Charles Dickens (1845) Hardcover "Books, Inc." 1936
set of 20,
Vol. III December 2008
Dickens wrote 5 novella length Christmas Books, the most well known is
the first A Christmas Carol. The third book, The Cricket on
the Hearth, was in the 19th century as equally loved as A
Christmas Carol. Today it has largely been forgotten. What happened?
The plot centers on a blind girl who is sadly heart broken when her
plans for marriage are thwarted - this would have been a familiar and
even desirable outcome for Victorian readers who believed disabilities
were inherited and thus the disabled should be kept from marrying for
the sake of any unfortunate offspring. Today this is obviously no longer
correct and even seems heartlessly inexplicable to the modern reader -
as a result the book has become something of a forgotten period piece.
However it is still an excellent story and well worth reading for other
reasons: the Dickens characters, the scenes, the feel good ending.
Unlike most of Dickens novels, there have been only a few adaptions to
screen and stage. The NBC radio
play from 1945 is horrendously bad, the plot is mangled beyond
recognition and at only 25 mins hardly captures anything of the
original. There are two silent film versions, but as far as I can tell
there are no modern film adaptations other than a 50-min 1967 cartoon
version which has poor reviews and doesn't appear the follow the plot
closely. There was a stage adaption called Dot (1857) that was
very popular throughout the rest of the 19th century but it is also now
obscure.
The Cricket deserves more attention despite its failings, the
theme of adultery is well done and surprisingly frank, I was really
moved by Mr. Peerybingle's grief and his night in front of the fire with
the pixies. The scenes in the toy shop are classic Dickens and the final
party scene is emotionally uplifting. Until a serious video version is
made, which corrects the handicap aspect, it will unfortunately languish
in obscurity, read mostly by Dickens fans.
Henry Fielding (1749) hardcover, Random House 1960's December
2008
Tom Jones was one of the first forthrightly fictional novels in
English, where the author didn't try to frame it as a true story, such
as Moll Flanders or Robinson Crusoe. I think the best way
to appreciate it is like a connoisseur of early cars such as the
Model-T. It has its own beauty and grace, yet is largely impractical by
modern standards. It allows one transport to another age. It is fragile
and delicate, yet full of a spirit missing in the modern world. The best
way to enjoy it is to pretend you are a reader from the mid-18th
century, and new vistas of understanding will come forth. History books
often talk about the nature of the period as family oriented, locally
oriented, manorialism, class distinctions - in Tom Jones it comes
to living light, every page is a gold mine to understand the world just
on the cusp of the Revolutions of the 19th century (political and
economic). As a work of art its significance is hard to overestimate -
Dickens for example was clearly influenced. As a narrative the length is
difficult but makes the climaxes that much sweeter. As a writer Fielding
was a genius, and knew so, and said so, and was right., his novel has
become immortal.
Steven Pinker (2004) Hardcover first December 2008
Another wonderful edition to the series. Pinker in his introduction says
the best science articles "delight by instructing" and goes on to
explain the lessons of each of the articles. Thus the Introduction adds
a new dimension that some others in this series are missing, a master
teacher explaining why some ideas are so important. After reading the
Introduction last, I realized that the articles I didn't give much
thought too were some of the most important, while the ones I thought
were best were more lightweight. Such is the case when crossing minds
with Steven Pinker. Although written in 2003, most of the articles have
aged well, Pinker largely stayed away from topical hot button newsy
articles.
My favorite articles include "The Bittersweet Science" in which Austin
Bunn transports us back to the early 20th century and re-creates the
period just before the discovery of the cause of diabetes and its cure
insulin, a reminder of how lucky we are today. In "Desperate Measures"
Atul Gawande takes us another trip into the history of medicine,
profiling Francis Moore one of the most important surgeons of the 20th
century whose seemingly reckless experimentation killed thousands and
ultimately saved millions. In "Caring for your Introvert" Jonathan Rauch
describes and explains the 25% of the population who would rather just
be left alone most of the time, thank you very much, but does so
lovingly and without judgment. In "Sex Week at Yale" Ron Rosenbaum
attends a sex conference at Yale where he humorously observes academia
off the deep end. In "The Cousin Marriage Conundrum" Steve Sailer
explains that over 40% of marriages in Iraq are between first cousins,
creating a social dynamic completely different from our own experience.
This was the best article of the book as it has totally changed my
perspective on the Middle East and Arab culture, very important and
fascinating. Iraq is like the worst Appalachia county of inbred family
fighting Hatfield and McCoys. Finally the most challenging article but
also most mind expanding is "Parallel Universes" by Max Tegmark in
`Scientific American`. He describes 4 theories on universes outside of
the observable one. Somewhere out there in infinite space there is
another person just like you.
Chris Goodall (2008) paperback, UK edition, first December
2008
This is an absolutely excellent overview of green/clean technology and
solutions to global warming.
I thought I already knew a lot about clean technology through blogs,
science news and other books - and Goodall is current with the latest
news up to early 2008 - but there was hardly a page in this book I did
not learn something new, or had my perspectives changed. This is not
starry-eyed techno optimism, nor a pessimists dark vision. Goodall takes
a sober non-ideological even-handed engineering perspective with lightly
placed pronouncements on the viability of technologies, both good and
bad, often convincingly overturning perceived wisdom and myth. The book
would also make an excellent primer for anyone looking to invest in
clean technology, it cuts through the hype and quickly gets to the
bottom line of energy units and costs, and the risks. My copy is
dogeared with some of the best specific products and companies to look
into as investment potentials.
The chapter titles say a lot:
1. Capturing the wind
2. Solar energy
3. Electricity from the oceans
4. Combined heat and power
5. Super-efficient homes
6. Electric cars
7. Motor fuels from cellulose
8. Capturing carbon
9. Biochar
10. Soil and forests
Each chapter stands on its own and if your only interested in some the
others can be skipped, but they are all fascinating. The author is
British and it is written for an English audience, usually using British
pounds and examples, but the US is mentioned many times and it is easy
to extrapolate (many US companies are mentioned). It is very well
written and easy to read.
Some examples of things in the book: because water is 1000 times heavier
than air, underwater turbines harnessing tidal energy in places like
Scotland and Canada have extremely "dense" energy potentials. And the
technology, which is very simple, is already in place coming online at
commercial scales soon. As well, wave power is a mature technology with
big potential. Fuel cells for cars will probably never take off for
reasons explained, but as electric generators in homes, it has a lot of
potential. Carbon capture and storage, which I thought was pie in the
sky, is actually a very viable technology up and working today in places
in Europe. The book explains exactly how its done, and how it is stored
underground.
Books like this, which are so specific, burn bright but quickly. Indeed
it was written before the crash in oil prices in the second half of
2008, so it sometimes reads as if from another era. However, it is still
valuable, and energy prices will inevitably rise again. It is a sort of
testament to the need for government help in keeping new technologies
afloat during the occasional oil price crashes.
Jurek Becker (1969) Hardcover, 1975 trans. December 2008
There are two English translations of Jacob the Liar. The first in 1975
by Melvin Kornfeld, and an "authorized" translation in 1996 by Leila
Vennewitz, in conjunction with the author. I read the 1975 translation.
I normally don't like to bestow "favorite" status on books since it's
difficult to judge and compare such widely different works of art, but
sometimes something just stays in my heart in a personal way that
transcends, so I suppose this is one of my favorite books. It's a fable,
a parable. It's funny, sweet and rings true in a way no other holocaust
book I have read. The movie(s) don't do it justice, plot overlays that
skip over the books inner life. Highly recommended.
Daniyal Mueenuddin (2009) ARC Amazon Vine November 2008
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders centers on various forms of
romantic relationships between men and women in Pakistani culture. Along
with Iran and Saudi Arabia, Pakistan is among the worlds most
traditional societies. But it also home to a more globally oriented
class, sometimes called "Third Culture
Kids" because they grew up in two or more cultures mixing elements
of each to form a unique third culture - indeed this very book is a
product of a Third Culture Kid, Mueenuddin, who is an American citizen,
but born in Pakistan and living there now. He offers both a glimpse into
the traditional world kept behind closed doors, "in other rooms" - and
the globally focused multiculturalism, or "other wonders". The contrast
is striking, a search for identity as the traditional collides with the
modern.
In Other Rooms, Other Wonders has eight semi-linked short
stories. Four are freely available online, a Google search will find:
"Our Lady of Paris" (Zoetrope), "In Other Rooms Other Wonders" (New
Yorker), "A Spoiled Man" (New Yorker), "Nawabdin Electrician" (New
Yorker). The other four stories: "Saleema", "Provide Provide", "About a
Burning Girl" and "Lily" are just as excellent, and it really makes
sense to read them in the order Mueenuddin presents in the book
(although not required). Some of the stories are more connected than
others, it's a delight to find a minor character from one story expanded
upon in a later. Two of the stories recount the same event from
different perspectives, although strangely one is hardly aware of it
happening, the discovery is like a flash of insight. Mueenuddin is
discovering Pakistan's traditional identity, defining his own, and
creating a third culture with a global perspective.
Emile Zola (1887) paperback, Penguin 1980 Parmee November 2008
There are two English translations of La Terre, the first was by
Henry Vizetelly in 1888, it is freely available on Internet Archive,
Gutenberg and in later re-prints. Vizetelly was jailed for 3 months for
indecency by uptight Victorians, but he really should have been jailed
for the bowdlerizations. Luckily in 1980 Parmee made an excellent
translation for Penguin Classics (The Earth), which, as of this
review, is the most recent available. Amazon lists it as out of print
but this is not accurate, it can still be purchased new (but apparently
not on Amazon!). The problem is Penguin recycles it's ISBN numbers so
the original 1980 Penguin edition is out print and the new 1990's
edition (new cover, same otherwise) is not showing up in Amazon's
database.
La Terre never entirely succeeds as Germinal did, the work
most comparable. It is an ambitious book that could have been epic and
one of his very best, but Zola tries to do too much and the energy is
diffused. There are over 100 named characters, many with multiple names
making at least 150 names, plus the many interrelated family
relationships between each. This requires significant genealogical
memory and the reward is not entirely satisfying. Zola was trying to
recreate a whole rural farming village but aesthetically it didn't come
together. Unlike in Germinal which has class struggle for a
brighter future, there is no larger theme of social justice. The first
200 pages are slow, and the final 50 are like an antiquated picaresque
Dickens novel with all the loose ends tied up in an epic single
afternoon of action. However unlike Dickens there are no happy endings
here!
On the positive side, it's Emile Zola. Zola is a genius at choosing and
describing detail so the reader has a fair idea what "A Day in the Life
of a Peasant" was like, and the book is worth reading for its
anthropological aspects alone. It is comically scatological, which Zola
did on purpose since the novel is about the earth (night soil, etc..),
"dark humor" at its best, who knew Zola could be so funny. But this
comes across a bit pejorative, highlighting the worst aspects of the
rural and poor.
It's not a bad novel, but I don't think it achieved what Zola intended,
and aesthetically isn't as fully realized as Germinal. If your a
fan of Zola you will probably enjoy it, but not before some of his
better known works.
While reading I wished I had a complete list of the characters.
Afterward, I have found in an old book called "A Zola Dictionary" (1912)
which I re-formatted for the web as The Annotated list of
characters in Emile Zola's La Terre.
Chiara Frugoni (1997) hardcover, first November 2008
A Day in a Medieval City was first published in Italian in 1997
under a different title and translated into English in 2005. It is a
touching tribute by a daughter to her father Arsenio Frugoni, an Italian
Medieval scholar who died in a car accident in his early 50s. Before he
died he wrote a short lively essay describing a typical day in an
Italian medieval city between the 11th and 15th centuries. This forms
the Introduction of the book. Chiara picks up from there relying mostly
on pictures from the period to describe life in an Italian city - the
big events such as birth, marriage, death - but also the mundane such as
bathing, eating, reading, sleeping, etc..which in some ways are the most
fascinating aspects since they are so familiar to us. The writing is a
little encyclopedic but never boring, even though its a short book (177
pages of main text) it it not a fast read. The interpretation of
medieval paintings is always fascinating since they are so loaded with
iconography and the way stories flow through them, it's a visual story
and this book provides the key to understanding some well known Gothic
paintings. Only once did I see a mistake, regarding a rag held on a book
to protect it from greasy fingers (pg.150) - this is actually something
called a "Girdle
book" (Wikipedia has more). There are pictures on almost every page.
For this type of book, it is very good quality and has long often
rewarding footnotes. I'd recommend it for anyone wanting to learn more
about Medieval history at the ground level.
Robert Lawson (1944) hardcover, first (borrowed) November 2008
Rabbit Hill won the Newbery Medal for 1945. It's a short
illustrated novel (by the author) about "small animals" living at a
country crossroads near Danbury, Connecticut. An abandoned farmhouse is
taken over by "New Folks" and the animals wonder will they be good
neighbors or bad? Contains some racist content concerning Sulphronia the
black kitchen maid (bowdlerized in post-1970 editions) and some strong
Catholic sentiments regarding Saint Francis. It is overly sentimental,
except the part where Little Georgie has trouble on the black top which
is a moving scene. All these things I think makes it an interesting
period piece but not a classic.
Roberto Bolano (2004) hardcover, first November 2008
2666 is a writers novel, best appreciated by academics (or so
inclined) and other writers, often commenting on itself, the craft of
writing and the creative process. For the average reader the ending
lacks coherence, seemingly 900 pages of often depressing anecdotal
tangents across time and location. It's a generous work in that regard,
there are 100s of stories, within stories, most of them entertaining and
worth reading, but characteristic of Bolano, they don't really "end" in
any traditionally satisfying way - one doesn't read this novel to find
out what happens - although paradoxically, mystery is what drives the
book forward.
Bolano successfully breaks one of the basic rules of fiction writing -
rather than showing what happens, he tells what happens, like a
journalist. Thus he is able to say as much in one paragraph that others
take in a chapter. Bolano says as much in 900 pages that might normally
take 2500. He does not use line breaks and quotes for dialog (except in
book 5), so there are often long blocks of text with no white space -
it's a 900 page novel of high word count, but smooth reading. Ironically
I never felt I was wasting my time, as if every detail mattered, even
though I guess none of it did, all of it did.
The novel is certainly an investment of time and energy. I would
recommend it to anyone interested in European avant-garde literature,
Latin American literature, literature in translation and a sprawling
kind of dreamy (strange) ambiguous work resistant to classification and
open to interpretations.
When psychologists treat childhood victims of trauma - war, violence or
sexual abuse - they will often use props such as dolls or drawings to
re-enact the event in a safe environment without judgment. These five
stories are in a way voices of the child victims of Africa, told through
the prop of fiction (a doll, a drawing), empty of ideological or
political concern. Uwem Akpan has given nameless invisible victims a
voice that is understandable and easily empathetical by people
everywhere.
The title is a portmanteau. It can be read as "Say your one
them", as in, when the bad guys come, say your one of them to save
yourself. Or with a change of emphasis, it can be read as "Say.. you're
one of them!" One is defensive and inclusive, the other is offensive and
exclusive, the two meanings can be found in all the stories. In other
words, Africa has many divisions, but it can also be made whole by
finding a common humanity, if one chooses to see it that way.
This is a good book and I recommend it. If your short for time the two
best stories are "Fattening for Gabon", about an uncle who sells his two
younger family members into slavery. It's novella length but as the
story slowly unfolds, it imperceptibly descends into a living nightmare,
ending with a piercing scream that echoes forever. "My Parent's Bedroom"
about the genocide in Rwanda has very powerful imagery that - like the
scream in the first story - will haunt and become iconically associated
in your mind with the traumas of Africa.
Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled
Voyage Through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam
Andrew X. Pham (1999) hardcover first November 2008
Catfish and Mandala announces itself as a travel book with the
sub-title "A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape of Memory and
Vietnam" however it transcends the genre by also examining the immigrant
experience, the old world meeting the new, and the meaning of national
identity. Andrew X. Pham (b.1967) was a "boat person" who came to the
USA when he was 10 years old. This is the story of his return visit to
Vietnam in the late 1990s.
Pham's account is not always easy going or even pleasant, he is living
close to the earth and deals with some unsavory characters: prostitutes,
down and out hippies, racists, disgusting foods and revolting hotel
rooms, domestic violence, not to mention his almost continual bouts of
sickness (graphically detailed) all combine to make it feel "unpleasant"
at times. However this is the beauty of the work, to move the reader and
sympathize with people very different from ourselves, to step outside
our own life and experience and see the world from another perspective.
Many of these more distasteful aspects are offset by Pham's sensual food
writing - he was a food writer before becoming an author. Like the
contrasts of taste, texture and temperature of a well designed plate,
Pham balances his work between the dark and light.
This is Pham's first book and in some ways I think he tried too hard, he
is still too young and in the middle of his "quest" to arrive at the
kind of profundity the book seeks. He second book The Eaves of
Heaven is his better, it is less fragmented and more compelling -
although there have been many books written about Vietnam War it is one
of the more important ones for its non-ideological perspective from a
Vietnamese view. However both these books work well as a whole as they
tell the story of two generations of a family; it probably works best to
read The Eaves of Heaven first since it is the earliest
chronologically, then move forward in time to the present with
Catfish and Mandala.
Marvel Comics has a new series of hardcover graphic novel adaptations of
some classic books. Being a fan of Robert Louis Stevenson I picked up
Treasure Island. The story is adapted by Roy Thomas, a
heavy-weight in the comics world (Conan, X-Men, The Avengers, Fantastic
Four, etc..) and line drawings by Mario Gully. Overall I found it a
slick professional production and loyal to the original plot. There is
no original Stevenson writing, it's been modernized in a sort of
stereotypical stilted 19th century speak. The drawings are over the top,
everyone looks like a professional body builder with freakish muscles
and build, even old man castaway Ben Gunn is muscle bound. When they
talk their jaws hang down to their chest, it's sort of over-done and
doesn't make sense within a 19th century context. I really had a "kick"
watching pirates fight like ninjas with over the head round-house kicks.
All good stuff for kids, basically what this is made for. Still it was
fun to re-visit Treasure Island again, the plot really is almost
perfect. Probably my biggest complaint is I didn't like the artists
interpretation of the characters.
First Kill Your Family: Child
Soldiers of Uganda and the Lord's Resistance Army
Peter Eichstaedt (2009) paper advanced review copy
(amazon vine) November 2008
Africa is a mess of civil wars, dictators, genocides, corruption. How
often we hear on the news of trouble in East Congo, Darfur, Rwanda. One
little reported conflict is in the northern part of Uganda, where for
the past 25 year or so rebel leader Joseph Kony has committed some of
the worst atrocities of the 20th century. He is ranked number one on the
International Criminal Court's most wanted list, it is estimated over
1000 people die a week from the conflict. Kony started life as a poor
illiterate village witch doctor, but soon became leader of the "Lord's
Resistance Army", considered by his followers a prophet of God who will
one day rule the earth with the help of the Ten Commandments - and
machine guns. Through a perverse mixture of Christian and pagan African
spirituality, he has created a self-perpetuating band of ruthless
killers (mostly child soldiers) who terrorize the region of northern
Uganda, southern Sudan and eastern Congo. Byzantine politics and extreme
geography has allowed the conflict to go on seemingly with no end to the
benefit of a few and the misery of millions.
Peter Eichstaedt is an American journalist who learned about the war
while working in Uganda on other business. He decided to investigate
further and spent years traveling and interviewing people from both
sides, including a trip into the bush to meet the senior leadership of
the LRA. Like most conflicts in Africa, it is complex and multifaceted.
By reading this account - which is wide ranging from history to travel
journal to witness stories - one is able to more fully understand not
only this particular war, but other wars in Africa. Tribal loyalties,
racial tensions, historical forces, poverty and corruption, child
soldiers, remote and difficult geography, witch doctors -- are all part
of the mix.
Eichstaedt does an admirable job in this journalistic report. The ending
is not very satisfying for ones sense of justice. Kony is still out
there in the bush, operating beyond the pale.
Wladyslaw Szpilman (1999) Hardcover first November 2008
I don't watch a lot of movies (it cuts into my reading time!), but I did
happen to see Polanski's film when it first came out. I experienced a
total immersion into the Warsaw ghetto that has really had a profound
influence on me. The story and images have stayed with me over the
years, so I wanted to read the book. In this case Polanski's film
probably captures a lot more of the atmosphere than the book, it really
is a masterpiece of set and costume. Szpilman's book however is good at
episodes. He is a master at visualizing symbolic set-pieces, it is a
theatrical book moving from dramatic scene to scene. Starting with the
child smuggler stuck in the hole in the wall and beaten to death by an
unseen assailant on the other side (symbolic of innocent Jews caught by
historical forces (the wall) and the anonymous nature of prejudice) - to
the last scene where Szpilman finally emerges from hiding, but wearing a
Nazi uniform and almost killed by his fellow Poles. There is an even a
deeper geographical progression as Szpilman moves ever closer into the
heart of evil, finally coming face to face at the end, where he finds
redemption and forgiveness. It's as if these scenes were made for film
or stage, but they are so unusual and original in the details, one has
to assume they actually happened, or some combination of events seen,
heard about and experienced into an artistically satisfying whole. It
seems curious to me that although the book and movie are very popular,
it is not discussed much in critical (academic) circles (that I can
find).
I listened to the audio version (from Audible), read by E.B. White
himself. I'm certain the audio version is better than reading the book,
it's oral story telling at its best. White's soothing trombone voice,
the trumpet sound effects, song renditions, characterizations, and his
emphasis on the storyline converge into a wonderful heartwarming work of
art.
The Vertigo Years: Europe 1900-1914 is Philipp Blom's third book.
I bought it on the strength of his former two, both of which are
fantastic, and I'm happy I did - his ability to write engagingly on just
about any time period is demonstrated here in what is probably his
strongest book yet. Bloom's central thesis is that, traditionally told,
the years leading up to WWI were overshadowed by the war - it was an
idyllic "long summertime" of peace, an extension of the assuredly naive
19th century. However Blom reveals just about everything we think of as
"modern" was already happening before the war, it was a time it was a
time not of coasting, but of "machines and women, speed and sex," a
disintegration of the old world without a clear vision of a new. Like a
teenager getting behind the wheel of a car for the first time, it was
exciting and dangerous, a cocktail of fundamental social changes
converging all at once. Technology of the car, movie, photo and electric
light; class relations; women's roles, Freud; Eugenics; colonialism;
modern art; cult of "manliness", etc.. all combined to create a
fractured new world, where individuals don multiple identities no longer
tied to tradition, and an endemic nervous vertiginous exhaustion
flourished. Bloom crisscrosses the continent from Russia to England,
from the Balkans to Sweden, each page a small feast of ideas, people and
events. As a native of Vienna, Bloom commands a deep understanding of
central European history in a way I have never seen before, revealing
insights and people entirely new to me - it's a true pan-European
perspective told with compelling prose.
Like the subject it describes, the book is fractured, moving between
ideas, people, events, places and times - but Blom is nothing but
orderly in his exposition of how things were related. Freud's theories
for instance were mirrored by the political realities of the Austrian
culture he lived in. Each chapter has a human interest "frame story"
providing a smooth flowing narrative and Ken Burns-like feel for the
time. There are ample quotations and fascinating black and white
pictures, including a color plate section of modern art. It is a social
history not only about the wealthy and intellectual elite, but the
attitudes of the general public and zeitgeist of the many. A very long
and up to date bibliography and notes section provides a lot more
reading.
It's one of the better history books I have read, enhancing my
understanding not only of the early 20th century, but its inheritor the
present.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do
(and What It Says About Us)
Tom Vanderbilt (2008) Audiobook (Abridged) 6hrs October 2008
Full of great insights, not only into the externalizations of traffic,
but my own internal psychological state of mind as a driver - I thought
I was unique in many things but it turns out I'm like most other people.
There are a ton of ideas and perspectives and I think it would take some
time to fully absorb them, to drive and test them out in the real world,
to observe the things described. Unfortunately I chose the audiobook
version which is a poor choice for information-dense material since
there is no pause in the pace and a lot of the material went by quicker
than I could remember. However I did learn a lot and someday I might
pick up the book as a reference to dip into here and there in smaller
pieces. I really appreciated Vanderbilt's focus on people and human
nature versus the more mundane things like chaos theory and mathematics.
It's a challenging and powerful book if you use to question your own
beliefs about yourself as a driver. Who knew a book about traffic could
be so deep, or that driving could be so fascinating a subject.
'Twixt Land and Sea (1912) is a collection of three short stories
by Joseph Conrad. After a hiatus from sea stories Conrad returned to the
great blue in this collection, much to the delight of his fans.
"Secret Sharer" is one of Conrad's best short stories in general, and
without a doubt the best of the three. Although the action takes place
aboard a ship, for the most part it is a symbolic journey of the
discovery of self. A young untested Captain is faced with a number of
challenges - morally, and as a skilled sailor - and is able to show to
himself and the crew that he is a capable captain. In the end it is
ambiguous if the Captain made the right choices - was he morally right
or wrong in freeing an escaped murderer? Conrad leaves no solid ground
to decided if it was the right choice or not, there are good arguments
either way. Was it reckless to put the ship in peril by going to close
to shore? Was it morally right to free a man who was essentially
innocent, in effect choosing humanity over unbending law? The atmosphere
of the story is creepy, almost super-natural, but Conrad remains firmly
in the ground of realism, yet also employing symbolism in things such as
the hat and scorpion. This combination of realism and symbolism is the
very definition of Modernism and Conrad was at the forefront.
"Freya of the Seven Isles" is written as a melodrama, but Conrad doesn't
follow the rules of the genre, he twists the ending; the evil guy gets
away without repercussions, and the good guys pay a steep price for
doing the right thing. It's an anti-melodrama. A very dark story and not
very satisfying. The implication is that life is not a fairy-tale, stuff
happens and no matter how hard we work, life can just turn out bad no
matter what we do. I wonder if this sort of fatalism was common in the
years leading up to World War I.
"A Smile of Fortune" is essentially the same idea as "Freya" but in
reverse, sometimes bad things happen that turn out to be "fortunate". In
this story a young man is blackmailed into taking a shipload of potatoes
(a seemingly worthless haul), but when he arrives at his destination
port, he discovers there is a potato shortage and ends up profiting
greatly. The tricked becomes the trickster. In both of these stories the
themes of fate and fortune have a long tradition in Medieval literature,
making them essentially Romantic works, but with a Modern twist. Like
the title suggests, between land and sea, the stories are somewhat of a
mixture of styles, hybrid mutts, sort of like Conrad, a Polish expat
writing in English.
Pyramid (1975) is Macaulay's third book. It shows the building of
a hypothetical pyramid similar in size to Giza. Unfortunately Macaulay
took on a difficult subject. There is still controversy about how
exactly the pyramids were built. The 4-ramp model shown in the book is
just one of many ideas, and not even proven to work. The latest theory
is described in Khufu: The Secrets
Behind the Building of the Great Pyramid, involving a series of
internal and external ramps (see this BBC
article). Given this, it's hard to know what else in the book is
accurate, or conjecture. Macaulay is at his best when he demystifies the
world around us, but in this case the pyramids really are a mystery, and
so it leaves the impression of inaccuracy. However we can probably
assume some of it is right (the tools for example). Like all Maccaulay
books, it's an enjoyable and impressive journey through history. Just
don't rely on it as a blueprint for building your own pyramid!
Robert Louis Stevenson (1894) Oxford World's Classics pb "South Sea
Tales" October 2008
The Ebb-Tide was published in 1894, the same year Stevenson died
suddenly of a brain hemnerage. It was a joint project with Stevenson's
step-son Llyod Osbourne. It was the beginning of a new project to depict
the Pacific in serious literature, to show the evils and contradictions
of European colonialism. This had never been done before and it was a
loss to the world with Stevenson's untimely death. It would have been a
noble and important project, as Joseph Conrad would eventually
demonstrate. The Ebb-Tide reverses the typical stereotypes and
shows the Europeans to be uncivilized and the natives to be righteous
and upstanding. Of course this all seems old hat now, but at the time it
was a break from the norms that would eventually lead to
post-colonialism, which is still ongoing to this day.
This story itself is very entertaining and has Stevenson's trademark
psychological drama. The character of Captain Davis is particularly
dynamic. The cockney language of Huish is priceless, right out of
Dickens. Mr. Attwater is a bad-ass missionary, a sort of piratical devil
in the clothing of the lord, operating in the wilderness beyond the pale
of civilization., a prototype of Mr. Kurtz in Heart of Darkness
and Colonel Kurtz in Apocalypse Now.
Sheila Every Burnford (1961) Hardcover October 2008
A classic children's book - or is it? Sheila Burnford (1918-84) has said
she never wrote it to be a children's book, and indeed it's written in a
very realistic manner - no talking animals here. The main theme is
loyalty - pet loyalty to their masters, to one another, and human
loyalty to animals. It's all very saccharin sweet. A more believable
story would have shown the animals internal struggle between returning
to the wild (going feral), versus the safety and comforts of remaining
captive under human care (one of the great themes of literature). Alas,
Burnford is not that kind of writer, and anyway Jack London did it best
in The Call of the Wild. Interestingly though, Burnford did adopt
London's technique of describing the dogs actions and mannerisms as a
third party observer, and not delve into the animals thoughts (such as
in Black Beauty). The more I think about it, the more London's
influence seems apparent, Burnford is sort of like London's better half
(who was somewhat dark). For what it is, the story is appealing, love
conquers all, it was Burnford's most famous work and spawned at least 2
well known movie adaptations.
Art can take many forms. Supposedly a holocaust novel, there is nothing
corresponding to reality, Kosinski didn't experience any of the things
described. Poland and the Polish people were not like he depicted
(there's a reason it was banned in Poland). I suspect the only reason
this was a critical success, back in 1965, is Kosinski rode on the back
of Holocaust literature in order to write a shocker with no boundaries
of sex and violence. It rings hollow and feels like a scam masquerading
as high literature. Many of the scenes are seared into my memory, and
about the best I can do is laugh. Perhaps that's what it is - black
comedy - a sick satire.
