Category Archives: Book Reviews

Book review: Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

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Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ by Daniel Goleman. Highly recommended.

You know the feeling — your spouse says something that strikes you the wrong way, and involuntarily you tense up. You can almost feel your blood pressure rise. Without thinking, you respond emotionally, and soon what may have been intended as an innocuous comment has sparked a full-fledged marital battle that may leave as its aftermath lingering feelings of anger and resentment.

In Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman describes the physiological processes that drive and are driven by emotion and their purpose, the ability of emotions to hijack rational thought and the short- and long-term physiological and psychological effects, and the personal and social benefits of teaching and learning how to manage the emotions.

In the opening chapters, Goleman discusses in simplified terms the complex interactions of the brain when emotion-causing stimuli are perceived, with the emotional mind reacting more quickly than the rational. For example, the sight of a snake may start the fight-or-flight response; the structures of the emotional brain prime the body to strike out at the snake or to flee from it. Then, after the body is tensed, the rational mind notices that it is a harmless garter snake. The efficiency of the brain circuitry, along with its emotional memory and associative abilities, helps to explain the power of the emotions. Citing research, Goleman suggests that the ability to recognize and manage emotions and emotional response, primarily learned from parents, family, friends, school, and the community, is a greater indicator of success in relationships, work, and society than intelligence tests. It is not necessarily how well you learn or what you know, but indeed how well you play with others.

Goleman covers a variety of topics: depression, mania, anxiety, PTSD, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, relationship issues, abuse, and others. For example, a feeling of sadness can be transformed in the brain into a lingering mood and ultimately into a full-blown clinical depression. He shows how emotional intelligence can be used to control the brain’s circuitry so that pathological conditions like depression, mania, and PTSD can be managed or at least controlled.

Citing an increase worldwide in indicators of emotional and social problems, Goleman focuses on children and the importance of pilot programs that teach such skills as empathy, assertiveness without aggression, self-awareness and self-control, conflict resolution, and so forth. He discusses several studies that show measurable, long-term benefits of such programs, and the negative results when children do not have the opportunity to learn these skills at home, at school, on the playground, or in the community.

Goleman does not always seem trustworthy. His description of the 1963 “Career Girl” murders, intended to illustrate an emotional hijacking, does not match other accounts in key areas. He also leaves out facts, such as that several knives were used, instead saying that the killer “slashed and stabbed them over and over with a kitchen knife.” He does not mention the sexual assaults in “those few minutes of rage unleashed.” The crime he depicts fits his picture of an emotional hijacking, but other accounts show it to have been a more deliberate crime of longer duration. In a section on empathy, he says that one-year-olds “still seem confused over what to do about [another child’s tears],” citing an instance where a “one-year-old brought his own mother over to comfort the crying friend, ignoring the friend’s mother, who was also in the room.” There is no confusion here, but a logical, pre-verbal assumption: “My mother is comforting to me when I am upset; therefore, she will be comforting to you, too.” This kind of thinking is not limited to one-year-olds; for example, how many times has a friend recommended an action movie or horror novel to you, saying that you will “love it,” even though your known preference is historical romance or another completely different genre? Even adults assume that “what works for me will work for you.”

Goleman also discusses school bullies and outcasts in detail. He places so much emphasis on the probability that their peers are reacting to their lack of emotional intelligence that he misses some important exceptions and nuances, such as children who are social outcasts for socioeconomic and racist reasons or because they are nonconformist individualists, in which cases it is the other children who display a lack of empathy and emotional intelligence. On the flip side, there are children (and adults) who are not empathetic or emotionally intelligent but who are well liked, even popular, for other reasons, tangible and intangible (e.g., socioeconomic status, influence, some mysterious force of personality or charisma). Many successful, popular people exhibit little emotional intelligence, which Goleman could have addressed. In addition, while Goleman cites a wealth of research supporting his arguments, he does not present any dissenting opinions, or whether any exist. This weakens his presentation.

Emotional Intelligence is an insightful, enlightening look at how awareness of the emotions and their physiology can help us to manage them when they affect our lives negatively or when they become pathological (e.g., depression). I found the book to be a practical guide to recognizing when I am reacting rather than listening to others or hearing them correctly. It has helped me to cope with colleagues who are lacking in emotional intelligence and to give them subtle guidance. While most of Emotional Intelligence is intuitive to a perceptive mind, the book serves as a guide and reminder that even a little emotional intelligence can make relationships, situations, and life more positive, more productive, and less stressful.

13 August 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

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The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America by Russell Shorto. Recommended.

Before New York, there was New Netherland, claimed for the Dutch by English explorer Henry Hudson. At the heart of New Netherland was New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan — a frontier village and the gateway to the vast American interior, ripe for exploitation.

In The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto makes the case for the influence of the Dutch and their colony on the future United States and for Adriaen Van der Donck, who tried to convince the Dutch government to wrest control of the colony from the inept hands of the Dutch West India Company. He failed, leaving the colony vulnerable to the British, who took it with little effort and made it a mere footnote in American history textbooks.

The modern perception of the Dutch colony seems to support the adage that history is written by the victor. Adriaen Van der Donck lost; Peter Stuyvesant won, so that it is the latter who has a place in the history books. It is not much of a place, according to Shorto; as the loser to the British, Stuyvesant is portrayed “as almost a cartoon character: peg-legged, cantankerous, a figure of comic relief who would do his routine, draw a few laughs, and then exit the stage so that the real substance of American history could begin.”

