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Still avoiding Malcolm Lowry.
And so this, in a Dover Thrift Edition, with abundant suggestions as to further reading...
And the last few pages as well...some wonderful looking detours - "Great Dirigibles: Their Triumphs and Disasters", for one, but there are many others.
Back to the book at hand: Captain John Slocum Completes, over 3 years, the first solo circumnavigation of the globe in a boat of his own devising.
Lightly amusing, the voyage undertaken between 1895 - 1898, the world then largely civilized, pirates off the coast of Africa, savages of Terra de Fuego, otherwise the world at this time has been largely tamed and is a civilized place.
Link - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joshua_Slocum
That said, this has rather inspired me to embellish my list of pronouns to include "Captain", whereas before it was just "Doctor" and "His Holiness" and "King of Kings", which actually trips off the tongue better if said after my name.
Of interest, he refers to the Captain of Christopher Columbus's "Pinto" as "assisting" him when he was too fevered or exhausted to take the wheel, a not infrequent hallucination of those without companions in perilous situations, which he takes as matter-of-fact and attends no supernatural import. Or being greeted by people in South Africa that want to persuade him he's on a fool's errand, as everybody knows the world is flat (how little has changed!).
Of amusement, he while in Juan Fernandez remarks that the people are happy without a police officer or lawyer amongst them, and they all seem healthy enough without doctors. This, of course, would be true but we'll never get back to that idyll.
Or when he arrives at Samoa, being greeted by the natives has this exchange:
"You man come 'lone?"
Again I answered yes.
"I don't believe that. You had other mans, and you eat 'em"
Comical now, but at the time a very reasoned approach to how one might sail singlehandedly to Samoa.
On Samoa as well he meets Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, wife of the famous author, from here around the Cape of Good Hope, stopping in ports to be feted and give lectures on his travels to date, which largely subsidize his further adventures.
He ends up becalmed in the Wide Sargasso Sea, which reminds me of the scene in the "Rime of the Ancient Mariner" where our hero is becalmed, and, finally, he completes his tour round the world, declaring himself: "I was 10 years younger than the day I felled the first tree for the construction of the 'Spray'".
On November 14, 1909 he put to sea for the last time, never to be heard of since.
Link - Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_who_disappeared_mysteriously_at_sea
I am not sure that "Disappeared Mysteriously at Sea" is a genuine category, the sea by it's nature a devouring force that leaves little evidence of it's appetite.
Nevertheless, an intriguing, lightly told tale, 3 years travelling about the world to be digested in 3 hours of reading.
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An anthology of short stories, none of which particularly grabbed me. Some good writing, great authors, but the topic... well, not my topic.
This was started with the purpose of getting out of Malcolm Lowry's head, as that book - well, reading it, all the action taking place almost entirely within his head - neurosis, etc, I have mine own. That said I have another book to leap into and finger's crossed that it will be better, or at least more to my current humor.
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A slender book in which our protagonist/author arrives at Castle/Tavern and finds that both he and the other guests are mute. Thus, after dinner, they all tell their stories with a pack of Tarot Cards, the narrator interprets as each guest selects a card and begins to tell their tale...
...Until at last all their fates and destinies are intertwined, and all of the cards spread out upon the table, and the interpretation, the reading, the symbolism of each unique to the narrator, to the position - above, below, left, right, preceding or following, only by choosing the correct entry point you can find where every story begins, ends, where the cards have been arranged to tell those bits of the stories of MacBeth & Hamlet, and onward and so forth, until the Author/Narrator chooses to tell his own story...
Now, an interesting premise which I've considered (not exactly), and recalled reading that Thomas Pynchon's "Gravity's Rainbow" was actually based upon a deck of Tarot Cards, and - while on my first reading I did not get this, not at all, maybe with this foreknowledge I'll try it again...
On that note, for a while I was doing a fair bit of reading on the topic, the cards, they are an inspiration, and so maybe it's time to pick them up again...
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After the unforgiveable introduction by Nigel Reeves & David Luke, whose analysis seems to consist largely of giving away the plot and outcome of every story....
...it proved not bad. Somewhat modern, or approaching, a perfectly good book of short stories very much of the Period, my favorite of which was undoubtedly Michael Kohlhass, a disgruntled horse trader much abused by the law who is forced to take matters in his own hands to seek justice, rounds up a posse of grooms and peasants and leads a seige upon Wittenberg.
How sympathetic - and modern the character is, in his outlawery, in how as he grows in strength he grows in Madness, the theme of an honest man vs the unjust state, how thoroughly modern he is when again he sees the Gypsy who gave him the talisman that would save his life, thoroughly pragmatic when he says to her (essentially) "Why Me?" in response to the incredible events that have befallen him.
So, a relatively thick book, now on to a relatively thin one - Italo Calvinos' "The Castle of Crossed Destinies".
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A selection of grotesque and supernaturally inspired stories by E.T.A. Hoffman, perfect for Christmas.
Lots of notes made and googling to be done afterwards, his stories, both comical, thrilling (after the fashion of Shelley), Ghost Stories filled with sleepwalkers, psychics, odd characters that seem to exist between worlds, the Wandering Jew, for example, capturing in turns the implacable remembrance of love, those moments one knows will never be repeated, of true-love generally thwarted, of fashions and news of his day, for example he spins the tale of a miner who was found perfectly preserved in Copper Sulfate, only to be identified by his widow of 50 years, a true tale (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fet-Mats), then embellishes upon it to create a story of a sailor drawn to the Mine at Falun by a supernatural agent, not that the events at Falun were by the fashion of the day not fantastic enough, expositions that rely upon unknown circumstance and incredible coincidence, both fantastic and yet relatable, The character, for example of Chancellery Private Secretary Tusmann, whose taste in books somewhat reflects mine own, for example: 1720 "Cicero Presented as a Great Windbag and Pettifogger in Ten Orations" and from whose varied list of recommendations of books long out of fashion I'm led on to:
Wiegleb's - Natural Magic (a practical book on conjuring, or Magic as practiced by Penn & Teller, written in the late 1700's)
Nudow's "Theory of Sleep",
Frankfurt Dream book
Artemidorus - on dreams & Excerpts Here
Anyways, a light but suitable holiday read. Now off to do some work...