Onward

now finished: March by Geraldine Brooks 

up next: something written by a woman because I am reading only books written by women in 2022 

Well, damn me if there isn't trouble and forgiveness all around, and within, us. 

That is my takeaway from my gal Geraldine's book here. Including that this mirrors my very reading of it. At first (say, 70 to 80 pages in), I was put off, uncomfortable, thoroughly not into her taking this silent side character and imagining him whole, totally disturbed by Mr. March's objectifying of women, of Black women, of people enslaved. I went so far as to not like the book at first. My, how the pages changed me. Because, you will see when you read it, Brooks has done something quite intense in depicting our awfulness without shying away from it, while also solidly reinforcing my very favorite themes: 

1. Is redemption possible? 

2. Life is a mess, an absolute total mess.  

3. You will absolutely fck things up. You will. And you must go on, keep stumbling forward, and try to do better the next day. 

(This is the part where I once again cite my favorite MILD SPOILER line from the fantastic film In Bruges SPOILER: "Well, save the next little boy!" I mean, sometimes it's all we can do.) 

I am very specifically not going to spoiler March at all, and I hope that you will read it. If you have already read it, feel free to talk to me privately, or talk without spoilers in the comments here, because I would love to know your thoughts. 

I am simply going to say that I changed in the course of reading this book from being so powerfully uncomfortable with it existing to realizing the talent and raw power of what Geraldine Brooks has done. And do I now want to read every damn word she has ever written? I do. Do I now regret shelving her and stacking her and mindlessly touching her books over the years without getting around to reading them? I do. 

It was inevitable that I would read this one sooner rather than later because hello, Pulitzer. But now I want them all. And I also love reading about her, and ahout how she wrote this book, and about her Bronson Alcott research, and her Australian, worldy, and UnitedStatesian-ness, and her marriage with Tony Horwitz, and how he brought her in some literal and figurative ways to see so much Civil War history. 

This book is vivid, and hard to bear.   (Do I really need to say it? LIKE LIFE.) 

And the insight she has about war with her foreign correspondent experience is next level, combined as it is with her artistic and emotional genius. 

Little Women has always, always been about so much more than it might initially seem, and I do think many people realize that, which is good. Despite my resistance to taking it, that something-more aspect, and all the layers of Louisa May Alcott and Concord, are part of why this book March works, too. 

Stunned, I immediately wanted upon closing this book to go walk around some Civil War battleground and feel the ghosts. And guess what, turns out that living in Georgia as I randomly do now, I can do just that. But it gets better: where I am in Decatur, in DeKalb County, I just learned, the majority of residents voted in January 1861 to NOT secede, unlike neighboring Atlanta/Fulton County. And during the Battle of Atlanta, Confederate troops attacked General MacPherson's Union troops near the Decatur Courthouse (walking distance from my house), driving them back down the North Decatur Road (my intersection). 

I mean... as Amy (Ray, Indigo Girls) sings, "...before I realized / everywhere I stand..." 

Amy Ray being from Decatur and having taken those names Jonas and Ezekiel from tombstones she saw one day in a slave cemetery... 

My godz but we are all so fortunate to get to live and learn and feel pain and grow and read and write about it. 

Interpersonal relationships (as other Indigo Girl Emily Saliers would say) are so hard. 

Geraldine Brooks has scarred me. She's wondrous. 

Tumult Unceasing!

now finished: The Iliad by Homer 

 I have finally read The Iliad.

Wait, no. I have finally! read The Iliad! 

The epic thing, pages and pages and pages of hexameter, Books 1-24. Of which, I might add, I deem at least two unnecessary. We could easily do without the early on one that reads like the Old Testament, droning on and on about so-and-so and so-and-so and the son of so-and-so, just name after name after name. No one cares*, Homer. (Same to you, OT prophet scribes.)  And, that Book 23, fever dream, opponent-dragging, don't-call-it-a-climax, don't-call-it-a-denouement chariot race is just....what? Who took over the directing of this episode? Tarantino? That Enter the Void guy**? 

