Travel DAYS: Sunday, July 2 – Tuesday, July 4
The flight from LA to Dubai went across Greenland and produced memorable views like this one:
The flight on Emirates was among the best I’ve ever had. In addition to tons of new movies, TV shows, and albums, they also had some classics, so I thought it appropriate to rewatch given that we’ll be there in a few weeks:
I picked up my first Thomas Pynchon novel on Saturday, , for the plane rides, primarily because I liked the and have been studying the genre (LA Detective mystery ala ):
Fool’s Assassin by Robin Hobb
The Pawn by Steven James
Lockwood and Co. by Jonathan Stroud
The Neddiad
Stephanie Palmer over at 
Under the Dome
The Sacrifice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
: by Lloyd Alexander
How could free people willingly subject themselves to a monstrous tyranny? That’s the question Swiss author 
Biedermann’s bluster falls flat, however, when a homeless former heavyweight wrestler named Josef Schmitz politely forces his way into Biedermann’s house and asks permission to spend the night. Even though Biedermann has just read a newspaper article stating that the arsonists’ MO always begins this way, he’s too terrified that Schmitz will hurt him—or worse, think ill of him—to throw Schmitz out or call the police. Schmitz even gets material for emotional blackmail when the inventor asks to see Biedermann and Biedermann tells him either to sue or to kill himself. Using a mixture of sentimentality, flattery, and appeal for trust, Schmitz manipulates Biedermann into letting him sleep in the attic and hiding the fact from Babette.
The local fire department serves throughout the play as a chorus, commenting on the action and even breaking with classical convention to speak directly to Biedermann and warn him of his danger. Despite the ominous tone of their contributions, however, their point is that the entirely foreseeable end of the play is also entirely evitable. Even when Biedermann has to admit his suspicions to himself and to the audience, he clings to the desperate false hope that if he just stays on the firebugs’ good side, they’ll spare him. But then he turns the tables on the audience at the end of his soliloquy by asking, “What would you have done, dammitall, if you were in my place? And when?”
An adequate summary of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s is far beyond the scope of this post. There are too many 
Already fighting a fever and crippled with guilt over seeing the logical, practical consequences of his philosophy, Ivan suffers a major psychotic break. Alyosha nurses him through the night, but when Ivan finally appears at Dmitri’s trial the next day, he’s so incoherent that even his revelations of the truth are dismissed out of hand. Without another witness to confirm any of what Ivan says, the peasant jury convicts Dmitri, and the judge sentences him to twenty years in Siberia. Ivan has already arranged for Dmitri to escape to America, and he tells Alyosha he could never kill himself; but his repentance has come too late and at the cost of his health and sanity.
Akira Kurosawa’s 
Caponsacchi denied it. The court sent Pompilia to a convent in Rome until her health failed a few months later, then allowed her to return to the Comparinis’ house. By December, however, the reason for Pompilia’s flight and breakdown became clear: she was pregnant. The Comparinis arranged for friends to hide the baby, fearing Guido’s reaction. And on the night of January 2, 1698, Guido and three accomplices broke into the Comparini villa, killed the Comparinis, and fatally wounded Pompilia. The attackers were arrested later that night, caught literally red-handed.
The climax of the poem is Book X, in which the Pope reviews the case. He admits that none of these narrators are reliable, but their testimony has revealed enough about their character for him to discern the truth. Thus, he acquits Pompilia of infidelity, praises Caponsacchi for his courage, and denounces everyone who failed to help Pompilia. He then confirms Guido’s death sentence because he sees no other way for Guido to understand his soul’s peril and repent. And in Book XI, once Guido’s alone with the friendly priests who’ve come to hear his last confession, his mask comes off, revealing the unrepentant sadistic psychopath beneath. Not only does Guido renounce his faith and confess to having hated Pompilia all along, he even rages against the idea of his son supplanting him.
But let’s focus on books. That’s what lately.
3 – Are you willing to invest your own money? True, Amazon charges you nothing for putting your book up for sale. But unless you’re also a talented graphic designer who also possesses the rare skill of being able to objectively edit your own work, you’re going to need to engage the professional services of freelancers. Be ready to shell out hundreds of dollars for editing, and at least another hundred (probably more) for a quality cover. And then you’ll probably want to set aside some money for marketing, too.
This plot sounds like it’s ripped from the headlines, and it could have been—twelve centuries ago. The rampaging enemy in this case is the Viking horde, and the story itself is 
Malone’s 
Tolkien defines human creativity as sub-creation. Only God can create something from nothing, and Tolkien calls the world God created the Primary World. Yet humans, made in God’s image, have the right to use our sub-creative powers, defined as Art, to form Secondary Worlds from the material we find in the Primary World. Here Tolkien quotes from his poem “Mythopoeia,” which appears in full in recent editions of Tree and Leaf. Written for C. S. Lewis shortly after the famous conversation on Addison’s Walk in 1931, “Mythopoeia” attacks Lewis’ assertion at the time that myths are “lies breathed through silver.” Tolkien counters not only that myth is a vehicle for truth but also that myth-making is a human right—“we make still by the law in which we’re made.” And “Leaf by Niggle,” Tolkien’s only deliberate allegory, celebrates the idea that God may someday grant us the great gift of seeing our Secondary Worlds given primary reality.
Fantasy is the most difficult genre, in Tolkien’s view, because it’s characterized by “arresting strangeness” and is vastly different from the Primary World. Yet that’s also what makes fantasy worthwhile and is a consolation in itself. It carries with it Recovery, not just renewed perspective but renewed mental and spiritual health from “regaining a clear view… ‘seeing things as we are (or were) meant to see them.’” Fantasy also allows Escape, not from reality as a whole, but from the elements that stifle our spiritual health and growth, and thus can offer the consolation of satisfied desire. Best of all is the Consolation of the Happy Ending, the good turn Tolkien calls eucatastrophe: