Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Author: Stephanie Suh

  • Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

    Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls WilderPrairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    A really good biography by a really good writer about someone fascinating reads like a good novel full of intriguing characters, events, and places. In the peculiar alchemy of literature, such biography creates a literary chiaroscuro, an iridescent interplay of light and shade alloyed in the alchemy of words laced with an internal rhythm of the words that delightfully flavors otherwise flat discourse of nonfiction. On top of this magical incantation, all-around erudition of a writer cognizant of the historical and social contexts armed with exhaustive scrutiny into the subject is the Rosetta stone that consummates the performance by contextualizing the subject’s motivation, actions, and vicissitudes of life that is all very much like a plot. In this regard, Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires about Laura Ingalls Wilder, a prodigious American literary heroine enshrined in the great American literary pantheon, fits into such definition with gusto.

    I first came across this book from an article about The Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal, a significant achievement award in Children’s literature, from The Los Angeles Times a few months ago. The award changed the name into “The Children’s Literature Legacy Award” because Wilder’s allegedly stereotypical attitudes toward people of color were considered to be not in harmony with today’s social core values of inclusiveness, integrity, respect, and responsiveness to the epochal changes. In defense of Wilder’s works, Fraser argued that her works were products of her life and that the reception of her books should be more complicated than we might hastily believe based upon the cursory reading of her books as social or historical contexts. It was this very argument that piqued my curiosity about Wilder and her biographer Fraser. As someone who always inclines to someone whose views and attitudes are dauntlessly unreconstructed and intellectually provocative, I wanted to know more about the accused and her public defender. Hence, Prairie Fires is a testament to its quality that sheds light on the myths and misconceptions on the literary world of Wilder and her fascinating self.

    To many of us, Wilder is most well known by A Little House on Prairie, also translated into television firmament by Michael Landon in many a language, making it a kind of household name in everyday life. I remember watching it with the unforgettable leitmotif music that rendered the ambience of a story of a pioneer family with none other than faith, charity, hope, and themselves on the Great Plains. Notwithstanding a streak of fictionality laced with idyllic romanticism portrayed in the TV show version, it was this very ambience Wilder cherished the most and delineated in words despite her seemingly perpetual struggle against impoverishment in the epochal changes of economic climates of her time. She was something of a pioneer troubadour who sang the chaste and rustic beauty of the wild prairie as well as the acuteness, coarseness, and strength of a pioneer spirit found in her beloved father. Through a series of poverty after poverty, struggle against struggle, and hope against hope on the life of the open prairie, Wilder was already in training to become a great writer.

    It is one of Fraser’s literary finesses that she alludes to “prairie fires” as a metaphorical means for illustrating Wilder’s queasy and passionate character that ultimately spurred her on to writing professionally at a relatively late age in her life. Wilder’s circumstances pushed her into a reluctant lifetime position of a breadwinner and caretaker, making herself to the hostage of Fortune. Her stoic, matter-of-fact manner belied overwhelming fear, dismay, disappointment, and grief as a result of taking a vow of self-denial against her feisty feminine self. All of her aborted dreams and hopes and projections smothered under daily duties that life demanded by a succession of misfortune and became her pant-up fury that metastasized into the fiery images of prairie fires, real or phantasmal.

    Fraser is also excellent in providing us with very intriguing information on Wilder’s inseparable relationship with her writer daughter Rose, who is also believed to influence her mother to write professionally. Rose was a very complicated woman whose literary talent seemed to be prevented from blossoming into full fruition on pedestals by her endless windy rage and self-doubt. She loved her mother and father dearly for sure because whatever money she had earned from writing was a munificent largess to them in the forms of a house and other apparatuses. Moreover, it was Rose who induced Wilder to write about her dramatic life that ultimately resulted in A Little House on Prairie. And yet Rose was also always out of reach of her beloved parents. She loved independence, living in the New York City and Europe with a penchant for cultural sophistication and extravagance, measuring herself against the burgeoning careers of her peers. But even her foibles are pathetic and sympathetic in Fraser’s punctilious portrait of Rose colored by the language she employs from her arsenal of words and narrative skills that guard Rose from misconceptions.