Shorto covers the colony’s history from the time Hudson “found” it to Stuyvesant’s reluctant surrender to the British in 1664, as well as Van der Donck’s career from his university days and the writing of his book to his efforts at The Hague, followed by speculation about his death.

In between, Shorto shows what was different about New Netherland from its encroaching Pilgrim and Puritan neighbors to the north. For one thing, the “Dutch” were not all Dutch in origin. They were Dutch, English, German, French, African, Jewish, Quaker, even Turkish. One of the founding couples of New Netherland was a “French-speaking teenager ” and a “Flemish textile worker,” “. . . two young nobodies” whose descendants are estimated to number more than one million. The Dutch, having been victims of religious intolerance, promoted an unusually tolerant society that naturally encouraged diversity, which continues today. Shorto notes that, where Peter Stuyvesant’s farmhouse once stood, “The same view takes in an Arab newsstand, a Yemenite Israeli restaurant, a pizza shop, a Japanese restaurant, and a Jewish deli.”

Perhaps the more important difference in the English and Dutch legacies lies in each colony’s original reason for existence. The Pilgrims and Puritans sought to escape persecution and to establish a society based on their own strictly interpreted religious beliefs, which did not preclude the persecution of others such as Quakers. New Haven and other cities were to be their equivalent of a promised land. The Dutch and others who settled New Netherland had a different motive — they saw opportunity. Here, anyone could obtain land, work hard, and succeed in a way not possible in the Dutch republic, with its limited space and resources. When writing of the initial report on New Netherland, Shorto says of the Dutch merchants reading it, “What jumped out at them, however, were other words, sharp, money-laden nouns — ‘Vellen . . . Pelterijen . . . Maertens . . . Vossen . . .’ — the report making a frank promise of ‘many skins and peltries, martins, foxes, and many other commodities.'” He reminds us that the colony was not managed by the government, but by a profit-making concern — the Dutch West India Company.

It was the opportunity that drew the French-speaking teenager and the Flemish textile worker and that allowed their descendants to proliferate, together with the Dutch attitude of religious, cultural, and social tolerance. It is easy to see the seeds of a democratic society in New Amsterdam, where the rules are different, where colonists of all skill sets are needed, and where opportunity is not restricted by class or status. Even the militaristic Calvinist Peter Stuyvesant can’t change the character of the colony that developed before his arrival.

The book would have benefited from quotations from primary personal sources, for example, letters and journals of Stuyvesant and Van der Donck. It appears that such historical riches have been lost or not yet translated. Shorto tries to fill in these deficiencies with colorful, evocative language and speculation about how these and other characters might have felt or acted at critical moments; for example, Van der Donck writes “like a man possessed,” while Stuyvesant might “stump off” in a fit of pique.

Shorto does bring the colony to life, including interesting and sordid details about court cases, facts such as that one-quarter of all businesses on Manhattan were taverns or breweries at one point, and details such as that one prostitute preferred to be paid in otter and beaver pelts rather than with money.

His evident passion for the subject and his frustration with Anglocentric (and mythologized) history leads Shorto to overstate the case for the influence of the Dutch colony. The United States today is not as uniformly tolerant, even in the Dutch sense, as Short believes, or as multicultural except in urban areas. Each urban area has not necessarily modeled itself after early Manhattan, but has evolved in its own way, not always offering equal opportunity to every group of immigrants or every individual.

Despite the Pilgrim/Puritan myths left to us and to which we cling, however, the United States, like Manhattan, is a unique creation born of a unique set of circumstances. Like the Pilgrims and Puritans, the Dutch were founding colonists and be given their due as such. If you are interested in a more complete picture of early American history, The Island at the Center of the World should be on your “must read” list.

Sunday, 6 August 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Forest House

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The Forest House by Marion Zimmer Bradley. Recommended.

If a book or movie is successful, you can expect a sequel. In the case of The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley had begun with the culmination of the Arthurian tale — Arthur’s rule and death. With little of mythological interest to tell after Arthur, Bradley turns to his ancestors for her first prequel.

The Forest House, set primarily during the rule of Domitian (81–96 CE), is the tale of two people and two peoples. First, there is Gaius/Gawen, son of a high-ranking Roman official and his now-deceased Briton wife, and Eilan, daughter of an influential Druid, granddaughter of the Arch-Druid, and aspiring priestess. They represent the invading Romans and the native Britons of many tribes and lived in a world that is changing.

The Roman empire, overextended and increasingly dependent on its provinces for manpower, is on the decline. Briton, defeated but rebellious, is making its last stand. At the same time, the exotic Eastern religion of Christianity is taking followers from Rome’s patriarchal and Britannia’s matriarchal pagan beliefs. Like the Romans and Britons themselves, these religions coexist under an uneasy truce; as Joseph of Arimathea tells the priestess Caillean, “Surely then you know all the gods are one God,” which she completes with, “and all the goddesses one Goddess.”

While the Arch-Druid and the old High Priestess Lhiannon, together with Gaius’s father Macellius, contrive to keep the peace, Eilan’s father, Bendeigid, and her foster brother, Cynric, who is the result of Roman atrocities against the priestesses of Mona, want both to exact revenge on the Romans and to drive them off their island. Against this setting, the ambitious Gaius and the equally ambitious Eilan meet and fall in love.

Bradley sets up the history well, with touches that show how Britannia has slowly but inevitably succumbed to civilization. As one character notes, it has been decades since wolf- or bearskins have been available in the marketplace. Bradley establishes a good sense of time and place, although Caillean’s story of her indifferent mother with too many children to care for seems to introduce modern sensibilities.

