Philosophical Musings of a Book Nerd

I remember seeing this book at my friend's house years ago and borrowing it for a bit of a read. Mind you my friend is a bit of a booknerd like me, though these days our tastes in books have taken a bit (or a lot) of a divergence. The thing is that while he went on to study social work I went on to study an arts degree. The other thing is that I had an English teacher that would rile against what he considered to be airport trash, and books like those by [author:Stephen King], were basically off of his list. In fact I remember writing a play about a young adult named Brian Megadethhead who was ordered by a judge to either go back to school (and a Catholic school at that) or go to gaol – he decided to go back to school. Needless to say my English teacher wasn't all that impressed and spent the rest of the year decrying Megadeth as well as having a go at Stephen King novels, or whatever the current fad was at the time.

Mind you, whenever I am in an airport I do like to have a wander through the bookshop just to see what is actually sitting on the shelf and to see if there are actually any books that my teacher would actually approve, and while it has been years since I was in his class, and am not even sure if he is still teaching English, I still wonder whether [book:Life of Pi] would actually appear on his list of banned books, considering the last time I wondered through an airport bookshop that was the only book that I thought would be acceptable to him (though I suspect that Fifty Shades of Grey would). Anyway, most long haul international flights have a television in the back of the seat with more shows than one could even watch in a twelve hour period that the need to buy rubbish at airport bookshops is probably no longer necessary.

Anyway, on to this book, even though it has been quite a while since I have read it, but the fact that I have read it (albeit a long time ago) I feel that I should probably say a few things about it. Mind you, I should try to get my hands on it to read it again because it was, to put it bluntly, nothing short of awesome. Mind you, with all the other books out there, as well as the books on my shelf, reading this again might be a little lower on my list of priorities, though I'm sure if I see it in a bookshop I would probably buy it, and then proceed to read it again – that was how much I enjoyed it. In fact, I believe I have seen other books written by Tad Williams, and the name always rang a bell, it is just it wasn't until I looked this book up on Wikipedia as a bit of an aide de memoire that I suddenly connected him with this book.

So, Tailchaser's song is about a cat in the world where cats have a civilisation and communicate with each other. In fact they have their own mythology, and while humans exist, they tend to be these creatures that live in a mysterious world, a world that sometimes crosses with that of the cats, but not by much. In fact all of the animals have their own cultures and mythologies, it is just that the cats' world is the main focus of the book. The thing is that this book is about cats and about how these cats go on a quest and end up saving the world from a particularly evil and nasty cat, and honestly who doesn't love cats.

Well, cat haters of course, but then as they say haters are gonna hate. Mind you, there are people who are allergic to cats, so I can understand why they aren't particularly fond of them, but I have to admit that you got to love the rather eccentric nature of our feline companions, even though, as they say, dogs have masters and cats have staff. Actually, that is why my friend prefers cats over dogs – dogs tend to be dependent and incredibly clingy (I'm sure dog owners have discovered what happens when you bring a new dog home and then go to sleep only to be kept awake all night from howls of loneliness) while cats tend to be independent. Well, they are independent to an extent because when they want something (usually something to eat) you generally know about it. Unfortunately 'go catch a mouse' generally doesn't work.

The main reason that this book came to mind is because I started reading Duncton Wood, which I had picked up cheap from my Church's fate (though it turned out that I picked up books two, three, and four, but fortunately I found book one at a bookshop around the corner), which is similar, but about moles. The other interesting thing is that with these books everybody seems to make comments about the similarities between this book, Watership Down, and Lord of the Rings. The thing is that any book that happens to be a fantasy book is considered to be similar to Lord of the Rings, but that is not surprising because it is probably the most well known fantasy book out there. As for Watership Downs, I have to admit that I haven't read it yet, though I should make an effort to do so someday.

Oh, before I forget, apparently they will be releasing a movie based on this book in 2018 so I'm going to have to keep an eye out for it.

I recently reread this book with the purpose of rewriting this review, however instead I wrote a blog post instead.

This book is a collection of essays that explores some of the problems that arise from Shakespeare’s plays, though the conclusions of most of these essays tend to come down to the fact that there actually isn't a problem if only we understood the way the play was written and Shakespeare's original intention (and the fact that he is simply using poetic license). However, to me, this sounds like the authors seem to think that Shakespeare can do no wrong, and any problems that arise from his plays have more to do with our limited understanding than with any internal flaw. My response to this is simply that Shakespeare is human, albeit a very talented human, but still a human. In this review I won't so much comment on their essays but rather touch on some of the problems that appear to have arisen. The main reason for this is that it has been a while since I read this book, and with the bulk of books for me to read and to reread, unfortunately this book will not be one of them (though, obviously, I have since reread it).

The first topic is whether Henry V was a war criminal. This argument is flawed in so many ways that to even consider this is simply anachronistic. Look, in today's world, he mostly would be, but remember, he lived over 500 years ago at a time that England was still technically living in the Middle Ages. Many people do not attribute England's entry into the modern world until after the end of the Wars of the Roses. Further, we may label Henry V as a war criminal, but weren't all the other kings and generals the same at that time. While there was a basic understanding of the rule of law and of human rights, he did not have a Geneva convention, nor did we even have any rules for war until after the conclusion of the Thirty Years War. Anyway, remember that history is written by the winners, and in this particular period Henry V was the winner.

There is also a essay about the age of some of the characters, such as King Lear and Juliet. I actually wonder what the point and purpose of this essay is. Why should we concern ourselves with Lear's age or Juliet's youth. I suspect that Lear was probably quite old, and the character seems to play this out quite well. He has elements of depression (and I actually wanted to run a depression test over him to see if we could diagnose Lear as such). He also has elements of dementia, and spends most of the play wracked with insanity. As for Juliet, my immediate guess would be that she would be in her early to mid teens. The reason I say that is because that is the age where well heeled women would be married.

Then there is the essay on Hamlet, though from the title I am not sure whether they are referring to Hamlet as being stupid, or the ghost, however I would suggest that the stupidity is resting with Hamlet. This is actually a good aspect of the play to look at, and it is something that I have considered as well. In those days, though I suspect that the original Hamlet (Amleth) occured during a pre-christian period. However, it is clear that the play is set after Denmark became Christian, so the question is, why did Hamlet listen to the ghost despite Christian doctrine warning us away from such spiritual entities. My immediate response is simply that the ghost, demon or not, appeared to Hamlet as his father. Further, Hamlet doesn't immediately trust the ghost, and decides to test the truth of the Ghost's accusations. That is why he staged the play, and was also hesitant in killing Claudius. It is only when he overhear's Claudius confessing his sin that he knew that the ghost was telling the truth.

Finally, I will look at the question of whether Cleopatra was a dead-beat mum. I have just finished reading Antony and Cleopatra, and my immediate answer would be yes. As I suggested in my commentary on the play, Cleopatra seems to play the role of a serpent who wraps herself around Antony and tries to bring him into her power, to be her king and emperor, and to raise herself to the position of emperess of the world. tn was the battle between Ceaser and Antony outside Alexandria that set the course of the future empire, and it was Ceaser who won. I would not necessarily say that Cleopatra threw her lot in with the wrong person. No, Antony was maleable, and exposed to her wiry charms, and it seems that he defeat and failure was pretty much predestined.

Oh, an here is a pretty cool image I found on the internet last night:

One of the things that I have come to see that is a key ingredient of succeeding, not just in the modern world, but pretty much everywhere, is to be able to interact and socialise. The thing is that you could be one of the most brilliant minds out there but unless you are able to sell yourself, and your ideas, then unfortunately you probably aren't going to get anywhere. Sure, there are people out there who manage to get a 'lucky break' (and I believe Einstein was one of them) but the reality is that if you spend your life waiting for that break, you are probably never going to ever get it. In fact, you'll probably simply end up being little more than a footnote in history, though I have to admit that considering all of the people that have ever lived, more likely than not we are all going to be footnotes.

Anyway, the story is about a bureaucrat in the Russian Bureaucracy who is mid-ranking, but not so high up that he would be considered, or even welcomed into, the nobility (according to Wikipedia he is a titular counciler, which is rank 9 on the table of ranks). Looking at the tables it certainly seems that he isn't low ranking, but then again I would hardly call him high ranking either – it seems that he is at one of those ranks which provide a comfortable living, but not really have all that much infuence. The problem is that our hero is a bit of an anti-social character, but the doctor prescribes the solution of going to a party, however he ends up going to the wrong party, and after making an idiot of himself, gets kicked out. Actually, this almost sounds like the type of advise a clueless psychologist would offer.

