Vaction Speed-Read

Although not actually a “speed reader”, when traveling for no particular purpose I spend an inordinate amount of time reading (mostly other people’s) books. Over the past weekend or so, I got through:

Unpopular Opinions

A collection of essays by Dorothy Sayers, divided by topic: theological, political, and Sherlock Holmes. Sayers’ primary theological concern, based on the essays I’ve read (and not just these) is the question of the practical implications of specifically Christian doctrines about God, such as the Trinity or Christ’s humanity. The “political” include encomia of the English character – addresses from World War II and practically propaganda; feminist pieces mainly demanding that women’s views be treated inclusively and human and not distinct from men’s when there is no reason to suppose any particular advantage or disadvantage to one’s perspectice based in sex; and an essay complaining about other people’s bad English style, the production of at least one of which such pieces seems to have been a moral requirement of mid-20th century English authors. The pieces on Sherlock Holmes are mainly of the mock-critical variety purporting to determine various details of a “real” Sherlock Holmes which, of course, Arthur Conan Doyle never bothered with. The effect of the essay attempting a quasi-Aristotelian analysis of the detective story, which Sayers claims in her introduction to the collection to be serious, unfortunately suffers from an overly flippant tone.

Shakespeare’s Game

The William Gibson who authored this book is not the reasonably well-known science fiction author (although the title would be entirely believeable for one of his novels) but a playwright and professor. He uses several well-known plays by Shakespeare to discuss a theory of how both individual scenes unfold to hold an audience’s attention and how this is mirrored in a play’s overall structure. I more skimmed this one than read it: Gibson’s structure of move, object, barrier, and plunge (the consequences that follow on when the barrier is surmounted and the object achieved) seems useful and worth more attention than I spared, and he tosses in some useful or thoughtful tidbits on Shakespeare’s plays, but his own writing hardly holds the attention. And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why he insists on using “move” instead of “mover” when the latter would usually make better grammatical and situational sense.

Wylder’s Hand

One of Sheridan LeFanu’s earlier novels of suspense. The plot is perfectly serviceable for any mystery or thriller, and the male characters are intriguingly drawn although the female ones are a bit flat. But I can’t say I care for the technique of telling a story by definitely leaving out some information while including other events, without any consistency about what the narrator should have known when, purely to induce suspense. This can work in a short story with a quick payoff but in a novel it’s mostly just frustrating. (I’m also not entirely sure the eventual revelation is entirely consistent with what we’re told to begin with, but I’d have to reread to make sure.) Dorothy Sayers, to judge by references to his work, seems to have been a fan, so my evaluation seems a bit presumptuous – or his technique may have improved with practice and lent a more sympathetic glow to younger efforts.

Pharaohs and Kings

In 1995 Egyptologist David Rohl published this work (in the original British edition as A Test of Time) suggesting a significant revision to standard dates assigned in academic reconstruction of the ancient Egyptian chronology. His starting assumption is that Biblical myths and legends should have similar relation to actual events as other cultures’ stories, so that the fact that with the conventional dates it is peculiar and a sign of possible error that no archeological evidence appears to match the events of the Biblical stories at all. (Rohl is not a Christian, but suggests this non-match was perhaps accepted too easily by others willing to “debunk” the Bible as religious without regards to its historical value.) He thinks that Victorian Egyptologists – ironically, in an attempt to solidify Biblical credibility – grabbed the first plausible correspondence between Hebrew and Egyptian names of a Pharaoh they could find, but that this does not hold up under the standards of modern philology or documentary evidence. As far as this goes, this critical argument seemed plausible to me: however, a difficulty is that Rohl relies on similar linguistic arguments further on which to a non-expert are not particularly more (or, to be fair, less) plausible than this one he begins by debunking.

However, if this identification is discarded, other difficulties with conventional dates can be admitted (since they are held to be necessary based on that “fixed point”) and re-examined, and the correct record established. Rohl claims his own reconstruction does result in the expected correlations between Egyptian and Hebrew texts and archeological evidence. Rohl’s recreation of the archeological evidence from and concerning Canaanite sources again seems quite plausible – but the dates are a bit murky. I also thought it very odd that, if I read the section correctly, Rohl seems fairly satisfied with the established chronology for Israel, despite apparently questioning some accepted conclusions about technology levels, while he was willing to start over virtually from scratch with the Egyptian.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, his thesis has not found any significant acceptance with Egyptologists generally. Rohl has, per Wikipedia, written various follow-up works, presumably refining his reconstruction further and addressing some of the problems it creates. The primary difficulty is that it would change not just Egyptian dynastic dating but all the cross-linked dating based on comparisons lists of kings from across the Near East – some of which are apparently considered more stable than our understanding of Egyptian chronology. Adjustments have of course continued to be made even within the conventional framework for Egyptian history, but no accepted revisions come anywhere close to the scale of change Rohl advocates.

Review: Anna Karenina

Leo Tolstoy was deeply unhappy with the complacency and hypocrisy of upper-class Russian society in the late 19th century.

The plot of the eight hundred page novel is obviously a little more complex than that, but that’s the point of the book. We’re treated to the contrast between Anna, whose affair breaks the conventions of society, and all the rest of the adulterers who carry on more discreetly and so lose no real status. Tolstoy is more inclined to blame social conventions for producing unhappiness than he is to introduce any serious moral reflections on individuals’ behavior. He has a distinct sympathy with individual desires.

We also have, running through the book, a distinct preference for the country over the city. The country is more honest, more necessary, less artificial. At the same time, many of the superfluous city nobility are quite sympathetically drawn: Tolstoy does not seem to want to blame anybody for being caught up in – born into – any condition whatever.

Through the character of Levin, Tolstoy seems to suggest the best life is simply to carry on life, to try to do the right thing, and to accept what comes of your choices. In some sense this is echoed by the rest of the plot: the eventual tragedy falls out through a process in which virtually every character, in one way or another and extending even to Anna herself, refuses to deal with the consequences of her affair sensibily or morally or both.

Tolstoy has a remarkable ability to turn a phrase, capture a scene or a feeling, and describe entirely plausible characters. The wit dries up somewhat in the last quarter of the book, and I can’t help feeling that the book sort of wanders to an end – although in a way the sheer lack of impact Anna’s eventual death has – quite plausibly! – on the rest of the cast is emotionally a little terrifying.

Still, it is for the most part a magnificently constructed novel: but not, on the whole, pleasant reading.