Thomas Covenant? Unbelievable!

I'm re-living my youth.  As the years pass, I find myself doing this more and more.  This time around, it has to do with a book or, rather, series of books, that I read back when I was twenty-something and am now in the process of re-reading.  It's a Tolkien-esque fantasy series known as "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever", written by Stephen R. Donaldson.

Thomas Covenant is a modern leper, and I'm not using the term "leper" in a figurative sense.  He literally suffers from leprosy.  Before he was diagnosed with the dread disease, he was a published writer as well as a family man, having both a wife and a son.  After his unfortunate diagnosis, his wife left him and took their son with her (can't risk either of our appendages falling off you know) and the rest of society shunned him as well, demonstrating that apparently not much has changed for lepers since biblical times.

"I thought you said this was a fantasy series," I hear my readers thinking at this point, "nothing terribly fantastic-sounding about that.  Sounds more like a melodrama, really."  Well, things do take a turn for the somewhat more fantastical when Covenant walks into town to pay his phone bill one day (an act of defiance against his fellow townspeople who would much rather he avoided any personal interactions) and inadvertently wanders in front of an on-coming police car.  At the moment of impact, his world dissolves from around him, as one might well expect that it would, except that it is then replaced with a different world; not the one that you might be thinking of, Dear Reader, as there is nary a sign of either pearly gate nor fire and brimstone. 

Well, actually, there sort of is fire and brimstone, but it's not what you think.  Covenant has apparently been transported inside a mountain which he will later learn is named "Kiril Threndor" or "Mount Thunder" in the common tongue, having been summoned by a creature known as a cavewight.  In due course, he learns that he has been transported to another world known simply by its inhabitants as "The Land" and he is sent on a mission by the enemy of that Land, one "Lord Foul the Despiser", to deliver a message to The Council of Lords, informing them that Lord Foul intends to kick their collective asses within the next forty-nine years, or sooner, if they don't manage to retrieve the Staff of Law from the cavewight who stole it, and used it to summon Thomas Covenant. 

The reason why the cavewight summoned Thomas Covenant, of all people, has to do with Covenant's resemblance to one of the Land's greatest heroes, Berek Halfhand, so named because he lost two fingers of his right hand during a big showdown between himself and The Despiser.  Covenant happens to be missing those same two fingers, in his case due to his leprosy. 

Covenant, not surprisingly, refuses to believe that any of what's happening to him is real, especially since his leprosy seems to go into remission during his time in The Land, so he officially assumes the moniker of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, just to make it clear to everyone around him that he doesn't take any of them seriously.

Sounding a bit more Tokien-esque now?  Hmmm?  And that, my friends, is my chief criticism of this series.  It's too Tolkien-esque.  Consider:

Thomas Covenant has been transported to a world, much like our own, known as Middle Earth - I mean The Land.

The Land is an idyllic place where both magic and fantastical creatures (cavewights, giants, ur-viles, mystical intelligent horses, etc.) exist and which is in danger of being corrupted by an evil entity known as Sauron - I mean Lord Foul the Despiser.

And here's the clincher; Thomas Covenant holds the one weapon which might defeat The Despiser, his wedding ring, which is made of white gold, which happens to be the ultimate source of "wild magic" in The Land.  An evil entity that can only be defeated by the power of a magic ring?  Really?

And get a load of the first book's description of Drool Rockworm, the cavewight that summoned Covenant:

"Crouched on a low dais near the center of the cave was a creature with long, scrawny limbs, hands as huge and heavy as shovels, a thin, hunched torso and a head like a battering ram.  As he crouched, his knees came up almost to the level of his ears.  One hand was braced on the rock in front of him, the other gripped a long wooden staff shod with metal and intricately carved from end to end.  His grizzled mouth was rigid with laughter, and his red eyes seemed to bubble like magma."

Ummm... did he also happen to make a funny "gollum" sound in his throat, by any chance?

I said that the resemblance to Tolkien's writings is my chief criticism of Donaldson's work.  My other criticism of the Covenant books has to do with the alternately corny and lame monikers with which Donaldson saddles his characters. "Drool Rockworm?"  "Lord Foul?"  Really?  They sound like the names of the evil villains in a typical Saturday morning cartoon show.  On the other end of the scale, we have "High Lord Kevin".  Okay, it's better than "High Lord Bob", I suppose, but just barely.

Now that I've undoubtedly earned the everlasting ire of both Thomas Covenant and Stephen R. Donaldson fans everywhere, let me say that I actually enjoyed the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.  Hey, I wouldn't be re-reading the first six books (Donaldson has since written more) if I didn't enjoy them.  They're well-written and they offer an interesting blend of the real world that we all know with the fantastic.  But, hey, I enjoyed "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" too, yet I still maintain that it's basically "Episode IV: A New Hope" all over again.

Unmentionable Cuisine

A few of my buddies and I used to get a kick out of getting each other "gag" gifts for birthdays, Christmas and other such gift-worthy events.  By "gag" gifts I mean gifts that were completely impractical or even bizarre whose only purpose was to elicit a laugh or at least an eye-roll or a face-palm.

I must confess that it was I who started the practice the year that I got my buddy, Mart, a 60-minute tape cassette of whale song for Christmas.  No, this wasn't an album named "Whale Song" or some new-age group or musician called "Whale Song", this was actual whale song, of the kind elicited by actual whales (humpbacks, I do believe).  Sixty continuous minutes of it, no less.  Now, this might have been understandable if Mart had been some kind of tree-hugging, environmentalist, hair-shirt, "Save The Whales" type, but he was, most decidedly not.  No, Mart had no interest in whales or their songs that I was aware of.  That's what made it such a grand gag gift.

