Random Number Lit Last Leavings 2023
Almost Done with the Recap of the things I missed telling you about in the fall of 2023
It is at this point in drafting these series of newsletters that I regret leaving this detail too long in the telling. I have typed a recap of a late summer round up. I typed an entire recap of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I then recapped what was mostly just October 2023, and now I will finalize what I was able accomplish from the end of October until just about now. I will save most of December reads for a complete December recap just before a Year in Review newsletter early in the New Year.
If you are reading this an unaware, a great percentage of attention this project gets is in intermittent postings to a Youtube Channel under the same name, Random Number Lit. I post reaction videos immediately after finishing a novel and then I record as I randomly pull the next book.
There is also an Instagram feed that has more up-to-the-minute action of what I am reading at the time and anything that falls in my way as I dig into these books.
There is also a Pango Book Store, however you access that app, under the same name where I post copies that I have read from for sale so I can buy fancier versions if there is one.
Thank you for reading this far.
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
Herman Melville - Billy Budd
Mary Tudor - Selected Letters (these are not all the letters I read. I investigated an 11 volume set of physical texts sent to me via interlibrary loan. I have not found a good repository of those letters online yet)
Pierre Larousse - The Grand Dictionary (This is a link through to Hathi Trust, I am not sure if you will have access to it if you are not connected to an institution with permissions).
Charles Dickens - David Copperfield
I did not pull David Copperfield. I imagine a gasp here. I know, the nature of this project is that I only read books that I pull randomly or else how can I call this Random Number Lit. Well, I began reading this book because of Barbara Kingsolver. Kingsolver won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction this year for her novel Demon Copperhead. Before this project a friend of mine, Drew Moody, and I read all of the pulitzer prize winners together so that project has a special slot into this project and whenever a new Pulitzer is announced that gives me carte blanche to read a new book each year. Erdrich’s winner was fantastic. I may or may not post videos about those books because I don’t know if they will all stand the test of time like the “classics” will. Many of the early pulitzer winners I know for sure will not. So, I decided to read David Copperfield. Also, I have never read any Dickens so I had no idea what to expect.
From my cultural associations with Dickens I know that he was both a very popular but also very well thought of writer during his lifetime which is a trick many a writer never pulls off. I have also often heard Dickens’ writing talked about in very grim terms so I anticipated dark and depressing material. That is not what I found in Copperfield at all, or only in parts. Dickens can write a villain for sure, two or three such villains in Copperfield that really frustrate and disappoint. Then there is a cadre of unreliable characters that also frustrate and disappoint. I loved this book and I loved that this was my introduction to Dickens as well. Murdstone is a true villain in a classical sense that takes everything from Copperfield and thinks he is doing him a favor. Murdstone basically sells him into slavery and resents him for getting in his way later in the novel.
Something happens early on in the novel that tipped Dickens’ hand to me and that I was looking for ever after in the novel. When Copperfield is imprisoned in his own house, Dickens places him in a small library by himself from this vantage point Copperfield basically educates himself. This is a fascinating turn and something that I have thought often about. Rousseau is concerned with this in Emile and Mary Shelley is concerned with this in Frankenstein. Defoe is concerned with this in Crusoe and most recently Flaubert is concerned with this in a decidedly French way in Sentimental Education. I am steeped in this notion of how to build a mind. Oddly enough, Flaubert’s deeply embodied, tempted, and distracted way is one of the more convincing approaches honestly.
Copperfield says that he only has 10 books with him in the study a few of which are adventure stories of Smollet but most notably he has Crusoe and Don Quixote, Arabian Nights and Tale of the Genji (both these latter ones I have not read for the project though I read the Heike which takes place right before Genji). It is in these books that Copperfield forges his personality, and there could perhaps not be any better books to do so. One of the first elements that Dickens is doing something with the canon of the classics is young Copperfield’s walk to Canterbury which resembles the classic Canterbury Tales. On that walk, the companions regal each other with tales on their way from Wincester to Canterbury. Copperfield only does one side of that journey but I don’t think you can take a walk from London to Canterbury in British literature without drawing connections back to a very famous walk in the same direction. Copperfield does the walk alone but the same sentiments are invoked here.
