It's October, so it's time to pull out my collections of ghost stories and classic tales of horror for some spooky seasonal reading. Where to start? Perhaps "Green Tea" by Sheridan Le Fanu, or "The Wendigo" by Algernon Blackwood.
Perhaps the biggest news in reading this week is that I finally finished The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan. It certainly feels good to have come to the end of that particular pilgrimage. I also read Rasselas this week, completing my first book by Samuel Johnson and checking off a category on my Literary Life Reading Challenge.
On Monday morning, I woke early and read Treacle Walker by Alan Garner in one sitting. Some of Garner's books can go quickly like this. I have been a fan of Alan Garner ever since discovering the 1969 Granada television adaptation of his novel The Owl Service, in which the Welsh myth of Blodeuwedd manifests in the lives of three teenagers in 1960's Wales. Treacle Walker and Garner's novel Elidor also explore the theme of myth, folklore, and ancient landscape memory intersecting with the modern "ordinary" world, making our world seem not so ordinary.
I have just started We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson. The story is told from the perspective of a young woman named Merricat Blackwood. So far all I know is that the Blackwood family are decidedly unpopular in the small town, for some mysterious reason. This is my second book by Shirley Jackson. I absolutely loved The Haunting of Hill House. I plan to re-read it again someday, and would highly recommend it for spooky season reading.
I have been distressed by the loss of Open Library and Internet Archive this week, as I'm sure many readers are. How can I read my York Mystery Plays and my Mircea Eliade?? Hopefully both will be back online soon.
COMMONPLACE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"The best safeguard against bad literature is a full experience of good; just as a real and affectionate acquaintance with honest people gives a better protection against rogues than a habitual distrust of everyone." - C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism
ART OF THE WEEK
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| Landscape with Grave, Coffin, and Owl by Caspar David Friedrich, ca 1836 |
Something for Halloween season! The German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich is best known for his landscapes of mist, craggy mountains, blasted trees, and Gothic ruins. He sought to experience the sublime in the contemplation of nature. Full of symbolism and sometimes religious mysticism, his art sought to evoke an emotional response in the viewer. Several of his works explore themes of mortality, the transience of human endeavors, and the endurance of nature, as in this sepia drawing from 1836. An owl, long associated with wisdom and death, directly confronts the viewer and serves as a living memento mori, a pale moon rising above his horns like a ghostly crown or halo - or a rising spirit, as birds have deep associations with Spirit and spirit-flight, as well as the wisdom of the Holy Spirit. No human being is visible in the drawing; we can only infer human presence by the coffin and the discarded tools of the gravediggers. In the foreground grow two thistles, known for their wild beauty and hardiness: nature endures when man's spirit has flown.
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