Not Sure Frederick Is all that Great

Berlin and Sans-Souci; or Frederick the Great and his friends by Luise Mühlbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was my first look into Muhlbach, and I enjoyed it. I didn't really know what to expect, and was pleased that I thought it mostly worked.

This is primarily the story of Frederick the Great, though most of the time is spent on people in his orbit. We get the story of some of those who served him in government, his sisters (especially Amelia) and their loves, a beautiful dancer the king fell in love with, and the brilliant people he surrounded himself with, particularly Voltaire.

Amelia's story is the most similar to traditional historical romance. She falls in love with a brilliant soldier, a young man named von Trenck, who is a favorite of Frederick's and is being promoted rapidly, but he is still much too far beneath her socially to even allow rumors of their connection to exist. Their visits and letters are discovered and he is jailed, ostensibly for treason against the state. Amelia fights for him; the king demands she forget him entirely; Trenck escapes, but never reconnects with her; years pass; and Amelia intentionally destroys her voice and her beauty when her brother insists she marry the king of Denmark. It's tragic, and it also shows the absurd social stratification that existed in European states at that time, a theme repeated in other subplots.

Another subplot includes a student at university who excels in studies but then falls in love with the theater and a particular actor. It's not until the day of graduation that we learn that the student is a woman in disguise. The very conservative professors allow her to graduate--she was a favorite--and also loosen their restrictions on the theater.

Voltaire is a dick in this novel, and he really wears out his welcome. I wonder how accurate this portrayal is. But Frederick loved him--up until he didn't. The king himself isn't much better, and is often worse. So inflexible and demanding. He would let on that he was just one of the guys at times, but then he'd get furious if he didn't get the respect he felt like he deserved. He basically kidnaps a beautiful dancer and makes her perform in Berlin, preventing her from making any decisions about her future. And the way he treats his sister was so unfair, forcing her to pretend to be happy at all times even when she is inconsolable with disappointment. It seems like the kindness of a loving brother might have succeeded where the demands of a tyrant failed.

One thing I appreciated about the character Frederick, and possibly about the real person, was his progressive view of religion. He was pretty much an atheist, more interested in philosophy and the beauties of nature than a supernatural creator that he couldn't believe in. He sounds in many places a lot more like people today than his own contemporaries. He didn't really care what religion his people or officers or officials were, which I found surprising and positive.

There are differences worth looking at, perhaps at another time, but this novel compares very well with Scott, Ainsworth, Dumas, and others from the period. It's just very interesting to have a story from the German perspective, taking place in Berlin instead of Paris or London or Edinburgh. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to more by this author. I have 8 or 9 other titles, so we'll see if this is representative of her writing.

It'll be interesting either way.

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Where Clarenceaux Gets Chased Around Elizabethan England

Sacred Treason by James Forrester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I thought this was a lot of fun, and it did some things I wasn't expecting. It's good to be surprised.

This is one of those "follow the clues to locate the deeply significant object" kinds of books, where the main character is also trying not to get killed while solving the mystery. The action starts right away, no throat-clearing or establishing the setting, and I like that. Our main character is given an important (though confusing) document, actually a journal, right at the start, and immediately is getting chased around, though he has no idea what's going on. People are being hunted down and killed over the journal, treated as traitors to the crown, and Clarenceaux realizes he won't survive without solving the mystery. With the widow of the friend who gave him the journal, he must travel across England, chased by Walsingham's brutal servant, and figure out the meaning in the journal entries.

As the book is set in the time of Elizabeth, and I have a number preconceived notions about the government and how public figures behaved in those day, I was surprised by some of the things I saw here. But the author is a historian, so I had to change my mind about some stuff. For example, the people here are modest, even prudish, but they're okay taking baths together. (Just don't stare.) And in a few places, Clarenceaux negotiates with representatives of the crown and answers back in a way that I thought would never happen in those days. I guess the movies I've seen and books I've read set in those times always emphasize the lawlessness of powerful men--which definitely did happen--while this book shows us that men in government could also be mindful of the legal limits they were supposed to observe. The book shows us some of the brutality we associate with that time, some of the horrible treatment of prisoners and suspects, but also shows how men (here, it's Sir William Cecil) were attempting to be fair and just.

The result of writing the book that way is that it felt more real, not less; the people sound more like modern folks we live with and see every day, instead of making the characters essentially foreign, as I'm used to seeing them portrayed.

Altogether, this is a successful and entertaining book. Excellent pacing, lots of action, good characters to root for--nice. I wouldn't have minded a touch more depth in the story, some subplots or greater backstory or something, but I liked it fine as is. Probably make a good screenplay.

