The Frost Goes On

Well, things can get pretty crazy around here on a Saturday night, let me tell you. Last night I had a scotch, watched an episode of Touch of Frost, and spent two hours reading about 1620 to 1630 or so in England. I know, you can't imagine the scale of my debauchery.

"No Other Love", the episode of Touch of Frost I watched, was easily the grimmest and morally murkiest of the series I've seen so far. The season finale from 1997, the episode has two crimes occurring next door to each other--a pawnbroker is robbed while next door an elderly woman murders her husband with a kitchen knife.

The pawnbroker's story ends up being far more sinister than it at first seems, involving child abuse, rape, and incest like a miniature Chinatown. The elderly couple, meanwhile, has Frost feeling sympathy for the murderer who stabbed her grouchy husband in a fit of annoyance because he wouldn't let her listen to a song on the radio without interrupting to demand she make him breakfast, a song that reminds her of their child who died due to her husband's negligence.

The story's a bit over the top in its melodrama but actress Jean Heywood gave a really nice performance as Olive--interviewed by Frost she shows the conflict of deciding what she ought to tell being overridden by the fact that she doesn't care anymore.

The other case has Frost feeling sympathy for the murderer, too, though ends up being a far more tangled affair. There's still a little pat morality in the episode, especially in a scene where a young woman wistfully looks at a child after she's had an abortion, but all in all I liked the complexity at work and I liked that we see Frost having a lot of trouble dealing with it instead of being an edifice. But that was part of the strength of the first episodes of the series where we saw Frost was having to mourn a recently deceased wife while carrying on with his job.

I don't know if I mentioned the book I found on England Under the Stuarts last year--roughly covering the 17th century. Written by G.M. Trevelyan and first published in the early twentieth century, it has some antiquated mannerisms to its style. Trevelyan has a distressing tendency to refer to the superiority of the English "race" and he avoids discussing homosexual relationships of the English monarchs. In the latter case, the effects these relationships had on the policies of James I and Charles I are too great to ignore but the best Trevelyan can bring himself to do is refer to the great love the kings felt for certain men that made them "favourites"; "After Buckingham he [Charles I] never loved any man; he had many good servants, but never again one that was dear to him."

However, I really love Trevelyan's ability at bringing a sense of story to his recounting of history. I love his tendency to put events into perspective, tying them to other events and to other aspects of life in England at the time.

The girl of fifteen who landed in June as Queen of England, gossiping to her French women of the dances and duels of their land, and aglow with virtuous recollections of her confessor's precepts for conduct among heretics, looked or felt no more like a queen of tragedy than did Marie Antoinette on her way from Vienna to Versailles. Yet Henrietta Maria was bringing into England the feud of parties yet unformed, the wild terrors of the Popish Plot, the furies of the Exclusion Bill and the wrath that should unite bitter foes to drive her son James II to the land whence now she came.

Historical Revisionism of the Daleks

Well, just when I'd been talking about how much better the Fifth Doctor audio plays are written than his television episodes, I ran afoul of Renaissance of the Daleks. Five (Peter Davison) and Nyssa (Sarah Sutton) are caught up in some kind of time travel trouble spanning Earth's history, snatching soldiers from various wars, not unlike War Games, the Second Doctor story. But in this case, each of the transported soldiers is annoying and badly written from the point of view of someone with a weak and politically motivated grasp of history. A virtuous knight from the Crusades named Mulberry (Nicholas Deal), a black Confederate soldier from the U.S. Civil war named Floyd (Richie Campbell), and a female U.S. soldier from the Vietnam war named Alice (Regina Reagan). The first two have the scent of conservative bias. Floyd even argues that the South didn't fight for slavery but for states' rights, the same bullshit line one normally hears from right wing creeps to-day. Yeah, they were fighting for states' rights--the states' rights to enslave human beings.

When Floyd worries the Daleks will destroy the Confederacy, the Doctor tells him, "It's worse than that." What do I hate more about this exchange? The implication that Floyd is so simple minded at this point he thinks the Daleks only threaten the Confederacy or the fact that the Doctor sounds worried at the possibility that the Confederacy will be stopped? It's a tough choice.

Renaissance of the Daleks was written by Christopher Bidmead, the showrunner from the Fifth Doctor's television era, which perhaps explains why it's so badly written. Though I don't remember his stories being quite this obnoxious.

