Blog

by Wendell Berry, 2000

Very sweet tale about a sweet man, the town barber, in Port William, Kentucky. Full of love and pain, the beauty of nature, hard-work, relationships, and faithfulness and steadfastness, forgiveness along life’s journey. Jayber’s life starts out by the river and ends by the river. He’s an orphan sent to live in a Christian orphanage where he learns to cut hair, then to college to be a minister, then because of all his questions about the Bible, and not having any answers, he decides he can’t be a preacher and leaves college. Makes his way to Lexington and partners with a barber, turns his shop around and one night when the rivers are rising, he leaves – packs his belongings in a cardboard box and finds his way back – a long hard cold walk, to Port William. Burley Coulter picks him up by the river and sets him up in Port William in the barber shop. He lives and works there and becomes one of the community. He gardens and cares for his home and shop (same building) and becomes the gathering place for the men of the community. He becomes part of it. He falls in love with Mattie Kieth and even though she marries Troy Chatham, a man no one respects, he loves her until she dies. He dated another woman, Clydie, for many years, and one night at a dance, he sees Troy dancing with another woman, and Troy gives him a big smile. Jayber is immediately sick at heart (at the thought of Troy cheating on Mattie, and he, himself cheating on her, too). He goes to the bathroom, climbs out the window, leaves, and never sees Clydie again. He decides he will be true to Mattie, and he is for the rest of his life, even though she remains married to Troy, a despicable man.

After 32 years in Port William, as the town barber, the grave-digger and the church janitor, he decides to close up shop and move down to the river in a cottage that Burley Coulter lets him use. He is very happy by the river, gardens, fishes, and still barbers. He runs across Mattie once in awhile in an old growth forest of her dad’s – a beautiful spot with birds, trees, and the play of light. They never plan to meet, it just happens they both love it there.

Years later, Mattie gets sick and is in the hospital dying. Jayber knows and vows to not go see her – he has no right to, he thinks. Then one day, he hears terrible crashing and walks to find out that Troy is logging every tree in the forest to sell and try to pay off his debts.

He leaves to find a place to lay down, by a “drift log.” He sleeps – like death itself – a dreadful sleep. When he awakens, he goes home, cleans himself up, takes Danny Branch’s boat up the river, goes into the hospital at Hargrave to see Mattie. Last few paragraphs:

“When she saw it was me, she said, “Jayber. Oh, he’s cutting the woods.”

‘And so she knew.

‘Her eyes filled with tears, but she said quietly, “I could die in peace, I think, if the world was beautiful. To know it’s being ruined is hard.”

‘Then, in the loss of all the world, when I might have said the words I had so long wanted to say, I could not say them. I saw that I was not going to be able to talk without crying, and so I cried. I said, “But what about this other thing?”

‘She looked at me then. “Yes,” she said. She held out her hand to me. She gave me the smile that I had never seen and will not see again in this world, and it covered me all over with light.”

by Anne Tyler, 1985

Excellent Book – could not put it down! Who and what would Macon choose? His wife, Sarah, who he adores but they just are not right for each other? Or Muriel Pritchett, the young, skinny, colorful, poor but oh so rich in spirit young lady who gently but definitely forces herself into his life through his dog, Edward, who is vicious after the death of Ethan, Macon and Sarah’s son, brutally murdered in a Burger Bonanza at the age of 12. And then there are Macon’s eccentric sister and 2 brothers. Macon breaks his leg and goes to live with them. They all live together in their grandparents house and they are very orderly and structured. The sister, Rose, takes care of her brothers, who work in the bottle cap factory their grandfather started. They are adorable people. Macon writes travel guides for businessmen called “The Accidental Tourist.” His boss, Julian, seems to totally adore Macon and his craziness and then he meets Rose, and falls in love with her. They get married and live for awhile in a posh apartment. Rose moves back home temporarily to take care of her brothers but doesn’t come back. Julian talks to Macon. He tells him to hire Rose to help put his office in order. Julian does. The next thing you know, Julian is living with Rose and her brothers. Happy! Cute! Muriel has a son, about 7, very sickly, premature baby, she loves and cares for him tenderly but over-protectively. When Macon moves in with Muriel, he becomes slowly like a Dad to Alexander, and Alexander blossoms.

