I didn't realize that this blog site was still active . . .

Ali,

Thanks for reminding me that this blog site is still active. I don't know why, but for some reason I had assumed that this was no longer the case, which explains my long absence from here.

A lot of things have happened during the last year or so, but perhaps the most important is that my next book (my 5th) is about to be published. This one is going to be a collection of my essays, many of which have had a home on my website for quite a long time. Once the book appears, I'll remove most of them from the site, but I intend to add new essays there as well.

The new book is Dancing With the Daffodils: Essays on Life and Love and Letters. It's being published by a new small press located in Southwestern Indiana. I will add the image of its title page to the end of this post.

At this point all I had wanted to say is that I am glad I am back. Soon I'll write some short pieces worth reading. Right now, this is it. And, oh yes, here's the image of the cover of my new book:

To Gene

Gene, Some of your comments deserved to stand on their own in an independent post. Do you know how to send a new post to this site. Just click on New Post on top of the window. It is very easy.

Ali

On tulips . . .

Hello Everyone:

The mind works in funny (strange) ways. I usually do the crossword puzzle that keeps appearing in my daily newspaper. Sometimes I even finish it. In any case, a funny "mind trick" happened to me this morning, and it's the reason why I have decided to write this little, hopefully interesting, but otherwise trivial essay.

I came across the clue "Dutch bloom" - and I immediately thought of the word "tulip." And it fit, and so it was the right word. But then my mind suddenly jumped to a scene in a charming Italian movie (and then to you all in Iran - more of this now as this is actually the reason for this little essay). The charming Italian movie is called Bread and Tulips in English (Pane e tulipani - in Italian). The scene involves the heroine in the story (a middle-aged woman who ends up in Venice where she decides to stay for a while); in the scene she is in the floral shop where she has found a job, having tea with her boss. The florist is an eccentric old man who suddenly tells her that although everyone associates tulips with Holland, they actually come from Persia.

So that's why I am writing this little essay now. Because Iran is the seat of ancient Persia - right? In any case, it's funny how one thing (or idea) suddenly leads to another in our minds. In fact, 20th century fiction (in the early parts of the century) began to use this idea, which then came to be called "stream of consciousness" - as if the mind were a river that keeps flowing and flooding, too, on occasion, while it just goes on about its own business.

In the works of fiction I am talking about here, the narrator seems to disappear, and the reader seems to be inside the mind of the hero or heroine. These books are not easy to read. But here are a couple of examples of them from English literature: James Joyce's Ulysses and Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway.

Just to give you a flavor of this kind of (difficult) writing, here is a quote from the Virginia Woolf novel:

"But to go deeper, beneath what people said (and these judgments, how superficial, how fragmentary they are!) in her own mind now, what did it mean to her, this thing she called life? Oh, it was very queer [strange]. Here was So-and-So in South Kensington; someone up in Bayswater; and someone else, say, in Mayfair [these are places in and around London]. And she felt quite continuously a sense of their existence; and she felt what a waste; and she felt what a pity; and she felt if only they could be brought together; so she did it. And it was an offering; to combine, to create; but to whom? / An offering for the sake of offering, perhaps. Anyhow, it was her gift. Nothing else had she of the slightest importance; could not think, write, even play the piano. She muddled [mixed up] Armenians and Turks; loved success; hated discomfort; must be liked; talked oceans of nonsense; and to this day, ask her what the Equator was, and she did not know."

Well, there you have a moment from this beautiful novel. What you "see" is what Mrs. Dalloway is thinking. She is a middle-aged housewife who likes to throw (give) parties. And both her husband and her friends criticize her for this. So in this passage she is defending herself, to no one in particular. She is just thinking. And what we see as we (the readers) watch her think is why she is the way she is: she is a charming woman growing old who loves to bring people together so that they may enjoy themselves. That's why she is throwing parties. It's her gift to what she calls "life." It's what gives her joy, a purpose in life: to help bring people together that they may enjoy themselves. Quite beautiful and quite a wonderful ambition, don't you agree?