God's Middle Finger: Into the Lawless Heart of the
Sierra Madre
Richard Grant (2008) PB, first October 2008
British travel writer Richard Grant (who lives in Arizona) recently
spent some travel time in the Sierra Madre mountains of northwest
Mexico. It is home to narco gangsters, bandits, crippling poverty
and general lawlessness. The murder rate in some areas is 10 times the
worst American inner cities with some small villages completely wiped
out in blood feuds (imagine Hatfield and McCoy). It is the Wild West and
begins just 20 miles from the US border of Arizona.
God's Middle Finger is the type of book I call "Dark Tourism",
intentionally going into the "World's Most Dangerous Places" simply for
the thrill of it. Books like this let the reader feel better about their
relative security and comfort, however they rarely capture what it's
really like for someone living there. By foregrounding the dangerous and
violent aspects for the sake of a rush, it's difficult to know if we are
really seeing an accurate picture of what the people are really like, or
rather seen through the eyes of a thrill seeking tourist. It's not my
intention to be polemical because there are some positive things that
can be said about this book. If your able to look past Grants adrenalin
fueled focus on murder and gangsters, the book is a great way to learn
about some of the history and people of the Sierra Madre region of
Mexico; and the nature of the Mexican drug crime problem in general. It
is sorely lacking a map, but I was able to trace some of his route using
Google Maps, which combined with the satellite view, provides some
visual measure of the extreme topography that has made it a favorite
haunt of outlaws.
The book starts and ends with a high adrenalin frame story involving an
encounter with bandits - I found it too good to be true, too novelistic,
and too easily invented (relatives of Pancho Villa?) - we will never
know but most of the book seems credible enough. Overall I credit Grant
with stoking my interest in reading more about the region (there is an
excellent bibliography). Many of the themes, in particular "honor
cultures", can also be found in Deliverance, it's a good coda and
a little closer to home for those fascinated by the dialectic between
lawful society and honor cultures.
Jerome K. Jermoe (1889) Oxford World's Classics pb October
2008
Three Men in a Boat (1889) came highly recommended from a number
of "must read" type lists and so I had pretty high expectations which is
always a bad start to a book. It's a comedy novel about 3 men who travel
by small boat up the Thames River, based in part on a real trip Jerome
had taken, but largely invented while sitting at a desk soon after his
marriage at the prodding of his wife. It's sort of a satire of inland
small boat traveling for pleasure first made popular by John MacGregor's
A Thousand Miles
in the Rob Roy Canoe on Rivers and Lakes of Europe (1866) that
by the 1880s had become all the rage. Another more famous example is
Robert Louis Stevenson's An Inland
Voyage (1878) - all of which can be seen as part of the
increased leisure time among the middle class due to the industrial
revolution and rising living standards resulting in more travel in
particular in the outdoors. However those books are not comedy and
Jerome uses the river travelogue/travelguide mostly as a stage onto
which he casts his actors in a comedy of manners and British
self-deprecation. It's one of the more overtly funny things I've read
from the 19th century, although that doesn't include much. Since it
involves so much in your face joking and physical slapstick, like
Chaplin or The Three Stooges, it has aged well because matters of the
body are timeless - some of the oldest recorded jokes in the world
involve farting, which is not to say the book stinks. Rather it is an
insight into the time, a look into manners and mannerisms of the late
19th century with an impishly boyish perspective.
An excellent piece of investigative journalism. Although called the
first "non-fiction novel" I don't consider it a novel. To do so would
suppose that journalism is objective, it is not, and anyway by most
accounts Capote mostly got it right. It's gripping journalism, extremely
well researched, and very American. The juxtaposition of Capote, a
liberal New Yorker, among the conservative mid-westerners should not go
unnoticed. It strikes a chord with the American paradoxical character of
"the new" versus "stability"; change versus safety; the search for
frontier versus authenticity; the fear of anarchy versus the fear of
authority; liberal versus conservative. On the one side the ultimate in
safety, security and authority is represented by the Clutter family -
and on the opposite side the killers, younger and free, represent
change, "the new" and anarchy. Capote instinctively tapped into this
dialectic and became part of it himself as an upstart homosexual New
Yorker in the middle of stable, secure and patriarchal Kansas. This sort
of "meta" author mirroring the story is the real aesthetic and creative
achievement that has kept it a classic while later "new journalism"
works, characterized by their use of literary techniques applied to
non-fiction, have rarely if ever exceeded Capote's initial genesis.
Edward P. Jones
(1992) hardcover, first, signed by author October 2008
Lost in the City - a collection of short stories - is
Edward P. Jones' first book, followed by the Pulitzer Price winning
novel The Known World (2003), and All Aunt Hagar's
Children (2006), a second collection of short stories. Both
Lost and Aunt Hagar are about blacks in Washington, DC
where Jones grew up in the neighborhoods he writes about. His stories
are like mini novels with lush detail, multiple fully evolved characters
and densely colloquial prose.
My favorite story is in the middle of the book, "The Store", it is the
most uplifting and optimistic surrounded by stories of tragedy and
sadness. It is about a poor boy done good by hard work and honesty.
Other stories I thought were excellent include "The Sunday Following
Mother's Day" about a husband who kills his wife for no reason, and the
resulting years of failed relationships with his son and daughter. It's
epic scope crosses generations of multiple people, but it is also
grassroots, concerning people who are invisible to society. "His
Mother's House" is about a street drug dealer and his relations with his
family, it helped me better understand how families (mothers, fathers,
sons) and the drug culture can intermingle ."A New Man" is a
heartbreaking story of a 15 year-old girl who runs away from home and is
never heard from again. Overall I would say I thought the stories in
Aunt Haggar are better, more fully realized, longer, however
these are still excellent.
The stories have a common theme surrounding an old colloquial saying
"Don't get lost in the city". The word "lost" means having no direction,
aimless, with no intention, and the stories are about people in that
sort of jail-like state of mind, simply doing time with no direction
home. It also means alienation, being lost is the opposite of family and
home, all of the stories involve broken and dysfunctional families,
coldness. Charles Dickens wrote about London and the poor of the 19th
century, but his stories were the opposite of Jones. Instead of that
"coming home to family" Christmas time spirit of Dickens, Jones invokes
coldness, alienation, purposelessness. I hesitate to call Jones
"anthropological" because it is also very aesthetically pleasing, but
like Balzac did for Paris in the early 19th century and Dickens for
London, Jones invokes the spirit of a time and place that, while not
full of good feelings and happy endings, does speak truthfully. The last
story of the book, "Marie", ends with an old woman listening to an audio
oral-history and I think Jones is telling the reader how he sees his own
work, a history of a people and place.
The Great Mortality: An Intimate
History of the Black Death, the Most Devastating
Plague of All Time
John Kelly (2005) hardcover, first October 2008
The Great Mortality is a synthesis of more
specialized scholarly texts using some of the latest creative
non-fiction techniques to make it more accessible for the general
reader. Due to the nature of the sources, the Black Death is actually a
very difficult subject matter to turn into a readable narrative - as so
many failed past attempts can attest - and this is probably the best
there is at the moment. Kelly covers the main themes: outbreak and
origins, biology, depopulation, social and economic effects,
persecutions, religion. There are end-notes (no in-line footnote), but
oddly no bibliography, or no Further Reading, such as a list of modern
literature about the Black Death.
Kelly makes some large leaps towards the end about the consequences of
the Black Death, namely, by de-populating Europe, the Black Death
ushered in the Early Modern Era with an emphasis on labor saving
devices. Although this conclusion seems like common sense, it is
problematic on a number of fronts - not the least being the Black Death
was only one of many reasons for a demographic decline in the Late
Middle Ages. As well, scholarship is actually divided if the Black Death
really had any major consequences at all - it is one of the great
questions of history. For the most part things just continued on as they
had - the Hundred Years War took a short break then picked right back
where it left off, etc.. Kelley doesn't question or go into all the
finer details of his conclusions. It's very easy, too easy in a popular
history book, to reach sweeping conclusions about the books subject
matter "changed the world" (so many books have sub-titles to that
effect), the difficult part is to prove it and I'm not sure Kelly has
fully represented the scholarship. He does do an excellent job of
representing the most recent debate about what caused the Black Death
(plague or some other disease).
Overall I found the book highly readable, but nothing particularly new
and some of the conclusions are sweeping in what was a very complex
period. I've read much about it already in survey texts and encyclopedia
articles, but Kelly goes into enough detail, with quotes from primary
sources, to make it more tangible. If you want a "one book" on the
subject without needing specialized knowledge of the Middle Ages this is
probably the best there is.
Robert Louis Steveson (1889) hardcover ca. 1950's October 2008
The Master of Ballantrae is not one of Stevenson's
better novels but I knew that before going into it. It's been sometimes
described as "masterly", and since I've rarely read any Stevenson I
didn't like, I gave it a try. The psychological battle between two
brothers is the sub-text of this Scott-like epic historical tale with
elements of James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales, Treasure
Island and Kidnapped. However unlike Scott and Cooper, who
had nationalistic designs, Stevenson's is a darker more inward looking
story of psychology. The overall effect is strange and a bit sensational
(ala Woman in White). Not to my taste, but I understand Stevenson
was influenced by Scott growing up and wanted ultimately to write a
series of Scottish historical romances that would help with Scotland's
independence movement. But instead he wrote Ballantrae in the
middle of winter (thus "A Winter's Tale") in the Adirondack Mountains of
New York on his way to the Pacific, far away from Scotland, to which he
would never return. Rather than a national epic it is an odd sort of
genre-bending thriller probably best read today for the psychological
struggle between two brothers.
Elie Wiesel
(1958) hardcover re-print October 2008
Night has only slowly emerged over the years as the
single most important canonical work of Holocaust Literature (perhaps
shared with Anne Frank), reaching an apex in 2006 when Oprah chose it
for her book club. It's a very short book, brutally direct and to the
point, like the subject it describes. Yet it is not sensational. The
problem is how does one write of significance about the Holocaust
without being over-shadowed by the incredibly horrible specifics? Many
memoirs suffer as "dark tourism" mired in the banality of evil. However
Wiesel was able to elevate it to something even more important -
spirituality, the nature of God and faith - like a beam of light cutting
the darkness, he found both artistic expression and factual
conveyance.
George Washington
(1745) Hardcover, leather bound October 2008
George Washington's Rules of Civility was written by
a young teenage Washington as part of a classroom assignment in 1745. He
copied down, probably dictated by a teacher, the 110 "Rules of
Civility". Rules range from the banal to the profound, from the peculiar
to the universal. Some of the more entertaining include the age-old rule
of double-dipping: If you dip your bread or meat into the gravy, do
not do so immediately after biting a piece off.. while other rules
reveal some thankfully forgotten habits: Bones, peel, wine and the
like should not be thrown under the table...
This volume is edited by John Phillips and includes a fascinating
investigation of the rules origins, going back through many authors and
variations, originating with a Florentine Italian Humanist in the early
16th century. This type of book is part of the genre known as the
Courtesy Book which were popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance as
ways for "new men" to enter polite society. Today books like this would
be called self-help, although it is unfortunate the basic rules of
civility are not longer part of standard education. This is a great
little volume full of timeless wisdom. And the fact George Washington
wrote it down at age 14 makes it all the more fascinating to connect the
past in a relevant way with the present that I think many readers can
easily connect with.
Each issue of Lapham's Quarterly is made up of many
ingredients - introduction by Lapham, short quotes, historical
selections, pictures, original essays - all on a common theme. How these
ingredients hold together seems to be in part determined by the nature
of the subject matter. For example in the last issue, The Book of
Nature, I found the historical selections to be haphazard while the
original essays were wonderful. In this issue, Ways of Learning,
I found the quotes, pictures and historical selections - the main body
of the journal - to be almost poetic in achieving Lapham's stated goal
of letting the wisdom of the past speak to universal truths relevant to
the present. In particular the choice of pictures and placement really
sent a strong message that either I had not noticed in the past or the
editors have improved their visual wit. At first I was a little
skeptical of the subject matter, education, as being a topic that would
gel well. But it turns out to be profound listening to great minds speak
about education and learning, it really made me question, re-think and
discover new things about myself and my approach to learning and
education. Unfortunately the last section of original essays was weak,
only one of six, by April Bernard was outstanding for me. Overall I
would say this is my second favorite issue so far, behind States of
War.
Peter Guralnick (1994) hardcover, first October 2008
Last Train to Memphis (first of two volumes) is
probably one of the best biographies about Elvis. It covers the early
years from Elvis' birth in 1935 to his mothers death in 1958. The first
couple chapters are about his childhood, but the majority of the volumes
length are about the first five years of his professional career from
July 1953 to September 1958. It's a very readable and often gripping
account by a self-avowed Elvis fan - Peter Guralnick - who wanted to
present Elvis as a normal person and not a mythological characture.
Guralnick says up front he does not analyze or interpret Elvis but
leaves it to the reader to find their own interpretation; so, right away
we know this is not a scholarly book or serious attempt at understanding
and interpreting Elvis, but a well-told narrative of the events of his
life, akin perhaps to a well done History Channel or PBS show.
Probably the most compelling question the reader will have about Elvis'
early life is how and why he became so successful. Elvis once explained
his success in response to a question asking if he was lucky, "I've been
very lucky. I happened to come along at a time in the music business
when there was no trend. The people were looking for something
different, and I was lucky. I came along just in time." Of course Elvis
also had a genius for giving people what they wanted, as the above
answer reveals, Elvis was a mirror who could mold himself to be whatever
people wanted. True to his word, Guralnick never really discusses why
Elvis became successful, but my own interpretation is that he was the
right person at the right time at the right place, a combination of
luck, talent and hard work. It was a matter of contingencies. Elvis was
known as the cross-over artist, but cross-over was in the air, if it
hadn't been him it would have been someone else - although probably
combinations of many artists over time, instead of so much talent in one
person at one time and place.
I'll be honest, I'm not an Elvis fan. I don't dislike him, just neutral,
although after reading this I'm more sympathetic, he just wasn't part of
my generation or my parents. There is no doubt he was a major talent,
not to mention key figure of 20th century world history, which is why I
wanted to learn more about him. I had many questions about his early
life and rise to fame which were mostly answered in the first 150 pages
or so. After that it became a little tedious reading about concert
performances, snakelike handlers and the recording industry, and so I
stopped reading around page 220, or in 1955. By then Elvis was on the
express train his success was assured, there were too many people
invested in seeing it happen, the machine was in motion. What I missed,
however, was the interpretation and analysis by Guralnick to better
reveal who Elvis was, he still felt remote to me.
Note: there is a wealth of material on YouTube about Elvis including
early recordings and rare video before he became famous making it a
richer documentary experience when combined with reading the book.
Search YouTube for "Elvis 1954".
Harvey
Pekar
(2006) hardcover, first September 2008
I read a lot of books and try to be as inclusive of as many
genres as possible, and so this marks my first entry into the world of
modern comics, something I've been hearing about for a long time but
never looked into before now. My three favorite comics from the book are
"La Rubia Loca", "Recollection of Seduction" and "Walkin' the Street"
(the last by Robert Crumb, the only artist I recognize). I like this
trio because they are about real people, real human emotions told as a
compelling memorable narrative.
The Best American Comics 2006 is the inaugural volume in a new
Best American series. I'm a regular reader of other Best American
titles, such as the Essays, and Science and Nature. Based on reviews on
Amazon from readers with a lot more comic experience than I, this is not
considered a great collection. The 2007 issue is supposedly better and I
may try that one next. The book can be a good value - attractive 8x11"
hardcover with partial cloth spine and full-color interior - it is going
for cheap on the used market, I bought my copy for $4.
David Foster Wallace (2005) hardcover first September 2008
It's a shame it took Wallace's untimely death to remind me I
had not yet read the Lobster book. I read Supposedly Funny Thing a few
years ago and was blown away. Reading Wallace the world is new again,
I'll never see the things he describes the same again. He can write
about any subject in any genre (book review, political journalism,
tourism, etc..) and set a new standard of what is possible. Even if the
subject matter is arcane or mundane, you still end up learning huge
important universal things, it almost doesn't even matter what the
subject of his essays are about, they are all just profound. I can't
help coming away after reading Wallace feeling like my IQ has improved
by a few points. The old saying, books are the company you keep. It is
no wonder his death has affected so many. It's a terrible loss, an
authors most productive years are often in their 40s-60s, Wallace was
just getting started, but he was productive, and there is a lot to be
thankful for.
The most memorable/important essays for me include "Up, Simba" in which
Wallace was a journalist attached to John McCain's 2000 Presidential
campaign. In "Big Red Son" he covers the adult video awards ceremony in
Vegas. In "Authority and American Usage" he writes a novella-length book
review of a dictionary - probably the greatest and most informative book
review I have ever read, and which made me want to buy the dictionary
and raised my interest in linguistics in general (although Wallace does
that in all his essays).
This is my second volume from the Best American "Essay"
series. Out of the 24 essays or so only 6 stood out enough to mark them
for later re-reading. I guess after 8 years since its publication some
feel dated or not as relevant, but it's also possible to get a broader
perspective of what has lasting value.
My six favorites are William Gass' "In Defense of the Book" (Harper's
Magazine) which poetically describes the many ways books are superior to
digital. This is a common theme among many writers but Gass approaches
it in a new and original perspective, and without being Luddite. In
Richard McCann's "The Resurrectionist" (Tin House) he describes what it
was like to loose a kidney and have a transplant, I was really moved by
his heroic fortitude and truth of experience. Peter Singer in "The
Singer Solution to World Poverty" (New York Times Magazine) lays bare
the ethical delima of rich nations and poor nations on a very personal
level. He posits, what would you do if you could save a child from being
hit by a train by sacrificing your car in its path (which contains all
your worldly goods). Likewise he provocatively suggests individuals from
rich countries should be sending excess wealth - beyond basic needs - to
those in the poor countries. The essay "Gray Area: Thinking with a
Damaged Brain" (Creative Nonfiction) is a fascinating first-person essay
by Floyd Skloot who has a serious brain injury. He describes its effects
both in an external social sense and inner self. Cheryl Strayed in
"Heroin/e" (Doubletake) writes about her mothers death from cancer and
her own subsequent degeneration into a serious heroin addiction. A dark,
sad and aesthetically beautiful piece. Andrew Sullivan in "What's So Bad
About Hate?" (The New York Times Magazine) discourses on what exactly is
a "hate crime" and concludes there is no such thing, every person is
motivated by complex inner motivations and not an external single
emotion. Similar to the "war on terror", the "war on hate" is a war on
an emotion that is misplaced and causes more problems than it solves.
Frank Norris (1899) Paperback (Penguin) September
2008
Frank Norris (1870-1902) is comparable with other turn of
the century American writers such as Stephen Crane, Theodore Dreiser and
Harold Frederic. Like Crane he died at a young age (32), but not before
producing an impressive body of work that anyone twice his age would
have been proud of. He is best known for three novels: McTeague:
(1899), Octopus (1901) and Vandover and the Brute
(posthumously published 1914), the last critically his best. All three
are now in a single volume by the Library of America ensuring Norris a
place in the American literary canon.
Norris was mainly influenced by Charles Dickens and Emile Zola.
McTeague, written while Norris was in college taking sophomore
level grammar classes on how to write, was a conscious attempt at
bringing the "European style" of Zola, in particular Zola's masterpiece
L'Assommoir (1877), to American literature. With its focus on the
poor working class who "degenerate" into alcohol, sex, violence and
greed - it was thought poor people were naturally (genetically) disposed
to these vices - Norris copies and imitates Zola's Naturalism, but set
in the city of San Francisco. Critics generally hated it and saw it as
cheap genre titillation of the sense hardly worthy of review, but a few
saw it as groundbreaking.
Norris is incredibly easy to read, he was originally a journalist and
wrote simply to get the facts across, considering himself an
"anti-stylist" without using complex sentences or fancy words. His
intention was to get to the truth of the thing and such a simple writing
style is very effective aesthetically for the novels subject. At the
same time it lacks the depth and scope of Zola; the characters often
feel contrived and one-sided, the secondary characters are right out of
Dickens complete with sentimentality which jars with the Realism. The
novel starts out slow but picks up pace in the last third, maintaining a
gripping narrative up to the surprise last sentence that left me hooting
for joy.
Norris had seen early cinema and many of the scenes are described in a
way that is reminiscent of early film. McTeague had such an
impact on director Erich von Stroheim that he made it into an epic
10-hour long film Greed (1924), the most exspensive film ever
made at the time, today it is one of the most famous films in history.
Beef: The Untold Story of How Milk, Meat, and Muscle
Shaped the World
Andrew Rimas (2008) Paperback
(Amazon Vine ARC) September 2008
The sub-title of Beef hints of an "untold story". Actually, it
turns out, there is not a single story, but many stories, each from 1
paragraph to a few pages long. These wide ranging mini stories,
encyclopedic snippets really, are categorized into chapters along
chronological order, from pre-history to the present. Such a
presentation, without a central narrative, would not hold many readers
attention, so the authors also took some trips to exotic locations and
weave in travel tales related to beefy places and people. This is a
standard creative non-fiction technique commonly found in books like
Mark Kurlansky's Salt: A World
History although the overall effect here is muted because there
is no "mystery" to create tension. We also get some recipes, including
how to make cheddar cheese.
The last chapter of the book is the best, from the 20th century to the
present. It suggests the current industrialized methods of raising beef
are unsustainable and the future will see changes. The earlier chapters
about the history of beef are interesting, but prior to the 19th
century, I found it somewhat meandering. It's not a scholarly or
definitive treatment. I noticed a few mistakes; the authors use the term
"Dark Ages", which has been largely deprecated by medieval historians;
and they mistakenly use "sweetmeat" to refer to offal.(*)
Sort of like how a cow is made up of many cuts of beef, Beef is a
a number of styles and techniques weaved together. History, travel,
journalism, recipes. Some parts are more interesting than others, and it
will largely depend on what the reader already knows and is interested
in. It's a short book that can be read easily in a day (or cross USA
plane trip).
(*) Sweetmeat is bread, sweetbread is meat. Strange as it sounds, the
Oxford English Dictionary confirms it. Since I am reading an Advanced
Readers Copy, this may be corrected in the final edition.
Tim Cahill (editor)
(2006) Hardcover September 2008
I bought this anthology based on the strength of its user reviews on
Amazon and LibraryThing, plus my positive experiences with another title
in the series The Best American Science and Nature Writing.
However I had serious trepidations, after all isn't modern travel
writing mostly just light touristic pieces found in Reader's
Digest or the local newspaper, barely hidden attempts at selling us
packaged vacations? Was I ever wrong and pleasantly surprised, the 2006
collection turns out to be one of the best books I've read this year.
There are 26 essays and not one is bad, they are all fantastic and at
least 4 of them are classics. Normally in anthologies like this I'm
happy when a third are favorited enough to mark the page for re-reading
later, but here it's almost 100%; marking the pages is
superfluous.
The guest editor for 2006 is Tim Cahill, founder and editor of
Outside magazine, so it is perhaps not surprising that, as a
professional editor of a magazine that caters to travel writing, he was
like a Saudi Sheik with unlimited funds on a shopping spree in Paris,
able to pick and choose from the best the world has to offer, the only
limit being 320 pages. But how does he pick the "best"? "In choosing
pieces for this anthology", he says, "I've looked for the best
stories I could find", [emphasis added] - clarifying what he
means by story, "if I can't find a story, I often feel I'm being beaten
over the head with an encyclopedia. Stories are the sole written
instrument that can bring tears to our eyes, or make us laugh.. and they
are more fun to read. Story is of the essence. " This collection then is
a testament to Cahill's ideal of travel writing as story, and it
succeeds brilliantly. Cahill also posits that America is currently in a
"Golden Age" of travel writing and after reading this collection I might
agree.
If you read only one travel writing anthology this would be an ideal
place to start. Even if your not interested in travel writing as a
genre, most of these pieces were not written as strictly travel writing,
or for traditional travel magazines. The articles are mostly by well
established and known journalists and novelists and non-fiction authors
in top-tier magazines like National Geographic, The New
Yorker, GQ and others. I look forward to reading more from
this series, but based on admittedly shallow investigations of user
reviews, none of the other volumes in the series look as good as this
one. Perhaps 2005 was just a very good year for travel writing, perhaps
Cahill has an unusually good talent for picking the best articles, or
perhaps since this is my first experience with the series, and my
initial low expectations - whatever the case this volume will be
revisted in later years and has earned a satisfying place on my
bookshelf.
Alphonse Daudet
(1869) Paperback (Penguin) September 2008
Alphonse Daudet (1840-97) was one of the most popular French authors of
the last decades of the 19th century. He was a peer of Emile Zola and
read and appreciated by Charles Dickens and others. Today he is almost
entirely forgotten. Soon after his death his work suffered some serious
criticisms, and it has only been recently that scholars have begun to
restore his reputation. He was from Provence in southern France and
before he became an accomplished writer he was as a charismatic oral
storyteller with a looming presence, long fingers and thick beard that
could entrance an audience. Thus reading him today his style can seem
antiquated but when heard through the voice of a storyteller it has more
resonance. Apparently his writing is very difficult to translate because
of his heavy use of poetic styles and slang terms, and I do believe much
has been lost in translation.
Lettres de Mon Moulin (1869) is one of his earliest and
considered one of his best. It is an anthology of newspaper pieces he
wrote in his 20s about life in Provence. Mostly it is recounting local
legends, ghost stories, humor and encounters with local characters,
embedded with extra flourishes to give the tales a little more punch to
make up for what would have been more dramatic told in person. They are
framed by the first story which tells how Daudet found an old abandoned
wind mil and set up there in a picturesque surrounding to write the
stories. The stories are generally short, enchanting, naive and innocent
bliss that captures some of the romance of Provence and 19th century
life before modernization.
The Bridge Over the River Kwai (1952) is a short genre WWII
adventure tale loosely based on real events. Its literary virtues,
self-conscious and formulaic, can be attributed to Joseph Conrad's
influence (Boulle's favorite author), in particular the novel Lord
Jim (1900), about Victorian moral certitudes within a crumbling
colonial empire, the ridged view of the system being more important than
the individual - old ground for the the modernists by the 1950s. Boulle
was French, and the character Colonel Nicholson was based on two actual
French officers Boulle had known while in the military - but Nicholson
was an old stereotype, more appropriate in World War One, by World War
Two he was an anachronism and would never risen to the rank of officer
in the British army, at least not without being killed by his own
troops.
Boulle is best known as author of Planet of the Apes (1963) and
Bridge oddly foreshadows it with a quote about the Japanese:
"Monkeys dressed up as men! The way they drag their feet and slouch
around, you'd never take them for anything human." He would transfer
the relationship between Japanese soldier and Allied prisoner into the
future exploring issues of morality between master and slave, man and
animal. In the end Boulle is Conrad-light, a generation or two late,
with a talent for ironic racism. Excellent movie adaptation as a sheer
thriller but looses the depth, what there is.
The Perfect Storm: A True Story of
Men Against the Sea
Sebastian Junger
(1997) Hardcover September 2008
The Perfect Storm started out as an article in Outside
magazine, where Junger was an occasional free-lance contributor,
although his day job was a lumber jack and waiting tables. When he
wasn't slinging an axe or chops, he expanded the original article into a
book, his first, published in 1997 when he was about 34 years old. It
did well on the New York Times list and quickly went on to a big-budget
star-powered movie. The natives of Gloucester, the New England fishing
town at the center of the story, gave it a positive reception, which for
Junger was its highest praise. In fact it made some of them famous,
Linda Greenlaw went on to write her own book The Hungry
Ocean.
Stylistically the success of the book is remarkable because the final
moments of Andrea Gail, the climax of the book, are a mystery. Jungler
says it was "journalism by analogy". But the effect works well by
lending the account authenticity while engaging the readers imagination
to fill in the blanks, making it all the more terrifying. In addition it
lends a great deal of sympathy and compassion to the friends and
relatives of the dead, who also live with the unknown and terrors of
the minds eye. Most non-fiction authors would have no problem
interjecting some fictional dialog or scenes to make the book more
readable, but it would have been a lie, the truth is unknown and it
showed a great deal of integrity on Jungers part to take the high but
more risky and difficult road.
Of course the book is about the storm, and not just the Andrea Gail.
Probably the most riveting part of the book concerns the Air National
Guard helicopter that forced landed in 100 foot seas. The details of
this are well documented and Junger is thus able to sustain a strong
narrative without falling back on tangents, or "analogy," as he does in
the Andrea Gai story - which happens to make up four-fifths of the book.
Thus some of the most popular complaints by readers is that it doesn't
flow well and has awkward anecdotal tangents breaking up the storyline.
However for anyone with a natural curiosity with how things work
(fishing, boats, rescue), this type of braided narrative - common in
creative non-fiction these days - is perfectly normal.
Overall I'm impressed with the books integrity and compassion. The
writing is workman-like, dense like a magazine article but not
stylistically original, except for the effective use of journalistic
analogy to tell a story.
Much has been written from a spiritual and literary view about this
famous 1922 book by Nobel Prize winner Hermann Hesse. I will look at it
from a historical context perspective. Hesse was born in 1877 into the
generation immediately after the German victory of the Franco-Prussian
War. Think of the generation in America born after WWII, or in England
after the Napoleonic Wars. It was a generation full of bright futures
and expectations, Germany would at long last fulfill its destiny on a
global stage. As it turned out it was this same generation that lead
Germany into the misery and defeat of WWI (1914-17) and the dream and
future died in the slaughter of the trenches. So it was in the aftermath
in 1922 Hesse the philosopher became popular with Germans with his
introspection and inward looking examination of what life really meant,
what is really important. The outer world had defeated Germany and it
would find strength and solace by looking inward. Perhaps it is not
surprising that another generation resonated with this same message of
rejecting the outer world and embracing inner vision, the
counter-culture of America in the 1960s, when Hesse's book first became
widely read and known in English speaking countries.
