2017: Things in Perspective (an autobiographical ramble)

I ended the last two years off with book reviews, looking back a what I had read—from the great to the grating. It’s becoming a tradition. This year, however, I’m breaking genre. I’m going to wander more casually through a few of the books I read this year as a way of reflecting on the year more generally. 2017 was a tough one, I won’t lie. But travelling to the centre of the earth with Professor Lidenbrock or to Venus with Elwin Ransom, road-tripping across the Midwest with Sal Hiddle or hiding out in the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Claudia and Jamie Kincaid—these things somehow made the heartache and the chaos easier to bear, at times mirroring back and illuminating things going on in the real world. And so, I present to you: a year in review in book reviews.

The first book I read this year was Dany Laferrière’s The World is Moving Around Me. I didn’t know it at the time, but this reminiscence of the Haitian earthquake was a fitting way to ring in the year. In our house, 2017 was like an earthquake. We trembled. Sometimes we collapsed. We experienced debilitating sickness, hopelessness and death. Like Laferrière, however, when we took the trouble to look past the gloom we were surprised by the beauty and goodness always gleaming out from the crevices. The night after the quake levelled Port-au-Prince, Laferrière recalls noticing flowers: “I walked through the garden, amazed to see that the most fragile flowers were still hanging from their stems. The earthquake attacked what was hard, solid, and what could resist it. The concrete fell. The flowers survived.” Here lies the central theme of 2017 for me: even when life falls apart, beautiful things remain. It was a year of extremes. Of profound sadness and profound joy, and of joy in the midst of sadness. Of flowers sprouting from the ruins.

Canada celebrated the 150th anniversary of its confederation this year, and the festivities were inescapable. But the year of celebration was marred by the loss of two pillars of the pantheon of Canadian pop culture: Stuart McLean and Gord Downie. When McLean passed away in February, I was halfway through reading one of his Vinyl Cafe collections. Few writers (and fewer broadcasters) have been as adept as McLean when it comes to blending the hilarious with the heartbreaking. Take “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” in which Dave experiences a wine and Beatles LP induced reversion to his youth. He dances in his kitchen. He flirts with a coworker. The metamorphosis is complete when his cheek sprouts a pimple—which Dave promptly mistakes for skin cancer, setting him into a bout of abject panic over his own mortality. He ends up making a spectacle of himself in the local drugstore when he gets his arm trapped in a blood pressure machine. Who besides Stuart McLean could spin such a yarn? Reading it days after McLean died of melanoma, I don’t suppose I read anything more tragic this year. I also don’t think I laughed harder at anything.

And the Lord knows I needed a laugh. When McLean died on 15 February my wife had been ill and in crippling pain for fifty days. She couldn’t work, could hardly sleep or eat. She had been to the ER multiple times, seen our doctor repeatedly and spoken to two specialists, and no one could identify the monster. This was something we had never contemplated, much less experienced. Prospects looked grim. We were honestly convinced she was never going to recover. We prayed desperately for a miracle. When my PhD admission came in the mail I almost turned it down, thinking I would be home taking care of her. It was incontestably the bleakest period of our lives. Yet, bad as it was, it is almost impossible to be unwaveringly miserable when you live with a one-and-a-half-year-old. All the more when that one-and-a-half-year-old happens to be JJ Robertshaw. I was recently looking through the photos on my phone from the bleak period, and this is what I found:

Yes. That’s JJ using the box from a Vinyl Cafe boxset as a hat. That’s what he does. He takes a sad situation and makes it into something funny. I honestly don’t know how we would have made it through the Bleakness without this ridiculous little goofball. As it happened, on our fourth trip to the ER we found a nurse practitioner who immediately recognized the Monster. He set us up with a specialist and put her on the right medicine. She started feeling better shortly after. The Monster was at bay.

In March the snow melted and the world began to thaw. She went back to work, and JJ and I resumed our daily walks in the forest. Things were looking brighter. We had a new lease on life. I reread Out of the Silent Planet and felt like Elwin Ransom, basking in the purest sunlight, experiencing a “progressive lightening and exultation of heart.” I reread The Half-Blood Prince and felt like Harry hopped up on Felix Felicis, or after the big Quidditch win when he finally kisses Ginny. I gambolled through Brian Jay Jones’s biography of Jim Henson and Cary Elwes’s memoirs of the production of The Princess Bride—looking forward more and more to rewatching the films of my childhood, introducing Kermit and Piggy, Buttercup and Westley, to JJ.

And it would only be JJ. We were thrilled to be on the other side of the Reign of the Monster, but we weren’t unchanged. The thing had been traumatic. It had wreaked havoc on her body. One thing was certain: we wouldn’t be having any more children. She’d been through enough. And, anyway, what if the Monster returned? 

It did. April brought a relapse. It was Bleakness, the sequel. This, now, was truly the lowest point of our lives. If it could happen again out of nowhere, how can we ever be sure we’re free of it? I reread Perelandra and felt like Elwin Ransom. Overwhelmed. Facing off against a foe that is maddeningly beyond comprehension. The fate of a world on my shoulders. I reread The Deathly Hallows and wallowed with Harry and Hermione in their hopelessness after Ron splits. No idea what to do next. The fate of the world on my shoulders. Never in a million years would I have considered running away from the Monster, ditching my family. But if I had, the Boy Who Lived would have had a thing or two to say to me; when Lupin makes to abandon his pregnant wife and join the gang on their adventure, Harry calls him a coward and sends him packing.

I had many anxious and sleepless nights during the Bleakness. I’m prone to bouts of insomnia in stressful times, and sometimes in I get into torturous mental cycles where my problems confuse themselves with those of the fictional characters I’m reading about. It keeps me in a nightmarish half-sleep the whole night. It’s not fun to experience, but it is kind of funny to think about afterwards. In April, I spent an entire night confusing Remus Lupin’s situation with my own. I kept having to remind myself that I wasn’t a werewolf, that my wife wasn’t a shapeshifter, and that she most definitely was not pregnant. 

Except she was. We eventually realized that the old Monster was piggybacking on her classically severe morning sickness. I hate to admit it, but we weren’t exactly ecstatic to learn we were expecting. Babies were the furthest thing from our minds at the time. We were in shock. When her kindly uncle Edwin passed away we didn’t think things could get much bleaker. 

By May, things started to turn around again. We got a handle on the morning sickness and the Monster was put back in check. We started to come to terms with the unexpected tiny person. Momentary pangs of a complicated joy slowly transformed into a more generalized excitement. We found out we were expecting a boy and fell to daydreaming about two brothers growing up together. I ploughed through numerous classic of children’s literature, continually building up a robust literary infrastructure to share with the boys. Among much else, I read The Secret Garden and White Fang. Like Mary Lennox and Colin Craven, we were cultivating new life and being rejuvenated in the process. The Monster was White Fang, a savage beast being domesticated, slowly, and with great care.