Anyway. 

I liked reading The Iliad! Did I mention it's epic? So violent by the way, much like a Game of Thrones episode. The various bone-splitting, tendon-slicing, helmet-crushing, brain-spurting injuries and kills are gruesome and vividly rendered. 

Here's what I didn't know: that there was so much Olympian gods chicanery involved in this. I really had spent four decades (or, three, I suppose) thinking it was more realistic than magical realism. Like, wheeeeeeee! gods just routinely step into our lives and do stuff. The whole (epic!) thing is honestly so similar to the impending biblical Christianity  sensibility of war-fate-storytelling that I don't understand how anybody believes in any one monotheism god as opposed to all-those-pagan-gods. It's all part and parcel.  Humans are so weird. 

On that note, one time Zeus points out how terrible humans are. Zeus. Zeus! The jerkiest of jerks! He has this to say: 

"For there is nothing more wretched than mankind / of all things that breathe and creep upon the earth. "              -- Book 17 

You are not kidding, son of Cronus. 

Besides Achilles hanging around his ships lamenting how things are, and everybody but everybody considering women "prizes" to be won, taken, and stolen, the other main thing that happens throughout The Iliad are these wandering metaphors. "Then the Trojan warriors came," he'll say, "like a pack of wolves, who trot up the mountain, you know the kind I mean, with snouts toward the moon, like a lost wandering beast who knows its meal waits just around the bend, the kind of meal he can sink his teeth into, a wolf's tooth, the kind you wear around your neck; up the mountain they went  like these wolves, as a clan of mystic seekers whose blood scent leads them on, like a man who has lost his only friend..."***   It goes on like that for a while, and then eventually the sentence ends and we can find out what the Trojans did. 

Why did I read The Iliad now?  (Besides the obvious why not, of course.) Well, lately I have been realizing that everyone seems to remember a whole lot more of the Greek mythology we read in junior high than I do. See, e.g., any given episode of Jeopardy! I was like WHY DO YOU ALL KNOW ALL THIS STUFF. Granted that it is definitely not because y'all have sat down and read The Iliad, I know that, but I am the Literary One, so I have to do the reading. I decided to invent an Ancient Greek Things class for myself and I have added some mythology and gods and classic epics books to my nearest stacks and I am filling in some knowledge gaps. 

Also it's college football season, which is a great time to get hyped when "A dark cloud of Trojans now closes round..."  (Book 16)

The Iliad! 

p.s. Agamemnon reminds me a bit of tr$mptydumpty. 

*yes I am aware it is of historical interest and some people care

**his name is Gaspar Noé. ugh. 

***I made that up, but barely

The Best and Worst I Read in 2014

I read 72 books in 2014! Well, OK, I read sixty-something books and I listened to a handful as audio books on my mp3 player while out walking or running. But for the purposes of this blog entry, same thing. Let's take a look at my 2014 year of reading in review!

I read more truly great non-fiction than truly great fiction this year. While I enjoy reading non-fiction and obviously love when it's great, I would also really like to be able to read more great novels, too, and by that I mean, I would like to stop being so disappointed in more than half of the novels I pick up. But we'll get to that in a second. First...

THE GOOD:
Easily the two best novels I read this year were Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko and Time's Arrow by Martin Amis. Both deal with the utter horror show that is humanity but in completely and totally different ways. The former is a gargantuan tome of Native American-Mexican-Arizonan-bring-on-the-revolution wisdom that will shock, horrify, and awe you if you have any ethical bones in your body. It will also teach you some history, make you homesick for Arizona if you're from there, cause you to seriously ponder your role in society and humans' role on the American continent and the globe, and possibly inspire a little tiny eensy bit of hope for the world. (But not too much.) There's also a fair amount of sex and drugs mixed in. It's hard to explain. The latter is Amis' famous novel told in reverse about a Holocaust "doctor" -- in order to grapple with the how-could-this-happen and how-did-he/they/we-become-evil questions, he tells the story backwards and it's basically genius.  I cannot recommend these two books highly enough.

