Applying a scalpel to a city

kw: book reviews, historical fiction, mysteries, plagues, folklore

New author K. Avard is a family friend. His sort-of-fiction-sort-of-nonfiction novel First, Do No Harm was released earlier this month. By his own account, he reads a great deal, possibly more than I did at his age. He spent more than a year in Austria and nearby countries, which clearly provided fodder for this book.

Background facts: 

• Vienna suffered a Great Plague in 1679, which was almost certainly bubonic plague. There is a monument to the event near city center.
• Vampires were considered very real around that time, and some historical events seemed to confirm their reality. This led to the impaling and burning of disinterred corpses that apparently had not "rotted enough".
• Alpen (plural of Alp, not related to the word for "mountain" but to "elf") were folkloric creatures similar to incubi, thought to sit on a sleeping person and suck either their breath or their blood. There is a sexual element to incubus stories that is absent in stories of the Alpen.
• Plague doctors who went to afflicted places and claimed to be able to cure the plague have been accused of spreading it as asymptomatic carriers.

I have not asked Mr. Avard of these things. They are matters of my own knowledge and research I did while reading the book. There may be another thread as well. In Bram Stoker's Dracula, a side narrative concerns an insane man in a mental hospital who worships the vampire at a distance. This man does things such as breed flies, feed them to spiders, and then eat the spiders, under the delusion that consuming so many lives, at first and second hand, will increase his own stock of "life stuff". This narrative was ignored in the various vampire movies and follow-on vampire books and films and TV dramas. But it may underlie a character in the book named Thomas, self-named Belial.

The protagonist Dietrich is a medical doctor who finds himself in the middle of a sudden onslaught of plague. He becomes the central player as he and several companions, including his formidable sister and a very compassionate bishop, must become detectives to determine whether the epidemic is an entirely natural phenomenon, or is there a supernatural element? Are Belial and the plague doctors partly angelic, as they claim, and thus doing God's work? Are they Alpen? If they are angels, are they angels loyal to Jehovah, or are they fallen angels loyal to God's enemy? The denouement provides only a partial answer to all these queries, which testifies to the author's skill and understanding of the ambiguities of real life.

If I go into more details of the plot, it could spoil the enjoyment of other readers. Some may be like me and enjoy comparing the narrative to the facts of history. Others may prefer to read it undistracted by such things. The book offers delights for both.

The absence of a colophon and some other indications show that the book was self-published. The author did speak to me of a distributor, so he apparently did nearly all the work himself but found it best to farm out the advertising and distribution. One result of self-publishing is the lack of a copy editor. I am a compulsive proof-reader, so I found a few items that I'll pass on to Mr. Avard, so he can brush up the text if he decides on a second printing. Most will escape notice by most readers. 

I would advise him and other self-publishers: Locate a friend who can read with care and clear up typos and solecisms, or hire a professional copy editor to give the text a run-through. The rather small number of items I found testify to the author's care, but also show that nobody's perfect. I read and copy-edit everything I write, and I sometimes find things I missed when I read again at a later date.

I hope author K. Avard continues writing, and offers lovers of mystery and historical fiction further delights in the future.

Happy as a what?

kw: folklore, aphorisms

An advertisement that has been running lately ends with the words, "I'm as happy as a woodpecker in a lumberyard." The first time I heard it, I about had to sit down. Perhaps I know too much: A woodpecker would starve to death in a lumberyard. What is a woodpecker after, hammering away on yonder tree? Beetle grubs under the bark, that's what. Bigger woodpeckers such as the common flicker can also get a half inch or so into the wood for grubs that tunnel deeper. The wood in a lumberyard has all been cooked, so any grubs it may have contained are dead and dry as dust.

That got me thinking, what other common proverbs are actually nonsensical? Only one pops to mind: "Happy as a pig in sh*t." I have heard that one here and there in the past, though it is a little less common than "...pig in mud" or "...in slop." These latter two are accurate. A pig can't sweat, so it rolls in water or mud to cool off. But if a pig has room enough, it will never defecate near the mudhole it wallows in. They do have a sense of cleanliness, though it differs from ours, and sh*t is definitely not on their list of favorite ointments.

