Sir Walter Scott: a great writer, but oddly Frenchified

Once again, unable at present to find any newer fiction that seems worthwhile, I have turned to Sir Walter Scott — this time, Ivanhoe.

Reading Sir Walter Scott can be hard work for contemporary readers. Even in the early 1800s when his novels were being published, Scott’s style would have been pretty florid, I think. But somehow (if you’re stoic enough to read him) that remains part of the charm today. In Ivanhoe, at least, because it is set in England rather than in Scotland, readers won’t have to work their way through page after page of dialogue in the Scots dialect. But dialect or no, Scott is in many ways a linguist, very much aware of how he employs language and dialect for literary effect. And as a historian, Scott also would have been aware of the history of the English language itself and how the French and Anglo-Saxon languages mixed and merged into English in the miserable (unless you were Norman) years after the Norman Conquest.

Consider this conversation from the first chapter of Ivanhoe. Ivanhoe is set in 12th Century England. The conversation is between a Saxon swineheard (Gurth) and the court jester (Wamba) of a staunch Saxon noble:

“Why, how call you those grunting brutes running about on their four legs?” demanded Wamba.

“Swine, fool, swine,” said the herd, “every fool knows that.”

“And swine is good Saxon,” said the Jester; “but how call you the sow when she is flayed, and drawn, and quartered, and hung up by the heels, like a traitor?”

“Pork,” answered the swine-herd.

“I am very glad every fool knows that too,” said Wamba, “and pork, I think, is good Norman-French; and so when the brute lives, and is in the charge of a Saxon slave, she goes by her Saxon name; but becomes a Norman, and is called pork, when she is carried to the Castle-hall to feast among the nobles; what dost thou think of this, friend Gurth, ha?”

“It is but too true doctrine, friend Wamba, however it got into thy fool’s pate.”

“Nay, I can tell you more,” said Wamba, in the same tone; “there is old Alderman Ox continues to hold his Saxon epithet, while he is under the charge of serfs and bondsmen such as thou, but becomes Beef, a fiery French gallant, when he arrives before the worshipful jaws that are destined to consume him. Mynheer Calf, too, becomes Monsieur de Veau in the like manner; he is Saxon when he requires tendance, and takes a Norman name when he becomes matter of enjoyment.”

The words at play here, of course, are bœuf for what we English speakers call cows when we eat them, and porc for what we call pigs when we eat them. My guess is that Scott is suggesting a plausible linguistic history for how it came to be that we use separate words for creatures on the hoof versus creatures on the plate.

So clearly Scott is well aware, when he writes, of whether he is using English words of French or of Anglo-Saxon origin. But here’s the sad thing. One of the reasons why Scott can be so difficult to read, and for why the rhythms of his writing can be so choppy, is that he loves English words of French origin and uses them a lot. Here’s a sample of French words (little changed from their Latin roots, of course) gleaned from just a few pages of the first chapter of Ivanhoe: misapprehension, refractory, rivulet, dejection, construed, disposition, obstreperously, proprietors, importations.

I always use Tolkien as the best example of an English writer who wisely and consciously writes out of the Anglo-Saxon half of the English language. Can you imagine Tolkien using such words as obstreperously or refractory? Of course not.

It’s as though Scott knows that it is wrong and pretentious (oops … French!) of him to do this, but he does it anyway. Proving that he knows better, he writes (again from the first chapter of Ivanhoe):

In short, French was the language of honour, of chivalry, and even of justice, while the far more manly and expressive Anglo-Saxon was abandoned to the use of rustics and hinds, who knew no other.

There are other little jokes that relate to Scott’s awareness of languages. When he names a character Albert Malvoisin, for example, which is more or less French for “wicked neighbor,” you know that character is going to be a villain.

