Which It's A Gratuitous Literary Confession, Ain't It?

I am currently rereading Patrick O'Brian's Master & Commander, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin novels. I haven't kept close track, but this must be the seventh or eighth time now.

On the one hand, given the limited amount of time at my disposal for pleasure reading, I feel vaguely guilty that I should be returning to such a well-known book instead of branching out to something new and different. On the other hand, a well-written novel is like a well-written symphony - something new reveals itself each time. Furthermore, one should no more refuse to reread a book because one already knows the plot than refuse to listen to a symphony again because one already knows the melodies: the joy is in taking in the words or notes themselves, not in arriving at the conclusion.

Por ejemplo, I found myself chuckling anew over this delightful paragraph in which Jack Aubrey, never a scholar in his own youth, is scolding his young midshipmen about keeping up with their studies at sea:

"You can write decently, I suppose? Otherwise you must go to school to the clerk." They hoped so, sir, they were sure; they should do their best. But he did not seem convinced and desired them to sit down on that locker, take those pens and these sheets of paper, to pass him yonder book, which would answer admirably for them to be read to out of from.

O'Brian's dancing from the first person to the third person voice and then back again to a kind of middle ground is masterful enough, but I just love how he lets the end of the paragraph get away from him in gentle mockery of Jack's rather hypocritical fussing. It's a grace note, a throw away, but charming nonetheless. And the book (indeed, most of the series) is crammed with such gems (not all of them humorous, of course, but rayther covering the whole gammut of emotions). Why on earth would someone not want to come back repeatedly to mine for them?

If I decide to press on and reread the entire cycle, however, I'm going to have to be careful about pacing. The last two or three times through, I tried to read too much, too fast and got burned out. This time, I think I'll be rigid about reading two or three other books in between each Aubrey/Maturin story so that this doesn't happen again.

CUE THE FREAKY MUSIC YIPS from Steve-O: That's spooky....on a whim last night I pulled down Master and Commander and started reading the durn thing again too.

I've been meaning to do more library blogging as of late; heck, I've been meaning to do a lot more blogging on a wide number of things lately but, first rule of light blogging club being what it is, I'll have to keep my trap shut.

Some recent high and low lights:

The Second Horseman, by Kyle Mills was a great pool side waiting for the kids to get done with swim practice read. Total time committment: two days of practices. Highlights: if this were a Hollywood pitch meeting for the movie (and if there's any justice given the crap being pumped out of Hollywood these days there should be one, here), the pitch would be something like this: the fast paced national security ticking bomb thriller tension of 24, but with the central role being played by a world class jewel thief who is a jewel thief version of Ari Gold, from Entourage. Just your standard story featuring an ex-CIA Bill Buchanan type who has to bust the Jeremy Piven-played jewel thief (who, of course, he had framed to be sent up in the first place) out of prison, so they can hijack a tractor-trailer load of cash sent daily from Vegas to the Federal Reserve bank in San Francisco so they can use the money to buy some Soviet nukes off the black market to take them out of circulation. Jailarity ensues, as they say. Three orgles out of four.

Harry Potter and the Ginormous Mound of Marketing Tie-ins, by J.K. Rowling. I re-read Harry Potter 2 and 6 in anticipation of The Deathly Hallows coming out next month. I almost wish there was a way that we could slip these books to Robbo---maybe a Confundus charm, or something---without Robbo knowing what they are from all the marketing hype over the years. Truth be told, I think Robbo would really like them a lot.

I'm not sure how well they will hold up over time, though, once the plot of The Deathly Hallows emerges. Will the popularity of these books fade over time, once first time readers to the series know the ultimate resolution, in much the same way that the original Star Wars movies now kind of suck in light of knowing the full story? Or, will they become like C.S. Lewis' Narnia series which only go richer each time you read them, knowing the beautiful, sad, tragic yet deeply resounding conclusion?

The bone I have to pick with J.K. Rowling--or maybe it's intentional, and therefore something to credit her with--is the complete absence of the humanities from the course of education at her magical school. The wizarding world as she presents it is completely bereft of art and music of their own creation which is not derivative of the creations of the non-magical world. In many respects the wizarding world---or, at the very least, wizard Britain---is a world which never really left the medieval: they never went through the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the revolutions of capitalism, industrialism, and Darwinism. Now, I can see how a number of our readers would probably say a combination of the last three aint bad (and certainly the Shire of Tolkein was Rousseauian presentation of Britain minus the last three), how many of us would want to live in a world without the humanism and individualism and rationalism and science that were the crowning achievements of the first two? Not me, for one.

The first book---and I have a gut hunch the last book---pivots on the character never actually met by the reader of Nicolas Flamel, a historical figure with a long history of being used by authors as a representative of the obsession with alchemy. To me, the series rises and falls with the fate of another obsessed alchemist born several centuries after Flamel lived: Isaac Newton. Newton turned away from alchemy in the end and embraced science and the scientific method, and with it the principles of rationalism and free inquiry. Rowling's wizards remain profoundly uncurious about the nature of their world, and the small few who inquire are kept hidden away within the Department of Mysteries, their work kept secret. The Wizards, from the fragments that Rowling provide, turned within themselves in Europe at least at exactly the time the Europeans reached out to understand the world, the universe, and the place of human beings within it.

Whether intentionally or not, Rowling has shown us a world within a world free from imperialism, nationalism, capitalism, religion and industrialism---yet it is a society racked profoundly with racism and slavery, governed oppressively without any pretense of due process, the rule of law, equality, or democracy, and in a world without great art, sculpture, literature, poetry, dance, or music of its own.

They have Dumbledore. We have DaVinci, Newton, Smith, Darwin, Einstein, Watson, Dickens, and Neil Armstrong.