Having Coffee with Dante

My friend Patricia, who spends part of the year in Florence Italy, had a conversation with me and Dante came up. By coincidence my college copy of Dante was sitting on the desk next to me and I told her that I had found it on a shelf when I was sorting out books to give away. I started looking through it, and besides all my marginalia, I found scraps of paper with diagrams and notes, including a few from my professor from the course that had me reading the book.

I am in my almost-annual rereading of Moby-Dick at the pace of a chapter a day, and Pat said that that was the way she had read Dante. I found Dante to be much more difficult than Melville. Even though I do love poetry, his terza rima is too repetitious and the language only made sense because I was reading it with a guide.

Actually, any epic poem I have read or tried to read has piqued my short attention span. I failed with Gilgamesh, Odyssey and Iliad, Aeneid, Beowulf, the Nibelungenlied, and Paradise Lost, Even some modern epic poems seem to be beyond me – Walcott’s Omeros, even the more modern Paterson by William Carlos Williams, and Pound’s Cantos.

With Dante, one translator, Robert M. Durling, has done prose translations of Dante that drop the meter and rhyme that trouble readers like me. Turning verse to prose seems like cheating, but then again any English translation is flawed. Durling says, “…the closely literal style is a conscious effort to convey in part the nature of Dante’s Italian, notoriously craggy and difficult even for Italians.”

Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence. His family, of minor nobility, was not wealthy nor especially distinguished. His mother died when he was a child, and his father before 1283. At about the age of 20 he married Gemma Donati, by whom he had three children.

We don’t know much about his formal education. Probably he studied with the Dominicans, the Augustinians, and the Franciscans in Florence, and for a time at the university in Bologna.

In 1295 he went into politics and in 1300 he became one of the six governing Priors of Florence. In 1301, the political situation forced Dante and his party into exile. For the rest of his life, he wandered through Italy, perhaps studying in Paris, and depended on the generosity of various nobles. He continued to write and at some point late in life, he took asylum in Ravenna where he completed the Divine Commedia. For that, he was much honored at his death in 1321.

My Moby-Dick reading will take me into May since I began on Christmas Day because that was when Ishmael’s Pequod set sail. The Divine Comedy begins in a shadowed forest on Good Friday in the year 1300. If I was to walk with Dante again on Good Friday (which is always the Friday before Easter Sunday) that would start me reading on March 29. Sailing on the Pequod and walking through the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso would probably be too much all at once.

The Divine Comedy has three sections, or canticles, Inferno, Purgatorio, and Paradiso. Technically there are 33 cantos in each canticle and one additional canto, contained in the Inferno, which serves as an introduction to the entire poem. So many days…

One of the sheets I rediscovered in my Dante. Incomprehensible to me now.

I looked for Dante things in the library and found Prue Shaw, one of the authorities on Dante. Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity is her introduction to his poem. which is sometimes considered the greatest literary work of all time and not simply a medieval treatise on morality and religion.

Maybe I need a guide through those three places with their complicated geography through the afterlife. Surely I need a guide to thirteenth-century Florence and the people and places that influenced him. After all, Dante had a guide. Beatrice serves as the pilgrim’s bridge to salvation. She is a descends into hell to call upon Virgil for his help and to instruct him to lead the pilgrim Dante on an otherworldly journey.

I was required to read some Dante in college and I even included The Divine Comedy in a major paper I wrote for an undergraduate independent study. I know I made it through Inferno, with some skimming I am sure. Purgatorio was different. While I was relieved to be out of the depths of the abyss of Hell and heading skywards on the titular mountain, I didn’t feel relieved.

Having been raised Catholic but having lost most of my beliefs in college, (according to my mother, because I took religion courses) Purgatory always seemed like a terrible place. Dante puts Mount Purgatorio somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere, which I found amusing. There are contained all the struggles and temptations that humankind must overcome if they are to attain Paradise.

The Inferno’s plunging concentric circles are reversed in Purgatorio’s sseven terraces, built one on top of the other and each associated with another level of Deadly Sin.

Having made it through Hell and taken a cable car up Mount Purgatorio, I entered – without my own Beatrice – Paradise. Dante’s experiences in the Inferno and Purgatorio were arduous and harrowing, but this third part is a journey of comfort, revelation, and, above all, love – both romantic and divine.

The third part should have been the most enjoyable to read but I, like most readers, focused on that inferno of Hell.

I may dip back into Dante after Ishmael gets picked up floating in the ocean clinging to a coffin. Perhaps, I will take my copy to my local coffee shop and read a little each time. Can I conjure up Dante, or better yet, Beatrice, to guide me?

The American cafe where I may try to meet with Dante

The two illustrations of Dante used here are ones I created using AI.

November 14, 1851

On November 14, 1851, Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick was published in America.

