The Merry Men and Other Stories by R. L. Stevenson - a brief review

The Merry Men and Other Tales and Fables by Robert Louis Stevenson

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


The stories in this collection are linked by being largely moral in nature. The Merry Men focuses on guilt, conscience and payment for sins; Markheim follows a similar line with a supernatural interference; Thrawn Janet is an episode of a priest and a possessed woman; Will O' the Mill is a contemplation on whether it is better to experience all the world or live a simple life; Olalla is a bizarre story of a fallen and ruined family and choosing to sacrifice personal happiness to prevent future evil; finally The Treasure of Franchard highlights the importance of family, simple things and the evils of money, at least too much of it in the wrong hands.

Despite that, none of them beat the reader over the head with didactic ramblings, and each story has a charm and character of its own to keep the reader intrigued. Olalla ends disappointingly to mine, but the hook of the secret was only just strong enough to keep me going with it anyway. The descriptions in The Merry Men, of the raging sea and the desolate land, are beautifully rendered in true Stevenson style.

In all, this is a pleasant and enjoyable collection, but not one of much mark.



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A Concise Review of a Concise History of India by Francis Watson

India: A Concise History by Francis Watson

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book tackles its immense task admirably and gives a good overview of the historical movements, and some of the key figures within that. It, naturally enough, gets a bit clogged in names and places and events that it can't possibly spell out clearly, and could probably have profited by a few more maps to clarify. Nevertheless, given its scope it's an amazing achievement, that also highlights the importance of India in broader world history.



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Dinosaurs, telekinetic teens and horned youths

A couple of decades and four sequels late, I finally watched Jurassic Park the other day. I don't know why it took me quite that long but it did. Aside from being a bit dated, and screaming 'Spielberg directed this' from the first sequence (not in itself a bad thing), it was a good movie. I can imagine seeing it in the cinema in its day would have provoked the desired shrieks and gasps. I played the Lego game of the first four movies last year, so a few spoilers, but with some obvious gaps in my understanding.

What I found myself thinking about after watching it was the characters and how they might have been in the novel. One of the few things I know about Michael Crichton as a writer is that several of his books have ended up as movies, which he also writes the screenplays for. For some reason I cannot explain, that put me off reading anything he wrote. Some irrational bias I had I guess, tall poppy maybe. But from the movie I sensed a lot of depth to the characters which could only be achieved to a degree on the screen, which means in the book these scientists and moguls are much more detailed. I found myself wondering if the abortive love triangle is somewhat more considered, if ultimately as unsuccessful on the third spoke's part.

This led me on a dinosaur train (not the Henson Company variety), to Stephen King. Growing up a somewhat squeamish child of the 1980s the name Stephen King meant movies I didn't want to watch even if most of my friends kept telling me they weren't scary. As such, I had another of my irrational biases not to read anything he wrote. When I got married I found that my wife had a King section in her library, so during a test match I decided I should finally read one of his books. Carrie was thin so I went with that.

There is no way I will watch a movie of that book, I've seen pictures and know the idea, I wouldn't enjoy it. Nor do I feel it would do justice to what was an amazing book. I had heard that the schlock movies of his work were poor reflections of his skill, now I know it. Carrie is a harrowing tale, which manages to create tension and character in an economical way. I could empathise with Carrie, even when she was lost in her own destruction and rage.

A final stop on the train is Horns. I saw the movie starring Daniel Radcliffe a few years ago, and I highly recommend it for its dark humour and subtle humanity. It too is based on a novel, this one by Joe Hill. After watching the movie I decided the novel is probably very good, I predict Hill is witty, with good sense of character and mood. I guess in this case a good movie has recommended a writer to me, instead of bad movies turning me off one. My own maturity levels probably have something to do with it too.

Does this mean the book is better than the movie? No. They're distinct works, whether one is 'based' on the other or not. Saying the book is better is as good as saying apples are better than carrots. You may prefer one, but you can't judge them in the same way, they're completely different. That's why I can enjoy Wells' The Time Machine and still enjoy the 2001 film with Guy Pearce. It's its own work, an adaptation, not a translation. Try to remember that when watching different versions of things, they're different stories even if they're directly based on each other.

Keep dreaming!

The Way to Ascend

Today one of the Squid's old friends came by. He's a part-time archaeology teacher with a fedora and a bullwhip, you know the type. Nice abs. He taught me that X never marks the spot, but sometimes the Roman numeral for 10 may, but only in medieval European libraries.

Anyway, he told me he'd seen signs indicating there was a way to ascend buried in my backyard. Not one to scoff at the ideas of a friend of the Squid I joined him on an expedition. He told me he knew the best digging team in Cairo - of course, in Hobart that's not much use, so he let me do the digging.

Some blackberries had to die, but that had to happen anyway so it was a gain really. And after what felt like hours, but was probably less than one, it lay bare before us. The surface was still covered in dirt so we couldn't make out any secret markings if there were any, but the structure was plain, and from where I was standing there could be no doubt about, we had excavated a true way to ascend.

We did so. It was amazing, the view is slightly different from up there. Tragically, our mode of ascension had ceased to be so, and served only to take us lower. The Squid's friend said that was often the way with such artefacts, then he noticed the sun was setting, jumped on a horse and rode off, leaving me with so many questions, and these ...

A Sentimental Mug

I get sentimental about the most random objects. Recently, a mug got a crack in it, coffee leaking slowly out through the whole height of it. I liked that mug. It was a good size for a coffee, and a red colour that wasn’t too bold or too pink. It was a Kris Kringle present from years ago, the job before my last one. It came filled with Lindt chocolate balls. I used it at work for a bit then took it home where it became my main coffee mug after the tragic death of the blue funny face mug I’d bought to match my green funny faced tea mug.

Writing this I realise it’s mugs that seem to interest me, but I can’t say why. Right now on my desk are two mugs, both had coffee in them, I’m a slacker and forgot the first one. It’s a white one with the words ‘I’m silently correcting your grammar’. My niece gave it to me a few years ago, and everyone seems to find it most apt. I do do it silently. The other is a Star Wars mug with pretend posters based on The Force Awakens. It was from my wife and son.

Who’d have thought inexpensive mugs would make such treasured gifts? They’re impermanent, as the puddles of coffee under my red mug prove, but they last years, and with every sip there's a reminder that for a moment in some chain store someone thought of you.

Sentimentality is seen as a weakness at times. Certainly, if I actually cried over the mug there’d be reason to question things. But, if it is a matter of association and remembrance, perhaps it’s good to be sentimental, even over inconsequential things like coffee mugs.

Don’t get me started on teacups.

Keep dreaming.

Farewell Brian Aldiss, RIP

It is with a heavy heart that I bid farewell to Brian W Aldiss, a stalwart writer and scholar who passed away on the weekend aged 92.

I think the first book of his that I read was Billion Year  Spree, his history of science fiction. It's a fascinating read and influenced me greatly. I was doing my Honours at the time and his definition of science fiction, particularly that it is set in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould, shaped my thinking at the time and infiltrated my whole thesis, even if it was off topic. My ideas on genre have shifted in the last couple of years, and I do not hold so closely to Aldiss' own, but they're still influential, and I wouldn't be where I am without them.

I haven't read his most famous fictional works, the Supertoys stories that Spielberg's movie AI was based on, or the Helliconia series, but I have read a couple of others. The first was Frankenstein Unbound. It took me a bit to accept what was going on and for a while I probably would have said it wasn't that good. But, it stayed with me, I read it almost two decades ago but have clear memories of scenes within it. It wasn't what I expected, but it was good enough to get past my initial reaction and hook me.

Sadly, my memory of Moreau's Other Island is vague and of disappointment. The other book of Aldiss' that I've read is Nathaniel and Other Stories, an anthology of his early short stories. Off the top of my head I can only recall one. It was about a sentient bomb, sent across space. There was an alien world at war with Earth, and they sent a series of such bombs at a speed sufficiently faster than that of light to arrive on Earth before humans evolved, thus preventing their enemy from ever existing. Only, it turned out humans worked it out and the bomb wiped out its originating planet instead. That was just the meat of the story, the real flavour came from the bomb itself, its excitement and relief that its journey was coming to an end, its sense of purpose. And then it finds it's been tricked, and its whole reason for being flipped on its head. I'm not surprised it stays with me.

So Mr Aldiss, I say farewell and thank you. Stories and ideas are the most precious of gifts, and yours have proven very valuable already, and I can truly say they have changed my life. The good news is, though you may no longer be with us, your gifts are and there are more treasures for us all to unearth.

Keep dreaming my friends.

A Literary Ramble on Literature

In preparation for the next semester (or trimester as DU calls them), I read two introductions to books introducing the various voices within literary theory, both of which asked that essential question, what is literature? Of course, the answer is vague, partly because it's a debatable point and partly because they were introductions and they can't give it all away. But it made me think about what literature is or has been to me, which is something I probably should think about if I'm studying Literature.

The first thought I have is remembering the many times I rearranged my books in my teens. It was something I did at least once a year I think. I would take every book off the shelf and put them into piles according to how I wanted to organise them, then work out the best way to arrange them all on the shelves. I could make a joke here about how much of a nerd I was/am, but, as I think about it, I'm not going to wear that label over this - I love books, I always have and always will, that doesn't mean I have to wear some societal label.

I digress, the point is, and there is one, I typically sorted them back into 'genre'. Fantasy always had the largest piles, with science fiction next and horror a small pile that grew steadily, especially if you include the Gothic Romances. There were plenty of problems and 'ums' and 'errs' deciding which pile to put some books on. Star Wars novels got their own pile and took up a shelf of their own, so that avoided that one, but other books raised questions - which could be the origins of my thesis, but that's a topic for another blog. The point, is where Literature stood, and in terms of sorting - and cataloging - my books it meant, books that don't fit any genre I'm aware of. Mostly it contained books I'd read for English at school like Dickens' Oliver Twist.

Later, when I was doing some post-grad study in writing, I was talking to someone who'd finished her Masters at the same uni, and I mentioned I had contemplated doing the Novel Writing Workshop. She asked what my novel would be about and as soon as I described some vague notion I had she replied 'There's a Genre Writing Workshop too'. I was floored, poor naive fool that I was, it had not occurred to me that a fantasy novel was not really a novel, but a piece of genre fiction. To her defence, she meant no offence and didn't intend any disdain towards genre, and I wasn't put off by her attitude, merely that the distinction between 'literature' and 'genre fiction' was so well established as to be taken as part of the structure of writing and teaching writing.

These days I'm aware of the existence of such distinctions to some people, and of the mirrored snobbery within genre fiction itself, however it is eroding I'm happy to say. Which leaves the question - what is literature to me now? And the answer is ... I'm not entirely sure. In the end, I think it's any creative work which uses language and is approached by a reader as such - that is a creative work using words. So, a play is literature when approached as a script for reading and digesting, and a performance text when approached for mounting a production. A performed play is literature when approached by a reader/audience member from the point of view of the words being uttered and the context they are in (so scene/characterisation etc is part of it not just the words). So literature, I realise as I write this, is a relationship between the reader/watcher and the text.

That was a journey for me, I didn't expect that outcome. I hope, if you've stuck with it this long, that your relationship with this text has been enjoyable.

Keep dreaming!