Book Review: Pandora's Jar

 By Natalie Haynes

• Pub Date: 2020 

• Where I bought this book: Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg, Pa. 

• Why I bought this book: The author knows it's a jar, not a box

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      In the early 16th Century,  a Dutch fellow by the name Erasmus of Rotterdam took it upon himself to translate some ancient Greek and Roman texts into Latin. A philosopher and Catholic priest, he was influential in the Protestant Revolution and had experience in Biblical themes, so it was natural that one of the works he chose was the story of Pandora. Like the tale of Eve in Genesis, Pandora was an origin story in which all the troubles of the world are blamed on a single woman.

    But in his writings, Erasmus made a critical error, mistranslating the Greek word for what she opened to pyxis instead of pithos. Thus Pandora's Box, instead of Pandora's Jar, entered the vernacular.

    Popular culture, including its literature, often reflects the times in which it was made. In ancient Greece, women had no voice -- remember, even the female characters in theater were played by men -- so its literature and myths reflected that. Even the goddesses mostly had traits that men pinned on women -- vain, jealous, vengeful, deceitful.  

    Haynes, a scholar, author, and comedian, makes this eminently clear, and she does by examining 10 female figures who are prominent in Greek mythology, but whom she insists have been wrongly portrayed. The title character, for instance, is blamed for all the troubles that have beset the world, and the Greeks claim the world was right and just before women came along.

    Most of the women in this study are similarly slighted. Indeed, Haynes said, of all the Greek writers, only Euripides gave women a fair shake, writing them with rare insight and giving them a voice. She says Euripides stands out amongst Greek playwrights, and he remains one of the best male writers to portray women. 

    Pandora is among the better known figures Haynes explores, which include Helen of Troy, Medusa, and the Amazons. She also includes lesser known mortals: Penelope , who waited 10 years for Odysseus to return home after the Trojan Way; Eurydice, who was rescued from the afterworld by her husband Orpheus -- until he looked back to make sure she was following him; and Jocasta, the unfortunate mother of Oedipus.    

    She compares the ancient sagas to the modern interpretations, and recently published Stone Blind, a new tale of Medusa. And she enjoys some of the pop culture retellings, saying that of all the tales of the Amazons, Buffy the Vampire Slayer did her right: By showing that Amazons trained and fought together, Sarah Michell Gellar portrayed the ultimate Amazon.

Book Review: Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever

Not Even Immortality Lasts Forever: Mostly True Stories, by Ed McClanahan

• Where I bought this book: Kentucky Book Festival, Lexington
• Why I bought this book: McClanahan is Kentucky's best unknown writer

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    I first fell in love with McClanahan's writing soon after I moved to the commonwealth some 40 years ago, and a colleague suggested -- nay, insisted -- that I read The Natural Man, McClanahan's first novel.. 

    I did. I was hooked.

    McClanahan has led an extraorinary 20th Century life. Born in Brooksville, the seat of rural Bracken County, he was a part of the pre-war generation -- too young for World War II, and smart enough and pacifist enough to avoid the Korean War. McClanahan is a contemporary of the legendary Kentucky poet and author, Wendell Berry, along with Pulitzer-prize winner Larry McMurtry and beat/hippie author Ken Kesey. He ran with the Merry Pranksters. He was an author, professor, and lecturer under the moniker, "Captain Kentucky." Along with Mason, Berry, James Baker Hall, and Gurney Norman, McClanahan was part of the group called the "Fab Five" of Kentucky literature.

    In Not Even ..., McClanahan pens a ragtag collection of tales stretching from his boyhood days to his current elderly strolls around Lexington. The result is funny, yet touching, a feeling that you are listening to an old man in the latter years of his life lightheartedly recalling his earlier days of glory. He explores his relationship as the hippie, ne'er-do-well son of an upright, businessman-father who brokers little nonsense and was unusually proud of the cut of his nose.

The nose, my father firmly believed, is composed of certain pliable matter that one can mold and shape over time like a lump of gristly modeing clay, if -- if --one develops the proper habits of life and sticks to them assiduously. Such as: When said olfactory apparatus itches, son, do not scratch same by rubbing it with the heel of your hand as if you want to smear the gaddamn thing all over your counternance. Rather, delicately grasp it between the thumb and forefinger, just below the bridge -- thus; yes; just so -- and gently pull forward and down, thereby addressing the offending itch while simultaneously helping the nose to become all that it can be, which is to say a nose not unlike the paternal beezer itself.

    Some of the stories may be true -- one he claims to have video proof he found on the Internet. Others, like the one above, he admits, might be a teensy bit exagerrated.  There are those he says are true to the best of his recollections. A few, perhaps, might just well be, perhaps, merely allegorical. 

    It's a memoir in the best sense of the term -- self effacing, forgoing sentimentality if he chooses, grumbling about memory loss if it provides a convenient escape hatch.

    It's short, and sweet, and funny as hell. Go read it.

Book Review: Church of Marvels

 The Church of Marvels, by Leslie Parry

   

    I loved the story, just not the way it was told.

    Set in Lower Manhattan and Coney Island at the tail end of the 19th century, Church of Marvels tells of a family of carnival workers, and then of an abandoned baby recovered by an underground prize fighter, along with an undertaker who regularly visits the city's opium dens. 

    I think.

