Wednesday Words

Let me put this right out there: I think it’s cheating to make up words in order to have the rhyme and meter of poetry work. Take, for instance, the poem “Jabberwocky” in Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll. There are enough nonsense syllables in this poem to force one to believe at least six impossible things before breakfast!

Sure, Humpty Dumpty does do some translating for Alice (“ ‘Brillig’ means four o’clock in the afternoon – the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.”), but still: Lewis Carroll made these words up to make the poem into poetry. Cheating.

Oh, but what poetry this is. This cheat gets a free pass because “Jabberwocky” is pure magic! It’s melodic and flowing, fun to read and recite, and still tells an adventure story. And while the words are made up, they adequately evoke picture, sound and emotion, even without explanation. In fact, I liked reading this without translation and explanation. It’s more fun to imagine what it all means for myself.

And by the way, isn’t snicker-snack just the best onomatopoeia ever?!

 

There’s a list of these made-up words at this Wikipedia page for the poem “Jabberwocky.”

 

Coming soon: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

…and Through the Looking Glass (which I do not think I’ve read before.)

 

The first and last time I read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland I was ten years old. I struggled to finish it then, probably because I really didn’t “get it.” (And I was at least as distractible then as I am now.) I had hoped for fantastical whimsy (I was already well in love with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), but only seemed to be getting confused. I have vague memories of Alice changing sizes every few minutes, lots of impatient, grumpy and screaming characters, and odd creatures like the Cheshire Cat, Mock Turtle, and the hookah-smoking caterpillar, whose very existences seemed to be some kind of joke in on which I was not. In short, I was more confused than Alice.

This time around, I hoped to find the charm and whimsy I had missed many (many) years ago. Sadly, I did not. The story mostly seemed like a particularly odd dream (which it is), shifting pictures and little progress with no real plot or moral. It reminded me of some of the goofy stories and nonsense sentences I would make up on the fly for my younger cousins and my nieces when they were in a particularly giggly mood.

Happily, I find foolishness and silly nonsense perfectly acceptable forms of entertainment. (I’m an unapologetic fan of The Three Stooges.) While I do like to have a little more warmth, cheer and free-spiritedness with my stark raving madness, I enjoy he fun and engaging language (“Curiouser and curiouser!”) and love some of the scenes, characters, and quotable lines (“Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”) Those little adventures, weird folks, and odd quotes really can be enjoyed individually on their own merits, since there is little connecting them together throughout the story. And that’s mostly the value I found in this re-reading.

Alice’s adventures do keep moving along, however, tea party to croquet match, chess-board pawn to chess-board queen. I kept the pages turning if for no other reason than to see what silly nonsense was going to happen next. I was even more aware that I was often missing out on some joke that would probably be hilarious to me if I was a contemporary of the author, and I found some of the disconnectedness and grumpiness frustrating, but the classic scenes and characters, the ones everybody seems to know, are really so much fun that I enjoyed visiting them in their homes down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass.

What would life be like if we didn’t know the Mad Hatter, the White Rabbit, or the grinning Cheshire Cat? Don’t we all have days when we’re called upon to believe impossible things, before breakfast and beyond? Or felt like “here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place”? And isn’t being able to quote at least a few lines form “Jabberwocky” one of the most fun things in the world? Callooh! Callay!

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I suppose it’s pretty corny to say so, but I have to admit that The Omnivore’s Dilemma actually did change my life. Not in a lightening flash all-or-nothing way, but I learned to understand my food better and over the years I’ve made many gradual changes in the way I shop for groceries, cook, and eat.

 

Of course, many people are familiar with this book because of its description and questioning the wisdom of the modern industrial food system, especially the commodity corn and concentrated animal feeding operation (CAFO aka feedlot) components. These are addressed in eye-opening detail, but they are only a part of the overall story. The Omnivore’s Dilemma is about four meals that Pollan consumed and analyzed: an “industrial” meal, fast food eaten in a car as so many Americans regularly do; an organic, but still somewhat more mainstream meal; a “pastoral” meal raised in an almost painstakingly sustainable manner; and a “foraged” meal that Pollan hunted and harvested himself.

I had so much to learn the first time I read this book, but I figured it would be a just review and re-affirmation this time around. It turns out that there were plenty of interesting details I had forgotten, and though this was a re-read, I found myself being informed all over again. I really appreciated and enjoyed, once again, Pollan’s engaging journalistic style. I was also struck by the honesty with which he offers us his more personal connections in the story. Whether he’s sharing his disgust with composting chicken blood and entrails, ethical questions about eating meat, adrenaline rush over shooting a wild pig, or, again, disgust over dressing that dead pig, Pollan lets us know what he really thinks with a frankness that helps make everything else in the book particularly trustworthy.

