My Reading Life

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest, by Stieg Larsson

2011-09-26T12:32:00.000-07:00

Without reservation I will say:

I loved this book.
It is every bit as good as the other two.
I read it slowly, read every word.
It is bitterly disappointing that Mr. Larsson is unable to write any more.

May he rest in peace.

What the Dog Saw, By Malcolm Gladwell

2011-09-26T12:27:00.000-07:00

A good friend recommended this book, and everyone should have such a good friend. Each one of the essays is nothing less than fascinating, and the overall effect of the book is delightful. Gladwell is a masterful writer with a great curiosity about people, what they do, and why they do it.

The title of the book comes from an essay about Cesar Millan, popularly known as the "dog whisperer." Gladwell gives a brief biography of this very interesting man, and some anecdotes about his work with people.

The Man from Beijing, by Henning Mankell

2011-09-26T12:23:00.000-07:00

The beginning of this book is grisly, and astonishing, which gives it great promise. Unfortunately, it simply fails to deliver.

The plot is complicated and interesting, and one suspects that the characters could be as well. Why aren't they?

I know that Henning Mankell created the Wallander series, from which there have been some excellent TV adaptions. This leads me to suspect that Mankell really is good, but that the translator of this particular book may have fallen down.

There is too much bland exposition, and too little use of nuance. Tools such as foreshadowing, and some believable stream-of-consciousness might have helped. I was disappointed, but I might try another Mankell (and another translator) just to see what that might be like.

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy

2011-03-24T23:01:00.000-07:00

Audio book

One of the nicest, most patient, and kind men ever born and his son walk the Earth during the days after some kind of horrible apocalypse, the details of which we do not know. There has been fire everywhere, though, and ash continues to rain from the sky, seemingly years and years later. Except for a very few people, life on the planet is gone. Animals and plants are not present. The grass and trees are dead. The ocean is gray and lifeless. Bones lay on the beach.

The Ultimate Good Luck, by Richard Ford

2011-03-24T22:58:00.000-07:00

This is, compared to what I've read so far by Richard Ford, very different. The style of writing is roughly the same, lots of time-stretching interior sentences, fine descriptions of place nuanced with what is happening, and well-drawn characters, but instead of following a story placed in the America of the late twentieth century, we are in Mexico in the 1980s, and the term fiction noir comes to mind.

Too late to hire Humphrey Bogart, but one imagines this becoming a screenplay that would be a fitting vehicle. Miss Bacall would have a role as well.

If I were a star-giver, I'd give it Five.

Rain Gods, by James Lee Burke

2011-03-15T19:15:00.000-07:00

Audio book.

A hell of a good book by James Lee Burke, the author of the Dave Robicheaux series. This book is set in Texas, and features a small-town sheriff named Hackberry Holland.

Holland discovers a mass grave containing 9 Asian women recently killed by gunfire. Further investigation reveals that these women are heroin "mules," with drug balloons in their stomachs.

As the story unfolds, several colorful characters emerge. Holland's deputy is Pam Gaddis, a young woman with more than workplace affection for the sheriff. An unfortunate young couple, Vicky and Pete, become involved in the investigation and endangered by the numerous hardened criminals exposed in the process.

Of the bad guys, "Preacher" Jack Collins is the worst. He is at best a psychopath, at worst pure Evil.

James Lee Burke never fails to please, and this was a thoroughly enjoyable novel.

The Mission Song, by John leCarré

2011-03-05T11:22:00.000-08:00

Audio book.

Excellent, of course, which is no surprise. "Salvo," Bruno Salvador is a British subject born in The Congo. He is a brilliant interpreter with a command of many African languages and dialects, as well as several European. In the usual leCarré fashion, he winds up recruited by British Intelligence, and does several jobs for "Mr. Anderson," interpreting sound interceptions and interviews from recordings.

The story gets into gear when Salvo is sent on an unusual mission, where he is to use an assumed name and identity, for people with whom he's not acquainted. This happens coincidentally with his discovery -- through an interpreting job -- of the love of his life, although he is a married man.

While this novel does not depart from leCarré's dark view of modern history and international affairs and the cold-hearted, cynical people who orchestrate them, its denouement is uncharacteristically uplifting, in a way still consistent with the writer's world, drawn from his own history and experiences.

The Highest Tide, by Jim Lynch

2011-02-26T23:11:00.000-08:00

I liked Border Songs so much that I had to read this book. It's a good story, and I read it in a day. It's about a young boy, Miles O'Malley, who lives on Skookumchuck Bay near Olympia, WA. I don't think there is a bay named that, but it's the name of a river, and the area he describes certainly could exist near Olympia.

Miles is very aware of the life on the tidal flats near him, and a big fan of Rachel Carson's books.

This is basically a coming-of-age story, overlaid with a little ecological awareness and sense of setting.

Djibouti, by Elmore Leonard

2011-02-26T23:00:00.000-08:00

A great read by an old master. The only fault I find with this is that everyone in this book talks like an Elmore Leonard character. "The hell is that?" "He wants to know makes you so sure?" etc.

But Mr. Leonard, having created so many novels, films, TV shows and stories, can get away with quite a bit of license.

In this novel, there is a documentary filmmaker (Dara), her close friend and assistant (Xavier), who are from New Orleans. They travel to Djibouti where Dara hopes to film a documentary about Somalian pirates. In the course of this rather complicated plot (further complicated by Leonard jumping back and forth between Dara and Xavier's conversations about what they have filmed and actual "real-time" action) they run afoul of a very crazy bad guy (this is an Elmore Leonard novel) named Jama, nee James Russell.

The Angel's Game, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón

2011-02-15T14:43:00.000-08:00

Translated from Spanish by Lucia Graves.

I am not certain what to think or say about this novel. I expect it might be described as "gothic." It' s not Stephen King in Barcelona, but it has some hints at the occult. From nearly the beginning I expected the mysterious "publisher" to be revealed as Lucifer, but this is never exactly done.

This book might have been a waste of time. It was entertaining.

A Most Wanted Man, by John le Carré

2011-02-15T14:37:00.000-08:00

I "read" this as an audio book.

In the ongoing mess of world affairs one suspects a high degree of incompetence, subterfuge, and mindlessly selfish power-grabbing. Le Carré does nothing to allay this suspicion.

This book is set in Hamburg, Germany. It deals with a young refugee from Chechnya, amazingly naive in spite of the brutal treatment he has endured on his flight from torture and imprisonment. The story is, of course, detailed and complex. Some people in Germany try to help him, and a very many do not.

If one is disposed to be paranoid or depressed about current events it might be best to skip this one.

Another excellent novel in concept and execution.

Nine Dragons, by Michael Connelly

2011-01-29T17:56:00.000-08:00

A Harry Bosch novel, with a little bit of the Lincoln Lawyer at the end. Not bad, really. This was an audio book. The person who read it was a little bit intrusive. He did voices, which isn't always objectionable, and it wasn't the worst I've heard, but it was just a little bit too much.

I will read, or listen to, more of these.

Murder of a Chinese storekeeper that appears to be a Triad killing leads Bosch to arrest a Triad bag man. The plot goes very quickly and violently from this point, taking Bosch to Hong Kong, and back to Los Angeles.

Our Kind of Traitor, by John Le Carre

2011-01-29T17:49:00.000-08:00

I've never read a bad LeCarre, and the streak continues. Perry and Gail meet Dima in Antigua. They are more or less ordinary people from England on a holiday. He is, as it turns out, a rather highly-placed member of Russian organized crime, who (of course) wishes to defect to the UK.

Zero History, by William Gibson

2011-01-29T15:26:00.000-08:00

(audio book)

Newest in series involving Hubertus Bigend, Hollis Henry, etc.

Hollis Henry searches for the footage, and eventually encounters Cayce Pollard.

Absolutely marvelous, absorbing, totally enjoyable.

Spook Country, by William Gibson

2011-01-29T15:23:00.000-08:00

I had thought this was first in the series, but apparently Pattern Recognition comes first, and it is the first one I "read" (as an audio book -- this one is an audio book too). Hollis Henry is the central character in this one. In this book Hollis travels to Vancouver, BC, on a quest to locate the mysterious hacker Bobby Chombo (not sure of the spelling, this is an audio book) (Chombo appears in Zero History) and a shipping container that turns out to hold laundered money. Some amazing Cuban-Americans in an ancient sleeper cell are featured, as well as the former members of "Curfew," Hollis' band.

First class.

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, by Stieg Larsson

2011-01-29T14:56:00.000-08:00

Translated from Swedish by Reg Keeland.

Excellent, just excellent. Try to put this book down. Just try.

Mikael Blomkvist is an investigative financial journalist. At the beginning of the novel he has been convicted of libel, and will be paying a large fine as well as doing prison time.

He is hired by Henrik Vanger, an elderly, retired industrialist, to investigate the unsolved disappearance of his granddaughter Harriet in 1966. (The novel takes place circa 2003.)

As this story unfolds, we are treated to glimpses into the life of Lisbeth Salander, an unusual young woman with a great deal of difficulty in her life, as well as a great deal of talent and skill.

Salander and Blomkvist come together to solve one of the best mysteries I've ever read.

Neuromancer, by William Gibson

2011-01-29T14:46:00.000-08:00

Read maybe 1/3, couldn't finish it. It's too vague, the opposite of the book by Greg Egan that I recently tried to read, which had too much exposition. This one doesn't have enough, there's too much assumption that the reader will just figure out what's going on, and I fail to live up to this assumption. I was disappointed, having recently very much enjoyed 3 other novels by Gibson.

Winter's Bone, by Daniel Woodrell

2011-01-03T20:58:00.000-08:00

This is a very unusual book. It is short, only 193 pages, reads faster than hell (less than 8 hours), uses colloquial language, and is absolutely excellent.

Set in the Missouri Ozarks of today, Winter's Bone tells the story of Ree Dolly and her family, who live in the midst of raw, horrible, bone-crushing, bloody monsters from a time in the mythological past, but who at the same time are just kinfolk, who "cook crank," and live by a strict and awful code far more strict and harsh than any mere law enforced by the civilization that, we are scarcely aware, exists all around them.

Ree's dilemma is that her father has jumped bail, and if he is not found in time to make a court appearance, the bondsman will take all she and her family (her mother, drugged into oblivion on psychotropic medication, and her two little brothers, Harold and Sonny) has, which is their house and the land it is on. This home has been in her mother's family for at least a century, and is the treasure of this family. They have nothing else.

This is truly fine writing.

Border Songs

2010-12-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Mrs. L. read Border Songs first. She read about it in a Seattle Times book review, and when she was reading it, kept telling me that it was very good. I agree. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it was a "can't put it down" read, and I look forward to more from Jim Lynch.

We found it exceptionally interesting because the book is set in an area about 150 miles north of us. Blaine, WA is the town you will drive through if you take I5 north through Washington and enter Canada. It is the home of the border crossing, the Peace Arch, the symbol of Canadian-American friendship.

The friendship between our countries has fallen on hard times in recent years. In the US, we've become prey to xenophobia, and many foreigners that enter the USA illegally do so through Canada. Furthermore, British Columbia has apparently developed quite an underground marijuana-growing industry, and a lot of this product crosses the border at or near Blaine. US citizens are less pleased with their neighbors to the north, many of whom may see us as violent, under-educated bigots bloated with too much wealth and power.

This story centers on a young man who has grown up in Blaine, a town where the Canadian border is very real, but at the same time very artificial. Brandon Vanderkool joins the US Border Patrol at the urging (and string-pulling) of his father, Norm. Brandon is no ordinary BP agent. He is severely dyslexic, stands six-foot-eight, and immediately shows a terrific talent for noticing the tiny inconsistencies in the world around him that betray smugglers and illegal border crossings.

Brandon's job brings into focus the nature of the tensions between Canadians and Americans in this small international community. The characters are beautifully drawn and believably human. The story is plotted with mastery, and we enter a world we are painfully reluctant to leave at the turning of the last page.

As if all this were not enough, Lynch has included a wonderfully sensitive portrait of the natural history of the Pacific Northwest, with especial attention to bird life. In addition, we are allowed to see nature through the eyes of a most unusual observer, Brandon Vanderkool.

If you haven't already, I urge you to treat yourself to a reading of Border Songs.

Indie Bound Daily Book Calendar

2010-12-23T07:31:00.000-08:00

Last Christmas my sister-in-law Diane gave me a daily tear-off calendar from IndieBound.org, which represents the American Booksellers Association, an organization of independent book stores.

Each page of the calendar contains something about a work of literature, often in the form of a question with the answer printed upside-down in tiny print at the bottom of the page.

I've had daily tear-off calendars before, often with cartoons on each page, but I've never had one that kept my attention as this one has. As it nears the end of 2010 and the pad has grown very thin indeed, it seems I've begun to notice books that I want to read much more often on its pages. In the last week these books have come to my attention:

Ghostwalk, by Rebecca Stott
Travels With My Aunt, by Graham Greene
The Miracle Life of Edgar Mint, by Barry Udall
Fall on Your Knees, by Ann-Marie MacDonald

I look forward to reading every one of these. I haven't picked up a book by Graham Greene in a long time; the other authors are all new to me.

Diaspora, by Greg Egan

2010-12-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

I became bogged down in the thick swamp of exposition at the beginning of this novel. No doubt there are people who will disagree with me, but this is no way to write. I gave up in the first ten pages.

A Quiet Life, by Kenzaburo Oe

2010-12-20T11:34:00.000-08:00

I'm having a rough time with this one. I read A Personal Matter, and was impressed. Now, wading through this novel, I find it hard to keep going.

No doubt this is a personal failing, but I couldn't finish this book.

A Home for Scared People, by Chris Onstad

2010-12-15T16:35:00.000-08:00

I cannot say enough good about Chris Onstad, Achewood, the characters, the stories, the genius. I have worn out the word "genius" by talking about him.

One indication of Onstad's skill (genius): I am much older than him, born during the Eisenhower administration. The Korean War and I are contemporaries. Achewood is more than a little contemporary, hip, and wrapped up in popular culture, which description would make lesser work not only inaccessible but completely undesirable to me. The world of Ray Smuckles, Roast Beef, Molly, Téodor, Cornelius, Phillipe, Nice Pete, Todd (a squirrel), Lie Bot, Chucklebot and Pat is not only attractive, it is addictive. Every time Onstad releases a new (free) web comic I experience a strong release of serotonin.

Therefore, it was not a difficult decision to purchase a new copy of A Home for Scared People, and I am happy that I did. It is a nicely done little book, hardbound and high quality, and contains many pages of original prose dealing with the background of some of the characters. In particular, the relationship between Ray and Beef is examined in detail, from its origins in high school.

We should all enjoy such friendships.

How Onstad keeps body and soul together I suspect has a lot to do with the efforts of his wife. One day, if there is any justice in the universe (there may not be), he will be rich and famous in his own right. In the meantime, I strongly encourage everyone to support him in every way possible. The world is better for his art.

Pattern Recognition, by William Gibson

2010-12-13T16:17:00.000-08:00

I listened to the audio book version of this, on 9 CDs, read by Shelly Frasier.

Set in the present, even recent past. Cayce Pollard lost her father Win when he disappeared near the World Trade Center on 11 September, 2001. Win was loosely connected to the CIA.

Why did I like this book so much. I was drawn into its world and did not want to leave.

Mirror World (England). What an attractive idea, it describes the feeling of being in a foreign land so well. Those little things I used to notice about Canada when I went there as a child.

Contemporary Russia. Oligarchs.

Pilates. Starbucks

Cayce has a sort of allergic reaction, to certain brand names / logos. One that is mentioned, and used against her in the plot is The Michelin Man, Bibendum.

"The footage" is a film that's being revealed one little segment at a time via anonymous Internet postings. YouTube is not mentioned, and indeed may not have existed at the time this was written, or if it did it was such a minor whistle stop on the Info Railroad that no one would have known what it was. I was attracted by the retro-Internet world of people on a forum, Hotmail, Ethernet connections in hotels. Saying "hello" when answering a cell phone, being surprised at discovering who is calling -- pre caller ID?

I really loved this book, was sorry when I played the last CD. I'm thinking about getting the print version to read and see if it makes a similar impression.

http://www.bearcave.com/bookrev/pattern_recognition.html

http://www.sfreviews.net/patternrec.html

Prayer of the Dragon, by Eliot Pattison

2010-12-06T21:45:00.000-08:00

Inspector Shan finds himself in a remote village with his friends Lokesh and Gendun, the aged lama. A man is dying, but if he lives he faces a horrible primitive execution.

In this mystery, we are again treated to the world of modern Tibet, overshadowed by the iron shadow of the Chinese occupation. Shan must straddle the chasm between two cultures, one ancient and spiritual, the other new, cold, and materialistic.

Yet another element is introduced into this novel, that of the American Navajo. Two Navajo characters, seeking for the ancient roots of their own culture, join the cast.

I enjoyed this book but wonder if I actually needed to read yet another of these Shan mysteries. It was reassuring to read Bone Rattler, and know that Pattison could apply his excellent writing skill to another setting, and different characters.

Another Thing to Fall, by Laura Lippman

2010-11-28T20:21:00.000-08:00

A Tess Monaghan mystery, set in Baltimore, involving a TV production company taping a new show for a cable series, some suspicious events including at least one murder, and a glimpse into the personalities, stresses and conflicts that populate such an enterprise.

This is a well-done novel of suspense, not a masterpiece of literature, that kept me entertained all day today, a cold and rainy Sunday in late November.

Cinnamon Kiss, by Walter Mosley

2010-11-27T21:38:00.000-08:00

Great mystery, story, atmosphere. Great insight into the life, and point of view, of an African-American in California in the 1960s.

Great book.

Independence Day, by Richard Ford

2010-11-27T21:34:00.000-08:00

Frank Bascombe's life in Haddam, New Jersey, continues after The Sportswriter.

Frank is a real estate agent now. Most of the action in this book takes place over the Fourth of July weekend, during which he tries to sell a house, resolve a relationship, and help his disturbed son, among other things.

Frank's days seem to be 96 hours long. Perhaps this reflects on my own laziness and lack of productivity, but the amount of action and thought that this man experiences in twenty-four hours is—to me—unbelievable.

Frank Bascombe's world is well-to-do, if not wealthy, and white. (His ex-wife's second husband, Charley, is indeed wealthy, for contrast.) Many of his problems are those of abundance, and as such perhaps not much to be pitied. He mentions more than once that he doesn't really need to work. His independence of financial worry sets him apart from most Americans. He is, in fact, a landlord who owns two rental houses in the "colored" neighborhood of Haddam, and we get a hint of the lives of his tenants in a very different world.

In this book we get a close look at Bascombe's son Paul, a rather disturbed teenager. Paul figures in the other books in this series, but I believe this is the most detail I've read about his life and problems. While Paul isn't quite believable as a character, he does represent many of the things that happen to kids in America who are given too much, and raised to expect too much.

Swan Peak, by James Lee Burke

2010-11-27T21:23:00.000-08:00

This Dave Robicheaux novel takes place in Montana. Cletus Purcel, Dave, and his wife Molly, are spending the summer with Albert Hollister, a retired English professor.

It's not much of a vacation. Clete is intimidated by a couple of hired thugs within the first few pages of the book. Murders that at first seem like serial killings are reported soon afterward. Cletus' drinking and womanizing, and Dave's sober-alcoholic angst threaten to get in the way of them being any help to the local sheriff, and the FBI (in the person of a young lady to whom Cletus takes a liking).

Burke does a great job of describing the Montana countryside, and evoking the moods of this tough, remote land.

Swan Peak is a thoroughly enjoyable continuation of the Dave Robicheaux series.

Armageddon in Retrospect, by Kurt Vonnegut

2010-10-07T21:00:00.000-07:00

I can do no better than Roy Blount, Jr. Click on the title above for a link to his New York Times review of this book.

What I will say is how we love Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., and how we cannot stand for him to be dead, and how we would publish his canceled checks if we thought we could.

I agree with Mr. Blount that the very best part of this collection of posthumous publishings is the recounting of KV's experience in Dresden.

And I miss him very much. He died shortly before my father did. The Alplaus Fire House posted memorials to them both.

Here on Earth, by Alice Hoffman

2010-10-07T20:50:00.000-07:00

The New York Times said "Heathcliff Redux."

I'll say "lightweight," but understand, this is as much a judgement upon me as the book, because I read the whole thing.

Recent readings

2010-09-27T21:03:00.000-07:00

Oh, I have been bad. I've lost track of several things, and some of them were really good. Here's what I can remember:

Distress, by Greg Egan. Delicious science fiction, a journalist in the near future, deals with modifying DNA, bionics, open-source, much more. I definitely want to read more from this guy.

A Death in the Family, by James Agee. Remarkable. Deeply felt and emotional without being in the least sentimental. American. Set in Knoxville, TN, early 20th century. Vivid character development, excellent POV renderings -- many of children. The author's skill is formidable.

A Personal Matter, by Kenzaburo Oe. (1969) Bird is a young married man who suddenly finds himself the father of a child born with its brain outside its skull. All three of these authors are new to me. All of them make me want to read more of their work.

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, an Inquiry into Values, by Robert M. Pirsig

2010-06-10T14:35:00.000-07:00

I first read this book about 35 years ago. I had forgotten great rafts of it, and much of what I remembered was inaccurate.

There are many paragraphs devoted to discussion of philosophy--of Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle--that are very dense and not easy to get through. Perhaps they didn't sink in the first time, or perhaps they were skipped over; the reader has been guilty of that type of behavior before.

What sticks with me now is Pirsig's description of the state of mind, the "right attitudes" one needs in order to carry out the task, motorcycle maintenance, which is of course both object and subject, both metaphor and literality. May we all enjoy such attitudes.

If you click on the title of this entry it will take you to a 2006 interview of Pirsig by Tim Adams of The Observer.

I read this book online, this time. There was no "online" the first time.

Some things to read in the near future

2010-06-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

One of the few things that makes me feel like I want to go on living for a long time is the evanescent list of books and authors I've yet to read.

Roberto Bolaño: 2666, The Savage Detectives, and more.
Lords of Finance, by Liaquat Ahamed
Let's get print copies of That Old Cape Magic and Bridge of Sighs by Richard Russo.
Jeffrey Archer

And then there's the books to re-read.

Herman Hesse
Thomas Mann
Trevanian
and always, always Mark Twain
and James Joyce

Literally Fantastic

2010-05-22T21:21:00.000-07:00

The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan - something new for me. I'll describe it as a Gothic novel. Very creepy, very good.

American Gods, by Neil Gaiman - great stuff, fantasy in the tradition of Stephen King if that may be said.

More from htmlcomics.com: Harvey Pekar

2010-04-30T10:08:00.000-07:00

Another great treasure unearthed at htmlcomics.com is Harvey Pekar's American Splendor. I wouldn't have known about the comic series, Harvey, or his appearances on the old David Letterman show on NBC except for having seen the movie, American Splendor.

You have been advised.

Books: recent, on the way and thought of.

2010-04-29T14:32:00.000-07:00

The Red Tree, by Caitlin R. Kiernan is at the library waiting for me to pick it up.

I just received Fatal System Error, by Joseph Menn, and read the first few pages last night.

American Gods by Neil Gaiman is on the way from Better World Books.com. I learned about the book and the bookseller on Twitter today. Neil Gaiman is @neilhimself.

M & I recently finished reading Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett, a newer novel that deals with modern finance and life in the USA. I highly recommend it.

