LMU Library News

Reading 1911: The Montessori Method

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our seventh review in the series comes from Ani N. Shabazian, Clinical Professor in the School of Education and Director of the Loyola Marymount University Children's Center. 

A Practitioner’s Perspective: A Review of the Book The Montessori Method

Decades before Maria Montessori (pictured, with one of her students) became a household name, she published her first book in 1909, which details the theory behind her original educational practices.  Her work, translated into English in 1912, received international recognition.  Entitled The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in “The Children’s Houses”, the book explores the often-overlooked piece of educating very young children and illustrates how approaches to early childhood education have evolved over time.  Topics addressed in this book include the decline of freedom in the classrooms, the idea of children guiding their own learning, the resurgence of training teachers, and the origins of today’s highly specific Montessori methodology. 

Maria Montessori, born in 1870, was always ahead of her time.  She attended a boy’s technical school as a teenager and was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree.  She later studied the fields of psychiatry, education, and anthropology, which greatly influenced her pedagogy.  In the late 1890s, she was an assistant doctor at a psychiatric clinic at the University of Rome.  In her work at the clinic, she became familiar with the work of Edward Seguin, a teacher and physician, who was one of the first to believe that children with mental retardation could learn and, thus, be taught.  Maria Montessori began her work with children with special needs; after successfully developing her methodology, she expanded her lens to include working with typically developing children.  Informed by her life experiences, the cornerstone of her methodology is rooted in the scientific method of observation. 

Maria Montessori opens this piece with defining the purpose of education by stating, “Education is to guide activity not repress it” (p. 25).  She believes that children are born as unique individuals and it is the teacher’s responsibility to reveal their potential.  Subsequently, her image of the child is one of strength and competence; she believes that children are self-motivated, active, and naturally curious learners.  Her method is especially unique and extraordinary because it was created by a “feminine mind and hand” (p. xviii), unlike other educational approaches.  Her ideas were viewed as not only progressive during her time, but are still so today over one hundred years later.

In this book, Maria Montessori reveals her strong critique of the traditional education system for young school age children; concerns which hold just as firmly today in consideration of the traditional elementary education system.  She writes at length regarding her concern about the “slavery” pervading the school systems; she refers to the restrictive chairs and desks, and the “suffocation” of the children’s growth because of their inability to be “free.”  Through her methodology she proposes to protect the children’s right to be active learners by creating environments for children that allow them to explore the space on their own.  She advocates for the modification of the furniture in the classrooms, adjusting the table size and shape, enabling children to move them around as they please as well as work together at the same table.  Maria Montessori considers it important that children be able to choose where they want to sit as well as find a comfortable position to sit in.  She states that “freedom is not only a sign of liberty but a means of education” (p. 84), and this freedom for children begins with the environment in which they are placed.  The children’s daily schedule also allows for flexibility, as Maria Montessori firmly states, “we have never followed [it] entirely” (p. 121).  Although the schedule calls for some teacher-directed instruction, there is also a point at which the teachers move on to “free teaching”, which she describes as the teacher limiting herself to “correcting the disordered movements” (p. 123).  Her belief that children are self-directed learners is evident in her role for teachers in the classroom. 

There is also an amusing chapter on nutrition, which is one of the only areas in which this book seems to be a bit dated.  Maria Montessori writes that children’s diet should be rich in fats and sugars with recommendations such as, “the morning breakfast for the rich might be milk and chocolate” (p. 135).  This chapter outlines the details of how to prepare broths for children as Maria Montessori asserts that the children’s diet under the age of three and half years should largely consist of fluids, endorsing soups, purees and meatballs, as they are not able to chew their food properly.  Maria Montessori concludes the chapter by stating that children should learn to eat with “cleanliness, both with respect to themselves and with respect to their surroundings” (p. 136).

Although at times overly detailed, this is a wonderful book that provides deep insight into the education of young children.  It is a must read book for anyone in education, including adult education.  Maria Montessori exhibited originality and insight into the mind of young learners, experimenting with a different type of instruction that continues to be an innovative approach to education.  As such, this book warrants careful reading, for Maria Montessori’s ideas are as relevant to teaching today as they were when she first proposed them. 

You can find a print copy of the Montessori method here, or read the e-book by clicking here.

