A rough-and-ready distinction

Reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to Samuel:

He’s interested in, of all things, its physics – e.g., why a person (or an Oompa-Loompa), having drunk a “fizzy lifting drink,” should rise in the air.

Why does an ice-cube rise in a glass of water?, Samuel asks. It’s the right sort question. I’m impressed.

What blows Samuel’s mind is that, in Charlie, chewing a stick of gum produces the same sensory/​nutritive effect as eating a three-course meal (I’m not sure he realizes it isn’t possible).

And the detail that really gets him is that, at one point during the second “course,” the gum tastes like a baked potato. Why this should impress Samuel so much, I don’t know.

That the gum turns Violet Beauregarde into a blueberry interests him less.

That she could be de-juiced back to near-normalcy interests him somewhat more.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I once knew a college student who was very interested in The Lord of the Rings – for its metaphysics (her word).

Like, why Elves and Men differ as to mortality?, I asked.

Yes, she said.

That strikes me as the wrong approach.

Could this be one way to distinguish fantasy from science fiction? I.e., is physical or metaphysical inquiry appropriate for science fiction but not for fantasy?

Authors/​works you couldn’t inquire about in that spirit (at least, not lamely):

Homer

Hamlet

Gulliver

M. R. James

Jekyll & Hyde (but see this paper, which I don’t disparage)

Alice

The Curdie books

Narnia (I haven’t read Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia)

Harry Potter (too many ad hoc creatures and spells)

The Borrowers

Charlotte’s Web

And, I’d say – despite all the “world-building” – The Lord of the Rings.

By contrast, Lewis’s “space” books more readily invite physical/​metaphysical scrutiny. So does Slaughterhouse-Five. So does A Wrinkle in Time. So too, perhaps, might Watership Down, which I haven’t read.

So does Dante; the Divine Comedy is metaphysical SF with all the is dotted and ts crossed.

And it’s possible to go further down this path with H. P. Lovecraft than one might expect.

The Charlie books are an interesting case. There are physical explanations for some of the phenomena. These explanations don’t hold up for very long, and they’re articulated with the Alice books’ madcap irreverance; but they have a prima facie plausibility. It’s appropriate to try to work out the underlying laws – if you’re a child. Not so much if you’re grown up.

Body-text fonts, pt. 38: Pilgrim

R.I.P. the Pope.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

This month’s typeface, the designing of which was begun but not completed by Eric Gill, is one of my favorites. Like Ehrhardt and Plantin, it was a common British choice for typesetting paperbacks during the ’fifties, ’sixties, ’seventies, and ’eighties.

Good times!

Then Pilgrim fell into disuse because of the eclipse of metal type. Its decline made it apt for fancy “retro” productions.

It used to grace the cheap stuff. I assume that its name was meant to evoke the oft-reprinted Pilgrim’s Progress.

Incidentally, if you want to know what fonts are especially good at small sizes on cheap paper, compare reprints of The Lord of the Rings. (Don’t look at bibles; too many are incompetently produced.)

I wish Pilgrim would come back into vogue.

A good digital interpretation is Canada Type’s Bunyan Pro. See this PDF for samples, including a short essay on the suitability of Gill’s fonts for body text.

Goodbye, hobbits

I finished reading LOTR and its appendices (spoilers follow). I reiterate: The book is excellent so long as the hobbits take center stage. The rest is fine if one already likes Beowulf and such; but I was glad when Mordor, Gondor, Rohan, and Rivendell finally dropped out of view and Frodo & Co. set about restoring peace and homeliness to the Shire, expelling the non-hobbits. (Ultimately, though, the four little heroes and old Mr. Bilbo would all depart to live out their days with elves or man-kings: some in the last chapter, others at the end of Appendix B.)

