Christmas

The History of Literature #368 – The Story of the Nativity (with Stephen Mitchell)

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368 The Story of the Nativity (with Stephen Mitchell)

Stephen Mitchell has translated or adapted some of the world’s most beautiful and spiritually rich texts, including The Gospel According to Jesus, The Book of Job, Gilgamesh, Tao Te Ching, Bhagavad Gita, The Iliad, The Odyssey, Beowulf, The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and The Way of Forgiveness. In his latest book, The First Christmas: A Story of New Beginnings, he brings the Nativity story to life as never before. In this special episode, Jacke talks to Stephen about his translations, his search for spiritual truths, and his work imagining the story of the first Christmas from multiple points of view.

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. The History of Literature Podcast is a member of Lit Hub Radio and the Podglomerate Network. Learn more at http://www.thepodglomerate.com/historyofliterature.

The History of Literature #172 – Holiday Movies (with Brian Price)

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LOGO-COVERS

Seasons Greetings! In this episode, Jacke attempts to recover from last week’s gloominess with something lighter and cheerier: a trip to the movies! Holiday movies dominate screens big and little during the month of December – but what do they do to us? How do they work? What separates a good holiday movie from the rest of the pack? We ask screenwriter Brian Price, author of Classical Storytelling and Contemporary Screenwriting, to help us understand the genre. Then Jacke, in a frenzy of holiday spirit, pitches his own idea for a holiday movie to Brian – and comes to learn the true meaning of the phrase, “Christmas flop.” Hope you enjoy!

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature or historyofliterature.com/shop. (We appreciate it!) Find out more at historyofliterature.com, jackewilson.com, or by following Jacke and Mike on Twitter at @thejackewilson and @literatureSC. Or send an email to jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.

The History of Literature #124 – James Joyce’s “The Dead” (Part 2)

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In this second part of a two-part episode, we look at the resounding conclusion of James Joyce’s masterpiece “The Dead,” which contains some of the finest prose ever written in the English language. Be warned: this episode, which runs from Gabriel’s speech to the final revelatory scene, contains spoilers. But don’t let that stop you! Read the story first (if you want), then come back and listen to the episode – and hear the song that launched a thousand complex thoughts in Gabriel (and a million college theme papers for everyone else).

Help support the show at patreon.com/literature. Learn more about the show at historyofliterature.com. Contact the host at jackewilsonauthor@gmail.com.

FOR A LIMITED TIME: Special holiday news! Now for a limited time, you can purchase History of Literature swag (mugs, tote bags, and “virtual coffees” for Jacke) at historyofliterature.com/shop. Get yours today!

A Jacke Wilson Holiday (Restless Mind Episode 10)

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Jacke offers some holiday thoughts on loneliness, his failures with women and the theater, and a teary trip to the Nutcracker.

Happy Holidays!

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Little Black Dress? Yes. Little Black Penguin Classics? Also Yes!

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Some things are so classy they just never go out of style. Like little black dresses, and little black classics from Penguin Books. Here’s another gift idea for this holiday season (along with Edward Gorey).

Eighty Penguin Classics, presented in bite-sized form (i.e., novellas, short essays, selections of poems, or excerpted passages from longer books).

Yes, it’s a bit of a commitment ($75 or so), but that’s cheap for what you’re getting, and think of the possibilities here. Close your eyes, grab one, tuck it into your pocket, and head out to face the day. Give yourself a little surprise: a bit of Chekhov, maybe, or a touch of Sappho. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday,: Suetonius, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Montaigne.

Will it work? Can I make my year better through this strategy of randomizing my brain expansion? Stay tuned!