 

Image credits: http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/montessori/method/method.html

 

3/28 Alumni Authors: Graciela Limón

All are invited to join us for the fourth evening in our Centennial literary series, Alumni Authors.

Alumni Authors: Graciela Limón

Wednesday March 28

6 p.m. / Von der Ahe Family Suite

Graciela Limón is a Latina/Chicana writer, educator and activist. She is the daughter of Mexican Immigrants and a native of Los Angeles. She received a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Spanish Literature from Marymount College Los Angeles, a Master of Arts Degree in the same field from the University of the Americas Mexico City, followed by a PhD in Latin American Literature from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

Prior to retirement, Limón was a professor of U.S. Hispanic Literature and Chair of the Department of Chicana/o Studies at Loyola Marymount University. She is now Professor Emerita at LMU as well as Adjunct Professor at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara.

Limón has written critical work on Mexican, Latin American and Caribbean Literature. However, she now concentrates her writing efforts on creative fiction that is germane to her areas of interest: feminism, social justice and cultural identity.

Her body of work includes In Search of Bernabé, a winner of the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award (1994). Limón also published The Memories of Ana Calderón(1994), Song of the Hummingbird (1996) andThe Day of the Moon (1999). Erased Faces, which was awarded the 2002 Gustavus Myers Book Award, was published in 2001, Left Alive was released in 2005, and The River Flows North came out in 2009.

The Madness of Mamá Carlota, to be published in March 2012, is her most recent endeavor. Guests at this event will have the first opportunity to purchase her newest work, which is not yet available in bookstores or libraries!

This special evening with Dr. Limón is co-sponsored by the Department of Chicana/o Studies and Sigma Lambda Gamma. 

RSVP here. 

 

 

 

Reading 1911: Wandering Stars

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our sixth review in the series comes from Associate Professor of Theater Arts Kevin Wetmore. 

Wandering Stars by Sholem Aleichem (Yiddish: Blonzhende Stern) was first serialized in a Yiddish newspaper in Warsaw, Poland from 1909 to 1911.  Shalom Aleichem was the nom de plume of Sholem Rabinovich (1859-1916), a Yiddish Ukrainian novelist and playwright best known in the United States for his “Tevye the Dairyman” stories, the basis for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. 

Born near Kiev, at the age of 15 Aleichem read Robinson Crusoe and adapted it as a Jewish novel.  Although he initially wrote in Russian and Hebrew, from 1883 on he wrote exclusively in Yiddish.  In 1905 Aleichem immigrated to New York City, moving to the Lower East Side in 1914.  Aleichem’s son had tuberculosis and was not allowed to enter the United States and returned to Geneva, where he died in 1915.  Aleichem followed a year later and was buried in Queens.  Over one hundred thousand people attended his funeral. He wrote eight novels, over a dozen plays and hundreds of short stories and essays.

Wandering Stars is a love letter to the Yiddish theatre as well as a series of snapshots of this history of Yiddish theatre as its center moved from Eastern Europe to the United States.  It is also a personal history of the Jewish diaspora.  Yiddish theatre originated in Purimspiel in the Jewish communities of Medieval Europe.  In 1838 Isaac Shoyshpiler (Issac the Actor) wrote and performed a play about Moses at a time other than Purim.  He was succeeded by Avram Goldfaden, “The Father of Yiddish Theatre” who founded a professional company in Romania in 1876.  Theatre companies began touring, moving from Jewish community to Jewish community presenting plays in Yiddish.  Increasing pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe resulted in mass emigration of Jewish communities to the United States, and by 1910 New York City had become the center of the Yiddish Theatre world.  As Jewish theatre became more mainstream and more performers began working in English Yiddish drama began to decline.  As Eddie, a second-generation Jewish-American character in Herb Gardner’s Conversations with My Father states in 1936, “When’s the last time you saw somebody in a Yiddish theatre under a hundred who wasn’t dragged there by his Zayde (grandfather)?”

In Wandering Stars, Aleichem begins in a small Polish town in which Leibel, the son of a wealthy merchant family and Reizel, the cantor’s daughter fall in love with each other and a visiting Purimspiel company.  They are inadvertently separated, but both grown to become stars of the Yiddish theatre in their own rights under the names Leo Rafalesco and Rosa Spivak, performing first in Eastern Europe, then London, and finally reuniting in New York City.  As they rise as stars and as they travel through the world, their journey shows the history of Yiddish theatre, from small shtetls to New York and eventual assimilation into mainstream American performance.