The other moment I took note of was this a curious moment with Steerforth much later in the novel. Steerforth, his mercurial friend, is sitting staring into the fire at Peggoty’s just before the incident occurs. Copperfield surprises him unintentionally and Steerforth exclaims, “You’ve come upon me like a reproachful ghost!” And I burst out laughing while reading this. What a delightful exclamation, quoting Macbeth at a time like this! So then it occurs to me to watch out for Steerforth as a potential MacBeth character. That doesn’t pan out exactly, there is a petulance to Steerforth that I don’t read into MacBeth but Rosa Dartle strikes me as a Lady MacBeth type and so I watched this character this point on to see if it happens and like clockwork it seemed to fit. So then I began to investigate the other characters to see who might be a stand in for someone else and I think there is evidence enough to say that Peggoty himself is Robinson Crusoe, or the archetypal sailor, and Mr. Micawber is Don Quixote which Dickens portrays as a sort of con man that finally makes good.
Here is what I loved like way down in my spirit that I don’t think I can sufficiently express here. I had a similar experience with with Fathers and Sons and Hemingway where there is something about loving a thing and then finding out that someone else loves it too that there is a shared intimacy here that I find fascinating. I feel like I know something about Dickens now as I see him marshaling these little toy blocks around on this stage of his own making. He is as little ownership of Don Quixote in the mid 1800’s as I do in 2023. The same can be said of Crusoe written some 150 years before Copperfield. But then there is something else that is happening here, there is an invitation to play that Dickens is offering you (masterfully I might add) that if you are familiar with these works then watch what I do with them. It is almost like having a conversation parallel to the text that (if you are read in) is a constant question “do you agree?” or “what do you think of my interpreting these texts this way?” I was most struck by this with Mr Micawber for two reasons. First, that Dickens would have thought of Don Quixote as a con man and the taker-advantager of innocence (which Don Quixote willfully does for sure) but then that Don Quixote dies disabused of his fantasies whereas Micawber is rewarded for his eccentricities in the end so there is this sort of rewriting of Don Quixote that Dickens engages in which is almost like fan fiction we might say now - but Dickens gives breath to what I feel like in Don Quixote is a mistake on Cervantes part - but that is my own Don Quixote-ing the story itself. And so there is this wink that Dickens holds in his eye as he invites on this journey with him, Copperfield but also Dickens himself in a different way. And it is this master class but also this dialogue he is having with the reader and the secret door that I passed through to be able to engage with Dickens in this way is an honor in my life that I will never forget. I don’t know if it is reasonable to express that you should read Don Quixote and Robinson Crusoe before you read David Copperfield but I loved it and I hope I could show you why.
Herman Melville - Billy Budd
I pulled the name Herman Melville from the Small Works List, again from an Early American Literature list, and had somewhat of an idea of what I was going to read. As soon as the thought occurred to me to make this sort of project, Moby Dick, is in the cards for the Big Book List. In fact, because of the Big Book List I have read Nickerson’s account The Loss of the Ship Essex - the actual events that inspired Melville’s epic. Now that book and its accounts were transferred to the Small Works List where they belong and so I have to contend with Melville. I will save Moby Dick for another day as I will at some point draw this name on the Big Book List, and so I have to read something else. In recent years, Melville’s Confidence Man has gotten a lot of attention due to the political climate we are in and so the thought occurred to me to pick this one. Knowing, as Frost says, how way leads onto way I doubt I should ever come back to Melville and so what will I read of his that is that other text that you have to have read in order to contend with Melville. Confidence Man is there, but I thought it would probably be Billy Budd if you are going to read two things from Melville. My library had a copy just sitting on the shelves and so I picked it up and read it in two days.
There is a moment in right, smack dab in the middle of this book that stopped me in my tracks. The novella revolves around the life of the Handsome Sailor, Billy Budd, basically a couple of days in his life really. He is transferred to a government ship. There have been a raft of mutinies lately. Mutiny has to be squashed in its least most expression immediately, thoroughly and harshly on the high seas. The Handsome Sailor runs afoul of the master at arms for reasons that I did not pick up on, could have been your garden variety jealousy. Apparently, there is some mention of the spilling of soup. Anyways, Billy gets word from the Dansk that this guy is out for him. Billy plays it off. All of this is happening very quickly I might add. Then, someone comes to tell Billy in the middle of the night to watch out. Billy doesn’t trust this communication and charges after the guy only to be caught unawares. Later, the captain calls Billy up to the cabin because he has been accused of starting a mutiny. There are three of them in the room, Captain Vere the starry-eyed captain (who almost knows that Billy is innocent), the master at arms (an old crook), and Billy the innocent.
