A Natural Curiosity

The Melvin Memorial

2009-11-13T00:39:00-05:00

On a recent visit to the Metropolitan Museum, I spent some time with the figure of Mourning Victory, reproduced in marble from the Melvin Memorial that stands in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts. This is one of my favorite works of art. It is even more impressive where I first saw it, on a shadowy hillside in the cemetery, not far from Poets’ Ridge where Thoreau and Emerson are buried (Emerson under an impressive boulder, Thoreau beside a small white headstone marked Henry, where bunches of goldenrod are sometimes left). The gloom of the site emphasizes the power and melancholy of the flag-wrapped figure emerging from the stone. It didn’t occur to me until recently, though, that the three Melvin brothers whose death in the Civil War are remembered with this monument (Asa, John, and Samuel) must have been related to George Melvin, the local man noted by Thoreau as a dedicated hunter and for having a discovered a rare pink azalea (May 31, 1853). He was sitting in the shade, bareheaded, at his back door. He had a large pailful of the azalea recently plucked and in the shade behind his house, which he said he was going to carry to town at evening. He had also a sprig set out. He had been out all the forenoon and said he had got seven pickerel,—perhaps ten. Apparently he had been drinking and was just getting over it. At first he was a little shy about telling me where the azalea grew, but I saw that I should soon get it out of him.

What the Consul drank

2009-11-09T02:30:00-05:00

(More about Under the Volcano is at Words Without Borders.) Malcolm Lowry’s great novel Under the Volcano is about, among other things, the Cabbala, Dante, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, the rise of fascism, the ways in which we create hell on earth, and the ways in which we sometimes enjoy that hell and resist escaping it. But it is also about the last day in the life of my namesake Geoffrey Firmin, former British Consul and an extreme alcoholic. I recently reread the book, beginning on November 2, the day in 1939 on which the novel opens, and the day in 1938 on which the action takes place. A question that’s preoccupied me on previous readings is that of exactly how much the Consul drinks on November 2, 1938. It’s a little hard to determine, since he is not a straightforward drinker. He will accept a drink but not touch it for several pages, he will scavenge the remains of other people’s drinks, and toward the end of the day the careful calibration of his drinking (at least in his own mind) goes completely out of control. None the less, one can begin by saying that on the night before November 2, the Consul drank heavily at a charity ball held for the Red Cross. He was perfectamente borracho, as other characters remark. As the Day of the Dead begins, we first see the Consul in the Bella Vista bar, shaking “violently” as he pours himself a glass of whiskey (p. 47*). He then takes another half a glass (p. 51). While walking with his estranged wife Yvonne, who against all odds has returned to him, he ducks into a shop and almost certainly has a quick drink or two while inside (p. 56). “You are—diablo!” the shopkeeper playfully calls after him. Later, while Yvonne is taking a bath at his house, he steps out for some therapeutic alcohol and finds himself lying face down in the street. A passing English motorist stops to check on him, and the Consul takes a “long draught” from a bottle of Burke’s Irish whiskey that the man offers him (p. 80). Back home, he drinks “fiercely” from his own whiskey bottle, then has another “half quartern” (two ounces), plus an additional finger (p. 92). While Yvonne is probably having a nap, the Consul drinks some Tequila Añejo de Talisco from a bottle he has hidden in the bushes (p. 127). He returns to the bottle a little later (p. 139), then has two Carta Blanca beers with his brother Hugh (p. 142), followed by a “large drink” of bay rum (ordinarily an aftershave). To steady himself so that his brother can shave him, he has a “stiff drink” of whiskey from a bathroom mug (p. 175). Visiting his friend Dr. Laruelle with Yvonne and Hugh, the Consul restrains himself for some time, but finding himself alone on the balcony, he “drank down all the drinks in sight”: four cocktails (type unspecified), plus what is left in the shaker (p. 208). At a cafe called the Paris, he has a tequila (p. 215), then three more (pp. 227 and 229) at the shadowy Terminal Cantina El Bosque, with its sinister connotations of endings and Dante’s dark forest. As Hugh, Yvonne, and the Consul travel on a bus, Hugh takes out a “small pinch bottle of habanero”—perhaps tequila flavored with habanero pepper? By p. 278 the Consul has nearly finished it, and a few pages later he is at the Salón Ofélia, “oozing alcohol from every pore,” and telling himself, “How sensible to have had a mescal.” By p. 303 he has had a second, plus several drinks more from a lemonade bottle filled with mescal—drinks that he tells himself he has had in fact but “had not drunk so far as the others were concerned.” He follows this with a beer. “‘Mescal,’ said the Consul.” These are the words that open Chapter XII, the final chapter, in which the Consul meets his doom. At the Farolito bar in Parian, toward which he has been drawn all day, the Consul has two mescals (p. 337), then another (p. 344), then another (p. 346), then finishes an almost empty bottle (p. 348) before having yet another mescal (p. 358). At this point, threatened by some paramilitary thugs, he loses all control. “Innumerable tequilas and mescals were being brought and the Consul drank everything in sight without regard for ownership.” A little later a pimp, who has been hanging out in the rest room and may also be a spy, slaps the Consul “calamitously on the back” as he is taking a “long drink”—the last drink he will ever have. How many drinks is that in all? Certainly more than forty, and perhaps more than fifty. It’s occurred to me that you could have a pretty lively party with no more alcohol than the Consul drank by himself in one day. Management accepts no responsibility if you choose to try it. *Page references are to the 1965 Lippincott edition.

The Education of a British-Protected Child

2009-11-06T00:00:00-05:00

My review of Chinua Achebe’s new collection of essays, The Education of a British-Protected Child, is up at the Christian Science Monitor. In it, among other things, Achebe renews a long-time sparring contest with his colleague Ngugi wa Thiong’o over the use of indigenous languages, and his more deadly struggle with Joseph Conrad over Heart of Darkness. Here’s a bit from the review: Achebe does not temper his language when attacking racism, colonialism, and their defenders. But that is not to say that he fails to see different points of view. The Igbo people, he says, prefer to view events not from the extremes but from the middle ground. The middle ground is a guard against fanaticism. It is “the home of doubt and indecision, of suspension of disbelief, of make-believe, of playfulness, of the unpredictable, of irony.”

Hawk and Cicada

2009-11-04T03:27:00-05:00

My friend Lucy has posted photos of a fierce-looking hawk and a cicada emerging from its shell. I’ve often seen cicada shells clinging to tree trunks or lying on the sidewalk, but I’ve never seen the insect actually emerging. Very cool. Here are a few of Thoreau’s observations on cicadas.

Corn Dark

2009-11-02T00:09:00-05:00

Jenn and I went to the Whitney the other day, for the first time in several years, and saw the Georgia O’Keeffe: Abstraction show. I’m not ordinarily a big fan of abstraction, but I enjoyed the exhibit—perhaps because O’Keeffe’s abstractions are often not very abstract. Many of these begin with objects in nature—a flower, a bleached bone, a stalk of corn—and stylize or otherwise alter them. They are speculative nature paintings, in the way that Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist takes place in a speculative version of New York. I liked in particular Pelvis I, It Was Blue and Green (which might or might not be derived from an aerial view of a water landscape), and Lake George (1924), in which the wave in the foreground is carved like a sand dune. Corn Dark reminded me of this passage from Thoreau’s Journal (February 26, 1840), a precursor of his credo from Walden: “I believe in the forest, and in the meadow, and in the night in which the corn grows.” The most important events make no stir on their first taking place, nor indeed in their effects directly. They seem hedged about by secrecy. It is concussion, or the rushing together of air to fill a vacuum, which makes a noise. The great events to which all things consent, and for which they have prepared the way, produce no explosion, for they are gradual, and create no vacuum which requires to be suddenly filled; as a birth takes place in silence, and is whispered about the neighborhood, but an assassination, which is at war with the constitution of things, creates a tumult immediately. Corn grows in the night. P.S. The color of the universe is beige.

The Dangerous World of Butterflies

2009-10-30T19:25:00-05:00

I read Peter Laufer’s book The Dangerous World of Butterflies after seeing the author interviewed on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Perhaps because he wrote the book as a break from his books on warfare, prisons, and other light topics, Laufer uncovers a surprising amount of conflict, criminal behavior, and creepiness—including a painting by Damien Hirst (of dead shark fame) incorporating the bodies of butterflies who emerge from their chrysalises only to be trapped in the artist’s fresh paint. Laufer presents other intriguing (and less creepy) facts. For instance, it is apparently a myth that one cannot hold a butterfly by its wings without permanently damaging its ability to fly. The color in the wings of some butterflies, including the showy Blue Morpho, comes entirely from reflection and refraction: the actual color of a Blue Morpho, visible when it gets wet, is brown. And the transformation from caterpillar to butterfly, as remarkable as it is, is even more remarkable when you learn that the creature doesn’t just change shape in its chrysalis—it actually turns to liquid. Laufer talks to Rachel Diaz-Bastin, a biologist at the butterfly house in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: Inside the hard chrysalis the transformation is in progress. “All of their body parts, every cell, liquefies.” It is, as she has said before, science fiction. “This is weird stuff. All of their cells differentiate and begin forming the adult butterfly. It’s basically this big butterfly soup inside.” Were you cut the chrysalis at this stage, you would find nothing resembling a caterpillar and nothing resembling a butterfly: only liquid.

The red sash of the sumac

2009-10-28T22:40:00-05:00

Having moved to Brooklyn from Cambridge, Massachusetts, ten years ago, one of the things I miss is the brilliant autumn foliage—the subject of Thoreau’s essay “Autumnal Tints,” and of many passages in his Journal. The fall colors in New York are mostly yellow, russet, and brown, but there are a few sugar maples that turn scarlet and orange, and it’s possible to find a few other plants that add a touch of intense color. This week at the High Line park the leaves of the sumac were turning red, the birch leaves were yellow, and honeybees and bumblebees were gathering nectar from dense beds of purple asters. The sumacs were also glowing red near the lake in Prospect Park, reminding me of a passage that Damion Searls has included in his new edition of Thoreau’s Journal. The clear bright-scarlet leaves of the smooth sumach in many places are curled and drooping, hanging straight down, so as to make a funereal impression, reminding me of a red sash and a soldier’s funeral. They impress me quite as black crape similarly arranged, the bloody plants.

Becoming Americans

2009-10-27T19:39:00-05:00

My review of Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing, edited by Ilan Stavans, is out now in the Christian Science Monitor. Here’s an excerpt: Many of the selections describe the obstacles, and sometimes opportunities, of learning to use American English. To be an exiled writer, says Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel Prize–winning poet, “is like being a dog or a man hurtled into outer space in a capsule (more like a dog, of course, than a man, because they will never retrieve you). And your capsule is your language.” Of course, the contributors to this book have more to worry about than just language. Some are indentured servants. Some are slaves. Others struggle with lack of money, poorly paid and degrading work, and lack of support from compatriots who have come before. The fact that these authors survived and wrote well about their experiences makes them among the most successful immigrants. But whatever successes they may have had in the Old World, and whatever successes may come in the New, the memory of being scared and vulnerable and out of their element lends their work a refreshing humility.

The Pattern in the Carpet

2009-10-20T04:40:01-05:00

My review of The Pattern in the Carpet by Margaret Drabble is out in the Christian Science Monitor. Here’s an excerpt: Margaret Drabble’s new book, The Pattern in the Carpet, as she explains on the first page, is a cross between a memoir and a history of the jigsaw puzzle. It looks at first like a cozy book, full of idyllic reminiscences of a slower and more rural way of life. And in fact, it describes how Drabble’s Auntie Phyl “taught us to peg rugs, and to sew, and to do French knitting, and to make lavender bags, and to thread bead necklaces, and to bake rock cakes and coconut fingers, and to play patience.” Fans of jigsaw puzzles will learn where they appear in the work of Jane Austen and how they developed from the “dissected maps” once mounted on mahogany to teach children geography. But take care before you send this book to your own kindly aunt. Under the comforting surface is something much more disquieting. I’ve also reviewed Drabble’s novels The Radiant Way and The Witch of Exmoor, and I’ve discussed her a few times in my blog.

Thoreau’s Garden

2009-10-16T03:24:01-05:00

Thoreau’s Garden by Peter Loewer is an engaging book, but it takes a little while to figure out what the author is intending with it. Chapters are devoted to various plants discussed by Thoreau—most but not all of them flowers—and are generously peppered with quotations from the Journal and expert discussion by the author (an experienced botanist and gardening author) and illustrated with the author’s own pen and ink drawings. Beginning with the serviceberry, Thoreau’s Garden also covers the bog rosemary, bearberry, swamp pink, jack-in-the-pulpit, milkweed, aster, barberry, cardoon, jimsonweed, horsetail, joe-pye weed, rose hibiscus, desmodium, false foxglove, turtlehead, dyer’s greenweed, wild geranium, bluet, water lily, puffball, earthstar, and more. Yet this is a far from exhaustive list of the plants Thoreau wrote about. The shrub oak, for instance, is missing, though Thoreau had warmer feelings toward it than probably any other plant. ("I love and could embrace the shrub oak with its scanty garment of leaves rising above the snow, lowly whispering to me...") The scarlet oak is also missing, as well as the maple and all the other trees that supplied the material for his essay on Autumnal Tints—as well as the apple tree, which was the subject of its own essay. But Loewer has not deliberately left out the trees, since the hemlock has a chapter. On page 70, Loewer reveals at least some of what he’s about. After commenting on how he (and Thoreau) like the barberry despite its disagreeable smell, he goes on: That’s why it’s good that Thoreau’s Garden is a garden of the mind. The small pool is kept full by a waterfall that ripples along, fed by a hidden spring, glistening as it turns and tumbles over rocks. Perfect ferns arch over the pool and everything is shaded by a towering three-hundred-year-old tulip tree. And there’s a comfortable rush chair that is impervious to the elements, a chair for dreaming and thinking, a chair for idleness. Surrounding this garden is an impermeable hedge of common barberry, protecting me from the world, just as in ages past hedges ringed farms to keep out the wild. This, then, is a book created to realize the author’s vision of an ideal Thoreauvian garden. He has included what he wants and excluded what he doesn’t care to write about (including that tulip tree). He has made room for well-chosen quotations from Thoreau on sexual relations, water and water bugs, the tourist sights of New York City, and many other matters. Not everything is here, or meant to be here, but what’s here is presented with charm and affection.