Books #36-43 of 2020

I fell behind a little bit. The start of teaching is always overwhelming, and the commencement of a school year online was moreso. Finding time to be online for pleasure or personal musings is difficult when you end the work day with achy half-blind eyes from staring at a screen 12 hours. But, I am catching up here on some recent reads.

 

I discovered Renault by reading a collection of essays by Daniel Mendolsohn, an editor and contributer to the NYRB who corresponded with Renault as a teen. This is the 3rd of her wonderful novels about ancient Greece I've had the pleasure to read this year as a result. She had a remarkable gift for inhabiting and re-imagining this past and its characters. I'd rank her with Graves, Williams, and Vidal easily, and she might best them all. What she can't learn via astute scholarship she infers and weaves seamlessly into the known. 

Alexander as a youth had to navigate between the machinations of his mother Olympias--a princess from Epirus, regarded by the Macedonians as a backward and feral tribe much the way the Macedonians were regarded as such by Athenians--and Philip, his scheming and systematically ambitious father. Olympias consults oracles and sacrifices in her role as a cultist of Dionysus, while Philip conquers just about everyone and bit by bit advances toward his dream of bringing all of Greece under his empire and then moving East. Olympias and Philip are in constant struggle with each other, often to Alexander's dismay, but also to his benefit later in life. What he learns about power and influence in this household makes him the commander and gifted politician he later became. Renault's gift is showing it all, rather than telling.

The writing is beautiful, the characters are alive, and Macedon at the approach of its apex is fascinating. But the most lovely thing about the novel is Alexander's relationship to Hephaestion. From childhood pals to teenage lovers and into adulthood, there are few relationships drawn with so much tenderness and sympathy out of the hundreds I've read. We also get to meet Peritas and Bucephalus along the way.

 

The second volume of Renault's novels about Alexander is told from the viewpoint of his Persian eunuch and lover Bagoas. The first chunk of the narrative is Bagoas's own, and we witness the sad fate of his family and his capture. His decline from prince in an aristocratic Persian house to eunuch in another's is rendered with nigh unbearable sympathy by Renault. One can't help but root for Bagoas as he rises through the ranks of eunuchs kept for pleasure by wealthy men until at last he winds up as the favorite of Darius, King of Persia.

Of course along the way there are rumors about the barbarian Alexander, who has taken charge of armies following the assasintation of Philip, and is marching eastward. Bagoas is rightfully terrified about what awaits him if Darius is defeated and Persian conquered, and in this finely wrought and delicious novel we see indeed what occurs. After the fall of Darius Bagoas ends up in Alexander's service, and then in his bed. Renault deftly re-imagines the perspective of a Persian in the barbarian culture, and his surprise at Alexander's humanity and compassion and erudition. Bagoas as a long-time keen observer of intrigues at Persian courts becomes an invaluable advisor to Alexander, competing with Hephaestion for his love and attention, and through Bagoas's point of view we see many of Alexander's substantial victories, his illnesses and injuries, his close calls, and eventually his demise. A fantastic historical novel, easily one of the best I've read, and it surpasses even its glorious predecessor.

Not nearly as interesting nor as entertaining as the first volume (The Shadow of the Wind). Kind of a rehash of the same plot elements but the execution and the characters are a bit less engaging. But had just enough momentum to pull me through to the end and to interest me in continuing the tetralogy. 

These stories are top-notch Borgesian journeys into the outer reaches of creativity and imagination. Delightful and disturbing by even measure, I expect her to out-do Kafka and Calvino. This is truly a young author to marvel over. I want to learn more Spanish and read her novels in the original. 

 

And speaking of learning more Spanish in order to read the original--this is another young writer with tremendous gifts. Mexican Gothic is a Lovecraftian tour-de-force. An isolated European family inhabits a grim manse deep in the Mexican wilderness. The residents of a nearby town whisper about the manse and its inhabitants, and with good reason. They have created a monstrous fungi cult and are transforming their patriarch into an unspeakable horror from beyond time and space. Though Lovecraft seeps through this work (I see that Sylvia Morena-Garcia has edited a Cthulu-themed collection of mythos in the HPL universe), her main influence in English is likely Shirley Jackson, whose Hill House also permeates this creepy book. You can, and likely will, polish it off in an afternoon.

Sergio Argones has a mad and unrestrained imagination both as scribbler and as story-teller. I used to get MAD Magazine as a kid and the first thing I would do was look at all the marginal scribbles Argones had doodled in and around the panels of others' work. Groo was funny to my middle-school self, and still gives me chortles as that middle-school self fades more and more into the deep recesses of time.

Learn the language of these symbols. Dig their resonance with the subconscious. Let them awaken the eternal within you. Hand over the reins to the Universal and escape the cycle of samsara. And confront about 1,000 typos, mis-spelled words, and sentence fragments along the way.

