Day Five, London, 6 May 2010

Today is my sister Wendy's birthday, and I will spend the entire day thinking about her,  and giving thanks for her place in my life.

I thought of her especially yesterday at Stonehenge with the sheep grazing all about the monument - sheep grazing with great dignity.  Wendy appreciates that in animals - just their presence and dignity.

Today it is the British Museum, and I skip breakfast at St. Katharine's and proceed to get on the train, getting off at Bank and going over to Charing Cross.  I do need something to eat, and look around for a Tea Room, but don't see anything that suits me.  Then I notice, between St. Martin in the Fields (a wonderful Wren church) and the building next door a kiosk with a stairway leading underground and proclaiming, "The Café at Saint Martin in the Fields".  (These are apparently quite common, having seen one at Westminster Cathedral, and at the Methodist Central Hall.)  So I go in and have a delicious Spanish Tortilla with aioli, and an orange juice.  

The Organ at Saint Martin in the Fields

The last time I was in this church was in 1974, and I was in agony - only day 2 into a pair of new shoes purchased for my first European trip.  So my memory is clouded with pain, recalling only a very dark church, a most welcoming pew that I sat in for some time, and a humorous story about one of Joanne's colleagues, Dr. Edna Parks, being mistaken for Her Majesty, the Queen.  All of this came flooding back, and I was unprepared for all the light.  The window behind the altar has been replaced with a rather modern thing - can't tell whether or not I like it.  They were preparing for a concert that was to be given that evening, so people were bustling about the chancel.

Chancel Window at St. Martin in the Fields

The man in the foreground gives you an idea of how bright the room as become.  There were many touches about the room that I had never seen before or had forgotten.  It was quite delightful.

Trafalgar Square is always amazing to me.  It was full of life.  Some were there to be in the sun (after several days of gray).  Some were there to go to the National Gallery, some to the Portrait Gallery.  Some were just walking through.  Some were there to protest something - it was a voice with an Irish accent, but I kept hearing "Iran", so I don't know why they were there.  I knew why I was there - it was for the National Gallery.  Oddly enough, when Jo and I were here in '74, we didn't go in!  Now it was time to make up for lost opportunities.  It's difficult to do in an orderly fashion, so I just started out - didn't worry about chronology.  The painters that jumped out at me were Zurburan, Holbein, Turner, and  Saenredam, and there were several others that I had never heard of before.  The new (to me) Sainsbury wing is quite nice, and having revisited the arguments about what this wing should look like, I'm afraid that in retrospect I have to agree with Prince Charles.  Venturi and company accomplished a nice post-modern building.  My friend, Paul Groth may not agree.

I haven't talked much about food - well I am in Britain, after all.  For lunch I went to the museum restaurant and had a Lentil and Lamb Pie that was just extraordinary.  Those Cornish pies and pastries are just wonderful.  

My back is beginning to bother me, and it is cold.  None-the-less I decide to walk over to Westminster Abbey, down Whitehall.  A thought comes to me, that was formed a bit at Windsor, and comes to full bloom as I make my way past all the government buildings.  It is about statues.  We need more of them.  We need them to be of people who have stepped up and out and have done something for society.  I am thinking about the King Memorial in San Francisco which is photographs and words.  Most, people who visit there, I think, don't read the words - they look at the spectacular water.  Statues cause us to pause and say, "Who was that?"  Yes, we need more statues to lift us out of egalitarian ignorance of great women and men, and to honor their departure from the ordinary to the extraordinary.  Here's to you, Winston!

Big Ben

Westminster is closed, St. Margaret's is closed, and I am a half hour late for Even Song.  Even more so I am tired and cold.  So I go home, buy some chicken (good!), and curl up with Marilynne Robinson's Gilead.  The cursillo people are walking about the place singing an American Spiritual (I am reminded of Marilyn Jackson's comment during a procession on M. L. King, Jr. Day at Saint Francis while we were singing Lift every voice and sing, "Give it up white people!") carrying candles and generally making a nuisance of themselves.  Ah, people.  How wonderful to be alive.

Day Four, London, 5 March 2010

The scrim has descended again, but that's because I read email before writing today's journal.

