Now that you have dutifully purchased Dover Beach at its amazingly low price of $0.99, you will want to also purchase my friend Craig Shaw Gardner’s new funny fantasy novel Temporary Monsters. If you are wondering whether this novel is worth the $4.27 that Penguin Group (USA) LLC is charging for it, I have just three words for you: Bob the Horse. Bob the Horse is perhaps the most irritatingly comic character ever invented.
Here is the clever cover:
That would be the second movement of Beethoven’s piano sonata Opus 111 — the final movement of his 32nd and final piano sonata. Here is what a couple of pianists say about it:
The pianist Robert Taub has called it “a work of unmatched drama and transcendence … the triumph of order over chaos, of optimism over anguish.” Alfred Brendel commented of the second movement that “what is to be expressed here is distilled experience” and “perhaps nowhere else in piano literature does mystical experience feel so immediately close at hand”.
Andras Schiff, in his lectures on the Beethoven piano sonatas, finally runs out of words (acceptance, forgiveness) to describe the last few minutes of the sonata, and can only play the music. At some point after the first few variations in the final movement, the music takes off into another realm of spirit and meaning, leaving language behind.
Perhaps the most moving piano recital I ever attended was Rudolf Serkin late in life playing Beethoven’s Opus 109, 110, and 111 at Symphony Hall. He played the 111 after the intermission, and that was it. No encores. Just 25 or so minutes of music — after the arietta, there was nothing left to say.
Here is Claudio Arrau playing the sonata in Bonn in 1977, when he was over 70. Looks like the air conditioning was broken, because the sweat pours off him. No matter. I heard Arrau play about a decade later, and he was moving so slowly I thought he’d never make it to the piano. His tempi were also slow, but he made them work.
Here we are on the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s assassination — a time for funeral marches. But at some point you have to get past the funeral marches — and Opus 111 is where you need to go — the triumph of optimism over anguish.
I’m not sure how this works, but look here. Not Dangerous Flames or Arielle Immortal Quickening, although I’m sure they are both very fine novels. Scroll down to the third one. That’s mine.
Ninety-nine cents is pretty cheap for a book this good, don’t you think? It used to be free for a while, but you were too busy and didn’t get around to downloading it, now did you? Will it ever be free again? I wouldn’t count on it, if I were you. If I were you, I’d spend the $0.99 and see what all the excitement is about.
My science-fiction novel Forbidden Sanctuary is a first-contact thriller in which one of the aliens who have landed here learns about Christianity from an interpreter who happens to be a devout Catholic. He becomes convinced that it is Earth’s counterpart to the persecuted faith that he secretly follows on his home planet. This is a very high concept, and the book is well worth the $2.99 it’s gonna cost you!
You can read the first chapter here. In this excerpt we see the alien–Tenon–escape from his ship, trying to find sanctuary in the Catholic church he knows is nearby.
**********
In the first instant he was half inclined to turn back. This world was dark, and confusing, and bitter cold. How could he hope to find refuge in it? But of course he had come too far to turn back. He shut the door behind him, and started carefully down the long staircase to the ground.
They had guards too, of course, but they too were looking the other way, more interested in keeping Earthpeople away from the ship than Numoi away from Earth. He crouched low to the stairs as he descended, and prayed that the helmeted creatures at the bottom would not turn around.
They didn’t. Five steps from the bottom Tenon leaped over the railing and landed silently beside the stairs. He looked around. There were no other guards nearby that he could see. He moved to his right until he was well outside the guards’ line of sight, and then he walked slowly away from the ship.
The area around it was deserted. Who could be outside in this cold? It was very well lit, however, and he felt conspicuous. He picked up his pace, and soon he was in the shadows of a building. He could hear the murmur of voices inside. It was probably warm in there; he longed to join the voices. But would they protect him? No, he needed a sign: something to show him that the vomurd was continuing. He walked on.
And before very long he reached a fence, long and high and fiercely metallic. He could see a guard to his left, but once again the man was facing away from the Ship. Well then, he must climb the fence.
It was difficult for his hands to get a grip, and at the top were twisted strands of wire that tore at his flesh; but it was all right, he should be able to put up with pain. When he reached the ground on the other side he stopped to look back through the fence at the large pyramid that was his past, and then he trudged off along the road he found at his feet.