I'm a long-time fan of Lewis Lapham. I used to lap up Lapham's intros to Harper's Mag, and when he stepped down from that post and moved over to Lapham's Quarterly I eagerly followed along. I bought this book from a recent list of books Lapham regarded as most influential. Reading Durant I can see stylistically and philosophically his influence on Lapham. This collection of essays on major themes in the study of history provided many useful gems for further discovery, and each topic could serve as provocation pieces for inquiry units in Humanities courses. Humane, erudite, and with an unparalleled grasp of world history, Durant might indeed take a large chunk of my remaining reading time here on Earth.

Book #27 of 2020: Horizon by Barry Lopez

"You can say their names as they were beads on a rosary or something, remind yourself of Sojourner Truth, remind yourself of Whitman, remind yourself of the writings of Thomas Jefferson about "the rights of man," even though he didn't get the implication of what he was saying. There's a connected set of figures, a repository of dynamic, moving, conflicted, half-wrong-all-the-time figures who are trying to sort through the values that would make human life possible. And we at this moment particularly need them."  Robert Hass interview, The Paris Review Summer 2020

Barry Lopez takes us on a journey around the world to places he's visited. Along the way he thinks deeply about heroic figures and their ambiguity: sea-faring explorers, Arctic adventurers, settlers in the Outback, theorists and philosophers, industrialists and artists. Lopez, who has himself journeyed widely and inhabited extreme environments and written thoughtfully about his experiences, is troubled by the state of Earth and the systems of oppression and exploitation many of his childhood heroes opened up with their exploration. We move from the Arctic Circle to the Galapagos, from Africa to Australia, and finally to Antarctica. There are moments in the Pacific Northwest and Asia and South America sprinkled throughout. There are many troubling questions raised, and no answers. Hence the title Horizon. A horizon is of course a physical boundary--the rim past which one can't see. Lopez at a young age was inspired by explorers to go past physical horizons and discover and experience as much as possible. But there is also the horizon of time: what comes next, now that the Earth has been "ravished and plundered, ripped and bit, tied with fences" in the words of Jim Morrison.

Lopez posits that indigenous wisdom and voices likely point the way to a healthier and more just future. My favorite character from the book is Ranald McDonald. Lopez uses McDonald and his motivations and exploits to counterbalance Captain James Cook, who Lopez still wants to admire despite some obvious imperialist flaws. By rescuing indigenous voices and heroes, by privileging them now before its too late, we might be able to prevent the next horizon from being a tip over into global catastrophe.

Book #30 of 2020: The Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

There is a long-running debate about Conrad's little novel and what it means. Any work of lasting quality should have such a debate (there's a nice exploration of the salient points here). Was Conrad racist, and was he using tropes of 'savage Africa' in indefensible ways? Was he against one form of imperialism but for another? Was his work reinforcing European superiority?

I'd argue that Conrad was 'woke,' and was laying the groundwork for what it means to be 'woke' today, over 100 years ago. He was trying to express his burgeoning anxiety, an anxiety that all the structural underpinnings of his society and culture were based in immense criminality and shocking cruelty, and that the vast majority of people who benefited from these systems of oppression were blithely unaware of this reality. All the myths and propagandistic 'history' and the 'heroic' actions of admirable men were laid bare for him, and this cast him into a void. If the civilization whence all your morals and beliefs and knowledge derive turns out to be devoid of morals and built on lies, what next? Heart of Darkness is full of the radical tension that results when perceived truths and conventional wisdom are stretched taut and burst over the raw red wounds of slavery, butchery, conquest, and exploitation. Suddenly the heroic and civilizing are revealed as the truly barbaric, and one is confronted with the questions: Whose side are you on? How best do we confront this?

For Conrad it was to reveal "The horror, the horror" in a rich and demonically ambiguous work. It's impossible to revisit it without the ghosts of Apocalypse Now--many times when picturing scenes or characters as I re-read it, Dennis Hopper or Martin Sheen or Laurence Fishburn or Marlon Brando would intrude. That film used Conrad's novel to punch holes in the myths around American imperialism.

Yesterday in Baltimore a statue of Columbus was pulled down and cast into the Inner Harbor. Young people are feeling the anxieties which drove Conrad to write more than a century back, and they are acting on them. They are writing their own reactions to "The horror." Will this lay the foundation for new, more just economic and governmental structures, or will there be a harrowing collapse into chaos or reactionary violence? Time will tell.

Book #21 of 2020: The Discovery of France by Graham Robb

We think of France and we think of an established, wealthy nation with a long history, not all of it worth celebrating. We think of philosophy, art, and literature. We think of landmarks, wine, and renowned cuisine. We think of the Enlightenment and wars of religion and Crusades both interior and exterior to the country.