Amazon description:

The Little Black Classics feature works by Jane Austen, Anton Chekhov, Samuel Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, John Milton, Nikolay Leskov, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Gustave Glaubert, Nikolai Gogol, Samuel Pepys, Washington Irving, Henry James, Christina Rossetti, Sophocles, Leo Tolstoy, Oscar Wilde, Boccaccio, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Thomas de Quincey, Apollonius of Rhodes, Robert Louis Stevenson, Petronius, John Peter Hebel, Hans Christian Andersen, Rudyard Kipling, John Keats, Thomas Hardy, Guy de Maupassant, Aesop, Joseph Conrad, Brothers Grimm, Katherine Mansfield, Ovid, Ivan Turgenev, H. G. Wells, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Charles Dickens, Herman Melville, Michel de Montaigne, Thomas Nashe, Mary Kingsley, Honoré de Balzac, C. P. Cavafy, Wilfred Owen, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Plato, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Giorgio Vasari, Friederich Nietzsche, Suetonius, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, Dante, Henry Mayhew, Hafez, Geoffrey Chaucer, John Ruskin, Pu Songling, Jonathan Swift, Walt Whitman, Kenko, Baltasar Gracián, Marco Polo, Matsuo Basho, Emily Bronte, Richard Hakluyt, Omar Khayyam, Charles Darwin, Catullus, Homer, D. H. Lawrence, Sappho, Virgil, Herodotus, Shen Fu, and others.

Melancholy Christmas… what to do when it’s almost over

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Dear Readers,

Oh, it’s been a good Christmas season here on the Jacke blog, although I’ve been struck by how much sadness, longing, and ache there is out there. Let’s call it the human, grown-up side of Christmas. The kids have their joy and excitement; the adults watch them bouncing around with their new presents and smile through sad eyes. That’s my Christmas, and it sounds like it’s a recognizable Christmas for a lot of you as well.

I didn’t want to spoil our reading of James Joyce’s “The Dead” for Christmas Eve. But now that THAT’S over, let’s go ahead and combine it with another masterpiece for Christmas night. John Huston’s film version of “The Dead,” available on youtube in its entirety.

And of course, there’s always a couple of episodes of The Jacke Wilson Show. We had the one about The Gift (Young Jacke’s attempts to buy a present for his mother) and the Christmas story for my boys (about their great grandfather’s Wisconsin boyhood).

The Jacke Wilson Show Episode 5 – The Gift

Or directly download the mp3 file: The Jacke Wilson Show Episode 5 – The Gift

The Jacke Wilson Show Episode 6 – A Boy Named Johnnie

Or directly download the mp3 file: The Jacke Wilson Show 1.6 – A Boy Named Johnnie

So tonight, when the chaos is over, and the house is cleaned up and the fire is still going and the chair is comfortable with maybe a glass of red wine still half full, enjoy this beautiful and quietly devastating film, or suffer along with me in the podcast episodes (there is some triumph in there too, and some smiles!).

And may you and yours have a very merry (and only slightly melancholy) holiday this year.

With love,

Jacke

Christmas Is a Time to Read-Joyce: The Dead

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Joyce's Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.
Joyce’s Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.

[Note: It’s here! Christmas Eve! And we’ve been running our own version of an advent calendar here on the Jacke Blog: reading one Dubliners story per day until today, when we reach “The Dead,” one of the most celebrated works in all literature. So cozy up to the fireplace, but on a little scratchy old opera, and enjoy this beautiful world masterpiece from James Joyce. Seasons greetings, everyone, and may you and your loved ones know much joy and grace during these holidays.]

THE DEAD

LILY, the caretaker’s daughter, was literally run off her feet. Hardly had she brought one gentleman into the little pantry behind the office on the ground floor and helped him off with his overcoat than the wheezy hall-door bell clanged again and she had to scamper along the bare hallway to let in another guest. It was well for her she had not to attend to the ladies also. But Miss Kate and Miss Julia had thought of that and had converted the bathroom upstairs into a ladies’ dressing-room. Miss Kate and Miss Julia were there, gossiping and laughing and fussing, walking after each other to the head of the stairs, peering down over the banisters and calling down to Lily to ask her who had come.

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Christmas Is a Time to Read-Joyce: Grace

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Joyce's Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.
Joyce’s Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.

[Note: We’re reading one of James Joyce’s Dubliners stories each day until we get to “The Dead” on Christmas Eve. You can read more about the project on the first day’s installment. If you’re arriving late, fear not: it’s not too late to join us!]