The other good novel I read this year was Men Against the Sea by Charles Bernard Nordhoff, the second in the Bounty Trilogy. Actually, the first, Mutiny on the Bounty, was all right, too, but the struggle of the men in the boat in the second book is just so hardcore, and you end with so much respect for them and an understanding of their deep love for the boat that helped them and brought them to safety.

The great non-fiction I read this year includes:
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown -- This history of what happened to Indians in the American West should be required reading for everyone. The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times by Francis Russell -- Yes, you actually do need to read a biography of Warren G. Harding, if for nothing else than for the shenanigans of the smoke-filled rooms at the 1920 Republican convention and for his kindness to puppies.
The Walrus and the Elephants: John Lennon's Years of Revolution by James A Mitchell -- I was born too late (to live in the early '70s) but John Lennon wasn't and he was incredible and I previously had no idea how hard the U.S. government tried to get rid of them. (And succeeded?)To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism by Evgeny Morozov --  If you hate when people say "X changed my life" or when people are hailed as brilliant because they gave a TED Talk even though they are physically incapable of critical thinking, you'll dig Evgeny's thesis. If you are bristling at these notions, you are in need of Evgeny's thesis.Zola and His Time: The History of his Martial Career in Letters by Matthew Josephson -- When I finally got around to reading a Zola book (Therese Raquin) the other year, I was less than impressed. But! This bio re-fascinated me about him. And poor, poor Dreyfus (he of the Affair) -- such a fascinating bit of history and a groovy group of literary pals, who are definitely not without their flaws. 
THE BAD: 
Get out of my face, Gone Girl, The Interestings, Sue Grafton, Sharon Olds (Stag's Leap and her undeserved Pulitzer in particular) and, frankly, Sophie's Choice, too. So much disappointment!
THE UNDERWHELMING: 
The Fault in Our Stars, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Little Women (re-visited as an adult), No Ordinary Time, and some of Truman Capote's short stories included in the volume along with Breakfast at Tiffany's.  SOME FUN SURPRISES: The Wicked Pavilion  by Dawn Powell. Who knew?
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins. Check it out if you want a classic novel that's also basically a pioneering mystery novel and not on everyone's radar.
Missing Justice by Alafair Burke. Even though I've read a few of her novels previously and I am well acquainted with her and her life commentary, I was still delighted by the sharp feminism in this page-turner.
Also, 10 A ños con Mafalda, a collection of the Argentine comic strip Mafalda, opened my eyes to a bit of social history I never would have otherwise known. 
And you? How was your 2014 reading?

If you can't hold on, hold on

finished: Time's Arrow by Martin Amis

Because the Holocaust doesn't make sense, how to make sense of the Holocaust? 

How can you write about it? How can you write a novel about it? Lots of people have, of course. How do you approach it?  You can't make sense of it. Can you try? 

Martin Amis has taken some flak for writing Time's Arrow. Some of it was how-dare-you-write-about-the-Holocaust-you-weren't-there. I'm not sure I find that point very convincing. Some of it was your-telling-of-the-story-backwards-is-just-a-gimmick. Some of it was you're-the-same-old-Martin-Amis-as-in-your-other-novels-and-I-like-to-bash-you. On the other hand, some reviewers apparently fell all over themselves to praise it when it came out in the early 1990s, what with its heavy, important subject matter, and Amis' important self. (Word order chosen carefully there.) 