Christ lifts up the sinking Peter

I didn't go to Morning Prayer this morning.  There are a bunch of people here making a Cursillo, and they want to be by themselves.  In fact, I had to leave early to get to Victoria Station by 8:45, so that I could catch my tour to Windsor, Stonehenge, and Bath.  I don't normally do this kind of thing, but this was relatively low impact (no heavy guide) and it got me to the places I wanted to go.  I get there early, it's quite a walk from the Underground to the Coach Station and its 4º C outside, and quickly get a cup of coffee and a Cornish Pastie.  

It's not a bad group of people, excepting a trio of young Americans who trumpet their ignorance of history and culture, and are constantly late.  We make our way out of London on the M1 to Windsor, and I tour the state apartments (no photography allowed) and St. George's Chapel (same there, as well).  The one thing that impressed me at Windsor were all the Holbein drawings and paintings.  I saw many things that I recognized from books.  Windsor, since it is a working palace, is too clean.  It doesn't have that patina of time such as you see at Sans Souci, or at Versailles.  And there are ushers everywhere, all very polite.

In the chapel, I realize what a complete fusion there is of Church and State here.  It was most evident in the choir of the chapel, where heraldry outplays any Christian symbolism hands down.  We saw this in Switzerland, as well, where cantonal, or national symbols replaced Christian symbols.  The Germans didn't seem to fall into this pattern - perhaps because there was no Germany.  (One exception might be the ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis Kirche in Berlin - where Hohenzollerns seem to mix into the Byzantine symbols and devices that they seemed to love so much).  I was surprised at how many chantries there were.  One was filled with chapel chairs, extra candles, kneelers, and other liturgical equipment.  If it were my chantry, I would have been pissed.

Stonehenge

I grab lunch to go - we're going to eat on the bus as we make our way to Stonehenge.  I had imagined this in some other part of England, for some reason, and was surprised at the approach one makes from the northeast.  The guide tried to quiet our expectations.  I'm certain he's heard more than once that "it's so small."  The approach was impressive, it hovering over the roadway, completely approachable.  Walking around the ruins, I found it to be soul-stirring somehow.  There were sheep grazing all around it, which seemed appropriate and a relief.  In spite of the fact that there were numbers of people there, I did feel as though I could experience it by myself.  

Dignus est agnus

After buying a book and a wonderful cherry shortbread, we are on our way again - this time to Bath.  As we leave the Stonehenge site we begin to see all of the other pre-historic archaeological sites that accompany it.  There's talk of pulling it all together into one National Park - I hope they do - I hope I can come back when it's done.

Bath Abbey from the Roman Baths

We park by the Abbey, and I realize that there will be dessert following the baths - a church!  The baths are OK.  Having been to the ruins of a bath on Massada, and similar ruins in Rome, this seems a bit tame, but enjoyable.  The air is full of mist and sulphur as we walk around the ruined baths, and there are some quite nice archaeological treasures - especially a gilded bust of Minerva.

Minerva - the bust from her temple in Bath

The church is calling me.  It looks like a fine piece of Perpendicular Gothic.  Built in the late XIVth Century, and having supplanted a ruined Norman building, this is late on the gothic scene.  And the ceilings!

Fan Vaulting in the nave at Bath Abbey

The church has the nickname, "The Lantern", because of all the marvelous light that suffuses the place.  There is a wonderful Klais Organ (Bonn, Germany), but no one is playing it.  There are "stewards" all over the place, ready to answer questions, and there is a "prayer trail" inviting visitors to try and worship.  And there is a bookstore.  I succumb to a copy of Common Worship - Daily Prayer, which has enthralled me during my stay at St. Katharine's.  

I meet a couple from New Orleans, and we talk about the church and other places that we have visited, as we await the return of our bus.  I sleep my way back into London, and come home very satisfied.

Now, to work on my ego.

Day Three London, 4 March 2010

I arrive late for Morning Prayer - it was early because it was to be followed by a Eucharist at 8, which I stay for.  There are only three of us, priest included.  I marvel at how all the liturgies descended from the work of Cranmer have diverged - how there isn't a sense of cooperating, at least with the English versions. Some prayers are distinctly the same, others are totally new to me.  It made me pay attention during the liturgy.  After mass, I have a quick breakfast alone.  No one is really in the refectory.

I leave and grab the DLR, this time getting off at Bank, and going over to the Center line.  My goal is the British Museum, and once I alight at Tottenham Court Road, become totally lost, wandering around Covent Garden like a lost soul.  It seems that what I thought was north was actually south - grey skies will do that to you.  However there was something good that came out of it; I bumped into St. Giles in the Fields.