GRACE

TWO GENTLEMEN who were in the lavatory at the time tried to lift him up: but he was quite helpless. He lay curled up at the foot of the stairs down which he had fallen. They succeeded in turning him over. His hat had rolled a few yards away and his clothes were smeared with the filth and ooze of the floor on which he had lain, face downwards. His eyes were closed and he breathed with a grunting noise. A thin stream of blood trickled from the corner of his mouth.

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A Christmas Full of Longing and Ache

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Friend of the blog georgetteann has a lovely post on Christmas music over at her site, A Walk on the Bright Side:

As my mind drifted away from the conversation at our table and focused on the music, I began to notice I knew almost every song in his repertoire by heart. Some songs were from my mother’s era—great emotional tunes of the 60’s and 70’s that she played over and over when we were growing up. Others were melodies from my high school and college days in the late 80’s and early 90’s. What I noticed was that I could remember exact moments associated with each and every one of them. I could recount people and places and events within the first few notes. As I drove home, I realized my life was like a soundtrack marked by a series of great moments tainted by plenty of unpleasant ones…and then the tears came…and then the words came.

Beautiful. She also reminds us of the devastating classic, “Please Come Home for Christmas” by Charles Brown.*

Lord, that’s devastating. I’ve worn out his album Cool Christmas Blues. My kids don’t get it at all, of course. In a way I’m grateful they don’t. They’ll understand it later, I suppose, as adults do. Until then it’s poppy, upbeat, sing-songy music. Songs in major keys.

We say Christmas is for kids, and I’m not going to argue. But Christmas for kids is Frosty and Rudolph and platters of sugar cookies. Adults have more refined palates. My tastes run to coffee and dark chocolate; my taste in music is for all the pining, longing, aching songs of Christmas. (Sinatra’s “I’ll Be Home For Christmas” is the one that gets me.)

*I don’t know much about Charles Brown. Wikipedia says:

“Born in Texas City, Texas, Brown graduated from Central High School of Galveston, Texas in 1939 and Prairie View A&M College in 1942 with a degree in chemistry. He then became a chemistry teacher at George Washington Carver High School of Baytown, Texas, a mustard gas worker at the Pine Bluff Arsenal at Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and an apprentice electrician at a shipyard in Richmond, California before settling in Los Angeles in 1943.”

Wow. What a life. Merry Christmas to all who celebrate it. May you and your families have much joy. Both the unadulterated joy of a nine-year-old tearing into presents, and the melancholy, nostalgia-infused joy of an adult watching the scene and smiling through sad eyes.

This song always reminds me of my grandfather, who was so upset by his youngest brother’s death in World War II he could barely speak about war, or his brother, for the rest of his life. You can listen to my podcast episode about my grandfather as a young boy, a story that was a gift to my own boys, by following this link.

Christmas Is a Time to Read-Joyce: A Mother

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Joyce's Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.
Joyce’s Dublin. Image Courtesy of echelon.lk.

[Note: We’re reading one of James Joyce’s Dubliners stories each day until we get to “The Dead” on Christmas Eve. You can read more about the project on the first day’s installment. If you’re arriving late, fear not: it’s not too late to join us!]

A MOTHER

MR HOLOHAN, assistant secretary of the Eire Abu Society, had been walking up and down Dublin for nearly a month, with his hands and pockets full of dirty pieces of paper, arranging about the series of concerts. He had a game leg and for this his friends called him Hoppy Holohan. He walked up and down constantly, stood by the hour at street corners arguing the point and made notes; but in the end it was Mrs. Kearney who arranged everything.

Miss Devlin had become Mrs. Kearney out of spite. She had been educated in a high-class convent, where she had learned French and music. As she was naturally pale and unbending in manner she made few friends at school. When she came to the age of marriage she was sent out to many houses where her playing and ivory manners were much admired. She sat amid the chilly circle of her accomplishments, waiting for some suitor to brave it and offer her a brilliant life. But the young men whom she met were ordinary and she gave them no encouragement, trying to console her romantic desires by eating a great deal of Turkish Delight in secret. However, when she drew near the limit and her friends began to loosen their tongues about her, she silenced them by marrying Mr. Kearney, who was a bootmaker on Ormond Quay.

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