Well, it's that time of year again. Except that this is my final course-enroll process, and, well, this really is my last time enrolling for undergraduate classes at Cornell University.
Here's a list of the courses for which I've enrolled:
http://www.schedulizer.com/p9ym
Intro Hebrew II: A continuation of last semester. Especially if I end up tutoring English in Israel, I need all the help that I can get! I really need to brush up on the Hebrew that I learned last semester.
Honors Thesis Class: Mandatory, if I want to write that thesis. And, really, I do. I'm writing about France in the era of World War II; but you remember that, don't you?
The Jewish Question in Nineteenth - Twentieth Century Europe: Taught by the eminent Professor Holly Case, probably the #1 History professor among those whose classes I haven't already taken. Prof. Case is the East European specialist, and can read all of those wild Slavic and Finno-Ugric languages (the languages are wild, not the Slavs and Hungarians). Moreover, I'm hoping that this class will give me more background on the events that I'm describing in Chapter III of my thesis, which concerns the marginalized populations in Vichy France, especially the Jewish population (I'll be incorporating my summer research on the wartime Jewish community in Indre-et-Loire in this section).
Medieval Philosophy: To quote the course roster, "Topics include the problem of universals, the theory of knowledge and
truth, the nature of free choice and practical reasoning, and
philosophical theology. Readings (in translation) include Augustine,
Boethius, Anselm, Abelard, Aquinas, Scotus, and Ockham." I can't wait: other than Augustine, and a tiny bit o Aquinas, I haven't read the original of any of the above philosophers in their original primary sources. I'm going to continue my current practice of turning all of my classes outside of the History department into historical investigations, and add this to the growing constellation of intellectual history in my head. I wonder if they'll let me do anything with Maimonides...
Kosher and Hallal: Starring the awesome Prof. Joe Regenstein! Unfortunately, this class meets at exactly the same time as my Thesis class. So, I'll be taking it as an independent study, and following on with the class online. Not optimal, but still acceptable. Only possible because Prof. Regenstein is great! Note that this does not appear on my Schedulizer schedule.
I'm excited! This semester is going to be awesome!
~JD
Monday, January 21, 2013
Sunday, January 20, 2013
New Year's in New Jersey
Due to backlogging, I'm over two weeks late posting the rest of my trip to the tri-state area.
December 31st, I was still staying with the Feldmans. Having visited the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum on the 30th (my Mother's birthday), Peninah and I decided to visit the Liberty Science Center on Monday the 31st. Although the exhibits there are aimed towards a much younger audience than the two of us, we still had a good time together. Peninah, as usual, ended up revealing that she knew more about everything than I did, about astronomy, physics, pathology, and, of course, agriculture. As for the museum, I was semi-impressed. It's three to four times as large as the Ithaca Science Center, but, doesn't have the amazing George Rhoads ball machine that I know and love so much. It does, however, have a good room of interesting physics puzzles, a nice exhibit on infection and disease, a decent aquarium, and some excellent videos on current events in environmental preservation in the New York City area. It also has one of the Da Vinci surgical machines (for long-distance surgery): I've always wondered how those things worked. In the evening, Peninah and I awaited 2013 with some of her friends from high school, and promptly returned back to her home right after midnight, and hit the sack.
The next morning, Peninah drove me to Five Towns. The drive, which normally lasts over an hour, took only about forty minutes, because everyone else was sleeping in or hung over. Eli has a big beautiful house, full of sunshine even at this time of year. His Israeli mother and all three of his sisters were home -- we two were the only males in the house. Whereas I grew up the youngest of three boys, Eli is both the oldest and the only boy (that must be hard). We watched the end of Star Wars Episode VI, beginning just before the ewoks appear. Eli pointed out that I... resemble CP3O in certain ways. I'm afraid to say how correct I think that he is. We took a long walk through Five Towns: compared to what I know, it's both very wealthy and very Jewish. I'm just not used to seeing a restaurant full of black hats. Eli is wonderful, and makes such good conversation because he's so knowledgeable (he's a philosophy major, after all). We ended up wandering fairly far from his house, and didn't make it back until after dark: Eli showed me where the restaurant that his father owned used to be. I got into bed a little bit later than I had planned, and, the next morning, didn't get out of bed until about 6:50 am. I caught the train to New York City at around 8:00, and took the subway from there to my appointment. Again, I had a lot of reading time, but luckily, I had my Kindle with me. I made it a few minutes late, but I think that everything went well: I took the subway a few more stops, and ran the remaining blocks to the Cornell Club, where I caught the 12:30 pm bus back to Ithaca. I hadn't seen much snow since I had left upstate New York, and it was comforting to pass through the pall of snow in the air, about two hours' journey south of Ithaca. I made it home -- and just in time to leave, just a few days later, for my wonderful trip to Boston, which I described in the last post.
Before I close this post, I'd like to mention that, among the pile of mail I received today, I received a letter from one of the teaching programs to which I've applied -- soliciting me for money. A tad ironic, don't you think, especially considering the fact that, as of yet, I'm still unemployed? The situation reminds me of a quote from Moby-Dick: "And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"
~JD
December 31st, I was still staying with the Feldmans. Having visited the Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum on the 30th (my Mother's birthday), Peninah and I decided to visit the Liberty Science Center on Monday the 31st. Although the exhibits there are aimed towards a much younger audience than the two of us, we still had a good time together. Peninah, as usual, ended up revealing that she knew more about everything than I did, about astronomy, physics, pathology, and, of course, agriculture. As for the museum, I was semi-impressed. It's three to four times as large as the Ithaca Science Center, but, doesn't have the amazing George Rhoads ball machine that I know and love so much. It does, however, have a good room of interesting physics puzzles, a nice exhibit on infection and disease, a decent aquarium, and some excellent videos on current events in environmental preservation in the New York City area. It also has one of the Da Vinci surgical machines (for long-distance surgery): I've always wondered how those things worked. In the evening, Peninah and I awaited 2013 with some of her friends from high school, and promptly returned back to her home right after midnight, and hit the sack.
The next morning, Peninah drove me to Five Towns. The drive, which normally lasts over an hour, took only about forty minutes, because everyone else was sleeping in or hung over. Eli has a big beautiful house, full of sunshine even at this time of year. His Israeli mother and all three of his sisters were home -- we two were the only males in the house. Whereas I grew up the youngest of three boys, Eli is both the oldest and the only boy (that must be hard). We watched the end of Star Wars Episode VI, beginning just before the ewoks appear. Eli pointed out that I... resemble CP3O in certain ways. I'm afraid to say how correct I think that he is. We took a long walk through Five Towns: compared to what I know, it's both very wealthy and very Jewish. I'm just not used to seeing a restaurant full of black hats. Eli is wonderful, and makes such good conversation because he's so knowledgeable (he's a philosophy major, after all). We ended up wandering fairly far from his house, and didn't make it back until after dark: Eli showed me where the restaurant that his father owned used to be. I got into bed a little bit later than I had planned, and, the next morning, didn't get out of bed until about 6:50 am. I caught the train to New York City at around 8:00, and took the subway from there to my appointment. Again, I had a lot of reading time, but luckily, I had my Kindle with me. I made it a few minutes late, but I think that everything went well: I took the subway a few more stops, and ran the remaining blocks to the Cornell Club, where I caught the 12:30 pm bus back to Ithaca. I hadn't seen much snow since I had left upstate New York, and it was comforting to pass through the pall of snow in the air, about two hours' journey south of Ithaca. I made it home -- and just in time to leave, just a few days later, for my wonderful trip to Boston, which I described in the last post.
