Purgatorio- Dante  (1321) 
Continuing through Purgatorio 

Canto 22
Level 6: gluttony
The canto starts with the entrance to the sixth level, and while Virgil, Dante, and Statius climb, Virgil and Statius converse. Virgil lets Statius know that he actually knew of Statius love for him because another soul was in limbo that had related this to him. Virgil asks Statius how someone with so much wisdom could have been in the level of avarice for so long. Statius replies that it wasn’t avarice, but its inverse: profligacy, that was his sin. Both are punished on the same level. Statius also reveals that it was Virgil’s own writing that prompted him to become a Christian. One of Virgil’s lines caused Statius to reconsider his sin and repent, and another verse, mentioning a ‘new progeny descending from heaven’, along with the preaching of the Christians, caused him to turn to the Christian faith. But sadly, he was afraid, so he hid his faith and pretended to be a pagan. It was this that caused him to spend so much time in purgatory. 

Then Statius turns and asks Virgil about who else is there in limbo. A list of names follows that I won’t bore you with, but they finally all arrive up at the sixth level late in the morning. They continue to head counterclockwise around the mountain when they come upon a tree in the middle of the road, tapered upwards. It has sweet apples, and is watered by a stream that pours over the leaves and dissipates. Voices proclaim that one can’t partake of this fruit. Then several examples are given of holy living in the past, where self-denial is extolled. This is the level that purges the sin of gluttony. 

Canto 23 
Level 6: gluttony cont. 
The canto starts with Dante still pondering the tree. Finally, Virgil tells him to get a move on, and so Dante turns and they all head down the road. They soon hear a group of penitents weeping and singing. The penitents, deeply emaciated, pass Dante and Virgil quickly and silently, but one cries out and Dante, not recognizing him at first for his disfigured face, recognizes the voice as that of his friend and fellow poet, Forese Donati. Forese wants to know who is accompanying Dante, but Dante is so taken with Forese’s emaciated figure, that he wants to know what happened to him. Forese explains that a heavenly power runs through the water which causes them to hunger and thirst. This level punishes gluttony and their former sin is purged through this hunger. They must accept the punishment and submit their wills now to reject the appetite of the body.  

Dante wonders how Forese, who had died less than five years ago, managed to get so far up the mountain if he had waited until the last moments of his life to repent. 

Forese answers that it was the prayers of his faithful and devout wife Nella. When he left her, she alone was left to do her good works, for the women of Florence are an evil lot. Then Forese prophecies that very soon, such promiscuous dress will be forbidden from the pulpit.  However, having updated Dante, Forese now has his own burning questions that he wants answers to. The first is that everyone there notices Dante is casting a shadow, meaning he isn’t a shade like the others there. Dante relates how only a few days ago he was still lost and adrift in life, when he was rescued by Virgil and led through hell, then up the mountain of purgatory. He doesn’t name Statius, but pronounces that it is because of him that the recent quake occurred. 

The canto ends here. 

Canto 24  
Level 6: gluttony cont. 
Still on level 6 of purgatory, the canto continues with Dante locked into conversation with Forese. Dante asks about Piccarda, Forese’s sister, and is told she is already in heaven. Dante asks if there are any other notable souls there among those looking at him, and Forese mentions several, none of whom we would know of today. But the first he mentions, Bonagiunta da Lucca, continues to stare at Dante and mutters “Gentucca”, and Dante engages him in conversation. We don’t know who ‘Gentucca’ is (still to this day), but Dante is told that she will cause him to love Lucca, even while others berate it. Presumably, this pertains to some welcome Dante received while exiled from Florence.  

Bonagiunta then asks if he isn’t Dante, the famed poet of the “new style”, who wrote “Women who have an understanding of love”? Dante says he is, and explains that “when love inspires me, I note it and go on expressing what the voice inside me said”.  Dante is essentially explaining that his ‘style’ is based on the notion that Love dictates what to say, and he faithfully transcribes it, dispensing with earthly intermediaries. Bonagiunta then mentions that he, along with two other poets whose names we would no longer know, had fallen short of such a thing, and now he can understand why. Then Bonagiunta adds that apart from this attitude of the poet, there is no difference. At this point, Bonagiunta and the others continue rapidly on their journey.  

Forese stands off and lets them pass, so he can stick with Dante a bit longer, asking when Dante will be back again? Dante says he doesn’t know how much life he has left, but regardless, he would rather be back here to continue on up.  

