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

Tag: books

  • ‘Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney’, by Paul Johnson – review

    CreatorsCreators by Paul Johnson

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Kurt Vonnegut encouraged anyone dabbling in the act of creativity: “To practice art, no matter how well or badly, is to make your soul grow. So do it.” Accordingly, the art of creation is a noble act of finding a meaning of life in which man searches for his freedom of will and will to meaning by translating the principles of sentiments and reason that are universal in humankind to various forms of creativity, ranging from writing and painting to music and dance, and to even gardening and making people laugh. Such act of making something out of nothing requires Herculean feats of courage and spirit that serves as a sovereign remedy for the existential ills of everyday life, however ordinary or exceptional. Paul Johnson’s Creators, which looks into the bright side of clever, talented individuals contrary to his previously published Intellectuals in which he recounted the hypocrisy of historically famous intellectuals, presents his thesis: that we all have creative traits in us is our divine prerogative of humanity; and to produce works of the arts involves prodigies of courage as well as talent that is sublimated to the aesthetic expression of intellect and beauty, such as to be in the cases of luminous artists whose oeuvres marked their standing in literature, painting, and music.

    Each chapter on each different artist draws up on the artist’s unyielding courage and creativity, which is a quintessential element of creative originality of outstanding quality. Johnson admits that an artist tends to be egotistical due to his extravagant faculty of creativity into which the artist pours out everything that is in him. An unusual degree of courage that is akin to physical courage of a soldier on the front is demanded of the artist unless he bows to the final enemy of creativity, such as age or increasing debility. Take Beethoven’s struggling against his deafness by using a toothbrush in his mouth to feel the tonality of each piano key while composing his immortal symphonies. Great impressionist painter Toulouse-Lautrec’s inherited disabilities and grotesque deformities as a result of hereditary inbreeding could not stop him from producing beautiful paintings with his triumphant willpower and courage until his death at the age of thirty-seven. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote incessantly despite his chronic illness due to his weak and unreliable lungs that eventually killed him in his early forties. Emily Dickinson wrote poetry without encouragement and public response, while David Hume failed to receive public recognition upon publishing Human Understanding. So did Anthony Trollope of The Macdermots of Bally Cloran that was neither reviewed nor sold of a single copy.

    The life of an artist is full of peculiar aspects and strange satisfaction often spurred on by personal weaknesses, such as in the cases of Jane Austen and George Eliot whose real name was Mary Ann Evans. Both of the women led lonely and lugubrious lives without experiencing felicities of love and adulation by men despite their brilliant spirits and ingenious minds. Surely beauty was in their time and still is only skin-deep, but their plainness left them in spinsterhood and forced themselves to spur loneliness on writing that was the solace in which they could fall in love with the men they desired. In effect, the reader will learn that it was the courage to express their spirits and feminine aspiration to be loved that fed on their creativity. Also, self-awareness, careful nursing, and restricting of the talents and subject matters, rather than audacious rampant criticism of society in general in undisciplined tempest of words, were added to the wings of their creative spirits.

    In light of the above, art is not genius but a work born of love and labor of its creator whose Herculean degree of courage and desire of expressing imaginations and intellect perform a painful but delightful feat of ingeniousness. Johnson avows that rational and professional methods of using skills, experiences, creative industriousness, and self-confidence are the ingredients to create the work of art. Also, he affirms the reader that there is no need to make a pact with the devil or perform a magical ceremony to invoke a creative spirit because inspiration comes from within. It is how to find it and reveal it like a hidden diamond in its most radiant luminescence. Written in common words devoid of academic locutions and once again his usual consummate narrative skills, this is Johnson’s another scintillating book to be acquainted with the human face of geniuses whose works have produced pleasure in our senses and minds.

  • Martin Luther: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

    Martin Luther: A Life From Beginning to EndMartin Luther: A Life From Beginning to End by Hourly History

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Martin Luther represents the rapidly changing 16th century Europe where, many thanks to wide popularization of printing press, the spread of new knowledge, including Copernicus’s suggestion of the universe as being heliocentric and the discovery of new sea trade routes by the Spanish and the Portuguese, was available to the mass. Accordingly, this reading of Martin Luther: A Life from Beginning to End elegantly narrates Luther’s role of not only a religious reformist but also a cultural leader of the epoch. The reader will learn that Luther was in the right place at the right time to be in the vanguard of the Reformation by defining the emerging Protestant church and putting Europe in medieval mindset toward the new Europe in a modern way of thinking like never before.