A pet to one, a monster to another

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, psychology, psychopaths, folklore, monsters

I don't know how a book that claims to be a comprehensive treatment of monsters (of all kinds) can go 300 pages and not even mention Mao TseDong or Josef Stalin. At least Adolf Hitler gets a cameo appearance, but he is 1/8 the murderer Mao was, and "only" half so bad as Stalin.

Entering "monster" into the Princeton WordNet search page, we find:

• an imaginary creature usually having various human and animal parts
• giant: someone or something that is abnormally large and powerful
• freak: a person or animal that is markedly unusual or deformed
• a cruel wicked and inhuman person
• (medicine) a grossly malformed and usually nonviable fetus

In On Monsters: An Unnatural History of Our Worst Fears, Stephen T. Asma discusses all these kinds of monsters and more. He categorizes them into four larger areas:

• Ancient monsters (mostly chimeras and wild take-offs of human types such as headless men with faces in their chest)
• Medieval Monsters, seen as divine messages
• Scientific Monsters, including deformed fetuses and more-recently-produced chimeric creatures
• Inner Monsters, such as mass murderers, serial killers, and the monstrous impulses that can be found in any of us.

To me it all boils down to this: we most fear what we can neither predict nor control. Lesser fears are reserved for controllable but unpredictable things, but we reserve some of our greatest dread for that which we can predict but not control, as witness all the people who shout (or whisper) "Don't go in there!" at key moments of a horror film.

I don't really have much more to say about the book. Though well enough written, it is a bit more scholarly than I'd have expected for a popular treatment. It took longer to read as a result. I already know that the real monster is in me, and under which circumstances I'd conclude "there is a fellow I'd cheerfully bump off." Those who really need such insight, however, never seem to find it.

Pillars of existence

kw: book reviews, mythology, folklore, imaginative fiction

Having had a classical education, I am very familiar with the corpus of Greco-Roman mythology. I've had no prior exposure to Semitic mythology, knowing only what is written in the Old and New Testaments of the Holy Bible. Of course, I've heard of Kabbalah and its panoply of demons and its numerology, but paid little attention.

I picked up The Book of the Unknown: Tales of the Thirty-Six, by Jonathon Keats, as a wild card, not even knowing what "the 36" means. If these twelve stories in any fair way reflect the Jewish myths on which they are based, then I must conclude that my education is quite lacking!

The basis of the stories is the idea that thirty-six (Lamedh-Vov in Hebrew) righteous souls maintain the integrity of the world, but their identity is unknown, even to themselves, being known only by the LORD God. For one of their names to become known means he or she will lose their special status, and God must choose a replacement. Were all to become known, some kind of disaster would result.

The opening chapter is a bit of myth-making in its own right, setting up a scenario for a scholar to learn the identities of one set of thirty-six from a prior century. The stories of twelve are then proffered. They seem an unlikely mix of "the righteous", including a fool, a gambler, a clown and a murderer, even a fallen angel-become-human and a golem. In each case, the key is their very deep simplicity.

Nearly everybody would like to be a god. But to grow from the human to the divine has three steps: redemption, transformation, and glorification. I have yet to read a convincing story of glorification; even the Biblical accounts are cloaked in mysterious language. Most good stories lead us through, or let us observe, a transformation. While there is transformation in these twelve stories, they are primarily stories of redemption, each and every one. Not all have happy endings, but they all have Better endings. The stories are too well crafted for me to detail any one without giving away too much. Seek out this book, and enjoy.

For Latinas, it is Fifteen

kw: book reviews, nonfiction, ethnology, folklore

When does a child become an adult? In Edo-period Japan and earlier, and only among nobles, a genpuku ceremony for boys was held at an age between 12 and 16; mogi for girls between 11 and 14. The precise age varied through the generations, and from place to place. In modern Japan, ceremony or no, young people become legal adults at age 20.

