It's not all bloodthirsty competition:
The two were not evenly matched. [Marcel] Duchamp was one of the best players in France, and no doubt swept [Samuel] Beckett off the board in most of their encounters. But still they enjoyed each other's company, and continued to play.... All summer they played lengthy chess games together in a seafront café.
—David Shenk, The Immortal Game: A History of Chess
Sounds nice, doesn't it?
Have you ever read exactly the right book at exactly the right time? That's what The Immortal Game: A History of Chess was for me. I picked it off the shelf at the library, attracted by the subject and the beautiful cover design, and it turned out to be a real winner. It is a very well-organized book and very well-written, with a friendly, self-deprecating style. The author, David Shenk, has a fine chess pedigree (his great-great-grandfather was the illustrious Samuel Rosenthal) but acknowledges that he is little more than a "patzer" at the game. No matter—he makes up for it with his writing, and has done a wonderful job of making chess accessible and fascinating.
The Immortal Game traces the development of chess over time, from hazy myths about its invention (I posted a bit about it here), to the latest "hypermodern" style of play. He also touches on various topics related to chess, from how chess has been used to defend and critique rigid social systems, to how it is used to understand and mimic the brain.
Continue reading "“The Immortal Game: A History of Chess” by David Shenk" »
When and how and why was chess invented? The very oldest chess myths point toward its actual origins. One story portrays two successive Indian kings, Hashran and Balhait. The first asked his sage to invent a game symbolizing man's dependence on destiny and fate; he invented nard, the dice-based predecessor to backgammon. The subsequent monarch needed a game which would embrace his belief in free will and intelligence. "At this time chess was invented," reads an ancient text, "which the King preferred to nard, because in this game skill always succeeds against ignorance...."
This quote from The Immortal Game: A History of Chess by David Shenk expresses exactly why I have taken up chess. Back in June I was inspired by Wil to try backgammon again. I had played it as a child and it seemed like it would be a fun pastime. Eventually, though, as I got backgammon strategy pretty well figured out, I got tired of being at the mercy of the dice. A few bad rolls and it would be game over through no fault of my own.
I suppose it's my Western Enlightenment mindset that rebels against the notion of being controlled by fate. Though as a scientist and biologist I realize that randomness, probability, and systems determine much of our existence, I'd still rather believe that I have a say in the matter. It's either chess or chaos, and I pick chess.
If there's one thing I learned in 2007 it's that a book that starts badly will continue badly and end badly. Never again will I labour through a book that should be good but just doesn't fulfil its promise. Life is just too short and there are too many truly good books to read to waste time on a dud.
I've just had an opportunity to exercise my new discernment muscles by deciding to jettison Ten Discoveries The Rewrote History, by Patrick Hunt, after just one chapter. It was supposed to be a fascinating look at such touchstones of ancient history as the Rosetta Stone, the library of Nineveh, Pompeii, and Troy. Sadly, it proves once again that being a good scientist and being a good writer are two entirely different things.
The alarm bells started going off when I saw that the cover proclaimed that not only was the author a Ph.D., but an archaeologist, from Stanford. This seemed a bit much. I've looked at a bunch of my other nonfiction books and not one has so much as a "Dr." on the cover, even when the author is a physician!
I finally got around to finishing The Smithsonian Book of Books by Michael Olmert and I'm sorry to say that it's a book that promises more than it delivers. Perhaps I've been spoiled by Christopher de Hamel's The Book, a beautiful, rigorous, comprehensive, orderly, and fascinating history of the Bible as a book. I thought I might be getting something similar here but I was terribly mistaken.
It starts off as a history but soon starts jumping around in time to address various themes. The text is interrupted by short vignettes on particular topics, which eventually morph into chapters as chronology is all but abandoned. Some of the digressions deal with subjects the author has written on before (such as Colonial Williamsburg, which pops up again and again) and they often come across as tangential if not irrelevant. It's possible that Olmert was required to insert a certain amount of American content, or else he just didn't have the time or inclination to write new material. I also noticed that certain aspects of basic book history, which I learned from de Hamel's superior work, were simply left out. This is just not a book to learn the history of books from.
Perhaps I am asking too much from a coffee-table book, but it doesn't even match The Book in illustrations either. As with the text, some of the illustrations seem irrelevant and just there to make up the numbers (e.g. a half-page painting of the Williamsburg courthouse to illustrate civil record-keeping). A great number of the illustrations are also blurry, which I think is unpardonable these days.
Certainly there are a number of interesting tidbits here, both in the text and illustrations, and I particularly enjoyed the explanation of the mechanics of type casting and type setting. However I don't think there is anything here that you can't get in much better form elsewhere. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for this book (thanks to you all) and I think I'll be hocking it fairly soon. Sorry Mr. Olmert.
Here is my running commentary on Alberto Manguel's City of Words lectures. I'd love to hear comments from anyone who is listening along.
In the first lecture I was struck by the tension between the blessing and the curse of language as described by Manguel. The blessing is the ability to name and even create reality with words and stories, and how we need words and stories (and someone to tell them to) to see and know ourselves. The curse is the curse of Cassandra, which is to have your word-creations ignored and denigrated. No one likes bad news, whether it's about the fall of Troy or the greenhouse effect, and so we invent more comfortable stories to drown out the dire prophecies of the Cassandras.
