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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

More Literary Dads

6/17/2019

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Yesterday, of course, was Fathers’ Day. (Please note apostrophe placement, he said sternly in his best teacher voice. Yes, I’m painfully aware most calendars seem to write it as Father’s, but That Is Not Correct, You Illiterate Louts: we’re not referring to one father, but rather to a collective. Sheesh.) Anyway… so, fairly predictably, I was reflecting on literary fathers (hey, back off, man… it’s an easy blog topic for this week). I’ve written about literary dads before, a couple of years back (you can find that post here if you’re interested), so I had to think of a few new ones to talk about. And came to a mildly thought-provoking conclusion (well, thought-provoking on a sleepy Sunday afternoon when I wrote this, anyway), to wit:
 
It seems easier to generate a list of literary dads who aren’t really very good at being daddies than to come up with dads who are. (Or maybe that’s just where my mindset was, for some reason.) Yeah, I know there are nurturing, caring dads out there in the literary realm… but I suppose that, like literary mommies, daddies who are incompetent, testy or just plain nasty make for more interesting characters than ones who are wholesome, supportive and effective at what they do. It’s kind of a corollary to what I call the Mischief, Murder and Mayhem Syndrome in news reporting: most current events junkies aren’t really interested in news stories about unbearably cute kittens playing gently with each other in flower gardens on a sunny day; it’s the awful, the ugly and the bizarre which is far more fascinating. Hmm. Guess that’s not really much of an endorsement about human nature in general, or news junkies in particular, is it?
 
At any rate, here’s my list of literary daddies that came to mind (in thirty seconds or less) for this year:
 
Claudius from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I like this play a lot, although it’s not a happy one, and as I tell my students, whenever you read Shakespearean tragedy, you can pretty much guarantee a pile of corpses on stage by play’s end --- including the title character.  Claudius is Hamlet’s uncle… or step-dad, really, because he marries his dead brother’s sister just as the play has started. Which never fails to gross out my students. (Granted, they have a point; what should Hamlet call Claudius? ‘Uncle Dad?’) Claudius makes a show of displaying step-fatherly devotion to his new son, but he’s usurped the crown Hamlet should have had, married his new wife in unseemly haste (Hamlet notes sarcastically to Horatio, his BFF, that food from the funeral became food for the wedding feast), and, we eventually learn, murdered his own brother to become king. And while he repents what he’s done --- well, sorta --- not enough to come clean and own up to his crimes. Unsurprisingly, he meets a nasty (and fitting) end at his stepson’s hand. Sir Derek Jacobi does a masterful job with the role in the excellent 1995 Kenneth Branagh film.
 
Claudius from Robert Graves’ books, I, Claudius and the sequel, Claudius the God. Yep, ‘nother Claudius --- amusingly, also played by Sir Derek Jacobi in the terrific 1977 BBC television miniseries, back when he was still just an ordinary mortal like the rest of us. This Claudius is the reluctant Roman Emperor of two millennia ago, and I say ‘reluctant’ because he’s no monarchist at all --- wants the Roman Republic restored, in fact. He’s made Emperor, totally unwillingly, by the Praetorian Guard after his mad nephew Caligula is murdered. To universal surprise --- everyone erroneously assumes he’s mentally disabled, to accompany his physical disabilities --- Claudius actually proves a pretty competent Emperor. And he’s dad to a son and daughter, although a pretty distant dad, truth be told… and he’s quite sure the boy isn’t his. Nevertheless, he’s got plans for son to restore the Republic --- which, of course, ultimately come to naught, in a tale worthy of Shakespearean tragedy.
 
Denethor from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. (My obligatory Tolkien reference for the day.) I like book Denethor --- who’s Steward of Gondor i.e. de facto king --- much better than the filmic one, although John Noble did an excellent job with the material he was given. Book Denethor is prouder and not nearly as loony as filmic one --- Peter Jackson’s take in the films is that Denethor is clearly losing his marbles, which I doubt Tolkien would have approved of. Book Denethor is proud, cold, and calculating, yes, but doesn’t lose it until just before dying by his own hand, when he thinks he’s lost his second and only surviving son… whom he neglected in favour of his firstborn. There’s a lesson for dads everywhere: cherish your children while you can, buckos. Ah, yes, which leads to a title for Denethor’s memoirs: Tales Of A Bad Dad.
 
President Coriolanus Snow from Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games trilogy. Truthfully, I’d forgotten his first name --- if in fact I ever knew it --- and on seeing it as I checked with my friend The Google, I rolled my eyes and just wanted to say… “Really, Suzanne? Really? Are we trying to be terribly clever here?” Because, of course, his first name is a not-subtle-at-all reference to Shakespeare’s tragedy of the same name: both characters share all kinds of common plot and character points in their respective narratives. (Of course, that’s not something your average teenager/YA aficionado would know. Or care about, come to that, so maybe it doesn’t really matter that much.) That personal snarkiness aside, however, I like President Snow’s character a lot, particularly as Donald Sutherland plays him in the films: he’s utterly ruthless --- although there’s a charming (if creepy) dichotomy as he tenderly relates to his grand-daughter --- cunning, pragmatic, and above all, terrifyingly honest (“Oh, my dear Miss Everdeen. I thought we had an agreement not to lie to each other”) which is as unorthodox in a politician as it is refreshing.
 
