(Editor’s note: The Fat Man has an interest in foreign literature (classical and modern) and asked that I put up this link to a translation site that also provides interlinear translations for those studying languages.
photog)
Tag: literature
Thoughts on Jack London’s Short Story, “To Build a Fire”
When I was young, every high school English curriculum would include a review of some classic short stories and Jack London’s “To Build a Fire” was inevitably among them. And rightly so. Within the space of seven thousand words London casts a spell that draws you into the inhuman realm of winter in the Yukon. We barely have a thumbnail sketch of the protagonist; “the man” and his unwilling accomplice; “the dog.” But we learn the tragic details of what can happen when a man ignores the physics of arctic winter weather.
‘At the man’s heels trotted a dog, a big native husky, the proper wolfdog, gray-coated and without any visible or temperamental difference from its brother, the wild wolf. The animal was depressed by the tremendous cold. It knew that it was no time for traveling. Its instinct told it a truer tale than was told to the man by the man’s judgment. In reality, it was not merely colder than fifty below zero; it was colder than sixty below, than seventy below. It was seventy-five below zero. Since the freezing point is thirty-two above zero, it meant that one hundred and seven degrees of frost obtained. The dog did not know anything about thermometers. Possibly in its brain there was no sharp consciousness of a condition of very cold such as was in the man’s brain. But the brute had its instinct. It experienced a vague but menacing apprehension that subdued it and made it slink along at the man’s heels, and that made it question eagerly every unwonted movement of the man as if expecting him to go into camp or to seek shelter somewhere and build a fire. The dog had learned fire, and it wanted fire, or else to burrow under the snow and cuddle its warmth away from the air.’
…
‘Already all sensation had gone out of his feet. To build the fire he had been forced to remove his mittens, and the fingers had quickly gone numb. His pace of four miles an hour had kept his heart pumping blood to the surface of his body and to all the extremities. But the instant he stopped, the action of the pump eased down. The cold of space smote the unprotected tip of the planet, and he, being on that unprotected tip, received the full force of the blow. The blood of his body recoiled before it. The blood was alive, like the dog, and like the dog it wanted to hide away and cover itself up from the fearful cold. So long as he walked four miles an hour, he pumped that blood, willy-nilly, to the surface; but now it ebbed away and sank down into the recesses of his body. The extremities were the first to feel its absence. His wet feet froze the faster, and his exposed fingers numbed the faster, though they had not yet begun to freeze. Nose and cheeks were already freezing, while the skin of all his body chilled as it lost its blood.’
…
‘A good idea, he thought, to sleep off to death. It was like taking an anaesthetic. Freezing was not so bad as people thought. There were lots worse ways to die.
…
He drifted on from this to a vision of the old-timer on Sulphur Creek. He could see him quite clearly, warm and comfortable, and smoking a pipe.
“You were right, old hoss; you were right,” the man mumbled to the old-timer of Sulphur Creek.
…
Then the man drowsed off into what seemed to him the most comfortable and satisfying sleep he had ever known. The dog sat facing him and waiting. The brief day drew to a close in a long, slow twilight. There were no signs of a fire to be made, and, besides, never in the dog’s experience had it known a man to sit like that in the snow and make no fire. As the twilight drew on, its eager yearning for the fire mastered it, and with a great lifting and shifting of forefeet, it whined softly, then flattened its ears down in anticipation of being chidden by the man. But the man remained silent. Later, the dog whined loudly. And still later it crept close to the man and caught the scent of death. This made the animal bristle and back away. A little longer it delayed, howling under the stars that leaped and danced and shone brightly in the cold sky. Then it turned and trotted up the trail in the direction of the camp it knew, where were the other food-providers and fire-providers.’
London reveals the emotions and thoughts that race through the mind of the man as he tries to escape the consequences of his terrible mistake. But at every turn he’s thwarted by the limitations that cold have imposed on his failing body. And we listen to his thoughts as his time runs out and he accepts his fate.
Jack London created a remarkable story. There is no filler. The story only includes what is needed to paint the picture of a tragic human tale. And I will say that if I ever write anything half as good as, “To Build a Fire,” I will consider myself an accomplished writer. Well done Mr. London.
Life over Art
Thomas Mann was a famous German author whose heyday was the first half of the twentieth century. He had a Nobel Prize in literature for one of his novels and a reputation for writing psychological stories that were full of melancholy and longing for lost happiness.