Before I close this post, I'd like to mention that, among the pile of mail I received today, I received a letter from one of the teaching programs to which I've applied -- soliciting me for money. A tad ironic, don't you think, especially considering the fact that, as of yet, I'm still unemployed? The situation reminds me of a quote from Moby-Dick: "And there is all the difference in the world between paying and being paid. The act of paying is perhaps the most uncomfortable infliction that the two orchard thieves entailed upon us. But BEING PAID,--what will compare with it? The urbane activity with which a man receives money is really marvellous, considering that we so earnestly believe money to be the root of all earthly ills, and that on no account can a monied man enter heaven. Ah! how cheerfully we consign ourselves to perdition!"
~JD
Friday, January 18, 2013
Visit to Boston, January 2013
I've been very lazy about posting, recently. Let's see if I can catch up, OK?
Last Friday, I boarded the 1:30 am Shortline bus from Ithaca, New York to New York City, slept most of the way, and slept a good part of the way on the 8:10 am Megabus bound for Boston. I arrived at about 12:45 pm, took the T red line to Charles MGH, and was at my brother Sam's apartment by early afternoon. He's a grad student now, and wasn't feeling well. I picked up some groceries (I hadn't eaten anything all day long, having been in transit), read a little bit, and made preparations for Shabbat.
I left for my walk to Cambridge, and arrived at the Harvard Chabad House at around 5:00 pm, and, miraculously, found my way without trouble. If you know where to cross the Charles, and can find your way to Massachusetts Avenue, it's not too difficult: I could, and though it was lightly raining, I made it to Chabad about twenty minutes early, and sat and read the parsha until Kabbalat Shabbat. A few moments in, Sam Weiss walked in and sits down to my left! This really, really excited me, and, to further improve matters, Orion, Michael Weiner's former roommate whom I met the last time I was in Cambridge, sat down on my right a few moments later! After Ma'ariv, I went upstairs with the rest of the students who were staying for dinner. Marissa and Sarah (who was staying with Marissa) had been on the other side of the Mechitza, and, after some chair shuffling, we all managed to sit down at the same table, along with Marissa's roommate Chana, Chana's boyfriend David, Marissa's friend Kenny, and a couple more people on the far side of the table from me. Kenny made the second most frequent pun on my name, on account of his being a law student; he was a lot of fun, though as was everyone else at the table. It was wonderful to see Marissa and Sarah again, even after what had only been under a month. Chabad was hospitable and friendly, as usual, and the Rabbis even remembered me from my last visit (nice, isn't it?). I left with the others, but took a right on Mount Auburn, and made it back to Sam's apartment. I accidentally walked to the two legs of the right triangle to Beacon hill rather than the hypotenuse. I talked with Sam until I went to bed.
I got up late Saturday morning at 8:15 am, and made it as fast as I could to Harvard Hillel on Mount Auburn Avenue. Again, I ended up sitting next to Orin, and was honored with Gelilah for the first Sefer Torah (it was Shabbat Rosh Chodesh). During Shacharit, I noticed my friend Morris Alper from Palo Alto, and I spoke to him afterwards: Ilan Rasooly also walked in having coordinated to visit his sister Tali the same weekend that Sarah was visiting Marissa. I saw Sam Weiss again, and, much to my excitement, so was Nate Schorr! Marissa also introduced me to her friends Danny and Melanie. We walked to Tali and Yoni's house after kiddush, along with Sam Weiss's roommate Avi, and one of his friends. Tali and Yoni are an incredibly friendly young couple with a very comfortable apartment, and are full of interesting things to talk about, and have a good library of books. Sam Weiss suggested that I look up one of the books they were discussing, Gödel, Escher, Bach (I was one of the less technologically-oriented people in the room). Lunch was wonderful, and I think that Ilan's was the best vegetarian cholent I've ever had -- I was especially happy because they had clearly thought about me. Around 3:30 pm, everyone decided to leave together except Tali, Yoni, and Ilan, and I asked to follow Marissa and Sarah far enough for me to be able to recognize their apartment, before I returned to Harvard Hillel for 4:10 pm Minchah. A few minutes after leaving Marissa and Sarah, I must have become lost -- I had been looking for a street called Kirkland, but ended up crossing a bridge onto Adelaide, and never made it. Eventually, I made it back to Sam's apartment around 7:00 pm, where I changed, and left again for Marissa's apartment, picking up a bottle of wine on my way. Marissa had wanted us all to be there by 8:00 pm, and I had hoped to be there by 7:45, but because of my stupidity in getting lost, I had lost too much time to make it back in time, even though I ran at every opportunity. I arrived at 8:30, expecting to find a full house (people show up early to spend extra time with Marissa -- for good reason), but was the first guest to arrive. I helped to toss a salad, and we had begun on the fruit (which, among other good things, had candied kumquats from Marissa's mother). We Skyped in the two older Zwillenbergs, who had just returned to Philadelphia from Israel, to tell them how much we missed them both. Soon afterwards, the others arrived -- Sam Weiss, Ilan, Chana and David, and, much to my excitement and pleasure, Ben Chartock and Eli Shaubi! I literally jumped on Ben, I was so happy to see him (and, yes, I'll blog about my earlier adventures with Eli presently -- backlogged). Eventually, Nate and Danny showed up. After a gamut of subjects including Marissa's tri-Angell trip to Switzerland and her one-week workshop on how landscape architecture can be of use in the pursuit of peace in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we began to speak about my Monday interview. Everyone agreed that, yes, I should go ahead and try to dress well, because it will be a real travesty if I were to fail to be employed for coming to the interview in sneakers. I was becoming worried that Sam was waiting up late for me to return, and would only make himself sicker in this way. So I wished everyone a good night, and Marissa walked me out at around 12:15 am. When I reached the T, it was chained shut, so I called Sam, and he suggested that I take a cab, so I did, and was back in Sam's apartment in about ten minutes. I met his roommate Anthony's brother Sean, and Sean's French girlfriend before going to sleep.
Last Friday, I boarded the 1:30 am Shortline bus from Ithaca, New York to New York City, slept most of the way, and slept a good part of the way on the 8:10 am Megabus bound for Boston. I arrived at about 12:45 pm, took the T red line to Charles MGH, and was at my brother Sam's apartment by early afternoon. He's a grad student now, and wasn't feeling well. I picked up some groceries (I hadn't eaten anything all day long, having been in transit), read a little bit, and made preparations for Shabbat.
I left for my walk to Cambridge, and arrived at the Harvard Chabad House at around 5:00 pm, and, miraculously, found my way without trouble. If you know where to cross the Charles, and can find your way to Massachusetts Avenue, it's not too difficult: I could, and though it was lightly raining, I made it to Chabad about twenty minutes early, and sat and read the parsha until Kabbalat Shabbat. A few moments in, Sam Weiss walked in and sits down to my left! This really, really excited me, and, to further improve matters, Orion, Michael Weiner's former roommate whom I met the last time I was in Cambridge, sat down on my right a few moments later! After Ma'ariv, I went upstairs with the rest of the students who were staying for dinner. Marissa and Sarah (who was staying with Marissa) had been on the other side of the Mechitza, and, after some chair shuffling, we all managed to sit down at the same table, along with Marissa's roommate Chana, Chana's boyfriend David, Marissa's friend Kenny, and a couple more people on the far side of the table from me. Kenny made the second most frequent pun on my name, on account of his being a law student; he was a lot of fun, though as was everyone else at the table. It was wonderful to see Marissa and Sarah again, even after what had only been under a month. Chabad was hospitable and friendly, as usual, and the Rabbis even remembered me from my last visit (nice, isn't it?). I left with the others, but took a right on Mount Auburn, and made it back to Sam's apartment. I accidentally walked to the two legs of the right triangle to Beacon hill rather than the hypotenuse. I talked with Sam until I went to bed.
