Still Lost in Literature

Bing Crosby as a Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Several months ago I commented on the ITV miniseries Lost in Austen and the general idea of getting literally lost in a favorite novel. Recently my mind has returned to that theme thanks to me reading The Eyre Affair. In the novel some characters are able to enter books, manuals and poems. Unlike the miniseries Lost in Austen, the characters in The Eyre Affair know they are in a book. In the Eyre Affair the protagonist, Thursday Next, enters the novel Jane Eyre and becomes friends with the male lead of the novel, Mr. Rochester. Mr. Rochester is aware of plot points, the effect of Jane's first person narration (anything written on the book page has to be observed or spoken by Jane), and the need to protect the integrity of the story. The Eyre Affair is a lot of fun in that it treats literature very, very, very seriously. So I initially wondered if this lost in literature concept is a British thing.

"Not so!" my little mind reminded me the other day. I remembered that it was Mark Twain who first introduced my young mind to literally losing oneself in a good book. In A Connecticut Yankee In King Arthur's Court Mark, the character Hank Morgan, a "19th century citizen of Hartford, Connecticut, literally loses himself in Arthurian legend. The Connecticut Yankee brings with him knowledge of science and social liberalism and proceeds to befriend Arthur and antagonize Merlin and the Camelot establishment.  (I most confess, that I've only ever read the first half of this book.  It got much too complicated, satrical and political towards the end, and my twelve year old self quickly lost interest).

So, to be clear, as far as my mind recalls, Mark Twain got me lost in literature first. Again, I ask, where would you go in literature to shake things up?

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Henry the Fifth Moments

There are moments in movies when the team is losing at halftime, when the next offensive of the battle starts, when the task seems daunting...that someone steps up and gives an inspiring speech.  I call those moments Henry the Fifth Moments.  If you've ever read or seen the Shakespeare play, you may be acquainted with the several times that King Harry leads his troops into a dauting fight agaist the French and then sustains their spirit with inspiring words.  These inspirational words from Shakespeare's pen have lived on to be widely recognized today: "Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more,"  "Cry God for Harry, England and St. George!" "We few, we happy few, we band of brothers."  And the spirit of the play lives on in countless sports, war, adventure and even comedy films.  Below, is a youtube video of spliced and edited Henry the Fifth Moments from some great movies.  Appropriately, there's even a clip from Henry V.  Watch, and be inspired!


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My Christmas Mix

This past weekend I created a Christmas Music Mix.  It is inteded to keep my mind happy and occupied on the drive to work and on the long drive home for Christmas.  Both legal and technical reasons prevent me from uploading the songs for you, but if you would like to find any of them on your own, try this website or this one.

1.  Oliva Olson – All I Want For Christmas Is You (from the soundtrack for the film Love Actually)

2.  Darlene Love – It’s A Marshmallow World

3.  Percy Faith – We Need A Little Christmas

4.  The Waitresses – Christmas Wrapping

5.  Marah – Christmas At Valley Forge (from this episode of This American Life, pretty funny and educational, follow the link and listen to Act V of the show)

6.  Gayla Peevey – I Want A Hippopotamus For Christmas (listen via streaming audio)

7.  The Royal Guardsmen – Snoopy’s Christmas (listen via streaming audio)

8.  Marah – New York Is A Christmas Kind Of Town (listen to a snipit on Marah's myspace page)

9.  Vince Guaraldi Trio – Hark, The Herald Angels Sing (from the Charlie Brown Christmas Special, watch it at the 2:34 minute mark of this youtube clip)

10.  Stevie Wonder – Someday At Christmas

11.  Aimee Mann – I’ll Be Home For Christmas 

12.  Randy Travis – Jingle Bell Rock

13.  Louis Armstrong – Santa Baby

14.  david m. bailey – Angel In The Attic (listen via streaming audio)

15.  Nancy White – It’s So Chic To Be Pregnant At Christmas 

16.  Sufjan Stevens – Holy, Holy, Holy

17.  XTC – Thanks For Christmas

18.  Johnny Cash – Away In A Manger

19.  Chuck Berry – Run, Rudolph, Run

20.  Death Cab For Cutie – Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)

21.  The Jackson Five – Frosty The Snowman (listen via streaming audio)

22.  Seven Day Jesus – O Holy Night

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Presidential Election '08 Continued

You thought it was over?  Well it's not.  The Electoral College starts voting today.  You may have voted in November, but the next President of the United States has not been, technically, elected yet.  Today across the country the Electoral College starts voting and the next President won't be constitutionally elected until January 8th when the electoral college's votes get counted in Congress. Will this election ever end? Evidently, not yet.
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Hillary Clinton: Will She be a Seward or a Chase?

The main reason I readTeam of Rivals was because journalists and Barak Obama himself asserted the history book was a touchstone for his thinking in organizing a presidential cabinet. Reading Team of Rivals, I ended up shoehorning recent 2008 campaign events into a comparison with events surrounding Lincoln. There are some striking similarities. As for Lincoln and Obama, 

• Both are lawyers who began their political careers in Springfield, IL. 
• Both rose to national awareness due to exceptionally eloquent speeches that resonated with moderate public opinion. 
• Both were perceived as inexperienced, Washington outsiders with an outside chance at a nomination. 
• Both employed a successful strategy of gaining grass roots support among a diverse group of delegates to ensure that where he was not the first choice of delegates he was a second choice. (Particularly, a comparison of the 1860 Republican convention to the 2008 Iowa caucus, reveals both employed the same strategy of making sure that where he could not be the first choice among delegates/caucus goers he would be their second choice should their first choice candidate not garner enough support.)
  

