Dickens and Cavemen

I have 2 books on the go at present. Well, two that I still recognise a commitment to. The Crabby Cook Cookbook, which is still on the bedside table isn't quite doing it for me as a representative of the recipebook/memoir genre, sadly. (Although I may yet change my mind having looked at her blog). I partly picked it because the author is Jessica Harper, who once starred in a deliriously enjoyable film that mysteriously flopped: The Phantom of the Paradise. A take on The Phantom of the Opera (you guessed? well done you!), Jessica Harper was Phoenix, the beautiful pop singer, coached by lovestruck composer Winslow. Sadly, evil record producer Swan (played by Paul Williams) seduces her, steals Winslow's music, and disfigures Winslow in a horrific record pressing incident. Winslow vows revenge on Swan's decadent new nightclub, the Paradise.

So the first one of the books that I am reading is Nicholas Nickleby. By Charles Dickens, but you knew that. I like Victorian literature, and I like Dickens, and Nicholas Nickleby is a fun read. Packed with incident, and including:
1. Outrageous villains like the evil uncle Ralph (boo, hiss) who makes Ebenezer Scrooge look like your grandfather.
2. The expose of contemporary social injustices in the shape of Yorkshire schools, represented by Dotheboys Hall and the loathsome Squeers family.
3. The depiction of early Victorian theatre with the Crummles family, who cast Nicholas as Romeo in a very unusual version of Romeo and Juliet.
4. Not one but two virtuous but imperiled heroines - Nicholas' sister Kate and Nicholas' love-interest Madeline. They are sweet but one can see Miriam Margoyles' point (in Dicken's Women) that they are 'rather icky'.

Writing about this is also making me remember going to the 8+ hour stage version of NN, which came to Wellington sometime in the 1980s or very early 1990s. Particularly the part where Nicholas does play Romeo, which he does like 'a demented typewriter', as a critic once wrote of Richard Briers in the role of Hamlet. (As quoted in No Turn Unstoned: The Worst Ever Theatrical Reviews, compiled by Diana Rigg.)

I'm about a quarter of the way through. Nicholas, having left Dotheboys Hall after thrashing the sadistic Squeers (see photo - Jim Broadbent as Squeers in the 2002 film), is now rooming with Newman Noggs and attempting to teach French to the four Kenwig daughters. I've hit pause on it, to read Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us About Sex, Diet, and How We Live, by Marlene Zuk. This turned up on the new books shelf at Massey, and while I was the first person in the queue, that also means that I have to get it back by this Friday.

Marlene Zuk is a professor of ecology, evolution, and behaviour at the University of Minnesota, so is well placed to comment on the various popular books recommending dietary and other practices supposedly followed by pre-agricultural hunter/gatherer societies (aka cavemen). Books like The Paleo Diet argue that since the adoption of agriculture about 10,000 years ago, there hasn't been enough time for our bodies to adapt. Or that since we were hunter/gatherers for much longer than we've been farmers, we must be 'better adapted' to the former lifestyle.

Zuk cheerfully points out that this is not true - adaptations can appear and become widespread in a very short space of time. A non-human example she cites is of male crickets in Hawaii who no longer make noise with their wings, an adaptation that became widespread in about 20 cricket generations - about 5 years! She also repeatedly points out that we have very little knowledge of how early humans actually lived; and that there would have been a wide variation in early societies as there are in modern societies (including modern hunter/gatherer societies).

I've finished the section on diet, and have just started the chapter on exercise. I look forward to finding out why I shouldn't worry too much because I can't remember the last time I hunted down a wildebeest or fled a snarling sabre-tooth.