I got up late Saturday morning at 8:15 am, and made it as fast as I could to Harvard Hillel on Mount Auburn Avenue. Again, I ended up sitting next to Orin, and was honored with Gelilah for the first Sefer Torah (it was Shabbat Rosh Chodesh). During Shacharit, I noticed my friend Morris Alper from Palo Alto, and I spoke to him afterwards: Ilan Rasooly also walked in having coordinated to visit his sister Tali the same weekend that Sarah was visiting Marissa. I saw Sam Weiss again, and, much to my excitement, so was Nate Schorr! Marissa also introduced me to her friends Danny and Melanie. We walked to Tali and Yoni's house after kiddush, along with Sam Weiss's roommate Avi, and one of his friends. Tali and Yoni are an incredibly friendly young couple with a very comfortable apartment, and are full of interesting things to talk about, and have a good library of books. Sam Weiss suggested that I look up one of the books they were discussing, Gödel, Escher, Bach (I was one of the less technologically-oriented people in the room). Lunch was wonderful, and I think that Ilan's was the best vegetarian cholent I've ever had -- I was especially happy because they had clearly thought about me. Around 3:30 pm, everyone decided to leave together except Tali, Yoni, and Ilan, and I asked to follow Marissa and Sarah far enough for me to be able to recognize their apartment, before I returned to Harvard Hillel for 4:10 pm Minchah. A few minutes after leaving Marissa and Sarah, I must have become lost -- I had been looking for a street called Kirkland, but ended up crossing a bridge onto Adelaide, and never made it. Eventually, I made it back to Sam's apartment around 7:00 pm, where I changed, and left again for Marissa's apartment, picking up a bottle of wine on my way. Marissa had wanted us all to be there by 8:00 pm, and I had hoped to be there by 7:45, but because of my stupidity in getting lost, I had lost too much time to make it back in time, even though I ran at every opportunity. I arrived at 8:30, expecting to find a full house (people show up early to spend extra time with Marissa -- for good reason), but was the first guest to arrive. I helped to toss a salad, and we had begun on the fruit (which, among other good things, had candied kumquats from Marissa's mother). We Skyped in the two older Zwillenbergs, who had just returned to Philadelphia from Israel, to tell them how much we missed them both. Soon afterwards, the others arrived -- Sam Weiss, Ilan, Chana and David, and, much to my excitement and pleasure, Ben Chartock and Eli Shaubi! I literally jumped on Ben, I was so happy to see him (and, yes, I'll blog about my earlier adventures with Eli presently -- backlogged). Eventually, Nate and Danny showed up. After a gamut of subjects including Marissa's tri-Angell trip to Switzerland and her one-week workshop on how landscape architecture can be of use in the pursuit of peace in the Israeli-Palestinian situation, we began to speak about my Monday interview. Everyone agreed that, yes, I should go ahead and try to dress well, because it will be a real travesty if I were to fail to be employed for coming to the interview in sneakers. I was becoming worried that Sam was waiting up late for me to return, and would only make himself sicker in this way. So I wished everyone a good night, and Marissa walked me out at around 12:15 am. When I reached the T, it was chained shut, so I called Sam, and he suggested that I take a cab, so I did, and was back in Sam's apartment in about ten minutes. I met his roommate Anthony's brother Sean, and Sean's French girlfriend before going to sleep.
Sunday morning, I got up around 8:20 am. Around 11:45 am, Sam and I left for the day. For the first time, I explored Boston proper -- not Cambridge. Our main mission was to buy me clothes for my Monday interview. Sam was incredibly patient throughout, and we ended up visiting several stores before I had the clothes I needed to look acceptable. We had dinner at an Indian restaurant, and returned to Sam's apartment, where I tried on the new clothes, Sam and Anthony had a tie-off and tried to explain football to Sean's French girlfriend, and I went to bed early. I was up at 6:00 am on Monday morning, so that I would have enough time to make it to the interview on time. Taking my suitcase and backpack with me, I left for my interview. I had studied the T map the night before, and arrived at Match High School, 1001 Commonwealth Avenue, at 7:35 am. The doors were still unopened, but a few students were outside, and told me that the staff would let me in: they knocked on the glass, caught a teacher's attention, and I was inside. I signed in, took out my book, and tried to calm my mind down with something that I knew that I would find comforting. Another candidate arrived, a student from Madison, Wisconsin, who, unlike me, has training specifically in teaching. Jasmine Mark, the Recruitment Manager with whom I had been in contact, arrived to show us around the school, just as students were filtering in. Before entering, students pass through a dress code check administered by one of the staff members (the result is that every member of the administration knows almost every student), and, in response to the question "What do you need to succeed?" respond "courage, discipline, and perseverance." There is a lot of discipline at Match. I am amazed by how little heckling there is in the halls, compared to IHS, my own High School. I'm used to fairly aggressive bullying (having known some prime victims), explosive food fights, f-bombs, ragging, petty cruelty, blatant racism, subliminal but present class antagonism, etc. I noticed none of this at Match, where the student body is mostly from the inner city, and didn't notice a single security guard (of which there are several at IHS). The interview lasted from 8:00 am until 2:00 pm, and comprised two quasi-observed tutoring sessions with students (one in Algebra and one in English), and three one-on-one interviews. We had time to prepare our tutoring sessions in the third-floor teachers' lounge, where we had an opportunity to meet the faculty and staff. I felt extremely comfortable around them all, and found a lot of common ground (I also got a chance to give my classic Kindle infomercial). The interviews were with the director of Match Corps, the Match Recruitment Manager, and the director of athletics and after-school activities. I think that I did a good job of conveying my very real enthusiasm for teaching, and for Match's social mission. The two tutoring sessions likewise went extremely well. Both of the students needed just a little bit of nudging, and a few reminders, in order to complete the work that we had set aside for them. I am extremely thankful to all of the people who taught me how to take apart and simplify math problems -- mostly Sam and my Mother. I'm not a "math person" -- however, I do love the simplicity of geometry and algebra. Although I didn't need to remember any trigonometry, take a single derivative, or even whip out the old quadratic equation (x=-b±√(b2 – 4ac)/2a, for your information. And you thought I needed to look that up? Hah!), I did need to be able to understand complementary and supplementary angles, solve equations with two variables, and calculate midpoints well enough to explain them all to a student. The student was very sweet, and incredibly motivated. The only thing that she had truly forgotten were the formulas for calculating the area and circumference of a circle (Πr2 and 2Πr, respectively). Likewise, she miscalculated one midpoint with the midpoint equation, and I needed to show her a simpler method of calculation. However, she really was an angel, and went above and beyond our expectations. The student to whom I tutored English was very quite and reserved. He had just read Macbeth, and had not only understood it, but had seemed to have enjoyed it. He had a great difficulty with English, and I needed to simply define certain terms for him -- "balk" and "visceral," for instance. However, he understood irony, and, when I once explained how to spell "noble," he never misspelled that same word again. I had never read more than an first few chapters of The Things They Carried, the other book his class had been reading, but I did my best to conceal this, and to give as much help as possible. Just like in the first student, I saw in this second student lots of dedication and discipline, despite difficulties. Both students evaluated me -- I have no idea how well I scored.
