The Story of the Story

Voila!

A beautiful new challenge. Literally, so very beautiful. This publication of James Joyce's Ulysses was designed by Ernst Reichl for Random House 1933. The story of the book and how it finally became available in the United States is a fascinating one. This first US edition opens with a forward from Morris L. Ernsst - the lawyer who successfully defended the novel, a copy of the legal brief that lifted the US ban, and finally a letter from Joyce to the editors. I can imagine how the American public felt in the early 1930s, overwhelmed with curiosity and frustration. With such vigor and excitement this particular edition must have been met with.

Martha Scotford recalls the drop of the ban: "How they got the ban dropped and delivered the book at just the right moment is a short tale of legal, design and production choreography."

James Joyce, age 22 in 1904 (Original photograph from the C. P. Curran Collection, UCD Library Special Collections. Digital images courtesy of the IVRLA, UCD
This reminds me of a story that I hear on NPR recently. John Steinbeck's son, John Steinbeck IV, gratefully recalled the cunning way his father was able to get him and his brother to read the heavy classics at a young age. Before heading to bed, John would tell his boys to stay clear of one of the bookshelves, saying there are many secrets enclosed in the pages of those books. After the warning, John would slowly and deliberately lock the case and place the key in an easy to reach place. After hours the boys would sneak downstairs, remove the key from on top of the case and feverishly read - hoping to uncover the secrets which their father spoke of. They would lock the case up before sunrise, place the key back in its place and scurry up to bed. John IV remembers that as a time of great exhaustion.

I love this story, the image of John placing the old key down while the boys looked on wide-eyed. Those things that are forbidden beckon our curiosity. In both the case of the Steinbeck boys and of the 1930s American public - their fruit was rich with gorgeous rewards and well worth the leg work.

Read more about the removable of the ban from Martha Scotford article.

Brrring

Remember the days when we shared a phone with our ENTIRE family? Can you even imagine that now? There was one line, located in the most public of all rooms in the house, the kitchen. Kinked necks from clutching the receiver between your ear and shoulder, marks on the wall from where you'd unhitch the base so to give you the extra cord length - a desperate attempt to find some privacy.


Alexander Graham Bell
I am trying to overcome my telephonophobia. Yes, I have a slight fear of phone calls, and I know I'm not alone. This all started slowly, when I began to use the text function on my Nokia in 2002. Then exponentially, in mirrored opposite lines, I began text messages as my primary means of correspondence while simultaneously, the number of calls I made dwindled down to a mere few.

From my Rome journal, inspired by African textile design

Think Less, Garden More

What a surprising amount of humor!

In Candide or The Optimist, Voltaire follows the life of the good Candide who is indoctrinated at a very young age by his teacher with the idea that "all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds". Candide struggles with this philosophy as he is forced to endure excruciating hardships one after the other.



Through a number of chaotic events, the plot unravels as Candide travels through Europe and South America. I was shocked to discover that this book was published in 1759. Not because of the writing style or events, but because of the wildly timeless satirical tone. Don't get me wrong, Candide is grappling with many dark and twisted ideas:

"A hundred times I wanted to kill myself, but always I loved life more. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts; is anything more stupid than choosing to carry a burden that really one wants to cast on the ground? to hold existence in horror, and yet to cling to it? to fondle the serpent which devours us till it has eaten out our heart? —In the countries through which I have been forced to wander, in the taverns where I have had to work, I have seen a vast number of people who hated their existence; but I never saw more than a dozen who deliberately put an end to their own misery."

The book surprisingly ended on the most satisfying notes of purity. Candide and his crew only find solace and resolution once they take to the land and begin to farm it:

"You are perfectly right, said Pangloss; for when man was put into the garden of Eden, he was put there ut operaretur eum, so that he should work it; this proves that man was not born to take his ease.

Let’s work without speculating, said Martin; it’s the only way of rendering life bearable. The whole little group entered into this laudable scheme; each one began to exercise his talents. The little plot yielded fine crops . . . and Pangloss sometimes used to say to Candide:

All events are linked together in the best of possible worlds; for, after all, if you had not been driven from a fine castle by being kicked in the backside for love of Miss Cunégonde, if you hadn’t been sent before the Inquisition, if you hadn’t traveled across America on foot, if you hadn’t given a good sword thrust to the baron, if you hadn’t lost all your sheep from the good land of Eldorado, you wouldn’t be sitting here eating candied citron and pistachios.

That is very well put, said Candide, but we must go and work our garden."

Sage advice shines through...Think less, garden more.

To start reading Candide RIGHT NOW, visit an amazing site provided by the New York Public Library Website.

Illustration by Fernand Siméon from 'Candide ou L’optimisme' by Voltaire. Paris: Jules Meynial, 1922. NYPL, General Research Division.

Just Go Read This

There are books that make me feel incredibly thankful to have crossed their path. It is with a great sense of satisfaction that I want to celebrate these discoveries. With many famous, or classical works of literature filling up my list of 'to-reads', it feels miraculous each time I come across one of these lesser known parcels of excellence.

It's the kind of book I order 3 copies at a time, one that's never returned, one that I wrap up for many birthdays:

Fittingly, the first time I was faced with the works of Mr. Hrabal was in his homeland of the Czech Republic. Studying Czech culture and social change, Too Loud a Solitude was set in front of me with little to no explanation whatsoever. It didn't take long for me to realize how lucky I was, this was one of these very special intersections (of me, and book). Busting at the seams with colorful life and bottomless emotion, the book opens with some of the most beautiful metaphors ever written. In fact, it's here that Hrabal writes my most favorite beginnings to any book ever written:

I am a jug filled with water both magic and plain, I have o nly to lean over and a stream of beautiful thoughts flows out of me

Homemade bookmark

The tale of Hanta, the bibliophile, who painfully murders books for a living. Piles upon piles of books arrive at his feet, in the hot and dirty space between Prague's modern street level and sewage that houses his solitude. One after another, Hanta is tortured by the destruction. Memories, hallucinations and facts are woven together by way of his hydraulic press. Visits from colorful gypsies and cold jugs of beer schlepped from pub to sub-layer help relieve the haunted Hanta. Mountains of books and knowledge crowd the pages and this man's solitude is the story. As the reader, we sit - crammed and enlightened - inside the dome of what is Hanta's brain.

Now, just go read it!

More about Hrabal

Artichokes Are Flowers

Recipe from the kitchen of Kevin Walz as recorded in the journal I kept while in Rome in January

The one and only, Harold McGee says "the most important flowers in the West are neither colorful nor flowery!" When left to bloom, the choke turns a beautiful purple.



My recent favorite way to cook them is on the grill. Chop off the top, remove some of the outer layers, skin the stem and then half or quarter each. After the grill, dress with olive oil, salt and lemon.

I eat them on their own, toss them in a farro pasta or add them to a frittata.

Critical Mass 1 & 2

Be Good for Something

This painting of Henry David Thoreau is from Robert Shetterly's book of portraits "American's that Tell the Truth"




I was lucky enough to grow in the same Concord woods where Henry wrote Walden and Civil Disobedience. My cross country team jogged daily past the small, low lying pile of stones where he once lived. Hot summer nights were spent sneaking along Walden pond's path to reach the cool water for a moonlit swim.



There's nothing like the timeless wisdom of Thoreau:

"Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something."

"How does it become a man to behave towards the American government today? I answer, that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it."

"Being is the great explainer."

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."