    It's all very confusing. The novel drifts from one tale to another, abruptly changing characters, locales, and narrators. It's tough to keep up with the stories when you forget who is who. You spend too much effort trying to figure out how each person relates to the others in time and narrations. 

    And whatever you think is happening, or has happened, is probably wrong.

    Ostensibly, the tale circles around Belle and Odile Church, who with their mother, Friendship, perform at and run a carnival sideshow -- the Church of Marvels of the title -- on Coney Island. Alternatively, we are introduced to Sylvan Threadgill, who cleans out privies on the Lower East Side, and somehow finds a baby girl in a dark alley. There is Alphie, a makeup girl and sometimes prostitute -- who turns out to be one of the most intriguing characters in the book -- whom we first meet while she is babbling a confusing, perhaps fantastical, story while trapped in an insane asylum.

    Other characters come in and out, and it takes a while to figure out who everyone is and how they relate to each other. But just as you think you are piercing together the tale, it jumps off into another place with new people we haven't met before.

    Confusing, yes. But it is well written, and it is nicely wrapped up in the end by one of the characters who explains pretty much everything. I just wish more of the book was as expositive.

Book Review: Actress

Actress, by Anne Enright

    Katherine O'Dell was one of Ireland's best-known and beloved actresses.

    But author Anne Enright relates a few problems with that in this finctional biography/memoir of O'Dell, narrated by her daughter Norah

     For one thing, O'Dell was born in England. Her acting career, while it encompassed some starring roles in the West End, Broadway, and Hollywood, was largely mythical. So she became Ireland's best-known actress by pretending to be Ireland's best-known actress.

    The eyes were naturally green. The hair was dyed the appropriate Irish color. Her agent dictated her style.

"From now on," he said, "you wear any color you like, so long as it's green." By this he meant anything from teal to emerald -- all forty shades of it. The hotel dresser arrived, pulled my mother's head gently back into the sink, and two hours later she was a flaming redhead.

    So she looked the part and played the role well. Being Irish is a character, and she was good at it. On the stage or in front of the camera, she was the familiar Irish ingenue. She pulled off the intrigue needed to keep up the illusion of her craft. She was as much the idea of an actor as she was the reality.

   O'Dell lived in Dublin in the rare ol' times, where little was as it seemed,  and where everyone kept their closest feelings close to the vest. That meant O'Dell was always performing. She was the star. 

    Norah, the narrator, reveals the stories of her mother the actress along with her own. Both their stories are similar and familiar. She reveals her mother's hopes, dreams, and fears. She mixes in tales of her own life, which paled in comparison to her mother's. But both shared bouts of drinking, days of torment, and instances of trauma and abuse.

    As the narrator, Norah speaks like a neighbor -- or perhaps, an older, wiser aunt -- telling the tale over a laminated kitchen table filled with cooling cups of tea, ignored biscuits, and over-flowing ashtrays. She would nod her head at whatever you had to say, then with a wink and a knowing smile, put you to rights. "Aye," she say, "but let me tell ya what's really going on.

    And then she'd be off. 

    There are some quibbles. Some of the minor characters are merely background noise, although they play brief but important roles in the story. But they are poorly drawn out, and thus hard to remember. And our narrator tends to jumps around in time, here and there, introducing new characters without warning, causing one to get confused.

    But overall, it's a well-told tale. 

Book Review: Hamnet

Hamnet, by Maggie O'Farrell

    If you're going to write about William Shakespeare and have him as a character in your novel, you had better be able to make your prose and dialogue sing.

    Maggie O'Farrell is more than up to the task. 

    Although Shakespeare is not the major character in this fictionalized biography, when he speaks, his words glisten. O'Farrell catches his cadence, his rhythms, his poetry You can almost hear the character speaking his words in iambic pentameter. You envision him upon the stage in the Globe Theater, delivering his lines to a silent, enrapted audience.

    Yet the major characters are those who surround William Shakespeare -- his wife, his parents, his in-laws, and his children, including his only son, Hamnet. It is, at its heart, a family story of Shakespeare growing up, coming of age, finding love, and trying to make his way in the world.

    It's a sad story, and at times the despair clings to the pages. The 16th Century was a time of the plague in Europe, and Shakespeare and his family were not immune.

    Still, the strongest, most compelling character in the tale is Shakespeare's wife, called Agnes in the book. O'Farrell portrays her as a feminist before her time, a healer, a strong woman who keeps her family together during illnesses and her husband's long absences. She is sometimes seen as a witch, whose unusual habits include carrying around a kestrel, keeping bees, and going off to the woods to birth her first child.

     Yet she brings magic to the hills around Stratford-upon-Avon. Whether it's the magic that promises and delivers riches and a long, happy life, or requires a steep price for wishes granted, is just one of the themes explored in this book.

    O'Farrell acknowledges her research was necessarily thin. Little is known about Shakespeare's life and times -- heck, even the number of plays he wrote is an open question -- and what is known is disputed. Yes, there was a Hamnet Shakespeare, who had a twin sister, as he does in the book. He died when he was 11. His death may or may not have had an impact on his father's plays, particularly Hamlet.

    So, O'Farrell took that information and made it her own, turning it into this wonderful piece of historical fiction.

     Her writing and her book is extraordinary. At times, especially in the early parts of the book, when she alternates between Shakespeare's youth and his early adult years, it came be a bit confusing.  But it soon comes together, into a heartfelt, heartbreaking novel of love, grief, and pain.