The first event of Seattle Reads Persepolis with Marjane Satrapi was tonight at the Lake City Branch of the Seattle Public Library.
Yours Truly trundled up north with a sketchpad, prepared to make a patented Crappy Drawing (tm). But even twenty minutes before the event began, the room was packed to the gills. Standing room only. MORE than standing room only, standing room only plus people sticking their heads in the windows. The sign posted said the room was legal for 55 people; there were probably twice that many crammed inside and as many outside as well.
I had a good spot right outside the door due to my early arrival. But first some horrible woman squeezed in front of me and got in my way. Then Satrapi started to read. She was sitting down, so I couldn't see her at all, and the gain on her mike was very low, so she was inaudible. I left. I bet she sells a lot of books, it was quite a crowd!
It was not very good planning to put her in such a small room for her first event in the area. I just hope nobody pulled the fire alarm.
I'll catch her at one of the later events - maybe one with a larger venue like Town Hall.
Great Book: Oedipus the King, by Sophocles
And now, for the rest of the Oedipus story.
Oedipus is now known to most modern readers through Freud's Oedipus Complex, "a male child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother. This desire includes jealousy towards the father and the unconscious wish for that parent's death.". Colloquially it's most often used in a salacious context to indicate sexual desire for a parent.
Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. But he didn't do it on purpose. Perhaps that makes the use of his name in this context, for those unacknowledged shameful drives, even more appropriate. As a youth Oedipus was told he would kill his father and marry his mother; horrified, he fled his home and his adoptive parents. On the road he encountered Laius, his father, and slew him after an argument. Proceeding to Thebes, he saved the city from the Sphinx and was rewarded with the hand in marriage of the recently widowed Queen, Jocasta - his mother.
The first play of Sophocles tells the story of the discovery (the big REVEAL!) of this sin. Oedipus' ignorance is played to the extreme. He doesn't know that he was adopted, he doesn't know that the man he killed on the road was the king of Thebes, and he doesn't know that he's the biological child of his Jocasta and Laius.
When the play opens, Thebes has been struck by a plague. An oracle tells Oedipus that the citry is being punished because the murderer of Laius has not been brought to justice. Oedipus, silly fool, promises loudly that the evildoer will be found and punished. He has opportunities to take the hint and drop the whole thing, but he just has to keep asking questions. Let the snowball begin!
First he realizes that he is the murderer. Then he finds out that he was adopted. THEN he finds out that he is the baby boy that was supposed to be exposed by that shepherd - the son of Laius and Jocasta. Woops, he actually DID murder his father and marry his wife. Then Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus puts out his eyes with her jewelry. The end.
He didn't know. He didn't know! Oedipus didn't mean for this to happen. He left home because he was trying to prevent it. But his path was set, and there was nothing he could do to avoid his fate.
Although we're less likely to marry our mothers these days, family curses are still around. Children act out their parents' sins, abusers abuse in their turn and the cycle continues. And huge weight, dragging each generation down.
So where did it start? I knew there had to be a reason. Who earned the curse for Thebes?
Laius, Oedipus' murdered father. He was famous in anitquity for raping his (male) student, Chrysippus. As punishment, the gods sent the Sphinx to Thebes and forbade him to have children.
Laius disobeyed the command in a drunken stupor and thus Oedipus was born. Given the discalimer 'in a drunken stupor', and Jocasta's age (probably early teens, if she was young enough to bear Oedipus four children later?), I assume this was another rape. After consulting an oracle, Laius ordered the infant exposed in the woods to die.
So rape is the crime that Oedipus is working under. He was probably conceived in rape and his father was a famous rapist.
Poor guy never had a chance.
Oedipus is now known to most modern readers through Freud's Oedipus Complex, "a male child's unconscious desire for the exclusive love of his mother. This desire includes jealousy towards the father and the unconscious wish for that parent's death.". Colloquially it's most often used in a salacious context to indicate sexual desire for a parent.
Oedipus killed his father and married his mother. But he didn't do it on purpose. Perhaps that makes the use of his name in this context, for those unacknowledged shameful drives, even more appropriate. As a youth Oedipus was told he would kill his father and marry his mother; horrified, he fled his home and his adoptive parents. On the road he encountered Laius, his father, and slew him after an argument. Proceeding to Thebes, he saved the city from the Sphinx and was rewarded with the hand in marriage of the recently widowed Queen, Jocasta - his mother.