Mayle's vision of Provence is pure fantasy. It's true, the details of
food and weather and habits are accurate, but it rings of 19th century
English colonial patriarchy. The French "peasants" are portrayed like
happy go lucky children living in a Romanticized garden of Eden
uncorrupted by the real world of London and Paris. Mayle is the
benevolent Patriarch in contrast to the towns cast of cartoonish
personalities (it's no accident this book was adapted to a comedic TV
series). If it was a novel at least there would be a plot, but instead
it's a faux anthropological survey with Mayle studying the life and
habits of local natives and imparting information for those back home
who wish to follow his colonial ambitions (Mayle was in advertising).
Its been said travel writing is stuck in the 19th century and this is a
prime example of the genre with a modern voice. The book has been very
popular - it really is very enjoyable at a certain level - but believing
the fantasy and traveling there expecting a similar experience is being
complicit in a form of modern day colonialism. Mayle apparently has
since left Provence because the town changed - one can only imagine why.
With that said I enjoyed reading about Provence and plan to read
Alphonse Daudet's Lettres de mon moulin or Letters from My
Windmill published in 1869 - it is beloved in France and offers
perhaps an authentic French perspective on the region just before
modernization.
Anatole France
(1908) Hardcover, boxed September 2008
I only read the first 177 of 324 pages - I'm not a huge fan of old
satires when the historical context is unclear, I'm reading the words
but not really understanding, it's an in-joke with me on the outside.
The first half was a lot of fun because I knew European history enough
to understand the allegories and allusions . The second half of the
modern period is beyond me and tiresome. One day I may return to finish
when I have more context.
Helen E. Hokinson (1893-1949) was a cartoonist for The New Yorker
from about 1925 to 1949. She died in a plane accident at age 55 cutting
her career short at the height of popularity and leaving many despondent
fans. Her cartoons, collected in this volume, are of her trademark
"dowagers", or late middle aged women typical of the period, denizens of
woman's clubs, beauty parlors, art galleries and summer resorts. They
are "full figured", wear funny hats, and the sins of the flesh tend to
the dietary. She called them her "Best Girls".
Hokinson is mostly forgotten today, she was the product of a generation
that has mostly passed away, and with woman's liberation, her work is no
longer politically correct. Yet there is something warm, timeless and
appealing, sort of like the soup grandmother used to make. It certainly
brings back fond memories of my grandmother, and helps explain some of
my mothers own tendencies as she moves on in years. A great collection
of a forgotten but beloved artist.
It should be noted that James Reid Parker was a "silent collaborator"
with Hokinson, he dreamed up the situations and wrote the captions to
Hokinson's drawings.
Scheisshaus Luck: Surviving the
Unspeakable in Auschwitz and Dora
Pierre Berg
(2008) Paperback (Vine/ARC) September 2008
Scheisshaus Luck belongs on a groaning haunted shelf labeled
"Holocaust Testament". Most are by Jewish survivors, but
Scheisshaus is unusual because it is by a "gentile" (non-Jewish)
French boy of about 17 years old who was accidentally caught up in the
Nazi death machine. Pierre Berg's account of Auschwitz is fairly unique.
His style of writing is one of cynicism and religious irreverence with
romance, sex, humor and a young mans rebellious spirit that keeps him
alive. This as not great literature like Elie Weisel or Primo Levi, but
the story is gripping and compelling, I had trouble putting it down as
it smoothly moves from one death defying incident to the next. As a
story of survival it is remarkable, but sadly not uncommon for the time.
The scenes in the wars aftermath during the Russian occupation of
Germany are fascinating, in particular the descriptions of the Russian
army as a motley horde of mixed Asian steppe races moving into Eastern
Europe, the great ancestral fear of Germany come to pass through their
own doing. Berg's imprisonment lasted only 18 months but by the end it
feels like a lifetime has passed, the reader has aged years along with
Berg, a sense of transition into a new era of innocence lost.
Brian Greene (editor)
(2006) Hardcover September 2008
As usual with this series, I learned a lot in the 2006 edition.
In "Dr. Ecstasy" I learned about Alexander Shulgin who, in a
Frankensteinian laboratory in his home in CA, has single-handily created
over 200 psychedelic compounds, including ecstasy. In "My Bionic Quest
for Bolero" a deaf man describes his quest to restore his hearing with
cutting edge "bionic" ear implants (this article became a book: Rebuilt: My Journey
Back to the Hearing World). In "Show Me the Science", the ever
fascinating Daniel C. Dennett shakes his head at the anti-science
movements and their techniques, notably the "intelligent design" crowd,
but just as easily applicable to global warming deniers, Holocaust
deniers and anyone with a political agenda that is at odds with science.
In "Buried Answers" I learned about the business of autopsy and how
important they are and how rarely they are performed these days.
"Conservation Refugees" is probably the most important article of the
book. Mark Dowie introduces the concept and term "conservation refugee"
and it since become more commonly used with this article a sort of
genesis. Conservation refugees are (usually) native people who have been
oppressed or expelled from their traditional lands after those lands
have been put into conservation, usually by one of the big NGO's such as
the World Wildlife Fund or Conservation International. The result is the
growing recognition that "wild" lands can not be left barren of people,
that humans play an integral part of nature.
"The Mummy Doctor" is a great human interest story of the worlds leading
expert on the dissection of mummies. The graphic descriptions of organs
like cardboard and smells are priceless. In "Out of Time" I went on a
journey into the Amazon and lived with a small band of dangerous
head-hunters with little contact with the outside world. In "Buried
Suns" I learned about the underground nuclear testing in Nevada.
Burton Watson
(trans,) (479 BC) Hardcover August 2008
I found the 2007 translation by Burton Watson to be highly readable. I
know nothing about Confucius or even Chinese history but still found
many valuable passages. It is easy to see how this (and I presume other
Confucius texts) could form the ethical foundation of a culture, not
unlike the Bible or Tora and other sacred texts. It's even more
remarkable for being secular and not mythological based, which lends it
even greater credibility, at least for this modern reader. Its emphasis
on "humanity" can never go out of style. Considering its age this is
certainly among the greatest books of world literature.
James Boswell (1785) Hardcover, 1936
unedited edition August 2008
In 1773 James Boswell (age 33) convinced his older friend Samuel Johnson
(age 64) to go on a 4 month tour of Scotland. Boswell took on the role
of tour guide and confidant introducing Johnson to the "lairds" and
"chiefs" of Boswell's native Scotland. For Johnson, it was his first
trip outside of England. They each wrote a travel book, with Johnson
focusing on Scotland, and Boswell on Johnson.
Boswell's Tour is something of a literary breakthrough. At the time it
was not considered good manners to be too specific about ones personal
habits but Boswell often talks about seemingly mundane things that for a
modern reader would seem normal in a travelogue but for the day was
scandalous. Boswell repeated conversations with well known figures that
didn't portray them in a glowing light and this resulted in years of
tit-for-tat newspaper editorial attacks and defenses. Later editions
would include letters, apologies and defenses. Today with all the
personalities long dead it seems like a Hollywood tabloid. In the
context of the times, Johnson and Boswell were seen by some critics as
outsiders gatecrashing the establishment - Johnson was a provincial
"hack" as one Londoner called him, and Boswell was Scottish, damning
enough on its own, but with a personal reputation as a "rouge" (ladies
man) and heavy drinker (demons that would follow him to the grave).
However their reputations as towering figures of the Enlightenment would
soon be solidified, further increasing the popularity of this
book.
As a work of literature Boswell's account is warm and endearing. Johnson
and Boswell are Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, respectively. Boswell at
once mythologizes Johnson hanging on his every word, a great master who
can say no falsehood, and at the same time makes him into a lovable
blundering traveler. Certainly Charles Dickens' Mr. Pickwick of the
Pickwick Papers was influenced by Boswell's Johnson. As travel
literature Boswell's observations of Scottish life are valuable. Boswell
had an excellent memory and kept a daily diary so we have very exact
details of food and conversation, although Boswell did not think much of
scenery or geography.
Tour to the Hebrides was a best-seller from its first publication
and is still widely read. Its influence is probably hard to quantify, it
was partly responsible for popularizing the English tradition of
traveling to Scotland which would be so common among the literary set in
the late 18th and 19th centuries (and to this day). One can only wonder
how many travelers have re-traced Johnson and Boswell on a literary
vacation. In the early 20th century a cache of Boswell's unpublished
papers were discovered in a castle, among them the complete unedited
manuscript of the Tour. This was published in 1936, it is
substantially different, with many passages cut from the original
restored, it is the better and recommended.
Miracle in the Andes: 72 Days on the
Mountain and My Long Trek Home
Nando Parrado and Vince Rause
(2006) Audibook (10+hrs), Hardcover first
ed. August 2008
I just finished reading Piers Paul Read's Alive (1974) a few days
ago, and so fresh with names, maps and time lines, I had high hopes
Miracles in the Andes would add a new dimension to this amazing
story. Unfortunately I was somewhat disappointed, all the more so given
the generally good reviews Miracle has been getting. It is
perhaps inevitable in the shadow of Read's classic masterpiece that
anything else will pale in comparison. The re-telling of events from
Parrado's perspective is interesting but misses a lot - for example he
was in a coma the first three days of the accident - and he doesn't seem
to add much that is new to Read's version - which almost without
exception is better told.
Beyond a retelling of the events, I had hoped Parrado would reveal
something new about himself and the other survivors, but instead if
often read like hagiography, glossing over the differences among the
group to show them as united friends, discounting and minimizing
character defects. It reminds me of how the Catholic Church writes
history of saints, and it is probably no coincidence that the survivors
were from Catholic backgrounds, and saints in the minds of true
believers who saw the hand of God at work in this "Miracle in the
Andres". I was hoping for a more in depth psychological examination of
the survivors, a sort of personality x-ray to bring them to life, to
intimately know them as friend or brother. Instead there is a polite
respectful distance, which is frustrating, given the intimate nature of
the experience.
Despite these sentiments I still recommend the book to anyone who has
read Alive. Parrado's inner struggle with life and death - while
not exactly original or new - is profound and worth the reminder of what
is important. There are also new pictures, and an Epilogue with brief
bio's of what happened to the survivors after the rescue to the present
day. Whatever the faults, as the men age, and the myth grows, more books
and films will appear to hopefully peel back more layers behind the
"Miracle" in the Andres. But Alive remains the best book of this
disaster and it is hard to imagine it ever being replaced.
The Jungle Effect: A Doctor Discovers the Healthiest
Diets from Around the World--Why They Work and How to Bring Them Home
Daphne Miller (2008) Hardcover,
first August 2008
The Jungle Effect is what Dr. Miller noticed when her San
Francisco practice patients went on a "native diet". Unlike typical
Western diets, which caused her patients health problems, when they
switched to native diets - traditional foods from native cultures -
their health improved, often dramatically. To learn more about native
diets, Dr. Miller visited places such as Iceland, Nigeria, Crete, the
Amazon, Okinawa to discover what they are doing right. Thousands of
years of human trial and error, according to Dr. Miller, have selected
for the best diets for human health and longevity.
Dr. Miller is not new in this approach. Dr. Weston A. Price in the 1930s
saw the same thing and today there is a large and active community of
native nutritionists surrounding Price and his legacy (see Sally
Fallon's classic Nourishing
Traditions). However Miller's book does offer some new and
interesting perspectives. She actually traveled to native regions and
sampled the foods and diets, and this makes for fascinating reading in
an up to date journalistic human-interest story style. She dispels the
notion that genetics plays a significant role, suggesting that anyone of
an ethnic background can adopt any native diet (eg. a European can
benefit from an Okinawa diet). Finally, she suggests food is more than
its parts, each dish is symbiotic, so it is important to eat the entire
food way, not just its elements. For example olive oil is good, but best
in combination with the entire Mediterranean diet. Oddly enough, she
also recommends mixing and matching various native diets (she personally
cooks from different regions each night).
Dr. Miller's book is an excellent primer for anyone not already familiar
with native nutrition. Her research supports and adds to the work done
by the Weston A. Price Foundation, with a slightly different approach.
Her field-trips make for excellent reading and reveal specific regional
food-ways. The Jungle Effect is a valuable contribution to the
growing literature, and an easy and fun to read introduction to native
nutrition.
Piers Paul Read (1974) Hardcover first August
2008
Alive: The Story of the Andes Survivors (1974) is one of the most
widely read books in the Outdoor/Adventure genre. It continually ranks in
Amazon's top-25 sellers for its category, and National Geographic ranks
it #58 on its list of all-time 100 Best Outdoor Literature. The story
grips you by the collar and pulls you forward never letting up until the
end. You wonder if you read a book, or were actually there, it is
effortless. Alive is about a group of mostly under-25 men faced
with starvation and physical endurance in a remote and harsh geographic
region, it reminded me of two other classic narrative non-fiction works,
Alfred Lansing's Endurance (1959), and Nathaniel Philbrick's In
the Heart of the Sea (2001).
I have some minor quibbles. In the interest of a gripping narrative, Read
sacrificed character development, so it was often difficult to keep names
straight. By the end, about a handful stood out as "knowable", but the
rest it seemed like we hardly knew them. I found myself constantly
shifting back and forth between the pictures as I came across a name to
remind myself who the person was. This worked, but it was a lot of work
on my part that could have been smoother had Read devoted a chapter or
two to more fully develop the important characters.
In addition, there is now a new book out by Nando Parrado (Miracle in
the Andes (2006)) which tells the story from a survivors
perspective, and while I have not read it yet, it is reported that he
shows things in a different light. Contrary to Read's image of a
quarreling fractious group, Parrado emphasizes less titillatingly banal
aspects, and goes into the deeper transformations members went through.
It is generally being reviewed as a more subtle, introspective and mature
work. It has the advantage of being a first-person account and not a
journalistic summary, but Alive was written within a year of the
events and so retains perhaps a more authentic memory.
Alive is and will always be a classic survival story, in
particular for those involving cannibalism. I can't wait to see the two
movies based on it plus Nando Parrado's book.
City is David Macaulay's second book. Unlike most of Macaulay's
other books in this series, rather than a single building, he draws an
entire city. It is interesting and I learned a lot, the Romans were more
advanced with basic infrastructure like plumbing and heating than I had
imagined. I think Macaulay's subject is too broad though, so he isn't
able to get into the hyper-detail that otherwise is the strength of his
work that makes it so fascinating. It feels like a book for 14 year olds
and not enough for the adults. Still, like all of David Macaulay's books,
it is well worth it.
A novel full of compassion in most unexpected ways, "what literature
should, and can be."
This is a difficult book for me to review - I've read all the
"professional" reviews I could find online, two stand out as must-reads.
Luckily they are pro and con so you get a good contrast of perspectives,
depending if you like or dislike.
A Billion Lives: An Eyewitness
Report from the Frontline of Humanity
Jan Egeland
(2008) Hardcover first August 2008
This is my second biography of a top level United Nations humanitarian
official (after Chasing the
Flame) and the subject matter makes for surprisingly riveting
reading. Unlike the image of a desk-bound UN bureaucrat, some of these
guys put their lives on the line, out in the field in remote jungles,
working with some of the worlds most recluse and violent groups, and
dealing with massive crisis at the center of a global event like the
Indian ocean tsunami. If there is a single hero that saves the world,
probably the closes the world has is the UN Undersecretary-General for
Humanitarian Affairs, or the UN Emergency Relief Chair (these boring
titles don't do the job justice).
Jan Egeland, a Norwegian, worked at the UN from 2003 to 2006 and this is
an eyewitness account of the disasters and problems he dealt with during
that period. Egeland is probably most familiar to American readers as the
man who called the US "stingy" after the 2004 Tsunami when the US pledged
only $15 million in aid - the details of this incident are fully revealed
in the book but suffice it to say he was mis-characterized by right-wing
fanatics. Other conflicts Egeland discusses include: Ivory Coast, Iraq,
Columbia, Darfur, Lebanon, Zimbabwe and Uganda. These are very personal
accounts and in some cases Egeland is the first person to meet with rebel
groups, it's fascinating and revealing how they live and operate. At the
same time Egeland does not fully explain the historical context of the
conflicts so it can be taxing to read minutia detail - I often found
myself wading through areas of specialized knowledge to the more riveting
human interest stories.
The title refers to the bottom 1 billion of the world who are often
ignored and bear the brunt of problems. Despite the litany of death and
disaster, Egeland is optimistic that the world is improving, it is better
now than it was 30 years ago and so on back in time. People like Egeland,
those who devote their lives to humanitarian work, are really among the
worlds heroes.
NOTE: If you have already read Chasing the Flame, this book makes
a fantastic coda as Jan Egeland started his job at the UN the very day
Sergio was killed, at the Canal Hotel bombing, so he brings much of the
recent history of the UN up to the present from where Chasing the
Flame left off.
Desert Places (1996) is Australian adventurer Robyn Davidson's
second major travel book, her first being the better known Tracks
(1980). She repeats a camel journey through the desert, but this time in
Western India in the company of a nomadic people known as the Rabari. As usual,
Davidison is full of lovable contradictions, sweet one moment and ready
to kill en masse the next. Likewise her approach to the book takes
a consciously anti-travel literature track, just about everything we
associate with travel literature Davidson turns the tables. Or, at least
she tries, but in the end it is still fundamentally part of the genre.
For most readers, who are not conversant with the recent scholarly
debates about travel literature (in relation to post-colonialism,
post-modernism) the overall effect may be a little off-putting, with one
New
York Times critic interpreting Davidson's irreverence as "bad faith".
In the end I think Davidson succeeded in writing a good travel narrative,
updated with politically correct concerns about the fate of traditional
nomadic people under the homogenizing assault of globalization - but her
overall attempt at breaking out of the genre into something greater
probably did not succeed. Still it is a fascinating look into what life
is like for the Rabari, stripped of romanticism and from the perspective
of women, and that makes it an important, unique and worthwhile
journey.
Robert Louis
Stevenson (1893) paperback August 2008
Island Nights' Entertainments is a collection of short-stories by
Robert Louis Stevenson published in 1893. Stevenson died young in 1894 so
this is some of his last works but represents a signal change in his
writing style that left some clue to where he was headed had he lived
longer. Stevenson was best known and beloved for his Romantic works like
Treasure Island, Jekyll and Hyde and Kidnapped.
However when he decided to move to the worlds most romantic place, the
South Seas, his work took a turn towards realism. Stevenson no doubt
thought he was growing up and becoming a more "serious" writer, although
some of his contemporary critics at the time thought his realist works
were among his most forgettable and that it was a shame he didn't stick
with what he was best known for. However what his critics could not see
was that realism was soon to morph into modernism through the
introduction of symbolism, and Stevenson was already beginning to
experiment, at least a decade before Joseph Conrad. I have no doubt that
had Stevenson lived he would have been known as a modernism pioneer, he
was just on the cusp with stories like "The Beach of Falesa". This
represents Stevenson's first realistic story, focused less on the plot
than on the mannerisms of society. As Stevenson wrote in a letter to his
friend back in England: "It is the first realistic South Seas story; I
mean with real South Sea character and details of life. Everybody else
that has tried, that I have seen, got carried away by the romance, and
ended in a kind of sugar candy sham epic, and the whole effect was lost -
there was not etching, no human grin, consequently no conviction. Now I
have got the smell and look of the thing a good deal. You will know more
about the South Seas after you have read my little tale than if you had
read a library."
Andrew X. Pham (2008) Hardcover,
first August 2008
The Eves of Heaven is an "auto-biography" by Thong Van Pham. In
fact it is written by his son Andrew, but he takes on the first person
voice of his father Thong, similar to the technique used by Dave Eggers
in What Is the What?. It is difficult to know how accurate it is,
or what degree of artistic license is involved, but in a way it doesn't
matter because as creative non-fiction it reads like a novel.
Not only is the story highly engrossing, thrilling and fascinating, but
it is humane. Thong never seems to loose his sense of dignity and respect
for life despite the horrors of violence, drugs and prostitution that
stalk him. The lush prose is deliciously sensuous in one chapter, then
shifts to scenes of deprivation the next, like a master chef playing the
pallet between extremes of texture and temperature - and like the fusion
of French and Asian culture that is Vietnam.
The Eaves of Heaven covers over 30 years of war in Vietnam as it
transitioned from a "feudal" age to the modern world in one or two
generations - the Japanese in WWII, the French and then the Americans.
One mans lifetime saw it all from start to end. Through this wonderfully
written, humane and moving memoir of a single life, the reader is able to
more fully understand the Vietnam experience as a whole.
Peter S. Wells (2008) Hardcover,
first August 2008
There are so many lengthy difficult books about the Early Middle Ages,
written for and by specialists, what a delight to find a short and easy
to read summary of the latest scholarship of this rapidly changing
multi-disciplinary field, written for a general audience by a medieval
scholar with an up to date and useful bibliography.
The term "Dark Ages" has a long and complicated history ever since its
invention by Italian Humanists in the 14th and 15th centuries. Modern
medieval historians try to avoid the term Dark Ages with its pejorative
implications. However some will still justify its use because the period
was "dark to us", because of the lack of written record. However even
this is no longer the case, a wealth of archaeological information has
surfaced to enlighten the period. The old prejudices of a violent,
backwards and stagnant time are falling away. Was it different from Rome?
Yes, but to apply a value judgment of a "Dark Age" is inappropriate, this
powerful metaphor has sadly shaped many peoples vision of the
period.
Peter Wells examines some of the enduring myths and shows, through new
archaeological findings, rather than a sudden break with the past, a
continuity of history. For example there is a myth that urban centers
declined or were abandoned, Wells shows substantial evidence this was not
the case, using a case example of London. There is a myth of continuous
violence and warfare, however Wells suggests this could not have been the
case because of freedom of movement and trade that was occurring. There
is a myth that technology halted or went backwards, when in fact it was a
period of innovation, including the deep plow, horse harness and 3-field
system which created a surplus in food, population and specialization.
There is a myth that Roman roads deteriorated, which is true, but the
original Roman roads were built on ancient roadways and were mainly only
meant for military purposes anyway. Artwork flourished in this period
finding new and original expressions.
Barbarians to Angels is a quick read for a general audience that
summarizes a lot of recent and difficult scholarship. For more
specialized works, to understand how we know what we know, the "proof",
there is an excellent Bibliography.
Natalie Zemon
Davis (1984) Paperback, 2002 re-print August
2008
This short work - about the length of a long journal article -
reconstructs the dramatic events behind the very well known 16th century
legal case of Martin Guerre, in southern France. Natalie Davis is the
first modern historian to scientifically investigate the facts of the
case and try to answer questions of what exactly happened and why. First
published in 1984, the book today is generally considered a classic
because it crossed a number of boundaries. First, it is one of the
leading examples of "microhistory", which in medieval history means
documenting the lives of peasants, which represented 90% of the
population, but who left behind very little evidence for historians to
work with, and have thus traditionally been under-represented in
history. This school of history arose in the 1970s and when this book
was published in 1984 it was sort of the height of fashion (which
doesn't take away from its value). Secondly, the book has a wide popular
readership because of the film of the same name, for which Davis was a
consultant. Finally, it is a solid and commendable work of scholarship.
Unlike other popular histories (such as A Distant Mirror), it
sacrificed nothing in its scholarly integrity while remaining
approachable and entertaining, thus introducing many general readers to
real medieval history without much requirement for specialized
knowledge. The story of Martin Guerre continues to be re-told centuries
later around the world, its power and vitality undiminished by centuries
of time or the cold lens of scholarship.
James Hilton (1933) Hardcover, World's
Best Reading (Readers Digest), 1995 August 2008
A feel good character study of a kindly old Victorian English boys
school professor. It is too saccharine sweet sentimental for my taste.
Hilton tells us how wonderful Mr Chips is, how funny he is and beloved
but doesn't convincingly show it, it's all sentimentality. I can see
how it would remind older readers of Victorian era professors they had,
sure and confident of themselves and the world before it blew up in WWI
- the older reader could "know" Mr. Chips the archetype based on an
amalgamation of professors they had grown up with, so it's hard to be
critical of that. But Hilton has not fully fleshed out Mr Chips so he
comes across for modern readers flat, a cartoon character out of a
British children's boarding school genre novel.
The illustrations by Dianna Diamond in the Readers Digest edition are
excellent, photographic in detail. I have not seen a movie adaptation
but hope to do so as I think the sentimentality will transfer well to
film.
Alexsandr Kuprin
(1905) Hardcover, private printed via Lulu and Internet
Archive, from 1916 first English edition August
2008
The Duel (1905) is Russian author Aleksandr
Kuprin's realist masterpiece, wining him literary fame and
friendship with Anton Chekov, Maxim Gorky, Leonid Andreyev, Nobel
Prize-winning Ivan Bunin and Leo Tolstoy. Kuprin was a born storyteller
and has been compared with Kipling and Jack London. Like London,
however, Kuprin "degenerated" later in life with the vices of women
(prostitutes) and drink and his works similarly became sensational, like
with the lurid account of prostitutes in The Pit (1915). But he
reached a pinnacle of high art with The Duel.
The Duel explores "honor" in its many permutations. Honor in
career, love, and the hypocrisy inherit. The main character, Romashov,
is a 21 year old military officer in training in a backwater provincial
town where everyone knows everyone and gossip spreads quickly. Kuprin's
realistic portrayal of the horrors of Russian military life is a
wonderfully rich portrait of an "odious and wanton liaison [of]
gambling, drinking, soul-killing, monotonous regimental routine, with
never a single inspiring word, never a ray of light in the black,
hopeless darkness."
Romashov experiences a number of setbacks in his career and his romantic
notions of being a hero to the Czar are shattered by cruel realities -
on the brink of suicide (a common occurrence in his regiment) he
undergoes a change when he discovers salvation through empathizing with
the sufferings of others: "it was clear to [Romashov] at once how petty
and insignificant was his own sorrow in comparison with [his friends]
cruel fate." By rising above soul-crushing military doctrine of honor
and violence, and finding instead sympathy with others, he finds
freedom, "a proud, triumphant feeling of malicious joy and defiance."
To this end Romashov then discovers that most professions are based on
"mistrust of the honor and morality of mankind.. supervisors and
official, policemen, book-keepers, priests, etc.." and there are only
two careers that are truly noble, science/art. and manual labor. Thus
Romashov navigates his way through the world of honor in the sphere of
his career, but he has a fatal flaw and that is love. In the end he is
tricked by honor in love (or lack thereof) and it is his undoing. Kuprin
was not entirely happy with the novels ending, and I tend to agree that
its sensationalism mires it in the 19th century. It could have been a
modernist novel had Romashov's duel ended in a different way, such as
the alternative path suggested by his friend Nasanski. However it is
still dramatic and satisfying.
This is a multimedia collection of primary and secondary works about H.
G. Wells' War of the Worlds and Orson Welles' 1938 radio play. It
contains:
1. Forward (Ray Bradbury)
2. Introduction (Holmsten/Lubertozzi)
3. A short biography of Orson Welles and history of the radio play
(Holmsten/Lubertozzi)
4. Mars in popular culture (Holmsten/Lubertozzi)
5. A short biography of H.G.Wells and history of the book
(Holmsten/Lubertozzi)
6. Transcript of Orson's radio play (Howard Kotch [w/ Welles])
7. The complete text of the novel (H. G. Wells)
8. Afterword (Ben Bova)
9. An audio-CD including 5 tracks:
9a. "The War of the Worlds", the complete 1938 play (1 hour)
9b. Orson Welles press conference the day after
9c. H.G and Orson co-interviewed in 1940.
9d. An excerpt from a 1968 radio version in Buffalo, NY that caused
similar panic
9e. An excerpt of Orson looking back on the play 40 years after.
10. Many illustrations and pictures.
This is a very generous book. Even if you already own the novel, there
is enough supplemental here to make it worth having. My only complaint
is that H. G. Welles original book is not very good, until Orson
immortalized it on radio in 1938 (with substantial changes) it was not
one of H.G.'s most well known works. Indeed, Orson's adaptation is
genius, while H.G.'s story is mostly derivative of the existing genre
known as Invasion
Literature which was very popular in the run up to World War I.
Having already read Ther Battle of Dorking (1871) I felt like I
was reading it all over again, but less convincing, repetitive and sort
of sappy. If it hadn't been for Orson's radio play I suspect the novel
would be a minor work of H.G. Wells and not the iconic 20th century
story it has become. Luckily the hour long broadcast is freely available
online, but this book, if found cheap enough, is a great resource
and a lot of fun.
Charles Dickens
(1840) Hardcover "Books, Inc." 1936 set of 20,
Vol.VIII July 2008
The Old Curiosity Shop is Dickens 4th novel, serialized between
1840 and 1841. It was his best selling work to date and contains some
strong auto-biographical elements concerning the death of his
sister-in-law Mary Hogarth, as seen in the death of Nell. After he
finished Dickens said he though it his best work and would always be his
favorite, although this sentiment would later change with David
Copperfield. It sold well in America - one of the best known stories
about the novel is that readers would line up at the dock, as ships came
in from England, asking if Nell had died, however this is apocryphal.
Critically the novel has had a mixed reception and it is generally
considered to be near (but not at) the bottom of his 16 major works. The
character of Nell in particular has been the focus of scorn for being
too sentimental or "vulgar" - I found certain passages of her death to
be unreadable, and during her escapades around the countryside I found
myself caring not one bit what happened (I almost gave up the novel
entirely but luckily kept going). Up until about page 340 (of 521) the
novel is fairly unfocused and not much happens. The remaining 150 pages
or so are probably the best. The character of Quilp is the most
memorable - Dickens doesn't fully flesh it out, but it is obvious from
his habits that Quilp is an old sea-hand, old enough to have been in the
Napoleonic Wars and probably one of many veterans who plagued Englands
unemployed ranks in the years after. Thus for me he held a certain
fascination not only as a comic "Ogre", but as an archetype of what
probably was not uncommon in the period.