The title comes from a reassurance spoken to Reizel by Leibel as they prepare to leave Holeneshti, their home: “Every star is a person’s soul.  Wherever the soul goes, the person goes.  That is why we imagine the stars are falling.  But stars don’t fall – they wander” (71).  Leibel’s romantic notion embodies one of the themes of the novel, that every person is a wandering star, their soul lighting their way through life.  The title is also, however, an obvious play on the idea that as actors they have no home – because of the traveling nature of Yiddish theatre, the “stars” of the show continually wander from place to place, performing and moving on.

Aleichem also shows the conflicting attitudes towards the United States as both safe home for the Jewish people and site of assimilation and the potential loss of Yiddish, if not Jewish identity.  Leo’s friend and former lover Breyne Cherniak emigrates first to New York and writes him in London, inviting him to New York, saying, “America is truly the Land of Yiddish Theater” (245).  Yet when he does arrive he realizes what Aleichem calls “The Gentile Temptation”:  “Great and mighty is the Gentile temptation everywhere and especially for those on the Jewish stage.  Rare is the Jewish star who does not dream of one day finding a place in the non-Jewish firmament” (331).   From the beginning of their careers, as Leibel becomes “Leo” and Reizel becomes “Rosa”, this transformation of identity in exchange for success in the theatre becomes another major theme of the novel.  Aleichem captures New York in the first decade of the twentieth century is a series of haunting and rapid word pictures, but it is New York as seen through the eyes of an immigrant. 

Aleichem’s gift, however, is his ability to capture the human moments of life in brief chapters.  He also celebrates conflicting impulses: the desire to please one’s parents but pursue one’s dreams, the doubt that can strike in the midst of faith and, paradoxically the faith found by doubting.  For humor, both broad and subtle, Aleichem is second to none.  His characters love life.  Aleichem’s gift to the reader, however, is his insight into Yiddish theatre written only as one involved in it could write.  Wandering Stars is simply a great novel of the theatre, from the poor theatre of the Purimspielers that open it to the Broadway triumphs of Leo and Rosa that close it.

The novel has been translated into English twice.  The first is an abridged version from 1952 with a different ending, but I must recommend the 2009 unabridged translation by Aliza Shevrin.  Shevrin’s translation is not only eminently readable but captures the warmth, the fun, the violence and the magic of both theatre and Aleichem’s work.  Whereas Fiddler on the Roof was Yiddish culture for a gentile Broadway audience, Wandering Stars is a history of Yiddish theatre as love letter that allows the reader direct access to Aleichem’s brilliance, passion and humor.

 

Reading 1911: The Quest of the Silver Fleece

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our fifth review in the series comes from Associate Professor Angela James. (For more information about the entire series, click here!)

The Quest of The Silver Fleece, by W.E.B. Du Bois

Among the works that formulate the “canon” in African American Studies, The Souls of Black Folk surely tops the list. One reason that particular book has been so central, as one among many groundbreaking books written by the author, is the manner in which it crosses disciplinary boundaries to provide a economic, historical, and philosophical understanding of the meaning of being black. Souls of Black Folk demonstrates a detailed and nuanced understanding of race and blackness in American society that remains unparalleled. As one who uses The Souls of Black Folk as a foundational text for nearly every class I teach, as well as for my own thinking about African Americans, I found The Quest for the Silver Fleece to be immensely interesting as a novelistic extension of that work. In this book, DuBois uses the conventions of the novel to explore, often in greater detail, how race is ‘lived’ by African Americans.  He gives nuance to his famous insights about “the veil”, as well as examines with precision the economic and political interests served by race and racism in the period of post-emancipation and post-reconstruction America.  I must admit that, though I did not expect to enjoy the novel as a “good read”, I did!  DuBois’ use of the romance of Bles Alwyn and Zora to illuminate many of the central concerns of black people then and now was masterful.  Further, the way in which he uses the vehicle of fiction to explore the complex psychological and economic issues related to race on both sides of the veil is compelling. DuBois is able to effectively communicate that there is at once an inner and outer reality of race, and that both must be acknowledged in order to chart a collective way forward. 