The characters and the plot seem more influenced by soap operas than by history or realism. Neither Gaius nor Eilan appears to be a well-developed, consistent character; in fact, the senior priestess Caillean is the only complex character whose beliefs are clear and whose behavior follows them. The Arch-Druid, Ardanos, wishes peaces at all costs, but the motivation for the strength of his conviction, which leads him to suggests killing his own descendants, is never clear.

The most puzzling aspect of The Forest House is the practice of the goddess religion and its role in keeping the peace. Neither Ardanos nor Bendeigid seem particularly faithful to it, and Caillean and many of the priestesses know that Ardanos changes the goddess’s message delivered through the oracle of the High Priestess when he translates it for the common people. Bradley makes much of the Arch-Druid’s manipulation of the oracle, whether delivered by Lhiannon or his granddaughter Eilan, but does not offer any detail about what he changes, why it angers Caillean and others, or why the goddess allows it. Ardanos is painted as manipulative and shady, but without details it is difficult to judge him or what he does. Only once does the goddess bypass him, and it is to state the obvious — that the world is changing, and that the Roman and British people will become one whether they wish it or not.

As in The Mists of Avalon, Bradley refers obliquely to Atlantis. She also mentions the idea that Caillean, Eilan, and Gaius have lived before and will live again, but the significance is never revealed, unless it is meant to explain Arthur as the once and future king. Without a story of Arthur’s return, however, this seems an insignificant plot point that is given more significance than it seems to warrant.

At some point, the plot comes to a halt and struggles for some time. Events happen that are necessary to expedite the conclusion, but they take a long time to unfold and are not interesting on their own. Eilan talks about the importance of her “work” at the Forest House, which seems to be primarily to speak at the festivals for the goddess, who is reinterpreted anyway. Gaius marries, has children, travels, and meets influential people; this part of the story seems especially protracted and tedious. As they grow older, both Eilan and Gaius become more self-righteous and less likable so that, by the end, I found it difficult to care about the fate of either one. It is the Irish Caillean, who is sent to establish a new home at Avalon, who remains interesting and true to herself.

The Forest House is a pleasurable but disappointing novel that offers few surprises and, unlike The Mists of Avalon, adds little of note or interest to the Arthurian legend.

1 June 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Tropic of Cancer

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Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller. Not recommended.

In his 1960 introduction to Tropic of Cancer, Karl Shapiro said, “I call Henry Miller the greatest living author because I think he is,” “. . . as a spiritual example he stands among the great men of our age,” and “. . . he [Orwell] predicts that Miller will set the pace and attitude for the novelist of the future. This has not happened yet, but I agree that it must.” Shapiro does not support any of these points in his essay, and nothing about Tropic of Cancer supports them, either.

Tropic of Cancer consists of 318 pages recounting Miller’s experience as an American expatriate in Paris and expounding his personal philosophy, often in ways that are rambling and painfully nonsensical. Miller’s stories about his friends are tedious, pointless, and catty; like Miller, they seem to have been talentless hacks whose belief in their own artistic abilities makes them artists and writers, as though believing is being. Miller writes, “A year ago, six months ago, I thought I was an artist. I no longer think about it, I am” — which is the type of arrogant pretentiousness he mocks in virtually all of his acquaintances.

When they are not creating, or talking about philosophy or creating, Miller and his circle seem to spend nearly every moment picking up women (and disease). They rarely use a neutral term such as “woman” when there are so many obscene, demeaning words with which to objectify the gender. The women that Miller and friends find are invariably portrayed as stupid, drunken, irrational, loose, sly, deceptive, and good primarily for one function, which Miller turns into a squalid, cold, joyless act. In spite of all the vice and the “living,” no one seems to be having fun, and some characters, notably Fillmore, find themselves nearly trapped into the bourgeoisie life.

Miller expresses contempt for the machine, the industrial age, and money — although he schemes to keep 2,800 francs from Fillmore’s mistress and revels in having so much in his pocket. Often hungry, Miller obsesses about food and relies on his friends to support him. When he describes his Indian friend Kepi as “. . . a scrounger, a sort of human tick who fastens himself to the hide of even the poorest compatriot,” he could be talking about himself as he bitterly complains about those of his friends who are stingy with money, accommodations, food, and wine.

Miller’s logic about the working world is facile; he writes, “If you want bread, you’ve got to get in harness, get in lockstep.” On the surface, this is true, but it never seems to occur to him that, if you want bread, someone must cultivate, raise, and harvest the wheat and produce the other components; someone must transform these components into bread; and someone must deliver it to the shops and cafes. In other words, if most people weren’t in “lock step,” Miller could choose to starve or set himself to produce bread, joining the world in harness. He makes his choice clear, then whines about it. He may despise those who support him, whether they are friends or workers, but that is perhaps because he, a misanthrope who finds fault with everyone but himself, needs the very people he denigrates (including “the grocer, the baker, the shoemaker, the butcher, etc. — all imbecilic-looking clodhoppers”), a reliance which he resents. He hates the machine and the machine mind, but offers no alternatives.

Seemingly incapable of sincere feeling, Miller finds human emotion amusing. When a friend says, “A boy can break your heart . . . He’s so damned beautiful! And so cruel!” Miller writes, “We had to laugh at this. It sounded preposterous. But Collins was in earnest.” When an acquaintance to whom he owes money dies, he writes, “At any rate, he was killed in an automobile accident shortly after my arrival, a circumstance which left me twenty-three francs to the good.”

