of monsters and men
Dear friends,
This month has been moving at breakneck speed as work and everything else is hitting the gas pedal. I originally thought about doing a Valentine’s Day special, but I haven’t read enough books recently that would fit the bill, so this will have to do.
Beowulf: A New Translation by Maria Dahvana Headley
For those of you who have been to my bookcave apartment and seen my shelf, you may have seen my beat-up copy of the Seamus Heaney translation of Beowulf. I have no qualms spoiling the plot of a story that’s over a thousand years old, and Beowulf I think is a good read precisely because Beowulf dies at the end and dooms his people to being invaded again, leaving us to wonder about whether he was a good king in the end.
When I first heard about this new translation by Maria Headley, I was skeptical because the Heaney translation is timeless and preserves the poetry while also being fairly accessible. But I’d seen the Headley translation recommended and it had won a Hugo and was nominated for all the other major fantasy-genre awards, so I decided to give it a try. The big narrative difference is that Headley characterizes Grendel’s mother as a warrior woman and not a monster, unlike Tolkien and Heaney. She justifies this choice in the introduction as plausible due to Beowulf being referred to with the male version of the same epithet as Grendel’s mother but has been translated as a monster-woman by different male translators in the past.
The other main difference between this translation and previous translations of Beowulf is the use of current slang that will sound dated in a decade but sounds great now and injects life into the text. If I were teaching high school English, I think this version is the best for understanding the plot and getting kids interested in Beowulf. If you think about it, Beowulf is basically a Medieval jock dudebro, and Headley just makes the dudebro-ness more obvious to us 21st century readers.
Example for comparison: Unferth disses Beowulf around line 400 and Beowulf responds by debunking the fake news Unferth heard.
The Headley translation:
I’m the strongest and the boldest, and the bravest and the best.
Yes: I mean—I may have bathed in the blood of beasts,
netted five foul great ogres at once,
smashed my way into a troll den
and come out swinging, gone skinny dipping in a sleeping sea
and made sashimi of some sea monsters.
Anyone who fucks with the Geats? Bro, they have to fuck with me.
Seamus Heaney:
…my people supported my resolve
to come here to you, King Hrothgar,
because all knew of my awesome strength.
They had seen me boltered in the blood of enemies
when I battled and bound five beasts,
raided a troll-nest and in the night-sea
slaughtered sea-brutes. I have suffered extremes
and avenged the Geats (their enemies brought it
upon themselves, I devastated them).
Props to Headley for bringing this old story to life. It’s almost jubilant. If you hated reading this for class, I definitely think this translation is worth a look and someday I hope there will be translations of the Illiad and Odyssey done in a similar vein. I’ll leave you with the closing lines of Beowulf: A New Translation, where Beowulf’s soldiers mourn him and prepare for the impending wars:
He was our man, but every man dies.
Here he is now! Here our best boy lies!
He rode hard! He stayed thirsty! He was the man!
He was the man.
Mine! How the Hidden Rules of Ownership Control our Lives by Michael Heller and James Salzman
I picked up this book from the library because it had pie one the cover and a catchy title without knowing anything else about it. Looks like I, like most readers, do judge books by their covers, and this is why cover designers exist. What can two random law professors, one of real estate law and the other of environmental law—both of which are subjects I didn’t know they made professors of—can teach us about human nature we don’t know already?
Turns out the answer is quite a bit. This book is most relevant for Americans because the legal examples used are almost entirely from America, but I’m sure it’d be an entertaining even if you aren’t. Each chapter is based on old maxims and showing how they’re false: examples are “I reap what you sow,” “Your home is not your castle,” and “The meek shall inherit very little.”
The examples they use are a fascinating look into human nature. A homebuyer looking to buy a house overlooking the Hudson River in Nyack, New York ended up suing the realtor after discovering the house was haunted by two poltergeists and claimed the realtor should have warned him because of the ancient principle of caveat emptor/buyer beware. (I have no stake in whether the ghosts were real or not, but this ended up in court and some poor person had to listen to every word and transcribe the court proceedings.) The realtor’s defense was that the house in question didn’t even make the list of the top dozen most haunted houses in the town, so a warning wasn’t necessary. The realtor lost, and the house ended up selling to some ghost fan who made sure in their contract that they would only buy the house on the condition that the poltergeists Sir George and Lady Margaret were still living there. And yes, this court case actually happened in 1991 and not during the Salem Witch Trials. (Google “Nyack ghost house” if you’re interested in more details.)
If you want to learn about how South Dakota is creating the groundwork for inherited American aristocracy, why shooting down a drone in your backyard is legally contentious, why airlines got rid of reclining seats, why 23AndMe only costs $99 per person, and why the Columbia University closes its gates around a public area for a few hours every Sunday morning for no apparent reason, check out this book! It’s quite insightful.
From now on, each month I’ll be also recommending a short story because I want to push the agenda—there’s so much stuff out there that’s awesome and free, but because finding it takes a few extra steps, it’s less accessible. For those less familiar with the state of short stories in the 21st century, because we collectively all have demanded journalism and websites to be free to view—though in reality someone always has to pay the bills, and a lot of the time for news it’s you, the viewer, being served ads or annoying reminders to turn off your adblocker and subscribe—99% of literary magazines have migrated online and are supported by donations. So this has led to a torrent of good shit out there that is hard to find if you don’t know where to look because there is no centralized search system for hundreds of websites, unlike centralized sites like GitHub/Reddit/AO3 that have indexed everything (three cheers for databases, without which I would not be gainfully employed haha). There are so many venues out there that if you have a niche type of story you like, I guarantee there’s a magazine or journal that caters to your exact taste.
This YouTube comment I stumbled upon puts the perks of reading short stories for people struggling to finish novels due to time and effort (specifically, anthologies, but still stories) much better than I can.
“Habeas Codex” by Curtis C. Chen
This is a very funny short story about two detectives investigating an exploit in a VR world. It’s only 4700 words, but Curtis C. Chen manages to cram lots of plot and humor perfect for the social media era. The illustration to go along with it is also lovely, and that’s about as much I’ll say so I don’t accidentally spoil anything :)
Thanks for reading, and Happy early Valentine’s Day/Singles Appreciation Day!
tina