Please don’t misunderstand me, though. I love Walter Scott and enjoy reading him, Frenchified or not. But I’m going to test a theory as I continue to read Ivanhoe (I’ve just started). That is that Scott may primarily use French when he wants to be funny (he’s often hilarious), but that he sticks to Anglo-Saxon when he wants to be serious and to talk to another native speaker of English heart to heart — another thing that Scott does well, though those kinds of tender scenes, I think, tend to be near the end of his novels rather than at the beginning.

Yes. I’d encourage all lovers of English fiction to dust off their stoic-hats, take a deep breath, fortify their patience, and pick up a novel by Sir Walter Scott. At present I’m reading the Gutenberg.org edition on my Kindle, but I’ve also ordered an 1880 hardback edition from the U.K., which should be here in a couple of weeks. I’m having more shelves built for my little library room, so why not, since it’ll probably take me a month to read Ivanhoe. Antique fiction reads better somehow if you’re holding an antique book in your hands.

The Batman (2022)

If it weren’t for the occasional blockbuster, woods-dweller that I am, I’d know next to nothing about popular culture. The super-hero genre wasn’t really my thing even when I was eleven years old. But I did love comic books. Batman and Uncle Scrooge were two of my favorites. The new Batman movie will require two hours and forty-five minutes of your time. Is it worth it? I vote yes.

It’s visually spectacular, though often the detail of the spectacle is half-obscured in darkness. Even when a scene is lit by sunlight, there is a heavy overcast, fog, and often rain. The scenes of Gotham City at night are reminiscent of the city scenes in Bladerunner — bright lights, squalor, and rain, rain, rain. The soundtrack and music are superb. This must have been an easy role for Robert Pattinson, with his face masked most of the time and always the same wooden expression. What an unhappy life Pattinson’s Batman must have had.

The plot is complicated, and I’m not sure that I followed every detail of it. The theme is corruption and the fragility of the good. Batman may be dark and eccentric, but he is 100 percent morally sane. Just in case the message of bravery in the face of corruption and wickedness is insufficiently clear, the screenwriters give Batman a soliloquy, which surprised me since otherwise his lines were few. With luck, Generation Z will get the message, as some of us did many years ago when we were eleven.

Batman can be streamed from HBO Max.

Everything is turning green

The lettuce actually was planted by Ken last fall. It wintered over in a cold frame. Yesterday, during a cold rain, I picked it while it was at the peak of perfection. I washed it, chilled it, and ate it 40 minutes after it came in out of the rain. Who knew that lettuce could be so good? Lettuce may seem watery and light, but when you cut the stalk of good homegrown lettuce, a rich milky juice bubbles out.

Most of the winter’s mustard was crushed by a heavy snow because I foolishly left the top of the cold frame open. But enough mustard survived for one potfull for later this week.

I could happily live off of bread and cheese and wine. With the addition of fresh fruit and some super-green salad, even pizza probably would be healthy.

Anthropoid

Particularly now, with Russia attempting to crush and take over Ukraine, it is important to know the history of World War II. The film Anthropoid is based on events that occurred in Czechoslovakia in 1942 under German occupation. The Czechoslovak government-in-exile (in London) sent highly trained Czechoslovak soldiers into Czechoslovakia by parachute to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi in charge of the German occupation. Heydrich, a principle architect of the Holocaust, was called the Butcher of Prague. The secret military operation was called Operation Anthropoid.

This is not a film for the squeamish. After the film was released in the U.S. in 2016, its score on Rotten Tomatoes was only 66. This puzzles me. It is a far better film than that, with an excellent script, excellent dialogue, and a superb cast.

Back in 2020, I read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Even in 2020, I tried to make the case for the importance of reading this book, as authoritarians (and worse) ran roughshod over America and worked to destabilize Europe. In 1939, Europe pretty much abandoned Czechoslovakia to Hitler. Today, Ukraine is getting help. But we have seen this movie before, both the cruelty on one side and the bravery on the other.

Anthropoid can be streamed from Amazon Prime Video.

If you were a deer, would you be scared?