I came later to the Martin Amis party. I'm pretty sure I'd never heard of him when I was in high school. I had heard of his pops, Kingsley Amis, by the time I finished college, but it was working in a bookstore that really put Martin on my radar. I got around to reading him for the first time in 2007, when I commenced my A-to-Z project, in which I read and blogged about a book by 26 new-to-me authors, one for each letter of the alphabet. I started with him, for 'A'--I read The Information and loved it. A couple years later, after making my way through the alphabet (hey, I was in law school--and besides, I always have lots of other stuff to read; it's never just one project at a time), I decided to select the Top Half and read another thirteen books by each of those authors. Amis made the cut. I then read Money. And, as time has marched on, I've continued by selecting six of those thirteen and reading a third book by each of them. Yes, Amis is in this select group of A-to-Z project semi-finalists, along with Truman Capote, Umberto Eco, E.M. Forster, Salman Rushdie, and William Styron. And this time around, my Amis selection was Time's Arrow.

Interestingly, this summer as I read third books by the likes of Capote and Styron and Amis, I was also preparing for my Habitat trip to Poland (which you can read more about here and here and here on my front page blog). And interestingly, it just so happened that I had months earlier, when I didn't yet know I'd even be going to Poland this year, acquired Time's Arrow for my Amis selection (at our favorite bookstore in Seoul, during our January layover) and decided to finally read Sophie's Choice for my Styron #3 (a decision made whilst we were still living in China). So there I was, in Michigan this summer, reading Sophie's Choice and also preparing to go to Poland. Naturally, I sought out some Polish literature by Polish writers at the library (all hail the GRPL!) and read stuff about the history of the country, too. But I also, in yet another twist of fate, happened to find myself this summer on Franklin Roosevelt in my read-a-bio-of-every-president project. It all came together. And what with Time's Arrow being a light, thin quality paperback, I brought it with me to Poland. 

There, I visited Auschwitz. 

I haven't yet shared with the world all my Auschwitz-visiting thoughts, of which there are many. It was such a mind-altering experience, being there. Here, let me just say this: I was so glad, when I read Time's Arrow the next week, that I had visited Auschwitz before reading it. 

To be honest, I wasn't all that fond of Sophie's Choice. I've seen the movie, years ago, so I knew all about the choice and the things that happen. And it seemed crazy that I didn't like it, because I have been so enthralled with my boy Styron up to this point, reading his earlier (more obscure?) stuff, like Lie Down in Darkness (my favorite book of the original A-to-Z 26) and Set This House on Fire (such a book for self-indulgent expat writers who think they have something to say to the world...)  But I thought that, frankly, Sophie's Choice totally failed. Styron's approach (gimmick?) was to narrate as a writer telling the story of Sophie, his friend whom he meets after the war, living in Brooklyn. Then she/the narrator recount her experiences in flashbacks, but they're all over the place, and the sexual overtones of it all are kind of abhorrent, frankly. Sophie desperately needed/needs to be rescued, but instead she continues to be taken advantage of and ravaged, by life and everyone. And everyone is a mess. Sure, these cynical things approach a truth about humanity, too, but they didn't really tell me the Holocaust/Auschwitz story it seemed Styron was trying to tell. 

Amis' approach was to get inside the mind of a former Holocaust doctor -- and I do mean, as a separate entity, who has somehow appeared inside the man's mind -- and go backwards from there. I thought Time's Arrow was incredible, and I admire it and Amis because he succeeds at demonstrating something for us. It's easy enough to say that only in a crazy, mixed-up world where time flows backwards could the Holocaust make any sense, but its another thing to write the novel that shows that. As we travel backward through time and through the life of Dr. Tod Friendly (and his several other later/earlier names), we know what's coming, and we read about him and his fellow Nazis "creating" a race of people out of fire and ashes. We all say that the death camp Auschwitz goes against all that humanity is. You certainly feel that during the portion of your tour when you step into the chamber that was once used to gas prisoners in the hopes of exterminating the Jewish people (along with hundreds of thousands of others). You can feel that again when you read Time's Arrow. 

When the backwards-running narrative finally arrives at Birkenau, you remember walking along that Birkenau train track, looking up at where it dead ends at the edge of the forest. Shit, you think. This world needs to be grappled with. You think that when reading, and when visiting. 