The interview ended at 2:00 pm, and there were really no major problems, although Jasmine Mark felt very upset that I hadn't been able to eat lunch on account of there not having been a kosher option. I was not upset (I'm almost glad that I didn't have the option to stop to eat -- it meant that I could concentrate more fully on the tasks at hand). I took the T back to South Station, caught the 3:00 pm Megabus back to New York by a margin of only a few minutes, and caught the 8:30 pm Shortline bus back to Ithaca. It was a very productive afternoon of reading, and I was delighted that my friend Ahmed was on the same bus back to Ithaca. We sat together, and spoke about our respective families for the beginning of the drive.
I arrived back at North Campus Ithaca around 1:30 am, where Victor picked me up. I fell asleep at just past 2:00 pm.
Thanks to the following people, in alphabetical order, for making this a great weekend: Marissa Angell, Anthony and Sean Breece, Chabad House of Harvard, Ben Chartock, Chana, Chloe, Dad (who drove me to the bus stop), Danny, David, Sam Davis, Ahmed Elsamadisi, Victor Haas, Gelilah-assisting guy, Doug Lemov, Kenny, Jasmine Mark, Nedra Massenberg, Mom, Morris, Orion, Sara Parr, Avi Prince, Ilan Rasooly, Nate Schorr, Eli Shaubi, Sarah Sonenberg, Jonathan and Tali Speiser, Gray Visco, Sam Weiss, and Judy and Michael Zwillenberg (Apologies if I've forgotten you).
~JD
I arrived back at North Campus Ithaca around 1:30 am, where Victor picked me up. I fell asleep at just past 2:00 pm.
Thanks to the following people, in alphabetical order, for making this a great weekend: Marissa Angell, Anthony and Sean Breece, Chabad House of Harvard, Ben Chartock, Chana, Chloe, Dad (who drove me to the bus stop), Danny, David, Sam Davis, Ahmed Elsamadisi, Victor Haas, Gelilah-assisting guy, Doug Lemov, Kenny, Jasmine Mark, Nedra Massenberg, Mom, Morris, Orion, Sara Parr, Avi Prince, Ilan Rasooly, Nate Schorr, Eli Shaubi, Sarah Sonenberg, Jonathan and Tali Speiser, Gray Visco, Sam Weiss, and Judy and Michael Zwillenberg (Apologies if I've forgotten you).
~JD
Monday, December 31, 2012
The Cloisters and Metropolitan
I have spent the last day looking at
(mostly medieval) art with my new favorite museumgoing partner. I'm in
Teaneck, staying with the Feldmans, and Peninah and I took the bus across the
Hudson to visit the Cloisters, New York's European monastery, imported
piecemeal by John D. Rockefeller, Jr. We had been up since before seven
that morning, and arrived at the Cloisters at 10:00 am. I haven't been to
the Cloisters since I accompanied the rest of Mrs. P-B's Medieval History
class, when I was a senior in High School, nearly four years ago (and the only
time before that was also with Mrs. P-B, come to think of it, when I was a High
School sophomore). Very little has changed, but more significantly,
Peninah is such a great traveling buddy, and knows New York City's
public transportation system far better than I do.
We saw some amazing pieces in the
Cloisters. Although there were many pieces that I remember having seen
before, such as Robert Campin's Merode triptych, the hunting-themed
playing cards, Rogier van der Weyden's Nativity, the series of Unicorn tapestries, and the arcades
and courtyards of the Cloister buildings themselves, all of these felt
refreshingly new and interesting. To some extent, I owe this to my
energetic traveling companion, who pointed out to me at least one detail I had
never before noticed about every piece that we discussed. To some extent,
I'd like to think, this was due to my deeper appreciation of art history,
specifically knowledge of technique and style, and their relationship to
geography and chronology, thanks to my exposure to Western art in European art
museums and in Professor Lazzaro's class. Regardless, it was good to
revisit these pieces, as well as to notice pieces that I had never noticed or
admired before. For instance, I had never noticed the 12th-century pane
of stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral, depicting the martyrdom (by fire)
of Saint Lawrence. Although the Cloisters have some pretty amazing
pieces, I had never realized that they had stained glass surviving from the
largest cathedral in England! Likewise, I don't think that I had ever
noticed the fully-illuminated copy of Saint Augustine's City of God (I
hadn't read the Confessions the last time I visited, and may not have
recognized the book's historical significance). Likewise, I had never
noticed the Cloister's pilgrimage badges before, again, because I don't
think that I knew what pilgrimage badges were (in my mind, devised by the same
kind of mind that came up with tiny Eiffel Tower keychains). I know for
certain that I never would have spent as much time scrutinizing the long
genealogical tree of Jesus, dating from 13th-century England, had Peninah and I
not tried to figure out all of the links in the chain. Unfortunately, our
games of name-that-apostle showed that neither of us really can interpret most
the distinguishing symbols added by the artist, beyond maybe the keys always
held by Saint Peter. You see a row of twelve guys, and all of them are
holding books, and most of them have beards -- how on earth do you tell one
from the other? Art historians can, but I know that I certainly
can't. I learned in the course of this, and in attempts to identify
Biblical scenes in tapestries that Peninah is far better at reading artwork
than I am. One art style that we both could recognize was the glazed
Andalusian pottery: the Muslim influence is very obvious in medieval
Spanish Christian art. The Cloisters were full, if not crowded, mostly by
Europeans, if the languages that I overheard were any indication of
nationality. I guess that Europeans visit the great City of New York at
about this time of year, and find that the most cultured part of town is
imported from home. That's just my guess.
Despite some subway (I'm not allowed
to call it "The Metro") issues that arose involving broken ticket
machines, we made it to the strip of Museums on the East Side. Although
we had already paid admission to the cloisters, which got us in to the
Metropolitan Museum for free, we still needed to wait in what was a very, very
long line of tourists, just to enter. Luckily, the line went very
quickly, and it turned out that the amount of time it takes to wait in line to
visit the Metropolitan Museum is almost exactly the amount of time that it
takes to eat a sandwich, luckily for us. Checking our bags would have
been nuts, so we headed straight towards the galleries of European paintings,
at my request. We saw some Georges
de la Tour, some Goya, and some Caravaggesque paintings, before we
hit all of the Dutch landscapes. While Peninah sat for a moment to look
at a Dutch countryside, I darted off to look at a Vermeer painting that I hadnoticed, that I didn't recognize, "A Maid Asleep," circa 1670-1674. I was
suddenly surrounded by a Japanese tour group, all clustered around the Vermeer
painting, and I eventually extricated myself to find Peninah, passing some
Rembrandt self-portraits on the way. We
came out to the balcony to find the display of musical instruments that Peninah
wanted to see, including some horns with unpronounceable names and indescribably
contorted shapes. She has the pictures
on her phone, if you're ever interested.
