Why I Prefer Long Biographies to Long Novels

Since my last post, I've been engaging in one of my masochistic acts of forcing myself to read something that I'm not enjoying, and have given up. The book is the new, long novel, The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje. This isn't a criticism of the novel and mainly reflects the evolution of my literary tastes over a long period of time. 

Simply put, fiction has never been my favorite type of writing. I like it only when it either contains accurate and realistic depictions of people or presents a skewed and unusual picture of reality that I find entertaining or challenging. The first category for me, in long novels, would include Middlemarch, which, to me, is an accurate sociological depiction of an English town in the 19th century and also contains autobiographical elements of George Eliot. In this case, since George Eliot was cognizant of Darwinism, there is even a slight evolutionary flavor. I have a strong preference for realism like this. The second category would include Kafka's novella, The Metamorphosis and László Krasznahorkai's Satantango. However, what I've found is that interesting skewed fiction can work just as well or better in a short format. For example, I thought that Kafka's novels, The Trial and The Castle, were boring. I also thought that László Krasznahorkai's shorter works, The Last Wolf and Chasing Homer were about as good as the longer Satantango and The Melancholy of Resistance. 

In the long novel category, I should mention the only one that I've read recently, The Mandarins, by Simone de Beauvoir. Although de Beauvoir distorted some facts and concealed identities, it is still an autobiographical novel, and that is what I liked about it. However, I don't think that de Beauvoir understood her environment or wrote as well as George Eliot, so I don't rank her novel as highly. The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje, is a long novel that has a realistic basis in the Brontë sisters. Since I had just read a long biography on the Brontës, I was looking for more information about them. For me, this is where fiction often fails, because I prefer fiction that is based on knowledge and facts to fiction that is based on authorial reimagining or speculation.

While Juliet Barker's biography of the Brontës is accurate and unspeculative, they lived so long ago and their lives were so short that the information available to biographers has been limited. Charlotte Brontë corresponded more than her sisters did and had a wider social network, so much of the information came directly or indirectly from her. Furthermore, Charlotte, as the oldest surviving sibling, took an active role in developing the literary careers of her sisters. One lingering gray area for me is whether there was any significant sibling rivalry between the sisters. When Emily and Charlotte were in Brussels with Constantin Heger, though Emily took no interest in him, Charlotte fell madly in love, but he does not seem to have reciprocated. However, Heger later told Mrs. Gaskell that Emily was a genius. It seems possible to me that Charlotte was jealous of Emily's talent and intentionally destroyed or edited some of her work after she died. Also, because no one really recorded it at the time, the details of daily life in the Brontë household are not well known. There obviously were various family tensions periodically, and in modern terms all the deaths would have been traumatic, though, during that period, frequent family deaths were quite common. Barker doesn't discuss the family's religiosity, but that must have played an important role, since Patrick was a clergyman. However, from what little is known, Emily seems a bit like a precursor to Emily Dickinson, who moved from orthodox religion to something resembling a religion of nature, which does not necessarily entail a Christian god.  

I have been reading biographies for so long now that when a topic comes up, I am attuned to finding out more about what people said, did and thought in earlier times. I seem to be too experienced to be satisfied by novelistic speculations and inventions well after the fact. It is often difficult enough to understand what is going on in the present, let alone 170 years ago. I only read a few pages of The Song of Stork and Dromedary, and they consisted mainly of descriptions of what people were doing, without direct quotations. Because I am primarily interested in what people think and feel during their lives, Anjet Daanje has effectively added a layer of opacity which runs counter to my interests as a reader. In any case, because I am a self-acknowledged atypical reader, I am not suggesting that others should refrain from reading The Song of Stork and Dromedary.

Diary

I haven't read a long novel in over ten years and will shortly be starting The Song of Stork and Dromedary, by Anjet Daanje. It was recommended to me by someone who knows my reading preferences, and it is a perfect fit for me because it is loosely based on the Brontës. It also helps that the author is not American and seems to be more serious than most novelists. In the U.S., "serious novel" has become an oxymoron, like "serious news." I haven't been impressed by recent British or French novelists, and this author is Dutch.

The number of pageviews on this blog keeps rising for unknown reasons. This month isn't even over yet, and I'm already above 90,000. Apparently there are more bots circulating now than ever. I haven't done a deep dive into this, but I may be meeting some of the criteria for bot attraction. It probably helps that I've been posting regularly for over twelve years. Also, it seems likely that the bots are looking for revenue. Although I don't have my own revenue-generating ads, the YouTube videos that I post do, which would make me attractive to Alphabet. I would rather have no advertising at all on this blog, but in this case it allows me to include content that I find interesting. Occasionally I find videos that are relevant to earlier posts that I've made and add them. I've just added this clip from Goldfinger to my earlier post on the subject. I enjoy Bond's wittiness. His dialogue with Goldfinger is quite sarcastic even while Goldfinger is pointing his golden gun at him. Then, after the gun fires and Goldfinger gets sucked out, when Pussy Galore asks Bond where Goldfinger is, he replies "Playing his golden harp." Don't we all wish that someone we know were also playing his golden harp.