Summer passed like that. Laughs with JJ, the joys of my sister’s wedding and a reunion with our sister-in-law, cautiously looking forward and trying not to look back. In September, JJ and I both began a new chapter: he went to daycare and I started my PhD. From that point, both my life and my reading were too hectic to present as anything like a straightforward narrative. I did have the opportunity to read classics like Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s Silencing the Past (a brilliant work of historical theory that looks at power and the production of historical narratives, and the importance of what gets left out, drawing many of its illustrative examples from the Haitian Revolution), and Edward Said’s Culture and Imperialism (also an excellent book, and a must-read for anyone interested in postcolonial history), and spent some time perusing Eltis and Richardson’s Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The coursework was exhausting, but I was constantly struck with an almost giddy awareness that, as a funded grad student, I’m basically getting paid to read books.

I worked frantically to get all my papers done before the child arrived (and was mostly successful). Finally, on 23 November, the world welcomed Wesley Andrew Edwin Robertshaw. Our own Wes. Joy of joys. The Dread Pirate Robertshaw.  Somehow we pulled it off. We kept the Monster at bay even as this little munchkin crept into the world. In retrospect, all the troubles of 2017 were worth it to get to meet this tiny, stinky, loud, hungry, beautiful creature. JJ and Kippy (our purebred mutt) graciously welcomed him home, and we settled into the madness of the newborn phase.

But the rollercoaster ride of 2017 wasn’t over yet. Exactly three weeks after Wesley’s birth, his oldest great-grandparent, my wife’s grandfather Earl Norman Plato, a man sincerely loved by all, passed away at the age of eighty-six. He followed his brother and best friend uncle Edwin by eight months. He and Wes just barely crossed paths in this world. The loss of Grandpa Plato was devastating. He was a pillar of his family, of his community, a writer, a historian, a lover of nature who passed that love on to his children and grandchildren, a gifted painter, a spinner of yarns, a man of faith. I can think of no better commemoration than this excerpt from E. B. White’s timeless novel Charlotte’s Web: “Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both.” Yet Charlotte’s magnum opus was not anything she wrote—propitious as her words may have been for Wilbur’s fate. Her magnum opus was her egg sack. Her children. The same must be said of Earl. His magnum opus was his children and grandchildren, and now great-grandchildren. His best characteristics and passions are discernible in each of them, and I consider it an honour to be part of their family. They reflect the same luminosity that constantly poured from Earl—the love of nature, the thirst for learning, the concern for others. He was a man who you knew truly cared about you, took an interest in your life, and whom you wanted to make proud. I, for one, partly attribute my own career path to the influence of Earl Plato. At one point in my life I was on a crash course straight for law school, until at a family gathering Earl sat me down and said “Matt, you need to be a historian. Travel the world. Write history.” And so I did. I’m working on it anyway.

And so 2017 ended as it had started. Tearfully. Yet the mountainous surges of sadness served to frame moments of absolute joy. Even the sting of this most recent loss was softened by Earl’s three youngest great-grandchildren, all born since September, as well as by the unplanned and unexpected presence of my wife’s dear brother and sister-in-law over the holidays. For us, in any case, Grandpa Plato’s passions and compassions will live on in the way we raise our kids. In nature walks on Sunday afternoons, in the art and literature we create and enjoy, in our faith and in our family dynamics. And, we hope, the unbreakable brotherly bond of Edwin Kenneth and Earl Norman Plato will be reflected in the relationship between Jack James Norman and Wesley Andrew Edwin Robertshaw. 

So here’s to 2017: the earthquake, the rollercoaster. I’d say it was stranger than fiction, but, as noted, I read some pretty strange fiction. It was interesting, to say the least. Maybe as strange as fiction. And, Lord, may 2018 be a little bit boring.

Translating Narnia, an essay.

Throughout its history, Haiti has had the unusual distinction of combining a sophisticated and sustained literary culture with staggeringly low literacy rates. Haitian elites, nourished on the language and literature of their former metropole, have produced an impressive corpus of poetry and prose. In 1956 Edmund Wilson wrote that Haiti had “produced a greater number of books in proportion to the population than any other American country, with the exception of the United States.”¹ Yet the literacy rate in the 1950s was no higher than 10 percent, and it has since only risen to about 60 percent—still much lower than any other nation in the Americas.² The disconnect has to do with the structure of Haitian society. Economic and political power have long been concentrated in the hands of a tiny minority.³ The linguistic dichotomy has served to reinforce this exclusivity. Every Haitian speaks Creole as his or her mother tongue; those with an education also speak French. The prestige language has effectively excluded the monolingual masses from the political process, the legal system and education. Over the course of the twentieth century, however, there has been a growing push for the legitimation of the popular language.⁴ Writers, politicians and activists have called for the use of Creole in formal contexts and in writing in order to foster democracy and development.

Producers of Creole-language literature have been at the forefront of this movement, striving both to demonstrate the expressive capacity of the language, and to furnish Haitian educators with teaching materials. Yet despite the strong link between education and the emergent Creole literary corpus, there has been relatively little children’s literature produced in the language. As George Lang notes, the maturation of Creole-language literatures is hampered by “low levels of literacy, the lack of standard orthographies, the overwhelming prestige, both economic and cultural, of the metropolitan languages with which they compete,” and this has long been the case in Haiti.⁵ To be sure, there is a growing number of books for children in Creole, but the vast majority of these are intended for narrowly educational purposes. As yet, there is no critical mass of imaginative and captivating fiction in Creole. For children around the globe, one of the main incentives for learning to read is the promise of access to a boundless world of adventure and knowledge, but at present Creole literacy offers no such promise. Acquisition remains limited, and consequently the market for books in the language remains small. To break this cycle, concerted effort is required on the part of Haitian authors and publishers.

Translators, too, can offer valuable contributions to the corpus of children’s literature in Creole. Itamar Even-Zohar has explained that translations can play a central role in the development of a nation’s literary polysystem if the polysystem is “young,” “peripheral,” or “weak.”⁶ In such a situation, translation “fulfils the need […] to put into use its newly founded (or renovated) tongue for as many literary types as possible in order to make it serviceable as a literary language and useful for its emerging public.”⁷ Gideon Toury has described how translators respond to the “observation that something is ‘missing’ in the target culture which should have been there and which, luckily, already exists elsewhere and can be taken advantage of.”⁸ It therefore seems appropriate to call for an increased flow of translated children’s literature into Creole. There have been some works of world literature translated into Creole. Two of the earliest formal works in the language were adaptations of European classics: Cric? Crac! (1901), George Sylvain’s celebrated collection of fables adapted from La Fontaine, and Antigòn (1953), Félix Morisseau-Leroy’s adaption of Sophocles’s Antigone.⁹ But apart from Maude Heurtelou’s adaptations of half a dozen European fairy tales and two recent translations of Le Petit prince, there have been hardly any Creole translations of the so-called ‘classics’ of world children’s literature.¹⁰