It irks me that I have to uglify my day lily bank to try to keep the deer from eating the day lilies. This year, they started eating them very early, without waiting for the flower stalks and blooms. With luck and good rain, this bank will be a green jungle of day lilies by early June.

The lilac bush has struggled, but each year it looks a little better. It probably needs a good feeding and a little pruning. Speaking of pruning, I pruned the apple trees fairly aggressively this winter, but the pruning has really improved the shape of the trees, not to mention my ability to mow under the trees without getting scraped off the mower. The fig trees, which are doing well, have just started putting out their leaves, but there’s already a baby fig. I have never seen a baby fig this early.

Twitter, schmitter. And Musk, schmusk.


A breakdown of Twitter content. Source: Wikipedia.

From its beginning, the whole idea of Twitter seemed ridiculous to me. How could 140 characters possibly convey anything useful or meaningful? Surely the contemporary attention span can handle at least 190 characters! And (glory be!) now we’re up to a breathtaking 280 characters, doubling the speed at which world peace, universal understanding, and techno-utopia can be attained.

And yet Twitter took off. I have a friend (to be a little more honest, a former friend) who insists that there is no source of news better than a “well curated” Twitter feed. He was not sparing in his disdain — I would even say sneering disdain — for the fact that I still read newspapers. I was horrified when, around 2015 or so, Paul Krugman stopped blogging and moved to Twitter. (Krugman still writes his twice-weekly column in the New York Times.) It is frequently said that Twitter killed blogging almost overnight and that blogging “is so 2010.”

But what do I know, given that I’m so 2010? People flocked to Twitter and its 140 characters. Even those of us who were left behind in 2010 had to figure out what “#” and “@” meant. According to Omnicore, whoever that is, Twitter today has 217 million “monetizable” daily active users. And yet, back in 2020, a study by Carnegie Mellon University estimated that 45 percent of the tweets about the Covid virus came from bots. Many of the real people who had flocked to Twitter couldn’t tell the difference (or didn’t care), which says a lot about the real people who flocked to Twitter. By the American election of 2016, Twitter had become a creepy pit of disinformation and manipulation. There were Trump bots by the gazillions, no doubt. And there was “the real Donald Trump,” so’s we could distinguish his disinformation from that of the bots.

The word “monetizable” gives me the creeps. I first heard that word back in 2001 or so, when consultants, who seemed to me like some kind of zombies, were let loose on the staff of the San Francisco Chronicle to “monetize” the Chronicle’s “content.” I started making plans for early retirement. But it wasn’t just the monetization that made Twitter so creepy. It was partly the mere look of it on the screen, a dreadful looking typographical stew of babble, incomprehensible abbreviation, smart-alec remarks, and giphies, in which the giphies compete on juvenile silliness. Twitter’s culture is as unattractive as its typography. Even if 3.6 percent of Twitter was news, who’d be able to find it? And because 280 characters was not enough to express the full complexity of some of the thinking to be found on Twitter, the Tweetstorm was invented, quadrupling, quintupling, and even octupling the speed at which world peace, universal understanding, and techno-utopia can be attained.

This morning the Washington Post reports that Twitter’s employees (most of whom are in San Francisco) are in a state of panic and rage that Elon Musk has bought into Twitter and will now be on Twitter’s board. After all, would Musk have bought into Twitter if he hadn’t intended to use it for his own purposes? Clearly, Twitter employees think about as highly of Musk as I do. We’re probably about to witness a grand demonstration of the fruits of Musk’s libertarian philosophy colliding with social media, with a flaming crash like a self-driven Tesla. Right-wingers such as Hugh Hewitt (in the Washington Post) believe that Twitter is a “‘woke’ echo chamber” and that more right-wing and libertarian “diversity of opinion” is just the thing to fix it.

As I see, the reasons for not being on Twitter just quadrupled, and maybe even octupled.

Strathblair

This is to be a post about a 30-year-old BBC Scotland series, “Strathblair.”