Around him were dark, looming hills, and tall, hard, bare-looking plants. Over everything was a layer of crusted snow. He had never actually seen snow before, but there was plenty of it in the land of the Stani, and Argal had spoken of it more than once. White grains of ice, as far as you could see. He shivered, and looked up at the alien sky. The stars were sharp and clear, their strange patterns almost as unsettling as the snow. Was one of them their star? He was unclear on such matters. Did anyone really know? It didn’t matter now.
By the fence he had seen a few of those fast-moving mechanical vehicles other crew members had talked about in tones of wonder, but none were on this road. Perhaps they were not used at night. Perhaps no one was allowed out after dark. There was so much he didn’t know—including how much farther he had to walk before he would find what he was looking for. So far there was nothing—no sign of a village, a farmhouse, a light. He could be going entirely in the wrong direction—a town just out of sight behind him, none for a day’s travel ahead of him. They would find his frozen body in the snow, by the road, and they would say: a fit punishment for a Chitlanian, to die in a land like the Stani’s.
If he was not used to the cold, at least he was used to the walking. He had had enough forced marches to keep his legs in shape, even after the inactivity of the Voyage: rushing to the border to subdue some recalcitrant tribe, providing an escort for some minor ambassador, scouring the hillside for heretics…
He recalled that painstaking search, knowing only that they were looking for enemies of the state, going from cave to cave, sword at the ready, determined to root out the traitors.
And he was the one who found them; scrambling up a small slope at dusk, weary and frustrated, he had entered the low cave and shined his torch, and there they were. About twenty of them, white-robed, gentle-eyed, sitting, waiting. His sword came out, and then he was calling for assistance, and one of the white-robes had said: “Calm yourself, soldier. You have nothing to fear from us.” And they came with him peacefully, praying all the while to Someone he had not yet heard of.
He had received a promotion for his daring single-handed capture of the heretics. The promotion had made him eligible for the Voyage. But that meant nothing to him compared with the image in his memory of those faces as they went to their deaths, faces transfigured by an emotion he had never felt, but longed to feel. Soon after that he was scouring the hills, alone, looking for someone who trusted him enough to bring him to Argal.
His hands were numb. He clapped them against his side to bring the feeling back. He was having difficulty focusing his eyes. He had to squint continually to keep them working. His ears roared with pain. His legs wanted to stop, but stopping, he now realized, meant death.
And besides, there were signs now of life: lights in the hills, a dwelling, then, after a while, another. He squinted at each dwelling as he passed it. Not what he was looking for. Not yet.
Millions, he kept telling himself. There are millions.
One of those vehicles suddenly appeared, its lights like some incredible animal eyes piercing the darkness. He stopped, transfixed, as it roared past him, its occupant faceless behind the glare of the lights. He took a deep breath, and continued.
He had been a soldier all his life, and yet he had never known fear. Occasionally there would be danger, but the Numoi were always in control, and besides, to die for Numos (so he had believed) was the greatest possible glory of your life.
Now he would gladly die for Chitlan, but still he was afraid, because he was alone in the dark on a strange world, and he did not know what hazards awaited him around the corner, over the next rise, and he did not want to die senselessly, by walking on the wrong side of the road, or touching an object that was not supposed to be touched, or making a sound where silence was required.
He did not know whether the water in his eyes was caused by the cold, or by something else.
He did not want to think of the past anymore, but he couldn’t help it, to keep his thoughts in this world was to invite despair; and if he lost the will to keep his legs moving then everything would have been in vain.
He thought of Argal, who had walked the length of Numos, and all the outlands as well, risking his life with every step he took. But he had a mission, and he never complained. He thrived on it, really; how he would have enjoyed the challenge of this situation.
Tenon pictured Argal sitting in a hearth chamber, his dirty peasant robes gathered around him, his face creased and scarred with the ravages of his life. And the eyes! Eyes that held knowledge and truth, that had pierced deeper into the mysteries of all-that-is than any living being. Eyes, Tenon thought, with a shiver, that he would never look into again.
He recalled the first time: they had led Tenon to him blindfolded, at night, wary of a pure-blooded soldier with an impeccable record. He kept waiting for the feel of a knife against his throat, but these people were different (he kept reminding himself); that was why he had put himself in their hands.
When the blindfold came off he found himself in the stone-floored hearth chamber of a peasant farmhouse. In the dim firelight he saw a couple of young rustics regarding him suspiciously and, beyond, the foreigner he had struggled so long to meet, the foreigner who had a price of five thousand goldpieces on his head.
“Come and sit, soldier,” Argal had said in a low, friendly voice. “Perhaps we can learn from each other.”
But what could he teach Argal? He knew only what the Numian schools had taught him, and that, it turned out, was less than nothing in Argal’s eyes.
For some reason Argal spoke little of Chitlan that first night. Perhaps he wanted to tear down Tenon’s old religion before building a new one; perhaps it was just where his thoughts were when Tenon arrived. At any rate, he began by speaking of the Ancients.
“It is fascinating to me how little even educated Numoi know about these Ancients. It’s nothing more than myth and pious double-talk—which, you know, is precisely what the Ancients wanted. Did you know, for example, that there were exiles from Numos at the time the Ancients were putting together the hasali you are now a part of?”
Tenon, of course, had not known that.
“Some of them reached the land of the Stani. They wrote about what they understood—and feared—but they were foreigners and, I’m afraid, they were at best ignored, at worst mistreated. Their writings lay unread—until I came upon them. I was just a young scholar back then, and I had not even heard of Chitlan. So the Stani leaders threw open their archives to me, not knowing what they possessed.”
“What was it?” Tenon asked, intrigued and half afraid.
“Well,” Argal replied, “here is my interpretation of it. I believe it to be true. You see, the Ancients were practical, clear-sighted, and, according to their lights, benevolent people who above all were interested in answering one question: how do you set up a lasting, peaceful civilization? You will not find this question discussed in the Chronicles of the Ancients, or any of the other writings that have been preserved by the priestesses, because all mention of it had to be suppressed as part of the answer.”
“And what was their answer?”
“Oh, there were many parts to it, like the structure of the government and the size of the nation. But the centerpiece was this: to create a religion. And the centerpiece of the religion was the Ship.”
“But isn’t—wasn’t—?”
“Isn’t the Ship proof of the truth of your religion? No, it is only proof of the genius of the Ancients. I don’t pretend to understand how it works, but I do know there is nothing miraculous about it—nothing to compare, for example, with a resurrection from the dead. But we will come to that another night.
“You see, they wanted it to appear miraculous. So they destroyed all documents concerning the theory of timeless travel and the construction of the Ship. They cloaked their work in mystical terminology, and taught their successors how to copy what they had done, but not how to understand it. Instead of using what they had learned to add to the material well-being of their nation, they used it to transform its spirit.
“They gave Numos a central symbol, a ceaseless quest that would provide a focus for all the work and thoughts of its people. They were lucky, I think, in a couple of points. Enough of the Ships returned from the black void that they have not come to symbolize utter futility. And the crews never have discovered other intelligent life—because that would end the quest, and with it the value of the symbol.”
(Tenon-by-the-hearth had circled his hand slowly in understanding, finally getting used to this strange perspective on his world, starting the slow transformation that would lead him far from his mindless orthodoxy. Tenon-in-the-cold-alien-air, product of the transformation, thought: the Voyages are too important to Numos, though. The Council will simply redefine the goal, and the Voyages will continue, more meaningless than ever. But that has nothing to do with me anymore. Tenon shivered, and tried to walk faster.)
Argal’s eyes had gleamed in the firelight, pleased at Tenon’s understanding. “Do you see?” he exclaimed. “It is an artificial religion, designed to provide stability and meaning to a civilization. As such it has been successful and, in some ways, I grant, admirable. But it is not the truth. A civilization, it seems, can be based on a lie, but now we know the truth, and the truth will destroy this civilization like a rock shattering a hollow, decayed fossil.”
Tenon noticed one of the young peasants writing down Argal’s words, and he started to realize that this was the beginning of something immense, that he was hearing words that would be remembered in a thousand generations the way the acts of the Ancients were remembered in his. But still there were doubts. “If a lie is so powerful,” he asked, “how will the truth destroy it?”