So there we are. Pater familias, indeed.

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What? Act VI Already?

6/10/2019

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Okay, baby, ready or not, here we come: Act VI.
 
There’s something simultaneously alarming and exciting about that simple statement, you know. Act VI? Already? Yikes.
 
What are you babbling about now? I hear you mumbling. Well, glad you asked. Let’s start at the beginning: as you can see from the quote at the top, Will (Shakespeare, Of Course, Dummy) wrote one of his most famous monologues in one of his comedies, a play called As You Like It. (Yes, he wrote comedies. Yes, he can be very funny --- and not just to dead Elizabethans, either. Now stop looking at me like that and stop interrupting.) The weird thing about the monologue being in one of his comedies is that it’s actually fairly melancholy, with an ending that is, to be frank, downright depressing (more about that later). I won’t print out the entire thing here, but will provide you with my own summary of Will’s take on our lives:
 
Act 1 – Babyhood
Act 2 – School Daze
Act 3 – Young Man/Woman
Act 4 – Startin’ Out and Establishing Yourself, Career/Marriage-Wise
Act 5 – Later On and Bringing it to a Close
Act 6 – Retirement
Act 7 – Decrepitude and Shuffling Off This Mortal Coil
 
And as of the end of this month, I will officially be transferring from Act V to Act VI when I leave a 34-year career as a secondary school teacher. Without even the benefit of a rhyming couplet at the end of the scene to signify the conclusion of Act V. (Sorry. English teacher humour.)
 
It’s alarming because it’s something new: the second last act in the play. Which means the end of the play is a helluva lot closer than it was two acts ago. Yeah, I know things could have conceivably ended at any moment --- kind of a grand cosmic ringing down the curtain, so to speak --- but it’s way more likely to end at the end, if you know what I mean. (Like most people, I have no recollection of Act 1, a few jumbled and probably largely inaccurate memories of Act 2… and Act 3, despite the fact I naively think I can recall it, is largely obscured in a purple mist of hormones.) But I do recall Act 4 commencing like it was yesterday. And it seems hard to believe that here we are, on the other side of that gaping chasm which appeared to be, three and a half decades ago, an utterly uncrossable and unbridgeable divide.
 
It’s also exciting because it’s something new: I’ve run the wheels off the old model of my life, and this represents something quite different, which is, yes, a little (okay, sometimes a lot) unsettling, but also full of potential and new opportunities. I ran into a guy at work the other day; I’ve known him since high school, although our acquaintance was more the casual kind than BFF. At any rate, he’s now retired, but is substitute teaching as a means of bringing travel money into the kitty, and he assured me there is life after teaching. Which was really good to hear. (I can’t imagine substitute teaching after retirement… not at this juncture, anyway. While it’s fairly lucrative work, money-wise… well, I subbed way, way back when Pontius was a Pilate because it was the only way to get on full-time --- a means to an end, I guess you could say --- so I did it with dedication but no real enthusiasm. It does allow you to leave at day’s end with no lesson planning or marking, and you get to avoid the endless, pointless meetings, but the trade-off is that one of the big things about teaching is the rapport you build with your kids, and quite obviously, in subbing, you don’t have that. In terms of school-daze social status, you are down near the bottom of the ladder, sandwiched unhappily between caretakers and school bus drivers. I still vividly recall, way back in Act 4, at one school where I subbed regularly, being in the classroom one morning, reading the lesson plans I had been left, and kids streaming into the building. One kid poked his head into the room, saw me, and yelled to his buddy in the hall, “Hey! We got a sub!” Yikes. Words to make any substitute’s heart sink way down to his toes. His buddy, answering the summons, came to look, saw me, and smacked the first kid. “That’s not a sub, you dummy, that’s Mr. Ranshaw,” he loftily informed the first kid. God bless him: I knew, at that moment, I had made the critical shift in that kid’s subconscious from cardboard cut-out teacher to real person.)
 
At any rate, I anticipate and hope Act 6 to be one of rejuvenation and re-invention. In good ways. My wife has always noted that when I come home from school for the summer at the end of June, I undergo a Jekyll/Hyde transformation --- the Jekyll side, I hasten to add, although she doesn’t call it that: she refers to me in the summertime as “Island Niles,” a reference to the TV comedy classic series, Frasier. The series protagonist, Dr. Frasier Crane, has a perpetually uptight brother named Niles, who, in one episode, goes on a tropical holiday and comes back very uncharacteristically relaaaaaaxed. So, yeah, I could see myself as Island Niles.
 
And Act 7? Well, Will’s take on it is very bleak, even for an Elizabethan --- but you’ve got to remember he was writing four hundred years ago, when most people didn’t even make it to Act 7. Life was, as Thomas Hobbes wrote around the same time, “nasty, brutish and short.” Although none of us know exactly what’s in store, I hope my Act 7 is much better than what Will projects.
 