I'm currently reading Bones, by Jonathan Kellerman, and listening to Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo, as I drive back and forth.

And so, a backlog is developing. Rather than order another book and put it on the pile, let me note that Scott Turow has released a new novel called Innocent. I eagerly await this particular feast, as I've never failed to enjoy one of Turow's books.

Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Raymond Carver

2010-04-25T21:19:00.000-07:00

This is a collection of short stories. I picked it up today and started reading it, and realized I'd read it before. Not to worry. Carver is worth reading many times over. The first story is "Fat." It takes place in a restaurant, a waitress serves a very fat man who eats a great deal. The second story is "Neighbors," in which a couple cares for their neighbors' apartment and cat while they are away. In both of these stories there are strange, seemingly unrelated changes that take place in the protagonists as they handle these mundane events. There are twenty more, and I look forward to every one.

My Earthquake Phase

2010-04-25T20:49:00.000-07:00

I listened to an audio book recording of 1906 by James Dalessandro about two months ago. Not the best novel I've ever encountered, but it delivered a dose of painless history, about which I can't complain. Since such a book necessarily contains some embellishments and actual fiction it made me curious about the facts of the actual event, the San Francisco earthquake and fire in April 1906.

This led me to another audio book, A Crack in the Edge of the World, by Simon Winchester. This is a serious exploration of the modern science of geology, plate tectonics, and how this all relates to the 1906 earthquake. I thought the book was terrific, and very informative, but this reviewer doesn't agree, and says it's inaccurate and poorly done.

Bryan Burroughs of the New York Times Book Review didn't like it, either. He says it's "...the kind of book where an author spreads the paint around - that is, goes wandering down endless back alleys in hopes of finding something interesting..."

Maybe that's what I wanted. After all, both of these were audio books that I listened to while driving back and forth to work. They relieved the boredom of being confined in an automobile, stuck in the flow (or lack of flow) of traffic, without compromising my attention to driving.

Ah, well.

Recent reads

2010-04-23T07:14:00.000-07:00

Union Atlantic, by Adam Haslett
Tin Roof Blowdown, by James Lee Burke
Hella Nation, by Evan Wright
That Old Cape Magic, by Richard Russo
Bridge of Sighs, by Richard Russo
Home Poetry Repair Manual, by Ted Kooser
Valentines, by Ted Kooser
Essential Pleasures, anthology ed. Robert Pinsky
Delights and Shadows, by Ted Kooser

Sandman

2009-12-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

OMFG, as they say on the Internet. I have been totally immersed in reading the beautiful, artful, lyric work of Neil Gaiman & Co. I know that I read these comics on paper many years ago, but my memory of them is dim.

These stories and drawings of the adventures of Morpheus, god of Dream, one of the Endless (including Destiny, Death, Despair, Delirium, and Desire -- and one mysterious other?) are nothing less than classic mythology rendered in a breathtaking, gripping, modern form.

I do think that the graphic storyteller is a very underrated artist in this time, and that future generations (should there be any) will look back at them as we do now at artists who were scorned or ignored during their lifetimes. We now sell paintings and other work by such people for millions and millions of dollars.

And my heartfelt thanks to http://htmlcomics.com for making these works and so many others available.

Survivor, by Chuck Pahlaniuk

2009-12-04T07:06:00.000-08:00

This book by the author of Fight Club has a very similar tone to its better-known cousin. I suppose that's what they call "voice."

Tender Branson begins this book by explaining that he's hijacked an airplane, let all the passengers and crew go, and is now heading for a crash in the Australian Outback. This is the ending, right at the beginning of the book. The pages are numbered backwards. Yep. The last page is page 1.

But I can forgive all this cleverness. I read every word, and thoroughly enjoyed this book, the story of an innocent, raised in a strange religious cult and released to the outside world to work as a type of slave for the enrichment of the Creedish elders. (I think that's a clever name for a cult.)

The details of the cult's beliefs and organization come out in the story, but this begins to be overshadowed by a high-powered sendup of the "real" world's fixation with celebrity, hyped by and pumped out through the "media." When Tender Branson becomes famous as the last (save one, actually, as we discover) surviving member of the Creedish, who have committed mass suicide (or are being serially murdered), he suddenly acquires an agent, becomes famous, and begins changing into a super-celebrity, preaching and praying to multitudes, and rapidly turning into something completely manufactured and unreal.

Since we already know the ending, we are entertained by the suspense of knowing that all of this must fail, and watch carefully to see how it is done.

I look forward to reading some more of Mr. Palahniuk's work.

The Cult, the official Chuck Palahniuk website.

The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley

2009-11-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't know it, but James Crumley is dead.

I just heard about him, and he's been dead over a year. Just my luck.

The Last Good Kiss is a pretty good read. I got a little put off at the beginning by its overblown language, but I started to get used to it.

Then I got put off by the constant drinking and fighting, it was starting to give me a hangover.

The plot twisted enough to make me read to the end, and I might just try another book by the late Mr. Crumley.

Books Should Be Free

2009-10-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

Lots of free audio books at http://www.booksshouldbefree.com/.

Thanks, Orin.

Recent Reading

2009-10-31T22:35:00.001-07:00

In an effort to try to at least keep up the record, here are some things I've been reading lately:

The Simeon Chamber, by Steve Martini - An early one, involving some California history, WWII, and the Hearst Castle.

Time Bomb, by Jonathan Kellerman - these never fail.

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison - her first novel, and really excellent

A Monstrous Regiment of Women, Laurie King - second in the series started by Beekeeper's Apprentice

Fight Club, Chuck Pahlaniuk (read online, probably bootleg) -- Wow. Now I've started to read Survivor, another novel by Pahlaniuk.

A Year in Provence, Peter Mayle - this is a surprisingly enjoyable book written by an English journalist who moved to Provence with his wife, their adventures establishing a home in this singular area of France. I suppose the book could also be entitled How Two Rich People Managed to Survive France, and it did recount an embarrassing number of drunken driving episodes, but I did enjoy it nonetheless.

Black Money, by Ross MacDonald

2009-09-29T18:44:00.000-07:00

Vintage Crime 1996, copyright 1965. ISBN 0679768106. 238 pages.

I recall being introduced many years ago to Ross MacDonald's work by someone who said MacDonald was a latter-day Raymond Chandler. I suppose that was true, latter day being the 60s rather than the 30s, but that was a long time ago. (Incidentally, the author's real name was Kenneth Millar. Click on the title of this entry for a link to a detailed article about Millar/MacDonald's life and work.)

In Black Money, Lew Archer is hired by a wealthy young man who has lost the girl of his dreams to a man who appears to be some kind of a scoundrel. Martel claims to be from France, a political refugee unpopular with the DeGaulle regime. Young Virginia Fablon is very much taken with Martel, and cannot be persuaded to see him as anyone other than who he claims to be.

Virginia's father died in what was judged a suicide about seven years before this story takes place. Her mother is beginning to find it difficult to maintain a lifestyle such as that enjoyed by her neighbors in this seaside country-club community of the rich.

When Archer begins to investigate Martel, he is met with threats, and soon senses a greater mystery than the simple seduction of young Virginia by this mysterious and unlikely man.

As one always expects in MacDonald's work, there are great characters, a deviously complicated plot, and plenty of gritty observations from the narrator, Lew Archer. This is the hardboiled detective formula at its very best, and every page is a pleasure.

The lobby of the hotel was the mouth of a tourist trap which had lost its bite. There were scuff-marks on the furniture, dust on the philodendrons. The bellhop wore an old blue uniform which looked as if he had fought through the Civil War in it.

The Beekeeper's Apprentice, by Laurie R. King

2009-09-27T15:22:00.001-07:00

Picador Books, 1994. 346 pages. ISBN 978-0-312-42736-8

A wonderful novel in which we are introduced to young Mary Russell, a British orphan of some means, who meets Sherlock Holmes. Holmes has become a retired gentleman living in the country and keeping bees. Russell becomes, as one would guess, his apprentice.

This sort of thing could be done very badly. The Apprentice is done extremely well, and is an absolutely delightful read. There are more books in this series, this is the first, one wonders if they will be as good.

Holmes and Russell have several adventures together in this book, culminating in one enormously complicated effort to identify and capture a master criminal who attempts to kill Russell, Holmes, and Watson (yes, Dr. Watson lives, too) during the course of events.

Bone Rattler, by Eliot Pattison

2009-09-27T14:52:00.000-07:00

A Mystery of Colonial America. Counterpoint. 2008. 460 pages. ISBN-10: 1593761856 ISBN-13: 978-1593761851

When we heard that the author of the many Inspector Shan mysteries had written a new novel set in the American Colonies in 1758, we were eager to find out what that would be like, and were not disappointed.

Duncan McCallum is a prisoner aboard a convict ship bound for the New World. He is a Scot, unfriendly to the British king, whose life and family have been destroyed for his treason to the Empire. During the voyage, there are some strange and actually surreal events that set the stage for what transpires when he lands in New York, indentured to Lord Ramsey as a teacher for his children.

Ramsey's children include an elder daughter named Sarah, who seems afflicted with some great sadness from a past about which no one will speak. As events unfold in the New York wilderness, her story and character are revealed to be quite fascinating.

Native American lore and culture play an important role in the plot of this complex mystery. As we move deeper into the fabric of the story, the Iroquois characters increase in number, depth, and function. It is hard to read this without thinking of Pattison's obvious love and respect for the ancient culture of Tibet reflected in the Inspector Shan series. The parallels between China's invasion and destruction of Tibet and that of the British and French invasion of America and destruction of its native culture and people are unavoidable.

Pattison explores the spirituality of the natives of America in the face of the European invasion, and lays upon that the tapestry of England's exploitation and domination of Scotland and its culture and people. Scots allied with Indians against the English oppressors in this story make the point clear if not obvious. The history of our world is one of domination, disrespect for indigenous culture, and the trampling of religion and tradition in the name of whatever power has the upper hand.

With all this history and moralization included in the text, one might think this would be a dull read, but Pattison's masterful writing and plot delivery keeps us involved in this excellent mystery and more or less painlessly feeds us a great deal of factual information about the Colonial period and the deeds of those who founded what became the United States of America.

this big fake world, by Ada Limón

2008-12-27T12:28:00.000-08:00

this big fake world, a story in verse. Ada Limón
66 pages. Pearl Editions, Long Beach, California. 2007.

I don't think I've ever read anything quite like this before. The story is as complicated as any novel, but conveyed in the terse, precise language of poetry. I know this concept isn't new, it's probably just the first time that I've read anything so contemporary, accessible, so readable done this way.

In fake world we have Our Hero, a man who feels at odds with life. We are introduced to him in "On a Lunch Break Our Hero Accidentally Leaves the Office:"

"...the traffic lights kept turning
green and green again.
He began to complain to them
about being rushed, always
getting the "go ahead..."

and

"when he returned to the conference
all the men in suits looked
like barbed wire."

The second poem is entitled "There is a Woman at the Hardware Store," and later on we meet Our Hero's wife in a poem entitled "His Wife Was Not Something He Could Hang on the Tree:"

"... He knew she was
angry, but had given up on talking, her mouth
turned down like a fish's mouth awaiting
the hook..."

Our hero has a friend named Lewis, who writes letters to Ronald Reagan.

In this little book of just about fifty poems, we can follow these four lives as they change and interact, and understand the feelings of these somehow familiar people. We are given a rich and detailed story, laced with whimsy (as any love story must be), and told with great skill.

This is a wonderful work, and one that I shall continue to enjoy. Ms. Limón is a poet of great promise, and I look forward to reading more of her work. I have another collection of her poems, Lucky Wreck, which I'm reading, and hope to write about here soon.

Two poems by Ada Limón may be read in the 19 December 2008 edition of InDigest, a web publication.

I found her books at Amazon.com:

this big fake world

Lucky Wreck

The House on Fortune Street, by Margot Livesey

2008-08-26T20:32:00.000-07:00

Harper Collins 2008 311 pages. ISBN 978-0-06-145152-2.

Margot Livesey has written five other novels, according to the dust jacket on this book. Further information from that source tells us that while she is from Scotland, she is presently living near Boston, and is a writer in residence at Emerson College.

This novel is written in four major parts. Each part deals with a different point of view, but with the same story. Now, this is not simply a retelling of the story from four vantage points. That doesn't sound very interesting or original to me, and this book is both. As a matter of fact, this is easily one of the very best books of any type that I've read.

The principal characters are Sean, Abigail, Dara, and Dara's father Cameron. Sean is a scholar who gave up a business career to return to school and study Keats. Abigail is the woman who stole Sean away from his idealistic, nearly-idyllic marriage -- only to disappoint him with coldness and infidelity later on. Dara is Abigail's close friend from college, who lives in the flat downstairs from Sean and Abigail, in the house of the title, which is Abigail's by virtue of an unexpected inheritance.

Cameron is the older person in this group of four, and his part of the novel flashes back in time to when he was the age of the other characters, in order to tell the story of his uniquely problematic life. Cameron is the older of two boys, but his younger brother Lionel was killed in an accident at age fourteen.

There are many other people involved in this story, including Abigail's parents, who provided her with a great deal of uncertainty and insecurity, moving her all over Britain during her childhood. Dara has, of course, a mother -- divorced from her father when his secret becomes apparent to her. Sean has a brother to whom he turns when his life becomes a morass of betrayal and despair.

The characters in The House on Fortune Street are complicated. No one is excessively good, nor is anyone supremely bad. At times, Abigail seems to qualify as the Evil one of the cast -- but her story is more complex than that. We get a good background on all these people, who they are, and why they behave as they do. Character development is extremely complete and believable in this book.

The story itself is fascinating, and I won't reveal any more of it here. I encourage you to read this novel -- I think nearly anyone would enjoy it. The plot is neatly done, thoroughly fascinating, and perfectly wrapped up at the end. This is not a particularly happy story, dealing with some of the saddest aspects of human experience, but there is much about it that is attractive and warm -- it is not completely pessimistic about the resilience of human spirit.

This is the first book I've read by Livesey's, I'm glad there are others.

Obsession, by Jonathan Kellerman

2008-07-14T17:09:00.000-07:00

2007 Ballantine Books ISBN 978-0-345-45264-1. 458 pages.

Another great Alex Delaware novel. Robin is back, and a new French bulldog.

Alex is approached by a former client, Tanya, the adopted daughter of a woman recently deceased, Patty Bigelow. Patty was a nurse, well-known and respected by Rick, partner of Delaware's longtime friend, Detective Milo Sturgis.

Tanya's concern is that she thinks her mother was trying to confess something on her deathbed, something horrible. Knowing that Delaware is a psychologist, and that he has a friend in the police (Sturgis), she asks him to help find out what, if anything, Patty had on her conscience, and help her stop thinking about it.

Both Tanya and Patty have suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), and as the stress of the mystery increases, so do Tanya's symptoms.

The mystery unfolds in LA as all good Delawares do, and this is one of the most satisfying of the collection.

The Lay of the Land, by Richard Ford

2008-04-28T21:15:00.000-07:00

Vintage Books 2006. ISBN 978-0-679-77667-3. 485 pages.

This novel takes place during three days in the fall of 2000: Thanksgiving Day and the two days prior. It is narrated by Frank Bascombe, a real-estate broker who lives and works on the Atlantic shore of New Jersey.

Frank is in his mid-fifties, twice married, happy with his work, and successful. His life has had its pain, however. He and his first wife lost a son at age nine, to Reyes' syndrome. His second wife, Sally, believing herself to be a widow at the time of their marriage, discovered that she was not. Her first husband, Wally, was a veteran of the Viet Nam war who suffered from mental illness (probably post-traumatic stress disorder) and disappeared for many years. Sally believed him to be dead and went through the process of having him so declared. Wally reappeared after her marriage to Frank, and she – confused and dismayed – went off to be with Wally, leaving Frank alone in Sea-Clift, New Jersey with his business, his beach house, and his memories.

Frank has an employee named Mike Mahoney who works as an agent for his company, Realty-Wise. Mike Mahoney's Irish-American name is a comically incongruous label for this man. He is an immigrant, a Tibetan who worked his way to America by way of several jobs including telemarketing from a call center in India. Mike is a devout follower of the Dalai Lama, a Buddhist, and finds nothing but harmony between his religion, nationality, and profession. He is an excellent real-estate agent.

Frank's plans for Thanksgiving involve a reunion with his son and daughter at the beach house, with an elaborate catered meal. Each of his children plan to bring current serious love-interests to the holiday dinner, neither of which Frank has met at the beginning of the story. Clarissa is bringing a boyfriend, which is a change for her.

Frank's daughter Clarissa is a serious sort, who had been involved in a committed lesbian relationship at the time that Frank discovered that he had prostate cancer. She was enrolled in graduate school at the time, but came immediately to her father's side when learning of his illness and took an aggressive role as his advocate and aid in his fight against cancer. When we join Frank, he has made much progress in recovering from the disease, but it is still very much with him; his sickness and weakness are part of the pathos with which this story is interwoven.

Paul, the surviving son, is quite nearly a buffoon. He can hardly be civil with his father, for whom he feels great resentment. Apparently growing up as the surviving brother was not a pleasant role. Paul works for Hallmark in Kansas City, writing messages for greeting cards.

“...Paul, in his rage last spring, told me about his job—that it was the same as what Dostoevsky or Hemingway or Proust or Edna St. Vincent Millay did: supplied useful words to ordinary people who didn't have enough of them. I, of course, thought he was nuts.”[p.390]

The days are eventful in a way that would be slapstick comedy if not written in such a thoughtful, sober, and analytical manner. On a trip to his inland home town of Haddam, NJ, Frank meets a developer with whom Mike Mahoney may partner, attends a friend's funeral, nearly witnesses the bombing of a hospital, and gets punched by a drunken acquaintance in a bar.

The next day includes a vitriolic argument with another old friend, and a gangsterish youth breaks out one of the side windows of Frank's car with a brick concealed within a milk carton. Getting this window repaired late on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, Frank visits another bar, where he spends a little too much time, and finds himself sitting in his repaired car, without the keys, on a freezing, rainy night.

Thanksgiving Day itself provides no exception to the nearly absurd progression of accidents and disaster. Ford does not disappoint; he has constructed a fascinating and suspenseful plot that keeps us involved as well as enabling pointed commentary and reflection on the state of our lives as Americans in the twenty-first century.

During the meeting with the developer and Mahoney, Frank realizes that the field where they are, soon to be covered with new houses, is a place he used to visit with his deceased son, Ralph, who “would be almost 30 now.” [p.47]

“...I take a departing look at the cornfield...soon to be overwhelmed...Someone should draw the line somewhere.

“I say silent adieu to the ground my son trod and will no more. The old lay of the land...” [p.44]

The farmland changes to housing developments, and Ralph's short life and death, and Frank's first marriage, recede into the past.

Frank considers the development unnecessary, and he abhors the unnecessary, in spite of his career in Real Estate, and his Suburban, which might both be argued to be unnecessary. (The “Suburban,” of course may just be a little joke.) His rejection of the unnecessary is part of his understanding of what he terms “The Permanent Period.”

“...when very little you say comes in quotes...few...voices mutter doubts in your head...life's a destination more than a journey...who you feel yourself to be is pretty much how people will remember you once you've croaked...” [p.46]

“...the Permanent Period...comes...when it comes...[It]portended an end to perpetual becoming, to thinking that life schemed wonderful changes for me...” [p.54]

“[The Permanent Period] portended that I say to myself, and mean it, ...'This is how in the shit I am! My life is this way' – recognizing ... what an embarrassment...it would be if, once you were dust, the world and yourself were in basic disagreement on this subject.”[p.54]

Ford presents the absurd in a determined and calm manner. When Frank visits Haddam to make an appearance at the funeral of his old friend Ernie, there are costumed volunteers re-enacting a revolutionary war battle in the streets. As the hearse containing Ernie's remains leaves the funeral home en route to his final resting place, people in tri-corner hats are chasing each other in the street, pretending to shoot muskets.

Frank belongs to an unusual service organization known as “Sponsors.” It is the function of the Sponsors to provide a friendly ear, simple advice, but no personal involvement, to citizens of the area who contact the organization with requests for help. “Strange questions are our stock in trade.”

“Sponsorship is not about connectedness anyway. It's about being consoled by connection's opposite. A little connectedness...goes a long way...We might all do with a little less of it.” [p.96]

Frank makes a Sponsor visit while he is in Haddam, to a well-to-do widow who is suffering from the feeling that she needs to confess something, but does not know what that “something” is. Frank advises her that most likely there is nothing; it is probably just a feeling arising from a need to get on with the future, and the belief that in order to do so the past must first be cleared up. Overlaying the visit, Frank believes at first that he has met the woman before, a feeling that gets stronger while he is there. He concludes that she was someone with whom, between marriages, he had a one-night encounter, which he recalls only vaguely. By the end of the meeting it seems that perhaps Marguerite remembers as well; we are not certain, and if she does she is not eager to recognize it either. Frank leaves this awkward situation having slightly made a fool of himself, and collapses in the refuge of his Suburban, feeling a little woozy.

In Lay of the Land, Ford has constructed a muted seaside world, a believable inland New Jersey, and a character into whose mind and memories we are allowed to wander, and browse. This book is, among other things, a snapshot of America in late 2000. In the background is the contested Gore-Bush election. It is not yet 2001, more innocence exists than will after the events of 11 September 2001. Frank is a confident Democrat, unafraid to sport a “WHY BUSH?” bumper sticker on the Suburban, even at the risk of offending a client.

There is plenty of plot, and action – which I have intentionally avoided exposing in order to preserve the enjoyment of the novel for anyone who has not read it – but there is a wealth of interior rambling as well. We follow Frank's despair, sadness, his joy with his second wife, the absurd disaster of Wally's return, his love for his daughter and sons – even the difficult Paul. There is an abundance of quirky characters, but they seem only to be drawn from real life, rather than contrived. Issues with which Americans had to and have to deal are introduced, examined briefly, and become part of the backdrop in front of which this play is performed. Lay of the Land seems to have something for everyone; in an odd and peaceful way, it is very reassuring. We are all here for only a while, everything changes, and we have the opportunity to behave well, to be decent to each other.

This book was given to me, consigned to my chairside pile, and read in order of seniority (approximately, anyway). It was not until I finished the book that I became aware that this was the third in a series of books about Frank Bascombe. The Sportswriter, and Independence Day both treat earlier periods in Bascombe's life. I mention this partly as praise, because Lay of the Land works perfectly all alone as far as I am concerned. I am, however, encouraged to read more of Ford's work, and may very well complete this trilogy.

26 April 2008

No Country For Old Men, by Cormac McCarthy

2008-04-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Vintage International 309 pages. ISBN 978-0-307-38713-4

No Country For Old Men starts out with a short stream-of consciousness narrative, as if Sheriff Bell were talking to us, or we could read his thoughts. These italicized segments will be repeated throughout the book, and one will provide its epilogue.

Sheriff Bell, we discover, has been the Sheriff of his county for many years. He is a man who appreciates the peace and simplicity of his own life, and has a strong love for his wife, to whom he has been married for many years. Bell is in many ways a very traditional good American man, who served his country in World War II, and came back home to be a peace officer in the place where he grew up.

Bell is monogamous, not overly religious, and exhibits a calm, pragmatic tolerance of other people who may or may not be much like him. It would have been easy to write more prejudice into this character, to make him a little more of the typical “redneck” small-town sheriff; McCarthy has created a much more complex character here, a man that we will know, recognize, and like. Bell is the man we wish we had directing our local law enforcement, wherever we live.