“Its time has come,” Argal responded. “The lie is not what it once was. The crews still go off every twenty cycles to meet their fate, but there is confusion and fear beneath their brave façades. The priestesses still carry out the prescribed rituals, but there is boredom behind their gestures. The Council still rules, but the people feel free to grumble at their edicts. The entire planet is ready to listen, ready to believe. And that is precisely why Chitlan chose this moment to appear in our midst. We will be victorious, and there is not a power in the Universe that can stop us.”
And how often had Tenon heard those words spoken—by different hearths, to other new believers? Yet they never failed to thrill him. Often he lacked Argal’s utter certainty in the final triumph, but he never lacked faith in him, or in Chitlan.
A cold wind cut through him, as he realized again that Argal was gone. He was on his own; he had left those hearths behind forever.
There were dwellings all around him now, but no sign of what he was looking for. Pray, he must pray. His legs must continue to move, he must fight off the tears….
And eventually he saw it—sharply etched against the planet’s bright half-moon, just as he had imagined it. Angela’s words echoed in his mind: they put Him to death on a cross. And she herself had worn a tiny gold cross around her neck. Symbol of her faith.
O, lucky people, who could display their symbols so openly! He rushed over the banks of snow to the building with the cross, joy and anticipation warming his frigid body. Across the walk, up the short flight of stairs…
And the door was locked. Tenon stared at it in disbelief. That could not be. Then he reasoned: not everyone on the planet was a follower of Jesus. Perhaps there were still people who wanted to harm them. Of course they would lock their place of worship in that case. But certainly their chief priest or priestess would be inside—asleep, most likely, but eager to help a believer in trouble.
He pounded on the door. No one came. He pounded again. His hands, already cut and raw from the wire of the fence, ached with the effort, but the door remained locked. Finally he gave up and started to walk around the building, looking for other entrances. They were all locked. There were windows, of course. He could break a window and get inside. But that would be desecration. That would not be allowed.
He came around to the front again and sat on the steps, exhausted and fearful. Perhaps someone would open it up in the morning. But how long would it be until morning? He could not survive much longer without shelter. How much worse a death that would be—frozen on the very steps of their temple, his goal reached but meaningless.
That could not happen. He struggled to think things through. It was clear that he had to get indoors. There were plenty of dwellings. Most of them were probably occupied. What he needed was one occupied by a follower of Jesus. But how would he know?
He would have to take a chance. Which one?
The one nearest the temple, obviously. Would someone who was not a follower of Jesus want to live next to one of His temples?
Tenon got up and walked across a short pathway to the nearest dwelling. It was in darkness, like the temple. He stood in front of the door for a long time, summoning his courage. It has to be done, he told himself. There was no other way. He knocked.
And knocked. And after an eternity a light appeared behind the door. He saw the shadow of a person through the small, curtained glass panes and heard a brief, gruff sentence. There was nothing he could say, so he knocked some more.
Finally the door opened a crack—still locked with a chain—and a face appeared.
They looked at each other through the crack, and Tenon dimly realized that the man was as frightened as he was.
With his trembling hands Tenon tried to form a cross. “Jesus,” he whispered, hoping it sounded right on his alien tongue. “Jesus.”
The man kept looking at him, and the chain remained in place, and suddenly Tenon could take no more, and the tears came streaming out of his eyes. “Jesus,” he moaned as he felt his legs giving way, and then he heard the chain move, and the door swung open, and he fell forward into warmth and light.
I realize my previous post was perhaps not sufficiently deferential to “Louie, Louie.” It is, of course, a work of immense cultural and artistic significance — just not a song you want to hear after a presidential assassination. I used to own a tape of Rhino’s “The Best of Louie, Louie,” which of course includes the hit Kingsmen version, plus — my favorite — a rockin’ rendition by the Rice University Marching Owl Band. There are even versions where you can hear the actual lyrics, not that the lyrics are necessary to enjoy the song.