St. Giles in the Fields Church

From the exterior, which is Palladian, I thought that the church might have been a Wren, but no it was by Flitcroft.  Interestingly, it was founded by Queen Matilda, the same patron who founded St. Katharine's. This building was the third such building, the second, consecrated by Bishop Laud also figured in heavily during the Plague.  Also of interest is a pulpit used by both John and Charles Wesley.  What struck me was the interior, bringing back memories of Old North Church in Boston.  The stained glass in the chancel is the only such glass in the building (luckily all the Victorian glass was blown out in WWII), the nave lights being plain glass.  The tables of the law are also mounted in the chancel.  I took some time there to sit and think (and figure out where the British Museum actually was).  

The Great Court at the British Museum

Although the buildings at the Museum are impressive, it is Norman Foster's Great Court surrounding the reading room (which was closed, unfortunately) which gives the place a sense of place and wow.  I found myself just having to walk around it a couple of times to take it all in.  Like the Louvre, you don't quite know where to begin.  So I bought a map, and noticed a large pharaonic head, and started there.  

 

The Rosetta Stone

One is properly greeted with the Rosetta Stone, and once again I was stunned.  It brought back to mind the first time that I went to Paris and the Louvre.  (My sister, Bonnie, had advised me to enter the building, rush to see the Mona Lisa, and having gotten that out of the way, to enjoy the collection).  As I left the Mona Lisa, I wandered down to a staircase and was suddenly confronted by the Nike of Samothrace.  I stopped, and I cried.  Not only was it of immense beauty, but it was true.  All the things that my father, Professor Norman Gienapp, and others had shared with me from art history, literature, and music was true - and it was summed up in the sculpture.  The Rosetta Stone proved to be a similar experience, although without the tears.  I took my time in the Egyptian Galleries, taking it all in.

The stele of Shalmaneser III

At the far end of the Egyptian materials I came upon another piece that I had known about since studying biblical languages, and that was the Stele of Shalmaneser III.  What is interesting about this piece is that it depicts one of the kings of the Bible.  There he is, above, Jehu, the King of Israel (the Northern Kingdom) offering his obeisance and his tribute to the Great King.  Like the Louvre and the Pergamom, there are lots of Assyrian, Chaldean, and Babylonia cherubs lurking over the visitors to the museum, intimidating us as they did the visitors or captives of these ancient empires.  

Next were the Greek Galleries, and of course, the Elgin Marbles.  Interestingly, rather than ignoring or downplaying the issue of these objects and the request of the Greek Government that they be repatriated, the museum had published a brochure stating their position.  

Group from the Pediment of the Parthenon

These sculptures are truly stunning, and they are displayed in a large and gracious space (in spite of all the French school children running about) that you can walk around them and truly take them in.  I realized that I was only going to be able to touch the surface of all this - but to immerse yourself in the totality of it all was truly wonderful.

It was time to have something to eat, and realize that the Roman curse had reappeared.  The Roman curse is a pain in my upper back that I first experienced last fall in Rome, and then later in Potsdam.  I think it may be due to carrying a heavy briefcase for 24 years.  At any rate a Margarita (the pizza) and a Limonata seemed to help a bit - that and sitting at a chair with a back on it.

Ivory cherub from the Levant

Now I concentrated on some galleries where I knew that I would see things I have treasured in my mind for years.  Materials from Nineveh, Syria, Babylon, Sumer, Agade, and Ur were all there.  There were ivories (see above) and gold - especially the headdress from the Royal Tombs at Ur.  There were reconstructed musical instruments, legal texts, religious texts, and objects that I had read about and been interested in continuously.  Some seemed smaller than I had imagined them, such as The Goat Caught in a Thicket, or the Standard of Ur (below).  Seeing them at all, however, was a real blessing.

The Standard of Ur

One of the exhibits that I really wanted to see were the materials from the Ship Burial at Sutton Hoo.  I had heard about these treasures before, but have recently run into them in my reading of The Inheritance of Rome, by Chris Wickham.  These treasures and the history that has been inferred around them, makes one realize that one is always a student of history, never its master.

Helmet from the Ship Burial at Sutton Hoo

There was the Enlightenment Room, George IV's monument to rationalism, and Olmec and Mayan treasures that took my breath away.

