University of Nebraska Press

Out of the Silent Planet by CS Lewis

y an odd coincidence, I finished reading this book (finally!  when did I say I was going to post on this originally?) on the same week that one of my short stories, "Gabriel's Trumpet", was published in The Lamp Post of the Southern California CS Lewis Society.  And it isn't because the book is long that it took me forever to finish it.  It's only 160 pages.  It's just that, at first, it moved slowly.  And don't get me wrong.  I love C.S. Lewis.  I picked this up because I love his work. 

But, Ransom, our hero, is much like most heroes.  He's smart.  He's kind.  He has a deeply ingrained sense of right and wrong.  And so it is on an errand of right that he goes to collect a stranger's son from the house he is serving at.  He runs into an old school chum, gets drugged, kidnapped, and taken to another planet to be given to the sorns.  Well, of course whatever they are going to give him to isn't going to be something he wants to go with.  So he runs.  And runs straight into another race of people on the planet, the hross.  Like a lot of Lewis's work, you can read the faith into it, but you don't have to.  Ransom does come to a kind of spiritual awakening, but not one involving specifics of current religions, just generalizations of goodness, trust, etc.  But I just kept having a few problems with it.

For one thing, some of the science is off.  Okay, it was first published in 1943, but Heinlein wrote at the same time and knew that gravity wasn't going to weight you as you approach a planet (well, it will, but not significantly as it is in the story) nor is there going to be any kind of gravitation on a spaceship.  Just the sort of stuff that bothers me.  And then, of course, there is my feminist streak.  There is not one female character in the whole book.  Ransom spends time with a whole race of people, but the only ones mentioned are males.  There is even a matriarchal society, however Ransom only really speaks to one of them and sees a few others, all male.  And as much as I really try to let that go when reading older fiction, well, it grates.

So it took me a bit to get into it.  You might say it was almost unwilling.  But by the end I was curled up on the couch and telling my husband that he could either do something about dinner himself or wait for me to finish because I wasn't moving until that last page had turned.  It grew on me.  And I have gone from thinking that I would never pick up the next book in the trilogy (yes, it is a trilogy.  Isn't everything in sf and fantasy a trilogy or series of some sort?) to hunting it down in the library.  So now if you'll excuse me, I need to go read the next one.

As promised, War, What is it Good For?

lgerians know from war.  It's an undeniable fact that Algeria has experienced its share of civil war and unrest, which perhaps reached a zenith at the tail end of French colonization.  The film The Battle of Algiers is one of the most remarkable things I've ever watched...made by Algerian filmmakers within months of the end of the war with the French, it highlights the street tactics and ingenious guerilla warfare that locals engaged in to triumph over their colonizers.  It is black and white and shot in a city still torn up from homemade bombs, buildings riddled with bullets.  So powerful and immediate, it almost hurts to watch it.  A few years ago, at the beginning of the Iraq war, generals showed the film to their troops, to prepare them to combat insurgents in the streets of Baghdad.  I can't help but wonder if, instead, these young soldiers came away from the screenings musing on the futility of war, and with a newfound sense of empathy for their "enemies."

Into this cratered landscape came Mohammed Dib, born in Algeria in 1920 and exiled to France in 1956.  One of the "founding fathers" of North African literature, in his book The Savage Night (translated by C. Dickinson,) Dib writes of war with an insider's insight and poet's language.  This is the first book-length translation of Dib's writing, and was released by NU Press in 2001.  2001.  I must say, the timing could not have been more inspired.

Algeria is Dib's most fertile storytelling ground, but this collection includes tales set all over the world.  It doesn't matter, really, where he sets his stories.  They all share a universal through-line, a burning reminder that people worldwide are living lives touched by--mauled by--war.  Their experiences are universal and, in a sense, unexceptional.  And, like the finest war writers, Dib also understands that from horrific circumstances can emerge haunting moments of grace.  In "Paquita, or The Ravished Gaze," a young girl's parents sell her eyes to the daughter of a wealthy gringo family in the northern part of their country.  Their guilt over this act torments them so much that it causes them physical pain.  Unexpected, then, is young Paquita's final assessment: "Brightly, she cries, 'Ever since my eyes were taken away, the world has become so much vaster.'"

Rape, torture, loss and trauma.  It's all here, and if you're looking for something light, do what I do and pick up US Weekly.  (I wasted a good four hours last week contemplating the future of Tom Cruise's new baby.)  But for rainy evenings, when you have tossed aside the daily newspaper with a frustrated groan, eyes bleary from headlines that seem unchanged for months or years, find solace in this mighty little book.

Black Gun, Silver Star

My name is Art T. Burton, I wrote the new biography, Black Gun, Silver Star: The Life and Legend of Frontier Marshal Bass Reeves. This book was a culmination of ten years of intensive research which should help to broaden readers perspective on Wild West history. I look forward to answering questions from readers of my book or thoughts on the Indian Territory, blacks in the West, or the Wild West in general. I holstered my toy guns at the age of 12 and now in my mid 50s I am back in the saddle again, with a brand new view and interpretation. I will be adding comments concerning my research and related items in upcoming weeks. Hope to see you on the trail.

