Sounds like wish - A quiet place.

26 September, 2013

Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 5

The War of the Worlds. Read the blurb on the front cover of this 1910 edition: ‘It is a story which no ordinary reader can possibly put down half finished.’

Cover of 1910 Hodder and Stoughton edition of ‘The War of the Worlds’ – courtesy Andrew Cox on http://drzeus.best.vwh.net/wotw/

And that’s because when you’ve half-finished reading it, you’re at a point of suspense that drives you onwards through the chapters. I’ve been reading this book online, having succumbed to the temptation of instant literature. Normally I go to a library and get the physical book to read, which should be possible with any classic. But not this time. To my disappointment, my local libraries don’t have copies of it; it’s either lost, available only as an audio-book or video, or is held in a faraway place. You’d think that libraries in a capital city would ensure they have copies of every classic on their shelves. Of course, I could always go out and buy it but then it would be yet another book to store in my house. Libraries are a gift.

Searching for the centre of The War of the Worlds online, I took the plain text version which is 111 pages long, then went to p. 55 and read these tense lines in the chapter ‘The Exodus from London’ which follows a number of chaos-filled chapters where Martians had invaded the suburbs of London, killing citizens with their Heat-Ray and a black vapour they discharged into the streets:

‘All the railway lines north of the Thames and the South-Eastern people at Cannon Street had been warned by midnight on Sunday, and trains were being filled. People were fighting savagely for standing-room in the carriages even at two o’clock. By three, people were being trampled and crushed even in Bishopsgate Street, a couple of hundred yards or more from Liverpool Street station; revolvers were fired, people stabbed, and the policemen who had been sent to direct the traffic exhausted and infuriated, were breaking the heads of the people they were called out to protect.’

Header: artwork by Alvim Corréa for a 1906 Belgian edition. Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

*****

25 September, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: Lines and patterns

This month in Canberra we have the flower festival, Floriade. And this week Floriade carries on into the night, beginning tonight. I’ve just come home from a fun evening watching circus performers and crazy light shows. Problem is, at night the flowers are coloured by swinging beams of red and blue and green and purple light, so I have no idea what colour these tulips really are.

But I thought it was all ideal for a ‘lines and patterns’ theme: the gardens are planted with flowers of different heights to form geometric patterns, and the ferris wheel behind them makes a great show of light lines glowing on and off as it turns. Slowly. Very slowly.

23 September, 2013

Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 4

The Reader by Bernhard Schlink (translated by Carol Brown Janeway) is 216 pages long and the middle page (of my edition) is p. 108, where Hanna, a former guard in a Nazi concentration camp, is on trial for her part in locking women prisoners in a church which was then bombed and burnt down. Two pages later, on p. 110, Hanna asks the judge a question which leaves him, and us the readers, on shaky ground. The judge searches for an answer, stalls for time, and eventually answers unsatisfactorily. We the readers read on, hoping a better answer is offered in the second half of the novel.

Here’s the portion of the conversation that puts the ball in the judge’s court:

‘Did you not know that you were sending the prisoners to their death?’
‘Yes, but the new ones came, and the old ones had to make room for the new ones.’
‘So because you wanted to make room, you said you and you and you have to be sent back to be killed?’
Hanna didn’t understand what the presiding judge was getting at.
‘I … I mean … so what would you have done?’ Hanna meant it as a serious question. She did not know what she should or could have done differently, and therefore wanted to hear from the judge, who seemed to know everything, what he would have done.

*****

22 September, 2013

Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 3

Today, telling my daughter-in-law about the turning point at a novel’s centre, I picked up a book lying on her table, Wuthering Heights, to demonstrate. I calculated the number of pages in the story, then halved it and turned to that page, ending up at p. 166, the early part of Volume Two where Heathcliff asks Nelly Dean how Catherine died. Nelly replies:

‘Her life closed in a gentle dream – may she wake as kindly in the other world!’

And Heathcliff responds darkly, horrifying many of the readers in 1847 who were frightened by this unstable, devilish man and what he was going to do with this consuming love in the second half of the story:

‘May she wake in torment!’ he cried, with frightful vehemence, stamping his foot, and groaning in a sudden paroxysm of ungovernable passion. ‘Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there – not in heaven – not perished – where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray one prayer – I repeat it till my tongue stiffens – Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest, as long as I am living! You said I killed you – haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt their murderers.’

*****

19 September, 2013

Journey to the centre: Great middle lines – 2

To find the centre of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco (translated by William Weaver), I have to begin by counting the pages of the first prologue which precedes the second prologue. The first one appears to be a kind of introduction by the author, an account of how Eco came to write this story. But he’s shrewd; the first prologue is all fiction, just like the rest of the story. Added to the pages of the story, (pp. 3 – 493), the total number in my edition is about 498, making the centre a sub-title page, “Fourth Day”. But I turn the page and find the spot where the young monk, the narrator, starts to feel certain his fellow monks are not simply dying one by one, they are being murdered. A coincidence is revealed at this halfway point, leading the reader to guess why the monks in this wealthy Italian monastery are being permanently silenced.