The story is basically too much to tell (not that we shouldn't try), and the "gimmick" of telling it backward turns out to be less gimmick and more way-to-access-this-thing. 

I read a biography of Martin Amis this summer, too. It was a light, I-think-just-this-side-of-unauthorized account, but it was interesting. Basically, I am jealous of Martin and his literary friends (Rushdie, Hitchens, Barnes, and the like, all those England Observer-writing literary intellectuals who get to just hang out being readers and discoursers together and writers when they are alone all the time) and I want to inhabit such a world (but hold the incessant womanizing, eh?) I read with interest about the friendships developed with Saul Bellow and the occasional arguments over Israel/Palestine politics. I must say that in a way, Israel/Palestine politics have nothing to do with the Holocaust. To equate critical analysis of Israel policy (or U.S. policy) with anti-Semitism and therefore "forgetting" (as opposed to, you know, never forgetting) is I think as insulting as what it's trying to insult. How can you make a political military issue out of this total affront to humanity? 

My incredible tour guide at Auschwitz said that the longer she works there, the less she judges people/countries/leaders, such as the Allies who opted not to bomb the railways leading to Auschwitz, and the more she remains neutral as she learns and is glad she wasn't in the difficult position of making those decisions. This is a woman who routinely communicates with Auschwitz survivors, and she shared some of their thoughts with us. She was steady, somber, and very informative. We walked around on a gray, drizzly day, through the mud and dirt, through the exhibitions, around the remains. Nothing makes sense. She explained it all to us, and the facts and exhibits and piles of eyeglasses and shoes make no human sense. But there they are. 

It's not about reserving judgment, or not taking a stand, or not believing in what's right. Backwards, we can approach this event with all the knowledge and all the judgment and all the pain, and see what we can see. We (humanity) obviously didn't see the Nazis when we went in chronological order, so Martin helps us by approaching them the other way. 

Bury My Heart

now finished: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown
now reading: The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

I owned a copy of Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee for more than 15 years before reading it. Hence its place in "Project: Finally!" in which I have resolved to finally read over the course of 2013-14 the most nagging and lingering of all the books I've meant to read for years now. These aren't just books I've thought about reading here and there, but the ones that I've actively, totally, fervently meant to read, that I have touched or even owned, many of which I have started and read some of. These are the books that I know about and have engaged with and many, many, many times failed to read for some stupid reason. This project is about mending!

Would that the slaughter of the tribes that previously occupied the U.S.A. could be mended so easily.

It's not as if I can add anything to the tale of woeful history in which the U.S. manifested its destiny by slaughtering the previous occupants of the land. I will say, however, that this book presents the story in such a way that I felt really sad. And yeah, outraged, of course. Plenty of outrage. Of the if-not-you're-not-paying-attention variety. But even more sadness, the deepest, darkest, gut-punching sadness. Every time another leader tried to say, "Hey, we can live here and you can live here and we can all live here, but please let my people just live on this land without your soldiers attacking us" it hearkened back to the very first pages in which Christopher Columbus notes how polite the welcoming Taino Indians were, their manners "decorous and praiseworthy." Which prompted him to take all he could get. Nothin' but a G-G-G thang. Talk about your original gangsters. But don't gangsters actually respect their rivals' territory, maybe, at least a bit?

A few people did try, among them  John L. Webster, Judge Elmer S. Dundy, and Tom Jeffords, but there were so many assholes to contend with that the noble efforts of good people were but a tiny glimmer in a horrid, shadowy doom. Now, I'm a super proponent of "it's better to light one candle than to curse the darkness." That's true, but many people didn't have even that much of a choice. So, so many people, especially Native peoples, were lighting their candles, only to be doused and darkened time and again by gold- and silver-hungry settlers, battle-hungry soldiers and officers who didn't have a living in the army if they didn't stir up shit, and general greedy destiny manifesters who told themselves Indians were savages.