Despite the attention on Nell she is not really the hero of the novel,
who is Richard 'Dick' Swiveller, a name not dissimilar to the authors
own and Dickens' favorite character. He is transformed by 3 weeks in a
coma and comes out the other side strong enough to take on and beat the
evil Quilp.
Despite problems this is still a Dickens novel and fairly good. There
are certain scenes and passages and characters that will live with me
always.
For more in depth, an outstanding and enlightening review can be found
here
by "Murr".
Getting into Guinness: One Man's
Longest, Fastest, Highest Journey Inside the World's
Most Famous Record Book
Larry Olmsted
(2008) Amazon Vine pre-release reviewers copy,
paperback July 2008
Getting into Guinness appears to be the first ever "biography" of
The Guinness Book of World Records (as it's called in the
States). "The Book" (as Olmsted and others sometimes call it) is the
worlds best selling book, second only to the Bible, its sales buoyed
year after year by its target market of 7 to 15 year old boys. However
Getting into Guinness is for adults and is a fascinating behind
the scenes look for all of us who remember, for example, the man with
the longest fingernails - in case your curious he recently offered to
cut them off and sell them on Ebay for a quarter million, but no one
bid.
Olmstead, in the tradition of "Gonzo" journalism, writes about not only
the book, and its sub-culture, but actively participated by breaking a
few records himself. Thus the chapters move back and forth from
scholarly archival material of history and the psychological and
historical forces that have made it so popular, to his own accounts of
trying to bread into The Book on two occasions (playing poker and
playing golf). Throughout Olmstead investigates some of the most
prolific record breakers, the most famous, the most bizarre and the most
dangerous. He fluctuates between calling record breakers "fame junkies",
addicted to getting into the book like alcoholics - to modern day
Olympians: "it is the last bastion of pure [sports] amateurism,
celebrating the drives and passions that were once embodied by the
Olympic Games."
The Book started as a dry encyclopedia in 1956 meant to be used in Pubs
as a reference so that bar disputes among patrons could be settled (it's
founder, Hugh Beaver (1890-1967), worked for the Guinness Brewing
Company). However it quickly caught the public's fascination and within
a year people were breaking records for no other reason than to get into
the book. This phenomenon, known as "Guinessport" in which odd-ball
"sports", like balancing a milk jug on your head while walking
backwards, is a direct result of competition among the fame junkies to
do one better than the previous record holder.
Over the years The Book has changed, originally it was about nature and
science with little focus on people, but today it is exactly the
opposite being almost entirely about human records. The Books golden age
was the 1960s and 70s, a period when consumer culture and materialism
led to more comfortable lives and free time to live out dreams, and find
15 minutes of fame when there were otherwise limited channels. Today as
countries around the world go through this same process of development,
like in China, they are also discovering The Book - in 2004, China
entered the "top 10 countries with most records" and is expected to
continue upwards in rank over time.
Getting into Guinness is a breezy magazine style human interest
read, probably the perfect format for the subject. A more scholarly
account would be possible but it wouldn't be nearly as fun.
Nineteenth-Century Britain: A Very
Short Introduction
Christopher Harvie
(2005) Paperback July 2008
This appears to be a CliffNotes version of a longer textbook. It
requires a fair amount of knowledge of English history background, the
subject is so vast that names, events and places are not explained by
assumed to be understood. It's sort of the worst of all worlds, a text
loaded with dry statistics and no central "big picture", then condensed.
Parts are good, worth skimming through and picking out the sections and
chapters of interest and for the recent bibliography.
David Macaulay (1973) Hardcover,
first edition July 2008
This is Macaulay's first book (1973) and with Castle is probably
his most popular, but he had yet to fully develop his techniques and
while the basics are there, it is thin in comparison to the only other
Macaulay book I've read (Mill, 1983). Still it provides an
intimate and detailed cross-generational perspective, the sense of
passages of time through the lives of people contrasted with the
permanence of architecture is very well done. The Cathedral no longer
seems a cold stone monument but embodies vibrant and living hopes and
dreams.
The Best American Science & Nature
Writing 2005 (The Best American Series)
Jonathan
Weiner (2005) Hardcover, first July 2008
I'm
writing this review in July 2008 about an anthology of magazine articles
published in 2004 - I probably would have given it 4.5 or 5 stars when
it first came out but 4 years on makes the difference. Many of the
pieces - as chosen by guest editor Jonathan Weiner (The Beak of the
Finch) - have a topical bent about current events, in particular
Bush (anti) science policies which have since played out. As a Guest
Editor there is a pull between choosing pieces with lasting value, and
those that are period pieces soon forgotten. Weiner seemed to focus on
pieces with an ideological bent, or more accurately, pieces that
attacked ideologies, either way it seemed like "ideology" was a central
theme.
My favorite articles include: Jared Diamond, "Twilight at Easter", a
classic re-telling of the Easter Island parable of planet earth. I read
this same account in his long book Collapse but I think in this
shorter form it is more powerful and concise. Malcolm Gladwell's
"Getting Over It" suggests that most of us get over traumatic
experiences fairly well and don't need to dwell on it. Reinforcing this
is Jerome Groopman's "The Grief Industry" which shoots giant holes in
the whole PTSD theory and the industry it has spawned. Sherwin Nuland's
"The Man or the Moment?" is a historiography piece about approaches to
history, in particular the social historian who looks at the "zeitgeist"
as the main driver, and the "great man" historians who focus on
individual actions. Although the Great Man theory has largely gone out
of favor, he makes some surprising observations how individual
personalities do in fact drive history at a certain level. Michael
Specter in "Miracle in a Bottle" takes on the vitamin industry which is
mostly unregulated and makes claims with little scientific basis. This
is an important piece because it clarifies how free market capitalism
without government controls can cause problems. I used to be big into
suppliments but have since focused on eating a balanced healthy diet. A
similar article by William Weed "106 Science Claims and a Truckful of
Baloney" underscores the barrage of scientific-sounding stuff we are
exposed to every day and how 90% of is just plain, well,
baloney.
Two other pieces are memorable for good stories - "The Curious History
of the First Pocket Calculator" which was designed by a Jewish
concentration camp inmate in Germany during WWII - and "To Hell and
Back", the story of Bill Stone a cave explorer and all around polymath,
who may someday end up on the moon.
Waiter Rant: Thanks for the
Tip--Confessions of a Cynical Waiter
Anonymous ("The
Waiter") (2008) Paperback, pre-release review copy Amazon
Vine July 2008
Waiter Rant is a memoir by
an anonymous author who for the past few years has been writing an award
winning blog [online public diary] about his daily experiences as a
waiter in a New York City Italian Bistro. The blog, also called Waiter
Rant, has been very popular. After being noticed and approached by
HarpersCollins to make a book, this is the result. It is a sort of
Cinderella story since most amateurs - the author is entirely
self-taught and previously unpublished - only dream of such an
opportunity.
Since the author is anonymous, for the sake of the review I will call
him "Phillip" after Phillip Marlowe, the private detective in Raymond
Chandler's 1930s hard-boiled pulp-fiction crime novels. Chandler is
"Phillips" favorite author and he credits him as a major influence on
his writing style. Indeed Phillip seems to model his life as something
of a wise guy - hanging out with prostitutes and drinking heavily after
a hard days work, the all knowing waiter veteran who can see through
customers with a thousand yard stare. There is a rough edge to it, but
at the same time, Phillip is able to convey in parts some surprisingly
insightful passages. His best writing is in the earliest and last
chapters where he talks about his own personal challenges, history and
demons. Chapter 21 "Demons" in particular made me pause long and hard.
Phillip has a psychologists insight into himself and others and his
honesty and candor are refreshing. However this comes at a price in
other chapters where he tends to be the smart guy know it all at the
expense of customers and staff - sometimes he takes it too far with a
youthful bravado.
It's a well written book and although I allocated myself three days to
finish I had trouble putting it down and finished in less than a day and
half, it goes very quickly.
Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life
and Times of Janis Joplin
Alice Echols
(1999) Hardcover first (ex-lib Reno NV, 18 checkouts, greasy
smelly) July 2008
There are a whole bunch of
biographies of Janis, including the well known 'Buried Alive', but this
late comer published in 1999 appears to be the most even-handed,
well-researched, and scholarly. In fact Alice Echols is a scholar of the
1960s (without any personal connection to Janis) so there is a lot of
contextual information to put the period in perspective - I've probably
learned more about the 1960s San Francisco scene in this book than
anywhere else, it's worth reading for that reason alone.
This is my first "rock-star biography", a genre I have avoided because
of the groaning shelves of narcissistic "tell alls". I choose Janis to
be my first (something she would have loved) after seeing a couple
YouTube clips: one showing her singing "Ball and Chain" live, the other
a TV interview at her Texas hometown high-school reunion. In these clips
I saw a deep, complicated and obviously brilliant person, her charisma
on stage was memorizing and off-stage equally so. For me she became more
than a raspy-kinda-scary voice on the radio from another era, and I
wanted to learn more about who she was, and why she had become so famous
and died so young.
Joplin's personality was a wild horse who kept on the move, never
finding but always seeking a new home and greener pastures, running from
her personal demons while embracing her desire for living life in the
moment to the fullest. She drank heavily (Southern Comfort), fucked
thousands of guys and hundreds of women, got in fights with Hells
Angels, shot heroin and was a mainlining speed freak. She was a
vulnerable, loving and kind child from a well-off Middle Class suburban
family. She was a walking enigma. Her origins are with the beatniks and
folksie scene of the early 60s, she was never fully accepted in the San
Francisco scene as a hippie, yet she is widely imagined as one of its
founding mothers as "Perl" in a costume of boa-feathers, clunky
bracelets and lots of beads.
In the end her death was no surprise even to herself, she put her body
on the front-line of the cultural revolution pushing the boundaries
forward on many fronts. It is unfortunate she was largely forgotten in
the 70s and 80s but I think with historical reflection on the 60s her
life will find more prominence - if nothing else than an archetype of a
generation, but also for being ahead of her time as a woman rock star in
a male dominated industry.
Echols does a good job of balancing the exterior fame with the interior
truths of Joplin, a psychological profile that will remind the reader of
other people they know like her, it's believable because she seems so
"normal" (in a somewhat abnormal way). I came away both with an intimate
understanding of Janis and a much stronger sense of the 60s having seen
it through the life of a single person who was a central catalyst.
Emile Zola
(1885) Paperback Penguin 2004, trans Roger
Pearson July 2008
Zola's naturalism is among my
very favorite styles of literature, and Germinal is his
Masterpiece, so my feelings about this novel are nothing but praise. I
first read it at 16 and now again at 41. It feels so real, the people,
places and events, it's hard to imagine they never existed - but in a
way I suppose they did exist in mining towns all over the world. Such is
the magic of Zola to merge the specific (fictional) and the general
(reality) in a singular vision. I look forward to reading it again once
enough time has passed as both readings have brought new insights and
understandings.
After reading I watched Claude Berri's 1993 film adaptation, but in
French which I am not fluent - however it didn't matter, it allowed the
foregrounding of the beautiful sets and costumes which are the strengths
of the film; Zola was a visual author which makes transition to film
that much smoother. The vision I had built up from the novel matched up
almost perfectly with the movie, suggesting Zola did an excellent job of
getting at the reality of the thing - over 125 years of distance in time
and a translation to English melt away through the power of words to
bring a common experience.
Steve Koss
wrote an insightful review
on Amazon, I agree with everything he said and wanted take it a step
further. As Steve says the first story is the key to the book - Nam Le
tells us he "could totally exploit the Vietnamese thing. But instead,
[he] choose to write about lesbian vampires and Colombian assassins, and
Hiroshima orphans - and New York painters with hemorrhoids." Why? These
are strange things to write about and the question is what do they have
to do with the ethnic literature?
Everything. The problem is, as Lee says, so-called ethnic literature is
"a license to bore. The characters are always flat, generic." We as
readers are either numb to it because of over-use or no frame of
reference. However it is still possible to convey the feelings of the
experience through a proxy, and so all of these stories immerse the
reader with certain themes in preparation for the last story. Each story
is similar in its exploration of alienation and loneliness in the face
of a crisis, usually with death hanging over all.
It's been said there is no loneliness more acute than that experienced
around other people, in particular family. The New York artist who waits
alone in the restaurant for the daughter who never comes; the high
school football star who fights his demons, but even with his father
taking the punches, still faces it alone; the Colombian assassin who
faces his destiny without his friends help; in each of the stories the
main character is isolated and alienated and faces a great trauma. The
experience of reading this book reminded me of when I was child, lost in
the crowd, my parents seemingly gone forever and the world a difficult
and cold place.
By the time we get to the last story of the book, "The Boat", our
sensibilities have been so finely shaped to this sense of alienation,
fear and dread that Nam Le is able to convey the Vietnamese "ethnic
experience" to just about anyone in the world. The details and facts are
the words on the page, but the feeling and sense of experience comes
from within ourselves. Within that interpretive framework this no longer
seems like a collection of short stories but a work greater than its
elements, a masterful use of the short story format.
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
(1958) Hardcover, first English 1960
Pantheon July 2008
The Leopard was
published in 1958 making 2008 the fifty year anniversary. If - as
Goethe once said - Sicily is the key to Italy, than The Leopard
is the key to understanding Sicily. While clearly a modernist novel with
multiple points of view and a focus on the body, it reads like a late
19th century novel of manners, perfectly re-creating for a modern
audience a lost world. This is sort of summed up neatly in the novels
most famous line "If we want things to stay as they are, things will
have to change." Some critics have charged it is too celebratory of the
Aristocracy and old order, but Lanza Tomasi (Lampedusa's adopted son)
recently said the "miracle" of the book is no reader identifies with the
lower class, "everyone believes he is the Prince." The Prince is torn
between intelligence and lust, described with irony in softly poetic
passages. It feels like a 19thh century novel but the use of Freudian
psychological theory to explain and understand motives lends it a lack
of moral certitude and thus cleary placing it as a 20th century
modernist tradition.
As a curious aside with numbers, the main part of the text takes place
in 1860 - the last chapter jumps forward fifty years to 1910
Incidentally, the same year Virginia Woolf famously announced the end of
an era: "On or about December 1910 human character changed." Fifty years
after 1910 in 1960 The Leopard reached a world wide audience. And
this review is written 50 years after that. Such are the neat and tidy
50-year periods of the story intertwined with history, I believe
Lampedusa would have smiled with the continuity.
Robyn Davidson
(b. 1950) by 1975 was something of an Australian bohemian who had lived
in Sydney's equivalent of Haight-Ashbury, an enclave of rebels and
artists. Fed up with people and the world she decided to travel across
the desert of Australian alone on a camel. The only problem is she
didn't have any money or know anything about camels. The first half of
Tracks describes Robyn's experiences in the town of Alice
Springs, a dirty and uncultured place about right in the middle of
Australia where men where men and blacks (aborigines) were treated worse
than the Jim Crow south. It was here that she ran into an elderly
ex-German with a sadist streak that taught Robyn how to work with
camels. The second half of the book describes her trek, which became
something of an international news event and a National
Geographic article in 1978. She had struck a nerve with the popular
imagination - the lone women in the desert on a camel - and this unknown
young lady in her 20s was now a hot commodity - much to her chagrin as
she hid from spotter planes and roving reporters with telescopic lenses
while seeking a solitary experience.
Tracks is important in the canon of travel literature (if such a
thing exists) for a number of reasons. The Cambridge Companion to
Travel Writing considers it one of the three most important travel
books of its era (1970s - the others being Bruce Chatwin's In
Patagonia and Peter Matthiessen's The Snow Leopard), saying
"although formally less innovative [than the other two], Davidson's
feminism and anti-racism articulated the views of a new generation and
showed how a genre long associated with colonial and imperial attitudes
could be freed from some of that heritage." In other words, Davidson
takes a very sympathetic view to the plight of the Aborigines, how
poorly they are treated by whites, and the value of persevering their
culture - today these things are politically correct and expected, but
Davidson was ahead of the curve in the mid-1970s Australian outback.
Likewise Davidson's persona is very strong and in many ways she offers a
female perspective of exploration that is refreshing and
enlightening.
Davidson has a number of connections with other well known artists. She
went on to have a friendship with Bruce Chatwin in the early 80s and
both authors had a fascination with "nomadism." (Davidson's next most
important book, Desert Places (1996), also explores this theme).
She had a romantic affair with the National Geographic
photographer who took pictures of her trip (Rick Smolan,
probably best known for his "Day in the life.." photo books). Davidson
also had a three year relationship with Salman Rushdie in the mid 1980s.
Eric Sevareid (1912 - 1992) was a third generation Norwegian-American
born and raised in a small town in northern North Dakota. His book of
memoirs Not So Wild a Dream, published in 1947, is mostly about
an action-filled 15 year period from high school graduation in 1930 (age
17) to the end of World War II (age 32). During that time Sevareid
professionally and personally went through a number of adventures that
typify his "Greatest Generation" and events of the world at large.
Sevareid was one of the pioneering "Morrow Boys", a team of radio
journalists who filed daily radio journalistic pieces from Europe during
the war. This allowed him to travel to many places and get up close to
the front and fighting. Sevareid is at his best narrating his
adventures, the book is episodic and some of the best include: Bombings
in London during the Battle of Britain; the plane wreck while going over
"the hump" into China; his experiences in Paris during the "phony war"
and "Exodus"; the horrors of war on the Italian front; the D-Day
invasion and subsequent Battle of the Rhine; the mutiny on-board a
Liberty Ship in NY harbor. His accounts of the Great Depression, when he
tramped around as a hobo on a train are really excellent, as is his
description of a 2500 mile canoe trip, which is covered in more detail
in his 1935 book Canoing with the Cree. These two books, written
while still a young man, would be his most popular, and last real
literary output - although he always considered himself a writer first,
most of his later career was on television..
Sevareid was known for writing "think pieces", for example in one
transcript, aired late in the war to popular acclaim, he talks about the
unknowability of the experience of combat for a soldier, the
impossibility of words to describe the immediate and often irrational
emotions and thoughts of a soldier. These "think pieces" became a
trademark of his later in life as a TV reporter, and Not So Wild a
Dream often goes off on a thinking tangent. If there is a theme to
the book, Sevareid is seeking the essence and spirit of his time and
generation, what we might call the "Zeitgeist", and he often comes very
close to capturing the immediate feeling of change. It is why this book
is so important as a primary source for documenting the times and his
generation. One of the more profound moments for me is when he sees a
change in his generations attitude towards war:
"Our own men,
whose cult was antimilitarism [in the 1930s students were highly
anti-military], whose habit is to identify themselves merely as
civilians in different cloths who detested soldiering, now subtly
changed. There was a dash and verve about them that I had rarely
observed before, and young boys would frankly say: "In Italy all i used
to think about was going home. Now I kinda hate to quit before we get to
Berlin." It was if they suddenly realized they were soldiers by
profession, with the honest desire to complete this masterpiece of their
skill down to the last detail."
Sevareid is right, during
WWII the American military went from a small and and unpopular
enterprise to a large beast that to this day is a major force in
American culture, the consequences of which Eisenhower predicted in his
military-industrial complex speech. Another area Sevareid muses on is
the waning power of Britain and the ascending power of the USA - which
given the events post-Cold War and the "Rise of the Rest" of the world,
also has a prophetic tone. To get an idea what the US will be like as it
becomes less relevant in the world - with the rise of China, India and
the rest - one only has to read Sevareid's account of the waning power
of Britain in the last chapters of the book.
Bruce Chatwin in 1974 was an unknown British journalist with no books to
his name. Seeking the life of a nomad he flew to the southern part of
South America and severed ties with his newspaper and former life with a
single-sentence telegram: "Have gone to Patagonia." For the next 6
months he walked and hitchhiked around this remote region keeping a
diary which became the basis for the book. According to the Cambridge
Companion to Travel Writing (2002) it is one of three most important
travel books of its era: "[its] laconic and elliptical style, in its
ninety-seven short sections averaging little more than a couple of page
each, seemed to finally bring modernist aesthetics to a fundamentally
nineteenth-century genre..[it was] a landmark in contemporary travel
writing." The narrative does follow a geographic route, but the included
map does not show it, the reader has to piece together where on the map
Chatwin is next. There is almost no narrative about actual travel, each
of the mini chapters starts in a new place with Chatwin already arrived.
The people he meets and stays with have no background or reason why he
is there. Throughout is interweaved chapters on Patagonian history,
often highly esoteric and in some cases true original research by
Chatwin he solves some puzzle or mystery of history: Chapter 49 is as
good an etymology on the word "patagonia" as will ever be found.
Subsequent revelations showed some of it to be fiction; some of the
people Chatwin wrote about later came forward and denied things
happened, or who were characterized incorrectly. Chatwin never denied
this but explained that his work did not so much change reality as
augment it, sort of like how political cartoons can bring out a hidden
truth.
Chatwin, who died age 48 of AIDS (he was bi-sexual and one of the
super-star AIDS victims in the 1980s), went on to write other well known
books and is recognized as a skilled stylist. His travel writing is very
literary and the book is credited with reviving interest in the genre as
a legitimate form of literature. It is full of great poetic imagery, I
just picked a page at random and found this quote: "She was waiting for
me, a white face behind a dusty window. She smiled, her painted mouth
unfurling as a red flag caught in a sudden breeze. Her hair was dyed
dark-auburn. Her legs were a mesopotamia of varicose veins. She still
had the tatter of an extraordinary beauty. She had been making pastry
and the grey dough clung to her hands. Her blood-red nails were cracked
and chipped."
Joseph Conrad
(1900) International Collectors Library (date unknown,
1980s?) June 2008
Conrad was experimenting with new narrative forms that would soon be
known as modernism. Rather than a straight chronological narrative from
a single perspective there are multiple narrators and time shifts. As
well he explored the Victorian value of honor and duty which the First
World War literally blew apart, thus making it a unique snapshot of a
culture in its last days, no one could write a book like this today
(that wasn't sarcastic). Because of these period trappings I can't give
a "timeless acclaim" of 5-stars, but the writing is still wonderful,
Conrad was a master of the language.
The story reminds me in many ways of Frenchmen Pierre Loti's novel My Brother
Yves (1883), also about a morally ambiguous sailor who is taken
under the wing of a narrator. Loti is little known today but at the time
in 1900 he was probably better known that Conrad, certainly a more
canonical literary figure (Loti's reputation, at least in the English
speaking world, has not lasted).
Probably one of the shortest books I've read in a while (about 30
minutes) but the story is powerful and a "tearjerker". I think it
suffers from an attachment to Dunkirk as a period piece with
nationalistic undertones during a period when England was searching for
its identity under the looming possibility of a Nazi invasion, and the
United States was still on the fence about entering the war (a debate at
the time as heated as the Iraq War today). But it is hard to be critical
of a book like this, it is beautifully written and probably Gallico's
most successful and still well worth reading.
Reading Theroux's travel literature, one wonders why he left home - the
people he meets are almost universally irritating for him, and he takes
little interest in much else except perhaps his own physical discomforts
and prejudices. Of course we love to hate this type of splenetic and
cantankerousness writing, not unlike Tobias Smollett's 1786 Travels Through France and Italy (Smollett also took a 'Grand
Tour'). Theroux models himself an anti-tourist, resisting seeing the
sites but when forced he rarely has anything positive to say. This
appeals to the reader who wants to travel without being a tourist, but
in the end comes across as crass and of little value. He is at his best
describing the lowest encounters, prostitutes seem to fill the most
interesting stories (it's unclear if he partakes but he does imbibe in
smoking a fair amount of hashish). Theroux followed the "hippie trail" for
part of the way but found them, like most everyone, open to
ridicule.
There are some interesting historical curiosities. He traveled through
Vietnam in late 1973 when the US military was pulling out, and so he got
to see first-hand the deserted bases overtaken by squatters, stripped of
every valuable not unlike what happened to Iraq in the wake of the US
invasion in 2003, and perhaps not unlike what might happen again in the
near future. He also makes a literary connection between the Vietnam War
and Conrad's Heart of Darkness, well before the appearance of
Apocalypse Now (1979). The best scene in the book I think is with
the 3 Americans living on the beach with some Vietnamese women.
In the end this is an important book in the travel literature canon
because Theroux set out to create something new and found a wide
following of readers helping to revive interest in the genre, but he was
eclipsed by writers like Bruce Chatwin (In Patagonia) who really
did move the state of the art out of the 19th century into a modern
aesthetic.
Lewis Lapham (ed.) Volume 1, Number 3 (Summer 2008) June
2008
"Book of Nature" is Lapham's third journal in this wonderful new
quarterly (see previous review). The topic is of course "Nature" and the
range and variety of works is broad. Since this is an area that I am
already somewhat familiar with, many of the pieces are not new to me,
but it was a delight to run across favorites, and of course the parade
of new pieces I had never heard of before. There are over 100 so I will
detail just a few that stood out:
The first section is called "Howling Wilderness" and deals with the
power of nature that both commands worship and instills fear. Immanuel
Kant, before altering the course of philosophy with the categorical
imperative, mused on the aesthetics of beauty giving some wonderful
definitions of "sublime" and its variants. Evan Connell recounts an epic
Antarctic survival story from Shackleton's 1909 expedition, his near
death experiences are so often "one is tempted to exclaim 'Oh, come off
it!'". Pliny the Younger vividly re-tells one heroic tragedy during the
Pompeii volcanic explosion, when citizens wore pillows on their heads to
keep off falling rocks. Robinson Jeffers poetically describes sea-lions
being attacked by killer whales. Jack London recalls the SF Earthquake,
with people hauling trunks of possessions through the flames, the
working man able to dig a hole and bury it, the middle class man without
the tools or strength forced to abandon.
The second section "Garden's of Earthly Delight" is about man's control
of nature according to his image. John Burger looks at the history and
philosophy of the zoo, revealing its origin in early 19th century
Romantic Nationalism. Vitruvius in the first-century BC discovers the
length of both arms equals the height of a man, and many other
fascinating body-part symmetries. Curtis White writes in 2007 about the
philosophical side of environmentalism, suggesting it needs more than
just science, but also an ethic, morality and spirituality. E.B. White
laments the passing of a pig (not the one from Charlotte's Web).
The third section "Terra Incognita" has works which suggest "we don't
know what's going on." Al Gore starts off with a motivational excerpt
from the book An Inconvienent Truth - I have only seen the movie
but the book seems even better. C.S. Lewis provides a wonderful quote:
"What we call man's power over nature turns out to be a power exercised
by some men over other men with nature as its instrument." A Crow Indian
laments the death of the Buffalo.
This issue contains 6 original essays all of which are very good. The
first essay by D. Grahamm Burnett attempts a summary of the history of
the evolving concept "nature" in the Western tradition - a complex
journey indeed, I think C.S. Lewis did a better job of it in The
Discarded Image, but this is probably the academically strongest
essay of the bunch, although a complex and difficult topic. Bill
McKibben re-examines Thoreau's Walden and its importance to
modern readers. Simon Winchester ends with a really cool and fascinating
essay about how different the world would be if a volcanic mountain had
popped up a few miles from its present location, thus altering the
course of the Yangtze river away from China. If you read only one essay
in the entire issue, don't miss this one.
Nathaniel Hawthorne (1837) Hardcover, Readers Digest: Worlds Best
Reading series (1989) June 2008
Hawthorne wrote this collection of short stories anonymously in the
1830's, first published in local papers. At the urging of a friend he
signed his name and raised the money to publish it as a book in two
collected volumes, a copy of which was sent to former classmate and
famous writer Henry Longfellow at Harvard. Longfellow gave it a
favorable review and thus launched Hawthorne out of obscurity and on the
path to well known works such as The House of the Seven Gables
and his masterpiece The Scarlet Letter.
Overall the collection is a mixed bag, some are clearly dated while
others have timeless appeal. There are a lot of stories and only a
handful will I remember and/or want to re-read in the future so it was a
bit of a chore to read through them all. Hawthorne was honing his style
so some of the pieces are dead ends, while others echo some of his later
better works.
My favorite stories include "The Minister's Black Veil" about a 17th
century New England puritan minister who vows never to look at the world
except with a black veil over his eyes - the reason why is the mystery
of the story and revealed to us at the end. "Wakefield" has a similar
theme of mysterious behavior, a man decides to walk away from home
without saying he was leaving and then return 10 years later - it is
based on a true story and in fact there are modern accounts of similar
things happening. "The Gentle Boy" beautifully captures 17th century
religious fanaticism, intolerance and historical forces concerning the
conflict between Puritans and Quakers in New England. This story is
probably his most mature and serious of the book. "Mr. Higginbothem's
Catastrophe", about a rumor of a man's murder, is a riddle wrapped in a
story, I was perplexed and enthralled to the end. "David Swann", about a
young man who falls asleep by the side of the road, is a philosophical
story about the nature of fortune and fate. "Dr. Heidegger's
Experiment", about a liquid that makes the old young again, presages
Robert Louis Stevenson and more recent movies like
Cocoon.
Rachel Carson (1962) Hardcover, first (no DJ) June
2008
Rachel Carson (1907-64) died of complications from breast cancer at the
age of 56 which makes Silent Spring, published before she told
anyone of her condition, a haunted book, a dead woman walking seeking
justice for a crime. Carson's body is almost is a metaphor for the
planet. The so-called modern "environmental movement" - which the book
is commonly thought to have started - is really about human justice,
people are part of the environment and justice for the environment is
justice for people. By reading Carson today and remembering how and when
she died, we are reminded that keeping our campsites in better condition
than we found them (old Boy Scout motto), not trashing our backyards, is
a moral consideration both about nature and people, ultimately
one and the same. Carson's appeal for justice from the grave has not
been met, her predictions have come true: cancer is epidemic, public
health in general is eroded, and DDT and other chemicals now permeate
the earth from the Arctic to our mothers milk. Progress has been made
but "environmentalism" still carries a heavy stigma among many. The
American pledge ends with "and justice for all" - human justice can
never be obtained so long as nature, of which humans are a part,
continues to be debased.