“The other day I observed Venantius’s hands, when the blood had been washed off, and I noticed a detail to which I attached little importance. The tips of two fingers of Venantius’s right hand were dark, as if blackened by some dark substance. Exactly – you see? – like two fingertips of Berengar now. In fact, here we have a trace also on the third finger. At the time I thought that Venantius had handled some inks in the scriptorium. . . . “

*****

18 September, 2013

Journey to the centre of a novel: Great middle lines – 1

In the middle of a novel, a few lines often show the reader that a character’s world is about to become unfamiliar and unsafe. It can be a turning point, a point where a journey begins and when the action starts.

I’d like to share some of these lines with you. I’ll go to the half-way point of a novel, give or take a page, and scan it for something I wish I’d written myself. Today I picked up The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien, turned to the opening page, p. 13, then the last page, p. 253, and calculated the rough centre would be at about p. 120. I read the page and found these admirable words, which indeed are the point where a journey begins:

“There are no safe paths in this part of the world. Remember you are over the Edge of the Wild now, and in for all sorts of fun wherever you go. Before you could get round Mirkwood in the North you would be right among the slopes of the Grey Mountains, and they are simply stiff with goblins, hobgoblins, and orcs of the worst description. Before you could get round it in the South, you would get into the land of the Necromancer; and even you, Bilbo, won’t need me to tell you tales of that black sorcerer.”

*****

14 September, 2013

Multicoloured

This is an inviting house tucked away on a hill in Port-Vendres, France. Check out the tricky second entrance, up the ladder.

Multicoloured wall, Port-Vendres, France

At the left of the house is a gate surrounded by multicoloured mosaics on both sides. Here’s one side:

Take a look, too, at Ailsa’s travel photos, especially the multicoloured hot springs. Totally awesome. She proposed the multicoloured theme this week.

10 September, 2013

Weekly photo challenge: Unusual point of view

I’m at home sick today. When I lay in my bed this windy afternoon I saw clouds sailing through the sky and camellia bushes swaying to and fro past my window frame. I immediately thought of the photo challenge to find an unusual point of view. I don’t usually photograph on my back, but I thought I’d give it a try.

Camellia silhouette – clouds on the move

7 September, 20138 December, 2019

Hidden

Tomb of Queen Hatsepshut, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, c1941 — Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, Valley of the Kings, Egypt, c1941

Hidden behind tall cliffs on the west bank of the Nile is the Valley of the Kings, Biban el-Muluk, in Luxor.

And trying to hide in the rock face of the limestone cliff is the temple of Queen Hatshepsut, known as Djeser Djeseru (Holy of Holies or Sacred of Sacreds), which is the main building of the mortuary temple complex at Deir el-Bahri. Hatshepsut ruled from 1473-1458 BC, one of the few women to rule as Pharaoh.

Excavations at the complex began in the 1890s and continued until 1936. There seems to have been some archaeological work in progress when this photo was taken during WWII. New photos available online (for example here), compared with the one above reveal some reconstruction since the 1940s.

The temple complex is a symmetrical structure, 30 metres tall and the length of about two and a half football fields. On the lower terraces there were gardens; fossilised remains of trees have been found lining the walkway to the temple, fragrant incense trees which Queen Hatshepsut had brought back from Punt (south-east of Egypt, possibly present-day Somalia). About 100 colossal statues of her as a sphinx guarded the entrance, and more massive statues of the queen wearing male clothing and a false beard adorned the temple.

The black and white photo above comes from my father’s WWII photo album.

The colour photo below is of statues of Hatshepsut in the Hatshepsut Room in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Large Kneeling Statue of Hatshepsut Egypt, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ailsa came across a few strange hidden things in her travels and posted photos of them on her blog, then asked us to find some things hiding in other parts of the world. Ailsa comes up with fantastic prompts for photos and blogging, and I really appreciate the ideas. Check out her post!

4 September, 2013

Pink

Marianne has challenged me to find a photo of something pink this month. I wasn’t keen because I’ve had three sons so I’ve never had to buy pink stuff, and I almost never wear pink myself (give me red or turquoise). However, this afternoon I drove past this line of trees near my house which have recently burst into bloom, looking spectacular in straight masses. They’re minutes from my house, so I stopped and snapped them. When I moved closer to the flowers (go to the subject, don’t zoom in – that’s what I’ve been told) I was tickled to see red stalks and centres. Check out the photo in the header.

Marianne requests we spread news about great blogs we’ve read. One I’ve commented on recently is Wholeyjeans, where Jean has a very interesting look at environmental destruction and adds a poem that I had to read twice; it was meaningful and not beyond me (as much poetry is…).

I also commented on Ici & Là Nature Pictures, a blog about the beauty of France seen by biking and walking. I commented simply because I love France almost as much as I love Australia.