Aaron Helton

tags: #reading #books #readinglist #epics #gamestudies

2019 was not a banner year for me in reading, a fact I blame on the lack of a reading list. I've come to realize that I need a some means of guiding my reading for the year, especially if I have a particular theme or set of themes I am exploring.

In keeping with earlier themes, I am returning in 2020 to epics, one a month if I can read that fast. To the extent possible, I am either steering clear of Western canon or approaching it from a different point of view. For instance, I plan to read feminist takes on both Beowulf and The Odyssey this year. In addition to epics, I am also planning to read one notable work in the field of game studies each month, basically using the Game Studies Study Buddies podcast as a curriculum. I may or may not have things to say about any of these as the year progresses, but what I do have to say I will publish on this site.

I have a number of works on prior lists I hope to use as supplemental reading, but I may post that list later as an addendum. I am in no particular hurry to organize it.

Let's build a reading list, shall we?

December 2019

For the rest of this month, I plan to read Gaming: Essays on Algorithmic Culture by Alexander R. Galloway. This is a set of essays exploring the video game as an independent medium and distinct cultural form. This book, as well as Homo Ludens below, was a gift from my Reddit Secret Santa, and happens to be short enough that I'll be able to read it within the next couple of weeks as the year winds down.

January 2020

Epic

Popol Vuh: The Definitive Edition of The Mayan Book of The Dawn of Life and The Glories of Gods and Kings, translated by Dennis Tedlock

This is the Quiché Mayan book of creation, detailing the deeds of the Mayan gods and the rise of the Quiché kingdom in the Guatemalan highlands. It is one of the most important surviving pre-Columbian texts we have available.

Game Studies

Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture by Johan Huizinga

Something of a classic in the game studies curriculum, this seminal work provides an evaluation of play as a central activity of flourishing cultures.

Fevral

(Note: Unless absolutely required, I will never after this point type February.)

Epic

The Tale of Sinuhe: and Other Ancient Egyptian Poems 1940-1640 B.C. (Oxford World's Classics), translated by R.B. Parkinson

This collection of poems offers English speaking readers a glimps into the golden age of Egyption fictional literature.

Game Studies

Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace by Janet H. Murray

The updated version of this book offers commentary on the original, explaining what panned out and what didn't. The book created instant controversy upon its publication in 1997, but she also made some interesting predictions along the way.

March

Epic

Sundiata: An Epic of Old Mali (Revised Edition) by D T Niane

This is a work of oral tradition pinned down and captured in text. True, it was never intended to be transmitted this way, but this story, part history, part legend, tells of how Sundiata united the twelve kingdoms of Mali and built an empire.

Game Studies

Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, by Jesper Juul

Juul studies the tension between rules and fiction in video games, and examines the role computers play in mediating this tension.

April

Epic

War Songs, by Antarah ibn Shaddad and James E. Montgomery (translator)

Writing from the 6th century Najd highlands of the Arabian peninsula, the warrior-poet recounts his struggles for recognition. These poems are attributed to Antarah ibn Shaddad, the subject of a later epic, The Epic of 'Antar.

Game Studies

Ready Player Two: Women Gamers and Designed Identity, by Shira Chess

Chess examines the implicit assumptions game designers and developers make about women as an audience for gaming, especially how they reinforce normative ideas about women.

May

Epic

The Kalevala: An Epic Poem after Oral Tradition, assembled by Elias Lönnrot and translated by Keith Bosley

This is the national folk epic of Finland, and grew out of its oral traditions, preserved well into the 19th century.

Game Studies

Games of Empire, by Nick Dyer-Witheford and Greig de Peuter

What is the role of video games in the media of Empire, and what is the impact of this role on creators and players?

June

Epic

Florante y Laura (Spanish Edition), by Francisco Baltazar

This Spanish edition of a Filipino romance is an epic poem about the love and determination of the Duke Florante and the Princess Laura of Albania while being pursued by the usurper Count Adolfo.

Game Studies

The Games Black Girls Play: Learning the Ropes from Double-Dutch to Hip-Hop, by Kyra D. Gaunt

This work illustrates how black musical styles are incorporated into the earlies games African American girls learn.

July

Epic

The Faerie Queene, by Edmund Spenser

Arthurian romance cum Italian renaissance epic recounting the quests of each of various knights to achieve a virtue.

Game Studies

Man, Play and Games, by Roger Caillois

This is a study of what games are, and what their place in our lives is.

August

Epic

The Odyssey, by Homer, Emily Wilson (translator)

The club consisting of translators of The Odyssey in to English gained its first female member when Emily Wilson published this authoritative translation in 2017.

Game Studies

Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature, by Espen J. Aarseth

Central to this text are questions of whether computer games make great literature, and whether video games are supplanting other narrative forms, or eliminating pure narrative entirely.

September

Epic

Beowulf: A New Translation, by Maria Dahvana Headley

Release date: August 25, 2020. This is a new, feminist translation of the beloved work, the earliest in the English language.

Game Studies

Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect, by Aubrey Anable

What is the role of video games in our larger emotional landscape?

October

Epic

Epic of the Forgotten: Bulgarian-English Dual Language Text, by Ivan Vazov, Mark J Ripkowski

Vazov wrote this to commemorate the Bulgarian fight for freedom against the Ottoman Empire, and to criticize the decline of the Bulgarian nation after the Liberation.