After this I listened to two really good 2007 Sixth Doctor audio plays, I.D. and the very short Urgent Calls, both written by Eddie Robson. The audio plays continue to make me warm to Six (Colin Baker) almost against my will. I.D. has the existential crisis of someone's consciousness being put into two vessels, an idea not dissimilar to the later Eleventh Doctor television story "The Rebel Flesh"/"The Almost People". I.D. also has a nice bit of world building in its setup, creating a sense of vast space with the first friend the Doctor encounters taking him on a ride on a hover bike of some kind. The impression is further helped with mention of the Doctor using a pocket telescope. Urgent Calls is told almost entirely with phone conversations where a woman named Lauren (Kate Brown) continually manages to accidentally reach the Doctor when she makes wrong telephone calls. Not unlike Clara, I suppose. Once again I wonder why the writers of these audio plays aren't drafted for the television show instead of just their ideas.

Twitter Sonnet #859

Assorted salads sortie in the bowl.
Equations served for questions scorch the mind.
The horrid rabble blamed the third to roll.
At dice, the chancery remit in kind.
Computers came confounded by the clocks.
We didn't tip the lamp the candle fell.
A burning thread was drowned in waxy socks.
Ordained in fish the scales of fins will tell.
Perennial rose stratagems'll bloom.
Foundations pink and red recall the blood.
In cake, strawberries fell to frosting doom.
A doughnut ravished pings the glitchy HUD.
Rewound the feet can spool in shoes like springs.
The heels of Jack may yet return for rings.

You Must Take the Bus, Right?

Many have speculated on the correct path to heaven; Luis Bunuel suggested it was an old, crowded bus filled to bursting with people from all walks of life. So we have his 1952 film Ascent to Heaven (Subida al cielo, a road movie with pretty unmistakable symbolism. It successfully combines domestic comedy and deathly serious implications while also containing a little of the surrealism for which Bunuel's movies of the 1920s and 1930s are well known.

The film also builds suspense beautifully. Starting with a wedding disapproved of by the groom's parents, the newly-weds are taking a little boat off to an island for their honeymoon when they're interrupted by the groom's greedy, self-centred brother, in a boat going the other direction, bearing news that their mother is terribly ill and near death. So he brings Oliverio (Esteban Marquez), the groom and the film's protagonist, back down to Earth, interrupting his first attempt to ascend to heaven. Oliverio must face trials before he can finally consummate his happy new domestic life.

Oliverio isn't sure he's going to make it to shore before his mother dies. She is still alive when he gets there but Oliverio's brother has gotten drunk with the only man in the little town authorised to witness the mother's new will so there's a good chance the wicked brother will steal all the inheritance away from Oliverio's innocent little nephew. So Oliverio embarks on a journey by bus to town where an even higher official can be found who'll witness the will. Oliverio was already afraid of not getting back before his morther died when he was just a mile or two away. Now he has to hope she sticks around for him to make a few days' journey and back.

Over course of time, the bus carries a politician, a farmer (and his goats), a middle aged mother of two, and a young pregnant woman who gives birth when the bus is caught on a little mountain road.

Also on board is a gorgeous young woman named Raquel (Lilia Prado) who is trying to seduce Oliverio for some reason. In case we miss what's going on here, Bunuel has her actually feeding an apple to Oliverio.

In a fascinating dream sequence, the apple peel becomes incredibly long and leads up to Oliverio's grinning mother where she sits on a pedestal, knitting, the product of her needles being somehow the apple peel.

Bunuel may as well have painted "Original Sin" in bold letters on the pedestal. But the association with the film's surface story is interesting. Raquel represents temptation to sin, yet she's symbolically tied to the whole purpose of Oliverio's journey. We see Oliverio's innocent wife pleading with him in the dream; why isn't she connected to the history of womankind the way Raquel is? Perhaps there's more reality in Oliverio's lust for Raquel than in his pious love for his wife.

Along the way to town--and to heaven--the passengers encounter various and chaotic trials and enticements, all of them strongly symbolising transition--the bus gets stuck crossing a river at one point, the bus driver later insists on stopping for a birthday and for a funeral. The politician, without success, tries to get across the river by threatening a tractor driver at gunpoint. One can suppose there's significance in who does or does not reach the destination but the end of the film wonderfully subverts the expectations accrued by the symbols. Things happen at the end that the audience would do well to ask whether it's good to feel pleased or displeased about.