Edward Hoagland is best known for non-fiction environmental writing, but
his first book in 1955 was a novel based on his experiences in his early
20s with a traveling circus. Most circus literature is about the
performers while the crew are so much background ambiance. In Cat
Man, Hoagland flips the picture and foregrounds the working guys
while the circus itself fade into the background. There are two types of
circus workers: performers and support crew. They have separate dining
halls, buses and trains: the "first train" people are the guys (they are
almost all men) who put up the tents, feed the animals, run the machines
- the "second train" performers arrive later. The performers are highly
paid rare talent while workers tend to be down and out low-paid
alcoholic drifters - "winos" with missing teeth, long hair, ratty
clothing and a homeless odor. Times were different back then, rougher,
and Hoagland's world is a dirty, smelly, low-brow violent place. Yet, as
ex-clown Stephen Brennan said, Cat Man is "the best, the truest
circus novel I've ever read." The plot is almost non-existent, other
than about a young drifter who runs off the join the circus, and it even
lacks a chronological progression with chapters jumping back and forth
in time and place. Some of the chapters would stand alone quite well as
short stories, vinaigrettes. Rather it is almost entirely a character
study and hyper-real detailed description of day to day life working
behind the scenes in a circus. One critic in the New York Review of
Books compared it to Moby-Dick because of its encyclopedic
detail.
I really enjoyed the novel although at times found the prose so dense
with detail and so slow in action that I would scan over sections
waiting for something to happen, in particular the descriptions of the
big cats. But like a war novel, it captures the essence of long periods
of inactivity and sudden bursts of action, usually violent and
dangerous. As realistic documentation of the rougher side of circus life
Hoagland's Cat Man is a timeless classic.
News from Tartary: A Journey from Peking to
Kashmir
Peter Fleming (1936) Hardcover, first (Scribner) May
2008
Peter Fleming (1907-71) was Ian Fleming's (James Bond) older brother.
Peter first rose to popularity in his 20's, during the early 30's, with
3 major travel/adventure books about trips through Brazil (33'), China
(34') and Central Asia (36'). News from Tartary is the last of
the three and describes a 6 month 3500 mile trip from Peking (Beijing)
due west across Chinas western provinces and south to India. "Tartary"
is an old western term meaning "Central Asia". At the time China's most
western province of Sinkiang (sometimes known as "Chinese Turkestan")
was embroiled in a complex struggle of colonial and civil wars with
Russia, China, etc.. and was a black hole of news. Sort of like Chechnya
today, it held a certain dangerous fascination for intrepid western
adventurers. Fleming traveled with Swiss writer Ella Maillart (1903-97)
who was herself an accomplished adventurer, although not so well known
in the English speaking world, she also wrote her own book about this
trip and the two can be read for profitable comparison. There are many
re-prints of News in circulation but the original edition is best as it
contains dozens of fascinating black and white photos, thick rough-cut
paper and a color tri-fold map of the route.
News from Tartary is today considered a classic of travel
literature ranked #64 on National Geographic's "100 Best Adventure
Books". It is an early example of "British understatement", the bumbling
amateur English gentleman who travels for no reason other than
traveling, as would be copied in the post war years, with authors such
as Eric Newby. Fleming graduated from Oxford with an advanced degree in
English literature and while he believed in adventure, he wondered how -
in a modern world of motor vehicles, trains and planes - real adventure
could be written of anymore. Just as Cervantes in Don Quixote
believed in the spirit of chivalry, but knew its time had passed, he was
able to write about it through a bumbling knight who could be laughed
at. Likewise Fleming sought to disarm his readers with word play and
self-deprecation, thus strengthening the more serious parts of the book
and lending the author more credibility - Fleming succeed, in the
readers eyes, not because of physical prowess and skills, but despite
them. By being an approachable everyman, he is more able to vividly
convey to his readers - who probably have never been to remote central
Asia and never will - how it feels to travel through the Gobi desert on
camels, arriving in oasis, going through sandstorms and traveling
through the Himalayas.
The Bridge of San Luis Rey hinges on old questions that writers
have been asking since Antiquity: does man have free will; and why does
God cause suffering? As Wilder says "..in my novel I have left this
question unanswered.. we can only pose the question' correctly and
clearly, and have faith one will ask the question in the right way." Its
didactic nature is meant to steer readers to a Christian perspective on
these age old questions. This of course would have resounded strongly in
mainstream Protestant America of the 1920s and 30s, who largely
questioned the value of reading "romances" at all, but today it feels
dated. As another reviewer pointed out The Life of Pi is a more
modern example of this type of work (and looking backwards Voltaire's
Candide (1759) asks similar questions, although is more a
political tract). In any case the symbolism of the bridge is strong if
not overtly so, it is a character unto itself, it's easy to make up some
possible symbolisms: In the early descriptions the knotted braids of
rope holding it together, built by the Incas, are like the threads that
bind the history of Europe and the Americas together across the chasm of
time. The life paths of the characters are like points on opposite sides
of a circle with a line between them, each line intersecting in the
middle, the middle being the bridge, the common point where they all
come together.
Wilder doesn't really answer the question he asks, which honestly anyone
can write a novel asking big important questions and no answers. The
bridge feels somewhat cliche and middle-brow, we all use a bridge as
symbolism in every day conversation in a sort of folksy way. It
continues to get good reviews and is on the Modern Library top 100
novels of the 20th century, but how many people still read it? On
LibraryThing it has a popularity of about 2100 which is pretty low for a
Modern Library 100 novel (again Voltaire's Candide, a short book
which deals with similar themes, has over 5 times the number of readers
- and that for an 18th century novel). The Wikipedia article as of 2008
was almost void of any real content and amounted to a long stub (I just
doubled its size by adding one long paragraph). A Google search doesn't
turn up a whole lot of criticism or blog posts or the type of stuff we
usually see for true fan favorites and/or academic darlings. At 100
pages it's a quick read, it's a clever story and the prose is lyrical so
I think most people check it off the "best of" list and move on, but I
would be surprised if time treats it as kindly as the canonical list
makers have so far.
Voltaire (1759) Hardcover, Barnes&Noble 2005, Introduction by Gita
May May 2008
From the "Introduction":
"Voltaire would probably have been
both pleasantly surprised as well as bemused by the exceptional and
enduring popularity of Candide, which he viewed as one of his
minor works, unworthy to vie with his tragedies, historical essays, and
epic and philosophical poems, on which he staked his posthumous
reputation... Voltaire wrote contes (tales) late in his career
and almost as an afterthought, for he subscribed to the neoclassical
canon and hierarchy of literary genres according to which tragedy in
verse and epic poetry gave an author his most reliable passport to
posterity and immortality. Novels, short stories, and contes were
looked upon suspiciously as upstart genres with n credible aesthetic or
even moral pedigree." (Gita May, 2005)
The above quote from
the Barnes & Noble 2005 "Introduction" ironically demonstrate the
message of Candide - Voltaire spent a lifetime working in
neoclassical genres, serious long works that are largely no longer read
today - this is a tragedy really almost exactly like that described in
Chapter XXV about a noble Venetian with a great library that he never
reads. However, in a comic twist, it is Voltaire's least serious work in
an "upstart genre" (the novel) that has remained the most popular and
widely read. Thus Voltaire in a way pre-saged his own career, a timeless
message in which the message is the message itself. Today the
"classical" form is the novel, perhaps in the future it will be a new
"upstart genre" such as blogs, Wikiipedia or other online written
forms.
The Greatest Circus Stories Ever
Told: Amazing Stories of Life Under the
Big Top
Stephen Vincent Brennan (2005) Hardcover, first
May 2008
The Greatest Circus Stories Ever Told (2005) is an anthology of
13 essays and book excerpts from sources first published between about
1900 and 1926 (two are from 1955 and 1972). The editor is Stephen
Brennan, a former circus clown, who provides an introduction to each
piece with a little background about the author and facet of circus
life. Since most of the pieces are old, they mostly discuss the circus
silver age (golden age?) between about post-Civil War to WWI. However
the age of the pieces should not discourage readership as the pieces are
all well written, engrossing and capture a more romantic time in
America.In addition I love anthologies like this because they reveal
obscure but good authors and works I never would have heard of
otherwise.
Water for
Elephants, a modern novel about old circuses, has been in in the
best seller list for years now. In comparison, reading about real life
experiences from people who actually lived it, in short approachable
extracts, vetted by an old hand, is an authentic and rewarding
experience. While the crowds ohh and ahh their attention on the center
best-seller ring, reading this book is like being out back of the tent,
hanging with the circus people as they tell stories around a campfire:
old retired clowns, the skeleton man and his wife the Fat lady, the
romantic tight-rope walker, canvas men on the run, rummies -
memorable stuff.
James Otis (1881) First edition, read via Internet Archive May
2008
Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks in a Circus was first published in
Harper's Young Peopleas a serial in 1877, and then as a book in
1881. It was an immediate classic and favorite among young boys and
girls who dreamed of running off with the circus. It was very popular
and sold so well that a few years later Mark Twain wrote his own story
of a run-away conscious-stricken orphan who joins the circus: The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1884). The central theme of the
novel is doing what you know is right versus doing what comes naturally
and following your instincts, as shown by the character Mr. Stubbs the
monkey. Although written to be a "wholesome" children's novel of what
happens to bad boys, most remember it for the romantic story of running
off with the circus. Indeed, by the end Toby has become so successful in
the circus, his reason for returning home stretches credibility
(probably to the secret delight of younger readers who knew what they
would have done in Toby's shoes: stayed with the circus!). The novel was
influential for at least 3 generations, a young Carl Sandburg thought it
his favorite novel and William S. Burroughs mentions it in his memoirs.
Disney paid it homage in a 1960 movie adaption. Since then it has become
increasingly obscure, but it's close similarities with Huckleberry
Finn should give it a wider audience as a comparison novel. The
original included 30 pen and ink drawings by W. A. Rogers (1854-1931)
which are essential.
Johann Wyss (1812) Paperback, Penguin Classics, 2007. Ed. John
Seelye May 2008
The Swiss Family Robinson was initially written in German by
Swiss author Johann Wyss in 1812, and then soon after an accurate
English translation was completed by William Godwin in 1816. The Godwin
translation remained the standard in English for a generation or two,
but by the mid-19th century the number and variety of English
translations began to multiply - there were no enforceable copyright
laws and translators freely added episodes, changed names (and even
genders) of some of the characters and cut portions of the text to
conform to changing views on education and aesthetic tastes. There are
probably over a dozen such variations and most who read the novel today
are not reading the original (the 2007 Penguin Classics edition, edited
by John Seelye, is the 1816 Godwin translation, which is the closest to
the original). I have now read both William Kingston's 1879 adaptation
(one of the more common versions) and Godwin, I believe the original by
Wyss/Godwin is better. It's not abridged like most later versions so
certain scenes just make more sense - some of the characters are more
dynamic, like Ernest shows himself to be a capable bloodthirsty killer
like his brothers (a scene cut from later editions to maintain his
"bookish" nature) - the theories on education are classic Rousseauian
(he is mentioned twice in the narrative).
This isn't your childhood Swiss family. Godwin's 1816 translation has
rarely been in print until recently - most versions floating around are
some variation of Isabelle de Montolieu's 1824 French adaptation
(William H. G. Kingston's 1879 English translation of Montolieu's French
adaption is probably the most common). In Montolieu/Kingston's version,
the original ~400 page that Wyss wrote has been abridged to about 150
pages, with an additional 150 pages or so of new material added to the
end (with an entirely different ending, new characters, etc). So if
you've read Swiss family as a child, and are looking for an "unabridged"
version, you may find Godwin's 1816 translation missing a lot of
material - simply because Wyss never wrote it in the first place. I
would also say Montolieu/Kingston's version (and others) are more "kid
friendly" mainly because the Godwin translation is from 1816 and as such
uses some language that is dated and has passages that would probably be
boring or not make sense without historical context. So in a way there
is no "right" version since most readers for the past 150 years have not
been reading the "original" anyway. I would probably recommend the
Montolieu/Kingston version for juvenile readers and the Godwin version
for adults - or even better, read all of Godwin plus the second half of
Montolieu/Kingston which is all new material, the first half just being
an abridged version of Godwin.
Swiss Family is part of the "Robinsonade" tradition of castaways
on a remote island who survive by their own wits and a laundry list of
civilized goods. However Swiss is different from Robinson
Crusoe in a number of important ways. Foremost it is a group of
people and not an individual, society and civilization continue to
function. Secondly unlike Crusoe who pays for his sins by being wrecked,
and then finds redemption and is rewarded with his man "Friday" (Friday
being the day of redemption), the Swiss family are always within the
grace of god and never fall, they are rewarded from the very start for
their faith. The sheer amount of material abundance in the novel is
overwhelming - every vegetable and animal that is useful to man is found
within a few square miles: Buffalo, cotton, penguins, gold, horses,
etc.. and all ready and ripe for the picking. The stuff is there to
educate the reader, so the inconvenient details are left aside (arguably
a mis-education). As a product of the Enlightenment and burgeoning
Industrial Revolution, the novel can be seen within the context the rise
of the Middle Class. The reader is not only learning how to survive on
an island, but Middle Class values in a culture of rising abundance of
wealth and material goods. Partly for this reason, it is perhaps not
surprising the story has continued to be popular to this day,
particularly in America (a new Disney movie, an update of its 1960
classic, is coming out in 2009).
In the end I enjoyed the novel for what it is - a great adventure and
inspiring family story. Many classic stories are challenging and
interesting but not always "fun" - this one is just a great story and
fun to read. It's even more fun knowing there are is a whole world of
alternative versions available, with more adventures and different
endings, but I'm glad to have read the original as it was written by
Wyss (and his sons).
Update: For additional versions, the Wikipedia
article has links to Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Google
Books which have scans of old books freely available online. The
Kingston version is there among others. There is also a library of
pictures.
I didn't like Kim in balance. It has its attractions: the rich
detail of Indian culture, the search for identity and opposing forces
which create a fine balance along many axis, the quest story both
religious and secular, the exoticism and beauty, the child-like sense of
wonderment. But the Orientalism, racism and subtle homoeroticism just
killed it for me, there were parts that just made me cringe and want to
take a shower. As Orwell said in 1942, Kipling is a paradox: "During
five literary generations, every enlightened person has despised him,
and at the end of that time nine-tenths of those enlightened persons are
forgotten and Kipling is in some sense still there." That might be a
harsh judgment and with time my feelings will probably mellow.
Heinrich Harrer (1953) Hardcover, 1954 "first edition" May
2008
Seven Years in Tibet is a classic, to place it into historical
context here is a "Brief History of Tibetan Travel Literature":
Prior to 1783, the only Westerners to travel to and write about Tibet
were a few Jesuit priests and adventurers [[two early narratives are
collected in Clements Markham, ed. Narratives of the
Mission of George Bogle to Tibet, and of the journey of Thomas Manning
to Lhasa (1876*)]]. These accounts were enough to spark European
interest in the region but were too whimsical for ambitious colonialists
who had grander designs in need of more specific information. Thus it is
not surprising Tibet in 1792 closed its borders to Westerners: a 1783
British East India Company expedition had raised suspicions of Englands
imperial intentions. Tibet became "The Forbidden Land", and for the
entire 19th century - although many tried - only 3 Westerners reached
the capital Lhasa, thus furthering its mystique. By 1904 the British -
intending to finally establish diplomatic relations - sent an armed
expedition under Francis Younghusband to Lhasa. It was successful, but
bloody, causing international outrage [[newspaper reporter Edmund
Chandler was there and wrote an account The Unveiling of
Lhasa (1905*), as were a number of other books by participants.
Travel writer Peter Fleming wrote a "full account" in Bayonets To Lhasa:
The First Full Account Of The British Invasion Of Tibet In 1904
(1961*)]]. Kipling's novel Kim (1901*) was
popular at the time, and it includes a romantic portrayal of a Tibetan
lama which fueled imaginations of all-wise spiritual beings, but instead
Younghusband found a reality of poverty and "feudal"
backwardness.
After Younghusband's 1904 "gunboat" diplomatic mission, Tibet did allow
a few British representatives in, but a steady tide of trespassers kept
coming [[as described in Peter Hopkirk's Trespassers on the
Roof of the World : The Secret Exploration of Tibet (1983)]].
Some of the more notable include Frenchwoman Alexandra David-Neel who in
1923 disguised herself as a beggar and reached Lhasa [[My Journey to
Lhasa (1927)]] - in the same year American William Montgomery
McGovern also made it to Lhasa using the same trick [[To Lhasa in
Disguise (1924)*]]. By the 1930s modernity had started to make
inroads, Tibet's aristocracy began to look outward, the borders were
more fluid, and more well known personalities were writing about it in
less Shangri-La cliches, notably Robert Byron [[First Russia, Then
Tibet (1933)]], Marco Palli [[Peaks and
Lamas (1939)*]], and Fosoco Maraini [[Secret Tibet
(1952)]]. By the time Heinrich Harrer arrived in 1944 Tibet had only 6
years left before the Chinese Communists would invade and a new type of
curtain would fall over The Forbidden Land. Harrer's 'Seven Years in
Tibet' marks the end of "Old Tibet" (as a nation, and a western "secret
land" literary tradition), and the start of a new contemporary era more
focused on human rights, indigenous peoples and post-colonialism.
Seven Years in Tibet is foremost a great adventure story,
National Geographic ranks it #20 in its list of all time best
Outdoor/Adventure Literature. Some of the works mentioned in this review
are also great adventure tales (David-Neel's book ranks at #55), but
what sets Seven Years apart is that Harrer had a personal
relationship with the Dalai Lama, the first Westerner to ever do so. The
Dalai Lama is now a world figure but it was Harrer who first introduced
him to the outside as his personal tutor. They remained close friends
for life and it is probably no accident that after Harrer died in 2006
the Dalai Lama announced his "retirement" in 2007, a sort of symbolic
closure with the West. In any case, although Harrer was not the first
Westerner to reach or write about Lhasa, his war-time adventure and
friendship with the Dalai Lama sets this account apart as not only great
exploration/travel literature, but an important record of Tibet just
before its fall to the Communists, and a history of the early life of
the still living Dalai Lama.
The Man Who Loved China: The Fantastic Story of the
Eccentric Scientist Who Unlocked the Mysteries of the Middle
Kingdom
Simon Winchester (2008) Audiobook, narrated by author, 9.5hrs May
2008
Simon Winchester certainly has the power to immortalize anyone or thing
he writes about, and so it is with the life of Joseph Needham
(1900-1995), a Cambridge scholar polymath. Needham is probably obscure
to most people, but among his Don peers he is a legendary as the writer
of a massive encyclopedia on Chinese science and civilization designed
to answer that great question: Why was China the mother lode of
scientific and cultural innovation for so long, and why did it come to a
stop by the 15th century - why didn't the Industrial revolution happen
in China? At one point China was making 15 great innovations per century
(paper, compass, stirrup, etc..), according to Needham, but then the
country stagnated and for the last 500 years or so had a reputation for
backwardness and poverty. Similar to Jared Diamond's "Yali Question"
(why did Europe have "cargo" and Yali didn't?), Needham set out to find
answers by cataloging the history of Chinese innovation. He created a
massive multi-volume encyclopedia of such prodigious learning, value and
length it has been compared with James Murray and the Oxford English
Dictionary, or Sidney Lee and the Dictionary of National
Biography.
I've now read all four of Winchesters biographies (The Professor and
the Madman (1998), The Map That Changed the World (2001),
The Meaning of Everything (2003)) and I would rank "China" as
good as 'The Meaning', not as good as 'Professor' and better than "Map".
However Winchester has done something different this time and I hope he
builds on it in the future, he has made the subject relevant on a global
level - the rise of China and discovery of its past history and
importance. More than a well-told and fascinating story of an eccentric
English professor rescued from the obscurity of the archives, The Man
Who Loved China in a way is about the bigger picture of the rise and
future of the largest nation on Earth, one of the central events of the
21st century.
Lewis Lapham (April 2008) Volume 1, Number 2 (Spring
2008) May 2008
My earlier review
of the first issue of Lapham's Quarterly has a background on
the journal in general; this is a review of the second issue: "About
Money" (Spring 2008).
Before getting into the specific contents of this issue I want to relate
a personal story. When I was younger, my grandmother would send a
Christmas package each year that included a small bag of coins from
other countries (real and defunct). Some were old and worn, others shiny
and new, some had real value, most were no longer in currency, artifacts
of another age durable enough to survive alongside rocks, fishing hooks
and other curiosities of a boys collection box. I would sometimes go
through the pile of strange coinage, feeling the weight of each, the
different shapes and languages and pictures, the clinking sounds of
different metals on metal from countries that normally never mix, except
in collections, and my mind would wonder - who owned this coin, what is
its story? Such is this collection of essays about money from vastly
different time periods and authors, each page a coin to discover and
treasure, some old, others new, some of value, others not so much, to
compare and find new meaning by their relative position to one another,
a sum greater than the parts.
The format of "About Money" is similar to "States of War" (see
previous review) ) with an opening essay by Lapham followed by 5
thematic sections titled: "Exchange Rates", "Earnings", Expenditures",
"Liquidity" and "Derivatives". Lapham says this "five-part improvisation
can be read as an attempt to restore power to the American dialectic; it
can also be read as a gloss on the bull-market in superstition, along
the lines of what the watchers at the bedside of the Dow Jones
Industrial Average like to call a "technical correction." - In other
words, words of wisdom from the past about the problems of the present.
There are some real gems within and here are my favorites with brief
commentary: "Savannah" (p.48) by Mortimer Thomas is an amazingly banal
look at the evil of slave trading - humans reduced to pure commodity,
notable for its clear-eyed lack of emotion. "West Germany" (p.50) is a
letter sent to debtors offering to buy their internal organs (kidney) in
exchange for debt relief - in 1987! "Wall Street" (p.55) by Daniel Loeb
is a masterpiece of character assassination - and wonderfully
entertaining."Peking" (p.60) by Liu Xu is a colorful and exotic journey
into a lost Orient. "Detroit" (p.68) by Henry Ford tells of his early
career, rise to power and business philosophy, sort of like a
conversation one might have over drinks looking back on his younger
days. "Roulettenburg" (p.82) by Fyodor Dostoyevsky is one of the best
descriptions of what it's like to be on a gambling winning streak - I've
experienced this before and the feeling, the mystery of it all, is spot
on.
"Paris" (p.108) by George Orwell is a reminder that being poor (really
poor) does have its disadvantages, this story would shake any romantic
vision of the starving artist. "Titanic Dinner Menu" (p.119), the
first-class dinner menu the night the Titanic sunk. After reading this
ten-courcse meal(!) I felt like sinking myself. Probably the greatest
"last supper" ever served (compare with death-row inmate last suppers).
"Pennsylvania" (p.120) by John Updike, finds a natural connection
between lust and money - the lights are on, the gross details are out in
the open, the vulgarity of greed and sex are exposed as grubbing
grabbing debasement. "Fifth Avenue" (p.133) by Mark Singer shows how
shallow Donald Trump is, yet after Trump read this article in The New
Yorker he said "Some people cast shadows, and some people choose to
live in those shadows," suggesting a slightly more nuanced internal life
of Trump. The picture facing this page by Lauren Greenfield is superb
and my favorite in this issue. "Sardinia" (p.151) describes a birthday
party of obscene opulence, where everything is so over the top that in
the end it all seems blasai and typical.
"New York City" (p.159) by James Crammer, a recent piece from 2007,
describing the current financial crises and the big picture in easy to
understand terms. "New York City" (p.161) by Washington Irving, an
historical counter-point to Crammer's article, warns of regular
financial turmoils that come and go and the signs of their coming can be
read like old sailors storm warnings. "Germany/Czech Republic" (p.166)
by Loretta Napoleoni describes the trade in human sex-slaves ongoing
today (we learn that a white European female sex slave can be bought in
Israel for $8 to $10,000 a head).
Of the 4 guest essayists (Jack
Weatherford, Jackson Lears, Tim Parks, Edward
Castronova) I think Lears is the best, but they are all interesting
and accessible and enlightening. There is also a counter-factual "What
if.." history essay about what would have happened if Hitler had
destroyed the retreating Dunkirk expeditionary force - but I found it
unconvincing: Churchill always maintained he was never truly worried
about loosing the war except in the early days of the German U-Boat
campaign, when England for a short while lost control of the seas.
Overall a good issue. The subject matter is a little more intellectually
challenging than the first issue on War, and the "narrative" is less
clear. I found the more obscure pieces to be the most rewarding as I I'd
never have found it otherwise. Looking forward to future issues.
Agent Zigzag: A True Story of Nazi Espionage, Love,
and Betrayal
Ben Macintyre (2007) First, hard May 2008
The Fifth Estate (spies) in World War II for the most part played a
larger role in popular imagination than reality. However there were a
few who stood apart and lived up to the legends of a James Bond
character. Eddie Chapman's files until recently have been locked away in
secret government vaults, but through freedom of information, his story
has finally gone public. Times corespondent Ben Macintyre has
combed through the reports and reconstructed Eddies story with a
novelists flair. First serialized in the Times and then published
as book in England and the US, it is an addictive page turner, excellent
weekend reading that will enthrall and entertain, all the more so
because it's so improbably true.
Since Yesterday The 1930's in America, September 3,
1929-September 3, 1940
Frederick Lewis Allen (1940) Paperback, Bantam Classic 1961 May
2008
Since Yesterday (1940) is a journalistic history of the 1930's in
America. Frederick Lewis Allen also wrote Only Yesterday (1930)
about the 1920's, and these two books are probably his most well known
and popular. It is written in a conversational tone for a popular
audience and at times is really entertaining and fascinating. It's at
its best discussing popular culture and the changing zeitgeist of
America, the political and economic history is often a bit dry. It's
valuable for learning about the era because it was one of the first
attempts at writing a history of the 1930's, when the events were still
fresh, the episodes Allen focuses on are what the people of the time
found the most important and foremost in their conscious. Thus one gets
a sense of how events flowed together, how one thing effected the next,
a more holistic view. The 1930's were very dynamic for a lot of reasons,
probably one of the most rapidly changing of the 20th century despite
it's sorid reputation for gangsters, dust bowls and the depression -
World War II was largely a product of the 1930's and that war defined
the rest of the century (and beyond). My interpretation (not Allen's) is
that modern technological innovations had begun to spread to the masses:
radio, machinery, electricity - these things created more free time,
rising rates of education and political involvement - it's obviously
part of a continuing process that can be seen in the world today in
China, India, etc.. we have much to learn about the changes other
countries are going through by looking back and the changes in our own
country in the 1930's.
This is my first Macaulay book and I couldn't be more happy, a
remarkable achievement of form and function. The progression of time,
from 1800 to the present, encapsulates the character and spirit of the
Industrial Revolution. The ghosts are around still, many an old mills
stony ruins still lay open to explore along woody river banks. Mills
were a high-technology of the day, Macaulay's hyper-real pictures and
expert explanation both demystifies and creates a new romance and love
through skillful storytelling and beautiful artwork. Mill was
published almost 25 years ago before global warming was much of a
concern, and the books examples unwittingly show exactly where and how
things went wrong, as the mill transitioned from water power to coal
power in the 1870s, it no longer seems abstract.. Of all Macaulay's
books this is the one that will probably be closest to home, the most
immediate to my personal experience, but I look forward to reading many
more of his remarkable books, almost all wining multiple prestigious
awards.
Blessed Unrest How the Largest Movement in the World
Came Into Being and Why No One Saw it Coming
Paul Hawken (2007) Hardcover, first April 2008
A few years ago, activist author Paul Hawken set out to create a
database of every non-profit in the world categorized into a taxonomy,
which is now on the web in a sort of Wikipedia community format at
wiserearth.org - This had never really been done before and he was
surprised by the sheer number of organizations working independently to
make the world a better place. He found a common thread that all were
concerned about the environment and human justice. From this he
concluded that there is a global "movement" (a word with many
qualifiers) the likes of which have never been seen. He compares it to
the "Industrial Revolution" - at the time everyone knew something
different was happening, but no one had a name for it or even described
it as a unique event, it was both everywhere and unrecognized. Likewise,
according to Hawken, this global movement is from the ground up, with no
core ideology or leadership, it's an historical mass movement that has
snuck up on us and only now being recognized as a major shift.
I think Hawken's message is a powerful one and will appeal to the
millions of people working in small groups in isolation against large
and powerful forces. Hawken does in fact describe a new trend that has
been observed by others: the recent rise, proliferation and influence of
NGOs. Hawken contends top-down organizations led by ideologies are old
school 20th century, the future is distributed small organic holistic,
sort of like how Wikipedia is made, millions of individuals (small and
large NGOs) contributing expertise on a local basis that has the net
effect of global human and environmental justice.
I had some problems with the book, it is clearly a one-sided manifesto
and much of it is historical anecdote of well known incidents (the
Bolivian water wars, the India coke pesticide case, etc..) and presents
a single side. These issues are extremely complex, it is rarely so easy
to say there are good and bad guys, it is harmful IMO to present these
controversial issues so one-sided and hold them up as poster children
for reform. Why not look at the real undisputed success stories that
everyone can get behind? He does in some cases such as Rachel Carson's
fight against DDT. Overall I was touched by Hawken's passion, vision and
(ironically) his idealism.
Washington
Irving (1819-20) The Modern Readers' Series, 1929 April
2008
Completed the ones I had not read yet. None stand out, the best remains
"Rip Van Winkle", "Sleepy Hollow", "Spectre Bridegroom", "Mutability of
Literature" and the Bracebridge Hall Chirstmas cycle.