Game Studies

Beyond a Boundary: 50th Anniversary Edition, by C. L. R. James

A classic work of sport and culture through the lens of cricket. (It's a departure from the other kinds of games explored above.)

November

Epic

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 1, by Anonymous, Robert Irwin

Timeless and unforgettable tales within tales woven by the incomparable Shahrazad as she seeks to prolong her life each night. This work encompasses three volumes.

Game Studies

Gaming the Stage: Playable Media and the Rise of English Commercial Theater, by Gina Bloom

On the traditoinal theatrical concepts in gaming.

December

Epic

The Arabian Nights: Tales of 1,001 Nights: Volume 2, by Anonymous, Robert Irwin

Game Studies

Literary Gaming, by Astrid Ensslin

An examination of literary videogames, or the literary-ludic spectrum.

(pause for breath...)

You may notice that I have left off at 2/3 of the 3 volume set of The Arabian Nights, which you can take to mean that this list ultimately carries me into January 2021 unless I get to it sooner. I will readjust this list as necessary, pointing you to the changelog if you're interested, because I assume I will read some things faster and some things slower, and I would prefer to keep trucking instead of merely waiting for the end of the month. Beyond the end of this current list, I have a tentative schedule worked out for 2021, believe it or not. At that point I plan to turn to some classical Chinese literature, starting with The Journey to the West and proceeding with The Story of the Stone, or The Dream of the Red Chamber. The timing and contents of the 2021 list will undoubtedly evolve as I make faster or slower progress on the 2020 list, which is not arranged to optimize page count. There are short books and long books on this list.

One other thing I should note is that, while I am confident in the idea of reading in and around game studies, I have no idea if I will be able to sustain this much interest in the topic for the whole year, or if this particular set of books will be the ultimate list. As I post changelogs to this page, you can follow along with the evolution of this list. In case I abandon the game studies reading list entirely, I will begin supplementing with some prior lists, still TBD.

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tags: #roundups #media #music #books #podcasts

A roundup of my media consumption for the year.

Music

I come at music like this: I try lots of things, but take note of little. What rises to the top for me isn’t necessarily what others find great (and in fact I can’t always see the greatness others see), but rather something, usually idiosyncratic, that helps the artist stand out. That’s not to say I am completely ignorant of things like airplay and promotional hype, nor do I fully reject those aspects of an artist's trajectory, but I don't necessarily march to the same beat. Anyway, here's what I found worth my time this year.

My Apple Music playlist of the following is here: https://music.apple.com/us/playlist/2019-top-music/pl.u-MDAWWqNI40l5e0

1. J.S. Ondara – Tales of America: Spare but rich and commanding bluesy acoustic songs offering a newcomer’s take on America’s promise. Ondara, an immigrant from Nairobi, is definitely one to watch.
2. Michael Kiwanuka – Kiwanuka: On his third album, Michael Kiwanuka narrates a world of violence and racism through pensive, melancholy psych-soul melodies.
3. Heilung – Futha: Otherworldly neofolk chants that attempt to amplify a particular history, that of pre-Christian Nothern Europe and, like Skald below, a welcome counterpoint to generic metal acts in Viking cosplay.
4. Zao – Reformat / Reboot: This remix compilation of the venerable metalcore gestalt that is Zao was notable not just for the electronic touches the remix infuses, but also because, inexplicably, there is (or was) a NES cartridge version of the album available. This gimmick is not a detractor: the music is genuinely enjoyable even though I’m something of a metalcore outsider.
5. Chris Forsyth – All Time Present: This mostly instrumental album showcases Forsyth’s exceptional skill with the guitar as he and his backing band take us on an extensive journey through experimental classic rock riffs.
6. Billie Eilish – When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?: I’m not sure what needs to be said about this. If you somehow missed the incredible buzz around Eilish’s debut album, let me encourage you to give her a first look.
7. SKÁLD – Vikings Chant: Skald want to answer the question of whether and to what extent a French musical act can revive the ancient Viking poetic traditions. In large part, the answer is yes.
8. Dream Theater – Distance Over Time: The unquestioned prog-metal kings are back with an album that is solidly in their wheelhouse, showing that they still have staying power while also not quite meeting the stratospheric bar they’ve set in the process.
9. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – Ghosteen: Ghosteen is Nick Cave’s first full reckoning of the grief of a lost child. It is a deeply personal collection of impressions and haunting melodies born of finding oneself engulfed in a darkness for which no preparation would have been sufficient.
10. Sleep Token – Sundowning: This long awaited debut album is an idiosyncratic collection of pop metal worship ballads by an anonymous group. What they’ve built in the lead up to this album is a successful marketing and promotion machine that happens to produce great music.
11. Vampire Weekend – Father of the Bride: It’s been a while since this group has released anything, and the intervening years, lineup changes and a cross-country move all add up to a different band than the one that emerged in 2008. Class consciousness infuses this album of anthems, folksy ballads, spirituals, and catchy pop country tunes. Is it the mark of maturation?
12. Mdou Moctar – Ilana (The Creator): High energy spontaneous and celebratory Tuareg guitar from Niger, this album is full of desert assouf – that elusive term that evokes loneliness, longing, nostalgia, and everything that lies beyond the comfort of the campfire.
    

Books

Okay, well, look. 2019 was not a banner year for me and books. I never really developed much of a reading plan, which even if I don’t always follow it, it is still something to guide me. Anyway, that’s not to say I read nothing, just that I lost a lot of steam this year. I read 13 books, but had set my goal at 25. Some of the reason I got nowhere near my goal is that I picked up a couple of very lengthy books, one of which I finished and the other of which may be a near-perennial almost-read.