Expected and Received

In the graveyard and out on the marshes a young man's destiny is shaped by a chance meeting with a lifelong criminal. The beautiful black and white gloom of these environments and this ominous meeting provide a striking start to David Lean's 1946 adaptation of Great Expectations. In some ways, it represents the best example of the not entirely accurate impression general audiences have of the story. In other, fewer ways, it bears an approach distinctly borne of Lean's own vision. It's a good movie but it misses the main point of the book.

I read an essay by Jay Clayton included with a 1996 edition of the book that in part argues that Lean's focus is much more on the relationship between Pip and the convict, Magwitch; that the heart of the story in Lean's film is that relationship. I certainly agree. There's little of the moral anguish Pip feels about Joe who is here employed for comic relief more than anything. Bernard Miles as Joe drops his hat in the tea when when he visits the gentlemen, Pip and Herbert, a piece of physical comedy much broader than anything that occurs in the book.

Pip as an adult is played by John Mills whose freshness and honesty are somewhat at odds with the need to portray Pip's conceit. The film sadly lacks the scene where Trabb's boy mocks Pip's aloofness when he goes back to his home town. This omission is related to the fact that never once in the film does Pip say Estella makes him miserable. One suspects Lean was less suspicious of the gentleman lifestyle, and less enamoured of the idyllic lower class, than Dickens was. Pip's longing for Estella seems wholesome and Estella, as played by Valerie Hobson, seems only coy when she tells him she has no heart.

My favourite performance in the film is a young Jean Simmons as the younger Estella, though she too puts a great deal more human warmth into the role than is called for. She comes off like a version of Lewis Carroll's Alice with the arrogance dialled up.

Lean also makes the choice to make Biddy (Eileen Erskine) much older than Pip and no potential love interest for him. Of course, now it would be a distraction since Biddy would no longer represent a wholesome alternative to the addiction to Estella. One could argue a film from the following year, Out of the Past, was a better representation of the kind of internal conflict of man in his love for two women with Robert Mitchum torn between gentle, pure hearted Virginia Huston and the quintessential femme fatale Jane Greer.

A lot of the latter portion of the book is given over to Pip's endeavours to save Magwitch but in Lean's movie the love between the men is less affected by Pip's sense of what a gentleman should be. He doesn't seem to feel any particular dread of Estella learning of his connexion to someone so low. The rapport between Pip and Magwitch, portrayed ably by Finlay Currie, is much more like the relationships of two men across cultural boundaries in Lean's famous films of the 60s and late 50s--The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia.

And like those films, Great Expectations features Alec Guinness, here looking pretty adorably young and exuberant as Pip's flatmate Herbert.

Miss Havisham is played by Martita Hunt who was only 46 at the time. Quite lacking the horrific appearance ascribed to her by Dickens, she does give the role some effective fixedness, undermined by a finale that seems completely uninterested in her and Estella's story. The film's ending is of course twenty times rosier than even Dickens' revised ending.

The Bird in Question

I saw this bird on the way home to-day. I've never seen one like it and have no idea what it is. I was driving past Sea World so maybe it's an escaped penguin? That can fly? Or climb a lamp post? Well, I wish it speed in getting as far from Sea World as possible.

Here are some more photos that've accumulated on my camera--I took a few at Liberty Station, a former Navy Training Centre that's been converted to a hipster food court, a Vons, Trader Joes, ballet schools, and various deserted art galleries. I took pictures of buildings that look like they haven't been bothered with in quite a while.

Here are some ravens I saw hanging out by the Ikea a few days ago. The one sitting was huge and not even slightly afraid of me. Still, I'm glad I have a camera with a proper zoom now because it was always impossible to get close enough for a decent shot otherwise.

Twitter Sonnet #858

Invasion's monochrome resorts to goats.
All corn repeals the maize re-branding late.
If godly cereal could include oats
There'd be no egg or fish we'd own we ate.
Elab'rate tiers of afterthoughts pull down.
A weight awaiting corpses seals the fall.
No tablecloth was set for adult's frown.
No painting sold upon the withered mall.
Apportioned pillage cracks the thatched state code.
At leisure, plastic brains repulsed the deer.
Amorphous groves emit a shapeless ode.
Expectant pages have a cat to fear.
The harp of Herrmann murders suits at work.
To dagger fights you never bring a dirk.