Jack London (1903) As collected in The Call of the Wild / The
Sea-Wolf by Jack London (International Book Collector) (1990)
April 2008
The Call of the Wild (1903) is generally considered London's best
work, London himself was a wild man: drunk heavily, whored, jailed,
tramped, poached, prospected - the bastard son of a wandering Irish
astrologer. The novel is London's reconciliation with his own wild
nature - he eventually killed himself in 1916 with an overdose of
morphine - but not before he produced a prodigious amount of work
becoming one of the most popular authors of his age, and certainly one
of the best storytellers. His work is at its best seen from the conflict
between animal instinct and intellectual reason.
The Silent World A Story of Undersea Discovery and
Adventure, by the First Men to Swim At Record Depths with the Freedom of
Fish
Jacque Cousteau and Frederic Dumas (1953) Hardcover, first April
2008
The Silent World was Jacques Cousteau's first book and his
introduction to the English speaking world (although a French national
he wrote the book in English). The documentary of the same name, showing
events detailed in the book, was released in 1956 and won an Academy
Award, launching Cousteau on his famed career. The Silent World
has never gone out of print (estimates at over 5 million copies sold)
and Cousteau went on to publish over 50 books and countless
documentaries as well as a tireless advocate of ocean
conservation.
In 1943 in southern France in the middle of WWII, Cousteau and friends
invented modern scuba-diving. It seems unlikely with France effectively
out of the war under Axis occupation, many Frenchmen had a lot of time
but not a lot of resources, even basics such as food were in short
supply. Cousteau, in his early 30s, found himself in a sort of
proto-hippie group who lived on the beach diving for fish and showing
off how deep they could free dive, manly men doing manly things while
they sat out the war. Eventually they started experimenting to find ways
to go deeper (stay under longer) and Cousteau commissioned the first
"aqua-lung", basically the first modern scuba tank with a breathing
regulator. Prior to this assisted diving was tethered to a breathing
tube at the surface. Suddenly Cousteau and his two diving buddies,
Frederic Dumas and Phillipe Taillez, were exploring the undersea world
in ways never done before: free-floating like a fish with extended
lengths underwater. They did a lot of experimentation with equipment and
the effects of depth on the human bodily, discovering the rules of
diving that are still followed to this day.
The Silent World is a memoir of the most interesting and
dangerous experiences during that golden 10 year period between 1943 and
53 when scuba diving went from a new invention to an established and
important occupation. After the war there was a lot of wrecks that
needed salvaging and harbors to be de-mined. Cousteau took part in
underwater archeology trips. A daring and almost fatal descent into a
freshwater sinkhole cave. Wreck diving, encounters with sharks and
whales. In terms of underwater exploration, Cousteau and his team were
like Neal Armstrong on the moon or Christopher Columbus - but more than
just explorers they were film-makers and popularizer's of the beauty of
the ocean. He soon gave up his harpoon and hunted the depths with a
camera, often saying people preserve what they like, and he hoped to
show the oceans in a way people would like. It's easy to imagine this
book being written by someone else, a dry technical manual that is
outdated - but Cousteau's book remains timeless, it speaks to the
imagination of limitless possibility, beauty of the ocean and excitement
of discovery. I have no doubt in 50 more years it will still be in print
and widely read and enjoyed.
This small-format paperback is only 108 pages ("very short") but packs a
wallop. The French Revolution is a hugely complex topic, not least
because it remains to this day highly controversial, there are 100s of
tomb-length books including the flood of books on the 200th anniversary
in 1989. Where to start? Here. Doyle gives an overview of the basic
events but that is not his main purpose. Rather his chapter titles
explain: "Why it happened", "How it happened", "What it ended", "What it
started" and "Where it stands." In other words, he uses historiography
to put it into historical context. In the end the actual events are
curious and interesting, but they were so confusing and full of
contingencies that even contemporaries had trouble keeping track of what
was happening around them. The bigger questions of Doyle's chapter
titles provide a higher-level understanding that rises above the trees
and gives an understanding that would take years of reading specialized
books to arrive at. Doyle himself is well known for the Oxford history
of the French Revolution, respected for its even-handed treatment,
representing all sides and taking a neutral point of view. It can be
read in an evening and the reader will come away with a clear
understanding of why it's important and where the main axis of debate
lay today.
E. M.
Forster (1924) Hardcover, Readers Digest "World's Best Reading",
Afterward by Scott Russell Sanders (1989) April
2008
The 1920s were dominated by the younger modernists who rejected the
older generation of writers Forster was born into so it's curious to see
this work not only survive by thrive. His writing style is notably
old-fashioned (enjoyably so) but the themes are very 20th century which
gives it a certain air of authentic beauty. It is a mysterious and
fractured novel in which we see the multiple contrasting faces of India:
English/India, Muslims/Hindus, Brahmans/Untouchables (caste), clans,
sects, men/women, princes/beggars, Northerns/Southerners - there is no
single "India", it is a confusing, complex and fractured landscape. Can
there be harmony, can order be imposed, can order even exist? Ultimately
this is a spiritual question of the Universe in general: does life have
meaning, the great question of all religions. In the end, when the boat
sinks in the lake, for a brief moment, all the fractured elements come
together in a sort of comic accidental soup - then separate and go their
own way. Forster never answers the question, how could he, it is the
greatest question ever, but he sets up the actors and creates the
conditions to allow us to examine, ponder and wander, to "travel
lightly."
Steinbeck's novel of social injustice was from the beginning considered
a Great American Novel selling over 300,000 copies in its first year, "a
phenomenon on the scale of a national event. It was publicly banned and
burned by citizens, it was debated on national radio hook-ups; but above
all, it was read." Steinbeck scholar John Timmerman sums up the book's
impact: "The Grapes of Wrath may well be the most thoroughly
discussed novel - in criticism, reviews, and college classrooms - of
twentieth century American literature." Within a year John Ford made a
major movie starring Henry Fonda and in 1962 the Nobel committee cited
The Grapes of Wrath as a "great work" and as one of the
committee's main reasons for granting Steinbeck the Nobel Prize for
Literature.
Perhaps it's most fundamental message is the equality of life, there is
no difference between the poor and rich, other than a bank account, all
life is sacred. Treat a poor person with dignity and respect and they
will and can do as well as anyone else. It is a timeless message and one
that bears constant repeating, although Steinbeck's treatment is a bit
folksy and sentimental.
Contemporary critic Carl Van Doren said "This novel did more than any
other Depression novel to revise the picture of America as Americans
imagined it." The American image of the frontier pioneer moving
westward had shifted to the Joad family. The Joads encapsulated the
American character and spirit of independence, scrappy can-do
hard-working virtuous, an American hero archetype. Martin Seymour-Smith
says the work is fundamentally flawed because Steinbeck can not show why
the California businessmen's behavior is wrong - after all, they are
just trying to make a living, would the Joad's in their shoes have acted
any different? "There is a conflict in him [Steinbeck] between the
philosophical unanimist and the humane socialist," in other word how the
Joad's treat animals (as objects) but demand equality in humans. Thus
the books message of all life being sacred, no matter its circumstance,
is fundamentally contradicted.
In the end Grapes of Wrath is of epic proportions and a gripping
story. It's often seen as the quintessential American novel of the 1930s
and certainly one of Steinbeck's best (along with Of Mice and
Men).
The Thirties is a wonderful anthology of short essays about the
1930's, mostly magazine articles and book excerpts written between 1930
and 1960 by many well known authors, including Steinbeck and Arthur
Schlesinger. It covers a broad slice of life including politics, crime,
natural and man-made disasters, new technologies, books, music etc.. the
editor, Don Congdon, has written a number of excellent introductions to
each section. When the anthology was published in 1962 it was only about
22 years since the 1930s had ended, about as close to their time as 1989
is to our own, so the target audience was probably the middle aged and
senior citizen - today, for most of us, the thirties are ancient history
so this "old" anthology is even more interesting as a barometer of the
zeitgeist of the time, an early attempt at deciding what was important
by the people who had recently lived through it. This is a long
(generous) anthology so I will list here the pieces that I think are
essential. There are really no bad pieces, but a few are just knock-out
interesting and well written.
"The Texas Babe" (Paul Gallico, Vanity Fair 1932), a profile of
the greatest woman athlete of the 20th century, Mildred "Babe"
Didrikson. This particular piece has since been rejected by some
revisionist historians as being misogynistic, but within the context of
the time, it's an excellent profile that goes to the heart of her
make-up and why she was so important.
"The Akron and the Three Who Came Back" (John Toland, Ships in
the Sky 1957). An edge of seat reconstruction of the Akron
blimp disaster off the Jersey coast. I'd never heard of this before but
it is a gruesome and compelling story, easily could be a movie.
"Hitchhiker" (Eric Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream 1946). Excerpt
from his book which has never gone out of print, I plan on reading it
soon. Tells of his travels around the world as a young man, this piece
about hoboing on trains. Beautiful literary style and great
adventure.
"Scottsboro Boys" (Allan Chalmers, They Shall Be Free 1951). A
year by year summary of major events in the Scottsboro Case, wherein a
couple young southern black boys were falsely convicted of raping white
women by an all white jury and sentenced to death. This was constantly
in the news for most of the 1930s, an excellent and readable summation
of this important marker in American black history.
"Dillinger" (Alan Hynd, True Magazine, 1956). A re-telling of
John Dillinger's life of crime. He was a sort of Robbin Hood folk-hero.
This is a gripping piece as good as any novel. See also the 1945
movie.
"The Almost Assassination of Thomas E. Dewey" (Burton Turkus and Sid
Feder, Murder, Inc. 1951). Another gripping true-crime story,
this time with a twist ending. Provides insight into the New York
mobster scene and what it was like to be a hit-man.
"Pity the poor Giant" (Paul Gallico, Farewell to Sport 1938).
Another sports piece by Gallico (of The Poseidon Adventure fame).
The sad story of Primo Carnera, an Italian giant of a man who became the
world champion boxer, only to be used up and left out to dry by his
corrupt handlers. Fascinating story well told with a novelists
flare.
"The Men from Mars" (John Houseman, Harper's Magazine 1948). A
fascinating inside account of Orson Welles' famous 40-minute radio-play
The War of the Worlds that caused mass hysteria around the
country. Explains the series of unintended accidents that caused it to
be so widely believed by so many.
The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who
Survived the Great American Dust Bowl
Timothy Egan (2006) Audiobook April 2008
The Worst Hard Time is a popular history of the "Dust Bowl", the
period of drought in the 1930s on the Great for modern Plains (the
"dirty thirties"). Egan focuses on the story of the common man,
inter-weaving about a dozen characters and their families. Along the way
we learn about the larger history of the settlement of the Great Plains,
the series of events that lead to the "sod busters" breaking up the
grasses, and the great drought of the 1930s that led to the massive dirt
blizzards or dust storms from which the plains have still not fully
recovered. Although left unsaid by Egan, the elephant in the room is how
human actions on the environment can have massive and long term negative
consequences.
Listening to this as an audio-book has its disadvantages because it is
difficult to keep the names straight as Egan weaves back and forth
between the many characters and places with anecdotal stories. At some
point early on I gave up trying to keep all the people and places
straight because it didn't really seem to matter as there was no central
narrative, just a lot of random stories. The majority of the book is
composed of dramatized short narratives of a page or two in length,
organized in chronological determined chapters.
Comparing this to Little Heathens (my last book) - also about
farm life in the mid-west in the 1930s - Heathens offers a much
richer and deeper understanding of what small farm life was like
(although not in the Dust Bowl). Egan's account is based largely on
archival diary entries and it is often banal reading. Whereas
Heathens captures the spirit of the times, Egan is at his best at
the extremes - extreme events, people, weather. I would have liked to
have heard more natural history about the geology, plant life, animals.
More history about the recovery program and present day conditions
(there is a brief epilogue). For what it is, it's a good introduction to
the place and time. Probably the best way to understand it is directly
from primary sources, which are still easily accessible.
Little Heathens: Hard Times and High Spirits on an
Iowa Farm During the Great Depression
Mildred Armstrong Kalish (2007) Hardcover first April
2008
Little Heathens is a near anthropological survey of life on a small
family farm in Iowa during the 1930's, when there was no electricity,
running water, bathrooms and very few if any "store bought" goods. It is
today a world foriegn in this age of convience and Millie laments the
loss of the "rich store of knowledge that had been bestowed on us by
life on that simple farm," and the self-confidence and self-reliance it
fostered. It's odd that this simple little memoir - nothing more than an
elder grandparent retelling what life was like "when I was young" - has
struck a chord with so many readers, it is one of the New York Times 10
most notable books of 2007. The Times attributes its success in part
because so many memoirs today are about unsavory people doing scandelous
things, it is a relief to read about a real person going about a
"normal" life (if such a thing exists), someone you'd like to have as a
relative or friend, or even to walk in her shoes (when she wore any).
Partly it is Millie herself who is humble, sincere and likeable.
But it is also, I believe, about bigger current day issues: Global
Warming, Peak Oil, Recessions, high food prices and other man-made slow
motion train wrecks have many questioning if society is on the right
track and naturally many are looking back to the past for answers. A
return to the country, simplicity, slow pace of life, the values of
thrift, honor and tradition are finding wides audiences in modern forms,
such as organics, slow food, alternative energy. They say when you reach
a certain age "everything old is new again" and Millies account of the
1930s is finding a lot of interest in these times. It's a beautiful book
of substance and simplicity, I recommend it highly.
Since the appearance of the movie version of Deliverance in 1972
the story of four "city boy" weekend warriors who tangle with a couple
mountain men in north Georgia has become a part of modern cultural
mythology. Phrases like "Now, let's you just drop them pants," and "I'm
gonna make you squeal like a pig," are, for better or worse, instantly
recognizable. However for everyone who has seen the movie fewer probably
know about or have much interest in the original novel by James Dickey
published in 1970. The old saying about the book being better than movie
is not the case here, not because the movie is better - the movie in
fact is such a faithful adaptation of the book most of the dialog
remains intact and no major scenes are cut - rather the movie plays to
its strengths of excellent actors and cinematography, while the book
plays its strengths as literature with depth of meaning. Both the movie
and book are excellent and for anyone who has seen the movie reading the
book will add new nuances, themes and insights that take it beyond just
a good thriller and into the realm of classic literature. The Modern
Library lists it at #42 in its list of 100 Best Novels of the 20th
century.
At its core the story is about a clash of cultures, between the "city
boys" and the "mountain men". Traditionally the mountain culture of
Appalachia is an "Honor Culture", similar to the border regions of
Scotland (where many of the people originally migrated from). Honor
cultures often arise in mountain regions because the isolated geography
creates weak or non-existent law enforcement and everyone is sort of the
sheriff taking justice into their own hands (Hatfield and McCoys). In
such an environment a persons honor is the currency of the realm -
insult that honor and revenge is required. Similar dynamics can be seen
still in places like Afghanistan, Chechnya or wherever law enforcement
is weak or non-existent (Iraq ca. 2008 for example).
Lewis Medlock (Burt Renyolds) represents modern mans rebellion against
the confines and constraints of the rule of the law, he laments the loss
of the culture of honor where a man can stand up for himself on his own
turf with his own hands. However in the end he gets more than he
bargained for discovers how fragile and brief life can be in the
un-tamed wilderness of mens hearts. Lewis changes in the end, becoming
less reckless and more content to live a peaceful and quiet life in the
civilized lawns of suburbia. The other characters go through similar
transformations of which I will let the reader ponder. Even the river
itself is tamed in the end, becoming a resort lake.
There is one major plot difference in the novel which remains a mystery.
As Ed is a leaving, the sherrif warns him not to come back. But then the
Sherrif, in his final words of the book, says to Ed: "You damned fucking
ape. Who on earth was your father, boy?" and Ed replies "Tarzan". Now,
this has to be contrasted with an earlier line in the book when one of
the mountain men says the river can climb the cliff walls "like a
monkey". Clearly, the sherrif knew more than he was saying, he knew a
lot more. Perhaps it was intuition, or perhaps a lucky guess, but it
changes the whole character of the ending - they got away with murder
because the Sherrif let them go, not because they outsmarted anyone. The
wilderness always wins in the end.
John A. Arnold (2000) Oxford UP
paperback April 2008
John Arnold is a professor of Medieval history in England and has
written an excellent 123 page introduction to the field of history. He
illustrates his narrative with obscure but interesting examples from
Medieval and early Modern to show how historians approach their craft,
the kinds of questions they ask, how primary sources are used, and
issues such as periodization. He also has an excellent but brief
"history of history" from the Greeks to the modern era touching on some
of the most important authors and books (for a more in-depth look, see
Burrow's excellent A History of
Histories (2008)).
Although a lot of this is already familiar to me, probably the most
interesting revelation was how historians (and their works) can be
classified into "camps" or tribes. History is always more than "just the
facts", there is an underlying purpose and approach. However historians
are notoriously sly about revealing their position for fear of being
seen as prejudiced or non-objective, it usually has to be dug out by the
reader or exposed by an intelligent reviewer what approach they are
taking. Arnold classifies most histories into three main camps:
political, social and cultural. Each sees the prime mover of history
through a different lens and borrows techniques and concepts from other
fields (political science, anthropology, sociology, economics, etc..).
Further, within each camp, historians can often have a key philosophical
difference, as seen through the question: were people in the past
similar to us, or different from us? This is for example what sets the
Annales school apart, they see people of the past as being different
from us, exotic and therefore open to a wide range of possible
interpretation. Arnold offers his own solution to the problem: people of
the past were both, just as people around the world today are both
similar and different from us. Arnold likewise has an "on the fence"
answer to the old question of what the prime mover of history is- he
sees it as simply a series of contingencies, one accident after the next
with no single person or institution in control of what happens. In the
end I really enjoyed this VSI because Arnold writes with a novelists
care, engaging the reader with stories and narrative.
Charles Dickens (1844) Hardcover "Books, Inc." 1936 set of 20, Vol.
II April 2008
Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44) is Dickens sixth novel, written after
his first visit to America. It is generally considered transitional
between his earlier and later works of maturity, Dickens borrows less
from the picaresque (Martin's trip to America) and begins to focus on
character development and a central theme, creating a unique style of
his own. The theme, as Dickens says in the Preface, is "selfishness". It
was written at the same time he wrote A Christmas Carol, and at
the time he thought of Chuzzlewit the best novel to date - he was
particularly attached to his characters Tom and Mary Pinch. Today the
novel is one of his lesser known and read, although still generally has
a positive critical reception.
This is my sixth Dickens novel and they all take forever to read, at
this point I have probably spent more time reading Dickens than
any other novelist. The more I read the more I respect and enjoy, there
is not a page that doesn't have an amazing passage, very often I find
myself reading it aloud, acting out the scene and characters (something
Dickens himself sometimes did while writing). There is a sense of the
unlimited, of imagination unbounded - it's the same feeling I had when
younger playing D&D or reading Lord of the Rings, a rich tapestry
world with no end of possibility. His descriptions and choice of words
are truly unique. Even if the plot is circumstantial and old-fashioned,
Dickens can be read for his aesthetic and artistic beauty alone. The
more immersed in Dickens one becomes, the more impressed upon the 19th
century mind-set, emotions, way of thinking - a sense of the emotional,
feeling, that no history book could portray.
Earth: The Sequel: The Race to Reinvent Energy and
Stop Global Warming
Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn
(2008) Hardcover, first March 2008
I don't know what it is about book sub-titles these days but they all
have them, and this one generously has *two*, "The Sequel" and the
common "The Race To.." (at least it's not "..That Changed the World"). I
very often avoid books with these sub-titles because I know exactly what
to expect: a long magazine article that would have been better in a
magazine and not as a book. However in this case I took the chance
because one of the co-authors is Fred Krupp, President of the
influential Environmental Defense Fund. Even though it is indeed written
like a magazine article (very skillfully I assume mostly by Miriam Horn)
with lots of human interest stories and non-fiction narrative
techniques, the content is well worth it.
Essentially it is a survey of the current technologies, companies and
people involved with alternative energy in the United States. Even
though I follow this stuff in the news and blogs there was tons of new
stuff here I never knew about. Some of the people involved are really
fascinating. Some of the companies are much further along than I
realized. Others are probably not the solutions I thought they may be.
My copy is marked up with people and companies to watch.
If the book has a re-curring message it is this: free markets work, but
only if there is a cap and trade system to adjust the cost of fossil
fuels upward, so that alternative technologies have a chance to develop
and compete. If there is no cost to pollute, than obviously clean
technologies are at a disadvantage. This has to change, and
soon.
Randall Jarrell
(1965), illus. Maurice Sendak 1996 hardcover
re-print March 2008
Randall Jarrell (1914-65) is better known as a poet, although probably
best known today for his poetry criticism. He also wrote a few
children's book, most notably The Bat-Poet and The Animal
Family, the later published the same year he died and winning the
1966 Newbery Honor. It is wonderfully illustrated by Maurice Sendak, of
Where the Wild Things Are fame, in beautiful pen and ink
drawings.
The story is a sort of fable along the lines of Hans Christian Andersen
or Lewis Carroll, but updated with a 1960s message. It is about a lonely
hunter who lives in a cabin by the sea who with time comes to gather
around him a "family" of very different creatures, first a mermaid, and
then a bear, lynx, and human boy. Each is an orphan whose parents have
either died or somehow left the scene. They all are very different
animals yet find comfort and eventually identity with one another. It is
a story in the spirit of the Age of Aquarius, when songs such as "Free
to Be.. You and Me" resonated during a cultural revolution in which
boundaries of class, race and, in this case, even species were being
explored, when everyone was a "brother" and "sister".
My reading of the story in its 1960s context is only one interpretation,
this is not a heavy handed preachy book by any measure, it is timeless
in its message about toleration of differences, the power of love to
overcome anything (including for a mermaid to live on land, in effect
brining a happy ending to Hans Andersen's otherwise brutal The Little
Mermaid), and in particular for those who seek out love and find it
in the most un-expected places. It is a short book, easy to read, and
poetically written. Over the past 40 years it has found a place close to
the heart of many children and adults, I only wish I had discovered it
sooner.
Recently two new important African-American slave narratives have come
to light, published here along with scholarly commentary for the first
time. They are considered significant by historians because they support
a theory that slaves played a role in bringing about their own freedom.
Traditionally slavery is thought to have ended with Lincoln's
Emancipation Proclamation - Lincoln freed the slaves, we are taught in
school. However, is it possible that the slaves themselves played a role
in their own freedom, that their own actions, conscious or not, helped
bring about Emancipation? This is what today many historians
contend,1 and these two narratives support that view. "For
most slaves", Blight says, "freedom did not come on a particular day; it
evolved by process." It was the process of waves of slaves escaping into
Union lines as the war moved south, often forming shanty towns of
"contrabands" (as the Union called escaped slaves, they were initially
classified by the north as property). Eventually something had to be
done about the"contraband" and Lincoln signed some limited laws that
gave them freedom, which eventually morphed into the Emancipation
Proclamation. But it was the slaves desire for freedom, willing to risk
life by escaping, that forced the issue of Emancipation. Further, many
of these freed slaves then took up arms and joined the Union army. It is
estimated over 700,000 of the nearly 4 million slaves found freedom
through this "process", the remaining 3.3 million achieving freedom with
the 13th Amendment.
Whatever the historical debates, these narratives are interesting and
even thrilling. Although not as well written as Frederick Douglass, in
many ways the adventures of these young men are more real and tangible -
as private documents they were not written to be published, not filtered
through an editor. They were meant for friends and family and thus have
a rough, raw real edge to them.
David Blight has done a great service to historians and the public by
both publishing the original sources and summarizing and expanding on
them. Each of the two narratives has a corresponding chapter that
re-creates the narrative in more detail and clarity for the modern
reader. In addition there are two chapters that examine what happened to
the men after the war including some fascinating pictures. No two slave
narratives are alike and these will surely not disappoint as important
historical case examples and thrilling stories. America has two new
unsung heroes representative of 100s of thousands who sought and found
their own freedom.
1 - See "They
Chose Freedom", by James M. McPherson in The New York Review of
Books, Volume 55, Number 4. March 20, 2008
Banana The Fate of the Fruit That
Changed the World
Dan Koeppel (2008) Hardcover,
first March 2008
This is a popular science non-fiction narrative about the
banana, added to my growing library of books about 'things' that have
"changed the world" such as salt, lobster, cod, sushi and the kangaroo.
Similair to these other books we learn about the biology, the origins,
some cultural myths, the recent history and present day issues while
being introduced to some interesting characters told in an engaging
manner that keeps the pages flipping easily. It's an ok book for the
information but I felt it could have been better.
There are some factual errors, such as calling the year 1517
"post-Enlightenment" (p.21). There are a number of typographical errors
where words run on into each other with no spaces (at least 3 separate
occasions, entire lines as one long word). Most of the information is
archival-based, with a few interesting first-person trips to Central
America, Europe and Africa. The central "mystery" that drives the book
forward - the plight of the banana - is exposed too soon and too often
so we basically know the ending early on. There is no "main character"
who ties everything together, other than the banana and Koeppel, so it
lacks a certain feeling of significance that books like this at their
best have - a central compelling personal story. He doesn't mind
telling us on a number of occasions how many notebooks of data and how
hard he worked researching the banana - well, of course, it goes without
saying but there are no footnotes and a slim 3-page
bibliography.
Worth it for the interesting history of the banana and current issues,
but feel the book could have been better had Koeppel shown us, the
reader, more excitement for his subject and/or someone alive today we
can identify with as the physical embodiment of "Banana" - the book
would have been longer and Koeppel might have in the end contributed
something original of lasting impact rather than a mostly archival based
summary backgrounder.
The Best American Essays 1998 (The Best American
Series)
Cynthia Ozick (editor), Robert Atwan (series editor)
(1998) Paperback March 2008
I found this at a used book store bargain bin, it is now my second "Best
American Series" book and I really enjoyed it. The variety of writing
that can fall under the classification of "essay" is so vast that the
editor has somewhat of a hard job in choosing. In this case Ozick
focuses on retrospections, older people looking back on their lives. I
appreciate the thematic organization, but I am certain these are not the
"best", rather ones that have a common theme. But then, what is "the
best"? J.M. Coetzee examines this question and more in "What is
realism?", probably the most mind blowing essay of the bunch - I'm not
sure if it's fiction, non-fiction or a lesson on writing but it really
opened my eyes to some of the games and tricks of writing.
Other essays I enjoyed include Jeremy Bernstein's "The Merely Very Good"
which is both an interesting history lesson about some famous 20th
century physicists, and a lesson of what it means to be really smart,
but not at the top of your field, second-tier. "A Peaceable Kingdom" by
Edward Hoagland is a short beautifully romantic piece about the natural
world at a summer mountain cottage, although it could just as easily be
anyones back-yard (replace the bears with chipmunks). Louis Simpson's
"Soldier's Heart" is a somewhat dark and effecting story of a WWII vet
who had PTSD and ended up in the hospital getting electro-shock therapy
and the lifetime it took to recover and heal from both experiences.
Finally, Diana Trilling's "A Visit To Camelot" is a re-telling of a
party she went to at the Whitehouse with the Kennedy's, it's magical.
Tom Clancy (1984) First edition hardcover (Naval Institute
Press) March 2008
It's been almost a quarter century since Tom Clancy's first novel Red
October surfaced in 1984. It was launched by an obscure publisher in
Annapolis called Naval Institute Press better known for books targeted
to career Navy professionals. Perhaps not surprisingly, Navel Institute
Press had never published fiction before - it was a bold experiment by a
first-time novelist and first-time publisher. Of course the experiment
worked fantastically, its popularity reached a zenith when U.S.
President Ronald Reagan called it "unputdown-able" - it was soon on the
reading list of every red-blooded patriotic American.
Today Red October is generally seen as the genesis of a new
genre: the "techno
thriller". Focusing on military procedures and weapons hardware, it
describes the "what" and "how" of war (the more rewarding question of
"why" we fight - if we should fight at all - is usually tackled by the
more literary authors). Looking at the historical precedents for this
type of writing the short story The Battle of Dorking (1871) is
where it all began. First published in England's Blackwood's
Magazine it is a first-person account about a (fictional) invasion
of England by Germany. It was written soon after the Franco-Prussian War
- when Germany used new technologies to quickly gain an advantage and
early victory - Dorking was a huge hit with the public playing
into popular fears and policy makers who used it to justify the creation
of the earliest modern spy agencies. It was so successful that today it
is considered the founding work of "invasion
literature", a genre of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that
was influential in fanning war hysteria leading up to WWI. The books
were "calculated to inflame public opinion abroad and alarm the more
ignorant public at home," as one English Prime Minister at the time
complained.
Likewise, the techno thrillers of the 1980s contributed to a
pro-military culture, a re-newed and vigorous form of patriotism that
imagined American know-how (technology) would prevail against the "red"
menace, like the 1983 "Star Wars" missle defense system. We already know
Clancy influenced Reagan, and probably a generation of military
professionals, the only question is to what degree. Clearly during the
1980s and 90s a lot of people believed the fiction and it lead to a wave
of patriotic American hubris in the wake of the Soviet collapse,
eventually crashing spectacularly on the rocky shores of Iraq. "They
thought they could create their own reality, but reality snapped back,"
as historian Fred Kaplan puts it, talking about his recent book on this
subject Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American
Power.[1]
Clancy's success is a guage of how influential the techno thrill has
been. After Red October, he was churning out thrillers almost
yearly making him one of the top selling authors of the 80s (Red
Storm Rising, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger)
- a peer of Steven King, Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel on the Best
Seller Lists. In 1990 Red October was adapted to film
starring Sean Connery eventually grossing over $200 million. Many more
book-to-film adaptations followed in the 90s and by the 21st century the
franchise had expanded into video games. Naval Institute Press' gamble
paid off handsomely and it continues to sell new fiction titles with
Red October remaining its best seller. Perhaps most
influentially, the genre Clancy started has exploded with dozens of new
authors and books appearing yearly, a recent example is The Ghost
War by Alex Berenson which had a prominent review in this weeks
New York Times Book Review (March 23, 2008).[2]
Whatever its faults, Red October is something of a creative
breakthrough, it is considered the foundation of a genre for a reason.