Two of Lincoln's chief competitors for the nomination were William Henry Seward and Salmon Chase. Hillary shares some striking similarities with these men.

• Seward and Hillary were well acquainted with the Washington elite and had been familiar to the public for decades.
• Seward and Hillary had the support of a well seasoned, well known political machine/political bosses.
• Seward and Hillary saw their nomination as inevitable.
• Chase did and Hillary appeared to have a personal, desperate and at times blinding desire to be president.
• Chase and Hillary and Seward underestimated the consequences of the enemies they'd made along the way in previous political campaigns.

Once elected, Lincoln wanted both Seward and Chase in his cabinet because they were bright and talented. He honestly wanted their counsel. He also wanted to achieve balance and party unity. Each man represented a faction of the young Republican Party. Seward and Chase entered the cabinet each believing he was more deserving than Lincoln. Each perceived Lincoln as weak, and each initially planned to influence Lincoln's decisions and govern through the cabinet as a de facto president. Seward, eventually put aside his personal ambition to be president and became Lincoln's closest friend and supporter in the cabinet sharing a rapport and affection with him. Seward provided invaluable counsel and played an instrumental and heroic role as Secretary of State in using diplomacy to keep Europe from recognizing Confederate sovereignty. Chase, while he eventually came to admire Lincoln's kindness and capability, always thought himself better than the president. Chase also did a heroic job in financing the Union as Secretary of the Treasury. Chase, however, worked against Lincoln, spreading political unrest behind Lincoln's back and pursuing a presidential nomination.

So my question, is which will Hillary be? Will she be Seward and grow to be Obama's most devoted admirer and supporter, providing counsel and advising him honestly?  Will she be Chase, working effectively and tirelessly, but never relinquishing the feeling that it should have been her job, and working to spread unrest within the party and behind Obama's back. Which one will she be?
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Lincoln the Editor

Abraham Lincoln's Desk in Springfield

I very much enjoyed reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln. I posted a book review on my shelf over at Shelfari. My favorite passage in the book is an analysis the author, Doris Kearns Goodwin, does of Lincoln's resonant First Inaugural Address. Before introducing her analysis, Ms. Goodwin spends many previous pages tracing the development and boundaries of Lincoln's and William H. Seward's opinions on slavery. Seward phrases his abolition opinion as a response to a higher law that compels us to treat all people humanely. Lincoln phrases his anti-slavery opinion as a pragmatic fulfillment of the principles of equality enshrined in the Constitution. In the passage excerpted below, Ms. Goodwin lays out the language recommended by Seward side-by-side with the language Lincoln eventually chose. The texts are extremely similar, but the subtle differences exhibit important qualities of Lincoln: (1) his willingness to seek and embrace the advice of others; (2) his talent for effective eloquent communication as both a writer and editor; and (3) his confidence in adhering to the pragmatic idealism he believed in.

Seward’s greatest contribution to the tone and substance of the inaugural address was in its conclusion. Lincoln’s finale threw down the gauntlet to the South: “With you, and not with me, is the solemn question of ‘Shall it be peace, or a sword?’” Seward recommended a very different closing designed “to meet and remove prejudice and passion in the South, and despondency and fear in the East. Some words of affection—some of calm and cheerful confidence.” He suggested two alternate endings. Lincoln drew upon Seward’s language to create his immortal coda.

Seward suggested: “I close. We are not we must not be aliens or enemies but fellow countrymen and brethren. Although passion has strained our bonds of affection too hardly they must not, I am sure they will not be broken. The mystic chords which proceeding from so many battle fields and so many patriot graves pass through all the hearts and all the hearths in this broad continent of ours will yet again harmonize in their ancient music when breathed upon by the guardian angel of the nation.”

Lincoln proceeded to recast and sharpen Seward’s patriotic sentiments into a concise and powerful poetry: “I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” Most significant, Seward’s “guardian angel” breathes down on the nation from above; Lincoln’s “better angels” are inherent in our nature as a people.

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Thanksgiving Historical Anecdote

I spent the past three weeks and a giant chunk of Thanksgiving weekend reading Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin. I've been enjoying Ms. Goodwin's historical insights on Sunday morning talk shows and on PBS for years now. When Barak Obama and other journalists started bandying her book about as an insightful instruction on Presidential management and cabinet creation, I thought it was about time I gave her a read. I did, and the book is excellent. It even had a very apt Thanksgiving anecdote which, if Ms. Goodwin doesn't mind too much, I will post here:

“....Both [President Lincoln and Secretary of State William H. Seward] loved humor....”

Fred Seward recounted the events of one morning in October 1863 when his father called on Lincoln. “They say, Mr. President, that we are stealing away the rights of the States. So I have come to-day to advise you, that there is another State right I think we ought to steal.” Raising his head from his pile of papers, Lincoln asked, “Well, Governor, what do you want to steal now?” Seward replied, “The right to name Thanksgiving Day!” He explained that at present, Thanksgiving was celebrated on different days at the discretion of each state’s governor. Why not make it a national holiday? Lincoln immediately responded that he supposed a president “had as good a right to thank God as a Governor.”

Seward then presented Lincoln with a proclamation that invited citizens “in every part of the United States,” at sea or abroad, “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November” to give thanks to “our beneficent Father.”

So, dear readers, happy belated Thanksgiving! A day which we celebrate as one nation courtesy of both the humorous whim and the hard work of Messrs Lincoln and Seward. Something to be thankful for year-round and forever more.

(Unrelated musing: How long do you think it will take before spell checks stop trying to auto-correct the names Barak and Obama?)
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