This is where the bulk of the novel starts because on the way home he meets somebody who sort of looks like him, but is much younger, and much more dashing, than he is, to the point that everybody likes him, and our hero eventually goes insane and is dragged off to the mental asylum. This is the thing about new people, especially dashing and popular new people – they have the ability to take the attention away from us, and this has the effect of making us really, really jeolous. In fact I have known people who will work their way into the lives of new people, and either cosy up to them, or become a toxic leach, and they usually do this because, well, are are pretty insecure in and of themselves and are basically preventing themselves from having these dashing individuals come in and undermine their position (though of course their positions are generally all in their heads anyway).

It is interesting that Dostoyevski uses the idea of the double, or the Doppleganger, in this book, because the idea is that this person comes in and takes your place. This isn't the demonic creature, that basically kills you and then infiltrates your circle of friends, but rather a dark, rather human, aspect – it is the fear of becoming obsolete. In a way our protagonist sees a lot of himself in his double – maybe this is what he was like when he was much younger, but as he grows older, and his life begins to stagnate, this younger version of himself is coming into his life to take it away from him. Yet it is even more horrific when it seems that all of our friends are turning from us to this new person, yet we don't trust this new person – it is not that he is doing anything bad, it is just that our perception is that this person is dangerous, and we want everybody to see how dangerous this person actually is. The catch is that sometimes we might be right, otherwise we might be dead wrong.

Yet maybe it is just that psychological fear within us – is it the case that the older we get the more anti-social we become, or does it have more to do with the fact that the older we become, the more people we encounter that are not all that pleasant. In a way the more people that hurt us, the less trustworthy of people we become, and while it is all well and good to say that we should treat everybody like a blank slate, sometimes it isn't the easiest of things to do, especially if you are working in a position, such as a ticket inspector on public transport, that tends to bring out the worst in people. In fact, sometimes I wonder whether a ticket inspector would actually admit to people that they are ticket inspectors, or whether they just say that they work for the public transport authority in customer service?

Yet, it is one of those roles that seems to bring out the worst the people, that seems to attract the wrath and aggression of the community around you. Sure, that may also be the case with politicians, yet the thing is that they have this ability to be able to shield themselves from the world – the thing with most, if not all, politicians is that around half of the electorate didn't vote for them, and half of the electorate really doesn't like them. Is it also the case with police officers, but I'm sure there are countless numbers of occupations out there where all you tend to get is criticism as opposed to thanks and gratitude.

This, unfortunately, has its ability to wear one's character down, so no wonder our hero becomes ever more cynical and anti-social. In a way he is jealous of his double, namely because he does see himself in him, yet doesn't know how to break out of his own shell, and his own paranoia. In a way it is not that his double doesn't like him, or is trying to poison his world, but rather our hero is looking at him from the outside, wanting to be like him, to be accepted, but somehow failing immensely. Yet while we are watching the events unfold through the eyes of our hero, I can't help but think that maybe, just maybe, we are also in the position of the double – in the end it all comes down to attitude – the double succeeded because he didn't let the hero's hatred get to him, and simply got on with life, while the hero let his range and jealousy burn up inside of him until he snapped.

Sometimes I wonder whether the more authors a book has the worse it becomes. Actually, come to think of it, I struggle to actually think of any work of literature that has more than one author – it seems as if for a book to enter into the annals of greatness the book has to be written by a single author. To me this isn't actually all that surprising because artists tend to work alone. In fact, when one considers music the same seems to apply, considering Bohemian Rhapsody was allegedly written by a single person (though I was always under the assumption that Queen, a four piece band, actually wrote the song, but then again people seem to think that Freddy Mercury actually wrote the song, Queen just performed it).

Anyway, as you can probably tell, this book was written by three people, which makes me wonder how a book is actually written by three people – do they write a chapter a piece, or do they just write specific characters? In either case how is it that they actually put the book together – do they sit down and work it out around some really bad cups of coffee, or do they argue about it around some really bad glasses of wine, and then go away, write their own sections and let the editors work it out. Or is it that they simply draft the outline of the book and then let poor Larry Niven sit down and put it all together. Well, however they do it the final product really didn't turn out all that well.

So, the story is set on a planet orbiting Tau Ceti. The characters had just come out of a hundred year long sleep and are now setting up for a new world on what appears to be a paradise. Unfortunately there was a problem with the hibernation pods and apparently everybody has emerged from deep sleep somewhat stupider. Mind you, if we are talking about the best and the brightest, maybe it is simply the fact that the one thing that they lack is common sense – this seems to always be the case when you put a bunch of academics together, the one thing that they all seem to lack is common sense. Anyway, they land on this world and in their mind it is a paradise, and after a number of surveys they believe that there isn't actually anything hostile on this world, that is until a nasty monster comes along and starts ripping everything apart. However, they don't actually believe that it was a monster, but some guy who is sulking over the fact that nobody believes that there is anything hostile on the island – that doesn't sound as if the hibernation pods had busted, that just sounds like your typical bunch of human beings who want to live with their heads in the sand – climate change anybody?

Anyway, they eventually realise that these creatures exist after one of them almost completely destroys the camp, so they decide to go out and hunt the rest of them down and kill them. Well, that turns out to be a particularly smart idea because it also turns out that these creatures have a natural way of keeping their population down – they eat their young. In fact, it turns out that they are like frogs – as babies they start off as fish, but when they mature they turn into these monsters – so, the mature creatures basically eat the babies, which keeps the population down. However, now that they have basically gone out and killed all the mature ones there is nothing keeping the population down, so they pretty quickly discover that the whole island is swarming with monsters. Mind you, the other catch was that they only eat their young if there is nothing else to eat, so when the colonists arrive with all their live stock, all of a sudden they have something else to eat.

As I mentioned, this book was rather dull and boring, and in fact is the first part of a trilogy. Sure, it did do well to explore how humans have this nasty habit of completely ruining an eco-system with their introduced species. For instance, the landed gentry introduced foxes into Australia simply so they might have something to hunt, and not surprisingly they have gone and run havoc across the environment. Mind you, the farmers then get criticised by the likes of PETA when they try to cull the foxes due to them causing issues with their live stock. Then again, I do see where they're coming from because technically humans are an introduced species, and a pest, but we don't go around culling ourselves.

Mind you, the other interesting thing is that we all know that the colony is going to survive, but then again this novel does play out like a movie, and unless the creators are really clever, we never actually have the protagonists lose. Okay, they have to adjust the way the colony works, namely that every man gets to have two wives (namely because half of the male population was wiped out when they went to war against the monsters – they called them Grendels after the monster from Beowulf), however the colony does manage to survive. The other interesting thing is that the planet is ten light years from Earth, and they took a hundred years to get there from Earth, and they are talking about advertising for new colonists. Well, they didn't think that through all that much because first of all it is a twenty year round trip for any communication, and even if another colony ship was sent out, it would take a hundred years for them to arrive, and that doesn't take into account humans developing new technology. Mind you, as yet I don't know of any book where the colonists arrive at a planet after travelling for a hundred years only to discover that while they were asleep humanity has invented the FTL drive and the planet has already been colonised.

Hot on the tails of the rabid success of Alice in Wonderland comes the similar, but somewhat different, sequel. The absurdity of this volume is of the same scope as the original, but in many cases, being a sequel, it seems to lack some of the uniqueness of the original. One thing I noticed with regards to the original is that there simply did not seem to be any plot. Thus, the absurdity of the entire volume was complete. There was no reason for Alice to be there, and no goal that she had to reach, and the end simply comes all of a sudden.

However, come the sequel, we have a plot and a quest. Initially Alice simply wants to see what is on the other side of the looking glass, and sure enough, she enters a world that is similar, but different, to our own. In a way it is a world of opposites, so when she is thirsty she is given a biscuit (when what she really should have asked for is a biscuit, because more likely than not, she would have been given a drink).

The story is based around a game of chess, and there are numerous metaphors in relation to the chess board. For instance the journey across the third square (Alice is a pawn so she starts on the second square) is by train which represents the pawns ability to jump the third square. The queen moves at a rapid pace, which is representative of the queens ability to move as far as she likes, and the knight stumbles, representative if the rather odd way that the knight moves.

As for the quest, well, as soon as Alice meets the queen she decides that she wants to be a queen, so the queen tells Alice that she must move to the other side of the chess board, and in doing so, she will become a queen (which is a rule in the game of chess). Some have said that the story itself was written by Carol when he was teaching Alice Liddle how to play chess, though I must say that I did not learn all that much about the game of chess in this book.