Shapiro claims that Miller is a poet, but his attempts at poetic and philosophic ramblings often make little if any sense. Speaking of buildings and statues, Miller says, ” . . . they must be saturated with my anguish,” the kind of bad metaphor in which he frequently indulges. He describes artists such as himself as the “inhuman ones.” “I am inhuman! I say it with a mad, hallucinated grin, and I will keep on saying it though it rain crocodiles. Behind my words are all those grinning, leering, skulking skulls, some dead and grinning a long time, some grinning as if they had lockjaw, some grinning with the grimace of a grin, the foretaste and aftermath of what is always going on.” Whenever these attempts at poetic philosophy appeared, rambling on for pages, I found myself yearning for a return to his insipid stories about prostitutes, disease, friends, and hunger.

Tropic of Cancer is perhaps the worst book I have ever read (and I did promise myself that I would read Tropic of Capricorn). Shapiro says, “There are not many of these emancipated beings left in our world, these clowns and clairvoyants, celebrants of the soul and of the flesh and of the still-remaining promise of America.” If Miller, with his whining, his criticism, his holier-than-everyone attitude, his “art,” his two-dimensional view of people, and his obsession with excrement, is the “greatest” of these souls, may I never meet the least.

24 May 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: Rebecca

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Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Highly recommended.

Rebecca is a mystery novel in which nearly every character makes false assumptions that lead to false conclusions. From the catty and gauche widow Mrs. Van Hopper to the suave widower Maxim de Winter, nearly everyone in Rebecca is wrong about something. For the nameless narrator, her incorrect assumptions are founded on Mrs. Van Hopper’s gossip and build on each other until they have constructed a person and a past that never existed and a future in which every action and utterance have two meanings — the one that the narrator perceives and the real meaning.

For example, Maxim’s sister Beatrice tells the narrator that she is nothing like his first wife, the late Rebecca de Winter, who died in a tragic boating accident. The narrator accepts this statement and remembers it as she learns more about Rebecca. She feels herself to be plain, uninteresting, shy, and unsophisticated. By contrast, and by all accounts that the narrator hears, Rebecca was beautiful, fascinating, charismatic, and witty. Even Maxim’s carefully diplomatic estate manager, Frank Crawley, tells the narrator, “. . . I suppose she was the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life.” Not surprisingly, the more she learns, the more the narrator needs to know about Rebecca — a first wife whom she cannot have replaced in the brooding, moody Maxim’s affections.

The narrator falsely interprets other people and what they say and do. The intimidating housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, gives her several hints that Rebecca was exacting and demanding in her management of the household and staff. The second Mrs. de Winter is also told how much Mrs. Danvers loved and admired Rebecca. The implication is clear; the narrator’s only hope of coming to terms with the formidable housekeeper is to take charge. Instead, she decides that the best way to mollify Mrs. Danvers is to make herself unobtrusive and to let her have full rein over the household’s management. Her naïveté and self-effacing behavior give Mrs. Danvers a reason to despise as well as dislike her.

Many, if not most, readers are probably misled as well. Rebecca’s appearance and charms are described by several people in several places, and her name or initials appear on nearly everything she owned. On the other hand, the narrator is never described or named. Even when Mrs. Danvers calls her “Mrs. de Winter” over the house telephone the first time, the narrator responds with a denial of her new identity but without reference to her former one. “I’m afraid you have made a mistake. Mrs. de Winter has been dead for over a year.” Surrounded by Rebecca’s belongings, Rebecca’s servants, and Rebecca’s friends and husband, the narrator sinks further into anonymity.

There are few clues to the narrator’s looks, other than that she has “lank hair” (compared to Rebecca’s “clouds” of black hair) and that she is “plain,” according to herself. Yet Rebecca’s cousin, Jack Favell, flirts with her and repeatedly hints that she is a fresh, attractive younger wife of the sort that affluent older men like Maxim often choose. The reader should also ask why Maxim does marry someone who apparently is so different from the first wife he adored.

In Rebecca, passion seems as repressed as open communication, but sexuality is not far beneath the surface. The relationship between Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers is full of sexual overtones. While Maxim may be willing to replace Rebecca in his affections and his bed, Mrs. Danvers clearly is not. As a comfort, she clings to Rebecca’s old bedroom suite and to her apparent contempt for men. Mrs. Danvers says of Rebecca, “She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that.” Even Maxim says, “She [Rebecca] looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel.”

The narrator also refers to herself as being like a “schoolboy” or “boy.” The incident at the costume ball and Mrs. Danvers’ ensuing description of Rebecca begin the narrator’s transformation into Rebecca, or at least a woman more like Rebecca — confident, assertive, and, later, sexualized. She tells Maxim, “I’ve grown up, Maxim, in twenty-four hours. I’ll never be a child again.” With her new knowledge of Rebecca, she makes an offer to Maxim: “I’ll be your friend and companion, a sort of boy.” It is this offer and admission that finally elicits the truth — a truth that was under all the cascading false assumptions, misinterpretations, and lack of communication.

Rebecca is an outstanding mystery and character study that captures a world on the cusp of irrevocable change. Maxim’s marriage to Rebecca seems to have been made in the old tradition; as his grandmother says, “She’s got the three things that matter in a wife . . . breeding, brains, and beauty.” Their marriage is a contract in which each plays a role. In contrast, Maxim’s second marriage is modern; it is based on impulse and emotion, and thrives away from the constraints of society and tradition. When Maxim and the narrator come to Manderley, they are bound by the past — Rebecca’s past, as well as a past world in which they are surrounded by servants and constrained by a decorum that requires the suppression of communication and feelings.

