Evaluating a Young Travel Writer Here is a young English travel writer describing a train trip from Boston to Lowell in the year 1842:

A great many newspapers are pulled out, and a few of them are read. Everybody talks to you, or to anybody else who hits his fancy. If you are an Englishman, he expects that that railroad is pretty much like an English railroad. If you say "No," he says "Yes?" (interrogatively), and asks in what respect they differ.

You enumerate the heads of difference, one by one, and he says "Yes?" (still interrogatively) to each. Then he guesses you don't travel faster in England; and on your replying that you do, says "Yes?" again (still interrogatively), and, it is quite evident, doesn't believe it.

After a long pause he remarks, partly to you and party to the knob of his stick, that "Yankees are reckoned to be considerable of of a go-ahead people too," upon which you say "Yes," and then he says "Yes" again (affirmatively this time); and upon your looking out of the window, tells you that behind that hill, and some three miles from the next station, there is a clever town in a smart lo-ca-tion, where he expects you have con-cluded to stop.

Your answer in the negative naturally leads to more questions in reference to your intended route (always pronounced rout); and wherever you are going, you invariably learn that you can't get there without immense difficulty and danger, and that all the great sights are somewhere else.


A promising young travel writer, think you? He is a bit wordy. I think he shows promise, though. The guy's name is Charles Dickens.  ¶ 8:40 PM 1 comments

  The King's Danish Everything I ever learned about chess I learned from my grandfather, Charles K. Dickson, who, so far as I know, never let me win, so that when I finally did win a game it really counted for something, and from the book I interited from him, Irving Chernev's 1,000 Best Short Games of Chess, which led me to all of Chernev's other wonderful books.

Between these two teachers I learned enough to see how much fun chess can be if you're not worried about losing. If my opponent makes a careless move that would lose immediately, I suggest that he take it back. Who wants to win that way?

Tonight I tried the King's Danish, a combination of the Danish Gambit and the King's Gambit. We went 1 P-K4 P-K4 and I went P-Q4, offering the queen pawn as the opening of the Danish Gambit. My opponent Steve (he's Steve and I'm The Other Steve) declined the offer of the queen pawn and went N-QB3, so then I went P-KB4, offering the king bishop pawn, as in the King's Gambit. Hence the King's Danish, an historic first, so far as I know.

Steve then took the queen pawn, and the queen bishop pawn, completing the Danish, which leaves Black up two pawns, but leaves White with lots of open files and diagonals and pieces in a better position for offensive action.

I managed to pick up a piece in the early going, and then it was a matter of not losing. Steve, down a piece, needed a brilliant stroke to win, but he generally sees deeper into the position and I'm the kind of player who often leaves openings. He had two connected pawns advancing on the queen rook and queen knight files, but I was able to hang on for the win.

Score one for the King's Danish. I rather doubt that it will consistently win for White, but it's sure to make for a delightful skittle, one way or the other.  ¶ 10:36 PM 0 comments

  Maigret Dreams How do you think?

That's the question that comes up when you read George Simenon's Maigret novels. Maigret is introduced to a new situation, asks a lot of questions and then -- mulls over the entire situation. Simenon tells you all these minute details about Maigret's life because without them you cannot understand his thought process.

Most disciplines of thought tell us to structure our thinking in some way. Maigret never does that. He's fond of saying to journalists, "I know nothing," which, if you've read Socrates, is the key to wisdom. The oracle at Delphi declared that Socrates was the wisest man in the world and Socrates said that could only be because he was the only one who knew that he knew nothing!

There is no greater barrier to wisdom than thinnking you already know. Once you already know, you can no longer learn.

Reading the Maigret books you trace Inspector Maigret's thought process -- things that occur to him, things that strike him a little bit odd, but you also have to know the trains he took, the restaurants he ate at, what he ate, which pipe he is smoking and why -- if there is a reason...

I love it. I've just read four Maigret books in succession. You get a description of one man's thought process and it gives you insights into your own.

Unless you try to structure it, as Maigret never does, it's not an orderly process at all. Images, impressions, associations, notions, snatches of song, occur to us seemingly at random, unless they are triggered by a stimulus like the cookie in Marcel Proust's A La Recherche de Temps Perdues, which I have never read, and I don't know anyone who has read it, but everybody knows about it for some reason. Maybe someone read it a long time ago.

Maigret proceeds as if guided by the contemplative guidelines in The Cloud of Unknowing, a 13th-century guide to meditation: "Place the Cloud of Forgetting below you and the Cloud of Unknowing above you." This places you, the reader, in the immediate present. So what occurs to you? How does your thought process work?

I just know that when I read Maigret, I have these incredible dreams. One night about 15 years ago I had been reading Maigret in Society about this diplomat who had not been allowed to marry the woman he loved, but kept up a correspondence with her for fifty years where they told each other everything, and I mean everything.

That night I had a dream about my old girlfriend at college. I dreamed that I had wandered down the wrong aisle in the supermarket and lost track of her, and now here it was nearly 20 years later. I emailed her to find out how she was doing. I did lose her because I made a wrong turn. In the perspective of decades you come to see these things without regret, but with greater understanding. I wrote a short story about it.