I started the year off with a book that I had kicking around a while, Natsume Soseki’s The Three-Cornered World, which was a gift from a friend in 2017 or 2018. It is the curse of the avid reader to have more books to read than time to read them, which underscores the surprise of actually getting to a book that's been on one's shelves for a while.

A timely event at the Korea Society prompted me to read Heinz Insu Finkl's new translation of The Nine Cloud Dream, which was a nice follow-on to the previous work.

Theater screenings of a number of Studio Ghibli films was the impetus behind my read this year of Diana Wynne Jones's Howl's Moving Castle. The book was as compelling as the film, but I think I prefer Miyazaki.

Back in January, the New York Times published Globetrotting, a sneak preview of books coming out in 2019 from around the world. So I took on a few. The first of these was All My Goodbyes by Mariana Dimópoulos, followed by Guillermo Saccomanno's 77 and Adèle by Leila Slimani.

When I cleaned up my Twitter account a while back, I stopped following all the corporate accounts I had accumulated, ditched anyone who looked like a Nazi, and otherwise gave my account a thorough scrub. What I found is that I have a soft spot for authors, especially authors I've read and like, so as a consequence, I follow more authors than perhaps any other category of people. The result of this, of course, is that I hear about other authors, so when Hafsah Faizal came across my radar with We Hunt the Flame, the first book in her Sands of Arawiya trilogy, I was instantly intrigued and pre-ordered it. I eagerly await the next installments.

Two more works out of the pages of the New York Times Book Review grabbed me over the summer: Thomas Harris, who is apparently a Big Deal, released Cari Mora, which was entertaining enough, and I also read Erica Ferencik's Into the Jungle, which was also worth the time.

Coming back around to things I have long overlooked but regret having done so, I picked up Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed. It was good. Really good. And it saddens me that there is not so much more fantasy set against non-European backdrops and inspirations.

Did I mention that I mined my own shelves for reading material? Two other books I picked up this year have been on my shelves for a while, and I finally got around to them. The first of these was The Princess Bride by William Goldman. Look, I've seen the movie enough times that I could probably, with some time and thought, reproduce the dialogue line by line pretty accurately. The book is so much deeper, and it opens windows into character motivation that would have strengthened the movie. I don't want to spoil it, but you should read it. The second of these was The Stand by Stephen King. I started reading this book as a teenager, but had to put it down (though not out of lack of interest), and I never got back around to it. The copy I have now was gifted to me by a Reddit secret Santa. Of all the works I've read this year, this is the only one I have even tried to write a review of (which I guess I better get back to).

The final read of the year, though it was actually wedged between the previous two, was one that my 13 year old was assigned as summer reading before starting 8th grade. Ann Rinaldi's Numbering All the Bones is a historical novel about one girl's attempts to heal the trauma of the American Civil War.

Podcasts

I wish I could find good statistics on the hours and hours I've spent listening to podcasts this year, but I don't see them. In any case, my podcast habit is what gets me to and from work, and sometimes fills other idle times, especially long dog walks. Instead of simply listing out all the individual podcasts I listen to, I will offer a list of my current favorites.

1. Druidcast
   Frequency: Monthly on our around the 20th.
   From their website:
   > ...each episode features poetry, story and song offered by Bards throughout the world. There are also interviews with people involved in the Druid tradition, and related areas, plus seasonal thoughts, explorations of Celtic mythology and history, reviews, and competitions.

2. In Our Time
   Frequency: Weekly
   Description: Wide ranging podcast produced by BBC Radio, exploring the history of various ideas, people, places, literary works, etc.

3. Game Studies Study Buddies
   Frequency: Monthly or so.
   From the website:
   > Games Studies Study Buddies is a podcast that makes academic games studies accessible, text by text. Rather than focusing on following or forging a “canon” of the discipline, media scholar Cameron and literature scholar Michael instead aim to cover an eclectic body of material. And while we are centrally focused on contemporary videogames, you can expect our discussions (and the work we cover) to account for everything from Dungeons & Dragons to tic-tac-toe.

4. Death By Monsters
   Frequency: Weekly
   From the website:
   > Death by Monsters is a weekly podcast with Matthew Jude, Nick Murphy and Paula Deming, three friends with very different opinions on monsters, mysteries and the unknown.

5. The Dream
   Frequency: Biweekly?
   Description: Produced for Stitcher, this seasonal series examines various industries. Season 1 examined MLMs, and Season 2 look like it's focused on Wellness. I'm about to bump this to the top of my list.

I listen to a number of other podcasts as well, but these are the ones I wanted to share for this year.

What's up for next year?

One thing I learned from this year is that a reading list goes a long way, so I will put one up soon, and I'm pleased to say that I will be returning to epics for another round of that sweet sweet mythology. If you've followed my reading journeys before, then you will have done so on different websites. For a variety of reasons, I am consolidating all of those posts and all future posts here, in a place that I own and control. So that's another way of saying to watch this space for more details.

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When we come face to face with the inadequacies of HERE and NOW, we tend to yearn for other times and places. For some, the yearning amounts to nostalgia for eras that may not have even existed, the so-called “good old days”. For others, in an attempt to find some escape from the problems of their own city, state, or country, the yearning is for some other country that “gets it right”. For still others, it’s not so much a spatial or temporal pursuit, but instead one of adopting the right thoughts or behaviors in the hope of salvation. But this yearning is, in the case of the spatial and temporal, farcical, because absent from it is a realistic understanding of the problems that the people of these other times and places confronted. In the case of the behavioral and attitudinal, it is merely inadequate.