In the beginning of the book, a man named Moss, out hunting in the desert, comes upon the scene of a grisly multiple murder that's taken place around several abandoned vehicles. There are dead bodies, weapons, and drugs. In one vehicle is a man who has been shot but is not dead, to whom Moss speaks. This man calls Moss cuate (friend, compadre) and asks for agua. Moss has no water, and is too cautious and fascinated to simply go for help at that moment.

Moss follows the tracks of an injured man who crawled away from the scene, and finds him dead, with a bag “level full of hundred dollar bills... His whole life was sitting there in front of him. Day after day from dawn till dark until he was dead. All of it cooked down into forty pounds of paper in a satchel.”

This money, which Moss takes, drives the story to its end. It is, of course, the proceeds from a drug deal that went horribly wrong. Moss, who we find to be a simple and generally honest man devoted to his young wife is instantly possessed by the spell of lucre, the awesome possibilities that these millions of dollars represent, the vision of freedom from dull and difficult work. He has practically no resistance, although we are given strong hints that he sees the seeds of his own destruction herein. Moss knows full well that he has scant chance of getting away with this treasure, but the reward is just too great for him not to try.

The lure of all that money doesn't completely corrupt Moss. He returns later, in the night, with water for the man in the car, but it is too late. As he runs with the satchel of money he demonstrates that he has not lost his strong set of principles. He is as kind as he can afford to be; he is loyal to his wife.

There are many evil men in this book, but none with evil so pure as Chigurh. Chigurh is presented as a heartless, soulless murderer; he comes into the story by killing a young deputy in a county next to Bell's. As he moves through the story he leaves a trail of victims, some shot to death, some killed with an air-powered hammer designed to slaughter cattle.

Chigurh obviously takes pleasure in killing, but he is not killing solely for pleasure. He seeks the money that Moss has found, hoping that by recovering it he can gain the trust and business of the mysterious drug cartel whose ill-fated transaction in the desert caused the scene that Moss discovered. He represents the coldest of the cold; the murdering reptile brain that thrives in the world of drugs.

Moss runs, and is sought by the drug runners, Chigurh, and Sheriff Bell. Bell has put the pieces together, and has a reasonably accurate idea of what has transpired. Reason and logic, which serve him in understanding the case, also tell him that Moss is very unlikely to survive. (And what will happen to his wife?) He sets out to find, and rescue him – an impossible task that he cannot refuse to try. Bell's wife asks him: “Do you really care?” To which Bell answers:

“Yes mam. I do. The people of Terrell County hired me to look after em... I get paid to be the first one hurt. Killed, for that matter. I'd better care.”

There is a struggle in this book, but even more there is despair. Bell, consulting with his deputy, Torbert, says this about the drug runners:

“...I used to say they were the same ones we've always had to deal with. Same ones my grandaddy had to deal with. Back then they was rustlin cattle. Now they're runnin dope. But I don't know as that's true no more. I'm like you. I ain't sure we've seen these people before. Their kind. I dont know what to do about em even. If you killed em all they'd have to build an annex on to hell.”

Bell could be described as a conservative, but that would be an oversimplification. Bell certainly believes in what we might term “traditional” moral values, but he brings his own personality, a sort of horrified acceptance of what is coming to pass, to the discussion. He tells of a discussion with a woman who complains about the “right wing,” and says “I want my granddaughter to be able to have an abortion.” Bell says:

“...I don't have much doubt but what she'll be able to have an abortion. I'm goin to say that not only will she be able to have an abortion, she'll be able to have you put to sleep. Which pretty much ended the conversation.”

McCarthy writes much of this book in a vernacular that seems appropriate for the people, and the place, in a way that is easy and pleasant to read. I devoured this book on a rainy Sunday several weeks ago. After a couple of hours I cancelled my plans for the day and read it to the end. I am not sorry for doing that.

This is a skillfully told story, in the tradition of the Western, but addressing one of the major questions of modern civilization: What have we done? We have created this wealthy, technologically enhanced existence (at least for those of us in America, much of Europe, and the rest of the “developed” world), at the expense of decency, community, and perhaps even humanity. Drug addiction, and the soulless criminals that supply the addicts, make up the basis for a profound symptom of the rot growing within our numbers. Again, from Bell:

“I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.”

And this:

“I think I know where we're headed. We're bein bought with our own money. And it aint just the drugs... Money that can buy whole countries ... it will put you in bed with people you ought not to be there with. It's not even a law enforcement problem. I doubt that it ever was...

...I told a reporter...It starts when you begin to overlook bad manners... It reaches into ever strata...You finally get into the sort of breakdown in mercantile ethics that leaves people settin around out in the desert dead in their vehicles and by then it's just too late.”

By the end of No Country for Old Men I felt very close to Sheriff Bell and his view of the world. I believed in Chigurh and the evil he symbolizes, and I understood the futility of looking at it as a “law enforcement problem.”

Furthermore, I look forward to reading more books by Cormac McCarthy. This was my first.

12,13,24 April 2008

©Eric F. Lester 2008

This Is By Us

2008-03-01T23:15:00.000-08:00

My Reading Life has suffered a bit of late. I seem to have slowed down on actually reading books, complete books, and yet I seem to spend plenty of time right here in this chair reading, and writing. The truth is, I've found this new thing to read, and it's consumed a lot of my time.

I first encountered thisisby.us on Craigslist, where I was perusing jobs for writers or editors. I do this often, it's sort of like picking a scab. Whenever I see a job open that's actually real-looking, the requirements are far beyond anything I can claim -- even though I feel that I could do the job -- and I fall into despair that I will end my days as a greeter for Wal Mart after my nice cushy job that I have now is eaten by the monster of financial inevitability. The ad said something like "write and get paid," so I was interested.

What I found was a sort of interesting looking website with the catchy FQDN of thisisby.us. Thisisby.us allows anyone to contribute (anyone who registers, that is, but it's a simple process and doesn't require anything objectionable) just about anything. There is no editorial approval required. Once one's writing is posted on the site, readers who have registered can vote for the piece if they like it, and write comments about it. The number of times a piece is viewed, and the number of times it's voted for, determine how prominently it will be listed on the site.

As for the "get paid" part: thisisby.us sells ads on the site. The advertising revenue is split fifty-fifty with the contributors, according to the FAQ, and distributed according to "goodness," a quality calculated from views times votes, measured at some point in time. From what I have learned, no one is getting rich writing for thisisby.us.

I didn't ever think I was going to make money there, but it looked like it might be fun, and perhaps a place to improve my writing. I started reading, and soon wanted to be able to vote and comment. I had to register, and create a username, and I was in.

There are plenty of posts to read, vote for -- or not, and write comments about if one desires. Experience hasn't yet taught me -- though it should have by now, I've made sufficient faux pas in this area that I should know better -- to be careful when commenting. Various personal shortcomings make this a problem area: thoughtlessness, insensitivity, literary snobbism, old age, and a sick sense of humor are among them. Mental illness probably plays a part as well. Be advised: the writer is very likely to read one's comments. The writer is very likely to be feeling just a little bit insecure, having just released his or her brain child to the cold, cruel world. The rule "if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all" is a good rule here.

(There will be members of thisisby.us who will read that last sentence and snort meaningfully at the hypocrisy I've displayed by writing it.)

There are many really fine writers working on this site regularly. A registered member can "fan" a writer that she likes by clicking "I like this writer!" on a post, or on the writer's profile page. It is then possible to enable email notification whenever a writer one likes has posted something. I do this, and I must admit to being obsessed with checking the trap I've set in gmail to catch these messages. I will eagerly click off to read the new one by one of my favorites, and then read the comments, and become curious about a comment writer, click on his link, start reading something by the new person, and I'm off ... Hours go by in this way.

A writer who goes by the alias Wisco writes once or twice every day (from Wisconsin), including a "news roundup" for the day which is always interesting, often quite insightful, and frequently humorous. Brakeformoose is another frequent journalistic contributor, writing from New Hampshire. His stuff is very funny when he means it to be, and very professional. It was not too surprising to learn that he free-lances for his local newspaper. (As of 1 March, 2008, 'moose seems to have slowed down a bit. Perhaps he's finding some success out in the "real world." I hope so -- he's very good.)

Terry Hargrove's alias is his name. He is the author of Don't Mind Me, subtitled "A Tennessean Lost In Connecticut." He writes regularly on thisiby.us, and I am always quick to read him. Mr. Hargrove writes a column for the Pictorial Gazette of Old Saybrook, Connecticut, and his book is a collection of those columns. His stories are often about his childhood or his family, sometimes set in Tennessee where he grew up in the 1960s. He makes me laugh out loud regularly, and has a gift for the short and sweet.

Brianfile23 and BigDog both write from Fort Worth, Texas. I feel like both of these guys are my friends, although I wouldn't know them if I saw them on the street, and they'd probably think I was a strange old codger if they met me. Brian's posts are like pages of his personal journal, stories of his daily life, right up to date. I don't know how he does that. BigDog's writing is likely to be about anything, and he's really been working on it of late. He just wrote an essay about The Innocence Project, and before that a piece of a vampire thriller (I think?). Late last night I read one by him about a Polish woman who saved Jews during World War II.

vetinarii lives in New Zealand, although he's originally from England. His writing is simply exquisite. It's always calm, nicely poised, perfectly phrased, and thoroughly interesting. I would read a grocery list written by this man. Jasmine Ardent is the alias of a lawyer who lives in Seattle; she writes poetry and prose of a quality that makes one despair thinking of her laboring over boring briefs in a dusty courtroom. She has been kind enough to comment on some of my efforts and I think her ideas very helpful.

My old friend Doc writes some very well-worded and often highly opinionated pieces, and occasionally posts them on thisisby.us under the name Tom Joad. Doc writes letters to the editors of the local papers, and they get printed just about every time. I keep telling him he should be freelancing for the papers instead of giving his writing away free and working nights for money.

Blackrob8 is new to me, but I've seen some really good stuff from him. Typo is a very intelligent fellow who writes beautifully and betrays an excellent education. Beardless Viking is a writer I just started paying attention to; he is, according to his profile, a "First-year MFA in Creative Writing at San Jose State University." bbstucco was one of the first writers that really attracted me on thisisby.us. He has just about stopped posting on the site this year, but that's apparently because he too has found success in that elusive "real world."

There's anniemor in Northern Island, mudgeon I know not where, maze, Erik the Red, Roomspimp (what a strange name), Mike James, dean fearce, and so many more I know I'm going to forget someone wonderful and probably hurt somebody's feelings by leaving them out.

I don't know how I can possibly name all the writers that have entertained me, occupied my mind, and why -- this entry would go on for many meters down your screen. It's unfair, because I've named a few, and that seems to give them preference, but it's really not that way. Go to http://thisisby.us, read a post or two, register, and try it yourself. See how many writers you've collected after a few weeks.

I suppose this is the "social networking" website thing in a different form, but for me it's a very palatable form. Certainly, a lot of the posts on thisisby.us are forgettable, of low quality, barely intelligible and offensive -- bring your thick skin and do not send your children to this site. But when you go to the trouble of mining through the slag, the gems you extract will be well worth it.

Don't Mind Me, by Terry Hargrove

2008-02-10T09:29:00.000-08:00

Ladder Press, 2007. 168 pages. ISBN 0-9790371615

Terry Hargrove is appearing April 5, 2008 at the New Haven Free Public Library.

I became familiar with Terry Hargrove through a writing website that I've been frequenting. "Thisisby.us" has a broad range of writers and poets from rank amateurs to real professionals. Hargrove is one of the pros.

He's quite modest, doesn't throw his credentials around or beat the less experienced with the club of his accomplishments, but I did get a hint that he might have a book in print, and sure enough, this is it.

Hargrove is one of seven children, born and raised in Lewisburg,Tennessee, who moved to Old Saybrook, Connecticut with his family. There he writes a column for the Pictorial Gazette, a Connecticut newspaper.

Hargrove's stories are uniformly short and sweet, and I had to prevent myself from racing through his book. It takes only a few minutes to read any one of them, and many are quite good read aloud. (My wife can attest to how many times I stopped her from whatever she was doing and made her listen while I was reading this book.) They remind me a little of the stories I used to hear on NPR read by Bailey White, and I think that NPR would do well to entice Terry Hargrove to read his stories on the air, if he's of a mind to.

There are 47 stories in this book, so I'm not going to go into each one, but I will point out a few that really stand out.

"Damon Runyon and Me" is about Terry's appreciation of Roller Derby, a sport which Runyon invented.

"Tennessee Spring" is tornado season. "Maybe tornadoes are God's construction company, like the one working on I-95 only faster, cheaper, and non-union."

"When Should I Start Being Concerned?" Children don't often fall into stereotypical molds -- they are real individuals right from the start.

"The Face" is about having a mustache, or not having a mustache; dealing with eighth-graders, and dealing with one's father-in-law.

"Lessons From Jam Pot" has serious existential questions -- and answers.

"Easter Duck" remembers a pet that could have inspired Rod Serling.

"A Halloween Tale" deals with death, and fear, and crawl spaces.

"Problems With Math" is a great explanation of what it's like to not intuitively understand mathematics. Terry Hargrove describes getting a bad headache from it; I just get sleepy.

"The Christmas Tree" If I have to declare a favorite, this is it. This is a horselaugh from beginning to end.

"The Age Before Computer Nerds" tells us a bit about the comic book kid, and his future.

"Getting Even" is about getting even, and it's a delight to revel in Glenn's delight.

Mr. Hargrove has given us a wonderful sampling of his work, which will leave readers looking for more. He deals with ordinary life: families, communities, schools, and churches, and the things that happen within them, without sanding off the rough spots or polishing the surface. His stories impress us as true reflections of life, they remind us of things that have happened in our own real lives, of people and places we have known.

I'll be looking forward to reading Terry Hargrove's next book.

Mortal Allies, by Brian Haig

2008-02-07T20:41:00.000-08:00

This was an audio book, which I listened to while driving to and fro for a couple of weeks. The book is read by John Rubenstein in a style that I would describe as "wiseass," but it seems suited to the voice of the narrator. The novel is written in first person, and the narrator is Major Drummond, a JAG officer, army lawyer, who has a background in covert operations.

The novel begins with Drummond arriving in Korea at an army base, dressed in cutoffs and a t-shirt, because he's been summarily wrenched from a vacation in Bermuda and flown here to assist in the defense of a Captain charged with murder, necrophilia, committing homosexual acts, and consorting with an enlisted man. The Captain has a civilian attorney, a woman that Drummond remembers less than fondly from law school. He is assigned to be her military assistant.

The story unfolds into a complex montage of issues: gays in the military, military justice, military protocols, modern diplomatic relations with Korea, the conflict with North Korea, the clash of the cultures, and the clash of Drummond's personality with Katherine Carlson, the beautiful but difficult attorney who leads the defense.

This is a mystery, with elements of spy novel, a thriller, and a social commentary. I was surprised to find myself really liking this book, and becoming engrossed in it about half way through. Haig has done a masterful job of plot construction, and has managed to make a statement in a most unconventional way.

I may have to read some more Brian Haig.

The End of America, by Naomi Wolf

2008-01-29T18:00:00.000-08:00

Chelsea Green Publishing, 2007. 168 pages. ISBN 978-1-933392-79-0.

This is a disturbing little book. It's extremely well-written, relatively dispassionate, and coldly logical. It did not make me feel well.

The full title is The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. Wolf has written it directly and emphatically, outlining her points clearly and describing nothing less than an emergency to her fellow citizens of all political persuasions.

While her claims may at first seem extreme and alarmist, a reading of her carefully thought-out arguments brings to one some rather unwelcome revelations. Reaching back through the history of the Bush administration to the date of her writing (late 2006) Wolf itemizes instance after instance of power-grabbing initiatives by the Bush Executive Branch.

In her introduction (go to this site and scroll down toward the bottom, there's a link to download a copy of the introduction and some other material from the book) Wolf says

"I began to take a second look at how leaders in the past had cracked down on societies over which they had
gained control..."

End of America compares moves made by the Bush administration to steps taken by leaders such as Mussolini as they established totalitarian control over their countries.

How can we ignore such legislative travesties as the USA PATRIOT act and the Military Commissions Act? This last, which suspends habeas corpus, should make any American of any political persuasion furious. The idea that the President (whoever he or she is, no matter of what political party) would have the ability to imprison any citizen without charge, without the right to representation, and even without disclosing that the imprisonment has been accomplished or where the citizen is -- this is in my mind a definition of the opposite of what the Bill of Rights and Constitution exist to protect.

Wolf's comparisons of strategies, and of language, are chilling. She points out the significance of the term "homeland" as we now use it, and how it was used as the Nazi party came to power in Germany in the 1930s. It is considered "over-the-top" to make comparisons with the Nazis and Hitler:

"I also know that there is a kind of intellectual etiquette, an unwritten rule, that Nazism and Hitler should be treated as stand-alone categories. But I believe this etiquette is actually keeping us from learning what we have to learn right now. I believe we honor the memory of the victims of Nazism with our willingness to face the lessons that history—even the most nightmarish history—can offer us about how to defend freedom."

Wolf points out her own bona fides in this,

"As someone who lost relatives on both sides of my family in the Holocaust..."

There will still be detractors, those who will say that this book is unnecessarily paranoid, that there just isn't any basis for believing that our leaders are headed in this direction.

I found the most chilling aspect of this work to be the idea that we are supposed to know that our government will deal with us if we speak out against it. We are supposed to be aware of the downhill slide from legal interrogation of prisoners with Constitutional rights to the covert torture of helpless "disappeared" captives.

It serves the ends of what Wolf terms the "Fascist shift" for us to have a growing fear of our government. We know that it imprisons our fellow citizens without recourse to traditional legal protections, and we know that it has reached out to foreign nationals and governments and committed crimes. We know that if the magic word "terrorism" is invoked, all bets are off, and all rules are suspended. There is no real effort to conceal these things, there is no need. The more this incipient knowledge is revealed, the less likely we all become to resist any initiative taken by the Executive.

I put this book down about a month ago and put off writing this review. I was just too uncomfortable. As time has gone by, I have found myself brushing off her arguments as too extreme, even obsessive. And then I think back, and I understand that this, too, is probably a predictable reaction. People who live in societies that are becoming more repressive no doubt feel just as I do.

Therefore I say, read this little book, and judge for yourself. If Naomi Wolf is wrong then we have nothing to fear and there is no harm in the reading. If she is right, we may be at an important point in our history, where we will need every intelligent and alert American to be aware of what our government is doing, and to fight to retain the freedoms that have made this country the beacon of light that it once was in the world.

The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins

2008-01-27T18:59:00.000-08:00

Houghton-Mifflin, New York, 2006. ISBN-13: 978-0-618-68000-9. 374 pages.

The God Delusion is well-written, and well-reasoned. It deals with a difficult and complicated subject in a manner that kept my interest without being condescending or simplistic, in spite of the need for detailed explanations throughout. Dawkins comes across as a likable, optimistic teacher with a strong desire to see clear thinking take root and grow in the world.

Dawkins uses science and logic to illustrate how irrational religious beliefs have evolved and developed over the history of mankind, and how they have plagued civilization.

There will be, of course, objections to this book. Atheists run into this all the time. Apparently some religious people feel threatened by atheism; perhaps they don't like to have to think carefully about exactly what they believe. Dawkins' analysis of the origins of religion, and the actual substance of which it is formed, is daunting to say the least. He challenges the circular logic of faith, which says that one must believe in spite of evidence to the contrary. It is this anti-logical trump card that defeats all rational discussion. If one argues that God cannot be seen, heard, or felt, the response will be that God wants it this way: God wants us to have faith in him without any evidence of his existence. Religion says that belief in the improbable is the key to understanding God and pleasing him.

This book provides welcome relief from the background guilt that I experience when discussions of religion erupt. While I regard most of this stuff as nonsense on a rational, adult level there is always the "inner child" that was taught early on to fear the omniscient bearded man in the sky. There is the confusing story of Jesus and his inscrutable sacrifice, which somehow relieves me of original sin, or something like that. Talk about a guilt trip! Here's this man who, 2000 years ago, suffered a horrible death at the hands of merciless sadists because he knew that you were coming along, and he loves you, even now. Aren't you ashamed of yourself for not believing this.

It is not hard to debunk the myths that come from religion, whether it's the story of Jesus or the promise of a heaven full of virgins to the suicide bomber (Dawkins, by the way, rightly asks: what about the fate of these virgins? How do they feel about it? And why would a man want virgins, anyway?) it's pretty easy to simply say: this is not possible, not probable, it cannot be proven and so it is not true. What is difficult is to free people from the innate feeling that they are supposed to believe in this claptrap, and that if they don't, they are evil, ungrateful heretics and that God (who loves them) will punish them with nothing less than merciless eternal torture. This predisposition to adopt such illogical nonsense as one's "beliefs" is, as Dawkins points out, most likely a sort of side-effect of natural selection.

I found this concept immensely attractive. Parents impart much useful knowledge to their children, e.g. don't eat spoiled food, wash your hands, get enough sleep, the good fish are in this part of the river, etc. At the same time, parents may tell their children things which are inaccurate or untrue, such as the idea that you can "catch" a cold from getting wet and chilly, that people of another race are inherently inferior, or that there is an invisible omniscient omnipotent being who requires certain bizarre behavior and will punish you if you fail to display it. While the bad ideas may be quite useless or even harmful, the basic good information is often required for survival. Offspring with a penchant for hearing and adopting the instructions of their parents are probably more likely to survive, hence natural selection will favor this trait. The bad ideas, such as religion, are as fervently adopted as the good. Dawkins' own explanation of this concept is much more skillful than mine, and includes good examples and illustrations.

The message of The God Delusion is that too much evil is done in the name of religion for it to occupy the exalted place that it enjoys in human society. Why should we continue to grant special privileges (tax exemption) and overlook behavior which, if not excused under the explanation of religious belief, would be considered illegal and destructive (e.g. taking children out of school)? Religion is responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Religion fuels the never-ending wars of the Middle East, and the conflict in Ireland. Many representatives of one of the major religions of the world have been exposed as pedophiles, and that church itself has been found to be complicit in covering up or impeding prosecution of crimes committed by these people. How is it that rational people continue to tolerate this monstrosity in our midst?

This topic cannot be broached without inspiring controversy. I am sure that many people will find me heretical, insensitive, and evil for expressing these ideas. Fortunately for me, very few people read what I write here, so I will not have to put up with too much abuse. But to anyone who does object, I invite you to borrow this book from your public library (or buy it, if you don't mind putting money in the hands of the infidel) and read it. Give it an honest chance and ask yourself if it doesn't make a lot of sense. Some will, of course, reject it out of hand. But a few may just be relieved to find that they are not alone: many of us are unwilling to ignore logic, to eschew science, and adopt dangerous and destructive myths foisted upon us by previous generations. Many, I imagine, will be very pleased to read this book, and to enjoy its clear and reasonable arguments and Dawkins' fine writing.

Interpreter of Maladies, by Jhumpa Lahiri

2007-12-12T20:52:00.000-08:00

198 pages. Published by Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Co. New York 1999.

In keeping with my habit of seldom reading "new" stuff, here's a book from the free table at work that's eight or nine years old, and I only regret that I didn't find this writer sooner. These stories are all excellent, perfect, what can I say? Find a copy and read it.

Each one of these stories deals with people living or visiting somewhere other than their home. Many are Indian or Pakistani living in the United States of America, others are moved from their home by the partition of the Indian subcontinent.

