Purpose for blog/The Grail WAr

My initial plan was to write a blog entry every other week, on Wednesdays, on my 'not-busy week.'

Let me explain.

I have a busy week and a not-busy week.

My busy weeks are well...busy.
 Monday's not so bad, but I use the time between classes to do administrative work and there's little time to do anything really constructive. Tuesdays on my busy week's are insane. I leave the house at 6 in the morning and get home at about 8.45 at night. During the day, there is literally a total of ten minutes of time where I'm not working:  teaching, planning, checking homework, making copies or driving to the factories where I teach or the town I'm teaching. I spend two hours in the car, and the rest of the time I've got my nose to the EFL grindstone: except from 11.30 to 11.35 when I choke down my  lunch(hastily chopped fruit with fat-free white yogurt--it's' better than you think); and 1135 to 1140 when I take a much-needed, and, by this point, almost orgasmic, break on the toilet.
WEdnesday is a little less hectic; I have time for a leisurely lunch at home and I get home early enough to go for my near-daily 6.5 km fastwalk(I don't call it a power walk due to the fact that, in my opinion, for it to be called a powerwalk one's arms must swing a little more robustly--you gotta get your shoulders into it...--but I do walk pretty fast and I do have a swing in my arms that let's people to know that, yes, I am exercising.).
Thursdays I dont go in until noon for our weekly meeting and work til 8 and, while Friday morning is pretty busy, I am usually finished at about 1.30, barring any meetings with teachers or would-be teachers.

But on my  non-busy weeks, I have plenty more time.
 On Wednesdays, for example, I don't leave for work until two, and I usually leave work for home at 6.30 pm. So I decided to write a blog, because a) I like typing and b) It keeps me away from Facebook, which is marvellously entertaining and a great way to feel 'in touch' with people you really aren't in touch with; but which eats into time like nothing I've ever experienced. I mean, you sit down, click on an article: ('11 Ways Cannibal Puppies Are Awesome', say, or ''Beyonce Took a Dump in a Cancer Ward and It Was Amazing') and the next thing you know, it's time to have lunch, take a shower and go to work.  I needed something productive to do on my rare mornings off...

Maybe I should talk about what I'm going to write about on this blog.
 You see, I'm not going to write about anything. Or, rather, I'm not going to specialize in anything.

I read somewhere that it was advisable to "specialize" in a blog. Apparently that is a strategy for bringing readers in...you know...there are cooking blogs...and travel blogs...and medical blogs and sex blogs, etc.

But...I don't care.

I'm not looking for a big readership. I figure my brothers and sister and a handful of friends and acquaintances will check it out, and I'm cool with that. I'm under no delusion that this is going to somehow be compiled in a best selling book; I'm not going to fuss to much about re-writing and trimming; I'm not going to fret about whether my subject matter is cheery or interesting or appropriate...I don't have the time to be a professional writer, anymore. The days of writing 4 or hours a day because, damn it, I had to! are more than a decade behind me. Now, I'm just writing for the sheer joy of writing and the sheer of joy of not being in Facebook's thrall. Oh, and there will be book reviews, because I read a lot of books.

This week is technically my busy week, but it's 'Spring Break' week in Zlinsky Kraj(the 'district' of the Czech Republic I live in.) Instead of my usual 34 hours of teaching in two towns and 3 factories, I'm only teaching 12 hours--and I'm not working at all on Wednesday and Thursday! In fact, this afternoon, Jana is packing up all three kids and going with her brother to the Jaseniky Mountains for three days, about 120 miles away, for a short, last 'ski holiday' of the season. I don't ski, which means on Thursday, not only do I not have to work; but I also am going to be girlfriend- and children- free...which means...PARTY TIME!!!! For one day And 'party time'  means...well, staying home and reading all day.

So that's why I'm writing my blog on my busy week. Because it's not really busy this week.