    Luther was born in 1483 and christened Martin on the feast day of St. Martin, the day after his birth. The oldest of five siblings, Luther was brought up in a strict disciplinarian household in which his miner father’s no-nonsense work ethics and mother’s strict methods of corporeal punishment (e.g., she beat her son’s hands until they bled for stealing a nut from a market.) had strong impacts on his character and belief system. Academically speaking, Luther was a reasonably intelligent student, not a brilliant one with flying colors aiming to be a lawyer at the University of Erfurt. His favorite subject was classical literature of which Virgil’s Aeneid was his passion that led him to the humanistic idea of reading original texts in contrast with other mandatory subjects including rhetoric, reasoning, and argument based on a translated version of writings of Aristotle with commentaries. His original aspiration to become a lawyer was fatefully changed when he encountered a turbulent thunderstorm on his way to see his father and became so frightened that in fear of mortal danger, he prayed to St. Anne that if she protected him from the storm, he would take a vow of monastic life. Hence, instead of returning to the university, Luther went to the monastery of the Augustine to become a monk.

    Luther’s doubt and despair over his inability to please God according to the nominalism, a medieval school of thought teaching that good works through the Church would please God, continued to vex his conscience and question the true meaning of Christianity, all the more fueled by his study of scripture in its original language. Luther’s indignation at the dogmas ruling over Christianity not the Gospels alone in its original text resulted in the famous 95 Theses opposing the Church’s sale of indulgences on a variety of grounds nailed to the door of All Saints’ Church in Withenberg, which ignited embers of the Reformation especially against Church of Rome. Surely, that the papacy was secular, not divinely appointed was to infuriate the Church and excommunicate him. Notwithstanding the mortal threats from his foes, Luther was a man of convictions and successfully led the Reformation movement with a group of his followers. Be he ever imperfect, Luther was also a generous and kind man who cared for orphans and the sick even by lodging them in his house. Furthermore, Luther helped a group of nuns escape from a convent in 1523 during the Reformation and married Katharina von Bora, one of the escaped nuns without home and family whom Luther affectionately called, “My lord.”

    In the eyes of Rome, Luther might be an infidel heretic to be condemned in the Sixth Circle of Inferno, but he was more of humanistic thinker, a pioneer educator putting his ideas into actions to upend the fallacies of the ecclesiastical bureaucracy and its practices under the pretext of redemption of fallen souls and blessing of celestial graces through the Church that had already become corrupt with the cardinal sins. What distinguishes Luther from other religious leaders is his role as a public activist, advocating church reform based on Christian freedom and the message of the Gospel in scripture without resorting to the use of violence because it was not of Christian conduct. He worked on the vernacular bible based on Erasmus’s recent edition of the New Testament in its original Greek by transcribing into German word by word without the use of commentaries in order that his translation would be accessible to the public and convey the contexts as truthfully as possible to the original. Also, Luther encouraged medieval German’s history of folk hymns in the vernacular during mass by rewriting the hymns himself, one of which was famed “A mighty fortress is our God.”

    To encapsulate, the achievements of Luther that have influenced our modern way of thinking appertain to education of minds of people on the ground of individualism which are: (1) examination of each Christian’s conscience; (2) the sufficiency of scripture alone as the bedrock of Protestant church tenets; (3) building a direct relationship to God through only Christ, not through a priest; (4) active participation of laypersons in church worship; (5) emphasis on grace, forgiveness, and salvation by faith alone; and (6) the use of hymns in the vernacular for the mass. Had it not been for Luther’s pyrrhic vanguard of the Reformation movement, Europe would have still remained in the medieval mode of thinking and living.

  • Stardust!

    Sometimes I feel like a mad scientist who relentlessly pursues any signals of supernal intelligent being in the universe when I write my book reviews, poems, and occasionally attempted short short stories on my little lonely blog. I do it because for the love of act of writing and the ambition of writing better. Simple as that.

    And Voila! At last, I was able to catch such signal coming from the most unexpected galaxy of Great Writers this week: That my book review on a fabulously well-written modern thriller, The Flight Attendant got the attention of its equally fabulously brilliant author, Mr. Chris Bohjalian, who not only read the review but also gave me kindly comments on the review thwarts all of my provisional existential worries like magic.

    So I guess my endeavors to improve my writing skills for love of literature and history have not been in vain after all. Francis Bacon’s timeless adage of “Reading makes a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.” has been one of my credos. Now Mr. Bohjalian’s warm encouragement shall be my new, fresh literary memento. What more can I say? I now have stardust.

    https://www.facebook.com/plugins/post.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fstephanie.suh.35%2Fposts%2F587631201604148&width=500

  • The Great Surprise from Chris Bohjalian

    I have just checked my neglected tweeter and found out that Mr. Bohjalian, the writer of The Flight Attendant about which I wrote a book review, left such a kindly compliment thereon. I am much obliged for the commendation. This made my day!

    The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

     

  • The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

    The Flight AttendantThe Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian

    My rating: 5 of 5 stars

    Maybe it was because of the hauntingly enigmatic cover page with a title that was both realistic and alluring associated with the popular image of the profession: Glamour, Romance, and Adventure in the high skies of the world separating the profession from its terrestrial counterparts. Or maybe it was because I had once wanted to become a flight attendant myself. But above all of these speculations, I had never imagined myself enjoying a contemporary fiction until I found The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian upon reading the excerpt of the book; that it’s actually a thriller about a lone woman on the emotional run for her life tangled in a web of international intrigues and personal intricacies unraveled in the progress of the story, which compels the reader to stay tuned for each next chapter.

    The story begins when the protagonist Cassandra (“Cassie”) Bowden, a mid-thritish flight attendant wakes up one morning with a terrible hangover in a hotel in Dubai only to find a dead body of a man, a hedge-fund company man partial to Russian literature whom Cassie met on her flight a day ago and spent a night with, lying next to her. Thenceforth, her reluctant adventure of escaping not only from a suspicion of killing the man she barely knows but also from all that has been troubling her mind as her anxiety is translated into a borderline paranoia. But Cassie is hardly a pathetic figure; she is a great functional alcoholic, prefers a one-night stand with a stranger she meets during her flight or at a bar. She also lies pretty well although most of her lies are absent from malice. And yet, it’s also hard to dislike her or stigmatize her as a loose woman, for in one way or another, the reader may find her related to herself in the deprivations of love and security, of intimacy and support. She’s the perfect embodiment of imperfect heroine not uncommon but exceptional to recognize.

    In fact, Bohjalian’s superb narrative skills that show Cassie’s truculent inner crisis without using cerebral terms of psychology lucidly and effectively builds the development of the story all the more flawlessly and sleekly at the same time. Without using flowery words or baroque-styled sentences, Bohjalan’s unlikely heroine of the story seems convincingly realistic and vivid as if the reader were inside of Cassie’s mind. In terms of subject matters of the story, Bohjalian skillfully incorporates social issues of self-destructive alcoholism, white-color crimes, depression, and other types of addiction into the story without inculcating a moral undertone in the narrative. Also, Bohjalian’s choice of flight attendant as the profession of Cassie proves that writing truthfully and entertainingly about everyday life in contemporary setting always works best to attract the reader to the world of literary creation that seem so real. In this respect, Bohjalian follows the footstep of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the creator of Anne ff Green Gables, who once said the idea of a good story results from making use of the real to perfect the ideal which includes encompassing foibles and idiosyncrasies of the human nature because they can enhance literary imaginations viscerally and effectually to the extent possible.

    All in all, The Flight Attendant by Chris Bohjalian achieves its purpose of entertaining the reader with pages filled with vivid characters, lucid descriptions of the scenes, and plots that twist even the most logical assumptions of each chapter thanks to Bohjalian’s diligent research of all the components of the story, ranging from the work routine of a flight attendant to FBI investigation procedures, behavior patterns of a functioning alcoholic, and to the world of financial espionages, all packaged fabulously in straightforwardly powerful language he employs. The reader will be engrossed in the story, wanting to know more about the fate of Cassie as if she were an acquaintance. It’s the art of Bohjalian that lured me into this riveting thriller. The Flight Attendant is a classic of our time that has a style without neologism, contemporary with our time with its powerful, fresh, and universal appeal to the reader of this modern time.