"A Temporary Matter" is the story of Shoba and Shukumar, a Bengali couple living in Boston. They are notified that their electric power will be interrupted for an hour on the next five evenings at eight PM. These interruptions provide an unlikely respite from ordinary life, an opportunity for them to take stock. The result is bittersweet, complicated.

"When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine" is told from the perspective of a young Indian girl living in the USA with her parents in 1971. Mr Pirzada is a neighbor who has left his wife and seven daughters in Dacca, Pakistan, where civil war is raging.

"Interpreter of Maladies" finds a family of first generation Indian-Americans and their children, returning to India on vacation.

"A Real Durwan" is about Boori Ma, a woman displaced to Calcutta by Partition.

"Sexy" tells about an affair between Miranda, an American, and Dev, a Bengali, in New York. This is set against a story told to her by her Indian friend Laxmi, whose cousin's husband has deserted her for a Canadian woman. As a favor to her friend, Miranda watches the cousin's seven-year-old son for a day, which puts her relationship with Dev in a new perspective.

"Mrs. Sen's" is where another young boy, Eliot, goes during the day while his parents work. Mrs. Sen's husband is a mathematics professor. She is adrift in America, unable to drive a car, used to having a "driver" at "home."

"This Blessed House," the Connecticut home of newlywed Hindus is packed full of Christian knicknacks, courtesy of the former residents. Raking leaves, they uncover a large shrine to the Virgin Mary in the yard.

"The Treatment of Bibi Haldar." Bibi Haldar has a disease that sounds like epilepsy, but is not understood. She lives at the mercy of relatives, who tolerate her but before long find her to be too much to handle. Many treatments have been attempted for Bibi, but in the end, she finds her own remedy.

"The Third and Final Continent" is North America. The young man has lived in India, and England, and now Cambridge, Massachusetts. For six weeks he awaits the arrival of his wife, Mala, from Calcutta. During this time he rents a room from a remarkable old lady who opines that the planting of an American flag on the moon is "splendid!"

I have not done justice to these wonderful stories in my brief descriptions. Please don't be put off by my vain attempt to summarize them, but dive in and read them all. The worst thing about this book is the temptation to simply read it all at once, without stopping. It is a feast of reading, and worth savoring.

I look forward very much to my next opportunity to read Jhumpa Lahiri.

A Google search for "Jhumpa Lahiri" is rewarding.

Best Short Stories of 1919, Edward J. O'Brien, Editor

2007-11-29T18:44:00.000-08:00

THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF 1919 AND THE YEARBOOK OF THE AMERICAN SHORT STORY EDITED BY EDWARD J. O'BRIEN. BOSTON. SMALL, MAYNARD & COMPANY

This book is available as a free electronic book from Project Gutenberg. It is in the public domain. Release Date: November 11, 2007 [EBook #23445]

What was 1919 like in the USA? It was the end of World War I, the era of the pandemic flu which killed more people than the Great War. In 1919 women in the USA did not have the right to vote; it wasn't until August 26, 1920 that the 19th Amendment was passed, granting suffrage to American women. Prohibition --the Volstead Act -- started, that was the 18th Amendment, in 1919. It went on for 14 years.

Elsewhere in the world: In 1919 the Soviet Union was forming, the first Communist International was held in Moscow on March 2. Ghandi began working in India to resist British rule with nonviolence.

Civilization was changing in 1919. The nineteenth century had seen the industrial revolution, and now the twentieth was truly underway, with a horrible war at the center of its second decade. Many ideas and norms that had made up social, political, and economic conventions were in question, or crumbling to ruins.

The number-one best selling fiction in 1919 was The Four Horsemen of the Apolcalypse [Link to e-book at Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia library. The e-book is publicly accessible.] According to information on the Kingwood College Library website, this book sold for $1.90 -- publishers didn't think the public would pay $2 for a book. (Kingwood College is a Community College in Kingwood, Texas.)

Here is a collection of twenty short stories by writers in that year. Some of their names are familiar to me: Sherwood Anderson and Djuna Barnes for sure, some of the others seem familiar, and the rest are new to me.

The very first story, "The Kitchen Gods," by G. F. Alsop, grabbed my attention because of its title. A few years ago I read and enjoyed a book by Amy Tan called The Kitchen God's Wife, and couldn't help wondering if she had read this story. It tells the story of a polygamous Chinese marriage, and the result of the husband's desire to embrace Christianity. The atmosphere is painted beautifully and economically, however self-conscious the author is in her description of this culture.

I found a little about Alsop, from Contemporary Authors Online, Gale 2004. (I got to this database through my public library system; I don't think it's freely available without a subscription.) Her name was Gulielma Fell Alsop, she lived from 1881 to 1978 (a long life!). The last place she lived was in Vermont. She was a medical missionary in China in 1908, head of the Barnard College Medical Department in 1917. She is listed in Barnard's Alumnae Bibliography.

"An Awakening," by Sherwood Anderson, I found to be an odd kind of story. I am not sure I get the point of it, but it may be due to the 88 years that have elapsed since its publication obscuring certain cultural and social assumptions or norms. The story takes place in Winesburg, Ohio, fictional setting for many of Anderson's stories. (According to Wikipedia, at the preceding link, there is a Winesburg, Ohio, but it is not the fictional Winesburg. Instead, Anderson's Winesburg is modeled on a city named Clyde, Ohio, where Anderson grew up.) In this story we see two men attracted to the same woman. One wins, one loses. I wish someone would explain this one to me. There is a Wikipedia entry for the novel Winesburg, Ohio that provides some clues, I think.

"Willum's Vanilla," by Edwina Stanton Babcock, tells the story of the return of a young man to a rural community in the United States. Mr. and Mrs. Pawket, the elderly agrarian couple who provided this orphaned youngster with a home in his youth, are excited to see their foster son again. "Willum" has been living in Italy, and has married an Italian woman. For his bride, he has ordered the construction of an Italian villa (which word becomes corrupted to the "vanilla" of the title), and to facilitate this project he sends an architect ahead who is to supervise the project, and who will board with Mr. and Mrs. Pawket. While these plans seem solid evidence of young William's solvency, even wealth, events conspire to convince the Pawket's and some of the townspeople that William has fallen on hard times and is returning home from Italy somewhat worse for the wear. This is a perfectly delightful piece, with great use of dialect and terrific characterizations. The story is written with humor, but not without affection, and I enjoyed it immensely.

"A Night Among the Horses," by Djuna Barnes, is a dark tale involving -- apparently -- a man who has married above his station in life and suffers some regret. I'm afraid this one missed me, too.

Djuna Barnes

"Long, Long Ago," by Frederick Orin Bartlett tells the story of a newspaperman who comes to New York on his vacation to visit the offices of the paper where he got his start. He's been gone five years, and hopes to see at least some of his old co-workers. I found the story mildly amusing, if dated. The opening sentence was confusing:

When the brakeman swung back the door and with resonant indifference shouted in Esperanto "Granderantal stashun," Galbraithe felt like jumping up and shaking the man's hand.

Apparently the reference to Esperanto is a joke. I didn't get it. I thought at first that it was some type of futuristic fiction, which would have been interesting from 1919. But it's not.

The point of "Long, Long Ago" is, in my understanding, that time goes by very quickly in the news business in New York compared to the speed with which it travels in Kansas -- and the vacationing newsman realizes that given this realization, he should get back to Kansas, where he'll live longer.

"Dishes," by Agnes Mary Brownell is a story of domestic life. I enjoyed this story immensely. It's deceptively simple, with simple characters, and plain, vernacular speech. It is the story of a woman who comes into her new husband's home to live with him and his mother. His sister, who used to live with them, has married and gone off to live with her husband. The new wife must take the sister's place, in some ways. It is a story that deals with how our true characters can be suppressed through mundane routines in life, repeated and subscribed to, but perhaps without necessity or meaning.

"The Blood Red One," by Maxwell Struthers Burt, may be an allegorical tale about something to do with World War I. I didn't understand the references, I assume there were certain allusions, but I haven't a clue what they were. It's strange, told with good language, words that flow and sound well. There is a mysterious character who appears and tells two stories about "The Maimed One" -- perhaps this is Woodrow Wilson, or some other world leader during the Great War?

Here's a link to another Maxwell Struthers Burt story, called "The Water Hole." I like it better, and didn't have any trouble at all understanding it. I read about MSB a little bit, and it seems that he was a poet as well as a prose writer, and lived the last part of his life in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, where he ran a dude ranch, among other pursuits. You can find information about him on Wikipedia and other sources, just put his name into Google.

"The Wedding Jest," by James Branch Cabell, is written in a flowery sort of pseudo-Arthurian English, which bothered me and tempted me to skip it, but that would have been a mistake. This story of love, marriage, and ghosts explodes at the end and reveals a deviousness of plot that is not evident until that moment. I recommend patient reading of each and every word, and attention to detail.

"The Wrists on the Door," by Horace Fish, could probably be described as a right-to-life fable. Blah, blah, blah...

"Government Goat," by Susan Glaspell, is set in Cape Cod, and has to do mostly with two families, the Cadaras, and the Doanes. Joe Cadara, the father of his family, has been killed at sea. Joe Doane, father of the family next door, is alive and well, albeit employed only on land, at "odd jobs," since his family's fishing business has failed. The families are forced to compare their relative well-being: the Cadaras receive much generous charity, but the Doanes still have a father. When the Cadaras receive a goat from "the government," Joe Doane thinks about who is lucky, and who is not. The story is told with skill, and a great sense of humor.

"The Stone," by Henry Goodman: an evil man hounds his wife from the grave. In 1919, before Stephen King, and all the sensational horror movies, and the Twilight Zone, this probably was sort of frightening, original, even entertaining.

"To The Bitter End," by Richard Matthews Hallet. This is one Hell of a story. Written in seagoing dialect, one elegant phrase upon another, ultimately a sort of long joke with a dry punchline, one can only draw back with awe and admire the skill with which it's told. Here's a little taste:

"And now Elmer and his wife, who were stationed ankle deep in that yellow sea of chips under her prow, could see the brows of the shore gang beaded with sweat, and a look of desperate hurry in the eyes of the youngster coming with the paint pot and painting the bottom of the keel as the blocks fell one by one. Well he might hurry; for sometimes the ship trips the last dozen blocks or so, and thus stepped on with all that tonnage they snap and crackle, and splinters fly in every direction."

Two formidable women are involved, and disaster stalks on the horizon.

"The Meeker Ritual," by Joseph Hergesheimer, is a quaint story of a story told to a sort of cynic-philosopher type, of a family of spiritualists and the strange goings-on within their home. I am not sure that I understood all that was implied in this tale, but I found it vaguely amusing. The Wikipedia entry for Hergesheimer speaks of his "aesthetic" style, and how powerfully descriptive it can be, while at the same time obscure, lacking a depth of characterization.

"The Centenarian," by Will E. Ingersoll, is as corny as Iowa, but beautifully written, and touching in its descriptions and observations of old age and our inevitable decline. The ending has a bit of a twist, though not unpredictable. I looked up 1 August 1914 and found, as I had guessed, that it marks the date of Germany declaring war upon Russia and the mobilization of the Swiss army: the beginning of the Great War.

I found very little about Mr. Ingersoll, except that he was (is?) Canadian, and published some other works.

"Messengers," by Calvin Johnston, is a sentimental story, written in an Irish brogue, of railroads and people, and Duty.

"Mrs. Drainger's Veil," by Howard Mumford Jones (1892-1980), is fascinating and suspenseful. I am a little bit disappointed in the plot, though. Am I addicted to mystery? Perhaps. I don't like to figure out what's happening in a mysterious (if not mystery) story before I am (I think) supposed to. In this story of long years of spite between a mother and daughter, living in seclusion in an ancient, neglected house, I did guess the deep dark secret. But, having said that, I may have just had dumb luck; or perhaps others will not be distracted by this. The writing is excellent and the story is one of the best I've ever read, of any kind.

Howard Mumford Jones appears to have accomplished quite a lot during a long life. In 1965 he received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book O Strange New World: American Culture-The Formative Years. He was Professor of English and Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of the Humanities at Harvard University.

Howard Mumford Jones sources:
Amazon Search Results
Wikipedia Entr y
Pulitzer Prize Site
Harvard University
Some quotes

"Under a Wine-Glass," by Ellen N. La Motte. A story told in the tropics, the "Gulf of Siam," from a ship's captain to his passenger, of a "lonely man" with a great gift who, having temporarily lost his gift, searched for the right place to regain it.

"A Thing of Beauty," by Elias Lieberman (1883-1961), in which John Keats himself appears to remind us that we must not be saddened by life, only focus on beauty, and be happy.

"The Other Room," by Mary Heaton Vorse, tells of people who have come to terms with the inevitable. This is one of the stories that makes me feel that I am missing something that might be obvious if I understood an allusion -- but I can't tell you what that might have been!

"The Fat of the Land," by Anzia Yezierska, is a colorfully written rags-to-riches-to -disappointment story, with lots of great dialect and dialogue. I'm not sure it goes anywhere, but I enjoyed reading it. The Jewish Virtual Library has an entry for Yezierska. A Google search of her name will yield much information, such as this.

The editor considers this story to be the best in the collection. In his foreword he says it is "the finest imaginative contribution to the short story made by an American artist this year."

At the end of the collection is an appendix, "The Yearbook of the American Short Story, November 1918 to September 1919." O'Brien explains in detail in his foreword, and in the appendix, how and why he put it together. It is a good picture of how American short fiction looked in that time. What he would think of it today is a topic for amusing conjecture.

The Four Million, by O. Henry

2007-11-14T21:41:00.000-08:00

I suppose I have talked too much about Project Gutenberg of late, so I'll try to keep to the topic here, which is yet another great find at the Project: The Four Million, by O. Henry.

This is the second book of stories from William Sydney Porter, who wrote mostly under the name "O. Henry." There are various stories about the significance of that name; my favorite says that he was friendly with a cat named Henry, who would come when Porter called "Oh, Henry!"

Porter was born in North Carolina, and lived in Austin, Texas, and New York City. The "Four Million" refers to the population of New York at the time -- Porter wrote about ordinary people, he had an eye and ear for the stories in the people's lives all around him. New York was a rich source of material.

Most people know that O. Henry is famous for ending his stories with a twist, or a trick ending. I enjoy this technique as much as anyone, and I admire his use of this difficult form. It didn't seem to restrict his ability to portray human lives and events with a realism and texture that make every one of his short stories a delight to read and re-read.

Another hallmark of this master's writing was the use of unusual polysyllabic words. O. Henry was a lexophile, a lover of words, and obviously loved to put great discoveries from the English language to work in his stories. Here is a sentence from "The Cop and the Anthem:"

"There was an endless round of institutions, municipal and eleemosynary, on which he might set out and receive lodging and food accordant with the simple life."

"Eleemosynary." I first encountered that word in this story, but I've never forgotten it. I think it's a treasure.

My greatest admiration is reserved, however, for the obvious love with which O. Henry drew each of his characters. The street-grifter, the starving stenographer, the young bride, even the "hop-head" who shares his marijuana-induced dream with a young man pining for his lover's forgiveness (and, in delaying him when he has about given up waiting for her, saves the affair) -- all these unlikely people and more are made real and alive with a few masterful sentences from his pen.

I think this is ageless writing, and I hope that many readers young and old will discover and re-discover it. We are very fortunate to have the dedicated people of Project Gutenberg who are willing to make this wonderful art available to anyone with access to the Internet. And, we are very lucky to be English readers who can appreciate the work of O. Henry.

I'll leave you with this, some paragraphs from the opening of Gift of the Magi, which may be O. Henry's best known story. If you haven't read this, go immediately to it and read it all. If you know it, go anyway.

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one's cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
While the mistress of the home is gradually subsiding from the first stage to the second, take a look at the home. A furnished flat at $8 per week. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
In the vestibule below was a letter-box into which no letter would go, and an electric button from which no mortal finger could coax a ring. Also appertaining thereunto was a card bearing the name "Mr. James Dillingham Young." The "Dillingham" had been flung to the breeze during a former period of prosperity when its possessor was being paid $30 per week. Now, when the income was shrunk to $20, the letters of "Dillingham" looked blurred, as though they were thinking seriously of contracting to a modest and unassuming D. But whenever Mr. James Dillingham Young came home and reached his flat above he was called "Jim" and greatly hugged by Mrs. James Dillingham Young, already introduced to you as Della. Which is all very good.

Wikipedia Entry for O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

Biography and Stories at the Literature Network

Blue Screen, by Robert B. Parker

2007-11-10T22:41:00.000-08:00

A Sunny Randall novel, in which Jesse Stone plays a major part.

If I seem to be on a Parker kick, I am. I borrowed 2 Spenser movies from the library and watched them last week. Not so hot, but interesting. Robert Urich just isn't Spenser to me. And they were "TV" grade movies, which is to say bad.

They were Pale Kings and Princes, and Ceremony. I am even less qualified as a movie reviewer than a book critic. My take: I'm glad I didn't pay money to see these, but I did watch both of them through to the end.

Sunny Randall is a female detective living in Boston, Massachusetts. Yes, she and Spenser live in the same city. Sunny's shrink is Susan Silverman. And in this novel she meets, works with, and sleeps with Jesse Stone. Lots of interaction.

On Parker's website there is a quote from The Robert B. Parker Companion, by Dean James and Elizabeth Foxwell, which states that Parker invented Sunny Randall at the request of Helen Hunt, so there would be a Parker detective that she could portray.

In this book, Sunny is hired by a sleazy movie promoter to protect his primary actress/property, a woman named Erin Flint. It isn't long before there's a murder, lots of mystery, a few trips across the country, some sex, the meeting with Jesse Stone, etc.

It's a fast read, entertaining, nothing wrong with it. Very lightweight.

Apparently "Blue Screen" refers to a type of movie rather than the failure of a Windows computer.

I prefer Spenser, in book form, so far.

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce

2007-11-04T08:37:00.000-08:00

Electronic text, available from Project Gutenberg at http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/4217

I have read Portrait at least a couple of times before. Joyce tried publishing it under the name Stephen Hero, rewrote it, and finally succeeded in publishing it in 1916.

This book is considered to be at least semi-autobiographical. No matter, it is an excellent work of what I'll call interior fiction, that is, it is a story that happens mostly within the mind of its central character. This type of fiction is not uncommon from modern writers, but Joyce was one of the first to place the conflict and resolution of a novel within the consciousness or mind of a character, rather than centering upon actions and conflicts between people, places, and things in the visible world. This type of writing is also known as stream of consciousness, and William Faulkner explored the technique extensively in his work.

Portrait is not an easily read, or "accessible" book, but it is far less cryptic or obscure than Joyce's later works, Ulysses, and Finnegan's Wake. It begins with its principal character's babyhood. Stephen Dedalus is hearing his father tell him a children's story:

Once upon a time and a very good time it was there was a moocow coming down along the road and this moocow that was coming down along the road met a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo...

From inside young Dedalus' mind we grow up with him. He goes away to school at Clongowes, but this is cut short by the financial problems that plague his father, and grow worse throughout the story.

When Dedalus and his family move to Dublin (at the beginning the family lives in Blackrock), they have come far down economically. Politics are constantly in the background, and there are strong hints that Dedalus' father's troubles are at least partly political.

Dedalus next attends a Jesuit school. Here he wins a prize for acting in a school play, and is temporarily rather wealthy. He squanders his money rapidly, buying food and gifts for his family, and begins to sample the prostitutes of Dublin. Catholic religious guilt soon overtakes him: There are thousands of words devoted to the brilliant and horrifying descriptions of Hell provided to the students by priests during a "retreat" at school in honor of St. Francis Xavier.

--We are assembled here today, my dear little brothers in Christ, for one brief moment far away from the busy bustle of the outer world to celebrate and to honour one of the greatest of saints, the apostle of the Indies, the patron saint also of your college, saint Francis Xavier. Year after year, for much longer than any of you, my dear little boys, can remember or than I can remember, the boys of this college have met in this very chapel to make their annual retreat
before the feast day of their patron saint....

...The preacher's voice sank. He paused, joined his palms for an instant, parted them. Then he resumed:--Now let us try for a moment to realize, as far as we can, the nature of that abode of the damned which the justice of an offended God has called into existence for the eternal punishment of sinners. Hell is a strait and dark and foul-smelling prison, an abode of demons and lost souls, filled with fire and smoke. The straitness of this prison house is expressly designed by God to punish those who refused to be bound by His laws. In earthly prisons the poor captive has at least some liberty of movement, were it only within the four walls of his cell or in the gloomy yard of his prison. Not so in hell. There, by reason of the great number of the damned, the prisoners are heaped together in their awful prison, the walls of which are said to be four thousand miles thick: and the damned are so utterly bound and helpless that, as a blessed saint, saint Anselm, writes in his book on similitudes, they are not even able to remove from the eye a worm that gnaws it.

Nice stuff.

As the story progresses, we see Dedalus become more and more disillusioned with the Catholic religion that controls his country and countrymen. This causes him much conflict with those around him, not the least of whom is his mother.

The story ends with journal entries. Here is one of them:

APRIL 10. Faintly, under the heavy night, through the silence of the city which has turned from dreams to dreamless sleep as a weary lover whom no caresses move, the sound of hoofs upon the road. Not so faintly now as they come near the bridge; and in a moment, as they pass the darkened windows, the silence is cloven by alarm as by an arrow. They are heard now far away, hoofs that shine amid the heavy night as gems, hurrying beyond the sleeping fields to what journey's end--what heart? --bearing what tidings?

Dedalus will be leaving Dublin, leaving Ireland, even as Joyce did, but it will never leave him, as it never left Joyce. In this book Joyce began some of the techniques that he would develop in Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake, and continued to work on expressing the peculiar relationship with Ireland and Irish culture that characterized his life's work and literary legacy.

Some more information:
Wikipedia Entry for James Joyce: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Joyce
Guardian article about Nora, a film about Nora Joyce.

Back Story, by Robert B. Parker

2007-10-28T07:55:00.000-07:00

G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York. 2003. 291 pages

This is a Spenser novel, one of the series of thirty or more, featuring characters well-known to those of us who have read so many of these. Hawk, Susan Silverman, Quirk, Spenser, and yet another Pearl (I don't know what happened to Pearl I, in a novel I didn't read), the dog.

Spenser is a private detective living in Boston. Susan is his love, a respected psychiatrist. Hawk is a "criminal genius," a former covert operative of vague and mysterious roots, an African-American keenly aware of the tension between races in our society who will be reading impenetrable scientific literature in one scene, only to respond with the worst shuck-and-jive language ("sho nuf") in the next.

Spenser is nothing less than a Samurai. He is strong, brave, skilled at warfare beyond belief, and possessed of a powerful sense of right and wrong. People come to him who have been wronged, treated unfairly, by powers that they are too weak to overcome, and Spenser sets out to correct the injustice.

In this novel Spenser is approached by a young woman, Daryl, through the intercession of his adopted son Paul Giacomin. Daryl's mother was killed in a bank robbery in Boston in 1974; this story is placed somewhere in more current times, probably at the beginning of the twenty-first century. (My, it's strange to write that.) It was never discovered who exactly shot her mother to death, there is a cloud of mystery and a hint of cover-up over the crime. This is essential Spenser. He goes to work.

Through the story he unravels the facts of the case, not without risking his life and those of his friends, and killing several of the enemy who try to keep him from the truth. He uncovers a complicated intrigue involving organized crime and the FBI, which I will not explain out of a desire not to spoil the mystery for those who have not yet read this delicious book.