Every time another massacre is about to happen in this book -- and yes, there are so, so many -- the dread creeps up again, and the reader just hopes against hope that this time someone will see reason, that someone will realize killing people they have just sworn to protect, including dozens of women and children, is a really bad idea, you know, morality-wise.

Alas, no.

This book made me so profoundly sad -- and I already knew some of this history! It's not as if it was a surprise, right. I've read I Will Fight No More Forever.  I grew up in Arizona. I know about Honor the Earth. I had thought and even ranted about loads of it before! I lived in Joseph City and I've been to Holbrook and know all about the Navajo, right?! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.  So pathetic that this is what passes for "knowing" this history. I lived on the edge of the reservation (you know, where the powers-that-be like to build power plants). I quoted passages from Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee  in a college paper (without reading all of the book!) I'm a supporter of Native justice, so I totally knew all about what went on, right? Oh my dear gods, no. Those attitudes of "what can I do" + "hey, I'm on the right side, I've done something" are pretty dangerous. Especially if they prevent you from getting around to reading this book for fifteen years. Trust me, you can learn something from reading this book, no matter what you think you already know, and furthermore, you can feel something and experience something while reading this.

Then again, I really DON'T know what to do, even now that I've read it. For a long time I have wanted to get a job where I can even do something tiny and small to help right these wrongs and be better going forward. But what? How? Where?  etc. I really should have gone to law school at ASU. Fuck Hofstra's "international law" concentration; what a joke. I might add that I don't even know how to find my own Indian ancestry, which I always think about when I think about the deplorable behavior of the white folk in the 19th century. My great-great grandmother, the paternal grandmother of my paternal grandmother, hails from Quebec and was a "first nations" person, or whatever one calls this in Canada. See how pathetically little we know? Even my grandmother didn't know. Just knew that her grandmother was Indian, married into the family of Frenchies there in Quebec, and both of this ancestor's parents are recorded as French names in our records, without birthplaces even, so who knows who was French and who came from where. That's all we know. We don't even know what Indian nation she descended from, or who married or kidnapped whom. It bothers me that one's history can be so quickly erased and forgotten, whether on a personal level, or on the massive scale in which the U.S. army and settlers saw fit to eradicate entire tribes and nations and peoples and history in the Western U.S.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee should be required reading for everyone. (Is it required reading anywhere in school??) Yes, it will make you feel sad. You might have to pause and come back to it when it gets to be too much. But read it. Do.

Gods, wealth, magic underwear, socialist market economies, and other roots of all evil

now finished:
The Return of the God of Wealth:  The Transition to a Market Economy in Urban China
by Charlotte Ikels
now reading: The Anchor Book of Chinese Poetry ed. by Tony Barnstone and Chou Ping
now also reading: Lonely Planet Phuket Encounter by Adam Skolnick and Austin Bush

I just managed to get the heck out of Guangzhou, and my so-called friend makes me relive it all with The Return of the God of Wealth, which, while about "urban China," is specifically about Guangzhou as a representation or even trendsetter of the aforesaid transition to a (socialist) market economy. This so-called friend (I kid, I kid) is living in Shanghai and working and getting a master's and learning about China things for his classes, and he loaned me the book because, he said, it was "good" and "interesting"  and it intrigued him and taught him a lot about Guangzhou.

Guangzhou...sigh.  So interesting from afar. So full of bodily fluids from a-near.

