Yearly Archives: 2011

Genesis of “The Dead” by James Joyce

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For “The Dead” James Joyce drew upon an incident in Galway in 1903. There a young man named Michael (“Sonny”) Bodkin was courting Nora Barnacle (Joyce’s eventual wife), but he had tuberculosis and was soon bedridden. When Nora resolved to leave Galway for Dublin, the boy stole out of his sickbed and in the rain under an apple tree sang to Nora . Later, in Dublin, Nora learned that Bodkin was dead. When Nora first met Joyce, as she told her sister, what attracted her to him was his resemblance to “Sonny” Bodkin.

Apparently, Joyce was jealous of the dead suitor and grilled Nora ceaselessly about him. What bothered him was that her heart was still moved by the recollection of the boy’s love for her. This notion of a man in rivalry with a dead boy lying in a cemetery appears to be the genesis of Joyce’s most famous story.

Besides basing his story only on this incident, Joyce borrowed heavily from the ending of a book which is hardly read anymore, George Moore’s Vain Fortune. In that book a young bridal couple learn that a young woman whom the groom jilted has committed suicide. Both are tormented, and the bride asks her husband not to kiss her. She falls off to sleep, their marriage unconsummated, and the husband stares out the window at “the melancholy greyness of the dawn.” In that instant he realizes that his life is a failure and that his wife lacks the passion of the girl who killed herself. He does, however, achieve a sort of redemption through his agony: a resolution to try to make his wife happy. This is clearly the situation from which Joyce adroitly lifted: the dead lover who comes between the living lovers, the husband’s realization of his failure, his acceptance of mediocrity, the resolve to be at least sympathetic — it all came from this other book. Nonetheless, Joyce rarefies the story by having it arise not from the suicide of a former love but from the simple memory of the young love itself.

John Dos Passos — Three Soldiers

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The defining moment in the life of John Dos Passos came between August 16 and 20, 1917, when he experienced combat firsthand as an ambulance driver in France at the Battle of Verdun. Three days later he wrote to his friend Rumsey Marvin:

The war is utter damn nonsense—a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don’t do the fighting.

Of all the things in this world a government is the thing least worth fighting for.

None of the poor devils whose mangled dirty bodies I take to the hospital in my ambulance really give a damn about any of the aims of this ridiculous affair.

Before his wartime experiences, Dos Passos had only intellectualized his feelings of rebellion nurtured at Harvard, and later embellished during his bohemian days in Greenwich Village with its political radicals such as John Reed. These were heady days for someone who wanted to work in the arts. Dos Passos saw the Armory Show, which introduced Americans to the work of Picasso and Matisse; he attended performances of the Ballets Russes; and he was deeply affected by the literary radicalism of the poets Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot.

He had become a pacifistic, but knew that for a young man hoping to be a writer, he must experience the war firsthand. He volunteered for an ambulance unit and shipped to France on June 20, 1917. Near the end of July he joined a section of drivers headed toward the front. What he saw there was, he wrote in one of his journal entries, “horror . . . so piled up on horror that there can be no more. How damned ridiculous it all is! . . . All the cant and hypocrisy . . . all the vestiges of the old truth now putrid and false infect the air, choke you worse than German gas — the ministers from their damn smug pulpits, the business men — the heroics about war — my country right or wrong — Oh infinities of them!”

Mountain Interval by Robert Frost (1916)

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The first edition of Robert Frost’s third collection of poems, Mountain Interval, was published in 1916 by Henry Holt and Company and was dedicated “To you who least need reminding that before this interval of the South Branch under black mountains, there was another interval, the Upper at Plymouth, where we walked in spring beyond the covered bridge; but that the first interval of all was the old farm, our brook interval, so called by the man we had it from in sale.” The “you” Frost refers to is his wife, Elinore, to whom he dedicated most of his books. The “South Branch” is the Frosts’ farm in Franconia, New Hampshire. The “Upper at Plymouth” is a reference to their time spent together in Plymouth, New Hampshire. “The first interval” is another reference to time spent together, this time in Derry, New Hampshire. And the brook is Hyla Brook, by Frost’s farm in Derry, which provided the title of one of the poems in this volume. According to Jay Parini in his biography of Robert Frost, Robert Frost: A Life (1999), an interval is a “New England dialect term for land in a valley.” Therefore “mountain interval” provides a double meaning, suggesting a “pause in a journey as well as a dip in the landscape” (278). “The Road Not Taken” opens the volume and perhaps makes reference to this “mountain interval.”

Initially the collection did not sell as many copies as Frost’s previous collection, North of Boston, probably because his publisher rushed the book into print. Nevertheless, it contains some of Frost’s best-known and most celebrated poems, such as “The Road Not Taken,” “Birches,” and “Out, Out—.” Frost wrote the majority of the poems during his stay in England; whereas he wrote a few before leaving for Europe and reworked them for book publication, such as “Birches” and “Putting in the Seed.”