The Shape Pounded Out by Repulsions

Sometimes the conflicting forces of prejudice and broader morality produce some fascinatingly strange results. 1946's Duel in the Sun, a Western about a half-Native American, half Caucasian nymphomaniac indulges in disgusting stereotypes while getting caught on a confused track of censor imposed morality that requires a character to be both amoral and ruled by an unseen hand of omnipotent decency. The result is something feverish, lusty, and weird; a garishly effective melodrama.

The Technicolor on this film is dark, oily, and bright, like the vision of a gang of drunken cowboys wandering from saloon to saloon. The film stars Jennifer Jones as Pearl, daughter of a white man (Herbert Marshall) and a Native American (Tilly Losch). Neither Jones or the woman who played her mother apparently looked satisfactorily Native American so they were given body paint that, apart from being racist, appears a bit too grey to be any real human skin colour.

Pearl's mother isn't around for long because her father murders her and the guy she's sleeping with. Pearl's father blames this on his wife's inferior race then sends Pearl off to be raised by the white woman he wished he'd married, Laura Belle, played by Lillian Gish.

This was only around fifteen years after Gish was a leading lady and director King Vidor shoots her as someone who was still a beauty. This was before she'd transitioned to solidly old lady roles like the character she plays in Night of the Hunter. She's patronisingly affectionate to her black maid, Vashti, played with an excellent sense of comic timing by Butterfly McQueen in a sadly typical role.

Of all directors, it's strange to see King Vidor in charge of a film that perpetuates racial stereotypes given he directed 1929's Hallelujah, a film with an entirely black cast that in many ways defied stereotypes generally enforced by films of the era. But with Duel in the Sun, Vidor was really co-director to the Hays code censors and producer David O. Selznick, who was looking to replicate the success he'd achieved with Gone with the Wind.

At the heart of the film is a genuinely complex commentary on sex, the signal of which is distorted by noise of creative interference. Already I've mentioned Jennifer Jones, Lillian Gish, Herbert Marshall, and Butterfly McQueen, but this movie had a truly large, all star cast that also included Lionel Barrymore as Gish's husband and a loyal Confederate, Charles Bickford as a somewhat pathetic wouldbe suitor for Pearl, and Walter Huston as a frightening and strange preacher. At the centre of the film, Pearl is torn primarily between two admirers, brothers played by Joseph Cotten and Gregory Peck.

Cotten is the good son--he went off to school and became a lawyer while Peck's character was spoiled by their father--Barrymore--to become a cocky and self-centred young man. Pearl falls for Jesse (Cotten) but she lusts for Lewt (Peck). Morality seems to demand she be loyal to the one who has sex with her, yet the momentum of the story makes this amoral. Walter Huston's preacher seems to underline the haziness of the moral situation in a fascinatingly bizarre scene where Gish's character brings Pearl to him wearing only a blanket, Pearl having been naked when summoned and conducted to the preacher that way for no apparent reason.

Huston starts the scene tearing into a sandwich when she walks into the room and then proceeds to talk about how her body is evil and a temptation to men before he gives her a medallion to ward off sin. It's as though Vidor and Selznick are giving us the grotesquely satirised personification of the censors who probably saw the preacher as being perfectly proper.

The last act of the film is like a collapsing tunnel of moral constraints until a final scene that's like watching people in strait jackets speaking in tongues.

If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em?

We've all heard about Puritans in 17th and 18th century New England having an unhealthy fear of witches. What if they were right? What if there really were some malevolent, Satan worshipping witches out there? That's the premise of 2016's The Witch, a mildly entertaining film made with what many would interpret as ambition. Director Robert Eggers' influences are easy to spot for anyone familiar with horror films of the 70s and I was glad to see so much attention to 17th century historical detail. But the film never escapes the weight of influences and research to breathe for itself.