Across the courtyard was a fantastic display of 19th-century American
glasswork and ceramics. It was mostly
functional tableware: bottles, flasks, vases, cruets, that kind of thing. The difference between antebellum and postwar work was obvious: art became significantly more decorative and skillfully-wrought after 1865. Peninah was particularly impressed by a
lemonade glass, I believe from the 1870s or 1880s, and neither of us could exactly
tell what a "celery vase" was, although we saw several. There were a lot of ugly, ostentatious
pieces, many of them from Tiffany's. My
new word of the day was "opalescent."
We found ourselves in the American
wing. We ended up visiting some cramped
period rooms (where we learned what differentiates a chocolate pot from a
teapot), some of them courtesy of the Van Renselear family, and seeing a
special exhibit on women's sports clothing from the interwar period, which I
wish my Mother had been present in order to see. We also discovered the concept of "open
storage:" the Metropolitan allows museumgoers to visit its storerooms of
furniture and paintings not on display.
Much of it is fairly nondescript, and I can easily understand why it
isn't out. In one row of otherwise plain
furniture, were a very remarkable table and desk, which turned out to have been
designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
We descended to the galleries of
American paintings. We saw the famous
"Washington Crossing the Delaware," an awful lot of official
portraits (including much more George Washington), pieces by John Singleton
Copley, the Peale family, and Benjamin West.
Those guys. There was a room full
of art that was so ugly that Peninah couldn't bear to stand in it, and, to be
honest, I agreed with her. We had only
about thirty minutes left before the museum closed, so we ran off to the
opposite wing of the museum to find the Muslim art, from the Abbasid, Spanish
Umayyad, and Seljuk periods, in Arab and Persian lands (we never got into the
Turkish or later South Asian rooms). Archaeologists from the Metropolitan had helped to excavate an Iranian site from the 12th century, find all sorts of beautiful art objects and jewelry in their digging. It made me think: some of these things were surely lost, others left behind. Why did nobody ever try to recover them? Surely, if one was fleeing, or going into exile, the bulky bowls that we found whole and undamaged would have been too cumbersome. But why weren't they looted, or stolen, or recovered? One of the most interesting pieces we found was world's earliest nearly-complete chess set (it's missing a pawn), from 12th-century Nishapur, Iran. I wondered how the archaeologists could be certain that the knights, rooks, and bishops were correctly identified (pawns are easy, and the two central pieces, now the King and Queen, but at other times the King and Vizier, closely resemble each other).
It was dark by the time we made it back to Teaneck, but we had had a wonderful (if tiring) day of museums, with no mishaps. Good going, Peninah!
~JD
Saturday, December 29, 2012
I made it to New Jersey!
Hi cool people!
If you're a fellow Cornellian, I hope that you're taking this opportunity to escape the snowscape that is now Ithaca. Although Ithaca, New York serves as a kind of gravity well for me, I managed to make it all the way... to Teaneck, New Jersey. No, Teaneck is not as far as Paris, Florence, Tzfat, or any of the other cities that I've visited since I began this blog (as a travel blog). However, I'm here because it's the home of some very special people in my life, namely the Feldman family, who have been kind enough to host me. Peninah, knowing that I would otherwise have little excuse to get out of Ithaca, invited me to Teaneck. I left on the 7:20 am bus from Ithaca on Friday, read for most of the way, slept for a few parts of it, and arrived in late morning. Shabbat falls very early here, so I helped peel and cut vegetables in the kitchen for a while, cleaned up as best as someone like me can do, walked the quarter-mile or so to the Beth Aaron synagogue with the Feldman family, and welcomed in Shabbat. Since then, I've had my learning-time with Peninah, Alex, and their Father, and been kept well-fed (so don't worry, Mom). Tonight, plans are still up in the air. Tomorrow, we visit the Cloisters and, maybe the Metropolitan.
OK, I'll have more interesting things to post tomorrow, after some museumgoing with my favorite older sister of Lani's.
~JD
If you're a fellow Cornellian, I hope that you're taking this opportunity to escape the snowscape that is now Ithaca. Although Ithaca, New York serves as a kind of gravity well for me, I managed to make it all the way... to Teaneck, New Jersey. No, Teaneck is not as far as Paris, Florence, Tzfat, or any of the other cities that I've visited since I began this blog (as a travel blog). However, I'm here because it's the home of some very special people in my life, namely the Feldman family, who have been kind enough to host me. Peninah, knowing that I would otherwise have little excuse to get out of Ithaca, invited me to Teaneck. I left on the 7:20 am bus from Ithaca on Friday, read for most of the way, slept for a few parts of it, and arrived in late morning. Shabbat falls very early here, so I helped peel and cut vegetables in the kitchen for a while, cleaned up as best as someone like me can do, walked the quarter-mile or so to the Beth Aaron synagogue with the Feldman family, and welcomed in Shabbat. Since then, I've had my learning-time with Peninah, Alex, and their Father, and been kept well-fed (so don't worry, Mom). Tonight, plans are still up in the air. Tomorrow, we visit the Cloisters and, maybe the Metropolitan.
OK, I'll have more interesting things to post tomorrow, after some museumgoing with my favorite older sister of Lani's.
~JD
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Lovecraft and Poe
Happy snowtime-in-Ithaca!
I haven't updated this blog in a while. To be honest, I haven't been doing an awful lot, beyond catching up on my sleep and (to a lesser extent) my reading. Not my thesis reading, mind you -- nothing that productive.
One particular book that's taken up a fair amount of my time is H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Like several of the books that I borrowed from Olin library for pleasure reading, it's horror literature, a genre with which I have very limited experience. Other than some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories, and Maupassant's "Le Horla" (all from the 19th century, I might add), I don't know horror.
Lovecraft writes mostly about the occult: descents into crypts, mysterious countryside killings, demon worshipers, that kind of thing. From what I know, Lovecraft, in literature, connects early horror writers such as Poe and Maupassant to later horror writers, such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc.
Already a Poe fan (though not exactly an expert), I'm glad to say that there are a fair amount of similarities between Poe's writing and Lovecraft's. Although I realize that I risk teleology (i.e. trying to show some kind of progression from Poe's horror fiction to that of the late 20th century), as a literary exercise, I'm going to compare -- and contrast -- these two masters of horror.
First of all, although both authors are very literary, Lovecraft is more succinct. Poe, sometimes to his credit, and sometimes not, can be very wordy. "A Descent into the Maelstrom," for instance, lasts unbearably long. Some of Lovecraft's stories, by contrast (and some of the good ones) seem shorter than Poe's poems. "The Statement of Randolph Carter," for instance, is only a few pages long, but manages to tell a thrilling story in its limited space. This, in many instances, is a major improvement: Poe is sometimes painfully literary, dwelling on such details as the precise dimensions of protagonists' reading preferences ("The Fall of the House of Usher" comes to mind).
Second of all, Poe's tales dwell far more on the psychological than do Lovecraft's. The best examples of this are two of Poe's masterpieces, "The Telltale Heart" and "The Raven" (notably, both fairly hort). All of the story's action occur in the protagonist's own mind. Not to say that Lovecraft doesn't wind up his readers: in "The Lurking Fear" and "The Rats in the Walls," the mysteries of the killings and of the bizarre noises, respectively, keep the reader in suspense. However, there's typically something far more substantial about Lovecraft's frights than Poe's. Which brings us to another enormous difference between the two writers.