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I Wanted Something Longer/I'll See if I Can Find It

Haiku: The Poetry of Zen by Manuela Dunn-Mascetti
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The poems are good
The book itself is too short
Fifty-one pages

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Where Satan and Jesus Take a Tour

Paradise Regained by John Milton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Read as a story, as retelling of a myth, as poetry, this is pretty entertaining, and well done. I mean that as a reader separated in time from the author by about 350 years. Dipped into with a little curiosity and a dash of patience, I found this fun and pretty entertaining, even though I'm not the intended audience, and I think many other readers would have a similar response.

As a devotional experience, reading it as a hardcore Puritan might have done three centuries ago, it's probably pretty cool, but I don't think modern Christians can approach it the same way. They might still be charmed by the way Milton approaches matters of theology, even if they don't agree with his take. In any case, that's not my thing now, though I do like that he takes on ambiguities in the language and tries to explain them them for the reader, as he does in Paradise Lost. (In that book, for example, Milton spends some time on the ambiguous phrase "in that day you shall surely die," referring to the day they eat the forbidden fruit. Clearly they don't die that day, so he discusses it, trying to make sense of it. Here, Satan brings up the kingdom Jesus is to inherit, trying to understand what that means: "A kingdom they portend thee, but what kingdom, Real or allegoric, I discern not..." I like it that he anticipates what questions the reader has been wanting to have answered.)

This has received a lot less attention from the average reader over the years than Paradise Lost. It is a much shorter work with a narrower scope and smaller cast, and it's also less "visually" impressive. (There is no scene showing burning demons in hell, no construction of Pandemonium, no description of a war in Heaven, and it's a shame. Those were fun to picture.) It's not entirely lacking, mind you. This part deals only with Jesus getting baptized and then spending forty days fasting in the desert, but that canonically includes Satan tempting Jesus, showing him the great nations of the world and promising to make him king over it all, and those scenes are both awe-inspiring and entertaining. Satan sweeps him magically from one high spot to another, where Milton can describe the amazing scenes all around. It still requires the reader to use their imagination, but it's pretty effective:

With that (such power was given him then), he took
The Son of God up to a mountain high.
It was a mountain at whose verdant feet
A spacious plain outstretched in circuit wide
Lay pleasant; from his side two rivers flowed,
The one winding, the other straight, and left between
Fair champaign, with less rivers interveined,
Then meeting joined their tribute to the sea.
Fertil of corn the glebe, of oil, and wine;
With herds the pasture thronged, with flocks the hills;
Huge cities and high-towered, that well might seem
The seats of mightiest monarchs; and so large
The prospect was that here and there was room
For barren desert, fountainless and dry.

He follows this with a long recitation of the various cities and empires that he could see from that point, which is a chance for Milton to show his erudition:

Here thou behold’st
Assyria, and her empire’s ancient bounds,
Araxes and the Caspian lake; thence on
As far as Indus east, Euphrates west,
And oft beyond; to south the Persian bay,
And, inaccessible, the Arabian drouth:
Here, Nineveh, of length within her wall
Several days’ journey, built by Ninus old,
Of that first golden monarchy the seat,
And seat of Salmanassar, whose success
Israel in long captivity still mourns;
There Babylon, the wonder of all tongues,
As ancient, but rebuilt by him who twice
Judah and all thy father David’s house
Led captive, and Jerusalem laid waste,
Till Cyrus set them free; Persepolis,
His city, there thou seest, and Bactra there;
Ecbatana her structure vast there shews,
And Hecatompylos her hunderd gates;
There Susa by Choaspes, amber stream,
The drink of none but kings; of later fame,
Built by Emathian or by Parthian hands,
The great Seleucia, Nisibis, and there
Artaxata, Teredon, Ctesiphon,
Turning with easy eye, thou may’st behold.
All these the Parthian (now some ages past
By great Arsaces led, who founded first
That empire) under his dominion holds,
From the luxurious kings of Antioch won.

(Spoiler: Jesus says no thanks, we've got a plan already.)

But the huge canvas and the great detail, all delivered in elevated language, is mind-expanding and intellectually invigorating, whether the reader is religious or not. The fact that its only about 2000 lines--about 40 pages--is a plus, too, making it more manageable for uncommitted readers. Overall, it's more impressive and more entertaining than I expected.

I'd like to see this done as an animated feature, with dreamy watercolors. Seeing empires spread across the horizon could be really cool. I wonder if there's a BBC radio show or something we could use for the narration. Hmmm.

Recommended if you already like the series.

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Where Tennyson Improves on the Original

Idylls of the King by Alfred Tennyson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Answering the question, "How good is this?" I might give a 4 or 5. Tennyson wrote some amazing poetry. More on that later.