Olmec head

It was 3:00 - and time for Tea.  There is a wonderful restaurant on the upper level of the Great Court, that sort of wraps around the Reading Room.  There I had tea and a lemon tart, and watched and listened to the people around me: two gay men having tea and dishing, a man and a woman trying to impress each other, a couple of uppity women who pissed off the wait staff and were subsequently ignored by them, four Chinese women who wanted more types of tea than the establishment offered, and finally two Arab business men and their English client/contact, with the Englishman laughing in that disengaged manner that seems something of a stereotype - but there it was.  Too much fun, watching other people.  If Arthur had been with me, we would have surmised stories about each of them.  

I spent my last moments looking at a collection of Mexican revotionary books, posters, woodcuts, etc. that were quite engaging.  I never realized that Orozco was such a firebrand.  Off to the side were some woodcuts by Dürer and Mantegna that brought me back to my roots.  Finally a room filled with Indian and Chinese buddhas, and all their wanna bes formed in granite, basalt, and lacquered wood.  My camera battery ran out - so I new it was time to go.

On the way to the tube, I looked at St. George's Bloomsbury, whose architect stuck a copy of the Tomb at Hellicanarsus on the church's bell tower.  Appropriation - that's what empires are good at, and perhaps the British Museum's argument that they can take care of it best makes sense.  I know what all of this appropriated material has done for me, but what might it do for someone whose roots are part and parcel of these objects?

Dancing Shiva

I meant to close yesterday with a comment about St. Katharine's wheel.  It was the means of her torture and her demise, and when I came across this dancing Shiva, locked in the center of the wheel of fire that is life as we know it, I remembered Katharine's wheel.  We come to a place, leave it and move on, and come back again - a rotation of memory, experience, and deeds.  Perhaps that is what I am here to learn - where am I in this dance?

Day Two - London, 3 March 2010

Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness *

and cleanse me from my sin

For I acknowledge my faults *

and my sin is ever before me.

Psalm 51:2-3, From Morning Prayer in Lent, Common Worship - Daily Prayer

St. Katharine

So began my morning, with these words from Morning Prayer.  Not to say that I was feeling especially like a sinner today, but that the day (which was mostly cold and grey anyway) was covered with a scrim of regret, shame, and anxiety about being unemployed.  In all that I did to get away, it was there as a smudge, or smear over the wonderful things that I did and saw.  Chesley (my psychiatrist) will not be happy to hear this.  

Breakfast followed in the refectory - and I think that most Brits are more shy than I am.  Finally someone broke the ice, and we spoke - albeit briefly.  I took the Tube to South Kensington, a station that brought back memories of my visit here with Joanne in 1974.  Not much had changed at the station.  One nice thing was the pedestrian subway that connects the station to the Natural History Museum (which I did not visit) and the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A).  I read somewhere that after all of these institutions were built, including Royal Albert Hall, the locals called this part of London Albertopolis.  I believe it.

Ceramic mullion at the V&A

At first I found the museum un-engaging.  I suspect that after experiencing the Uffizi in Florence, and the Bode in Berlin last Fall, the casts and assorted Della Robbia didn't seem quite right.  I did give it my best, however, wandering through room after room of stuff.  The V&A must be Britain's attic, much like the Smithsonian is ours.  What was utterly fascinating was the Theatre section, with costumes, photographs, videos, etc., of all the London stage productions.  Truly marvelous!  I avoided all of the Orientalia ( I may go back), and around 11:45 found myself hungry and wandered off to the Café.  Here is where I began to understand the V&A.  Having picked up my Steak and Mushroom Pie (what?  no kidney?!) and a Limonata, I went to the three indoor rooms, all of which are splendid in their Victorian decoration.  I wanted to take photographs, but didn't want to disturb the people around me.  It was then that I understood why I wanted to be there.  After lunch I photographed some architectural details including the fabulous ceramic staircase.

The Ceramic Staircase at the Victoria and Albert Museum

Taking a pause, and looking at the map, I realized that I needed to go see at least two paintings, one by Byrne-Jones, and the other by Dante Gabriel Rosetti (who's the Italophile?).  The painting, The Day Dream, is absolutely stunning, and I found myself taking a considerable amount of time with it.  

The Day Dream by D.G. Rosetti

There were Tuner's an Constable's in the next room - but my aesthetic receptors had all been blown.  It was time to go.