Karin doesn’t want to call our new son “Frodo.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Speaking of ol’ J.R.R., I also finished the fourth installment of Anthony Powell’s Dance to the Music of Time, and it occurred to me that we might not be living in some Wild West regarding when to put a space between a person’s initials; there might be a rule, after all. Dance features a character, J. G. Quiggin, a writer, whose initials are spaced when grouped with the surname and unspaced apart from it. So, on Quiggin’s books’ covers, the name appears as “J. G. Quiggin”; but his friends (or, rather, frenemies – he’s that sort) use the familiar unspaced “J.G.” Well, they say the letters out loud, but that’s how the narrator transcribes them.

This topic interests me because I’m sometimes referred to by my initials; although, because of the hyphen, the letters of my name shouldn’t ever be spaced: they should always be written “J.-P.” (Or “J-P” if the writer does without the periods.) I actually prefer “JP” – less fussy – but who am I to decide my own name and its cognates?

(Not that society has made up its mind on this. Trump’s running-mate’s homepage calls its subject “JD Vance,” but the Google search result says “J.D.” Wikipedia says “JD,” deferring to Vance’s personal preference. But I wonder if the editors shouldn’t overrule him. Isn’t that what Wikipedia is for? There’s the precedent of this book cover, too.)

I cook for the family

I read about cassoulet in an Iris Murdoch novel. Tonight, I cooked it. That is, I cooked “quick cassoulet” in a skillet (traditional cassoulet requires hours of baking), using canned beans.

The result was flavorful but chewy. The bites with celery were crunchy. I’m not sure that that’s how cassoulet is supposed to end up.

I ate three-quarters of the dish. Karin, Samuel, and Daniel ate much smaller portions. I doubt they’ll beg me to cook it again.

Tomorrow: Almanzo Wilder’s “fried apples ’n’ onions.”

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Half of vol. 3 to go in LOTR.

I continue to read (and, in some cases, re-read) Forster. Each book has bettered its predecessor. I’m now reading Howards End (1916). What does Forster really think of his sadsack, the clerk Leonard Bast? This poor young striver spends his free hours going to Beethoven concerts and reading Ruskin to “improve” himself. He befriends the rich and cultured Schlegel sisters and tries to talk literature with them, and they couldn’t care less; they’d rather treat him as their pet. And they’re much nicer than the other richos. Forster clearly pities Leonard, but he doesn’t seem to like him much. He makes him about as attractive as a trespassing cockroach that must be squashed. Forster likes other proles in other books; just not the strivers. Everything in its rightful place, after all, I guess.

LOTR appendices

I mentioned I’d been reading them, daily, in small doses. The drudgery paid off this weekend when I got to Appendices C and D.

Appendix D is about the Hobbits’ calendar. Each month has thirty days. A given date always falls on the same day of the week, year after year.

But some of our months have more than thirty days, you might complain. Do the Hobbits just ignore certain days? Or do the heavens over Middle Earth have very tidy properties? Is Tolkien another Dante?

Extra days are included in the Hobbits’ calendar; but, sensibly, they aren’t grouped with any month or week. Consider this 61-day sequence: 30 month-days (the “Forelithe” month); a non-month, non-week holiday (“Midyear’s Day,” a.k.a. “Overlithe”); and then 30 more month-days (the “Afterlithe” month).

Tolkien comments:

It will be noted if one glances at a Shire Calendar, that the only weekday on which no month began was Friday. It thus became a jesting idiom in the Shire to speak of “on Friday the first” when referring to a day that did not exist, or to a day on which very unlikely events such as the flying of pigs or (in the Shire) the walking of trees might occur.

Appendix C, “Family Trees,” is even funnier. A single Hobbit name is faintly amusing. Dozens laid out together are hilarious: Tolkien at his pedantic best.

I also like it that Tolkien underlines the names of those present at the Long-Expected Party, i.e. the beneficiaries of Bilbo’s practical joke.

You can browse the appendices here. Click on links in the table of contents.

Tournament honors

A young man tried to kill Trump but only wounded him slightly. Bystanders were hurt; one was shot dead. The attacker himself was killed. Investigators say his motive remains unclear.