It is in this context that Hans Michel Fortunat and I produced a Creole translation of C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.¹¹ Lewis’s The Chronicles of Narnia are among the best-selling children’s books of all time.¹² The seven novels of the series have been adapted into stage and radio plays, video games, television cartoons and Hollywood films. Within ten years of its publication in 1950, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe had been translated into Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German and Swedish; in another two decades it was available in Chinese, Hebrew, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Welsh; by 2008 it was in forty-seven languages including Afrikaans, Arabic, Georgian and Tibetan.¹³ While the Chronicles have not seen the same degree of international success as, say, the Harry Potter series (with translations in seventy-nine languages including Ancient Greek, Latin and Esperanto), they remain among the most translated works of literature in history.¹⁴ In 2003, Devin Brown assessed the ongoing appeal of the Chronicles, concluding that the works embody the ‘classic hero myth,’ and they “continue to be vital to readers today because they guide and encourage those facing this hero journey in their own lives.”¹⁵ The popularity of the works in places as disparate as Russia and Taiwan suggests that the Chronicles would be a valuable addition to the body of children’s literature in Creole.¹⁶

According to Hans Vermeer, “every translation presupposes a commission, even though it may be set by the translator to himself.”¹⁷ This paper, then, is conceived as an auto-commission for Neve Majisyen an, a Creole translation of Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew, a follow-up to Konpè Lyon. Vermeer insists every commission include a well-defined skopos—a statement of the purpose or intended function of the translation.¹⁸ As outlined above, the purpose of the proposed translation is to contribute to the embryonic body of works of imaginative and engaging children’s literature in Creole in order to foster literacy, and thereby enrich individuals and extend the capacity for democratic processes and public discourse in Haiti. This skopos will serve as a frame of reference as we face the challenges of mediating between the vastly different cultures of the Source and Target Texts. But there remain a number of important points to address before this commission and skopos can be deemed complete.

Vermeer explains that the skopos of an original work is by no means identical to that of a translation of the same work, saying “source and target texts may diverge from each other quite considerably, not only in the formulation and distribution of the content but also as regards the goals which are set for each.”¹⁹ He permits, however, that the skopos of the Source Text can and should be taken into consideration: “one must know what one is doing […] e.g. what the effect of a text created in this way will be in the target culture and how much the effect will differ from that of the source text in the source culture.”²⁰ Lewis wrote extensively on writing, so his skopos for the Narnia books can be elucidated with some certainty. The didactic purpose of the works is evident, but the author insists he did not approach his fiction from a moralizing position. The year after Nephew was published, Lewis wrote: “Some people seem to think that I began by asking myself how I could say something about Christianity to children; […] then drew up a list of basic Christian truths and hammered out ‘allegories’ to embody them. This is all pure moonshine.”²¹ He explains that his writing “inevitably begins with mental pictures” which become “a thing inside him pawing to get out […]. This nags him all day long and gets in the way of his work and his sleep and his meals. It’s like being in love”²² Elsewhere, he wrote that his chief interest as a reader was the “pleasure of Story” for its own sake, which is “something other than a process and much more like a state or quality.”²³ Elsewhere still, he conceded that “a simple sense of wonder, extraordinary things going on, were the motive forces behind the creation.”²⁴ The story, in a sense, is the skopos. This seems compatible with our goal of stimulating the imagination and the love of reading in Haitian children. To honour Lewis’s intentions we will strive to maintain the aesthetic and the sense of wonder present in the original work.

Lewis’s opinion of children, moreover, can serve as a useful model. He had a profound respect for his young readers. He criticized authors who “take too superior an attitude” when writing for children, and said that “the child as reader is neither to be patronized nor idolized: we talk to him as man to man.”²⁵ We must, however, consider the particularities of children’s literature as such. In his analysis of Taiwanese translations of the Harry Potter books, Wen-chun Liang found that strategies of preservation, addition and localization were employed somewhat unsystematically when dealing with British cultural items like food and goods. After surveying a group of fifteen-year-olds, he found that young readers preferred localization—the substitution of foreign with familiar items. He explains that translators of children’s literature “need to take into account children’s interests, demands, responses, knowledge and reading ability,” as well as their “imperfect understanding of other cultures.”²⁶ If young readers do not feel they understand the text, they will get frustrated and give up.

Lawrence Venuti’s concept of ‘implicature’ is instructive here. He defines implicature as “a feature of the foreign text that reveals a difference between the foreign [SL] and domestic [TL] cultures, usually a gap in the domestic reader's knowledge for which the translator must somehow compensate.”²⁷ This is doubly the case when translating for young readers, triply so when writing for young readers in a place like Haiti, with its widespread illiteracy and partial incorporation into global cultural matrices. Excessive explanation, however, can also be a deterrent. Emer O’Sullivan describes a German translation of Alice in Wonderland in which the translator went to great lengths to explain the pun inherent in the name of the Mock Turtle; in so doing, he utterly nullified the humour of the original, along with the attraction the book holds for adult readers.²⁸ In order to appeal to our intended readership, then, we must be sensitive to the needs of young Haitian readers but not condescending.

Finally, we must take a moment to reflect on specific sociolinguistic factors governing the use of Creole. André Lefevere states that translations are subject to the various ‘poetics’ and ‘patronages’ of the Target Culture.²⁹ A poetics is an informal code of behaviour that governs the inventory and function of a work, while a patronage is an ideological, economic or social pressure that influences artistic production. Literature in Creole is shaped and enriched by the inventory of the country’s deep-rooted oral storytelling tradition. There are particular turns of phrase, syntactic shifts, comedic elements and narrative styles that can be employed to attune the translation to a Haitian reader’s literary sensibilities. This traditional poetics, for instance, is what led us to title our first translation Konpè Lyon, Konmè Lougawou (‘Brother Lion, Sister Witch’). On the functional side, it is quite typical for oral storytellers in Haiti to “both entertain and deliver a message to their audience.”³⁰ The didacticism underlying the text will not, therefore, seem out of place. Of course, our genre requires considerable divergence from the norms of Haitian storytelling, but the conscientious application of local poetics will help readers cope with the sometimes uncomfortable foreignness of the work.

The most important patronage governing the production of Creole texts emanates from the Akademi Kreyòl Ayisyen (Haitian Creole Academy). Like its counterpart in France, the Akademi serves as the governing body for the Creole language, overseeing its use and development. It is not an authoritarian institution, but we must take its preferred practices and ideological notions regarding Creole into account if we are to contribute to an internally coherent body of literature. We will, for example, need to consult with the latest resolutions on orthography, the most recent of which was issued in June 2017.³¹ Furthermore, the members of the Akademi wish to dispel the myth that Creole is merely a vulgar dialect of French, and to show that it is a self-sufficient language. While much of the Creole lexicon is derived from French, the Akademi discourages the creation of neologisms based on French words. Academician Michel Degraff, for instance, states that Haitian Creole “manifests a robust set of productive affixes that allow lexical expansion from HC’s internal morphological resources.”³² Accordingly, we must be careful not to simply fill lexical gaps by creolizing a French equivalent.