Forese then breaks from this by telling Dante to go, and that his brother Corso, the one Forese holds most responsible for the troubles in Florence, is about to be dragged to hell while being ignominiously killed. Then he says he must move on since staying with Dante step for step is slowing him down too much.  

At this point, Dante, Virgil, and Statius come upon another tree like the one in the previous canto. They see a bunch of people trying to get at the fruit, like willful children, but then they seem to wise up and understand it is pointless, and accept their lot. As our travelers move by the tree, an unknown voice cries out against the Centaurs that fought against Theseus as well as the Hebrews who were left because they were soft in the way they drank, and so were left behind when Gideon went in to battle against the Midianites. 

They move on for more than a thousand steps when a voice catches them unaware, leading them to the path upward to the next level.  

Canto 25 
The seventh level: lust 
The canto starts off around 2 in the afternoon with Dante, Virgil, and Statius climbing up to the seventh level. The passage is narrow so they must climb up single file. Dante wants to ask a question, but holds back until Virgil basically says: out with it. Dante then asks how those in the last level could suffer and grow so thin if they had no need of food?  

Virgil gives two examples: Meleager, was by the will of the Fates, only to live as long as a log thrown into the fire. But his mother took the log out of fire before it burned up. However, when he killed her brothers in a fight, she threw the log back in when it burned up, he died. The second is of a man’s reflection in a mirror, so that though you can see it as solid, it isn’t. The point is that life and death aren’t a matter of merely feeding the body, but external causes; and the external cause may not even be material. 

Then Virgil calls on Statius to explain the matter. Statius courteously defers to Virgil, but submits to his request in humility and gives this explanation.  

First we get a sort of sterile sex talk, where Statius explains how female eggs get fertilized through the sperm, but the important point is that the sperm and egg have formative power in their blood. 

Once together, they form the embryo, it continues to grow and at this point there isn’t much difference between animal and human souls.  

The second part of the explanation moves to more theological ground, explaining that humans get their immortal soul, with its human reason and intelligence, from God breathing on it to give it this. 

Statius uses two examples to illustrate the point: the first is grape juice and sunlight makes wine. This is meant to show that an earthly element (the juice), and a celestial element (the sunlight) make another element- the wine; the second is from Greek mythology, where the Fate Lachesis cuts the thread of life and the body and soul separate. 

While the faculties of most of the body parts are done, the faculties of the soul: the intellect, will, and memories, are not only functional, but are heightened, no longer obscured by the body.  

The theological portion continues with some pure invention by Dante, who needed to explain how ‘shades’ could suffer physical effects. He describes that at death, the soul knows where it needs to go- either hell or purgatory, and while on the respective shores, the soul uses the same formative power that created the original body, to sort of make a new spiritual one- a shade- that has sensations.  

This is what allows the bodies to suffer the effects of the various levels. 

At this point the three travelers arrive at the last level and are immediately confronted with a serious concern: fire shooting out from the walls of the mountain. This is mitigated by a breeze blowing up from below and deflecting the flames away at the edge, but it means they must tread very carefully near the edge, worried about the flames to the interior, and falling over the edge of the cliff to the outside. 

They hear penitents on this level going through the fire, singing hymns, and then shouting prayerful sayings of those that resisted the sins of lust. This alternating between praise and prayer is the cure for healing up this sin. 

All the King’s Men- Robert Penn Warren  (1946) 
This story is loosely based on Huey Long, the ex-governor and then senator of Louisiana. Willie Talos is a poor farm-boy who studies law and is tapped to run for governor. But he is encouraged by the opposition party to split the vote of his own party. He is doing terribly in the polls, and once he is informed he is the patsy, he transforms. He actively campaigns for the man he was supposedly challenging, but thunders in his speeches that if that man doesn’t fulfill his promises, that he, Willie Talos, will gut him. In the next election, Willie is elected. He learns that politics is a dirty game, but adapts to playing it very well. The story is told from the voice of Jack Burden- a reporter that witnesses Talos’ rise from patsy to populist demagogue, and goes into his employ as a researcher. Jack’s background and PhD is in history, which comes in handy for digging up dirt on Talos’ opponents. The entire novel is absolutely engaging, but for me, especially the political philosophy bits. Talos runs on the theory that man is made of dirt, and so is dirty. No politician can avoid the dirt, he must learn to play in the dirt. You must have power to make things happen, and he is a man that means to make things happen. If that requires playing dirty, then he will do whatever it takes, since if he isn’t playing dirty, the next guy will, and it will be the next guy getting the next guys things done, rather than Talos getting Talos’ things done.  

