Playing Red Rover with William Wallace--On A Foreign Field by Hazel West

Did you play Red Rover as a child?  It involves bringing people from the opposing team over to yours.  I think that Red Rover is a particularly apt central metaphor for a novel about a captured English knight who learns about the Scottish rebels he'd been sent to fight, and changes his perspective.  The novel is On A Foreign Field by Hazel West.

                                                      
Here's some background that reveals my perspective on this topic. I was a teenage Jacobite whose imagination was fueled by Robert Louis Stevenson and Sir Walter Scott. The Jacobites were supporters of the Scottish Stuart Kings after Scotland had formally become part of a new entity called Great Britain through the Acts of Union .   I read a great many books dealing with The Battle of Culloden . I also became a fan of the Highlander TV Series.  In the Battle of Culloden the Jacobite cause was led to defeat by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Yet the Highlander TV series contained an episode called Through A Glass Darkly that questioned the value of the Jacobite cause and the leadership of Bonnie Prince Charlie.  The link to "Through A Glass Darkly" that I'm providing will allow you to watch this episode for free on Hulu.  Contacts with Scottish fans of the Highlander show also exposed me to other perspectives on Scottish history. The Jacobite phrase "Charlie is my darling" was not the slogan of everyone in Scotland. In fact, I learned that many contemporary Scots thought the Stuart prince had been "a right Charlie" which is UK slang for being a fool. See Wiktionary definition of Charlie.  It's the third definition under noun.  I  began to question whether the restoration of the Stuart dynasty would have benefited Scotland myself.  Had the Stuarts ever really cared about the Scots?  Did any royal house care about more than maintaining its own power?

I knew that before the Stuarts ruled in Scotland there had been an earlier hero of the cause of Scottish independence who hadn't been a prince or even a nobleman.  His name was William Wallace.  His story was popularized in the Mel Gibson movie Braveheart .  As a commoner in the 13th century, William Wallace never expected to rule Scotland.  He simply wanted to end the tyrannical abuses of English rule. Surely from the perspective of this democratically inclined American, William Wallace made a far better iconic figure than the Bonnie Prince. Yet I had never researched Wallace or even read historical fiction about him. 

Hazel West has written a William Wallace novel that I still haven't read called Freedom Come All Ye. I decided to read her second novel dealing with William Wallace, On A Foreign Field, because it has an unusual focus.  As I indicated above, the central character is an Englishman named Reeve Montgomery captured on the field of battle while he was fighting the rebel forces led by William Wallace.

Reeve originally condemns William Wallace's  battle strategy as being dishonorable.   This is what I had to say about that in a Goodreads discussion of On A Foreign Field :

   At the outset Reeve thinks that William Wallace's tactics are "foul play". I didn't agree, but I think that this  was a common view historically. Many peoples believed that the only fair way to fight was the way they were trained to fight. So if someone used tactics that were outside their training, they were considered dishonorable. In fact, I read that the longbow was considered dishonorable by knights trained to fight with the sword. They thought that slaying at a distance was wrong. Now in the modern world nations routinely drop bombs which is considerably more distanced than the longbow.

I think that war is not a game. Rules for combat are for sports competitions. The reality of real combat is quite different. In the case of the Scots fighting against the English for their independence, it was a desperate struggle. William Wallace's tactics were pragmatic. He did what worked.

Wallace did what worked, but Hazel West also portrays him as being ethical.  He doesn't believe in mistreating prisoners like Reeve Montgomery which is one of the reasons why Reeve begins to change his attitude toward the Scottish cause.

There's another unexpected ally of William Wallace mentioned in this book, a French pirate. I did research on this individual.  His name was Thomas de Longueville.  Here's a site that contains his story: Pirate Joins William Wallace .  It also intrigued me that this pirate was known as The Red Rover. The Electric Scotland website says that Sir Walter Scott incorporated the tale of the Red Rover becoming a follower of William Wallace into The Fair Maid of Perth which you can download for free from Project Gutenberg at the link I've provided in your format of choice.  There was also a novel by James Fenimore Cooper called The Red Rover.  It deals with a pirate, but it's totally unrelated to Thomas de Longueville and William Wallace.