Well then just the other night I was reading Maigret Sonewalled and I had a very amazing dream. Unfortunately, I can't describe it in words. Maigret had figured out exactly nothing about the crime or the criminal but when the innkeeper asked him how the investigation was going, he said, "It's finished." He knew he had all the information he needed; he just hadn't put it together yet.

Well neither have I, but like him, I think all the necessary information is there. I'll keep you posted.  ¶ 8:37 PM 0 comments

  Tony Hillerman I remember back in the 70s if you gave one of Kurt Vonnegut's books to someone, you generally found, when you visited them later, that they had gone out and gotten all the others.

I gave my brother Rob a copy of a Tony Hillerman book years ago, and sure enough, the next time I went to his house, there were all the Hillermans there on the bookshelf.

If you don't know the legendary Joe Leaphorn and the young Navaho policeman Jim Chee and all the other wonderful characters in Hillerman's universe, you're in for a real treat. The television series was pretty good, but the books are really superb.

Joe Leaphorn, when the series begins, has lost Emma, his beloved wife of many happy years, and his sorrow is lovingly portrayed every time he wakes alone and reaches for her.

In one book, Leaphorn is looking for a lost archaeologist in this canyon and he see a lone goose who has lost its mate; geese mate for life; and he looks at the goose with empathy, a typical Hillerman touch.

Leaphorn attains his legendary status by solving perplexing crimes in an equally perplexing post-modern web of unreality. Murders on reservations are technically under the jurisdiction of the FBI, but in Leaphorn's universe the FBI is chiefly concerned with their own image, and they send a variety of nincompoops, crooks and capable agents that Leaphorn has to deal with in solving crimes.

It's a lot like the examining magistrates that Inspector Maigret has to deal with in the Simenon novels. In one book the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) agent is the baddy and he gets washed away in a rare torrent of rainfall -- justice flowing down like a mighty stream as Martin Luther King prophesied.

That's ironic because stormclouds come over Navaho country almost every day, but they almost always fizzle out, to the disappointment of herders and farmers. I can't think of another writer who does more with meteorology than Tony Hillerman.

And every novel is instructive about the ways of the Navaho and the Hopi and the Utes and other tribes. Hillerman has been named a friend of the Navaho people, and one has the impression that he has many Navaho friends who help him understand Navaho sensibilities. I think he presents them masterfully.

Take Jim Chee, he's completely gone on this blond-haired blue-eyed teacher from Wisconsin, but she wants him to go back there. He can't. His uncle is a singer and has trained him in the Navaho cermonies and sand paintings.

Then he's gone on Janet Pete -- who wouldn't be -- the Navaho public defender who used to work in Washington and maybe was the girlfriend of some politician. She is beautiful and smart and strong and loves Jim Chee, and that's a hard package to resist, but she sees him as a big shot in the FBI, which he could be if he wanted to, but that would come in conflict with his calling as a healer.

I'm guessing Jim will end up with Officer Bernadette Manuelito. I'll give six-to-one odds.

Here's a sample of the kind of situation that you might find in a Hillerman novel: Jim Chee is at the drive-in with his friend Cowboy Dashee, a Commanche, and Janet Pete, whose Navaho language skills aren't all that good.

They're watching a movie about the war of annihilation against the Commanches. Cowboy Dashee is watching a movie about the destruction of his people. And the Navahos, Jim Chee included, are laughing their heads off. This is apparently a very popular feature at the drive-in.

Turns out, when they were making the movie, they asked some Navahos to dub the "Indian talk" into the soundtrack, and the Navahos in question decided to put in a bunch of obscenities and rowdy jokes, since nobody knew what they were talking about.

So Cowboy Dashee and Janet Pete are watching this terribly sorrowful movie, and they're wondering what all the Navahos are laughing about.

Tony Hillerman also wrote a transcendent novel about Vietnam called "Finding Moon." For everyone who had any involvement in the US war in Vietnam I recommend it above any other book in the universe.

As a member of the Vietnam generation, I felt this book dispelled some very painful problems about this war which Vietnam veterans like John Kerry, along with a ragtag army of hippies like me, were able to bring to an end. Yes it's true the Viet Cong were associated with atrocities early in the war. They saw how disastrous this was, while we did not.

When I finished this book I felt a sense of resolution that I have never felt before. It reminded me of the Chinese doctor in the Bill Moyers series on Chinese medicine, who waved his hands over his patients without even touching them. At the beginning of the series you're skeptical, but by the end, when you have learned about the 'chi'...

When I finished reading "Finding Moon" I resolved dilemmas I had known since I was eleven years old and saw in Life Magazine a Buddhist monk who set himself on fire.

Did anyone else see that picture?  ¶ 7:51 PM 1 comments

  A Unique View of the Roman World I was reading about the gladiatorial spectacles held in Rome, and I was wondering if children were allowed to watch them. Of course they were! I found out by reading "The Golden Ass" by Apuleius -- in a great translation by Robert Graves.

At some point someone is wearing a hat of some kind and a little girl says, "He looks like a gladiator."

