to embed this came through as a link. Well, if you feel inclined to click the link, you'll see photos and everything!

Does anyone know of an Etsy-like merchant (an online store that carries various products by various creators) that does not do business with Amazon shipping, i.e. that prohibits it?

I've been using Etsy, which I know has its own problems, as an alternative to Amazon and was slightly shocked to find one seller I bought from is using Amazon to ship my order.

I just now read of Michael Keating's death. Seventy-nine is not a shabby age, but I am saddened.

Hudson helps me exercise my back.

One thing I miss about Bluesky (and even indulging in Facebook) is sharing the occasional photo, so maybe I'll aim to do that on DW, even though DW makes it so dang hard relative to everywhere else.

Here are some more random thoughts up to roughly Helm's Deep: the Dealing with Mistakes Edition.

(LOTR spoilers, if anyone cares...)

Aragorn

Original (pre-Viggo) Aragon often gets described as too perfect, and I see why. I don't find him a super fascinating character either, but I had not clocked how protracted his inner struggle is over leading the fellowship after the fall of Gandalf. He has multiple iterations of the "we must do without hope" idea, which, in Tolkien's philosophy, is a clear sign you're not thinking properly. Admission: In an earlier entry on this, I unwittingly quoted Bakshi (facepalm)!

He recurrently talks about how his decisions as a leader have gone wrong--and he's not totally wrong about that. He fails to track what's going on with Boromir, fails to keep track of Frodo (and Sam). Interestingly, he loses Frodo and Sam, in part, because he decides to climb the Emyn Muil to check things out from its famous vantage point, and that's not a bad decision in itself, but it is explicitly driven, in part, by ego, by his desire to sit on the seat of kings, and that seems not accidental. Later, against Legolas's advice, he chooses to rest rather than keep chasing the Orcs, which may have quashed their chance of actually catching the Orcs.

That's a lot of struggle with fallibility, and it's fairly easy to miss because it's minor. It's minor because Aragorn operates from a place of good intention and time-tested knowledge and morals. This makes me think of karma as a seed that may or may not fall into fertile soil. Each of those little losses of hope or imperfect decisions would carry karma (in a Buddhist frame), but they don't fall into fertile soil because Aragorn has--to torture the metaphor--been consistently cleaning the shit so there's nothing for them to grow into.

Boromir( Read more... )

(I mentioned last post that East-Farthing folk tend to use "funny" instead of "queer," but this was apparently a fluke. Merry is back to calling things "queer" and so do people in Bree.)

I understand why Peter Jackson cut out the Tom Bombadil. In addition to all the singing, it's one of the most digressive parts of LOTR, as it focuses very little on anything to do with the Ring (not nothing, but little). I had forgotten that Tom not only bursts into song a lot but talks almost entirely in meter. It is interesting, though, that he drops out of meter in the paragraph where he's talking about how old he is/how he predates the coming of Morgoth.

I had also forgotten that when the hobbits are cavorting naked on the Barrow Downs, it's actually only three of them cavorting naked. Frodo never loses his clothes, which is handy for him--and possibly, in universe, the hand of God--because he could have lost the Ring right there. This means, however, he owes us a naked scene, which he will give us later on.

Accents

At Bree, the gatekeeper identifies Frodo as being from the Shire by the way he talks, which I take to mean his accent because there aren't any obvious dialectical markers in his words (that I see).

This raises a thorny problem for LOTR adaptation or just reading aloud: what on earth is one to do about all the accents that would logically exist? Traditionally, (ex. BBC radio) readings have gone for elevated RP unless the lines show non-standard dialect markers. That's how I grew up and is my happy place, but I admit it doesn't make sense, and the Bree line suggests it's not reflective of Tolkien's intent. Jackson did possibly as well as one could with this, having subtle alterations between more British and more American across different groups. But I do find it weird that there's more accent variation among three hobbit cousins than across the whole rest of Middle-earth. Elves, to date, seem to always come out elevated RP, and Rings of Power got slammed for this--unfairly, I think, as it's just doing what everyone else has done and clearly did put some thought into accents. But it's a fair point that Elves are speaking a foreign language when speaking the Common Tongue, so it might make sense to have them sound foreign, relative to English. All in all, I don't have the perfect answer and would love to hear others' views.

I've started rereading The Lord of the Rings for the first time at least ten years, and I thought I would note some stuff that is popping out to me this time around:

Sam is character we almost always see surrounded by his social "betters" and in his humble servant mode, which makes it really interesting to me that the first scene he's in shows him in conversation with this social equals in a more comfortable and outspoken mode. This immediately sets up how calibrated his behaviors are to his social context.

Frodo's first line is "Has he gone?" This sets up nicely the association of his character with loss.

People in Hobbiton tend to call things "queer"; people in the East Farthing tend to call things "funny," though they also use "queer." Merry calls things "funny"; he is a true Bucklander.

Frodo is really quite witty. Hobbits are, in general, and this isn't new news for me about Frodo, but it is striking me what a high percentage of his dialogue has some sort of wit or irony. I think this was largely lost in Jackson's script, which tends to go for terrified or generically nice.

(Reposted from my Substack)

I recently attended a Trinity Lecture Series lecture, "Knowing What We Don’t Know: Cultivating Intellectual Humility Through Imaginative Literature" with Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. It was a very good lecture by a Catholic for an audience assumed to be entirely Catholic. As an agnostic Buddhist, I was a cultural guest, and it was the first time in a long time I have been a guest in discourse community that assumes everyone is an insider. Such an experience is a gift, even—perhaps especially—when it causes discomfort. Moreover, it was an apt gift to receive in a lecture about cultivating humility and knowing what we don’t know. I tried to follow Professor Hooten Wilson’s (hereafter JHW) advice to listen openly and think deeply. Here are some of my impressions.

I am fully onboard with her advice to read a wide range of fiction with openness and, if those works don’t initially connect with us, to start with the thought, “Maybe I missed something.” I’m not great at that. I’m a judgmental reader of fiction, especially if it’s recent. So this is something I can and should strive to improve on.

A key aspect of her advice was to read texts widely known to be great works of high morality in order to cultivate “taste.” By developing a taste for such works, we can gravitate to them and increase our exposure to good role models and lessons, while decreasing the amount of time we spend engaging with harmful inputs. I agree with a lot of this. “Taste” is not the word I would personally use because, to me, “taste” is a relatively amoral word; it refers to entertainment (or food, etc.) that one enjoys regardless of one’s underlying morals. For example, one may have a “taste” for horror movies without thinking people should terrorize each other in real life. JHW, however, ties “taste” strongly to moral rectitude, which is lexically alien to me.

I agree, however, that morality is deeply entangled with fiction. I agree that what we like generally says something about our values—or at least this is true for me. I agree that this is important and deserves consideration. I might call it something different: discernment, judgment? I personally would leave a greater philosophical space for enjoying works without morally agreeing with them.

But I agree that surrounding oneself with beneficial inputs is beneficial. Reading great works helps the heart and mind in ways that reading trash doesn’t. I have certainly absorbed ill effects from works with some kind of “harmful” message. The most harmful to me personally has been the message that women have to have a romantic partner to be anything other than a failure. This was culturally louder in my formative years than it is now, and it followed me from Disney to Jane Austen to every pop fantasy novel to every Shakespearean comedy, and so on.

But this is tricky because harmful messages can be in great works that also have good messages. Pride and Prejudice is a good novel; Much Ado about Nothing is a good play. I’m glad I’ve read both. On balance, I agree with my parents (and I think JHW agrees too) that reading broadly is a decent way to sort through different kinds of messaging. I doubt that it’s possible not to get psychologically hurt (at least for someone, like myself, who absorbs a lot of life through literature), but it certainly is possible to cultivate a practice of reading works that are thoughtful, well crafted, and conscientious in their various ways.

Where JHW’s discourse threw me was not in its basic points about reading but in its (Catholic) stance on humanity. She opened by asserting that we (humans) tend to think only about our successes and see our lives as a continuous rise through accomplishments. I thought, what universe does she inhabit? I thought, my default perspective is better summed up by an interchange in the Monk movie, where Monk says something offensive, and a bystander says, “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?” And Monk says, “Yes, every day. All the time.” (Quote may not be exact.)( Read more... )

Happy Downfall of Sauron Day, Middle-earth denizens! I will be honest, this year it's a feat just to remember to post. I've had zero brain cells to spare for Middle-earth.

I usually get to spend March 25 in my hometown, which is usually lovely at this time of year, but this year, the dates were such that I spent all day driving from California back to Oregon (about 8 hours), so no commemorative hike. My town is still lovely, but it's really showing the effects of climate change this season. It looks more like May than March, the grass already quite dry and peas already out in full force. So that was depressing.

Not a bad thing but a very emotionally trying thing: my hopes to get our family property situated in some form that would protect it long-term, hopefully in concert with Indigenous people of the region blew up spectacularly. Basically, my mom (who is the owner) overrode it with another plan, and it will be okay. It's fine, but it's requiring a huge cognitive shift on my part after years of trying to figure out land-back. It has also been, by turns, embarrassing, humbling, disappointing, and contentious, which has left no mental space for Tolkien.

So if I have anything to say about LotR today, it may be that I feel a little bit like Frodo saying that the Shire has been saved but not for him. Except thanks to rabid necrophilic (just recently heard that adjective) imperialism driving climate collapse, I can't really say it's been saved, but it has been put in nearly as favorable a position as the necrophilic empire allows. But not for me, not as the home it once was. As with Frodo, it's still there, and I'm still welcome, and (unlike Frodo) I'll still be around, but I can't really go home again.

Well, as my mother put it today, "It would be nice if Sauron had actually fallen." We can only hope.