  In an article about the game Red Rover at Red Rover Game Wikipedia states that "rover" comes from a Norwegian word for pirate.  Then the article speculates that the game was originally daring the Vikings to "come over".  Yet the request to the Red Rover in the game to let someone "come over" doesn't really make sense in that context. What if  it was originally about members of a pirate crew asking their commander, the Red Rover, if they can "come over" to William Wallace's side? The game ends with "Red Rover, Red Rover, let everyone come over."  If the game was based on Thomas de Longueville, this might indicate that all the pirates in the crew joined William Wallace's cause, not just de Longueville himself.  So the game Red Rover might not only be a metaphor in the context of this novel. It could actually preserve a part of the history behind the events of the book. 

I always enjoy learning more about history, and discovering more books through research inspired by a work that I'm reviewing.  I feel that my experience of reading On A Foreign Field has been enriched by this research.  The book now has more depth for me. 









                                                  

Witchblade/Red Sonja Gets An "A" For Concept But Implementation Isn't A Complete Success

Witchblade is responsible for getting me back into reading comic books as an adult. As a child I read Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batman and Superman, but I stopped reading comics at the age of twelve. I became a Witchblade fan as a result of the TV series that aired on TNT (2001-2002) starring Yancy Butler as Sara Pezzini, a New York City cop who was chosen by the Witchblade.  The Witchblade is an ancient intelligent artifact that has chosen female wielders for thousands of years.  Probably the most famous historical Witchblade wielder is one of my favorite historical personages, Joan of Arc, who was the subject of historical flashbacks in the TV series. The Witchblade unites with the wielder, and is said to balance the powers of light and darkness. The comic book and the TV series mainly deal with the contemporary wielder Sara Pezzini.  The original publisher and owner of the franchise is Top Cow, but it has licensed other companies to publish Witchblade. 

Most recently, Dynamite Entertainment published a six issue crossover series called Witchblade/Red Sonja. I admit that I didn't read the series when it was in print.  Red Sonja is not a character that I've followed, so I've had to research her history for this post. She is partly based on two historical swordswomen created by Robert E. Howard named Sonya of Rogatino and Dark Agnes of Chastillion, but Red Sonja was created by Roy Thomas for Marvel Comics' Conan the Barbarian series.  Conan the Barbarian is another Robert E. Howard character. Red Sonja became part of the Conan mythos which is set in prehistoric times in the "Hyborean Age" which is a completely fictional construct. She first appeared in Conan the Barbarian #23 in 1973. Dynamite currently publishes a Red Sonja series, and  I was delighted to learn that Gail Simone (best known to me for her phenomenal work in DC's Birds of Prey series) will start writing it in July.

The Witchblade/Red Sonja series has just been re-published by Dynamite as a graphic novel  and Net Galley offered it for review.  I selected it for review because of my interest in Witchblade.  It was written by Doug Warner with art by Cezar Razek.  

Comics definitely work better for me in print format than they do in electronic format.  I read this in Adobe Digital Editions on my computer which allowed me to enjoy the art in full color.  I was impressed with the way Cezar Razek brought Red Sonja's  environment alive, but I found some of the transitions between contemporary Witchblade and prehistorical Red Sonja very abrupt.  Perhaps they wouldn't have felt that way in print where they would probably have involved turning a page or been marked as a new section. 

 I liked the idea of  incorporating Red Sonja into the Witchblade continuity.  I also liked the fact that Sara Pezzini and Red Sonja were in a position to aid each other.  Unfortunately, there was a big police procedural plot hole on the Witchblade end.  It may sound strange that I can accept a cop who fights a supernatural villain with the aid of an ancient artifact allied across time with a prehistorical swordswoman, but can't suspend disbelief when contemporary police procedure isn't followed.  I'm the sort of reader who is bothered by inconsistencies.  I realize that if  this particular error had been corrected, an additional issue would probably have been required to resolve the plot.  Yet I think it would have been a better story.

I am hoping that the Witchblade movie that has been touted since 2009 finally does get made, and that it meets my expectations.  Meanwhile it would be really nice if a talented writer gets on board with the comic series.  I want to love Witchblade, but not every incarnation of Witchblade has been worthy.

