This week featured much organizing and reorganizing. My life (and my house and my office) may not look any simpler or cleaner from the outside, but I feel as if I’m back on the right path. And I highly recommend finding a way to learn about calculus without taking any quizzes or tests. They are so stressful!
The Impossible Read has been going well, and this weekend I read The Fall of Arthur, an unfinished poem by J.R.R. Tolkien, and commentary on the work by his son Christopher. I kept meaning to watch the movie The Green Knight, but my plans shifted back and forth all weekend and I kept losing the opportunities. Or, more honestly, I kept choosing to do other worthwhile things and then remembering the movie when there was no longer enough time — like right now — to watch it in one sitting.
Some of these other worthwhile things have included cataloguing books from my library and packing them up so that they were no longer double shelved, doing laundry, hanging up my clean clothes in my closet, and getting rid of some of the clutter in my bedroom.
I also finished reading a particularly aggravating biography of Robert Louis Stevenson, which is background of the author of Treasure Island, which inspired a book by H. Rider Haggard that inspired a sequel from H. Rider Haggard that apparently inspired a work by the subject of my research project. So obviously the next book to read on this list is Treasure Island, which I think that I first read in the sixth grade. It has been suggested that I then re-watch the movie Treasure Planet.
It may seem as though I have too many reading lists going. The Impossible Read is surely long enough without my continuing to add to it, no? But when I created my list of books that were stepping stones on the path of classic science fiction, I saw several times when my lists overlapped. So some of the books will be read as I come to them on the SF list, and it shouldn’t hurt the progress (such as it is) of the Impossible Read to have already finished a particular book.
Watching The Green Knight should finally wrap up the Arthur/Beowulf/Gawain section of the Read. The next book on that list is The Fellowship of the Ring, which I probably read for the first time somewhere around 1987 or 1988. So many lives ago….
Knitwise, I made a little bit of progress on my Cottontail scarf, which I keep at work and keep forgetting to bring home. I did a few rows here and a few rows there. The gauge is probably somewhere around five or six rows to an inch, so in a single sitting I don’t really perceive any added length to the piece. On the other hand, my goals for the project are to keep my hands busy from time to time and to end up with a scarf. So I’m getting done what I want to do.
The biggest progress was probably made with the Licorice Blanket — ironically, by deciding to frog it. I knew how many rows I needed to pull back to re-try the ending, and I kept putting it off. Finally I laid the blanket out on my dining room table and saw it as it really was. It didn’t look like a long runner with pointed ends. It looked like (or would, if I had re-finished it) two huge pointed ends with a very short straight bit in the center. In other words…it wouldn’t look “right” no matter what I did.
That made it easier for me to come to terms with completely undoing the work. I don’t know what else I would like to do with the yarn, and I certainly don’t know what the yarn really wants to be. And it’s likely that I will pass the yarn along to another yarnie who does know the answers to these mysteries. So I rolled it back up into three balls, put them in a project back along with their ball bands, and put the project bag away for a while.
When I was putting the Licorice yarn away, I came across a single cake of thrift-store ombre yarn with a pattern already tucked into its bag. I think I’ll work on smaller projects for a while as I try to make a dent in the stash. After all, winter is coming.
To celebrate the end of the first section of reading for The Impossible Read, this weekend I watched three movies related to the King Arthur books that I have read so far. On Saturday, Eldest and I watched the sweet and charming The Sword in the Stone (Disney, 1963), an animated dramatization of portions of the first section of T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. I knew that Eldest hadn’t seen this movie, but until I watched it I didn’t realize that I had never seen it, either.
While it didn’t bring back any memories for me, it was a gentle delight. I did note the similarities between several of the film’s animals to animals in other Disney films — particularly to the wolves, snakes, and even the boy in the upcoming The Jungle Book (1967). The Sword in the Stone has been waiting patiently in line for its live remake, but it seems that the project is now on indefinite hold.
The next movie was the 1967 film adaptation of the musical “Camelot.” Again, this was a first-time viewing for me. I grew up with access to several vinyl Broadway cast albums and played them over and over during my preteen and teen years, but “Camelot” was not one of them. I didn’t even know any of the songs from it.
