New England Review

The Roots of Luxury

The bottom diagram depicts a Syrian pistachio tree in an 18th century text scribed by Muhammad ibn Muhammad Shakir Ruzmah-‘i Nathani.
(Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)

Did you know that the pistachio is one of only two nuts mentioned in the Bible? In case you were wondering, we are not metaphorically counting Nebuchadnezzar as one of these nuts, although he did grow them.

At JSTOR’s unexpectedly riveting Plant Science blog, managed by Michael Gallagher, arcane botanical facts, like the ones above, grow into rich histories of natural phenomena, including their interplay with literature, economics, and spirituality.  A post by Gallagher recounts how the pistachio was converted into one the world’s first recorded luxury goods:

The Queen of Sheba decreed pistachios an exclusively royal food, going so far as to forbid commoners from growing the nut for personal use. One wonders whether Sheba brought the pistachio with her to Jerusalem to impress Solomon along with the other gifts of spices, gold, and precious stones. Something must have worked as Solomon is reputedly supposed to have fathered her child (Menelik) and forever connected the two kingdoms in history (and perhaps the Ark of the Covenant).

In ancient Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar had pistachio trees planted in the legendary Hanging Gardens of Babylon… The enzymes of pistachios have been found in the remains of embalmed Egyptian nobility (most likely as an ingredient in the embalming fluid itself) (Kaup et al, 2001).

So, the next time you lick a pistachio ice cream or shuck the the once-prized nut, think of King Tut and the Queen of Sheeba. For more gripping botanical narratives, explore JSTOR Plant Science.

Get the following before the book

A thought-provoking essay at Her Kind, “Living in Parenthesis,” by Cris Mazza, discusses the outsourcing of just about everything to the writer in a literary world that increasingly blurs the lines between selling your work and selling yourself. After meeting with an agent who tells her to cultivate an online presence, Mazza’s student notes:

“What I find objectionable about that style of self-promotion is that it’s like you have to build a character out of yourself. You can’t blog something like, ‘Didn’t sleep well last night. Wrote a little. Will go buy a new broom now,’ because then your would-be readers think that you’d be dull at parties. You have to be fun! And quirky! Because that’s the only way to get the following before the book, right?”

[read more]

Background noise

These days, we often read to the sound of passing traffic, someone on his cell phone, or the vacuum in the next room. If we’re lucky, maybe we’ll get a few minutes with only the sound of wind in the park–before an airplane drones overhead. We can hide in our quietest place, but the world is unpredictable, and the background noise to our reading is often out of our control. Fwriction Review suggests that we take control again.

In their “Waffle-Rocking Playlist,” authors pick songs to accompany their prose and poetry, so that not only the realms of the visual and mental, but the auditory too, can be engulfed in the experience of reading. Jerrold Yam recommends the above song “Shivers,” by young British singer Lucy Rose, to accompany his Three Poems. Whether it be these sweet, quiet lyrics, or the psychadelic noises of Pink Floyd, perhaps a soundtrack is the final step towards truly escaping the world for a minute or hour of reading.

[view the whole playlist]

A Study in Sherlock

Sherlock Holmes: great detective, iconic literary creation… and Twitter phenomenon?

@MycroftHolmes RIP Moriarty. Changing my name to Sigerson. Don’t tell Watson.
If Steele’s classic 1903 illustration of “The Empty House” had a Twitter caption…
(Image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Prompted by the sensation of the #IBelieveInSherlockHolmes hashtag, Jeanette Laredo investigates the Sherlockian world and the ways in which the cannon invites readers and viewers deeper inside its mysteries. How did a Victorian text create a perfect environment for fandoms both before and after the advent of digital media? More controversially, this cosmos changes the stakes of fan culture for academia:

Like Watson, we desire access to the potential fictional worlds contained in Sherlock’s early case files. The writings of The Baker Street Journal as fan fiction pull at the red tape that binds the untold cases of the great detective. As fan fiction they reify a connection to the fictional world by making the reader/fan an active participant in creating that world.

Read more at the Journal of Victorian Culture Online.

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