I don’t run in those circles and I can’t personally say whether that kind of cynicism is warranted or not, but given what I do know from reading history, it may, in fact, be true. 

As I Lay Dying- William Faulkner (1930) 
Different story telling, with each chapter narrated by different characters involved in the story. The basic story is that the mother of a southern family dies, and she had asked her husband to have her buried in her hometown. The couple has 5 sons and daughters: Cash, the oldest, and a taciturn carpenter; Darl, the most literate, who narrates most of the chapters; Jewel, an illegitimate son as a result of the mom’s affair with the local reverend; Dewey Dell, a 17 year old daughter who is pregnant by a local youth, and who tries to buy abortion pills, and Vardaman, a little boy between 7 and 10 maybe. Cash makes a coffin for the mother, and they embark on a trip to have her buried. But the rains come and wash out the bridge to cross the river. They cross it, but Cash breaks his leg and they nearly lose the coffin in the stream. They continue on but the journey takes nine days, and the body begins to stink terribly. They finally reach the destination where the ten bucks Dewey Dell has been given for ‘abortion pills’ is confiscated by her dad, who buys himself dentures, and then he marries a relative of the dead wife. The end. Short book and an easy read. I got through all 230 pages in a day. 

The Bridge of San Luis Rey- Thorton Wilder  (1927) 
In Peru, there is an old rope bridge over a gorge that breaks and five people fall to their death. The local priest decides that he wants to know the stories of their lives, to test his theory about whether God had a purpose in taking their lives at that moment. He sets about interviewing the people to tell their story, and the chapters are the results- telling the stories of those that perished in the accident. 

He publishes the work, only to have it condemned as heretical and he is burned. But the impact of the accident begins to bear fruit in those that were close to the dead, and the book closes with the statement that love is the bridge between the land of the living and the dead, and the only survival and meaning. 

The Heart of the Matter- Graham Greene  (1948) 
The novel is a portrayal of British policeman, Major Henry Scobie, in an unnamed West African country during the second world war. The country, we know from other sources, is modeled after Sierra Leone, where Greene spent time himself. Scobie is married to a devout Catholic woman, Louise, who does not want to be there. He does his best to love her, but they are essentially incompatible. She asks him if he can pay for her to go live with some friends in South Africa, and he borrows the money from a local Syrian businessman. But part of the deal is that Scobie will allow the passage of some diamonds. So the blackmail material starts.  

A ship sinking at sea has several survivors, who had spent 40 days at sea, arriving in town, among them Helen Rolt, a 19 year Englishwoman who was on her honeymoon, when the ship sank and her husband was drowned. Scobie and Helen end up in an affair. Without covering too much of the territory, Louise comes back from South Africa, is aware of Henry and Helen, but doesn’t worry about it, since she is being courted by a fellow officer. Helen meanwhile is not content with being hidden away, and treated like a bad habit. Scobie decides the only way out of this, primarily for his wife and mistress, is suicide, covered up to look like a heart failure. He procures the necessary medicines to induce this and the book ends with the aftermath of Scobie’s death. 

The Secret Agent- Joseph Conrad  (1907) 
Kind of a spy novel, that interested me a lot more than I had expected. It concerns a terrorist attack on London, instigated by an unnamed, but rather obviously Marxist leaning government, supposedly in 1886, long before the Soviet Union. There are good insights into the minds of those committed to violent revolution though, and those things were of interest to me. 

The aforementioned unnamed government has a secret agent- a British citizen, Adolph Verloc, who owns a small shop purveying pornographic material and other bricabrac. Verloc is contacted to make an explosion, so as to shake the British people’s foundation on Science. Verloc is uncomfortable with this, but sets it in motion, but it ends up killing his brother-in-law, an low-functioning autistic man who stays with Verloc and his wife.  

Nostromo- Joseph Conrad  (1904) 
Giovanni Battista Fidanza, nicknamed ‘Nostromo’, is an Italian immigrant to the fictional South American country of Costaguana. He is the head of the longshoremen in the port town of Sulaca, and a man universally respected for his capability, fearlessness, ability to lead men, and ‘incorruptability’. The politics of the country swing back and forth between factions claiming principled belief, but swayed mightily by money and power. But there is one source of wealth beyond any other in Costaguana: a silver mine owned and operated by Charles Gould. When the country is again rocked by a revolution, the new leader attempts to gain control over the mine and its wealth, but a large shipment of silver is spirited away by Nostromo at the behest of Charles Gould. Nostromo’s reason for being is essentially the respect of those that know him, but as he successfully hides the silver, and everyone believes it lost at sea, he realizes that he is being used as a puppet. He sets about redeeming the silver from various places in small quantities, slowly growing richer. Nostromo is also friends with another old Italian immigrant, Giorgio Viola, who has two daughters. Nostromo is in love with the younger, Giselle, but is given the older, Linda, as a wife. Nostromo promises Giselle he will take her away, but must first dispose of the silver. One night, as Nostromo is secretly attending to the silver, Viola shoots him, having mistook him for a trespasser. 