There is a strange and bittersweet ending, a sort of shifting of resolution that I found interesting, even realistic. But make no mistake, this is rich fantasy, pure escape fiction: There are no Spensers walking the face of this planet. No woman is as beautiful or tolerant as Silverman, no friend as powerful, connected and brave as Hawk. No cops (including the FBI) so impotent and frustrated, or at worst corrupt and evil, connected to the mob or mired in cover-ups of their own mistakes. There will be no resolution of this puzzle without Spenser's intervention.

At the end of the battle the Samurai sheaths his sword. The field is littered with dead bodies. The world is still evil, but he has inserted some balance, neutralized some threats. He has done what he set out to do, but we are not sure if Daryl will know the details of who killed her mother. She has, according to the formula, opted out, told Spenser to stop looking, she doesn't want to know any more. But Spenser did not stop once he had begun; he leaves no job unfinished.

This is escape fiction at its best, with a few thought-provoking threads woven through it. Parker has something to say about the hippies and the anti-establishment movement in the seventies, the dope-smoking culture, and the modern hangers-on who live in this past, rolling joints and cursing the Man. Over-simplified it may be, but he makes his case: if you want to change the world, you'd better be ready to get hurt and hurt some others, you'd better have a good plan and the means to execute it. Self-reliance is what Spenser is about: he knows exactly whom he can trust.

Parker is also interested in the discomfort we feel when we are inescapably faced with racial issues. He contrasts Spenser's invulnerable bond with the equally invulnerable Hawk, and their superiority to prejudicial thinking expressed through their black-and-white ribbing, their comedic take on the whole "what color am I" issue, with the stark hatred and rejection between whites and blacks that drives essential elements of this plot.

It is also important to mention that in this novel Spenser meets Jesse Stone, the police chief of Paradise, Massachusetts. Stone is the star of another excellent series by Parker, which has had some success adapted for television -- as did the Spenser series in the past.

If you haven't had the pleasure of reading Robert B. Parker, wait no longer. There is a pile of great reading here, you can't go wrong.

Some other than official Robert B. Parker Web Sites:

Bullets and Beer
A Parker Biography on Kirjasto (Pegasos, at www.kirjasto.sci.fi.)
A Parker Article at bookreporter.com
New York Times Article
Wikipedia Entry (includes more links)

More Project Gutenberg -- Music

2007-10-25T13:29:00.000-07:00

This is not news, as it happened at least a few days ago, but it's news to me. Project Gutenberg has, in addition to the things I recently described, sheet music.

I discovered this on Slashdot. There is an article (linked to the title of this post) there that summarizes, and explains, the source of and issues regarding the storage and publishing of public domain musical stores on Gutenberg.

Curious, I went over to the Project and had a look for myself. I was able to download a compressed file of the Second Brandenburg Concerto. When I extracted it I discovered that it consisted of files with .xml filename extensions.

The computer I used is running Ubuntu 7.04 Desktop. Using Synaptic, it took me about three minutes to locate, download, and install a program with which to read the score. The program I installed is called Noteedit and is, of course, free and open source.

Please understand that I don't have the skill (or the orchestra) to make any use of this, and furthermore, that I spent only a few minutes making a rudimentary investigation. I am sure there are other programs that could be used to read (and edit) the score, and there are probably other online repositories of public domain music.

Gutenberg Goodies

2007-10-23T21:11:00.000-07:00

Something recently reminded me of Project Gutenberg.

This ambitious (and successful) undertaking set out some years ago to scan and electronically publish every out-of-copyright piece of literature they could get their hands on. From what I understand, they scan old books, magazines, and newspapers, and then use OCR software to put the text into ASCII format. Leagues of volunteer proofreaders check on the OCR and make corrections as necessary before releasing the electronic texts. I did this for a while: volunteered as a proofreader, but fell off the habit. This causes me a twinge of guilt; I may have to go beg for my old job back.

Not too long ago I wanted to see if any of Faulkner's writing had risen into the public domain. Apparently none has, although I did find this version of The Sound and the Fury online. But my quest for Faulkner led me to visit Project Gutenberg, and I couldn't help browsing here and there.

The first goodie I encountered was Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie's classic children's book. I looked at the listing and clicked on a link to read it, and then realized that (typical of me) I hadn't been paying close attention. This was an audio book. Available in several formats, one can download this freely (it's all public domain, and Gutenberg offers their transcriptions for free) and enjoy the excellent reading of this book (and many others) by volunteers who have done a terrific job. I didn't listen to the whole thing, I must admit, but what I heard was great. I hope that those of you who voraciously consume My Reading Life will do some research for me and let me know what you find. Both of you.

Next, I wanted to take a look at Dubliners, by James Joyce, once again. Not too long ago I looked up a copy of "The Dead" (the last story in the collection) for a friend, so I was fairly certain that the book must be in the public domain. It is, and this past weekend I found myself reading the whole thing again, for what must be at least the third time. It seems so obvious to say that Joyce was one hell of a great writer, but he was. His prose is poetry:

In the evening my aunt took me with her to visit the house of mourning. It was after sunset; but the window-panes of the houses that looked to the west reflected the tawny gold of a great bank of clouds.

From "The Sisters," by James Joyce.The stories in Dubliners are:

The Sisters
An Encounter
Araby
Eveline
After The Race
Two Gallants
The Boarding House
A Little Cloud
Counterparts
Clay
A Painful Case
Ivy Day in the Committee Room
A Mother
Grace
The Dead

Having finished Dubliners for now, I've immersed myself in Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. From that novel comes this beautiful bit:

Without waiting for his father's questions he ran across the road and began to walk at breakneck speed down the hill. He hardly knew where he was walking. Pride and hope and desire like crushed herbs in his heart sent up vapours of maddening incense before the eyes of his mind. He strode down the hill amid the tumult of sudden-risen vapours of wounded pride and fallen hope and baffled desire. They streamed upwards before his anguished eyes in dense and maddening fumes and passed away above him till at last the air was clear and cold again.

The Joyce catalog at Gutenberg also includes Ulysses and Chamber Music. Chamber Music is poetry; I think it could be accurately described as a long poem in 36 parts. I can't say anything about it, I'm very poor at reading or evaluating poetry, I fear I'm a little too stupid for it. Ulysses is one of my great loves, and when I've finished savoring Portrait, I'll probably dive back into Ulysses (1.49MB of ASCII text!).

Grey horror seared his flesh. Folding the page into his pocket he turned into Eccles street, hurrying homeward. Cold oils slid along his veins,chilling his blood: age crusting him with a salt cloak. Well, I am here now. Yes, I am here now. Morning mouth bad images. Got up wrong side of the bed. Must begin again those Sandow's exercises. On the hands down. Blotchy brown brick houses. Number eighty still unlet. Why is that? Valuation is only twenty-eight. Towers, Battersby, North, MacArthur: parlour windows plastered with bills. Plasters on a sore eye. To smell the gentle smoke of tea, fume of the pan, sizzling butter. Be near her ample bedwarmed flesh. Yes, yes.

Apparently they haven't gotten around to Finnegan's Wake.

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them, by Al Franken

2007-10-14T18:27:00.000-07:00

Lies And The Lying Liars Who Tell Them; A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right.
By Al Franken.
Dutton, New York, 2003. ISBN 0-525-94764-7.
379 pages.

Although this book is a little out of date I'm glad I read it. Franken is, first and foremost, a comedian. But he is no slouch as a journalist, and does a forceful and effective job of pointing out the bluster, mendacity, and just plain bullshit that spews from the likes of Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, and even good old George W. Bush.

He enumerates and debunks lies from the Bush campaign in 2000, the era up to and immediately after 9/11. He deplores the war in Iraq, even though he personally supported it at first -- as many liberals did, including Senator Clinton. I found his willingness to own up to his own erroneous endorsement of that effort refreshing in a political atmosphere where seldom does anyone admit to a mistake. He believed the WMD explanation, and feared an Iraq with nuclear weapons and Saddam Hussein in command.

The book is entertaining and funny, but I'm not sure how much actual good this type of writing does. I agree that Bob Jones University is a joke and that the facility with which the Bush administration will lie to support its positions is actually funny in a black sort of way -- but I wonder who has read and will read this book. Has it changed anyone's opinion? Would a neo-conservative pick this book up and read it, and evaluate the facts in it, and come to any conclusion; or would he be more likely to discard it after reading the title or the first few words?

I hope that Americans are still open to discourse, but the real climate seems to be more one of extreme polarity and commitment to political ideology that is more like religious faith (and is often mixed up with it) -- not to be questioned. If you are an American liberal or conservative today and someone presents an argument with one of the pillars of your ideology, no matter how well-reasoned or insightful, it seems to me most likely that you will take offense and consider that you have been personally attacked. There are very few of my acquaintances with whom I would be comfortable questioning such core beliefs. Those with whom I would feel comfortable are very close and trusted friends who would understand that any argument I present comes only from a standpoint of philosophical inquiry. Otherwise, I'd be afraid of making an enemy with whom I would have to deal in the future.

Mockery is a time-honored method for dealing with unpopular yet powerful institutions. Satire lets us laugh at the injustice and dishonesty that we see in our government. These tools have existed for centuries, and perhaps as long as they continue to exist no tyrant is safe indefinitely. But I sense that we live today in a climate of increasing fear of that with which we do not agree, and intolerance of those with opposing viewpoints.

Al Franken is an accomplished comedian and comedy writer. He understands the power in a well-timed, effectively-delivered sarcasm. I hope that he and others like him will continue to throw rocks at the monolith that rises in our midst.

For even if you don't agree with Al Franken's politics you must love the existence of an established and successful performer who openly taunts and ridicules the government in power for this is one indication that we still enjoy at least some of the freedoms guaranteed to us in the Bill of Rights.

On the last page of his book (before the appendices) he relates a conversation with a Methodist minister on an airplane.

"...'Do you know what God's punishment is for liars?' he asked me.
"Guessing wildly, I tried, 'They're turned into donkeys?'
"'No,' he said. 'God's punishment for liars is that they believe their own lies.'"

I went looking for a website featuring the author and his works, as I usually do when I write these reviews. I discovered that Franken is running for Senate in Minnesota. I have no idea how well or poorly he's doing, but I'll be interested to see how that goes.

Cadillac Jukebox, by James Lee Burke

2007-10-05T21:48:00.000-07:00

I've read a number of these Dave Robicheaux mysteries, set in Louisiana, and I've liked them all. This book was no exception. The mood is dark and swampy, some of the characters are as lowlife as they can get, the mystery goes back to the nineteenth century for some of its roots. This is essential, basic, James Lee Burke.

Along with the old history he includes some more recent. There's a character called Clay Mason, steeped in the Hippie culture of the 1960's, who bears a certain similarity to William Burroughs. There's some connection to a location in Mexico that could be Burroughs' ranch there.

Both the Governor-elect, Buford LaRose, and his wife, Karyn, are acquainted with Robicheaux, indeed it seems he has had a vague encounter with the lady in his alcoholic past -- and these people are incredibly corrupt as well as being drug addicts. If this is a reference to anyone real, let me know, I've missed it.

The case centers around a man named Aaron Crown, in prison for killing a major Louisiana civil-rights leader, whom Robicheaux is beginning to believe may be innocent. And there's Mookie Zerrang, recently released from prison, a psycho/sociopath. He may be in town just to kill Robicheaux. Or someone else. Or all of the above.

There's so many characters, and so much plot. What really happened to Aaron Crown, what did he do? And what's Jerry Joe's story, Dave's childhood friend? He was close to the LaRose family, worked on a place in Mexico that they owned, side by side with the young Buford. This is a hell of a story.

Just the names are enough. Mingo Bloomberg. Sabelle Crown.

"If you seriously commit yourself to alcohol, I mean full-bore, the way you take up a new religion, and join that great host of revelers who sing and lock arms as they bid farewell to all innocence in their lives, you quickly learn the rules of behavior in this exclusive fellowship whose dues are the most expensive in the world. You drink down. That means you cannot drink in well-lighted places with ordinary people because the psychological insanity in your face makes you a pariah among them. So you find other drunks whose condition is as bad as your own, or preferably even worse.

"But time passes and you run out of geography and people who are in some cosmetic way less than yourself and bars where the only admission fee is the price of a 6 A.M. short-dog.

"That's when you come to places like Sabelle Crown's at the Underpass in Lafayette."

Cletus Purcel ( a regular character in these novels). Brandy Grissum. Dock Green:

"...an agitated, driven, occasionally vicious, ex-heavy-equipment operator, who claimed to have been kidnapped from a construction site near Hue ... and buried alive ... His face was hard-edged, as though it had been layered from putty that had dried unevenly. It twitched constantly, and his eyes had the lidless intensity of a bird's, focusing frenetically upon you, or the person behind you ..."

Dock Green has Tourette's syndrome, just for good measure.

There is violence, mystery, and the Bayou. All in all, worth your time.

Mount Appetite, by Bill Gaston

2007-09-29T17:54:00.000-07:00

Raincoast Books, Vancouver BC, 2002. 221 pages. ISBN 1-55192-451-X.

This is a collection of short stories. Bill Gaston is a writer who lives in British Columbia. He teaches at the University of Victoria. I liked this book from the first few words. His prose is powerful, rhythmic, and effective without being excessive -- he sneaks up on you and clobbers you with a line.

"But when he was tired, like now, he felt closer to the shabby ground. He could feel in his bones how spring still hadn't come. He could smell mildew in the grey rug, which had to be fifteen years old. The floor of this old mobile creaked almost anywhere you put a foot down and the room he worked in was damn ridiculous... So much needed to be better."
--From "Where it Comes From, Where it Goes" page 14.

Desire is the source of all suffering, Gaston reminds me several times in these pages.

"Where it Comes From, Where it Goes."

What is the source, what is the justification, for a man to have the gift of healing? Why did he receive the gift, and what makes it keep working?

"The Angel's Share."

A mysteriously indigent woman traveling by kayak visits a campground group of urban folks on holiday sitting around a fire, drinking and talking.

"The Alcoholist."

A portrait of an intensely sensitive man with a talent for spirits.

"Driving Under the Influence."

A drunk driver finds himself attracted to a female police officer at a roadblock. He is charming, she lets him go. But he's tempted to go back and see her again, that very evening.

"Comedian Tire."

Two brothers who have not been particularly close are drawn together as the elder prematurely nears the end of his life. The younger has a complicated young-family life including a van that isn't running right and a child (and, perhaps, wife) with the flu. Somehow against his better judgement, he takes his van to "the red garage," a less-than-reputable retail auto repair chain store. The end of this story has a similar feeling to the end of "The Bronze Miracle," later in the book. The characters are, through the events in these stories, somehow released from their "normal" striving and find themselves weightless -- perhaps enlightened.

"The Little Drug Addict That Could."

Jack is a government bureaucrat who deals with fisheries. Tyson is his nephew, a problem child now no longer a child who's never been good at keeping a job. He comes to Jack with a surprising request for help resulting in an outcome worthy of an O. Henry story.

"The Hangover."

Three brothers go on a fishing trip. Keith, the "stuffy cellist," wary of their careless, macho behavior, is reluctant to go, but resigns himself to the outing. Horrified by the amount of beer and whiskey they've loaded into this "iffy tin boat," he protects his hands under his life jacket, and dreads the coming drinking and inevitable hangover. He's the only one wearing a life jacket, Phil and Raymond are using theirs for seat cushions.

In this unlikely story of modern Canadian siblings working vainly in middle age to frolic as youth, to change their brother, make him more ordinary; in this story's nine pages are sufficient hints to infer their three lives to date, as well as what is to come.

"He could remember his father once joking -- some joke -- that in a past life someone must have done something horrible to his hands."

"A Forest Path."

Begins with the disclaimer that it is not fiction, and expresses detestation for those who write fiction, for they are writers of lies. Malcolm Lowry, author of Under the Volcano, and once resident of Dollarton, a part of North Vancouver, BC, is one of such detested weavers of written misinformation, and the subject of the narrator's ire and spite.

As the story continues, we learn that the narrator was a little boy in Dollarton when Lowry lived there. He and his mother both knew Lowry somewhat, and the narrator gives us a new insight into Lowry's short story of the same name as this one.

Gaston more than once in this collection explores a theme of rebirth, reincarnation, the cycle of death and life, including but not limited to the Buddhist perspective. In this story he relates Lowry's fascination with Death, speculates that he had a hatred of life, and leaves us with the impression that perhaps Lowry's spirit continues on.

I knew nothing of Lowry when I read this story. A little research on the 'net was helpful.

Some information about Malcolm Lowry and Under the Volcano.

"Maria's Older Brother."

Tony is a little different, perhaps a little retarded, a child among children his own age. He loves to play baseball with the other kids but he is the absolute last choice for anyone's team, and only gets to play when no one else is available. When his sister dies, he seems to think that perhaps he will get some dispensation from the usual scorn his peers direct at him.

"The Bronze Miracle."

Having graduated from high school, Jim goes to work in a 7-Eleven store by night, and as a landscaper by day, in order to save money for his dream -- his desire -- to buy a large brick house on an Eastern lake. He is visited ten times by The Bronze Miracle, and is changed.

"The Northern Cod."

Ruth Twirling is a British Columbian marine biologist in Newfoundland, working on a project that is apparently trying to find a way to restore the Cod population in the Atlantic in that region. She has left familiar academic circles to work in this remote and unfamiliar place and as the story begins it seems a quirky choice to have made, but as more about her life is revealed we begin to understand from what she is escaping, and for what she strives.

"Mount Appetite."

Felice is taken from her widower father by the Authorities, because he grows pot, and makes cannabis tea to relieve her from the tortures of mental illness. The story is told in a series of emails from the father to a psychiatrist to whom he is compelled (by the Authorities) to go.

The father's rage at what has been done to him and his daughter grows, builds, explodes in a calm fury of sarcasm, mock-patient explanations of how they have been living with Felice's illness since she was born, and how they have never benefited from or desired any help from doctors, or the government.

"...I feel surrounded by galaxies of insane pettiness. Each galaxy (read: government ministry) is spinning in on itself with its mad, mad, black hole in the middle, sucking in all common sense, and decency, and light. A black hole is the absence of a brain and, even more, a heart. The word "ministry" smacks of horror. It harkens back to when government was a religion, a churchy time when "ministry" meant kindness. That it flipped to its soul-sucking opposite is -- well, Orwell predicted it, didn't he?"
--page 194

Felice's disease, simply explained, is that she cannot decide what to do. For this, her father pities her, but also loves her intensely. She wants the perfect answer every time, she cannot stand to make the wrong decision, thus she is mad.

Some Fall Books from the NY Review, and a Return to Summer via the Seattle Times

2007-09-28T08:31:00.000-07:00

One of the stated purposes of this journal was to talk about things that I'm thinking about reading. I seldom remember to include this. Thanks to Dan for a copy of The New York Review of Books, September 27 2007, for the inspiration to make this list.

Inside the front cover is a two-page ad by the University of Chicago Press entitled "Fall Books." Among the books featured, I'm interested in these:

Marked. Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration. By Devah Pager.
Betrayals. The Unpredictability of Human Relations. By Gabriella Turnaturi, Translated by Lydia G. Cochrane.
The Middle Path. Avoiding Environmental Catastrophe. By Eric Lambin.

Dan handed me the magazine opened to an article entitled "Pandora's Click," by Janet Malcolm, a review of an interesting sounding book about email etiquette. This book is entitled Send: The Essential guide to Email for Office and Home. While it decries the gaffes and misunderstandings that can be and are generated all-too-often by the misuse and overuse of email, it ends on a hopeful note: perhaps email will bring back the popularity of written correspondence in the younger generation.

Another book advertised herein is Zuckerman Bound, a Library of America series edition which includes four novels (The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound, The Anatomy Lesson, and The Prague Orgy and an "unproduced television screenplay" (of Prague) by Philip Roth, a writer to whom I'm always meaning to return (return? I'm not sure I've been there. I just looked at his bibliography on Wikipedia and maybe I've never read anything by him. Ah, memory, thou betrayer.) Roth was recently interviewed on the NPR show Fresh Air, and he talked about his latest novel, Exit Ghost. Exit Ghost is not included in this collection, but the advertisement says "Here is the perfect companion to ... Roth's latest novel ... which brings Zuckerman's story to a denouement."

And here's an ad for a new book by Annie Dillard, called The Maytrees. She's a formidable writer. The book I remember her for is The Living, a novel about the early days of Whatcom County in Washington State. I'm sure I've bored many people with my raving about that book. Dillard can be very spiritual, even religious, but somehow it doesn't bother me.

And here's an interesting review: "Citizen Gore," by Michael Tomasky, of The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore. And I thought I was the only person who'd noticed that.

Assault on Reason sounds like a good book. Tomasky says that Gore discusses the demise of reason in American discourse, and assigns a large role to the rise of TV, which for the last fifty years has been our main form of communication. He then takes apart the actions of the Bush administration, analyzed in this light, noting that the modern Right has become a political movement disguised as a religious one. Tomasky wonders whether Gore could run for President in 2008, whether he could or would be elected, whether he'd even welcome the chance. Perhaps Al plays a better citizen than politician.

An interesting work of fiction is discussed in "Ice Capades," by Christian Caryl. This is review of Ice, by Vladimir Sorokin, translated from the Russian by Jamey Gambrell. This book, we are told, is part of a trilogy about a bizarre brotherhood of aliens who draw their power from an ice-like substance that fell from space to Earth in Siberia. Caryl sees it as a commentary on the totalitarian governments of modern history, from the Nazis, through Stalin, Kruschev, and Kim Il Sung. It sounds as though it might be enjoyable, I'm not sure, it could be a little ponderous. At least it's on my list.

I dove into an article about Allen Ginsberg. Ginsberg was a lot of things, among them an icon of the last half of the twentieth century, of the post-World War II cultural revolution embodied in the Beat movement, the Hippies, the music, writing, and art that has developed in the last sixty years or so -- kind of a spiritual grandfather to all of us born in the fifties. "Howl," his (in)famous long poem of 1956 hit the American culture with a neo-Whitmanesque free verse sledgehammer:

...who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,

who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually happened and walked away unknown and forgotten into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alleyways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,

who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of the subway window, jumped in the filthy Passaic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street, danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed phonograph records of nostalgic European 1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans in their ears and the blast of colossal steamwhistles...

Allen, we hardly knew ye.

News Flash: Seattle Times Starts Fire

It's getting colder and wetter here now, and we've had a few fires in the woodstove. I start my fires with newspaper; we save it in a basket. My father always had a problem when he tried to start a fire with newspaper: he'd stop crumpling the pages because he'd start reading them. I have the same problem. In the midst of some recent crumpling I noticed a page from the 29 June 2007 Seattle Times "Readings" feature, page 44H, with the headline "Terror thriller is frightening in its plausibility." This introduces a review by Nisi Shawl of a book entitled Quantico, by Greg Bear. This sounds like a great read, it's a techno-adventure set in the near future, which allows for a few yet-to-be-invented gadgets:

"Bear does the hard work of extrapolating from current engineering to shiny new tech-toys ... portable ... holograph projectors; sparrow-sized winged surveillance cameras; ID-activated handguns ..."

I'll probably read this book, it sounds like the kind of thing that I like: pure entertainment, lowbrow, no redeeming social value.