The dog training episodes are fascinating. Edward (the dog) adores Muriel from the moment they meet. Muriel, Macon, and Edward bond while Muriel trains the dog and Macon. SWEET conversations. Muriel does all the talking. Macon blossoms with Muriel. His world opens up, becomes messy, but rich and colorful, and he opens up to the world.

Last paragraph and 1/2: “…The real adventure, he thought, is the flow of time; it’s as much adventure as anyone could wish. And if he pictured Ethan still part of that flow – in some other place, however unreachable – he believed he might be able to bear it after all.

“The taxi passed Macon’s hotel brown and tidy, strangely homelike. A man was just emerging with a small anxious dog on his arm. And there on the curb stood Muriel, surrounded by suitcases and string-handled shopping bags and cardboard cartons overflowing with red velvet. She was frantically waving down taxis-first one ahead, then Macon’s own. “Arretez!” Macon cried to the driver. The taxi lurched to a halt. A sudden flash of sunlight hit the windshield, and spangles flew across the glass. The spangles were old water spots, or maybe the markings of leaves, but for a moment Macon thought they were something else. They were so bright and festive, for a moment he thought they were confetti.”

Macon chooses Muriel! Hooray! She had followed him to Paris. The book is set in Baltimore where they all live but takes you to many cities where Macon has to go in order to update his “Accidental Tourist” guidebooks.

Great Book!

by Geoffrey Chaucer, c. 1343-1400 (translated by David Wright)

He wrote the Canterbury Tales, an unfinished poem, starting in 1387. It is a delightful series of stories told by 29 members of a party traveling to Canterbury. The “Host” decides it will be fun for each member to tell a tale, making the journey fun. So there is the Knight’s Tale about 2 cousins who fall in love with the same woman. The Miller’s Tale about a carpenter with a beautiful wife, he was very jealous, but ends up getting duped by Fly Nicholas who lusts after her. This tale is bawdy and hilarious and has ‘cunt’ in it. The Reeve’s Tale about a crooked miller taken advantage of by 2 scholars who end up with his wife and daughter all night. Another very bawdy tale. The Sergeant-at-Law’s Tale – about Christian Lady Constance who is beloved by a Muslim, who converts to Christianity, but his mother tries through treachery and malice to destroy her and almost does. This tale is full of loving prayers and words about Jesus. The Sea-Captain’s Tale about a good merchant whose treacherous wife and good friend, a monk named Brother John, conspire to take advantage of him. The Prioress’s Tale – about a little Christian boy murdered by Jews. This story shows extreme hatred of the Jews: “Hateful to Christ, by Christian folk disdained.”

The Monk’s Tale which tells the history of great men who fell, from Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Hercules, Nebuchadnezzar, Belshazzar, Zenobia (heroine) to Nero, Alexander, Julius Caesar and Croesus.

The Nun’s Priest’s Tale – which is the tale of Chantecleer and the fox!

The Wife of Bath’s Tale – which begins after a very long preamble about her 5 husbands – is about a knight who is to be killed for rape but is pardoned as long as he can say what women most desire. An old women tells him (women want most to be master over their husbands) and the knight has to marry her. He is mourning the fact that he had to marry someone old, ugly, poor. She teaches him what being a true noble means. Someone who is always virtuous, a gentleman, who performs noble deeds. As for poverty, she explains, is a boon – can laugh at thieves, teaches one to know God, shows you who your real friends are, and Jesus, Heaven’s King, chose poverty. “Whoever is contented with his lot, poor as it is, I count him to be rich…Whoever covets anything is poor…” As far as her being old and ugly, she explains she will be true and faithful.

But she gives him a choice: she will become either young and beautiful, or remain old and ugly and be faithful for life to him. He lets her choose, so she chooses both – and becomes young and beautiful and good.

The Friar’s Tale: The summoner partners with the Devil and to Hell they go.

