The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (1891)

The Irish Quarter

Oscar Wilde

1854 to 1900 

Dublin

 Wilde himself is a transitional figure. The man who, when he first came to London, sported a velvet beret, lace shirts, velveteen knee-breeches and black silk stockings, could never depart too far in his life from the pleasures of the old-style dandy; this conservatism is reflected in The Picture of Dorian Gray. But many of his attitudes suggest something more modern. It was Wilde who formulated an important element of the Camp sensibility -- the equivalence of all objects -- when he announced his intention of "living up" to his blue-and-white china, or declared that a doorknob could be as admirable as a painting. When he proclaimed the importance of the necktie, the boutonniere, the chair, Wilde was anticipating the democratic esprit of Camp.-from Susan Sontag's "Notes on Camp"

The first time I read The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde I was probably fifteen or so.   I think that is probably about the right age to first read it.   I remember thinking at the time how wonderful it would be to know people who actually spoke the way the Lord Henry and Dorian spoke about art, life and beauty.  The Picture of Dorian Gray helped to create or make public a new sensibility, that of camp.   It also was one of the first, that I know of, novels to openly glorify a thinly disguised homoerotic fixation.  I think it was in a way a great force for social good in the world as it was a model for future GLBT writers but in a way I think it may have done harm as it lead to the identification of gay men as "fops" given to long anti-adult commentaries on the nature of art and such.

The best thing in the novel is in the outrageous things Lord Henry says and the worse thing in the novel is the fact that there is no counterpoint to the things he says.   Have you ever had a reunion with a friend from decades ago, one you were once very close to and had memories of great conversations with and then upon seeing them again found you or they had changed enough so you did not have as much to say to each other as you once did and you were a bit glad when you parted, still on good terms and promising to stay in touch but knowing you probably will not?

I think everyone should read The Picture of Dorian Gray.  It is not that long, it is an important work historically and you might be entranced by some of the things said in the conversations.  It will probably make you think.   It did change the world.  I also have posted on some of his plays and short stories and highly recommend them.

Mel u

"Why Does the Child Cry" by Mulk Raj Anand

"Why Does the Child Cry" by Mulk Raj Anand  (1973, 12 pages-first published in The Illustrated Weekly of India)

Short Stories of the Indian Subcontinent

A Reading Life Project

Mulk Raj Anand

1905 to 2004

Mulk Raj Anand was a founding father of the Indian novel in English.    He was one of the first writers from India to gain an international readership in English.    Anand (1905 to 2004--Peshawar, India) after graduating from college in India went to England to receive his PhD.     While at Cambridge (the university of choice for Bloomsbury) he became friends with people like E. M. Forester  and George Orwell.   He was a passionate admirer of Gandhi and a strong supporter of the movement for Indian independence.    He was a friend of Pablo Picasso.    His literary output was very large including several novels, lots of poetry and numerous highly regarded short stories.   He was a strong force for good in the world.

I have already posted on four of Anand's wonderful short stories.   E. F. Forester helped him get his first novel, Untouchable, published in England and it is one of the great novels of the 20th century.   It has been compared to Dickens for its insight into to lives of the Dalits and I think if Anand had predated Dickens the comparison would be reversed.  

I was very glad to see a short story by Anand included in Best Indian Short Stories Vol I edited by Khushwant Singh.   The stories are from this nine year tenure as editor of The Illustrated Weekly of India.  During his editorship (1969 to 1979) it became a high prestige destination for Indian writers and published stories by some of the great writers of the subcontinent.  Publishing in The Illustrated Weekly of India was as prestigious as publishing in The New Yorker.  

"Why Does the Child Cry" , written originally in English, is the story of "Abdul Latif, the potter's son, was called Late Laff by everyone".   It is a terribly sad heartbreaking story about senseless cruelty and how the innocent victims suffer most in absurd wars.   Abdul is not mentally bright but he is very agile physically.  He is all over the village and everybody loves him.  He loves hunting birds and fishing with his friend Ali.   I know this story will be hard for those who do not have Singh's anthology to read so I will tell the conclusion.   One day Abdul comes home and finds his house destroyed, the runs through the village and their are dead bodies everywhere.   He has no understanding of the religious wars that were tearing apart the subcontinent.   He begins to runs through the village in a panic when he sees a tank, looking for his friend Ali who always helped him.   The scenes he sees are depicted with great passion and veracity.   This is a great story.