The reading of kindling is always a mixed pleasure. On the one hand, I am pleased to find interesting things to read in my old newspapers, but this is tempered by discomfort (I am usually kneeling on the floor, and the room is cold, else I wouldn't be doing this.), and a vague guilt-like emotion about not really reading newspapers. What is it about newspapers? Sometimes I read an entire article and have no idea what I just read, sort of like what happens if I try to read when the TV is on in the same room. It must be me; plenty of people read newspapers and get stuff out of them. This doesn't always happen, I often read columns, letters (I like letters to the Editor in any publication; I'll usually read them first if I pick up a strange magazine, as in a waiting room.), articles, etc. with normal retention.

But so many things elude me, and I find them later in the kindling basket.

Death Comes for the Fat Man, by Reginald Hill

2007-09-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

Harper Collins New York 2007. 404 pages.

This is my first Reginald Hill, I doubt it will be my last. What a great mystery and crime novel, and good to the last words on the last page! This story is masterfully done, tightly raveled so that it unravels throughout every inch of the book.

The novel begins with a horrendous explosion where Detective Superintendent Andy Dalziel is seriously injured. He is not expected to live, but he is taken to a hospital and put on life support. This is how we are introduced to one of the most important characters in the book who, although completely out of the picture, affects everything and everybody in the story from beginning to end.

We are left with Chief Inspector Peter Pascoe, his close friend and colleague, who is also injured in the explosion although not quite as seriously. Pascoe spends the rest of the book getting to the bottom of the cause of the explosion and what is really going on in Manchester. The mystery involves a range of strange characters, including British secret counter-terrorism agents, self-styled "Templar" vigilantes (see also The Da Vinci Code and The Templar Legacy though I recommend neither one, they both reference this legendary group of Crusade-era knights), quirky Yorkshire cops, a paralyzed veteran of the war in Iraq, a talent agent named Ffion, and much and many more.

The plot is intricate, we are skillfully hoodwinked, this is a very satisfying read with nary a wasted page.

High Five, by Janet Evanovich

2007-09-25T21:27:00.000-07:00

1999 St. Martin's Press. 317 pages. ISBN 0-312-97134-6.

This book was a lot of fun, total escape, took about four hours to read. I've never read one of Ms. Evanovich's works before, but I will read more.

Stephanie Plum is the heroine; she's a bounty hunter in New Jersey. She's quite unlikely, very feminine, but very tough. The story is funny, and the mystery is quite valid. This is great entertainment.

The depiction of an old middle-class neighborhood in Trenton is extremely well-done. I grew up in the Northeast and felt right at home amongst the little houses in "The Burg."

"You can relocate in Antarctica, but if you were born and raised in the Burg you're a Burger for life. Houses are small and obsessively neat. Televisions are large and loud. Lots are narrow. Families are extended. There are no pooper-scooper laws in the Burg. If your dog does his business on somebody else's lawn, the next morning the doo-doo will be on your front porch. Life is simple in the Burg."

Aside from the poignantly accurate description of American life in Trenton, we have the story. Stephanie spends most of this book looking for her missing uncle Fred. In the process, there's a lot of action, including attempts on her life, explosions, an ex-con who has pledged revenge against her (and he is a first-class creep, too), a very small man whom she's obliged to board in her apartment (long story), a job working for a very dangerous sort of guy, doing things like scaring drug dealers away from an apartment building, and -- you get it. It's loaded, get it. Read it. Enjoy it.

I'm going to get another one soon.

Falling Man, by Don DeLillo

2007-09-20T22:14:00.000-07:00

Scribner, New York 2007. 246 pages. ISBN 1-4165-4602-2.

Don DeLillo wrote this book about a few people living in New York City at the time of the September 11, 2001 hijacked airliner attack on the World Trade Center. One of the characters, Keith, is a survivor of the Towers who walked out with his life, barely ahead of the collapse.

Keith, his wife Lianne, their son Justin, and many other New Yorkers are portrayed in this novel in a kind of shock-dulled atmosphere where the horror and bizarre intensity of so many sudden deaths has rendered normal life practically impossible, and at the same time so very valuable, so very dear.

The prose reads to me like ocean waves lapping at the shore. In and out, quiet but overwhelming in their persistent sound. (An earlier DeLillo novel is entitled White Noise. I don't believe I've read it, but I may have.) DeLillo is a master, I've not been disappointed by a word of his choosing.

Nothing is the same now. Whether it's our fault, or the fault of forces and persons beyond our control, we are indelibly changed, no longer innocent or naive.

A European (German?) man in the story declares that America's fate is to become irrelevant.

"...Soon the day is coming when nobody has to think about America except for the danger it brings..."

And later:

"...There's an empty space where America used to be."

The Falling Man of the title is a performance artist whose repeated work is to fall from high places, jerked to a stop by "... an arrangement of straps under the dress shirt and blue suit with one strand emerging from a trouser leg ..."

Bangkok Tattoo, by John Burdett

2007-09-16T19:01:00.000-07:00

Alfred A. Knopf New York 2005. 302 pages. ISBN 1-4000-4045-0.

This is the second book I've read by John Burdett, the first being Bangkok 8. The protagonist is again Sonchai Jitpleecheep, detective in the Royal Thai Police, serving under the notorious Colonel Vikorn. Again, the book starts with a murdered American, and takes off at a wild pace into a bizarre mystery set in Bangkok and its surrounds.

While this novel has much in common with the other, I didn't find it the least bit distracting or detracting. Instead, I felt at home in Sonchai's world, having been initiated into the unique atmosphere of Thailand, and having from that other book absorbed some of Burdett's philosophy regarding what we in the West would probably term corruption.

The mystery is excellent, the action never lets up. The characters are well and completely drawn, and I found myself involved with nearly every one.

Mitch Turner, the murdered American, has apparently been killed by a prostitute named Chanya, who is in the employ of a house known as the "Old Man's Club." This institution is owned by Sonchai, his mother, and the Colonel. It becomes evident that Turner is in the employ of the CIA. His murder is particularly grisly, and involves some very particular mutilation.

As the story unfolds, we learn about the Muslim culture in Thailand, and how it feels threatened by the USA's irrational quest to find and destroy all remnants of its arch-enemy, Al Qaeda. There is a fair amount of interesting insight into what might be the attitudes of Muslims in Southeast Asia, as well as their coexistence with the Buddhists who dominate Thailand. There are some interesting discussions of the effects of these two religions, and how they compare to Christianity as manifested in the USA.

Agents of the CIA arrive and become involved. There is in the background a war going on between Colonel Vikorn of the Police and General Zinna of the Army. Incredible dirty tricks are used in this conflict, which weaves in and out of the plot and mystery concerning the death of Mitch Turner.

Turner, who was obsessed with Chanya, was also obsessed with tattoos, and tattoos become an interesting element in this story, as well as a peculiar tattoo artist from Japan. We are introduced to underground characters from both Japan and China as well in this story.

In the end, when most of the mystery is unravelled and some of it is resolved, Sonchai reminds us: "We are distracted from distraction by distraction. Nothing is happening... Says the Buddha: All meaning is realized, the universe is nirvanic."

I very much look forward to my next opportunity to read a book by John Burdett.

China Road, by Rob Gifford

2007-08-15T22:07:00.000-07:00

I must admit to only reading part, perhaps half, of this book. But it was new, and the library wouldn't let me keep it any longer. Lord knows I have to stay on good terms with that institution.

China is certainly an up-and-coming power and force in the world, in terms of economic and political influence. This book is a look at the state of the country from the viewpoint of NPR correspondent Rob Gifford, who takes and incredible long road trip along route 312, "the route 66 of China."

Gifford interviews "old hundred names," the traditional name for the common people of China, and provides a picture of what their lives are like. Whether they are truck drivers, coal miners, or prostitutes, Gifford talks to them and writes about their hopes and dreams, and their predictions for the future of the nation.

Whether Gifford's assessment of the politics and economy of China is correct I leave to experts. What I took away from this book was the feeling that I had met several contemporary Chinese working people and experienced their common humanity. They are, after all, no different than any of us who struggle to get by.

The One Percent Doctrine, by Ron Suskind

2007-08-08T22:17:00.000-07:00

Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11
Simon and Schuster, 2006. 367 pages.

OK, Americans. Required reading.

Think Dick Cheney's a little creepy?

This is a dispassionate analysis of where America's been going for the last six years. It is remarkably unbiased, and sticks to high standards of journalism, i.e. reporting as opposed to pontificating.

But you can't simply not draw some conclusions.

We haven't just become paranoid, we've discarded basic tenets of our system of government under the banner of fighting terrorism and Al Qaeda. Our latest President enjoys his second term in office with one of the lowest approval ratings ever given a US President. There is little or no doubt that he is at the very least guilty of perpetrating an enormous lie about the reason for the Iraq war, and yet he remains in office, and out of prison.

Read this well-written account of what our security services have been doing, and how public servants have been forced to either sacrifice their integrity or resign while the Cheney-Bush juggernaut rolls on.

Lincoln, by Gore Vidal

2007-08-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

OK, the truth: I got tired of this book and abandoned it after reading about two-thirds of it.

I recall that I liked Gore Vidal when last I read his stuff, so maybe this was just my problem, or maybe this just wasn't his best book.

I recently heard a Lincoln biographer interviewed on NPR say that there have been something like 14,000 books written about Lincoln. Whew.

I grew tired of what seemed like stilted, unreal dialogue. I also became aware of a consistent use of segue to move from one scene to another. This is a legitimate and useful tool in storytelling, but it should (in my humble opinion) be transparent, or at least hardly noticeable, when used skillfully.

I did learn a few interesting things about Lincoln -- unfortunately in the context of fiction, so I'll have to do more research before I can truly "believe."

Big Coal, by Jeff Goodell

2007-08-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future
Houghton Mifflin, 2006. 324 pages.

"Dirty Secret," indeed. What we have here is a man-made natural disaster in the process of unfolding, about to shower our children and grandchildren with disease, poverty, misery, cold, and darkness. And chaos. Is that gloomy enough?

In this thoroughly readable book, Goodell lays out the history and contemporary state of Coal, the business, industry, rock, and energy source. He explains where it comes from and how it's used, and who controls the mining, transport, and burning of this enormously important and dangerous natural resource. He travels around the USA, and visits China, to get a picture of how Coal figures in the contemporary global economy and environment.

Among other things, this book contains one of the best explanations of "global warming" that I have encountered. Goodell points out that the phenomena collected under this umbrella title include many more things than a simple rise in temperature. In many places, so-called global warming may actually produce lower average temperatures. For example, ocean currents that bring warm air to the British Isles could be disturbed if the salinity of the ocean is changed from Polar ice melting.

Global warming is driven mainly by Carbon Dioxide, released into the atmosphere from any number of sources. The burning of coal is an abundant source of carbon dioxide. Most of the electricity in the USA comes from coal-fired generators.

While serious and devoid of facile optimism, Big Coal is not a pessimistic book, but rather a cautionary one. Goodell leaves us on a note of hope that the coming crisis may be seen by many as an opportunity for profitable innovation, and that solutions to our problems may be found. If we are blessed with journalists like Goodell, we will have the information that we'll need to address the problems, and find the solutions.

The Innocent Man, by John Grisham

2007-06-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

This is the only non-fiction work that I have read by John Grisham. I've read many of his novels and have always found them excellent. This book was up to the same standard.

This is the story of Ron Williamson, a man wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to death in Oklahoma in 1987. Williamson was finally freed from prison in 1999, but he was a broken man haunted by serious mental illness, who died at the age of 51.

Grisham tells this story with great feeling and depth, and includes many details of Williamson's life and family. In addition, he tells the stories of other men wrongfully convicted during the same period of time, some of whom are still incarcerated without hope of release. He exposes the sloppy police work and incredibly incompetent prosecutorial procedures that have made Oklahoma the model for injustice and violation of civil rights in the USA.

Grisham makes an excellent case to stop using the death penalty in this country. Our justice system is far too flawed to use this irreversible step, even if one has no other objection to it.

Happy Bloomsday, June 16th.

2007-06-17T22:50:00.000-07:00

On Friday, the 15th of June, I sent this email message to several people:

Saturday is June 16th, the day in 1904 on which James Joyce's novel Ulysses is set. It's known as Bloomsday, after the name of the principal character, Leopold Bloom, and in Ireland it's a holiday.

I got a few responses, and they prompted me to write a little more about it. This to my nephew:

I read Ulysses once or twice about 35 years ago. It's creepy to be able to say amounts of time like that and actually mean it.

There's a great old black and white movie made of it, starring I've no idea who.

I would very much enjoy it if you would keep me posted on your joint reading -- I'm very interested in Joyce and am always amazed at the depth of his work. Personally I am only capable of appreciating the surface, but this is true for me of most art. When others explain the revelations they have discovered in Joyce (or for that matter almost any good writer) I'm always amazed and educated. So please, don't be stingy.

Here's a lovely bit from the first chapter to show you what an intellectual I am, I love this:

Buck Mulligan, hewing thick slices from the loaf, said in an old woman's wheedling voice:
--When I makes tea I makes tea, as old mother Grogan said. And when I makes water I makes water.
--By Jove, it is tea, Haines said.
Buck Mulligan went on hewing and wheedling:
--So I do, Mrs Cahill, says she. Begob, ma'am, says Mrs Cahill, God send you don't make them in the one pot.

I found Ulysses at The Gutenberg Project, and spent some happy hours on Saturday paging through it.

I sent this snippet to a teacher:

Here, teacher, Dedalus teaches (or tries to):

--You, Cochrane, what city sent for him?
--Tarentum, sir.
--Very good. Well?
--There was a battle, sir.
--Very good. Where?
The boy's blank face asked the blank window.
Fabled by the daughters of memory. And yet it was in some way if not as memory fabled it. A phrase, then, of impatience, thud of Blake's wings of excess. I hear the ruin of all space, shattered glass and toppling masonry, and time one livid final flame. What's left us then?
--I forget the place, sir. 279 B. C.
--Asculum, Stephen said, glancing at the name and date in the gorescarred book.
--Yes, sir. And he said: Another victory like that and we are done for.
That phrase the world had remembered. A dull ease of the mind. From a hill above a corpsestrewn plain a general speaking to his officers, leaned upon his spear. Any general to any officers. They lend ear.
--You, Armstrong, Stephen said. What was the end of Pyrrhus?
--End of Pyrrhus, sir?
--I know, sir. Ask me, sir, Comyn said.
--Wait. You, Armstrong. Do you know anything about Pyrrhus?
A bag of figrolls lay snugly in Armstrong's satchel. He curled them between his palms at whiles and swallowed them softly. Crumbs adhered to the tissue of his lips. A sweetened boy's breath. Welloff people, proud that their eldest son was in the navy. Vico road, Dalkey.

This, to a friend who said he had tried and failed to read Ulysses:

Ulysses is not the most "accessible" of Joyce's works. If you would like to read what I think is one of the very best short stories ever written by anyone, and written by Joyce, and eminently readable, try "The Dead," from his book Dubliners.

Now, I'll freely admit that I love Joyce and without any rational reason for I'd guess that 3/4 of what he put into his writing goes right over my head but many years ago my old friend and High School English teacher John Hogan clued me in that the magic of Joyce is in reading his stuff aloud. He had a young daughter, Maggie, who was around 10 years old at the time, and he and his family went on a car trip somewhere. To pass the time and entertain everyone, Maggie read to the family from Finnegan's Wake.

Should there ever be a contest for the most inscrutable published work in the English language Finnegan's would have to be one of the top contenders, if not the hands-down winner. But, said Mr. Hogan, listening to Maggie read it for hours in the car, it made sense: it sounded good. It was like music, he said. Finnegan's wake is many things, and as I said, most of them I don't understand, but it is an orgy of words, just words for their own sake, and there are thousands and thousands of them, many of them made up new just for the occasion.

Joyce was nearly blind for much of his life, and the sounds of things were necessarily more important to him than their detailed appearance.

It's hard to say exactly why Joyce has always (at least since High School) appealed to me. He's Irish, and hard to understand, so perhaps that's the attraction?

The Wanderings of My Reading Life

2007-06-17T22:06:00.000-07:00

I started writing these little reviews in October 2005. At that time I put them on a free blogging site called "Blogsource." It seemed fine at the time. Here's the original URL of My Reading Life:

http://readinglife.blogsource.com/

Please note that that link will become non-functional at some point. That's what I understand, anyway.

Blogsource recently let me know that they were shutting down, but offered to move my blog to a new location:

http://eflester.livedigital.com/blog

And indeed they did. They did a fine job, as far as I have checked. But it's just not where I want to be. Live Digital is very nice, and free, and works OK, and this is in no way any kind of complaint about either Live Digital or Blogsource. They are both free, and provide a way for people to publish stuff on the Web without doing a lot of work to format it. That's what I was looking for at the outset. But Live Digital is a "social networking" site, according to the person that communicated with me. It has lots of features that don't interest me in the least, and doesn't impress me as the place that I want as a home for this journal.

Since I have two other blogs hosted here on Blogger, it makes sense to move My Reading Life here too. So that's what I'm working on. I've moved quite a few entries, starting with the most recent and working my way backwards.

At the present, then, there are 3 different places where I've placed this blog on the Internet. Eventually, blogsource.com will go away. And I will most likely remove my stuff from livedigital.com as well, but not anytime soon.

If you enjoy reading my little essays, you'll find them here on Blogger.

Homeland, by Barbara Kingsolver

2007-06-17T13:07:00.000-07:00

"Homeland"

The title story takes place in Morning Glory, Kentucky, "a coal town hacked with sharp blades out of a forest that threatened always to take it back." The Murray family has native American roots, as well as European. Great Mam is the Cherokee great-grandmother of Nathan, Jack, and Gloria -- the narrator of the story-- the grandmother of John (Papa, "Indian John") Murray. Florence Ann (Mother) Murray is married to John, and the children's mother.

"The primary business of Mother's life was scrubbing things, and she herself looked scrubbed. Her skin was the color of a clean boiled potato. We didn't get in her way."

Great Mam is near the end of her life, and her grandson wants to take her to Tennessee, to see where she grew up, the Homeland of her people. He decides that they will drive to Cherokee, Tennessee. This will be an arduous and expensive journey in their old truck, but the whole family will go.

Gloria, "Waterbug," relates some of the Indian lore and mythology that Great Mam shares with her, such as her belief in the "little people," who appear at night as stars in the sky, and by day walk invisibly amongst us, reclaiming discarded things such as withered flowers, and returning them whence they came.

In 2001 and the dark years that have followed it, the word "Homeland" has taken on a meaning that it did not have before in this country. Kingsolver published this collection of stories in 1989. It is interesting to note that she seems to be using the word to point toward the destruction of the Indians homeland, the destruction of their past and their heritage. The Murrays represent, among other things, a stage in the assimilation of the native American people into the modern culture and society of the USA. They work, struggle, grow, raise their children, fight the exploitation of their lives by corporations, they die, and make way for the next stage, the next generation.

"Blueprints"

This is a story about Lydia and Whitman, a couple who, by choice, live in a rural area, a sort of "back to nature" rebellion against modern life. They have moved from Sacramento to Blind Gap, thinking to find romance. Instead they have discovered inconvenience, deprivation, and small-mindedness.

"Her memories from Sacramento smell like salt-rising bread ... Whitman with his sleeves rolled up, gregarious ... giving his kindest advice ... to the people who gravitated endlessly to their kitchen. But when [he] was removed from that warm, crowded place he'd hardened like a rock."

The story's title comes from this:

"Whitman has an astonishing memory for details. Often he will draw out the plans for something he's building and then complete the whole piece without referring again to the blueprints."

And this, while Lydia is lecturing her young science students:

"She tells them about imprinting in ducks.
" ' It's something like a blueprint for life.' "

In this short story we are invited deep into this relationship, and get to see its weakness and its strength, and have an idea of its future.

"Covered Bridges"

I will describe this as a love story, about another couple, unsure of who they want to be. The husband (I don't think we ever learn his name) narrates the story, and describes his love for his Lena believably and beautifully.

They are married, settled, thinking of whether to have a baby, but can't decide. They decide to "borrow" (babysit) a friend's youngster for a weekend.

Melinda, the borrowed baby, is a bit of a problem. They take her outdoors to amuse her. this works, but while they are playing Lena is stung by a hornet, to which she is deathly allergic. Her husband saves her by administering her epinephrine shot. Later, as she recovers in the hospital, she says:

"Having a child wouldn't make you immortal. It would make you twice as mortal."

And like Whitman and Lydia, they must decide what they will be.

"Quality Time"

This story is about Miriam, a single mother, and her daughter Rennie. As the life of such truncated little families can be, theirs is rather hectic, even stressful. Miriam tries to deal with it all by making lists, and carefully managing her time.

One day, as Miriam eats a hurried lunch, she overhears a mother explaining to her daughter that Mommy and Daddy are getting divorced.

It comes to Miriam like a slow shock, building up in her nerve endings until her skin hurts. This conversation will only happen once in that little girl's life, and I have to overhear it, Miriam is thinking. It has to be here. The surroundings seem banal, so cheery and hygienic, so many wiped-clean plastic surfaces. But then Miriam doesn't know what setting would be better. Certainly not some unclean place, and not an expensive restaurant either -- that would be worse. To be expecting a treat, only to be socked with this news.

In these few pages we get a very deep look into the lives of these two females adrift in the modern world, buffeted by its unfeeling forces, and how much they love each other, mother and daughter. Their life, Kingsolver says somehow (I think) is all right. It may not be the life of a single mother and daughter on American TV and it may not fit any stereotype at all, but it is all right. And they will live as well as they can, and they do.

"Stone Dreams"

In which we have a mother and daughter, a husband, and a lover. Complicated, dangerous -- and oddly resolved.

"Survival Zones"

Darrell and Millie Ormsby, and their friends Roberta and Ed are people in their forties, rural people who live somewhere around Cincinnati. As the story begins they're spending an evening together, although "Darrell is in bed with the stomach flu. Every so often he lows like a calf from the bedroom and Millie has to go get him some more Seven-Up." When Roberta returns home, she is wakeful, and after watching TV for a while "She goes into the kitchen and is surprised to find Roxanne sitting at the table in her yellow terry robe." This mother and daughter talk about love, and marriage, and growing up, as Roxanne is about to graduate from High School:

"Mama, Danny and me are talking about getting married."
"...What's your hurry?" ...She wonders if Roxanne would be able to tell her if she were pregnant.

And later,

"Honey, what I'm trying to say is, things generally work out for the best, whichever way they go. Don't do something just because you think it's going to be your last chance in the world at being happy."

The story concludes at Thanksgiving,

Roberta imagines the army of women across the country marching into their kitchens with turkeys like this, preparing to pick the bones clean for sandwiches and soup stocks that will nourish their families halfway to Christmas.

"Islands on the Moon"

This mother and daughter is a little more unusual. Annemarie and Magda are apparently products of the sixties, Magda being of the Summer of Love generation (or even the Beat) and Annemarie a very early child:

Magda had Annemarie when she was sixteen and has been standing on tiptoe ever since to see over or around her difficult daughter to whatever is on the other side.

As this story begins, we discover that both Annemarie and Magda are pregnant.

"Bereaved Apartments"

A strange, moody story in which two unlikely acquaintances develop a sort of unhealthy interest in an old woman's home, and the things in it.

"Extinctions"

This story is a complicated weave of family involvement. On the surface, a mother takes her two boys on a rather long auto trip to her childhood home, to attend Easter services with her aged relatives. There are dark overtones of Southern fundamentalist mystery and guilt, and closeted insanity.