The Summoner’s Tale: A begging Friar (Limiter) goes to get money from Thomas, who is sick, telling him he’s sick because he hasn’t given enough. Thomas tells him to put his hand down his back, beneath his buttocks to get a thing hidden there. The Friar does and Thomas farts in his hand – a thunderous fart. The Friar leaves in a rage and goes to the Lord’s house (manor house) and tells the story of how Thomas farted in his hand and told him to share with 12 of his fellow friars. All the lord and people could do was wonder how to divide a fart equally among 13 friars. A servant said they could lay a cart wheel with 12 spokes, each Friar would kneel on a spoke with nose in middle. The corrupt Friar right in the middle. Then Thomas would fart in the middle and that’s how you could divide a fart equally.

The Oxford Scholar’s Tale: My favorite. The tale about the Marquis who marries the beautiful peasant girl, Griselda. He tests her goodness by taking away first their baby girl and then her son. Thinking they were dead, yet she remains patient and faithful. Then he tells her he loves another and Griselda is sent back to her father’s. She goes. The Marquis realizes how good and true she is and gets her and returns her to his palace with their 2 children and they live happily ever after. This tale is to teach us to “Live in virtue and in patient fortitude,” “Accept what God sends us without complaint.”

The Merchant’s Tale: About old January marrying lovely young May.

The Squire’s Tale: A king is given a magic bronze horse, a mirror, a ring, and a sword. The horse will take you anywhere in the world. The mirror shows true friends and foes. The ring is for his daughter so she will know and understand bird song. The sword can pierce any metal and, if rubbed on the wound, it will heal.

The Franklin’s Tale: About the Knight and his beautiful wife – a very loving couple, while apart another man falls in love with her. She tells him he can have her if he’ll remove all the rocks in the ocean of Britain. He goes to a magician in Italy, pays him 1000 lbs. to do it. The magician does it (makes the ocean rise) and when she is faced with betraying her husband, she tells him what she promised. Rather than have her break her promise, he tells her to go to the man. When the man finds out, he sends her back to her husband. When the magician finds out, he forgives the debt.

The Doctor of Medicine’s Tale: A crooked judge wrongfully condemns a father of stealing a bond slave and orders him to return the bond slave to the rightful owner. The bond slave is his lovely daughter, who the judge wants for his own. Rather than have his daughter “live in lechery and filthy sin” he cuts off her head and gives it to the judge.

The Pardoner’s Tale: 3 hoodlums decide to kill Death. They come across an old man who tells them he saw death beneath a tree. They go to the tree, find piles of gold. They send one to town to buy bread and wine. While he is gone, they decide they will kill him when he returns so they can divide the gold between them. While the one is in town he buys poison to poison the other two and get all the gold to himself. When he returns, they kill him – drink the poisoned wine and then they die too. They found Death alright. (The Pardoner sells pardons yet preaches against avarice.)

The Second Nun’s Tale: About Saint Cecilia who refuses to renounce her Christianity and is boiled alive.

The Canon’s Assistant’s Tale: About Alchemy and trying to turn mercury into silver or gold.

The Manciple’s Tale: About a beautiful white crow who could talk – who told his owner about his unfaithful wife. The owner kills his wife in a fit of rage and then turns on the crow, tore out its feathers, makes it black, and took away its song. And that’s why all crows are black – moral of the story – Guard your tongue: “Watch out, and be most mindful what you say nor ever tell a man – not on your life – that somebody’s been pleasuring his wife; or he’ll hate you like poison – that’s for certain.”

“No need for worry, son, if you have said nothing malicious; you can’t be betrayed. But once a man has spoken out of malice, in no way can he unsay what he’s said…Among all folk wherever you may go, keep watch upon your tongue: think of the crow.”

The Author’s Valediction: “Now I pray all those who hear or read this little treatise, if there be anything in it which pleases them, to thank Our Lord Jesus Christ from whom proceeds all wisdom and goodness…”

Amazing book – written 100 years before printing press! How did he know his Bible so well. So many stories from the Bible – Old and New Testaments. Also 200 years before Martin Luther! Amazing! Only hatred of Jews is wrong.

by Mark Twain, 1889

A Colt Arms foreman in 1800’s Connecticut gets knocked silly and ends up in 6th Century England with a knight in armor. He goes from being about to be burned at the stake to being The Boss, supplanting Merlin as the greatest magician, because he made the sun disappear (he knew there was a total eclipse on the day he was to be burned at the stake, so predicted that if they went through with his execution, the sun would disappear).

