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

Tag: literature

  • The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling

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    It was my first moment of spiritual Eureka mixed with awesomeness and bewilderment in terra incognita when I first read The Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling. It was a wonderful pictorial book painted with the scenes from the Disney’s classic animated film version. To the child’s eye, it was like a fiesta of vivid colors and vivacious characters set in motion in the heart of jungle I had never seen. What’s more, the animals were so humanlike and likable into the bargain that while reading the book, I almost forgot that they were beasts speaking their own language, which I was able to understand through the presence of Mowgli, who looked a lot like Tarzan in diminutive stature and size wearing only a loincloth and long dark hair. Mowgli’s knack of communicating with his beastly friends who were always there for him even compelled me to try talking to my domestic puppy Nena at that time by using a quaint conflation of the human alphabets and the doggie phonetics to a moderate success.

    Now I am pitchforked forward in 2018, but the childlike sensation of reading The Jungle Book still resonates strongly with me in defiance against the existential horrors of life that I deal with everyday. Amid the the detritus of daily chores and duties, I turned to Disney’s remake of The Jungle Book (2016), which I chose to watch on my Kindle Fire a few nights ago. At first blush, I had a certain indisposition to watch the highly-acclaimed film: although I am not altogether unreconstructed in terms of watching a film version of classic literature, I tend to shun adopted film versions of classic literature because of the gratuitous rendering of post modernist revisionist interpretations of the books they put on screen. But such misgiving was proved to be an unnecessary mental albatross.

    The Jungle Book is a cinematic eye candy to children and adults with its stunning visual impacts and a spectacular scale of the story set in the background of a deep jungle somewhere in India populated with a cast of magnificent characters representing human characteristics in different forms. To classify this film as an anthropomorphic children’s film is to miss the essence of Kipling’s allegorical allusion of our human nature to multifarious animal forms: Sloth, Integrity, Conscience, Humor, Greed, and Vengeance, all of which is manifested in contact with the nature itself whose essence is of neutrality. It is in this background of nature, which is neither paradise nor hell where our human nature becomes conspicuous in its very essence, a primeval form. The manifestation of such human traits is a fortiori overcome by the figure of Mowgli, a feral child brought by a benevolent wolf family. Mowgli is an emblematic of resilience, independence, and courage against the gravitas of trepidation, death, and despondency.

    9780385389839Given the authenticity of the storytelling aligned with the original context by Kipling and the performance of the characters studded with breathtaking scenes of nature so characteristic of Disney’s creative imaginativeness, it is a film worth of the spending your time on screen. It is a kind of film that stimulates your mind by inviting you to think about a meaning of our human life and existence and of our purpose of life. It will also thrill your heart with the adventures of Mowgli in the heart of the jungle and the stereoscopic views of the nature on screen created by a wonderful collaboration of our timeless human imaginations and 21st century feats of technological bona fides.

  • Cry Wolf for Huck, Mariner, and Mowgli

    Fake news is not an unique thing of our social media era. As there is nothing new under the sun, ludicrously fake news dealing with fatalities, especially of the famous, irked the nerves of the victims of such falsity. Subsequently, the selling of the newspaper like hot cakes was all over but the shouting. The logic of the fake news is a priori simple:  sensationalism has always been a tacitly cardinal principle of journalism to bring the grist to the mill for instantly skyrocketing readership with consummate profits in no time. It’s all linked to mob psychology, often without moral and ethical culpability when the media rashly trumpets a premature death of a living person.

    mark-twain-350Let’s go back to the time when the great American humorist and writer Mark Twain (1835-1910) regularly featured in the nationwide newspapers with his trademark scintillating remarks on just about any subject that piqued him; but none other than reading articles about his own deaths twice in the New York Times would have perturbed his otherwise usual sanguine nature. After the first ignominy, the writer told the Times that it was an exaggeration. But after the second occasion, when the Times suggested that he had been the victim of a yachting accident, he thought he had it enough for such media farce and remonstrated to the Times with a public complaint that he would make a thorough investigation of the fallacious report. To think that a respectful newspaper such as The New York Times published such fake news of the famous writer of the time twice is something of a bitter pill to swallow, but it also shows that reputation isn’t necessarily likened to integrity or even probity.