But answering the question, "How much did you enjoy this?" a 3 is about right, if maybe a slight exaggeration. Not Tennyson's fault. I just don't like most of the stories here.

After reading Mallory's Morte d' Arthur, which I actually didn't like, I decided to read Tennyson's reboot, see if the stories read any better this way. And they definitely do. This is the way to deliver the King Arthur stories to your veins, if you need that fix. But only if you already like them.

Turns out, I don't like the Camelot/round table/Arthur stories very much. They don't go anywhere, IMO. They don't achieve anything. You can impose something on it, some meaning, some deeper significance, (which Tennyson does, IMO), giving meaning where meaning seems elusive, but I don't think you find it in the originals. I don't want to become the main character on the internet today, so I have to temper that a little. Sure, there are themes in the stories that seem significant: we learn, to our sorrow, that imperfect humans can't make anything perfect; we see that righteous authority, even when it is temporarily established, is undermined by unjust power; humans, we are reminded, are fallible, and heroes are human; the powerful should defend the weak, but may fail even when they try to do it; and so on. That and more is in the text, if you're looking.

But those judgments all seem to come from outside the system, looking at it from a modern perspective, asking what we learn by reading the stories. The action all takes within a terrible social milieu, where the poor, the aged, the common, and the powerless are ruthlessly mocked and ridiculed by those entrusted with their protection, the privileged nobles. The most treasured values are noble ancestry, skill with weapons, great strength, attractive physical appearance, and the kind of bravery indistinguishable from foolhardiness, to the point that participating in senseless violence is much less damning than avoiding it, even if you end up killing your brother or friend. Oops. Everyone lacking these attributes is like dirt beneath their feet, barely tolerated, and only defended (when they aren't being taken advantage of) in an accidental and condescending way. We see this, and judge it, and we tell ourselves that the stories demonstrate this deep truth--but I don't think it's in the text.

The original stories seem much more interested in telling about great people and their drama, their ups and downs, and just marveling at it or enjoying their tragedy than in making meaning from it all. These are action-filled romances, not fables, and definitely not parables. At least, that's how I think Mallory saw it.

Tennyson, to his credit, does take a wider (meaning modern, with the benefit of hindsight) view, imposing some meaning on the text, recognizing the imperfect message of the original. He asks the queen, to whom he is dedicating his work, to

...accept this old imperfect tale,
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with Soul,
Ideal manhood closed in real man,
Rather than that gray king, whose name, a ghost,
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from mountain peak,
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or him
Of Geoffrey’s book, or him of Malleor’s, one
Touched by the adulterous finger of a time
That hovered between war and wantonness,
And crownings and dethronements...

It's the mixed messages in it that make me feel that the messages I do find are all mine, invented by the pattern-finding part of my brain.

TL; DR: Most of the stories in the King Arthur cycle are about short-tempered bullies and tyrants who I just can't care about very much.

However, I can somewhat appreciate the language. That isn't my norm; I seldom to never read something for the words, for the language. That's not my thing. If it's yours, good news: Tennyson has some beautiful passages. Here's the description of the beach where Arthur fought and killed Modred (that's how he spelled it), receiving his own death wound at the same time:

Last, as by some one deathbed after wail
Of suffering, silence follows, or through death
Or deathlike swoon, thus over all that shore,
Save for some whisper of the seething seas,
A dead hush fell; but when the dolorous day
Grew drearier toward twilight falling, came
A bitter wind, clear from the North, and blew
The mist aside, and with that wind the tide
Rose, and the pale King glanced across the field
Of battle: but no man was moving there;
Nor any cry of Christian heard thereon,
Nor yet of heathen; only the wan wave
Brake in among dead faces, to and fro
Swaying the helpless hands, and up and down
Tumbling the hollow helmets of the fallen,
And shivered brands that once had fought with Rome,
And rolling far along the gloomy shores
The voice of days of old and days to be.

That's some pretty awesome imagery, some impressive poetic language. I like it. And there's lots throughout.

You know, probably the best way for me to enjoy this book is not to read it through, but to open it at a random page and just admire 20-30 lines. Then close it back up.

I may give that a shot.

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Where Mack Bolan Enters the Lions' Den

Panic in Philly by Don Pendleton
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As I have seen pointed out, these books are guilty of glorifying violence. They absolutely are. No way around that. That's why I wouldn't easily recommend them for anyone else. These are like R-rated 80s movies that had to work to escape an NC-17 for violence, and readers have to decide how they feel about that before they pick up a book from a series like this.

But read as pulp fiction, as men's adventure, as a what-if, maybe even like a comic book, and imagined more like a John Wick or Jason Bourne movie, with all the violence coming against violent men who probably deserve it, they're very entertaining. I was surprised.