The Bridge of Signs: The Vision of Deaf Writer Albert Ballin

When I read an excerpt from The Deaf Mute Howls in the anthology Angels and Outcasts, I decided that I wanted to read the entire book. (For my review of Angels and Outcasts see my December 2012 blog post  "Angels and Outcasts: Portrayals of the Deaf in Literature".) The deaf author Albert Ballin (1867-1933) sounded so inventive.  Apparently, he never thought of himself that way.  According to Douglas Baynton, who wrote the introduction, Ballin was disappointed with his life and its limitations.

Albert Ballin was a man who pursued a career as an artist and later as an actor in Hollywood.  He believed that deaf sign language could be the mode of communication between directors and actors while in the process of making the movie during the silent film era. He even thought it possible that signing could become the universal language that would be understood throughout the world.  This would involve a major paradigm shift.  A population on the margins of society would move into the center. I feel that Ballin was a true visionary.   Baynton says that Ballin had outsized aspirations.  Most people do have smaller dreams. It seems to me that expectations tend to be shaped by background.  If you are always surrounded by people who think you will accomplish nothing, you are delighted if you are able to prove them even slightly wrong with a small accomplishment that may only feel significant to you.  If on the other hand, you come from a background of wealth and privilege as Albert Ballin did, you might think that you have the power to accomplish absolutely anything. Yet when it came to the promotion of signing for use by hearing individuals, Ballin was a movement of one.

The oralist movement that  brought about the complete banning of sign language in deaf instruction arose in the late 19th century, and was in direct conflict with Ballin's efforts.  When I read the excerpt in Angels and Outcasts I was baffled by Ballin's friendly relationship with Alexander Graham Bell who was a key figure in the oralist movement.  Baynton solved the mystery.  Ballin and Bell were both in favor of mainstreaming the deaf.  They both thought that there should not be separate instruction of the deaf or a separate deaf culture.  That was the basis of their positive interaction. Yet Ballin wanted to mainstream signing.  He thought that sign language should be taught to all students.

A recent dystopian fantasy novel involved a scenario in which Ballin's vision could have been realized.  Unfortunately, this never occurred to its author.   The Flame Alphabet by Ben Marcus posits that children's spoken language becomes toxic to adults.  Parents become physically ill by listening to the speech of their children.  Signing would seem to me to be the obvious solution to this dilemma.  It would have re-united families, and turned the dystopian scenario into a utopian one.  I skimmed through Marcus' book and discovered that he didn't consider the universal adoption of sign language. I then abandoned the novel disappointed by this failure of imagination.

Could universal sign language have been achieved in real local communities?  Douglas Baynton mentions an anthropological study by Nora Groce called Everyone Here Spoke Sign Language which deals with Martha's Vineyard, an island off the coast of Massachusetts.   Due to a heavy concentration of a genetic tendency toward deafness in Martha's Vineyard, the island developed Martha's Vineyard Sign Language. (See  Martha's Vineyard Sign Language on Wikipedia. ) Yet Baynton questions whether everyone really did know sign language on Martha's Vineyard.  If this was really the case, then why were sign language interpreters necessary at town meetings, and why were deaf children sent to boarding schools on the mainland to learn how to sign?  When I did a search on the deaf in Martha's Vineyard, I came across a very intriguing article on other similar communities worldwide.  Since this article is freely available online,  I am providing a link to it here: Deaf Utopias?   This article by Annelies Kusters appeared in the Winter 2010 issue of Journal of Deaf Studies and Deaf Education.  Kusters said that none of these communities communicate solely in sign language.  They are all multi-lingual.  What is different about them is the prevalence of hearing people who can sign, but hearing residents tend to know more languages than deaf residents.  Yet I was struck by an exception to this generalization that Kusters mentions.  A deaf El Sayed Bedouin in Israel learned Hebrew at a school for the deaf, and translated Hebrew documents into sign language for a hearing El Sayed Bedouin who couldn't read Hebrew.  This is the sort of scenario that is in accordance with Albert Ballin's vision.  It seems to me that  he wanted to see a future in which deaf sign language is a lingua franca that facilitates communication between people who don't have any spoken language in common.  Ballin calls hearing people learning how to sign in order to communicate with the deaf "the Bridge of Signs" which is really a marvelous image.