It is interesting how some of the characters from this story make their way into the other story in the more main stream productions (though I am not talking about the Tim Burton movie here). For instance Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum seem to appear in the Alice in Wonderland story in the films when in fact they appear in this book. It is also noticeable (and something that I did not realise until I read this) was that the poem Jabberwock appears in this book. I always believed that Jabberwock was a poem that Carol had written separately from this book. By the way, this is what a Jabberwocky looks like:

I quite like the pictures that Carol put in the book, and some of them seem to be quite absurd in themselves. For instance there is a scene on the train when the ticket inspector comes along and asks Alice for her ticket (and I have found myself on the wrong side of a ticket inspector, as we probably all have, though I will also have an aversion towards the ones on the trains in Italy). However, it was quite bizarre how he seemed to always look at her through a pair binoculars, like this:

The ending was pretty cool as well, because the story ends with her shaking the red queen and suddenly waking up from her dream world and realising that she was doing this:

Oh, and look at who also makes an appearance in the story:

Not that Humpty actually first appears here. He was no an invention by Carol, but actually had been around in his own nursery rhyme a long time before hand (though according to Wikipedia the first appearance was in a book of nursery rhymes published in 1870, two years before Through the Looking Glass).

Reading this play I got the impression that it was basically about a group of people sitting in a house talking about philosophy and pining for the good old days. As I have mentioned before, reading plays, especially if I have not seen them performed, can be a difficult task at best, and sometimes I have to read some two of three times to be able to follow them (though some of them I need to read only once – however Chekov does not fall into that category). Anyway, when I read the synopsis and theme on Wikipedia, I discovered that it was about a bunch of people in a house talking philosophy and pining about the good old days – oh and three of those people where sisters, which is why it is call The Three Sister (eh duh).

Anyway, I want to focus on three quotes from the play and write about what those quotes mean to me.

ANDREI: And you can sit in some huge restaurant in Moscow without knowing anyone, and no one knowing you; yet somehow you don't feel you don't belong there. Whereas here you know everybody, and everybody knows you, and yet you don't feel you belong here; you feel you don't belong at all. You're lonely and feel like a stranger.

The sisters actually grew up in Moscow and moved out to the country when they were young and through out the play they are pining for a return to Moscow (which never happens). I can very much relate to them because I personally understand the quote above. I grew up in Adelaide which, with a population of around 1.2 million people, is technically a city, but even then it has the attitude of a small country town. Basically you cannot wonder around Adelaide without running into people that you know.

It is okay if you are a friendly, personable person who has not made a huge amount of enemies, but having lived a rather wild life, that was not the case for me. As such in my last few years in Adelaide I found myself forever ducking and weaving, trying to avoid people that I did not want to run into. However, it is also like what Andrei says about – living in Adelaide was like sitting in a restaurant where you know everybody, and everybody knows you, and you feel as if you do not belong.

Then I moved to Melbourne. I may not have the best job in Melbourne, but at least it is not Adelaide. In a way, it is better to have a sucky job (at least in my opinion) and live in Melbourne, than to have a sucky job and live in Adelaide. Once again, as Andrei says, living in Melbourne is like sitting in a restaurant where you know nobody and nobody knows you, yet you feel as if you belong. Further, I am not ducking and weaving, hoping that I will not run into somebody that I don't want to run into. Mind you, getting the Adelaide mindset out of my mind still will take time, and I have made a few blunders while I am hear as well, but I still feel as if I can walk down the road with my head held high.

TUTZNBACH: All right then. After we're dead, people will fly around in balloons, the cut of their coats will be different, the sixth sense will be discovered and possibly even developed and used for all I know. But, I believe life itself will remain the same; it will still be difficult and full of mystery and full of happiness. And in a thousand years' time people will still be sighing and complaining “how hard this business of living is!” And they'll still be scared of death and unwilling to die just as they are now.

Here they are talking about the future and what the future may bring, and their discussion seems to be very insightful, at least what Tutznbach says. I look at the world around me and say that what Chekov said through Tutzenbach is right. Indeed technology has made things easier, and the cultural attitudes may have changed, but people still find life difficult and happiness fleeting. However, the interesting thing about happiness is that economists try to measure it, and they believe that happiness comes through owning stuff.

However that is not the case. I have lived in a big house, owned my dream car, and had stuff, but it did not make me happy. I even had a bucket load of friends, yet even with all of these friends I still felt very much alone. It is funny because now I don't own a car, live in a room in a share house (with some pretty good housemates), and don't really own lots of stuff, and while I have friends, I can't say it is the same as it was before, yet I don't feel alone and I can say that I am happy. I don't know what this move to Melbourne has done for me, because I can even walk into a sucky job with a smile on my face, and I am still trying to make my mind up whether I want to shoot for a higher paying, more intellectually stimulating job, or simply use this job as a way to have a steady income while saving my intellectual abilities for my hobbies outside of work.

I used to know a thing or two twenty-five years ago, but now I don't remember anything. Not a thing! Perhaps I'm not a man at all, but I just imagine that I've got hands and feet and a head. Perhaps I don't exist at all, and I only imagine that I'm walking around and eating and sleeping.

This seems to be the most existantialist statement that I have read so far in one of Chekov's plays. It seems as if the speaker of these words has grown old and lost touch with his identity. In a way it seems to be reflective of our society, as we discard the traditions of the past and move into a post-modern present where traditions are defined by individual preference. It seems as if we, as a people, have lost our identity, and as if our concept of culture is really only imaginary.

In fact the whole idea of our culture seems to be imaginary. Music and art seem to only exist for one purpose, and that is for making money. Art these days seems to evolve around advertising and marketing, as does music. Films are produced not on literary merit but on whether the return will outweigh the production costs. Our society, in a sense, is based entirely around consumerism, and any culture that seems to exist is not culture at all, but a farce. Even sport, with athletes earning millions of dollars, have seemed to have lost its cultural significance to simply only exist as a means to keep the population distracted.

The thing that really struck me with this book was how annoying it would have been traveling in Europe back in the late 80s and early 90s (or even earlier). Okay, automatic teller machines were starting to appear, but it wasn’t like now where you basically had a common currency over much of the continent, nor do you have to load yourself up with traveler's cheques to make the journey. In fact I have never seen a traveler’s cheque in my life. Sure, I have heard of them, especially the famous American Express ad:

‘Mr Wong, Mr Wong, I’ve lost all my traveler’s cheques’;

‘oh, what kind where they’.

All I can say is that I felt sorry for anybody with the name Wong in the telephone book because no doubt they would gets lots of prank phones calls, and you pretty much work that out when you are the one making the prank phone call and the response is ‘and f**k you too!’. But seriously (yes, I was young once), when I first decided to leave the country and explore the world it was 2011, which meant that we had smart phones and google maps, it was nowhere near as frustrating, and I certainly wasn’t wandering around blind. Okay, on my first trip I didn’t have any internet access, so I was reliant upon a road map when we were driving, tourist maps when we were in a city, and basically stumbling around with my eyes bulging out at seeing Venice in the flesh.

The thing about travel is that it is addictive, and a book about traveling around Europe brings out the part of me that wants to say ‘stuff this, I’m out of here’. In fact I did do that once, and jumped on a plane to London simply to go and watch a live performance of Les Miserable (I had just seen the film, and staring at the poster while wandering through the London Underground just made me want to see it all the more). Fortunately that second, and third, time I did work out that the best way to deal with the internet problem is to buy simcards over there, and I have to admit that Vodafone turned out to be a life saver – namely because I ended up buying one in the Netherlands and using it for the next three weeks as I wandered around Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Pas de Calais.

However, it must have been a pain in the neck having to change currencies every time you crossed the border, though my understanding was that traveler’s cheques solved that problem by being accepted wherever you go – though I suspect that you later had to cash them at a Bureau de Change, and then change currencies whenever you went into another country. Mind you, crossing from France to Switzerland, Germany to Czechia (Czech Republic), and France to England proved headaches enough, especially in Czechia where it was impossible to actually work out what the value of the money actually was. In Hong Kong I simply divided the price by 10, in the Eurozone I multiplied it by three quarters (or just hazarded a guess) and in England I basically doubled the price.