In addition to his novels which were too long for my liking he wrote a handful of novellas that were collected in an English translation under the title “Death in Venice and Seven Other Stories.” One of these stories is named “Tristan” and is the story of a sanitarium up in the Alps that especially treated people suffering from tuberculosis which is never actually named in the story but only hinted at when a patient would cough and then check a handkerchief for blood. But in addition to the actual patients at this sanitarium called Einfried there was one resident who stayed there for the atmosphere; a “novelist” named Detlev Spinell. And novelist would be an exaggeration. No one has ever read his book and even letter-writing is an enormously slow and painful exercise when performed by him. In the story, this writer is the cause of the death of a woman who is attempting to recover from a mild case of tuberculosis which is several times emphatically stated to be only affecting “the trachea, and not the lungs, thank God.” He is a malevolent force that insinuates into the young woman’s mind that she is the victim of a crass, plebian existence that sacrificed her health and artistic spirit at the altar of mundane human activities, specifically; marriage and childbirth which was the event that sapped her strength and weakened her body sufficiently to allow the wasting disease to get the upper hand with her.
And this unhealthy influence by Spinell eventually causes her health to completely break down. And so, the doctors call for her husband to return to the sanitarium before her incipient death. And while this catastrophe is occurring Spinell takes it upon himself to write a letter to this husband who at this point is occupying a room in the same building. He painstakingly writes the letter, mails it, smiles at the husband in the hallways when they meet and gives no thought to what will happen when the letter returns from the post office to the building that they both reside in. The letter is an insulting and disparaging polemic attacking the husband for his “plebian” tastes and lack of artistic feeling. And he announces that he has awakened the wife to her true spiritual stature and thereby causes her to renounce her allegiance to ordinary life (and by that choice, life itself).
Now all of this is quite bizarre but Mann paints the personalities of husband, wife and Spinell very skillfully. And this allows the personalities and their relationships to each other to make sense. The husband is a very plain and “normal” individual. A businessman who embraces the life of a husband and father along with his hard charging life as a capitalist. He loves his wife and child but he isn’t above pinching a maid in a hallway when the opportunity arises. The wife loves her husband and child but she has the artistic side to her personality and she can be influenced into believing that the prosaic life of a housewife and mother is a demeaning occupation for someone as sensitive and with such an elevated soul as herself. And then there is Spinell. He is an abnormal spirit of the “artistic” type who sees life through a prism that only values the spiritual and pure emotions and sensibilities of the artist. All ordinary things like the normal male/female relations are fraught with unacceptable amounts of inartistic reality. Thus, his hatred of the husband in the story and his beatification of the wife.
The climax of the story, to my mind is the collision when the husband reads the letter and confronts Spinell down the hall from him. He reads parts of the letter to the author and then rains verbal abuse on the head of his frightened and contrite adversary. But just as his screaming abuse reaches its crescendo, from out in the hall, comes news that his wife’s lungs have collapsed under the ravages of her ailment, causing her to cough up an enormous quantity of blood and that she is on the edge of death. The husband shifts his focus onto the bearer of bad news:
‘“Is she dead?” yelled Herr Klaterjahn. As he spoke he clutched the Rätin by the arm and pulled her to and fro on the sill. “Not quite? Not dead; she can see me, can’t she? Brought up a little blood again, from the lung eh? Yes, I give in, it may be from the lung. Gabriele!” he suddenly cried out, and his eyes filled with tears; you could see what a burst of good, warm, honest human feeling came over him. “Yes, I’m coming.” He said and dragged the Rätin after him…’
Mann shows us the reality of life and compares it to the shadow of life that Spinell hides in. He uses art to hide from life. As for the husband, who really was a crass, plebian individual full of crass plebian faults, he is also a living, breathing human being. Spinell is a wraith. His artistic sensibilities and motives are pathetic and infantile. Now this is coming from Thomas Mann who embraced art as the central motive of his life. What I find interesting is that he so clearly shows us the primacy of life over art. I find that powerful.
Just Something that Came to Mind
Lately there have been a lot more options if I wanted to talk about what’s in the news. There’s all kinds of Jimmy Kimmel talk. He’s off the air, he’s back on, he’s gonna apologize, his show won’t be carried in a quarter of the country, blah, blah, blah. And Donald Trump just got through trashing Joe Biden and the UN in front of the General Assembly. There are psychopaths shooting up innocent victims everywhere you look and Democrats are desperately kowtowing to Mamdani hoping he can provide the magic bullet needed to bring back the millions of voters who are jumping ship. Yep, there’s all kinds of madness everywhere you look.