On the home front, the weather is becoming increasingly autumnal, with overnight lows near 50º. The tomatoes are doing very well, and I should have a constant supply until early November. I've taken down the deer fencing, because the deer won't seriously damage them now, and they probably have other plants that they prefer. I figured out that my neighbor's tomatoes, which usually do very well, are determinates, which means that they all form at once at the end of the season. I grew them once but much prefer indeterminates, which supply a continuous stream for several months. The hummingbird volume at the feeder is picking up now, because the southern migration has started. During the summer, I mainly see males, which have striped throats. The females, which have white throats, rarely come to the feeder because they seek more nutritious food for their chicks. When you see them at the feeder they are usually migrating. The males are also passing through and often have fights near the feeder. They should all be gone in a couple of weeks.

I can tell now that my mouse problems are over. At this time of year in 2023 and 2024 they were audible in the walls and could be seen crawling on the house at night. Since 2024, there haven't been any. When I read The Farm in the Green Mountains in 2020, I became a little concerned that there could also be rats around. Looking into this recently, there do seem to be rats in Vermont. However, rats dislike the cold winters and require a high caloric intake. There are rats in some towns and on some farms, but they don't generally inhabit the woods. So my main pest risks seem to be under control. Last fall there were a lot of carpenter bees, which make small holes in wood and lay eggs. Their damage was minimal. Occasionally, black bears can be a nuisance, but I haven't had any trouble with them since I started taking down the bird feeders from April to December. My generator maintenance guy said that a bear got into his garage recently and made a mess, but they're usually harmless.

The weather is fantastic today, and I'm off for a hike on the Cadwell Trail.  

Strange Bedfellows on the Evolutionary Landscape

I just read Neanderthals: Fact, Fiction, and Wishful Thinking, by Jeffrey H. Schwartz. The title intrigued me, because I have been wondering about our connection to the Neanderthals, but I went into this cautiously, because I had read Schwartz before and found his writing style to be too fussy and academic. Unfortunately, he hasn't changed at all, so I've decided to just make a brief comment rather than a full review of the book.

As I wrote earlier, genetic research has recently shown that we are related to the extinct Denisovans and Neanderthals, and that they are probably the closest relatives of modern humans. Schwartz seems to find the Neanderthal connection offensive and then goes on to write a long history of biological science as it relates to the evolution of H. sapiens, from Charles Darwin to the present. He seems to be most familiar with the skeletal differences between Neanderthals and modern humans and devotes more space to that than to the genetic studies. Somehow, he seems to find the thought of sex between Neanderthals and humans repugnant. Apparently, in his academic bubble, no one told him that human males are known to have had sex with dogs, horses, donkeys, cattle and sheep. 

To keep it short, I'll just say that Schwartz must never have studied at the Sabine Hossenfelder College of Quantum Indeterminacy or Robert Sapolsky's "It's Complicated" University. In sum, there is so much that we don't know that Schwartz should be far more cautious in his dismissiveness of our connection to the Neanderthals. While it is true that some animals, such as cockroaches and horseshoe crabs, have had stable genetic and physical characteristics for hundreds of millions of years, some large mammals have gone through major physical changes or become extinct within a mere 12,000 years.

I'll add that I was shocked to see Schwartz describe James Watson, who died last year, as a "Brit" on page 152. Anyone could have told him fifty years ago that Watson was an American. 

Video of the Day

 Contra dancing in New Hampshire in 1967.

Diary

I haven't been reading anything recently but will start next week when my new book arrives. The atmosphere here is the distinct "late summer." The vegetation is lush, and the birds are generally quiet, except for the pileated woodpeckers, which are pounding away now. The trees get covered with large holes, which become habitats for many animals. The softwoods, such as birch, tend to rot and collapse faster than the hardwoods, such as oak. The longer you live here, the easier it is to develop a sense of living in an ecosystem. The worst of the hot weather is over now, and I still haven't used an air conditioner. I got rid of two large portable air conditioners that I never used but kept one small window air conditioner just in case. Even on hot days the interior of the house stays fairly cool, and during the day the upstairs heats up. It only becomes uncomfortable for me when the humidity is high and the temperature is above 80º, and that rarely occurs. Usually the overnight temperatures are in the 60's, and if I ventilate the house in the morning and close the windows it stays cool inside all day. So far, this seems to be a good location for living during a period of climate change. There will be periodic flooding, which won't affect this house, and some severe storms, but that's about it. It currently does not appear that there will be droughts locally. We do get a little smoke from forest fires to the north and west, but that hasn't been significant so far. There seem to be some unexplained health benefits to living here: since arriving, I have had no illnesses or allergies and no aches and pains. It seems possible that I'll become a super-ager without making any special effort.

