A Legacy in Wax

Madame Tussaud: A Novel of the French Revolution by Michelle Moran is a fictionalized account of the life of Marie Grozholtz Tussaud. Marie learned the art of wax modeling from her uncle, Philippe Curtius, who learned to create body parts in wax when he was a physician. Their Salon de Cire was filled with life-sized figures of popular people, dressed in authentic clothing and arranged in realistic settings.

At the height of its popularity, lines formed early in the morning in front of the salon and continued into the night until the exhibits closed. At first people flocked in to see Marie Antoinette’s latest fashions and marvel over the heroes of the American Revolution. Over time, they came for the latest news and to see tableaus featuring the leaders du jour: Maximilian Robespierre, Jean-Paul Marat, and the Duc d’Orléans.

Marie straddled two diverging worlds as long as she could. She sculpted the royal family numerous times, tutored the king’s sister, Princesse Élisabeth, and was a guest at the Court of Versailles. At the same time, the Salon de Cire became a gathering place for those who talked of revolution, and Marie could not avoid being drawn into the spiraling horror they set in motion. To save her family and herself she agreed to make death masks of guillotine victims, who were sometimes people she had known and loved.

Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette

(Photo courtesy of Iman1138)

Madame Tussaud is a gripping account of a tumultuous time in history through one person’s eyes. As grim as much of it was, I enjoyed looking up images of the characters – the painting “Death of Marat” is overly romanticized – and words I was not familiar with (the popular headgear of the revolution was a red Phrygian cap, and true patriots wore a tricolored cockade). I also gained an appreciation for Marie, the woman who endured so much grief yet went on to create a museum that still exists, almost three hundred years later.

Triangle in the sun

This is true: in the 19th century, astronomers saw canals on Mars. Peering through telescopes, they drew detailed maps of the elaborate intersecting lines they saw on the surface of the red planet. Had those lines represented physical canals, then the canals would have to be truly enormous, excavation projects far beyond the capacity of Earth technology. The world was transfixed by the idea of a far-superior Martian civilization.

Ken Kalfus sets his elegant new novel, Equilateral, at this moment. It is 1894, and astronomer Sanford Thayer is certain that Earth must communicate with the advanced people of Mars. His passion has convinced governments and private shareholders to invest in a huge project: the creation of an enormous equilateral triangle in the Egyptian desert.

The triangle will be three hundred miles on each side. Each side is a deep trench, five miles wide, paved in black pitch. At the moment when Earth will be most visible to Mars, it will be filled with petroleum and set on fire. Surely Martian astronomers will see this shining beacon of geometric perfection, and will understand that Earthlings, too, are intelligent and civilized people.

Into this work of intelligence and civilization, the labor of hundreds of thousands of North Africans is pressed. They dig in the hot sun, while Thayer keeps his eyes on the skies.

Equilateral is a remarkably thoughtful novel that, in its short 200-page span, evokes questions about race, colonization, sex, and evolution. Above all else, it’s a compelling portrait of the way 19th century Europeans thought about themselves and others.

Add to all that some messy personal complications and some even messier political developments, and you end up with a tragedy of Grecian proportions, played out on a baking black triangular stage.

I’m still thinking about Equilateral, days after I finished it. Don’t miss this terrifically interesting book.

Iran: Modern and Medieval

Oregon author Aria Minu-Sepehr returns to the Newport Public Library on Sunday, June 2 at 2:00 p.m. to present “Iran: Modern and Medieval.”  He was here in March as one of four Oregon Book Award Finalists, and read from his book, We Heard the Heavens Then: A Memoir of Iran.

Minu-Sepehr had a privileged childhood as the son of a major general in the Imperial Iranian Air Force. Following the fall of Shah of Iran in 1979, his family sought refuge in the United States. The hostage crisis, a year later, would prove that the edicts of the Iranian Revolution could impact the global community and destroy the goodwill of one people for another. 

Any future involving Iran is now considered to be volatile. Will Iran seek nuclear armament? Will sanctions deter Iran’s rogue bent, or will they further radicalize the nation?

Minu-Sepehr argues that Iran itself is torn—a nation at once modern and medieval. Without a proper understanding of this fundamental divide, the West continues to peg Iran erroneously as this or that, in turn feeding a foreign policy that rests on half-truths and quicksand assumptions. 

Aria Minu-Sepehr has lectured on issues concerning Iranian culture and U.S. foreign policy, and created and directed Forum for Middle East Awareness at Susquehanna University, where he taught world and Middle Eastern literature.  He teaches writing at WoodSprings Institute and is the copy editor of Judicature.

The Hypnotist by Lars Kepler

In Lars Kepler's The Hypnotist, there’s a psycho on the loose, responsible for the violent and gory deaths of a family in Sweden. Detective Joona (Yo-nah) Linna must speak to the one victim that didn’t die, a boy who lies in a coma with more than a hundred stab wounds all over his body. The only way to speak to him safely, without causing more trauma—hypnosis.