Lovecraft portrays actual monsters. Organic, flesh-and-blood monsters running around, whose existence is not explainable through normal laws of nature. "The Unnameable," for instance, makes this point explicit. While the narrator's interlocutor scoffs at his belief in a horrific monster, and, moreover, the belief that the image of its face has remained suspended in certain windowpanes, the narrator (a horror writer) firmly does, and spends most of the story providing what he considers to be valid proof of the monster's existence. The conversation reaches it climax at nightfall, when the monster they'd been discussing ambushes them -- and the two characters awaken in hospital beds. The wound marks that cover their bodies could only have been the result of a real, horned, clawed monster, and the two characters bluff the hospital staff by telling them that they had been attacked by an enraged bull. Meanwhile, the closest to any living nonhuman monsters I can think of in Poe's stories are the ape in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the horse in "Metzengerstein." The overwhelming majority of Poe's demons and monsters are all part of the human psyche ("The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Telltale Heart"), or the forces of nature themselves ("Into the Maelstrom" and "The Masque of the Red Death").
The point of Lovecraft's "The Unnameable", it seems to me, is that the narrator's horror stories (and, by extension, Lovecraft's own) are as piercing and frightening as they are, because they are based on reliable, historical fact. This is something else that Poe's and Lovecraft's stories share in common: their attempt towards perfect, chilling reality. Although I can't find the citation right now, Orwell wrote about Poe's stories (citing "The Black Cat" in particular) that, though some of the characters and their actions seem insane, their's is a self-contained madness, in which everything makes cohesive sense, suspending readers' sense of disbelief. And the self-contained sense of each story hammers the nerves of the reader, forcing him or her to imagine the most frightening of all possible scenarios, given the circumstances.
Which brings us to the fourth and final distinction. Although both Poe and Lovecraft imagine some pretty terrible scenarios, they would respond somewhat differently if asked to name the most frightening thing imaginable. Poe would respond either "live burial" ("Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Live Burial") or "death by wasting disease" (most poetry, "The Masque of the Red Death" as well as events in Poe's own family). Lovecraft would respond "having one's face chewed off" ("The Lurking Fear") or "chewing off another's face" ("The Rats in the Walls"). This, in my opinion, is crucial, and explains why Lovecraft's stories are so much more frightening than Poe's: although both authors perfectly depict frightening scenarios, the eighty or so years that separated the two makes all the difference in terms of zeitgeist, and there is simply a greater disparity between our own fears and Poe's, and our own fears and Lovecraft's. Lovecraft's "The Colour from Out of Space" (which resembles Maupassant's "Le Horla" in some respects) terrifies me more than anything else I have ever read, and I doubt that Poe could ever have devised anything as weird and creepy. Do not mistake me -- Poe ages well, but he still ages. "MS. Found in a Bottle," for instance, which helped to make Poe's reputation, is a dull read. Even "The Masque of the Read Death," one of my favorites, has put an 11-year-old to sleep when I tried to read it to him once -- not only because of its lengthy descriptive passages, but because 21st-century Americans fear plagues far less than did 19th-century Americans.
Read both authors' works -- don't pass up either one. If you don't want to sleep, choose Lovecraft, but if you relish good writing style, choose Poe.
~JD
"Only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear -- the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness" (Lovecraft, "Pickmans's Model," Necronomicon, p. 191).
I haven't updated this blog in a while. To be honest, I haven't been doing an awful lot, beyond catching up on my sleep and (to a lesser extent) my reading. Not my thesis reading, mind you -- nothing that productive.
One particular book that's taken up a fair amount of my time is H.P. Lovecraft's Necronomicon. Like several of the books that I borrowed from Olin library for pleasure reading, it's horror literature, a genre with which I have very limited experience. Other than some of Edgar Allen Poe's stories, and Maupassant's "Le Horla" (all from the 19th century, I might add), I don't know horror.
Lovecraft writes mostly about the occult: descents into crypts, mysterious countryside killings, demon worshipers, that kind of thing. From what I know, Lovecraft, in literature, connects early horror writers such as Poe and Maupassant to later horror writers, such as Stephen King, Dean Koontz, etc.
Already a Poe fan (though not exactly an expert), I'm glad to say that there are a fair amount of similarities between Poe's writing and Lovecraft's. Although I realize that I risk teleology (i.e. trying to show some kind of progression from Poe's horror fiction to that of the late 20th century), as a literary exercise, I'm going to compare -- and contrast -- these two masters of horror.
First of all, although both authors are very literary, Lovecraft is more succinct. Poe, sometimes to his credit, and sometimes not, can be very wordy. "A Descent into the Maelstrom," for instance, lasts unbearably long. Some of Lovecraft's stories, by contrast (and some of the good ones) seem shorter than Poe's poems. "The Statement of Randolph Carter," for instance, is only a few pages long, but manages to tell a thrilling story in its limited space. This, in many instances, is a major improvement: Poe is sometimes painfully literary, dwelling on such details as the precise dimensions of protagonists' reading preferences ("The Fall of the House of Usher" comes to mind).
Second of all, Poe's tales dwell far more on the psychological than do Lovecraft's. The best examples of this are two of Poe's masterpieces, "The Telltale Heart" and "The Raven" (notably, both fairly hort). All of the story's action occur in the protagonist's own mind. Not to say that Lovecraft doesn't wind up his readers: in "The Lurking Fear" and "The Rats in the Walls," the mysteries of the killings and of the bizarre noises, respectively, keep the reader in suspense. However, there's typically something far more substantial about Lovecraft's frights than Poe's. Which brings us to another enormous difference between the two writers.
Lovecraft portrays actual monsters. Organic, flesh-and-blood monsters running around, whose existence is not explainable through normal laws of nature. "The Unnameable," for instance, makes this point explicit. While the narrator's interlocutor scoffs at his belief in a horrific monster, and, moreover, the belief that the image of its face has remained suspended in certain windowpanes, the narrator (a horror writer) firmly does, and spends most of the story providing what he considers to be valid proof of the monster's existence. The conversation reaches it climax at nightfall, when the monster they'd been discussing ambushes them -- and the two characters awaken in hospital beds. The wound marks that cover their bodies could only have been the result of a real, horned, clawed monster, and the two characters bluff the hospital staff by telling them that they had been attacked by an enraged bull. Meanwhile, the closest to any living nonhuman monsters I can think of in Poe's stories are the ape in "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and the horse in "Metzengerstein." The overwhelming majority of Poe's demons and monsters are all part of the human psyche ("The Pit and the Pendulum" and "The Telltale Heart"), or the forces of nature themselves ("Into the Maelstrom" and "The Masque of the Red Death").
The point of Lovecraft's "The Unnameable", it seems to me, is that the narrator's horror stories (and, by extension, Lovecraft's own) are as piercing and frightening as they are, because they are based on reliable, historical fact. This is something else that Poe's and Lovecraft's stories share in common: their attempt towards perfect, chilling reality. Although I can't find the citation right now, Orwell wrote about Poe's stories (citing "The Black Cat" in particular) that, though some of the characters and their actions seem insane, their's is a self-contained madness, in which everything makes cohesive sense, suspending readers' sense of disbelief. And the self-contained sense of each story hammers the nerves of the reader, forcing him or her to imagine the most frightening of all possible scenarios, given the circumstances.
