Shahnameh, pt. 1

A few weeks ago, I caught some flack from a friend because, despite its admittedly many problems, I liked the movie “300.” It was, to my friend’s thinking and not without some justification, a racist depiction of not just the Persians (i.e. the modern-day Iranians) but of anyone who didn’t claim white Western descent. But where he saw racism I saw the dramatic depiction (alright, an annoying slow-motion, video game, bronze-tinted, senselessly brutal depiction with absurd dialogue - sure) of Herodotus’ account of my most favorite battle of antiquity, The Battle of Thermopylae. How do I recreate the shivers that crawled up my spine when I read, as an intrigued new college student, that when a Spartan hero, one of those incredibly and impossibly built killing machines, is informed that the Persian arrows were so many that they blotted out the sun, he replies, “Then we shall fight in the shade.”? No, it isn’t just a corny one-liner they put in the trailer. According to Herodotus at least, he really did say that.

But therein lies a problem: the only accounts of the Persian Wars are from Western sources. And for all of the things at fault with “300", being true to its sources - mostly - isn’t one of them. If the Persians seem both incredibly effeminate and vile at the same time, it’s because, according to the Greeks, they were. If the Greek warriors, despite their own atrocity, are made out to be heroic freedom fighters it’s because, according the Greeks, they were. For whatever reason, the Persians didn’t see any need to record their own account of the Persian Wars and, if they did, we’ve lost it to the oblivion of time.

Biased and one-sided though it is, I still love Herodotus’ Histories and I still love the Battle of Thermopylae. It’ll take more than an overdone Hollywood movie to change that. But I’ve felt the need to even my knowledge of epic histories out a bit per se, which is why I bought Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings by Abolqase Ferdowsi, newly translated by Dick Davis. And Shahnameh is an epic which covers the history of Persia, from the beginning of time to the coming of Islam. However, Shahnameh is a history in the way that The Iliad is a history. It is based on some historical fact but, like all those other tricksy poets like Homer, Ferdowsi takes some creative liberty.

As a result, either because of Ferdowsi’s story telling or because of Davis’ translation, Shahnameh so far reads like the bastard child of the Bible and the Lord of the Rings...in a good way. Compare this early passage:

The just and prudent Hushang was now master of the world, and he set the crown on his head and ruled in his grandfather’s place. He reigned for forty years, and his mind was filled with wisdom, his heart with justice...Mindful of God’s will, he set about establishing justice. He helped the world flourish, and filled the face of the earth with his just rule.

...with this passage that immediately precedes it:

He gathered together fairies, leopards and lions, savage wolves and fearless tigers, birds and domestic animals, and this army was led by the intrepid young prince...the black demon came fearlessly forward, and the dust of his forces rose into heavens, but the king’s fury and the wild animals’ magnificence rendered the demons’ claws harmless. When the two groups met, the demons were defeated by the animals; like a lion, Hushang caught the black demon in his grip, cleaving his body in two and severing his monstrous head. He laid him low in the dust and flayed his wretched body of its skin.

I haven’t even put a dent in this massive tome but over the course of what will be - yes, I admit it - months, I look forward to trying.

Who Says Librarians Lead Boring Lives?

The online diary of Saad Eskander, Director of the Iraq National Library and Archive (INLA), is a moving daily account of Saad's life as a librarian struggling to replenish the library's looted collection in the middle of an unstable war zone. I was particularly struck by this succinct but very telling entry:

Saturday, 10 March: Three bombs exploded in my neighborhood. Two bombs went off at 7.30. They violently shook my flat, as I was watching some TV programme. At 13.20, another bomb exploded in my neighborhood. It shook my flat. I spent the whole day writing and reading in my room.

On March 5, Saad offers this heartbreaking entry on the bombing that took place last month in Bagdhad's outdoor book market:

As we were talking, a huge explosion shook the INLA's building around 11.35. We, the three of us, ran to the nearest window, and we saw a big and thick grey smoke rising from the direction of al-Mutanabi Street, which is less than 500 meter away from the INLA. I learnt later that the explosion was a result of a car bomb attack. Tens of thousands of papers were flying high, as if the sky was raining books, tears and blood. The view was surreal. Some of the papers were burning in the sky. Many burning pieces of papers fell on the INLA's building. Al-Mutanabi Street is named after one of the greatest Arab poets, who lived in Iraq in the middle ages. The Street is one of well-known areas of Baghdad and where many publishing houses, printing companies and bookstores have their main offices and storages. Its old cafes are the most favorite place for the impoverished intellectuals, who get their inspirations and ideas form this very old quarter of Baghdad. The Street is also famous for its Friday's book market, where secondhand, new and rear books are sold and purchased.... It was extremely sad to learn that a number of the publishers and book sellers, whom we knew very well, were among the dead...This day will be always remembered, as the day when books were assassinated by the forces of darkness, hatred and fanaticism.

What Does Make a Bookstore?

A very old post on bookstores, "What Makes a Bookstore?", at The Millions (A Blog About Books) got me to thinking about my own experience at the bookstore a few days ago.

When it comes to hanging out, it's hard to beat the chains. Your nearest Barnes and Noble probably has dozens of plush chairs and couches where you can sit for as long as you want. The stores are vast wide open spaces with a controlled climate and a bit of piped in music wafting just overhead. The shopper can make a day of it, grabbing a snack and a coffee from the cafe and lounging through the uncrowded weekday afternoon...likewise if you need to pick up a specific title, but don't expect to walk away with anything unexpected from these forays. Don't plan for a literary discovery.