But I can use a break from it from time to time. I just get fed up with the awfulness of the world and the awful people doing awful things.
So, let’s talk about something less depressing and maybe more interesting. A while ago I mentioned I bought a copy of a book I owned back in the stone age. It’s an anthology of science fiction stories published in the 1950s, edited by Robert Heinlein, called, “Tomorrow, The Stars.” There are fourteen short stories in the book’s two hundred and forty-nine pages. They’re all between ten and twenty pages long and were written by authors “famous and less well known” at the time. Interestingly, one of the less well-known authors was a certain, “Kurt Vonnegut Jr.”
So, I’ve been rereading these stories, some for the first time in over fifty years. I won’t pretend that they’re all equally good or that any of them are timeless prose. They’re not. They’re pulp fiction or maybe slightly better than pulp fiction. But they’re also entertaining. They amuse. They keep the reader’s interest. They tell a story. All that good stuff. But what’s my point? I’ve read lately that science fiction short stories are an unsellable product. All the magazines and the anthologies are going bankrupt. No one will buy them.
Back in the dark ages magazines like Analog and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction made plenty of money selling monthly editions filled with mostly just short stories. Sure, they would also serialize some novels but mostly we were reading short stories by authors, “famous and less well known.” Now I am well aware we are living in a new age. Theft of intellectual property has been the downfall of all the formerly lucrative entertainment forms. CDs, DVDs and books have been pirated out of existence. Young people have been conditioned not to pay for anything. Everything is a streaming service. Amazon sells books by the penny/a page method.
Yes, yes. I get all that. But these are just the technical details of our age. Piracy has always been around. What it takes to sell a product in the face of these kinds of obstacles is the same thing that is needed in any other place and time; creativity and psychology. And in fact, a short story would seem to me to be the easier sell. You can read (or hear) a short story in a car ride or a subway commute or a high school class that you don’t want to listen to.
Sometimes you don’t want a four-hundred-page epic fantasy. Sometimes you don’t even want a novella. Sometimes you want a ten-to-twenty-page story to take you out of your life for a half hour.
Just something that came to mind.
To Be or Not to Be a Barbarian
Just when I think Leftists can’t get any more un-American they say, “Hold my soy latte” and show us just how miserably wretched they truly are. Up here in New England one of the states (it doesn’t matter which one) is debating a bill to mandate 100% voting turnout for all elections.
Now I don’t know the details. I don’t know how they’ll guarantee that the dying and the late-stage dementia patients are forced to vote. I’m guessing if you don’t show up the ballot gets filled out for you by the Secretary of State. I think they’re calling it the 100% Democracy Bill or something brilliant like that.
This sounds like a joke from our side; just a way to make fun of the leftist tendency to dictate behavior for “people’s own good” but this is actual legislation that’s currently under debate. Actual politicians in this part of the country think this is consistent with the American constitution. Well, all I can say is these people are insane.
But they’re also running the show up here. The insanity is baked deep into everything they think and do. They don’t realize how this looks to people on the outside. This is so close to North Korea and Sadaam’s Iraq where “free elections” end up with the dear leaders garnishing >99% of the vote every single time.
Well, that’s enough about that.
I was thinking today about the definition of literary science fiction. I guess it’s any science fiction that has enough character development and enough verisimilitude to the way real people act and talk and feel to convince “serious” literary critics that your story is literature and not entertainment. I guess it has to be in some sense “real.”
Unfortunately, I understand that what it’s mostly become is racial and sexual grievance screeds very unconvincingly disguised as science fiction. So outside of a specific population of people primarily dedicated to reading such stuff it’s not going to very interesting to most of the human race.
But putting this political sub-genre aside what is the difference between genre fiction like science fiction and fantasy and actual literary fiction?
Well, I think that’s still quite subjective but I get the point of some of the criticism of some genre fiction. The story can be so stereotyped that the action feels cartoonish, the characters are one dimensional and the dialog is completely predictable. I can think of some pulp stuff that seems that way now. But by the same token, there are literary “masterpieces” that have long stretches of boring plot where nothing much happens. And even the most widely hailed protagonists can have whole chapters where the story drags and the dialog is meh.
So, what’s the calculation? Can a pulp story have 95% of the story composed of space opera and still be “literature” if the author gives the hero a scene full of heartbreaking humanity and emotional conflict? Sure, we’re not expecting Conan the Barbarian to break into a Shakespearian soliloquy when one of his comrades is skewered by a neolithic monster. But if you write a story that has an interesting plot surely there is no shame in trying to make, some of the characters at least, recognizably and honestly human.