Which brings us to the fourth and final distinction. Although both Poe and Lovecraft imagine some pretty terrible scenarios, they would respond somewhat differently if asked to name the most frightening thing imaginable. Poe would respond either "live burial" ("Fall of the House of Usher" and "The Live Burial") or "death by wasting disease" (most poetry, "The Masque of the Red Death" as well as events in Poe's own family). Lovecraft would respond "having one's face chewed off" ("The Lurking Fear") or "chewing off another's face" ("The Rats in the Walls"). This, in my opinion, is crucial, and explains why Lovecraft's stories are so much more frightening than Poe's: although both authors perfectly depict frightening scenarios, the eighty or so years that separated the two makes all the difference in terms of zeitgeist, and there is simply a greater disparity between our own fears and Poe's, and our own fears and Lovecraft's. Lovecraft's "The Colour from Out of Space" (which resembles Maupassant's "Le Horla" in some respects) terrifies me more than anything else I have ever read, and I doubt that Poe could ever have devised anything as weird and creepy. Do not mistake me -- Poe ages well, but he still ages. "MS. Found in a Bottle," for instance, which helped to make Poe's reputation, is a dull read. Even "The Masque of the Read Death," one of my favorites, has put an 11-year-old to sleep when I tried to read it to him once -- not only because of its lengthy descriptive passages, but because 21st-century Americans fear plagues far less than did 19th-century Americans.
Read both authors' works -- don't pass up either one. If you don't want to sleep, choose Lovecraft, but if you relish good writing style, choose Poe.
~JD
"Only a real artist knows the actual anatomy of the terrible or the physiology of fear -- the exact sort of lines and proportions that connect up with latent instincts or hereditary memories of fright, and the proper colour contrasts and lighting effects to stir the dormant sense of strangeness" (Lovecraft, "Pickmans's Model," Necronomicon, p. 191).
Friday, December 14, 2012
The Hobbit is a Movie!
We interrupt the regular schedule of this blog to make a brief announcement regarding the quality of the recent live-action adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit.
An Unexpected Journey is the first of what will be three movies based on what might be my favorite novel of all time. For those of you who haven't already this story: I was a sick little kid with asthma, and when I was hooked up to my nebulizer, the only thing that I could do was listen to my Mother read to me, until I became old enough to be able to read myself. My book of choice was The Hobbit. When I became old enough, I read it over and over, and pored over the map at the beginning for hours. Yes, I mean hours.
I have been waiting for Peter Jackson to make a movie of The Hobbit since around the time his adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring came out. In other words, twelve years, give or take a few months.
I was naturally super-excited when 'Sools decided to make a CJL trip to see The Hobbit an event, mostly because I know that he of all people is a highly competent organizer, and that I could trust him to make certain that everything was well-coordinated. It was. Except for when my ticket fell out of my pocket between Victor's car and the movie theater, and I by sheer chance managed to locate it, lying on the asphalt of the movie theater parking lot.
So how was the movie?
An Unexpected Journey is an excellent portrayal of the beginning of The Hobbit. Not only that, it adds two major side-plots, one hinted at in the Tolkien saga, the other one, to my knowledge, not appearing in any part of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or (obviously) The Silmarillion that I remember. (However, they could be part of an appendix, part of Tolkien's extensive notes, etc.). In my opinion these side-plots do not detract at all from the main story, but help keep the viewer engaged. One of them, I know, stars a hero more or less neglected in the tales of Middle Earth -- the other introduces what I believe to be an original villain.
To a Hobbit fan such as myself, it was wonderful to see so many of the familiar scenes enacted on a big screen, with all of the special effects budget that they so richly deserved. To begin with one minor scene (in both the book and the movie; not a big spoiler), I do not think that the moviemakers could have depicted the Stone Giants of the Misty Mountains any better. The book is vague about their exact appearance, and their motives for rock-throwing. The movie depicts them in the liminal space between manifestations of the raw forces of nature, and sentient beings. There is no doubt that there really are giants throwing rocks at each other -- yet the giants emerge from the mountains themselves, and, to be honest, reminded me of nothing so much as earth elementals from Dungeons and Dragons by their appearance. Also excellent was the way the movie fleshed out the Dwarves' personalities. Tolkien really only mentions the specific personalities of a few of the Dwarves (Thorin, Balin, Bombur, etc.), and a few of the Dwarves do not even have occasional character traits attributed to them -- I do not think that there is anything significant ever mentioned about Bifur, for example. The moviemakers, knowing that of the fifteen main characters, twelve of them cannot be mere stereotypes, make an effort to give all of the Dwarves personal quirks and tags. My Mother will need to give more input on this issue, but I certainly feel as if there was a very deliberate effort to clothe all of the Dwarves distinctly, to avoid their appearing like clones.
There were absolutely scenes from the movie that could not have existed without these side-plots. For example, in the book, no worgs pursue the company until after they leave the Misty Mountains. However, their earlier appearance, explicable by one of the added side-plots I have mentioned, helps keep the pressure up on the company (as well as the audience), and makes what could have been a montage of aerial shots of the Dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf hiking through the craggy New Zealand countryside into a gripping game of cat-and-mouse. However, such additional action details (usually, the moviemakers' changes add rather than subtract action) always remain true to the story: just because Bilbo has a little bit more time with Sting in his hand in the movie than in the book does not transform him into Sir Bilbo the Fearless, or Ninja Baggins. I approve: movies are paced differently than books, and a perfect adaptation of a book script into a motion picture, even if the book was originally a comic books (I have Watchmen in mind right now) can draw fire from movie critics without emotional ties to the original book. There's also one scene sure to thrill Tolkien fans who don't mind a little bit of liberty taken with what might have happened behind the scenes at linchpin moments of The Hobbit -- and it's just too juicy a morsel to give away. I heartily approve, though, and hope that, when you see this scene (believe me, you'll know it when you see it), you'll agree with me.
Of course, there are dozens of missing or altered details. I really don't care, but for those sticklers out there, here's a short list of aspects of "An Unexpected Party" (Chapter 1 of The Hobbit) that do not appear in An Unexpected Journey.
- Bilbo does not go on and on about all of the Hobbit legends about Gandalf, and his interest in an adventure is much subtler.
- Took family history.
- Reference to second breakfast, elevensies, etc.
- Dwarven hood colors (but, as I mentioned before, this is better for the movie).
- The elvish word "burglar" can also be interpreted "expert treasure-hunter."
- (Most) Dwarf beverage preferences.
- No green smoke rings from Gandalf.
- "Struck by lightning, struck by lightning!"
- The note left on the mantlepiece, which Gandalf brings to Bilbo's attention.
Do not mistake me. There were excellent lines and references, often cut and pasted directly from the book, not at all lost on me, such as the Legend of Bullroarer Took, adapted brilliantly into the movie script, so that it did not at all feel like a non-sequitur . Though I did not have a copy of The Hobbit in front of me, I'd bet a drink at the Green Dragon that Gandalf's reminder to Bilbo of his ancestry is lifted word-for-word from The Hobbit.
I obligatorily need to mention how much I loved the way in which the movie portrayed the famous riddle game. "Riddles in the Dark" is probably my favorite chapter of The Hobbit, and I highly commend whoever was responsible for the script, storyboard, and precise editing of the movie's depiction of the epic confrontation between Bilbo and Gollum. The psychology of the whole scene is magnificent, and not just Gollum's schizophrenia and Bilbo's very real fear, but every single line that the two of them exchange. It is probably the best scene in the entire movie, and will be very difficult for Peter Jackson to top in parts II and III of The Hobbit.