Another really interesting aspect to this book is when it was written. Apparently when Bryson went backpacking with his friend in the early seventies he was able to pass into the Eastern bloc, namely Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Mind you the stories that he tells of his experience in Sofia makes you wish you were young, American, and backpacking through the Eastern Bloc in the Early Seventies. However things had changed, and Bryson was pretty fortunate that he was able to go there when he did because within a couple of years Yugoslavia would explode into a massive war. As for Bulgaria, he got to witness the breadlines first hand, though his comment about walking into his hotel and having a full buffet available is rather interesting. In fact it is also noticeable that it appears that only foreigners were even allowed in the hotel. As he said, it is surprising that he simply wasn’t mugged because it was pretty obvious that he was American, and quite a wealthy one at that (he followed in his father’s footsteps and became an editor in a London newspaper).

I could write a lot more on this book, namely sharing my experiences in 2011 with Bryson’s in 1991, however I think I will leave that for my blog (which you can find the link here). Mind you, if you are interested in reading about my travels there is always my travel blog, and one of the main reasons that I went to Europe in 2016 was to actually have something to write about that didn’t involve suburbs in Australian cities. However, one thing that I should mention before I sign off, is how Bryson mentioned that with the collapse of Communism, tourism was only going to get worse – however it wasn’t something I noticed. In fact I suspect that what it has done is not so much brought more tourists from the Eastern Bloc – they still happen to be quite poor compared to the rest of Europe, but it has actually opened Eastern Europe to tourism.

I must say that I find these French plays to be a little difficult to follow at times namely because of the way the scenes are set up. It seems that each of the scenes have only specific characters in them and when one of the characters leaves (or a new one arrives) then suddenly the scene ends and a new one begins. They are not like Shakespeare where the scenes are location specific, and the way that Shakespeare constructs his scenes and his plays I find much easier to follow. However, when my internet is working better (I seem to be having problems with it on my laptop though I suspect that it may be the operating system as opposed to the internet connection itself) I will try to watch some of the Moliere plays on Youtube (they are available on Youtube). The other thing I was thinking of was getting a dongle, but that is not necessary at the moment (and I pay for the internet anyway).

This play seems to be quite similar to Tartuffe, and apparently it was not as popular as the previous play. In fact, from the introduction, I get the impression that the play actually flopped (if it was possible for a play to flop, but I guess it is when it has a very limited shelf life, though some plays have limited shelf lives because the actors have other projects that they want to go onto, though some plays, like the ones that have run for 20+ years in the West End probably cycle through actors). The difference here is that we have a philosopher in the house as opposed to a religious zealot (for want of a better word) though we have the standard woman who wants to marry her crush, but that marriage isn't allowed to happen because she is supposed to marry somebody else, however it turns out that the somebody else was a fraud so she ends up marrying the guy she wanted to marry in the first place. Plays like these (and there are a number in the Moliere collection) makes me wonder if there was such a thing as romantic love during the 17th century. I was always under the impression that arranged marriages were generally the way things went, though it seems that in Moliere most of the characters tend to be members of the middle class (who were the bulk of the theatre goers namely because the aristocracy was small, and the lower classes were uneducated).

When I speak about romantic love I am speaking about choice in getting married. These days there seems, at least in our culture, a fair amount of choice in who we get to marry. I find it a little daunting though, especially since I was the guy that either chased the wrong women, or was too gutless to actually ask any of them out. That is changing a bit though, and I guess I am learning to let people go at times. However, I thought that this was a recent phenomena, especially with the development of the car which enabled people to travel greater distances (up until then they were generally stuck where they were born). However, I suspect that one of the reasons for this belief was because prior to the development of the car (or even the railway) you were generally trapped in your own small town, and the person that you ended up marrying you had known for quite a while (namely most of your life).

This play, however, is set in the city, among the middle classes, where you would meet people at university and other functions. If you were a member of the nobility then I suspect that you had little choice in who you were going to marry, though I do notice that most of Shakespeare's plays involve nobility, and there is a lot of romantic love there as well. However, the key with most of Moliere's plays is the idea that one can chose who they are going to marry, but that choice is being taken away from them so they must come up with a plan to get out of it. In the Would-Be Gentleman, the antagonist is made to believe that he is being given a knighthood in Turkey, while here they make it appear that the family has become bankrupt. As such, romantic love triumphs.

However, for the play to appeal, there must have been at least some choice in marriage. Look, even today there is still some restrictions, and there are still cultures were arranged marriages are the norm. However, we all hear, and still see on television, shows were a marriage cannot go ahead unless the parents approve of it, and if the parents don't approve of it, then the marriage is going to be difficult at best. Of course, these movies run on the principle that the father is the one objecting to the marriage, and in the end comes across as a buffoon. Still, as in Moliere's day, and as it is today in our performances, romantic love always triumphs.

In a way I’m not entirely sure how I should approach this book, particularly since I generally don’t review short story collections as a whole but rather each story on its merits. Mind you, that is probably going to cause a little bit of a problem when I get around to reading the Collected Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, particularly since I can’t do The Raven the injustice of lumping it together with a bunch of other stories. Then there is At the Mountains of Madness, though it has been a while since I have read anything by Lovecraft, and even then it was only one story, ironically ‘At the Mountains of Madness’. However, I will get around to writing about them when I finally get around to reading the books (and I might read them a short story at a time, as I did with a collections of stories by Joseph Conrad).

However, the problem with Sherlock Holmes is that it is, in a way, the lack of variety in the stories. That doesn’t necessarily mean that the stories themselves are bad, it is just that pretty much, with the exception of the content, all of the stories end up being of a similar structure. In fact the novels also followed this structure as well, namely: Holmes is confronted with a problem (which takes up the first part of the story), Holmes wanders about and works it out, Holmes then spends the rest of the story explaining what happened. As it turned out this formula worked out really well, if the five collection of short stories, and four novels, are anything to go by.

It’s not as if these stories are unoriginal either – a lot of mystery novels that I have read basically all deal with murders, and in a way it starts to become a little dull and dry. However, while people do die in a Sherlock Holmes story, and of course you have the occasional one where the eventual victim hires Holmes due to some mystery, murder isn’t always the case. In fact, you have ones that involve missing objects, or objects that have been discovered and Holmes is attempting to locate the owner. We have another one that involves a child of a previous marriage that the mother is trying to keep a secret, or a naval treaty that has become the centerpiece of a mystery. In fact it is not the crime that is important, it is the mystery, as in some cases it turns out that no crime has actually been committed.

I guess that is one aspect of our human nature – we love mysteries. In fact not knowing is far more exciting than actually discovering the answer, because once we know the answer all of a sudden it ceases to be a mystery and the revelation turns out to be really boring. Mind you, it isn’t as if the revelation is boring, it is just that knowing the answer is boring. It is sort of like hunting, or even courting a future wife – it isn’t the success that is exciting, it is the journey to reach that point. Sure, not all journeys are thrilling – being stuck in economy class traveling from Singapore to Frankfurt (which takes something like 12 hours) isn’t at all exciting, especially if you have somebody behind you kicking your seat (something that fortunately I didn’t have to experience), or the guy in front of you lying his seat back as far is possible and leaving it there for the entire journey meaning that I can’t use my laptop (and that is after having the previous occupant kicked out of the seat because ‘he must has a window seat’, though as it usually turns out, the previous occupant is usually moved to business class as compensation for the inconvenience – something that has happened to me).

One interesting thing is that it seems to be apparent that Doyle was attempting to wind up his Holmes stories – why else would he finish the final story by having Holmes thrown off the top of a waterfall. Personally, I’m probably not surprised because while people may have enjoyed the stories, Doyle might have been having a lot of trouble coming up with new stories – writers block if you will. Otherwise, it simply might have been that he had become somewhat bored with the character and wanted to move on. The problem is that once somebody creates something that is beloved by the community, then it can be pretty hard to put it behind you. In a way it is the curse of the celebrity status – once you have become a celebrity you are no longer your own person – you are now what the media, and the fans, make you out to be, and if it turns out that you break this mould, then you run the risk of losing that status all together – while it is painful, it is also incredibly addictive. One simply cannot stop being a celebrity.

Look, I am going to give this book a good rating, not because I actually enjoyed it or was drawn into it, but more because it gives us an insight into the colonial world from the eyes of the people being colonised. This book is set in Nigeria, and is written by a native Nigerian in English (which by the way is his second tongue, though he is also a professor at Brown University). However, one sort of wonders if this example of post-colonial literature is designed to criticise the colonists or the world that is being colonised.