Leaving a place and coming back is always fraught. Even if the place has been held in perfect stasis, the leaver and the returner are different people, and the magic that the place held is attenuated. Time, of course, is not something we can revisit, and our attempts to cobble the bones of the past onto the present are a misguided inversion. The past is the accreted structure on which the present rests, and either ignoring the past entirely or knocking down the superficial accretions to root around in the bones means that we can never draw actual lessons from the past. Some part of me is absolutely convinced that humans lack the capacity to learn from the past anyway.

All this would be a trite retelling of existing cliches, though, if I were to stick only to the common reading of the idea. I think we can extend the metaphor to encompass a more universal condemnation of our efforts at “progress”, this myth that somehow, if we perform the right series of actions, uncover the right knowledge, and adopt the right attitudes, that we can achieve some lasting, objective moral good in the world. If we are truly capable of this, we have yet to demonstrate it, not only because there is no external arbiter of moral good, but also because we are good at segmenting ourselves from the evils of our ancestors even while we dress their reincarnations in science and practice them anyway.

Let’s put it this way. Every empire is built from the bones and blood of those it conquered, plus the bones and blood of those pressed into service to expand and maintain it. Every beneficiary of that empire is implicated in the actions the empire took to achieve whatever it achieved and to maintain itself. It hardly matters whether a particular citizen stood on a battlefield or personally tore down the home or business of one of the empire’s enemies. Those activities are the grinding gear teeth of the great imperial machine, but the body politic is the mass of the wheels and cogs that turn those teeth.

“My empire is bad,” you (not metaphorically) might say to yourself. “I’ll vote with my feet and leave.” In the Exit, Voice, and Loyalty paradigm, this is the Exit. If you have the resources to flee (and most of us don’t), you may find a place that welcomes you. But fleeing in this way almost guarantees you’ll never be able to return. In this sense I don’t even mean that the place will have changed. Abdication of one’s contingent birthright is a betrayal of the bestower, even if it’s fundamentally absurd to parcel the world into neat borders when no such demarcations exist between neighboring peoples. If you don’t find a place that accepts you, then you may face one of two cruelties: the first is being stateless in a stateful world; and the second is being deported to a country you’ve repudiated by your Exit. When people flee political violence or the fear of it, to deport them back to the place that would enact that violence after their Exit has demonstrated to the State that, in the State’s view, they deserve it is a monstrous cruelty.

In addition to the risk of landing on unwelcoming shores, you risk trading one empire of bone and blood for another. Only this new devil is one you can’t recognize as easily, because it is disguised by language and cultural differences and a history you probably don’t know. This is perhaps the biggest mistake anyone makes in coming to America as an immigrant or simply to work for a time in a diplomatic or international capacity. Nobody can fault them for lacking a grasp of American history, because the history we teach in our own schools has been a fiction since it was written. But where we fail to understand our actual history, we nevertheless live out its implications and can, with some earnest inquiry, learn to see past the spectacle of our schoolhouse propaganda. To become an American is to wear the mantle of guilt that plagues the American experiment and its bipartite sins: slavery and genocide.

Voice is probably the only option left to most of us, and as I suggested above, it is merely inadequate. You can exercise what freedoms are permitted under the system in which you live. Most are a matter of style, not of substance. And if you live anywhere in the West, the majority of it has been packaged and sold to you via the religion of Capitalism. In fact, so insidious is Capitalism that it implicates even the saints and contaminates their virtues.

What is a saint, anyway? For purposes of this argument, I’ll define a saint as someone whose actions can be held to an identifiable virtue, where a virtue is some idea that purports to be an improvement in the material or moral conditions of humans, the world, etc. Saints, in other words, live and act according to what they consider higher standards than others and do so out of a sense that their standards have a measurably positive impact on the world. It hardly matters what particular human activities are virtuous and which practitioners of humanity are saints by this definition. What matters is that their acts of saintliness, no matter how purely motivated, are tainted by their association with the society around them. Since ours is thoroughly infected by Capitalism, theirs are as well.

There is no more poignant example of “you can’t go home/anywhere” than when applied to saints. Saints who arrive at their saintliness via rejection of prevalent attitudes will be rejected in turn if they try to return home, and the taint of Capitalism ensures they can’t go anywhere else either. They are implicated no matter how virtuous.

As an example, let’s take the ideal of veganism. It seems simple enough to parse, right? Don’t consume products that derive from animals. But by consume, do we mean eat? Buy? Use? And what does it mean to derive from animals? Do we mean made of one or more animal parts? Does it matter if they aren’t killed? Do we mean made with the labor of animals? What if animals are incidentally involved? Or used for testing? And does it matter if we couldn’t possibly know? Also, what is a product? Do we count second-hand items, or only newly produced? And what about items that are made from animal parts but are secondary uses or byproducts of the primary uses? Or items derived from animals that are so integral to, say, medicine, that we would die without them? Are there any ethical uses? And where are the lines? Does the intent matter at all?