To briefly summarize the plot, The Quest for the Silver Fleece is set largely in Tooms County, Alabama, but references and in fact, visits the world beyond.  In particular, the story takes the reader to both New York and Washington DC, and the trips are well worth taking to explore the manner in which the pursuit of material and political gains warps the character of the Black middle-class.  It is a story of how race is used to exploit labor.  It is a story of how racial betrayal is motivated by individual aspirations and the willingness to put one’s self ahead of group concerns.  It is a story of how racism perverts the aspirations and motivation of blacks and of whites.  It is also the story of how gendered oppression makes difficult black male-female relationships, and how the healthy resolution of such is the key to community survival.

The story begins with a young man, Bles, whom is committed to formal education, and unwavering in his commitment to the individual and collective struggle for dignity and freedom.  The heroine of the story is Zora, “child of the swamp”.  While Bles represents the earnestness of the struggle, Zora represents soul and sprit of Black people unschooled.  Her development, then, represents the possibilities of higher learning without losing the essence of those original strengths.  Through her attainment of sophistication and formal knowledge (earned through her employment with a somewhat enlightened white woman), Zora is able to devise a plan to outsmart the southern aristocracy and create something of value for the community.  The young romantics are initially drawn together by a shared vision of what they can together create (the silver fleece, a crop of beautiful and bountiful cotton).  They are torn apart, however by the awful limitations on the dignity of Black men in the context of the plantation south.  Our beautiful heroine, is forced to admit her “impure” past as a result of her unwilling use, and Bles explodes in displaced anger against her:

“You----you told me-----you were pure….”

“But Bles---you said ----willingly----if she knew---“

He thundered back in livid anger:

“Knew! All women know!”(169-70).

However, all women do not know.  The burdens of race and gender are such that even the painfulness of a black woman’s own past, is sometimes usurped as simply an expression of racial domination which is an affront to black male masculinity.

The central problematic of the novel becomes the story of how these star-crossed lovers find their way to each other again through the morass of gender and racial oppression.  Along the way, DuBois has lots to say about the inner workings of the racial bargains struck by northern industrialists and the southern aristocracy, as well as the trick which racism plays on white workers allowing their greater exploitation.  In the end, the book is satisfying in its use of subplots to illuminate larger economic and social concerns, which are more nuanced then a more prosaic, academic delivery would allow.  In particular, I found the idea which lies at the center of the novel, that finding a way through the difficult terrain of gender and race as a necessary precursor to community well-being, to be as relevant and intriguing in 2012 as I am sure it was in 1911. 

(Want to read this book? LMU has copies available here and here. Or you can get a copy of the e-book here.)

 

 

2/8 Alumni Authors: Noir novelist Denise Hamilton

The William H. Hannon Library's Centennial literary series Alumni Authors continues with award-winning novelist Denise Hamilton.

Wednesday February 8 / 6-7:30 p.m.

Von der Ahe Family Suite (Library Level 3)

Denise's crime novels have been finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, Macavity and Willa Cather awards. She also edited Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, which spent two months on bestseller lists, won the Edgar Award for “Best Short Story” and the Southern California Independent Booksellers’ award for “Best Mystery of the Year.”

Denise’s new novel, Damage Control, received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, raves from USA Today, Los Angeles Magazine and BN.com and kudos from James Ellroy ("A superb psychological thriller").

This event is free and open to the public, however we do request the courtesy of an RSVP. (Click here to RSVP, or call 310-338-5234) Refreshments and snacks will be served, and copies of Denise's work will be available for purchase and signing.

(Photo credit: Blake Little)

Reading 1911: The Devil's Dictionary

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our fourth review in the series comes from Head Cataloging Librarian Walter Walker. (For more information about the entire series,click here!)

After several years of distinguished soldiering in the Civil War, the almost completely self-taught Ambrose Bierce became one of the most colorful figures in late 19^th- and early 20^th-century journalism in America. In San Francisco, where he spent most of his life, he was a newspaper editor and columnist, and delighted in exposing hypocrisy and stupidity in private and public life. Bierce was known in California as “the wickedest man in San Francisco” and in London as “Bitter Bierce”. His friend H.L. Mencken said “What delighted him most in this life was the spectacle of human cowardice and folly.”  Ambrose brought his gift of satire and misanthropic attitude to writing a dictionary that was eventually entitled The Devil’s Dictionary and published in 1911.

Bierce had used the title “The Devil’s Dictionary” for newspaper columns defining words, then published the definitions from A-L in The Cynic’s Word Book in 1906. He said “Here in the East, the Devil is a sacred personage (the Fourth Person of the Trinity as an Irishman might say) and his name must not be taken in vain.” He was forced to accept the original title because of his publisher’s prudishness concerning the word “devil”, but he later restored the preferred designation. The satirical definition was quite common in nineteenth-century literature, but Bierce’s handling of it transcends the ordinary in several respects. His savage denunciation of mankind, tempered only by verbal humor and mordant wit, gradually overwhelms all but the most cynical of readers.

Here are some examples of his definitions:

Absolute, adj.  Independent, irresponsible. An absolute monarchy is one in which the sovereign does as he pleases so long as he pleases the assassins. Not many absolute monarchies are left, most of them having been replaced by limited monarchies, where the sovereign’s power for evil (and for good) is greatly curtailed, and by republics, which are governed by chance.

Absurdity, n.  A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one’s own opinion.

Academe, n.  An ancient school where morality and philosophy were taught.

Academy, n.  (from academe).  A modern school where football is taught.

Bore, n.  A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Peace, n.  In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting.

Positive, adj.  Mistaken at the top of one’s voice.

Wall Street, n.  A symbol of sin for every devil to rebuke. That Wall Street is a den of thieves is a belief that serves every unsuccessful thief in place of a hope in Heaven.

He often adds to the entries comical “scholarship” in prose or poetry written by such “expert commentators” as “Father Gassalasca Jape, S.J.” or “Phela Orm”.  For example, the definition for Carmelite includes a poem attributed to “G.J.” about a drunk monk, Death, and a fat horse.  Since “jape” is a trick or practical joke, the Jesuit priest Father Jape is probably a figment of Bierce’s imagination.

It is quite obvious that this book was written over a century ago when one sees the archaic attitudes toward minorities and women. He uses the n-word in the definition of African, and it is sometimes difficult to ascertain if his definitions are making fun of women or of misogynistic men. For example, Indiscretion is “The guilt of woman,” Ugliness is “The gift of the gods to certain women, entailing virtue without humility,” and Garter is “an elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.” He also said “Ah, that we could fall into women’s arms without falling into their hands.” H. Greenbough Smith said that Bierce’s views of women were very strange. 

As a young man he was involved with a woman in her seventies, and later broke off an engagement to a young woman because of jealousy. He then married the daughter of a wealthy mining engineer and had a few children, but refused to see his wife anymore after he saw an admiring letter to her from a male friend (he said “I never take part in any competition—not even for the favor of a woman”). Soon after that, one of his sons committed suicide at age 16 after killing a rival in a duel over a girl in Chico, California. Perhaps Bierce’s difficult relationships with women, petty jealousies, and family tragedies shaped his philosophy and word definitions in The Devil’s Dictionary.

Ambrose Bierce’s book was popular 100 years ago, and many of his aphorisms are still quoted and cited today. Derek Abbott recently created Wickedictionary as an updated, contemporary version of The Devil’s Dictionary. Yet by 1927, H.L. Mencken said that it was out-of-print and difficult to find. Perhaps this illustrates that what is popular today may be forgotten 15 years later.

What happened to Ambrose Bierce? In November 1913, at the age of seventy-one, he joined Pancho Villa’s army in Mexico. He was last heard from in a letter dated December 26, 1913, and is presumed to have died in battle soon after, with his body burned when corpses were incinerated to prevent the spread of typhus. He had earlier said that he would not return from Mexico, and that “nobody will find my bones.”  After his dramatic disappearance in Mexico, his works sank into obscurity.

However, I found The Devil’s Dictionary to be quite an amusing read, and a book that you can just dip into serendipitously. A few more examples:

Love, n.  A temporary insanity curable by marriage or by removal of the patient from the influences under which he incurred the disorder.

Saint, n.  A dead sinner revised and edited.

Dictionary, n.  A malevolent literary device for cramping the growth of a language and making it hard and inelastic. This dictionary, however, is a most useful work.

(Want to read this book? If LMU's copy is checked out, here's an e-book... here's an iPhone app, and don't forget LINK+!) 