There is a concept, I believe first coined by Rudyard Kipling, called 'White Man's burden'. This is the idea that the European civilisation has been given the job of taking their civilisation out to the world and raising the non-European races out of barbarity. However, one sort of questions whether this burden, as it is coined, was really the intention of the colonisers, or simply propaganda that was spoken by the imperial overlords. I am inclined to lean towards the second interpretation.

The reason that I say this is because if we take one case study, that of the Australian aboriginals, we see that white man's burden never actually lifted them out of poverty, and it was not for lack of trying. In fact, the attempts to civilise the aboriginals had almost the opposite effect than was intended. Granted, there is a very small group of aboriginals in our society that have successfully integrated into our culture, but there are still many that haven't. While it is possible to wonder around an Australian city and not actually see aboriginal tribes camping in the city parks, I assure that they are there (and I caution anybody against approaching them 'just to have a look').

What we see in this book though is a view from inside the culture that is being colonised, and like the aboriginals, it does not work. However, the book is divided into two parts, the first part involves the social collapse of the indigenous culture from within due to its own contradictions, and the second part involves the destruction of the lifestyle and the culture as the imperialists (in the form of missionaries) force their gospel of European Economic prosperity upon them.

In many ways we like to criticise the imperialists for destroying the natural cultures of the indigenous people, however sometimes it is necessary. There are many aspects of our culture that we take fore-granted, and there are many aspects which are truly barbaric that we simply want to step back and say, 'but that is their culture'. Take the aboriginal act of spearing somebody through the leg for punishment. What is it supposed to do other than cripple the person. Is it supposed to be a deterrent? Well, like most deterrents, it does not work. The death penalty is a deterrent against drug smuggling in Singapore and Bali, but it does not seem to stop people smuggling drugs, or killing people in the United States. What about cutting off the right hand of a thief in some cultures (the right hand being the hand you eat with and the left hand being the hand you wipe your butt with), is that a deterrent, or simply a punishment that literally prevents the person from ever being able to integrate back into society again. We all make mistakes, and one of the good things about our society is that punishment does actually allow people to return and become productive members of society (as has happened with myself).

Then there are the missionaries, not that I actually have anything against missionaries. Many have suggested though that missionaries are the first wave of colonisation. This means that when the missionaries arrive you can be sure that the merchants, then the army, and finally the colonisers, are close behind. However, I am doubtful that many missionaries, both then and now, ever considered themselves to be the first of a wave of colonists. There are many historical missionaries that actually went out to do what they believe (and I believe) is a good thing. I do not believe it is wrong to offer somebody an alternative to their religion, especially if their religion keeps them living in fear and oppression. However, it is clear, historically, that more scrupulous people have used missionaries as the vanguard for colonial efforts, and when the missionaries were expelled from China, I guess that was one of the reasons for doing so.

The title of the novel is about the destruction of the traditional life of the village. To us it is about change, where as to them it is their world that they have lived in for thousands of years being destroyed. Colonialism was always going to happen, and I do not believe that we should not give tribal people the opportunity to experience a new way of life, however I do not believe that we have the right to roll out a monoculture across the world. One thing us Europeans, especially us Christian Europeans, forget is that Christianity was never meant to create a monoculture, but rather it is our stubbornness, and refusal to look outside the narrow box that we surround our lives with our own misguided sense of what is right and what is wrong.

I was originally going to read this book when I was in Paris, however I had only just finished reading a collection of Satre's plays and there were a couple of other books that had caught my attention beforehand (such as [author:Hemmingway]), so I decided to put it down for a while. Mind you, considering that it is set in a seaside town that is fictional, though technically supposed to be La Havre, I could have read it when I was in Rouen, though of course I didn't know anything about the book until I actually started reading it. Anyway, since I have no idea when I will get back to France (particularly La Havre as there is supposed to be an Impressionist Museum there which happened to have the famous Renoir paintings on display in an exhibition, which meant they weren't in the D'Orsay when I was there), I decided that I should read it sooner rather than later.

Well, I have to admit that I am glad I did because this book is nothing short of awesome, even if it is somewhat hard to follow up times. Mind you, I would start praising Satre's writing style but that would probably make me look like a complete idiot because the version that I read was in English and Satre wrote in French, and my French is simply not at a level where I can actually read a novel, let alone determine whether the writing is any good (my German isn't that good either, but at least I can read a Tintin book, though I usually only get past the first couple of pages before I put it down and go and start doing something else, though reading a Tintin book in German is sort of cheating since I am quite familiar with the books anyway).

I probably should start talking about the book as opposed to rabbiting on about anything but the book, but then again I am one of those people that does get distracted quite often, and I do sort of write stream of consciousness style, in the sense that I simply dump onto the word processor the first thing that comes to mind as opposed to actually planning out my review in the way that I would do an essay. Well, this book is stream of consciousness, but it does not necessarily mean that Satre didn't plan it, namely because writing stream of consciousness doesn't necessarily mean that the story wasn't planned, but rather it is writing in a style as if we were looking directly into the mind of the author. Actually, Nausea (or La Nausée as it is in French) is written as a diary of the protagonist who basically puts his thoughts down on paper as he basically drifts through life, and drift he certainly seems to do.

Nausea is about an historian named Antoine who basically is trying to come to terms with who he is. He is financially secure, which means that he doesn't have to work, and basically spends his time researching and writing about an obscure French politician. He is also a bit of a loner, though he does interact with the Autodidact, who is basically reading every book in the library in alphabetical order (something which I probably wouldn't do, not so much reading every book in the library, but reading them in Alphabetical order, though I would probably skip books like Fifty Shades of Grey and the sequels). There are also a couple of other characters in the book, including Antoine's long lost love Anny, whom he tries to get back in touch with only to discover that she has moved on.

Funny thing this, and I guess it goes to show the type of person that he is, clinging onto a past that has long gone. This does happen, especially when one is a loner, that the only people that we know are the people that we have known, so when we decide to start looking for love the loner always looks backwards to the people that he (or she) has known as opposed to the people that he (or she) will know. Then again I guess this is the nature of the future – it is a big unknown, whereas the past is a known, and as such when we look back into the past we only encounter people that we have known, and people that we have known tend to be more comforting because there are no nasty surprises, where as people that we do not know, though we might have met them, are a blank slate, which means the potential for some really nasty surprises.

Yet, as Antoine has discovered, things are not static – they change, as is the case with Anny. She has moved on and simply doesn't want to go back, where as Antoine simply wants to cling to a past that has now long gone. I guess this is why he is an historian since he does not want to let go of the past. However, does that mean that Ford was correct when he said that 'history is bunk'? I don't think so – there are two ways to approaching history: the academic way and the conservative way. The academic seeks to learn from the past to be able to understand why things are the way they are, and to look for patterns to assist us in ascertaining the future. This is the same with the stock market analyst – they analyse historical data in an attempt to look for patterns which might make them, and their client's, money. Then we have the conservative view that doesn't look at the past academically, but rather looks at the past as a form of comfort – in a way the past comforts them because it is familiar, while the future is a vast unknown, and thus the conservative wishes to cling to the familiar rather than take the risk for entering the unknown, which is why, in many cases, we have this war against the future. Then again, it really isn't the immigrants that are taking our jobs, they are just taking the jobs that we really don't want to do – no, the robots are taking our jobs.

Finally, there is the question of existence and identity, but then again this is one of the core ideas of existentialism – who we are. Mind you, this type of query has been going on since time immemorial (or at least as far back as people discovered that they had time to sit down and think about thinking as opposed to working in the fields tilling crops and going out into the forest to hunt animals), even before Decartes famously said je pense, donc je suis (I think, therefore I am). However, what is coming out of this book is the suggestion that our identity, our existence, is defined by our environment. This is evident as Antoine comes to realise that the inanimate objects around him are beginning to define his existence, which is starting to make him sick – ergo the title of the book.

Yet isn't it true that in our modern society we are defined by our job, our house, our upbringing, even the phone that we have: oh, you have a Samsug that is three years old, well I'm better because I have a new one (says the cocky individual before the phone blows up). I guess it is one of the reasons why BMWs are suddenly becoming so popular, and why the urban sprawl is pretty much destroying Australia's market gardens – we need to have an identity and that identity comes from the house you live in and the car you drive. In fact it has even been suggested that some people have had their job applications rejected based upon the suburb in which they live.