By focusing on hyper-real clinically computerized military procedure and
weapons systems, it gives the appearance of a non-fiction documentary.
As a marker of its success, the world he portrays in fiction - the
military - has been the most vocal in its praise. This alone makes it
worth reading in the same way we might read Balzac to learn about the
anthropological details of Parisian life. However unlike Balzac, Clancy
is "genre fiction" so don't expect a lot. The characters are
uninteresting, either flat stereotypes or unbelievable, the plot has
some large holes, the writing is often boring and un-inspired. Then
again, Clancy can get away with it because, sadly, that is actually how
many people in the military appear on the surface, the military
de-humanizes by its nature - Clancy has cleverly found a way to write
about a subject that has lots of interesting "hardware" and the people
are so many Barbie dolls to move around. This is a shame because good
writing about the military and war - All Quiet on the Western
Front - humanizes in the face of de-humanization, it rebels against
the machine. Clancy embraces the machine and lovingly extols its
wonders, for better and worse.
Joseph Conrad (1902) Three stories
collected in Joseph Conrad: Tales of Land and Sea, illus. Richard
Powers (Hanover House: Garden City, NJ) March 2008
Youth, a Narrative; and Two Other Stories is a collection of
three novellas by Joseph Conrad published as a single volume in 1902, it
is one of the half-dozen or so volumes of short-story/novella
collections published in his lifetime. The stories are Youth
(1902), The Heart of Darkness (1899) and The End of the
Tether (1902). Although Heart of Darkness is more well known
today - it has aged well - the story Youth got title billing -
Conrad worked on it between 1881 and 1998, about 17 years! It certainly
was his favorite of the three based on his comments in the Authors Note,
in part because it was the first appearance of "Marlow", an
auto-biographical alter-ego character that would resurface in many later
works. Youth is the most autobiographical, with Conrad
saying:
"Youth" is a feat of memory. It is a record of
experience; but that experience, in its facts, in its inwardness and in
its outward colouring, begins and ends in myself.
Heart
of Darkness is a more stylistic work, much to the chagrin of many
readers expecting a gripping adventure story along the lines of
Apocalypse Now, it is a slow, stuttering, dark, beast of a thing
that even after 3 readings I still feel like I am reading it anew, an
impenetrable thicket of overlapping symbolisms. Conrad says of its
authenticity
"Heart of Darkness" is experience, too; but it
is experience pushed a little (and only very little) beyond the actual
facts of the case. [Heart of Darkness] was like another art altogether.
That sombre theme had to be given a sinister resonance, a tonality of
its own, a continued vibration that, I hoped, would hang in the air and
dwell on the ear after the last note had been struck.
I
wonder what the "actual facts of the case" were - or is it best not to
know. The last story is the longest of the three, it is clearly Conrad's
least favorite, saying
As to its "reality," that is for the
readers to determine. More skill would have made them more real and the
whole composition more interesting. It is not very likely that I shall
ever read "The End of the Tether" again. No more need be said. It
accords best with my feelings to part from Captain Whalley in
affectionate silence.
It is a damning sentiment, even by
under-stated Victorian standards, however contrary to Conrad I found it
to be absolutely delightful. He dispenses with the heavy symbolic
artifice of the first two works and sticks with a more naturalistic or
realist mode that conveys a sense of place and time, and in particular
the character of Captain Whalley, is unforgettable. The villein, Mr.
Massey, owner of a tramp steamer in the backwaters of the orient, is on
par with evil captains like Queeg or Ahab - it was easy to imagine him
being played by Humphrey Bogart. I love works rich in historical detail
and this one really brings the era alive.
Edgar
Allan Poe (1838) G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press,
Tamerlane Edition, Volume 2 & 3 (partial each), 1902. Illustrated by
Frederick Simpson Coburn. Set 285 of 300. March 2008
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe's first
and only novel. It is notoriously uneven and difficult to classify, but
can generally be described as an endless adventure story of one
episodic adventure after the next with no definitive ending. Poe is at
his classic best in the middle portion describing the macabre
adventures on-board the ship Grampus. The later half is a rush
job, Poe copied entire sections from other books word for word and the
plot has a weak ending. Later commentators have defended the ending by
pointing out Poe imagined what the South Pole was like before anyone
had been there, but Poe's vision is hardly convincing, even for
contemporaries. Putnam, who published it without reading to the end -
on the strength of the first and middle section - vowed never to
publish another work again without reading it fully. It was generally
panned by contemporary critics.
Narrative does have strengths, the macabre style he is so famous
for can be seen in full development (his first big classic The Fall
of the House of Usher (1839) was only a year away). On the other
hand Poe's imagination seems to get away from him, he is unable to
sustain a long narrative without it shattering into separate short
stories. He was at his best working from start to end in manic bursts
of creative energy. Whatever the critical reviews, Narrative is
popular today, if for no other reason it is Poe's only (complete)
novel. The descriptions of being buried alive in the Grampus,
the ghost ship and the story of cannibalism with Richard Parker are
well told and unforgettable.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight A
New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage
Anonymous
(1400) Hardcover, W.W. Norton, 2007 March
2008
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (ca. 1400) is chivalric romance
literature of the late Middle Ages. It is often thought of in
conjunction with Beowulf (ca. 800), but these works are nearly
600 years apart, as near to one another as Sir Gawain is to our
own time. It is a part of the "chivalric revival" of the Hundred Years'
War period, when the old order of knights and chivalry was giving way to
longbow armed peasants who could unceremoniously kill from a distance,
when the three-orders of knight, peasant and priest was breaking down.
In this period of rising violence, social turmoil, the Black Death,
famine and other "Crisis of the 14th century", there was a nostalgia
among the nobility for the old days, the romantic stories from the 11th
and 12th centuries found new popularity. Sir Gawain then is a
continuation updated with contemporary aesthetics and sensibilities- a
chivalric revival. It's this type of work that Don Quixote would
devastatingly satirize 200 years later, effectively putting the final
nail in the coffin of the medieval romance and opening the way to a new
form: the novel.
Armitage has done a great job with the translation, by keeping the
alliteration intact it makes for excellent reading aloud, the tongue
gets a real work-out but pretty soon the guttural Germanic accent takes
over with a short, crisp, pounding rhythm. By the end you feel ready to
become a good Medieval knight, or at least better understand the
mindset.
Richard Preston (editor), Tim
Folger (series editor) (2007) Hardcover first March 2008
The
Best American Series is an anthology published yearly by
Houghton Mifflin of articles that appeared in magazines over the past
year - it's kind of a "best of" for magazine articles, in case you
didn't get a chance to read 100s of magazines this past year. This one
is for science and nature, but they also have them for fiction, travel,
comics, etc.. The first was for fiction since 1915, but starting around
2000 they really expanded the line, including one that has blog
articles(!). The Science and Nature Writing series began in 2000 so
this is the seventh book. It is my first of the Best American series,
of which I hope there will be many more on my shelf.
There are 28 articles by 28 authors arranged in alphabetic order by the
authors last name. It is a box of surprises and a bag of chips - one
never knows what comes up next, once you start it's hard to stop. It's
unlike a short story anthology, it's a unique experience to read
magazine articles in book form without the glossy pictures, narrow
columns and advertisements, it is easier and more enjoyable, sort of
like Tivo, with the best of TV distilled down and all the commercials
removed.
Articles about science often don't have longevity since things
naturally change rapidly, and this book does have a few articles about
current events that in a few years will be outdated, but most of the
articles have longer appeal that will last at least another decade, and
some are timeless in scope and artistic appeal. The articles are
written for a popular audience, so for the general reader, they are
easily accessible small windows into what's going on in the world
today.
One River Explorations and
Discoveries in the Amazon Rain Forest
Wade Davis
(1996) First edition hardcover March 2008
One River is full of great stories and anecdotes as well as a
sense of place and time that are unforgettable. I'm giving it four stars
for reasons stated below and so won't focus on the positives which have
already been so well covered by many reviewers. These are fairly minor
quibbles in an otherwise good book.
Stylistically, the narrative doesn't always flow well. Wade presents the
life of the books central character, Richard Schultes, in some sort of
chronological order, but interjects anecdotal stories out of order
requiring the reader to have a good memory to keep everything straight.
This is a long detail-rich book with 1000s of people and place names
covering about a 150 year timespan from the Amazon Jungle, to the Andes
to Central America and the American West.
The amount of detail is at times excessive, in particular with place
names and locations, Wade sometimes spends as much time describing where
a place is (a 50 person village in the jungle) as he does about the
place itself before moving on to the next place - it feels like a rote
travel log at times, probably because he used Schultes private botany
journals as one source. There is so much detail it sometimes crowds out
the big picture, lost in the trees. I think the book could have been
edited back 100 pages or so, there is just a lot of material that is
pure anecdote or trivia.
Finally and probably most importantly, as a life of Richard Schultes,
this is pure hagiography. He is the hero of the story in all respects.
Perhaps hagiography is helpful in motivating students to become
scientists, but it is not a balanced objective biography, it is a
tribute by one of his admiring students, Wade plays up Schultes
accomplishments but does not question or examine his failures. For
example, Schultes spent the majority of his career in the Amazon
studying the rubber tree and became the world expert, yet he never did
complete a book about it, what a tragic loss. I don't mean to disparage
Schultes, but given his stature and reputation, the lack of any
criticism naturally draws the question Wade never asks. The book was
written in 1996 and Shultes died in 2001 so with time we may see a more
balanced perspective.
Upton
Sinclair (1906) Hardcover, B&N 2004 March 2008
So much has already been written about The Jungle it's hard to
write an original review without resorting to personal impressions which
simply echo others - like so many cows in a Chicago stockyard, I've
joined millions of other Americans in a rite of passage through
Sinclair's Packingtown, and in the end "I never sausage a thing."
But original discussion can always be found by asking: is the novel
still worth reading today? Clearly many teachers think so, it is widely
assigned in the classroom, in particular at the high school level. I
partly attribute this to the books relative ease of reading (I finished
it in 2 days), but it comes at the expense of artistic quality - it is a
journalistic novel with a lot of facts and not a lot of things we might
come to expect in a great work of art: the characters are often not well
developed, there is not the beautiful language and heavy use of
symbolism, and it ends on a purely propaganda note. Sinclair is more
interested in the novels message than the characters, ironic given the
message: people are more important than the system.
It is still worth reading for its historical detail of working class
life at the turn of the century; as a lover of history I reveled in all
the tiny details, not only of the meat packing but the clothes, the
food, the types of jobs, the types of things people bought, attitudes,
mannerisms and expressions. These were people of my great-grandparents
generation, who my grandparents were born into, so it still remains
personally relevant and fascinating. Another novel about Chicago from
this time period, Sister Carrie (1900) does as good a job in the
historical detail, but is a stylistically much more mature work of art -
and it broke new ground in allowing "fallen women" to rise up and
succeed, a taboo of the age - Sinclair's fallen women are "correctly"
killed off or given no hope of improvement.
Because of The Jungle's historical importance in raising
awareness of social issues - similar to what Uncle Tom's Cabin
did for equality laws and Oliver Twist did for the working poor
of England - as a novel of social improvement it will probably remain
popular among educators who want to show fiction as more than just
entertaining stories. In summary, the novel is a classic because it is a
mythological part of the American reading landscape, and for its effects
on US health laws. It is not a classic in the artistic sense, but still
worthwhile for the historical detail about America at the turn of
century.
Dickson J. Preston (1980) Hardcover, first February 2008
Frederick Douglass wrote three biographies, or rather, he wrote his
biography three times in different periods of life, each time recounting
the story of his youth and escape from slavery, and then bringing the
account forward to the date of writing. They are Narrative of the
Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845), My Bondage
and My Freedom (1855) and Life and Times of Frederick
Douglass (1881). Of the three Bondage and Freedom is the most
detailed and reliable account of his early slave years. Life and
Times smoothed out some passages. While Bondage and Freedom
is the most reliable of his accounts it remains the least read, the
tendency is to read Narrative first and then for those wanting
more detail to skip to Life and Times.
Douglass' 1845 Narrative was probably the single most influential
American slave narrative ever written, it was widely read and well known
in the decades leading up to the Civil War. However from its first
publication many contested its veracity, in particular Douglass' former
owners on the Eastern Short of Maryland. For the most part historians
have taken Douglass at his word, or excused certain things in light of
the context that he was trying to raise sympathy for the cause of
abolition. It was not until 1980 that historian Dickson Preston, who
lived in Talbot County, Maryland, did a more scientific study of
Douglass' early years in slavery, going back through the records and
seeing what could be verified, what made sense. Because Dickson is not
black he had trouble finding a publisher since it was thought at the
time any new biography of Douglass should be written by a black scholar,
but with the help of James A. Michener (who was also living in Talbot
County at the time working on his book Chesapeake) they found
someone to publish this excellent objective historical
investigation.
Dickson says in the Preface "this book began as an adventure in what
might be called historical detective work. I had read his vividly
written first autobiography.. and had been deeply moved by its stark
recital of the grimmer side of Eastern Shore slavery. I had also read -
and heard, for they are still spoken on the Eastern Shore - the denials,
the insistence that Douglass was a charlatan who had made up most of his
life story or had it written for him by his norther white benefactors.
But what were the facts?" The book then is a re-telling of Douglass'
narrative using supporting facts and logical conclusions to determine
the accuracy and probable truths. Through this process we are afforded a
much richer and deeper glimpse into Douglass' life.
The main thing Dickson discovers is that Douglass for the most part was
telling the truth, but that he tended to overplay his trials and
tribulations through the sin of omission - he tells the bad things but
not the good. Of course this is understandable given the context of the
books dual purpose as a weapon in the war against slavery. Far from
being a deprived child Douglass was, at major transition points in his
life, given opportunities of advancement by his white owners, he was
clearly an exceptional child and not the typical downtrodden field-hand.
This is not to say he was not a self-made man because he really was
gifted, but others saw in him early on his great potential and he was
given privileged and room to grow very few other slaves had. In the end
we get a more balanced and full view of not only Douglass but the whites
in his life and ultimately slave culture in Maryland as a whole, the
good and the bad.
I found Young Frederick Douglass to be essential to understanding
who Douglass was and how he came to be. Douglass' narrative is gripping
but leaves a lot of open questions - Dickson's research helps shed
substantial light on what was happening behind the scenes, for
anyone wishing learn more about Douglass after reading
Narrative it would be hard to go wrong with Young Frederick
Douglass.
The Last Flight of the Scarlet
Macaw One Woman's Fight to Save the
World's Most Beautiful Bird
Bruce Barcott
(2008) First edition hardcover February 2008
In 1982 Sharon Matola, a feisty, curly-haired native from the rusty
working-class town of Baltimore, left home for adventure - after some
false starts hopping trains and training lions, she eventually landed in
the green jungles of Central America where, in the tiny country of
Belize (pop: 250,000), she created the first and only "zoo" (more like
an animal rescue). Because of her passion for animals and the
environment she earned a reputation as the 'Jane Goodall of Belize'. So
it was inevitable when a corrupt Belize government wanted to build a
fiscally questionable dam that would obliterate some of Belize's richest
biological resources - including the unique roosting area of the
beautiful but endangered Scarlet Macaw - she became the driving force
behind a movement to stop powerful and shadowy forces. Bruce Barcott, an
environmental journalist with Outside magazine based in Seattle
Washington, heard about Matola's struggle and for a number of years
followed her story as it went from a single womans crusade into an
international turmoil involving Fortune 500 companies, the Canadian
Government, movie stars and Englands secretive and rarely used highest
court the "Privy Council".
The Last Flight is structured as a "non-fiction narrative",
meaning there is a main character (Matola) following an evolving story
(struggle to stop the dam) in which the reader is kept in suspense to
find out what happens. Along the way the author imparts factual
background knowledge such as: a history of Belize; Belize culture and
geography; Belize wildlife; a history of dams and the environment;
wildlife extinction; backgrounds on institutions like the NRDC and
Englands Privy Council; how companies and environmental groups operate
during disputes. In both the suspense story and factual tangents Barcott
has succeeded marvelously in creating a highly readable page turner.
Just as Matola is the stories personification of conservation, the
iconic Scarlet Macaw becomes the symbol of all the animals that would be
impacted by the dam, and ultimately of endangered animals everywhere.
Rather than a black and white "man vs nature", Barcott reveals how
ambiguous and complicated conservation is, often not a question of
ethics but politics. This is a book about a tiny valley, an unknown
woman in a country where fewer people live than most American counties.
But it is a larger more important work, it is a window into the world of
conservation struggles, an awareness of the Belize people, culture and
geography, and most importantly a profile of Sharon whose passion and
determination is an inspiration for anyone, in particular young women
and men to follow their dreams and make a difference in the
world.
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American
Slave
Frederick Douglass (1845) Hardcover,
Barnes and Nobel 2003, ed. Robert O'Meally February 2008
Absolutely engrossing, written when he was just 27. I can't believe I
waited this long to read it. At only 100 pages it can be read in a
single evening but it's a story that is unforgetable. I didn't know much
about Douglass but now that I've read this, his most famous work, his
name reasonates with meaning, images and life. I wish I knew him, he's a
hero for all.
Anna Politkovskaya (2003) First
hardcover English February 2008
I've always wanted to learn more about Chechnya so this is my first book
about a very violent and complex war. Anna Politkovskaya was somewhat of
a disidant Russian journalist who made a name for herself covering the
war and putting herself in harms way - she was eventually assassinated
in 2006, probably by the Russian military she managed to piss off enough
times with her muckraking. In addition to her many newspaper stories she
wrote three books about the war, two of which were translated into
English, this being the second. A Small Corner of Hell is a long
series of first-person oral histories and moralizing. It is designed to
be a critique of the Russian government and military through the use of
shocking imagary and emotion, an appeal to popular Russian opinion. Of
course most of what is written here is true, and without her we might
never know these stories. I was hoping for a more balanced and broad
overview of the conflict, but the details of the individual crimes and
sufferings are helpful in understanding the brutality of war. It truely
is a meat grinder, after finishing the book I checked Wikipedia for the
latest updates on the major people and most of them are now dead. I'd
like to learn more about the war but it is like many of the wars in
Africa, sensless depraved violence commited by homocidal maniacs under
no authority or control. There is no honor, no hope, just a slow
genocidal suicide. Things have become better since 2006 but the conflict
is mostly in a lull and re-grouping period waiting for the next flare
up, for the traumatized younger generation to grow up and start over
anew.
Edward P. Jones
(2006) First, hardcover February 2008
All Aunt Hagar's Children is a collection of short stories by
Washington D.C. native Edward P. Jones, it is his third book and the
first since winning the Pulitzer Prize for The Known World
(2003). The stories are about black Americans in Washington D.C. during
the 20th century. Each story revolves around family, society and self,
detailing experiences emblematic of southern blacks who migrated to
northern cities from rural roots: some found salvation and others a
living hell. In all the stories there are transformative turning points
in peoples lives. As Jones shows, they are often not conscious of what
happened - life-altering events can happen in the course of the banal
every-day, setting in motion life patterns that can be hard to break
when it's forgotten or not noticed how it started. In some cases the
patterns are passed down unconsciously generation to generation - like
the devil, cycles of violence, poverty, addiction, sickness and
ignorance stalk many of the characters for seemingly mysterious reasons,
bordering on the mystic in some stories.
The stories are beautifully original, Jones employs authentic southern
expressions creating a time capsule reverberating with fading folkways.
Like the characters he writes about, Jones grew up poor in Washington.
He had a strong mother - whom he dedicates the book too - and it
contains many of her colloquial sayings. This is not a book to be read
quickly, like the pace of southern culture, each sentence demands
respect for plot structure, character development and the unique
southern way of putting words together. I read this hoping to learn more
about the black culture of Washington (and Baltimore up the road) and
was not disappointed, but what an extra treat to have a world-class
writer with a deep sense of humanity, empathy (and sometimes sly humor)
show the way.
Update: Two of the best stories are freely available online from
The New Yorker website where they were originally published: "A
Rich Man" and "Old
Boys, Old Girls".
Chasing the Flame: Sergio Vieira de Mello and the
Fight to Save the World
Samantha Power
(2008) First, hardcover February 2008
Sergio Vieira de Mello of Brazil (simply "Sergio" to many) was the
personification of what the United Nations could and should be. As Paul
Bremer's adviser Ryan Cocker once said, "Sergio is as good as it gets
not only for the UN, but for international diplomacy." Sergio was the UN
Secretary General's "ultimate go-to guy", a nation builder in the
world's toughest spots like East Timor, Cambodia, Kosovo. No one who met
him - from George W. Bush on the eve of the Iraq War, to the Khmer
Rouge, to Slobodan Milosevic - came away untouched by his intelligence,
physical bearing, charisma and integrity. It was a major blow to the
world when he and 14 other UN staff were killed on August 19th 2003 by
an al-Qeada suicide bomber at the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, an event that
has become known as the UN's "9/11". He was often spoken of as candidate
for the position of UN Secretary General, but his career was cut short
before he had a chance to become the world-renowned elder statesman he
was destined to be. This biography by Pulitzer Prize winning Samantha
Power is a monument to his legacy and should connect with a wide
audience. Not only an enthralling story of adventure (Sergio was almost
always in the field in dangerous situations and places), but equally a
revelation of what was happening behind the headlines in major crisis
around the world over the past 30 years - and it is the story of the UN
itself, as mirrored in the ups and downs of Sergio's life and character,
its faults, weaknesses and strengths.
Power has managed to convey Sergio's persona with utmost sympathy,
seductively drawing the reader into Sergio's world. His younger staff
members were often likened to puppy dogs who followed him around, at one
point even into the bushes to take a leak - I often felt this way
reading his biography, like a puppy dog I didn't want him to leave or
for the book to end, for the inevitable to happen. I dreaded the last
chapter titled "August 19 2003" - it is the most thrilling chapter in
the book, a masterpiece of journalistic writing - it can bring the
reader to tears in a way no fiction could achieve. Samantha Power is an
adviser to Barak Obama "the person whose rigor and compassion bear the
closest resemblance to Sergio's that I have ever seen," she says in the
credits. Power also knows Terry George, director of Hotel Rwanda,
who advised her on the book and who expressed an interest in making a
movie version, we can only hope.
Charles Nordhoff and
James Norman Hall (1932) 1960 hardcover 56th printing, Little Brown
February 2008
This is the classic novelization of the real-life Bounty mutiny, from
which the four
movies were based. When the writing team of Nordhoff and Hall - both
WWI vets who had recently moved to Tahiti - published this their most
famous collaboration in 1932, the Bounty mutiny was already about 140
years in the past, a source of legend and myth for boys and men who
imagined the unlimited potential, and exotic women, of the islands of
the vast South Pacific. Looking at it today in the 21st century, the
novel contains colonial tropes of "exoticism" pioneered by Melville
(Typee), Conrad and Pierre Loti's descriptions of Tahiti in Le Mariage de
Loti (1880). It is a fun read but one word holds it back from
being a timeless novel: Post-Colonialism. Had it been written in 1832 it
would be a classic, but by 1932 it is a colonial artifact rife with
certain expectations that ring flat. To enjoy this novel is to sustain
the colonial beliefs of European cultural superiority, to be complacent
of the colonial venture. However, it is still a great story, the plot is
excellent and the characters memorable, Bligh is one of the great
villeins of literature, a peer of Captain Ahab (Moby-Dick) and
Queeg (The Caine Mutiny). For the true story, see Caroline
Alexander's The Bounty: The True Story of the Mutiny on the
Bounty (2003).
Alfred
Lansing (1959) First hardcover 1959 BOMC February 2008
Earnest Shackleton's 1914 Antarctic expedition has recently
become a sort of mini-industry on PBS, A&E, History Channel, BBC along
with an embarrassment of riches in books, photography, websites, clubs,
museums. Certainly the attention is warranted, it is one of the most
incredible polar survival stories ever. However it was not always that
way - after the expedition returned in 1916 it was largely overshadowed
by World War I, and besides, Shackleton never even reached Antarctica,
much less the South Pole, it didn't capture the publics fascination. Not
until 1959 when unknown journalist Alfred Lansing published his first
and only book Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage did the
world really start to notice this incredible story.
Lansing's account starts with a bang and never lets up to the last
sentence - it is a thrilling edge of the seat ride where, when things
can't get any worse, they do. There have been a number of other
re-tellings since, including most recently by Caroline Alexander The
Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition (1998),
however none of these match Lansings for its energy and drive. Most
importantly some of the original crew members were still alive when
Lansing wrote his book so he was able to get first hand accounts - more
than an archival history, it is a primary source of not only the
officers but the entire crew. Based on an informal survey of Amazon
best-seller lists and LibraryThing library holdings, this book is
probably the single most widely read account of any polar expedition, a
canonical leader of its genre. Still, for the serious student,
Shackleton's own version of events in South (1919) and Worsley's
Endurance (1933) are required reading and very good in their own
right, I look forward to continuing my "Shackleton journey" with those
books next.
Daoud Hari (2008) Advanced Reader's Edition, Jan 2008, for March 13
release, paper. February 2008
There are a number of compelling memoirs by Sudanese authors such as The Poured Fire On Us
From the Sky (2005), What is the
What (2006), and at least 4 more by or about "The Lost
Boys" of southern Sudan. As the conflict has
moved north and west, like birds flying before the storm, we are now
seeing a new wave of heartbreaking memoirs arriving from the Darfur
region. Each story is as unique as the person telling it, and all offer a
glimpse of a world few know about because western journalists have so
much difficulty working in the country, thus making this first-hand
narrative by a native Darfurian a unique and important source.
As a young man Daoud Hari witnessed the destruction of his idyllic
medieval village by modern Russian-made helicopter gunships and, like the
logs of a raft breaking apart in the rapids, he and his family spun off
in many harrowing directions. Hari decided early on that he would "use
his brains and not a gun to make a better life" for himself. After
arriving at a refugee camp in Chad, his skill at languages allowed him to
work as a translator and guide for westerners on fact-finding trips
across the border into Darfur. On about his 7th trip in August 2006 he
became embroiled in an international incident with kidnapped National
Geographic journalist Paul Salopek, making
headlines around the world. Through the help of friends Hari was able to
get out of Sudanese jail and move to the United States, where he now
works for SaveDarfur.Org.
Hari's easy to read book is an excellent entry point for learning about
the Darfur conflict. A nine-page Appendix called "A Darfur Primer" is,
the author says, what any Darfurian in a bar would know about their own
history. Hari's book contains the most complete version yet of
Pulitzer-Prize winning Paul Salopek's kidnapping ordeal in 2006, taking
up nearly the last third of the book; Salopek has not published an
account, but he was severely beaten and almost died (a fate nearly shared
by Hari). Hari tells us about the unintended consequences of the Iraq
War, saying "Torture was the popular new thing because Guantanamo and Abu
Ghraib were everywhere in the news at that time, and crazy men like this
were now getting permission to be crazy." Finally, Hari is perhaps most
remarkable for never loosing his humanity despite the horror around him,
reminding the reader "loosing a baby is hard. It doesn't matter where in
the world you live for that." This is a wonderful memoir, intelligent,
thrilling, educational, recommend highly.
Colin
fletcher (1968) First hardcover February 2008
The Man Who Walked Through Time is about Colin Fletcher's 1963
solo backpacking trip through the Grand Canyon, it is considered a
classic of Outdoor Literature ranked #45 in National Geographic's 100
Best Adventure Books. It was first published in January 1968,
almost exactly 40 years from the date of this review - the author was
41 when he took the trip, I am 41, and Fletcher emerged from the trip
declaring "life begins at 40", adding the journey had offered him the
"key to contentment." Like Dante's descent into the Inferno in media
res (age 40), Fletcher descended into the Abyss of the Canyon and
emerged a spiritually changed man, changing the landscape of outdoor
recreation with him.
Colin Fletcher (1922-2007) was a Welshman and WWII vet who moved to
California in the 1950s. An avid backpacker, he is best known for The
Complete Walker I-IV (1968-2001), which for a generation or two has
been the singular bible of backpacking - "Colin was sort of the founding
father of modern backpacking, the first person to write about going out
for an extended period and being self-sufficient." (Annette McGivney,
editor of Backpacker Magazine). In 1968, the same year he
published the first edition of The Complete Walker, he also
published The Man Who Walked Through Time, recounting a 1963 trip
in which he was the first person to walk the length of Grand Canyon
National Park 'in one go' (second to complete the whole journey). More
than an adventure journal, it inspired a generation to take up (create)
the backpacking lifestyle as a way to fill a spiritual void and escape
the confusion and chaos of Vietnam-era America. As Backpacker
Magazine contributing editor Buck Tilton recalls "After Vietnam, I
was trying to figure out what to do with my life. So many of my friends
had died from bullet holes. I read The Man Who Walked Through
Time, and it was the only thing that made sense to me. Fletcher's
words gave meaning to backpacking. I loaded my pack exactly the way
Fletcher did and carried a walking stick like his. He was my
hero."
Fletcher wrote about what he saw in day to day events, none are death
defying or edge of the seat, what set it apart was Fletcher's inner
journey of discovery as a metaphor of the vast expanse of time in the
geology of the Grand Canyon. "I saw that by going down into that huge
fissure in the face of the earth, deep into the space and the silence and
the solitude, I might come as close as we can at present to moving back
and down through the smooth and apparently impenetrable face of time."
Fletcher found peace and solitude in removing himself from the "piercing
arrows" of the modern world.