 Which is OK because I couldn't write last week, anyway, due to  a long power-point translation from a big client in the medical industry which I had to proofread. It took 4 and a half hours and a good dose of concentration to get through because it was hardly interesting stuff. 

So...I have a number of ideas to write about in my blog that occupy my mind, but first I'm going to clear the cache with book reviews.

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The Grail War by Richard Monaco

A few months ago, I wrote a longish book review on Facebook(and amazon.co.uk) of Parsival, or a Knight's Tale, the vaguely Arthurian novel by Richard Monaco from 1977. I really liked the book and it has acquired meaning and depth for me over time. So recently I ordered all four sequels(two of them out of print, used, from an English bookseller, the other two on Kindle.)

First of all, although it was clear he was setting up for a sequel in a couple of the final chapters, I don't think they was really necessary. The first book was a complete work of art. This isn't a criticism. I'm glad he wrote sequels. I enjoyed this book a lot.

As before, the real star for me here is Monaco's writing, which is relentlessly physical. This is a story told almost purely from the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and physical sensations of the characters as well as their inner thoughts. Occasionally, Monaco breaks the fourth wall to inform the reader of something (an old-fashioned device I usually don't care for, but I think it's old-fashioned-ness is part of the point. More about this later.) I enjoy this physicality so much. It's not like watching a movie: it's better.

I had the impression while reading Parsival that the author was exploring and discovering the story; each page had the whiff of divine inspiration about it. And I accepted it as that, even as the characters(main characters: Broaditch, the earthy, cynical but good-hearted peasant and Parsival, the philosophical super-knight) went on various detours that ended in dead ends, plot-wise. It was all part of the overall tapestry and I liked it. 

THis book, by contrast, seems to be slightly more tightly plotted than Parsival, as Monaco gathers the characters (the two mentioned above and the new character Lohengrin, Parsival's bitter, angry, nearly villainous son) together for a final climactic battle.) 

As before, I don't think the plot is really not that important or complex, but I realized that both books(and the other sequels as well) are actually quite medieval in plot. you know, reading Malory, Tale of Sir Gareth, for example...I mean, he basically just rides his horse and fights people he meets on his knightly quest. These books are similar: a lot of wandering, a lot of fights. They are much more true to the spirit of medieval romances  than other Arthurian retellings, I think. I'm sure this is a self-conscious choice on the author's part. But anyway,. I sort of see these books more as ways for Monaco to hang his philosophical and poetic observations of life than as amazing stories. In fact, I would almost call them prose poems because the writing is intensely poetic...almost to point where it obscures all else. Again, this is a positive thing. (Normally I'd count this as negative, but these books are strange and break all rules for me. He's really writing about every life experience that's relevant to him: birth, death, marriage, sex, love, parents, children, war, spirituality...and writing pretty profoundly about it, I think.)

An interesting thing... the supporting character Gawain(a fine, complex creation) realizes it first, that he is literally unkillable because he has some 'part to play'. Broaditch also forces himself, quite against his nature, to surrender to fate because it's clearly moving him somewhere and he has no control of it; and Parsival, after a suicide attempt, also realizes his essential...unkillibility? Of course in story they are in the hands of fate, or of God's or the Devil's(again, like medieval stories, there really does seem to be both a Christian God and Devil at work--and again, it's a very medieval concept of God and Devil); but of course it's also just that the author himself doesn't want to kill him because he needs him for the plot. I can't think of another story where the characters become aware of their own plot armor.

As for the War in the title itself...well...such is the nature of his writing that I can honestly say I have never read such well-written battle scenes. I mean, they are horrifically violent. (these books are the most violent books I've ever read, by a long shot) but so graphically descriptive...it's just beautiful. 

It's clear that despite wallowing in violence and blood a bit, the author despises war and I suppose I would categorize these books' depictions of war both as 'Post-Vietnam' and 'Post-Holocaust. There are very few heroic deeds taking place  as the war takes on a terrifying life of its own and everyone, villain and hero, is irresistibly swept up in an incredible, bloody climax that has to be read to be believed.