So here’s to a long and lustrous Act 6 (and hopefully Act 7, too)!
 
I’ll keep you posted.
 
 

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We Should Be Cats. Sort Of.

6/3/2019

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I’ll start today’s epistle with a confession which I know won’t win me any points in some quarters: I’m not really a cat person by nature. Although… there is a cat in our neighbourhood who comes by our house regularly, a cat I will guardedly admit not minding, even though it’s one of the most self-assured cats I’ve ever encountered. He’s not a stray --- his name, so we’re told by another neighbour, is Pearl, which originally made us assume he was a girl. (Sorry, all you politically correct types… aggressive archaic stereotyping rears its ugly head, I admit.) But then my wife, who is a self-professed cat person and not in the slightest bit squeamish in matters feline, played doctor, did a little anatomical examination, and informed us Pearl is a boy… although we still suffer from some gender confusion with him at times.
 
Anyway. Pearl drops by our place on an irregular basis --- sometimes early in the morning, sometimes in the gloaming; sometimes daily, sometimes not for a week. But we are clearly a dedicated, documented stop on his neighbourhood exploration route. He will arrive at either door --- more often the back, come to think of it, probably because it opens into the kitchen, which, as we all know, is the nerve centre of operations in every home --- and announces his arrival with a plaintive mewing that continues until either someone answers the door, or even a cat’s legendary patience wears thin and he concludes no one is home. (The only strange thing, given his nature, is that he doesn’t leave a little note saying, Dropped by today! Sorry to have missed you, hoomans! Catch you on the backswing! Or words to that effect.) He’s a remarkably forward cat, demanding attention and affection with no hint of shyness whatsoever, and will even --- cheeky bastard! --- make a beeline into our house if given the slightest chance. (Although I allowed it once or twice during periods of extreme cold weather this last winter --- why were his owners permitting him outside at such times? --- I have forbidden it since spring came on and temperatures improved, because I noted with alarm that my wife and both sons were getting misty-eyed about the prospect of acquiring our own felis catus, and I came to the conclusion I wasn’t about to let a furry, four-legged animal (even one with Pearl’s remarkable sang-froid) dictate policy on the possibilities of pet ownership at our house. And while I do profess a small liking for Pearl --- I may have been known to scratch his head, back or tummy on occasion, although I neither confirm nor deny this --- I regard him as something of an aberration among Cats I Have Known, most of whom I have found to be varying combinations of aloof, stand-offish, condescending, and very much Wanting It All, But Only On Their Own Terms. Which, as far as I’m concerned, is hardly the basis for any kind of meaningful relationship, human or otherwise. No, no… please, Cat People, spare me your earnest protestations about how wrong I am. You’re entitled to your opinion. And so am I.)
 
Anyway --- again. The reason I relate all this, really, is merely to say: I can confirm Bob Heinlein’s statement at the top of this post. In spades. (Yes, I know, I know… a long-winded introduction, indeed… although permit me to observe that you’re still here, reading, aren’t you? So, stop complaining: it’s evidently kept your interest thus far. And I have been working up to my point. Besides, as I’ve observed before: my blog, my rules.) Pearl makes a great fuss when we Answer The Summons… but when he’s had enough, he’s had enough, and basically just walks off with nary a backwards glance. This is one cat trait I’ve come to admire lately, and wish it’s one humans would adopt… possibly with an amendment.
 
Why? Because I’ve recently decided --- with very mixed feelings --- to retire from being a career secondary school teacher, after three and a half decades. And I told my principal, months ago when I first voiced the possibility, I wanted to do it as a cat. Well, no, that’s not exactly how I phrased it: I told her I just wanted to leave quietly by the side door, with no fanfare or celebrations. (We can possibly get into the ‘why’ of that desire another day.) And currently, I’m running into pushback from various well-meaning but misguided people who seem perplexed and/or wounded I should feel that way --- pushback that, frankly, I wish would just cease.
 
Instead, I have a suggestion --- my amendment to the cat philosophy Bob Heinlein delineated, if you will. It’s rather counter-cultural. Okay, it’s very counter-cultural. In fact, it’s something we really don’t tend to do much at all, either as a society or as a species --- to our collective shame, I think. But it’s this: people constantly intersect with our lives, right? They move in and out of our lives, for varying periods of time. How about if, instead of trying to tell people at the end of our time of association with them how much we appreciate them, we do that --- bumping against their legs, buzzing with mischief --- well, if not every day, then on a regular basis? While they’re intersecting our lives?
 
I know, I know: we don’t do that. We’re quick to complain and slow to praise. We’re so wrapped up in the minutiae of each day, we obsess over the trivial and ignore the truly important. We don’t tell people how important they are, or how valued they are, or what a great job they do, while we’re with them.
 
But, you know… maybe we should.
 
I think I’d like that kind of world.

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    D.R. Ranshaw's Blog

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    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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