It was a three-hour movie with an intermission, and because it took its time in setting up the relationships between the three primary characters there wasn’t much time for anything else. Merlin/Merlyn and Archimedes get some flashbacks as Arthur asks for guidance, and King Pellinore shows up — probably to serve the purpose of giving Arthur someone else to talk to. Mordred suddenly appears at Camelot (with a three-sentence back story) and creates havoc and disarray. Arthur, with all the guidance he has received, still seems helpless as everyone’s fates play out.
The final feature was the 1975 film Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Now I know why each and every knight calls out “Camelot!” when the party views the castle through the trees: it’s just the way it happened in the movie.
I’ve seen this movie many times before, and it was fun to see it again. The DVD edition I have is subtitled “the ultimate definitive final special edition DVD” and contains a ridiculously long list of bonus features. I just played the movie, but I did notice some extra footage I hadn’t seen before, particularly in the adventure of Sir Galahad. I probably shouldn’t have started watching Monty Python at the tender age that I did, but it’s too late to do anything about it now.
Checkpoint: So far I have read 1,443 pages and watched almost 6 hours of movies related to the Impossible Read. Onward we go with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, followed by a movie break, and then Lev Grossman’s The Bright Sword (as soon as I can get a copy).
In other news, on Saturday morning I was able to pick up my repaired saxophone, retrieve my unrepaired saxophone, and get two books of sheet music I had ordered. I’m concentrating now on getting the setup right so I don’t put too much strain on my hands, so I haven’t launched into actual practices yet.
Knitwise, the Victorian Duet Scarf KAL by Franklin Habit kicked off this weekend with the release of the pattern. I’m also hooked up on the official Discord channel for the KAL, which means that, after all these years, I have finally installed Discord. Knitters from around the world are posting photos of their work and/or their swatches (I didn’t swatch), asking questions, and contributing to a broad conversation ranging from this specific pattern and how the design will come together, to the gauges preferred by Victorian knitters and the reasons why.
I cast on using Franklin’s knitted cast-on method, for 45 stitches.
After knitting ten rows on Saturday, I forged ahead and knitted two more rows on Sunday while watching Camelot — then noticed an error I had made on Row 10 that forced me to un-knit rows 12, 11, and most of 10 before I could correct my mistake and go forward again.
The second photo shows 3-3/4 inches of knitting where there will eventually be 30. I can do ten rows of the pattern in a long sitting, but can I find a way to do that twice a day? On US3 needles?
After four months of my Impossible Read project, during which I spent most of those days not reading, I have finished the first book on the list: T. H. White’s 1939 book The Once and Future King. I have an Ace Fantasy edition that was printed, and possibly acquired, in 1996.
As I have stated before, when I began this project I demanded far too much of myself — so much that I got in my own way and stymied any progress at all on reading the book. I wanted not only to read the greatest classic works of all time but also to create a neat, creative, multimedia reading journal for the ages. And that was just too much. (I still want to do it, but I’m now telling myself that I can do all that on the second pass through the reading list.)
Once I got over that issue, it was much easier to make time for reading. And after I got past the second “book” in the novel, “The Queen of Air and Darkness,” I was hooked on the story. Sometimes I stayed up late just to read a few more chapters.
The story begins with the boy Arthur, nicknamed “Wart,” being raised by Sir Ector along Sir Ector’s son Kay. The eccentric Merlyn presents himself as a teacher to both of the boys, but since he is living backwards in time his focus is on training Wart — who he knows will eventually be Arthur, King of England.
Along the way in this first section (“The Sword in the Stone”) we meet Robin Wood (not Robin Hood!), Maid Marian, Friar Tuck, and other members of Robin’s band that we remember, or think we remember, from the 1973 Disney movie. I was surprised to see these two very English tales combined in one narrative.
The way this particular version of the King Arthur tale is told, however, soon reminded me of the storytelling structure used in “The Princess Bride” (1987). Though Arthur’s tale is timeless, it’s definitely being told, perhaps as if to children or grandchildren, in 1939. There are references to cricket, to contemporary politics and fashions, and to Nazis. As much as Merlyn cautions Wart to learn to think for himself, the narrator expects the reader to make certain connections between Arthur’s story and contemporary events.
Another curious aspect of this version of the story has to do with how many times the narrator straight-out tells the reader that if they’d like a blow-by-blow retelling they should just read Malory’s Morte D’Arthur. Now that I have finished The Once and Future King, a friend is sending me an 480-page edition of the Malory so I can do just that. (Next time around, of course.)