But until very recently France was a nothing more than a loose association of tribes, and the spectacular natural beauty of the country was largely undiscovered by residents, let alone tourists. Robb's book shows how "France" was forced upon most of its residents, who often did not speak or read its language into the 20th century. A cartographer on a Royal mission is assassinated by suspicious locals. Beaches are regarded as unhealthy and residents avoid them at all costs. Cats and tripe are common fare in restaurants. Locals don't drink the local wine, which they regard with contempt. Soldiers conscripted into the army at the advent of WW1 have never heard of France and speak only local dialect. Much of France's tourist industry and many of its sports came from English adventure seekers trodding all over mountains and discovering things. It's a very interesting take on nation-building, and very eye-opening. At a time when France had enduring imperial experiments in Asia and Africa, the government had yet to colonize much of its own territory.

The book is full of delightful anecdotes told with humor, deep insight, and warmth. I highly recommend it. There might be lessons here for the current situation in the United States.

Book #20 of 2020: The Unsettled Dust by Robert Aickman

How have I not read Mr. Aickman before? Perhaps I have, when I used to chug down enormous volumes of collected ghost or horror fiction anthologies as a teen. He must have been in one of those omnibus volumes featuring Machen, Poe, Lord Dunsany, and M.R. James...

The quality of the writing is superb. The characters are deftly and subtly realized, and the settings painted with an astute attention to detail. Aickman understood that horror and occult fiction work best when everything is as real and regular and normal as possible, until that moment when it isn't. He also understood that the moment when things go askew should be quiet and unsettling in startlingly insignificant ways. The creep of his fictions develops slowly over a few dozen pages until an absolutely delicious effect is achieved. Often the climax is as much a puzzle as a fright, a bewildering haunt or murky resolution. Where Lovecraft would have the narrator swoon into forgetfulness upon witnessing some cosmic monster, Aickman has the narrator return unsettled to the office on the morning train.

These tales rank with the best--and by the best of course I mean M.R. James and Henry James, whose ghost fictions are of an undeniable literary craftsmanship. I'd throw Shirley Jackson in there as well, but her stories build subtly and then tend toward a garish or nightmarish or wickedly funny reveal. Aickman and the two Jameses are more subtle. Aickmans's narrators are reminiscent of M.R. James' artsy intellectuals and his settings are the same country villages and dark moors, but with modern John Cheever twists and turns. I loved this volume, and will read more!

Book #18: The Wise Friend by Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell has settled into a nice groove of late. Sure, there's a formula at work here, but I'll take Campbell doing variations on a theme any time.

Patrick was a fan of his aunt's slightly surreal and peculiarly spiritual art, despite the protestations of his own parents who found her worldview and paintings more than a bit off. Years after his aunt's death in a tragic fall, Patrick's son becomes obsessed with her work, largely through the influence of his new girlfriend.

Over time, Patrick comes to believe there's an old power waking in the woods. It can take human form but can't assume its full magical potential until certain rituals involving the earth from burial sites of various occultists are brought together. Unfortunately, he comes to believe his son's girlfriend is assisting an ancient evil trying to re-emerge. Questioning his own sanity, he desperately tries to stop what is imminent but at the potential cost of alienating his son forever.

Typically well-written with Campbell's hallucinogenic prose and paranoid descriptive style. A breezy summer read for quarantine.

Book #16 of 2020: Teaching What REALLY Happened by James W. Loewen

I remember when Lies My Teacher Told Me came out and I thought--"I just finished reading a bunch of Zinn I probably don't need to read this," and then I was gifted a copy of Lies Across America and I thought "I should read this I'll put it in the stack" and it stayed in the stack for most of a decade and then I moved to Panama and the Dept. Head of the Middle School Social Studies Department handed me a copy of Teaching What Really Happened and I finally read James Loewen.

It's a great book, not only because it pokes holes in common myths and misperceptions about over-mythologized assholes like Columbus and about propagandized whipping boy victims of revisionist Lost Cause Southern historians like John Brown. Loewen focuses here on what's important, what's left out, and gives really great ideas for teaching students how to be critical thinkers by letting them examine crappy text books and "historical" monuments and ridiculous art work and questionable justifications of terrible, brutal, genocidal behavior, and giving them the tools and skills needed to find out for themselves how accurate these things are and how to support their contentions with facts as much as possible.

It's also a brave book for calling out a lot of curricular bullshit and publishing industry bullshit and a lot of cultural bullshit. It's the role of Social Studies teachers to make students and their families uncomfortable with tough and troubling questions and topics. Loewen says you gotta disregard the fear that your community will be upset by what you teach or what your kids learn how to find out. He also has wise tips for white educators who are scared to teach kids of color (or vice-versa).