He becomes King Arthur’s manager of the kingdom. He adopts Clarence as his right-hand man and together they institute schools, newspapers, soap, toothbrushes & toothpowder, telegraphs, telephones, Gatling guns, dynamite, baseball, mapping the countryside.

It’s hilarious! He has the Knights become traveling salesman for soap and toothpaste – they wore sandwich boards or banners to advertise their wares. He wanted them to all learn to bathe – they were terrified of bathing.

He has to put on armour himself and go on an adventure with “Sandy” (Alisande), a princess who comes to Camelot with a tale of ogres keeping 45 princesses in a castle. He goes with “Sandy” who talks non-stop – he wished for a cork for her – and rescues the 45 princesses who turn out to be hogs – but Sandy doesn’t see them as hogs.

Then they go to the Valley of Holiness and he repairs the Holy Fountain (by magic) and is even able to institute bathing there. The one thing he wasn’t really able to do is make social justice – eliminate the caste system and the evils of the Church. In the end, it’s very violent and sad. He kills 30,000 knights with an electric fence. He and Clarence go out to check for wounded and one of the knights stabs him. He is getting better but Merlin, disguised as an old hag, comes to cook for them in their cave, and puts a spell on him to sleep 13 centuries.

Before this, he has fallen in love with Sandy, married her, and they had a baby girl. Sandy named her “Hello-Central” because that is the name he often called out in his sleep and she knew it was special to him.

Some quotes from the book:
“Of course that taint, that reverence for rank and title, had been in our American blood, too–I know that; but when I left America it had disappeared–at least to all intents and purposes. The remnant of it was restricted to the dudes and dudesses. When a disease has worked its way down to that level, it may fairly be said to be out of the system.”

When he and Sandy come across some poor people mending the road:

“By a sarcasm of law and phrase they were freemen. Seven-tenths of the free population of the country were of just their class and degree: small “independent” farmers, artisans, etc.; which is to say, they were the nation, the actual Nation; they were about all of it that was useful, or worth saving, or really respect-worthy; and to subtract them would have been to subtract the Nation, and leave behind some dregs, some refuse, in the shape of a king, nobility and gentry, idle, unproductive, acquainted mainly with the arts of wasting and destroying, and of no sort of use or value in any rationally constructed world…”

“You couldn’t think, where Sandy was. She was a quite biddable creature and good-hearted, but she had a flow of talk that was as steady as a mill, and made your head sore like the drays and wagons in a city. If she had had a cork she would have been a comfort. But you can’t cork that kind; they would die.”

“So I was pleased when I saw in the distance a horseman making the bottom turn of the road that wound down from the castle. As we approached each other, I saw that he wore a plumed helmet, and seemed to be otherwise clothed in steel, but bore a curious addition also–a stiff square garment like a herald’s tabard. However, I had to smile at my own forgetfulness when I got nearer and read this sign on his tabard:

“Persimmon’s Soap–All the Prime-Donne Use It.” That was a little idea of my own, and had several wholesome purposes in view toward the civilizing and uplifting of this nation. In the first place, it was a furtive, underhand blow at this nonsense of knight-errantry, though nobody suspected that but me. I had started a number of these people out–the bravest knights I could get – each sandwiched between bulletin-boards bearing one device or another, and I judged that by and by when they got to be numerous enough they would begin to look ridiculous, and then, even the steel-clad ass that hadn’t any board would himself begin to look ridiculous because he was out of the fashion.

“Secondly, these missionaries would gradually, and without creating suspicion or exciting alarm, introduce a rudimentary cleanliness among the nobility, and from them it would work down to the people, if the priests could be kept quiet. This would undermine the Church. I mean would be a step toward that. Next, education–next, freedoms–and then she would begin to crumble. It being my conviction that any Established Church is an established crime, an established slave-pen; I had no scruples, but was willing to assail it in any way or with any weapon that promised to hurt it.”