The world around them is changing, however. When a ship wrecks off the coast and a crowd gathers to watch the rescue and salvage operation, a tourist points out to the narrator how Manderley, and all it represents, has become an anachronism. “Those are nice-looking woods over there, I suppose they’re private . . . My husband says all these big estates will be chopped up in time and bungalows built . . . I wouldn’t mind a nice bungalow up here facing the sea.”

From the memorable opening, “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” to the well-paced unravelling of every false assumption and conclusion, Rebecca is an engaging, evocative, thoughtful novel that acknowledges the past before moving toward the future. The next time the night is deep and you can imagine both the silence of the woods and the roar of the sea, read Rebecca.

22 April 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age

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The Virgin Queen: Elizabeth I, Genius of the Golden Age by Christopher Hibbert. Not recommended.

The adjective “Elizabethan” invokes a vision of an era of sumptuous dress, religious strife, European conflict, and the flourishing of the dramatic arts. The Virgin Queen is a study of the ruler for whom the time is named, and her rule, which lasted for an almost-unprecedented 45 years.

Hibbert takes a primarily episodic approach to Elizabeth’s life, from her birth as the unwanted daughter of Henry VIII and his second, ill-fated wife, Ann Boleyn. When Henry finally produces a legitimate male heir, Elizabeth is reduced from “princess” to “lady.” After her unpopular, Catholic half-sister Mary ascends to the throne and she is vaguely implicated in some plots against the new queen, Elizabeth is imprisoned despite her seeming subservience and her pleas of innocence, devotion, and loyalty.

Raised away from the court by hired nobility and taught by Cambridge scholars, Elizabeth appears to be both demure and autocratic. The important point is “appears,” because, while Elizabeth in her correspondence is deferential and in her appearance demure, her peers invariably see her as withdrawn, haughty, and “proud and disdainful” — traits that “much blemished the handsomeness and beauty of her person” (Sir William Sidney). Mary, not unjustifiably paranoid, does not believe in Elizabeth’s humility, honesty, or loyalty. Hibbert’s portrayal of Elizabeth, who craves the adoration of peers, councilors, and subjects alike, seems to support Mary’s assessment.

Elizabeth proves to be arrogant and autocratic, allowing no one to question either her or her rights as ruler. She is keenly aware of the importance of having the support of the populace, which she enjoys in contrast to the despised “Bloody Mary.” She ignores the advice of privy council, however, when it suits her, occasionally to the detriment of her popularity.

Hibbert does not explain why or how Elizabeth, kept out of the way during the reigns of her half-brother and half-sister, became so popular. This points to one of the flaws of Hibbert’s episodic approach; recounting Elizabeth’s life in terms of “Subjects and Suitors” (although not all of them), “Papists and Puritans,” “The Queen in her Privy Chamber,” “Traitors and Rebels” (again, not all of them), and so forth, veils or distorts much of the historical context of Elizabeth’s development and reign. Within one chapter, she may be young at one point and in late middle age at another. With England’s changing allegiances and relationships with France and Spain, it is difficult to track what is happening at a given time and why. Elizabeth’s most noted accomplishment, England’s defeat of the Spanish armada, is covered briefly and superficially, almost as an aside, leaving the reader with the impression that it was happenstance that no one, including Elizabeth or the privy council, had much to do with; it just happened, with little explanation.

The tale of Elizabeth’s suitors can be equally confusing. Hibbert describes her negotiations with Henry, Duke of Anjou (later Henry III of France), when he was 20 and, “in fact, twenty years younger than herself.” A few pages later, Hibbert discusses her negotiations with his younger brother Francis when Francis is “not yet nineteen” and she is 39, yet it appears that the talks with the older brother occurred first, which would make sense. Even more confusing, the negotiations with younger brother Francis continued until she was 45 (they would be the last hopes of getting her married).

Elizabeth’s treatment of religious conflict is glossed over. While Mary is noted for her brutal repression of Protestants, Elizabeth, at least in this biography, is a conservative Protestant who fears and loathes radicals of any kind, Protestant or Catholic. During her reign, repression is focused primarily on the rebellious poor; she is less interested in punishing the wealthy nobility than in grabbing their riches.

As portrayed by Hibbert, Elizabeth is a parsimonious, greedy, emotionally needy woman who wishes to rule absolutely but who cannot make a necessary, definitive decision, such as signing the death warrant for her conniving cousin, Mary Stuart. The privy council, led by Lord Burghley, the Earl of Leicester, and others, devote much of their efforts to manipulating this indecisive autocrat into decisions they want and to making sure that she cannot renege on them — an ironic situation for the woman who says to Burghley’s son, “Little man, little man, the word must is not to be used to princes.”

There are several weaknesses in addition to the episodic structure. For example, the queen herself is not quoted often enough in key areas, yet Hibbert devotes one-third of a page to Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem speculating about how she might have felt during her confinement in the Tower of London.