 

I had the chance to hear Michael Pollan speak in 2009, and I must say that his lecture was as solid, honest, and interesting as his books (I also really like In Defense of Food and The Botany of Desire). (I also got to meet him briefly after the talk, and he was very nice.) Each time I get the chance to delve into some of his work again, I get a renewed desire and energy to participate in and promote a more sustainable food system. Is it even possible to feed 7 billion people in a way that does not destroy the earth on which we all live? Maybe not. I don’t know. But I feel a lot better, as a biologically omnivorous creature, knowing more about where my food comes from and how it was raised.

And I still really love this book!

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

Favorite Lines Friday

I loved this passage from The Two Towers, a conversation between Sam and Frodo regarding the idea of great stories and their place in the one we are reading. I find it universally applicable to the idea of all great stories and their characters.

  

 “I don’t like anything here at all,” said Frodo, “step or stone, breath or bone. Earth, air and water all seem accursed. But so our path is laid.”

            “Yes, that’s so,” said Sam. “And we shouldn’t be here at all, if we’d known more about it before we started. But I suppose it’s often that way. The brave things in the old tales and songs, Mr. Frodo: adventures, as I used to call them.  I used to think that they were the things the wonderful folk of the stories went out and looked for, because they wanted them, because they were exciting and life was a bit dull, a kind of sport as you might say. But that’s not the way of it with the tales that really mattered, or the ones that stay in the mind. Folk seem to have been just landed in them, usually – their paths were laid that way, as you put it. But I expect they had lots of chances, like us, of turning back, only they didn’t. And if they had, we shouldn’t know, because they’d have been forgotten. We hear about those as just went on – and not all to a good end, mind you; at least not to what folk inside a story and not outside it call a good end. You know, coming home, and finding things all right, though not quite the same – like old Mr. Bilbo. But those aren’t always the best tales to hear, though they may be the best tales to get landed in! I wonder what sort of tale we’ve fallen into?”
            “I wonder,” said Frodo. “But I don’t know. And that’s the way of a real tale. Take any one that you’re fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of tale it is, happy-ending, or sad-ending, but the people in it don’t know. And you don’t want them to know.”



A Year of Books I've Read Before

April: Catching Up

Well, my current work schedule may be good for the pocket-book, but it’s not so good for reading books. Oh well! So April will have to be a catch-up month during which I finish the books I didn’t get through in March (and in the case of Mansfield Park, February). I also put two more books on my reading list, proving that, when it comes to my reading plans, I’m ever the optimist.

 

Here’s what I hope to read in April:

Held over from March:

 

Mansfield Park by Jane Austen, which I actually started in February and am having a really tough time getting through

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan, with which I’m nearly finished and still loving

Alice’ Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll, which is even sillier than I remember

 

And starting this month:

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver

 

 

 

A Year of Books I’ve Read Before

The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Being the Second Part of The Lord of the Rings

 

 

Each time I consider re-reading The Two Towers, it’s with a certain amount of dread. It doesn’t start well: the Fellowship has been dissolved, Merry and Pippin are prisoners, Frodo and Sam are off on their own with little idea of where they’re going. And (spoiler alert!) the book doesn’t end well either with Frodo and Sam in as bad a situation as can be. Even though there are some great adventures and victories in this volume of The Lord of the Rings, and new and exciting characters to meet (Eomer, Eowyn, and Treebeard to name a few), The Two Towers has always been, for me, a bit of a downer.

Much like my recent re-experience of The Fellowship of the Ring, however, I loved this book more than ever this time around. Yes, all the sad and pitiful and disgusting and hopeless things were still in the story, but this time I really gained an appreciation for the way Tolkien’s skills with language and storytelling build those strong emotions in a reader. Here is a fantastic example, a description of the scene Sam and Frodo face as they approach Mordor:

 

Here nothing lived, not even the leprous growths that feed on rottenness. The gasping pools were choked with ash and crawling muds, sickly white and grey, as if the mountains had vomited the filth of their entrails upon the lands about.  High mounds of crushed and powdered rock, great cones of earth fire-blasted and poison-stained, stood like an obscene graveyard in endless rows, slowly revealed in the reluctant light.

 

And as they grope their way through the tunnels, unknowingly following Gollum to Shelob’s lair, there is nothing to see and describe. Instead, Tolkien gives us a stunning description using the only sense available:

 

And still the stench grew. It grew, until almost it seemed to them that smell was the only clear sense left to them, and that it was for their torment.

  

Peeeeew!

 

My point is that this middle volume in the trilogy is no place-holder. It’s not just pages of padding to fulfill a three-book contract. There are preliminary battles in the upcoming great storm of war and early victories that build momentum for the “good guys.” There is further introduction to the grand histories, peoples and places of Middle Earth. The narrative is full of anticipation, of building urgency, of building need for world-wide (or Middle Earth-wide) action, of lurking evil and the despair it evokes, of the lingering hope in and for likely and unlikely heroes.

What a fine, fine story!

 

 

 

A Year of Books I've Read Before