Captain Vere lets the situation play out as it stands. Here is the accuser, here is the accused - what do you say for yourself? Unfortunately, Billy has two problems. Billy stutters and is unable to speak for himself but also Billy doesn’t know enough about his own situation to be able to defend himself properly. Billy cannot answer the accusation, and instead punches the master of arms to death. This dooms Billy’s fate instantly. Next the captain, now with a real problem on his hands, has to convene a jury of the shipmates and try Billy for murder or a real mutiny because killing a higher ranking crew member is tantamount to mutiny on board. One of the lieutenants asks Billy a simple question:
‘One question more,’ said the officer of marines, now first speaking and with a troubled earnestness. ‘You tell us that what the master-at-arms said against you was a lie. Now why should he have so lied, so maliciously lied, since you declare there was no malice between you?”
This is a question of judgment right here in the middle of this text. Billy cannot answer this question because he does not know. The answer was withheld from him by his own rash action. The answer is held back from him by his own innocence. His answer is held back from him by his own handsomeness (not having perhaps to have strained through the muck of hard passage because of his innate skill or the natural deference offered handsome men). He cannot answer though the fate stays the same. This is a fascinating calculation on Melville’s part and is a timeless parable about making difficult decisions with not enough information, the impossibility of choice. Given this then, Billy is doomed to die. Apparently, all of this has happened in the middle of the night and maritime law requires to do executions at first light so Billy has to pass the night knowing he will die aboard the ship that was his doom. This is one of the most hauntingly beautiful scenes I can think of in literature, next to the graveyard scene between murderess Lady Audley and reluctant detective Robert Audley in Lady Audley’s Secret.
Billy dies perhaps for all of us fools who have gotten in over our heads and were crushed by systems and choices that we did not and could not understand at the time. Billy dies for Joseph K. in Kafka’s Trial some 100 years later. I am intrigued by this question and what it says out about our ability to judge rightly for ourselves. I loved this little book but I did not love the prose of it. Melville’s writing is intricate and difficult in a way I do not enjoy. Often times, I have to stop myself to make sure I can summarize what is literally happening on the page. A lot of words happen but not a lot of plot, and so you have to retrace what you think happened just in real time in the plot of the story and I think the most I got was that Billy spilled some soup nearby where Claggard, the master-at-arms, was walking. The fact that that is hard to pin down I think is a weakness of the text, everything else was a delight.
Mary Tudor - “Selected Letters”
This one was a struggle to find someone to read of Mary Tudor’s because lots of people were called Mary then. There was a Mary Tudor Brandon just before Mary, a sister of Henry VIII who was briefly the Queen of France. I presumed that this was not the Mary Tudor from the list. Then there is Mary Queen of Scots who was also queen for sometime, but I don’t believe this is the person whom the list is speaking of. The one I settled on was Queen Mary I also known as Bloody Mary. I read extensively of the brief histories I could find on this subject to find out if there is anything that she wrote during her life. I found that there were at my count now two plays about this person, one by Victor Hugo and the other by Tennyson as far as I can gather. Hugo’s, now on reflection, may have been about the Queen Mary of France but I would have to double check this now.
I didn’t retain much of the history that I read about Queen Mary I. It appears that she was committed to Catholicism, in what appears to me in her letters, in a genuine way. Her father, Henry VIII took on a very public fight and division with the Catholic Church for not very defensible reasons. After Henry VIII’s death, her brother Edward takes the throne and continues the family feud with Rome and at one point requests of his sister to stop holding masses in her house. This is the moment that I keyed into this drama. The threat is death. Some courtier is tasked with delivering this letter from brother to sister, knowing full well what it contains, the rumors are true. Mary receives this letter and writes back immediately in all appropriate modesty but politely refuses to stop.
My dutye mose humbly remembered unot your Majestie. It maye please the same to be advertised that I have by my servants received your moste honorable Letter, the contentes wherof doe not a litle trouble me, and so much the more for that any of my servants should move or attempte me in matters towching my sowle, which I thinke the meaneste subjecte within your realme could evell beare at their servants hande;
She has received the letter from the hand of a servant and it has troubled her, and send ends the letter with not a little dig at her brother:
Our Lorde be praysed, your Majestie hath farre more knowledge and greater guiftes then others of your yeares, yet it is not possible that your Highnes can at theis yeares be a judge in matters of Religeon. And therefore I take it that the matter in your letter procedeth from such as do wish those things to take place, which be moste agreeable to themselves; by whose doings (your Majestie not offended) I intend not to rule my Conscyence.