Of course this tragedy is more important than soccer, but I don’t know what else to say about it.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Congrats to Spain and Argentina for winning their respective tournaments.

Congrats to the Colombians for playing so well. They collapsed in the end. Their semifinal had been the more tiring one, and they’d rested a day less than the Argentinians.

Here is my Copa América “team of the tournament” (with honorable mentions in parentheses):

Martínez, ARG (Vargas, COL);

Nández, URU; Romero, ARG; Martínez, ARG; Mojica, COL (Sánchez, COL; Hincapié, ECU);

Ríos, COL; De Paul, ARG; Caicedo, ECU (Valverde, URU; Koné, CAN; Lerma, COL);

Rodríguez, COL; Martínez, ARG; Díaz, COL (Córdoba, COL; Rondón, VEN).

The Euros’ official “tournament team” is here. I mostly agree: I’d choose Mamardashvili (GEO) over Maignan (FRA), and maybe Carvajal (ESP) over Walker (ENG); and I wish I could make room for Çalhanoglu (TÜR), but not at the expense of any of the tremendous Spaniards.

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I finished reading the First Movement (novels 1–3) of Anthony Powell’s A Dance to the Music of Time. The pace is 20 pp./day, no more than 1 novel/month, for 12 months. Repetitious though much of it is – the narrator has to keep reminding us what his dozens of characters have been up to – its soap-operatic tidal wave swamps the intricacies of E. M. Forster, whose novels I’m also reading.

Sméagol has appeared in LOTR and is, in his way, delightful – a grotesque busybee. He, Sam, and Frodo have reached Mordor’s Black Gate. Two towers flank it. Are these the titular towers? I thought Orthanc was one, and also the Dark Tower. Is the question ever settled?

I finished reading the longest appendix (A).

Zuleika; LOTR; Farmer boy

One of my favorite chapter openings, almost as good as “The grandmother didn’t want to go to Florida”:

Her actual offspring does not suffice a very motherly woman. Such a woman was Mrs. Batch. Had she been blest with a dozen children, she must yet have regarded herself as also a mother to whatever two young gentlemen were lodging under her roof. …

The same is true of Karin: not with lodgers but with pets and strays.

This time, ’twas a spider. It spun its web on the prongs of our “Medusa” lamp.

Karin once feared spiders – maybe she still does – but she treated this one oh so tenderly. She brought it ants and flies.

Last night, she brought it a live Junebug. That cracked something inside of her. She was anguished for the Junebug: “It just fought so hard to live.”

She carefully removed the spider from our house.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Her actual offspring are with their grandfather tonight. A respite for us.

This morning I hazarded a library outing with them. They were loud, and I had to drag them home when Daniel wouldn’t stop running through the stacks. But it was gratifying that at first they shunned the e-⁠tablets. Samuel built with blocks from a Jenga-like game. Daniel filled, emptied, and refilled the Connect Four grid.

I kept an eye on them and read Tolkien. Pippin tries to sneak off with the palantír. Gandalf scolds him; then they ride away in the night, on Shadowfax.

As he fell slowly into sleep, Pippin had a strange feeling: he and Gandalf were still as stone, seated upon the statue of a running horse, while the world rolled away beneath his feet with a great noise of wind.

Thus ends LOTR bk. III. Tolkien is at his best in the concluding paragraphs of the “books.” So far, he has always concluded with a scene of hobbits. There are grand things in this story, but they are best viewed through hobbits’ eyes; they are too grand for anyone less humble. Tolkien himself may have been a bit of a hobbit, recording momentous and homely detail, for homely folk.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I also am reading the Little House books. Nine-year-old Almanzo, in Farmer Boy, isn’t quite a hobbit, but he is driven to and fro by industrious larger creatures. The temperatures are frigid; the work is hard; but all is worthwhile because it is fueld by mountains of rich food, described unstintingly.

July’s poem

… is my favorite in The Lord of the Rings, so far.