Mind you, what goes around comes around and I did pay a price for my mischief (beyond the price of the tape cassette, I mean). You see, I ordered the tape from a catalog distributed by the World Wildlife Federation and I have been plagued, ever since, with a never-ending stream of pamphlets, catalogs and general requests for donations from that same organization, who have now identified me as being some kind of tree-hugging, environmentalist, hair-shirt, "Save The Whales" type.  This has been going on for over 20 years now.  I've since changed my address at least twice, but they still keep finding me!

So anyway, a couple of other mutual buddies also got into the act, such as Peter, to whom I once gifted a lovely, hard-cover tome entitled "The Tartans of Scotland", comprised of well over a hundred glossy pages featuring dazzling, full-color prints of the tartans of all the major Scottish clans, and several minor ones to boot.  Again, this might have made sense if Peter's surname were McTavish, Wallace or even Adams, but it happens to be Karwowski.  Peter's reaction, upon beholding the book cover after unwrapping the gift was to say "So help me, if I find a Karwowski tartan in there..."

Later on Peter, in a marvelous display of one-upmanship, decided that, since I enjoyed books so much, he would get me a tome of my own.  So he got me a book entitled Unmentionable Cuisine by Calvin W. Shwabe.

Unmentionable Cuisine is a cook book, of sorts, that provides recipes which, how shall I put this, you're unlikely to find in the Betty Crocker Cookbook.  The book's underlying purpose is to make the reader aware of alternative food sources, many of which are already enjoyed by other cultures, and to instill in the reader an awareness that, as the human population continues to grow on this planet of finite resources, feeding everyone will inevitably become more and more of a challenge and that challenge may be met, at least in part, by turning to food sources not previously or currently considered, at least in our Western culture.  Browsing through some of the recipes, it's not hard to understand why that is, even for those who, like myself, consider themselves as having somewhat more "adventurous" gastronomic proclivities than most.

The book begins with the following quotation by Frederick Simoons, who maintains that "Western man, despite his frequent temptation to claim his foodways are based on rational considerations, is no more rational in this than other men, for it makes no sense to reject nutritious dogflesh, horseflesh, grasshoppers and termites as food than to reject beef or chicken flesh".  (Mmmmmmm... dogflesh).

The recipes in the book are divided into five categories; Meat, Fowl, Fish and Shellfish; apparently vegetarians and vegans need not apply.  (Also, apparently fowl is not considered meat, but I digress.)  The fifth category (you thought I had mis-counted, didn't you?) is entitled Nonflesh Foods of Animal Origins but it only includes things such as Milk, Eggs and Sperm - no vegetable matter of any kind.

(Pausing now while my beverage-drinking readers towel off their monitors after having read the word "sperm" in mid-sip....)

To continue:  Further dissecting the aforementioned five broad categories, meat is broken down into Beef, Pork, Lamb and Mutton, Meat of Goats and Wild Ruminants, Horsemeat, Dog and Cat Meat, Rabbit and Hare and, finally, Rodent and Other Mammalian Meat.  Very considerate of the author to group together all the horsemeat recipes in one section, so that the reader needn't peruse the entire book for them when they get a hankerin' for horse.  And I won't even make the obvious "Chinese food" joke with regard to dog and cat meat.

The Fowl section is broken down into Chickens, Turkeys, Ducks and Geese (those are all one category), then Pigeons, Small Birds and Reptiles.  Yes, apparently reptiles are considered "fowl" (or maybe the author merely misspelled the word).

The Fish section is broken down into Amphibians, Bony Fish and Mudfish, Eels and Lampreys, Sharks and Skates and the Shellfish section is broken down into Molluscs, Crustaceans, Other Aquatic Animals (there's a catch-all if I've ever seen one) and Insects and Other Land Invertebrates.  I've already given the breakdown of the Nonflesh Foods of Animal Origin section earlier, so let's not go there again.

Okay, so much for the categorization.  Let's look at some recipes, shall we?  We'll start with something not too exotic.  Let's see now ... yes ... Pork sounds fairly safe. Oh wait, on second thought, in deference to my many Jewish readers.  Perhaps we'll go with Beef instead.  That particular chapter is even good enough to further break things down based on what part of the bovine we wish to eat, starting with the entire carcass (Roasted Ox on a Spit).  Well, I don't think I'm quite that hungry and, in any case, I haven't got a handy brick, refractory brick or stone wall available against which to build the necessary large, hardwood fire, so let's find us a recipe that just uses a portion of the animal.  There's Muscle Meat, the Head, the Tongue (a surprising number of recipes use beef tongue), the Eyes (Mmmmm.. Stuffed Calf's Eyes or Des Yeux de Veau Farcis as it would probably be listed on the menu of your favorite upper-class gourmet French restaurant), the Brains, the Feet, the Heart or even the Bones (great for making soups and marrow-based sauces).  Ah!  How about:

CALF'S HEAD WITH BRAIN FRITTERS (A 19th Century New England recipe)

Simmer a skinned and washed calf's head in salted water only and cool it.  Remove and slice the meat. Put the brain through the fine blade of a food chopper and mix it with a beaten egg, 1 T flour, 3 T milk and some nutmeg.  Fry the brain mixture as fritters.  Place the slices of head meat in some leftover beef gravy that has been seasoned with pepper, mace, cloves, herbs, onions and cayenne and simmer them 10 minutes.  Remove the meat, strain the sauce, and add some sautéed sliced mushrooms. Return the meat to the sauce and reheat.  Surround the head meat on a platter with the brain fritters and fried bacon.

No?  Okay then, how about seafood?  Let's see now... this sounds tasty...