Moby-Dick received a disappointing reception. I suppose readers expected more adventure from him, like earlier books, and less whale information.

Melville continued to produce novels, short stories, and poetry, but writing couldn’t pay the bills. In 1865, he returned to New York to work as a customs inspector. It sounds like a dreadful job. He did it for 20 years.

Melville died in 1891, largely forgotten by the literary world. By the 1920s, scholars had rediscovered his work, particularly Moby-Dick, which many considered the greatest American novel. That kind of praise doesn’t really help get people to read it. It’s like saying Citizen Kane is the greatest American film. That kind of talk means the book or film is bound to disappoint.

This date always makes me go back to the novel in some form. Melville’s birthday (August 1), his death day (September 28), and Christmas Day, which is when the Pequod set sail, are all good days to explore his writing in some form.

I need to get started because it is already November in my soul and I don’t want to knock your hat off.

Pebble Meditation

Now that I am back into reading to little ones, I’m looking in the boxes of stored children’s books from my own sons. My grandkids are both under three so some books are too advanced but this is one that I will eventually introduce at one of their sleepovers.

Pebble meditation is a technique to introduce children to the calming practice of meditation. It was developed by Zen master, best-selling author, and  Nobel Peace Prize nominee, Thich Nhat Hanh. In A Handful of Quiet: Happiness in Four Pebbles and A Pebble for Your Pocket, he offers illustrated guides for children and parents, so this is not just a children’s book.

Many books in the children’s section of the library and bookstore are worth being read by older people. This meditation can be practiced alone or with a group or family and can help relieve stress, increase concentration, encourage gratitude, and help children deal with difficult emotions.

A very simplified how-to of the process:

1. A participant places four pebbles on the ground next to him or her.
2. At three sounds of a bell,  each person picks up the first pebble and says, “Breathing in, I see myself as a flower. Breathing out, I feel fresh. Flower, fresh.”  Breathe together quietly for three in and out breaths.
3. The next pebble is for “Breathing in I see myself as a mountain, breathing out, I feel solid. Mountain, solid.
4. Pebble 3’s recitation is “Breathing in I see myself as still, clear water, breathing out, I reflect things as they really are. Clear water, reflecting.”
5. And the fourth pebble has us saying “Breathing in I see myself as space, breathing out, I feel free. Space, free.”
6. End with three sounds of the bell.

I would compare my own use of a grief stone to this practice. In some workshops, participants may find pebbles that can represent people in their lives and use those pebbles when they breathe in and out and feel a connection to that person.

There are pebble meditations that focus on specific areas of growth. For example, using the six paramitas, or six perfected realizations, are the elements that help us cross from suffering to liberation. The six are generosity, diligence, mindfulness training, inclusiveness, meditation, and understanding.

Another pebble meditation uses the three jewels (Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha), and another uses the Four Immeasurables (loving kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity).

Do you have to be a practicing Buddhist to do this? Not at all. The terms used can translate to more common terms in many cases. Some people write words on stones and use them on a regular basis. (I see online that, of course, you can also buy stones with affirmations on them.)

What is there about the physicality of a pebble that helps one connect to a particular idea?

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Thich Nhat Hanh’s meditation presented by Plum Village brother Thay Phap Huu.

Reading Updike on a Rainy Friday Night

I was dusting bookshelves today and as I went past my row of books by John Updike I had to pull a few off and look into them.

I really liked Updike’s stories and novels. My wife and I used to read the books together every summer for a number of years. I also admired Updike’s three pages per day writing requirement. He really worked at his writing.  It paid off. He had a 50+ year career and has 67 books listed on his Wikipedia bibliography that includes 21 novels, 18 short-story collections, 12 books of poetry, 4 children’s books, and 12 collections of non-fiction. Many of my favorite pieces of his fiction are found among his 186 short stories.

I wasn’t reading Updike in 1960. That was the year he was 28 (I was 7) and he published his second novel, Rabbit, Run.  The New York Times called the book a “shabby domestic tragedy,” but also “a notable triumph of intelligence and compassion.” I would read it during the summer 0f 1968 after I had read a book of his stories, Pigeon Feathers, and then his first novel, The Poorhouse Fair.

The stories especially appealed to me, since I saw myself as a budding short story writer and was reading Hemingway, Salinger, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and other story writers too. I would go on to read almost all the stories and novels in chronological order of their publication. I wanted to write little, perfect stories like his “A&P.” I was a high school boy and immediately identified with Updike’s boy working at the checkout counter in an A&P supermarket when three young pretty girls walk in wearing nothing but bathing suits. That little plot unfolds quickly and tragically.

In my freshman year of college as an English major, I was assigned to read his newest novel, Rabbit Redux.  a sequel to the first Rabbit book.

I gave her my copy of the sexy Couples novel when we were dating, and we both read Marry Me when it came out and we were a few years from being married ourselves.  Updike chronicles many marriages and many uncouplings, some based on his own life story.