Portnoy’s Complaint  (1969) 
Funny book that is essentially a Jewish bachelor’s speech to his analyst.  

The title’s use of the word ‘Complaint’ refers to the literary form of complaint, such as “A Lover’s Complaint”, which presented the speaker’s comments on being spurned as a lover. This then presents the speakers comments on …. Portnoy. The first person speaker in the book, by the way, is Alex Portnoy. 

A few quotes from the book, which pretty much details Portnoy’s complaints about his Jewish upbringing: 

“She is only asking for me to do something for my own good- and still I say no? Wouldn’t she give me the food out of her own mouth, don’t I know that by now? But I don’t want the food from her mouth. I don’t even want the food from my plate – that’s the point.”  

“At any rate, a Jewish meal is what she got all right. I don’t think I have ever heard the word “Jewish” spoken so many times in one evening in my life, and let me tell you, I am a person who has heard the word “Jewish” spoken.“  

“Only in America, Rabbi Golden, do these peasants, our mothers, get their hair dyed platinum at the age of sixty, and walk up and down Collins Avenue in Florida in pedalpushers and mink stoles- and with opinions on every subject under the sun. It isn’t their fault they were given a gift like speech- look, if cows could talk, they would say things just as idiotic.”  

I did say the book was funny. It is… until it’s not. About halfway through, the horniness and vulgarity, mixed with the neurotic Jewish shtick gets pretty tiresome. There are still funny moments in the sarcasm, but I found myself thinking: c’mon. 

The book ends with: “So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?”  

Meaning Portnoy blurted out all 274 pages before even being asked what the matter was. 

THAT was funny. 

The Maltese Falcon- Dashiell Hammett  (1930) 
Classic detective noir stuff. Sam Spade, beautiful dames, mysterious characters, fedoras, wisecracks….Hammett was the pioneer of the detective noir genre. 

The Rainbow- D. H. Lawrence  (1915) 
The novel, so the jacket explains, covers three generations of the Brangwen family between the 1840s and the early years of the 1920’s. It particularly covers the thoughts about love of Tom Brangwen and his Polish widower wife, Lydia; their daughter Anna and her marriage to her cousin, Will; and then their daughter Ursula and her love life.  

Perhaps it was the themes of the times, but each of the women seems to want to remain aloof, and ‘unconquered’, even when they are married. There is a high value put on independence, and it seems like all three of the main women considered any kind of relationship to be a type of death, a sacrifice of their freedoms as individuals. Right at the very end, Ursula, having rejected her lover, finds out she is pregnant, and seems to have a change of heart, realizing that being tied to a person through marriage isn’t the death of her freedom. But too late, he has moved on and found someone who will accept marriage.  

As mentioned, it seems like the theme of individualism or collectivism was big in Europe at the time. They were on the cusp of monumental shifts with communism and fascism, where collectivist mindsets tended to consider the concerns of ‘humanity’ important, and individual humans as absolutely throwaway. But at the same time they were noticing that the promise of liberalism and individualism wasn’t turning out exactly as they had thought.  

Of course the growing feminist movement in England at the time probably contributed to the general sense in the book that marriage, particularly within the defined structures of the time and place, meant that the woman would now be subordinated to the man, and this story then speaks to these women that didn’t want to be subjected to that. They wanted love, but they didn’t want to be contained.  

Women in Love- D. H. Lawrence  (1920) 
This is a follow up to The Rainbow, continuing the saga of Ursula Brangwen, and her sister Gudrun. 

Ursula meets and falls in love with Rupert Birkin, a somewhat morose intellectual, and both of them constantly fret about who is giving up his/her freedom to who.  

The younger sister Gudrun meets and falls in love with Gerald Crich, a handsome son of a local coal mine owner. They alternately verbally spar and then fall passionately in love. Gudrun seems particular concerned that she is being bullied because, as in the last book, there seems to be much ink spilled over the idea of domination in these relationships and maintaining one’s freedom. 

At the end, I found each of these tedious, and I grew sick of their cares and concerns. If they all perished in a landslide, I couldn’t have cared less.