EELS WITH SEA URCHIN GONAD SAUCE (a French recipe, also known as Oursinado)

Poach fillets of conger eel or any firm white fish (you know, if you don't happen to have any conger eels in the fridge) in white wine containing some grated onion and carrot, salt, pepper and a BOUQUET GARNI.  Prepare a purée of the gonads of poached sea urchins (which is given as a whole separate recipe in the same section of the book so you're covered), a mixture of soft butter and egg yolks, and a little of the fish stock.  Whip with a wire whisk over hot water until smooth and thick.  Cover the bottom of a shallow casserole with ½-in. slices of French bread, add only as much fish stock as the bread will readily absorb, pour the urchin sauce over the bread, and bake at 350°F only until heated well.  Serve the poached fish and pass the sauce dish separately.

The book goes on to note that, in fact, the variety of dishes into which sea urchin gonads can be incorporated to advantage is limited only by the cook's imagination.  Makes me wonder about that `secret sauce`that McDonald`s puts on its Big Macs.  I see the potential for a catchy slogan right up there with Beef Sounds Good or Put Pork On Your Fork:  Go Nuts with Gonads!  Pretty good, huh?

The only area where I found this book wanting is that it provides no guidance on how to identify the gonads on a sea urchin, nor even how to tell a male sea urchin from a female, which presumably would have no gonads.

I'll bet by this point you're wondering, Dear Reader, just how many more wonderful recipes like those presented above are to be gleaned from this incredible cook book.  Well, I'm happy to report that it numbers no less than 406 pages, and that's not even including the Epilogue, the Selected Bibliography (pointing you at other fascinating recipe books), the General Index or the Regional Index which organizes the recipes by country.

Oh and, one last note:  All of the recipes in Unmentionable Cuisine are presented, mercifully, without any pictures or illustrations.

Oh and, Peter, if you're reading this, consider this an open invitation to my place for dinner anytime.  There's a wonderful recipe for Palaman Palaka or Stuffed Frogs in the common vernacular that I've been dying to try out on company!

The Book Of Austria

My wife and I celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary this month.  To mark the occasion, we treated ourselves to a weekend getaway in picturesque Niagara On The Lake, Ontario where we stayed in a charming bed and breakfast called Cecile's House.  Our accommodations were both comfortable and elegant.  The large house was built circa 1840 and decorated in a stylish French Provincial style. Our host was a former chef, complete with a charming "Pepé LePew" French accent, who had a particular gift for attention to detail.

In our room, on the night table next to my side of the bed, was a musty-looking hard-cover book, probably meant more as a decoration than a remedy for guest boredom, entitled "The Book of Austria".  The book captured my attention for two reasons; firstly because of the seeming incongruity of its subject matter amidst otherwise French surroundings, and secondly because I happen to be a native-born Austrian.  It was almost as if our host had some sort of sixth sense where his guests were concerned and placed it there specifically for my benefit.

Intrigued, I picked up the book and began leafing through it.  It was published in 1948, shortly after the war, by the "Österreichische Staatsdruckerei" (Austrian State Printing and Publication House) in Vienna.  After only a brief perusal, I was so taken by the book that I immediately set about Googling it on my return home, and I quickly found an on-line vendor that offered a copy, in very good condition, at a reasonable price.  I wasted no time in ordering it.

The book is full of interesting facts about Austria; its history, its geography, its culture and its people.  The very first chapter begins thus:

"He who would find Austria on the globe must turn the round ball of the Earth slowly on its slanting axis, otherwise he might easily overlook the Austria of the 20th century."

In truth, Austria today is a fairly small country.  Its entire geographical area would fit neatly into Lake Superior.  Politically, its global influence is negligible today.  Yet, in not-so-distant historical times, during the era of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, its geographical boundaries were considerably larger, and both its political and cultural influences notably stronger.  Even after the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire seemingly unimposing Austria had a role to play in the outbreak of yet a second world war.  Adolf Hitler, who forced the world to go to war for a second time was, in fact, Austrian by birth.

The Book of Austria pays homage to what the country was and what it is today (or, at least, to what it was in 1948), including:

The Geography of Austria:  Small as it is, Austria is further divided into nine provinces.  From the cosmopolitan Vienna, which is considered both a city and a province simultaneously, to mountainous Tyrol, home of Innsbruck, one of the world's skiing Meccas, Austria exhibits an astonishing diversity for so small a geographic region.  Styria, the province in which I was born, is poetically described in a word-palette that illustrates something akin to a merger of J.R.R. Tolkien's woodland elves and mountain dwarves:

The Music of Austria:  During the 19th century, Vienna was, for a time, considered the music capital of the world.  Some of the world's most renowned classical composers, including Haydn, Mozart, Schubert and Strauss were Austrian.  Several other classical composers, while not native-born Austrians, were nonetheless strongly influenced by Austrian music, such as Ludwig Van Beethoven, who studied under Mozart.  The Christmas Hymn "Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht" (Silent Night, Holy Night) was written by Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohr, both Austrian.  According to The Book of Austria, "Vienna in the Biedermeier Age," the period during which art and music were enjoyed by the middle class as opposed to being the sole purview of the aristocracy, "had found its most perfect form of expression" in its music.  Today, musical societies and organizations remain in Austria which were established for the purpose of encouraging music in all its branches, including the "Gesellschaft der Muiskfreunde" (Society of the Friends of Music), the world-famous "Wiener Sängerknaben" (Vienna Boys' Choir) and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

The Karlskirche, Vienna

Austrian Culture:  One chapter in The Book of Austria discusses Austrian Baroque.  In the words of the author: "If you wish truly to understand and to appreciate this curious country, to unravel the living mystery which is Austria, you must learn how to experience the most intimate and most glorious manifestation of her spirit, as it exists in legend and song, in literature and painting, in architecture and in the great festivals of the country.  It is in our Baroque that you must seek it."  I've visited Vienna twice in my lifetime, and both times I was struck by the gothic architecture, the ancient churches and buildings, festooned with gargoyles and friezes.  Everything in Vienna seems to be presented with a certain flourish.  North American architecture, by comparison, seems bland and soulless.

