George is in Romania.

God I hate cold openings, don't you? Now I have to explain: George is a good friend of the family who happens to be from Romania yet hasn't visited the place since she left with her parents over a decade ago, until now. is in? I don't have time to answer that one in full, so for now just think of it as the opposite of "is out."And Romania? that's a country, I think.

She left on the 22nd and will be gone till August something-or-other. She's already been to the Black Sea, museums, camping in the mountains -- and she's going to visit Dracula's castle! I'm extremely jealous so while she's away, I've decided, I'll do a little traveling of my own, except I'll have to use my Imagination.

So I went to the library, and guess what I found! First, The Land of Green Plums by Herta Muller, the most recent winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, and former member of the German-speaking minority of Romania. She set all her books during the regime of Ceausescu -- can you say bleak? -- and, I gotta say, two pages in and I'm already very confused.

I also tracked down a cookbook, Taste of Romania, which also included some other neat things, proverbs, folk tales, and a little history. As for the food... actually, there are a lot of typical, decent-sounding recipes in there -- in between the haggis and calves brains. (Yes, George, I took that from the e-mail I sent you. I do that kinda thing all the time: 90% of the stuff on this blog was lifted straight from pamphlets I found at highway rest stops)

Now, allow me to present some Romanian proverbs I found in that cookbook. The author took them from a Romanian book of eight thousand proverbs, which in turn were taken from a ten-volume (!) set. Note that some of these were split into two or more lines (here the line breaks are denoted by slashes, as is customary), apparently in verse but without obvious meter or rhyme. I can only assume that the Romanian originals had these qualities...

1. He who steals an egg today/Will steal a cow tomorrow.
2. Give an egg today/You will receive a cow tomorrow.
3. Bread as fresh as can be/Wine as old as can be/Wife as young as can be.
4. A sharp vinegar breaks its own bottle.
5. Big fires are made even in small ovens.
6. Even the sea has a bottom.
7. Don't laugh at the donkey./The time will come when you will need/To mount him.
8. The husband doesn't know/What the village knows.
9. Water and fire cannot become friends.
10. From the word to the deed/Is like from the earth to the sky.
11. Don't run after the wagon that doesn't wait for you.
12. Being lazy, he shuts his eyes and opens his mouth.

So, there you are... Some are common enough and have English/American equivalents. Some are awesomely deep ("even the sea has a bottom"), while others make you wonder where the cameras are. A few have already entered my vocabulary.

I get hints of what it means to be a Romanian from those proverbs, and I have gleaned more from encounters with George's American-based family. My impression is generally ungenerous: distrustful, stingy, ornery, paranoid (gee, I wonder why...). From my experience, Romanians are -- at risk of sounding racist -- angry little brown people who have an affinity for stuffed animals and silk shirts.

Some more "food for thought" may be in order:

Bucharest, Romania's capital and largest city, during the nineteenth century became known to some as the "Little Paris of the East," due in large part to the importation of French culture -- particularly art, architecture and food -- by the Romanian aristocracy. With this nickname we all win: the rest of Europe, and America are allowed a a crusty laugh at Romania's expense, while loyal proponents of the, uh, "Romanian Way" -- George's uncle among them, apparently -- have something to hold over the heads of neighboring backwaters -- the rest of Europe, and America among them, apparently. (It is as yet unconfirmed that maps have reached "the Tiger of Eastern Europe.")

At least one man, I read, was of the opinion that one of the happiest times in Romanian history was the approximately 200 years it spent as a Roman province, Dacia. But Rome pulled out, leaving the natives to ceaseless enemy onslaughts, often with only the Carpathian Mountains for protection.

A country that small and powerless doesn't create the waves of history but instead gets tossed about by them. Often the best plan was to ride along wherever the waves would lead. But then this strategy has sometimes necessitated joining Hitler, which lead to some 700,000 Romanian deaths just the same. And the Romanian Jewish population went from around 800,000 at the start of WW2 to just under 10,000 in 1992? Oy... but who am I to judge?