Many other such virtues are less complex than this, but I picked veganism because it offers a wealth of avenues by which to interrogate our theme. Let’s say you start from a couple of positions that lead down the road to veganism. You might say you want to reduce suffering in the world, and one obvious way to do that is to refrain from killing animals to sustain you. So you remove meat from your diet and eat plants and use plant-based products. But guess what system ruthlessly exploits animals while simultaneously bringing you enough plants to eat? You rely on Capitalism to deliver oranges in the winter, but doing so requires that you rely on it to overcrowd miserable cows, pigs, and chickens while they’re fattened for slaughter. At best you can buy a version of this that provides better living conditions for the condemned animals, but nothing outside of science fiction will deliver them from the fear of the slaughter. Can you accept the stain?

Let’s iterate a bit. You refrain from eating meat, don’t buy leather, and you’ve found a pretty comprehensive set of plant-based replacements for your other daily products. But wait a minute. Do you know how much modern medicine depends on the exploitation of animals? Injectable drugs rely on the antibacterial properties of hemocyanin, sourced by capturing and methodically bleeding horsehoe crabs. And now we have begun to genetically engineer pigs from which we can harvest organs to save human lives. If you ever need injectable drugs or aren’t choosy enough when it comes to an organ transplant, is that okay? Can you accept that stain too?

One more. Many durable substances derive from animals, and we have synthetic variants of most of them. In most cases, those synthetic variants derive from petroleum, the use of which is part of a real, existential threat to humanity, as well as to many other living things. Do we do better to avoid the use of animals here by risking their and our extinction through the use of fossil fuels? Can you accept that stain too?

There is nowhere to go, at least nowhere a human can conceive of and still be human. And by the time you realize it, there won’t be a place to come back to either.

#virtue #ethics #capitalism #vice

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tags: #readinglist #books

(Note: This post was rescued from Medium, where it first appeared. It is here for archival purposes.)

Even though we're almost a month in, there's still plenty of time left in the year to get started reading if you haven't already. And if you need a list, that's what this is for.

The basic list structure contains one series, often a trilogy, each two months. (Edit: I am also spacing out an additional series, James S. A. Corey's The Expanse, over the remaining year.) At the end of the main list, I will offer up the list of books from which I am supplementing this, because the nature of the main list makes for a faster reading pace than I can manage with classics. I will endeavor to write up some thoughts on what I am reading, but I don't want to make promises I can't keep.

December/January

The first series is N.K. Jemisin's The Broken Earth trilogy: * The Fifth Season * The Obelisk Gate * The Stone Sky

Update: I've completed this series as of 1/20/2018.

February/March

Kim Stanley Robinson's Science in the Captial series was collected in an omnibus edition called Green Earth. You may notice a strong environmental thread in this list.

Bonus: Leviathan Wakes by James S. A. Corey

April/May

Cixin Liu's series Remembrance of Earth's Past comprises three volumes, two of which were translated by award-winning author Ken Liu. * The Three-Body Problem * The Dark Forest * Death's End

Bonus: Caliban's War by James S. A. Corey

June/July

The late, great, Terry Pratchett collaborated with Stephen Baxter to produce a five volume series called The Long Earth:

• The Long Earth
• The Long War
• The Long Mars
• The Long Utopia
• The Long Cosmos

Bonus: Abaddon's Gate by James S. A. Corey

August/September

This was originally allotted for Charlie Stross's Empire Games series, but the last volume of this won't be available until January of 2019. I am tentatively replacing this with Octavia E. Butler, either her Xenogenesis series, or Earthseed. I may just do both, since that's 5 volumes, and both series are thematically related to the others in the main list. The other contender is Nnedi Okorafor, who won a Nebula and a Hugo for Binti, the first book in her recently completed trilogy. Assuming I stick with Butler: * Dawn * Adulthood Rites * Imago

And/or: * Parable of the Sower * Parable of the Talents

Bonus: Cibola Burn by James S. A. Corey

October/November

Of the items on this list, Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota is the least familiar to me. * Too Like the Lightning * Seven Surrenders * The Will to Battle

Bonus: Nemesis Games by James S. A. Corey

Ongoing

I'm making my way through War and Peace again, at the pace of a chapter a day; it will take me all year to read it again. Mahabharata is still in my rotation as well.

Supplements

From my list of supplements, I have already begun Watership Down by Richard Adams. I also have Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, The Trial by Franz Kafka, A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr., This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Notes from Underground by Fyodor Dostoevsky, and The Three-Cornered World by Soseki Natsume. These I will pick up as time permits between other readings.

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tags: #reading #books

(Note: This post was rescued from Medium, where it first appeared. It is here for archival purposes.)

My goal for 2017 was to read 12 sacred/epic texts at the pace of one a month. The selection of texts was based on a combination of familiarity with source material and a slight stretch beyond the familiar into stories that, at least for me, were not as familiar. Before I began compiling the list, for instance, I had a good handle on Greek and Roman mythology, as well as some of the Northern European stories. I had not, however, heard of Shahnameh, and I had only tangential awareness of Mahabharata, having read around it, roughly speaking. Similarly, while I knew the major contours of Norse mythology, I had never read any of the Icelandic Sagas, many of which deal more with the day to day live of the Norse and Icelanders than they do with anything divine. Along the way, I had also committed myself to reading War and Peace at the pace of one chapter per day, a pace I am happy to report I have more or less met (I occasionally play catch-up, but am still right on track to finish).

That was the plan, anyway. As all plans are wont to do, this one hit its snags. Some of those snags ended up being time-based, in that some works took me longer than I anticipated. Others were interest-based, in that some of the works turned out to be less interesting than I had anticipated. One work in particular was undone by its toxic undercurrent (discussion below). Before I talk about the failure points for the year, let's take a moment and delve into some of my favorites.