To sum up, the intention behind our translation of The Magician’s Nephew is to contribute to the growing corpus of imaginative and engaging children’s literature in Creole in order to foster a reading culture among Haiti’s young people, thereby establishing a viable readership to sustain the ongoing evolution of the corpus of Creole literature, and, not incidentally, cultivating the necessary level of literacy to enable a stronger democracy and greater grassroots development. To realize this objective we must navigate the specific requirements and tastes of young Haitian readers, as well as the broader poetics and patronages that govern the use of the language. Now that we have delineated the objectives and parameters for out translation, we will examine the implications of this skopos for one specific challenge presented by the Source Text: the names of characters.

Lincoln Fernandes writes that characters’ names in children’s fantasy fiction play “a fundamental role in […] portraying characters’ personality traits, which will often guide the reader throughout the plot of the story.”³³ The Chronicles are no exception. The names in the series cannot be treated as mere placeholders that can be transplanted unproblematically from Source to Target Text. Nephew contains two categories of names: those belonging to the ‘real’ world (Digory, Polly, Uncle Andrew), and those of ‘other’ worlds (Jadis and Aslan). In our previous translation, we decided to emphasize the familiar/foreign divide by localizing the names of the English characters, while preserving the names of Narnians. Lucy, Edmund, Susan and Peter’s names were Haitianized to Lwiz, Edmond, Pyè and Sizàn, whereas the names of Tumnus, Aslan and Jadis were preserved. This, we hoped, would strengthen our readers’ connection to the children, while maintaining the sense of enchantment conjured up by whimsical names. The same strategy will suit our translation of Nephew. Polly will be Polèt and Uncle Andrew will be Tonton Andre; the names of Aslan, Jadis and Narnia itself will remain intact.

There are, however, two small complications regarding names in Nephew. The eponymous nephew is called Digory, a name that prompts Polly to remark: “what a funny name!”³⁴ Unlike most of the human characters in the Chronicles, Digory’s name is marked as idiosyncratic. This is significant, as later in the series he appears as an eccentric professor. His name, furthermore, is doubly removed from the standard familiarity, because the events of Nephew take place decades before the other six novels—“when your grandfather was a child.”³⁵ It is both antiquated and unusual. The distinctiveness of Digory’s name presents a challenge for the translator, as Haitians are famous for the inventive and unique names they give to their children. Our solution is to draw from a formerly widespread but now less common trend in Haitian naming: the use of Greek and Roman names. Reading about early twentieth-century Haiti, one constantly encounters names like Damoclès Vieux, Cincinnatus Leconte and Themistocles Epaminondas Labasterre, but the use of names from antiquity is now less common. In Haiti, a name like Diagoras will strike the proper chord of eccentricity and datedness.

The character who best exemplifies the onomastic composition of the novel is the horse. Introduced as a humble London cab horse called Strawberry, the animal is renamed Fledge when he comes to Narnia and is granted the power of flight. Clearly, both of Strawberry/Fledge’s names contain meaning besides mere designation. Strawberry is sweet, commonplace and somewhat comic, while ‘Fledge’ alludes to his nascent wings and conjures up visions of action and heroics. One could argue for preserving ‘Strawberry’ or localizing ‘Fledge,’ (e.g. ‘Zèl,’ wing, or ‘Alavòl,’ in flight), but it seems most appropriate and consistent to localize the creature’s ‘real world’ name (‘Strawberry’ becomes ‘Frèz’) and preserve Fledge. The semantic meaning of Fledge will evade Haitian readers, but one may assume that many readers of the original are unaware that ‘to fledge’ is ‘to acquire feathers.’ Moreover, the sonic similarity of Frèz/Fledge can be considered an improvement on the original text. Likewise, the Greek flavour of ‘Diagoras’ will seem all the more poignant when, in later volumes, Digory is revealed to be something of a philosopher, even momentarily musing on Platonic forms in The Last Battle.³⁶ As Gideon Toury notes in a study based on his own translation of the Narnia books, translations sometimes engender “shifts which appear to be textual gains and improvements.”³⁷ The names in Nephew allow for such felicitous gains.

Hence, by emphasizing the familiar/fantastic division in the novel we will draw readers in with the ordinary and then captivate them with the extraordinary, thereby adhering to our intention of producing engaging literature in order to foster literacy. There are several other features of the text that must be analyzed along these lines: British cultural items, dialects and speech registers, and magical/mythical elements, to name a few. Then again, early twentieth-century London, with its cisterns and domestic servants, its school uniforms and codes of conduct, is not as different from modern Port-au-Prince as one might suppose. If nothing else, precocious and spirited children like Polly and Digory are universal. But if such children are to have a voice in their societies they must learn to read and write, to imagine, to analyze and explore. Translations of engaging and creative literary works like The Magician’s Nephew can play a vital role in the process.

Notes and Bibliography

Against the Oxford Comma (sort of)

A comma (not necessarily Oxford)

One hears a lot of hubbub on the internet about how the Oxford comma is the most important piece of punctuation in the English language, and to neglect it is the equivalent of leaving your dog in the car on a hot day while you go into the corner store to buy cigarettes, which you proceed to smoke in the car with the windows up while your poor pooch cries pitifully on the back seat. A typical polemic against Oxford comma non-use goes like this:

"We invited the rhinoceri, Washington and Lincoln." — THAT MEANS WASHINGTON AND LINCOLN ARE RHINOCERI! YOU CAN'T GET AWAY WITH THIS YOU IGNORANT APE! YOU ARE JOHN WILKES BOOTH REINCARNATED! SIC SEMPER GRAMMARIST! THE PRESIDENTS SHALL BE AVENGED WITH PROPER PUNCTUATION!"

The thing about examples like this is that they are contrived to make the OC look necessary. If you had simply rephrased the sentence (We invited Washington, Lincoln and the rhinoceri) there is no risk of being misunderstood. Furthermore, in 99 percent of sentences there is no possibility of the absent comma leading to this type of misunderstanding.

Example: I want eggs, bacon and toast. YOU WANT BACON AND TOAST TOGETHER... AND ALSO EGGS!?!?!?!? THE HORROR!!! HAVE A SIDE OF GRAMMAR WITH YOUR BREAKFAST YOU MINDLESS SLOUCH!!!! USE A COMMA OR I'LL PUT YOU IN A COMA!!!

I generally don't use the Oxford comma for three reasons:

1. As noted, it almost never adds clarity (other than in sentences that are designed to be misunderstood without it).

2. Despite my flagrant use of all caps in this post, I care about the aesthetic of the texts I produce. By minimizing the number of marks on any given page (i.e. by removing superfluous punctuation) there is an overall cleaner aesthetic.