Austrian People:  The Book of Austria describes Austria as being, in a sense, "the first attempt to create a European citizen - a world-citizen.  What is elsewhere so often but a vague longing, an illusion, or the unrealised dream of isolated individuals, has long been anchored in Austria among a wide circle of people."  The "typical" Austrian is described an an "everyman" who feels "mysteriously at home in another world which lies beyond their fellow citizens ... We may consider this will and this ability to live humanly among other human beings as the call of Austria to the whole world."  The typical Austrian, declares the book, "has a passion for 'wandern' - for hiking - deeply engrained within him. His mouth demands to breathe in the air of the great mountains, his foot the soft carpet of mossy slopes and his eye continual change, now drinking in the green of near-by forests, now reaching out to the distant lines which the silent horizon has etched against the bright sunshine."  I can personally attest to this.  Some years ago, I visited the beautiful Banff national park in my adopted homeland of Canada. Even though I had left Austria at the tender age of three and consider myself to be fully Canadian, yet as I hiked along a mountain trail overlooking Lake Louise, I felt a profound sense of well-being, like I had come home.  Perhaps this is why so many Austrians who have immigrated to Canada have settled in British Columbia.  With its towering mountains and its lush woodland, British Columbia is extremely reminiscent of Austria's Styria province.

In the book's forward, the author states "In contrast to other books, the Book of Austria does not wait until you encounter it by chance.  It comes to you, approaches you in word and picture - and in many another way."  I must admit, it certainly found me.

Why I Hate Neil Pasricha

Ask anybody who knows me and they'll tell you; I'm a nice guy.  I have no enemies.  I give people the benefit of the doubt, almost to a fault, and I tend to assume the best about everybody.  So why should I hate Neil Pasricha; a man whom I've never met and who has certainly never bothered, inconvenienced, negatively affected, or even thought about me in any way?  I'll tell you why.  The Book of Awesome, that's why!

Some time ago, I was minding my own business, shopping for groceries, and I found myself in the section of the grocery store where they keep the books, magazines and greeting cards.  Not looking for anything in particular, I was just browsing the various covers and titles when suddenly this black, hard-cover book entitled The Book Of AWESOME in rainbow-colored lettering caught my attention.  I quickly scanned the write-up on the back cover and the inner cover jacket and discovered that this is apparently a book that celebrates the myriad of small, simple pleasures that we encounter almost every day but that most of us don't even notice; the smell of fresh baked goods, peeling that thin, transparent, protective cover off new electronic equipment such as a cell phone or a TV remote, pushing in the little bubbles that are supposed to identify what's inside those soft drink cups that you get from fast food places but which never seem to be pushed in ... stuff like that.  The idea of the book appealed to me because I love things which accentuate the positive; goodness knows we hear enough negativity day after day, so I bought a copy.

You have to like the style and format of the book.  Each "chapter", if you could call it that, begins with a title that celebrates some little pleasure, like putting on a warm pair of undies fresh from the dryer, or waking up and realizing it's Saturday, or remembering what movie "that guy" is from.  Then there's a short write-up explaining why the author, Neil Pasricha, thinks that the thing in question is so great (it's not always self-evident, such as the chapter about your colon), and it always ends with a single word; AWESOME! 

Most of the chapters are pretty short, often just a page or less.  The shortest I've encountered was entitled "When you push the button for the elevator and it's already there".  This chapter was exactly two words long:

Ding!

     AWESOME!

The reason why I put quotes around the word "chapter" before is because the book itself was inspired by a blog, also by Neil Pasricha, called 1000awesomethings.com, so each "chapter" is really more of a "post", actually.  According to Wikipedia, the blog was born on June 20, 2008; just about 4 months before I started this blog.  In that time, 1000awesomethings.com has pulled in ... well, just a few more visitors than The Halmanator.  And it lead to not just one, but two book deals!  Yes, there is now a second book called The Book Of (Even More) Awesome. My daughter, who apparently delights in rubbing her father's nose in his inadequacies, made a point of getting me the second book last Father's Day.  I think the accompanying card said something like "You're okay too, for an unimportant nobody" (Okay,  it didn't actually say that, but I'm sure it was there between the lines!) 

The Book of Awesome was a New York Times bestseller and was the number one international best seller for over 140 weeks and was translated into Dutch, Korean, German, French and Portuguese (what, not Swahili???)  Nobody ever offered me a book deal!  Harrumph!

And that's why I hate Neil Pasricha; because he has accomplished what I can only dream of accomplishing, and he probably never even had any such ambitions.  Heck, he probably started the whole thing just as a lark.  The only thing worse than people who realize your own wildest ambitions are those who do it without even trying!  He`s like the Mozart to my Salieri!  Every time I either read The Book Of Awesome or visit 1000awesomethings.com I get a severe case of "Warumistmirsoetwasnichteingefallen".  That's a German word (that I just made up), something along the lines of "Schadenfreude", except it means "Why didn't I think of that???"

I've toyed with the idea of maybe cashing in by spoofing Pasricha's work.  I could start a blog of my own called 1000bogusthings.com.  Every day I could write about something that sucks.  How about this:

When you're tying your shoes and you`re already late and your shoelace busts

Snap!

     BOGUS! 

Eh???  Eh???  Maybe it could catch on!  Maybe I could write a book of my own called The Book Of BOGUS.

Nah, it wouldn`t work.  See, the reason why Pasricha's blog caught on so big is precisely because it's so positive.  It gently opens an umbrella over the reader to shield them from the torrent of negativity that seems to rain down upon us from the commercial media every single day and it urges us to take pleasure in the little things.  It's precisely the kind of light-hearted, "feel good" writing to which The Halmanator aspires, only with money and success attached to it. 