But first let’s talk about a theory of stories. Orson Scott Card is the only writer I’m aware of who has a well developed theory of stories. (In mentioning Card, I should say that I respect him as a writer, though he has greatly damaged his career with his right-wing, religious-fanatic politics.) Card’s theory is that the need for stories is a basic human need and that all human beings will seek and find and consume stories much the same way we seek and find and consume food. What follows, then, is a kind of academic question: Where do people get their stories, and what kind of stories do people want and need?

Though it seems strange to me, some people like and prefer here-and-now stories with characters and themes that resemble their own lives — or, at least, their aspirations for their own lives. But such stories bore the living daylights out of me. We get a steady diet of that kind of story just by reading the news, or even just by listening to people talk in social situations. For whatever reason — and if that reason is escapism I make no apologies — it’s only stories set in another time and another place that I find worthwhile. And though I make no apologies for escapism, which I see as one of the important purposes of stories and literature, I find that I’m often apologizing for my disinterest in the here-and-now fare that makes up the bulk of what’s to be found on the streaming services (and in novels as well, the kind of novels that I never, ever read). The contrast with contemporary reality is part of the appeal of science fiction and fantasy. Those stories are almost always in another time and another place. Historical fiction, and classic fiction, are also of course set in another time and another place. Some people, I think, would bypass a series such as “Strathblair” because it’s 30 years old. But for me, that’s part of the appeal.

“Strathblair” ran for two seasons on the BBC, 1993 and 1994. It is set in the 1940s, just after World War II. The setting is rural Scotland, in the hills of Perthshire. I have watched seven episodes so far. At first I thought the series would be a kind of Scottish “Little House on the Prairie.” But it has turned out to be more adult than that, with some dark themes. Characters include newlyweds with no farming experience who move to a neglected farm; a grouchy laird; and an even more grouchy old farmer who is very much set in his ways. The series appears to be an authentic picture of rural Scottish life in that period. The credits include an agricultural adviser. There is a great deal of fascinating detail — accurate, I assume, because of the agricultural adviser — about how the farming (mostly sheep) is done. In the kitchen scenes we often see what they are cooking and eating. Whether they’re at home or in a pub, we get a view of their drinking habits (a lot). There are lots of old cars and horse-drawn farming equipment. Cows get milked. Hay gets ricked. Sheep get dipped. Dogs are a necessity. The outhouse is in full view. Chickens, though treated well, live their short lives. Even what they’re wearing is fascinating, including the tweeds in classic styles such as the laird’s Norfolk jackets.

“Strathblair” can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video.

The annual spring poem


The bay window faces the south ridge and is the best-lit place in the house. The light makes it a poor place for a computer, but it’s perfect for a typewriter. This room is rarely needed as a bedroom now, so I’ve turned it into a little library and parlor, with a sleeper couch.

After a cold winter that froze the new gardenia bush, for which I had such high hopes for someday having gardenias, a blustery spring is blowing in. Has the weather been swinging wildly everywhere?

From Scotland Ken writes, “Our magnificent sunny and warm spell has come to an end. The temperature is now dipping below freezing and there’s an arctic chill in the air, even when it’s sunny. I need to determine whether to cancel our first spring training [softball] this evening.” From southern France, Lise writes: “Here it’s storming so much so I couldn’t close the car door — had to step outside going to the other side of the door — and push HARD to get it closed.” Two days ago, I wrote to Ken: “Winter has returned here, too, though today is warm with a windy, wet squall blowing over. The wind buffeting the house kept me awake last night because of my habit of worrying about the roof.”

The birds are delirious. There seem to be more of them this year than ever, particularly bluebirds. Apparently I don’t have enough bluebird housing. A pair of bluebirds keep trying to break into the house and the car. I put up a new bluebird house for them in the sycamore tree out front, but I’m afraid they’re not going to move in. I had worried that I wasn’t seeing many rabbits this spring, but recently, at dusk, I’ve seen a rabbit eating clover near the front steps. There are coyotes in the woods, so smart rabbits will stay close to the house, which the coyotes avoid.