“When my missionaries overcame a knight errant on the road they washed him, and when he got well they swore him to go and get a bulletin-board and disseminate soap and civilization the rest of his days. As a consequence the workers in the field were increasing by degrees, and the reform was steadily spreading. My soap factory felt the strain early. At first I had only two hands; but before I left home I was already employing fifteen, and running night and day; and the atmospheric result was getting so pronounced that the king went sort of fainting and gasping around and said he did not believe he could stand it much longer, and Sir Launcelot got so he did hardly anything but walk up and down the roof and swear…”

“I was gradually coming to have a mysterious and shuddery reverence for this girl: for nowadays whenever she pulled out from the station and got her train fairly started on one of those horizonless transcontinental sentences of hers, it was borne in upon me that I was standing in the awful presence of the Mother of the German Language. I was so impressed with this, that sometimes when she began to empty one of these sentences on me I unconsciously took the very attitude of reverence, and stood uncovered; and if words had been water, I had been drowned, sure. She had exactly the German way: whatever was in her mind to be delivered, whether a mere remark, or a sermon, or a cyclopedia, or the history of a war, she would get it into a single sentence or die.”

In the chapter called, “Drilling the King:”

“And so on, and so on. I drilled him as representing in turn, all sorts of people out of luck and suffering dire privations and misfortunes. but lord it was only just words, words–they meant nothing in the world to him, I might just as well have whistled. Words realize nothing, vivify nothing to you, unless you have suffered in your own person the thing which the words try to describe. There are wise people who talk ever so knowingly and complacently about “the working classes,” and satisfy themselves that a day’s hard intellectual work is very much harder than a day’s hard manual toil, and is righteously entitled to much bigger pay. Why, they really think that, you know, because they know all about the one, but haven’t tried the other. But I know all about both; and so far as I am concerned, there isn’t money enough in the universe to hire me to swing a pick-axe thirty days, but I will do the hardest kind of intellectual work for just as near nothing as you can cipher it down–and I will be satisfied, too.

“Intellectual “work” is misnamed; it is a pleasure, a dissipation, and is its own highest reward. The poorest paid architect, engineer, general, author, sculptor, painter, lecturer, advocate, legislator, actor, preacher, singer, is constructively in heaven when he is at work; and as for the magician with the fiddle-bow in his hand who sits in the midst of a great orchestra with the ebbing and flowing tides of divine sound washing over him–why, certainly, he is at work, if you wish to call it that, but lord, it’s a sarcasm just the same. The law of work does seem utterly unfair –but there it is, and nothing can change it: the higher the pay in enjoyment the worker gets out of it, the higher shall be his pay in cash also. And it’s also the very law of those transparent swindles, transmissible nobility and kingship.”

Towards the end he introduces Baseball and knights are the players: “Of course I couldn’t get these people to leave off their armor; they wouldn’t do that when they bathed. They consented to differentiate the armor so that a body could tell one team from the other, but that was the most they would do. So, one of the teams wore chain-mail ulsters, and the other wore plate-armor made of my new Bessemer Steel. Their practice in the field was the most fantastic thing I ever saw. Being ball-proof, they never skipped out of the way, but stood still and took the result; when a Bessemer was at the bat and a ball hit him, it would bound a hundred and fifty yards, sometimes. And when a man was running, and threw himself on his stomach to slide to his base, it was like an iron-clad coming into port.”

He marries Sandy: “Now I didn’t know I was drawing a prize, yet that was what I did draw. Within the twelvemonth I became her worshiper; and ours was the dearest and perfectest comradeship that ever was. People talk about beautiful friendships between 2 persons of the same sex. What is the best of that sort, as compared with the friendship of man and wife, where the best impulses and highest ideals of both are the same? There is no place for comparison between the two friendships; the one is earthly, the other divine.”

When their little girl, “Hello-Central” is sick: “Well, during the two weeks and a half we watched by the crib, and in our deep solicitude we were unconscious of any world outside of that sick-room. Then our reward came: the centre of the universe turned the corner and began to mend. Grateful? It isn’t the term. There isn’t any term for it. You know that, yourself, if you’ve watched your child through the Valley of the Shadow and seen it come back to life and sweep night out of the earth with one all-illuminating smile that you could cover with your hand.”