The first play of Sophocles tells the story of the discovery (the big REVEAL!) of this sin. Oedipus' ignorance is played to the extreme. He doesn't know that he was adopted, he doesn't know that the man he killed on the road was the king of Thebes, and he doesn't know that he's the biological child of his Jocasta and Laius.
When the play opens, Thebes has been struck by a plague. An oracle tells Oedipus that the citry is being punished because the murderer of Laius has not been brought to justice. Oedipus, silly fool, promises loudly that the evildoer will be found and punished. He has opportunities to take the hint and drop the whole thing, but he just has to keep asking questions. Let the snowball begin!
First he realizes that he is the murderer. Then he finds out that he was adopted. THEN he finds out that he is the baby boy that was supposed to be exposed by that shepherd - the son of Laius and Jocasta. Woops, he actually DID murder his father and marry his wife. Then Jocasta hangs herself and Oedipus puts out his eyes with her jewelry. The end.
He didn't know. He didn't know! Oedipus didn't mean for this to happen. He left home because he was trying to prevent it. But his path was set, and there was nothing he could do to avoid his fate.
Although we're less likely to marry our mothers these days, family curses are still around. Children act out their parents' sins, abusers abuse in their turn and the cycle continues. And huge weight, dragging each generation down.
So where did it start? I knew there had to be a reason. Who earned the curse for Thebes?
Laius, Oedipus' murdered father. He was famous in anitquity for raping his (male) student, Chrysippus. As punishment, the gods sent the Sphinx to Thebes and forbade him to have children.
Laius disobeyed the command in a drunken stupor and thus Oedipus was born. Given the discalimer 'in a drunken stupor', and Jocasta's age (probably early teens, if she was young enough to bear Oedipus four children later?), I assume this was another rape. After consulting an oracle, Laius ordered the infant exposed in the woods to die.
So rape is the crime that Oedipus is working under. He was probably conceived in rape and his father was a famous rapist.
Poor guy never had a chance.
Last Chance to vote.....
Today is your last chance to vote for the best American work of fiction published in the past 25 years.
Tomorrow I will start counting the votes.
Tomorrow I will start counting the votes.
Great Book: Antigone, by Jean Anouilh
This week is Greek Week and we are reviewing Sophocles' Oedipus plays, and Jean Anouilh's Antigone. And by we I am I.
Unlike March's Aristophanes trilogy, these are not funny and there are no crab people and they will probably never be adapted by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
To begin: Antigone, by Jean Anouilh. I read this in the original French in high school. I can see why my teacher selected it. It's got nice clean language, and Antigone's impassioned rejection of Creon's strictures is exactly the kind of teen rebellion we should have gone for. From what I remember we just thought she was stupid. The revolutionary spirit was long dead by 1992!
What I am wondering, after reading the introduction to this translation, was why my French teacher, a French native who was seventy years old if she was a day, never mentioned that this play was originally produced during the German occupation of France and was really about Hitler. What was she thinking? Did she think we wouldn't care?
Maybe she was right. Maybe we wouldn't have cared.
Anouilh's Antigone is a re-telling of the last of Sophocle's trilogy dealing with the royal family of Thebes and deals with only a thin slice of the Oedipal story.
Digression: I once filed papers for a very large company that had an employee whose first name was Antigone.
Antigone is a teenager. She's one of the children of the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta, who are dead. Her two brothers are also dead. They killed each other instead of themselves which made for a nice change (killing each other or suicide being the two alternatives for members of this family) except that in the process they waged a really long war and got a lot of people killed.
Since everyone else was dead, Antigone's uncle Creon took the throne. He's got a son, Haemon, and a wife, Eurydice (but not the same chick who Orpheus crushed on, and they thought there wasn't enough intermarriage in the family so Haemon is engaged to marry Antigone, who is both his first cousin and his cousin once removed.
Antigone opens shortly after peace has been restored to Thebes. Creon has buried one of his nephews, but ordered that the body of the other be left outside the city walls to rot.
