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Finished "The Mandala of SherlockHolmes," and am very tempted to go "Yay! Shiny!" :) It went over the top - at a couple of points I very nearly rolled my eyes and said, "this is just TOO much," but overall I thought that the choice of narrator, the Babuji Mookerjee, was the saving grace. In the best style of Holmes pastiches, the tapestry of the story world is hooked to that of the real world in so many places (in numerous footnotes - yay, footnotes!) that it gets difficult to determine where one ends and the other begins, at times. The author, Jamyang Norbu, presents the story as being written by Mookerjee, and creates a story of how he found it (common to Holmes pastiches, though often there's yet another character inserted there who does the finding). And! as an epilogue Norbu describes meeting Holmes current incarnation, a fat Tibetan monk.:)
I also finished the first section of the book on female pirates, which concluded with Ann Bonny and Mary Read. They were interesting. The other part of the book is completely different - they were originally published as two seperate books and just shoved together for no particular reason I can see. It takes that very scholarly tone where things are defined in extremely particular ways, to the extent that they define the only true pirates as exactly one type of person which they claim only existed for 30 years in the Caribean. Completely negating most of the previous book's discussion, because only three of the pirates discussed in the first book fell within that timespan (and one of them may or may not have been a woman).
I'm never sure what to make of that definition game. I mean, granted you want to have a definition to work from that has some delineation to it - a discussion means nothing if everything can get lumped under the same general term. But defining a thing too much by itself means you then have to ignore reams of evidence that show that you're wrong. All generalizations are false. A 'true' dog is loyal. Therefore any dog which is not loyal is .. what? A cat? Well, maybe a pirate, because pirates are defined as complete individualists who only stick around for as long as it's fun.
And then, by their definition a true pirate can only exist in a situation where there are no national boundries, and they assert that the ocean is now completely divided up and every point on it can be observed, and is - therefore they define their pirate out of existance. (If the ocean is so well surveillanced, how come we've got all these drug runners apparently getting through all the time?)
Despite appearances, I'm actually enjoying the second part of the book more than most of the first part. I disagree with it, but that's not a wholly horrible thing. At least it 'feels' more scholarly, rather than rampantly "I'll define a pirate as anything-the-hell-I-want as long as I can put a woman into the story somehow," as the first half of the book often did. The saving grace of the first half of the book was that they did seem aware that they were stretching things, and very aware that the sorts of inequalities that existed in times past were so extreme that it's hard for us to even concieve of them. I can see their argument that the documentation will be lacking, or incorrect, because women were so completely ignored and misrepresented. For instance, they pointed out that the most women posing as men were discovered as soldiers or sailors. That doesn't mean that all women posing as men flocked to become soldiers and sailors. It means that as a soldier or a sailor it's really really difficult to have any privacy. We'll never know how many women lived out their lives disguised as men as smiths and tanners and thatchers and farmers. Not that that has any bearing on piracy, but it's interesting.:)
Okay, enough of that sort of rambling. In the work rambling, I made one incorrect assumption a while back. I mentioned that Mainertoo is working the overnights and I couldn't figure out why because everyone else who worked overnights was still working as far as I knew. I now found out who's not. The weird thing is, we have to find out who's gone by way of the grapevine. I can understand their being mum about why he's gone, but not even admitting, publicly, that he is gone, that's just odd, I think. It makes one feel as though one's co-workers are just dissappeared, and that you could be dissappeared next. Does everyone's employers do that? Or maybe it's just that in most places everyone learns everything by the grapevine, whereas for many things we expect to be given a briefing. And we're direly warned not to pass on anything that is not given in briefing. Gossip is NOT allowed. But when gossip is all you have, it's what you'll resort to.
And in personal ramblings - June gave me her phone number. I'm such a dork that I forgot to give her mine in return.:) Teena will be returning to Maine, soon, and staying with June for a while until she can get either her own place or some roommates. In fact, I told Teena I'd give her and June a ride from the airport the night she comes in, but I neglected to tell June that, too. I'm such a dork.:) It did cross my mind to phone her when I got home tonight and correct both those oversights, but I'm also a phone-phobic dork.:)
I also finished the first section of the book on female pirates, which concluded with Ann Bonny and Mary Read. They were interesting. The other part of the book is completely different - they were originally published as two seperate books and just shoved together for no particular reason I can see. It takes that very scholarly tone where things are defined in extremely particular ways, to the extent that they define the only true pirates as exactly one type of person which they claim only existed for 30 years in the Caribean. Completely negating most of the previous book's discussion, because only three of the pirates discussed in the first book fell within that timespan (and one of them may or may not have been a woman).
I'm never sure what to make of that definition game. I mean, granted you want to have a definition to work from that has some delineation to it - a discussion means nothing if everything can get lumped under the same general term. But defining a thing too much by itself means you then have to ignore reams of evidence that show that you're wrong. All generalizations are false. A 'true' dog is loyal. Therefore any dog which is not loyal is .. what? A cat? Well, maybe a pirate, because pirates are defined as complete individualists who only stick around for as long as it's fun.
And then, by their definition a true pirate can only exist in a situation where there are no national boundries, and they assert that the ocean is now completely divided up and every point on it can be observed, and is - therefore they define their pirate out of existance. (If the ocean is so well surveillanced, how come we've got all these drug runners apparently getting through all the time?)
Despite appearances, I'm actually enjoying the second part of the book more than most of the first part. I disagree with it, but that's not a wholly horrible thing. At least it 'feels' more scholarly, rather than rampantly "I'll define a pirate as anything-the-hell-I-want as long as I can put a woman into the story somehow," as the first half of the book often did. The saving grace of the first half of the book was that they did seem aware that they were stretching things, and very aware that the sorts of inequalities that existed in times past were so extreme that it's hard for us to even concieve of them. I can see their argument that the documentation will be lacking, or incorrect, because women were so completely ignored and misrepresented. For instance, they pointed out that the most women posing as men were discovered as soldiers or sailors. That doesn't mean that all women posing as men flocked to become soldiers and sailors. It means that as a soldier or a sailor it's really really difficult to have any privacy. We'll never know how many women lived out their lives disguised as men as smiths and tanners and thatchers and farmers. Not that that has any bearing on piracy, but it's interesting.:)
Okay, enough of that sort of rambling. In the work rambling, I made one incorrect assumption a while back. I mentioned that Mainertoo is working the overnights and I couldn't figure out why because everyone else who worked overnights was still working as far as I knew. I now found out who's not. The weird thing is, we have to find out who's gone by way of the grapevine. I can understand their being mum about why he's gone, but not even admitting, publicly, that he is gone, that's just odd, I think. It makes one feel as though one's co-workers are just dissappeared, and that you could be dissappeared next. Does everyone's employers do that? Or maybe it's just that in most places everyone learns everything by the grapevine, whereas for many things we expect to be given a briefing. And we're direly warned not to pass on anything that is not given in briefing. Gossip is NOT allowed. But when gossip is all you have, it's what you'll resort to.
And in personal ramblings - June gave me her phone number. I'm such a dork that I forgot to give her mine in return.:) Teena will be returning to Maine, soon, and staying with June for a while until she can get either her own place or some roommates. In fact, I told Teena I'd give her and June a ride from the airport the night she comes in, but I neglected to tell June that, too. I'm such a dork.:) It did cross my mind to phone her when I got home tonight and correct both those oversights, but I'm also a phone-phobic dork.:)
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Personally I think he wants to keep chronologically distanced from "piracy" so he can maintain his romantic illusion that pirates were 'all' socialists and anarchists. I'm sure some were - Charles Bellamy apparently described himself as a socialist.
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PS