And I have to admire the writing style too.  Pasricha comes across as one of those easy-going, down-to-earth, "I'm okay, you're okay" kind of guys. When writing about those drink cup lids, he explains that "we..." (meaning he and his sister, when they were kids) "...thought there was a big Garbage Survey at the end of the day and every customer had to punch their button to send in feedback.  We figured some poor sap stuck his arm shoulder-deep in that bag of lettuce scraps drenched in Big Mac sauce, hollow ice cream cone bottoms, and greasy French fry containers and pulled out all the cup lids.  We imagined he arranged them in tipsy, drippy piles and counted how many sold that day, adding the results up on a clipboard and calling them into the head office so they knew how many batches to make for tomorrow.

You see what I mean?  That paragraph right there probably brought a bigger smile to your face than anything I've written in this post so far, didn't it?  DIDN'T IT???  You probably even chuckled knowingly, didn't you?

But, all kidding aside, I don't really hate you Neil.  Actually, I think you're kind of...

AWESOME! (c) (R) (tm)

A Brief History Of Time

The Halmanator is proud to announce that he has crossed yet another title off his Bucket Reading List.  The Bucket Reading List is a list of books that I've decided that I want to read sometime between when I officially conceived of the list and when I die.  Regular readers of this blog may recall that two of the titles that I've previously crossed off the list (because I read them, not because I changed my mind and gave up) were Moby Dick by Herman Melville and War and Peace, by Leo Tolstoy.  Now, added to this illustrious (albeit short) list of titles is A Brief History of Time, by Professor Stephen Hawking.

Again, this may somewhat surprise regular readers, who may recall an earlier post that was somewhat critical of Professor Hawking, but The Halmanator believes that it is possible to disagree with or criticize someone and yet still respect that person.  I further believe that one cannot properly criticize another's views if one has not given those views a fair hearing and understands them in their proper context.  If only our politicians were half so enlightened!

My main reason for adding Professor Hawking's book to my Bucket Reading List, beyond mere curiosity, involved wondering if my mind could even begin to understand the complex and abstract ideas that must surely emanate from the brain of such a widely-recognized mental giant.  Having read the book, I'm pleased to say that I was able to follow at least the basic concepts although, if I were one of Professor Hawking's actual students, I wouldn't count on passing the exam.

A Brief History of Time is considerably shorter than the first two books that I finished, which is good because I had to read it much more slowly.  Some parts, I had to read over two or three times before I felt as though I had any kind of grasp on what Hawking was talking about.  The book seeks nothing less than to explain the universe; how it began, how it works and what its eventual destiny might be.  In fact, had Hawking consulted me (and I state for the record that he most certainly did not), I might have suggested that A Brief History of The Universe might be a more appropriate title, or even Life, The Universe and Everything.  (No, wait, that's been taken).

To be sure, during the course of his dissertations, Hawking does discuss time; what it is, how it relates to space and whether it might be possible to make it go backward instead of forward, but this is just one subject in a larger discussion that covers the properties of light, the theory of relativity, gravity, dark matter, elementary particles and the forces of nature, the uncertainty principle, string theory, black holes, the big bang theory (no, not the sit-com) and quantum physics.  The underlying theme that seems to run throughout the book is the attempt to reconcile the fundamental differences between the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics in order to find a single, unified theory of the universe. 

To his credit, Hawking stays away from technicalities and complex mathematical equations which would surely leave the layman floundering.  Instead, he sticks to the concepts and offers analogies that the rest of us can understand as illustrations.  This is probably why the book has become such a big seller, despite its somewhat esoteric subject matter.

Hawking also occasionally breathes life into otherwise potentially dry subjects with the help of a tongue-in-cheek sense of humor that some might find surprising coming from such an academic as he.  He apparently likes a good wager, as he relates several bets that he's made with colleagues, such as the bet that he made with Kip Thorne and John Preskill of the California Institute of Technology, in which he took the position that there were no solutions for the equations of general relativity which would allow for naked singularities (black holes with no event horizon) that could actually be observed because they would be too unstable.  Later, when solutions were worked out that would indeed allow for observable naked singularities, albeit only ones a very long distance away, Hawking made good on the wager by "clothing Thorne and Preskill's nakedness".  Although he chooses not to elaborate on exactly what that entailed, I'm sure that it had to do with buying his colleagues new suits or jackets or maybe "I Pwned Stephen Hawking" tee-shirts, making it not nearly as compromising as it might sound.

One of my favorite bets that Hawking lost is yet another made with Kip Thorne that the star Cygnus X-1 would turn out not to be a black hole.  In fact, it turned out to be one, so Hawking's payment was a year's subscription to Penthouse magazine for Kip.  I so wish that I could go through the rest of my life telling people that Stephen Hawking clothed my nakedness and then bought me a year's subscription to Penthouse.  I could die happy.  There'd really be nothing left to accomplish!  I mean, how do you top that?

In case you're thinking that, in spite of his genius, Hawking doesn't learn from his mistakes (such as betting against Kip Thorne), you have to realize that Hawking actually very much wanted to believe that Cygnus X-1 was a black hole, and bet against that fact mainly as a hedge.  Having lost, at least he has the satisfaction of knowing that Cygnus X-1 turned out to be what he had hoped it would be.  If he'd won, he would have gotten a four-year subscription to Private Eye magazine, apparently one of his favorite publications.  (I'm now forming an amusing mental image of Hawking in a worn-out beige trench coat and deerstalker hat).  In a sense, he couldn't lose either way.

Sometimes, Hawking is unintentionally amusing.  I offer, as an example, his discussion of string theory or, rather, M-theory, which is a sort of extension of string theory.  Here's a very simplified explanation.  There are particles.  We all know what those are.  Then there are strings.  Those are like particles that have another dimension; length (hence the "string" analogy").  Well, M-theory posits the existence of another basic building block of the universe known as a membrane, or "brane".  That's like a string with yet another dimension, making it more like a sheet (or membrane).  These are referred to as "P-branes" (not Hawking's idea, as far as I know), with "P" being the number of dimensions in which the membrane exists. 