Now, I’m not thinking about Hamlet showing up in any of my stories. But Macbeth might as well be a medieval urban fantasy story. It has witches and magic and ghosts. Just because it’s in iambic pentameter and has “thou” and “thee” scattered around in it doesn’t make it any less a crime drama. So, who’s to say that a genre novel can’t be legitimate literature?
Just something I was thinking about.
Guest Contributor – Xavier – 23MAR2024 – Genre vs Literature
This post raises two important and related questions. One is the question of genre fiction versus fiction/literature or entertainment versus literature. The other, how technology impacts this balance.
On the first point I think the best guide for the use of imagination in narrative fiction or really any literature is could it be real. That is, literature always fabricates events, but only events that could be real, at least to the viewer. This may seem overly restrictive, but even if we look at even the most fantastic events in literature, they are literature precisely because they are convincing. The narrative is not just believable, but super believable, as the clumsy moniker of surrealism suggests. The reader has to have a reason to suspend disbelief and that reason has to be both compelling and convincing.
This is why Macbeth can include incanting witches and Hamlet a ghost. Same for Dickens, Joyce, etc. We don’t mind Old Hamlet showing up every night to drive the action. His presence is utterly real to mind of any son that lost a father to murder. That reality may be the reality of a dream or some subconscious memory acting on a son’s emotions, but it plays as real almost universally.
The second question relating to our kids watching stories inside game applications like Minecraft and its relation to literature and media has a very direct precedent in movies. As soon as movies got past the novelty stage when they were sequestered in menageries they looked to literature to augment the spectacle. I can be argued that screenplays almost never satisfactorily translate literature, not even drama where the analogy seems direct.
I believe literature doesn’t translate well because movies, like radio, video and now video games, are essentially entertainment media mixed with mass communication. It is not novel to say that the commercial dimension of these media plays a much greater role than they do in traditional art forms, which were mostly centered around patrons.
Some radio dramas, such as those produced by there Mercury Players, seem to approach the experience of attending a play. So maybe these mass media/entertainment forms can become like literature if they survive long enough to establish the required conventions to seem real. But movies and radio were quickly supplanted by TV and now video games. So perhaps the balance for literature requires a limit of commerce and reliance on technology, as these certainly are not timeless.
Most traditional “critics” would say that the need to seem “real” is undermined, rather than supported, by technical or futuristic artifacts. They don’t make good literature impossible, but they raise the bar to get an audience to suspend disbelief and to tell the underlying story that the reader wants. This is why genre fiction is such good fodder for farce. If the story doesn’t need these obstacles, it’s probably better off without them. But if the fun in writing with them can overcome their drag, the story could soar even with rockets. They’re just a heavy narrative load to bear.
The Bard’s Birthday
Whether Shakespeare really wrote his plays or they were the product of the Earl of Oxford I would like to take this excuse to heap praise on the man who created so many wonderful words.
Any man who could write:
‘Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’
and
‘To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.’
and
‘I am a man more sinned against than sinning.’
deserves great praise from me. I have gotten great amusement seeing and hearing and reading his works. They are a treasure for all mankind.
Happy birthday Billy boy.
Happy Birthday Shakespeare 🎉🎉🎉
(You don't look a day over 459!)https://t.co/SGObfnnhTe #HappyBirthdayShakespeare pic.twitter.com/b96A09XeEk
— Shakespeare’s Globe (@The_Globe) April 23, 2023
Scrooge Makes Amends to Bob Cratchit
This scene shows us the day after Christmas and Scrooge putting his new found understanding of life into practice. But he demonstrates that he hasn’t become a humorless convert and has a little fun with Bob Cratchit before remaking their relationship immeasurably for the better. Happening as it does at the epicenter of Scrooge’s former evil life, his “money changing hole,” it convinces us that he is indeed a new man.
“But he was early at the office next morning. Oh, he was early there. If he could only be there first, and catch Bob Cratchit coming late! That was the thing he had set his heart upon.
And he did it; yes, he did! The clock struck nine. No Bob. A quarter past. No Bob. He was full eighteen minutes and a half behind his time. Scrooge sat with his door wide open, that he might see him come into the Tank.
His hat was off, before he opened the door; his comforter too. He was on his stool in a jiffy; driving away with his pen, as if he were trying to overtake nine o’clock.
“Hallo!” growled Scrooge, in his accustomed voice, as near as he could feign it. “What do you mean by coming here at this time of day?”