"Jump Up Day"

Set somewhere in the Caribbean, "Jump Up Day" places an orphan -- her parents were probably American -- within a maze of African magical mystique. She is contacted by a mysterious person, the Obeah Man, reputed to have supernatural powers, who commands her to meet him and take a trip into the jungle.

"Rose Johnny"

In small towns it is somehow even more difficult to be a member of a minority. This is about prejudice, and bigotry, mob violence, sexism, ignorance -- practically the gamut of Human Evil run in the confines of this little place, and what place love and respect can have in such a muddle.

"Why I Am A Danger to the Public"

I read this story elsewhere before reading this collection. According to the publisher it appeared "in somewhat different form" in New Times. I have no recollection of ever reading that journal, but it's certainly possible.

"Danger" is a first-person narrative by a woman who "was not going to support my kids in no little short skirt down at the Frosty King." Instead she gets a job at the mine. As a female in a non-traditional job, a latina, and Union member during a strike on the mine, "Mrs. Morales" has a lot on her plate. But as she says at the end of the story,

"...They say he is all in one piece.
"Well, I am too."

---------------------------------------------------------------------

A quote from some Kingsolver advice to aspiring writers: "...breathe deeply and kill your television."

From HarperAcademic.com:
" Twelve short stories unified by Kingsolver's trademark themes of family ties and life choices."

Wikipedia article about Kingsolver.

The View From Castle Rock, by Alice Munro

2007-06-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

This book is a collection of short stories with a common theme. Munro's ancestors came to Canada and the USA from Scotland, and this collection is about them, and their influence on the narrator of the more contemporary stories in the second part, whom I suspect to be at least approximately the author.

Castle Rock is divided into a Foreword, Two Parts, and an Epilogue. Part One is entitled "No Advantages," Part Two "Home." The Epilogue contains a single piece, "Messenger."

"No Advantages" is also the name of the introductory piece in Part One. It describes Ettrick, "...fifty miles due south of Edinburgh, and thirty or so miles north of the English border..." The story is prefaced by an epigraph attributed to "The Statistical Account of Scotland, 1799" that describes Ettrick as a "parish" that "possesses no advantages." The narrator visits Ettrick in modern times, it seems, looking for signs of her ancestors. One of these is William Laidlaw, also known as "Will O'Phaup." Will O'Phaup was believed by some to be one of the last human beings to have seen fairies. Munro hastens to clarify the true nature of the "little people:"

"Fairies were not blithe and captivating. They belonged to the olden times...the truly dark times...of bad powers and evil confusion, and their attentions were oftener than not malicious, or even deadly."

We shift from this ancient evil to a description of the famous Presbyterian preacher Thomas Boston. This formidable Protestant preached fiery sermons, and wrote a book "...said to stand next to the Bible in every pious home in Scotland..." Boston wrestled with his own unworthiness, examining his own soul and finding it lacking. "So it seems strange to me that Thomas Boston should have been the minister whom Will O'Phaup listened to every Sunday..."

"The past is full of contradictions...perhaps equal to those of the present..." This is, as Munro reminds us in her Foreword, a story -- but it has the ring of truth, the unswallowable dissonant nature of a recounting of How Things Were.

Will O'Phaup had grandsons, James Hogg and James Laidlaw. James Hogg became a writer. Laidlaw had a daughter and five sons. His son William, says Munro, "...will be my great-great-grandfather..."

James Laidlaw, "a modern man," and a lonely widower, becomes interested in emigrating to America. He is "scornful of the place where he was born." And so prepared, we go to the next story.

"The View From Castle Rock."

The story begins with a trip to Edinburgh for Andrew and his father. Andrew's childhood memory of this trip is of climbing the great tower at Edinburgh Castle, and from that great height they look out across

"...a wide silvery stretch of water. And beyond that a pale green and grayish-blue land ... a land as light as mist, sucked into the sky.

"'So did I not tell you?' Andrew's father said. 'America... you have looked over at America... God grant you one day you will see it closer up and for yourself.'"

And later:

"He knew he was not looking at America, though it was some years before he was well enough acquainted with maps to know that he had been looking at Fife."

But to America they did go, in 1818 -- James with his children Andrew, Walter, and Mary, Andrew's wife Agnes, and little James, the grandson, not yet two years old. the passage seems reasonable, considering the age in which it was accomplished, but it is not uneventful. Young Walter has a journal where he records the adventures as well as the mundane details of their journey. Nine days into the voyage he reports the death, and sea burial, of a child.

Agnes, Andrew's wife, gives birth to a daughter, who "can say all her life that she was born at sea."

“Poor Mary” (“...indeed the meagreness and timidity of many of the women in their family has caused that word to be attached to [their] names ...”) spends most of her time caring for her young nephew, James.

“He does not have to whimper or complain – she knows his feelings by the way he digs his little knees into her.”

“She and he communicate in a half-and-half language – half her teaching and half his invention. She believes that he is one of the cleverest children ever born into the world.”

And Mary, Oh, Mary...

“Mary ... thinks that women ... lead an appalling life... She will never forget her own mother, who lay in bed out of her mind with a fever...till she died, three days after Walter was born. She had screamed at the black pot hanging over the fire, thinking it was full of devils.”

In the course of this story James Laidlaw changes from the adventurous one who impels them all to leave Scotland for the New World, to the old story-telling patriarch, pointing out the past, deprecating the present--regret, remorse, or just the situation changing his personality.

"Illinois."

William Laidlaw, James's brother, settled in Joliet, Illinios in the 1830s with his wife Mary and their children. "There, in Joliet, on the 5th of January, either 1839 or 1840, William died of cholera, and Mary gave birth to a girl."

"The Wilds of Morris Township."

"William's children grew up in Esquesing, [Ontario] among their cousins." When they were grown, they set off on their own "for another wilderness." This was the settlement of Morris. These brothers and sisters and spouses were amazingly hard-working, incredibly sober and frugal people.

These hard-nosed Scots practically dare the land not to allow them to make a living from it. It is this victory over Nature that seems to transcend their lives, and it is perhaps the root of the disdain for people enamored of "nature" that Munro relates in the stories placed nearer our own time.

"Working For A Living."

The narrator's father makes a living as a fur trapper, fur farmer, later works in a foundry, and at the end of his life becomes a writer. This is a complex tale about a couple who marry and make their way in a small town in Canada, how they survive the Depression and the time after, and what this all does to them. And the theme of life, and death, and continuance, is continued.

Part Two

"Fathers."

In which three fathers are described, an abusive monster, a man who is perhaps too solicitious toward his child, and the narrator's own, "...the parent I sorely wanted to please." Or at least this is how they seem to be, at first.

Monsters beget monsters. The narrator reveals some truth about her own insincerity, her willingness to appease her parents in order to manipulate them. And she tells us some of the dark side of being a child, of ganging up on an unpopular classmate, not wanting to be associated with an unpopular child.

"Fathers" could have been entitled "Fathers and Children," or perhaps "Our Fathers."

"Lying Under the Apple Tree."

The narrator is a little older now, and showing some signs of the young woman she will become. This story is one in which she mentions how unacceptable it is in her culture to talk about "Nature," although the people in this rural Canadian town are surrounded on all sides by nothing else, and live within it -- but this is the type of person, we would think, who puts on airs, wastes time, and perhaps thinks she's a little better than those around her. Some of the values of Munro's Scottish ancestors are apparent here.

There is also the adventure of an early adolescent love attraction, not shy of the physical, which has an interesting outcome.

Munro perhaps tells us something of her own childhood and adolescence, of the events and circumstances that have molded this writer, and reader -- in the end, shocked and disappointed by her young man, she dives into a book, any book, and doesn't come out.

"Hired Girl."

The narrator tells about a summer job as a maid to some wealthy folks living on one of the Great Lakes. "I did not have the grace or fortitude to be a servant." Again, a book is her refuge at the end.

"The Ticket."

The Fall before her wedding, the narrator cares for her mother at home. Her mother is ill with Parkinson's disease; this has been mentioned before in some of these stories. She is close to her Grandmother, and Aunt Charlie; the latter is sewing her wedding dress. She compares social and economic classes between her family and that of her fiance, jumping into the future of their wedded life together and comparing wedding presents:

"The presents from my husband's family were packed in the shops where they were purchased, and shipped to Vancouver...
"Nothing in my trunks ... came up to scratch...
"But my husband did concede that a good job had been done with the packing... when I tried putting some of these things where they could be seen ... he had to speak plainly. And I myself saw the point."

She compares three marriages, while contemplating her own, about to begin. These are those of her parents, her grandparents, and her Aunt Charlie. Of the three, it seems that Charlie's may have been the one to be envied. Although they never had children, "Their affection was legendary."

"Home."

Later in life, after her mother's death, the narrator goes home to visit her father and his wife in their home, the home of her youth. Munro describes the remoteness and insignificance of their town by describing the bus trip that she takes to get to it, which requires three buses, each of which descends in comfort and efficiency.

Her father's new wife is a rough and practical woman, in some ways coarse, but at the same time sentimental about her husband, and her old dog. During the visit, her father is ill enough to go to the hospital, but at the end of the story it seems that he will be all right, at least for a while.

Munro effectively paints the texture and color of this remote rural place, and we know her connection to it and her separation from it. In the ending, she describes a vision from "the worst winter of my childhood, which was 1935." It is nothing spectacular, just a clear memory of a cold night when she helped her father milk the cow, the cow which died that awful winter, and the gathering cold, "which killed all the chestnut trees, and many orchards."

"What Do You Want to Know For?"

In this story the narrator reminds us of her own mortality, as she is seeing a physician about some suspicious lumps in her breast.

"So this is the first time.
Such frights will come and go.
Then there'll be one that won't. One that won't go."

She and her husband explore the countryside in Western Ontario. The beginning theme of learning about families from old graveyards is repeated, as they attempt to discover the history of some unusual crypts.

In the course of this, they meet a man who remembers her father:

"He takes a closer look at me, and laughs.
"'You're not telling me he was your dad, are you?'"

And later:

"'Well now. I can see it in you. Bob Laidlaw's girl. 'Round the eyes. That's a long time ago...'
"...I agree with him, and then we both say that it is a small world ... We explore the connection as far as it will go... we are both happy. He is happy to be reminded of himself as a young man ... with confidence in what lay ahead of him...
"And I am happy to find somebody who can see me still as part of my family, who can remember my father and the place where my parents worked ... first in hope and then in honorable persistence. "

Epilogue

"Messenger."

Here is another search for a burial ground, this time in Joliet, Illinois. The narrator and her husband travel into the USA "in the summer of 2004", looking for "some trace of the life of William Laidlaw, my great-great-grandfather," the immigrant who died early in the story "Illinois."

"Flags everywhere. Signs. God Bless America."

"... And Joliet rimmed with new suburban houses ... all alike. And even these are preferable, I think, to the grander sort ... with vast shelter for cars and windows high enough for a cathedral."

Amidst the suburban mysteries of Illinois, Munro eventually despairs of finding the actual burial place of her great-great-grandfather. She returns to Blyth, in Ontario, west of Toronto, where Mary Scott is buried.

"On her stone is the name of that man, William Laidlaw.
Died in Illinois. And buried God knows where."

We've come so far, and covered nearly two hundred years. But we've gotten more than a history lesson, and more than a picture of pioneer life. Munro reveals herself in these stories with a courage and (I think) honesty that leaves me breathless and astonished. I found myself searching my own dim childhood memories for forgotten people and places, and significances.

It was difficult to write about this collection because I did want to do it justice, and it's a work that is far above my own meagre talents. This was a book in which I was happy to lose myself, and yet also to find myself -- and from an unlikely source, perhaps -- and yet it is hard for me to put down what it is about these stories that captivates me. As I re-read them in trying to write this review, I got lost in them again. I was in Ontario, I could feel its sun and weather, and breathe its air, and look through the eyes of the younger and older woman who tells these tales. I ask no better reward from any work of literature.

James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd
Ettrick Kirk and Thomas Boston
Georgian Bay and Around, Photos by Hanif Bayat

The DaVinci Code, by Dan Brown

2007-05-03T21:24:00.000-07:00

This was a very popular book a year or two ago. I think it's been made into a movie as well. It's a thriller that deals with the search for the Holy Grail. Along the way, we find out that the Holy Grail is not meant to be the cup from which Jesus drank at the Last Supper, but it is rather a depository of documents that tell the "true" story of Jesus, and incidentally of Mary Magdalene, who -- as it turns out -- was Jesus' s wife and the mother of their progeny. Indeed, we learn that there is a "royal family," descendants of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, that are alive today.

There is a lot of discussion about the decline of appreciation for the feminine in the Christian church, and how the pagan religions had great respect for this aspect of humanity. Didn't Tom Robbins cover this about 30 years ago?

All in all, a disappointing book.

What the Dead Know, by Laura Lippman

2007-05-03T18:54:00.000-07:00

373 pages (Hardcover). William Morrow 2007.

A terrific new mystery from Laura Lippman.

Heather and Sunny Bethany, two young sisters, disappeared in the late seventies while on a shopping trip to a local mall. For thirty years the police have been unable to find them. Now, a disoriented woman, involved in a hit-and-run auto accident, claims to be Heather. She says that she and her sister were abducted, her sister killed, and that she had been forced to live under an assumed identity until her captor turned her out when she reached age 18.

Lippman lays out the mystery for us with extensive flashbacks into the Bethany family's lives. Miriam and Dave, the parents, are slightly quirky products of the sixties and seventies, but mostly just normal loving parents of two bright girls. The sisters get along fairly well for siblings with a few years of age difference; there's a certain amount of unwelcome-baby-sister-tagging-along, but we find that Heather, the younger sister, may actually be more mature than Sunny.

The detectives are mostly believable; I did find some seemingly superfluous aspects of their characters slightly irritating (why do we need to know that Infante is a womanizer, and Willoughby independently wealthy?), but this is picking nits. Lippman was probably just trying to make human beings. It's not that easy, and another reader might not feel the way I did.

I was interested in the use of the word "police" in this book. While used in all or most of the conventional (to me) ways, it was also used as an objective noun, as in "Willoughby was a retired police," or "I am a police." In the lexicon to which I am accustomed, this would have been "policeman," or the more politically-correct "police officer." Perhaps in Maryland this is a common usage. And perhaps I should learn to ignore such minor anomalies, but I found it interesting, if not distracting.

We are given the outline of the mystery, all the necessary characters, all the pieces of the puzzle. I will not spoil this mystery, but I am proud to say that I figured out a small part of it before reading to the end. This was just enough to involve me, not enough to make me disenchanted -- in short, this is very skillful mystery writing.

I think Laura Lippman's books will be at our house again -- I hope it will be soon.

The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan

2007-05-02T23:50:00.000-07:00

312 pages, paperback, Mariner Books (Houghton Mifflin) 2006.

This is the story of No Man's Land, the dust bowl, Oklahoma, Texas, Nebraska in 1935 -- the people who, unlike Steinbeck's Joads, didn't leave for California and the Grapes of Wrath.

The Dust Bowl, the storms that ravaged the High Plains during the Depression, is an event that goes on my imaginary list of "Things They Didn't Teach Me in American History." This was, quite simply, a man-made environmental disaster on a grand scale. Faced as we are with the possibility that our current actions and habits are changing the Earth's climate, this is a sobering story for our times.

[Image from Wikimedia Commons, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Dust_Storm_Texas_1935.jpg]

Egan is an entertaining writer, he follows the story of disaster and despair by following individual histories of some of the people who lived through, or didn't live through, these storms and their consequences.

Beginning with the decimation of the Comanche, the killing of the buffalo, and the eventual stripping of the prairie grasses in favor of wheat, Egan shows us how the stage was set for such a tragedy. He exposes the disingenuous boosterism that caused the irresponsible settling of the Plains -- the result of which was the erosion of millions of tons of topsoil by wind.

Egan enumerates the cost in human lives and misery graphically and believably -- this could be a dull, depressing list of grievances and injustices, but instead he uses artful characterizations of the real people involved to bring the time and place to life.

This is good reading for anyone, but I highly recommend it for young Americans. They will have the burden of living with the next man-made disaster on our Planet; they will have the responsibility to try to mitigate it. Perhaps in some small way Egan's work can facilitate this Herculean task.

Search Google with the term "Dust bowl."

Tom Jones, by Henry Fielding

2007-05-02T21:32:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure what I expected when I picked this musty paperback off my shelf. I've found much in Tom Jones, including a great deal of delightful language and terrific entertainment. And I have been surprised to find much wisdom, for examples of which I offer the following.

On Karma:

"...nothing can be more reasonable, than that slaves and flatterers should exact the same taxes on all below them, which they themselves pay to all above them..."
Henry Fielding. Tom Jones Book I, Chapter VI.

On Mental Illness:

"The diseases of the mind do in almost every particular imitate those of the body."
-ibid. Book IV, Chapter XII.

On Self-Knowledge and Honesty:

"for let a man be never so honest, the account of his own conduct will, in spite of himself, be so very favourable, that his vices will come purified through his lips, and, like foul liquors well strained, will leave all their foulness behind."
-ibid. Book VIII, Chapter V.

On Confidence Men, Tricksters, and Software Marketing Executives:

"...men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand. A grand secret, upon which several imposers on mankind have totally relied for the success of their frauds."
-ibid. Vol. II, Book XI, Chapter II.

On Literary Criticism:

" ...the slander of a book is, in truth, the slander of the author: for, as no one can call another bastard, without calling the mother a whore, so neither can any one give the names of sad stuff, horrid nonsense, &c., to a book, without calling the author a blockhead; which, though in a moral sense it is a preferable appellation to that of villain, is perhaps rather more injurious to his worldly interest.
"Now, however ludicrous all this may appear to some, others, I doubt not, will feel and acknowledge the truth of it; nay, may, perhaps, think I have not treated the subject with decent solemnity; but surely a man may speak truth with a smiling countenance. In reality, to depreciate a book maliciously, or even wantonly, is at least a very illnatured office; and a morose snarling critic may, I believe, be suspected to be a bad man."
-ibid. Vol. II, Book XI, Chapter I.

Tom Jones is, Fielding tells us, a "history," which will deal with an exploration of "human nature." And what a wonderful history it is. This is the kind of novel for which the word "rollicking" was invented. Fielding must have been a very funny man; his insight into human foibles and shortcomings is sharp and timeless. He spares noone, noble or common, from the point of his wit.

Read Tom Jones online at Bartleby.com.

I read this book slowly over a long period of time, about 5 months. I sort of miss it now, it was a good friend over that time. I can't add to the volumes of intelligent and educated criticism of it, there has been much written about this novel in the last 258 years. One critic said words to the effect that he had never seen a more perfect plot, and I couldn't agree more.

To Henry Fielding in Heaven, thank you, sir.

So It Goes

2007-04-15T03:00:00.001-07:00

Earth lost a great human being on 11 April 2007. At the age of 84, Kurt Vonnegut died in New York City. He was the author of many wonderful novels, including Slaughterhouse Five, Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan, Mother Night, and Player Piano.

Discovering Vonnegut's writing was as if I had found a kind and wise uncle who always tried his best to explain how and why life is the way it is, and to reassure us all that it wouldn't be so bad if we'd just be a little nicer to each other.

Kurt Vonnegut was certainly one of The Greatest Generation's finest, and greatest writers. So much of his sensibility and world view was shaped by that horrible war in the 1940's, yet to me, born a few years after World War II was over, he seemed always contemporary and relevant.

Any time I've had the opportunity to read anything that he wrote, whether a novel, short story, or essay, I have done so eagerly and have not been disappointed. His voice, so dependable, so sane and clear, has always been worth hearing. Listen, he would say, and I did, and I was always delighted.

I will not try here to summarize his writing, that has been done elsewhere, but only to say goodbye to a great man, a hero to me and many, a great humanist, and a kind uncle willing to reassure anyone who would Listen.

Exit Wounds, by JA Jance

2007-04-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

April 15 2007 (03:00:00) ( 1 view )

Avon Books paperback, 2004. 390 pages. (First published in hardcover by William Morrow in 2003.)
A Joanna Brady mystery.

I was first introduced to J. A. Jance as the writer of the J. P. Beaumont series. Beaumont is a detective on the Seattle Police force. Being a Western Washington dweller, I was attracted to these novels in part by being familiar with the places in which they were set, and enjoyed the references to local customs and institutions, such as the (now defunct) Doghouse Restaurant, an old-fashioned greasy spoon choked by cigarette smoke that was a favorite hangout for Seattle denizens for many decades.

My standards for mystery fiction aren't incredibly high, and reading stuff set in Seattle that was mysterious enough and diverting enough to keep my attention kept me going. And Jance has had her moments.

Several years ago I read (or, more precisely, listened to a recording of) a book by her called Hour of the Hunter. Now that was a terrific novel. It had a great story, lots of suspense and mystery, and made me curious to learn more about the Tohono O'otham tribe, whose nation spans the border between Mexico and the USA.

I regret to report that I can't give Exit Wounds the same kind of praise. It does adhere to what I consider to be the essential principles of mystery:

The perpetrator(s) is (are) part of the entire story, introduced as close as possible toward the beginning but not revealed until the end of the story.
The identity of the perpetrator is not obvious, but it is not farfetched or ridiculous -- even though it may be made to seem so until the mystery is solved.
The story contains plenty of interesting characters, settings, and details.
The mystery is not bogged down in or by the interesting characters, settings, and details.

The novel loses points with me for having unbelievable characters. My biggest complaint is the Sheriff herself. I guess I've just gotten tired of Joanna Brady. She is so good, pure, kind, and even religious, that I actually find myself disliking her. This is distracting. Her husband is nearly as perfect as she. And her daughter -- I haven't met any 13 year olds anything like Joanna's perfectly cooperative non-whining mopeless Jenny.

This is not my first Joanna Brady novel, I've read most of them, so I can't say I wasn't familiar with the character. Without doing an exhaustive re-reading and study of the series I'd have to admit that I don't really know this, but I have the feeling that Joanna has become more like the person I have described above. Perhaps I've just become more grouchy and/or sensitive about her. In any event, I was undeniably distracted by my own irritation with this issue while reading Exit Wounds.

The novel deals with the murder of a woman named Carol Mossman who lives in a mobile home on a sort of run-down ranch. She has a large number of dogs, something like 12 or more, living there. We later find that she is a "hoarder," a person with a specific mental illness compelled to take in unreasonable numbers of unwanted animals. It's explained that such people are often victims of abuse, including sexual abuse. Soon after this murder, another is committed, this time involving two women who are found near a highway several miles from the town of Bisbee, where Joanna lives and enforces the law. As the story progresses, we learn that the murders are related, and related to Mossman's family's troubles.

Underlying the murders is a complicated family dispute that involves abduction, polygamy, and membership in a strange quasi-religious sect called "The Brethren," reminiscent of some similar strange organizations and practices we've heard of in the news.

The mystery itself is good, the book is readable and free of embarrassing mistakes in detail (as far as I noticed), and I would welcome it if it were the best I could find to entertain me on an airplane trip or some other interlude of boredom.

The Last Place, by Laura Lippman

2007-04-11T21:28:00.000-07:00

William Morrow 2002. 341 pages.

Maureen and I heard about Laura Lippman recently on NPR. They were talking about her latest book, What the Dead Know. Our library has it but there are the usual dozens of prior holds on a new book, so I picked up a copy of The Last Place, an older book in the author's list of works.