The number of dimensions in which the membrane exists?  Concepts like that make me feel like a "P-brane" myself.  It happens a lot while reading Hawking's book.

Browsing Through Chapters

My wife, my daughter and I are three very different people, but one thing that we do share in common is a love of books.  Of course, our individual tastes in books differ, but at least we all like to read.  For that reason, family outings to our local Chapters book store are not uncommon.

Because we happened to be near Chapters recently, my daughter suggested we go in to browse for a bit.  There was nothing in particular that anyone wanted or needed, you understand.  I'm always wary when Jessica suggests that sort of thing, because it invariably means that I'm going to end up buying here something.  Still, sometimes one has to bend a bit, so in we went.

As I wasn't looking for anything in particular, I just sort of sauntered around looking at the various covers.  Randomly browsing book covers can be an amusing experience.  Conrad Black has released an autobiography called "A Matter of Principle".  I smirked at that.  From what I've read of him, Conrad Black is the very last person who should be talking about principles.  What's next?  "Simon Cowell: I'm Okay, You're Okay"?  "Dr. Jack Kevorkian:  Choose Life"? "Adolf Hitler: Mazel Tov!"?

In the Self Help section, there was a book entitled "DO IT NOW!  How To Stop Procrastinating".  I didn't see the need to even open the cover of that one.  The title kinda says it all, doesn't it?

Speaking of procrastination, on the magazine rack, my eye fell upon the latest issue of Maclean's which featured a picture of the recently departed Steve Jobs, alongside the headline, "Let's Go Invent Tomorrow".  "That was the problem with Steve Jobs...", I mused to myself, "...always putting things off.  If he hadn't been such a procrastinator, he might really have been somebody!"

Speaking of magazines, I have in my collection a special issue of Time entitled "Your Brain: A User's Guide".  I highly recommend this one, and I really wish a lot more people out there would read it; especially certain politicians and so-called world leaders.  Here's a tip:  Defrag every so often.  It does wonders!

Having seen three titles outside of the humor section that made me chuckle, I wondered what other unintentionally amusing or ironic titles there might be out there so I turned on my computer and consulted that font of all knowledge, Google.  Not surprisingly, I quickly found several.  Here's a short list of some of the better ones, with links to their sources (credit where it's due):

A children's cookbook entitled "Cooking With Pooh".  (Ewww!)

"The Leadership Genius of George W. Bush".  This one goes side-by-side with Conrad Black's book.

"How To Avoid Huge Ships".  Paddle To The Sea should have read this one.

Here's a link to a web site featuring several titles that sound more suggestive than they're meant to.

There is one other intersting title that I personally stumbled upon, not at Chapters but at Cole's some time ago.  It was a journal, of sorts, entitled "F_ck You And Your Blog"  I suspect I'll be receiving several copies of that for Christmas.

War and Peace

Some time ago, I wrote in this blog about my thoughts on the book "Moby Dick" and I mentioned, too, that I had planned to tackle "War and Peace" next. In fact, I'm still reading it. I'm about half way through. I could have finished it by now, in spite of its notorious length but, like many substantial literary works, it starts out slowly, setting the stage and establishing the characters, and it can take a while before it really begins to capture the reader's interest. Consequently, I had set it aside for a while after starting it and, even now, I read only a chapter each day, and the chapters are short, though numerous.

Even so, I must say that I'm enjoying the book considerably more than I did "Moby Dick". Leo Tolstoy, the author, has woven a fascinating tapestry of aristocratic families made up of interesting characters whose lives and fates are interwoven against the backdrop of Imperial Russia's war with Napoleon. Tolstoy also displays a keen understanding of the human condition, as evidenced by the following paragraph.

At the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second.

A most astute observation, and I paused to think about why this is. I think that it's because our individual problems are our own. Since they affect only ourselves, we know that it's up to us to solve them. When a larger problem threatens society as a whole, everyone hopes that someone else will solve it. I think that's what's happening with the issue of global warming. If the climate is really changing, we may be witnessing the genesis of an unprecedented disaster; one that threatens not only all of mankind, but every living thing on this planet. At the very least, it would mean starvation, famine, war and death on a scale never before seen. So some choose to deny that the problem exists, and even the majority of those who do accept that there is a threat leave it to others to deal with the problem. I would argue that this was at the heart of the failure of the Kyoto and Copenhagen conferences on climate change. Every participating nation felt that the problem was the responsibility of the others. None were willing to stand up and declare "The buck stops here!". Meanwhile, the problem continues and no meaningful action is taken. I can almost hear Tolstoy muttering "Я сказал вас так!" (or, since French was apparently very much in vogue in Imperial Russia, at least among the aristocracy, "Je vous ai dit ainsi!"

Tolstoy also presents us with this second insightful bit of analysis:

On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries, thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms, and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them did not at the time regard as being crimes.

What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes? The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.

Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich, Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"- and there would have been no war.

We can understand that the matter seemed like that to contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St. Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178. It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.

I wonder what this world will be like 100 years hence, and what the historians of that time, if indeed there still be any historians, will have to say about the actions and motives of those who steer the course of history today?

Clutter

HBO featured a science fiction/thriller/horror series called "Ray Bradbury Theatre" from 1985 through 1992. Each episode was based on the writings of Ray Bradbury, usually on one of his short stories. The introduction to each episode consisted of footage showing Ray Bradbury arriving in his studio, which was cluttered with posters, photos, notes and every sort of tchotchke imaginable. Bradbury explained in a voice over, as he took his seat at a typewriter near the center of the flotsam,, that this studio is where he gets his ideas.

