The fig is a vibrant ingredient of my private mythology.  Both sets of my grandparents had thriving trees in Griffin, Georgia, and when I moved to Opelika in Alabama my new yard was blessed with a pair that eventually reached thirty five-feet high, but of course the shade they offered was hardly their greatest gift.  Kin to the mulberry, the shrub/trees can grow luscious, delicate fruit, companionable to rocky, free-draining soil, but hard to cultivate here in the Blue Ridge, where they are not only not native, but seem reviled by the weather.  But not always, for our generous neighbor Lori out on Timber Ridge seems to have the touch and industry to help them thrive, and from her bumper crop this year she has brought some bowls to savor.

My earliest or strongest association with figs is not a comforting one.  Under the fig tree by the well house at my Grandmother Thaxton’s house, I once discovered a very dark copperhead coiled, thick as my adult wrist, less coppery than brown and shadowy mud, no mistaking the viper wedge head but with a sheen of the purplish hue on his head akin to the figs ripening above.  How old was I – eight, nine?  It was no great leap from the camouflaging  fig leaves of Genesis, Adam and Eve and their dangerously serpent-haunted apple tree to a fig tree with a venomous snake flicking his split tongue andflexing his loops.  I yelled for granddaddy, but to my amazement, he did not smite or shoot or stone the reptile but lifted him by a garden rake and carried him beyond the trash pit, whispering something about God’s creatures.  His wife was of a different mind and never failed to introduce any visible snake not a good luck black snake to the sharp edge of a gooseneck hoe.?

But I overcame my dread, if not the association, mostly due to the syrupy fig preserves she put up in Ball jars, the dark amber syrup with skins suspended, honey on the tongue, the golden seeds popping between my teeth,  I slathered fresh cat head biscuits with the delicacy and gobbled them down.  No regrets, as the commercial world appears to have judged that fig jelly is an adequate substitute for the sinful treacle, and less messy.

Griffin, Georgia, as I said, right down McIntosh Road from Calvary Baptist, so I was pretty soon getting figs in my religion.  Mostly they came to us from Spain, then the Golden State,  back eastward and south, but with different ethnic migration patterns, they might have come from Palestine, where they are native and necessary, among the seven sacred plants of Canaan.  Jesus seemed to have mixed feelings about them and not a lot of expertise, but he was a carpenter, fishing guide and otherwise occupied with his Father’s business.

Still, the Bible has a bit to say about ficus carica  Mysterious enough to invite much primal imagination, they became more than sweet food.  Isaiah wrote that they could, boiled, render a plaster to cure, well, boils.  Jeremiah identified two kind of figs, good and naughty, and if you sent the latter to wicked people, pestilence would visit them.  It’s tempting to imagine that he saw the barren trees as the wicked ones, but it takes two kinds of fig trees to render a harvest – the ones the fig wasp has taken pollen to and those it has taken pollen from.

In Judges 9, Jotham told a story to the men of Shechem, in which the parliament of the trees invited the olive to be their king but were refused, as the olive was quite content to be used by men to honor their god.  So then they turned to the fig, who declined saying he would not abandon his sweetness just to be promoted over the trees. The bramble was another matter, but he had conditions.  I pondered this one and asked hither and yon but received no satisfactory answer.  I was beginning to see figs at the heart of an enigma, and they were personified and inscrutable.  They occupied a text and were resonant, so I knew I had to weasel out the implications for myself.  Not that I ever succeeded.

Jesus asked if you could get figs from thistles, making agricultural wit, but I knew this was not merely farm business.  He also cursed a fig tree he saw from afar and desired fruit from.  Up close, it proved to be the barren sort.  He was in parable mode and declared the empty tree a symbol of Israel’s unbelievers.  He was in a mood anyway, on his way to scourge the money lenders and goose peddlers from the temple.  Maybe the tree was a rehearsal.

For a while, those old puzzles were part of my cloud-gathering repertoire, but they faded from sight and savored the preserves.  In college, however, I read D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Figs,” which explains both “the proper way to eat a fig in society” and the “vulgar way.”  Even the history major I was (that day) could see that the latter was clearly sexual, and Lawrence’s speaker, like Jesus, was talking about two things at once.  Besides, I’d already encountered Prufrock’s reluctance to eat a peach and suspected the perils and attractions of sensuality.  Texts again, but that poem didn’t really sink into me until Ken Russell’s film of Lawrence’s Women in Love with Rupert and Gerald disputing over fig manners.  Then I knew it was about even more than sexuality but about embracing life or trying to rule it.

The fig lends itself to metaphor and indulgence, even in language.  “A fig to you,” “I don’t give a fig.” It once meant “trifle” because they were so common but has also in the Mediterranean come to imply femininity.  During the Punic Wars, Cato wishing to goad his fellow Romans into attacking Carthage, placed a bowl of figs on the map to represent Carthage – feminine, vulnerable.  An aside: Cleopatra ordered her suicide serpent brought to her in a basket of figs.  Her way of presiding over her own fate.

Many cultures believe the fig is a talisman against the evil eye.  The hole in its blossom end is called the eye, though it radiates to become a star.  The seeds inside are golden, the pith pink.  No one has ever found a way to safely ship them ripe, but even the dried versions are tasty in their packaged spirals.  More like fig Newmans.

In Opelika, I found the starlings, grackles and blackbirds, as well as other pillagers of convenience delighted in my figs, but the bounty was sufficient to allow me to net and harvest the lower halves of the trees and leave the rest to the greedy beaks.

Cato identified over thirty varieties of fig in De Argi Cultura, but from all I can determine, the white sap of all the green parts are an irritant to human skin.  Especially mine.  Goggled, watch- capped and poncho-draped on the step ladder with my wicker basket in Opelika (“swampy place” to the Creeks) I would often (August through early October) ascend and descend, itching like a poison ivy picker, collecting the just exactly ripe figs, gently, my mouth already watering and my mind jangled by Lawrence, Jesus, Cato, Cleo and the question of English holiday “figgy pudding” drenched in brandy and served flambé.

Itchy skin and eyes, bird competition, copperheads and occasional vertigo.  Complications aside, I’d still love to have my own fig tree. Go figure.

— RTS (September, 2017)

From mid-May until June, the blog will be accessible but not active.  In lieu of brief, frequent posts, readers are invited to read the essay entitled “Where I Come From a Hushpuppy Is Not a Fuzzy Shoe,” which is posted on the Shenandoah homepage.

“And Thou, O wall, O sweet, O lovely wall,
That stand’st between her father’s ground and mine!
Thou wall, O wall, O sweet and lovely wall,
Show me thy chink, to blink through with mine eyne!”
— Bottom/Pyramus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall . . . .”
— Robert Frost

Elves?

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
— Ronald Reagan at the Brandenburg Gate in 1987

In his poem Mending Wall, Robert Frost’s narrator (who sometimes seems to be his spokesman) scoffs at his neighbor’s unquestioned belief that ‘“good fences make good neighbors.”’  His skepticism is due in part to the fact that he doesn’t see the utility in hard borders – one man has apple trees, one pines, no livestock, no traffic to be impeded.  The narrator doesn’t acknowledge the value of shared work, ritual, a covenant handed down from fathers to sons, and he likes seeing himself as both reflective and practical, verbal and philosophical, while the neighbor gets short shrift for he is, evidently, living the unexamined life Socrates berated, toting and raising rocks “like an old-stone savage armed.”

It’s in part a poem about feelings of superiority, the broad picture, social discourse, as opposed to habit and Yankee acerbity.  But the narrator is not altogether fool.  Questioning why such obstructions make good neighbors might lead in various directions and conversations, as some reasons are pretty obvious, others as mysterious as, well, elves.

In what might be the narrator’s best moment, he wants to declare (though he seems to lack the grit to voice it),

“Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walking in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.”

What would follow such inquiry is not simple business, though walling out bison, felons, foxes, zombies, might be wise practice, especially if they might be dangerous takers who don’t repay.  However, walling out trading partners, needed workers, fugitives from violence, allies . . . , maybe not so smart.

What to do, what to do?  I suppose Frost’s speaker and others involved in barrier transactions have to observe, absorb, analyze, consult, prioritize, evaluate, keep a clear eye and an open mind and humane heart, scrutinize every facet and their own (perhaps somewhat unacknowledged) motivations, operate with imagination and a willingness to evolve.  They must not create distractions and deceits for themselves and others, and shouldn’t dismiss the complications of maintenance and karma.  Maintain a balanced perspective and humane ambitions.  Crazy, right?  But maybe much madness is divinest sense.  It’s worth a try.

A week ago, shortly after watching a TV report on the notorious Wall-to-be (not Pink Floyd’s) and viewing sections of some kind of border blockades already in place, I turned to the Weather Channel (exciting evening in the entertainment department) and watched a featurette on the current flooding threats to New Orleans.  What to my wondering eyes should appear but a section of levee flood barrier that looked identical to the segment of “Le Mur” I’d just seen touted as part of the Wall our putative president has already been building (though it was standing before what we now tentatively refer to as “the election”).  It’s meant to slow down high, fast water and trap debris.  And drug mules, immigration coyotes and other malefactors who celebrate Cinco de Mayo (which the Chief-in-Chief, bless his heart, did mention last week), according to the slap-dash commentary.  It all left me a trifle bewildered.

Even now I ask myself what this panel of small-barbed words might be walling in or out.  Perhaps that’s one positive result of the wall mania running rampant.  We stop and count to ten (as Twain advised) before we swear.

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When I was younger, I used to tip-toe into my father’s study, sit quietly amongst his towering wooden bookshelves, and crane my neck to marvel at the aged, jewel-toned spines of the vintage editions displayed before me. Intricate, golden cursive against the peeling leather spelled out titles from The Essays of Sir Francis Bacon to The History of Epistemology, and while my preschool reading abilities were confined to the likes of The Frog and the Toad, I felt an undeniable sense of reverence and humility in the presence of the wise, yellowing pages and ornate covers housed on those bookshelves. One night, however, I was feeling particularly audacious and decided to climb the tallest shelf, which contained a thick, purple book that had for months been the object of my intrigue. A few minor miscalculations later, I had made enough noise to awaken my entire family and quickly fled the scene, purple book in hand. Thus, I discovered the works of British poet W. H. Auden.

Though my appreciation of poetry leans towards the all-embracing, I often find myself put off by overly-sentimental writing stifled by excessive attempts to convey emotion. I believe that language is most beautiful when permitted to speak for itself, and the words of W. H. Auden do exactly that. Auden evokes grief, loss, and utter desolation without the sentimentalism upon which the Romantic poets relied so heavily, and he defies conventional expectations in his technical virtuosity just as he does in his pragmatic, grounded approach to love.      

Many love poems assume an idealized position in which the eternality of love allows man to transcend life’s inevitabilities, but Auden challenges the validity of this idea, arguing instead for the ephemerality of love and supremacy of time. “Lullaby” is a condemnation of traditional Romanticism that, like many of Auden’s poems, begins with an intentional surrender to convention followed by a swift repudiation. The first line, “Lay your sleeping head, my love/,” expresses tenderness and vulnerability, while the second, “Human on my faithless arm,” almost immediately establishes the practicality and unorthodoxy that characterize the remaining stanzas. In readily admitting his own faithlessness and consequently calling into question the value of monogamy, Auden portrays himself as the antithesis of the traditional Romantic hero and goes on to celebrate the love between two imperfect individuals. Rather than depicting the unflawed and even sublime love typical of Romantics, Auden urges humanity to abandon the pursuit of traditional ideals and to instead seek authenticity, ending the first stanza with an affirmation that his lover, while “mortal” and “guilty,” is nonetheless “entirely beautiful.”

Perhaps Auden’s ease in discerning the superficiality behind such ideals results from his understanding of the supremacy of time; he appreciates love but accepts its transience. Just as “Time and fevers burn away/Individual beauty from/Thoughtful children,” death ultimately “proves the child ephemeral.” Likewise, while considering the anguish of unrequited love in “The More Loving One,” Auden assures readers that “Though this might take [him] a little time,” it is possible “to look at an empty sky/And feel its total dark sublime”—that is, while the speaker contemplates his ability to exist in the absence of his beloved, he also acknowledges that time’s passage will lessen his pain.  The lovers depicted in “As I Walked Out One Evening,” however, represent the alternate side of this scenario: their affection is very much mutual, and each assures the other of the perpetuity of his or her love, proclaiming “I’ll love you/Till China and Africa meet” and “till the ocean/Is folded and hung up to dry.” Auden’s antagonistic stance is voiced through “all the clocks in the city/,” who “Begin to whirr and chime:/O let not Time deceive you,/You cannot conquer Time,” reminding the lovers that their passion and youthfulness will ineluctably wane.

Admittedly, it is neither Auden’s pragmatism nor his conviction in love’s impermanence that has drawn me to his work, but rather his emotional sincerity. His writing brims with the same genuineness and authenticity that he urges readers to seek in their own lives, and the resulting vulnerability elicits empathy without asking for it. Furthermore, he seems to leave certain lines open to varying interpretations, perhaps mirroring the lack of certainty with which these lines have been composed. I often wonder, for instance, whether Auden prefers to be “the more loving one” because he considers it the less painful option or rather because he cannot bear to see his loved one suffer as he does. Like the speaker of “As I Walked Out One Evening,” Auden’s readers undoubtedly find themselves contemplating the “deep river” that continues to “[run] on,” despite love’s coming and going.

-Sierra Terrana

When Donna Tartt’s much anticipated novel The Goldfinch hit bookstore shelves in 2013, the reaction was instantaneous.

Unwary shoppers found themselves caught up in the tidal wave of die-hard Tartt fans who had been waiting over ten years for her newest book. Together, they poured into stores, buying and ordering copies of the novel at accelerating rates. The book jumped onto the New York Times bestseller list and sat tight for nearly a year, selling over a million and a half print and digital copies, and drawing in rave reviews from the likes of Michiko Kakutani and Stephen King.

Because of the book, Tartt was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. The producers of The Hunger Games buckled down to create a film/television series based on the novel. New York’s Frick Collection, which had just begun exhibiting the painting for which the book was named, was suddenly accosted by throes of tourists who just wanted to see the piece of art that started it all.

But when The Goldfinch was entered into the running for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction that year, that was the last straw. A mix of critics, simmering in a stewy silence, finally bubbled over the edge.

“Its tone, language, and story belong in children’s literature,” wrote The New Yorker book critic James Wood. According to Wood, the book was full of relentless, far-fetched plotting and stock characters, and was simply undeserving of the literary respect it had received.

“Tartt’s novel is not a serious one—it tells a fantastical, even ridiculous tale, based on absurd and improbable premises,” he said.

The Goldfinch did end up taking home the prestigious award, much to the dismay of many literary critics, who panned the novel just like Wood did. And so, the question was posed: Was our literary culture being infantilized? Were we finally sinking into a doomed world where adults read Harry Potter and Twilight instead of Moby-Dick and The Tale of Two Cities?

In a way, this concern made sense. The plot of The Goldfinch is certainly an outlandish one. The novel follows the troubled life of Theo Decker, whose world is turned upside down when he is swept up in a catastrophic event at an art museum in New York City that kills his mother. Panicked, thirteen-year-old Theo steals a famous painting, titled “The Goldfinch,” in order to save it during the chaos. Drawn into a life full of drugs and crime, Theo tumbles from New York to Las Vegas to Amsterdam, coming of age with a haunting secret: he is in possession of a piece of art that many are desperate to get their hands on.

But the supposed lack of “seriousness” of The Goldfinch did not stop readers from buying the book. It did not stop Tartt from enjoying wild literary success, achieving more attention and praise than any of her past books combined. Whether the critics liked it or not, the novel served as a catalyst for the shifting in literary tastes, an accurate representation of what the public wanted to read in the early 21st century.

Hate it or love it, The Goldfinch proves that people will read what they want to read. And if that means tossing “seriousness” to the wind, then so be it.

-Virginia Kettles

by Laurel Myers

I love books. This phrase is typical of an English major—so hello, that’s me, guilty as charged. I learned to read when I was three and have always lived within a block of the public library in my town. My mom would call the librarians when I was big enough to walk across streets by myself and let them know I was on my way. I always ended up walking home with a stack almost as high as me with a book propped open on the top so I could read on the way back. When I woke up, I would read until the smell of bacon cooking wafted up the stairs. When I was going to sleep, I read until I came to a good stopping point (sometimes) or I finished the book (more likely) or I fell asleep (okay, this one happened the most). I took books with me in the car, even if we were just going to the grocery store; I took books to school and read when I should have been working on homework or talking to friends; I took a book with me… I think you get the point. I was never without a book, as if the pages were an additional appendage. My punishment when I was a kid? Having my books taken away.

   Little kids are always asked what they want to do when they grow up, and my list leaned towards the sciences: marine biologist was up there for a while, followed by zoologist, and joining Doctors Without Borders was a possibility until I was told that wasn’t really a “job job.” Then, bioengineering somehow became the major I was looking at for college. After an internship in a pulmonary-cardiovascular research lab, I realized a career spent in a lab was not for me and that my aversion to math might be a slight problem. Although I felt like I had wasted a summer, this experience actually saved me from wasting even more time and money going to college for a career I would not ultimately enjoy. (I would like to emphasize career, as science is a compelling subject that I find fascinating). Because of that summer, I was forced to reevaluate what I could see myself studying for four years and then dedicating my life to.

Which brings us back to the “I love books” statement. I found myself wondering if I could be paid for reading for all day, because who wouldn’t love that? I had been training my whole life! I was practically a professional already.

   I happen to also watch a copious amount of Netflix, which is how I came across two movies that presented an answer to me: Not Another Happy Ending and Genius. These films follow the relationships between a publisher and an author, along with the arduous process of developing a book. In Not Another Happy Ending, an author with a best-selling book is not able to write the sequel because she is too happy, so her publisher attempts to remedy her writer’s block by making her miserable. Genius tells the story of Tom Wolfe (a Washington and Lee alum and past editor of Shenandoah) and his publisher Maxwell Perkins’ friendship developing as they work on manuscripts together through the tumultuous changes of life. While they are most certainly different in genre and tone, there is a striking similarity between the two: the passion and drive to create good books.

   I have always been a consumer of books and love the worlds they took me to, but I had never thought about how they were produced. The world of publishing that exists behind all of these stories is one I want to venture into and figure out how all of the gears and mechanics work together to create such mesmerizing works. Once I wrapped my head around the fact that there was indeed a job where I could read manuscripts and converse with the creators of fantastical journeys, I declared an English major and looked for a way to begin introducing myself to this profession.

Interning at Shenandoah is a direct connection to publishing and all of the nuances and skills needed. Looking at the inundation of submissions to the magazine highlights the importance of having a concrete list of what makes a good story, which means you actually have to work through and know what belongs on the list. Working with R.T. Smith is to be working with a prolific and successful writer who has an incredible knowledge of the literary sphere. Writing these blogs and finding poems of the week forces me to put my own work and interests out into the public eye, which is oftentimes a terrifying thought. Spearheading the Greybeal-Gowen Prize for Poetry reveals the range of authors and their determination to have people other than themselves read their work. Shenandoah also encourages my interest in simply reading, as there are wonderful stories and poems in this literary magazine that I would not have otherwise found.

I am also fortunate enough to have friends trust my editing skills and my honesty when reading through their work. I edited a short story for a friend trying to publish it in a literary magazine, and was astounded by how some simple questions and critiques transformed the writing into a driven, focused, and astonishing piece. I fell in love with the process of give and take between writer and editor, and I am happy to be working with another friend on a novel, which I am learning is an entirely different beast.

Apparently, my passion has always been right there in my hands.

Here’s to the love of books.

“That’s not how it’s supposed to happen.”

“She was much more likable in the book.”

“How could they leave out James Potter’s backstory?”

When it comes to watching a movie that is based off of a book, there’s nothing worse than being in a room with a disgruntled reader who constantly feels the need to point out the differences between the two. And yet, admittedly, I’m often guilty of being that obnoxious, disgruntled reader.

While friends watching with me may be blissfully unaware of the details left out from the book, I struggle to stifle my complaints about the discrepancies. Given that the director is not privy to my subconscious screenplays, I guess it’s to be expected that the movie version is often drastically different from how I imagined the scenes while reading the novel. Yet somehow I still feel like he or she has personally let me down.

Whether from distractingly over-the-top production choices (looking at you, The Great Gatsby (2013)) or from being primarily focused on its perfect-looking cast (every Nicholas Sparks adaptation, ever), the full essence of a book is often lost in its conversion to the big screen. Nothing was more horrifying than when one of my favorite children’s books was turned into a film with a grotesque, feline-version of Mike Myers clad in a red and white striped hat. Even the Harry Potter film franchise— despite the fact that I honor Harry Potter Weekend marathons on ABC Family as something close to religious holidays— left some gaps that I may never totally come to grips with.

I know that often this criticism is not wholly deserved. Directors and screenwriters have a huge disadvantage in capturing what authors can fit in as many pages as they desire to an appropriate length film. Still, my aggravated chirps continue to spout unbidden from my mouth. If you’re like me in this aspect, I’ve found a substitution, though not a real solution. Some movies that I’ve thoroughly enjoyed are ones that are very loosely based off of books, but aren’t intended to follow the same plot line at all.

A prime example lies in Jane Austen adaptations. I love all of her novels, and yet for the most part I’ve been disappointed by the films. While I’m a fan of Keira Knightley and Gwyneth Paltrow in general, their depictions of Elizabeth Bennet and Emma Woodhouse did not live up to my (admittedly high) expectations of the characters from reading the novels. My preferred substitutions? Bridget Jones and Cher Horowitz.

The modern day adaptations of Pride and Prejudice and Emma come in the comical forms of Bridget Jones’ Diary and Clueless, respectively. While serious Austen scholars may spurn me for praising such frivolous comedies as satisfactory performances of her acclaimed novels, these were two films that did not, if I’m channeling my inner Mrs. Bennet, upset my poor nerves. The fact that they were so obviously intended to be only inspired by the novels made them easier for me to accept than most movie adaptations, as rather than looking for differences, I instead noticed the similarities. They bring Austen’s understated humor and clever societal critiques to the forefront. By replacing corsets with mini skirts and the dignified world of Highbury with 1990s Beverly Hills, Clueless makes the storyline of Emma more applicable to modern audiences while still following the transformation and revelations of an overly confident and meddlesome young woman in the form of Cher Horowitz. Similarly, Bridget Jones, while a messier and perhaps more alcohol-dependent version of Elizabeth Bennet, demonstrates a woman’s hasty judgments about two males contending for her affections, one of whom is her very own Mr. Darcy.

Another film adaptation that’s even more of a stretch from the novel but still worth mentioning is The Scarlet Letter-esque movie Easy A. Like most highschool students, I suffered through the required studying of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s celebrated novel as a ninth-grade English student. I have to admit, I’d take Emma Stone’s witty banter over Hawthorne’s stuffy language any day. Though in the form of a slapstick teen comedy, on a deeper level Easy A still deals with how female promiscuity is received by society. The continued double standards that Olive, like Hester before her, faces make us question whether we’ve really come that far as a society from 17th-century Puritanical Boston, at least when it comes to the hypocrisy in the way sexuality of women compared to men is viewed. Besides, anything’s better than the 1995 film version with Demi Moore, which boasts a nude bath scene, a different ending than the novel, and, by no coincidence, a Golden Raspberry Award for “Worst Remake or Sequel.”

At the present, I’m still working on being able to withhold my indignant comments and reserve my judgment when watching book-based movies. In the meantime, however, I’ll always opt instead for freely adapted versions of novels when they’re available. If listening to more of Cher’s shrill “As if”’s or Bridget’s drunken wailings of “All By Myself” is what it takes, that’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make.

-Emily Cole