Most notably, however, the book’s subtitle is never explained — neither why the era is “golden” nor why the queen was the “genius” of it. While the biography makes it clear that Elizabeth had a strong personality, as did her parents, the nation’s successes seem to have been the work of the privy council under the leadership of Lord Burghley and of adventurers like Sir Walter Ralegh. Elizabeth is not shown even to have played a role in, for example, nurturing the famed playwrights of the time, such as Shakespeare, Marlow, and Beaumont. The subtitle implies that Elizabeth’s brilliance inspired a benign, cultured age, while the text shows a woman so cold and petty that, when her best friend and seeming lover Leicester dies, she worries only about controlling his estates and monies, and so indecisive that her own privy councilors avoid working with her whenever possible. The age itself is brutal, with the crowd “disgusted by the spectacle” of a drawing and quartering performed, against tradition, while the victims are still alive.

At best, The Virgin Queen is a brief, superficial biography that leaves the reader hungry for more — more about Burghley, Leicester, Mary Stuart, and others, but not about Elizabeth herself, who somehow becomes a supporting player in her own biography.

13 March 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories

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100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories edited by Al Sarrantonio and Martin H. Greenberg. Highly recommended.

The best horror fiction is subtle. This point is missed by the producers of today’s horror films, in which blood and gore — and the anticipation thereof — have become a substitute for the storytelling art and the art of horror.

Horror can be the ordinary or the possible, taken one step further. Sometimes it is allusive, so that the reader is told, more or less, what happened but not how. Fiction like that of Edgar Allen Poe finds its roots in common fears and foibles of the human psyche stretched to unimaginable ends (for example, guilt in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Black Cat”). In other stories, the ending, or what happens next, is left to the reader’s imagination. The author plants the seed and fertilizes it, but leaves the reader to reap it.

In 100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories, Sarrantonio and Greenberg have captured the essence of horror fiction at its best — its subtlety and its interactivity with the reader’s mind and emotions. In some, supernatural or science fiction elements play a role, but not at the expense of the psychology. In many of these, the reader must decide how reliable the narrator is.

In stories like “Ants” by Chet Williamson, the commonplace becomes the unthinkable. “Examination Day” twists one of the worst fears a schoolchild has into a parent’s nightmare, while making a political statement. In several stories, the abuse inflicted on children are turned back upon the parents, guardians, or peers — or are they? Examples include “Holly, Don’t Tell” by Juleen Brantingham; “Moving Night” by Nancy Holder; “Making Friends” by Gary Raisor; and “Sredni Vashtar” by Saki. “In the Corn” by Robert Fox is memorable for its setting, the naïveté and vulnerability of its protagonist, and the situations that lie behind and ahead of him.

A story like “The Grab” by Richard Laymon deceives the reader by presenting several twists; the game is not what it appears to be at first, and that makes the players’ attitude toward it as shown at the end even more horrifying.

In real life, sometimes there are crimes that seem inexplicable until the culprits are caught and their depravity shown. In “Down by the Sea near the Great Big Rock” by Joe R. Lansdale, another explanation is revealed — or is it?

A few stories combine horror and whimsy, including “The Adventures of My Grandfather” by Washington Irving, “The Kirk Spook” by E. G. Swain, and “The Disintegration of Alan” by Melissa Mia Hall. “Fish Night” by Joe R. Lansdale is beautiful and haunting, with an ending that should not surprise but does. In some cases, though, the horror lies in the tale’s realism, for example, “The Upturned Face” by Stephen Crane and “Night Deposits” by Chet Williamson.

100 Hair-Raising Little Horror Stories is a marvelous anthology of the genre. In only a few words and a few pages, each gifted author establishes well-drawn settings, scenarios, and characters, and then sets the reader up for an experience that ranges from amusing but disquieting to disturbing and terrifying. Many of these stories reminded me of the best of 1950s and 1960s television, such asThe Twilight Zone, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and The Outer Limits. If you appreciate the subtlety, the tautness, and the art of the well-written horror story, you must read this anthology.

26 February 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Complete Claudine

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The Complete Claudine by Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette. Highly recommended.

  • Claudine at School
  • Claudine in Paris
  • Claudine Married
  • Claudine and Annie

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette wrote the Claudine novels when she was in her late twenties, when she was young enough to remember the single-mindedness and bitterness of adolescent fixations and old enough to have acquired the tempered wisdom and understanding of experience. Through Claudine’s eyes, the reader sees how the unreserved passion of the young must, of necessity, burn itself out or be transformed into a more lasting love that expresses itself more deeply and less dramatically to ensure its own survival.

Not surprisingly, Claudine at School is the most delightful of the series. Our narrator is full of life and mischief, and never fails to indulge in scathing commentary on anything within her limited countryside range — the licentious superintendent of schools, the weak and pretentious assistant masters, and the assistant mistress and head mistress who are literally joined at the lip and hip. Claudine’s barbs find targets in everyone, including her father, her former wet nurse and servant, and her best friends.

Like her creator, Claudine is a sensualist. She loves that which appeals to her senses, not necessarily her heart or her mind. Claudine craves her first “love,” the assistant schoolmistress Aimée Lathenay, for her “slim waist,” “lovely eyes,” “golden eyes with their curled-up lashes,” “complexion,” and “supple body” that “seeks and demands an unknown satisfaction.” Mademoiselle Lathenay proves her faithlessness quickly, and Claudine makes an abrupt transition from gushing would-be lover to “a chill that froze me.” Astute and precocious, Claudine recognizes that Aimée’s nature is “frail and egotistical, a nature that likes its pleasures but knows how to look after its own interests.” Claudine, calling the loss a “great disappointment,” seems to understand that the battle has not been for the love of Aimée, but for her possession.