A Word, Before You Take That Next Bite

he recent literary salon hosted by the University of Nebraska Press on Leslie Duram’s Good Growing: Why Organic Farming Works should have been attended by anyone who eats or who at least cares about what they eat.

Those who did attend the April 20 salon at the Lincoln Woman’s Club were privy to an excellent discussion that left me wondering (and worried) about how we so willingly allow our very sustenance to fall into the hands of a few conglomerates that daily stir up an unholy alchemy of chicken nuggets and cheez puffs.

Salon co-host Jim Bender, a Nebraska organic farmer and author of the Press book Future Harvest: Pesticide-free Farming, called into question the very morality of our food systems. Co-host Chuck Hassebrook, University of Nebraska Regent and Executive Director of the Center for Rural Affairs, blasted public research universities for chasing the almighty dollar and national prestige while largely ignoring their original land-grant mission to serve the needs, both mind and body, of state citizens.

The pursuit of money for money’s sake has led to a closed system that leaves few dollars for organic research or for any research that questions the morality or the sustainability of corporate production, including genetically modified crops and livestock injected with hormones and antibiotics that find their way not only into our soil and water but directly into our stomachs.

One can be encouraged by the growth in the demand for organic products nationwide, but there are concerns that as big-box retailers become major distributors of organic products, the standards for what is considered organic will be watered down. Moreover, any product offered on the big box retail level is likely to travel many thousands of “food miles,” so even if that carrot or cut of meat is certifiably organic, it still requires millions of gallons of fossil fuels to bring it to the marketplace or to our dinner table.

What’s worse, it may one day be impossible to even produce wholly organic crops, as Bender notes that a good portion of his organic crop is sacrificed to genetic drift from neighboring fields (a much bigger problem than herbicide or pesticide drift, he says).

Thankfully, a brave few soldier on in research, including Nebraska’s Charles Shapiro, who is laying the groundwork for long-term organic farming efforts at UNL, including the establishment of the university's first certified organic research plots in different ecological zones across the state.

Good luck, Professor. In the meantime we can all do our part by becoming more aware of our food systems and start making better choices as consumers, choosing organics over other food products and, as much as possible, buying from local producers.

Another good place to start is with Duram’s book, Good Growing: Why Organic Farming Works, and Bender’s Future Harvest: Pesticide-free Farming. It also helps to speak up to your elected officials. There are far too many rules out there that favor corporations over local economies and hard-working citizens. Make some responsible choices now, or there may not be an opportunity for choice in the future.

Listen to an MP3 audio recording (25 MB) from the salon

At Home on This Moveable Earth by William Kloefkorn

“Kloefkorn's sonorous prose and poetic sensibilities heighten the reader’s perception of life . . . the book’s structure is carefully wrought; he uses counterpoint, flashbacks, shifting points of view and variations on themes to shape his memoir. Kloefkorn is a consummate storyteller with a keen eye and a gift for language that is beautiful in its simplicity.” —Publishers Weekly Annex (May)

“Kloefkorn . . . reveals his life one vignette at a time in this richly evocative third installment of his proposed four-part memoir. With deftly wrought imagery so powerful and yet so poetic, this son of the plains and prairie gentles the reader back to days that nostalgia dictates must be remembered as sweetly unadorned. And yet, as Kloefkorn so cogently illustrates, no time is truly simple, and the transition from innocence to knowledge can be both magical and frightening. It takes a rare and gifted writer to seamlessly transport the reader through the devastating fury of rumbling tornadoes and the delectable freshness of romantic awakenings. Kloefkorn is just such a writer, and the journey is a lyrical experience.”—Booklist

“Kloefkorn has a marvelous prose style that manages to be both plainspoken and fluid, with frequent dollops of humor.”—Bloomsbury Review

I, Nadia, Wife of a Terrorist by Baya Gacemi

“Gacemi’s unique and invaluable portrayal of this personal side of terrorism is shocking, poignant, and impossible to forget.”—Booklist (May 1)

“This first-person account of a young woman’s seduction by Islamist extremism also offers an intimate look at the Algerian civil war. . . . Gacemi’s book received a lot of attention in France. Since Americans are less knowledgeable about Algeria, it will probably get less here-which is unfortunate, since her account of how a whole community can be seduced by terrorists is frightening and invaluable.”—Publishers Weekly (4/10/06)

“Nadia tells her story simply, offering little analysis. It is the very directness of the narrative that will push readers to consider both the appeal Islamism holds for some downtrodden women, and the way militant Islamism keeps women prisoners. An ultimately heart-wrenching personal account.” —Kirkus Reviews

“[A] fascinating autobiography. . . Nadia’s is a rare, firsthand account by a female Islamist extremist, and it reveals the personal, domestic dramas underlying the political turmoil of our times.” —The Washington Post Book World

