The Two Towers (Book Three) by J.R.R. Tolkien

Book Three of The Lord of the Rings is Tolkien's masterpiece within a masterpiece. His achievement is remarkable. 

Frodo and Sam have surreptitiously left the Fellowship of the Ring; Boromir is slain, and Merry and Pippin have been abducted by orcs and taken westwards.  Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli must decide their course of action, and they choose to pursue the orcs, in the faint hope of recovering their lost friends.

And from this point Tolkien takes the reader from one end of the land of Rohan to the other.  Where in the previous volume the travellers crept or plodded with stealth across the countryside, they now run and ride openly, desperately and relentlessly in an ever-widening field of action.  We witness court intrigue, a battle and two sieges; and we are immersed even deeper into the history and geography of Middle-Earth.

But perhaps Tolkien's genius is nowhere more conspicuous than in the way he handles branching, overlapping and intertwining strands of narrative.  Friends are parted, reunited and then parted again.  We jump from place to place and from time to time as the story unwinds. Here, we witness the action as it unfolds; elsewhere, we have deeds reported to us in retrospect; the point of view shifts and then shifts again.

The book deals largely with friendships made in the midst of war, and with friendships broken by the thirst for power.  The healing of Theoden kindles a friendship where once there had been enmity; valor in arms in the face of a common foe unites Aragorn and Éomer, and deepens the friendship between Legolas and Gimli.  Merry and Pippin, already bonded to each other by their kinship, meet danger together; and they find a wholly unexpected friend in a wholly unexpected quarter.

As we draw closer to the midway point of the larger work, great deeds are done and are yet to be done.  Tolkien's familiar theme of hope versus despair is never far away.  At one point the White Rider says:

I have spoken words of hope. But only of hope. Hope is not victory.

No, deeds must play out; and one may win a battle and yet lose a war.  Book Three ends with the friends riding from a victory to what is likely to be their long defeat. 'Run now!' [cried the White Rider.] 'Hope is in speed!’

Pangur Bán by Anonymous

I came across this poem today and instantly fell in love with it.

Pangur Bán is a poem written in Irish Gaelic in the 9th century C.E., and composed in what is now southern Germany.  

The author is unknown, but it is thought he was an Irish Monk who worked as a scribe employed to copy books by hand.  It becomes obvious from the text of the poem that the author loved both his work and his cat Pangur the White.  

Eight clever stanzas draw parallels between the author (and his work) and his cat (and his work): hunting, practicing, enjoying, capturing, trying, and enjoying some more. 

Having said that, I'll let the poem do its own talking.

Pangur Bán

I and Pangur Bán, my cat
'Tis a like task we are at;
Hunting mice is his delight
Hunting words I sit all night.

Better far than praise of men
'Tis to sit with book and pen;
Pangur bears me no ill will,
He too plies his simple skill.

'Tis a merry thing to see
At our tasks how glad are we,
When at home we sit and find
Entertainment to our mind.

Oftentimes a mouse will stray
In the hero Pangur's way:
Oftentimes my keen thought set
Takes a meaning in its net.

'Gainst the wall he sets his eye
Full and fierce and sharp and sly;
'Gainst the wall of knowledge I
All my little wisdom try.

When a mouse darts from its den,
O how glad is Pangur then!
O what gladness do I prove
When I solve the doubts I love!

So in peace our tasks we ply,
Pangur Bán, my cat, and I;
In our arts we find our bliss,
I have mine and he has his.

Practice every day has made
Pangur perfect in his trade;
I get wisdom day and night
Turning darkness into light.

(Translation by Robin Flower (1881-1946))

Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut did not rate Slapstick very highly compared with some of his previous novels.  Despite its flaws, this book is well-written, thought-provoking and entertaining.

In a nearby future, most of the human race has been wiped out by two plagues.  Civil government in the United States of America has collapsed, only to be replaced by contending regional warlords.  Meanwhile, something odd has happened in China: the Chinese have embarked on a program of breeding miniaturised humans in order to reduce consumption, and they have developed the ability to travel to other planets without using spacecraft.

Wilbur Swain, a centenarian and a former President of the United States, narrates the story of him and his twin sister Eliza.  Wilbur and Eliza, who are possessed of average intellects, become super-intelligent when they are in close physical proximity with one another.  Their problems begin when they inform their parents of this fact.

In the prologue to the book, Vonnegut states that Slapstick is the closest thing to autobiography he has written: "It is about what life feels like to me."  Subtitled Lonesome No More, the novel's central themes are intimacy, loss and loneliness.

We see these aspects of the human condition as Wilbur unfolds the tale of his long life.  There seems to be little comfort in what Wilbur has to say, and the reader can perhaps be forgiven for feeling a little cushioned from the full impact of the themes by the bizarre, perhaps comical, circumstances under which they occur.

I have called it “Slapstick” because it is grotesque, situational poetry—like the slapstick film comedies, especially those of Laurel and Hardy, of long ago ... The fundamental joke with Laurel and Hardy, it seems to me, was that they did their best with every test. They never failed to bargain in good faith with their destinies, and were screamingly adorable and funny on that account.

Whether Wilbur and Eliza (or any of us) live up to the standard set by Laurel and Hardy is for the reader to decide.  We can but try; and that, I think, is a large part of the project of Humanism.

The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

What a pleasure it is to read The Wind in the Willows.  For the most part it is just shear fun; on the other hand, it also deals with the vital themes of life: food, friendship, conflict, self-control, and our relationship with nature and with the deity.

Grahame gives us a mixture of animal fable and adventure story to tell the tale of Mole and his new-found friends: Ratty, Badger and Mr Toad.  The action takes place in a fictional slice of the English countryside called River Bank.  Bisected by a wide stream, River Bank is bounded by the Wild Wood on one side and a more settled and civilized precinct on the other.

There are many episodes within the story, and Grahame skillfully changes the pace from pure adventure (such as the timid Mole's uncharacteristic excursion into the Wild Wood), to festivity (such as Ratty providing an impromptu mid-winter feast for some caroling field mice) to ruminations on the nature of instinct (as in the tale of the sea rat), to an encounter with the deity on Pan's Island; and of course there are the uproarious hijinks of Toad sprinkled throughout.

Grahame is more than capable of providing us with a memorable image or turn of phrase.  My favourite comes from a passage where Toad is sleeping rough on a cold night and has a dream of being in bed:

... and his bedclothes had got up, grumbling and protesting they couldn't stand the cold any longer, and had to run downstairs to the kitchen fire to warm themselves ...

The Wind in the Willows evolved out of the bed-time stories Grahame told to his vision-impaired son Alastair, the inspiration for Mole.  Many of Grahame's own childhood experiences inform the setting and characters in the book.  It is a credit to Grahame that he took what could be viewed as a sad situation and turned it into a joyous, sensitive, reflective and hopeful tale for all those who happen, whether by chance or by choice, to stroll along his River Bank.