Updike received two Pulitzer Prizes for two of the four Rabbit novels. There is also “Rabbit Remembered” a long story (or novella) that came later. Those tales chronicle Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, an ex- high-school basketball star who first deserts his wife and son and then explores sexuality, marriage, parenting and also the time he is passing through in America.

I heard an interview he did at the time of his fourth Rabbit novel, Rabbit at Rest, which chronicles the end of Harry’s life. It is a sad book about grandpa Harry in his Florida condo, still dealing with his son, Nelson, and his wife, Janice, and an 1989 America that is a post-Reagan time of debt, AIDS, and President Bush 41. It won him another Pulitzer Prize. What interests me in the interview and book is his own thoughts about death. (He died of lung cancer in January 2009.)

I found a video that has John’s son, David Updike, interviewed about being the child of a writer. David was (is?) a teacher and also a writer and I have enjoyed reading his work. I have his children’s books and his books of stories and they are very good. It certainly must have been more negative than positive to be the son of John Updike if you wanted to be a writer. I like in this video David’s decision that he would give up writing a piece of fiction if it meant hurting someone he cared about. I don’t think his father held that belief.

John Updike received much praise in his lifetime for his writing. He also was pretty strongly disliked by some of his fellow writers and by feminists. He was, like too many famous men I admire, not a very good husband or father. But I think even some of those who are not fans concede that his prose is beautiful, often poetic.

I came to John Updike’s poetry much later than the books and stories. I love reading poetry, and I like some of his poems, but I feel like his prose had more poetry in it than many of the poems. I have used a few of his poems on my poetry blog

I took this passage from Updike’s wonderful story “Pigeon Feathers” and broke the sentences into more “poetic” line breaks using his punctuation most of the time. This “found poem” is about what it means to be dead as seen by teenage David as he walks at night across his farm home to the outhouse and imagines a grave. As I said, his prose is so often poetic, that it is easy to hear the sentences as lines in a poem.

A long hole in the ground,
no wider than your body,
down which you are drawn
while the white faces above recede.

You try to reach them
but your arms are pinned.
Shovels pour dirt into your face.
There you will be forever,
in an upright position,
blind and silent,
and in time no one will remember you,
and you will never be called by any angel.

As strata of rock shift,
your fingers elongate,
and your teeth are distended sideways
in a great underground grimace
indistinguishable from a strip of chalk.

What Is A Book?

What is a book? I’m pretty sure you know what a book is – but I’m not sure how long the prevailing definition will hold. I’m not even thinking here of reading books on a screen or audiobooks. I am thinking about the format of the book, no matter what medium delivers it.

The book that set me down this path is called The Unfortunates. It was written in 1969. It is an experimental “book in a box” by English author B. S. Johnson, but it was only published in 2008.

It has 27 chapters but they are unbound, with only a first and last chapter specified, and you can read the other 25 in any order.

Quick plot summary: The story tells us about a sportswriter who travels to a town to report on a soccer match only to discover he’s been to the town several times before to visit an old school friend who has since died of cancer. Some of the separate sections of the book are recollections of the dead friend; others are memories of the past or describe the day of the soccer match.

B.S. Johnson in a 1968 publicity photo for The Unfortunates

The flashbacks are “random” in that the reader chooses what section to read next.  If that sounds annoying, think of how random memories pop up into our present consciousness.

In the book box, there is a stack of loose-leaf printed pages. Some are bound in groups, some are single sides, and some are double-sided pages.

The author? Bryan Stanley (B.S.) Johnson) was born in 1933 and died in 1973.  Depressed by his lack of commercial success and with family problems, he committed suicide. At the time he was basically unknown to the general reading public and was, at best, a cult favorite. A 2004 biography by Jonathan Coe, Like A Fiery Elephant: The Story of B.S. Johnson, led to a revival of interest in Johnson’s work.

From a review of Coe’s bio in The Village Voice: “His technical ingenuity peaks with The Unfortunates (1969), a narrative in 27 pamphlets, all but the first and last of which can be read in any order. The book is fungible, but not just for fun; instead it’s Johnson at his most searing—a grief-stricken remembrance of his friend Tony Tillinghast, an academic who died of cancer at 29. Narrator Johnson travels to report on a football match (one of his regular gigs) and realizes the city is one he knows well, his late friend’s home. The interchangeable format reproduces the random nature of memory, as Johnson intended, and also affects other resonances. The dwindling stack of pamphlets mirrors the wasting body; the box they come in is a casket. But the book memorializes his friend’s short life by having it power a nearly infinite story—billions of novels for the price of one. Here is the beautiful collision of possibility and rigor.”

You might say the book’s format is just a gimmick, but reviewers say that the quality of the writing and the story are very effective.