Also like Colette, Claudine seems to sense that sexual relationships between women, a recurring motif throughout the four novels, are somehow incomplete. At this age, however, Claudine does not yet have the experience to make the comparison to a relationship with a man, especially since the men she knows are primarily her single-minded father, the silly assistant masters and the licentious superintendent.

Claudine soon learns what it’s like to be the object of unrequited adoration and submissiveness, and protests — too much — that she doesn’t like it coming from Aimée’s younger sister.

Despite the 19th-century setting and the adult themes, Colette has captured the essence of the adolescent experience — the testing of authority and its limits, sexual exploration and emotions, interest in the things of the senses, a more realistic view of adults and their foibles, and a sense of being caught between the familiar comforts of childhood and the frightening prospect of adulthood. It’s fascinating to watch Claudine slowly realize that she is not the sophisticate that she tries to project to adults and her peers, that there is more to life, love, and sex than she can glean from her racy books.

Claudine in Paris takes Claudine — and the reader — away from the country village of Montigny, to Paris, where Claudine will finally experience the delusions, illusions, deceits, ecstasies, and cruelties of adult love and lust. She, who naturally dominates women, longs to be dominated by a man, her husband. In Paris, in the adult world, and in the world of marriage, Claudine becomes less sure of herself as part of maturing. It is in this milieu, where her stepson poses for his portrait as a Byzantine queen, where her husband indulges her tastes (and then his), and where sex is a form of currency between those who want and those who have, that Claudine learns the distinctions between lust and love, the practical, the sensual, and the romantic. When her marriage is threatened by her desires and her husband’s encouragement, she finally discovers what love is — and is not.

Claudine and Annie is a departure in the series; it is the only one of the four novels that is told by a different narrator, the housewife Annie. In some ways, it’s more interesting than Claudine in Paris and Claudine Married because Annie is a powerful narrator in her own way, who loses her innocence when her husband goes away to collect an inheritance. In his absences, she sees how she has been subjugated as well as the crassness of her acquaintances, including her practical, faithless, domineering, money-grubbing sister-in-law. As she sees more of that from which her husband protected her — for his own selfish reasons — she experiences the paradoxical need to escape and to see more (not unlike Claudine in Claudine Married).

In this novel, Claudine has become a background figure whose voice is for the most part rare and strangely muted. The reader, who has watched Claudine mature and grow, can imagine how Claudine might have told this tale from the outside. At the same time, the strength of the Claudine novels lies in her voice and perspective, and in her catty observations, sarcasm, ironic wit, sensuous descriptions, and unique personality. In that sense, Claudine and Annie is an anticlimax — a loss to the reader of the Claudine we had come to appreciate (if not always like) in her prime. With her earlier return to Renaud, Claudine has lost her edge, which is only hinted at in Claudine and Annie.

The Claudine novels are filled with wonderful characters, including her unforgettable father and her equally unforgettable white cat, Fanchette. The Complete Claudine is a great read for Colette’s distinctive voice and insights and for the view it provides of turn-of-the-century rural France and urban Paris. You may not always like Claudine (or Colette), but she never fails to entertain and to say that which is worth hearing.

29 January 2006
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Oxford Book of Short Stories

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The Oxford Book of Short Stories ed. by V. S. Pritchett. Recommended.

In his introduction to The Oxford Book of Short Stories, V. S. Pritchett discusses the short story’s “relatively new and still changing form,” an odd statement since one could make a case that the short story is ancient, whether in oral or written form. For his anthology of short stories written in English, Pritchett draws on approximately two centuries and writers from several countries, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Australia, Canada, India, and New Zealand.

Pritchett suggests that an anthology is bound to be a matter of personal taste. When I began reading this particular anthology, I learned that Pritchett is a much-respected short story writer, so it’s to be assumed that his opinion and his taste are to be respected. Given the difficulties of editing an anthology, which he mentions in the introduction and which include copyright issues as well as the length of a story and how much it has been anthologized, Pritchett has done an adequate job of representing the short story in a relatively short volume.

For me, the problem with this volume—and the “still changing” form of the short story—is alluded to in the last paragraph of the introduction, where Pritchett says, “A modern story comes to an open end.” In my opinion, this approach helps to negate the beauty and the power of the short story as distinguished from the novel, that is, “the novel tells us everything, whereas the short story tells us only one thing, and that, intensely.”

This point is easily illustrated in great short stories, like Sir Walter Scott’s “The Two Drovers” and D. H. Lawrence’s “The Rocking-Horse Winner (both surprising choices because they are so often included in anthologies). Unlike Pritchett (and, I would suspect, many others), I do not see “Grace” as a story in which James Joyce’s “genius was first signalled”; rather, it’s a pointless exercise in tedium, like watching people you don’t know doing nothing interesting, that left me feeling I couldn’t justify the time wasted reading it. There is nothing “intense” about “Grace,” nor about Pritchett’s own contribution, “Many Are Disappointed,” which is an apt description of my reaction.

When a short story is “intense”—and good—the reader cannot be left feeling indifferent by an “open end.” Stories like “The Rocking-Horse Winner,” with its straightforward narrative and fable-like simplicity, evoke strong feelings of horror and dread, despite the commonplace setting and people—a household perpetually in growing debt, like so many, and men who indulge in casual horse betting, like so many. The normalcy of the tone underscores the weirdness of the tale. Other stories, like “The Coup de Grâce” (Ambrose Bierce), “Sredni Vashtar” (Hector Hugh Munro, also known as Saki), “An Official Position” (W. Somerset Maugham), “The Woman at the Store” (Katherine Mansfield), “Various Temptations” (William Sansom), and “Parker’s Back” (Flannery O’Connor), seared lasting impressions into my mind due to the richness of setting, characterization, situation, and plot. This is the type of story that makes this anthology worthwhile.