My "bottom line" on Mulk Raj Anand is to put The Untouchable, on your read in 2013 list.

I am writing this in participation in the Short Story Initiative of Nancy C of A Simple Clockwork.   This month the focus is on Indian Short stories.

Mel u

"The Unseen Wonder" by Anne Van

"The Unseen Wonder" by Anne Van (2012, 16 pages)

"A birthday gift transformed my life from ridicule to riches.  Hard to believe that such a feat could be accomplished by a simple present.  But sometimes fate was kind-even to a family composed of five women and one highly unusual man, who happened to be my father".

"The Unseen Wonder" is a wonderfully done very creative  and very much fun to read short story with superb  values and style.  It is set in late Victorian or maybe early Edwardian England and it reads like a collaboration of Anne Bronte and H. G. Wells.   Van describes "The Unseen Wonder", on her webpage, as a "steampunk story".   When I read this I thought I knew what it meant but to be sure I consulted a number of sources in clarifying my understanding.  Here is how the Urban Dictionary defines it:

Steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction, usually set in an anachronistic Victorian or quasi-Victorian alternate history setting. It could be described by the slogan "What the past would look like if the future had happened sooner." It includes fiction with science fiction, fantasy or horror themes.
 Victorian Steampunk: A modern Science Fiction work (post-1930s) that is set in the early parts of the industrial revolution.
Industrial/Modern Steampunk: Science fiction taking place in the late industrial age, early modern age; i.e. World War 1, World War 2

I have read a lot of science fiction and Victorian literature  in my day so I felt comfortable when presented with the opportunity to read "The Unseen Wonder".   I do not want to spoil this story for potential readers so I will just tell a bit of the plot so you can visualize the setting.  

The father in the story is an inventor in a day when inventors were heroes.   Some of the father's inventions have been wonderful successes, including the first toaster and some have been unmitigated disasters.   The family lives from the proceeds of the sale of the inventions.   Every year on the birthday of the story teller's mother, it is told in the first person by eldest  of the daughters, the father presents what has come to be called "The Gift", meaning a new invention.   This year he has promised it will be the most spectacular of all.   

The father has recently hired a new assistant to help him with his work, and girls being girls, the daughters are very excited by how handsome he is and how unattached.  

The household, especially the mother gets more and more excited as her birthday approaches.   I do not want to tell more of the plot but a seeming disaster occurs which allows the family to see what really matters in life but then just as I had become quite attached to the whole family, including the assistant, a wonderful development turns everything around.

I greatly enjoyed reading this story and hope to read more of the work of Anne Van.

Author Bio

Anne Van is an artist, fashionista, turned writer. She has a Masters Degree in

Fine Art and attended Waseda University in Tokyo Japan on a scholarship. She

has exhibited her artwork all over the United States and one of her works was

displayed in a museum in Picasso’s hometown of Malaga, Spain. After several

years toiling as a fine artist, she switched gears to pursue another passion,

fashion. Anne went to FIDM in Los Angeles and designed sportswear for major

retailers. All the while she heard stories in her head. So one day she quit fashion

and finally put her stories on paper. Since then Anne has published an article in

Victorian Homes Magazine (another passion) and a non-fiction story in The Best

Women’s Travel Writing of 2011 about her time living in Tokyo, Japan. Going

Underground won the gold Sola award for best cultural travel story. Anne also

writes fiction and her steampunk story, The Unseen Wonder, is published in the

historical anthology, Gaslight: A Golden Light Anthology and also as a stand-

alone mini-ebook in the Chimera Series. Anne continues to write the stories

that fill her head. She lives in a Victorian home in a historic landmark district in

Pasadena, California along with three rescue cats, including one that has six

toes, and her TV composer husband who thankfully doesn’t.

www.annevan.net

www.annevan1111.blogspot.com

"The Unseen Story" by Anne Van is published in 

Gaslight: A Golden Light Anthology (A Golden Light Anthology Series) [Kindle Edition]

I greatly look forward to following the literary career of Anne Van and I endorse this story without reservations of any form.   

Mel u

America Bewitched: The Story of Witchcraft After Salem by Owen Davies

America Bewitched:  The Story of Witchcraft After Salem by Owen Davies (to be published May 2013)

Since long after  the Salem witch trials in 1692 in Massachusetts witchcraft has played an important part in America culture.   Owen Davies, an authority on the history of the supernatural and witchcraft,  has written a very valuable book which covers everything from African-American folkways to the modern TV show Bewitched.  He shows us how old world beliefs about witches came to the new world along with European immigrants and African slaves.   He also talks about the witchcraft views of American Indians.  I was fascinated to see how these three cultures influenced each other in their witchcraft beliefs.

African slaves and American Indians both adopted their beliefs in reaction to the total domination of European culture.   To some extent they adopted the ways of the powerless in colonial situations world wide in which they held to views that they could make use of secret powers to damage the European settlers.  In the same frame, Europeans feared the Indians and the slaves would use witchcraft against them.

Davies details the very long persistence of witchcraft beliefs in America.   A  large number of people were murdered because they were thought to be witches that cursed people for revenge.  If your crops failed it was easy to accuse a strange seeming woman or man, especially one who did not speak your language, of witchcraft.   We learn that white missionaries looked at Indian medicine men as witches just as many Indian tribes demonized the white man after their initial contact.

One of the, to me, most interesting parts of the book was in Davies' explanation as to why European fairies and little people did not also appear in American folk beliefs to the very large extent they do in the cultures the immigrants came from.   I have been reading  lately in the folkways of western Ireland and very few of the vast legion of fairies and their cousins moved with the Irish to the new world.  Davies explains, which rang totally true to me when I read it, that fairies are rooted in the place they are from, with roots too deep to move.   Fairies in Ireland were rooted in local geographies and ancient interpretation of the landscapes of Ireland.   Likewise trolls and such from the Black Forest in Germany were not equipped for the long sea voyage. Much of Irish fairy legends was centered on prehistoric mounds and stone works. .  Witches were people so they easily made the transition.

Davies shows us that much of what people saw as witchcraft were just applications of folk remedies from traditions they did not understand.   Germans saw Spanish folkways as witchcraft, especially when they were mingled with Indian tradition but they saw their own just as normal activity and vice-versa of course.

Davies also talked about the reaction of the Indians to European technology which they recasted into a supernatural ideology meant to fight the diseases and the overwhelming power of the colonizers.

Davies deals in a debunking fashion  with the popular notion, put forth by contemporary American Wiccans, that American witches were persecuted for following the practices of European pagan cults.   Davies explains to us that in America in  the 16th century up to the middle of the 19th a witch was a "malicious, destructive individual bent on destroying individuals and communities."   There were never any circles of "good witches or followers of Celtic traditions.   This is a creation of the 20th century.

The basic theme of Davies' very interesting and well documented book is that America is a country to which magical traditions were transported and then reshaped, from Europe and Africa.  Indian folk beliefs were preserved through some incorporation into the folkways of Europeans but there were largely lost due to the total destruction of indigenousness cultures.

Just as it is the case in all cultures, believe in witchcraft was strongest among the marginalized in society.  People still demonize those who are not like them, those who do not share their core beliefs or just those who seem "different" to them.

I learned a lot from Davies' great book.    An understanding of witchcraft views is important to understanding  classic 19th century American novels like Huckleberry Finn and The Scarlet Letter.    This book should be read by anyone into occult studies, American history and colonial patterns but it also can help us understand modern America and the divisions that still plague it.

In the interests of full disclosure I was provided a prepublication copy of this work by Oxford University Press.

Mel u
The Reading Life

John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk

John Saturnall's Feast by Lawrence Norfolk  (2012, 416 pages)


John Saturnall's Feast is  Lawrence Norfolk's (1963, UK) newest historical novel.  A. S. Byatt has said he is "the best of the young novelists writing today".   He has three earlier novels, all got great reviews and sound really interesting.   Based on this work, I hope to read through his works in publication order.  

This novel is the story of a young boy, whose mother was considered a witch and whose father was never known, who went from being a kitchen boy in a great house in seventeenth century England to being regarded as the greatest cook in England, selected to cook for the king.  The novel does a wonderful job of taking us inside the kitchen.   Everybody had their roles and the kitchen masters ruled with an iron hand.   We experience the kitchen from the point of view of a young boy who sees finding a place there as his way to stay alive on up to his days as a great cook.      We follow his career as he rises up.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this novel was the lush and highly detailed descriptions of the cooking procedures and the luscious food.   No concerns about cholesterol here.