"I'm surrounded on every side by my magician's toy shop," explains Bradbury, "I'll never starve here!"

I have a home office something like that. My home office, or perhaps "den" is a better word, is an attic room. I claimed it as my den when we bought the house because it features lots of shelving and cabinet space, which I knew I would need. Even so, every available surface in the room is occupied by books, binders, boxes, discs, caricatures, miniatures and brick-a-brack of every kind.

Clutter rules my life. Sometimes I see this as a bad thing. I admonish myself to be more organized. I remind myself to get rid of the old stuff that I no longer need. What's the rule? If you haven't looked at it in 2 or more years, you can probably throw it out.

However, the introduction to the Ray Bradbury Theatre suggests that clutter isn't always a bad thing. Some of it has to do with surrounding yourself with things that make you happy. Looking around my den, it quickly becomes obvious that I'm a big fan of The Simpsons and Star Wars, and that I love airplanes, computer games and books. Spending time there tends to make me feel good because I look around me and see my favorite things. (Not to worry; I'm not about to start prancing about the room and singing, Julie Andrews style).

Beyond just making one feel good, clutter can serve to inspire. It can help to set the creative juices in motion by bringing dormant ideas to the forefront and sometimes highlighting obscure associations. In Ray Bradbury's case, the clutter in his studio helped to inspire some of his renowned literary works. In my case, well, it gave me something to blog about this week.

It's also possible to be too neat and organized. One of my favorite quotes about computer programming suggests that "structured programming is for compulsive neurotics who were prematurely toilet-trained, wear neckties and carefully line up pencils on otherwise
clear desks". Speaking of which, I think that most people, when they see a co-worker sitting at a clean, uncluttered desk, assume that person must have no work to do. Clutter suggests busy-ness.

Perhaps the happy medium lies in eliminating the clutter that comes from simply not putting things in their place or throwing out the unneeded, but keeping those things whose presence stimulates and inspires, even if they have no obvious practical use.

Moby Dick

Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" is widely regarded as one of the classic novels of our age. There are a number of books on my "Must read before I die" list, and "Moby Dick" was among them. About two years ago, I managed to cross it off the list. I found it to be one of the most tedious books I've ever labored through.

Don't get me wrong. "Moby Dick" does have its moments. I do find its main premise, "Whaling captain allows his obsession with vengeance to cloud his judgment with disastrous consequences", to be thought-provoking. The problem is that the book could have been trimmed down to about a third of its length without losing any of the essential story or premise.

Aside from being a writer, Melville was also a whaler and his love of the sea and of whaling is evident in the lavish detail with which he describes every aspect thereof. This might be appealing to the reader who shares Melville's love of whaling. To a certain extent, it's even interesting to those of us who have no special interest in whaling. For my part, by the time I got to Melville's detailed description of the whale-line that's attached to the harpoon, to which he devotes an entire chapter, I found myself mentally repeating the words of King Arthur from Monty Python's "Holy Grail".

Melville: "With reference to the whaling scene shortly to be described, as well as for the better understanding of all similar scenes elsewhere presented, I have here to speak of the magical, sometimes horrible whale-line."

Me: "Yes."

Melville: "The line originally used in the fishery was of the best hemp, slightly vapoured with tar, not impregnated with it, as in the case of ordinary ropes; for while tar, as ordinarily used, makes the hemp more pliable to the rope-maker, and also renders the rope itself more convenient to the sailor for common ship use; yet, not only would the ordinary quantity too much stiffen the whale-line for the close coiling to which it must be subjected; but as most seamen are beginning to learn, tar in general by no means adds to the rope's durability or strength, however much it may give it compactness and gloss."

Me: "Yes I, see."

Melville: "Of late years the Manilla rope has in the American fishery almost entirely superseded hemp as a material for whale-lines; for, though not so durable as hemp, it is stronger, and far more soft and elastic; and I will add (since there is an aesthetics in all things), is much more handsome and becoming to the boat, than hemp. Hemp is a dusky, dark fellow, a sort of Indian; but Manilla is as a golden-haired Circassian to behold."

Me: "Be quiet!"

Melville: "The whale-line is only two-thirds of an inch in thickness. At first sight, you would not think it so strong as it really is. By experiment its one and fifty yarns will each suspend a weight of one hundred and twenty pounds; so that the whole rope will bear a strain nearly equal to three tons. In length, the common sperm whale-line measures something over two hundred fathoms. Towards the stern of the boat it is spirally coiled away in the tub, not like the worm-pipe of a still though, but so as to form one round, cheese-shaped mass of densely bedded "sheaves," or layers of concentric spiralizations, without any hollow but the "heart," or minute vertical tube formed at the axis of the cheese. As the least tangle or kink in the coiling would, in running out, infallibly take somebody's arm, leg, or entire body off, the utmost precaution is used in stowing the line in its tub. Some harpooneers will consume almost an entire morning in this business, carrying the line high aloft and then reeving it downwards through a block towards the tub, so as in the act of coiling to free it from all possible wrinkles and twists."

Me: "I order you to be quiet!"

For all of his experience with whales, Melville seems somewhat misinformed about their nature. He devotes an entire chapter to the argument as to whether a whale is a mammal or a fish, as this question had apparently not yet been resolved when "Moby Dick" was written, back in 1851, at the end of which he reaches the erroneous conclusion that a whale is, in fact, a fish. So then, not only is "Moby Dick" unnecessarily long and tedious, it's also factually wrong in places.

Melville also takes great pains in familiarizing the reader with the many different types of whales there are to be found in the oceans of the world. I can't help wondering whether he might not sound a little like the character of Private Benjamin "Bubba" Blue from "Forrest Gump" if he were to recite them aloud; "The Sperm Whale, the Right Whale, the Fin Back Whale, the Hump-backed whale, the Razor Back Whale, the Sulphur Bottom Whale, the Narwhale..."

