Severus Snape Does Not Deserve Your Pity by Emily Asher-Perrin

I came across this post in Tor.com. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2013/04/severus-snape-does-not-deserve-your-pity.  Although it's an older article, it was one of the most well-written and accurate analysis of one of my favorite Harry Potter characters, Severus Snape. 

JK Rowling is brilliant and did a great job of creating a disturbed, flawed character, that many people, including myself can empathize with.  But, don't misunderstand him or pity him!

The Invention of Craft by Glenn Adamson

I'm cheating a bit with this post. I was asked to write a book review for the Art Libraries Journal. I wasn't sure I'd be able to read it by November, because I have so many more things to read, however, I found this to be one of the best books I've read and actually very relevant for my research into the time period I'm studying.  So I include it here. This is what I turned into the ALJ. Obviously it may be edited when published in the journal.

In the 2006 film, The Illusionist, Edward Norton plays a nineteenth century magician, Eisenheim, who is challenged to reveal secrets of his craft by Crown Prince Leopold, played by Rufus Sewell.  Prince Leopold is a clever, highly learned man with a scientific bent—he embodies what Adamson describes as ‘modernity.’  Until I had read Adamson’s book, The Invention of Craft, I had no idea that Eisenheim was based on an actual historical magician, Robert-Hodin.  Robert-Hodin was so well regarded that later illusionist, Erik Weisz chose the stage name ‘Harry Houdini’ to honor him.  Several of the illusions the audience sees in the film – an orange tree growing before their eyes, apparent ghosts walking among the living, and the trick that puts Eisenheim a odds with Leopold: taking the prince’s sword on stage and challenging anyone to lift it as King Arthur lifted Excalibur from the stone—are all based on the crafty performances of Robert-Hodin. “He is trying to trick you,” Leopold says, demanding that the lights are switched on during Eisenheim’s command performance at the prince’s palace. “I am trying to enlighten you.  Who has the more noble pursuit?”

Robert-Hodin is an artisan, states Adamson. Artisans have been around for centuries.  Artisans have different creative practices and diverse skills, from cabinetmakers to weavers of lace, from locksmiths to performers on stage.  The artisans traditionally belonged to guilds that regulated how craft knowledge was disseminated through personal networks, following stages of apprenticeship, to journeyman and finally after years of dedicated hard work, to master. Going through each stage, one gained experience of the craft.  The guilds protected artisan mysteries, allowing artisans to set the price on their own work.  The guild system allowed artisans to be independent from outside control.

The guild system and this artisan process of slow emersion into life-long careers started breaking down prior to the Industrial Revolution, asserts Adamson.  He shows how different trade shops and enterprises began dividing up labor, creating specialists in certain specific tasks so that large jobs that were commissioned could be done faster, and more efficiently.  What happened then (Adamson shows how this happened at different times in different trades) was that rather than apprentices being fully knowledgeable about the whole process of making something like a cabinet or a wood engraving, or the details of each trick in performance, people became specialists.  Adamson points out that the problem with this process was that someone from outside (like the encyclopaedist Denis Diderot, or a captain of industry, or a political figure), someone with a lot of influence and often power, gets the impression there is no actual skill or talent going into the craft process.  And what’s worse, promote this idea widely.

Adamson alludes to our awareness that at some point between 1750s to the 1850s the concept of a division between the ‘fine arts’ and the ‘craft arts’ occurred, with the fine art emerging as the superior of the two.  Adamson strongly argues that the whole notion of ‘craft’ was invented in order to: first, control artisans that were operating within their own economic and social communities; and second, to provide something in opposition to the concept of ‘progress’ in the narrative of the Industrial Revolution, that was effectively peddled by emerging entrepreneurs, industrialists and capitalists.  Many professions and new jobs emerged during the Victorian era. Natural philosophers became physicists and chemists.  Natural history practitioners were transformed into geologists and biologists.  And with some slight of hand, traditional artisans were rechristened as architects, designers, and engineers, or ‘mere’ practitioners of craft such as draughtsman or mechanics.  The actual magic being performed was through rhetoric, and Adamson shows how skills that were once admired and well paid for were either relegated into the lower ranks of society, or cleverly made invisible. For example, it was said that performers, like Robert-Hodin, used their creativity and skill to ‘merely’ make money, so they were considered ‘base’ because they didn’t contribute to something ‘more useful’.  Designers on the other hand, who did much useful work to plan, produce, and then finish products, like rifles or cabinets were obscured by talk of wondrous machines that ‘did everything.’  No credit or extra compensation was provided for laborers who worked with the machines; who were told they only had so-called mechanical and unthinking tasks to perform.   

The Invention of Craft is actually a cultural and social history, that challenges readers in an compelling way to ask questions like, why did the nineteenth century belief in progress and self-improvement lead to exploitation, not just of workers in Great Britain, but of raw materials and other cultures on distant shores? How has craft knowledge, which has been hidden, or belittled, or ignored since the nineteenth century, actually remained an empowering force with potential to change the world?  This well-researched book is worth getting just for the references alone—it’s a bonus to find the text so engaging.

Adamson defines many common beliefs that are still held today, about craft and ‘traditional arts’. He explains craft ‘creation stories’ in the eighteenth - nineteenth centuries, and challenges different myths in four very dense, yet enlightening chapters. Each chapter starts with a historical figure that is seamlessly woven into a greater narrative.  By the end of each section, which builds on the last, he offers different understandings of modernity.  Explanations by Ruskin or Morris or Marx may be too simple, he thinks. Perhaps modernity is actually just a fantasy of control.   

In The Illusionist, the character Eisenheim, started out as a cabinetmaker’s son, who has to flee as a young man because the authorities were trying to control his life.  When the movie begins we know this character has changed his name to Eisenheim and reinvented himself.  The craft skills of cabinetmaker are used to create ‘magical’ artisan props, props that transform him into a very successful illusionist, a performer outside direct control of the authorities.  Eisenheim practices ‘mysteries’ which he will not explain to outsiders.  People come to his shows to experience wonder. Prince Leopold, the embodiment of nineteenth-century, authoritarian, ‘scientific’ thinking doesn’t like wonder. Wonder to Leopold equals trickery.  Wonder is something that should captivate for a few moments.  The real thrill of viewing any craft skill for him comes from understanding how something is actually done. Prince Leopold asks which of them has the more noble pursuit.  It is well worth reading Glenn Adamson’s book for enlightening and nuanced answers.  

Oranges and Peaches

Just before I left my job this week, everyone I worked with at the new Skills@Library team was invited to a presentation, which is where your line manager gives a little speech thanking an outgoing employee for their years of service.  This is roughly what I said.  I didn't exactly give a speech, it was more like a conversation, where people were asking questions like what did I enjoy the most during my time at Leeds, etc. but this is the order I would have said things.

I’ve worked at the University of Leeds Library for more than seven years.  This is the longest I’ve worked at any library during my 12-year career starting at UCLA’s Department of Information Studies in 1999.  To commemorate this event, my husband got me the Lego librarian mini figure.  

In one hand she has a “Shhh…” coffee mug,  in the other hand a book, Oranges and Peaches.

Do you know the Oranges and Peaches story?
[Since there were co-workers in their 20s and no Americans I explained…]

It is from a peer reviewed journal article that I had to read while I was at UCLA.  Basically the article talks about how the majority of communication that happens between people is miscommunication, but that human beings have little filters in their brains that correct what we perceive as mistakes.  The following example is given in the article.  [I am clearly summarizing here and using my own words.]

A kid at an American college goes the college library, and he is very freaked out.  He has a test on Monday for his Introduction to Biology class and it is Friday afternoon.  He was told by his TA that he needs to read an entire book over the weekend to prepare for the test, but the undergraduate Library doesn’t seem to have it, so he is now in the biomedical library asking for help at the reference desk.

“The book is called Oranges and Peaches,” he says.  The librarian does a search in the catalogue by title and can’t find it.

“Who is the author?” she asks trying to be helful.  He spends five minutes looking through his notes and then says, “Charles… Charles somebody.”

“I need more information about the book. I can’t find it if you don’t even know his surname.”

Completely frustrated, the student raises his voice and says, “My TA says that there should be dozens of copies of this book in the library!  It’s supposed to be, like, the Bible of evolution.  Why don’t you have it?

“Do you mean ‘On the Origin of Species’ by Charles Darwin?” the librarian asks.

“Yes, that’s it!”

The rest of the article from what I remember says that staff working on the library reference desk need to be aware that although people know what they want, they often don’t know the best way to ask for it.  Even in the age of Google, sometimes you do need human mediation to help with searching.

Now at UCLA there was another class that was a requirement for us to take.  I think it was called “Information and Society”, and we went over the history of the library profession had to participate in what seemed like endless discussions about the meaning of our profession, and whether the profession, or libraries for that matter were valued.  I thought it was completely useless at the time.  I was wrong.

Every job I’ve had since I’ve been working libraries has involved in some “justifying our existence exercise.”  This is even true at places you’d think care about research.  While I was working at my first professional job at JPL, the JPL business managers had talked about possibly closing down the JPL library as a cost-saving measure and moving everything to Caltech.  I went around talking to scientists and engineers about how they felt about that and I actually met my husband because he was one of the people I interviewed.  All of them basically said, “We want our own library.  Why should we have to drive on three different freeways to get to the Caltech Library?  Sure most of the science journals are online, but what if we need to talk to somebody?  How much money will actually be saved if the different project and research staff have to waste time and keep physically leaving the JPL campus? And the priority at Caltech’s Library are Caltech University staff and students, not JPL staff.” 

It feels like these cycles of having to justify providing good library service and maintaining good collections keep repeating themselves.  I’m here again at the end of this job which has just undergone a restructure.  A restructure that basically negates the the value of the excellent collections, and the expertise in them that only happens after spending several years working closely with the collections.

I think in a years’ time it will be good that Skills@Library will be moving into the new Laidlaw Library currently being constructed, and staff will have the chance to spend time working on general enquiries.  I was sad when it was decided that Faculty Team Librarians would stop doing that.  I think it’s good for staff from all levels of the management structure to spend some time during the month on the frontline, that way we are in contact with library users, that’s how it was when I worked at Oxford University.  And what I enjoyed most about being a librarian was one-on-one contact with students and researchers.  By helping them, I learned a lot.  Even about things I wouldn’t have been interested in asking about for myself.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about books and knowledge as well as the state of the library profession. Probably because the topic of my PhD research is “Democratising Knowledge: Chambers’s Illustrated encyclopaedias.”  Chambers’ was/is a large publisher that began 200 years ago and has been profitable selling education books cheaply to anyone who wanted to teach them self about anything.  The publishing company is still running.

Books are not just books. Books symbolize aspirations, especially at a place like this university.  You come to university to learn what is in those books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.) and you become a different person because of that knowledge—a person who can practice science; or history; or medicine; or law.  Or who can write articulately. The people who write those books aspire to share their knowledge.

“Librarian” is more than just a job title to me. A librarian is someone in the unique position to connect people with books (or journal articles, or archives, or online resources, etc.).  In other words, someone who belongs to a profession that enables people to help themselves.

I’m not going to completely disappear.  After looking at COPAC records, I’ve found that many of the books I need for my research, (which overlaps with graphic design history, Victorian culture, history of science, bibliography) is found here at the University of Leeds Library.  So, if I come by, I’ll probably bother some of you to have a cup of coffee with me. 

The Song of Achilles

My son is keen on everything related to the Ancient Greeks and Ancient Romans at the moment.  So we've been visiting lots of places in Cambridge this week with lots of collections on Greek and Roman civilization material. When we were in Cambridge Central Library (curiously in the middle of a huge shopping mall) I came a cross this book.  I finished it in two days.  It is an absolute page turner. 

It tells of a 20 year period, prior to and encompassing the Trojan War.  The novel is told from the perspective of Patroclus, the companion of Achilles.  I understand this novel took Madeline Miller 10 years to research and write, and I can believe it.  The historical/mythic detail is rich, the settings are lush, and the characters develop and change, and the descriptions of love and death are sensual and vivid.  This novel is not for the faint of heart.  While reading some scenes, my heart was pounding.

When I was in college, I read the Iliad and I must say I didn't realize how much of my Greek mythology I forgot, which worked out fine, because the things I did remember were not featured in this novel, so I was genuinely surprised when I read certain scenes.  The Iliad is mostly about battle, and as it was written down long after the events were supposed to take place after being transmitted by oral culture.  Therefore, while the story is interesting, you mostly get, this happened, then that, then because of an offense caused before which we will flash back to, this is now happening.  This novel on the other hand flushes out personalities, character motivation, rules of the ancient society, so that along with the story, readers are sucked in.  

You fall in love at the same time that Patroclus does.  You fear for his life when he is cornered.  You are humiliated when he is ridiculed publicly.  You despise Agamemnon and share Patroclus' wary respect for Odysseus.  This is all very cleverly done and I'm glad this first novel of Madeline Miller's won the Orange Prize. 

The Giver

I read this book when I was visiting Los Angeles this past week.  It is excellent.  I follows the life of a boy, Jonas, from the age of 11 - 13 in a future society where choice has been removed from the world.  Everyone is taught to be pleasant, to manage their emotions, and to conform to the Rules.  When children become 12 years old, in his society, a group of elders decide what work they will spend the rest of their life doing.  Jonas, because he seems to have a certain talent for "seeing beyond" is selected to be the Receiver.  There is only one Receiver in the community, and s/he holds the memories of the past society.  The memories are needed to make wise decisions, but it was decided elders in the past that in order to maintain the "sameness" i.e., conflict and keep order, only the Receiver of memories should be forced to experience the joys as well as the pain of life.

Jonas receives a year of training from the current Receiver, who he starts to call the Giver.

The writing flows very well as does the story, and as readers you make the journey with Jonas, discovering that further and further unsettling things about the community.  

It looks like a film adaptation of this book is scheduled to be released in August, later this year.  I find the preview interesting.  When I was reading the book, in some ways it was playing out like a film in my head.  I actually imagined something like Pleasantville where the movie first takes place in Black and White, and as more memories are transmitted to Jonas, he starts seeing the world in color.  I guess this just means it will be a different adaptation.

True Detective

True Detective is a fantastic series: dark, hauntingly beautiful, and with a killer soundtrack that does its job manipulating audience emotions.   The eight episodes tell a complete story, jumping backwards and forwards in time, of two detectives, Rust Cohle (played by Matthew McConaughey) and Martin Hart (played by Woody Harrelson) who investigate a ritual-style murder that “makes their careers.”  The first 6 episodes of story is framed in a series of highly effective flashbacks, allowing you to learn about the two main characters and what makes these men tick. One of them is suspected by other police of having been involved with the murder,  as new evidence is brought to light. The last two episodes are set in present day Louisiana and Cohle and Harts attempt to discover someone they might have missed the first time they worked this case in 1995.

Matthew McConaughey does an excellent of job of being brilliant, dark, and obsessive to the point of craziness.  Nobody likes Cohle, but nobody can deny that he’s good at his job.  Woody Harrelson plays a unfaithful, drunk hypocrite that has serious issues controlling his emotions, his libido, and the thoughts and actions of the women in his life.  Hart seems to have it all, but can’t make good decisions about his personal life, which spills into his work. Both of Cohle and Hart are anti-heros, both of them lie, both of them break the law in the pursuit of the murders, and both are compelling to watch.

The dialogue between the two men is fantastic.  "Do you believe it's possible to be in love with more than one woman," Hart asks.  "I don't believe it is possible to love at all," Cohle chillingly responds. 

Lousiana is also a character as well as a backdrop for the story.  The landscape obscures the victims, hides clues, and shelters murders.  The bayou is breathtaking, and it breeds impoverished communities of people that are insular.  Outsiders like Cohle, originally from Texas via Alaska, seem to be drawn to and repelled to the local culture at the same time.  Hart embodies living with its squandered opportunities but also provides the glimpses of its possible reinventions.  

The aging process and the passage of time is depicted convincingly and methodically in the hair, makeup, clothes, the artifacts like phones, houses, cars and guns.  We are only going back to 1995, this is not vintage TV like Mad Men, but the settings are very believable and easy to relate to if you've lived through the 1990s and the first decade of this century.

Spoiler Alert:
Have just read some strange critics reviews, which I guess should always be taken with a grain of salt.  Sometimes people write a column to show off what they know, rather than to provide honest feedback of a show.  Sometimes people have their own issues to promote and they view everything through the lens of that issue.

True Detective is part of a genre, very much in the spirit of noir detective stories, but it also subverts the genre by being a combination of drama, thriller, and mystery, and local history narrative, while also paying homage to the buddy cop genre in long-running TV shows.   The buddy cop genre is turned on its head here, though -- it not clear until the last episode if this a tragedy (in the classical epic sense - hero is brought low by a tragic flaw or in this case the anti-heroes with many flaws) or a redemption story.  Some of the critics have talked about the high levels of testosterone injected into this series and lack of strong women characters -- that women are only portrayed as victims of sexual fantasy, murder, and domestic abuse. To which I would respond, “Are you serious?   Have you actually watched this show?”  The traditional femme fatal role which the noir genre always includes, shows a seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. In this story it is not a mysterious woman with a mysterious past, but a nurse who is also a betrayed wife, that brings down both men. 

The main characters are men, but everything that motivates them is equally influenced by men and women around them.  Hart gets told off by a madam at her whorehouse, who he is trying to tell off for having an under-aged girl working for her.  She responds that women don’t fit neatly into little boxes into which you men try compartmentalize us.  And it is telling that although he lives with a wife and two daughters, he doesn’t know them.  His main flaw is that he tries to see them in roles that he casts them in, rather than look at how they actually are.  This flaw is pointed out to him over and over by the women themselves, and by Cohle.  But his character is too thick to get it, which is realistic.  But just because he doesn’t get them, doesn't mean that the writers have created a story with weak female characters.
  

Cohle is the way he is because his mother abandoned him at when he was two years old, and he was raised by his Vietnam Vet father, who was clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome.   When the show starts, Rust Cohle is still dealing with the death of his baby daughter.  He seems to be a self-imposed loner who can’t make connections with people, because the two crucial relationships with females that connect his life to the past and the future can only be described by one word: loss.  And in one of the episodes, a woman that he clearly respects and desires because she is a mother and a wife (something he clearly longs for but believes he doesn't deserve), uses him in a shocking way. 

Cohle sets himself up in the role of philosopher, and with his long hair and beard the in 2012 version of himself, there is a definite Jesus motif in his appearance, personifying what comes off as his God complex to other characters through the years.  The case that Cohle and Hart are working on is about saving women and children, but it is also about saving themselves.  Both men are the children of women.  Both men have suffered something, and so they can relate to women victims. 

Gorillas in the mall

Image from the Tacoma Public Library.

What would Dian Fossey say? 

I really think she would have like the book I recently finished reading, The One and Only Ivan, by Katherine Applegate.  It won the Newberry medal last year.  It is based on the true story of Ivan, a gorilla who was kept in a Washington state shopping mall for nearly 30 years as a side-show attraction, and how using his artistic ability he eventually manages to move to a zoo "where humans make amends".

The story, told from the point of view of Ivan, was an engrossing page turner.  Applegate manages to amuse you throughout the first half of book while revealing unsavory details about Ivan's plight and other animals kept in the mall. Subsequently you find out this his parents were likely killed by African poachers and he and is sister were sold in the United States.  The second half of the book drags you along on an emotional roller coaster where you are rooting for all the animals and at the same time feel quite a bit of pity for the mall owner, Mack.  It takes a good deal of skill to have a bad character, but allow the audience to feel some sympathy for him.

Google recently made a tribute to Dian Fossey, who would have been 82 years old a couple of weeks ago, had she not been murdered for her work trying to save mountain gorillas.  I think she would have been happy to know about his case, and that there has been a decline taking infant gorilla's as exotic pets. 

Incidently, I did see Gorillas in the Mist a while ago when the film first came out, and I can still remember a lot of it.  It was a very powerful story.  As someone who has met mountain gorillas at the Bronx and San Diego Zoos, it find it hard to see how anyone can look these creatures and the eye and not see their humanity.    

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Mitty in the film archives or "negative assets department,"
as it's called in the film. Clearly it's an archive (see source).

I saw this film on opening weekend in the Netherlands, just after New Year's Eve.  I really liked what Ben Stiller did with the material and this is one of the few movies I know about where the main character is an archivist.  The original short story, by author James Thurber, is about a hen-pecked husband who fantasizes about doing amazing things professionally-- saving people's lives as a renowned surgeon, piloting planes or commanding submarines (well if you have to dream, may as well dream big and exciting)-- while in reality his wife tells him how to dress himself, how to drive, where he must wait for her, and speculates openly on his intellect, reliability, and maturity.   "Lovely marriage." Not.

The film on the other hand, is about a Walter Mitty who does daydream, and does imagine himself in superhero roles, but he also imagines things like, getting the last word in an argument with a jerk at work, and being really witty during the smack down, too. (I'm sure we all do imagine this.) He does imagine traveling, he works at Life Magazine, so how could he not, but for personal reasons, he's had to be the family breadwinner from the age of 17 when his father died, he's not "splurged" any of his money on himself.  One of the opening scenes shows him carefully managing his checkbook.  And let's face it, compared with other professions, archivists aren't raking in the cash.  What makes the job worthwhile is the material that you manage, and the vaults of Life Magazine would be a magnificent place to let 16 years roll by.  Except when it isn't. 

The movie has an interesting and realistic twist.  Mass media is changing, content is now going online, in the wake of the recession, it is very difficult to sustain regular print publications, especially publications that have the high quality that Life Magazine has had.  While on one level the film is about a guy who needs a or two push to get out in the world (the movie it shows a romantic interest), and that life needs to be lived; there is also some social commentary, like doing a good job and working very hard doesn't equate to job security, or the people who make big decisions that effect people's lives only care about the bottom line.  Or it questions the American belief that quality of life is better now that before.   There was some critic that said this movie doesn’t know what it want’s to be, but I like the complexity in this narrative.  Mitty is the reliable, practical man.  He knows how deal with and care for objects, like the negative film.  Like his mother's piano.  He is detail oriented and likes his work and it is implied in the film that he has some valuable skills in the darkroom, techniques which are done very differently on digital editing software these days.  But Mitty also wishes he could be like the celebrated freelance photographer who sees things first-hand, who doesn’t reflect too much, but lives in the moment. He wants to not have responsibilities. 

The cinematography is really beautiful.  Nobody can go to all these places, and not be changed inside.  The person I saw this movie with and I were debating about what was real.  His view was that none of it was real, the skateboard supposedly from Greenland, wasn’t the same as the one Mitty eventually gives a boy, and the warlords in Afghanistan would certainly not be interested in the cake made by Mitty’s mother.  Mitty never went anywhere, only things that happened with people he actually knows (like his family and coworkers) is real.  My take is that most of it did happen, just not as exciting as he sometimes portrayed it.  I think he did go to Greenland, you can tell on the plane he’s imagining he’s joined the jet set crown, but when he lands and walks around the airport and later the bar, he’s not very impressed.  The scenery impresses him, but not the locals... which is often a common experience for travelers, who do meet local con artists and thieves (this is never in the travel brochures, I know from experience) as well as normal people just sick of foreigners getting in their way.  He is shown freaking out over the money that he’s spending on these trips, and while I doubt there was a full body cavity search at LAX, the detail of him having a Cinnabon with his contact from Match.Com seemed very real to me.  Sometimes when you are in a far away place a conversation with a stranger, or a serendipitous moment is the thing you remember the most, though there is no record of it. 

I think it was a great film, and I liked that it mixed the genres up.  It was bitter sweet, but inconclusive.  He did lose his job, but he has a date lined up with someone he liked.  It could go anywhere from there.  Like real life.