Lions & Roses: LMU Centennial and the Tournament of Roses Parade

With LMU's Centennial float taking part in the 123rd Rose Parade, Hannon Library staff have used the library's collections to look at the colorful history of this world-famous event. This exhibit includes postcards from across the 20th century as well as a rare photo of the Loyola University marching band in the parade in 1938. Excerpts from the Los Angeles Times Historical database, one of the library's many electronic resources, provide background to the postcard images from the Dept. of Archives and Special Collections.

In addition, the Phoenix Decorating Company, designers of the LMU Centennial Float, graciously provided photographs of the float in production.

Located on Level 3 of the William H. Hannon Library, the Howard B. Fitzpatrick Court exhibit space is open during regular library hours. Don't miss this fascinating glimpse into the intertwined histories of two classic southern California institutions! 

Exhibit runs through January 18, 2012.

Top image credit: Flickr/LMU Alumni Association

Center image credit: LMU Department of Archives & Special Collections, Werner von Boltenstern Postcard Collection 

Reading 1911: How Little We Mortals Know: Review of The Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year we will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our fourth review in the series comes from a guest reviewer, LMU Senior Vice President and Chief Academic Officer Joseph Hellige. (For more information about the entire series, click here!)

How Little We Mortals Know: Review of The Sea Fairies by L. Frank Baum (Chicago: Reilly & Britton, 1911) 

“Nobody ever sawr a mermaid an’ lived to tell the tale.”

So says retired Captain Bill Waddle to young Mayre (“Trot”) Griffiths to begin L. Frank Baum’s fantasy of life under the sea. Like most young girls, Trot is full of questions and, now that his seafaring days have been ended by an accident, the peg-legged Cap’n Bill is grateful to spend his days teaching her about life on the sea and regaling her with legends of the world beneath. 

Trot is especially curious about those sea fairies known as mermaids and wishes with all her heart that she could meet one. Having heard her wish and wanting to correct the misinformation given by Cap’n Bill, the mermaids Merla and Clia transform Trot and Cap’n Bill into mermaid and merman, complete with scaled tails shimmering pink and green, respectively. The resulting tour through the depths of the deep blue sea is filled with sights, sounds, and adventures that rival those of Baum’s better-known “Oz” series. 

The first time my family vacationed at the Hotel del Coronado with our then young daughters, I noticed the framed photographs of L. Frank Baum and the accompanying text about the frequent visits from his home in Hollywood for relaxing and writing. So began my interest in his work and the discovery of just how prolific he was. Shortly after, I picked up a copy of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus (1902) and read from it nightly to my girls. It remains one of our favorites. It is with the same sense of delight that I discovered and read The Sea Fairies.

In this 1911 novel, Baum paints wondrous word pictures of life among the mermaids and their queen, Aquamarine, who introduces them to King Anko, an enormous, powerful, and patriarchal sea serpent who presides over his kingdom with beneficence. The role of chief villain is played by Zog the Magician, a hideous mixture of fish, animal, and human, who enlists sea devil assistants to capture the visitors and their mermaid escorts. The protagonists learn that sailors believed to have been drowned have actually been enslaved and held captive in Zog’s lair. Among these are Cap’n Bill’s brother, Cap’n Joe.  True to the form of this genre, Zog is eventually defeated with King Anko’s help, his prisoners are released, Cap’n Joe is chosen to be their new king, and Trot and Cap’n Bill return to dry land.

As is true of Baum’s other work, The Sea Fairies mixes fanciful children’s fare with social commentary, wry political observations, and light-hearted wordplay that is meant more for us grownups. For example, at one point Trot is confused by King Anko’s account of struggling to untie a painful knot in his enormous tail. When she tells him that she does not understand him, the King thanks her, saying

“People who are always understood are very common.  You are sure to respect those you can’t understand, for you feel that perhaps they know more than you do.”

 

Elsewhere, there are barnacles who love to sing meaningless ditties:

“Please go away and come some other day;

Goliath tussels

With Samson’s muscles

Yet the mussels never fight in Oyster Bay.”

 

And, snooty codfish, of whom Cap’n Bill says:

“I’ve heard tell of codfish aristocracy but I never knowed ‘zac’ly what it meant afore….but I ain’t sure they understand what they’re like when they’re salted an’ hung up in the pantry.  Folks gener’ly gets stuck-up ‘cause they don’t know theirselves like other folks knows ‘em.”