Here are the Kingsmen in all their unintelligible glory:
Here is conductor Erich Leinsdorf announcing the assassination to a stunned audience at the Friday afternoon Boston Symphony concert. What I find particularly poignant is the second set of gasps when he says that the orchestra is throwing away its scheduled program and instead will play the Funeral March from Beethoven’s Eroica. It’s as if the audience didn’t quite process his first statement, and the change in program made them understand the reality of what had happened.
I can’t embed the audio, but the WGBH archive has a clip that starts with the legendary announcer William Pierce, unaware that the world had change out from underneath him and everyone else, introducing the Rimsky-Korsakov piece that was scheduled to lead off the concert.
Time has an interview with the BSO music librarian, who hasn’t been able to bring himself to listen to the broadcast in the 50 years since:
With the show due to start in less than ten minutes’ time, Shisler got a relayed message from Leinsdorf himself. Run to the archives, put out and distribute the music for Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony. The president is dead.
Such was the rush that Shisler remembers little of his feelings from that moment. His memories get clearer of the minutes immediately following, when it was incumbent upon him to hasten to the stage with scores in hand. “The musicians were already there on the stage, in their places and of course the hall was filled with people. I had to tell each of the musicians as I was handing out the music what was going on. That was the first they knew of the death. It wasn’t an easy moment, for them or for me.”
I recall that the pop stations in Boston switched over to classical music for that weekend, realizing that Beethoven had more to say to us during that awful time than “Louie Louie,” which as at the top of the charts in November 1963. It sure doesn’t seem like half a century has passed.
While I was in Albuquerque I had the chance to chat with Rex Jung, a neuroscientist at the University of New Mexico. One of his research interests is creativity. So, OK, the conversation got a bit off-track, and we ended up talking about foot fetishes. He brought it up! Anyway, Rex pointed me to this entertaining blog post about V. S. Ramachandran, the prolific Indian neuroscientist (he came up with the idea of the mirror box for treating phantom limb pain, which was the basis of a particularly bizarre episode of “House”.) Ramachandran had an idea about foot fetishes, based on the work of Penfield and Jasper, who did the amazing “awake craniotomies” that allowed them to map the regions of the brain associated with different kinds of functioning. Jung explains:
Penfield and Jasper wrote a book in 1954 entitled Epilepsy and the Functional Anatomy of the Human Brain in which they describe surgeries performed on some 750 patients undergoing awake craniotomy. Both males and females were studied, although only about 10 percent were female. With respect to the genitals, Penfield and Jasper state (page 69), “The representation of genitalia is only sensory and not motor.” Second, and importantly, they state, “Its relationship to foot is not altogether clear,” although they place the genitalia next to the foot on the sensory map (see above). Well there’s the rub …
Their sensory map looks like this:
On the basis of this evidence, Ramachandran came up with theidea that maybe the proximity of the genital processing right next to the foot and toe processing, plus a little miswiring, would lead to foot fetishes. Well, OK….
Turns out that Penfield and Jasper’s data wasn’t all that strong about the position of the genital processing, and in reality it’s probably right where it belongs, under the trunk. So?
So, what does it all mean for 1) genitals, 2) the brain, 3) Penfield, and 4) Ramachandran? With respect to the genitals, they look to be where they are supposed to be in the brain, and the cartoon of the little man should likely be updated so that he is not tripping over his junk. Second, the brain appears to be organized in a somatotopical manner (that means it roughly maps to the body in terms of location and importance of function). Third, Penfield and Jasper (among others) were studying people with epilepsy, tumors, and any number of other brain disorders, and some miswiring might be garbling the data, along with the highly possible reticence on the part of either the good doctors or patients to map or report stimulation regarding the genitalia as compared to ANY other sensory or motor function. And finally, Ramachandran remains a genius. He was likely wrong on this front, but he has brilliantly demonstrated a key feature of highly creative individuals: they put out a lot of ideas. Not all of them are right, but some might lead to a “novel and useful” treatment for phantom limb or a theory of synesthesia (the latter of which is well supported by “miswiring” data). Keep it sexy, Dr. R. …
This seems right to me. To be creative, you need lots of ideas, but not all of them are going to be good ones. The trick is to figure out which ones are worth spending your time and energy on. I have pages and pages of notes about the novel I’m currently working on, and it is entertaining and rather distressing to read through these notes and look at all the bad ideas I’ve come up with. How do I know if the good ones are ending up in the actual novel? I’m relying on my friends to tell me. If I get it wrong, it’s all their fault.