Baynton points out that Ballin's idea of deaf signing being a single language is erroneous.  It puzzles me that Ballin wasn't aware of this fact when he was well-traveled in Europe.  Although local shared signing communities described in Kusters' article are possible, one universal sign language for the entire world is not possible. Not only does each nation have its own signing languages, but signed communication between deaf individuals is far more complex than that. I read about "idiolects" in Deaf in Japan by Karen Nakamura which I reviewed on this blog in August of 2012.   Judging from what I have seen and read, signing is a less likely candidate for universal language than any spoken form of communication because it's so individualized. 

Even though Ballin's dream isn't practical, it is definitely an interesting idea.  Perhaps one day there will be a Bridge of Signs organization for deaf and non-deaf people to communicate by signing with a chapter in every city.  That sounds like a piece of Ballin's dream that could be achievable.  

Postscript 6/11/13

I just saw a video with a transcript provided beneath it from hearing actor/medical student Peter Wingfield in which he tells his fan club about teaching ASL to his hearing son, Edan, as a baby.  The theory was to give Edan a way to communicate before he learned to speak.  See Hearing Baby Taught Sign Language .  I think that Albert Ballin would have been delighted.

But Is it Really Jewish Magic?--Reading Rav Hisda's Daughter

I read the second book in the Rashi's Daughters trilogy by Maggie Anton and liked it very much. Her latest book, Rav Hisda's Daughter, sounded like it would interest me even more. It's the first in a series taking place in a period of Jewish history that I've never seen before in historical fiction.

                                              
                                           
This novel deals with the daughter of a Talmudic figure who lived in Persia. The main character, Hisdadukh, is mentioned in the Talmud.  It actually means Hisda's daughter in Persian. Since relatively few names of women have come down to us from ancient Jewish sources, I would have assumed that the redactors of the Talmud  had left her name out.  Maggie Anton decided that Hisdadukh actually was her given name.  I had a problem with this idea.  She portrays Rav Hisda as a man who taught his daughter to read, consulted her about who she wished to marry, and had no problem with her sitting in on his Talmud classes.  He must have had a great deal of respect for his daughter and her autonomy.  So why would he have given her a generic name?  That didn't make sense to me, but I got over it.

I got over it because I found this book brilliant and original.  I am probably one of its ideal readers.  An ideal reader of this book is someone who is educated in Judaism, interested in its history, and in women's historical practices.  This ideal reader should also have an interest in Talmud.

 I admit that when I was first exposed to Talmud as a child, I wasn't impressed.  I studied an incident in which a camel knocked over a candelabra in the market place causing a fire.  The Talmudic era rabbis argued about who should be considered responsible for the damage.  Was it the owner of the camel, the owner of the candelabra or the camel itself?  I and my fellow students wondered how this could possibly be relevant to our lives.  After all, there were no camels wandering through the shopping malls of American suburbia, and in our age of electricity a candelabra causing a fire wasn't too likely in a shopping mall either.  It's only while reading Rav Hisda's Daughter that I realized that the value of the Talmud is in the legal principles established and the form of legal argument.  Since I am currently taking a legal reference course in library school, I  am conscious of legal issues.  I understand now why Jews have considered Talmud to be such good preparation for a legal career. So I found the Talmudic arguments in this novel almost as fascinating as Hisdadukh's more esoteric studies.

Hisdadukh's studies in amulet making, and other Jewish magical practices set this book apart. They reveal a Judaism that is fundamentally different from the Jewish religion as it is currently practiced.  I was taught that amulets were always regarded as superstitious among Jews, and that only the ignorant really believed in their power.  Am Ha'aretz means someone who is ignorant in a contemporary Jewish context.  In the context of this novel, it means someone who doesn't accept the authority of rabbis.  Anton portrays these refuseniks as the majority of the Jewish community in Persia.  In the time when Hisdadukh lived, the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem had been relatively recent.  Rabbinic Judaism was an innovation that allowed Judaism to survive without a temple.  I knew that, but I hadn't imagined that there could have been such tremendous resistance to this re-conceptualization of the religion. I should have. Historically, changes in religious outlook involve a slow process of evolution. They don't happen overnight.  Occult folk traditions were also never completely eliminated from Judaism. My great grandfather considered astrology when he decided the date of my father's wedding. My grandmother did divination by reading the patterns of spilled chickpeas.  When I was a child, I remembered my mother's concern about the possible effect of the Evil Eye on her family.  The Evil Eye was a major preoccupation for Jews of Hisdadukh's era.