 

More in Baum’s time than today, the term “codfish aristocracy” was used in reference to ostentatious displays of recently acquired wealth. The reference stems from the organization of New England colonist sailors into a “codfish aristocracy,” whose new-found wealth was acquired from the sea and who rose up against British tariffs on fishing. So important were these fish aristocrats that an effigy of the codfish still hangs in the chamber of the House of Representatives in the Massachusetts statehouse in Boston. 

To a well-dressed, though somewhat greedy, octopus Trot shares that up on dry land they call the “Stannerd Oil Company” an octopus, prompting the following exchange:

“Stop, stop!” cried the monster in a pleading voice.  “Do you mean to tell me that the earth people whom I have always respected compare me to the Stannerd Oil Company?”

“Yes,” said Trot positively.

“Oh, what a disgrace!  What a cruel, direful, dreadful disgrace!” moaned the Octopus, drooping his head in shame, and Trot could see great tears falling down his cheeks.

 

At another point the protagonists happen on an excited school of mackerel in time to hear the fish proclaim that one of their group, Flippity, has just gone to glory. Turning to their mermaid escort, Merla, Trot asks:

“What does it mean?  How did Flippity go to glory?”

“Why, he was caught by a hook and pulled out of the water into some boat,” Merla explained. “But these poor stupid creatures do not understand that, and when one of them is jerked out of the water and disappears, they have the idea he has gone to glory, which means to them some unknown but beautiful sea.”

 

Of humans who might also be said to have gone to their glory, the villainous sea monster Zog tells Trot and Cap’n Bill,

“The dying does not amount to much. It is the thinking about it that hurts you mortals most. I’ve watched many a shipwreck at sea, and the people would howl and scream for hours before the ship broke up. Their terror was very enjoyable [to me]  But when the end came, they all drowned as peacefully as if they were going to sleep, so it didn’t amuse me at all.”

 

All grand adventures end eventually, and The Sea Fairies is no exception. Baum followed this novel with one sequel and then returned to the “Oz” series for which he had become famous years earlier. Neither Trot nor Cap’n Bill were forgotten, however, and both make appearances in some of the later “Oz” stories. As for their adventure in The Sea Fairies, that, too, was destined to end with them back on earth where they belonged. As Trot says,

“The land’s the best, Cap’n.”

“It is, mate, for livin’ on,” he answered.

“But I’m glad to have seen the mermaids,” she added…

“Well, so’m I, Trot,” he agreed.  “But I wouldn’t ‘a’ believed any mortal could ever ‘a’ seen ‘em an’--“

Trot laughed merrily.

“An’ lived to tell the tale!” she cried, her eyes dancing with mischief.  “Oh, Cap’n Bill, how little we mortals know!”

“True enough, mate,” he replied, “but we-re a-learnin’ something ev’ry day.” 

 

Indeed!

 

Interesting Web Resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L._Frank_Baum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sea_Fairies

http://masstraveljournal.com/features/places/boston-cambridge/boston/massachusetts-fish-story

http://www.amazon.com/Sea-Fairies-Dover-Childrens-Classics/dp/0486401820

Reading 1911: Ethan Frome

What were we reading in 1911?

Each month of the Centennial year one of our librarians will look at a notable book published during 1911, and give you a glimpse of what people were reading while Loyola Marymount University was just getting started.

Our third review in the series comes from Systems Librarian Meghan Weeks. (For more information about the entire series, click here!)

Ethan Frome is a tragic novel written by Edith Wharton, started in 1907 and first published in 1911.  Wharton, whose maiden name was Edith Newbold Jones, was born in 1862 to a wealthy family. (Some say that the phrase "Keeping up with the Joneses" refers to Edith's family.)  Growing up in the United States and Europe, she was educated by private tutors. In New York in 1885, she married Edward Robbins Wharton, but divorced him in 1913. She wrote several novels, short stories, and poems, including The Age of Innocence, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1921.

Ethan Frome is set in the village of Starkfield, Massachusetts. Although Starkfield is a fictitious place, the name aptly describes the setting, which is desloate and suffers from especially harsh winters. The first chapter is told from the viewpoint of a visitor who stays in Starkfield one winter while working nearby.  This visitor, who is never named, occasionally encounters a curious man whom he describes as "the most striking figure in Starkfield, though he was but the ruin of a man." This man is Ethan Frome.  Ethan is very tall, but his right side is mangled, causing him to walk with a decided limp. The visitor is curious about Ethan and what happened to him, and asks around, getting bits and pieces of the story from the villagers about a "smash-up" that happened many years ago and which caused Ethan's lameness. Then one week, the visitor has to hire Ethan to take him to and from work, but there is a blizzard and the visitor stays a night on Ethan's farm. When he goes into Ethan's house, he "[begins] to put together this vision of his story." 