Okay, that is a very materialistic look at the book because there is a much more philosophical look as well, and that is our environment. Sure, there is our definition based on our phone and our car, but there is also the definition based on our family, where we grow up, the language that we speak, and the people whom we associate with – many of these things we have no control over. For instance my Dad was an electronic engineer when has resulted in me having a much stronger affinity with computers than the guy next door whose dad is a motor mechanic. Mind you, I ended up doing and arts/law degree, but a lot of that had to do with the post-modern idea of defining ourselves as opposed to letting the world define us. This, in a way, works because there are a lot of toxic people out there who try to define who we are against our will, however there are other aspects to our environment, to our definition, and to our existence, that we should embrace.

In the end embrace that which is good about us and reject that toxic individual who scorns you because you vote for a different political party, don't own a car, and tries to provide an explanation to your life out of their own ignorance, but rather accept those who accept you for who you are, and seek to let the past be the past and see the future as an exciting adventure that needs to be lived as opposed to a terrifying unknown that needs to be stopped. If anything, the one thing about our coming robot overlords is that they aren't going to discriminate.

As I was reading this a part of me felt that maybe this would have worked better as a television show, or even a Youtube video made by some train enthusiast, but then again considering that this book was written in 1978, and that Youtube didn't exist at the time, then maybe the book format was the best that was available. Though you did have the BBC, and I am sure there would have been similar shows on the BBC at the time. I remember a show called the Curiosity Show, which was a sciencey show that was aimed at kids. I have to admit that I loved it, and science in general, even though the German exchange student whipped us when it came to the let's see how pure we can get the water experiment – hers looked as if it was drinkable (though nobody was game enough to try it out).

Anyway, this isn't a general kid's science book, but rather a very specific book targeted at trains. In fact the title 'young engineer' should give you a pretty big clue that the purpose of this book is to allow train enthusiasts, or at least the children of train enthusiasts (or train enthusiasts who happen to be children) an idea of how trains work. Mind you, I have been to a fair few train museums, namely because my brother loves trains, and even visited some workshops in Queensland where they are restoring the old steam trains that used to plough the railways (and one of the huge trains we saw inside even appeared in this book).

Mind you, this book is showing its age because we have the author fully talking up the APT (Advanced Passenger Train) which ended up becoming a complete and utter flop, but that probably has a lot more to do with government interference than the concept not actually working. In fact one of the best ways to completely foul up a perfectly reasonable project is to get the government involved, which is the case with Australia's NBN where the shortcuts that are now being taken have turned it into an incredibly expensive white elephant, however to cover up their complete screwup they have the AFP raid the offices of the opposition communications spokesperson. Gee, I'm going off on lots of tangents with this book.

It is also quite interesting seeing some of the world records, which have since been broken. Well, not truly because the land speed record for a manned rail vehicle still stands (which was set by the US Airforce back in the 1950s), however the records for commercial trains have been broken since this book was written. So far, the fastest conventional rail vehicle was along the lines of 574 kph, while the fastest commercial rail vehicle, which uses maglev technology, is around 603 kph. The speeds that are set as records in this book are actually the top speeds that trains such as the ICE in Germany and the Eurostar reach on their regular trips (and the 574 kph set by the TGV in 2007 was probably performed under controlled conditions).

The other interesting thing about this book is that it goes into technical details of the older steam trains, especially since they were categorised on the number of wheels that they had, with the leading wheels, the drive wheels (namely the ones that the pistons were attached to and caused the train to move) and the trailing wheels. Obviously with the development of diesel and electric power the need for the large wheels diminished – and the main reason for that is that apparently it takes at least a couple of hours to get a steam locomotive primed to go, where as a diesel, and electric, take far less time. Mind you, the main reason behind the development of the electric trains was due to the development of the subway systems in Paris and London – steam trains simply don't work all that well in a subway (and if you go to the old railway tunnels up in the Adelaide hills you will see the vents for the steam, and smoke, from the old steam trains).

Oh, and another interesting thing, when I went onto the internet to find out how electric trains work, the first thing I was directed to, surprise surprise, was an advertisement for Alstrom, which happen to make the power units for electric trains. Also, for those who really love trains, there is always my Youtube Channel, which is pretty crap mind you, but at least it has videos of trains.

Since I am now writing a review on a children's book suggests that I am back at my parents' house which means that I have access to my brother's collection that basically dates back to when we were kids. Actually, this book dates back even earlier, namely because Pluto is still a planet and the moon landing hadn't happened. In fact the book only goes as far as speculating what it would be like if we were to send humans onto the moon (and I don't believe Kennedy had made his famous 'let us send men to the moon' speech yet, which makes me wonder if George Bush Jnr was trying to emulate him when he made the speech about sending humans to Mars). Anyway, as the title suggests, this book is basically about everything beyond Earth's atmosphere, though it does make some mention of the atmosphere because the atmosphere does have an effect upon how we perceive the universe as a whole.

So, the book is structured in a way that we first explore the history of astronomy, and the book is good here as it doesn't rest on the belief that the Earth was flat until somebody decided to sail around the Earth to prove otherwise. In fact they point out that the Ancient Greeks had long known about that and simply pointed to how boats, when they disappear over the horizon, still have their sails visible. After this we then move onto the cosmological foundations, starting at the Earth and then moving out to the rest of the universe. Apparently there is also a star chart in this book but I believe we may have lost it long ago.

I could criticise this book on the fact that they don't say anything about Dark Matter, or raise the idea as to why, if the universe is infinite, the sky dark. Well, the two problems are that first of all this is a kid's book, and secondly some of those concepts may not have been fully developed yet (I'm not a huge expert on the subject of Dark Matter so I can't go into specific details, especially off the top of my head). Mind you, when I make the suggestion that the universe is infinite that is a bit of a misnomer because there is a theoretical edge, that being the 'Cosmic Background Radiation', though the thing is that they spot at which we have found it is not the spot at which it is currently located because when we look out into the cosmos we are basically looking at it as it appeared to be years, centuries, millenia, or even longer ago – what we are seeing when we hit the cosmic background radiation is the point of time beyond which the universe did not exist, and while it may not have existed then, it certainly exists now.

One thing that they did pick up, though didn't go into details on, is the idea of the redshift, that is that galaxies, and in fact stars, are forever moving away from each other suggesting that the universe is expanding. Mind you, this idea sort of makes my head hurt, especially when they talk about galaxies colliding with each other since if galaxies are forever moving away, how can they collide with each other? Even then, at the distances and times that it takes for things to move across the galaxy, let alone the universe, and the incredibly short span of time that makes up our lives, I wouldn't be too concerned about the consequences of two galaxies colliding.

Talking about cosmic things colliding we do have comets, though the writers seem to go to incredible lengths to assure the readers that nothing bad is going to happen. Well, according to Lucifer's Hammer if the Earth were to pass through the coma of a comet then some rather bad things would happen to us, namely that civilisation would probably come to an end. Mind you, they talked about the Earth passing through the comet's tail as opposed to the coma, which probably wouldn't do anything as much, with the exception of some impressive light displays in the upper atmosphere. However, with the concept that ancient peoples freaked out when a comet appeared in the sky it makes me wonder if some time, in the distant past, there was such an event, the memory of which has been passed down through generations.

I actually quite like Aristophanes, not because he is a brilliant playwright, though since eleven of his works have survived 2500 years I really do not think that I am in a position to comment on his ability. Obviously there is a reason, and probably a good reason, not only why his plays have managed to survive, but that his plays managed to survive a somewhat puritan Dark Ages where pretty much anything that wasn't Christian was discarded. Okay, that is probably a bit too general since the Catholic Church didn't really begin banning books until after the Catholic Reformation (and despite my respect for my former Church History Lecturer, I still somewhat disagree with his assessment of the Catholic Reformation).

Aristophanes' comedies stand out in two ways: first of all they give as an insight into the common people of Athens of the 4^th century, and also gives us an understanding, and some very good examples, of the vernacular language. It is the difference between reading a book written in proper English and a book that relies heavily upon a region's slang (such as Australia: for instance, the word <i>sook</i> and <i>prima-donna</i> mean the same thing, but in Australia we use the former, where as the latter is probably a more polite and correct usage). The second thing about Aristophanes' plays is that they are incredibly imaginative, and in some cases quite fantastic. Moreso, the plays are actually pretty funny and remains so despite the 2500 year gap and the language complications. Okay, a lot of the humour (such as the puns) are lost, however the Barrett translation of his works is still very good (and he even manages to use a rhyme scheme in places, noting that English is probably the only language, at least what I know of, that uses rhyme as a poetical form).

