such small hands

Thoughts on "The Age of Innocence"

I had started reading this long before Martin Scorsese was honored with a Golden Globe; I'd seen his film version of Edith Wharton's book long ago, when it was in theaters. So my reading was colored by the images of Daniel Day-Lewis, Michelle Pfeiffer and Winona Ryder as the main characters.

Reading this through modern eyes, one might sympathize completely with Newland Archer and Ellen Olenska, the book's lovers. The restrictive society of upper-class old New York of the 1870s keeps them from realizing their love for one another. But reading it as a conservative, one might take the view that their self-control and self-denial preserves virtues not always held in such high esteem today: loyalty, fidelity, personal integrity, commitment.

Actually, May Welland Archer, Newland's wife, is probably the most underestimated character in the book. The reader even underestimates her, like her husband, until the final pages. More than 20 years after the main action of the book, Newland finds himself in Paris with his son; Paris ---, where his lost love Ellen has been living all these years. Newland's son reveals what May knew for so many years:

"Yes: the day before she died. It was when she sent for me alone --- you remember? She said she knew we were safe with you, and always would be, because once, when she asked you to, you'd given up the thing you most wanted."

The disclosure touches something deep in Newland. "It seemed to take an iron band from his heart to know that, after all, some one had guessed and pitied ... And that it should have been his wife moved him indescribably."

A very moving story of romantic love sacrificed for a different kind of love and devotion to family, things that don't seem to be valued much in the society of early 21st century America.

Thoughts on "My Life in France"

I needed a break from all of the serious philosophical and historical reading; this was a perfect antidote. A bright and breezy memoir of Julia Child's years in France, this is a fun read for any foodie.

I was struck by many things as I read, not least of which was the deep love and partnership she had with her husband Paul. Julia tells of falling in love with France, its people and its food. Her zest for life and indomitable spirit comes through as she determines to learn the language and the cuisine. She attends the renowned Cordon Bleu cooking school and embarks first on a series of teaching projects and then beginning The Book, which eventually became "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."

The reader can't help but be awed by the amount of sheer hard work that went into the cookbook that is now probably the foremost authority on classical French cooking. Constant recipe testing and research. It's mind-boggling.

I'm aware that the movie "Julie and Julia" was based in part on this memoir. But I have no desire to see it, oddly. Partly because I've heard Meryl Streep's performance is remarkably like Child herself, and I want to remember scenes from the book with the real woman in them, not the actress. And I have zero interest in the Julie Powell aspect of the story. Pah!

Reading "My Life in France" created a desire to own my own copy of "Mastering" as well as the DVDs available of the "French Chef" PBS series. Ah well, maybe someday.

Thoughts on "Man's Search for Meaning"

After two volumes of "Gulag," I thought I'd take a bit of a break. But not much of one. Ken recommended I read Viktor E. Frankl's book while the Gulag experiences were still fresh in my mind. Frankl's experiences as a survivor of Auschwitz come very close to Solzhenitzyn's observations about the nature of man.

Frankl is a psychologist, and as such, his observations while an inmate of a death camp are unique and caused him to develop a new school of thought, vis a vis Freud and Adler. He called it logotherapy, loosely signifying that rather than a will to power or pleasure, man has a will to meaning that gives his life purpose. Finding a meaning in life is what gives people real happiness.

Frankl says there are three ways to discover meaning: "by creating a work or doing a deed; by experiencing something or encountering someone; and by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering." He focuses most on the latter two --- finding meaning in love and in suffering. Both of them basically boil down to forgetting one's self. More than once, Frankl uses the phrase "bear one's cross" or "take up one's cross." Without mentioning Christianity specifically, Frankl basically says that meaning in life comes from dying to one's self.

Frankl quotes Edith Weisskopf-Joelson's paper on logotherapy, which shows great insight into the soul of the 21st century: "Our current mental hygiene philosophy stresses the idea that people ought to be happy, that unhappiness is a symptom of maladjustment. Such a value system might be responsible for the fact that the burden of unavoidable unhappiness is increased by unhappiness about being unhappy." Read that sentence carefully. It's a knockout.

Weisskopf-Joelson also writes that logotherapy "may help counteract certain unhealthy trends in the present-day culture of the United States, where the incurable sufferer is given very little opportunity to be proud of his suffering and to consider it ennobling rather than degrading."

I was also struck by this passage: "A human being is not one thing among others; things determine each other, but man is ultimately self-determining. ... In the concentration camps, for example, in this living laboratory and on this testing ground, we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints. Man has both potentialities within himself ... After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips."

Very much like Solzhenitsyn's saying that the line between good and evil runs through every human heart.