This is bad. Why? Well, here's another thing my high school French teach didn't bother explaining. If you're not buried properly, your spirit doesn't go to the underworld, but wanders around unhappy and lost forever.
Antigone, who loved her brother even if he was a total jerk, decides that Creon must be defied, as he is breaking the laws of the gods! She sneaks out and says the magic words over her brother's body and scatters dirt on his body.
She is caught, of course. But she has no regrets, will not bow her head to an illegal authority, etc. Creon says 'fine, then' and has her buried alive (I love those ancient Greeks). He changes his mind at the last minute, but it's too late. She's killed herself. Then Haemon kills himself. Then Eurydice kills herself. If Creon was any kind of sensitive individual he'd kill himself, too, or at least gouge his eyes out, but he's got to be the grown-up around Thebes once again, SOMEONE has to run the city, so he just continues to live his sterile, loveless life.
Creon tries to convince Antigone that her brother was not worth sacrificing herself for, but she rejects this reasoning; her rebellion is not on behalf of Polyneice. So why? She seems to rebelling for the sake of rebellion alone.
Her theme song would by 'My Generation' by the Who. She's intent on dying before she gets old.
Unlike March's Aristophanes trilogy, these are not funny and there are no crab people and they will probably never be adapted by Matt Stone and Trey Parker.
To begin: Antigone, by Jean Anouilh. I read this in the original French in high school. I can see why my teacher selected it. It's got nice clean language, and Antigone's impassioned rejection of Creon's strictures is exactly the kind of teen rebellion we should have gone for. From what I remember we just thought she was stupid. The revolutionary spirit was long dead by 1992!
What I am wondering, after reading the introduction to this translation, was why my French teacher, a French native who was seventy years old if she was a day, never mentioned that this play was originally produced during the German occupation of France and was really about Hitler. What was she thinking? Did she think we wouldn't care?
Maybe she was right. Maybe we wouldn't have cared.
Anouilh's Antigone is a re-telling of the last of Sophocle's trilogy dealing with the royal family of Thebes and deals with only a thin slice of the Oedipal story.
Digression: I once filed papers for a very large company that had an employee whose first name was Antigone.
Antigone is a teenager. She's one of the children of the incestuous marriage of Oedipus and Jocasta, who are dead. Her two brothers are also dead. They killed each other instead of themselves which made for a nice change (killing each other or suicide being the two alternatives for members of this family) except that in the process they waged a really long war and got a lot of people killed.
Since everyone else was dead, Antigone's uncle Creon took the throne. He's got a son, Haemon, and a wife, Eurydice (but not the same chick who Orpheus crushed on, and they thought there wasn't enough intermarriage in the family so Haemon is engaged to marry Antigone, who is both his first cousin and his cousin once removed.
Antigone opens shortly after peace has been restored to Thebes. Creon has buried one of his nephews, but ordered that the body of the other be left outside the city walls to rot.
This is bad. Why? Well, here's another thing my high school French teach didn't bother explaining. If you're not buried properly, your spirit doesn't go to the underworld, but wanders around unhappy and lost forever.
Antigone, who loved her brother even if he was a total jerk, decides that Creon must be defied, as he is breaking the laws of the gods! She sneaks out and says the magic words over her brother's body and scatters dirt on his body.
She is caught, of course. But she has no regrets, will not bow her head to an illegal authority, etc. Creon says 'fine, then' and has her buried alive (I love those ancient Greeks). He changes his mind at the last minute, but it's too late. She's killed herself. Then Haemon kills himself. Then Eurydice kills herself. If Creon was any kind of sensitive individual he'd kill himself, too, or at least gouge his eyes out, but he's got to be the grown-up around Thebes once again, SOMEONE has to run the city, so he just continues to live his sterile, loveless life.
Creon tries to convince Antigone that her brother was not worth sacrificing herself for, but she rejects this reasoning; her rebellion is not on behalf of Polyneice. So why? She seems to rebelling for the sake of rebellion alone.
Her theme song would by 'My Generation' by the Who. She's intent on dying before she gets old.