Among Jews, a bar mitzvah for boys is still held at the traditional time of the 13^th birthday. The female version is the bat mitzvah, a more recent innovation. It is at this same age that Christians of various Baptist and Anabaptist persuasions consider a young person to be "morally responsible", and ready for baptism, though some sects prefer an age of 7 or 8.

In the Unites States, Euro-Americans tend to celebrate several rites of passage: Sweet Sixteen (mainly for girls, and because it is alliterative); "Voting Age", since it was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1972 (just in time for a hotly-contested election); and "Drinking Age", or 21.

The US has a habit of making one large transition into a series of small steps. In martial arts, for example, whether Judo or Karate, a young Japanese was expected to practice and study hard for four to six years, and attain an age of 20, to get a Black Belt. Prior to that he (very rarely she) wore the White Belt of a Learner. Less than a century ago, American dojos began awarding a Brown Belt at the halfway mark; the Green Belt was invented when I was learning in the 1950s, and the 1960s and later saw a proliferation of belt colors. Most dojos, however, reserve solid Red for the 10^th dan (Black Belt is 1^st dan). Similarly, in school my only graduation ceremony was about age 18, for High School. My son had ceremonies after grades 3, 6, and 8, and of course 12.

In some, not all, Hispanic cultures, girls are ushered into womanhood at age 15, usually with the best party her family can afford. On the surface it resembles the Debutante Ball of the American South, though that is held at age 17 or 18. "Los quince" (not the small orange fruit) means "the 15", and a quinceañera is a "girl of 15 years". The quince bears the most resemblance to a marriage ceremony, with a (usually) white gown, many attendants, a dance with her Father, and plenty of food at a follow-up reception.

Fifteen Candles: 15 Tales of Taffeta, Hairspray, Drunk Uncles, and other Quinceañera Stories, edited by Adriana Lopez, gives a peek or two, not so much into the quince itself, but into the feelings, experiences, dreams, and disasters of the participants.

Consider how delicately balanced a marriage ceremony is, how prone to being "ruined" by the smallest misstep; "the 15" simple doubles the chances a young woman will have dramatic, traumatic memories to laugh or cry about decades later.

Ms Lopez has gathered 15 stories by 15 Hispanic writers, mostly women. A few of the events were happily memorable, some were more shockingly memorable, and the middle-of-the-road experience seems to be a tragicomic, frightening-when-it-wasn't-boring spectacle of uptight parents, misbehaving uncles, aunts, cousins, and siblings, and often, puzzled Anglo friends.

I am pretty sure at least a couple of the stories are quite exaggerated ... pretty sure. But as the 'one that got away' gets bigger as time passes, I suspect most of the authors were actually holding back a little. Human nature is stranger than we like to think.

In spite of the fact that most quince parties are more for the parents than for the girls, some of the girls were indeed strongly moved, have retained cherished memories, and look forward to offering the same chance to their own budding young daughters.

A monstrous taxonomy

kw: book reviews, folklore, monsters

Stephen Krensky writes mainly for the children's market. Watchers in the Woods, part of his "Monster Chronicles" series that now numbers eleven slim volumes, wound up on the New Books table in the grownups' section of the library, and I couldn't pass it up.

The book's 48 pages share the format shown here, with plenty of sidebar material to supplement the explanatory text. The tone is matter-of-fact, and there is a substantial bibliography and index. This isn't a "monster book", but a book that explains the mythology of forest monsters and others, such as dwarves and gnomes, that watch us, or so we imagine. He explains not just the folkloric "watchers" of many cultures, but those found in more contemporary fare, including Disney films and the Harry Potter books.

I infer that the tone of the entire series is the same; probably intended to reduce a youngster's fears of whatever might dwell among the dust bunnies under the bed. An entertaining summary.