This is the last of 5 books (numbers 11-15) that I got used out of curiosity, remembering seeing them lying around other people's houses when I was a kid, including my much older brother's place. Nostalgia made me try them, but I found that, for the right audience, they're still very good, and they seem to be different every time. I can't speak for issue 250 or 300, but so far I'd say they actually vary a lot. I expected the storylines to be very similar, but aside from the main idea of punishing violent career criminals, the actual plots have been different in every one.

The language is a little raw, like you'd expect with 1970s books like this, but it reads quick and I found the writing to be appropriate to the task, with the right tone for this sort of story: tough, pretty spare, and to the point. I liked it fine, especially for an action story.

Is it a good book? I wouldn't make that claim. But is it entertaining? I'd say yes.

Anyway, I've made a lot of apologies for the book and for the series, and that's enough. My main interest in books is entertainment above all, not themes or language or some other secondary characteristic of the story, and it's fun. It is. The good guy outsmarts the bad guys. I like it.

I don't really believe in guilty pleasures--at least, I don't think people should feel guilty for the things they enjoy--and I liked this. YMMV

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Where Sejanus Went Too Far

Sejanus by Ben Jonson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was better than I expected. I kinda liked it, even when I was struggling to keep up with characters and dated language.

I previously read Jonson's Every Man in His Humor, a play I found almost unreadable, one I'd be surprised could be staged in an entertaining way. I hated so much about it. (This is one of those "Everyone is unlikable" situations, and I'm one of those people who can't stand books and plays and movies where I don't like anybody.) Anyway, I put off reading anything else by him for fear of hating it. But I finally decided to try Sejanus, and it was a complete 180 from the other play.

This reads a lot like a Shakespeare tragedy or history play, definitely in the vein of a Julius Caesar or Richard III. I didn't identify any part as humorous, which you can find even in the most serious Shakespeare plays, so that's a contrast, but that's okay with me, as the elevated tone of the play matches its seriousness. Shakespeare does more with subplots, too, IMO--though I'm willing to be talked around on this if someone wants to argue.

The main type of action in this play is plotting, spying, and gossiping. Most of the real action--like poisoning, arresting, putting to death--happens offstage, reported by others. But we're privy to the pro-Sejanus plotters, which included Caesar at the start of the play, putting together trumped-up charges to remove rivals from government, and the anti-Sejanus plotters, which includes all the people who lost loved ones to his machinations, trying to counter his plans. A lot of scenes have overlapping dialogue, where the main conversation continues upstage between those supporting Sejanus, while downstage (in my imagination) a couple old guys, members of the party supporting Agrippina and her sons, comment on the underhanded stuff they're hearing. They read sorta like the old guys in the Muppets, mocking what they see, casting everything the audience is hearing in a different light. (It may be that some of these exchanges do come off as humorous for those who understand sufficiently. I'm not in that group, alas.) I found this approach very effective.

The conclusion comes quick. After sending many people off to their deaths through lies and straight-up murder, Sejanus thinks he's walking into a meeting of the senate where he will be elevated to Tribune, but instead it's a plot to arrest him and convict him. I'm not clear where Caesar changed his opinion, tbh, but he turned, and that was the end of ambitious Sejanus.

The language throughout, mostly delivered in blank verse, is emotionally charged and elevated but not unnatural or stiff. A nice example of this is the scene where Sejanus first worries that he's walking into a trap but then is satisfied that all is well:

How vain and vile a passion is this fear?
What base, uncomely things it makes men do?
Suspect their noblest friends, as I did this,
Flatter poor enemies, entreat their servants,
Stoop, court, and catch at the benevolence
Of creatures, unto whom, within this hour,
I wouldn't have vouchsafed a quarter-look,
Or piece of face? By you, that fools call gods,
Hang all the sky with your prodigious signs,
Fill earth with monsters, drop the scorpion down
Out of the zodiac, or the fiercer lion,
Shake off the loosened globe from her long hinge,
Roll all the world in darkness, and let loose
The enraged winds to turn up groves and towns;
When I do fear again, let me be struck
With forked fire, and unpitied die;
Who fears is worth of calamity.

This passage shows his pride, which would normally prevent him giving any respect to anyone else, and basically daring the gods to try to hurt him, presaging his downfall in the final act. But it also shows the kind of language Jonson was capable of, and I think it's pretty fine.

I like this play, and I really didn't expect to. I would have liked a little more real action on stage, and would have given it 5 out of 5 if it had included more of that, but even without I would recommend this play for those who enjoy older drama. Plenty of drama and lots of tragedy.

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