At the centre of the film is Thomasin (Anya Taylor-Joy), a teenage girl and eldest daughter of William (Ralph Ineson) and Katherine (Kate Dickie). With her brother Caleb (Harvey Scrimshaw) and young twin siblings Mercy (Ellie Grainger) and Jonas (Lucas Dawson), Thomasin is part of a Puritan English immigrant family who've been exiled by the main colony for unspecified reasons. We see a panel of judges condemn William for some kind of difference in religious belief we never get the details of. The film does, though, give mention to the wonderful, fundamental thorn in the Puritan psyche, the belief that nothing anyone can do in life can affect who God will save and who He won't, a fairly simple idea that leads to a lot of compulsive second guessing and anxiety in practice, as happens here.

Giving the family a literal, very real witch and Satan to worry about helps the modern, secular audience understand the perspective a little bit. The movie's best scenes feature the family arguing and accusing each other as that thorn is driven further in by one small transgression by the witch after another. Yet the witch herself is one of the least effective aspects of the film, probably because she removes all the doubt that drives the interesting psychology of the Puritans, leading the film to a rather unsatisfying ending. The director would have done well to have remembered Max von Sydow in The Seventh Seal feverishly asking the witch whether or not she had really seen Satan and the witch being unable to answer him.

But Bergman isn't among the unmistakable influences I mentioned. Eggers has clearly watched a lot of Stanley Kubrick and Dario Argento with a touch of The Wicker Man thrown in. The eerie vocals on the soundtrack might have come directly from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Suspiria and some of the editing of POV shots reminded me of The Shining. But the biggest problem with the film is in how it's shot. Unlike the films from the 70s that Eggers drew from, he uses a very modern, almost colourless, faded palette. Perhaps designed to reflect the narrow worldview of the Puritans, it ends up just being dull, lacking the complexity of true colour and lacking the stark edges of true black and white. Even worse, though, is Eggers' failure to understand POV shots, often dwelling on Thomasin's face without any clear character point of view, effectively taking us out of the film. Perhaps he was influenced by Carl Dreyer, The Passion of Joan of Arc or Day of Wrath. But the extended close-ups in Joan of Arc work because practically the whole story takes place in the brilliantly expressive face of the actress--not only can Anya Taylor-Joy not match this but the events of the film are occurring around her while Joan of Arc is almost entirely Joan's trial, where she is the centre of attention. First because she's being examined by the other characters, second because she doesn't seem to see her environment, being in apparent constant contact with invisible forces.

Day of Wrath, also about hardcore Protestants dealing with witches, has the very ambiguity about the virtue of characters' actions and the reality of Satan that The Witch lacks. So all the lingering shots of Anya Taylor-Joy's neck, face, and body--except for a few scenes where Caleb is lusting after her--come across more as Eggers' voyeurism than anything having to do with the story or character motives.

The film's sense of the real history, the realistic clothing and the terrible suffering the ill-prepared colonies underwent, is nice. Some of the character conflicts are nice. But the film fails to connect with and effectively tap into the fertile psychological ground of its subject.

The Busy Depths

Welcome to San Diego, where the Soviet Union meets 16th century Spain. Pictured above is a replica of the San Salvador, the first European ship to explore the California coast, seen from B-39, an actual Soviet submarine built in the late 60s.

I posted about San Diego's Maritime Museum before--in a 2010 entry you can see photos I took of the main attraction, The Star of India, an actual 19th century sailing vessel, and the Surprise, an 18th century replica built for the Peter Weir film Master and Commander. I went back on Monday last week to get some reference photos for my comic though none of the ships at the museum is from the period I'm working with. The Surprise and the San Salvador being from the following and preceding centuries, respectively, had several structural aspects in common, though. It was interesting seeing the evolution of the lateen sails and bowsprit sails.

The San Salvador replica is very new and is not open for boarding to the public. My professor for Pre-Colonial and Colonial Latin America last semester served as a consultant in building the replica, which is how I first heard about it.

I didn't go on board the Soviet submarine last time for some reason so I decided not to pass up the opportunity this time.

It was claustrophobic.

To get from one section to the next, one has to crawl through these small hatches. I did it very awkwardly, using my umbrella as an extra leg on the other side.

Officer quarters and the reflection of my above mentioned umbrella.

Every inch was covered with stuff. I can't imagine knowing what all these buttons and tubes and things do.

There was a family of Russian tourists there.

Cosy.