Out onto Brompton Road I took a few steps to John Cardinal Newman's Brompton Oratory.  Jo and I had visited here in 1974, and I recall being very impressed.  That was, however, before I had been to Il Gesu in Rome, or Einsiedeln in Switzerland - that is before I had seen real Baroque buildings.  So this visit was spiritual - I took in the good cardinal's faith, and noticed that the oratory was perhaps 3/4 size of what I had seen in Italy, France, and Germany.  

Up to Knightsbridge, and I avoid Harrod's, instead taking the Tube over to Euston Station.  My goal is to see the Sir Flinders Petrie collection at the University College - London.  This is not a museum.  One runs up a flight of stairs to a very ordinary looking door, having gone into one down on the street, where one is cordially greeted by some graduate assistant who tells me that I can photograph, but without flash, and to enjoy myself.  I pushed open a door and went into a wonderland.  You have to understand that I have been an Egyptophile since I was 8 (one of the first books I borrowed from the Library in Albuquerque, New Mexico, was a book on "the heretic king - Akhetaten").  

From right to left: Ahketaten, Nefertiti, and daughter Meriaten

And here he is, with his wife, Nefertiti, and daughter offering praise (see the hands of blessing coming from the obliterated sun) to the sun god, Aten.  As you can see from the photo, all of these treasures are propped up in rather ordinary cases of wood and glass.  There was glass, pottery, beads, pieces of sculpture, stelae, and a cast of the Palette of Narmar.  This was all stuff that I had read about as a kid - and there it was in front of me.  Especially wonderful were the pieces from Tell El Amarna, Ahketaten's abandoned capital.

As my daughter Anna reminded me once, as we travelled through the Colorado Rockies, "even splendor can become boring."  I wasn't bored, but I had taken in about as much as was possible, so I headed around the corner to a huge gothic revival church, The Church of Christ the King.  I was first aware of a small chapel on my way to the Petrie Collection, but when I actually got there, I realized that it was a huge building.  Someone was playing the organ, which was nice.  It was nothing that I could identify, but I liked it all the same.  

The English Chapel at the Church of Christ the King

I naturally thought that this was a "redundant" Anglican Church, since a sign stated that the church proper was not in regular use.  It wasn't until I got into the chapel that I read about what this building was really all about.  It was built as the "Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church" by a group in the late nineteenth century who followed the teachings of a Scottish Presbyterian pastor, who was not beholden to Romans, Orthodox, or Anglicans, but who believed in the catholicity of the church.  He ordained 12 men, who ordained others, but when all of the original 12 died, there were no more "new apostles" to ordain pastors, and so the movement died out (ca. 1910).  The trustees for this building rent it to the Church of England to serve as a chapel to the University.  The windows in the chapel are truly unusual, and I sneaked an illegal exposure of some of them.

I walked down to Tottenham Court, looking for either tea or an underground, which ever came first.  The underground won, and I train back to Knightsbridge.  The foodcourts at Harrod's are wonderful, but not as easily used as the ones at Ka Da We in Berlin, so I retreat across the street and have tea at Richoux (wonderful sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, fruit cake, and a pretty dreadful strawberry thing) which must serve as supper.

Thence back to Harrod's, perhaps to buy a hat, but way too expensive - so no to that.  Selfridges?  I am tired so I get back on the tube, which is really slow because of an "illness" at Westminster.  I get off at Lymehouse, and go to Cost Cutter and get some snacks.  

I think I've forgotten the scrim for a few moments, so off to dreamland.  Perhaps the Rosetti lady will help me.

Day One - London, 2 March 2010

St. Simeon Styletes sitting on his pillar.

How does one begin a retreat, or a spiritual quest?  When I made my new situation in life (being laid off from my job of some 24 years) known to close friends, almost universally they had the same advice.  "Go away," each one of them said.  "You have been given the gift of time."  The going away part proved to be relatively simple - it was the time part - that gift of time - that proved to be somewhat difficult.  How shall I spend the time?  It needed to have an intentional spiritual thrust to it, and my instinct was to go to Christ in the Desert, or something like that, and lay low and pray.

I wrote to a friend in England, and asked his advice.  Aside from the suggestion to go to Iona (which seemed way impossible) his alternatives were all urban.  So as I type this I am aware of the comings and goings of the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) system directly facing my window.  Around the calm garden and chapel of the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine's are the working parts of this city, from the Canary Wharf developments, to the old brick dock buildings now housing other concerns.  This may not be a desert that Simeon Styletes would have appreciated, but it is an oasis in the setting like the one in which I try to do ministry.

