Five Great Novels- Season Two, Part One

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The author asserts that every word of this post is his original intellectual property, and also begs anyone using any of the content or ideas herein to simply cite appropriately. 

Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, first published in 1936, has been on my radar for quite some time.  I grew-up exposed to the film, and at one point attempted to read through this monstrous volume.  Obviously, I failed.  With this in mind, I decided to place this novel in the first slot (American Novel) of my Summer 2014 Five Great Novels rotation. 

This novel took an unreasonable amount of time to finish—well over a month.  With that being said, my experience was enjoyable; this was one of the few novels in which I have been able to observe veritable layers of plot.  The broadest of these plots is the Gotterdammerung of Southern culture.  We see the South as it was before the war, followed by the process of its inevitable destruction, and later are presented with a reborn culture, a shadow of the past.  Regressively, there is the plot of action within Scarlett’s social circle.  Herein, those with gumption thrive, despite the death of their culture, and those without are doomed to relive a past which will never return.  This gumption should not be confused with a willingness to part from the original culture, as even those who cling to the past, yet bend in order to survive, are successful.  For example, the Fontaines and the Merriweathers, whom one cannot possibly claim have abandoned their past, are able to find success in a new, if not foreign culture.  At the most personal level is the plot surrounding Scarlett’s own life, her romantic affairs with her three husbands and other assorted beaux, including the pitiable Ashley Wilkes. 

It is precisely this layered plot which makes Gone With the Wind a novel of such great worth.  The novel documents a culture with all the bias of a people whose combined experience of bitterness and destruction has been discounted in favor of that of the victor.  Naturally, the novel is considered to be of racist leanings, as I discovered, much to my own humor, by browsing the Barnes & Noble website.  To this, my response is—‘ Of course the novel has racist leanings, it describes a culture firmly-rooted with a dichotomy of race which determined social class.’  But we should not discount Gone With the Wind for what in our politically-correct era would be considered it’s racist tendencies.  For although we may consider such language and themes to be bigotry, it is in fact a picture of a different time, and those who wish to make a fuss over a novel written before the Civil-Rights Movement, and largely set in a time before the Fourteenth Amendment, need to get over themselves. 

Five Great Novels, an Introduction

In the Fall of 2013, while a student at CIU, I was in a literature class called Five Great Novels.  The course was pretty self-explanatory-- We would devote an entire semester to five novels of worth, based-upon a unifying theme.  The five novels explored in that course were: The Scarlet Letter, Crime and Punishment, Pride and Prejudice, A Brave New World, and The Remains of the Day. The unifying theme of all these novels was the exploration of the human conscience.

In the Spring of 2014, my graduation was looming, and I knew that if I was to stand any chance, I would need to keep reading regularly.  Accordingly, I hatched a diabolical plan.  I would strive to read five valuable novels each season, totalling twenty novels each year.  I ditched the idea of a unifying theme, in favor of a simpler template, which I have since also abandoned.  Now, it is largely determined by which five works I would like to read, with some form of deadline involved.  My first Season, last Spring, included the following works:

1. The Last of the Mohicans- James Fenimore Cooper
2.  Frankenstein- Mary Shelley
3. "The Wasteland"- T. S. Eliot 
4.  A Storm of Swords- George R. R. Martin
5. The Stranger- Albert Camus

Now that I am on a blogging-streak, however short-lived it may turn out to be, I have decided to add a new section to my blog, one that involves this whole scheme of Five Great Novels.  I am currently working on Season 2 of Five Great Novels, with Gone With the Wind finished and The Three Musketeers nearly done. Expect to hear more soon!

There is Nothing Romantic about Being a Scrivener

Note: This is a passing reference to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener”, published in 1856.  A scrivener is a legal copyist, a now defunct occupation which involves painstaking replicating legal documents by hand.

Recently, I have been blessed with a job at a company called CoPart, a multi-million dollar corporation in the automotive industry.  In short—we sell salvage vehicles, and do it wonderfully.  Therefore, as a part of my job, I am responsible for filling-out titles for new buyers.  Early-on in this activity, I chuckled to myself when I thought of Bartleby and his business of being a scrivener.  Of course, my job is entirely more comfortable than that of Bartleby, and I would prefer a great many more things than he in my service. 

Nonetheless, I find myself consoled by my travels, and by my books.  Especially thoughts of the Black Forest, which bring tears to my eyes as I stare at my computer or fill-out paperwork.  These thoughts cause me to halt and contemplate my adventures, if just for a moment.  They constantly remind me that although I am very blessed with my job, and although I love it as a temporary occupation until I go back to school, I know that it does not fit my heart.  I am passionate about other things, about history and literature, and art—these have no place in an office.