We own this book. It taught Wayne about the nature of poverty, taxes and injustice; the nature of man in general; all while poking great fun at American ingenuity.

by Mary Shelley, Published anonymously in 1818 (The Mother of Gothic Horror)

Young Victor Frankenstein grew up in an ideal loving environment in Geneva, Switzerland. His childhood companions were Henry Clerval and Elizabeth. He loses his mother, tragically, to scarlet fever. Her dying wish were that Victor and Elizabeth would marry. He goes away to college, University of Ingolstadt, and is intrigued by Natural Philosophy – “the field we now refer to as the physical sciences.” He decides to try and create life. He experiments for a year – piecing together a being from dead people. He succeeds in bringing this being to life but as soon as he does, he is horrified: “I had desired it with an ardour that far exceeded moderation; but now that I had finished, the beauty of the dream vanished, and breathless horror and disgust filled my heart.” He abandons the wretch. The wretch goes to the country and hides next to a cottage for 2 years and learns to read, learns language from a loving family. Blind father, son (Felix), daughter Agatha. They have no idea he is living in a shed or hole right next to their cottage. He spies and listens and helps them – getting firewood in the night. He knows he is hideous and finally works up the courage to present himself to the blind father. Felix and Agatha come home unexpectedly and erupt in terror at the sight of him. He runs away and hides but his loving family leave the cottage forever – abandoning him. He burns down the cottage and goes off in a rage against humanity. He saves a little girl from drowning but the father is horrified, terrified of him, and ties to kill him rather than thank him. Enraged at his creator, he ventures toward Geneva. That same evening, Victor’s father, Elizabeth, and Victor’s little brothers, William and Ernest, are out on a hike. The monster comes across William and tries to befriend him. William is terrified. The monster kills him, then discovers a locket he wore and takes it. He comes upon Justine, a sweet serving girl, out looking for William, and puts the locket in her pocket, unknowingly to Justine. She is accused of the murder of little William, a boy she helped raise and whom she loved dearly. Victor returns home for the trial and knows without a doubt his monster is the one who killed William but he does not say a word to save Justine. She is executed for the murder of William. Victor is in agony and despair day after day yet tells no one his secret. His father takes him and Elizabeth to a beautiful mountain retreat to try and shake the darkness from Victor. Victor ends up going on a hike to the top of a mountain and meets his monster. His monster strikes a deal – no more murders if Victor will create a female for him to live and share his life with. Victor agrees. Goes to the north of Scotland or Ireland and sets about creating the female. On the verge of success, he stops – realizing he is about to make another huge mistake which could end up destroying the entire human race; if they had children, “a race of devils would be propagated upon the earth…” Also, “She might become ten thousand times more malignant than her mate, and delight for its own sake, in murder and wretchedness.”

So he destroys his work – and the wretch, who had followed him all the way, saw him do it through the window. The wretch vows vengeance: “I shall be with you on your wedding night.” The wretch murders dear Henry Clerval, on his way to get Victor. Victor marries Elizabeth and vows to tell her the day after their wedding the whole story. Thinking he would be able to end the nightmare that night. He tells Elizabeth to go to bed and she does – but screams, and he runs to her – to find her murdered – the wretch looking through the bedroom window.

Upon hearing that Elizabeth is dead, Victor’s father dies of grief 3 days later. Victor now goes on a hunt for the wretch. He follows him up north. They are on sleds with dogs and Victor cannot catch him. Victor is near death on an ice floe, he is rescued by a boat trapped in the ice and finally tells his story to the boat captain, R. Walton. The boat captain (not really a captain, but a young adventurer who hired a boat to try to find a passage north) is with Victor as he dies. The wretch is looking in at them. When he sees his creator is dead, he tells Walton that he will go now and build his funeral pyre.

Here is a quote of the monster when he realizes he was created by Victor – he had found some notes in the pocket of his dressing gown that were Victor’s journal of his creation. Once he could read, he read them: “I sickened as I read. ‘Hateful day when I received life!’ I exclaimed in agony. ‘Cursed creator! Why did you form a monster so hideous that even you turned from me in disgust? God in pity made man beautiful and alluring, after his own image; but my form is a filthy type of yours, more horrid from its very resemblance. Satan had his companions, fellow-devils, to admire and encourage him; but I am solitary and detested.”