Hey, this is my 500th post on this stupid blog! At first I was trying to do a post a day, but I’ve slowed down to two or three times a week since I began a new novel.
Thanks to WordPress’s comprehensive statistics, I can tell you that my most popular post ever (by a wide margin) was, oddly enough, this one about my visit to the real Mystic Pizza. In second place was my post on organic plots. And the bronze medal goes to this silly post on the Higgs Boson and smoking ducks. Do you see a trend here? No, neither do I. Wordpress doesn’t track “likes”, but I’m pretty sure I got my most likes for this little post passing along a letter to the editor about the Middle East. I put a lot of effort into that one!
Given the reaction to my last couple of posts, I probably should be doing a lot more Jane Austen blogging. Maybe I should be writing Jane Austen novels. If only I could.
A previous post reminded me that I had never read Pride and Prejudice. So I decided to give it a try. Here’s my experience of reading Pride and Prejudice in the modern world.
I downloaded the text for free from Amazon. It took less than a minute to get it onto my iPad–but I got annoyed, as usual, because Apple won’t let you download Kindle books from inside the Kindle app. The two-step process cost me an extra 20 seconds or so to get the novel to appear out of thin air.
I started reading the book on my iPad while flying 38,000 feet in the air across America. I took advantage of the Kindle app’s built-in dictionary to tap on unfamiliar words and learn what they mean. The words I didn’t know mainly had to do with modes of transportation in Jane Austen’s day; I now understand the difference between a curricle and a phaeton, although I’m not sure the definitions will stick in my brain. Not much need to know those words today unless you’re reading a Jane Austen novel.
As I mentioned, I continued reading the novel while watching the final game of the 2013 World Series. Most of the players had incomes in excess of Mr. Darcy’s ten thousand 
pounds a year (even adjusted for inflation); however, watching them pour champagne over each other in the locker room convinced me that not even Mrs. Bennet would have found them respectable suitors for her daughters. Also, I’m not sure any of the girls would have found those beards attractive.
I picked up the novel again while waiting to drive down to Commercial Street in Provincetown and see the somewhat unusual sights it has to offer. This time I read the book on my iPhone; the Kindle app helpfully synced my place in the book with the furthest place I had reached on my iPad. How does it do that? Many of the folks I saw on Commercial Street were heading to a ball, but I don’t think the ball was anything like the one that Mr. Bingley hosted at Netherfield. The men I encountered were, if anything, even less suitable than the baseball players.
I finished the novel while watching the Patriots destroy the Steelers on Sunday afternoon, followed by the Bears edging the Green Bay Packers on Monday Night Football. Clearly neither Mr. Gronkowski nor Mr. Polomalu were suitable matches. Nor Mr. Rogers, whose collarbone fractures so easily. Mr. Brady would possibly have made a good husband to one of the girls, had he not scandalously sired a child out of wedlock some years ago.
At any rate, it is now 200 years since Pride and Prejudice was first published, and the world has changed. And it is still exactly the same. We now have a lovely new word humblebrag, and here is Mr. Darcy talking about the same thing in 1813:
“Nothing is more deceitful,” said Darcy, “than the appearance of humility. It is often only carelessness of opinion, and sometimes an indirect boast.”
What a great novel.
Thanks to an invitation from friends, I ended up in Provincetown on November 2 — All Souls Day. Provincetown was still celebrating Halloween. I think it likes Halloween! Here’s a zombie/transvestite mannequin:
It was a gorgeous day. Our friends’ house must have some of the most spectacular views in town. Here is the Pilgrim Monument at sunset as seen from their rooftop deck:
And here is the harbor:
And the dunes:
After dark, things get interesting in Provincetown — too bad my camera isn’t better. Here are some sailor boys and, er, girls: 
Here is a biker/angel of death:
On the opposite side of the religious spectrum, here is a nun in a miniskirt and a pope (maybe) wearing sneakers:
Everyone was headed to the big Beaux Arts Ball at Town Hall:
Provincetown is one of a kind.
Richard Bowker 