Naturally, Frost was disappointed by the book’s lack of sales, but it was to be expected of a third volume following so quickly on the heels of two previous collections, A Boy’s Will and North of Boston. Despite the book’s abysmal sales figures, most scholars agree that it was a seminal book in the history of modern poetry, virtually on the basis of “The Road Not Taken” and “Birches.”

Is your local Barnes & Noble closing down?

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Is Barnes and Noble doomed to Borders’ fate?

Borders’ liquidation this summer should have been Barnes & Noble’s grand opportunity to grab a sizable market share, just as the warehouse book-selling superstores benefited in the past when they ruthlessly forced countless smaller and independent bookstores to board up and call it quits.

But something isn’t quite right at Barnes & Noble. Call it bad zeitgeist or whatever you want, but the vibe is all wrong. A quick check of our local store this weekend revealed aisle upon aisle, indeed entire sections of the store, stocked with non-book items, junk we’d never have seen a few years ago. One would’ve thought that putting out their own proprietary eReader (Nook) should have kept Barnes & Noble in the game, but a price-slashing war with Amazon is exposing the retailer’s financial shortcomings.

These times, they are a-changing, and Barnes & Noble can kiss their glory days goodbye.

The bookseller just emerged from another dreadful quarter. Take the Nook and its digital downloads out of the equation and the stark reality is that sales actually fell by 11% at its superstores. Unlike Amazon, which has a habit of always turning a profit, Barnes & Noble posted another wider-than-expected deficit.

Losing money and market share is a recurring theme at their superstores, and stacks of the Steve Jobs biography at a 30% markdown isn’t going to staunch the bleeding. Barnes & Noble has missed Wall Street’s profit targets in each of the past six quarters, and industry analysts see nothing but losses for all of fiscal 2012.

We’re now heading into the Christmas season, by far the most profitable part of the year for booksellers, but with so many consumers purchasing gifts cheaper online (including books), how many will be crowding the registers at your local Barnes & Noble? For the real book lover in your family, wouldn’t a Kindle make a more attractive gift? Forget the Nook. Kindle owns the eReader market.

Spontaneous Human Combustion: Fact or Fiction?

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Spontaneous human combustion (SHC) is a concept that has fascinated and puzzled people for centuries. The idea that a human body can suddenly burst into flames without an external source of ignition has intrigued and terrified people, appearing in both literature and alleged real-life cases. But is there any scientific basis to this phenomenon, or is it simply a myth? In this blog post, we will delve into the history, science, and mysteries surrounding SHC to separate fact from fiction.

The first known accounts of SHC date back to the 17th century, with a Danish anatomy expert describing a case from the late 14th century involving a knight called Polonus Vorstius who drank wine before bursting into flames. However, it was in the 19th century that SHC gained widespread attention, largely due to its inclusion in Charles Dickens’ novel “Bleak House.” In the novel, the character Mr. Krook, an alcoholic junk merchant, spontaneously combusts, leaving behind only a heap of ashes and a greasy coating on the walls and ceiling. Dickens defended his use of SHC by citing several real-life cases and medical opinions that supported the phenomenon.

Today, the scientific community has largely dismissed the idea of SHC as a genuine phenomenon. The human body, composed mostly of water, is not easily ignited, and the possibility of SHC occurring naturally seems remote. Proposed causes of SHC, such as bacteria, static electricity, obesity, and stress, have not been scientifically proven. While early explanations relied on outdated medical theories, modern forensic science has provided a more plausible theory known as the “wick effect.” This theory suggests that clothing or blankets can soak up melted fat from a burning body, acting like a candle wick and allowing the body to smolder for an extended period. This effect can result in the near-complete incineration of the body while leaving the surroundings relatively undamaged.

Despite the skepticism, there have been numerous reported cases of SHC throughout history. One notable example is the case of Matilda Rooney, a woman from Seneca, Illinois, who burst into flames on Christmas Eve in 1885, with her body being completely incinerated except for her feet. The fire also claimed the life of her husband, Patrick, who suffocated from the fumes. Investigators found no evidence of foul play or an external source of ignition, leading to speculation that SHC was the cause. More recently, in 2010, an Irish coroner attributed the death of 76-year-old Michael Faherty to spontaneous combustion, as his body was badly burned while the surrounding area remained largely undamaged.

While the idea of spontaneously bursting into flames captures the imagination, the scientific consensus is that SHC is extremely unlikely. The “wick effect” provides a more plausible explanation for many of the reported cases, with an external source of ignition often going undetected or destroyed by the fire. However, with a lack of concrete evidence, the mysteries surrounding SHC continue to intrigue and leave room for speculation.