“…Sometimes I allowed my thoughts, unchecked by reason, to ramble in the fields of Paradise, and dared to fancy amiable and lovely creatures sympathizing with my feelings and cheering my gloom; their angelic countenances breathed smiles of consolation. But it was all a dream: No Eve soothed my sorrows, or shared my thoughts; I was alone. I remembered Adam’s supplication to his Creator; but where was mine? He had abandoned me, and, in the bitterness of my heart, I cursed him.”

In the book, the beauty of Nature is constantly surrounding Victor, but he is incapable of joy any longer. When he and Clerval have taken a boat down the Rhine River: “I, a miserable wretch, haunted by a curse that shut up every avenue to enjoyment…We travelled at the time of vintage, and heard the song of labourers, as we glided down the stream. Even I, depressed in mind, and my spirits continually agitated by gloomy feelings, even I was pleased. I lay at the bottom of the boat, and, as I gazed on the cloudless blue sky, I seemed to drink in a tranquillity to which I had long been a stranger. And if these were my sensations, who can describe those of Henry? He felt as if he had been transported to Fairy-Land, and enjoyed a happiness seldom tasted by man….The mountains of Switzerland are more majestic and strange; but there is a charm in the banks of this divine river, that I never before saw equalled.”

Here, he and Elizabeth are on their way to Evian on a boat for their honeymoon night. It is a beautiful day and beautiful Alps surround them and the lake is beautiful. Elizabeth says, “Look also at the innumerable fish that are swimming in the clear waters, where we can distinguish every pebble that lies at the bottom. What a divine day! How happy and serene all nature appears!”

But from the first horror of his creation, progressively worse as the murders of his most beloved family and friends, Victor is absolutely miserable, afraid, remorseful, despairing, depressed. It’s painful to read. And the reader realizes it could have been so different if he would have taken responsibility for his creature, loved and cherished it and taught others to do the same. The creature had a heart of gold, was strong and intelligent and very loving. If only Victor had loved him and cared for him and raised him like a child, his life would have been so much happier, and his family and wife and best friend still alive to share it with him.

Remember this – all humans just want to be loved in order to blossom and become the creatures God intended us to be. If instead we are hated and despised, we become hateful.

Last page of book, the wretch is looking at the body of Frankenstein and talking with Walton – the adventurer on the boat in the ice: “I shall quit your vessel on the ice-raft which brought me hither, and shall seek the most northern extremity of the globe; I shall collect my funeral pile, and consume to ashes this miserable frame, that its remains may afford no light to any curious and unhallowed wretch, who would create such another as I have been. I shall die. I shall no longer feel the agonies which now consume me, or be the prey of feelings unsatisfied, yet unquenched. He is dead who called me into being; and when I shall be no more, the very remembrance of us both will speedily vanish. I shall no longer see the sun or stars, or feel the winds play on my cheeks. Light, feeling, and sense, will pass away; and in this condition must I find my happiness. Some years ago, when the images which this world affords first opened up on me, when I felt the cheering warmth of summer, and heard the rustling of leaves and the chirping of birds, and these were all to me, I should have wept to die; now it is my only consolation. Polluted by crimes, and torn by the bitterest remorse, where can I find rest but in death?”

Here is how Frankenstein came about (from Mary Shelley’s introduction): Mary Shelley, at the age of 18, with her husband, Percy, travel to Switzerland in the summer of 1816. It’s a cold and wet summer and they are sitting around reading ghost stories to each other. Lord Byron says, “We will each write a ghost story.” “I busied myself to think of a story…”

“Have you thought of a story?” I was asked each morning, and each morning I was forced to reply with a mortifying negative…”

“Many and long were the conversations between Lord Byron and Shelley, to which I was a devout but nearly silent listener…” “Night waned upon this talk, and even the witching hour had gone by, before we retired to rest. When I placed my head on my pillow, I did not sleep, nor could I be said to think. My imagination, unbidden, possessed and guided me, fighting the successive images that arose in my mind with a vividness far beyond the usual bounds of reverie. I saw – with shut eyes, but acute mental vision, – I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for supremely frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world…”

“…’I have found it! What terrified me will terrify others; and I need only describe the spectre which had haunted my midnight pillow.’ On the morrow I announced that I had thought of a story. I began that day with the words, It was on a dreary night of November, making only a transcript of the grim terrors of my waking dream.”