Today, the Romanians are a people of recovery and rebuilding. Out from under "communist" rule since only 1989, the country seemed to be making great progress to economic strength in the early '00s. It joined the EU in 2007 -- kinda -- and earned itself the nickname "the Tiger of Eastern Europe." Ah, but the most recent economic downturn seems to have hit Romania especially hard... Oh, well...que sera, sera -- Romanian for "let's drag our leader's body through the streets."

Review: First Love and Other Stories, by Ivan Turgenev

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The edition I read had just three stories: "First Love," "Spring Torrents," and "A Fire at Sea" -- a very odd trio they make. They are about 70, 140, and 10 pages respectively. If this were a muscle man competition, "Spring Torrents" would beat out the title story as a matter of sheer bulk, while the last story would have no choice but to quiver in his chair at the back of the stage, hoping beyond hope that no one sits on him.

The first two are thematically very similar: two tales of thwarted love, so obviously and painfully drawn from the author's own experience. Ah, the sweet melancholy of love unrequited or otherwise unfulfilled -- with my harsh old soul at my tender young age, it's really the only kind of love story I can take. Though I am still very new to his writing, I have reached a conclusion: this is Turgenev and I love him for it.

He was so preoccupied with this kind of tale, that his novel Fathers and Sons, really a novel of the generational gap, politics, philosophy and everything manly, found its way to a love story right quick! I can't but shake my head and smile. Even hard old hearts, hidden behind large and severe Russian beards have always been liable to melt.

"First Love" I read months ago, in another collection. Though I was largely impressed, and ate happily my first dose of the author's writings, I was rather peeved by the ending. I suppose it's one of those stories you can reread and then discover all the hints of the surprise ending hidden in plain view. But I, for my part, have not done this yet and am still convinced that the ending was jolting and disjointed.

"Spring Torrents" (or "Torrents of Spring" as I think I've seen it called) is at the other end, slow at first, with an unremarkable Italian girl for the main man's affections -- but it builds, ending unexpectedly, in a manner I feel I can be proud of.

"A Fire at Sea" is a major departure from its two older brothers and thus feels rather gruesomely tacked on. It is the autobiographical tale of a sea voyage the author took when he was about nineteen. The title spoils the premise -- it did really happen, and Turgenev freaked out, supposedly knocking aside children and women, and offering a crew member a ridiculous sum to save him. Well, that's what some other memoirs say, though Turgenev himself naturally paints a picture of more general uproar, thus shrinking and trivializing his own part...

This story could be (and probably has been) used to great effect in another, larger collection of the author's short works. It was written near the end of his life, about an event near the beginning -- an event that was always a source of embarrassment but colored his writing just the same. But here it has no place and shocks the reader out of the sharp and brooding reverie of what I now see as a pair of typical Turgenev love stories.


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Review: Low Moon, by Jason

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Here's another one from that indefatigable single-named Norwegian artist and writer, Jason...Low Moon includes five stories, all featuring Jason's trademark minimalistic, undeviating art style; stiff anthropomorphic animals, mostly dogs; easy, silent movie-inspired writing; and sharp attention to detail.

The showpiece of this collection is the one on the cover. No, not "Low Moon," the title story and so-so western-style tale of a duel that is fought with chess pieces instead of guns. I mean instead "&", the story whose last panel graces the cover. First, how do you pronounce it? "and"? "ampersand"? "the artist formerly known as..."? Second, what's not to like about this story? Actually, it's two: two simultaneous stories, one told on the left page and the other on the right. Both are typical of this collection, about two protagonists who know what they want and will do anything to get it. They both see their plans through, yet both end up at a bar sitting next to a perfect stranger...

The other four stories are passable, if not outrageously successful. "Emily Says Hello" has a cool premise and a dramatic ending. "Low Moon" is, as I said, so-so, with a series of schticks that don't all shtick."Proto Film Noir" is probably the quirkiest of the bunch, and consequently my least favorite; it has an unfabulous ending, too. And lastly, "You Are Here" ends the book on a sweet note that didn't ring with me.

The art is, again, "passable, if not outrageously successful." The lines are straight as can be, and the art is generally not without a visual punchline. But I want more. I like the way this book looks -- but all his books look this way. I have read three of them and I am getting awfully tired of all these plain, single-color backgrounds! Even the layouts are uninspired: in this book we get nothing but the same four-paneled pages throughout.