“What are you, I wonder? [said Treebeard.] I cannot place you. You do not seem to come in the old lists that I learned when I was young. But that was a long, long time ago, and they may have made new lists. Let me see! Let me see! How did it go?

Learn now the lore of Living Creatures!

First name the four, the free peoples:

Eldest of all, the elf-children;

Dwarf the delver, dark are his houses;

Ent the earthborn, old as mountains;

Man the mortal, master of horses:

Hm, hm, hm.

Beaver the builder, buck the leaper,

Bear bee-hunter, boar the fighter;

Hound is hungry, hare is fearful …

hm, hm.

Eagle in eyrie, ox in pasture,

Hart horn-crownéd; hawk is swiftest,

Swan the whitest, serpent coldest …

Hoom, hm; hoom, hm, how did it go? Room tum, room tum, roomty toom tum. It was a long list. But anyway you do not seem to fit in anywhere!”

“We always seem to have got left out of the old lists, and the old stories,” said Merry. “Yet we’ve been about for quite a long time. We’re hobbits.”

“Why not make a new line?” said Pippin.

“Half-grown hobbits, the hole-dwellers.

Put us in amongst the four, next to Man (the Big People) and you’ve got it.”

“Hm! Not bad, not bad,” said Treebeard. “That would do. So you live in holes, eh? It sounds very right and proper. … ”

The book perks up whenever Merry and, especially, Pippin come onto the scene.

I now rank the characters by how pleasing (and painless) they are to listen to.

1. Hobbits
2. Ents
3. Galadriel
4. Gandalf
5. Aragorn (as “Strider”)
6. Legolas
7. Gimli
8. Other wizards
9. Aragorn (as warrior-king)
10. Orcs
11. Other men
12. Other elves
13. Tom Bombadil

(I haven’t gotten to Sméagol yet.)

Who is the “Green Man” in this story? Is it Treebeard, Tom Bombadil, or both?

I also am reading the appendices, 3 pp./day. They go like this:

Slog slog slog WOW slog slog COOL slog WOW …

A Pole’s woes; the “clásico del Pacífico”; plans for Samuel

More Euros. The Germans look decent … the Spanish look very good but depended on an Italian “own” goal for their second victory … the English look putrid … the Dutch and French played a tedious, scoreless draw … the French have yet to score (they did provoke an Austrian “own” goal; the Euros’ official tally, so far, is five).

Poland’s excellent but perennially luckless goalkeeper, Wojciech Szczesny, committed a penalty-kick foul with his face. He only received a yellow card.

(I first saw him in the opening match of the 2012 Euros; he committed a delicate penalty-kick foul then, too, and was ejected.)

The Copa América has begun. Argentina defeated Canada. Chileans and Peruvians kicked each other all through their scoreless draw; quite a few were incapacitated (their rivalry is known as the Pacific Classic).

Frodo et al. have ventured into Moria.

Samuel watches Scooby-Doo.

He was waitlisted by and then accepted into our preferred preschool. A relief; but I grieve that this summer will be his last before he heads out into the world.

June’s poem

Alas, this is how I often feel, re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

From Nancy Mitford’s Highland Fling:

Receiving no answer beyond a frigid stare, Albert, with a deep sigh, disposed himself upon the stone, sitting cross-legged like an idol. He then produced a slim volume from his pocket. “I presume you have read ‘The Testament of Beauty,’ sir?”

“Never heard of it.”

“Oh, sir, you must have heard of it. A very great poem by our Poet Laureate.”

“No, I haven’t; I expect it’s immoral stuff, anyway. Kipling ought to be the Poet Laureate, to my mind.”

“Alas! Philistine that I am, I must disagree with you. I cannot appreciate Sir Rudyard’s writings as no doubt I should. ‘Lest we forget, lest we forget,’ ” he chanted. “Have you a favourite poem, sir?”

