Vacation Day 3: And Then It Rained

We saw this little rain-filled mushroom cup on our Saturday walk from the Superior Hotel to the West Bay Diner in Grand Marais. Back in Leelanau, it seems appropriate to post our third vacation day this morning, as the wind is splattering rain against the windows of our old farmhouse. How will vacationers in Leelanau feel about the weather today? We didn't mind wet while we were in the U.P. When your #1 vacation priority is relaxation rather than recreation, no "bad" weather (short of a natural catastrophe) is a problem or even "bad" at all. What could be more deliciously restful, after all, than falling into an early afternoon nap over a good book in a cozy hotel room while raindrops thrum against the windowpane?

Here I need to back up a couple of days, though, back to Thursday, our travel day from Northport to Grand Marais, because if this is going to be a post about books, I have to say that no one knows how to take a “busman’s holiday” like a bookseller. Eager as we were to reach the U.P., David and I stopped at a used bookstore before even reaching the Mackinac Bridge. Chris Nye’s shop, opposite the Pellston Regional Airport, has been open for about a year.


The inside of this simple pole building is quite a surprise. You’d swear you were in an old log cabin.



Chris is happy to be surrounded by books while he works on web design, his main business. Most of his used stock seems to be current popular fiction (brought in by local customers for trade credit), although he also carries a couple of new titles by local authors who have come to his store to do book signings, and I found an annotated Ulysses and a couple of other treasures during our visit. As I tell my own bookstore customers, it’s always potluck with used books, and you never know what you’ll find until you comb the shelves. Chris was friendly and welcoming, we were glad we’d stopped, and we’ll stop again the next time we’re going through Pellston.

North of the Bridge we headed next directly to First Edition Too, a bookstore I highly recommend. To reach my friend Mary’s shop, though, don’t take the road to Moran, despite her mailing address. Well, you can, but that’s the long way around. The easier way is to stay on U.S. 2 through Brevort and then grab Worth Road as it angles back like a hairpin. Go through the first intersection and then look for this welcoming sign.



I always find wonderful books at First Edition, and it’s always wonderful to see Mary, too. We found her busy with a garden project, but she put aside her spade long enough to show me her new bottle tree and sell me some books. I envy Mary having her bookstore, home and gardens all together in one spot.

Fast-forward now, back to Grand Marais. As it happened, the three books I read while there were the three I brought with me from Northport. First I read straight through Aaron Stander’s fourth Ray Elkins mystery, Shelf Ice, and have to say it’s my favorite of the series. (Reminder: #1 was Summer People, #2 was Color Tour, and #3 was Deer Season.) How long ago was it that the shelf ice formed such magical Arctic caves out by the Grand Traverse Light? Four or five years ago? I’m no kayaker, winter or otherwise, but those who are will appreciate Stander’s depiction of their sport. The action kicks off almost immediately, cinematically; there is also, however, plenty of friendly, realistic, searching conversation between characters. Friendships feel genuine. And Stander knows the Leelanau-Benzie territory very well, too. All told, there’s something for everyone in this book, all well integrated into a carefully crafted plot.

The second novel I read (not all these books read on the rainy Saturday, you understand) was Five Quarters of an Orange, by Joanne Harris. Strange. I’d hesitated over taking it along, not sure I wanted to read it at all, as the cover blurbs seemed directed at serious foodies. I mean, there’s good food in the U.P., hearty food, but not gourmet French cooking, so did I want to torture myself with what I could be eating in Paris? Well, it wasn’t like that at all. Food was an ingredient in the novel but hardly its theme, which was serious and dark, with lots of symbolism (not overdrawn) as the narrative moved back and forth between the main character’s late adulthood (age 65) and a sequence of events in her childhood (age 9). Secrets, deception, cruelty and betrayal form a story that haunts the reader long after the final page of the book has been reached.

Third book was nonfiction, The English: A Portrait of a People, by Henry Paxman. Part history, part social commentary, pretty funny in parts, quite refreshing and full of surprises, the chapters in this book moved right along. A complex and contradictory people, the English! Oh, and there’s a lot about how one can become British (an immigrant, for example) but not English. Interesting. I think there is no parallel distinction in France or in the U.S., although there is, I can’t help thinking, the fact that one can become a “local” through long residence in a community but never a “native.”

Well, and besides doing a lot of reading and picking up more books (we brought home two boxes), I also found an opportunity to indulge my passion for old postcards. “Northern Autumn, Birch Drive” could represent many Michigan locations. The salutation reads, “My Dear George,” and the card is addressed to Munising. The second card, more mysterious, has no picture whatsoever; neither does the address side have a street post office box number.