The second chapter starts the “vision” which goes back more than twenty years before the “smash-up.” Ethan is a young man who was studying to be an engineer but had to come home to care for the farm after his father had an accident. His father dies and his mother becomes ill. His cousin, Zeena, comes to live with them and helps to care for his mother. Ethan’s mother passes away during one of those Starkfield winters, and out of desperation and gratitude Ethan asks Zeena to be his wife. Soon after their marriage, though, Zeena becomes sickly and her cousin Mattie comes to live with them as an unpaid servant. Mattie’s parents had died and left her with very little money, and since she is neither skilled nor educated enough to find work, she has nowhere to go. Ethan and Mattie develop a mutual attraction which does not go unnoticed by Zeena.

One day, Zeena announces that her illness is much worse, and she must go to one of the bigger towns to see a new doctor.  Ethan is excited that he will be alone with Mattie and they have a nice dinner together at the farm, but the cat accidentally breaks one of Zeena’s favorite pickle dishes given to her by a relative. Ethan plans to glue it back together temporarily and hope that Zeena doesn’t notice it before he can replace it. However, Zeena comes back the next day and tells Ethan that the doctor says she needs a “hired girl” and that Mattie must go to make room for her. Zeena also finds the broken dish, which strengthens her decision that Mattie must go the following day. Ethan, furious and distraught, considers leaving with Mattie, but comes to the realization that he must stay because he doesn’t have the money to start a new life with Mattie. He also feels guilty because Zeena would have no one to care for her and no means to support herself. 

Ethan, against Zeena’s wishes, decides to take Mattie to the train station himself. On the way there, they lament over their separation and stop at a hill where they had planned to go sledding before Zeena’s early return. The hill is a steep and curved slope with a big elm tree at the bottom.  They decide to take the sled ride that they had planned before they part ways. Walking back up the hill, they embrace with a kiss and Mattie suggests that go down again, this time going straight into the elm tree so that they would “never have to leave each other any more.” Ethan agrees, and they go down the hill once more and right into that elm tree. Their wish to not leave each other comes true—but not in the way that either had envisioned.  Ethan turns into the mangled man described in the first chapter, Mattie ends up paralyzed, and Zeena now has to take care of both of them. In the final chapter, the visitor describes when he first sees all three of them as he enters the Frome house on the night of the blizzard, and how twenty years of suffering in this tragic situation have sapped the life out of all of them.

Ethan Frome is considered by many to be Wharton’s most tragic novel and it varies from her other works in that it portrays simple people in a small New England village rather than aristocrats. A couple of themes that make this novel as interesting today as it was when it was published in 1911 are the struggle between personal happiness and a person’s sense of duty or responsibility and how a person’s environment, in this instance the landscape and poverty, can have a negative effect on his/her emotional well-being. 

Reading 1911: What's next?

Have you been following our Reading 1911 series, in which LMU librarians read and review popular books published during the year that our university was founded?  If not, you can find the first three installations here:

Under Western Eyes by Joseph Conrad (review by Glenn Johnson-Grau, Head of Collection Development)

Jennie Gerhardt by Theodore Dreiser (review by Kristine Brancolini, Dean of the Library)

Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton (review by Meghan Weeks, Systems Librarian)

 

 

The response to this series so far has been fantastic, and we've received some questions about what's coming next. So here is a list of titles that we'll be reading and reviewing over the next few months:

Peter Pan by J.M. Barrie

The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

The Outcry by Henry James

My First Summer in the Sierra by John Muir

The Innocence of Father Brown by G.K. Chesterton

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson-Burnett

If you'd like to read along with us, copies of all of these books are available both in our library (click the book titles above) and through LINK+. These books are also all in the public domain, so if you have an e-reader, you can download and read the books for free! Here's a good place to look.

Also, if you want to pick a 1911 book and submit a review of your own, we'd love to feature it here! For more information, please contact Rhonda Rosen at rrosen@lmu.edu or 310.338.4584.