I recommend the book for teachers in the Humanities of all ages, and pledge again to get around to his others (someday--they are both currently in boxes with the rest of my beloved library in a storage unit in downtown Baltimore).

Book #15 of 2020: The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton

Following on the heels of Alice James: A Biography, I decided to read Wharton's The House of Mirth for the first time.

Lily Bart is a confounding mess of a human being. I vacillated wildly from admiring her pluck and courage to really despising her materialism and privilege. I think she's the most frustrating heroine in any novel I've read, excepting perhaps Jane Austen's Emma.

It's amusing how Wharton's prose changes when Lily and Selden are together. Birds flit, dew glistens, the weather is always charming and distant vistas reveal mountains dappled with sun. And when Lily is around the wealthy suitors off whom she sponges Wharton's details are sweat drops on lips and cheeks, messed up hair ineffectually slicked back, annoying creaky sounds from carriages. I mean come on, Lily--don't you get it? "Why do birds, suddenly appear..."

But of course that is the point of the novel. Lily is a creature of her environment. She has adapted to what is expected of her and her class. And it was truly awful for young women of astonishing wealth and privilege to be trapped in those situations. There's the guy you should marry, and the guys you are expected to marry.

There is a lot of foreshadowing along the way about the ending. I noted each occurrence and convinced myself that that ending wouldn't happen. And when it did I was done in for the evening. How much really changed for young women between Austen and Wharton? Not much. How much has changed since Wharton to the era of Weinstein, Trump, and, yes, Joe Biden? Not nearly enough.

Book #14 of 2020: The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault

Nikeratos grows up back stage, working as a hand in Greek theater as his father plays dramatic roles onstage. Years later, his bravery during a performance when a crane fails and he nearly dies catches the attention of a Syracusan noble named Dion. Dion and his teacher Plato ask him to put on a performance of a play written by the tyrant of Syracuse, and Nikeratos accepts the challenge.

This launches not only his acting career, but his involvement in political scheming and conflict as Syracuse goes through fluctuations from tyranny to democracy and back. Plato senses an opportunity to mold the new tyrant of Syracuse to his ideals of what a republic should be. Part of this is substantially limiting poets and tragedians and their productions. Will Nikeratos come to regret his role in bringing Socrates to Syracuse?

Meanwhile, an old gilt mask of Apollo comes to manifest Nikeratos' conscience. He carries it everywhere and calls on it when making decisions. The voice of the God steers him through cataclysms and successes.

Another rousing historical novel of Ancient Greece--I will definitely continue reading these, and soon hope to take on Renault's Alexandrian Trilogy. Alexander appears briefly at the end of The Mask of Apollo to set the scene--Nikeratos had always regarded Macedon as a barbaric realm where kings are always getting killed. His encounter with teenaged Alexander hints at what's to come!

Book #13 of 2020: Alice James A Biography by Jean Strouse

My first encounter with the James family was William. As a teen I'd discovered Joe Campbell and Carl Jung and I'd just finished Campbell's The Masks of God: Complete Four Volume Set when I stumbled upon The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature . A few years later I was in a seminar on American Realistic Fiction finishing my senior year in college, and had discovered Henry James via The Ambassadors. That novel tumbled me down a decade dominated by Henry and his serpentine sentences. The most intense and delightful year was my first year at Temple U in grad school, and another seminar focused entirely on James. We read I believe 7 or 8 of the novels and a couple dozen short stories in that class.

Strouse's biography of Alice is a loving and critical examination of the James family and its social milieu with Alice its central focus. The portrait of Henry Sr. is sensitive and illuminates how a pseudo-mystical Swedenborgian with somewhat retrograde ideas about the place of women in society managed to raise up a cluster of young intellectuals who would play no small part in challenging those views. Alice grew up in a house where her dad had long regular conversations with Emerson and Thoreau and other Boston Brahmins, where the Howes and Adams family were neighbors and friends, Edith Wharton and William Dean Howells were guests, a house filled with art and literature and Transcendentalism and philosophy, a home where Abolitionism and the beginnings of Women's Suffrage were a few of the real-world topics of discussion. Henry Sr. was restless and curious and afflicted by sufficient fortune to drag his family back and forth to Europe several times on whims. He hoped to expose his young brood to as much of Western culture and ideas as he could, and to give them a strong grounding in languages.

