There are many excellent illustrated volumes of Edgar Allan Poe stories, but this 1944 edition with illustrations by German-American artist Fritz Eichenberg is special. Eichenberg was a German artist who emigrated to America in the 1930s; his speciality was wood engraving, a technique particularly suited to Poe’s dark dramatics. Several of the illustrations show the climax of the story.
For the first time in more than 50 years Los Angeles’s J. Paul Getty Museum is displaying ten of the remaining pages from Códice Maya de México, the oldest surviving book of the Americas. Dating to circa 1100 CE, the Mayan Codex is said to have been painted by a single artist, recording the movements of the planet Venus over the course of 584 days.
The Mayan Codex, on special loan from Mexico City’s National Library of Anthropology and History, has rarely been displayed to the public. In a post from the Getty’s website, Timothy Potts, the museum’s director, emphasizes that the Getty is “extremely fortunate and grateful” for the privilege of exhibiting the remaining pages.
The Getty Museum’s intent for the exhibition of the codex is to highlight the sophisticated chronological manner in which the Mayan civilization translated and transcribed the cosmos over 900 years ago.
The four Mayan Codices, including the Codex on display at the Getty, are the only known remaining books that survived Spanish Franciscan Bishop Diego De Landa’s order to burn and destroy all Maya manuscripts and cult images during the Spanish Inquisition of Yucatán in July of 1562. De Landa was determined to eradicate any roots of Maya spirituality, specifically ritualistic human sacrifice, that conflicted with Spain’s goals of mass Indigenous conversion to Roman Catholicism.
While checking out book blogs I stumbled on a reference to “Spooks and Spirits and Shadowy Shapes” , featuring wonderfully atmospheric, period illustrations by Robert L. Doremus. Certainly not the most interesting Halloween reading, but personally significant as I remember checking out the book from my local library as a small child. Visits to the “big” library were the highlight of my otherwise uninspiring childhood and I seem to have lasting memories of many borrowed books.
It began to seem that one would have to hold in the mind forever two ideas which seemed to be in opposition. The first idea was acceptance, the acceptance, totally without rancor, of life as it is, and men as they are: in the light of this idea, it goes without saying that injustice is a commonplace. But this did not mean that one could be complacent, for the second idea was of equal power: that one must never, in one’s own life, accept these injustices as commonplace but must fight them with all one’s strength. This fight begins, however, in the heart and it now had been laid to my charge to keep my own heart free of hatred and despair.
James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son
Regular visitors to this humble blog are aware of my deep appreciation for George Orwell’s writing. I was chuffed to discover a new Orwell project set to launch this week. The Orwell Daily is a newletter which will offer tranches of Orwell’s writing—between 1,000 and 1,500 words—every day. The newsletter will launch on October 28th with a serialization of Down and Out in Paris and London, which will run until late December.
According to the Orwell Daily editor Jeremy Wikeley, “Really this about starting a conversation and a community around the books and the words themselves. Orwell is, obviously, everywhere. To say he’s influential doesn’t really cover it. For so many people Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm aren’t just good reads or wise parables, they’re living, breathing texts, books that make sense of the world and offer a way through it. The essays and the non-fiction too. The Foundation exists to keep that legacy alive.”
In honor of the Halloween season, here’s the first horror film, Georges Méliès’ The Haunted Castle. Originally released in 1896, the year before Dracula was published, it had been thought to be lost until 1988, when a copy was discovered in the New Zealand Film Archive.
Though it’s full of horrific trappings, in general Méliès intended it to amuse and astonish rather than to shock. The filmmaker himself appears as Mephistopheles, and the woman conjured from the cauldron is Jehanne d’Alcy, who would become his second wife.
Each year the Halloween season seems to engender new found interest in both popular and lesser known spooky stories. Those of us raised on classic ghost tales likely are familiar with the work of M.R. James, but younger generations may not have had the opportunity to enjoy the thrill of his iconic stories. His work has influenced writers of horror, from H. P. Lovecraft to Steven King.
“The stereotypical Jamesian ghost stry involves a scholar or gentleman in a European village who, through his own curiosity, greed, or simple bad luck, has a horrifying supernatural encounter. For example, in “ ‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,’ ” a professor finds himself haunted by a mysterious figure after blowing a whistle found in the ruins of a Templar church, and in “Count Magnus,” a writer’s interest in a mysterious and cruel figure leads to horrific consequences. Other stories have the scholar as an antagonist, like “Lost Hearts” and “Casting the Runes,” where study of supernatural rites gives way to practice. James’ stories find their horror in their atmosphere and mood, and strike a balance in their supernatural elements, being neither overly descriptive nor overly vague.”
Now it’s possible to sample all of James’ ghost stories in a single volume for free at Standard Ebooks, the home of free, high-quality, public-domain texts.
This collection includes all the stories from his collections Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, A Thin Ghost and Others, and A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories.
I have to admit that I am a bit of a airline safety video nerd. It’s the height of creativity to create a safety video that can both keep the attention of air travelers and be simultaneously entertaining. Created in 2019, the release of this new video was delayed by the pandemic. It is a departure from Air Canada’s past safety videos, which focused on passengers completing appropriate safety actions while in a plane. Instead, the nearly six minute video shows a number of beautiful scenes from across Canada, integrating safety information and actions into a bilingual ode to Canada.
NB: If the video fails to launch, please visit our homepage.
The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 180 countries on climate change performance, environmental health, sanitation, and ecosystem vitality from the cleanest to the dirtiest in the world. There are few surprises in thie top ten list described in the short video below, although I expected to see New Zealand and Iceland among the top ten countries.
NB: If the video does not appear in your email, please see our homepage.
Travel Between The Pages 