Hands down, my favorite epic read of the year was Shahnameh. The scale and scope of the stories are epic in ways that pointedly defy Homer. While I stand by my main quibbles, I admit they are pretty insignificant overall. What Ferdowsi offered was a national creation myth that traced the lineage of pre-Islamic Iran from the beginning of time through the succeeding generations. The result is a rich tapestry woven together from tales of love and war, rising and falling fortunes, heredity and succession, power and evil, and the dangers of revenge. The stories are endlessly delightful, if ahistorical, and well worth your time.

Mahabharata is currently in second place, but is an easy tie for first. It's only second place now because I am still reading it. It's a tie for first place for the same reason that Shahnameh was a favorite: its scope and scale again provide a rich narrative that, while perhaps lacking in depth of individual character development (possibly the only apology I will offer Homer), marches across generations. And if Mahabharata lacks in character development, I can potentially appeal to its abridgment as a means of explanation: the Critical Edition in its full scholarly heft numbers 19 volumes, which even I must admit is more than I can read in a month. The stories in just the first portion I've read so far offer up topics that are hard to find elsewhere, including a transexual transformation, lots of gods or godlike beings incarnating as humans after being born of humans (sometimes as the result of a curse), powerful yogic magics, and a guy disguising himself as a deer only to curse the hunter (a king) who shot and killed him. I know that, buried in this abridgment, there are lessons and morals, but I can't yet get past the action.

New Reads

This year I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, Aeneid, The Prose Edda, and The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale (still reading, in fact). These I had not read before. Each has something to recommend it, and while I was transfixed by Gilgamesh's quest for immortality and Aeneas's many sorrows, I find my interests drawn toward the stories in The Saga of the People of Laxardal and Bolli Bollason's Tale. Prosaic is an apt, if understated, descriptor. What we get in Laxardal are the day to day accounts of the people of a particular part of Iceland, a valley that appears to be on the West coast, if Google Maps is any indication. And yet this saga is no less important in terms of national character than the other two national epics on my list, Shahnameh and Mahabharata. It establishes the similitude of Icelandic lords and ladies with those of other lands, and describes Icelandic laws and customs in terms of property, trade, inheritance, marriage, divorce, and even raiding and vengeance. It is a fascinating set of stories.

Rereads

Among this year's selection were some works I had already read, in full or in part, such as The Iliad, The Odyssey, and Beowulf. In light of the project, these offered up a few new insights, but didn't sparkle as much, even though I came to appreciate the elegiac elegance of Beowulf. I hope to seek out a few other translations of this work in particular to see what else I can glean. Misses

A combination of factors caused me to push Mabinogion off the list, so it will remain only partially read for now.

The only work I consciously put down was Metamorphoses. It's not Ovid's fault that the stories he had collected detailed the acts of rapacious monsters. Or maybe it is, in that way that societies are vaguely complicit in the worst sins of their members. When there are so many stories today of sexual assaults, I'm not sure claims of historical value are capable of outweighing their presence in an ancient work, especially not in the quantity with which they occur. I absolutely understand that Jupiter was pretty much known for this behavior, but the stories themselves treat it with a casual dismissal, and I decided there were probably better things to read.

Now, I suppose I am guilty of judging ancestors on modern terms, but in looking at other works that are as old or older, divine rape isn't exactly a normal feature. These characters were particularly fond of the act when their contemporaries seemed, at least in their official narratives, to avoid it. The one thing I will say about this comparison, however, is that I am well aware that dynamics of sex and power in the ancient world intersected in complicated ways that largely favored the men, and ancient epics are indeed full of misogynies. That said, only in the Greek and Roman mythologies do we find rape itself as an instrument expressly communicated in words.

Other Books

I only took on a few supplemental books this year: * Shadow & Claw (The Book of the New Sun #1–2) by Gene Wolfe * Sword & Citadel (The Book of the New Sun #3–4) by Gene Wolfe * Wonder by R.J. Palacio * Body Horror: Capitalism, Fear, Misogyny, Jokes by Anne Elizabeth Moore

2018

What's in store for next year? So far the plan is to return to modern works, with a heavy emphasis on science fiction. Lined up are: * The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin * Green Earth by Kim Stanley Robinson * Remembrance of Earth's Past (trilogy) by Cixin Liu, Ken Liu, and Joel Martinsen * Long Earth (5 books) by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter * 2/3 of the Empire Games set by Charlie Stross * Terra Ignota (trilogy) by Ada Palmer

There's also my growing slush pile and a load of books I have on various wishlists. Some of them I may even get to.

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tags: #History #Literature #Books #Aeneid #Rome

---

I mentioned in my last post that Aeneid was more visibly self-conscious than Iliad or Odyssey, suggesting that it was the distance afforded by time that was at the root of this. Insofar as there is any regional psychology of the Trojan War, it is only as distilled by Homer and, later, by Virgil. While we have a scholar-backed view of the historicity of the city itself, it is unclear if there was any singular event that could be considered THE Trojan War. It is just as likely that, as often happens in the process of mythology, a number of separate events conflated to become the myth, and the separate events themselves faded in importance. In this way, the psychological impact of the war is the folding and weaving of unrelated histories and extant myths into a coherent myth, and therefore entering the burgeoning national consciousness of the early Greek people. But if Homer’s goal was to elaborate a founding myth, such narrative appears absent from his works.