    The paramount achievement of Fraser in this biography is her flawlessly lucid contextualization of Wilder’s philosophy of life, her viewpoints society, and most importantly, her backgrounds of the oeuvres in the context of regarding the epochal social and historical changes of her time, all of which are gleaned from her comprehensive research into the relevant subjects and her impressive erudition fascinatingly laced with her acute feminine sensitivity in the magical play of the words. In fact, her knowledge on the 19th and early 20th centuries are so impressively and naturally incorporated into the discourse of Wilder’s story that you come to an understanding of Wilder like never before and appreciate her oeuvres in the canon of American Classics by exonerating  the accused from being a jingoistic provincial “white” writer. Rather than pontificating the blind idolization of Wilder, Fraser serenely but efficaciously narrates the facts of the controversial author and her meritorious achievements both in life and literature in an expense of will, belief, and truth, producing a mesmerizing biography of a riveting character in literary Americana.

    The book does succeed in shedding light on the life of Laura Ingalls Wilder by recasting this famous American literary figure in a candid way which none other than Fraser could have possibly done on the topic with her magistral knowledge of Wilder armed to the teeth with thoroughly exacting research on historical and social resources with utmost solicitous attitude and sweet tenderness. For this very reason, Wilder’s books should read as a classics not as a historical textbook of the bygone era whose zeitgeist irks the populace of this modern time. Literature is an art, and therefore its value lies in Art for art’s sake. We use the real to perfect the ideal, and the real encompasses anything – including our foibles and idiosyncrasies – we deem worth sublimating into beauty, which is what art is all about by appealing to our senses, the pleasure of reading something beautifully profound, evocative, and enduring. In this regard, Wilder was and is an artist making the beauty of life out of the reality of life. All this makes this book an enjoyable and illuminating read with Fraser’s irrefutably magical alchemy of words and consummate storytelling skill devoid of expression of infelicity and authoritativeness. This is a canonical biography of a great American writer by another fascinating writer who deserves of the applauding to the very echo.

  • Fiddlesticks! – on Smartphones

    RE: 8/20/2018 edition of The Los Angeles Times on “Your smartphone is a teddy bear”

    We are swimming in a dazzling sea of modern technological conveniences, and we are drowning in it, whether we are against it or not. We have come a long way since the inventions of a talking telegraph (a telephone), an electronic toaster, a walkman, and all other apparatuses that have become inseparable from us, to arrive here in the 21st century where we seldom begin and finish our days without gazing into (or being glued into) monitors with our hands on keyboards. Surely, it’s a marvelous human cultural progress, a fantastic collective enterprise of the human minds for betterment. Hip, hip, Hooray for the magnum opuses.

    Apart from the marvels of our ingenious inventions that have made our lives a bit more bearable to fulfill our daily tasks, how about our non-technological aspects of life then? Do we really think that smartphones provision us with the bells and whistles of our equilibrium? At least two researchers at UC Irvine declare the resounding “Yes.” According to their recent study of psychological impacts of smartphones on our behavioral tendencies, the high-tech gizmo guarantees a feeling of security by saving us from social faux-pas in awkward situations. In fact, they “conclude” that smartphones function as efficacious stress relievers.

    John Hunter and Susan Pressman are the names of such revelation, and they want to debunk the infamy of a smartphone as a mindless gizmo used for killing away our otherwise productive moments. They conducted an experiment that involved 3 experimental groups of those who had (1) the phones but were not permitted to use them; (2) the phones and were permitted to use them; and (3) no phones among a control group of UC students. The results were all over but the shouting: that those with the phones displayed less degree of anxiousness and anxiety than those who had none when they were purposefully estranged from the control group. Conversely, those without the phones exhibited the highest level of the stress hormone alpha anylase in the saliva. Besides, those with the phone but were not allowed to use them showed the least level of the stress hormone. Consequently, the researchers raved about these results, rhapsodizing about the positive effects of a smartphone on our psyche.

