Ginger56’s Weblog

Saturday night. At 56 we stay in more and come home earlier. And where I used to consider late nights a sign of adulthood, now I get up early to read and write when my brain is fresh. And that brings me to Beowulf, for that’s what I’ve been reading at 7:00 a.m.

Most students of literature–heck most advanced high school students–read Beowulf under duress early on. It’s the original English literature after all, requisite though hardly popular.

But somehow I avoided it. Over the years I gatherd the gist: a strong warrior, a gruesome monster, a monster’s mother and ultimately death for the hero. With alliterative verse I had experience. I love Gawain and the Green Knight. Still, I had no desire to crack the epic text.

Then, Seaumus Heaney translated it, and I got interested. He’s definitely in my top ten of living poets, maybe all poets, a bard’s voice. Still, I didn’t buy it. Though I buy many books, that one didn’t seem crucial. And several years passed.

A few months ago, browsing at Parker’s books in Sarasota, I found it used and chose it over Pound’s Cantos and some kids’ books I considered for my collection.

It’s a hardback, bi-lingual (perhaps they all are), so across from Heaney’s spare and readable verse are the beautiful and inscrutable verbal relics of a world long gone. Occasionally, I roll them around on my tongue. I’m reading slowly a few pages a morning. Now, Beowulf has resurfaced after his plunge into Grendel’s mother’s den beneath the sea monsters.

I’m struck by the Danish connection. A student of English should know, I’m sure, that Hamlet was not the first prince of that nation to intrigue the neighbors in the British aisles. But I didn’t. And I really had no idea that the English author would use the tale to celebrate their Christianity.

Even more I’m struck by the Tolkien connection. Anyone whose read both the trilogy and Beowulf will know of that. And if, like me, you’ve been seduced by the more recent fantasy saga A Song of Fire and Ice by George R.R. Martin, you’ll see the link there too: the heirloom swords, the long battles, the drinking in the halls.

Beowulf is a simpler tale, but apparently I have not evolved past the pre-civilized ardor of warriors and wenches. In fact, though I could really do without the arms torn from torsos and other details of blood and gore, I’m enthralled the by magic, the noble friendships and the images of strong men on horseback galloping above the sea.

I recommend it–Heaney’s version is cleanly poetic and highly readable–every bit as accessible as Martin. If you, like me, missed the chance to discover where it all began, take this chance. It won’t take long and will enrich your experience of all those more recent entries into the fiction of magic, swords, blood-letting, and honor.

Reading Diane Setterfield’s The Thirteenth Tale, I feel quite suddenly inspired to comment. I think of Louise Erdrich because Setterfield’s prose shares poetry, though not the same strain of poetic style and inflection, with Erdrich. A writer—perhaps any artist—depends very much on what comes to him or her.

What marbles are in the stone yard? A sculptor may choose among them as a writer may choose to type or to write by hand—paper or screen then printer? But the real stuff the content, the composition, the language itself, these come from within. Often—arguably always—they evolve from some previous writer’s words or images. So, one might say, a writer can control her production by choosing carefully what to take in. Still, the first word to appear in a new session must spring by parthenogenesis to the page. This is the book that came to Setterfield compressed by her brain from influence, education, predilection and experience.

So I can’t criticize Setterfield for writing as she writes and emphasizing what strikes her, in short for not being Erdrich. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to learn that Erdrich is among her influences, but I can’t help but prefer the latter, at least thus far. (I’ve read only 1/3 or this book whereas I’ve delved through Erdrich for 15 years, reading The Beet Queen at least three times and following the protacted saga of Nanapush, Margaret, Lulu, Fleur, Eli, Pauline and so forth as well as the German transplant folk of Argus, though they tend to have only one book to themselves while the clans of the Anishinabe appear and reappear at the centers and the periphery, almost never wholly absent from any book.

They are both fine storytellers, though Setterfield spends way too much time admiring her yarn spinning. One particularly annoying ploy is that she imagines the outlines of stories by a character, outlines that are her own, and then has another character gush over them. It’s almost masturbatory.

It may be unfair of me to judge Setterfield. Still since it’s my blog, I will. She strikes me first off as wise in some ways but too self-important about her wisdom. In The Antelope Wife, Erdrich gives us such rich interplay of the contemporary and quotidian against the marvelous and antique. Ancient wildness lies down by urban Minneapolis (I can’t rembember its Anisinabe name) and from that coupling come the ongoing generations of latterday first peoples. In that book, Erdrich plays with the notion of twins and weaving. At some point, no doubt, she elaborated on the significance to herself. Throughout she returns to a pair of twins weaving what is clearly the tapestry of the tale, the interlocking, mutually influential lives and impulses of the characters, the repeating patterns, the inescapable destinies. Setterfield comes up with the excellent metaphor (quite similar) of a spider’s web. Then, she explains it, showing off her mastery of literary analysis, taking the pleasure of discovery from her reader and elongating a passage, that like many, could have been curtailed with no great loss to plot of sensibility.

In the end, Setterfield’s compulsion to show off her understandings leaves them vulnerable to the reader’s evaluation. For me, they often come up short. I don’t agree about marriage, for instance, at least not with the sweeping generalizations here. I don’t agree about reading, quite. Etc. If she could leave aside the exposition and focus on the tale, which is a good one and not unlike Erdrich in its fabulous ordinariness, the book would be much improved.

I collect illustrated books, mostly children’s piccture books but also beautifully illustrated editions of Whitman and others. (I own two illustrated versions of Whitmans Leaves of Grass, one with images by Rockwell Kent, the other by Louis Daniels.) Yesterday, I went to Parker’s books in downtown Sarasota. I’d seen a book illustrated by Tony Ross–whose work I love–in the window. First I poked throught the first editions and the literature. In the kids’ books, I found very little to stun me–the things I liked best I already own. I found a couple of things worth owning–a book illustrated by Arnold Lobel–1st edition and some others. Then in the poetry was an early edition of Pound’s Cantos, very tempting but $45.00–and available at libraries. Then I found John Berryman’s Homage to Mistress Bradstreet. I wrote my master’s thesis on Berryman’s Sonnets–still my favorite of all this work, so this Berryman tempted me a lot. Add to that its illustrations by Ben Shahn and the relatively low price, $14.95, I ended up with that. The Alex Ross was also tempting but the images were less than, “Ahhh” quality for me. I left it behind with the Pound and a book I haven’t read by Louise Erdrich–and I’d love to say I own all her works, but that was paperback and, almost certainly, still available from Alibris or other dealers–not to mention new (it wasn’t even 1st trade). So I ended up with Diane Wakoski’s Inside the Blood Factory as well as the Berryman and a hardcover of Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf translation–bilingual and well worth owning (not to  mention that I’ve never read Beowulf in any form). Next time, maybe I’ll spring for the Lobel and the Ross if they haven’t sold yet.