books, books
Aug. 28th, 2013 09:59 amWhat are you currently reading?
Ha. I was reading Robert Graves's poetic treatise The White Goddess, but I got about five chapters in and gave up.
In the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian, there's a giant sculpture made of cardboard covered in tinfoil. I say 'sculpture' rather than anything more descriptive because I'm not sure how to describe it. The placard in front of it says that it was the life work of a guy in his garage, and he kept adding to it and adding to it, and adding esoteric symbology and more tinfoil, for decades.
And I look at it, and I am simultaneously overwhelmed by the sheer amount of effort that went into it and the coherence of its creator's vision in putting all these disparate elements together, and made somewhat uncomfortable by the knowledge that this was some guy's lifework, and it's made of tinfoil-covered cardboard.
This is roughly the sensation I have after five chapters of The White Goddess. It is the work of a crackpot who has constructed an amazing edifice out of cardboard and wrapped it in tinfoil, and just keeps on building it up.
Graves's central argument, as I understand it, is that 1) poetry has become debased from its proper Theme; 2) that Theme is romantic relations between men and women, as a reflection of a celebration of the Goddess; 3) worship of the Goddess and matriarchal society was once widespread throughout all of Europe but has been supplanted by a patriarchal society & religion. In support of point 3 he suggests that the Celts were originally Greek, using scant (and bad) archaeological evidence and linguistic coincidences to make this argument.
The first several chapters are an analysis of the Cad Goddeu, an enigmatic and fragmentary twelfth-century Welsh poem. He claims that the poem is about the struggle between the forces of the Goddess and the God, and furthermore that it encodes a poetic alphabet, with references to Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Celtic myths (and likely more that I'm forgetting).
As a scholarly work it is just plain Bad, but I knew that going in. I was hoping for it to be at least entertainingly Bad, but it's dry and dull and left me shaking my head in dismay at his leaps of logic rather than in wonder at the connections he'd forged (in either sense).
I am told Graves wrote a novel, Seven Days In New Crete / Watch The North Wind Rise, based around these themes. I might find that more palatable.
What did you recently finish reading?
Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon trilogy (Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur). I had a fondness for these growing up: they're the Arthur legend, steeped in Celtic myth. They ... have not aged well. Or I haven't. The Atlantis bits of Taliesin remain compelling, perhaps because Lawhead had to come up with his own story and didn't feel constrained by the existing material. The rest feels like he's trying to cram in as much as he can from his primary sources. Characters are frequently either brought on with no fanfare (Vortigern), disappear without so much as a wave (Arthur's half-sibling, the Fisher King's wife), or have no motivation (Morgian). I cannot help but feel that there's a really cool story in there somewhere, but it would take far more than three books to tell.
I've also read #VPXV classmate Phoebe North's debut novel Starglass, a young-adult Jewish generation-ship novel, which was quite good despite its rather abrupt ending.
What do you think you'll read next?
I may pick up Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, on account of having seen the (Bogart/Bacall) movie on Sunday night and being completely in love with the dialogue. ("You just stood there and let them work me over?" "When a man's playing a hand, I let him play it out. I'm no kibitzer.")
Or I may finally get around to reading Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, to wash the taste of The White Goddess from my mind.
Ha. I was reading Robert Graves's poetic treatise The White Goddess, but I got about five chapters in and gave up.
In the National Portrait Gallery in the Smithsonian, there's a giant sculpture made of cardboard covered in tinfoil. I say 'sculpture' rather than anything more descriptive because I'm not sure how to describe it. The placard in front of it says that it was the life work of a guy in his garage, and he kept adding to it and adding to it, and adding esoteric symbology and more tinfoil, for decades.
And I look at it, and I am simultaneously overwhelmed by the sheer amount of effort that went into it and the coherence of its creator's vision in putting all these disparate elements together, and made somewhat uncomfortable by the knowledge that this was some guy's lifework, and it's made of tinfoil-covered cardboard.
This is roughly the sensation I have after five chapters of The White Goddess. It is the work of a crackpot who has constructed an amazing edifice out of cardboard and wrapped it in tinfoil, and just keeps on building it up.
Graves's central argument, as I understand it, is that 1) poetry has become debased from its proper Theme; 2) that Theme is romantic relations between men and women, as a reflection of a celebration of the Goddess; 3) worship of the Goddess and matriarchal society was once widespread throughout all of Europe but has been supplanted by a patriarchal society & religion. In support of point 3 he suggests that the Celts were originally Greek, using scant (and bad) archaeological evidence and linguistic coincidences to make this argument.
The first several chapters are an analysis of the Cad Goddeu, an enigmatic and fragmentary twelfth-century Welsh poem. He claims that the poem is about the struggle between the forces of the Goddess and the God, and furthermore that it encodes a poetic alphabet, with references to Greek, Jewish, Christian, and Celtic myths (and likely more that I'm forgetting).
As a scholarly work it is just plain Bad, but I knew that going in. I was hoping for it to be at least entertainingly Bad, but it's dry and dull and left me shaking my head in dismay at his leaps of logic rather than in wonder at the connections he'd forged (in either sense).
I am told Graves wrote a novel, Seven Days In New Crete / Watch The North Wind Rise, based around these themes. I might find that more palatable.
What did you recently finish reading?
Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon trilogy (Taliesin, Merlin, Arthur). I had a fondness for these growing up: they're the Arthur legend, steeped in Celtic myth. They ... have not aged well. Or I haven't. The Atlantis bits of Taliesin remain compelling, perhaps because Lawhead had to come up with his own story and didn't feel constrained by the existing material. The rest feels like he's trying to cram in as much as he can from his primary sources. Characters are frequently either brought on with no fanfare (Vortigern), disappear without so much as a wave (Arthur's half-sibling, the Fisher King's wife), or have no motivation (Morgian). I cannot help but feel that there's a really cool story in there somewhere, but it would take far more than three books to tell.
I've also read #VPXV classmate Phoebe North's debut novel Starglass, a young-adult Jewish generation-ship novel, which was quite good despite its rather abrupt ending.
What do you think you'll read next?
I may pick up Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep, on account of having seen the (Bogart/Bacall) movie on Sunday night and being completely in love with the dialogue. ("You just stood there and let them work me over?" "When a man's playing a hand, I let him play it out. I'm no kibitzer.")
Or I may finally get around to reading Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism, to wash the taste of The White Goddess from my mind.