Contrast with Virgil. From the beginning, we get a sense of Aeneas’s destiny to plant the seeds that would flourish into the Roman Empire. Virgil, in fact, is quite heavy-handed in this, layering prophecy and foreshadowing in order to remind the reader at every turn. By the time Virgil was writing, some eight centuries separated his own treatment of the fall of Troy from Homer’s, whereas Homer was separated from his subject by half the time. In human historical terms, a thousand years is a long time. It is a long time in which to study and internalize the myths of others, and it is certainly long enough to carefully construct narratives that serve as exuberantly self-conscious foundation myths.

Beyond layers of prophecy foretelling Aeneas’s destiny, Virgil is a shameless name-dropper. Homer’s Aeneas is but a minor character, rating a mention nonetheless. True, in Greek mythology, he was known to be the son born of the liaison between Anchises and Aphrodite, but Homer hardly dwelt on this fact. Whether there were already prevalent post-Troy biographical accounts of Aeneas prior to Virgil’s treatment of him doesn’t seem to be known, but even if there were, it is Virgil’s work that most defines the character of Aeneas. We are left, then, with a question of why Virgil chose Aeneas to carry the seeds of Rome’s founding, but whatever the questions of provenance, Virgil seeks quickly to establish the credibility of his minted hero by associating him with other well-known people. The most prominent of these is Ulysses (whom the Greeks called Odysseus).

Spoiler: we don’t meet the man of constant sorrow in Aeneid. Instead, we meet one of his luckless mates left behind during Ulysses’s flight from the island of the Cyclops. We’re led to believe that Ulysses has only departed recently, as the blinded Polyphemus has not fully healed from the dreadful wound that ended up enraging Neptune and preventing Ulysses’s return home. With this stroke, Virgil has demonstrated that Aeneas is not only following in the footsteps of Ulysses, but that by the end of his journeys, he will have endured his own odyssey, even if the particular trials end up being different. This, by the way, is only Aeneas’s recounting of the journey that landed him on the Libyan coast to be sheltered by Dido and the Carthaginians.

I think Virgil is setting us up to accept a whole new breed of suffering wanderer. And you know what? Aeneas’s tale, the story of the man who lost before planting the seeds of victory over his enemies, is in many ways far more sympathetic than the tale of the man who won but then just got lost on the way home.

I posted an edited version of this quote on Facebook, channeling its Fitzgeraldian flavor, but here it is more apt in its full length and captures Aeneas’s plight:

Breakneck on, impelled by the sharp edge of fear, we shake our sheets out, spread our sails to the wind, wherever it may blow.

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tags: #History #Literature #Books #Aeneid #Rome

The Aeneid

Not only did I end up delaying my reading of The Aeneid by a month, I have also fallen behind on creating the entry for it. As of today, I have finally made it through the first book, in which Aeneas and his crew, having fled the ruins of Troy, alight on the Libyan coast in search of refuge from the ever-jealous gods who thwart their safe passage to Italy, their destination. Queen Dido of Carthage takes them in and shelters them, at least for a time.

Before venturing forth, Aeneas will spend half the book detailing the fall of Troy and his wanderings since then. It is worth noting that the episode people think they remember most from the previous works, that of the Trojan Horse, is given much fuller account here than it was in The Odyssey (although Homer did mention it briefly).

Stylistically, there are some radical departures from the previous texts, which is natural considering the provenance of this text. The switch from Greek names to Roman ones is the most immediately noticeable feature, but this is just a matter of remapping names. Far more jarring, at least for me, is the constant switching of verb tenses, from past to present. While no such instances stand out from my readings of The Iliad, The Odyssey contained some interesting verb constructions, but ONLY in reference to Eumaeus the swine-herd: here, Homer switched from third person to second person, referring to Eumaeus as “you”. But Virgil, at least as translated by Fagles, seems to take a liberal view of verb tenses, freely mixing past and present forms. It is curious and, as I said, a bit jarring.

The other immediate contrast is that, whereas I saw little self-consciousness in Homer, Virgil is aggressively so, playing up early the mythos of Aeneas as destined founder of the Roman people. We get a sense from the beginning that this is a founding myth and not merely a narrative. By the time Virgil was writing, more than a thousand years had passed since the war itself and 800 years since authoring of The Iliad and The Odyssey. This is more than enough time for both works to have gained significance in the national psychology of the city-states comprising eventual Greece, and Virgil is clearly imitating this, but at a much farther remove.

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

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tags: #History #Literature #Books #Odyssey #Greece

The Odyssey + Midyear Check-in

It took me two months to finish The Odyssey. In terms of pacing and story development, I found the story of Odysseus’s journey home to compare quite favorably to modern novels. In fact, this was something I noticed early on, when Homer introduced numerous scene changes to account for parallel events. True, we can see this in The Iliad to some degree, but the tight focus on Troy and its immediate surrounds didn’t convey the same sense to me.

The Odyssey offers a complex interplay of vices and virtues, as well as an interesting view into the proto-Greek society which it ostensibly chronicles. Whereas The Iliad expounds on military virtues, funerary practices, and the like, in The Odyssey we get a picture of domestic life in parts of Ancient Greece, including marriage customs. For instance, it is clear from the outset that Penelope has, and is expected to have, little agency except within the household. The suitors are there to lay claim to the treasures of Odysseus, of which she is merely the gateway. They couch this desire, of course, in terms of her desirability as a wife, but I think that’s beside the point.

