The Festering Blurb: Books in The Home Office

HAIKU BOOK BLURBS

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:33:29 GMT

I had this completely brilliant idea -- as I often do -- to write about books using haiku. I was inspired by some printouts I found when I was cleaning out my closet. They were Blackadder Haiku. And they were so so so hilarious! Here's the link to Blackadder Haiku: http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/8889/haiku.htm Caveat: it hasn't been updated since 2002.

Blackadder is the amazing, and amazingly clever tv show about the family line of Blackadders: Prince Edmund, one of the nephews of Richard III (not having been snuffed out in the tower or else there would be no show), Edmund the Elizabethan, and pet courtier of ER1, Edmund the butler of the sockless Prince Regent (Hugh Laurie), and Edmund, an officer in HM's Army during WW1. (DVDs available from the usual retailers.)

I haven't done a lot of haiku in my time. But I've grasped the basics.

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The Pleasure Dome/Sup's Blackadder Page (last update 2002)

Mr. Bean's Greatest Poems

Books by Dave Morice

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Technorati Tags: Rowan Atkinson,Blackadder,Robin Driscoll,British Comedy,Dante,Dante's Inferno,literature,Italian literature,Dave Morice,comics,poetry,William Blake,PowerPoint,Mr. Bean,Hugh Laurie,Stephen Fry,Miranda Richardson

ALL HAIL THOTH -- EGYPTIAN GOD OF SCRIBES & WRITING

Fri, 30 May 2008 02:44:30 GMT

Thoth

by Marianne Dixon

Thoth is the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Djeheuty. Thoth was the god of wisdom, inventor of writing, patron of scribes and the divine mediator. He is most often represented as a man with the head of an ibis, holding a scribal palette and reed pen. He could also be shown completely as an ibis or a baboon.

As with most Egyptian deities there were many different stories regarding the parentage of Thoth. Many sources call him the son of Re, but one tradition has him springing forth from the head of Seth. This latter story is reminiscent of the birth of the Greek goddess Athena, who like Thoth was the patron divinity of wisdom.

Myths concerning Thoth show him as a divinity whose counsel is always sought. His most significant role is during the battles of Horus and Seth. Thoth is a staunch supporter of Horus and his mother Isis, maintaining that Horus' claim to the throne is just and the murderous Seth has no right to the kingship of Egypt.

Elsewhere Thoth is a reliable mediator and peacemaker. When the goddess Tefnut had a dispute with her father Re and absconded to Nubia, it was Thoth that the sun-god sent to reason with her and bring her home. Thoth was also present at the judgement of the dead. He would question the deceased before recording the result of the weighing of the deceased's heart. If the result was favorable Thoth would declare the deceased as a righteous individual who was worthy of a blessed afterlife.

Thoth was also a lunar deity, and whatever form he took he wore a lunar crescent on his head. Some Egyptologists think that the Egyptians identified the crescent moon with the curved beak of the ibis. It is also suggested that the Egyptians observed that baboon was a nocturnal (i.e. lunar) animal who would greet the sun with chattering noises each morning.

As he was messenger of the gods Thoth was identified by the Greeks with their own god Hermes. For this reason Thoth's center of worship is still known to us today as Hermopolis.

The name of Thoth in hieroglyphs.

Technorati Tags: mythology,Egypt,Thoth,Ra,Seth,Hermes,Hermopolis,Marianne Dixon,heiroglyphics,Egyptian mythology,Isis,Horus,Tefnut

ROOTING OUT BLOOM 3: Where Shall Wisdom be Found?

Sat, 03 May 2008 20:00:54 GMT

Rooting Out Bloom 2: The Western Canon

Rooting Out Bloom's Writing Roots

OBSERVATIONS UPON READING WSWBF

There's a German expression, "Die Mutter", which is fermented dough that is used as sourdough bread starter. You take a bit of Die Mutter, add it to your regular dough and with time and treatment, you have yummy sourdough bread. But, you must store DM carefully, adding dough to it to keep it going. And so you always have some with which to enrich future bread loaves. Biblical writing is sort of like Die Mutter. The Bible, in full respect, is like the "Die Mutter" of Western literature. Pervading, inspiring, enriching, immortalizing.

And that's just the first chapter!

Think about the classics of literature you've had to read in college and high school and what not. Threads of Biblical wisdom, especially OT references, thread finely and intricately through the works of European authors, yet draw attention to themselves by majestic King James syntax, or appearing in their original language (the italics immediately drawing the eye and signaling that this is important), or invoking the Bible as a sort of muse, or, more simply, extolling Biblical virtues. (Notice I did not say Christian -- for the simple reason that The Bible is a compendium of both Christian and Hebrew wisdom. And where literature is concerned, it's not unusual for them to overlap.)