    Neither a luddite nor an anachronist adhering to a primeval way of living, I am all for the munificent technological largess of our time with open arms because I also, inevitably, use it myself in my daily life. But the researchers’ triumphant conclusion of their experiment seems rather precarious and cursory in relation to the following speculations: (1) What were the age groups of their experimental groups? Did the researchers target a specific age group? (2) What were the education and social levels of the experimental groups?; (3) were there any variables in the experimental groups and the control group?; and (4) were the researchers by any chance funded by technologically-based companies?  These are the questions that my heart suspects more than my eye can see.

    The image of a devil’s advocate is what I am donning on this topic, but this article pushed me into the position on account of rather superficial results of the experiment devoid of the information on the aforesaid speculations. Also, looking at people wallowing themselves in small smartphones everywhere, especially on the subway and the bus, other than books or kindles, renders an apocalyptic image of the world nearing the doomsday or a scene of horror creatures that turn into zombies every night. “Magnas civitas, Magnas solitude,” Francis Bacon once lamented a great feeling of isolation in a great city. That says it, I should think so. Our sense of belonging and security is not bound by a possession of smartphones, nor does it replace your sweet teddy bears.

  • Carpe Diem, Ladies and Gentlemen! Enjoy the Moment!

    image (1)

    It’s a dewy one Saturday morning after the nightly rain that cooled off the fiery flame of the sun. Thanks to the abundance of flora in Avonlea, the process of transpiration by which leaves of plants release moisture  into the air that results in rain on earth, the land of Avonlea is hardly parched, and the atmosphere always fresh and fragrant. That is why Helen induced her husband Priam to move to Avonlea a year ago from Roanoke, where humidity and mosquitoes ruled in autocracy; it was an unsavory place to live, let alone to start a family. The rumor had it that the nondescript town was later set ablaze and ravaged by a man driven to madness by such a torid ambience of the toil. In the background of all this, Helen cannot be happier than now, while listening to one of her repertoires, “Downtown” by Petula Clark on her iphone. In fact, she feels as if she and her George were flitting on her aerial bicycle in the blue sky.

    image

    Meanwhile, Sally and Bonnie are cooing Alfred, a  baby son of their neighbors Mr. and Mrs. Redfox who are on holiday  to Prince Edward Island. Their vivacious daughter Judy is at a parochial summer camp in Thousand Silvers. The Redfoxes are scheduled to return home tomorrow afternoon, so it’s not too much of onerous task the two ladies have to tackle, straining themselves over how to pacify a crying baby, what to do in case he becomes sick out of the blue, and when to change his diapers, etc. Fortunately, Alfred is so mildly-tempered and easy to take care of in the bargain that it is actually a pleasure attending to the toddler without feeling stressful. Sally ponders if such equilibrium in temperament would be a manifestation of solidification of genetic composition. In a minute, Sally and Bonnie are going to take Alfred out for their usual morning promenade.

    photo

    “Look, Bonnie. Alfred’s got a cute mole on the right cleft of his lips! So adorable! I wish I had it too!” “Let me see. Hmmm… I had not noticed it until you told me so. Don’t you know that his sister Judy’s got the same mole on the left cleft of her lips? And so does Mr. Redfox? It seems to be a genetic trait of the family. Definitely. Funny that a man like him has got it, while his wife has dimples. But then the dimples are more precious and feminine and more desirable than a mole, no?” In fact, Bonnie secretly wishes that she would have the same attractive dimples around the corners of her lips that would make her face prettier and perkier. But it is just one of those innocent, muliebral wishes of  a lady who doesn’t think that she’s pretty enough to be wooed and sought after. But then who can blame Bonnie for vanity when a gentleman likes a pretty lady? But let us put all the convoluted thoughts and tangled emotions and untamed emotions aside for this bright Saturday fragrant with fresh petrichor. Forget all the worries just for Today and Tomorrow, which is Official Holy Rest Day, and let’s just pretend to have million dollars in our bank accounts for the weekend.