William and Henry of course benefited substantially from this life and went on to careers in science and literature respectfully, Both are regarded as among the top tier of American writers and thinkers. And both had "obscure hurts" and regular bouts of depression and unexplained physical ailments. Alice also suffered these, and to a much more debilitating degree. But Strouse brings full attention to Alice's rich social and intellectual life despite her physical and emotional suffering, and analyzes her treatments and relationships with different physicians, and situates her in a phenomenon of upper-crusty women undergoing similar long-term and unexplained prostrations and complaints. But Alice is never merely a symbol of women born too smart and too soon into an age where their gifts had no place--women at the cusp of a new age where their options were about to flourish. Her own individual experience is brought forth brilliantly. Her relationships with her brothers--a flirty, pseudo romantic one with William, and a deep, sisterly bond with Henry Jr.-- are attentively rendered, and there is ample attention to the affects of Alice and her reality on William's psychological theories and Henry's female characters, in particular Millie Theale.

The Diary Of Alice James was preserved by her long-time friend and nurse Katherine Loring, who had copies printed for her surviving brothers and for herself, and who then had the Diary published (much to Henry's chagrin--"OMG," he WhatsApped to William. "What if Ms. Loring includes all the shit I said to Alice in confidence about folks in our circles!?"). Immediately it was a smash, and was accounted as important a document as any other James family production. Alice was revealed as much more than a sad invalid whose misery inspired her brother's medical and artistic success--she was a daring independent spirit who had a ferocity for experience and making sense of it with a voice all her own.

Kudos to Strouse, who did the research necessary for biographies of multiple James family members in order to distill down this moving portrait of Alice.

Drawing of Alice James by Henry James, Jr.

It's a matter of choice

I remember the first time I went to the Wegman's grocery in Hunt Valley, MD. I was on the way to a party at a friend's house up near the PA border and they'd asked that I pick up some cheese and crackers as I came up from Baltimore.

It took me a while to get cheese and crackers because there were FOUR AISLES OF CRACKERS. It was hard even to "see" the individual varieties as the mind shut down at the overwhelming array of colors and box-front images of crackers spilled out with cheese cubes, spreads, confections, olives. I was as flummoxed as the narrator of Borges' "The Library of Babel" at the immensity and infinitude of packages. Paralyzed by choices, unable to process the information available to make decisions, I eventually just grabbed a couple varieties at random and hit the cheese counter blindly as well. I likely brought some weird ass thyme, dried tomato, and truffle resin biscuits made from prehistoric grains.

Quarantine in the digital age has a similar effect. Even on days when I'm working from home, I still have more time to entertain myself than typically is the case during the school year. No outdoor exercise, no trips to the beach or the shops (or extremely limited trips to the shops), no commute, no restaurants, bars, etc. And though I've managed to get a few time-fillers to consistency--push-ups and barbell exercises, tai chi, Rosetta Stone lessons in Spanish and Tagalog...a bit of blogging again, guitar playing--I am having some trouble with the amount of choice the digital age offers when I'm filling the rest of my time.

I'm about, for example, to finish the two books I'm currently reading. I have more reading time lately than typical, and I'm thinking "What should I read next?" There are a couple Henry James novels I've not yet read, and I have the Complete Henry James on Kindle for .99 cents. But look--they also have the Complete William Dean Howells--I loved Silas Lapham! Oh, look the Complete Edith Wharton. Jesus, I only read a couple novellas by her and always meant to take the plunge. What the hell should I read? I never read Anna Karenina, and wow they have all the Tolstoy. It's hard to pick when there is SO MUCH TO PICK.  And oh yeah there are those 300 free Met art books I downloaded last year...

Same with film. I can rent or stream pretty much any art house or foreign film I missed in the past and always wanted to see. I can get any schlocky horror film or any documentary about any topic. Because I have access to pretty much everything, I end up watching nothing because I can't choose. There are a few Zhang Yimou films I've not wept over yet...but there are also gaps in classic Italian and French film I'd like to close. But maybe I should re-watch Tarkovsky? Or Kurosawa? Arrgh.

Adding to the curse are the online course offerings: Harvard's free Buddhism course, and UPenn's free Greek and Roman Mythology course both sound grand. They don't offer credits toward MD State Teacher re-Certification, alas. But they sound cool. And there are SO MANY I can't just pick one.

I think of my Dad saying "Shit or get off the pot" when I get like this.

All the while I'm trying to decide what to pick to read, to watch, or the learn about, I'm listening to music streaming my entire iTunes library which consists of all the CDs I ever bought uploaded over the years and which runs the gamut from Perotin to Kendrick Lamar.

Of course, when you can't decide about something to do then you fill time with somewhat less intellectual pursuits, the most easily available of which is porn. But oh my goodness what porn do you pick? There are so many genres and sub-genres and sub-categories of kink and scenario and race and size and age and...

And yes, this post comes from a place of substantial privilege. Many don't have access to any of these things, and are stuck at home, in situations not dissimilar to those who experienced the last great global pandemic. Having too many options to learn and entertain oneself surely beats having few or none. Or, having to work with the likelihood of exposure.

Book #12 of 2020:

Old Noam still marshalls all the evidence without difficulty. He still maintains his sharp, precise ethics. He paints a dire picture of current situations but never waivers in his belief that there must be hope and optimism.