If I could have asked for any differences in the movie, in terms of its general production, I would have requested better music. The musical score was rather uninspiring, except when the tunes were drawn directly form the Lord of the Rings movies. I sometimes wonder if the Mordor theme from LOTR will become like the Empire's theme from Star Wars -- I can't hum a single bar of the music I heard last night, though.
An Unexpected Journey makes viewers smile, laugh, and grip their seats in suspense and and anticipation. It shocks, interests, frightens, and winds up. Highly recommended; in theaters if you can, on home video if you can bear the wait.
Oh, and did I mention? I had the opportunity to watch this movie with a lot of highly-attractive people beside and behind me. That might have been one of the best parts; thank you all for being my friends!
~JD
"You fool, Warren is DEAD!" ("The Statement of Randolph Carter," The Necronomicon, H.P. Lovecraft).
An Unexpected Journey is the first of what will be three movies based on what might be my favorite novel of all time. For those of you who haven't already this story: I was a sick little kid with asthma, and when I was hooked up to my nebulizer, the only thing that I could do was listen to my Mother read to me, until I became old enough to be able to read myself. My book of choice was The Hobbit. When I became old enough, I read it over and over, and pored over the map at the beginning for hours. Yes, I mean hours.
I have been waiting for Peter Jackson to make a movie of The Hobbit since around the time his adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring came out. In other words, twelve years, give or take a few months.
I was naturally super-excited when 'Sools decided to make a CJL trip to see The Hobbit an event, mostly because I know that he of all people is a highly competent organizer, and that I could trust him to make certain that everything was well-coordinated. It was. Except for when my ticket fell out of my pocket between Victor's car and the movie theater, and I by sheer chance managed to locate it, lying on the asphalt of the movie theater parking lot.
So how was the movie?
An Unexpected Journey is an excellent portrayal of the beginning of The Hobbit. Not only that, it adds two major side-plots, one hinted at in the Tolkien saga, the other one, to my knowledge, not appearing in any part of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, or (obviously) The Silmarillion that I remember. (However, they could be part of an appendix, part of Tolkien's extensive notes, etc.). In my opinion these side-plots do not detract at all from the main story, but help keep the viewer engaged. One of them, I know, stars a hero more or less neglected in the tales of Middle Earth -- the other introduces what I believe to be an original villain.
To a Hobbit fan such as myself, it was wonderful to see so many of the familiar scenes enacted on a big screen, with all of the special effects budget that they so richly deserved. To begin with one minor scene (in both the book and the movie; not a big spoiler), I do not think that the moviemakers could have depicted the Stone Giants of the Misty Mountains any better. The book is vague about their exact appearance, and their motives for rock-throwing. The movie depicts them in the liminal space between manifestations of the raw forces of nature, and sentient beings. There is no doubt that there really are giants throwing rocks at each other -- yet the giants emerge from the mountains themselves, and, to be honest, reminded me of nothing so much as earth elementals from Dungeons and Dragons by their appearance. Also excellent was the way the movie fleshed out the Dwarves' personalities. Tolkien really only mentions the specific personalities of a few of the Dwarves (Thorin, Balin, Bombur, etc.), and a few of the Dwarves do not even have occasional character traits attributed to them -- I do not think that there is anything significant ever mentioned about Bifur, for example. The moviemakers, knowing that of the fifteen main characters, twelve of them cannot be mere stereotypes, make an effort to give all of the Dwarves personal quirks and tags. My Mother will need to give more input on this issue, but I certainly feel as if there was a very deliberate effort to clothe all of the Dwarves distinctly, to avoid their appearing like clones.
There were absolutely scenes from the movie that could not have existed without these side-plots. For example, in the book, no worgs pursue the company until after they leave the Misty Mountains. However, their earlier appearance, explicable by one of the added side-plots I have mentioned, helps keep the pressure up on the company (as well as the audience), and makes what could have been a montage of aerial shots of the Dwarves, Bilbo, and Gandalf hiking through the craggy New Zealand countryside into a gripping game of cat-and-mouse. However, such additional action details (usually, the moviemakers' changes add rather than subtract action) always remain true to the story: just because Bilbo has a little bit more time with Sting in his hand in the movie than in the book does not transform him into Sir Bilbo the Fearless, or Ninja Baggins. I approve: movies are paced differently than books, and a perfect adaptation of a book script into a motion picture, even if the book was originally a comic books (I have Watchmen in mind right now) can draw fire from movie critics without emotional ties to the original book. There's also one scene sure to thrill Tolkien fans who don't mind a little bit of liberty taken with what might have happened behind the scenes at linchpin moments of The Hobbit -- and it's just too juicy a morsel to give away. I heartily approve, though, and hope that, when you see this scene (believe me, you'll know it when you see it), you'll agree with me.
Of course, there are dozens of missing or altered details. I really don't care, but for those sticklers out there, here's a short list of aspects of "An Unexpected Party" (Chapter 1 of The Hobbit) that do not appear in An Unexpected Journey.
- Bilbo does not go on and on about all of the Hobbit legends about Gandalf, and his interest in an adventure is much subtler.
- Took family history.
- Reference to second breakfast, elevensies, etc.
- Dwarven hood colors (but, as I mentioned before, this is better for the movie).
- The elvish word "burglar" can also be interpreted "expert treasure-hunter."
- (Most) Dwarf beverage preferences.
- No green smoke rings from Gandalf.
- "Struck by lightning, struck by lightning!"
- The note left on the mantlepiece, which Gandalf brings to Bilbo's attention.
Do not mistake me. There were excellent lines and references, often cut and pasted directly from the book, not at all lost on me, such as the Legend of Bullroarer Took, adapted brilliantly into the movie script, so that it did not at all feel like a non-sequitur . Though I did not have a copy of The Hobbit in front of me, I'd bet a drink at the Green Dragon that Gandalf's reminder to Bilbo of his ancestry is lifted word-for-word from The Hobbit.
I obligatorily need to mention how much I loved the way in which the movie portrayed the famous riddle game. "Riddles in the Dark" is probably my favorite chapter of The Hobbit, and I highly commend whoever was responsible for the script, storyboard, and precise editing of the movie's depiction of the epic confrontation between Bilbo and Gollum. The psychology of the whole scene is magnificent, and not just Gollum's schizophrenia and Bilbo's very real fear, but every single line that the two of them exchange. It is probably the best scene in the entire movie, and will be very difficult for Peter Jackson to top in parts II and III of The Hobbit.
If I could have asked for any differences in the movie, in terms of its general production, I would have requested better music. The musical score was rather uninspiring, except when the tunes were drawn directly form the Lord of the Rings movies. I sometimes wonder if the Mordor theme from LOTR will become like the Empire's theme from Star Wars -- I can't hum a single bar of the music I heard last night, though.
An Unexpected Journey makes viewers smile, laugh, and grip their seats in suspense and and anticipation. It shocks, interests, frightens, and winds up. Highly recommended; in theaters if you can, on home video if you can bear the wait.
Oh, and did I mention? I had the opportunity to watch this movie with a lot of highly-attractive people beside and behind me. That might have been one of the best parts; thank you all for being my friends!
~JD
"You fool, Warren is DEAD!" ("The Statement of Randolph Carter," The Necronomicon, H.P. Lovecraft).
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