by Ann Patchett, 2011

Anders Eckman & Marina Singh are doctors who work together in Minnesota doing pharmaceutical research. Anders is sent to the Amazon jungle to try and coax back Dr. Annick Swenson who has been doing research on developing a drug to extend fertility. The Lakashi Tribe in Brazil can have babies into their 70’s. The book begins with a blue paper aerogram coming from Brazil, Annick Swenson, stating Anders is dead and the Lakashi buried him. Marina and Mr. Fox, the president of Vogel, the pharmaceutical company, drive to Anders home to tell his wife and 3 little boys. Wife, Karen Eckman, calls Marina a few days later and asks her to go to the Amazon and try to find out what really happened. She doesn’t believe Anders is dead. Mr. Fox sends Marina to the Amazon. It takes a month before she finally finds Dr. Swenson. (Dr. Swenson refuses to use phone, internet, anything – she has been in the jungle 10 years and Vogel has no news of her progress on the fertility drug).

Marina falls in love with the little boy, Easter, who is deaf but very intelligent and very loving. Marina is a great doctor and Dr. Swenson does not want her to leave once she realizes how well she fits in with the tribe and the research. Marina learns the true research is for a Malaria prevention drug. It is tied to the fertility drug. The women and nursing children never get malaria. Every 5 days the woman go to a grove of trees and chew the bark. Marina starts chewing the bark too. These are beautiful trees in a grass-covered part of the jungle. They have yellowish bark, soft, are very tall, and covered with pink blossoms in the canopy. But light and air and no snakes, spiders, vines, etc. in this part of the jungle.

One evening at sunset, Marina and Easter are sitting by the river watching for a boat to come by to mail Marina’s letters. A boat does come by and it’s Mr. Fox! Come to rescue Marina. He had a devil of a time finding them. Barbara, the young Australian woman who, with her surfer husband Jackie, have an apartment in Manaus and are the gatekeepers for Annik – prevent people from bothering her, agreed to try and find the Lakashi. On the way, they took a wrong tributary and came upon the Hummocca tribe. They tried to kill them – poison arrows – and Barbara says she had a nightmare: she saw her dead father run into the river and call to her to wait. Barbara tells the story to Marina and Dr. Swenson. Dr. Swenson says Barbara’s father would have been a tall, pale white man and maybe she really saw Anders. Dr. Swenson never really saw Anders dead – she said he just disappeared one night in a fever and they all assumed he was dead. Marina and Easter take the boat to try and negotiate his release from the Hummocca. Marina brings oranges, peanut butter and a basket full of Rapps, the hallucinogenic mushrooms that grow at the base of the beautiful trees. They take the pontoon boat and Easter drives it 2 hours to the tribe of the Hummocca. When they get there, they are bombarded with arrows – Marina covers Easter. Shouts out in Lakashi – we have gifts – we have gifts. She sees Anders – he sees her. She tosses him an orange. He passes it around the Hummocca. And then the Hummocca see Easter.

“The man with the yellow forehead stood there waist deep in the water, his chest against the pontoon, and the look on his face was the same look that had been on her face a moment before when she first saw Anders, a cross of joy and disbelief, a look that was willing to accept that which was not possible. He turned and called to a woman on the shore who put the child she was holding on the ground and walked out into the water. Once she had seen Easter from a distance, she tried to move faster and the water held her back. She called to him, stretching out her arms, the trembling in her body sending out a ring of small waves into the water. And then she was there, pulling herself onto the boat and Easter shrank back behind Marina, his hands around her waist as tight as a snake.”

Anders is set free in return for Easter, the beloved little deaf boy – returned to his tribe, the Hummocca. They had brought him to Annik Swenson as an infant because he was deathly ill. Annik cured him but it took weeks – when they came back for him just a few days later, she told them he had died. She raised him as her own.

Anders and Marina return to Minnesota – Anders to his wife and 3 little boys. Their reunion is everything you’d imagine – A beloved father and husband retiring from the dead.

GREAT BOOK! LOVED IT!!!

Wonderful characters, wonderful story, fantastic setting – Minnesota – the most beautiful place on earth vs. the steamy jungle.