The tone here is something like, ‘hey bud, you are young and perhaps may not know all the ends and outs of this religion thing. Don’t ask this of me. For context King Edward was 13 at this time, and Mary was 34. This occasion came to ahead in front of court where the child king reproves Mary to her face for undermining what their father wanted, and both apparently are brought to tears publicly. Edward is concerned that if Mary were to take over after him she would usher in a new and vengeful Catholicism and so he disinherits her and their sister, Elizabeth, from the line of succession. In a short reversal, Edward dies young and appoints Lady Jane Grey as queen. Mary has had enough of this, and begins a very quick and successful rebellion locking Lady Jane Grey in the Tower of London. This is where I stopped in my reading of Queen Mary I. The letters change direction at this point, at least, in the resources I was using and so I lost track of how to manage this history. Bloody Mary’s reign starts at this point and reprisals against the anti-Catholic movement start here which lays the ground work for Queen Elizabeth’s rule just around the corner. According to a British historian that I talked to about this, Bloody Mary’s reign was not as bloody as Queen Elizabeth’s, it was just more shocking to the British narrative of its self at the time. I have not corroborated that story, but I am interested now to see how the rest of British history plays out with this arrow in the quiver.
Pierre Larousse - The Grand Dictionary
Have you ever heard of a wild goose chase? Well, you are about to hear about one. I pulled Pierre Larousse out of the ephemera of the Small Works List - World Lit 1800-1900. Obviously, I have no idea who this person is. I have read several French authors from around this time and later that would in all likelihood have read this very document for which I am about to explain. I did a quick Google search and I found the results astounding and daunting all at once. Pierre Larousse seems to have taken part in a very early field of bringing together all of the world’s knowledge. In the mid 1850s in France, Larousse was producing children’s educational material when the idea strikes him to combine the modes of dictionary and encyclopedia to see if he can bring together sufficient material for a comprehensive encyclopedia. When I tried to find something that he himself wrote though what I found was that the name Larousse becomes the standard French publisher of all things dictionary from then on. Larousse in the name in town for French translation dictionaries and all assorted travel guides and explainer texts. I am awash in titles attributed to this name but none of which are by his pen in the 19th century.
I was able to find through some help from my university’s reference librarians a digital copy of the original Grand dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle. I have seen scanned pages of a great many of the pages of this document. I created a slideshow of all the Letter Headings for the original Grand Dictionary commissioned by Larousse. I tried to make it a gif (pronounced with a soft “g” sound for anyone keeping score) but for some reason the file was too big.
Here is what I know now. The Grand Dictionary is an incredible document that I may spend quite a lot of time with going forward. This entry provides for this part of the project a survey of information that I am missing in the not quite ancient past motivations and inclinations that I don’t know enough about like what an average French person would have thought about Napoleon or Voltaire. Larousse was not an average person but the book would have been available to help form the opinions of a large population. There is something of the glue of the fabric of thought that a resource like this would hold together. It wasn’t until I got into this name and this text that I realized that like today’s Wikipedia, the power of the rhetorical force an encyclopedia has. I then began to translate by hand the 100 page preface that Larousse wrote in the first volume of this text. I will work through this document slowly as it is dry reading and poorly written thanks to Google translate but in it Larousse writes a concise history of the encyclopedia as human endeavor which will also add a great deal of context to this field of inquiry.
Post Rock Jukebox
While putting this Newsletter spree together over the past couple of days, I found a new Post Rock band from the list, Bell Orchestre. I don’t know much about this band other than they are a lo-fi vibe machine that just works in a really delightful little way. This verges onto the classical music sort genre but it is just really light, airy and chill in a big way. Anything they have made is good, I started at the beginning and my appreciation only grew as I listened through the discography.
There also won’t be a currently reading entry here because this dispatch isn’t completely up-to-date either. There will be one more dispatch as I try to clear out the cobwebs of not having posted in some time. I look forward to getting back to current soon and so I can let you see what it is that I am doing in an updated way.
If you are reading at this point, I would like to say thank you for doing so. I appreciate the company on such a long journey
.