This book is actually two lecture transcripts a few years apart on the same topic, with an interview with Wallace Shawn and a couple Q&A sessions thrown in. But many of Noam's best books were interviews with David Barsamian. It's a format which shows his strengths, and the choice is clear: internationalism or extinction.

Book #11 of 2020: The Ghosts of Birds by Eliot Weinberger

Back in the mid-90s I read Works on Paper: Essays and loved it so much that I promised I would read more Eliot Weinberger. Here I am nearly 30 years later keeping that promise.

The Ghosts of Birds has a few traditional essays or reviews, but more than half of them are kind of meanderings along a topic with collages of reminiscences or snippets of ancient texts or encyclopedia entries and a bit of comment intermixed. This is reminiscent of Walter Benjamin and his Arcades Project, or Paul Metcalf's works, or maybe Charles Reznikoff's Holocaust poems. One of the traditionally structured essays in here is about Reznikoff. There is a long rumination of George W. Bush and his terrible memoir, and it was refreshing to remember days when we thought "how awful and ignorant is this President?" Others are about indigenous American poetry, or Chinese verse through the centuries, or birds and art about birds. I promise myself again to read more Eliot Weinberger, and hopefully not three decades hence.

Book #9 of 2020: The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault

Recently I read Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones and Literature and the Gods. These sent me spiraling down a path back to the Ancient Greeks. Mendelsohn's book contained an elegant and touching reminiscence about his teenage infatuation with Mary Renault and her novels. This infatuation blossomed into a long-term correspondence with the author. As a result of that essay I read The Last of the Wine, which just happened to be be free on Amazon Prime.

What a timely read, finely tuned to our current reality. There was at that time in Greece a conspiracy of oligarchs to recruit foreign influence in the overthrow of the democratic government in Athens. Sparta was the recruited foe and the oligarchs successfully returned to power with their aid and support. Renault's depiction of the catastrophe is vivid and really captures what I imagine the Greek experience of the world was like. Along the way the reader gets to hang out with several characters we know well from Plato's dialogues.

Now I've moved on to House of Names: A Novel and I'm sure I'll have much more to say afterward. Toibin is a fantastic writer and I've already fallen deep into this retelling of Iphigenia, told from Clytemnestra's point of view. All of this is great, because I'll be teaching Ancient Greece to 8th graders next year and I need to brush up and put my own spin on the material. I'm already churning ideas for teaching the unit. Wonder if I'll be teaching it from quarantine? Toibin's Clytemnestra sees the world pregnant with omen and curse and wonders at the malignant power of her family's blood, but at the same time doubts the Gods are real and wonders how to mollify them and/or recruit them into her vengeful scheme. We all feel disturbing and discomfiting emotions at this time, and the Greeks somehow charted courses through them all for us.

PS: As I was typing this entry the Mrs. came in and interrupted me. I turned around and did a teasing Jack Torrence in The Shining impersonation. She was not amused, given we have not left the apartment in six days due to quarantine.

The latest books: 21 so far in 2019

Just reading books by Jung or Jungians or memoirs of the individuation process by those who work with Jungians causes me to have delicious and mysterious dreams. I've been doing a lot of dreamwork with the Shadow, Anima, and Mother archetype lately.

The best bits of this book are those which use Biblical stories and religious symbols to explain Jungian concepts. And the best of those is the discussion of Job. Probably only interesting or useful if you're fairly deep in the Jungiverse.



There are several reviewers on Amazon who trashed this book because it's called "AMERICAN" short stories but there's a lot of stories about Africans, Asians, gray parrots, etc. Make the Best American Short Stories the Best Again! Whatever. I used to read these annuals religiously but stopped about 20 years ago; thought I should see what was happening with the short story lately.

I found this collection was excellent and interesting BECAUSE it didn't feature the painfully empty interior lives of a series of alienated suburban white people who had never even heard of Marx or Sartre or Chomsky and were unable to find a theorist to diagnose their malaise in US Weekly and People magazines. And the story about the parrot, narrated by a parrot, is an all-time great I can use with my middle school students. One of the classic devastating last lines!

 

Having met James Ellroy, and having spoken with him about JFK conspiracy books and novels, and having watched him scrawl "Blood rage rules!" in my copy of his American Tabloid, and having enjoyed several of his books, I thought I'd give the latest prisoner turned literary darling a shot. Cherry is a worthy first effort. Sometimes the narrator's voice is searing, clear, and white-hot, and that voice carries you along and surprises you with what captures the narrator's attention, and the curious tidbits he knows about literature and history sprinkled into the junky talk and soldier lingo. There is a lot of blood rage here, or at least blood hunger.