The Epic of Gilgamesh featured prominently in the second lecture, which developed the theme of the Other as one who both helps us know ourselves and transforms us. I still haven't managed to read my copy of Gilgamesh, but Manguel provided a summary and reading of it that was fascinating. The tyrannical King Gilgamesh meets his mirror image, the wild Enkidu, and it is only when they embrace as friends that both Gilgamesh and his city, Uruk, are made just and whole. Manguel also made reference to two other literary examples of this dynamic: The Strange Case of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, in which the two estranged personalities also come together in a healed whole, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, in which the protagonist cannot accept the otherness in himself (i.e. age and loss of beauty) and spirals into paranoia and murder.
Continue reading "Alberto Manguel's Massey Lectures: The City of Words" »
Can stories hold a multicultural society together? Alberto Manguel proposes to answer that question in this year's Massey Lectures, and I can't wait to hear what he has to say. For those who don't know, the Massey Lectures are an annual Canadian lecture series featuring a prominent contemporary thinkers. They are broadcast on CBC radio's illustrious (though lately underfunded) Ideas program every November. The roll of past lecturers is stellar: Northrop Frye, Martin Luther King Jr., Claude Levi-Strauss, Carlos Fuentes, Doris Lessing (who, as you probably know, was just awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature), Noam Chomsky, Jean Vanier... the list goes on.
If you asked readers which of Alexandre Dumas's literary heroes they would like to be, they would pick D'Artagnan or Edmond Dantès. No one would dream of choosing Noirtier de Villefort, a somewhat sinister character in The Count of Monte-Cristo. Described by Dumas as a living mummy, a man three-quarters of the way into the grave, this profoundly handicapped creature summons up not dreams but shudders. He spends his life slumped in a wheelchair, the mute and powerless possessor of the most terrible secrets, able to communicate only by blinking his eye: one blink means yes; two means no. In fact dear grandpapa Noirtier, as is granddaughter affectionately calls him, is literature's first—and so far only—case of locked-in syndrome.
Continue reading "“The Diving-Bell & the Butterfly” by Jean-Dominique Bauby" »
I've been wanting to read this book for quite some time, so I was pleased when I saw it at my public library's audiobook download website. I just devoured the book, listening to the whole thing in two days, and mostly in a state of shock. Inside the Kingdom: My Life in Saudi Arabia is the story of Bin Ladin's surreal life during her 15 year marriage to a Saudi man. She was a thoroughly Western Persian-Swiss woman when she met and married her husband in 1973. For this vibrant and intelligent woman, the restrictions on women in Saudi Arabia were a culture shock beyond all reckoning. Her husband was sympathetic and did not restrict her himself, but outside of her home, and even in her home with Saudis, she had to conform to the strict tribal and Islamic codes governing a woman's every move.
The book focusses on the life of women in Saudi Arabia, which as a woman, was all she was allowed to see—not that there was much to see, even under the head-to-toe coverings they had to wear when any men outside their immediate family were around. About all that they are allowed to do is shop, have tea, and pray, and those first two require the use of a driver because women are not allowed to leave the house alone. Though Bin Ladin did find some friends in Saudi Arabia, most of the women were caught up in the tribal competition for status and honour. Competitive shopping and religious devotion (or at least the appearance of it) were how they established and maintained the female pecking order. They also lived in constant fear of being cast off and losing their children. All a Muslim man needs to do to divorce his wife is say "I divorce you" three times in front of a witness, and he can prevent her from ever seeing her own children again. As you might imagine, this inspires a great deal of obedience.
Continue reading "“Inside the Kingdom” by Carmen Bin Ladin" »
This book is a work of art. The Book: A History of the Bible, by Christopher de Hamel, brings together physical beauty, exacting scholarship, and impeccable writing in its treatment of arguably the most important book (or rather, collection of books) in human history. Let's start with The Book's physical beauty, which comes courtesy of Phaidon Press. The unique dustjacket shows both the front and back of a piece of highly textured parchment with the title embossed in it. The cover itself is a rich burgundy colour and is finely ribbed and embossed with gold print, giving it tactile interest.
Inside, the text is beautifully printed on heavy white paper with wide margins and crisp, detailed illustrations on nearly every page. The illustrations are not mere decoration but are thoroughly integrated with the story of the development of the Bible. Particularly important bibles, such as the Gutenberg Bible, get a full two-page spread so that it looks like you are opening the real thing.
The text is scholarly, complete with references, biblography, and index, but also very accessible. Technical terms are gracefully explained and the warm tone of the writing makes it seem as though you are getting a personal tour though a virtual Bible museum by the world's leading expert on the subject.
De Hamel covers the major trends and developments in the production of bible books, actually starting with Jerome's translation into Latin in the 4th century, working forward through time, and ending with 19th and 20th century discoveries of ancient manuscripts going back to the early second century. I think de Hamel does well to take such a monumental subject and break it down into narrative pieces that readers can wrap their minds around. His topics are:
Perhaps I should state explicitly that de Hamel's concern is not the content of the Bible but its form and how that form has changed over time. The content itself, as the discoveries detailed in the last chapter have shown, has not changed over time. This is perhaps the most remarkable of the many remarkable facts about the Bible presented in this book.
My favourite chapters in The Book were those covering the middle ages (de Hamel's specialty) and describing the many ways scripture was used and how that affected the physical form of the Bible. For centuries, the books of the Bible were bound separately or in small groups. Collecting them all into a single volume didn't catch on until the 13th century, when the need for small, portable bibles to support both itinerant preaching and university study resulted in bibles resembling those we use today.
I am still marvelling at how such a beautiful book can be so informative. I learned a great deal from this book, and appreciated being able to see every scroll, manuscript, and printed book de Hamel talked about. I would definitely recommend The Book to anyone looking for an accessible, reliable, and enjoyable introduction to the history of the Bible.
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