And we start our portrait of Tolkien with his mother—a welcome surprise in this tale of a group that rigorously excluded women—because Mabel Tolkien set in motion her son’s madly spinning top of mind, from which epic poems, children’s stories, fantasy novels, invented languages, literary essays, philological studies, songs, watercolors, and pen-and-ink sketches would take flight for the next eighty years.
Zaleski, Carol, and Philip. The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. (see pg. 13)
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“We can always become more human”
– Zena Hitz
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“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.“
From L.P. Hartley’s The Go-Between“The past is never dead; it’s not even past.“
William FaulknerAnd from Breaking Bread with the Dead:
The decisions of our ancestors, however strange those people may be to us, touch us and our world; and our decisions will touch the lives of those who come after us. By understanding what moved them and what they hope for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely-in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, they didn’t. By understanding what moved them and what they hoped for, we give ourselves a better chance of acting wisely–in some cases, as those ancestors did; in others, as they didn’t. We judge them, as we should, as we must; but if we judge them fairly and proportionately, as we ourselves hope someday to be judged, then we may use them well with an eye toward the future.
Jacobs, Alan. Breaking bread with the dead: a reader’s guide to a more tranquil mind. New York: Penguin Press, 2020. (see page 143)You often hear “Forget it! The past is in the past.” sure, but the consequences of our decisions can reverberate longer into the future than we expect.
Social movements like Effective Altruism and organizations like The Long Now Foundation recognize this. The better choices we make today, paired with long-term preparation can give our decendants a chance to flourish.
Too deep for a Sunday morning?
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- What type of poem is it?
- What is its mode? Lyric, narrative, dramatic?
- What is the form?
- Does it have meter? Does it have rhyme? Is it in free verse?
- What is the diction or vocabulary of the poem?
- Who is the speaker of the poem?
- Is there a story line or action?
- What is the setting?
- What are the images?
- Are there figures of speech?
- Are there any allusions in the poem?
- What’s the tone?
- Does the poem have any symbols?
- What type of poem is it?
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He is a free man,” De Laurentiis said of Spalletti. “After 50 years in cinema [as producer], and so many exclusives with directors, actors, when someone comes to you and says: ‘After all, I’ve done my best, a cycle of my life has ended, I still have a contract with you, but I’d rather have a sabbatical year.’ What are you going to do, are you going to oppose it?
“You have to be generous in life, I never expect anything in return. He gave us, I thank him, now it’s right that he continues to do what he loves to do.”
Garcia, Adriana. “Napoli boss Luciano Spalletti to leave, take sabbatical after Serie A title win.” ESPN, 29, May 2023, https://global.espn.com/football/story/_/id/37751868/napoli-boss-spalletti-leave-serie-title-winWhen Napoli owner Aurelio De Laurentiis speaks we quote him. Might he be the most underrated owner in football? Maybe the most underrated character in football?
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My goal with this series is simply to collect and post sentences from the readings that struck me.
Sure, Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel – With Maps isn’t Shakespeare. But who doesn’t enjoy a thrilling maritime adventure tale? It’s an underrated book, complete with illustrations. Certainly worth your time.
It was hurricane hair.
pg 63The image this renders in your mind. That swirl on the crown on a young man’s head. Hurricane hair.
His kicks popped off the bone,
pg 64This adds a bit of sound to the text. You can hear the “pop” of the kick coming off the bone. It’s both audible and visible.
He was not a defeatist. But the air was poison.
pg 127Chuck keeps a positive attitude in a hostile situation. Respect.
He was a resilient person, not given over to negativity. But at a certain point, sooner or later, he was going to either:
a) freeze to death, or
b) drown.
Whichever came first.
pg.164So much of this book is about Midshipman’s Chuck Dugan’s resilience. Floating at sea, stuck on Emergency Rescue Buoy No. 49, falling into a coma, no matter the obstacle Chuck Dugan carries on.
He passed under a wave and came up reciting the Midshipman’s Table of Priorities.
“Midshipmen –” he began, his voice cracked and faint. He spat out some water. ” – – will use the Table of Priorities when determining the precedence of one activity over another. ONE. Orders to report to the Superintendent, Commandant, Deputy Commandant.”
He went under. Slowly, he returned.
“TWO. Emergency calls for immediate medical and dental care. THREE . . .”
He disappeared.
“ELEVEN. Appointment with academic advisor
during pre-registration each semester . . . TWENTY – FOUR.
Liberty. “
pg 173More notes on the benefits of committing ideas and rules to memory. Reciting poetry, your alphabet, or the Midshipman’s Table of Priorites can help one detach in a stressful situation. Also, the Table of Priorites is another detail that Eric Chase Anderson uses to construct the world of this maritime tale.