In this I find great encouragement, knowing that although I am happy now with where God has placed me, I will not be able to rest until I am a professional scholar, for better or worse.  My only fear is that I do not have the mind to set me in a place of scholarship, and that I am doomed to do that which I do not love because I am incapable of that which I do. 

Until such a time as I am once again in the academic world, I will continue to work hard for CoPart, but I feel that I am destined for something quite different from that which I am now doing. 

The Failings of a Reticent Historian

Note: One of the newer additions to my vocabulary is the word ‘Reticent’, or ‘Reticence’, to which I was exposed by a translation of M. Dumas’ The Three Musketeers, in which the translator uses reticent to describe the demeanor of Athos. To be ‘Reticent’ is to be not given to speech, or to be normally silent.

I have been grieved by a section of the American population.  A group not defined by race, nor age, nor socioeconomic status, but by the way they treat history.  This group is a mob of pretenders, who espouse their appreciation of history in a peculiar way.  In their efforts to show their great love of all things old, they find it necessary to remove or otherwise damage historical artifacts and sites.  Of course, there is no better way to preserve and appreciate history than to destroy or steal from it.

                                    

My wife and I once visited the Ninety-Six National Historic Site together.  At the entrance to the park, there is placed a replica cannon barrel, protected by iron bars from vandals.  It was this cannon barrel which first brought to my attention the phenomenon of historical destruction.  You see, people touch things, and when they do so, they leave bits of oil on the object.  This oil from the hands does very little damage by itself, but when thousands of visitors touch an object, it creates an awful lot of damage that is not immediately apparent.

 Let us return to our replica cannon barrel at Ninety-Six.  Even if it were touched by the modest number of one-thousand people in one year, the oil and grit left on it would be tremendous.  Multiply that over the course of a decade— which in the scheme of history is quite little— and the damage done to a historical artifact, or even to a carefully constructed replica, could be fatal. 

Ninety-Six Battlefield, with earthworks in the foreground
and the Star Fort behind.

This gradual destruction also occurs in the landscape of a historical site.  To begin, particularly with earthen ramparts, roads, and the like, land wears-down with time.  Largely, this cannot be helped, so the historical appreciator is free from guilt.  This is the case, in my experience, of the Star Fort and Ninety-Six, the trenches at Spotsylvania Battlefield, and the earthen portions of Fort Moultrie.  Again, it is largely unavoidable.  However, those who wish to touch and experience history tend to further contribute to the washing-away of these earthen artifacts, which, once gone, will have gone forever.  Therefore, I plead with anyone who visits a historical site not to tread on earthworks.  Now, there is a caveat to this request; certain historical sites allow visitors to stand-upon earthworks.  In these locations, everyone should feel free to stand-upon the earthworks, but not to intentionally damage them in any way.

The worst crime one can commit upon a historical site, and one which makes me sick to my stomach, due in majority to the offense itself, and in part to my own reticence on the matter, is the removal of historical artifacts from their site of rest for personal pleasure.  Of course, as with any strong feeling, mine stem from an actual event to which I bore witness.  During my travels to Europe, I had the privilege of visiting some remarkably well-preserved trenches on the Western Front, near Mulhouse, France.  These century-old trenches looked much as they did at the Armistice, even down to the rusted barbed-wire which has lain still for nearly a century.  Imagine my horror, when, upon leaving this hallowed site, I observed three members of our group wrapping-up a section of barbed-wire to take home to the United States.  Of course, I said nothing, despite my shock, and I profoundly regret it. 

The trenches at Mulhouse, largely
unchanged since 1918. 

To those people—whom I refuse to name—if you by some chance come across this article, shame on you for what you did.  I understand that it was out of appreciation for the subject, and for the sake of memory that you did so, but I believe that you neglected to think—as many do—that such an object was not yours to take.  In addition, your response may be that it was cowardly of me to call you out in a public blog, rather than to confront you in person.  I admit to this cowardice, although for your sake, and that of our entire group, perhaps it is better that I could not find the words to say to you at the time, for they would not have been kind. 

To all who by chance may read this blog, I beg you in sincerity not to remove anything from a historical site, for any reason.  If you do,  the immediate damage may be as oil on a brass cannon, barely noticeable in the single occurrence.  But over the course of a decade, or a century, if each visitor to a site robs but a little, thinking it no large matter, any trace of living history on that site will be destroyed.

So again, I implore everyone not to harm historical sites beyond what is expected of time and weather, for this historical appreciator, reticent no longer, will have strong words for you.