January 2010 – Vine Maple Farm

January 31, 2010February 14, 2010

Saul Bellow, Herzog

Last week, I read Herzog by Saul Bellow for the second time. The first time I read it, I was fifteen, maybe fourteen. I read it then because I had convinced my mother to subscribe to the Book-of-the-Month-Club and Herzog was either the selection of the month or one of the generous premiums the BOMC gave out for joining. I read it this time because I read an article in the New York Times about sex scenes in popular literature and I happen to have registered for a creative writing class on writing love scenes. (What will this sixty year old grandpa do next?) John Updike, Saul Bellow, and Phillip Roth were held up as authors of pre-women’s liberation sex scenes.

I was reminded that Herzog was the first book I read that addressed sex openly. I discount certain scenes in Heinlein and Horatio Hornblower, which were certainly exciting to a fourteen year old in the sixties, but were suggestive cartoons, not passion.

Hyde Park and the University of Chicago play as background to Herzog, and I wonder if reading Bellow had anything to do with the fact that I chose to go off to Chicago for college. I’m not sure. While I was a student at the UC, I did not seek out Bellow, although I met him and his poodle on the street, probably Dorchester Ave, every morning one quarter when his dog walk and my class schedule happened to intersect. After the first few encounters, we began to nod, but our relationship never went farther than a nod. At the time, I am not even sure I connected the man with the poodle to the author of Herzog.

Rereading Herzog, I now realize how funny the novel is. Herzog is a buffoon in a straw boater hat and an unreliable narrator. The sex scenes are suggestive, but not graphic. The bawdiest moment it the entire book is when Herzog recounts an old joke about the Shakespearian actor who, when complimented for his physiognomy, replies “Madame, I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.” I trotted this chestnut out several times to show off my fifteen year old worldliness, but failed to calibrate the audience properly every time, and got only uncomprehending stares and shaking heads instead of sophisticated laughter.

Now, I wonder what it was that I enjoyed in the novel in 1965? Certainly the character of Herzog, who in some ways foreshadows some of my own intellectuality and passion for history of ideas and I think there is a certain amount of resonance between my own European heritage and Herzog’s Jewishness.

Of course, I missed entirely the bizarre absurdity of Herzog’s life and the preposterousness of twentieth century United States seen as a logical consequence of the enlightenment mixed with Nazi extremism and American materialism. But I can’t say that I understand the book now. I feel there is something I should understand, but it is all unclear.

Consequently, I feel compelled to re-read Saul Bellow’s entire corpus and figure out what it is that I almost understand. Over the years, I have read most of his books, but now I must reread them all.

January 30, 2010January 30, 2010

January Snowdrops

The snowdrops are beginning to bloom this week. They are not native to the Pacific Northwest. A cursory search on the Internet traces them to Asia Minor and they were garden favorites in Britain and Ireland before they appeared in the new world.

Here on the farm, snowdrops are thriving and spreading. My mother or grandmother planted them in the front yard flower beds, but lately, patches of snowdrops have been popping up in semi-shaded areas of heavy leafmold at edge of the woods and in the windbreaks. The patches began as little clumps, but the largest is now is close to twenty feet across. I suspect the proliferation stems from the absence of dairy cows snuffling and trampling over the delicate snowdrop beds, but that is only a guess.

New species scare me. My grandmother planted English ivy and now it threatens to choke the natives out. A couple years ago, it nearly strangled one of the evergreens in the yard with vines that grew as thick as a man’s arm. We cut the vines with axe and chain saw and pulled the ivy up that surrounded the base of the tree with the tractor. Dead vines still wrap the tree, but each year the tree grows a little healthier and the damage less apparent.

I hope the snowdrops are not invaders. January needs reminders that spring is not far away. This is an el Nino year and January has been warm, the temperature occasionally making it into the sixties, and I believe we have not seen a single snowflake. Still, the sun seldom shines, and when it does, the landscape is muddy and muted. The holidays are past and spring is still remote.

The snowdrops are thriving and even the lilacs are beginning to bud. There is still a chance of a bitter Northeaster, but the chance diminishes every day. The good comes with the bad. Warmth comes hand in hand with foggy overcast nights and the young astronomers have not had a single clear night for the telescope since Christmas.

January 24, 2010January 30, 2010

Warring States

filbert-catkins-jan — Filbert Catkins in January

The Indian civilization of the northwest reminds me of the Warring States (476 – 221 BCE) period in China. The Warring States was a dark interlude in the train of China’s history, which, unlike Western history, is a continuous sequence of dynasties. The government in China today is in a succession of dynasties that goes back at least to the Shang Dynasty whose traditional end was 1122 BCE. The Shangs left a literary legacy of inscriptions on ox scapulae and turtle shells that are an early form of the Chinese characters that are used today. The Shang was followed by the Western and Eastern Zhou dynasties. The Zhou left a few books and lengthy inscriptions on wonderful bronze castings. The Warring States were the last two hundred or so years of the Eastern Zhou. My mentor, Herrlee Creel, was one of the first historians to make use of Zhou bronze inscriptions, and I spent a few delightful years under his direction studying the Warring States, the chaotic period when the power of the Zhou kings was no longer adequate to establish order in the north China plain.

The Warring States is almost always described as a period of cruelty, treachery, and unprincipled ambition. The orderly civilization that Chinese historians saw in records of the Zhou dynasty disintegrated into a cluster of warring small states, each trying to get the best of the others. But the Warring States was the period when the great schools of Chinese philosophy and political theory became established. Confucianism, Daoism, Legalism, and military strategy all evolved rapidly while the states warred. Revenge, spite, and bloody battles are found on every page of the history of the period, along with intense intellectual ferment and a desire to return to the orderly days of the Zhou.

The Warring States period was ended by the leader of the warring states, Chin. Chin unified the states into as single state in 221 BCE, recalling the glory of Zhou. Unfortunately, the first ruler of the unified state was a cruel tyrant and could not hold power. He was replaced by the Han Dynasty, which was the first dynasty for which we have a detailed written history. From the Han on, recording of dynastic history was an important function of government. This began a long succession of great historic dynasties. Although the current regime in China may not be ready to acknowledge it, they are the current representative of a long line of mighty dynasties.

I believe that the modern world that we enjoy today owes as great a debt to Warring States China as it does to the golden age of the Greek philosophers. Surprisingly, Socrates ( 469 BCE–399 BCE) and Confucius (551 BCE – 479 BCE) were almost contemporaries.

But back to the Indians of the Pacific Northwest. Before the coming of the white men, the Bostons as they were called, the northwest Indians lived in idyllic splendor. Unlike the Indians of plains who had to scramble for survival, on the northwest coast, food was abundant. Swarms of salmon, halibut, and sea mammals were easily harvested and preserved. Clams, oysters, crabs, and other seafood were lying on the beach. There was no struggle to survive.

The Indians were able to skip agriculture and move on directly to a settled life of huge long houses and mighty totemic art. And they warred continuously, fighting over territory, fishing grounds, and slaves. They were a collection of warring states. It is easy to speculate on what they could have accomplished if they had a written language, or a more organized religion, or indigenous iron, but that kind of speculation only leads to a round of back patting among Europeans who reaped the supposed benefits.