There is only the name of the addressee and the direction “Onota, Mich.” You can see the beautiful handwriting, almost calligraphy, in which a pious sentiment was written. Down in the corner, however, in light pencil, is a simpler note: “Would you allow me the pleasure of your correspondence?” There is no postmark, so I imagine this penny postcard, if sent, was mailed in an envelope. Did Emma agree to a correspondence with Gilbert? And then what happened? The date on this card is February 24, 1891.

Returning to books, I should mention several novels connected to our home away from home. Parts of the novel Sundog, by Jim Harrison (who for years maintained a writing cabin east of town), are set in the Grand Marais area; Phil Caputo rearranged geography somewhat, but the little U.P. village in Indian Country is recognizably Grand Marais; and 2011 will see the publication of South of Superior, a novel by our friend and hostess (at the West Bay Diner) Ellen Airgood.

The lighter side of literature is also well represented on Lake Superior. In fact, Grand Marais cites as important history the long-time summer residence of William Donahey, creator of the cartoon Teenie Weenie characters long beloved of newspaper comic readers. The visitor center in Grand Marais is one of the original “pickel barrel” Teenie Weenie homes, recently renovated, and this year I noted that a miniature barrel had appeared by the side of the larger one. Various characters are represented on this small barrel, which is further decorated by a border of pickles.



“Nature in Abundance” (the slogan of Grand Marais) lures us down many U.P. two-tracks, but there is always plenty of time for reading Up North, too—at least, for those of us lucky enough to be on vacation there. All the while we were there, I kept reflecting on the fact that for people earning their living there, life is not a vacation, just as my home ground Up North here in Leelanau County is vacationland Up North for other people. But it all works out, here in beautiful Michigan.

Reprise? So soon?

Above: sun through frost stars on passenger side window as we head to Northport to retrieve our mail. David driving, on a mission, no time to stop for photography along the way. The house is pandemonium, stacks of maps, books, clothes and other necessities everywhere, and while I'm over halfway through The Gargoyle, my thoughts about it are not organized enough to share, except to note that I'm still struggling over my Hobbit Barrier (personal problems with medieval fantasy) to stay with this book.

A different book arrived yesterday in the mail and hopped to the top of our trip reading list. The title slips my mind at the moment, but it's a travel memoir by a young man in about 1930, exploring an island--maybe in the Bahamas?--and should serve a delightful antidote for the frozen landscape we'll be traversing on our way to Illinois tomorrow.

And though I only said good-by to James Joyce the other day, I'm bringing him back onstage for another bow. Below are the excerpts Steve chose for us to read aloud at our last meeting.

1)
STATELY, PLUMP BUCK MULLIGAN CAME FROM THE STAIRHEAD,
bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.
A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him
by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned:
—Introibo ad altare Dei.
Halted, he peered down the dark winding stairs and called up
coarsely:
—Come up, Kinch! Come up, you fearful jesuit!
2)
Ugly and futile: lean neck and thick hair and a stain of ink, a snail's
bed. Yet someone had loved him, borne him in her arms and in her heart.
But for her the race of the world would have trampled him underfoot, a
squashed boneless snail. She had loved his weak watery blood drained from
her own. Was that then real? The only true thing in life?
3)
Paris rawly waking, crude sunlight on her lemon streets. Moist pith of
farls of bread, the froggreen wormwood, her matin incense, court the air.
Belluomo rises from the bed of his wife's lover's wife, the kerchiefed
housewife is astir, a saucer of acetic acid in her hand. In Rodot's Yvonne
and Madeleine newmake their tumbled beauties, shattering with gold teeth
chaussons of pastry, their mouths yellowed with the pus of flan breton.
Faces of Paris men go by, their wellpleased pleasers, curled conquistadores.
4)
Boland's breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers
yesterday's loaves turnovers crisp crowns hot. Makes you feel young.
Somewhere in the east: early morning: set off at dawn. Travel round in
front of the sun, steal a day's march on him. Keep it up for ever never grow
a day older technically.
5)
—My wife too, he said. She's going to sing at a swagger affair in the Ulster
Hall, Belfast, on the twentyfifth.
—That so? M'Coy said. Glad to hear that, old man. Who's getting it up?
Mrs Marion Bloom. Not up yet. Queen was in her bedroom eating
bread and. No book. Blackened court cards laid along her thigh by sevens.
Dark lady and fair man. Letter. Cat furry black ball. Torn strip of envelope.
6)
—And tell us, Hynes said, do you know that fellow in the, fellow was over
there in the...
PARHe looked around.
PAR—Macintosh. Yes, I saw him, Mr Bloom said. Where is he now?
PAR—M'Intosh, Hynes said scribbling. I don't know who he is. Is that his
name?
7)
Pause. J. J. O'Molloy took out his cigarettecase.
False lull. Something quite ordinary.
Messenger took out his matchbox thoughtfully and lit his cigar.
I have often thought since on looking back over that strange time that
it was that small act, trivial in itself, that striking of that match, that
determined the whole aftercourse of both our lives.
8)
Never know anything about it. Waste of time. Gasballs spinning
about, crossing each other, passing. Same old dingdong always. Gas: then
solid: then world: then cold: then dead shell drifting around, frozen rock,
like that pineapple rock. The moon. Must be a new moon out, she said. I
believe there is.
9) Marilyn
Fabulous artificer. The hawklike man. You flew. Whereto?
Newhaven-Dieppe, steerage passenger. Paris and back. Lapwing. Icarus.
Pater, ait. Seabedabbled, fallen, weltering. Lapwing you are. Lapwing be.
10)
As the glossy horses pranced by Merrion square Master Patrick Aloysius
Dignam, waiting, saw salutes being given to the gent with the topper and
raised also his new black cap with fingers greased by porksteak paper. His
collar too sprang up.
11)
Shrill, with deep laughter, after, gold after bronze, they urged each
each to peal after peal, ringing in changes, bronzegold, goldbronze,
shrilldeep, to laughter after laughter. And then laughed more. Greasy I
knows. Exhausted, breathless, their shaken heads they laid, braided and
pinnacled by glossycombed, against the counterledge. All flushed (O!),
panting, sweating (O!), all breathless.
12)
Before departing he requested that itshould be told to his dear son Patsy
that the other boot which he had beenlooking for was at present under the
commode in the return room and thatthe pair should be sent to Cullen's to
be soled only as the heels were stillgood. He stated that this had greatly
perturbed his peace of mind in theother region and earnestly requested that
his desire should be made known. Assurances were given that the matter
would be attended to and it was intimated that this had given satisfaction.
He is gone from mortal haunts: O'Dignam, sun of our morning. Fleet
was his foot on the bracken: Patrick of the beamy brow. Wail, Banba, with
your wind: and wail, O ocean, with your whirlwind.
13)
The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious
embrace. Far away in the west the sun was setting and the last glow of all
too fleeting day lingered lovingly on sea and strand, on the proud
promontory of dear old Howth guarding as ever the waters of the bay, on
the weedgrown rocks along Sandymount shore and, last but not least, on
the quiet church whence there streamed forth at times upon the stillness the
voice of prayer to her who is in her pure radiance a beacon ever to the
stormtossed heart of man, Mary, star of the sea.
14)
The voices blend and fuse in clouded silence: silence that is the infinite of space:
and swiftly, silently the soul is wafted over regions of cycles of generations that
have lived. A region where grey twilight ever descends, never falls on wide
sagegreen pasturefields, shedding her dusk, scattering a perennial dew of stars.
15)
Order in court! The accused will now make a bogus statement.
Bloom, pleading not guilty and holding a fullblown waterlily,
begins a long unintelligible speech.
16)
Another thing just struck him as a by no means bad notion was he might have a
gaze around on the spot to see about trying to make arrangements about a concert
tour of summer music embracing themost prominent pleasure resorts... something
top notch, an all star Irish caste, the Tweedy-Flower grand opera company with his
own legal consort as leading lady...
17)
Which domestic problem as much as, if not more than, any other frequently
engaged his mind?
What to do with our wives.
18)
stealing my potatoes and the oysters 2/6 per doz going out to see her aunt if
you please common robbery so it was but I was sure he had something on
with that one it takes me to find out a thing like that he said you have no
proof it was her proof O yes her aunt was very fond of oysters

The sun is shining, the world is bright, and this is my true 600th post. I discovered after announcing the 600th yesterday that it was only the 599th. Better to reach a milestone on a sunny day, anyway, in my book.

Odyssey of Life: More on Patterns

“Every reading of Ulysses,” writes Bernard Benstock,

...prepares us for a rereading, as we carefully stow away in our minds the bits and pieces that form various patterns which are assembled and reassembled. Ulysses exists simultaneously as the sum of it parts, that larger design that conjures up Homer and Dante and Shakespeare, Dublin topography and Irish history, and the inner design that concerns itself with fictional people and their lives. Yet, the constant that remains beneath cosmic significance and stylistic innovation is the story of Molly and Leopold Bloom, and of Stephen Dedalus, and of numerous minor Dubliners as well. It is a story skillfully told, although often obliquely told, and a story always worth retelling.

- Bernard Benstock, James Joyce (NY: Ungar, 1985)

I particularly like the opening line in this passage: “Every reading of Ulysses prepares us for a rereading....” As for the matter of patterns, Joseph Campbell had something profound to say regarding this book and human life in general. See if you agree:

There is a relevant thought expressed by Schopenhauer in one of the most wonderful of his many wonderful writings, ‘On an Apparent Intention in the Fate of the Individual.’ He observes that, whereas while living our lives we may regard the occurrences of many events as largely accidental, when we approach the end of our days and look back, our whole lifetime shows an order, as though composed like a novel by an author with a hidden plan. All that formerly seemed to be the product of mere chance is recognized in the panorama of years as having been required for the orderly unfolding of a structured plot. All those miscellaneous parcels come together surprisingly. Schopenhauer compares this not unusual experience to the effect of the once popular toy known as an anamorphoscope, whereby a picture, broken up and scattered on a page in such a way as not to be identifiable, is brought together by a conical mirror to compose a recognizable image.

That is the way this novel is composed. Throughout its pages appear the scattered figures of apparently tawdry, fragmentary lives, to which the magical composing mirror is the title of the novel itself: Ulysses. This applied, the apparently trivial, accidental incidents are seen as reflexes of the archetypes of classic myth: epic destinies of heroic quest, metamorphosis, and fulfillment.

- Joseph Campbell, Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce, ed. Edmund L. Epstein (NY: HarperCollins, 1993)

That mention of an anamorphoscope tantalizes. Not a kaleidoscope, a toy whose name we recognize, but something from the past, a device, a toy, with rather the opposite function—not to break up but to bring together what has been broken up, a pre-existing unity.

Order, unity, disorder bring in, necessarily, the question of necessity. Are there, as determinism claims, inflexible laws beneath our level of awareness ordering our every action? “Backwards necessity” (not, please note, “backwards causation”) casts light from a different direction: It is not that laws determined my being here, now, as I am, but that my being here, now, as I am is only possible because of the path I have taken in my life. Henri Bergson, in the early pages of Creative Evolution, uses the analogy of a portrait painter’s work:

The finished portrait is explained by the features of the model, by the nature of the artist, by the colors spread out on the palette; but, even with the knowledge of what explains it, no one, not even the artist, could have foreseen exactly what the portrait would be, for to predict it would have been to produce it before it was produced—an absurd hypothesis which is its own refutation. Even so with regard to the moments of our life, of which we are the artisans. Each of them is a kind of creation. And just as the talent of the painter is formed or deformed—in any case, is modified—under the very influence of the works he produces, so each of our states, at the moment of its issue, modifies our personality, being indeed the new form that we are just assuming. It is then right to say that what we do depends on what we are: but it is necessary to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. This creation of self by self is the more complete, the more one reasons on what one does. For reason does not proceed in such matters as in geometry, where impersonal premises are given once for all, and an impersonal conclusion must perforce be drawn. Here, on the contrary, the same reasons may dictate to different persons, or to the same person at different moments, acts profoundly different, although equally reasonable. The truth is that they are not quite the same reasons, since they are not those of the same person, nor of the same moment. That is why we cannot deal with them in the abstract, from outside, as in geometry, nor solve for another the problems by which he is faced in life. Each must solve them from within, on his own account.

We do not trace an already existing pattern but create our own by choosing, acting and living. At the end of Joyce’s novel, Leopold Bloom seems to have decided that he will remain true to the pattern of his married life, with all of its disappointments and limitations. Stephen Dedalus has rejected both his father and a willing substitute father (Bloom), choosing instead of journalism or music a creative literary career all his own, with an ambitious object: “to forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” (Joyce, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man).

And Molly? Is there a pattern to Molly’s life, and how and out of what has she created it? Her husband is proud of his wife’s voice and the career built on it. Men through the city of Dublin admire, as does Bloom, her physical charms. Through the book, we see Molly through the eyes of her admirers, and it is only in the very last chapter of Ulysses that we are admitted to her interior life. One question that might come to a woman reader’s mind (e.g., mine) is, Is this soliloquy believable, or is it a man’s fantasy of a woman’s thoughts? Someone else asked, Did Joyce understand women? Steve, our group leader, has an answer to the second question, which indirectly answers the first: “He understood Molly.” This is not, after all, the mind of abstract ‘Woman’ but of one very particular woman. And we believe Joyce’s portrait of Molly, as we believe in all the characters in this book.

--But Sarah thinks I've gone on long enough, so I'll stop here.