It was ordinary things that got me here.  Seat 24J on a United 777, and an Express pass to Paddington Station and some dealings with the Circle Line on the London Underground.  As I walked under railway bridges, and between cars (I always looking the wrong way) suddenly I came on St. Katharine's, my urban wilderness.  Warmly greeted and shown to my "flat", I was informed that Evening Prayer was at 5:15.  So I went, and gathered with other clergy as we said the prayers, laying aside the C of E's Common Worship - Daily Prayer, to use a Roman breviary that was pronounced "not as wordy".  I had a hard time with my "hard 'r's'", as the British around me elegantly proclaimed the prayers.  It was hard not to fall into their cadence and pronunciation.  I thought of Arthur and the lady at Collins Street Bakery, "you playin' with me boy!?"  They wanted to know all about me,  did I know Alan Jones (from a former classmate),  had I done the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, which parish did I serve, and had I been to Sausalito?  All very human and ordinary stuff.  It was the prayers that led me beyond myself into the faith and customs that deeply united us.  I was sad when the office ended.

The chapel at St. Katharines

Now came the hard part - eating in England.  Trekked over to a restaurant called La Figa, which sits in a rather utilitarian manner on the ground floor of a residential block (two towers) called the Mosaic.  It was nominally Italian, although all the waiters spoke Italian, but the English with their boiling pot of water were there - this was not an Italian restaurant.  There was a little boy, quite cute actually, whose parents let him run around the space unattended and screaming.  The hard surfaces only made his and my plight all the worse.  I thought on St. Anthony and his temptations.  Was it my Großpapa who said, "the reason God made babies so cute is so that we wouldn't kill them."?  Right now I am in agreement.

So, I am both in and out of the desert, but am sufficiently alone to feel a tinge of loneliness, and spiritual purpose.  Tomorrow will bring other aspects to my search.

Travel Nerves

I'm sitting in the Church Street Cafe nursing a de-caf mocha, and taking care of last minute details before going home to pack.  I always have this free-form anxiety before I travel, and it's not fear of blowing up in the plane over the polar route, or getting lost, or anything like that.  I think it's about the loneliness that comes when I travel by my self.  I enjoy it immensely, but have walked around all morning thinking about Arthur and Anna, and trying to control my compulsion to phone them in the midst of their busy day.  

Some of the anxiety is tied to getting everything done before I leave: thank you notes, some business with various agencies, and churches, and then there is the waiting for the housekeeper to be done, so that I can return home and finish packing.  

From here it's off to downtown for a cheap shoe shine at Nordstroms, and then to pick up some Pounds Sterling at TravelEx - and then home, and maybe a nap.  The nap is THE best cure for free-form anxiety.

The Elegance of the Hedgehog - A Review

I read this book with my computer at the ready. Like Umberto Eco's work, it is necessary to complete the context of Barbery's book. Ideas, place names, artists, shops, and pastries were all new, and I felt the necessity to fully explore the references. What drives this work is not only the plot, which is intricate and compelling, but the entire context of the plot. The context is not only the places in which the action (which is largely intellectual) happens, but also the philosophical and esthetic environment which occupies or is occupied by the two main characters. Taking the time with each of these individuals, and especially for me, Reneé, served to fill in the many gaps that I have of French artistic and intellectual life. It surprised me that so much had left me by during my liberal arts education. On that level alone, the book was worth it.

The story itself is one of hope and discovery. At times I wondered if the two characters weren't really two manifestations of one personality - each reflecting a different time and history. They operate in sort of a prose xiasmus, each reflecting aspects of the other, including fate.  I found the older woman more attractive and compelling. The younger one had not yet lived enough life - but certainly had the capacity to do so. It gave me pause to think my own development as an individual ensconced in intellectual and esthetic history. It's not so much what I want to know, as it is what do I want to be?  The philosophical references, especially the German phenomenologist speak to this in the book, and the ghost of Sartre looms over it large.

Some in my book club commented that the characters were "over the top" and "unbelievable."  As they said this I wondered if this is not so much a French book as it is a piece of Japanese manga, albeit without all the drawing.  The two characters, and indeed the catalyst Kakuro, are all a bit larger than life, and printed in bold colors.  This is not a novel of characters so much as it is an interaction of symbols, types, and metaphors - a different type of literary aesthetic.  As such it serves to tell a story, but even more so to launch the reader into other modes of being and knowing.  To have read it only for the plot points and story line would have been a huge mistake.