3. Converting one's thoughts into text so that they are perfectly understood by the reader is a challenge. Conscientiously reworking sentences so there is no possibility of being misunderstood is a skill, and organizing lists so they can't be misunderstood, with or without useless commas, is a chance to work on that skill.

You may have noticed that I said I generally don't use the OC. This reflects a flexible approach to grammar that I think is under-appreciated by high-school English teachers and internet trolls alike. Grammar, like language itself, wasn't given from on high. It was created by humans over thousands of years. Modern linguists tend to describe language as it is used rather than prescribing 'proper' language use. Grammar exists for our benefit. It exists to make written language clear and understandable, not to constrain our ability to express ourselves or to cause endless online shouting matches. I'm not saying you should do one thing or the other. Use the OC if the sentence can't be organized any other way and will be misunderstood without it. Don't use it if the list is perfectly understandable the way it is. You'll be saving on ink! Or just use it. I don't care. Do what works for you. But in my opinion the Oxford comma is overrated, unnecessary and superfluous.

On Looking Normal, or a reflection on positive deception

A businessman and a hippie walk into a bar. They both look the part. Before speaking to each other they already know what the other will say. Any topic they discuss will be filtered through assumptions. “I already disagree with you” is the point of departure. Even if they strike up a congenial conversation, even if they happen to agree on most things, even if they could gain real, potentially life-changing insight from one another, their discussion will no doubt remain guarded, tempered by grains of salt on either side.

When we present ourselves in a particular way, when we cover our faces in tattoos, say, or wear expensive watches and jewellery, we are saying something about our worldview and our values. These things are inherently unifying and divisive. They are a badge that invites the confidences of the likeminded while at the same time repelling those of a different persuasion. Of course we can all long for a world where we will overlook such superficial differences, but the fact is first impressions are one of the primary ways that people organize and understand the world.

As a professor, I don’t want people to look at me and think “Oh, he’s that type of guy. I’ve already made up my mind about that type. I will note his ideas and regurgitate them back to him but keep myself insulated from taking them to heart.” In order to make an impact I need to navigate first impressions. For the same reason, when I travel I try to look fairly neutral. I don’t want to be judged as a wealthy tourist or a spoiled American kid when I visit Haiti. Unable to change the colour of my skin, I want to minimize preconceptions and let my voice and my ideas speak for themselves.

I’m not a “normal person.” I have particular (some might say eccentric) beliefs and interests. I have specific ideas about what’s wrong with the world and what needs to change. But if I want people to listen to my abnormal opinions I need to present myself as relatively normal. I’m not a normal person, but I appreciate the usefulness of looking like one.

An open letter to a toddler (at the end of my year as a stay-at-home dad)

JJ,

It's the 21st of June: the first day of your second summer. Your mom's teaching year is coming to an end, which means so is my stint as your stay-at-home dad. No more raisin bread and deli meat for lunch. No more watching Peppa Pig just so I can read the last five pages of The Deathly Hallows. No more Rush jam session in the basement while your mom is at work. I miss it already.

I can't tell you how much of a privilege it was to spend these last ten months with you. The swim lessons, the trips to the music store, the nature walks, the library play groups where I was the only dad, awkwardly visiting Aunt Melinda at the underwear store where she works, colouring, the Art Factory with grandma and cousin Ary, blowing bubbles, and just goofing around. I don't doubt it has been a formative experience for the both of us.

A typical occurrence: We are out in the backyard and you're roaming around picking grass or rolling stuff down your Fisher Price slide or writing on the footpath with sidewalk chalk. I'm sitting and reading or working on my thesis on my laptop. Then, suddenly you say "hand" and I look up at you standing at the edge of the deck and wanting help to get down to the ground. No matter what I'm doing I drop everything to help you down.

I'm back to school in the fall, and it won't be long before you're in school too. But no matter what I'm doing, no matter how busy I get, I will always hold your hand and help you with the next step.

Love always,

-Dada

A case for the monarchy

For many of us, abolishing the monarchy in Canada seems like the most natural thing in the world. We describe our country to ourselves with adjectives like modern, Western, liberal and democratic, and we find it hard to reconcile this idea with that foreign aristocrat, ruling by divine right on the basis of hereditary succession, whose face is stamped on our money. Wouldn't it be altogether logical, inevitable even, to dispense with the archaic institution, call ourselves the Republic of Canada, and get on with handing out trophies to Gordon Downie?

Logical, sure. But beneficial? Would Canada actually be better for it?

The way I see it, having Queen Elizabeth as a traditional figurehead, reminding us of our imperial history is not a bad thing in and of itself. If we give the monarchy the royal flush and recast the nation as a modern federal republic, founded on universal principles of liberty and equality, if we neglect our traditions and ignore our unique historical development, the good bits as well as the bad, we run the risk of believing that this land belongs to us. That we've always been here. Countries that start with a blank slate, that bow to nothing but universal principles, that think of themselves as outside of history, as the beacon of enlightened political thought, they tend to let it go to their head. It allows them to gloss over the darker chapters in their history, the darker corners of their present, and believe that it is all justified in the pursuit of a higher ideal. We mustn't shake off the residue of colonialism only to become the colonialists ourselves.

When my son looks at a five dollar bill, sees Wilfrid Laurier and says "Who's that guy?," what will I say? Apart from proving that you can earn an MA in history and not remember two things about our seventh prime minister, I doubt whether it will lead to a very enlightening conversation. But when he works his way up the corporate ladder and finally earns twenty dollars, and he says "Dad, who's that old lady?" I will be able to tell him the history of Canada. "She's the queen of England, son." "Why's the queen of England on our money?" "Because a long time ago, English people came across the ocean and set up a colony in Canada so they could all wear beaver hats." "But weren't there any people here already?" "Good question, son..."

There were people here before. People have continued to come since. It's a conversation that is at the core of our existence as a nation. Who belongs? If a foreign aristocrat can be welcome here, why can't a refugee? The Queen reminds us that Canada is many different things. It's a hodge-podge of encounters. It's a work in progress. It's continually trying to define itself as one thing, but never quite succeeding. It is, if I may, successive failures. Most of what I've seen written about Canada's 150th anniversary has been critical of Canada. Wondering who we are is part of our identity. It helps keep us humble. And wondering why our head of state is some lady who lives across the ocean is a beautiful and paradoxical part of that. 