But other times the voice is clumsy and the narrator becomes a familiar type (I lived in West Baltimore for years--I saw these guys and gals daily. The reality of this "familiar type" is quite real to me). If you've read or seen The Corner you have heard this story. If you read Russell Banks's Rule of the Bone you've heard this story and met this character. You need some humor to sustain the plot, the way Trainspotting is just fucking awful and then awfully funny and then just awful again. Cherry has a lot of the awful but loses its sardonic humor at some point.

I dunno why I'm nitpicking a pretty strong first novel--it just feels like I've read this before, and done better. But the descriptions of the Iraq War and its consequences and the attitudes of the soldiers are top-notch. The first half of the book is very strong. Something about the narrator and the characters just can't sustain the second half.

 

Just great. Points out the resurgence of Native American population numbers, and while the well-documented and notorious facts of centuries of ethnic cleansing and genocide are noted and examined here, the book is mostly concerned with celebrating survival--and despite the grim data, a great deal of success. A really fantastic historic overview of government policy and indigenous response, of activism and combat, of submission and fealty and betrayal. The Epilogue is some deep shit.

Book 31 of 2018

Thomas Cromwell is one of the supreme Machiavellians. Mantel's novel follows him from his lowly, brutish beginnings as the son of an abusive blacksmith who often beat him near to death and thence to the heights of power as King Henry VIII's most trusted and most feared counselor.

Surprisingly, as Cromwell plots the destruction of his foes and Henry's foes he remains a sympathetic character. One can't help but admire his astute knowledge of languages, finance, business, fine art and crafts, his keen apprehension of human nature and psychology. His past as a soldier and street brawler who knows the heft of a knife and how to use it, his use of sophisticated Italian memory palace techniques to keep reams of data organized in his mind--all of this makes him eminently likable despite his dastardly and often deadly machinations.

He has a nose for hypocrisy, and hypocrites tend to fall first in his schemes, and when they don't fall first their karma is used to keep Henry's world in order and to achieve his aims. Cromwell makes himself the indispensable man, and nobles from old blood lines tremble lest he target them.

I found the book deeply involving and fascinating, and look forward to Part 2...

Book 30 of 2018

What a great little novel! It's a classic haunted house tale with a multi-dimensional twist. Once you figure out what's happening to the victims you wish, as many do at horror films, that you could intervene somehow and stop them from doing what they are about to do. That's what makes dramatic irony so cool, right?

Of course a few of the victims are really distasteful people, so it's fun to see them get their occult comeuppance. But even they don't deserve this fate. Well, maybe the cop does.

As in Cloud Atlas, Mitchell keeps track of multiple narrative lines and characters and they are all fully fleshed out with profound and individual and entertaining back stories. Of course these lines and characters all end in a similar manner because their fate is pulling them gravitationally toward the singularity of Slade House. We get to experience this same fate from different points of view, and that's a fun exercise for a writer, to imagine how different people would experience and describe the same sorrowful fate. And Mitchell shows off by keeping them in character as they are snuffed--the things they notice and how they notice them are well done.

The little alley where Slade House hides itself is carefully and quaintly wrought. All of the settings are classic ghost story with 21st century updates. The House itself is truly entertaining, and its means of haunting is unique.

And the book, though creepy and harrowing, is also funny as hell. All good haunted house novels blend humor and despair. Mitchell does so quite well.

A great Halloween read. You can finish it between handing out candies Wednesday.

Books 28 and 29 of 2018

One of my favorite genres is the drug revelation memoir. I love reading authors attempting to describe going off the rails. I think of Walter Benjamin writing about hashish, or Aldous Huxley waxing philosophically about mescalin, or Castaneda's descriptions of peyote trips, or Burroughs, etc.

One of the coolest and most interesting thinkers and describers of such experiences was Terrence McKenna. And McKenna and his ideas are a large part of Lin's book. In fact, the only parts of the book which are at all interesting are when Lin is summarizing McKenna. Which leads me to ask why the hell anyone would read this book when they can just read McKenna or watch him on YouTube.

Because--no offense to Mr. Lin--this is the most boring book I've ever read about this topic. Or any topic. It's pointless. It's meandering. It says nothing new. Even the passages about depression and feeling alienated are dull...and another of my favorite genres is the descent into madness memoir by people who feel isolated and alienated and depressed.

How can a writer with any skills at all write tedious and wholly unimaginative descriptions of DMT and salvia divinorum experiences? I simply can't get my head around it. He smokes DMT and spends pages describing feeling distracted and paranoid and moving in and out of a tent he built in the corner from a blanket. He can't make a salvia experience at all tangible or interesting? Even Miley Cyrus can do that.

