Mark Twain

Mark Twain is releasing a new book 100 years after his death! I saw the article pasted below on CTV.ca, and have decided that this is a must-have for my library. Stayed tuned for a future book blog. =D

"It was in the news todayNEW YORK — It's never too late: Mark Twain is back on the bestseller lists.

Pre-orders for the first of three planned volumes of his autobiography, released in full upon the centennial of Twain's death, have for the past few days placed the book in the top five of Barnes & Noble.com and Amazon.com. It is outpacing new works by Ken Follett, John Grisham and Jon Stewart.

"The Autobiography of Mark Twain, Volume 1" comes out Nov. 15 from the University of California Press.

Excerpts have appeared over the past several decades, but Twain's strong opinions on current affairs and other matters were left out, at his request. He had said that it was best to wait 100 year after his death for the whole book to be released."

Julie and Julia

I recently finished reading "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell. This is the book that inspired the movie of the same title. I've seen the movie and I wasn't amazed, but I found the book at Homesense for five dollars, and figured that it would be worth a try.

I liked it! It wasn't the most amazing book ever, but it was... fuller than the movie (of course). As a result, the things that bugged me in the movie didn't stand out as much in the book. The relationships were more realistic in the book, and time didn't seem to speed by as fast.

The premise is the same in both the book and the movie: a dissatisfied secretary who likes cooking decides to improve her cooking skills and add meaning to her life by cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and writes a blog about these cooking adventures. It's a memoir of a true story (although for privacy reasons she changes most people's names, and renames her brother Heathcliff, which I thought was funny), and it includes illustrations of Julia Child's life as well. In the book these historical glimpses are largely limited to how Julia met her husband Paul. The movie includes more information from Julia's own memoir and tells the story of how her cookbook was written and published.

The movie really toned things down: the language, the sexual discussion, Julie's craziness. (She's pretty crazy, and she doesn't try to hide it.) It's a better movie because it's censored, and it's something people need to be aware of if they consider reading the book. The uncensored book was able to make Julie seem like more of a realistic person, though.

The thing that bugged me most about the movie was the purpose of her blog and what she hoped to get out of it - and how that is diametrically opposed to what I want from my own blog. By blogging, Julie wants to become famous and found - she's eager for strangers to read her thoughts and whines when she thinks she has no followers (except her Mom, who she says doesn't count). I, on the other hand, view my blog as a more quiet, private matter. I write mainly for myself, although it also turns out to be a convenient way to share my thoughts and adventures with my friends. I expect to only have a limited readership, and it makes me uncomfortable to discover that I have been found by strangers. I have a hard time understanding Julie's approach to blogging, and it kind of got on my nerves.

As this is a true story, it would be really cool to be one of the original readers of Julie's blog, considering all the fame and success that has come of it. It's nice to be able to say that you liked something before it became popular.

I think this book and movie have increased public awareness of Julia Child. I personally knew very little about her beforehand, and now I have a pretty good idea of who she was and what she did. I also think that people have been inspired to cook and explore recipes more. This was what gave me the idea of making a New Years goal of cooking 12 recipes out of the same cookbook (a much more easily attainable goal than that of Julie's - but it still isn't going all that well).

Timeline

This morning I stayed in bed until noon and finished reading "Timeline" by Michael Crichton. It is the story of several medieval scholars who are working on an archaeological site in France, who then get the chance to actually go back to the time and place they have been studying. I feel like I learned a lot about the medieval world from their travels. The story also includes physics, action, suspense, and a hint of romance.

Because it's fun to point out flaws and the questions that remained with me, here I go!
- One character, Marek, has been in love with the medieval period his entire life. He has studied it intensely, and feels like it is his home. Once he actually gets "there," he finds everything just as he expected it; the only thing that surprised him was the speed of their swords. I have a hard time believing that even the best scholarship today could be so accurate as to fully prepare someone for the real thing.
- The idea of time travel raises many logical perplexities. Crichton tried to address the issue of "time paradoxes" by having one of his characters explain how difficult it is to change any particular course of events:
"It's easiest to see if you take a contemporary example. Say you go to a baseball game. The Yankees and the Mets - the Yankees are going to win, obviously. You want to change the outcome so that the Mets win. What can you do? You're just one person in a crowd. If you try to go to the dugout, you will be stopped. If you try to go onto the field, you will be hauled away. Most ordinary actions available to you will end in failure and will not alter the outcome of the game.
"Let's say you choose a more extreme action: you'll shoot the Yankee pitcher. But the minute you pull a gun, you are likely to be overpowered by nearby fans. Even if you get off a shot, you'll almost certainly miss. And even if you succeed in hitting the pitcher, what is the result? Another pitcher will take his place. And the Yankees will win the game.
"Let's say you choose an even more extreme action. You will release a nerve gas and kill everyone in the stadium. Once again, you're unlikely to succeed, for all the reasons you're unlikely to get a shot off. But even if you do manage to kill everybody, you still have not changed the outcome of the game. You may argue that you have pushed history in another direction - and perhaps so - but you haven't enabled the Mets to win the game. In reality, there is nothing you can do to make the Mets win. You remain what you always were: a spectator.
"And this same principle applies to the great majority of historical circumstances. A single person can do little to alter events in any meaningful way. Of course, great masses of people can 'change the course of history.' But one person? No."
"Maybe so," Stern said, "but I can kill my grandfather. And if he's dead then I couldn't be born, so I would not exist, and therefore I couldn't have shot him. And that's a paradox."
"Yes, it is - assuming you actually kill your grandfather. But that may prove difficult in practice. So many things go wrong in life. You may not meet up with him at the right time. You may be hit by a bus on your way. Or you may fall in love. You may be arrested by the police. You may kill him too late, after your parent has already been conceived. Or you may come face to face with him, and find you can't pull the trigger." (172-173)
So, it's difficult to make one particular thing happen. But a greater issue in my mind is chaos theory, and how tiny little actions can have gigantic consequences. Any interference in the past, even if it doesn't change the outcome of a certain event, can still have other wide ranging effects.
I guess there's no good way to answer this, which is why it remains a question. It's unfair to expect a satisfactory explanation from a novel, and it is admirable that they at least try to address it.
- The book begins with a scientist stranded in the desert, far from where he originated. The story never does explain how or why he got exactly there, and I'm still curious.
- The entire project - both the archaeological research and the time-travel science - are funded by a company called ITC, owned by a bad-tempered, self-absorbed man named Doniger. I don't understand their interest in the particular time and place that the story is set in, nor their insistence on keeping the past pure and not bringing back any inappropriate materials (no plastics, modern weapons, etc). Don't get me wrong - I think the setting is interesting and their approach is admirable, but it doesn't seem to fit with how they are described. Although an explanation may be found in the potential tourism they see in an authentic historical experience, I still don't see their actions quite lining up with their purported priorities.

Despite the flaws I see, I found the book interesting and worth reading. The ending was really good - you don't know until the very end exactly what's going to happen, and then the epilogue keeps you from feeling like you're hanging. (It raises more questions about how altering the past affects the present, though. Sigh.)
I've heard mixed reviews about the movie, and although I'm sure it's not as good as the book, I'd be interested to see how they illustrated this book.