     

  • The Mysterious British Isles by Charles River Editors

    The Mysterious British Isles: A Collection of Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena across Britain and IrelandThe Mysterious British Isles: A Collection of Mysteries, Legends, and Unexplained Phenomena across Britain and Ireland by Charles River Editors

    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Great Britain, which is composed of England, Scotland, and Wales, is arguably one of the ancient lands imbued with history and tradition, full of primeval sites, historical artifacts, unique landscapes where skyscrapers casting shadows over castles, and a people of equally unique heritage and culture. But most of all, to me England appears to be a gem of the Crown, the archetypal image of Great Britain because there is London that has existed for thousands of years. The Mysterious British Isles by Charles River Editors offers the reader an elegant history of London with interesting information on the city itself, including backgrounds of famous buildings, places, and on its equally fascinating inhabitants who lived and worked to make their ends meet before our time.

    London has been a cosmopolitan city for centuries, and it is a city of amalgamation of the ancient and the new with churches built atop pagan temples, ordinary commercial buildings grounded around medieval burial grounds, and so on. To illustrate, St. Paul’s was built upon an old temple to Diana, the Roman version of Greek goddess Artemis. Also, Westminster Abbey, dating back to the reign of William the Conqueror and the Norman Conquest, was originally located on the Isle of Thorney – supposedly the site of a Roman temple to Apollo, which was destroyed by an earthquake and then replaced with an Anglo/Saxon temple to Thor. It was in 610 A.D. that it finally made Christian by King of the East Saxons, who had converted to Christianity, in dedication to St. Peter.

    In addition to the aforesaid great churches, the ancient Roman time street named Hounds Ditch, still running through the City of London, was used as the old London’s dumping ground. But Hounds Ditch is not the only place of the disposed remaining to be seen today. There are quite a few modern buildings with part of their plots unused, bits of empty lands in crowded, expensive London with signs warning people to “Keep off the Grass.” In fact, they are old plague pits, mass graves used to place a myriad of infected corps during the period of great plagues in London.

    Since London has been the center of economic activities, many professions have been come and gone as a consequence of changes of social and economic systems. Some of the worthwhile professions to mention in memory of the people who worked in them for their livelihood are listed as follows:

    • Chimney Sweep: It was city law that people should keep their chimneys clean due to a fire hazard. So many poor boys aged between seven and eight started becoming climbing boys, serving the apprenticeship to master sweeps. Unsurprisingly, may of them died of suffocation, suffered from deformity, developed scrotum cancer as a result of residue of soot.
    • The Mudlark: It was a popular job for poor boys in the 18th and 19th centuries; many of them were orphans. They scored the banks of the Thames for items of value. When the tides were low, the mudlarks looked for items through the muddy banks and became easy targets for police harassments, one of which was to throw the boys to the river. So the mudlarks were also good swimmers.
    • The Tosher: After the Great Stink of 1858, a genius engineer named Joseph Bazalgette developed a citywide sewer system that is still in use. It was this great Victorian engineering feat that gave birth to this profession. Toshers were specialized in the sewer system for any valuables dropped out of the pockets of Londoners.
    • The Linkboy: Before the late 19th century, London night was as dark as Persian night without public lamps. Hence these linkboys whose parents were dead or were so impecunious that they had to allow their little child to roam London’s dark nights became the essential night guides with lanterns on poles to drunken citizens or travelers or theater-goers. Sometimes, linkboys were also employed to decoy to guide customers to brothels in addition to their tips.
    • Sandwich Men: As a rise of advertising due to prosperous cheap printing with growing disposable income in the early 19th century, shops and stores were eager to hire the city’s impecunious citizens however old or young to use them as mobile advertisement. These sandwich men worked with poor pay by standing out in the sun and rain for up to 12 hours with their front and back covered with boards held up by ropes over their shoulders. In fact, the term was originated by Charles Dickens’s description of such man as a “piece of human flesh sandwiched between two slices of pasteboard. Sandwich men survived the centuries despite several attempts to ban the profession. Although the Westminster City Council prohibited the presence of sandwich men in 2008 in effort to upgrade the city’s shopping ambience in West End, the other boroughs of London have not yet perished sandwich men.

    The Mysterious British Isles by Charles River Editors encapsulates some of the most interesting facts of Great Britain, such as the aforesaid history of London and facts of its inhabitants. It also covers subjects such as famous criminals, fairies and giants, and legends of historic places throughout the Isles. It is worthwhile to read this book as a concise but essential reference book on Great Britain either to satisfy your curiosity for the country where the Sun never set on in the past or to occupy yourself with something at once entertaining and informative during your lunchtime, coffee break, or before going to bed.