Anyway. In the first section we also meet King Pellinore and view his curiously codependent relationship with the Questing Beast, who is lost and purposeless when she has no one to hunt her. But we don’t just meet characters; we learn the rules of chivalry and tournamenting that we will need to know all through the book.
Each section of the book views the larger story through the lens of a particular character: Arthur; Queen Morgause and her sons; Lancelot; and an omniscient narrator who jumps from view to view and finally settles back in the mind of Arthur. By the end of the book, Arthur is an elderly king who finally understands Merlyn’s reasons for trying to teach him how to think both rationally and on behalf of his entire nation rather than for his own self-interest. He is able to look back on his life and view his actions in context, now seeing where his mistakes have caused harm. The final pages give Arthur, and the reader, hope of a bright future. In fact, the last two words of the story are the label, “THE BEGINNING.”
Before I read this book I was only vaguely familiar with the notion of Camelot. In “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” (1975), which I have seen several times, it was presented as the home of the Round Table, both a mythic and noble destination and “a silly place.” But it was also used to describe the Kennedy White House. I read hundreds if not thousands of pages about John F. Kennedy when I was a teenager, and came across this reference several times. But since I had neither read the King Arthur story nor watched the movie “Camelot” (1967) by that time, I assumed that it referred to the society of King Arthur and his knights in its glory days. By the time I reached the third book, “The Ill-Made Knight,” I began to see other associations between King Arthur and Kennedy — tragic ones. When I neared the end of “A Candle in the Wind,” the final section, I was reading with a more sober and slightly broken heart.
I mentioned earlier that Merlyn was living backwards in this story, which immediately brought to mind the “Doctor Who” character River Song. She also could not remember when she had last met the Doctor, which would be the first time that he met her. Their relationship was always confused, not the least because the Doctor regenerated two times during her story arc. But thinking about the Camelot connection to the Kennedy administration put me in mind of David Tennant’s Tenth Doctor, particularly at the end of “The Waters of Mars” (2009), when the Doctor succumbs to pride and begins to see himself as an all-powerful force. It’s a terrifying episode in so many ways, but the final minutes of the episode hint less at the monsters than at the tragedy that lies ahead. And of course, “Doctor Who” is another very English tale.
The Doctor, thinking he has control over destiny.
This week I’ll continue the Impossible Read by starting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s 1982 novel The Mists of Avalon, of which I own a 1984 Del Rey/Ballantine edition. This time, the Arthurian legend will be told from the point of view of the women in the story. After I finish this book, I will close out the segment with three movies: “The Sword in the Stone” (1963), “Camelot,” and “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” Huge thanks go to my friend Casey for suggesting that I watch the movies in this order. The idea is that I’ll watch a child’s version of the Arthur legend, then watch a grown-up’s version of the story, then watch a version which turns everything upside down and then blows it all up.
I added one more typewriter to my collection this weekend, despite the fact that its thrift store label read “DOES NOT WORK.” The label also read “$2.00,” so I was willing to take a chance that it might just turn out to be a parts machine for another collector/restorer. But I’m not sure that will be its fate.
This 1951 Remington-Rand Super-Riter Standard was designed so that its top, side, and back panels would practically pop off for access to the insides for cleaning and adjustments. (They were loose when I bought it; perhaps that convinced the previous owner that it was truly falling apart.) After I brought it home I was able to quickly find and download, for free, both its user manual (“Operating Instructions”) and its 77-page service manual (“Mechanical Instructions”).
Meet “Vincent.”
And after a few minutes of skimming the manuals and fiddling around, I was able to get several things working that hadn’t worked before. The carriage still doesn’t advance when the keys are pressed, but that feels like some kind of mechanical misalignment; something just isn’t catching. I will have to learn more and dig deeper to find and address the mechanical difficulty, so for now I have fastened the panels on more securely, taken some photos, and created an entry in my typewriter inventory.
The typebars are in wonderful shape: this is regular-motion elite type.
Knitwise, I added a few rows to the Habit-Forming Scarf in the course of the week and weekend. It’s now 22-1/2 inches long. I usually get more knitting done on a Formula One weekend; the next race (Imola) isn’t until next weekend, but Monaco will be held the following week.
I did pull the rest of the yarn from the skein and wind it into a little ball. That reminds me that the next skein is soon to come.
My campus (and community) based yarn community will meet on May 21 for lunch and yarning. Surely by the time the green flag is waved at Monaco, I will have joined the second skein of yarn to the scarf.
Chocolate Sheep 