Connections: Death In The Morning by charlesmo2012

Twitter Sonnet #857

A wobbly wafer drinks through water tongues.
In darkened mouths a question sits at rest.
At dawn the ladder changed to ropeless rungs.
Far down the bib the ink has stained the chest.
A blunted spoon returns the tool box late.
Ourang outang outrage arranged a farm.
Unknown trespasses fell through old Newgate.
No alligator allocates alarm.
Auspicious birds compute the grid for birth.
Inimitable blue, the sky concedes.
It's not illusion, danced for Friday's worth.
Impractical, and great, the drink precedes.
The iron sandwich bread was soaked with brine.
The rain erased a chalkboard menu line.

Dekpa Goes to Sea

Finally, I finished it; Chapter Four of Dekpa and Deborah is online. A special nine page chapter, you'll notice there's a lot of Dutch in this chapter. I haven't learned Dutch, two Dutch friends of mine, who wish to remain anonymous, translated the dialogue for me. Thanks, you two.

I had no idea I was going to have to devote my whole spring break to this. I worked almost non-stop yesterday from the time I woke up at 9am 'til I finally went to sleep at 4:30am and I still wasn't done. And all I was doing was colouring--I'd finished the inks on Thursday and the pencils the day before. Instinctively I think I still expect to be able to knock out four pages in a day if I need to; pencil, ink, and colour. I have to remind myself that back when I did that I was using one pen, sketchbook paper, and I was scanning at half the dpi. Now I use four pens and a big bristol board and I scan at a higher resolution. I have to admit to myself that, even if I wasn't currently going to school and working as a tutor I still couldn't work at the pace that I used to. After this comic--which could be years from now--I may try doing something rougher and simpler.

In addition to all the Daniel Dafoe I listened to yesterday, I also listened to three Doctor Who audio plays; Year of the Pig from 2006 and, from 2007, Circular Time and Nocturne. Of the three, Circular Time was by far the best. It's actually four short stories, one for each season; "Spring", "Summer", "Autumn", and "Winter". All of the stories star Peter Davison as the Fifth Doctor and Sarah Sutton as his companion, Nyssa. Nyssa continues to get much more interesting material than she ever got on television--the "Winter" segment even delves a bit into the fertile ground of her father issues, though there's not far the audio plays can go with that due to the understandable reluctance to recast for the late Anthony Ainley. But she has a pretty adorable first romance experience in the "Autumn" segment while she and the Doctor are staying in England, in an unnamed village where the Doctor has apparently returned for years to play in a series of annual cricket matches.

The "Summer" segment has the two being arrested in the late 17th century and interrogated by none other than Isaac Newton, played by David Warner, who deduces a pretty far fetched amount about them and the future from the anachronistic coins in the Doctor's pocket. It's pretty entertaining though not completely plausible. In light of what I wrote about yesterday, I was amused to hear Newton demand to know if they were Catholics.

Even the first segment, "Spring", is good. Very fannish, it's one of the audio plays that mines what sound like hardcore fan speculations for a good story. In this case, the Doctor and Nyssa find a renegade Time Lord (Hugh Fraser) ruling over a species of sentient birds. The translator circuit in the renegade Time Lord's TARDIS is revealed as necessary for his schemes because it's impossible for him to learn to speak the language which requires one to have the break, throat, and even feathers for display, of a bird. I have to wonder how the TARDIS manages that.

Fools and Firsts

Well, I've spent all day listening to Willem Dafoe and it's put everything into a very sinister perspective. Just kidding! April Fools--I got you! Actually, I've spend all day listening to Daniel Dafoe audiobooks, finishing the latter half of Robinson Crusoe and immediately following it with the first half of Moll Flanders. I've been listening while colouring pages of my comic having yesterday spent all day inking. I'd hoped to have the chapter finished to-day but I still have three pages left to colour. So if I do finish to-day, it'll be rather late at night.

I've wanted--or I should say lacked (let's use 21st century English, Sets)--no inspiration for industriousness. Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Robinson Crusoe now, I see the Protestant work ethic I perceived was not my imagination:

Robinson Crusoe is filled with religious aspects. Defoe was a Puritan moralist and normally worked in the guide tradition, writing books on how to be a good Puritan Christian, such as The New Family Instructor (1727) and Religious Courtship (1722).