The novel is set in the times of the English Civil War (it covers a lot of years).   There is also a romance between John and a noble daughter of the house which, as you could guess, is a rocky one.   She is being forced into a marriage with a man who hates her as a condition for receiving a large bequest.

There are big moments, when the king is there for a feast, when Cromwell's men take over the castle and when we end up seeing them hung when Cromwell is defeated.   We go into battle with the cooks from the big house.  I laughed when one of them told the others not to worry we always get put in the back lines as who will feed them if something happens to us.  

I really enjoyed reading this book.   I thought the only weak spot was in the romance between the cook, John and the young noblewoman.

I will, I hope, soon read his first novel, The Pope's Rhinoceros, set in the 16th century.  It sounds fascinating.

I recommend John Saturnall's Feast to anyone who likes a very well written literary historical novel set in England in the 17th century.

Please share your experience with Lawrence Norfolk with us.   Besides Hilary Mantell, what historical novelists do you like?

Mel u

"Aiji's Miracle" by Anita Rau Radami

"Aiji's Miracle" by Anita Rau Radami (2004)

Short Stories of the Indian Subcontinent

A Reading Life Project

The Reading Life Guide to Getting Started in the Indian Short Story.

Anita Rau Radami

"She shouts orders, bullies the servants, eats enormous meals and farts painfully through the night.  She makes such a racket screaming before every resounding expulsion of gas, that nobody gets any sleep".

In reading for my permanent project, Short Stories of the Indian Subcontinent, I am discovering many new to  me wonderful writers.  Anita Rau Radami is certainly in that category.   I was very glad to see that Nancy C of A Simple Clockwork is focusing this month's Short Story Initiative on short stories by authors from  India. There will be reading suggestions and a place to link your reviews on Nancy's wonderful blog.

  I recently read the preface to Best European Fiction 2011 by the brilliant Irish writer Colum McCann in which he says European fiction is a vast field, drawing on forty languages and 800 million people.   Based on my reading of literature from India, I knew there are 67 languages with 100,000 or more speakers and over one billion people in India. If you add in languages with 10 thousand speakers, there are nearly 200.  In the Philippines there are over 100 languages so I think we can see the Euro-centric nature of most thought on the short story.   There is no literary culture older than that of India.    It took an Irishman, the great Edmund Burke, to tell the English they had no right to rule a country much older than their own.

"Aiji's Miracle" is a totally wonderful story that tells us a lot about the lives of women in India, especially about the often problematic relationships between women and their daughter-in-laws.   It also gives us a very good look at the dynamics of a marriage.   Told in the third person, it centers on an old woman, the stories words, Aiji who "hobbles around the house so full of herself that if you poke her with a pin she might explode".   Aiji was used to being the queen of the house until her son married.   She knows her daughter in  law has used sex to gain power over her son and she is now the head of the household.    The story is all about how Aiji displaces her and takes over ruling the house.  Aiji uses every trick of the powerless.

  I know most people will find it hard to find this story (I read it in the anthology Passages:  24 Modern Indian Stories) so I will only talk about a few of the things I liked about it.   The granddaughter is approaching marriageable age, the marriage will, of course, be arranged.  There is one big problem.  Her breasts have not developed at all and people say no one will want to marry her.  Aiji takes over this problem and brings her to folk doctors.  In the meantime, she tells all the neighbors that she barely is given enough  food to eat and brings shame on purpose on her daughter-in-law by eating at the houses of the neighbors.   This story is really a lot of fun and offers a lot of insight into family life.

Author Bio

Anita Rau Badami (born 24 September 1961) is an Indian-Canadian novelist. Born in Rourkela, Orissa, India, she was educated at the University of Madras and Sophia College in Bombay. She emigrated to Canada in 1991, and earned an M.A. at the University of Calgary. Her first novel, Tamarind Mem (1997), grew out of her university thesis. Her novels deal with the complexities of Indian family life and with the cultural gap that emerges when Indians move to the west. Badami's third novel, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call explores the Golden Temple Massacre and the Air India Bombing. Badami cites as among her favourite books Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, Cat's Eye and Surfacing by Margaret Atwood, A House for Mr Biswas by V. S. Naipaul and Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

I hope lots of my readers will post on at least one Indian short story this month.  