    0682e26f337825b366e8e3e3e0003ad1--folk-disc-golf

  • Kill or Cure? – on Medieval Medical Practice

    RE: September 1, 2018 issue of BBC History Magazine article by Elma Brenner

    The grace of health is conspicuous only by its absence when we fall into sickness unexpectedly in the course of our earthly lives. Throughout the history of human civilizations, there have been many interesting ways of curing illnesses peculiar to different wells in sound body,” went to Temple of Aesculapius, the demigod born into Apollo and Coronis, a beautiful mortal, later raised by the wise and kindly old centaur named Chiron, in eager hope of seeing the demigod in their dreams to listen to his prescriptions for the maladies, primarily consisting of a mixture of herbs and cooling potions followed by divine incantations. In this regard, the people in the Middles Ages were not more different than their ancient pagan Mediterranean counterparts. Moreover, their medieval attitudes toward sickness and a general well-being was no less incongruent than those of ours as Brenner takes us to the time period in this scintillating article.

    Pace our prevalent perception of backwardness of its culture and science in the tenebrous reign of the Church, there was a multitude of practical treatments for maladies as well as preventive health cares that appeared to produce efficacy to certain desirable extents. Just like their 21st century progeny, medieval physicians emphasized on the importance of preventive health cares, such as “Rapid stair climbing” for 3 or 4 times a week to strengthen cardiovascular endurance, a moderate diet, good sleep, and other types of physical exercise to promote general health of the medieval folks. In fact, it seems to me that such measures may seem as a wise way of preventing an individual from falling into a serious type of sickness that might have required of a physician a diagnosis of which he would not have yet known at that time,  or even if he had known it, he would not have known the cure.

    It is also very interesting to know that during this period of time, a physician was to diagnose causes of ailments and then referred a patient deemed necessary for a surgery to a surgeon whose status was considered less than a physician’s by dint of the nature of the physical exertions that involved unpleasant sensory aspects, such as bloodletting, collecting urine, and most dreadful of all, cries and screams of the patients under the surgeries without anesthesia. All of these physical “drudgery” or “legwork” was strictly undertaken by a surgeon under the guideline of a physician who offered prevention medicinal advice based upon a patient’s case-history, observation of pulse, urine, and blood. Thenceforth, at the instruction of a physician it was an apothecary, a modern day equivalent of a pharmacist you see in Duane Reade or Rite Aide, who completed the physician’s job by supplying the prescribed medicine to the patient.

    Since the medieval times was undeniably under the aegis of the Church that functioned as the Divine Terrestrial Office with its authority imprinted in all aspects of life, a spiritual application of supernatural agency in the cure of sickness was de rigueur for a medicinal procedure. For example, the Church instructed the agnus dei to see a priest prior to visiting a physician who also often had some degree of medical knowledge. Moreover, in the practice of Couching, which was a cataract surgical procedure by which a surgeon moved the cloudy lens on the iris of the patient to the bottom of the eye with a gold/or silver needle, 4 recitations of Pater Nostra –  the Lord’s Prayer-  were administered.

    In view of the above, it seems to me that except for the absences of antibiotics, surgical methods, and anesthesia, some of the practices are still existent, such as the use of uroscopy, which is the examination of urine to determine a patient’s conditions, a general medical procedure involving the trinity of physician, surgeon, and pharmacist, and the advocate of preventive health cares are very much similar to those of the 21st century counterparts. Hence, I am in agreement with Brenner that it would be our fallacy of human ego to flatly deride or discredit the medieval medical practices as backward or ludicrously primitive or even barbarous and proclaim our modern superiority. For were we pitchforked backward in the Middle Ages, perhaps we would understand their ways of working the cure apropos the medieval epoch. But then the prospect of going through  a surgery minus anesthesia – not even a dosage of Vailum – makes me thank God for the fact that I wasn’t born in that time.