That makes a lot of sense given how much of the book is about how Crusoe finds wisdom and contentment through hard, humble work. Some of his achievements strain credibility, to be sure:

And as nature, who gives supplies of food to every creature, dictates even naturally how to make use of it; so I, that never milked a cow, much less a goat, or saw butter or cheese made, very readily and handily, though after a great many essays and miscarriages, made me both butter and cheese at last, and never wanted it afterwards.

I don't care how hard you go at it, you don't just figure out how to make butter and cheese on your own with no guide or reference material. But maybe I underestimate Providence which apparently tolerates lactose. For all that, Crusoe seems to feel sure he can't make beer.

The differences between Protestants and Catholics from the beginning of the Reformation through the eighteenth century have been a continual point of interest for me over the past couple years. When Crusoe talks of his plantation in Brazil, it's interesting to hear how even in the late seventeenth century he was worried about being discovered as a Protestant and brought before the Inquisition. When he teaches his Man Friday--in a very unself-consciously patronising way, of course--to be a good Christian, though, he reflects on religion in the world to a point where he says:

As to the disputes, wranglings, strife, and contention, which has happened in the world about religion, whether niceties in doctrines, or schemes of church-government, they were all perfectly useless to us, as, for aught I can yet see, they have been to all the rest in the world: we had the sure guide to heaven, viz. the Word of God; and we had, blessed be God! comfortable views of the Spirit of God, teaching and instructing us by his Word, leading us into all truth, and making us both willing and obedient to His instruction of his Word; and I cannot see the least use that the greatest knowledge of the disputed points in religion, which have made such confusions in the world, would have been to us, if we could have obtained it.

Yet later, he confidently refers to Friday as a Protestant as though some part of the teachings he'd given the Carib had been clearly distinct from the beliefs of the Spanish castaway they later encounter. But of course, by the end of the book rejecting the Papist religion is important enough to Crusoe that he goes through a very complicated plan to extricate himself and his wealth from Portuguese territory. Never once does he mention explicitly any philosophical differences between Catholicism and Protestantism aside from the fact that Catholicism has a Pope and an Inquisition.

In interesting contrast to this is another book I've been reading lately, The Adventures of Roderick Random by Tobias Smollett, published in 1748. And what an amazing book it is. I'm about halfway through and I love it so much, I look forward to talking about it at greater length. But for the present purpose; it follows a young man, Roderick Random, in his various adventures, including his work as an assistant surgeon, or "loblolly boy", in the British Navy. I thought his reaction to an Anglican chaplain trying to take confession from him pretty funny:

The person, having felt my pulse, inquired into the nature of my complaints, hemmed a little, and began thus: "Mr. Random, God out of his infinite mercy has been pleased to visit you with a dreadful distemper, the issue of which no man knows. You may be permitted to recover and live many days on the face of the earth; and, which is more probable, you may be taken away, and cut off in the flower of your youth. It is incumbent on you, therefore, to prepare for the great change, by repenting sincerely of your sins; of this there cannot be a greater sign, than an ingenuous confession, which I conjure you to make without hesitation or mental reservation; and, when I am convinced of your sincerity, I will then give you such comfort as the situation of your soul will admit of. Without doubt, you have been guilty of numberless transgressions to which youth is subject, as swearing, drunkenness, whoredom, and adultery: tell me therefore, without reserve, the particulars of each, especially of the last, that I may be acquainted with the true state of your conscience; for no physician will prescribe for his patient until he knows the circumstances of his disease."

As I was not under any apprehensions of death, I could not help smiling at the chaplain's inquisitive remonstrance, which I told him savoured more of the Roman than of the Protestant church, in recommending auricular confession; a thing, in my opinion, not at all necessary to salvation, and which, for that reason, I declined. This reply disconcerted him a little; however, he explained away his meaning, in making learned distinctions between what was absolutely necessary and what was only convenient; then proceeded to ask what religion I professed. I answered, that I had not as yet considered the difference of religions, consequently had not fixed on any one in particular, but that I was bred a Presbyterian. At this word the chaplain expressed great astonishment, and said, he could not comprehend how a presbyterian was entitled to any post under the English government. Then he asked if I had ever received the sacrament, or taken the oaths; to which questions, I replying in the negative, he held up his hands, assured me he could do me no service, wished I might not be in a state of reprobation, and returned to his messmates, who were making merry in the ward-room, round a table well stored with bumbo and wine.