Chuck tried to consider the situation carefully,
but his thoughts were muddled. He didn’t want to
co-operate if he was a POW. There were rules to that:
strict Geneva Convention. Don’t co-operate, don’t give out more than your Name, Rank, and Serial Number.
Since this was his first experience as a captive – –
which he assumed he was, though he couldn’t remember
whose or which war – – he wanted to get it right.
pg 179The benefits of committing rules and ideas to memory. They’ll help you handle yourself in threatening scenarios.
Chuck sat quietly for a moment. He took a sip of the coffee — Navy-style black and boiling hot. For an instant, he felt faint, his head reeling from the on-rush of heat.
pg 180What’s the recipe for Navy coffee? Brew it black and boiling hot. Keep it that way post pour. Serve it in a hand-less mug. Boom Navy Coffee. Sip and smile.
More wonderful details Eric Chase Anderson uses to ground the story.
He longed – – briefly but intensely — for a tuna-fish sandwich and a cold glass of milk. Then decided coffee was very much all right. Mainly he felt curious.
pg. 183We’ve all had those moments after a hard run, a long hike, or maybe after changing a tire, where being physically spent brings on intense hunger.
Perhaps this paid for the sin he had just committed. The sin of condemning those three boys to their deaths.
pg 195This story, while filled with quips and diagrams and illustrations, is heavy. It has weight. Death lurks throughout the pages.
Anderson, Eric Chase. Chuck Dugan is AWOL: A Novel – With Maps. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2004.
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In 1974, I took a series of train trips all across India, as my father introduced me to the relatives I’d never had a chance to meet in my faraway English schools and home. Every detail of The Hero clamored around our compartment: the faces at the window, waving tiny cups of tea; the moralists eager to lecture anyone on everything; the slightly obsequious waiter explaining that there was nothing to drink but Coca-Cola. None of us in the carriage would have been surprised that the man who pontificated most furiously on the importance of liberating women would prove to be the one most eager to exploit them; projection can take many forms.
Depths and Surfaces, Iyer, Pico, Feb 22, 2018: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/5413-the-hero-depths-and-surfacesWe’ve talked about reading “upstream” with your favorite authors, but I’m finding it a helpful practice with your favorite filmmakers too. For example ask yourself, what movies did Wes Anderson watch? What movies did he love? Then go watch those movies, and you’ll soon see the inspirations reveal themselves.
Satyajit Ray was an enormous influence on Wes Anderson. With each interior train hallway shot from The Hero, I kept thinking “Oh! That shot is in the Darjeeling Limited!”
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“Impossible only means that you haven’t found the solution yet.”
– someone
Morrison, Scott. 1972: The Series That Changed Hockey Forever. Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2022. (see page 243)This from what looks to be a fantastic book on the 1972 Summit Series.
Don’t fret. I didn’t know what the Summit Series was either. It was an eight game hockey series between Canada and the Soviet Union. This was the first time NHL players filled the Canadian national team roster.
On the surface 1972 looks like a hockey book, but as I read on I discovered it’s a Canadian history book. It’s packed with historical moments most non-Canadians would know nothing of.
See the FLQ crisis. Crisis of national identity is not something unique to the last five years.
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These pamphlets in Wes Anderson’s Criterion Collections are worth the price of admission. They’re filled with drawings, interviews, and behind- the-scenes insights. An analog version of a blu-ray’s bonus features.
Here Wes shares a glimpse of his process:
When I’m writing, I keep notebooks of my ideas for sets, props, and clothes. I incorporate some of these ideas into the script, but I set the majority of them aside to give privately to the different department heads during preproduction. In the past, I have occasionally forgotten some of my favorite ideas until it was too late – – for example, after the movie is out on video. To prevent this from happening on THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (which contains more perhaps unnecessary visual detail than both my previous films combined), about three months before we started shooting, I asked my brother Eric, a skilled illustrator, to help me create a set of drawings that would include much of the information I wanted to communicate to the crew — and that would also suggest the overall look and feeling of the movie.
We had already found the house where I wanted to film (in the Hamilton Heights section of Harlem), and our production designer, David Wasco, had provided us with a set of blueprints, so I was able to very specifically plan the contents and arrangements of each of the rooms, and Eric was able to meticulously render them. Eric was, in fact, so meticulous that many of the sets had already been constructed by the time he finished the drawings. Eventually, however, his illustrations became the standard equipment on the walls of the production offices and art department and in the notebooks of everyone on the crew — a sort of manual to keep next to your script. We include a copy here for you.
— Wes Anderson
Criterion Collection Pamphlet. The Royal TenenbaumsEric Chase Anderson is underrated.
Is Wes Anderson the filmmaker with the highest percentage of his movies in the Criterion Collection? 9 from 10? I’m sure the French Dispatch is lurking at the door.
Floodlights and Goalposts 