This is part of a detective series, the detective's name is Tess Monaghan, a newspaper reporter turned private investigator. Tess lives in Baltimore, and this story takes place in and around that city.

This is the story of Tess's inquiry into a string of deaths that seem to be related to domestic violence. She enters into the investigation at the behest of a foundation to which one of her friends belongs. Quickly, many complications develop and it becomes obvious that she is investigating a series of murders, and they are likely committed by the same person.

Lippman uses a technique of interjecting sections from the point of view of the mysterious adversary. These are set in a sans-serif type to distinguish them from the rest of the text. I've seen similar techniques in other novels, with varying degrees of success. It works well in this book as a way to build suspense and give us sufficient insight into the criminal's motivation.

Dialogue is readable and believable in this book. Monaghan acquires an assistant named Carl, a retired turnpike guard who was closely involved in one of the murders, having found a victim's remains. Here's part of an exchange between Carl and Tess:

"Did you know Lucy Fancher before --" Tess stopped, groping for the right words.
He lifted his eyes from the box. "Before I found her head on the bridge?"
"Yes."
"North East isn't that small. Sometimes I think I might have seen her once or twice in town. But that's wishful thinking."
"Wishful thinking?"
"Wouldn't your rather know someone as a whole living, breathing person instead of just a head?"

The Last Place is a good, entertaining read, and Tess Monaghan is a great fictional detective. We look forward to reading more Laura Lippman.

http://www.lauralippman.com/

Wikipedia Article

Double Tap, by Steve Martini

2007-04-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

April 11 2007 (21:27:00) ( 1 view )

A Paul Madriani Novel.
Jove (Penguin) 2006. 401 pages.
First printing: G.P. Putnam's Sons (hardcover) 2005.

Wow. Once again, Steve Martini has reminded me that he deserves nothing less than the status of such legal-thriller genre authors as Grisham and Turow. He is a master, and I often think he's even better than the others. Double Tap is nothing less than a triumph for Martini and I hope he gets the recognition and compensation he deserves.

Note to movie producers: If nobody has started a film project based on this book, run, do not walk, to this man's agent and pay what you have to for the rights. This is a terrific movie between paper covers. I don't mean to belittle or demean this novel's accomplishments as simply a novel. It is perfectly successful without leaving the printed page. I only wish to see this type of effort lavishly rewarded, and I suspect that such rewards are more available from the film rather than the print industry.

Paul Madriani is a lawyer working in the La Jolla/San Diego area. We first met him in earlier novels working in "Capital City," which one suspects to be a thinly disguised Sacramento. But Paul's life has changed since the early days. His wife passed away, the victim of cancer, his daugher has grown up, he has had some traumatic experiences with violence related to his cases, and he is a tough, mature man with strong convictions. He is, in short, the perfect modern-day noir hero. He is a type of Legal Samurai, with an aw-shucks overlay reminiscent of a Woody Allen character. I hadn't read a Paul Madriani book in some time and I felt as if I were seeing a favorite old friend again.

Paul works with a partner, Harry Hinds, a character Harry Morgan was born to play.

In this story Paul and Harry defend Emiliano Ruiz, a young special-forces veteran accused of murdering a woman for whom he had worked as a bodyguard. As the plot unfolds, we are treated to a full-fledged whodunit laced with cybernetics, Federal government malfeasance, hints about the PATRIOT act, the NSA, legislative corruption at both the State and Federal levels -- a delicious salad of thriller, mystery, and modern-day political commentary.

Ruiz is charged with the murder of Madelyn Chapman, a filthy-rich software executive who had an ongoing close working relationship with a shady "General Satz." Chapman's company, "Isotenics,Inc." seems to be in possession of a terrifically powerful database application that would enable data mining on an unprecedented scale, national if not global, and would give whoever controlled it the ability to monitor and predict the actions of all types of people, allies, enemies, whatever -- if it were given access to enough data. We are shown that Isotenics most likely stole the source code for this application from a now sick and dying programmer named Kaprosky, who helps Madriani and Hinds with their case.

Double Tap is a great, satisfying thriller and mystery, with a real surprise ending. Don't miss it, and don't miss the movie (if somebody takes my tip -- remember, you heard it here first!).

http://www.stevemartini.com/

Saki

2007-03-16T15:55:00.000-07:00

March 16 2007 (15:55:00)

I must thank Merle Reagle and his crossword puzzle of 11 March 2007 for reminding me of Saki. I struggled for a while with that clue, and the name "H.H. Munro" popped into my mind.

Wikipedia has a good article about him, which has whetted my appetite.

Saki's works are now in the public domain, so here are some links to places where his stories may be read online:

http://haytom.us/showarticle.php?id=71#top

http://mclibrary.nhmccd.edu/lit/saki.html

I just read "A Holiday Task" from the first site, and "The Open Window" from the second. Both tales put me in mind of O'Henry's work -- I found the second more to my liking. They are both excellently written, compact, perfectly done.

Here's a link to "The Chronicles of Clovis" with an introduction by A.A. Milne.

http://gutenberg.readingroo.ms/etext03/clovs10.txt

Good reading!

EL

The Thunderbolt Kid, by Bill Bryson

2007-02-05T04:02:00.000-08:00

February 05 2007 (04:02:00)

The Life and Times of The Thunderbolt Kid. A Memoir.
Broadway Books 2006 270 pages.

Bill Bryson was born in 1951, right between my wife and myself. This book is a celebration of growing up in the 50s and 60s, and of course that's when we grew up, so this is a guaranteed nostalgia hit for us.

The Fifties was a time when the United States of America was at a sort of peak of universal belief that we were Right, that we were the Best, and that God had caused this to happen directly with His own power. It was also a time when some of that belief was shaken, by such events as the Russian success with Sputnik and the rise and fall of Joseph McCarthy.

Bryson points out how unusual, how rich with unique occurences was that time, and quantifies differences between now and then.

"Apart from baseball's greatest home run [and the author's birth] ... 1951 was not a hugely eventful year in America... The war in Korea was in full swing... Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had just been convicted... Oliver Brown sued the local school board ...

"America in 1951 had a population of 150 million ... no interstate highways ... about a quarter as many cars [as today]... Men wore hats and ties almost everywhere. Women prepared every meal ... from scratch. Milk came in bottles. The mailman came on foot. Total government spending was $50 billion a year, compared with $2.5 trillion now."
(page 11)

Bryson describes his youth, his home town of Des Moines, Iowa during his youth, his life with his parents (they were a bit unusual, both worked for the Des Moines Register newspaper), his education (not much of a student by his own account), the mischief (some of it felonious) gotten into by his friends (names changed), many other details of the times, and the adventures of The Thunderbolt Kid.

The Thunderbolt Kid is a fantastic superhero, a personna assumed by Bryson when he wishes to imaginarily zap some offensive adult into a pile of carbon, see through women's clothing with his x-ray vision, or commit some other super-feat not possible for an ordinary mortal. He credits his discovery (or invention) of The Thunderbolt Kid to his discovery of an old partly-motheaten sweater in the family basement. This sweater (depicted on the dust jacket of the book) featured a large yellow zig-zag of cartoon lightning affixed to the chest.

I'm not sure that the Thunderbolt Kid thing worked for me. I have the idea that the book would have been just fine, maybe better, without it. But that's just my opinion.

The Thunderbolt Kid was a pleasing foray into nostalgia, and a thought-provoking reminder of the time when my contemporaries were children -- our truly formative years.

East of the Mountains, by David Guterson

2007-02-02T00:59:00.000-08:00

February 02 2007 (00:59:00)

Although I've lived in Western Washington for over 30 years now, I still remember that I am a transplant. One of the first things I learned to say was "East of the Mountains." This phrase has a very specific meaning here. It refers to the part of Washington State that lies East of the spine of the Cascade Range. Its other three borders are with Canada, Idaho, and Oregon. East of the Mountains is the miracle of drying winds that have transformed the Earth on either side of the Cascades to be so different that it never ceases to amaze. A short drive (if the weather is cooperative) from Puget Sound Country is a land so dry, so brown, so different, that it could be on another planet.

On the West side are rain, fir trees, ferns, moss, greenery, water, flowers, fish, all types of small animals, and millions of people. Cities march down the trough from Canada, starting with Bellingham in the North, then Mount Vernon, Marysville, Everett, Seattle, Tacoma, Olympia; and much farther south, Vancouver, Washington.

East of the Cascade summits is a land of desert, or steppe, watered only sparsely by the Columbia River and boldly by the work of man in the 20th century. This is a land of sagebrush, rattlesnakes, sand, and wind. It is dry, and colored in shades of brown and tan. Some cities dot the desert: Yakima, Ellensburg, and Wenatchee in the Western-Central portion; Spokane, Moses Lake, and the "tri-cities" of Richland - Pasco - Kennewick are scattered about the map.

Dr. Ben Givens is a man at the end of his life. He is a retired thoracic surgeon, and has been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. He knows better than most that he has no chance of survival. His wife passed on about a year and a half before the story begins.

Ben has decided to end his life in Eastern Washington, in apple country, where he grew up. Instead of a slow, suffering death that will torture him and his family, he'll go well into the dry fields under the pretense of bird hunting and create a plausible accident. He's thought of everything, he doesn't want to burden his family with the spectre of suicide.

Ben's encounters disaster almost immediately as he sets out on what is to be his last journey. On I90, headed for Snoqualmie Pass, he is involved in an accident that wrecks his car and leaves him battered and bruised. Some young people come along and help him, and his journey continues with their assistance.

As he continues on, determined to carry out his mission, he encounters more people, good and bad. Some of them need him, some of them are needed by him.

The Eastern country is described beautifully, and the tone of the text sets the proper mood for this tale of a lonely, sick old man returning to this lonely land where he grew up. Just being in the sagebrush invites introspection; there is no noise but the wind, and a man can walk a long way without encountering another person.

Along with the adventures of the present, we learn about Ben's past, his World War II service, his romance with his wife of so many years. He becomes a person that I will remember for a long time.

How Ben's journey progresses and to what end he comes is worth your time to discover in this very well-done novel.

The Warlord's Son, by Dan Fesperman

2006-12-29T07:28:00.000-08:00

December 29 2006 (07:28:00)

Borzoi Books, Alfred A. Knopf. 320 pages.

This is an adventure novel for our times. Set in Pakistan and Afghanistan late in 2001, the story involves a reporter named Stan Kelly, or "Skelly," and his "fixer," Najeeb. Najeeb is the character of the title. His father is a great malik in the mountains across the Khyber Pass into Afghanistan, but Najeeb is estranged from his father. Having been educated in America but brought up in the Pashtun tribal world, Najeeb is hired by journalists to interpret, guide, and protect them from dangers they can only partially understand. He is a fixer, and without a fixer a Western journalist will perish in this jungle.

Skelly is sent to Pakistan in the hope that he can get into Afghanistan and report on the developments there. Osama Bin Laden, that most wanted criminal of the Western world, is said to be at large in the mountains. This could be the story of Skelly's career, and he is excited to be after it. Skelly's been moldering stateside trying to live a more normal life than that of a foreign "hack." The life of a foreign correspondent, however uncomfortable and inconducive to success with one's family, has gotten into his blood, and he yearns to be back in the thick of danger and intrigue.

Afghanistan after September 11, 2001, couldn't be a more dangerous or intriguing place. This is the small, backward nation of warlords and the Taliban, the underdeveloped third-world country that -- in spite of its poverty and lack of modern technology, bled the Soviet Union for years as it tried to dominate this land. Afghanistan may have been a much more powerful force than the saber-rattling of NATO, Reagan, and the Free World in causing the demise of the hammer and sickle. But the United States of America, having suffered the unforgiveable obscenity of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, seemed to have no choice but to take action against the Taliban. The Taliban could be seen as the protectors of Osama, and as such they were a valid, organized enemy that could be militarily attacked and definitively beaten -- at least in theory -- while Osama seemed and seems today like a foul smelling cloud of smoke: offensive, harmful, fatal, yet elusive and impossible to grab, grasp, confine, or destroy.

Skelly and Najeeb manage to get a ride into Afghanistan with the rear guard of a returning warlord. Almost immediately they are involved in a firefight, things fall apart, and begin to get truly complicated. As the plot progresses, Najeeb's family is involved, old resentments are brought to the surface, and a layer of intrigue is added. Added to the mix is the presence of certain shady American characters, Hartley and Pierce*, who remind us of the involvement of our own political and industrial interests and the role they play in the larger tragedy engendered by Western Imperialism, the clash of cultures, and the disingenuous liars on all sides.

Meanwhile, back in Peshawar, Najeeb's girlfriend is trying desperately to escape the bonds of purdah and escape to rejoin her lover. A series of mysterious threatening notes to Najeeb and the death of a malang, a sort of Pashtun holy recluse, by murder, make another frightening subplot. And I haven't mentioned the involvement of shady characters from the ISI, a very loosely defined Pakistani intelligence-gathering organ.

I turned these pages rapidly, and enjoyed The Warlord's Son immensely. I see that Mr. Fesperman has written a few others. I'll have to give one or more of them a try.
Notes

*It's interesting to get a glimpse into the fiction writer's mental process. "Hartley" and "Pierce" are names given to certain electronic oscillator circuits. Mr. Fesperman may have a little engineering in his background, or perhaps it's just a coincidence. But the observation is just too irresistible.

For more information about Hartley and Pierce oscillators, read Sine Wave Oscillators, by J.B. Calvert, an article posted on the University of Denver's website.
More Information

* Pashtuns of Afghanistan, an article at Afghan-Network.net
* The Rise and Fall of the Taliban, an article at Afghanland.com
* Pakistan Maps, and Afghanistan Maps at the University of Texas at Austin

Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll

2006-12-24T04:05:00.000-08:00

December 24 2006 (04:05:00)

One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,
And the ones that mother gives you, don't do anything at all,
Go ask Alice, when she's ten feet tall.
--White Rabbit, Jefferson Airplane.

If you haven't read Alice and/or Through the Looking Glass, don't put it off. If you have read it, do it again. It doesn't take long, that's for sure. I found this old paperback on a rainy Sunday afternoon and was soon lost down the rabbit hole.

There's plenty written about these works and little that a person of my education and experience would be able to add to the critical analysis of Carroll's whimsical fiction. It's well known that these stories were written primarily to entertain children, some of them very specific children with whom Lewis Carroll (the pen-name of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was acquainted, including young Alice (Liddell) herself. And it's also common knowledge that there are other levels, and jokes, to the stories, more accessible to adults and particularly to adults of the time, culture, and social class in which Carroll lived.

What attracts me to the story of Alice and her adventures in the Looking Glass world is that this is part of the quintessential English literature of childhood. Along with the Chronicles of Narnia, Baum's Oz classics, and others, these books find some place in most English-speaking children's mythology -- or at least I think they still do! -- and their landscapes and population are ever in our imaginations. When one sees an impatient, harried person checking his watch, one thinks of the White Rabbit: "Oh dear...I shall be late..." Imperious self-important tyrants always have something of the Red Queen about them, and who has not been in a conversation that reminded him of the one between the Hatter and the March Hare, with the Dormouse sleeping between them?

"Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English."

Through the Looking Glass, the second work, is said to be understandable as a complete chess game. It is also obviously rich with puns and inside jokes, and probably a great deal of humor at the expense of personages long deceased. This is all a great monument to the genius that called himself Lewis Carroll, but for me I value its capture of the time of life when we have the leisure and openness of mind to contemplate and observe the world that exists in our mirrors, when we think about whether the flowers mind being tethered to the ground, and when we have the imagination to conceive of a Rocking Horse Fly, "...made entirely of wood, and gets about by swinging itself from branch to branch..."
More Information and Where You Can Read the Books:

* The entire text of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, courtesy of the Gutenberg Project.
* This site is sort of an Alice fan-club site, I suppose; there's a lot of Alice-related information and much evidence of her influence on the world in which we live.
* Lenny's Alice in Wonderland Site seems a good resource for background and analysis of the work, nicely designed with great respect for the tales. Lenny is not above referring to the Disney movie that has no doubt been responsible for introducing millions to Alice and her adventures.

Gone, by Jonathan Kellerman

2006-12-24T04:00:00.000-08:00

December 24 2006 (04:00:00)

This is the most recent I have read in the Alex Delaware series. In it, Delaware and Milo Sturgis are faced with a bizarre series of killings and an extremely strange set of people, all against the backdrop of Southern California's glitz and highways.

The romance between Robin and Alex seems to be rekindled in this story.

A good, entertaining read.

Vanish, by Tess Gerritsen

2006-12-07T00:54:00.000-08:00

December 07 2006 (00:54:00)

401 pages. Ballantine Books, 2006.

In the lunchroom at work we have a "free" table. Items placed on this table are free for the taking. I think there's a couple of t-shirts and a pair of shoes on it right now. Sometimes there's food. I have recently gotten some Jasmine rice and some tea there. Often people leave books. I frequently take advantage of the books. Once they've been read at home, I usually take them back for someone else. I try to make my own contributions to this table from time to time.

A couple of weeks ago I found Vanish on the table, and took it home with me. This is a very effective thriller, which I read in about 5 hours. Great literature, it's not -- but it has the quality of suspense and excitement that allowed me to suspend disbelief and criticism and get wrapped up in its plot and characters sufficiently to devour its pages in one long bite on a cold November Saturday afternoon-evening.

The story begins with a description of some illegal aliens from Eastern Europe being smuggled into the USA from Mexico. It then jumps to the city of Boston, where a busy medical examiner discovers a live person accidentally delivered to her morgue's refrigerated storage. It picks up speed, includes a very pregnant police detective and her FBI-agent husband who quickly become involved in the hostage-taking which is central to the plot.

I thoroughly enjoyed Vanish and will read another Gerritsen when I get the opportunity. I see that she is the author of Body Double. I assume that the film of the same name was based on that novel. I saw that film several years ago, and dimly recall it as a strange and suspenseful experience.

Having recently been roundly critical of another thriller that I didn't read nearly as fast as this one, I have to point out at least one defect in Vanish. While the mechanism of having the live person discovered in the morgue is certainly a frightening attention-grabber, I fail to see why it is a necessary part of the plot. Indeed, it's never really fully explained -- unless I missed that in my breakneck scan of the text. And what about the title? Surely a better one could have been chosen. The Die is Cast? Playing for Keeps? I don't know.

But don't let these minor details keep you from reading Vanish. I recommend it.

The Templar Legacy, by Steve Barry

2006-11-30T21:39:00.000-08:00

November 30 2006 (21:39:00)

480 pages. Ballantine Books, 2006.

I hardly ever read books that I don't like. If I do, it's usually for work or a requirement for some course I'm taking. I started out reading The Templar Legacy, and considered putting it down unfinished. What do real book reviewers do? I guess they finish whatever they're reviewing, whether they like it or not. And in many cases they may not. Partially as an exercise in feeling like a professional reviewer and also to satisfy my curiosity about the book, I did finish it.

Templar is a "thriller," that is, it's in the genre that includes books by Ken Follett and Robert Ludlum. In my mind, a thriller is not exactly a novel about espionage, or war, nor is it a mystery -- although there is usually some type of mystery involved -- or crime novel. Generally these books will involve unlikely people caught up in large events that may affect much of the world, if not all of it. International travel is frequently involved, and as a result the writers of these novels are often travellers themselves, and there will be much description of various far-off places, and a great deal of atmosphere imparted from various locations. Successful thrillers -- that is, successful in entertaining me -- include good, complicated, multi-dimensional characters that we become very involved with. Ludlum often uses "ordinary" people who get caught up in big events, events that force them to act heroically in dangerous, exciting conditions. There is suspense, and it keeps us turning the pages.

There's a mugging and a suicide in The Templar Legacy's first chapter, so the action starts right away -- after a disturbing prologue that describes some grisly events from the 14th century. We are introduced to Cotton Malone and Stephanie Nelle right away, and we begin to understand that there are major issues at stake. The plot has to do with an ancient order of monks who defended the route to the Holy Land after the Crusades, their lost treasure, arcane knowledge of the true nature of Jesus Christ, resurrection, and redemption. It's probably got something in common with The DaVinci Code but I can't say for sure, as I haven't read that book. But I sense that DaVinci has some pretty attractive coattails, and Berry wouldn't be the first writer to see such an opportunity and take advantage of it -- but that really isn't what I didn't like.

What I did not like about Templar is that the writing is just too thin. The characters are not believable, and I didn't feel involved with any of them. There is some real tragedy mentioned in the plot, such as the suicide (or murder) of a man who was husband to Stephanie, and the father of her son, Mark. Perhaps this is a reflection of excessive sang-froid on my part, but I just didn't care about them. Cotton Malone should be, during the reading of such a novel, like my old friend -- warts and all, but an old friend nevertheless. He wasn't. I just didn't care about him, either. They all reacted strangely, and their dialog was unnatural.

And how about the main bad guy? First of all, I couldn't help waiting for the punch line that must have been set up by his name: De Roquefort. The big cheese? Granted, I betray my pedestrian tendencies in pointing this out, but Mr. Berry would have been well advised to name his villain something that doesn't make me want to snicker every time I read it.

There are too many distractions in this book. Several times, Berry puts an illustration on the page of some mysterious tombstones and versions of a cryptogram that his characters eventually must decipher. If the cryptogram was as simple as he represents, it would have been solved five hundred years before and saved his characters a lot of work and trouble. Malone is, we are told, possessed of an eidetic memory. "Not photographic ... an excellent recall of details that most people forgot." But it seems that Mr. Berry forgot -- if this remarkable asset figures in the plot again after it is mentioned, I totally missed it.

I am learning something about book reviewing here: it is much harder to write a negative one. I really just didn't like the writing, but that's not a good thing to say. I need to show you exactly what I mean. So I have to go back through the volume now, looking for examples. This is a lot like work.

"He carried the book to one of several club chairs that dotted the store, settled himself into the soft folds, and started to read. Gradually, a summary began to formulate."(page 59)

"The first assailant lay sprawled on the floor. The other man was likewise prone and still... he spotted something at the back of one of the necks. He bent close and plucked out a small dart, the tip a half-inch needle.

"His savior was privy to some sophisticated equipment." (page 70)

Ideally in a novel like this I shouldn't really even notice the writing -- it should be hard-wired to my brain and I should be turning the pages too fast to analyze sentences and wrinkle my nose at phrases like "privy to some sophisticated equipment." Templar lost its grip on me too often, and I was too tempted to pick it apart.

"...'the mayor said the grave was in danger from treasure hunters.' She shook her head. 'So a few years ago they dug the priest up and moved him into a mausoleum in the garden. Now it costs three euros to see his grave ... the price of a corpse's safety, I assume.'

He caught her sarcasm. (page 113)

An easy catch.

There are loose ends in this book, a thing to be abhorred in a genre chiefly based on intricate, suspensful plotting. For example, on page 135, Malone and Stephanie Nelle read a note to the deceased Ernst Scoville that warns "prend garde l'Ingeneur. 'Beware the engineer...'" We are later introduced to an unbelievable and fantastic character named Cassiopeia who is identified to be this engineer. There is, however, never any reason to beware her, nor is this warning ever sufficiently explained.

I probably should have been taking notes while reading this book, it would make the task of explaining what's wrong with it much easier. The next time I decide to finish a book out of professionalism, I'll get a pencil and paper.

Don't pay money for this book, but if you need something to read on a plane and it's available for free, it's probably fine. Sorry, Steve Berry -- I'll admit up front that you're a better writer than I am, but then nobody's paying me.

EL