A brief thought on patriotism

The leader of a country has to wear (at least) two hats. He must fully be a citizen of his country as well as a citizen of the world. He must fully understand his own people, but he must also represent them on the world stage. To do the latter, he must not be blind to his country’s place in the global community. He must understand that the populist rhetoric ‘my country first’ is counterproductive outside of ‘my country.’ That is what leads to wars. When nationalistic demagogues are elected it puts the world at risk. Is there a fundamental conflict between what is best for the world and what is best for ‘my country’? Are we returning to the age of mercantilism where one nation’s gain is tantamount to another nation’s loss? I don’t think we are, but that simplistic explanation is gaining traction among a large section of the population. You can’t elect the man who will stop at nothing to ‘make my country great.’ ‘My country’ can only be great if it is at peace with other countries, if it understands its role in the balance of resources, if it gives to the world and doesn’t simply take.

Patriotism, when not paired with an understanding of our shared, border-less humanity, is a bad thing. The First World War happened because nationalisms were stacked against each other. The people of France and the people of Great Britain and the people of Germany and the people of Russia and the people of Austria-Hungary believed that ‘my country’ was best and ‘your country’ had to lose for ‘my country’ to win. If the twentieth century has taught us anything it is that this kind of pride always leads to a fall. Of course, ‘my country’ should think about its own people, should build a welfare system to protect its weakest citizens, should foster a shared national identity. But that identity should not be based on the exclusion of the other. Our national borders should not blind us to what is common between all humanity. Greatness, when defined as power, is a fools errand. It can never be the end goal because the contest for power is a state of permanent competition. It is unstable by its definition. To make a country truly great, the goal must be not greatness, but humanity. And humanity requires humility. Make ‘my country’ humble.

Read in 2016: the Good, the Great and the Surprisingly Disappointing

It has been a year of blog neglect partly due to my raising a child while writing a thesis, and partly due to my uncanny goal of reading 72 books this year (the logical extension of last year's 60). This year, instead of a top ten list, I'm taking a somewhat different approach. I read or reread many excellent books (including old favourites like Charlotte's Web, the first three Potters and my all-time favourite novel The Master and Margarita) so a top ten list would be complicated prospect; how to strike a balance between all-time greats and interesting new recommendations? I also found that my emphasis on quantity resulted in my being a tad less discerning than I might otherwise have been. I was biased toward shorter books. I read hundred-page classics like Animal Farm, Of Mice and Men and The Old Man and the Sea, and ended up reading a disproportionate number of young adult and children's novels (62%). I did maintain a degree of diversity with regard to publication date; I read books from nearly every decade since the 1810s, with a slight bias (11%) toward the 1980s for some reason. But in terms of gender and nationality I was unintentionally biased toward authors who are male (65%) and either American (51%) or British (40%). Next year I'm going to prioritize quality and diversity over quantity and brevity. Any recommendations would be warmly welcomed.

   So without further ado, and in no particular order, here is my "Not Exactly Top Ten List" of books read in 2016: The Good, the Great and the Surprisingly Disappointing.

10. Son, Lois Lowry (2012). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ I'm a bit embarrassed to say I only discovered Lois Lowry this year. The Giver is a modern classic, and the first two of its three sequels (Gathering Blue and Messenger) are good. The fourth book in the series, however, stands out as my favourite. I admit it's a bit impolite to begin a list of book recommendations with the last in a series, but hopefully this will serve as an incentive to read it through to the end. My only criticisms of The Giver (besides its film adaptation) were that the supernatural element shows up unexpectedly and seems out of place, and the emotions are blunted (intentionally so, but it still makes for tiresome reading at points). This isn't the case with Son. The supernatural element has been well established in the previous instalments, and the emotions are raw and powerful.

   Son begins in the same society and around the same time as The Giver, and so offers another visit to and another perspective on Lowry's dystopia. It is the story of of Claire, a 'birth mother' (a woman assigned to the thankless job of producing children in this meticulously programmed community) who defies the rules of her society by learning the identity of and forming an emotional attachment to her infant son. It's possible that this book resonated with me so much because when I read it my own son was approaching his first birthday, and the emotional framework of the novel is based on a parent's attempt to understand and act upon her love for her son in a society where such feelings and such actions are forbidden. Claire risks everything and goes to extreme lengths, travelling through a frightening and fragmented future world in order to reconnect with a child who never knew her. Lowry, whose son Grey died in a plane accident in 1995, touches on some profound universal themes here. I would recommend it to anyone who has children (or parents).

9. Soccer Empire, Laurent Dubois (2010). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Dubois is an established historian of Haiti and the French Caribbean, but he took a break from his 'day job' to write this history of the French colonial empire through the lens of the French national football team. The famously diverse roster serves as a perfect springboard for an examination of the extent of French presence around the world: from Bernard Lama’s French Guiana and Lilian Thuram’s Guadeloupe, to Zinedine Zidane’s Algeria and Patrick Vieira’s Senegal, to Christian Karembeu’s New Caledonia in the south Pacific. Dubois weaves together the players’ individual biographies with the histories of different regions of the French Empire.

   Beyond a work of history and sports trivia, though, Dubois also offers a perspective on the legacy of colonialism in French society. French nationalism has often been tied to an ethnic idea of 'Frenchness.' For many, to be French is to be of French heritage, and consequently the status of immigrants in French society has always been somewhat tenuous. Sports are an interesting locus for this conflict, as some of the most celebrated French athletes are of colonial extraction. Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National famously complained in 1996 that the team was made up of 'foreigners' and 'fake Frenchmen'—even though every member of the team was a French citizen. As Dubois sees it, the diverse national football team offers an alternate conception of French identity. Specifically, he describes how the team's World Cup victory at home in 1998 was a moment of national celebration which forced the country to reimagine what it means to be French. To participate in the celebrations one had to accept that the team—made up of players with roots in Africa, the Caribbean and the South Pacific—was truly representative of French society. For a fleeting moment the nation considered "what it might mean to live in a very different world—one in which France was at ease with itself in all its diversity, accepting of its global past and multicolored future." This book comes highly recommended to anyone with an interest in sports, intercultural relations and the ongoing effects of European colonialism.

8. The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum (1900). ⭐︎ Given that it is the basis of one of the most celebrated films of all time, I thought this book would at least be interesting. But in the context of the many excellent novels for children I read this year, L. Frank Baum's story of homesickness, magic, and talking creatures was a major letdown. The first warning signs appeared in Baum's brief introduction to the work. In typical turn-of-the-century-American fashion, he states that "the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incident devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident. [...] The Wonderful Wizard of Oz [...] aspires to being a modernized fairy tale, in which the wonderment and joy are retained and the heart-aches and nightmares are left out." In other words, Baum thought he knew better than all children throughout all of history.

   In striving purely for entertainment Baum stripped the work of any entertainment value. What's the point of wonderment and joy if they are not grounded in real human emotions, moral questions and an interesting story? The book is a seemingly endless cavalcade of meaningless encounters, repetitive anecdotes, bizarre violence, and simplistic problems with equally simplistic solutions. The most interesting thing about reading it was considering the differences between the book and its far superior Hollywood adaptation—a rare enough scenario. The Library of Congress has named the book and its sequels "America's greatest and best-loved homegrown fairy tale," but thankfully Baum didn't have the final word in modern children's fantasy. Thankfully, his contemporaries like George MacDonald were willing to respect the ability of children to appreciate quality literature. Speaking of George MacDonald... 