The Man Who Walked Through Time is essentially a Romantic work
in the tradition of Robert Louis Stevenson's Travels with a Donkey
in the Cevennes (1879), highly influential with an earlier
generation of bohemians (Stevenson invented and describes the first
sleep bag in outdoor literature). Fletcher re-fashioned his account for
a new generation of drop-outs who wanted to find inner solitude and
discovery in the outdoors. I see in Fletcher a sort of proto-hippy, he
shed his clothing and walked bare naked with a bamboo cane, floppy hat
and scraggly beard. He ate pemmican and lamented the loss of the
martial spirit of the natives. He found value in nature and disparaged
the dam builders who would destroy it. He was a key element in the
burgeoning environmental movement - The Man Who Walked Through
Time will be "forever" a permanent mark in time of a movement and a
generation. In February 2008, almost exactly 40 years from the books
publication, the National Academy of Sciences published a report saying
"Camping, fishing and per capita visits to parks are all declining in a
shift away from nature-based recreation.. the replacement of vigorous
outdoor activities by sedentary, indoor videophilia." The times are
changing and 40 years ago today seems about 180 degrees in difference.
Perhaps by 2048, 40 years from now, we will see a re-discovery of
Fletchers vision of vigorous outdoor challenge, solitude and
self-sufficiency in nature.
Lewis Lapham (Oct 2007) Volume 1, Number 1 (Winter 2008) February
2008
"States of War" is the inaugural issue of a new quarterly journal Lapham's Quarterly
edited by Lewis Lapham, former Harper's Magazine editor. Although
packaged as a journal/magazine about current issues, it's really a
collection of "primary sources" - roughly defined as material
contemporary to the time, such as memoirs, speeches, transcripts and
poems. These kinds of "readers" are not big sellers outside of academia,
so the idea of a dressed up history reader in the newsstand alongside
GQ and Time seems at first fiscally foolish and
intellectually audacious. Some critics, such as Sara Irvy in The New
York Times(December
31, 2007), are skeptical that dead voices applied to current events
will find a popular audience, and that Lapham (now in his 70s) is
associating himself with great names as a sort of self-published career
epitaph. Forget the critics, he is on to something surprisingly good,
Lapham's Quarterly turns out to be one of the best things I've
read in years. Given the luminary contributors, perhaps it is only
surprising no one did it sooner. I'll examine those authors in more
detail below, but first some thoughts on the work as a whole.
What a delight to read primary sources with a common theme from all
periods of history in bite-size easily digestible pieces, vetted and
organized by professionals for a non-professional audience. Reading
primary sources is studying history at the cellular level, most of us
learn about history through more holistic but less immediate secondary
sources, such as the latest history book by Simon Schama or a History
Channel documentary. Primary sources are often left to the professionals
or serious history obsessive to decipher, quote and explain the raw
material. We also naturally feel a sense of superiority about our own
"modern" times - we perceive ourselves at the height of progress, the
evidence is all around from the cars we drive to the nightly theater on
TV - consequently we tend to distance ourselves from past voices when it
comes to problems of the day. Lapham's Quarterly succeeds in
breaking through this barrier by presenting sources in non-chronological
order along thematic lines - it doesn't matter when something was
written, it can have universal and immortal value when it speaks to the
greater truth of common human experience.
"States of War" examines the universal human experience of war. The 220
page journal is composed of three main sections: a seven-page
introduction by Lapham, 174 pages of primary source excerpts, and
30-pages of four essays by contemporary historians. The heart of the
journal is the middle section, the source excerpts, which is further
segmented into four sections: "Calls to Arms", "Rules of Engagement",
"Field Reports" and "Postmortems". I will deal with each of these
separately below - each source is anywhere from half a page to 3 pages in
length, on average about a page each, easily digestible within 5 minutes
or less in most cases. Each page has at least one color picture (many
full-page) and/or a boxed quote.
"Calls to Arms" is about the build-up up to war. Samples include the
speech given by Pope Urban II at Clermont preaching the First Crusade;
George Patton rallying his troops with an expletive-filled speech in
1944; an exchange of letters between Tsar Nicholas II and Kaiser Wilhelm
II days before the start of the Great War. In total there are 24 source
in this section in about 55 pages.
"Rules of Engagement" is I believe the most powerful section. In every
war there are "rules" and very often warriors are faced with the
contradiction of fighting to win and fighting honorably according to the
precepts of the age. It is fascinating to listen in on an exchange of
letters between William Sherman (Union) and John Hood (Confederate) just
before Sherman decides to burn Atlanta and go on a scorched earth
campaign, with Hood appealing to humanity and God. There is a devastating
story of Israeli soldiers deciding what to do about a 10 year old girl
who has wondered into the front lines. An excerpt from Nixon's Whitehouse
Tapes as he decides if he should bomb North Vietnam and kill 100,00s of
thousands of civilians, Kissinger says in effect "I don't care about the
civilians, I don't the world to think of you as a butcher." Churchill
musing over the use of mustard gas in WWII. In total there are 23 sources
in 35 pages.
"Field Reports" is about actual combat. These are some of the most
difficult documents to read because they are so violent. George Orwell
describes in detail what it was like to be shot through the neck
by a sniper; a Marine describes day to day life in the trenches of
Peleliu, a Pacific island in WWII, where worse than the
fear of death was the smell of it, and the millions of flies it
produced; there is an excerpt from All Quiet on the Western Front;
an excellent reconstruction of the Battle of Agincourt by modern
historian John Keegan. In total there are 23 sources in 57 pages.
"Postmortem" is reflections on war. These are the most cerebral and
least titalating of the bunch, a philosophically reflective quiet after
the storm. Jessica Lynch tells her story to Congress, saying she was not
the hero the press made her out to be. Kurt Vonnegut sees war as an
addiction. Eisenhower cautions against the military industrial complex
and Wilfred Owen warns "Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!" This section has 18
sources in about 40 pages.
Perhaps what makes this collection so good is its ambiguity, there are
pro-war and anti-war pieces, optimistic and pessimistic pieces - war is a
complex and multi-faceted part of the human experience. In summary, I can
not overstate my enthusiasm for this inaugural issue - many of the
sources are unforgettable and will live with me forever. Although costly
for a "magazine", if the same content had been published as a book, I
would have paid $30 for it - it's a bargain at $15 and will happily find
a home on my bookshelf (dog-eared and marked up).
The Complete Works of Edgar Allan
Poe Volume 2 of 10
Edgar Allan Poe
(1832-49) G.P. Putnam's Sons, The Knickerbocker Press, Tamerlane
Edition,
Volume 2, 1902. Illustrated by Frederick Simpson Coburn. Set
285 of 300. January
2008
This is volume 2 of a 10 volume set of Poe's completes works and critical
commentary published in 1902 by G.P. Putnam. The paper is thick hand-made
"Ruisdael" with rough-cut edges, typesetting print, and rich lithograph
prints. Putnam made at least 2 editions, this is the large deluxe
"Tamerlane" edition. You know it's deluxe as they give you *two* copies
of each print (about a dozen in each volume), one in color(!), probably
for removing to have framed without destroying the book. The less
expensive and smaller "Eldorado" edition has thinner paper, less robust
boards and no color prints. Each edition was limited to 300 copies. To
buy a new book made like this today (hand made paper, typesetting, color
lithograph ) would cost at least $300 (per book), and very few people
even make it this way anymore, it's all hand done; I bought the entire
set for $100 from abebooks.com, what a bargain and rich reading
experience.
The short stories and novellas makes up 5 volumes (vol 2 - 6) and so this
review is of the first volume of short stories (vol 2). They are in
somewhat chronological order, and somewhat complete. The stories in this
volume, in listed order are:
MS Found in a Bottle
Berenice
Morella
Lionizing
The Unparalleled Adventures of One Hans Pfaall
The Assignation
Bon-Bon
Shadow: A Parable
King Pest
Loss of Breath
Metzengerstein
The Duc De l'Omelette
Four Beasts in One
A Tale of Jerusalem
In addition it has partial text of "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym" with the
remainder in volume 3, of which I will review separately. My favorites
are "MS Found in a Bottle", "King Pest" and "Metzengerstein". These are
not considered the best of the bunch by scholars, but I thought they had
the most atmosphere and memorable scenes and stories.
"MS Found in a Bottle" is memorable for its depiction of the ghost crew
of a giant hulking ship. The ship seems to create its own weather, a
terrible storm into which the narrator is thrown aboard, only to find
himself surrounded by decrepit old seaman who don't even acknowledge he
is there and continue about their labors. Very creepy yet thrilling - who
are they, why are they bent on self destruction - Poe never tells us, it
will always remain unspoken.
"King Pest" is excellent for its post-apocalyptic "escape from NY" scene
as 2 characters enter a forbidden plague zone in medieval London. Houses
falling into the streets, skeletons in the gutters, a band of merry
makers drinking from the skulls of the dead - it's Mad Max meets gothic
horror - what's not to like? I'd love to see it on film.
"Metzengerstein" is about an old blood feud between 2 German families. It
is similar to Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables" (really the
other way around) where an inanimate object takes on the form of a feud.
In Hawthorne it was the house, with Poe it is a tapestry of a horse,
which comes alive and ultimately finds its revenge.
Some other notable stories include "The Unparalleled Adventures of One
Hans Pfaall" which is sometimes called the first science fiction story in
English (it's about a balloon trip to the moon). The story "Morella" is
often given good fare for its depiction of the question of what happens
to us after we die - a wife who dabbles in the black arts, her soul can
never die, and so she re-incarnates in her daughters body after her name
is called out. In "Bon-Bon" there are certain Dickens "Christmas Carol"
overtones as the devil appears in a gentlemanly form and takes a man on a
journey to see the souls of great philosophers of the past.
Kevin Bales is a recognized world authority on the generally hidden
phenomenon of modern slavery; he best known for Disposable People
(1999), a standard and influential text in classrooms and with policy
makers. Ending Slavery (2007) is his latest book which reveals
updated information and additional heartbreaking stories, balanced by
optimistic practical solutions for the audacious goal of ending slavery
around the world. Either one of these books would be an excellent place
to start learning about modern slavery for the average reader. While
slavery can be a depressing subject, Ending Slavery is ultimately
uplifting because of its success stories, of solutions working, of the
world becoming a better place and ways to keep the momentum going. By the
end of the book there is a practical plan of what to do next for everyone
from the concerned citizen, community leader, governments and NGO.
Modern slavery is largely hidden from view because, unlike in the 19th
century and earlier, slavery today is illegal everywhere and - like drugs
- the problem has gone underground. There are an estimated 27 million
slaves in the world today - by comparison in the entire 350 year history
of the African slave trade, about 13 million slaves were brought to the
New World. When talking about modern slavery this comparison to the
African slave trade is often made, and for good reason, our culture is
saturated with the history of slavery from the movie "Roots", the book
"Uncle Tom's Cabin" or Civil War history. If this cultural outrage of
history were channeled to help modern slaves alive and toiling away
today, imagine the good, but it starts with awareness. Most people don't
know the basics of modern slavery: What is a modern slave? Where are
they? What do they do? What can we do about it? This book helps answer
those questions.
As the cover-picture of the book suggests, a happy discovery awaits
within. After slavery comes freedom. New found freedom is one of the most
rewarding experiences imaginable, both for slaves and those who help free
them. It is no accident Lincoln, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu
and others are among the most revered and popular leaders; or that the
first and oldest human rights organization in the world is an anti-slave
group (which still exists in England, connected to Kevin Bales). The
struggle for freedom is far from over, and its happening everywhere from
the suburbs of Washington DC to the cocoa (chocolate) plantations of
Africa. Take the time to learn how slavery impacts us all, and what to do
about it.
Update: There are a number of free films online that tie into the
book. In particular Slavery: A Global
Investigation and Dreams
Die Hard detail some of the same people and stories in the book,
including interviews with Bales.
The Interesting Narrative of the
Life of Olaudah Equiano
Olaudah Equiano
(1789) Penguin 1995, Vincent Carretta ed. January 2008
The Interesting Narrative (1789) is one of the earliest "slave
narratives", a genre that includes classics such as Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852), A Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
(1845) and neo-slave narratives like Alex Haley's Roots (1976),
Toni Morrison's Beloved (1987) and Edward P. Jones' The Known
World (2003). What makes Olaudah Equiano's account unique is that is
was the first slave narrative to find a wide audience, and it is not hard
to understand why - not only is it a good story, but it is very well
written, almost literary - it sold so well it was a cornerstone in
bringing about public sympathy and support for the abolition of the
slavery in England.
Just about everything we know about Olaudah Equiano is from his
autobiography. He was born around 1745 in Africa, kidnapped and enslaved
at the age of 10 or 11 and shipped across the Middle Passage to the West
Indies, and soon after to a Virginia plantation (he was too small to work
the sugar cane fields). From there he had the good fortune to be
purchased by the captain of a British warship, where he learned English
manners, language and customs - and a promise of freedom. But, in one of
the great blows of his life, he was tricked and sold back into slavery in
the West Indies, where he worked on merchant ships for a number of years,
finally able to save enough money (trading fruits and rum between ports
of call) to buy his freedom in his early 20s. He then spent years as a
freed man working on merchant and military ships traveling extensively
around the Atlantic, including a trip to the Arctic. His close calls with
death were many, including disease, shipwrecks and run-ins with whites
who would beat him to within an inch of his life. Equiano eventually
settled down in England, married a white girl, had two children and died
a wealthy and respected gentleman, a remarkable achievement for a former
African slave in the 18th century.
The Interesting Narrative can be read on multiple levels. It is a
fascinating first-hand document of 18th century British mercantilism,
showing the Atlantic "Golden Triangle" in action. It is a story of
Christian redemption - by following the teachings of the
Bible, and those who transgress against it, Equiano explains why
things turn out how they do. It is one of the great works of travel
literature; exotic locales and death-defying adventures fill the pages.
It is a powerful expose of 18th century slavery, unflinchingly detailing
the institutionalized horrors and how both victim and victimizer are
turned into animals. It is a call for action to end the slave
trade.
In the end, we read books like this today with a certain amount of
curious detachment, it has been about 150 years since slavery ended - or
has it? Some 27 million slaves - more than twice the number of people
taken from Africa during the entire 350 year history of the Africa slave
trade - today toil in rich and poor countries around the world. Most
Americans probably know more about slavery as it once existed, than as it
is currently being practiced in their own time, directly touched by the
cheap goods we purchase. Reading Equiano's account we can't help but be
moved against slavery, all slavery, historical or contemporary, and for
that the book has immortal value.
Whatever You Do, Don't Run True
Tales of a Botswana Safari Guide
Peter Allison
(2007) First, paperback January 2008
Peter Allison was 19 when he left his suburban home in Australia to
follow his dream and backpack around Africa. He soon ran out of money and
found himself bar tending in a South African safari resort. He moved up
the ranks to a safari guide in Botswana where he stayed for the next
seven years running a camp and taking daily jeep rides with tourists from
around the world out into the bush.
Allison knew nothing about animals of Africa when he started. Much of the
charm of the book is Allison's self-deprecating English humor as he makes
mistake after mistake. His amateurism is a parody of the serious African
adventurer; yet paradoxically his amateurism gives his account a sense of
authority, we are able to see his wayward mistakes as a sign of his own
expertise. Amateurism also provides Allison with a form of
self-protection from the dangers of the bush; like a Mr Magoo stumbling
into bad situations, it is his recognition of bad decisions that enable
him to escape (unlike a "professional" who might not be as flexible in
admitting a mistake).
Whatever You Do, Don't Run is written in the travel literature
tradition of the wayward English gentleman bumbling through situations
with campy humor, similar to A Short Walk in the Hindu Kush. The
idea is to de-throne the serious, to present a comic vision of the safari
world that promotes harmless entertainment; but this also has the effect
of disengagement and detachment - the safari guests from Germany, Japan
and elsewhere become props to hang global stereotypes, or moral outrages.
It also serves as cover for Allison - behind the facade of wry humor and
aestheticism is a sense of moral and cultural superiority; the self
parody hides his own role and responsibility.
Translated
by Seamus Heaney
(1999) & (2007) 2007 illutrated first ed. based on the 1999
trans. - W.W. Norton paperback January 2008
Beowulf was written roughly sometime between the late 8th and
early 11th centuries during the Viking era, but it takes place in a
previous age, after the fall of the Western Roman Empire (475 ) to
sometime before the death of Charlemagne (814). It was written by an
anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet in Britain based on oral tradition.
We are very lucky to have this new illustrated edition. It is based on
Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney's celebrated 1999 translation and contains
over 100 full-page photos of archaeological items that bring the age
alive in color. Even if you already own the Heaney translation it is
well worth it to have this version, the photos were picked from
thousands and carefully tied into the text along with annotations.
The story seems to straddle two periods of social development, the
tribal state and that of the unified political kingdom. Germanic tribes
had exposure to Roman society and from that example began to form into
stratified social groups that transcended kin and tribal relationship,
as can be seen in the rise of the "Hall Culture", aristocratic warriors
who spent time at "court" in great wooden halls.
Set in a heroic age, the monsters that Beowulf battles represent the
other side of the heroic coin: fear. Fear is the greatest threat in a
culture that values bravery and loyalty. It is no accident that Grendel
comes at night, as anyone who has spent much time in the wilderness can
attest, sitting around a campfire before letting ones guard down to
sleep brings up every fear of the unknown lurking just beyond the light.
It is a fear any hearer of the tale (probably being told at night) could
easily imagine. Likewise the dragon represents the fear of revenge (such
as blood feud), it is the stolen cup that rouses the dragon from its
lair to punish the thief and trespasser. Revenge was common in a society
without strong law enforcement, and blood feuds could last
generations.
Typical of very old narratives I was expecting a disjointed, hard to
follow and not very sophisticated story, more well known today for its
age and placement in the English cultural canon than for its literary
value. However I was pleasantly surprised to discover something off the
pages of JRR Tolkien or from a Dungeons and Dragons game. This is the
mother lode of all fantasy fiction, the origin piece - dragons, magic
swords, demons, Conan-like heroes. These are the things I spent years on
in my youth. It's only unfortunate I was never introduced to Beowulf
earlier in life. Should be required reading for every lover of fantasy
and science fiction, particularly this illustrated edition.
The Story of Doctor Dolittle Being
the History of his Peculiar Life at Home and
Astonishing Adventures in Foreign Parts
Hugh Lofting
(1920) First edition 1920, via Internet Archive January 2008
The Story of Doctor Dolittle is the first book in the Dolittle
series and introduces the good Doctor and how he came to talk to the
animals. It is shorter and aimed at a younger audience than the later
books, but it has a great deal of Victorian charm and upbeat optimism
that is infectious. There are about 12 books in the series, nine
published between 1920 and 1933, the last 3 published posthumously in
the 40s and 50s.
Dolittle is an English gentleman who finds himself in the wrong
occupation, a doctor of people, and gradually withdraws from society
becoming a poor down and out town recluse. One day his English speaking
pet parrot Polynesia lets him in on a secret that animals have a
language of their own. Dolittle, now able to understand the complaints
of animals, becomes a successful and world-renowned doctor of animals.
Animal language is the central device of the series - in an age when
every Disney film features English speaking animals it seems almost
normal, but Lofting makes it seem new and marvelous. Indeed, the animals
don't speak English, but each species has its own "secret" language -
which is not too far from reality with "horse whisperers" and "dolphin
languages".
It's impossible to talk about this first edition without mentioning the
racism towards black Africans - not only the obvious language problems
(the "n" and "c" words), but attitudes of colonialism such as European
racial superiority - it goes a long way to explain why the book is not
as popular as it could be, and better known from the movie series (the
books went out of print by the 1970s and underwent bowdlerization). As
an adult well versed in post-colonialism I have no problem recognizing
and removing myself from the influence of racism, and find it
instructive on what institutionalized racism looks like and how it can
manifest in children's books; in other words, the non-political
correctness is refreshingly curious.
Dolittle is a social misfit who has mostly found friends through nature
outside of human society. He has decoded the language of nature, a
language that is right there in front of us all, if we only take the
time and sympathy to understand it. And he applies his powers for good
and not evil, as a healer of animals and a righter of wrongs. Of course
science is also the language of nature and "doctors" are also
scientists. The Enlightenment optimism that science will lead to good
and solve mankind's problem finds expression through the good will and
kindness of Dolittle. In this sense, it is the "best and brightest" of
society that will bring about goodness, a view popular in the early and
middle 20th century. Today we are more skeptical of such paternalism and
look for positive change through "open society", Dolittle should not be
the only keeper of the language, but teach everyone. Perhaps in later
books this happens. I look forward to reading the second book, The
Voyages of Doctor Dolittle, which is longer and more mature, the
basis for the film and it won a Newberry Medal.
Thorton Wilder (1938) Perennial (1998), Paperback, 128
pages January 2008
Paperback reprint (1998) of the original 1938 hardcover. Wikipedia calls
it "perhaps, the most frequently produced play by an American
playwright." Wilder won a Pulitzer Prize for it. Characters are
archetypal, scenery and props are minimalistic to non-existent. Emphasis
is on the banal aspects of every day life - the message is life is what
happens to us every day, no matter how inconsequential or small it may
seem. A film version came out in 1940, nominated for best picture of the
year, the film is freely available at Internet
Archive.
Stephane Audeguy
(2005, French) Hardcover, first US edition (2007) January
2008
Have you ever gazed up into the sky and let your mind wonder and think
about the clouds floating by? 200 years ago people first began to do so
with a scientific perspective, classifying and naming. Each cloud is
unique, ever changing, yet somehow the same. Clouds are made of water
and so are human bodies, we die and evaporate and condense into clouds.
Clouds can be peaceful, or fearsome such as a nuclear mushroom cloud.
The themes of water and clouds intermingle in this story about the
history of meteorology and the quest for a manuscript called the
"Abercrombie Protocol"; it is a story about the search for love, and how
all things are connected.
This is a many layered book and it certainly challenges the minds eye to
see connections and meanings - yet it is also enjoyable as a story, it
tracks multiple lives and generations revealing commonalities and
patterns re-appearing, not unlike how patterns in clouds can cross space
and time, like fractals. Although 266 pages it reads very quickly, I
finished in about half the time I normally would for a book this length.
Winner of a prize from the French Academy. Recommended.
John W. Burrow
(1985) Hardcover, first edition January 2008
After reading Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire, what a delight to read about Gibbon in a mere 111 pages
(afterall, Gibbon himself was under five feet tall!). A short treatment
about such a large subject as Gibbon and his work could have been a
problem, but Burrow pulls it off. After an opening mini biography of
Gibbons life, the remainder of the book is an overview of Decline and
Fall: chapter titles include "Rome", "Christianity", "Barbarism" and
"Civilization". The best chapter is "Civilization", it can be read as a
standalone essay about Western history, it is full of fascinating ideas
and insights. The last chapter "A possession in perpetuity" ties
together some loose ends and has an interesting discussion on the nature
of art and immortality. Any book of this nature has to rely heavily on
quotes and because Gibbons writing is so powerful he can steal the show,
but Burrow more than holds his own, the cadence between Burrow and
Gibbon is sheer pleasure. Yet, as Burrow says:
"To present a
vast historical work like the Decline and Fall as I have done,
chiefly in terms of its organizing concepts and the explanations it
offers, is necessarily to travesty it: to reveal the bones is to make
hard, angular, dry and summary what in the experience of reading is
enjoyed as flexible, rich and leisurely."(p.80)
The "bones" revealed by Burrow include Gibbon's stylistic device of
black/white polarities underlying his arguments: Liberty/servility,
vigor/enervation, manliness/effeminacy, simplicity/luxury,
fanaticism/moderation, superstition/reason, theology/morality,
asceticism/nature, unsocial/social and of course barbarism/civilization.
This is not to say Gibbons has reduced history into a child-like "good
vs bad" view, he does show ambiguity and unknowability in human action,
but his style or technique is to create polarities and then play off
between those positions. This is an excellent work of historiography and
intellectual history, I highly recommend it for anyone who has read
Gibbon to better understand his context and ideas, Burrow treats Gibbon
with a great deal of sympathy and the reader comes away with an even
deeper appreciation and passion for the man and his work.
Hans Christian Andersen, Maria Tatar (intro, notes, trans.), Julia Allen
(trans.) Norton Annotated series, hardcover, first 2007 January 2008
This is my 5th Norton Annotated book and I really had high expectations.
Sadly the magic of Andersen got lost somewhere. Maybe it's the
annotations which decode and de-construct Andersen, ironically the very
thing he warned about it in "The Snow Queen". Perhaps it was the random
pile of images with no consistent view, often showing the same scene
from multiple artists with radically different perspectives, diluting
the minds eye. Perhaps it was the new translation that has lost some of
its 19th century feel. Perhaps it is Tatar's own admission that she was
never that fond of Andersen. Perhaps it is my own realization as an
adult re-reading these tales for the first time since childhood that
they are not as good as I remember. Perhaps it was learning about
Andersen who seems a bit weak. With all that said, this is a wonderfully
produced book as are all the Norton series I would not hesitate to buy
another, it is very generous in what is provided, I don't think anything
else like it exists for Andersen. The determined reader will learn a lot
about what the stories mean and find new perspectives and appreciations
for these classic stories.
Like you'd understand, anyway is a collection of short stories
written over a 4 year period by Jim Shepard, professor at Williams
College in Massachusetts. The stories vary widely, but an underlying
structure subtly peculates through, barely wetting our feet, inviting
the curious to seek out the source of the spring. As Shepard says in an
interview for the 2007 National Book Award nomination: "while lots of
people have talked about how different my narratives and/or my narrative
voices might be, the emotional preoccupations tend to be very similar. I
probably obsess about the same five things, over and over."
The book is dedicated to Shepard's brother, and most of the stories
explore brotherly relationships, in particular how "the past enters and
floods our present" (p.140) - the football player in "Trample the Dead"
who finds motivation in the pain of his past and future brother; the
summer camp kid in "Courtesy for Beginners" whose brothers trauma
inescapably creates his own nightmare. As the picture on the cover
suggests, the more two brothers (or fathers and sons) struggle to
achieve identity, the more their lives intertwine and become
indistinguishable, driven by the "tsunami" of people and events outside
their control.
As the self-referencing title of the book alludes, this is a somewhat
post-modern book, the stories are not really about anything, they often
end with no satisfying closure or even a discernible plot. Yet it is
more than a self-conscious artsy exploration of post-modernism, its true
value lays in how the subtle yet powerful stories come together to form
a whole greater than its parts, and Shepard's uncanny ability to
convincingly place the reader into the mind of anyone, anywhere. Shepard
finds the smallest detail to bring alive a scene, time and place so that
it convincingly reads like a non-fiction memoir. For example in the
first story, "The Zero Meter Diving Team", about survivors of Chernobyl,
Shepards "voice" is almost indistinguishable from real-life accounts
such as those found in the non-fiction work Voices
from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster
(2005).
There are no bad stories, but my favorites are "Trample the Dead"
(high-school football), "Pleasure Boating in Lituya Bay" (1958 Alaskan
tsunami), and "The First South Central Australian Expedition" (19th
century Australian explorers). A book like this probably won't attract
the typical non-fiction die-hard, but it could; most of the stories are
based on historical incidents - there is a lengthy bibliography of
non-fiction works used in its creation - and as all good fiction does,
it explores the emotional side of things in a way non-fiction rarely
achieves.
Nathaniel
Hawthorne (1851) 1985 hardcover, Reader's Digest (World's
Best Reading)
January 2008
The House of the Seven Gables (1851) was probably more popular
and respected in the 19th and early 20th century. Today it still read,
but usually for entertainment, less so in schools where Hawthorne's
canonic place is held by The Scarlet Letter (1850). Yet some
notable contemporary critics thought this was his best work, in fact so
much criticism has been written about it one can search
on GoogleBooks and find 100s of old (pre-1923) literary texts that
give it attention.
The plot is generally predictable and the characters are not very
dynamic, yet Hawthorne has created a mythological entity, the house
itself. Who has not looked at an old house and wondered what stories it
had to tell. In the process of fleshing out the life of the house,
Hawthorne has brought alive the little details of New England that gives
the story a memorably strong sense of time and place.
There are some brilliant and timeless flashes of insight on the human
condition that contemporary critics noted. Holgrave's monologue about
how "A Dead Man sits on all our judgment-seats" is a dark but true
observation on the nature of generational warfare beyond the grave.
Hawthorne's contention that "the sick in mind are rendered more darkly
and hopelessly so, by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored
back from all quarters, in the deportment of those around them," is
clearly a writer who has experienced such a thing. Hawthorne not only
brings the inanimate House to live, but other objects, such as
electricity where "the world of matter has become a great nerve,
vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time .. the round
globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence," a strangely
prescient vision of the future. The "ghosts in the machine" is a
metaphor Hawthorne would have been at home with.
In the end The House of the Seven Gables is a flawed, but
memorable story notably for the rich details of historical New England
and the larger than life mythological character of the house. As Henry
James said, "it is a large and generous production, pervaded with that
vague hum, that indefinable echo, of the whole multitudinous life of
man, which is the real sign of a great work of fiction."
Claire Nouvian
(2007) Hardcover, first
January 2008
Scientific interest and study of the deeper parts of the ocean has only
come into its own in the past 40 years, with the past 25 years seeing a
real explosion of new discoveries. The scientific literature is
abundant, but for the interested layperson there has not been much to
tie it all together. 'The Deep' is one of a few recent works to bridge
that gap, bringing to a wider audience for the first time some of the
most marvelous images and discoveries. Nouvian says in the introduction
her intent was to marry both visual and intellectual
stimulation.
If you decide to purchase The Deep, it would not be overly fastidious to
wear gloves. Most pages are printed in deep glossy black, even the
slightest touch of a finger leaves a permanent oily smear. The blackness
of the pages and the alien eeriness of the creatures is at first
offsetting, but as each full-page picture goes by, the reader is drawn
into another world, vicariously experiencing what it must be like to be
in a deep sea diving submarine peering out the window into an "inky"
blackness. It is primordial, the book achieves its goal of both
intellectual transmission of new information, and the visceral
experience of traveling to the deep.
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