Mel u

"The Fury" by Paul Heyse

"The Fury" by Paul Heyse  (1871, 10 pages)

I am very happy to be participating for the second year in German Literature Month, hosted by Caroline of Beauty is a Sleeping Cat and Lizzy of Lizzy's Literary Life.

  In 1756 a 13 year old boy, Friedrich u left Germany through Rotterdam in the Netherlands, along with his parents and boat full of others from Germany headed for America, probably with the passage paid for by George II of England   His parents died on the voyage while he lived on to have over 2000 descendents, including myself.   I do not know how he lived or supported himself.   I assume he was taken in by others in the boat and was at best made an adopted  son of a farm family or at worse was treated as little more than an indentured servant.  I wondered what he thought when he first saw America.   I do not know where the ship landed but I know he lived in south Georgia.   I wondered what he thought when he realized most people did not speak German.  Could he read or write?  What was his first reaction when he saw Indians?   Who taught him to hunt?  What was his reaction to the American revolution?      Did he come to own slaves as he grew into a prosperous farmer?  Did he come to think of himself as an American?   Did he develop friendly relationships with the English speaking people who were in the vast majority or did he keep to fellow Germans?   In the subsequent ten generations, there are many English and Scottish names in my family tree.       The regulations of transport required that if one's family died after mid trip  then their survivors owed the passage money.   It may have been that their passage was free, paid for by the English government.   I know he probably suffered terrible hardship and loneliness  and that his descendents  fought in the American revolution, the Civil War , WWI and WWII, against Germany.   My last name can be traced back over 2000 years to an area of Germany beyond Roman conquest.

This year I will read for German Literature Month, in translations, 19th century short stories by Paul Heyse, E. T. Hoffman and Heinrich Zschokke.   I will also read the stories by German authors in Best European Fiction 2012 and 2013.   I will read my first W. G. Sebald novel, Austerlitz and if I have time some short stories by Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse.

Paul Heyse (1830 to 1914-Berlin, Germany) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1910.    He wrote novels, plays, poetry and 177 short stories.    His father was a well known professor of philology and his mother's family were wealthy patrons of the arts.   Heyse was as a writer under the patronage of German royalty.   My quick scan of his works in translation makes me think he is little read outside of serious students of older German literature.    Based on "The Fury"  (translator unknown") this is a shame.

"The Fury" is set in Italy, in Naples.   Italy was seen in German, English and Irish literature of the period as an exotic "tropical" locale where the people were somehow more "hot blooded" than those at home.  "The Fury" is a very romantic story.   The story is set among simple fishing people along the coast.   Heyse does a wonderful job in the opening paragraph when he describes how a whole village of people, including the very old, work together when a loaded fishing boat comes to shore.  We learn about the German perception of the role of the church in their lives, a cultural historian would probably have a field day with the attitudes in this story.

The central male character, Antonio, as he approaches shore, sees a very pretty young woman coming toward the landing.   He is at once struck by her and feels he is in love with her.  (I thought back to movie, The Godfather II on Sicily  where Michael is "thunderstruck" by a woman he sees and at once begins to court her for marriage, knowing nothing about her.)   He begins to converse with the woman and he basically suggests marriage on first conversation.  She tells him she will never marry anyone because of the lifetime of abuse her parent's marriage produced for her mother.   Her thoughts of marriage all relate to men beating women.    There is a close tie in of love and violence in this story.   I do not want to tell to much of the very interesting plot but the woman ends up giving the man a savage bite and from this she at once professes great love for him and a wish to marry him.

The two people in the story know nothing of each other's character or attitudes.   Love is seen as a pure unreasoned notion equated with violence.   The underlying idea seems to be that if a man or woman does not have the power to move you to violence, then you do not really love them.

I would happily read more of Heyse's short stories if I could find them in translation (and for free) online.

I hope a lot of my readers will consider participating in German Literature Month.  If  you go to the webpages of the hosts you will find lots of reading suggestions.  I look forward to reading the posts this event  will generate and I am sure I will learn a lot from them

Mel u
The Reading Life