7. The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald (1872). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ This year I read books by several beloved authors with letters for names: J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, E. Nesbit G. K. Chesterton and (for the sake of consistency) M. L'Engle. Besides their alphabetical noms de plume they have something else in common: they each acknowledged a literary debt to George MacDonald. The Princess and the Goblin is one of MacDonald's best-loved works, a novel that Chesterton referred to as "a book that has made a difference to my whole existence." This is what children's literature should be.

   Like The Wizard of Oz, the novel follows a young girl on a perilous adventure, but unlike Baum's story it doesn't rely on an endless stream of new settings and new characters and new situations in order to keep the reader's interest. It takes place on a mountain. Good literature can take place on a mountain. While Dorothy Gale wanders from place to place encountering obstacles and overcoming them, generally with little effort, Princess Irene stays within a stone's throw of her front door, yet she faces challenges far more interesting and nuanced than those in the Land of Oz. MacDonald's twist on the fairy story resides in the fact that you don't have to travel to faraway lands to find adventure—magic and wonderment are waiting right outside your door or up that poorly-lit staircase. Similarly, while Baum tried to rid his work of moralizing, MacDonald's characters face complicated decisions, and he allows them to make the wrong choice. It isn't the terror-inducing moral fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm that Baum was so set on replacing, but neither is it the 'only entertainment' stories that Baum proposed as their successor. It is the morality of everyday life. The Princess and the Goblin is at once wonderful and recognizable, magical and real. MacDonald is considered to be a bridge between traditional fairy tales and the modern fantasy genre, so his works are worth reading for their literary-historical significance alone. It is an added bonus that they're also a pleasure to read.

6. Going Solo, Roald Dahl (1986). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Last year I gave a nod to a lesser known work by everyone's favourite Norwegian-Welsh-fighter-pilot-turned-children's-novelist, Roald Dahl, by recommending the short story collection Henry Sugar and Six More. This year I thought I'd keep it going by reviewing the second half of Dahl's autobiography. The first instalment, Boy, mostly focuses on Dahl's traumatic experiences in English boarding school's, while Going Solo deals with his comparably traumatic experience as a fighter pilot in the Second World War. It was fascinating to hear about the War from Dahl's perspective; in addition to simply being a firsthand account by a great writer, his story reveals both the scope and the impromptu nature of the conflict. In 1939, Dahl was working in British Kenya for Shell Petroleum. When war was declared he was automatically made lieutenant, given control a native platoon, and tasked with rounding up Germans in the colony. He was twenty-three years old. The conflicting excitement and terror are palpable in Dahl's account. Then, as if on a whim, Dahl volunteers as a fighter pilot.

   I had the happy coincidence of reading Going Solo simultaneously with Bill Bryson's One Summer, which talks at length about the origins and haphazard nature of aviation in the interwar period. Before there was any semblance of regulation in the industry, hobby aviators could build planes in their garages and anyone in the street could become a pilot. Thousands of foolhardy young men (and more than a few women) risked their lives in the hopes of achieving the unprecedented degree of celebrity that could be attained by feats of aviation. Many perished in the process. In Dahl's account, there is the impression that he was driven to volunteer by a sense of adventure rather than some sort of patriotic obligation. By the time he reports for duty in Greece (after being sidetracked by crash landing in the Sahara and spending months recovering in a hospital in Egypt) it is too late to change his mind. To desert would be treason, punishable by death. All he can do is take orders and try to stay alive. This transition from idealistic adventurer to terrified cog in the military machine was an all too common occurence, and it is worth reading about it as articulated by a master storyteller like Dahl.

5. The Chrysalids, John Wyndham (1955). ⭐︎⭐︎ Spoiler warning. I liked this book a lot until about 3/4 of the way through. From the first, it seems as if it's leading to a conclusion that affirms the diversity of humankind. In a world where all deviations are deemed blasphemies and rooted out, the protagonist, David, meets a young girl with six toes. As shocking as the discovery is, David is even more surprised to find that the girl seems just like everyone else: "She was simply an ordinary little girl—if a great deal more sensible and braver than most." He starts to have doubts about the things he has been taught his whole life—that humans are created in God's image and any variation on that image, no matter how small, is to be shunned and eliminated. Okay. Seems like a pretty typical post-apocalyptic story. Seems like I know where this is going.

   But then suddenly the story takes a turn and ends up coming to an opposite and unsettling conclusion. It is disclosed that David and his friends are also 'mutants,' as they can communicate via telepathy. With the protagonist at risk, the threat of ostracism or worse becomes real. Clearly the solution is a fundamental change in the society's way of thinking. But then, after taking 150 pages to explain that even people with six toes and telepathy are, in fact, people, the author decides that one type of person is essentially better. A perfect, idealized woman shows up from a faraway, futuristic and enlightened society (New Zealand, obviously) to rescue David and his telepathic friends. She starts saying things like "In loyalty to their kind they cannot tolerate our rise; in loyalty to our kind we cannot tolerate their obstruction," and "ours is a superior variant," and "it is not pleasant to kill any creature, but to pretend that one can live without doing so is self-deception." A little too eugenic for my taste. I'll stick with The Day of the Triffids (which, incidentally, was #1 on my top ten list for last year).

4. Because of Winn-Dixie, Kate DiCamillo (2000). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Of all the books I read this year this one was the most pleasantly surprising. I really didn't know anything about it. I assumed it took place in the South and I thought it was about a horse maybe (I guess I hadn't looked at the cover). Honestly, I had no interest in reading it. But my wife recommended it, and I loved it. As it turns out, my surpassed expectations were appropriate, as this is one of the central themes of the book. The protagonist, a ten-year-old girl called Opal, is constantly surprised when she gets to know people who end up being totally different than she imagined. A familiar story, it's true. But one that is worth revisiting often. With the help of a stray dog, the titular Winn-Dixie, Opal adjusts to her life in a new town, and because of Winn-Dixie a ragtag cast of broken people find joy and acceptance in each other's company. The story is quite simple, but the characters are relatable and it is told with much heart. 

3. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy, Eric Metaxas (2011). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ I was always intrigued by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. All I knew about him was that he was a theologian who was involved in a plot to assassinate Hitler. I assumed that the events that led a pastor and a pacifist to become embroiled in a conspiracy to murder the head of state must be interesting in and of themselves. His life story is undoubtedly fascinating. Rarely has history placed a more principled person in a more morally convoluted context. The fact that Bonhoeffer had the literary capacity and lucidity of thought to articulate and print his perpectives on his historical context is to the world's benefit. One can't help but wonder what he would have contributed to post-war dialogues if only he had outlived the War.