Anton shows that the Evil Eye came from Persian Zoroastrianism.  I knew that Lilith also wasn't originally native to Judaism.  She wasn't mentioned in the Five Books of Moses.  There was nothing about Adam having had a rebellious first wife.  According to Lilith on Wikipedia  there was a category of demons called "lilitu" in ancient Mesopotamian lore.  In Rav Hisda's Daughter, what was originally a Pagan belief in demons is very much alive among Jews and Zoroastrians in Persia.

Another example of Pagan influence is Jewish women mourning for the Babylonian divine figure, Tammuz.  The prophet Ezekiel denounced Jews who participated in this practice.  In this novel, Jewish women are portrayed as mourning for Tammuz in Jewish cemeteries. They even did so near the grave of the prophet Ezekiel.  It's depicted as not really being about Tammuz. The women were mourning all their real losses.  Tammuz represented the deaths of parents, husbands and children for these women.  I wondered if they were looking beyond their religion for a way to express grief because the custom of Yahrzeit didn't exist yet. Yahrzeit involves lighting a 24 hour candle on the anniversary of a death.  An article in The Encyclopedia Britannica on Yahrzeit states that this custom began in the 14th century which is many centuries after the events of  Rav Hisda's Daughter.

 I have studied syncretism, the combining of spiritual traditions, in other religions. Yet I hadn't explored it very much in the religion of my own ancestors. I had grown up thinking that the people whose Jewish practice included Pagan customs  weren't really Jews, and that Jews had always been monotheists. I am now aware that  Israeli archaeology has shown that Jews weren't always monotheists, but I definitely still thought that the Talmudic period was when Judaism as I know it today was formed.  I hadn't expected to see all this Zoroastrian influence from the Persians surrounding Hisdadukh.   As someone who has studied anthropology I know that this is what living cultures do.  They adapt and change. Jews living in Persia would incorporate Persian customs.   It's really quite similar to contemporary American Jewish families who have a Christmas tree in their living rooms along with the menorah displayed in their windows.

I think that readers who know little or nothing about Judaism may not understand or appreciate this book as much as I did.  It seems to me that Maggie Anton assumes a certain amount of knowledge in her readers.  For example, we are told that the Jews in Palestine during this period celebrated Tu B'Av as a holiday in which unmarried Jews can find mates.  I ran a search on Tu B'Av  and learned from Tu B'Av on Wikipedia  that in modern Israel it's the equivalent of Valentine's Day. Hisdadukh considered it an antidote to Tisha B'Av, the anniversary of the destruction of the Jewish Temple, which is still commemorated in modern times with a fast.  Someone who is unfamiliar with the Jewish calendar would see the similarity between Tu B'Av and Tisha B'Av without realizing why they are similar.  These names are actually dates.  Tisha B'Av occurs on the 9th of the month of Av. Tu B'Av occurs less than a week later on the 15th of Av.   There are numerous similar details of Jewish life that aren't fully explicated for the general reader. That is the only weakness in Rav Hisda's Daughter that I can identify.

I consider this novel the best book that I've read so far in 2013. I will definitely want to obtain the sequels. In the mean time, I  have a subject that I want to pursue in further research.  I have just located The Women of the Talmud by Judith Z. Abrams and intend to read it by the end of March.











                                             

Behind Eliot Pattison's Mandarin Gate

For my first review of 2013 I will be blogging about Tibetan mystery  Mandarin Gate by Eliot Pattison.  It is the most recent in a favorite series.  It is not among Pattison's best, but I have learned a bit more about Buddhism as a result of reading it.  My votes for best in Pattison's Inspector Shan series would go to Water Touching Stone and Prayer of the Dragon.  I have also very much enjoyed the first in his Colonial American series, Bone Rattler, which like the novels by Sara Donati , established alliances between Scottish arrivals in America and Native Americans on the model of The Leatherstocking Tales by James Fenimore Cooper.