“I am very sorry, sir,” said Bob. “I am behind my time.”
“You are?” repeated Scrooge. “Yes. I think you are. Step this way, sir, if you please.”
“It’s only once a year, sir,” pleaded Bob, appearing from the Tank. “It shall not be repeated. I was making rather merry yesterday, sir.”
“Now, I’ll tell you what, my friend,” said Scrooge, “I am not going to stand this sort of thing any longer. And therefore,” he continued, leaping from his stool, and giving Bob such a dig in the waistcoat that he staggered back into the Tank again; “and therefore I am about to raise your salary!”
Bob trembled, and got a little nearer to the ruler. He had a momentary idea of knocking Scrooge down with it, holding him, and calling to the people in the court for help and a strait-waistcoat.
“A merry Christmas, Bob!” said Scrooge, with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. “A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavour to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon, over a Christmas bowl of smoking bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i, Bob Cratchit!”
Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more; and to Tiny Tim, who did not die, he was a second father. He became as good a friend, as good a master, and as good a man, as the good old city knew, or any other good old city, town, or borough, in the good old world. Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe, for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these would be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle up their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed: and that was quite enough for him.
He had no further intercourse with Spirits, but lived upon the Total Abstinence Principle, ever afterwards; and it was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us, and all of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!”
The First Urban Fantasy: A Christmas Carol
Merry Christmas to all from the management of Orion’s Cold Fire. Now the title of this post is admittedly a stretch. But it is a ghost story and it does take place in an urban center. I guess it would be adding insult to injury to claim steampunk status too, so I won’t. I gladly confess I’m a huge fan of this tale. I first remember running into it as a boy when my older cousin played Mr. Fezziwig in a grammar school production. I don’t remember much about that production other than the fact that Fezziwig was actually wearing a gray wig. Since then I’ve read the short book and attended several professional and amateur stage productions. But the most substantial proportion of my involvement with this story is the hundreds of viewings of the various film versions that have been made over the decades. Discounting such travesties as the episode made as part of the old television series “The Odd Couple” and the one starring the cartoon character Mr. Magoo, I have watched at least seven separate films.
Among the few versions that I still watch, the oddest one is the musical from 1970 starring Albert Finney. With Alec Guinness as Jacob Marley it includes a scene of Scrooge being installed in Hell by his long dead partner. I’m not particularly fond of musicals and Finney hasn’t really got a singing voice so there any number of painful moments in this film but the comical aspect of Scrooge is highlighted and allows this version to serve when children are present and might otherwise become bored.
Until recently I was of the opinion that the best version was the 1951 edition starring Alistair Sim. It had a good British cast and possessed a script that amplified the meager details of the novel with some dramatic details of the back story between Scrooge and his sister on her death bed. It also fills out the history of Scrooge as a businessman and shows us some details of Marley’s death. It remains in my reckoning a very good film.
But as with all other things in life, age alters our opinions and our point of view even about Dickens’ masterpiece. Of late, I have come to favor the 1984 television version starring George C. Scott. The balance of the cast is British with Scott the only American. The script is relatively close to the novel although there are a few touches having to do with Scrooge’s nephew and wife that are innovative. But in several aspects I find this later version to be the best. First is the character of Marley. The actor portraying this ghost is the best of any that have acted the role. The feeling and meaning he puts into his lines is perfect for that part. Next is the child playing Tiny Tim. He is without a doubt the most diminutive and fragile looking child imaginable. He enhances the reality of what we know is Tiny Tim’s probable fate. And finally, there is Scott’s part. He is a powerful man who displays his ruthlessness openly. George C. Scott was a very good actor and it shows. He interacts with the spirits as an equal. He defends his point of view as you might imagine a rational egoist would. You feel his gradual awakening to the error of his world view as a visceral experience and not just a logical progression. He captures the transformation that Dickens was portraying. It’s well done.
So, now why do I enjoy this story? I believe that Dickens’ story captures some essential truth about what it means to be human. He is trying to show us that in order to save ourselves we have to save those around us. And not through some social construct (“are there no prisons, are there no workhouses”), but by touching the lives of those around us and lending a hand to the weak. As a right wing fanatic this is an important lesson to remember. If you object to the idea of the socialist state then you must instead reach out to the people around you and make things better yourself.
So for me this story is a cautionary tale. Don’t forget that the people out there are real and they are someone’s children. And they can hurt. Watch out for them.
I’ll end this on a happy note. As Tiny Tim said, “God bless us, every one.”