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    It’s also interesting to see how a falsely presumably dead person reacted to the news of his own demise in the newspaper. Now I am going to pitchfork my reader to the early Victorian period to introduce you Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), a great English poet and literary critic who wrote “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.” In 1846, a man’s body was found hanging from a tree in London’s Hyde Park and was identified as the poet himself by the very name stitched into the jacket, which had been stolen from the alive-and-kicking poet. Upon our asking him about the fallaciousness of his printed death, Coleridge stoically, wittingly, and leniently piped up: “It is a most extraordinary thing that he should have hanged himself, be the subject of an inquest, and yet that he should at this moment be speaking to you.”

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    Would all those famous people cope with their prematurely published obituaries as the aforesaid with magnanimity? Surely, Humanly No. Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), who wrote the timelessly fascinating Jungle Book, was anything but human after the ignominy of reading his own obituary in the newspaper. Naturally, he resisted biting the dust and wrote the letter to the newspaper as thus: “I’ve just read that I am dead. Don’t forget to delete me from your list of subscribers.” How brilliantly he wielded his pen to vindicate such false killing of his life with intelligence and witticism! I wonder if any of our contemporaries responds or will ever respond to any fake news to this effect. Does this also mean that our reading brain that helps us to develop our cognitive abilities has been adversely affected by mindless decoding of the digital letters on the Internet as presented by Dr. Maryanne Wolf whose book Proust and the Squid I am reading at the moment?

    As the sudden surge of accusations of insensitivity to cultural, social, and personal traits is presently all the rage, it is helpful to retrospect to the precedents that might provide us with universal truths about life and how to respond to existential dealings in life that are not too much anachronistically different from ours in contemporary time. It is hardly likely that the social media will rein in their impulsive dissemination of sensational news on their platforms because it is a fortiori their modus operandi of generating profits as far as I know. And yet, we can learn from the way Twain, Coleridge, and Kipling reacted to their ludicrous false demises with intelligence, poise, and wit, let alone something about the sensational nature of journalism that is aimed at producing ever provocative – however false it is – news to the public.

  • Fate or Providence?

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    Julie has a sweet tooth. She loves bonbons, jelly, fruit candy, and butterscotch candy saturated richly in fresh milk. She savors them not in excess, for her motto is “Nothing in excess. Moderation is a virtue,” which is a synthesis of Apollonian adage found in the terrace of the temple at Delphi and Christian virtue recorded in the bible, a wonderfully syncretistic maxim created by her father Willie Shue, an intellectual food vendor of Avonlea. But today is not one of those lax halcyon days of Julie’s; neither Sally’s Sweet Cart stuffed with fresh buttery popcorn, Ice Frappuccino, chocolate-covered bananas, sugar-coated churros, and bottles of Coca-Cola nor her good old chum Lana seems to perk up her innate conviviality. It seems as though Julie was under the spell of a malicious witch bearing generational grudge against the Shues.

    IMG_3912Anyone around Julie is flabbergasted by her sudden change of mood. None has seen her this lugubrious, saturnine, and crestfallen. This perturbs the heart of ever altruistic, magnanimous Sally, who is tending her aunt Mary’s Sweet Cart today and tomorrow during her brief jaunt to Lake Leda 10 miles away from Avonlea. Having known Julie for over ten years since she and her vagabond intellectual father Willie made their debut entrance to Avonlea. Although the father and the daughter have been living in a hut with limited bare necessities, they are rich in humanity, knowledge, and imagination. Knowing this eggs on Sally to ask Julie if all is okay with her and her father.”No, Sally. Actually, I am deeply worried about my father. Last Wednesday, he went to see his physician for his result of a blood test. And the doctor told my father that his kidneys were damaged and that he needed to take medications everyday for two months until the next appointment with the doctor. My father has been diagnosed with “Acute lobar nephronia”. That was why my father was often dizzy and stumbled on the ground as flat a pancake.”

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    The litany of Julie’s woebegone feelings becomes a heartrending ballard of life in which we have to deal with unforeseen forces of malice and misfortune akin to those of Odyssey, Hercules, Jonah, and Aeneas according to the whims and caprice of gods and goddesses, and God. So would Willie’s predicament be a fortiori sign of divine intervention in the maning of his life? The new medical revelation of Willie’s ailing kidney poses a concatenation of philosophical musings that seems like Sphinx’s famous riddles: Delphic, visceral, esoteric, and maddening. Sally is wondering just what Willie is thinking about his decided fate, a diagnosis of his failing health. Perhaps he takes it in stoical attitude. Or according to Elisabeth Kubler Ross’s five stages of dying, he will be at Stage 1, which is “Shock and Denial.” It’s all a priori assumption that Sally can think of as far as Willie’s state of health goes. But most of all, Sally’s heart is now heavily laden with pathos for Willie and his daughter Julie. What will become of Julie if Willie’s symtoms gets exacerbated all of sudden, and he does not wake up next morning?… With all her a posteriori assumptions about Julie and Wille locked in her mind, Sally consoles Julie with a cup of buttery popcorn and a bottle of ice-cold Coca Cola for free and tells her that she will drop by her house to say hello to her father Willie with a box of Julie’s favorite bonbons later in the evening.

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  • Why she reads

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    With the works of great writers
    Of Beauty and Intelligence
    In magical feats of Imaginations,
    She regales with infinite varieties.

  • Heart of Gold

    image (2)“Anything new in today’s newspaper, Seraphina?” asked inquisitive Patricia, who arrived at Cafe Jolie, her and Seraphina’s “third” place after their homes and workplaces. “Yes, there is  very shocking news connected to our neighbors in Avonlea!” Seraphina  was excited by this one-of-kind news involving her beloved town that was seldom covered by any major newspaper unless big wigs in corporate world or bureaucrats in political arena visited the town with no other reasons than canvassing for “likes” of the good people of Avonlea, all for their dominance of popularity over the populace. So what made her flushed with rare effervesce? Patricia was by all means curious about it and wanted to dig out the whys and wherefores.

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    “You know the Magoo family who owns the mini mart down on the Merton Bowley Road? While Mr. Priam Magoo and his two other children Tony and Tracy were on their fishing trip to Bella Vista, their bedroom ceiling completely collapsed to the ground all of sudden on Friday morning! And the thing was that Mr. Priam’s wife Helen and their infant son George were in that bedroom! But by the grace of God, she and the baby were unscathed by the falling debris because Helen, with her  innate athletic feats accelerated by her maternal instinct, covered George’s tiny body with hers and escaped the scene as swiftly as she could. Both the mother and the baby fled to the Collies, their next door neighbors to calm their nerves. Until Priam and the other children would  return home tonight (a drive to Bella Vista takes about two days.), Helen and George would stay at the Collies.”

    photoPatricia’s heart became laden with ebbs and flows of emotions, erratically setting in motion a convolution of sadness, indignation, ebullience, longing, benevolence, and then pathos with a detritus of the news about the unfortunate incident befalling Helen and George  she had just heard from Seraphina. So much so that her eating at the cafe with Seraphina made her feel indulged in some sort of sybaritic activities with a phantasmagorical display of the scenes in which both the mother and the baby were frightened, taking a flight to their neighbors until the return of other family members played stereoscopically in her metal theater. While her friend Seraphina just matter-of-factly discoursed the news as if it had been one of those articles in a provincial bill posted on a public board in a park, Patricia took it to heart and decided to visit Helen and George at the Collies after the brunch. Just as the great Roman historian Pliny the Elder aided the refugees of the catastrophic eruption of Mount Vesuvius with all his might, Patricia was willing to offer consolation however small it might be to the mother and the baby.

    thanks-for-reading-Rok-Hardware

  • 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.