Inspector Shan, once a crime investigator in Beijing, is now to quote him "an official damned inspector of dams" in Tibet. From a plot perspective, I could have wished for more believability.  Readers are asked to swallow some incredible stupidity on the part of the Chinese regime in Mandarin Gate.  I am willing to believe that Chinese government functionaries can be corrupt, but not idiotic.  Chinese government decisions described in this book contradict what I know about their established policies.  If policy had been followed, a number of the characters could not have played the roles they did.  It boggled my mind that it didn't occur to the bureaucrats in Beijing that these particular decisions could cause them a great deal of trouble.  I know that we are supposed to suspend disbelief for fiction, but there are limits.  Pattison owes me new suspenders.  My current set of disbelief suspenders got stretched too far and are completely ruined.

On the other hand, I very much liked the extremely conflicted and mysterious character, Jamyang.  I was fascinated by his practice of  painting Buddhist symbols on household objects.  It reminded me of similar practices among native peoples in the Americas.  One object that is mentioned in this novel is a tea churn with the Eight Auspicious Signs painted on it.  Since I had never heard of this set of symbols before,  I took a look at the  article about them at The Buddhist Studies website.  This page explains their spiritual significance and shows images of each one.  Jamyang also painted spiritual signs on a gun.  This seems to contradict the non-violent stance of Tibetan Buddhism.  In fact, one of the  mysteries that Shan faces early in the plotline is to discover Jamyang's motive for decorating a gun in that manner.  Over the course of the novel he learns a great deal more about Jamyang, who is definitely one of the most complex Tibetan characters that I've seen in this series.

                                                          

The Masked Persona Unmasks

 Dear Readers,

I decided to start 2013 by integrating my online presence.  I admit that I enjoy playing with masks, but a Mardi Gras mask is eventually removed.  The Masked Persona was never really about concealing my identity.  I have a fondness for masked heroes and wanted to imagine myself as one if only in fantasy.

Now you can see my real name in my profile just as you see it in my WordPress blog Information Metamorphosis where I am currently adding new posts for a library school course after nearly a year of inactivity. I will be doing a presentation comparing WordPress and Blogger, and wanted to be able to show students this Blogger blog.  I'm actually rather proud of all the review content that I've generated here.

 Being a library student explains why so much of my emphasis on this blog has been on doing further research about the topics explored in the books I review.  Research is as natural to me as breathing.  Since this is a personal blog, my research here doesn't meet academic standards, but I do link to the best sources that I can find in each review.  I have always felt that good scholarship is honest scholarship.  If I cite Wikipedia and think that particular article is not completely reliable, I discuss why it's problematic so that my readers get the entire context.  I feel that I conduct myself with integrity on this blog even if Wikipedia is not a source my instructors would recommend. 

                                                        Sincerely yours,
                                   The Unmasked Persona
                                            Linda Frankel

The Golden Mask Award

I decided to give some of the books I reviewed awards for various reasons.  Look for the golden mask icon underneath the cover of the book with the reason why it won.

The golden mask looks like this:

                           

It has a Meso-American look.  I consider it in keeping with my blog's multicultural outlook.

There are also some books that I want to give awards that I did not review on this blog.  So I will list them on this page with links to my Goodreads reviews.

2012 Golden Mask Award for
the best novel I read this year

  was won by
            
 Endangered by Eliot Schrefer

The 2012 Golden Mask Award
for the best historical fiction I read
this year

was won by

 The Rock Child by Win Blevins



                                  
                                                                         
                                                  

   The 2012 Golden Mask Award
 for best mystery I read this year 

was won by

Winter's Bone by Daniel Woodrell 



                                                                        
                                             
                                                                                                                                        

                                             

                                          

The 2012 Golden Mask Award
for the best science fiction novel 
 I read this year 
  
was won by 
                                                
 Lucy by Laurence Gonzales

                                                 
 


The 2012 Golden Mask Award
for the best fantasy novel 
I read this year 

was won by 

The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe