REVIEW: Aesop's Fables; A New Translation by G.K. Chesterton [Kindle Edition]

Aesop's Fables; A New Translation. G.K. Chesterton. Public Domain Books (2004), Kindle Edition, Print length: 145 pages.

I wonder if modern man has always anthropomorphized animals. I suppose that ancient religious beliefs and practices could point to valid explanations, but how many animal stereotypes can we trace directly back to the influence of Aesop's fables? Aesop's works are important, because as Chesterton notes, they are simple truisms that require a certain degree of humility. People are reduced to "chessmen" and animals to their most basic qualities. In addition, the fact that these are likely collected works, and not simply the product of Aesop's mind, matters. Aesop, then, serves as a sort of orator, and yet he was supposedly thrown off of a cliff for...who knows...being "offensive?"

I wonder how often we bother to question our standard characterizations of the animals and the people found in Aesop's fables, and our often blind acceptance of the morals at the end of each one. Chesterton supposes in his introduction that ancient man thought themselves too mysterious to depict in the same manner as the cave paintings at, say, Lascaux. I think that some of the politics in the fables are obvious, and I wonder if this is where Aesop had a greater role in their creation. There are fables about the gods, the Oracle at Delphi, and slaves...fables that speak of class differences that easily could have gotten Aesop in trouble, if he were a Phrygian slave. There are lots of contradictory messages, too: tales of birds in cages who yearn to be free, and slaves who value protection over freedom. There are stories of cocks whose necks are wrung because they can only tell time, while a tame partridge is kept because it serves as a decoy to catch other birds...and then another tale in which a partridge is killed for its treachery when it offers to be a decoy in the interest of self-preservation. At face value, people take these morals to be self-evident truths, but the people in these stories are always the ones who contradict themselves. On the contrary, an Ass is always an ass.

Like Grimm's fairy tales, violence is a factor. The natural world has always had a bit of the gruesome to balance out the beauty. We accept this as normal, and it is, but it is also strange when we give voices to beasts and birds, and then use them to teach children right from wrong. Nothing is so cut and dry in a modern world, and yet these fables have survived despite the differences. I think that simplicity is the key. We tend to complicate matters, when all people really seem to crave are simple answers.

Rating: 4/5

To be quite honest, I'm being polite with this review. I gave this collection a 4/5 for historical importance, but I really wanted to give it a 3. The short form of the fables was easy to read, but it got to be rather dull, after a while. (In fact, it was enough to turn me off of ancient lit. for a while. I started reading an 1000-page, sprawling and modern novel this morning, just to shift to the other extreme. I NEED this, right now.)

REVIEW: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Mary Roach. (2004) W. W. Norton & Company (Pub). Paperback. 304 pages.

"The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship."

What you see is not all you get, with this title...which is probably a good thing, if you don't want to come off as "that creepy, weird girl/guy who laughs in the face of Death." After reading Stiff, perhaps you will find some comfort in knowing that someone else is laughing with you, and laughing twice as loudly. On the surface, Stiff is a detailed account of the possibilities that await our bodies after death. Roach covers topics as far-reaching as plastic surgery, decomposition, (after)life as a human crash-test dummy, and crucifixion experiments. The author's narratives frequently flip-flop between gruesome and often disturbing details, irreverent humor, and compassion for the departed.

What I find most interesting are the bizarre accounts of how humanity arrived at our present state of affairs, concerning death. There is some great, journalistic research, here. Early stories recounting the history of anatomy and surgical experimentation make me happy to have been born in these modern times, but they still put me off of doctors for a while. (Oh gods, NO! Not the puppies! ...he put his whole hand WHERE!? Without anesthesia?) Luckily, the horror is mitigated by Roach's frequent tangents and jabs at everyone's sanity, including her own.

The book also asks a lot of open-ended questions, either direct or implied. For example, do the benefits of experimentation on the dead outweigh the ethical concerns associated with the practice? Would we react differently if we were given access to all of the gory details? Ultimately, Roach states her opinions--very delicately, without being pushy--but allows readers to draw their own conclusions. (For the record, she saves any questions about Self and Soul for her follow-up title Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.)

Rating: 4.5/5

My Stories:
To be fair, I've actually read this book before. One night, as a joke, I thought that I would be funny and horrible, and offer to read the first chapter to my boyfriend...as a bedtime story. A bedtime story that begins with severed heads in roasting pans.* We started to talk about differences between men and women concerning their centers of gravity, which turned into a genuine curiosity about cutting one another in half to weigh the pieces. Now that's love. As a gift to my boyfriend, I thought I would continue the joke and start reading to him again.

*Amusingly, one of our mutual friends used to host a website to store a bunch of oddities from high school and college. It was called "I Roast Heads."**
**...and holycrapitstillexists. Let's just say I warned you. I Roast Heads!***
***An appropriate quote from the iroastheads.com quote page:
"'yeah, funeral music always sucks.'...'well, they won't hear it!'"
-somebody and hassell