The Thesmophoriazusae is one of those interesting, and imaginative, plays that also gives us a bit of an insight into Classical Athens. Remember that the tragedies are written in a stylised language, and people do not, and have not, transacted like that. People in Elizabethan England did not talk to each other using blank verse and Shakespearian language. While the vernacular was no doubt a lot different to what it is now, they still used it. The only time such high form language would have been used would have been in diplomacy, and even then I can't imagine Queen Elizabeth and the King of France speaking to each other (or even writing to each other) in blank verse.

The play is set around a festival known as the Thesmophoria, which was a woman's only festival that lasted three days at a place known as the Pynx. Having read this play I have now learnt that the Pynx was the location of the assembly (I always thought it was the Areopagous, but that was the high court). Type Pynx into Google Images to get an idea of what it looked like, and I have also managed to locate it on the Google Maps image of Athens. It is located to the west of the Acropolis just to the southwest of the intersection of Dimitriou Aiginitou and Apostolou Pavlou. From what I can remember of Athens, there is a promenade that runs along the south side of the Acropolis, and then another path to the west heads uphill, past the Areopogaus, and then curves around to the north of the Acropolis (with a gate that leads to the Agora). Anyway, you do not take that path, but actually continue along the promenade to the west, and it will then curve to the north, but you should be able to find it (and if you don't ask somebody, they do tend to be quite helpful in Greece). Okay, that is enough of me showing off how well I know Athens after spending only a week there, so now onto the play.

The play is about Euripides and how he learns that the women of Athens are upset about his portrayal of them, so he decides to sneak into the Thesmophoria in an attempt to convince the women that he was not all that bad. However, his plan involved a young Athenian who had yet grown a beard (all Athenian men had beards, some quite long at that) to disguise himself as a woman and sneak into the festival. However, this young Athenian didn't want anything to do with it so he gets his brother-in-law, the foul mouthed Mnesilochus, to do it instead. Obviously getting Mnesilochus to act like a woman was never going to work, and sure enough he ends up getting found out and tied to a stake to be executed. However Euripides comes in and convinces them (through a fine sounding argument) to release him.

This play is clearly about women and their role in Athenian society. It is not incredibly deep, but it is clear that the women, despite their lower status in the society, did have some freedom, and also the right to religious celebration (as is clear with the Thesmophoria). These women though are compared to two women from antiquity, namely the model wife that is Penelope, and Euripides' presentation of Helen. Sections of the play actually recite Euripides' Helen, and while I will not go into details of that play here, I will simply mention that the purpose behind Helen was to redeem her in the eyes of the Athenians. Euripides borrowed from a legend that had the Helen of Troy as nothing more than a mischievous phantom, and that the real Helen had been kidnapped by the king of Egypt and that was were she spent the war. In Euripides' mind, Helen was innocent of the charges laid against her.

This is why I find the play rather strange because Euripides is being accused of being anti-women, but it is quite clear from his writings that he is not. Of the plays that I have read, particularly the ones involving women, they are the tragic figures. Consider Medea, Hecabe, Helen, and Iphangenia. They were all innocent of any crimes, yet suffered simply because they were women. In fact, with regards to Medea, it is Jason that is considered to be the antagonist by tossing Medea out of his bed for a younger, more influential, woman.

However, the charges that Euripides (and in a way Aristophanes) is that the women of then modern Athens, were nothing like those women in Euripides' plays. In fact they came nowhere close to them in virtue. Remember, at this time Athens was in the middle of a very long and drawn out war, which means that a lot of the young men were off fighting leaving only the women, the children, and the elderly at home in Athens. It is suggested here, and it is the bait that Euripides uses to free Mnesilochus from the Thesmophoria, namely that while the cat is away then the mice are at play. Of course, you don't want anybody telling the husbands what their women were up to when they returned, and in a way this is a reflection of the Orestia, despite that play being written prior to the Peloponesian War.

You certainly have to love the occasional lyric poetry, especially when it is about the end of everybody’s favourite legendary English king, Arthur Pendragon. Actually, I’m not sure if that is actually his last name, though it seems that this guy, and the legend that surrounds him, is much like Robin Hood – he may have existed, he may not have, but a huge legend has arisen around them while there doesn’t actually seem to be any consistency in these legends. In fact, this particular book contains two contrasting versions of his death, though the common feature is that he was killed by Mordred (though whether Mordred was his son or not is also up in the air because one of them suggests that he is, while the other suggests that he is just naughty lord).

Anyway, these two poems contain literally everything, and it is no wonder that the story of Arthur has been picked up by so many authors and film makers, and the stories that come out of it are vastly different in nature. For instance there was a film from the eighties called Excalibur which focused much more on the fantasy elements, with Excalibur, Merlin, and a tragic end as he searched for the holy grail. Another version (named King Arthur), was set during the times when the Romans pulled out of England, and Arthur was basically a Knight from the other side of the empire and was fighting to stop the Picts from overrunning the England.

There was also this book I remember called The Mists of Avalon, which I remember seeing as a kid, but never getting around to reading it, probably because upon looking at it I came to the conclusion that it was the thickest book ever written – in fact it was huge. Mind you, there are probably much, much thicker books these days, but that one still sits in my mind as being pretty thick. Oh, and we cannot forget to mention this all time classic.

As I previously mentioned there are two versions of the story, both of them dealing with Arthur’s death, so there is no mention of Merlin, nor of the sword, nor of the Lady in the Lake (or the test to remove the sword from the stone). In fact both stories seem to eschew the fantasy elements and come across much more historical. Anyway, the first story deals with Arthur going on conquests across Europe and coming to blows with the Emperor of Rome. He eventually defeats the emperor, however discovers that back in England Mordred has taken the throne for himself. Mind you, after going to war with Rome, Arthur has actually lost a lot of men, but with the handful of men he does have he returns to England, confronts Mordred’s much larger army, and defeats Mordred while dying in the process.

There are a couple of things that come out of this story, one of them being the plot where the King is abroad and the person keeping the throne warm decides to name himself as king. This is something that has happened a number of times in history, but the one event that comes to mind is that of Richard II (of which I have written two blog posts, the second being here). Mind you, I would hardly equate Arthur with Richard, particularly since if it wasn’t for Shakespeare’s play he would probably be little more than a footnote in history – Arthur is a legend. Mind you, it is noticeable that both die, because we can’t have Mordred defeating Arthur and giving us an evil laughter and riding off into the sunset. Mind you, even in Shakespeare’s tragedies the bad guy eventually gets it in the neck. In a way it seems as if you simply cannot have a situation where the bad guy wins, and the good guy simply cannot come back and eventually win the day – it is almost as if it is anathema in literature.

The other thing is how Arthur pretty much conquers Europe. This is taken directly out of History of the Kings of Britain, and seems to attribute the barbarian invasions of Rome to being an invasion let by Arthur. Mind you, Monmouth puts Arthur around 700 AD, which is sometime after Rome collapsed, but it is interesting how we have no record of any legendary king carving out a huge empire in Europe. However, it should also be noted that this is one of those empires that exists only on the personality of a single man, and it appears that after his death the kingdom pretty much disintegrates. Another thing that I have noticed is that Bede seems to have a gap in his Ecclesiastical history right around the time Monmouth has Arthur appear. That’s not to say that I am suggesting Arthur existed because, other than Charlemagne, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of a king establishing an Empire on the Continent, especially one where the throne was in England.

Mind you, this whole thing reeks of nationalism, yet it is interesting that England did have an identity as far back as the 10^th century. Monmouth also suggested that two English Kings were responsible for crossing the channel in around 400 bc, conquering Europe, crossing the Alps, and sacking Rome. Obviously what is happening here is a medieval version of ‘Fake News’, though it is probably better described as being ‘fake history’ (though the Romans seems to have a lot of problems with this fake history) – this is history that really has no substance to it, and no archaeological support. Mind you, writers of history back in those days really didn’t take the academic and scientific approach that we do today (though all history is still tainted by opinion), but rather wrote from the legends that were in vogue.

The second story is pretty much the same (that is about how Arthur died), however it’s focus is more on the love affair between Lancelot and Guenevere. In fact, this affair could be considered one of the greatest affairs in literature (okay, there are probably others, but I really have no interest in stories about love affairs – I would call them forbidden love but it sounds so clichéd – still, something that you can’t have always seems much more desirable than something that you can). Whereas the first story has a lot more action and large scale battles, this one has a lot more intrigue where people are being killed, and then the murder is being covered up, and there is adultery, poisonings, duels, and finally King Arthur’s death.

In a way this is an incredibly painful episode to watch because we all know how it is going to end – badly – especially since Lancelot is one of Arthur’s most trusted knights. However, this episode is set mostly in the court of Camelot, and doesn’t even have any mention of wars and expeditions to foreign lands. Actually, come to think of it there is always the story of David and Bathsheba in the Bible – that’s a pretty well known love affair, but I digress. Anyway, it seems as if the story of Arthur is a story of betrayal, with his wife and best friend having hanky panky behind his back, and Mordred going off and stealing his throne (and dying in the process).

Anyway, before I finish off, I probably should end with this cartoon, especially considering the state of politics these days:

One of the main reasons that I decided to read this book, other than the fact that it happens to be a modern classic, is because I was reading an article in a Christian magazine that was complaining about how this book, and the motor car in general, is responsible for the promiscuous, permissive, and licentious society in which we now live. Mind you, this particular magazine pretty much made me want to puke, especially when you came across an article by some guy (and it was usually a guy, never a girl) who carried on about how bad he was, and he got so bad that he landed up in a huge amount of trouble, but then he found Christ and all of a sudden his life was turned around. Okay, some might be asking why, if I happen to be a Christian, am I trashing this particular magazine – well, because it happens to be a complete load of rubbish.

Anyway, enough of the reason as to why I ended up reading the book (and the other reason was because I wandered into a bookshop in Paris looking for a copy of Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast, and upon discovering that there wasn't a copy of that particular book, or in fact any book by Hemmingway, I decided to get this one instead, particularly since upon seeing it I was reminded of that incredibly annoying article that I read) and onto the book itself. Well, as it turned out the person that wrote the article probably didn't read the book at all because firstly it isn't about a single roadtrip, but about four, and also the main character (which happens to be Kerouac) doesn't own a car but rather relies either on buses, on his friends, or simply hitchhikes to get form point A to point B.

However, what this book does happen to be is a road trip – in fact it happens to be the original road trip. Sure, Willy Nelson might have written a song about a road trip, however the theory is that if it wasn't for this book the multitude of road trip movies (such as Thelma and Louise, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and of course Easy Rider) would never have come about. Mind you, I personally believe that is rubbish namely because if Kerouac didn't write this book then somebody else would have come along and written something similar, it is just that Kerouac managed to beat all of the other authors to the punch with his classic story of how he travelled from New York to Los Angeles and back again, from New York to San Francisco, and from New York to Mexico City where he landed up with the Mexican version of Dehli Belly, and was deserted by his friend (though this particular friend didn't seem to be the most honourable of people, especially since he seemed to have multiple wives and girlfriends).

On the Road is apparently the book that thrust the Beat Generation into the lime light, though interestingly enough the Beat actually refers to a group of writers as opposed to a generation as a whole (such as the Baby Boomers, or my generation, that being Generation X). I also suspect that the Lost Generation, that is the Generation of Hemmingway and his cohorts, was also a literary generation as opposed to a generation as whole. However it is interesting how people of an older Generation do tend to have an influence on those of a younger generation – Kerouac was influenced by Hemmingway, who in turn had an influence on the Baby Boomers despite the fact that he was of an older generation. Mind you, when I was young it was the Baby Boomers that had an influence on me, though more the celebrities than my parents. However, we should also remember that writers such as Lewis and Tolkien were from the 'Lost' generation as opposed to the 'Beat' or even the Baby Boomers (of which artists such as David Bowie were members).

One thing that stands out from this book happens to be how it seems that it was the beginning of the America that we now know, that is the America of the automobile and of the sprawling suburbs. In a way what the car did, or more specifically the cheap car that could be bought by the average punter (though it sounds as if Kerouac and his friends bought the 1940s equivalent of the old bomb and used it to travel about America). The interesting thing is that this is an America before the interstate highways, an America that is still developing and trying to find its feet and its identity. Sure, it had just emerged victorious from the Second World War, and had also emerged as the superpower after Britain was effectively bankrupted (and also saw its colonies, bit by bit, claiming independence), but it still hadn't really developed the identity that it eventually developed by the sixties and the seventies. However, what it also did was effectively became a car culture, which is a culture of individualism – having a car meant one have freedom, freedom to do, and go, wherever one wants to go, however there was a problem, namely that this place never seemed to exist – Kerouac travels from New York to California a number of times, spends his days in Denver, which seems to be the centre of the United States, and then frees himself further by going South of the Border and dreaming of going even further beyond – having the ultimate freedom to travel as far as the tip of South America.

However these dreams seem to be stunted – he ends up with Dehli Belly, and is deserted by his friend, Dean, a number of times. However it also seems that Dean seems to drift from woman to woman, from place to place, and from friend to friend, not having any real roots. We see the same with Kerouac as well, especially when he begins to settle down with the Mexican woman in Los Angeles, but then decides to dump her and return to New York. This is a new time, a time where people can pull out their roots and travel where-ever. Before then people rarely, if ever, travelled too far beyond their home. Yet, the interesting thing is that when one travels, when one pulls out their roots, it is very hard to put them back down again. I discovered that when I moved cities, that the roots that I pulled up had a lot of difficulty being planted again – sure, I have made new friends, but there are times and elements that I do not understand because I have not been around. There is a Website – Adelaide Remember When – that sits in my heart because I grew up in Adelaide, yet a similar website for Melbourne, Sydney, or even London and Paris, wouldn't have the same effect on me. Well, okay, London and Paris might be a little different, but I never grew up there so I don't have a personal connection with the past of any of those cities.

In a way what Kerouac is exploring, even if he it being intentional, which I suspect he isn't, is how we are beginning to become disconnected from place. Sure, he lived in New York, but in reality he come from abroad. However, what the car has done is that it has made it even easier from him to pull up his roots and to travel about. I have been on road trips myself, the longest going from Adelaide to Brisbane via Melbourne and Sydney, and back again. There is something liberating about letting go of life and jumping into a car and simply driving, even if one doesn't even have a destination in mind. In fact piling your friends into a car and going on a roadtrip is a bonding experience, as I have discovered on numerous trips to Melbourne and back again. However, things have even gone further with the advent of the commercial airline – now we can simply jump on a plane and simply anywhere we wish (though of course there are some restrictions, particularly when it comes to obtain a visa to enter certain countries, particularly if you happen to be from a country where the passport really has little, if no, power whatsoever).

Anyway, what better way to finish off this post than with a picture of a place where Kerouac seemed to finish off his journeys: Times Square.

The Real Hipsters

The funny thing is that after I had posted this review I suddenly realised that there was something that I forgot – the hipster. In a way it is really amusing reading about hipsters in a book written over fifty years ago. Well, that probably shouldn't be as odd as I think it to be namely because hipsters seem to be very retro in character to the point that retro is the new cool. Mind you, the hipsters of Kerouac’s generation weren't the retro lovers that the millenials are namely because the scene itself simply didn’t exist. In a way what the hipsters in Kerouac’s day were doing were setting the trends for the future – they were the members of the Beat Generation that laid the foundations for the sexual revolution and the era of flower power.

I have to admit that this whole retro hipster move is interesting in and of itself, and there are a lot of aspects about it that I really enjoy – the second hand clothes, in fact the second hand everything, which probably has a lot to do with them living in ridiculously overpriced innercity housing. However, it isn’t just the second-hand fascination that drives it, but also the coffee and craft beer craze and the smashed avocardos and eggs benedict (which is my breakfast indulgence of choice, though I can't stand avacado). Oh, there are sliders as well, but I think there was a time when you wouldn’t get anything like that on a breakfast menu, and people were happy with instant coffee (if you wanted good coffee you would get plunger coffee) – now you can buy your own coffee machine.

Yet this wasn’t the hipster movement of Kerouac’s age – they were bohemian, which is a sophisticated way of saying poor. Okay, not every poor person is bohemian since bohemians also tended to be artists, or wanted to be artists but never actually got a break. Even though Kerouac did get a break it wasn’t until at least ten years after he finished his book, and eventually died of alcohol poisoning pretty shortly after. However, the bohemian artist seemed to be driven by their art, but not only that, they also lived the poor lifestyle, as we encounter in this novel. Here Kerouac basically scabs lifts and when he runs out of money panhandles (otherwise known as begging) to get some more, even if only to get home. Mind you, it isn’t as if he is destitute, he still earns a stipend from the government for his military service, so it is enough for him to be able to live the artist’s lifestyle (which certainly isn’t the case today – if you try that you would be labelled with the term dole bludger and the like).

While Kerouac may not have introduced the hipster, or more precisely ‘Ned Kelly’ beard, there is one thing that this book has taught me – how to wear a tie and still look cool (not professional, cool):