Nobody cares if you felt suspicious for six hours straight after she shared her DMT with you. How many pages can you spend giving her the hairy eye-ball while she wonders what the fuck your problem is? What did you see or feel inside that realm? That's what's interesting. McKenna and virtually every other writer creates edge-of-the-seat, earth-shattering descriptive passages of breathtaking wizardry about DMT. Lin's passages sag like over wet noodles. I remember as a novice writer in the Temple University MA program how Toby Olson complimented my description of a mushroom experience and pumped me up with lavish praise during a workshop, only to say "but anyone can write a good trip, it's almost cliched."

Mr. Lin--anyone can write a good trip. Why couldn't you? I read something by you before and that was better than this, but not better enough that I would want to read whatever you published between then and now. And after having read this, I definitely do not want to read whatever you published between that and this, because this was so bad. Sorry, dude.




Thank goodness Ms. Due provided a cleanse for the above atrocity. This is a fine selection of creepy fiction, and runs the gamut from traditional ghost stories which are finely crafted and inhabit an interesting niche to more action/adventure sci-fi thrillers. I particularly liked the one about demons in a Florida swamp who take over infants for a while in the summer--has a nice sardonic tone and delicious Twilight Zone moral! And best of all are the rather intense post-apocalyptic stories at the end. Definitely should go on your Halloween reading list.

Books 25, 26, and 27 of 2018

It took me forever to read this novel. Not because I got bogged down, or because it was so long...but because I didn't want to finish it. It could go on for 5000 pages and I would love that. The characters were so compelling I wanted it to keep going forever. And the characters are not only humans, but also trees. And trees are cool as fuck. So maybe there will be a sequel from the perspective of an elm or a red maple.

The first half of the novel I thought "This isn't a novel." It definitely stretched the boundaries of any of the traditional ideas of what a novel is or was or could be. Initially I thought The Overstory was simply a collection of vignettes or novellas with a thematic link. But they all eventually coalesce and the threads end up woven together in a satisfying canopy more in line with the traditional definition of a novel.

Now if only I could remember the other Richard Powers novel I read.  Or perhaps I've read two? Can't recall, though, even when I look at the titles. Something to do with Israel? I've read too many damn books. I'm totally stumped.



There's a blurb from "O Magazine" inside the front cover of this Vintage paperback which says the writing is "reminiscent of Henry James."

HAHAHAHAHOHOHOOOTEEHEEHAR

OK, had to get that out of my system. Not sure if I'm laughing about an "O Mag" writer referencing Henry James, or the content of the blurb itself.

There is some fine writing in this book, but nothing on par with James, even James at his worst is better than this. But it's got some good bits. I mean, the novel is about a blowjob which lasts 120 pages. And that's a pretty good blow job, though the participants are pretty bored during the blow job, as they spend a lot of time reminiscing, remembering, fantasizing, philosophizing, and otherwise discursing all over the place. I mean James also does that, but much more subtly and he was a savage when it came to point of view and characterization, whereas Minot, though she writes a tight sentence, well her POV shifts a lot and yet the voice often seems the same inside different characters. So the blower and the blowee are bloviating internally in similar ways. And alas, neither character is particularly likeable or interesting--in fact, they suck, and well yes one of them definitely sucks but they both do actually. So my verdict about Rapture is not quite that it blows, but that it blows for a book about blowing and being blown. It should be hard to make a book featuring fellatio as its central action tedious, but Minot dug deep into her writer's bag of tricks and managed it, right down to the climax. But to be fair, there is also some thoughtful stuff about gender and power and the problematic dynamics of sex and relationships given the complexities of gender and power. Just not enough of it to make this worth reading.



A somewhat tepid yet occasionally interesting book about Chomsky and the anarchistic ideal of mutual aid. The artwork is not so great, sometimes the gist vanishes and memoir becomes the focus, but I enjoyed the bit about Occupy Wall Street and its library.

Books 22, 23, and 24 of 2018

A Smiley novel without Smiley. I mean, Smiley is there, and his tendrils are woven throughout. But he is only very briefly present in the novel in a physical sense.

Alec Leamas is a more Bond-ish spy than Smiley, who mixes it up mostly in an intellectual sense. Leamas is an action man who works in the field. And his fate really lays bare the realities of that era and that region and the cold callousness of the Cold War. And that Cold War did not end as suspected decades ago but was carried on by the defeated side in new and ingenious ways. This is a novel so taught it thrums like power lines. I read it in about ten minutes.



I enjoy the 'descent into madness' genre of memoir. And when the memoir is written by a Surrealist and the long-time lover of Max Ernst at a time when the entire world had gone mad, well then of course it will be a worthwhile read. The first half of the book is an exquisite introduction, analysis, and biography of Leonora Carrington which is just as good as the memoir itself.



I just may begin collecting dew when the planets are in the correct houses, because Hall lets more of the cat out of the bag than anyone else I've read.