Seven Pillars of Wisdom (a book review post)

 

This book is not what I would call an easy read. It's full of unfamiliar people, difficult to pronounce names, and events that are not really remembered by anyone other than historians. I would say, on the other hand, that those things don't matter to any great extent. You don't actually need to have a greater understanding of whom most of the people are other than how they relate to Lawrence, especially since most of them only make very brief appearances in the narrative. The ones who hang around, you will come to know. There's no need to speak any of the difficult pronunciations, so they can just be glossed over. And the individual battles and meetings and whatnot can be experienced through Lawrence, so there's really no need to know the history of the Arab Revolt in any great detail, rather like knowing about each and every battle of the American Civil War is mostly superfluous information. Not to mention the fact that the continuity may not be actual. Lawrence admitted that when he had a conflict between his notes and his memory that he always sided with his memory. No, that doesn't make sense to me, but, then, I didn't write the book.

I do think most people will not be able to or want to try to dive into this book. I chose to because of... well, reasons which are unimportant to the book itself.

Let's talk about the title. I like the title. Or I did. Before I started reading the book, I liked the title, and I fully expected it to have some meaning within the context of the book, and I kept waiting for the meaning to be revealed. I'm going to throw in here that I took a long time to read this book. It's something that I read bits of between other books. Not because it wasn't good, just because it's dense and does go on in places, and I would need a break. So, as I neared the end of the book, I began to worry that there had been some explanation about the title somewhere in the beginning and that I had just forgotten what it was. When I say it took me a long time, I mean that I spent more than two years with this book in the background of other things I was reading.

When I did get all the way to the end, no meaning to the title, at least as far as I could remember, had been forthcoming. I was slightly annoyed by that and decided I needed to do some research into the matter. As it turns out, there is no explanation for the title at all other than that Lawrence liked it. It's from a verse in Proverbs and was meant as the title for a different book that Lawrence was writing, one where it would have made sense, since it was going to be about seven great cities in the Middle East. But World War I started and Lawrence wrote this book instead and just kept the same title. In that sense it's a bit like if Richard Adams had never written The Plague Dogs but had decided to use that as the title to Watership Down just because he liked it.

All of which is to say that I'm not in favor of the title. My personal philosophy is that the title should be related to the book or reveal something about the book, but this title does neither, which I find... well, for me, it's a ding against the book, even though it has nothing to do with the text of the book. I love Watership Down (you can find it listed on my Of Significance... page) but if it had been named Plague Dogs, I would have issues with it.

So that's a lot just about the title. heh

If the book has a flaw, it's the title.

Which is not say that it's a perfect book, but it's the title that's a real thorn for me.

Lawrence has some beautiful passages describing the desert. More than a few. He's actually quite eloquent. He also occasionally spends chapters philosophizing about war (and maybe various other things? I don't quite remember), and those are interesting. For a bit. He always goes on too long about any given point and repeats himself several times before finishing whatever it is he's talking about. Not enough so as to make it not worth reading, though. And the book is full of amusing stories of things that happened during the various campaigns.

Like the time, during a cavalry charge against the enemy, he shot his own camel in the back of the head and was catapulted over the camel into the midst of the oncoming enemy. He didn't realize until later what had happened, but it actually saved his life. Amusing after the fact, you know.

There are also some horrific events recounted.

For me, though, the thing that really makes the book worth the read is the turning point for Lawrence when he goes from being a naïve, young soldier who believed the British, his people, were going to do right by the Arabs and his realization that they were... not. His exploration of his existential crisis and subsequent depression is... well, I don't know how to describe it. His determination after that that the Arabs should end the war in a state of independence and self-governance was admirable, even if he was not able to help them achieve it. Colonialism had not, yet, run its course, not that it has, now, either, but at least it's not the operating paradigm anymore.

In the end, this is a book that I'm very glad I read; however, it's not the kind of book I would suggest to anyone. It's the kind of thing a person really needs to take an interest in before they can get through it.

Broken Idols

There are topics we all avoid talking about. Not that we all avoid the same topics, but we all have topics we avoid. The topic of Bill Cosby is one I have been avoiding for a good while now. And, maybe, I wouldn't feel like I have to avoid it if I hadn't mentioned him on my "Of significance..." page, but he's there, and what we know about him now doesn't change the impact he had on me when I was younger. It does make me feel squiggly about having him listed there, though, but it seems worse to me to try to pretend that he did not impact my childhood at all.

I was introduced to Bill Cosby by my cousin, Sam, when I was probably around seven. Okay, that's not exactly true; actually, I was introduced to Cosby through Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids,

which I watched on Saturday mornings when I was little. "Little" meaning five and under. It wasn't a favorite, but I did watch it. I did not have an awareness of "Bill Cosby," though; it was all about Fat Albert.

But, when I was seven or so, my cousin shared with me his collection of vinyl Cosby records. We would sit in his room and listen to them for hours and laugh and laugh and laugh. My cousin had memorized all of the Noah skits and would spontaneously break into the routines anywhere he thought it was going to get him some attention and some laughs. Incidentally, it was while listening to those records that the Fat Albert thing clicked into place, and the stand up routines on the records were so much better than the cartoon. I never really watched it again after that.

The big moment was when I was in middle school and Bill Cosby: Himself aired on HBO. It was a Saturday morning the first time I saw it, I was the only one up, and, actually, I have no idea why I was watching that instead of cartoons. I got up early on Saturdays for the sole purpose of watching cartoons, but, for whatever reason, that morning I did not; I watched Himself.

I laughed so hard at the part about going to the dentist that I woke my parents up and my mother thought I was dying. At least, that's what she said. The show was brilliant. I own it on VHS. Hmm... yeah, I still own it because, as I said, I've been avoiding the topic.

A few years ago, I pulled it out and showed it to my kids for the first time. It was one of those here's-something-I-loved-as-a-kid things, and I want to share it with you. They, of course, loved it. "The beatings will now commence" was heard around the house for weeks, and there are still mentions of the chocolate cake for breakfast.

And, now... Now, I just wish I had never shown it to them at all, which makes me sad in ways that I can't express.

Fortunately, I never really watched The Cosby Show. I had already quit watching TV by the time it was on the air. Sure, I'd stop and watch a few minutes of it if it happened to be on when I was walking through a room, but it wasn't a thing I did. My high school years were largely devoid of TV. Small mercies, that.

When the rape allegations came out, the best description of what I did was holding my breath, just hoping that they weren't true. It's one of those things where you know the opposite of what you want is going to be the reality, but there's no proof, yet, so you just hope. And hope...

Of course, now, we know that he admitted to all of this years ago. He admitted it, and no one did anything. No one did anything. No one did anything about it at all. Not for the women he'd already raped and nothing to stop him from doing it again. Excuse me, but what the fuck? And, probably, although there's little chance he'll be able to get away with doing this again the future, nothing is going to happen to him now. Okay, yeah, his reputation is ruined, which might be the worst punishment he could have, but it's probably not the justice his victims want. Or most of us.

For me, the worst thing is that, at some point (soon), I have to sit down with my kids and have a conversation about this. Probably with that VHS tape sitting on the table right before we throw it away.

But I can't erase the impact he had on younger me and, unfortunately, it doesn't make his comedy not funny. It's one of those places where you have to separate the art from the artist, to some extent, and just cope the best you can. The worst part is that he did actually do a lot of positive things, especially for education in the black community and, to a large extent, this completely undoes all of that.

I don't really have a conclusion to this beyond what I just said. It's just that the fact that I have Cosby listed as one of my influences as been gnawing at me, so I felt like I needed to say something. I'm not going to remove him from my list -- that would a lie -- but I will add a link to this post for any future readers.

To say that I am mad would not be inaccurate, but, mostly, I'm just sad. And confused. I mean, assuming it's the truth (which I doubt since he also did stuff to hide his expenses in regards to the women from his wife) that he and his wife had an understanding, why would he need to resort to drugs and rape? He was Bill Cosby! I'm sure he didn't need to force himself on women. That he did is just... unfathomable to me.

An Exploration in Fantasy -- Part One: The List (an IWM post)

Prior to Tolkien, fantasy writing was sparse. At least, what we think of now as fantasy was sparse. Because of that, Tolkien is widely considered the "Father of Modern Fantasy" or, specifically, the "Father of High Fantasy." Along with the title has come the assumption that it was Tolkien who established our model of how fantasy ought to be written, that it was Tolkien who originated the tropes. People, often people who have not read The Lord of the Rings, look at what Tolkien did and ascribe the origins of all that fantasy has become to him.

Now, I love The Lord of the Rings. The Hobbit, as you'll know if you've checked out my "Of Significance..." page on my own StrangePegs blog, is one of the three books that I think everyone should read. And I don't undervalue Tolkien's importance. There would be no fantasy genre as we know it today without him. However, I don't think that we can "blame" Tolkien for today's fantasy tropes. In fact, many of the things we think he did, he did not, in fact, do. No, for the origins of fantasy, we have to look elsewhere.

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And that elsewhere is Indie Writers Monthly. Sort of. I mean it will be where to look. Today, we're just talking about the elements of fantasy. And there's a list! Everyone loves lists, right? So hop right over and check it out!