Melville's writing style is very uneven. While most of the book takes the form of a narrative, certain chapters read more like a play, such as Chapter 40, entitled "Midnight, Forecastle", which begins:

HARPOONEERS AND SAILORS.

(FORESAIL RISES AND DISCOVERS THE WATCH STANDING, LOUNGING, LEANING, AND LYING IN VARIOUS ATTITUDES, ALL SINGING IN CHORUS.)

Farewell and adieu to you, Spanish ladies!
Farewell and adieu to you, ladies of Spain!
Our captain's commanded.—

1ST NANTUCKET SAILOR. Oh, boys, don't be sentimental; it's bad for the digestion! Take a tonic, follow me!

(SINGS, AND ALL FOLLOW)

Our captain stood upon the deck, A spy-glass in his hand,
A viewing of those gallant whales That blew at every strand.
Oh, your tubs in your boats, my boys, And by your braces stand,
And we'll have one of those fine whales, Hand, boys, over hand!
So, be cheery, my lads! may your hearts never fail!
While the bold harpooner is striking the whale!

MATE'S VOICE FROM THE QUARTER-DECK. Eight bells there, forward!

2ND NANTUCKET SAILOR. Avast the chorus! Eight bells there! d'ye hear, bell-boy? Strike the bell eight, thou Pip! thou blackling! and let me call the watch. I've the sort of mouth for that—the hogshead mouth. So, so,

(THRUSTS HIS HEAD DOWN THE SCUTTLE,)

Star-bo-l-e-e-n-s, a-h-o-y! Eight bells there below! Tumble up!

DUTCH SAILOR. Grand snoozing to-night, maty; fat night for that. I mark this in our old Mogul's wine; it's quite as deadening to some as filliping to others. We sing; they sleep—aye, lie down there, like ground-tier butts. At 'em again! There, take this copper-pump, and hail 'em through it. Tell 'em to avast dreaming of their lasses. Tell 'em it's the resurrection; they must kiss their last, and come to judgment. That's the way—THAT'S it; thy throat ain't spoiled with eating Amsterdam butter.

FRENCH SAILOR. Hist, boys! let's have a jig or two before we ride to anchor in Blanket Bay. What say ye? There comes the other watch. Stand by all legs! Pip! little Pip! hurrah with your tambourine!

On first reading this chapter, I had to check the cover to ensure that I hadn't accidentally picked up the wrong book! It's as though Melville couldn't decide what kind of work he wanted to create. The world should breathe a sigh of relief that, in the end, he eventually went mostly with the narrative because, as a play, "Moby Dick" would make the Greek epics of yore seem like a Vaudeville sketch.

And take this excerpt from Chapter 42: "The Whiteness of The Whale"; an entire chapter devoted to pondering the color white:

"Though in many natural objects, whiteness refiningly enhances beauty, as if imparting some special virtue of its own, as in marbles, japonicas, and pearls; and though various nations have in some way recognised a certain royal preeminence in this hue; even the barbaric, grand old kings of Pegu placing the title "Lord of the White Elephants" above all their other magniloquent ascriptions of dominion; and the modern kings of Siam unfurling the same snow-white quadruped in the royal standard; and the Hanoverian flag bearing the one figure of a snow-white charger; and the great Austrian Empire, Caesarian, heir to overlording Rome, having for the imperial colour the same imperial hue; and though this pre-eminence in it applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe; and though, besides, all this, whiteness has been even made significant of gladness, for among the Romans a white stone marked a joyful day; and though in other mortal sympathies and symbolizings, this same hue is made the emblem of many touching, noble things—the innocence of brides, the benignity of age; though among the Red Men of America the giving of the white belt of wampum was the deepest pledge of honour; though in many climes, whiteness typifies the majesty of Justice in the ermine of the Judge, and contributes to the daily state of kings and queens drawn by milk-white steeds; though even in the higher mysteries of the most august religions it has been made the symbol of the divine spotlessness and power; by the Persian fire worshippers, the white forked flame being held the holiest on the altar; and in the Greek mythologies, Great Jove himself being made incarnate in a snow-white bull; and though to the noble Iroquois, the midwinter sacrifice of the sacred White Dog was by far the holiest festival of their theology, that spotless, faithful creature being held the purest envoy they could send to the Great Spirit with the annual tidings of their own fidelity; and though directly from the Latin word for white, all Christian priests derive the name of one part of their sacred vesture, the alb or tunic, worn beneath the cassock; and though among the holy pomps of the Romish faith, white is specially employed in the celebration of the Passion of our Lord; though in the Vision of St. John, white robes are given to the redeemed, and the four-and-twenty elders stand clothed in white before the great-white throne, and the Holy One that sitteth there white like wool; yet for all these accumulated associations, with whatever is sweet, and honourable, and sublime, there yet lurks an elusive something in the innermost idea of this hue, which strikes more of panic to the soul than that redness which affrights in blood."

Had I submitted this as an twelfth-grade writing assignment, my English teacher would have circled that entire paragraph with a big red marker and scrawled the words "run-on sentence!" across it, yet that same twelfth-grade English teacher saw no conflict in presenting this to his students as an example of a classic work of literary genius.

"Moby Dick" is not the most tedious book I've ever labored through. That dubious honor belongs to "The Stone Angel", by Margaret Laurence; a novel about the reminiscences of an old woman who had lived a very ordinary and, in fact, somewhat lacklustre, life. Reading that particular book was a little like visiting a senile old auntie who tended to prattle on and on about the same things at every visit. However, "Moby Dick" certainly ranks high on my tedium scale. Ever the glutton for punishment, I've now taken it upon myself to tackle "War And Peace" by Leo Tolstoy. Wish me luck.