This book has lots of insights into the Roman World, although it takes place largely in Thessaly. The Romans built cities all over the world and each was a microcosm of Rome with its baths and temples and stadiums (stadia, actually).

Apuleius was born in a Roman colony in Morocco in the second century AD, studied at a university in Carthage and ended up in Greece where he apparently blew all his money on liquor and loose women. That's probably why he can give us a great view of life in the underclasses of Roman society as well as life for the upper crust.

A goodly portion of the book is taken up with funny stories, many of them involving clever wives cuckolding their husbands. There is also a hilarious story about a guy who gets drunk and has a swordfight with a band of robbers and then passes out and when he wakes up finds he has actually been battling some wineskins.

The book also reminds us that the cities of the Roman world were walled for a reason. They closed the gates at night, and outside it was no man's land. We meet all kinds of robbers and cutthroats who live in caves in the mountains.

Graves' introduction also gives some explanations of Roman morals. While we hold up the Good Samaritan as a model, the Romans held that bad luck was contagious and it was best to keep your distance from unfortunate people, even if they were once your friends.

Apuleius doesn't think much of the new religion of the Christians. He has one character who is a Christian, and she only likes it because she goes in for free love in a big way.

This book has everything, even that pinnacle of Roman humor: women copulating with donkeys in the arena.  ¶ 4:34 PM 0 comments

  Greatest Enjoyment If I had to choose one book that has given me the most enjoyment, I would have to think, but not for too long. Irving Chernev's 1,000 Best Short Games of Chess wins hands down.

I have enjoyed this book immensely since I inherited a copy in 1973 from my grandfather, Charles K. Dickson, a guy who really knew how to be a grandfather.

For the last 33 years I have been replaying games from this book, and when I have visitors I show them the "bolt of lightning from a cloudless sky," which illustrates the power of the double check: either one of the attacking pieces could be taken -- both are "en prise" as the French say -- but not both at once, so the king has to move, and if he can't, it's checkmate.

I also show them the shortest game ever played between tournament masters, and a "classic trap by Costics in the opening." Then we play a game by Napoleon and one by Tolstoy when he was 81.

Chernev had an appreciation for the elegance of chess that you will not find in any other chess writer. I have read many and they are all boring and no fun at all. Chernev wrote a bunch of books and they're all great. I don't like long drawn-out pawn endings, and neither does he. These games are discussed in his works, but his goal is like mine -- to have fun.

Chernev gives you games where players sacrifice the queen and mate with a pawn and you can choose from books with a lot of commentary to others with just a little. 1.000 Best Short Games of Chess has just a little, so I have old notes from 1983 asking "What about B-KB4?"

Has one third of a century of replaying these historic games improved my game?

No!!!

I played my friend Kenny the other day and he forked two pieces with a pawn in the opening -- I was trying the Colle. Then he did it again on the very next move! I was down two pieces. I fought on bravely but ultimately resigned.

I think you will enjoy chess if you like losing as much as you like winning. If someone beats you, they're showing you a way to win, and I think you have to appreciate that. I know I do.

And if you want to replay a thousand beautiful games of chess -- they're all in this one book.  ¶ 8:49 PM 1 comments

  The Roman Sense of Humor You can tell a lot about people by their sense of humor. George Bush the Younger thinks a condemned woman pleading for her life is funny. HAW HAW HAW

Ronald Reagan thought nuclear war was funny -- "We start bombing in five minutes." HAW HAW HAW

The Romans thought it was funny to lock a metal helmet with no eye holes onto a guy's head which was connected to a chain attached to a helmet on another guy's head.

Both guys got swords, but no shields or armor and one of them got to live. That would be kind of funny to watch if you had no empathy for fellow human beings, or if it was Bush and Cheney. Now that would be funny.

We have an account from the poet Martial of one of the spectacles put on at the Colosseum during the reign of Titus around 80 A.D.

To get the joke, you have to know that Nero, years before, had tried to get the Roman public to give up bloody spectacles and listen to poetry readings and singing recitals and theatrical presentations.

So the Master of the Games announces that instead of a bloody spectacle, they're going to hear the famous Greek singer Mezentius perform "The Death of Orpheus." Orpheus was the guy who played the harp and sang so beautifully that it soothed the savage beasts. The crowd starts to boo. Screw that stupid cultural crap.

So Mezentius is on this island in the Colosseum, which has been flooded, and there are barges with beautiful naked women waving at him and throwing rose petals and he's singing the famous epic and playing the harp for all he's worth.

Then a bunch of bears, leopards and wolves come out of trapdoors on the island and the music doesn't soothe them at all and they attack Mezentius and they're tearing him apart and tearing each other apart and the crowd is laughing and all the beautiful naked women are laughing. HAW HAW HAW

Then the barges slowly start to sink and the water is full of... hungry crocodiles! And the beautiful naked women get chewed up by the crocodiles! HAW HAW HAW  ¶ 5:33 PM 0 comments

  Ozymandias This poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins was sent in by a reader in Conway, New Hampshire. (Thanks Mum!) It was featured on Garrison Keillor's "Writer's Almanac."

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.  ¶ 11:39 AM 0 comments