I don’t hear the term “avant-garde” much these days. It seems ironically old-fashioned. In college, I had a course where we read Alain Robbe-Grillet, Samuel Beckett, William S Burroughs and other avant-garde writers. Is The Unfortunates a book for that reading list? Probably not. It is really a book about memory, friendship, and loss. Then again, the descriptions of some of Johnson’s other novels, such as House Mother Normal, make me think he does belong on that reading list.

Not That Stephen King

“If you want to be a writer, you must do two things above all others:
read a lot and write a lot.”

This past month, after much hesitating, I read Stephen King’s novel, Billy Summers. I looked up which books of his have sold the most copies and it looks like The Shining leads the list, followed by Carrie, Salem’s Lot, Misery, Pet Sematary, Salem’s Lot, The Dark Tower series, and The Green Mile. Of those, I have read one and seen movie versions of three. I don’t think that qualifies me as a fan and certainly not as a King fanatic.

As you’ll see, my favorite Stephen King is not the famous mystery, horror writer that people know. Not that Stephen King. If you asked me what are my favorites by him, my short list would include the short stories “Stand By Me” and “The Shawshank Redemption” which are two that many people would not know were written by him. Both became quite beloved films.

From the top 10 list, The Green Mile is the only one I have read and I only read it after seeing the movie. I recall when it was originally published in 1996 that it came out in six self-contained monthly installments. That seemed like a Charles Dickens experiment or a publishing gimmick which I found unappealing. I read the volume that combines all six parts, but in 1966 the individual volumes were all on the New York Times bestseller list simultaneously, so I guess it was a good idea. The movie came out three years later directed by Frank Darabont who was known for some horror-ish films but also directed The Shawshank Redemption. The performances by Tom Hanks and Michael Clarke Duncan were excellent and so it sent me to the book, which returned to the bestseller list with the movie’s release.

I was able to borrow the audiobook of Billy Summers. I prefer that medium for most of my book reading these days. I used to listen to books on tape or on CDs during my car commuting days. Now, I listen on walks and while working outside in the garden.

I was first interested in King after I found out that he had been an English teacher like myself and was writing in his free time. I had seen a story or interview years ago that said he was frustrated and blamed teaching time for his lack of getting published. I did that too back in the day. His wife made a deal with him that he could take a year off from teaching to write and submit his manuscript. If he succeeded, great. If not, he would go back to teaching. Carrie was published. Goodbye to teaching. I searched for that origin story a bit online and didn’t find it, so maybe I imagined it.

Carrie is a horror and supernatural novel and I think qualifies as gothic fiction. He originally meant it to be a short story since that was all he was getting published. He wrote a longer novella version that he didn’t think was good. When he was writing this novel, he was living in a trailer in Hermon, Maine with his wife Tabitha and two children. He was teaching at Hampden Academy. He had published short stories in some “men’s magazines.” His wife and others rescued the manuscript by making suggestions for changes. It became an epistolary novel with “official” reports and has a framing device consisting of multiple narrators. The book sold so-so in hardcover but much better in paperback editions and much much better when the film came out in 1976. That’s when I discovered King.

The last King novel I read before Billy Summers was 11/22/63. A friend who is a big King fan recommended it because he knows 1) I love time travel stories 2) I’m still fascinated by the Kennedy assassination. This is a book King apparently thought about a long time ago but he didn’t feel he was ready to write. The short description is that it is about a man who goes back in time to save JFK. Of course, it is way more complicated than that. (I wrote about the book in an earlier post.) It is a love story too. To travel in time here is easy but to actually get to 11/22/63 and stop the assassination is not easy.

It’s a long book and I always think his long novels need some cutting. The love story of Jake, Sadie, and her ex-husband could be a novel by itself. I wasn’t a fan of the ending, but overall I did like the book. That’s my mixed recommendation, but I would recommend it if you meet one or both of my time travel and JFK interests.

“When you write a story, you’re telling yourself the story.
When you rewrite, your main job is taking out all the things that are not the story.”

But my favorite King book isn’t fiction. It is On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. This short book (right there not typical of King) is, as the title says, both a memoir and a craft book. His advice comes from his life, starting with childhood and into his established writing time. King had a near-fatal accident in 1999 and it is very much linked to his writing which is linked to his recovery.

This book got great reviews and I would add my own recommendation to those reviews. As King was recovering (and at first he could not physically do any writing), he did a lot of thinking about writing and his life. That’s why the book is a memoir about writing. It does have a lot of advice in “toolkits” about writing and even about a good life.

Is it worth reading if you don’t consider yourself a writer? I think so. I think it can be inspiring, even if all you plan to write is a journal for yourself. Can we all be “writers?” He says “You can, you should, and if you’re brave enough to start, you will.”

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room. Life isn’t a support-system for art. It’s the other way around.”