   But this biography is about more than just an incredible person. It offers a thorough look at religious life in Nazi Germany. Metaxas covers a whole spectrum of religiosity in the Third Reich: from the racist neo-pagan mysticism of Nazi officials like Heinrich Himmler, to the state-sanctioned Nazi-ideology-imbued religion of the Deutsche Christen (who tried to purge Christianity of its Jewish elements), to the Confessing Church of Bonhoeffer and others, who opposed the Nazis' interference in religious matters. The Confessing Church didn't take an official political stance against Hitler, but many of its members, like Bonhoeffer, did. I've studied the Second World War as much any non-European historian, but I encountered so much in this book that I had never come across before. I've read many biographies, and because of the moral extremes that defined Bonhoeffer's life and his world, this one was one of the best.

2. Stuart Little, E. B. White (1945). ⭐︎⭐︎ Spoiler warning. I read all three of E. B. White's novels this year. I'm sure I read Charlotte's Web growing up, but this year I had the pleasure of experiencing it as a read-by-the-author audiobook. Despite missing out on Garth William's iconic illustrations, it was a real treat to hear this superb classic read by White in his Mr. Rogers-esque voice. His characterizations of the stammering geese and the roguish rat Templeton alone are worth the listen. With its idyllic depictions of nature, the ambiguous understanding between Fern and the animals, and its poignant theme of the changing seasons of life, Charlotte's Web has become one of my favourite children's novels. Consequently, I was keen to see what else White had to offer. I was expecting great things from Stuart Little, but was surprisingly disappointed. It starts off promising enough, with the birth of the Littles' second child, who, with no explanation, "looked very much like a mouse in every way." The Littles opt to raise Stuart like an ordinary child leading to an interesting series of inventions and events in their New York City household.

   These parameters would have been enough for a great story. Little mouse in the Big City. But about halfway through, the author seems to have decided he needed some sort of plot, and then things falls apart. Stuart befriends a bird named Margalo who then flies away when she finds out a neighbourhood cat is planning to eat her. Stuart decides to go on an adventure in search of his friend. He borrows a working model car (which, without explanation, is able to turn invisible—a function that Stuart opts not to use). Stuart goes through a series of mildly entertaining but entirely unrelated episodes—he is briefly a schoolteacher, and then tries to woo a human girl who (without explanation) is two inches high, totally forgetting about his search for Margalo. There are some lovely bits of descriptive prose, but overall the whole second half is sloppy. And then, as if White ran up against a deadline, it ends. The well-crafted symmetry of Charlotte's Web is totally absent. Incidentally, White's third and final novel, The Trumpet of the Swan, is worth the read. It's no Charlotte, but hardly anything is.

1. The Master and Margarita, Mikhail Bulgakov (posthumously, 1967). ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ Every now and then you'll read something and you'll think 'I never knew literature could be like this!' For my wife it was Thackeray's Vanity Fair. For my son it was Boynton's Your Personal Penguin. For me, without question, it is Bulgakov's magnum opus The Master and Margarita. The first time I finished reading it I went through a period of literary withdrawal. I couldn't read anything for weeks. This was the end of literature, I thought. Nothing else could compare. Fortunately I got on with my life, but not before deciding I would reread The Master. Often. I reread it this year and its position at the top of my list of favourite novels was reaffirmed.

   Like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, there were so many forces working against this novel that it really shouldn't exist, let alone be so exceptional. The author wrote it over the course of twelve years (from 1928 all the way to his deathbed in 1940). He wrote it in a place and time when writers and intellectuals were routinely executed or exiled for criticizing the Soviet establishment. He had already been banned from publishing, and only survived the era—unlike many of his peers he died of natural causes—because Stalin himself intervened on his behalf. Committed to his art, writing clandestinely for years, Bulgakov burnt an early version of the novel, and when he died in 1940 he told his wife to hide the (nearly) finished manuscript. It wasn't published until seventeen years after his death.

   In countries that are more or less 'free'—in effective democracies, for instance—people write dystopian stories to imagine and warn against worst case scenarios. Indeed, the Huxleys, the Bradburys and the Lowrys enjoy freedom of expression which allows them the luxury of condemning any inkling of authoritarian activity in their own society by inflating it in fiction. Conversely, in places where the worst case scenario has already come about, in Stalin's USSR at the time of the Great Purges for instance, writing dystopian fiction would be redundant, not to mention dangerous. Those interested in using fiction to criticize their society instead must turn to subversive literature. Anyone can write a dystopian story. It takes a genius to produce an enduring work of subversive literature from within the context of a real-life dystopia. The Master and Margarita is subversive literature at its most refined.

   The novel follows three interconnected plots, each of which would have sent Stalin into fits of alternating hysterics and rage. The first concerns the Devil and his entourage (including a giant foul-mouthed cat who drinks vodka and carries a pistol) as they pay a visit to contemporary Moscow and cause havoc. The second is the tragic love story of the two titular characters. The Master is a novelist who, after his career is destroyed by the intellectual climate of the Soviet Union, is reduced to a spectre himself, abandons his beloved Margarita, and checks into a mental hospital (where he encounters several victims of the aforementioned nefarious mob running amok in the city). The third story appears as chapters of the very novel that triggered the Master's demise. It is an ultra-realist (and not particularly scriptural) account of the encounter between Pontius Pilate (the fifth Procurator of Judea) and Jesus of Nazareth (or, Yeshua ha-Nostri).

   Each of the stories is a direct challenge to the stifling ideology and oppressive practices of Stalin's USSR. But it isn't Bulgakov's politics that make the work so enduring. He was not, in fact, particularly political. He was committed to art, and he objected to the restricted role and character of acceptable literature in Soviet society. At the same time, he loved Russia. The work is also valuable for its insight on the vibrance and diversity of life in the the Soviet Union—a place that is often depicted as bleakness itself. If he is political, it is the politics of an artist who just wants to do art. The book dares to pose a question about a more universal conception of literature, and then serves as the answer to the question. It is literature about literature. It is a blacklisted novel about the blacklisting of novels. It's as if he's saying 'Look what I can do! Why won't you let me do it?" It's that scene from The Pianist where Adrien Brody is hiding from the Nazis in an abandoned apartment. As if to mock him, an established concert pianist, the apartment has a piano. At one point he sits down plays the "Moonlight Sonata"—but his fingers never actually touch the keys. Thankfully, seventeen years after his death, Bulgakov's fingers touched the keys.

   I could continue, but I'm really not doing it justice. Ultimately, The Master and Margarita defies description. It is so many things at once. One Russian-American novelist said that trying to explain Bulgakov's masterpiece "is like explaining what one cherishes about someone with whom one is in love." To adequately explain the novel I would have to write another novel. But who wants to read that? You should just read the original and see for yourself.

Okay. That's it. Thanks for reading. I wish you another year of well earned paper cuts, makeshift bookmarks and literary discoveries. Let me know how it goes.