The general remained silent, his eye on the horizon. As a matter of fact he had a favourite poem, but he could not quite remember how it went –

Under the wide and starry sky

Dig my grave and let me lie.

Home is the hunter home from the hill,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Something more or less like that.

The actual poem (Stevenson’s “Requiem”):

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

🥺

Sad news about this restaurant – the only local place I know of that sells Gaeng Hung Lay.

The owners are nice people. This really is too bad.

A GoFundMe page is here.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

I’m re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring. The last time, I was in the fourth grade. I remember being bored while the hobbits made their way through the Shire. Get to Rivendell! I thought. How many hundreds of pages can it take? How many meals must they stop for? And who cares about the sale of Bag End to the Sackville-Bagginses? Now I relish all of this. Each of the four principal hobbits is lovely. The chapter about Farmer Maggot is a delight. The good farmer displays an abundance of “country” virtue: industry, forthrightness, loyalty, hospitality, courage. Also, alas, undue suspicion of outsiders, even of fellow hobbits.

Hobbits who live in different Shire quadrants consider each other “queer.” Eastern Shire-dwellers like to mess around in boats, and some even befriend elves; Westerners … do not. These differences are the basis of their mutual mistrust.

This silly thinking, all too pervasive in the real world, is best corrected indirectly, by way of literature. Consider some real-life rivalry (e.g., Democrats vs. Republicans). Each tribe is prepared to defend every point, almost to the death. Absurd … but it’s hard to see the absurdity once you side with, or against, one of the tribes. The habit of scrutinizing each point reinforces the enmity.

It’s better to approach one’s adversary having first learned to smile at the hobbits’ silly disputes.

I remember my boss at IU saying that most first-year English papers end up arguing, Everybody just needs to get along. Not a bad position to take, until it becomes untenable. It turns out that orcs have real-life counterparts who must be kept at bay.

The problem is, it’s all too easy to mistake Farmer Maggot, a “stout fellow” if ever there was one, for an orc.

I wish I had known you better, Frodo – to his great credit – tells the farmer.

Karin’s birth week

We’ve celebrated as follows:

Last Saturday, we trudged around and around inside Thistleberry Farms’s Lord of the Rings-themed corn maze. It was none too easy. Toward the end, it became perilous: the sky darkened, and we only reached the exit fifteen minutes before closing time.

It was nearly as tiring as Frodo’s and Sam’s journey with the One Ring.

On Monday, we ate chicken wings with Karin’s dad and his two other children: Lily, Karin’s sister, and Julian, Karin’s stepbrother. It left Karin & me feeling quite poorly.

Wednesday was the birthday itself. We did very little. My parents sent a monetary gift through PayPal. Others sent Facebook greetings. I ordered an Agatha Christie book for myself.

On Thursday, Karin’s mom gave her some cash. Karin & I went to a used-media store and bought seven movies and one video game, Rugrats in Paris, which Karin played the rest of the night.

Yesterday (Friday), we ate Italian food with Mary & Martin and Stephen & Edoarda. When we got home, I ordered this puzzle for Karin:

Then the Mormons came over for a while. After they left, Karin played Rugrats in Paris.

Today, we’re going to buy some sale-priced frozen yogurt.

We aren’t Kardashians, but we’ve still managed to have a nice little week-long party.

The Orc movie

I bought some donuts to eat at school.

When I opened the box, one of them seemed to have been nibbled on by a mouse. Mary Mouse.

Right now, Mary is watching The Two Towers (which has Miranda Otto, one of my favorite actresses from Australia). … There are subtitles, because Aragorn and Legolas are speaking in Elvish to one another. … The Elves have just arrived to help to defend at Helm’s Deep. … Soon, I hope, the Ents will decide to lend a limb.

Mary knows all the behind-the-scenes lore. “That’s Peter Jackson,” she remarks of a scraggly-looking extra. She thinks it’s funny to see the Elves marching in rows: the actors were teen-aged boys, and it took an eternity for the directors to get them to behave.