Mind you, I get it: the simple style, besides being worthy on its own account, also allows Jason to comfortably produce one or two good sized books each year. There's something to be said about that method, especially for the young ambitious upstart, but surely Jason is past that. Surely he can afford to slow down, to elaborate on and fill in his well-established style.

What I like most about Jason's books are their unpretentiousness. Reading his books always makes me think, "Oh yeah, this is what the kids are reading!" but that doesn't discourage me. His books are hip, it seems, but they never lose track of telling a story, of entertaining. There's no impenetrable art house gunk in here -- or if there is, it doesn't clog up the machinery.

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"My Aunt Makes Up Her Mind About Me"

Thus I began my new life, in a new name, and with everything new about me. Now that the state of doubt was over, I felt, for many days, like one in a dream. I never thought that I had a curious couple of guardians, in my aunt and Mr. Dick. I never thought of anything about myself, distinctly. The two things clearest in my mind were, that a remoteness had come upon the old Blunderstone life - which seemed to lie in the haze of an immeasurable distance; and that a curtain had for ever fallen on my life at Murdstone and Grinby's. No one has ever raised that curtain since. I have lifted it for a moment, even in this narrative, with a reluctant hand, and dropped it gladly. The remembrance of that life is fraught with so much pain to me, with so much mental suffering and want of hope, that I have never had the courage even to examine how long I was doomed to lead it. Whether it lasted for a year, or more, or less, I do not know. I only know that it was, and ceased to be; and that I have written, and there I leave it.

A passage like that ought to make even the most thickheaded reader (Hi, how's it going?) stand up and take notice. Personally, I crinkled my nose, played thoughtfully with my beard and said: "I should write a blog post now!"

The above-quoted passage is the very last paragraph of chapter 14 of Charles Dickens by David Copperfield, or vice versa. The young Charley/Davy has run away from his drudge job at his stepfather's warehouse to take refuge with his eccentric Aunt Betsey. The two "met" only once before, when David was a very small, posthumous child. She, shocked and disappointed at his being a boy not a girl, quickly fled from his life and formed a new quiet life for herself in a small cottage in...one of those towns with an Englishy name.

Some years later --maybe 6 to 8 years-- when David flees to her, he finds his aunt to be nice enough, despite being a bit "sharp" and possessing more than a few idiosyncrasies. And, with a penniless, exhausted, filthy nephew at her door, she proves her mettle by taking him in and defending him against the vile Mister and Miss Murdstone, the stepfather and his sister. "My aunt makes up her mind about me"...well, I think I've already gone and spoiled the result of that chapter!

Still, the above paragraph puts to an end one of the most fiery and intriguing passages I have read in a long time (too long to put here but well worth reading). The tongue lashing Aunt Betsey gives Mr. Murdstone, combined with her effective shutting down of Ms. Murdstone's 'picky little comments, render entirely impotent the until now most terrible and powerful influences of David's young life. So impotent for so long, David finally finds a sane and confident guardian -- an eccentric, proto-feminist, hermit lady -- to defend him and look after his future.

It is a new era for David -- a happy time for him, the author, and the reader. All three of us are now set free from youth-stealing drudgery in some anonymous warehouse along the river Thames and are now free to roam among the endearing oddballs of Victorian society.

But we can never forget the events of the previous chapters, particularly Chapter 11, "I Begin Life on My Own Account, and Don't Like It," epitomized by a title so sadly understated --whether on account of bravado or pain or plain English stuffiness, I don't know -- yet so full of grim foreboding towards the chapter it heads up. Charles Dickens never forgot his own two years at a boot-blacking factory, as evidenced by this and so many other books, characters, passages. His experiences at one of the lowest rungs of society at an awfully young age no doubt, the scholar will say, made him a more well-rounded author in future years, made him "worldly" (without lasting long enough to make him world weary) and, finally, created a unique character capable of creating hundreds of others that he used to populate his unique vision of the world. Pity, the things required for such gains...