“Stark, visceral, and disturbing, this biography tells the true story of the transformation of a naïve teenage into the wife of a brutal religious fanatic. . . . Many books have been written about the terrorist mind, but few explore the psychology of the civilians who make the terrorist way of life possible.  . . . Both Gacemi and her subject have taken a brave step in telling this story.”—ForeWord

 

 

Howl's Moving Castle

kay, if you define science fiction as fiction that needs science as an integral part of its plot, then this isn't sf.  But Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynn Jones and the movie based on the book by Hayao Miyazaki both captured something for me, and they are clearly speculative, so apology ended.  For one thing, the book and the movie could almost be separate topics.  Miyazaki takes the book as starting material and then, like the best adaptation movies, instead of being falsely "true to the book", he uses it to create his own vision.  Jones's book is quite private, a battle between two wizards and Sophie who accidentally gets drawn into it.  Miyazaki's movie is a story of war, something there is only a threat of in the book.

The story, both versions, follow Sophie Hatter, a teenager working in a hat shop, who is cursed by the Witch of the Waste after meeting the wizard Howl.  Sophie is turned into a 90 year-old woman.  She leaves her home, afraid to be seen by her family as she is now, and makes her way to Howl's moving castle, which had been moving around outside of her town.  She barges in, strikes a deal with the fire demon, Calcifer, and declares herself the cleaning lady.  Then the stories deviate.

In the book, the Witch of the Waste has also placed a curse on Howl and the king's brother has disappeared, so Howl is trying to avoid both the curse and the job of hunting down the king's brother.  There are spells and wizard's duels and Howl's nagging sister in the strange land he comes from, Wales.  In the movie, the disappearance of a prince from another land has sparked a war.  Howl is avoiding becoming another pawn in this war and becoming a permanent bird creature who would never remember he was human.  In both stories, Howl is running rather than confronting a situation.  It is Sophie and the Witch of the Waste that change everything.

In Jones's story, Sophie is pretty.  Not the prettiest, but still pretty.  In Miyazaki's story, she is plain.  Such a little detail can change a lot.  Jones is looking more at aging, Miyazaki at beauty.  So when Howl throws a tantrum over his hair color, Jones's Sophie has to be pulled away by the young assistant, Michael, as Howl throws his fit and worries if she should leave him in such a state.  Miyazaki's Sophie shouts at him, "I've never been beautiful my whole life," and storms out.  It is more clear in Jones's story, in fact we are explicitly told, that Sophie chooses to remain old.

The Witch of the Waste is the other big change between the book and the movie.  In the book, she is the antagonist.  She doesn't show up much, but her presense is felt and her curse on Howl drives the plot.  She is the mastermind (mostly) of the end of the book.  In the movie, she is more a catalyst than antagonist, and before the end, Sophie takes care of her.  Which leads me to one of the aspects I love most about Miyazaki's work.  There are no absolute evils, at least in the characters.  People do things, bad things, for wrong or right reasons.  There is rarely retribution and the real story is the journey.  Thus Kiki in Kiki's Delivery Service must trust herself enough to fly. Chihiro in Spirited Away leaves the magic land after thanking the witch who turned her parents into pigs and threaten to eat both them and her.  And Sophie cares for an ailing Witch of the Waste, who can't undo the curse she created, and takes in the spying dog of her enemy.

I love that these children's movies will do this.  And we in America don't make this type story.  In Shrek, the bad guy is eaten by a dragon (gruesome!).  In The Incredibles, Buddy the bad guy is pulled into an airplane by his own cape (more gruesome!).  And in Monsters' Inc., the mastermind is arrested (the nicest of the three).  So I appreciate a vision that accounts for gray areas and people who do cruel things and are still forgiven, helped, and sometimes even loved. Maybe I can learn to be like Chihiro and Sophie.

Alanis Obomsawin: The Vision of a Native Filmmaker by Randolph Lewis

“Most Americans probably do not know that Canada has an oft-distinguished film industry. . . . Here Lewis goes some way toward redressing this oversight by discussing the career of a documentary filmmaker who is a double rarity: a member of a First Nations tribe (one of the Canadian indigenous peoples) and a woman. . . . Lewis relates the story of this remarkable woman in conventional chronological order, with ample biographical data and a detailed analysis of her oeuvre and its impact on Canadian society. . . . [T]his is a welcome addition to a long-neglected part of cinema literature.” —Library Journal (4/15/06)

Drinking Dry Clouds by Gretel Ehrlich

“These are exquisite stories. They reach to one another, as do their characters, interrelated and sharing the elegant but terrifying sense of place beneath the mountains on ranchland in western Wyoming.”—Bloomsbury Review (Mar/Apr 2006)

New in April from the University of Nebraska Press

New from the University of Nebraska Press: A biography of Charles Young, one of the first Black graduates of West Point, the first chronological account of Tarzan's life, and now in paperback, the story of LaDonna Harris, one of the most influential Native American women in politics, plus much more.

 

Browse our new books here:

 

http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/special/newThisMonth.jsp