Sherbert Illuminated

Before I talk about these books, I’d like to thank my mother’s friend, who was generous enough to send them to me. Thank you so much, Professor Demleitner! After I expressed an interest in becoming a translator, she sent me many German-language books from her personal library. I have elected to begin with the shortest books and read longer ones as my comprehension improves. I read the first three books in quick succession: Das Geheimnis der Statue by Janet Clark, Heiße Spur in München by Stefanie Wülfing and Gefährliches Spiel in Essen by Gabi Bier. The first is about two friends, Max and Yannick, who encounter a discarded statue that they suspect is illegally-obtained ivory. Heiße Spur takes place in Munich, where Paola, an Italian photographer, falls unexpectedly and sinisterly ill. Baier’s Gefährliches Spiel is from the same series and follows Friso Breughel, a Dutch journalist studying Essen’s architectural history. Oddly enough, two of the three mysteries ended up involving d

  “What does the future hold for Snow White…? When her Prince becomes a King and she becomes a Queen, what will her life be like. Surely, fairest of them all, she as exchanged one glass coffin for another,” (42). After reading The Madwoman in the Attic by Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, I understand why many people hate the classics. But The Madwoman is not a bad book. It’s a very good mirror.  Its analyses of the role of women in 19th-century English literature are clever and nuanced. But even as Gilbert and Gubar describe the ingenious strategies and symbols utilized by 19th-century authors like Charlotte Brontë and Emily Dickinson, a depressing reality descends: most English-language authors before 1900 (at least) were male, and most of them couldn’t write women with range beyond a sewing needle. Gilbert and Gubar highlight the contributions of Jane Austen, Mary Shelley, Emily and Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Christina Rosetti and Emily Dickinson. But every artistic victory the

There is not much that can be said about Jane Austen’s novel Pride and Prejudice that has not previously been said, but conciseness was not Ms. Austen’s strong suit and it is probably not mine either. Pride and Prejudice is pretty neat, but it’s not my thing. The book is almost a magical artifact, because characters like Jane and Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are icons in their own right. I cannot use quotes from the work, because the most illustrative passages are already famous. The world in which it is set—the balls, strolls and hushed letters—has cast a genteel shadow over English literature and continues to electrify the hearts of readers around the globe. Austen’s works survive, not for their plot, but for their characters. Pride and Prejudice is a love story, in that it is a story about the perils of social and romantic relationships. The restrictions surrounding the women of Hertfordshire, especially the economically-pressed Bennet family, lend a sense of urgency to their r

Imagine a slow, painful disaster. Imagine yourself and your friends trudging across a seemingly-endless plain of ice, battered by bitter wind and nursing multiple bruises, each pulling over 100 lbs of food and equipment toward a distant, invisible goal. Imagine a colleague collapsing for the third time today and hauling himself back up on broken legs. Imagine dwindling supplies of biscuit and contaminated pemmican. Imagine the sun circling the horizon like a vulture. Imagine death climbing your frostbitten limbs. Imagine later explorers piling stones in the ice, constructing a grave for the last martyrs of Prewar Britain.   Whatever you imagined was probably more dramatic and exciting than Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s expedition memoir The Worst Journey in the World . Published in 1922, Cherry-Garrard’s account of exploration, camaraderie and tragedie was an instant bestseller. But today it’s the sterile hybrid of a melodramatic memoir and a scholarly account. Neither facet is particularly