Penelope’s chastity stands in contrast today against Odysseus’s lack of it. That men were not held to the same standards as women in Homer’s age is likewise clear, and therefore the ancient listener would have merely praised Penelope for her virtue, but not condemned Odysseus for his vice. Else why explain the lure of Calypso to remove his sense of responsibility? Moving on to less clear grounds, we have a group of suitors, seeking to gain Odysseus’s treasure by way of marriage to his presumed widow. Their behavior was portrayed as shameful, and yet the inhabitants of Ithaca somehow tolerated this. I don’t know what to make of that, really. Odysseus and Telemachus got their revenge on the suitors, but in so doing nearly caused additional strife, avoided only by the intervention of Athena’s call for peace (after she frightened the Ithacans). So in this case we have vice paid with vice, as it seems Odysseus did not have an automatic right to slaughter the entire group of suitors. Again, this is ambiguous to me, and I don’t consider this a bad thing.

—

I thought I would also take a moment to talk about my progress for the year. At the beginning of the year, I set out to read 12 sacred/epic works. I should have been completing my sixth this month, but instead have only completed five. This means an adjustment is in order.

There are two options, really.

1. Double up on reading to fit the remaining 7 entries into the next six months.

2. Bump a reading from the list.

I have a particular reason for choosing the second option. The reason has to do with the particular entry that I plan to bump, and where it’s going. Since this year is a mix of sacred and epic, I thought perhaps I would continue with sacred-only reading next year. Therefore I am thinking of bumping the last entry to next year and finishing 2017 with only 11 entries. This is not firmly established since, if it turns out I can catch up, I will do that. Nor would catching up preclude me from pursuing an all-sacred reading list next year.

So, perhaps, let this stand as an initial call for sacred texts to read. I am interested in anything canonical or semi-canonical in Buddhism, as well as good English translations of the Zend Avesta. The total number of works needs to be divisible into 12 months of reading, but otherwise there are no real restrictions.

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

++++ Like what you just read? You can subscribe to new posts on this blog via any ActivityPub platform (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) at @aaron@www.aaronhelton.com or via RSS at https://www.aaronhelton.com/feed

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tags: #History #Literature #Books #Odyssey #Greece

Or, Poseidon vs Odysseus

Homer, Odyssey manuscript. Date: 3rd quarter of the 15th century. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Odyssey-crop.jpg (Public Domain)

I’ve dedicated May to The Odyssey which, in contrast to The Iliad, is not a strict re-read for me. That’s not to say I am unfamiliar with the material, only to say that I’ve never actually read the epic cover to cover before. Despite my late posting, I am in fact reading the work, which concerns ill-fated Odysseus and his very long journey home. The Iliad has some wonderful scenes, but the scope of the story is so limited that I don’t enjoy it nearly as much as other entries on this year’s reading list. For instance, Shahnameh was chock full of terrific episodes made all the better by their freshness to me. The Odyssey is not so fresh, of course, but it does contain numerous episodes that likewise delight, and I am looking forward to it more than its prequel.

Whereas The Iliad in large part concerned itself with the consequences of Achilles’s abstention from battle, stemming from his rage against what he perceived as injustice committed against him by Agamemnon, The Odyssey concerns the fate of a man who has drawn the ire of a god. Odysseus’s greatest crime was his hubris, which directly led to the events for which Poseidon sought vengeance on him, thwarting his passage home for 10 years.

As with The Iliad, I am reading the Fagles translation. I hope this epic is more fruitful for me than the previous.

Note: This is part of a series of posts dealing with the reading of one sacred/epic work per month in 2017. See below for more information on what I’m doing and how to follow along.

2017 Sacer-Epic Reading Journey

++++ Like what you just read? You can subscribe to new posts on this blog via any ActivityPub platform (Mastodon, Pleroma, etc.) at @aaron@www.aaronhelton.com or via RSS at https://www.aaronhelton.com/feed

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tags: #Iliad #Beowulf #Books #Literature

A Confluence of Funerary Practices

By Bermicourt — Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37502478

Separated by more than a thousand years and at least as many miles, two authors in vastly different cultures nevertheless described strikingly similar treatments for their heroic dead. The earliest of the two appears in Book 7 of The Iliad, where Hector is issuing his challenge for single combat to the Achaeans.

“But if I kill him and Apollo grants me glory,
I’ll strip his gear and haul it back to sacred Troy
and hang it high on the deadly Archer’s temple walls.
But not his body: I’ll hand it back to the decked ships,
so the long-haired Achaeans can give him full rites
and heap his barrow high by the Hellespont.
And some day one will say, one of the men to come,
steering his oar-swept ship across the wine-dark sea,
‘There’s the mound of a man who died in the old days,
one of the brave whom glorious Hector killed.’
So they will say, someday, and my fame will never die.”

Compare with Beowulf’s deathbed instructions and note the distinct similarities.

“Order my troop to construct a barrow
on a headland on the coast, after my pyre has cooled.
It will loom on the horizon at Hronesness
and be a reminder among my people —
so that in coming times crews under sail
will call it Beowulf’s Barrow, as they steer
ships across the wide and shrouded waters.”

I have little to offer in the way of commentary here. Both accounts must be products of militaristic sea-faring cultures who also burn their dead before burial, and the intent, though directed quite differently and provided in different contexts, is to honor fallen heroes. That the details between the two match so precisely is of mild curiosity to me.

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