Erik Maria Bark is the eponymous hypnotist. Ten years ago, he was an international expert in the use of hypnosis to treat survivors of trauma and abuse, until a tragedy forced him to promise never to hypnotize another person again. However, under the pressure of a life-or-death situation, he breaks his word, inviting a terrible revenge.

What an odd story! I’m listening to the audio version from Library2Go, and have been making up chores to do to give me more time to walk around with headphones on, because it’s completely engrossing. However, there are so many places where my suspended disbelief just falls and shatters, where someone acts terribly out of character or the police behave with such stupidity that I’m propelled out of the storyline and into sarcastic critiquing mode. And places where you expect the author to turn a cliché around, but instead he plays right into it! You’d think it would be awful, but somehow it works: it's suspenseful, twisty, and sometimes downright frightening.

Lars Kepler is the pseudonym for a Swedish husband and wife team, who have continued to write Joona Linna novels. The Nightmare is number two, The Fire Witness, to be published in July, is three, and The Sandman, whose publication date I have not been able to find, will be number four.

1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus, by Charles Mann

Until the Spanish (or perhaps the Vikings?) brought infectious diseases that decimated the native population, America was home to sophisticated urban centers that stretched from the Mississippi south to the Amazon River. At their peak, the population of some of the larger cities, such as Cahokia, located near present day St. Louis, may have reached upwards of 40,000 people. It wasn't until after the near total depopulation of the Americas that the land became the "uninhabited wilderness" that European colonists found when they landed centuries later. 

With 1491, historian Charles Mann reveals a dynamic culture stopped dead in its tracks. Gone were the irrigation systems and grain storage facilities that fed multitudes. Gone was the complex web of trade routes that supplied Gulf of Mexico salt to northern plains tribes and volcanic glass to the Iroquois. And gone, too, was a people’s ability to fend off the relentless physical and cultural assault that eventually robbed them of all they possessed.

1491 is a fascinating and controversial look at the land and cultures of the New World on the eve of Columbus' "discovery" of the New World.  This book opened my eyes to a millennia of history I never knew, and was never taught, about my own country. And you can reserve it here.

Memoir of a badly-behaved woman

Storm Large -- who may have the greatest rock-and-roll name of all time -- is well-known in Portland entertainment circles. Frontman of The Balls and frequent guest chanteuse of Pink Martini, she is a versatile singer whose can easily switch styles from heavy metal to torchy ballads. She won rave reviews for starring in Cabaret on Portland Center Stage in 2009, and is widely known for rocking the house on the short-lived reality show Rock Star: Supernova in 2006.


She also just won the Oregon Book Award for her excellent memoir, Crazy Enough, in which she describes the enduring effects of her mother’s mental illness on her life.

Large’s mother, Suzi, displayed aggravating, painful episodes of attention-getting delusions and compulsive lying, interrupted by bouts of suicidal depression. Diagnosed with everything from bipolar disorder to multiple personalities to something called “mental epilepsy,” Suzi was impossible to live with, even for the daughter who adored her.

Large (her family called her “Stormy”) rebelled early and hard, embarking upon a wild career of sex, drugs, and rock-and-roll. She recounts her adventures, good and sometimes very bad, in this funny, profane, and audacious book.

One of the greatest things about reading Crazy Enough was that it sent me hunting for Large’s performances online. She is remarkably talented.  Here is a clip (from Rock Star: Supernova) of her beautifully performing “Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd. I can be a harsh critic towards artists who cover songs I love, but I think that is wonderful. If you listen until the end, you’ll hear that she dedicates it to her mother.

If you’re interested in the story of a brilliant, troubled, difficult, and funny woman, check out Crazy Enough: A Memoir.

Godzilla and the China Syndrome

Godzilla’s emergence from the sea to destroy Tokyo was a potent figure of nuclear annihilation in 1956 when the film appeared on American screens. The film was directly linked to the controversial aboveground hydrogen bomb testing in the Pacific Ocean at the time. How is the threat of nuclear radiation being presented today through films and other media?

This is the focus of  Tracking Godzilla: Images of Nuclear Radiation in Film and Media, a free conversation with cinema studies scholar Isabelle Freda on Sunday, May 19, 2013 at 2:00 p.m. at the Newport Public Library. This program is sponsored by Oregon Humanities, with additional help from the Sylvia Beach Hotel.

Freda is an independent scholar who has taught at numerous universities and colleges in the U.S. and abroad. She received her Ph.D. in cinema studies from New York University, and her research and publications include studies of the modern American presidency, German-American relations, 9/11, the imagination of disaster, the Cold War and nuclear national security state, the presidential campaign film, eco-politics, and film.

Through the Conversation Project, Oregon Humanities offers free programs that engage community members in thoughtful, challenging conversations about ideas critical to our daily lives and our state's future. For more information about this free community discussion, please contact the Newport Library at 541-265-2153 or go to its website, www.newportlibrary.org.