     

     

  • There Was a Girl with Bangs

    il_340x270.761541340_nfev

    There was a girl, and she had bangs
    Right below her crescent eyebrows.
    And when she was happy,
    she was sweets to the sweet,
    And when she was sulky,
    she was colds to the coldest.

  • All Things to All People: on the importance of education by Daniel Defoe

    Daniel Defoe (1660-1731) was something of a daring noble rebel. If the name does not ring a bell to you at first blush, the name “Robinson Crusoe” will dawn on you with the popular images of the character and his faithful servant Man Friday constellated in film and animation firmaments. Defoe’s timeless classic Robinson Crusoe popularized the form of English novel along with Samuel Johnson’s epistolary novel Pamela in the canon of English literature. A writer conscientious as well as prodigious, Defoe did not hesitate to put his credo into actions by wielding his pen across paper. His bounteous works were in fact used as his arsenal of intellectual arguments against the ills of the society he did not fail to notice in all aspects of everyday life, such as the mistreatment of women, the poor, and those whose beliefs did not conform to the Church of England in his time. Defoe was neither an intellectual snob nor a hypocrite; in fact, he was not afraid of speaking his mind in a most poignantly cogent way as manifested in this short prose “Charm School for Women” from his essay on The Education of Women (1719) in which Defoe pillories canonical discrimination against women as grave injustice against humanity.

    Defoe believes that it’s a lack of education that makes a woman proverbially turbulent, clamorous, and uncouth by comparing the soul in the body to a rough diamond that must be polished to its most naturally brilliant luster in order that its true beauty is manifested, just as the soul is thus distinguished from nondescript melee or even brutes. Defoe criticizes that men make women brutes by preventing them from being made wiser by dint of denying them the advantage of education because of the fear that the new enlightened womanhood will vie with the manhood in their improvements. Defoe then suggests that women be taught languages, especially French and Italian with a special focus on a subject of history so as to make them understand the affairs of the world and how they swing and thus wise.

    In my point of view, such emphasis on the study of history strikes the chords with John Milton’s provident observation that: “Poetry makes us witty, but history makes us wise.” Knowledge of history enables you to realize a commonality between the bygone eras and our time in the discovery of truth of human nature across a great divide of time and space, so that we may learn from the past and use the knowledge as to better the world in our time, which will be an ongoing cultural enterprise so long as the human race exists. The universality of truth in satisfaction of reason and the cyclical nature of human affairs have been manifested in the Holy Writ as follows: “There is no new thing under the sun” and “Old things are become past; and lo! All things are become new.”

    Defoe’s viewpoints of women’s education is far from patronizing or condescending in the capacity of a sympathetic or lenient master deigning to address to his maids. On the contrary, he speaks as an altruistic, eager academic who feels for the pathetic states of women deprived of the privileges of education that will do a world of wonder to womanhood if equitably given. He avers that proper education will teach women the proper management of their natural wits, so that they will prove to be very sensible and retentive. Therefore, to withhold women from the crown of education is injustice itself, which in my opinion also goes against Christian charity in terms of sharing what you already have with those who do not in order to double the joys and cut the misery in halves. Moreover, the refined women’s souls as a result of education are the grist to the mill of society with more culturally refined and publicly civil-minded individuals. In light of Defoe’s provocatively humanistic perspectives on the education of women that does not smack of flagrant political ideology to gain popularity of womankind and his beautiful allusion of a woman’s soul to a rough diamond in its primordial form, this brief treatise on the importance of education of women is an illuminating read worth the noting with a nod.