I’m a very frequent shopper at Borders. There are at least three on my way home and, as a Borders preferred member, I enjoy saving 10 and 20 percent when I can. In addition to that, I can usually find what I’m looking for in less than five minutes, even in the smallest Borders and I like making an afternoon of it, lounging in the “plush chairs” and the “wide open spaces.” Theoretically, I could do this at the library but the libraries in D.C. are so unesthetically depressing that I try to grab what I need and get out as soon as possible. A few days ago though, I went into Borders with no particular book in mind, looking to be pleasantly surprised I suppose, and found only...more of the same. All of the prominently displayed titles were books I’d seen on bestseller list after bestseller list for last two years and I thought, “Is this all the book world has to offer right now?”

I left soon after, empty-handed and disappointed, which is my own fault really. I should have known better than to expect to be pleasantly surprised at Borders. Needless to say, my recent experience and The Millions old post have reminded me as to the error of my ways. It’s not on my way home, but I don’t care; I’m going out of my way tonight to make a beeline to the nearest indie bookstore, the amazing Kramerbooks & Afterwords Cafe. I can hardly wait. And I'm pledging here and now that from here on out I will do all of my one-stop book shopping at independent bookstores, whenever and wherever possible. It's time I started doing my part in keeping the dying breed of independent bookstores alive.

Lethem on Writing, Reading, and Other Things...

The only thing I’ve ever read by Jonathan Lethem was the introduction he wrote to The Selected Stories of Philip K. Dick. Despite the critical praise Lethem has received for both Fortress of Solitude and Motherless Brooklyn I, for some reason, can never bring myself to buy his books. Most times, I'll go into the bookstore with every intention of finally buying a Lethem novel, but usually, after a quick perusal of the blurb on the back, I’ll put it back down with promises that I'll buy it later. The interview he recently gave to the AV Club (the surprisingly serious-minded entertainment supplement to The Onion), has me wondering if I should try again...maybe. On reading, Lethem says:

... The Fortress Of Solitude might be an exception in this, but for me, when I was a reader only, I was a very fast, voracious one. I would skeletonize the books that I read, and the things I skipped are the things I now skip as a writer. I wasn't really very patient with long evocations of clouds and trees and buildings and landscape, nor did I pause over elaborate descriptions of the facial characteristics or clothing styles of the characters. I always wanted to know what they were doing and saying. And also what the mysterious big idea of the book was, what the metaphors were. So I would rush to those things, and I would be very cursory as I read the descriptive stuff.

Now, there’s something you don’t hear writers admitting to everyday. I can’t admit to not skipping certain, overlong descriptions myself but I’d also venture to say that sometimes “facial characteristics or clothing styles” could be a writer’s hint to the “mysterious big idea.” Sometimes, it could be dangerous to skip those things the author has worked so hard to include. Lethem and I, however, are in perfect sync with this:

The other thing is that, I think, sometimes visualization in writing works by a kind of homeopathic process. The less you offer, the more readers are forced to bring the world to life with their own visual imaginings. I personally hate an illustration of a character on a jacket of a book. I never want to have someone show me what the character really looks like—or what some artist has decided the character really looks like—because it always looks wrong to me. I realize that I prefer to kind of meet the text halfway and offer a lot of visual collaborations from my own imaginative response to the sentences. And so I think that I invite the reader to do the same thing.

And this quote, an extension of an article he published in Harper’s magazine last month, is interesting commentary on the artist’s place (or birth) in the larger culture:

The image of the artist is sustained by this great myth of iconoclastic individual genius. A lot of great stuff is made up by individual iconoclastic geniuses, and that's fine, but a lot of other stuff comes burbling out of collective culture. That gets invented one way and then used an entirely different way, and different people work on it, and you end up with this sort of puzzle.

On Food...and Drink

Adam Gopnik writes in next week's issue of the New Yorker:

There are four kinds of food in books: food that is served by an author to characters who are not expected to taste it; food that is served by an author to characters in order to show who they are; food an author cooks for characters in order to eat it with them; and, last (and most recent), food that an author cooks for characters but actually serves to the reader.

I can't remember the last time I read about food in a novel, which may be because the food was often just "Styrofoam peanuts in the packaging" of the novel's narrative. I can, however, recall the first sentence of a novel I've just started:

Jack Reacher ordered espresso, double, no peel, no cube, foam cup, no china, and before it arrived at his table he saw a man's life change forever.

I know Gopnik's talking about food not drink, but I think it's a prime example of a description that falls into the second category. Nothing could describe Jack Reacher, the loner, bare-minimum hero of Lee Child's thriller The Hard Way, better than that order of espresso.

More Scary News On Newspaper Book Reviews...

The folks at the blog Critical Mass report:

As reported on CNN and other places, the Tribune Company will be sold to Chicago real estate tycoon Sam Zell in a deal for $13 billion. This will make the company which owns the LA Times, the Chicago Tribune, Newsday, the Hartford Courant and other newspapers (not to mention the Cubs and other radio and television stations) a private company, and less beholden to stock price above all else. In other words, the deal could be good news for book sections, especially if they can be seen as integral to building a bridge between newspapers' past and their future.

Which is good news, especially considering the news posted at the Literary Saloon last week:

As has long been feared and now widely reported on, The Los Angeles Times is doing away with its stand-alone Sunday book review section, 'merging' it with the opinion section, beginning on 14 April...(Yes, the press release says 14 April, which is a Saturday, and early reports suggested it would be a Saturday-section, but they do also write that it would be: "a combined Sunday section". We'll see.)

The future of newspaper book review sections seems precarious indeed. Is it possible that ten years from now the only major newspaper that may still be running a book review section is the NY Times? As much as I value the reviews in the NY Times, I sincerely hope not.