I especially enjoyed the chapter on Cervantes and Shakespeare. Firstly, what a great combination to compare/contrast. It was a delight to feel someone as accomplished as Bloom in awe of Cervantes and his two most famous characters. As a writing teacher, I can tell when my students genuinely like their topic. Their writing style shows more care, more detail, and they are willing to take more chances with style. Writing about something you love vs something you don't give a tinker's toss about is like the difference between lightning and a lightning bug. (I think Mark Twain said that. If he didn't, he should have.)

I've never been one of those tiresome, pointlessly anarchic fools who think Shakespeare didn't write his plays. He wrote them. Live with it already. This bit in particular resonated in my mind -- like when you are searching for the last word in the crossword puzzle, and it hits you just as you're ready to give up: You cannot locate Shakespeare in his own works, not even in the Sonnets. It is this near-invisibility that encourages the zealots who believe that almost anyone wrote Shakespeare except Shakespeare himself. I wonder if that's a skill that ever comes up in Shakespeare courses.

Also in the book is the de rigeur inclusion of Greeks -- Plato and Homer. The uber-Euros Montaigne, Francis Bacon, Johnson, Goethe, Nietzsche (being paired with Ralph Waldo. How piquant. Bloom calls him "our American Goethe. So why not put him in the Goethe chapter? I'll have to re-read those sections.), Freud (there's that tingly feeling in the naughty bits again), the Gospel of Thomas, and St. Augustine (excellent choice; should have been given a more prominent place in the book)

Oddly enough, there's no Romans. No Cicero, no Seneca, no Marcus Aurelius, no Ovid. Some explanation on that gap would have been nice.

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Technorati Tags: Harold Bloom,philosophy,history,literature,Bible,library of Congress,reading,writing,Cervantes,Shakespeare,Francis Bacon,Nietzsche,Goethe,Plato,Homer,St. Augustine,literary criticism

UNICORNS--THE FETISH THAT DARE NOT NEIGH ITS NAME

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 03:26:36 GMT

Well, I gone and done it again. I'm going to retire so broke at this rate. I've been contributing to the GDP of If-you-love-it-so-much-why-don't-you-marry-it.com.

Mountain Man Dance Moves/The McSweeney's Book of Lists

MMDM is "ball-bouncingly" funny! There's a curious-yellow Bergmanesque fascination with unicorns. Don't ask me why. It really is a book of lists. They're so hilarious that I wish they were longer. The titles of the lists are even funnier than the lists themselves as many are quite brief. I would love to see another edition of this book come out. The premise of the book so totally meshes with my moyen de philosophie. Or do I mean mien? (Dodgy French; please bear with.)

Signs your unicorn is cheating on you: every time you say the word "magic", it sighs forlornly.

WTF???!!!

Funny? Yes. But it begs the question -- who the EFF is the unicorn cheating on? Everyone knows unicorns wouldn't cheat! Duh!

What makes unicorns cry? Renegde wizards who refuse to join the alliance; seasonal allergies.
5 signs that your child may be using unicorns: newfound interest in prancing; confused and sleepy one minute, enchanted and magical the next.

The writers of these lists, including Dan Kennedy and Bob Shea, among others, do this comedy writing right. They take their topic completely seriously. Their lists are presented as serious lists. Therein is the magic of written humor. Not unlike on-stage humor. Play it straight, and trust the audience/reader to get the joke and respond accordingly. (Are you listening, Mike Myers?)

Technorati Tags: Dan Kennedy,The Believer,McSweeney's,Beth Edwards,Mike Myers

CHAUCER'S FAMOUS ROAD TRIP

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 04:09:24 GMT

Franklin Library CANTERBURY TALES

APPROACHES TO TEACHING CHAUCER'S Canterbury Tales Joseph Gibaldi, ed.

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Damn, you thought traveling in the back seat of your parent's smoke-filled, windows-up Chrysler was tough. Well, back in 13-ought something or other, a motley crew of medieval characters set out on a pilgrimage to Canterbury, a cathedral town in southern England. It's not that it was far from London, (today, a couple of hours' drive) it was that they had to go on horseback and on foot. And of course, there was no M4 motorway. On the bright side, no road rage. It's hard to have road rage when there's no traffic!