Between these gems of the craft are weaker stories that made little if any impact on me. For example, John Updike’s “Lifeguard” seems to be a pointless exercise in the author’s own wit. The much-touted (and frequently anthologized) “Hills Like White Elephants” (Ernest Hemingway) is also cleverly told and shows the potential of the short story, but left me cold and indifferent. (In fact, I’ve read this story many times in anthologies and never remember what it’s about.) “The Tent” by Liam O’Flaherty shows an “intense” moment, but falls flat. The weaker stories fail to capture the imagination, the heart, or both.

The best stories seem to be those that make use of either quirky humor or underlying suspense and horror. Despite its dark theme, Bret Harte’s “The Iliad of Sandy Bar” is humorous, with its two protagonists doing their best to outdo each other after what appears to have been a simple disagreement. Mark Twain’s “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County,” also a favorite of anthology editors, is dry, witty, and folksy and is a good introduction to Twain. Many of the other stories mentioned, plus stories like Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Thrawn Janet,” are dark, unsettling, and disturbing. You cannot read them and be unaffected.

Indeed, The Oxford Book of Short Stories highlights why the short story format is ideal for humor and horror; these are life’s moments of intensity that deserve to be told and heard. For this reason, the stories of the apparently mundane with an open end are the weakest, failing to leave a lasting impression or make an impact.

For someone interested in a very limited overview of the short story in English, this is an adequate book with which to start. I would recommend choosing an author whose story strikes you, for example, a John Cheever (“Goodbye, My Brother”) or a Stephen Crane (“The Open Boat”) and exploring their work in more depth. Find out what moves you and read more of it.

Sunday, 8 January 2006
© 2006 by Diane L. Schirf

Book review: The Green Dwarf: A Tale of the Perfect Tense

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The Green Dwarf: A Tale of the Perfect Tense by Charlotte Brontë. Recommended.

The Green Dwarf demonstrates that literary achievement owes perhaps as much to experience and craft as to ability.

Set in the exotic colonial city of Verdopolis in Africa, The Green Dwarf is awkward on its own as a novella. It’s framed at the beginning as a tale within a tale; the recuperating Lord Charles, apparently a renowned literary figure, requests his venerable friend Bud to tell him a story, which turns out to be the story of The Green Dwarf. There are references near the beginning and end to “Captain Tree,” who would apparently figure in other juvenilia by the Brontë siblings.

A time-worn adage about writing is to “write what you know.” The Green Dwarf exemplifies the practical reason for this bit of wisdom; the Brontë siblings did not know Africa, so little of Verdopolis resembles a colonial African city or town. Even the descriptions of hills, glens, and forests, save for the occasional mention of a palm, evoke an English or Scottish setting, not an African one. It’s also never revealed in which part of the vast African continent Verdopolis lies. The nature of the “African Olympic Games,” the characters’ names, the occasional anachronism, and the plot of a lady in distress lend The Green Dwarf the air of a fairy tale in a fictional setting.

Interestingly, Brontë’s imagination is perhaps limited by her chronological age and her social and cultural experience and milieu. The piece villain says, “Beautiful creature . . . Behold me, fair lady, and know into whose power you have fallen!” A more mature or modern writer might hint at something more sinister to follow, as Brontë will later hint at Rochester’s depravity and his paternity of his ward Adele, but after this ominous line the kidnapper merely gloats and then leaves to serve his country.

The Green Dwarf‘s beginning and early Napoleonic aside are nonsensical, its language overblown, and its plot awkward (and interrupted by authorial intrusions such as, “It may now be as well to connect the broken thread of my rambling narrative before I proceed further.”). Brontë’s imagination shines through at times, in whimsy, in images, and in words. The ailing Lord Charles is fed a diet that consists of, among other delicacies, “. . . stewed cockchafers . . . and roasted mice.” In his rambles, he suddenly comes upon the green, foam-covered sea, which his “excited fancy” sees as a plains covered with “white flowers and tender spring grass and the thickly clustered masts of vessels . . . transformed into groves of tall, graceful trees, while the smaller craft took the form of cattle reposing in the shade” — quite a vision for the recovering poet. And Bertha’s comment upon the arrival of Lady Emily answers its own question: “But what have you brought such a painted toy as this here for? There’s no good in the wind, I think.”

Brontë foreshadows the significance of the “carroty-haired hero of the cart and asses” when he defeats Colonel Percy’s magnificent steeds and chariot in a race. She also cleverly keeps him a man of mystery: How did he win the race? How did he happen to be at the right place at the right time to find Colonel Percy’s servant “at a very lonely part of the road”? If he is more than human, why does he need Colonel Percy’s money to pay for his vices? Or is he a representative?

In many ways, The Green Dwarf reads more like a play than a novella. with the awkward authorial intrusions serving as scene breaks. Even the Ashantees and their king Quashie are mere plot devices who enter the scene, breathe wind into the plot’s sails, and add nothing to the drama.

Work on The Green Dwarf and other juvenilia undoubtedly fired Brontë’s continued interest in writing. She achieved success when she left Verdopolis and Africa behind and focused her imagination and her ability to convey it on what she knew and had experienced — the often difficult, lonely, isolated lives of independent, intelligent women in the 19th century, women who, like Jane Eyre, do what they believe is right at the cost of their own happiness.

2 October 2005
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf