Beowulf

Several years ago I printed a page from the college library’s card catalog. It said, “Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney“, and it hung on my bulletin board, taunting me, passing time, accumulating a set of neighbors (Gilgamesh is still hanging there), but not getting read.

This finally changed earlier this summer when my daughter brought home a copy of Beowulf that she would be reading for her senior English class in the fall. Seeing my chance, I grabbed the book, brought it into my room, and gradually worked my way through it.

To my surprise, Heaney’s introduction was harder to grasp than the poem itself. The poem is wonderfully easy to read and I sailed through it. But I wound up re-reading the introduction and was glad I did. The introduction makes the poem more accessible, while the poem makes the introduction more powerful.

Much could be said about the hero, Beowulf. Comparisons with Jesus spring to mind (my daughter attends a Catholic high school), but I’ll leave that for her research paper. Beowulf and his ilk reminded me of the Klingons from Star Trek. Check out:

“It is always better

to avenge dear ones than to indulge in mourning.

For every one of us, living in this world

means waiting for our end. Let whoever can

win glory before death.” 1384-1388

Other images:

“Grendel came greedily loping 711 / he grabbed and mauled a man on his bench 740 / bit into his bond-lappings, bolted down his blood 741 / and gorged on him in lumps 742“

88-92 “It harrowed him [Grendel] / to hear the din of the loud banquet / every day in the hall, the harp being struck / and the clear song of a skilled poet / telling with mastery of man’s beginnings”

“I [Beowulf] had a fixed purpose when I put to sea 632 / I shall fulfill that purpose 636 / prove myself with a proud deed 637 / or meet my death here 638“

Better

My brother is a long-time fan of the surgeon-writer Atul Gawande and my visits to LA have invariably included some description of a recent article or book by Dr. Gawande. My brother’s enthusiasm “bug” has bitten me too and I have read a couple of recent articles by Dr. Gawande in the past year or two.

This preamble explains why, when I opened a birthday package from my brother this past May, I was neither terribly surprised, nor disappointed, when Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance fell out.

The book is entertaining and thought-provoking, an unusual combination. While the chapters are loosely coordinated around a theme of “improving performance”, each one can stand alone and would make an excellent basis for a serious group discussion of health and social issues.

My wife has often said that doctors do not wash their hands as much as they used to. A chapter in Better bears this out and describes the terrible consequences of this oversight. Other chapters talk about the global effort to eradicate polio, malpractice lawsuits, battlefield medicine, and how to pay for medical care.

After I had read a few chapters, I became aware of a repetitious aspect of the book (Gawande tends to open his chapters with half-told stories) that was mildly annoying. Still, the book was a page-turner right to the end. In fact, the only part of the book that failed to impress me was the Afterword, “suggestions for becoming a positive deviant”. Here Gawande changes from observer and explainer to mentor. His advice can be summarized as ask an unscripted question, don’t complain, count something, write something, and change. Not bad ideas, but each sounds like something you might hear at a graduation speech — “the future belongs to you, make a difference” — and probably makes about the same kind of impression.

The Beginning Place

Ursula K. Le Guin has been one of my favorite authors. Her writing is sensible, in good taste, and the story always draws me in. She completely disdains the gooey in fantasy and forces her characters to act as honestly as they can.

The Beginning Place is the story of two disaffected young people, a lumbering ox of a boy and a small bird of a girl, each of whom separately finds the same gateway to a fantasy world. Although they don’t get along at first, circumstances force them to rely on each other.

The story is fairly short, barely 6 hours of audio (obtained from the library), and Rob Inglis is an excellent reader except for two things: he has a British accent and he is required (twice) to sing a short song in the girl’s voice. Fortunately, the bit of song is short. To his credit, he completely masters the fact that half of the
story is told in the sleepy-dull boy’s voice and the other half in the urgent and irritable girl’s.