I've been avoiding writing about Trump, because I consider him to be a boring topic. In January, 2017, I described him as a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo, and he hasn't changed at all since then. At the time, it seemed as if he was a stupid person way out of his depth, and he still seems like a stupid person way out of his depth. It makes more sense to look at this from a sociological standpoint, in which the corporatization of American life since World War II has caused people to become obsessed with wealth maximization. Since this is still a male-dominated country, net worth seems to have figuratively replaced penis size. To be "well-endowed" now, money does the trick. But the ante keeps going up, and millionaires are losers: you need one billion dollars minimum. The only reason why Trump is in power now is that the Republican Party needed a leader who would follow "pay-to-play" rules. This made Trump a good candidate, because he was an experienced grifter. At a practical level, this meant that rich people and corporations could just buy the federal laws and regulations that suit them. Trump is there to misinterpret and ignore laws for the people who keep him in power. Ordinary money grubbers prefer to work with someone like Trump, because he has none of the class distinction of a Rockefeller or a Rothschild. One of the reasons why Trump seems callous and indifferent to the needs of poor and disenfranchised people is that they have nothing to offer him. He also has a sadistic streak, because he knows that at heart he is a moron, and there is nothing that he can do about it.

Oddly, it seems that the democratic process may actually be working for the removal of Trump. He is doubling down on his fantasy "rigged election" trope because he knows that he may very well lose the House and Senate and be removed from office this time. The MAGA movement is currently recalibrating for a world without Trump, and there are defections brewing. Trump's preferred method of imposing his will on people is protracted litigation, but he is already losing cases, and I think that the MAGA members on the Supreme Court are getting tired of naughty Donald.  The midterm elections are also causing Congressional members to assess their popularity among voters if their support of Trump no longer supplies the cachet that it once did. The end is nigh.

Diary

This has been somewhat of an unusual summer for me. I was already getting a little tired of my regular hikes, and then there was a lot of rain. The rain was followed by massive plant growth and an explosion of mosquitos. The plant growth affected my yard, and the main perennial section grew properly for the first time since I moved here. It consists of a large boulder surrounded by four large hostas and four orange lilies. Since there was only one minor deer attack earlier, the flowers are intact. The tomatoes are also doing exceptionally well, and this is the first year ever that I had a tomato salad in July. But that also had to do with the fact that I had planted the seeds earlier than usual. Fortunately, since there is very loamy soil here, the grass doesn't grow much, even with a lot of rain, so that takes little time to mow during the season. As far as the mosquitos go, because I was under intense attacks several times, I finally realized that I am immune to mosquito bites, other than the annoying buzz and the biting itself. I looked it up and found that people develop an immunity over time. I never develop lumps or itches from mosquito bites now. I'm not particularly a fan of Friedrich Nietzsche, but I've found on numerous occasions that his phrase "What does not kill me makes me stronger" seems to be correct. I may simply have been born tough, but I often notice how people get upset by things that I just take as a matter of course. I have never needed to attend therapy sessions to build my self-esteem, and I don't care whether I'm included or not. Because of my geographic background and personal characteristics, I have never felt much need to integrate myself within the prevailing belief systems of my immediate environments.

In my yard, there seem to be fewer mosquitos than elsewhere. The day shift of insect eaters includes six eastern phoebes born this year, and the night shift consists of two bats that live on the house. The bat house is occupied during the day regularly now. Otherwise, the animal activities in the yard are fairly subdued at the moment, though, a few weeks ago, a couple of adolescent black bears wandered out of the woods and briefly stood up on their hind legs and had a play fight.

One thing that I've been spending a lot of time on recently is Google AI. I find it especially useful for finding basic facts and dates. It seems to have become more accurate over time, but I still like to find ways to double-check its content. My main concern is that it is specifically designed to maintain neutrality on controversial subjects and issues with politically correct implications. For example, it is now a foregone conclusion that Donald Trump is the worst and most corrupt president in American history, yet Google AI maintains neutrality on that topic. I got similar results when I questioned whether Helen of Troy, as depicted in the new film, The Odyssey, is racially accurate. I have read both The Iliad and The Odyssey and have studied Greek mythology and Homeric Greek. The actual probability that Homer conceived of Helen of Troy as black is exceedingly low. However, even classical scholars are reluctant to say that. I went back and forth on this with Google AI, and it finally admitted that it is designed to maintain neutrality on controversial questions as part of Google's business model. So, unsurprisingly, what counts is Google's profitability, not necessarily the dissemination of truthful statements. The film industry is also to blame, because it rewrites history for its own purpose of profit maximization. In this case the studio takes no responsibility for representing the intent of an author or authors who lived in a now-dead civilization. Following this methodology, there might be a future film in which Jesus is portrayed as a transvestite lesbian.

As far as my reading goes, I seem to be more in a winter mode than a summer mode. I enjoy the depth of long biographies and hope to find more good ones. For now I plan to switch to science next and read a new book on the Neanderthals. I currently have a female guest – a cat – whom I am cat sitting.