To stave off boredom, they told stories to each other. And this is where Chaucer is both narrator and storyteller in one. He tells the stories of these characters telling * their * stories! GENIUS! Not impressed? Not my problem. You see, back in the 1300s, English was the language of serfs and servants. Nobility and clergy, the top of the social strata spoke French and Latin. Courtiers like Chaucer straddled both upper and lower classes because they were born common, but worked among the nobility. So he had his French, his Latin, but he also used English.

And this is why he's famous: he used English, the language of the common people to create a poem of incredible depth and breadth of human characters. AND, he stratified his stories like English society itself was stratified -- The knight first, all the way down to the lowly pardoner. A "Boethian" Cosmos -- if you will.

So I think you will agree, teaching CT is also an exercise in soul-searching. According to ATTCCT, there are several possible approaches:

Linguistics
Languages
History
Political Science
Poetry
Biography
Psychology
Sociology
Religion
Sex Roles

Pick the one you like and have at it.

ATTCCT has a fantastic table of contents. (There's a sentence you don't see too often in the English language.) It's arranged by Materials (Part 1) and Approaches (Part 2). Part 2 then has chapters on different course configurations such as a Chaucer course for non-majors or -- I love this one -- "The Crooked Rib: Women in Medieval Literature" by Susan Schihanoff.

Like most texts that handle classic literature, it's top-heavy with self-conscious, self-imposing, self-righteous prefaces and introductions, yet in a humanistic vein. This one has 2 prefaces and an introduction with an array of pompous, high-falootin', fancy-schmancy, hoity-toity (gah! I'm starting to sound like Inspector Grim!) expression you would expect to find in a book put together for English professors BY English professors. For instance:

milieu
cri de coeur
sub aspicies eternitatis (Sheesh! If I had a nickel...)
Boethian Unity

If you're interested in bringing this book into your classroom, here's what you do: read CT first. Read it all the way through at least 3 times. Give yourself a couple/three months for this. Get a fix on YOUR ideas and approaches. THEN read the ATTCCT. Adjust accordingly. Don't try to bring it in the same year. You need to plan for the following school year. (These are just suggestions. My advice is based on 12 years of classroom teaching and reading materials from NCTE, IRA, and NWP.)

Canterbury, England

Barnes & Noble After Christmas Mini-Spree

Sun, 30 Dec 2007 02:58:48 GMT

BOOKS BOUGHT

Beyond The Dark: Angela Knight, Emma Holly, Lora Leigh, Diane Whiteside

The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie

The Dangerous Book for Boys by Hal Iggulden

Poetry Speaks-Expanded

442 Magazine, December 2007: Arsene Wenger, manager of Arsenal on the cover

GAH! I can't believe I bought another feckin' anthology. They're so CRAP! But it has a LoraLeigh/Breeds story in it. Quite a substantial one. It's the story of Matthias Slaughter, a wolf breed. Lots of name-dropping, which I'm quite fond of. Simon Quatres pops up again. Lots of action right from the get-go...and Jonas...sigh!

TMF is an old favorite ever since I saw the tv version in 1989 or thereabouts. I found a nice hardcover (ISBN 9781579126940). Refined design, sturdy, about 14 pt font so you can hold it close or at arm's length and still get a good eyeful.

TDBfB is not really about putting boys in danger. And if you needed to be told that, you're a sorry old sod. And it's not even just for girls. Duh! It's about cultural experience and developing one's intellect. That's what an adult thinks when they see the book. When a child sees it, they think, "wow, cool title." How to Play Poker! Sweet! Juggling. Hmmm...why not. What are the 3 most breakable things in the classroom/house/brother's/sister's room? (That's a joke, see.)

442 Magazine. Aahh, what can I say about this mag? It's A-mazing. It's HI-larious. EVERYBODY who's ANYBODY in European football, and even a few who aren't anybody but wannabes. I love this mag. I've been reading it for almost 10 years, ever since Michael Owen had his second cover in January 1999. Back then, it was imported and costs $4.95 at Borders. Now, it's $8.50. But it has so much information about the movers and shakers that if you really really love soccer, you can't be without it. I do choose my moments, though, because it's so expensive. I usually buy the season opener issue because it comes with a supplement, then a mid-season issue or two, then the end-of-year issue plus the voting issue and the awards issue. So that averages about 5-6 issues a year. Being a reader of 442 gives you pitch-cred.

Technorati Tags: Soccer,Lora Leigh,Agatha Christie,Emma Holly,Arsene Wenger,ArsenalFC,London,England,Literature,Mystery,Hal Iggulden,The Dangerous Book for Boys,Beyond The Dark,442 Magazine