Well, these kinds of books were plentiful in English (and in European) literature more than 50+ years ago. William Faulkner wrote books like that in America. Is there anything in Iranian literature that's like this? Where the reader "sees" what's going on inside the mind of the hero or heroine? I'd be interested in learning about that myself.

Answers to two questions

Hello,

I live in the State of Indiana - in the Southwestern corner of it. In a small town on the Ohio River. The town is Newburgh, and it's a short distance to the east of Evansville. A somewhat large town about 300 miles south of Chicago, Illinois. The climate here is very hot and humid in the summer.

The difference between a bid and an offer is this: a bid is usually an offer for a sum of money a freelance writer, for example, might ask to do a given job. The offer to do the job usually comes from the client who accepts the bid - that is, who is willing to pay the sum asked for by the writer. I hope that makes the difference between a bid and an offer clear.

I have to hurry now - I have to take care of some things - so I hope these two brief answers are all right.

On learning English . . .

As my dear friend, Ali, has probably told you, his students, I was born in Hungary. I came to the United States when I was 18 years old. That was 51 years ago by now (and, yes, that makes me an old man of 69 by this time). I knew German at that point, having spent a little over two years in Austria - and, of course, I knew my native language (which is Hungarian). In fact, I was an avid reader in my native language from about the age of 6. I don't ever remember a time when I didn't have a book in hand, though as a young student I usually didn't read what I was supposed to read. I was a "bad" kid who followed his own desires. Well, "bad" in a good sense, I suppose. The word is mischievous. Never mind.

In any case, by the time we (my mother and I) landed in New York City, I was fairly well-versed in matters of language and literature. But all this sophistication, if I may use that word, slipped away from me when it came to English. Not knowing English made me look like an idiot in America. Well, no one assumed that that's what I was, but that's how you feel when you can't understand the language of the people among whom you find yourself. So I was very keen on trying to do something about this. And that's how I began to take learning English seriously.

I never really took up courses in it. I didn't have to. I was in the country where the language was spoken, so all I had to do is do my best to "pick it up." But that's easier said than done. In any case, I went to it every chance I had. I got myself a Hungarian-English / English-Hungarian dictionary and just kept looking at it at random. Trying to memorize words was a first step. I also had some primitive language tutorials on hand. These were published for people like me, for new immigrants to the United States whose native language was Hungarian.

That was the beginning. In less than a year I knew enough English to enroll in a university course for the first required course for American students in English. The course was English 101. Many years later, by the time I was a professor of English, I ended up teaching that same course myself. But the road to that time was fairly long. And right now I feel that this little article of mine is also long enough. So I'll finish it with this final thought: my own example clearly shows that it is possible to go from complete ignorance to impressive knowledge. In fact, as a rule, we should never stop learning. To this day I like to browse in the Webster's Dictionary where I usually try to find some new word to learn. I guess I'll never be too old to learn new things. And right now, I am even learning things about Iran. So be it.

Bahman, Faranak and Fattemeh: Friday's class

Dear friends,

This Friday we will study Professor's Scheer's letter "I just learned something" in class. Please have a printed copy of this letter ready for Friday with you.

I am sure our very dear friend Steve will make our classes enjoyable and extremely useful.

T

I just learned something . . .

Ali and other Iranian friends,

I just learned something. Namely, that Ramadan is actually the name of a month in the Lunar Calendar still used for religious purposes by Muslims. And it's the month in which the Koran (as one popular English spelling has it) was revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. I didn't know this. I just assumed that Ramadan was the name of a fast participated in by Muslims once a year some time in the summer.

Ah, prepositions. Another "problem" with them is that they call for (require) the accusative (objective) case of pronouns. These cases are no longer used with regular nouns, so that even native speakers don't realize that "me" is actually the accusative or objective case of "I," for example, which is why "between you and me" is correct, though these days even the president of the United States may say "between you and I." Strange, but true.

And the idea that prepositions should not end a sentence is really alien to English - it comes from a rule in Latin. As far as I can tell (or, remember). In any case, prepositions are useful little "critters" (creatures), but we should be on our guard to make sure that we are using them correctly. At the same time, how can we know, if we are still just learning English?