There seems to be a worsening of the madness abroad in the world at present, from war to petty forms of violence such as the slap at the Oscars. If I were a poet I’d type up a poem asking who has opened Pandora’s Box. I feel luckier than ever to live here in the woods, compelled to go out only for necessities. I have not posted about the American political situation recently because it seems to me that things are mostly (though slowly) moving in the right direction, toward justice, accountability, and the defense of democracy, though the media are as usual determined to keep us in a state of demoralization and anger.

I have been afflicted with a kind of mania for finding just the right typewriter on eBay, a reliable everyday typewriter in perfect working condition that does not require a Ph.D. in typewriter repair if it ever needs fixing. For that reason, I use my IBM Selectric III lightly. I greatly prefer electric typewriters because they are fast, and I’m a fast typist. I’m also partial to IBM and Adler typewriters. Adlers are German typewriters, as well made as IBMs. I believe the Adler Satellite 2001 in the photo, made around 1975, will be my everyday typewriter now, though I also have a Facit (made in Sweden) typewriter that is in like-new condition but which isn’t as fast as the Adler.

A thought for the day: Why did we older folks abandon our typewriters so quickly and thoughtlessly after computers became affordable? I am extremely guilty, and I feel a certain shame for it. I can’t even remember what became of the last of several typewriters I owned. It was a massive old Underwood office machine made in the 1950s that worked perfectly for me for years. Why didn’t I keep it? What was I thinking?

The poem below was typed with the Adler Satellite 2001.

Ken’s new web site


Ken on the Isle of Mull during our hike there in 2018

Readers of this blog over the years will be familiar with Ken Ilgunas, who lived here at the abbey on and off starting back in 2010. Most of his writing on his books was done here. Ken’s blog, which he started in 2009, was way out of date, and he has recently upgraded it:

Link to Ken’s new blog

You can sign up for Ken’s newsletter. All the material from his old blog is there, with new material as well.

Ken lives in Scotland now, but for the record we are still literary confederates and are regularly in touch by email and text.


Ken was often on TV after Walden on Wheels was published in 2013. On several occasions, a limousine picked him up at the abbey to take him to network studios in Raleigh or Charlotte.


Ken in the abbey orchard, 2014

The Sierra Club

I felt a little irritated when I found in my mailbox a thick envelope from the Sierra Club. I had not renewed my membership, so of course it was a solicitation. The thickness of the envelope was clearly meant to give the impression of something valuable inside, as encouragement to open the envelope rather than just toss it. I opened it.

Inside I found five bifold cards, nicely printed, and five nice envelopes, white on the inside but tastefully washed in a pale yellow on the outside. How could I throw that away? A mailing like that must be very expensive. Not only is there the cost of postage, the cost of printing also would be high. It made me wonder if the Sierra Club spends an excessive amount of money to raise money, but I found at Charity Navigator that the Sierra Club has a four-star rating and that their fundraising expenses are 11.6 percent, which is not bad at all. The mailing worked. I’ve sent them a check to renew my membership.

The Sierra Club must be the oldest environmental organization in the United States. It was founded in 1892 by John Muir. In its long history, it has done a lot of good work and has not made many embarrassing mistakes. (One such mistake was accepting money from Chlorox and donations from the gas industry.) According to Wikipedia, the Sierra Club spent just over $1 million on the 2014 elections, all of it to oppose Republicans. Good work, that.

After I thought about it, I was glad to have renewed my membership, and I was impressed by the effectness of their direct mail appeals. With mailings like this they are, after all, providing much-needed revenue to the U.S. Postal Service. It’s also flattering to Sierra Club members (or former members) that the Sierra Club regards them as people who continue to use the U.S. Postal Service and who even send cards in the mail.