Reading Journal Entry: Wild Robert, by Diana Wynne Jones
OK, we round off Diana Wynne Jones week with one last YA fantasy novel, Wild Robert. This one is quite a bit shorter than her usual works, and aimed at younger readers. THe main character is Heather, who lives in a castle that's a tourist attraction. And she hates tourists. So she asks the local ghost to take care of them and gets more than she bargained for.
Robert was buried 350 years ago and thinks the castle belongs to him now. And he can do lots of fun magical stuff like turn rowdy teenagers into nymphs and satyrs, and turn annoying tourists into sheep, and magic the portraits down from the walls. Heather spends a whole day trying to keep him away from her parents and then - and then that's the end of the book. Rather unsatisfying, really.
And there weren't any murderous relatives at all! Except for all of Robert's relatives, who tried to kill him, but they all stayed off-stage, so they don't really count.
Next week we'll deal with lots more murdering relatives - Anouilh's Antigone goes up against Sophocles' Antigone, with more! more! MORE! violence and suicide from the ruling family of Thebes!
Robert was buried 350 years ago and thinks the castle belongs to him now. And he can do lots of fun magical stuff like turn rowdy teenagers into nymphs and satyrs, and turn annoying tourists into sheep, and magic the portraits down from the walls. Heather spends a whole day trying to keep him away from her parents and then - and then that's the end of the book. Rather unsatisfying, really.
And there weren't any murderous relatives at all! Except for all of Robert's relatives, who tried to kill him, but they all stayed off-stage, so they don't really count.
Next week we'll deal with lots more murdering relatives - Anouilh's Antigone goes up against Sophocles' Antigone, with more! more! MORE! violence and suicide from the ruling family of Thebes!
Reading Journal Entry: Unexpected Magic, by Diana Wynne Jones
A collection of short stories and a novella by the Divine DWJ. Most are short, fun shots - more grounded to the real world than her longer fantasy fare. Some personal moments as well. I enjoyed the novella, Everard's Ride, very much, but I really expected something more from the resolution.
Very few murderous relatives in this one. Plenty of cousins, I mean, but not so much members of the immediate family.
If I had kids, I would probably buy this. It's a hefty volume, and the number of stories makes it well worth cover price.
Very few murderous relatives in this one. Plenty of cousins, I mean, but not so much members of the immediate family.
If I had kids, I would probably buy this. It's a hefty volume, and the number of stories makes it well worth cover price.
Reading Journal Entry: Drowned Ammet, by Diana Wynne Jones
Drowned Ammet is the direct prequel to The Crown of Dalemark, which I won't be reviewing this week. It was the first of the Dalemark books that I read, and I disagree strongly with the reviewer from the School Library Journal who deems it 'unlikely that those who haven't read the first three books in the series will be willing to unravel the labyrinthine plot.' I didn't even realize there was a previous book untiel recently.
But that's not the book we're talking about. In Drowned Ammet, we meet three young kids growing up in Holand; Mitt, the son of a farmer, and Hildi and Ynen, members of the ruling family. Holand is in the south of Dalemark, which means that it is ruled by an iron first! In this case the iron fist supplies some, but not all, of the requisite homicidal family members. Mitt becomes involved with a revolutionary group, Hildi is engaged against her will to a foreign prince, and the
real trouble starts when the Count is murdered by someone else entirely.
Who is Drowned Ammet? Ammet is a local god who is trhown into the bay each year. He's very helpful.
It's a fun book, but I didn't find the way Mitt's family woes resolve themselves to be particularly realistic.... seemed a bit over the top, to be honest.
But that's not the book we're talking about. In Drowned Ammet, we meet three young kids growing up in Holand; Mitt, the son of a farmer, and Hildi and Ynen, members of the ruling family. Holand is in the south of Dalemark, which means that it is ruled by an iron first! In this case the iron fist supplies some, but not all, of the requisite homicidal family members. Mitt becomes involved with a revolutionary group, Hildi is engaged against her will to a foreign prince, and the
real trouble starts when the Count is murdered by someone else entirely.
Who is Drowned Ammet? Ammet is a local god who is trhown into the bay each year. He's very helpful.
It's a fun book, but I didn't find the way Mitt's family woes resolve themselves to be particularly realistic.... seemed a bit over the top, to be honest.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