All right, I'll admit that it was kind of fun, in a schadenfreude way, to read perfectly objective, factual sentences written in social science, clinical description, I'm-not-capable-of-judging-you-I'm-here-only-to-report-human-behavior speak about the hygiene (or more accurately, the lack thereof) in Guangzhou. And the public confrontation/problem solving amusements. And the traffic jams, and the trash, and the spitting, and the lack of heat source in apartments (WTF?!, as I have mentioned) and the horrible dietary practices of eating every animal that comes along (including domestic ones that are often stolen--since THEY AREN'T SUPPOSED TO BE EATEN so of course there's no dog/cat/hedgehog meat industry to legally raise and acquire them, you mother!@&**$rs!!!)  and about how Guangzhou people are willing to slaughter and eat anything.  Except that's not fun at all, actually. Because it's pretty fucking terrible. So I'm not really sure that I wanted to relive the past year by reading all about it in this book, even if there is a tiny bit of satisfaction to be had in having it documented all professional-like for anyone who was maybe thinking of not believing me.

For me and China, it's like the Mormons all over again. You people have got it all wrong; you dislike them for all the wrong reasons. People are always on about Mormons being weird or "cult"-like because they "wear magic underwear" and "have lots of wives," neither of which are accurate descriptions. Now, if you want to talk about history, that's fine; I do think we have to be responsible for our history (see, e.g., Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee), and I definitely think it should be discussed and that leaders should not gloss over it. However, to say "Mormons are weird because they have lots of wives," besides being such a blatantly male-identified statement, interesting in someone who wants to critique a wholly patriarchal religion, is basically the same as saying "People in the U.S.A. are assholes because they have African-born slaves."  I mean, we just don't. Anymore. Was the country founded and built on slavery? Yes. Did slavery disappear with the snap of a Constitution-amending finger, making life happy and joyous and hunky-dory for all the slaves? Of course not. And are there dire, lasting consequences that should be addressed by politicians and others in power, as well as masses who think, simplistically, that "those days are over so be quiet and move on"? Yes. And yet, if you said, "Ewww, the U.S. is so weird and creepy because they have slaves" you would sound very misinformed, and that's how you sound when you talk about the Mormons and the wives.

ANYWAY. The point is, there are soooo many good reasons to dislike and/or leave and/or never participate to begin with in the Mormon church (or any Christian church), in my humble opinion, and I've always been amused by all the "reasons" people have for thinking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is so weird when they fail to even address the real issues like lack of critical thinking, more sexist double standards than you can shake a stick at, condescending discussions about womanhood and motherhood (basically equated in the religion), and obsessive avoidance of super-mundane pleasures in life like coffee, wine, and R-rated movies. Not to mention the fact that the three hours of weekly church and the general conference sessions that roll around a few times a year will basically bore you to tears.

And so it is with China. People stateside are ready at the drop of a Tweet to unleash their scorn: blah-blah pollution, blah-blah piracy, blah-blah human rights. No, I don't mean to suggest with my "blah-blah" that these are not important issues. I mean to suggest that people are not saying anything important about them. They are jumping on a bandwagon ("Oooh, I heard China is bad! China is totally bad, it's like armageddon and doom and it's totally Communist, right, so it's bad!") and repeating things they know very little about and also buying a WHOLE lot of goods made there while lamenting the loss of "made-in-America."   Actual conversation that took place between me and a neighbor of my mother's in her Phoenix condominium complex's pool:

Neighbor woman: If we don't watch out, pretty soon we're all going to be China.
Me, admittedly a little puzzled about what it means to "be China": Well, maybe that's true, especially if everyone keeps shopping at Walmart.
Neighbor woman: *speechless uncomprehending face*

Part of why I was looking forward to living in Guangzhou for a year was that I wanted to distance myself even further (and farther) from the people who could never imagine themselves living in China. The people who assure you that they've read all about it...in the cable news scrolling headlines...but can't necessarily name the third and fourth largest cities there (which each have higher populations than most U.S. states).  And having traveled and lived there, I find myself shaking my head at all the apocalypse-now doomsaying, when I'm just fleeing the egregious daily life issues. You want a real disaster?  Try going to the bank. Try exiting the subway via escalator. Or, just enjoy a stroll through the city streets, with spit hurtling at you from every direction and children urinating and defecating on the sidewalks as a matter of course ("induced" even, by their adult guardians, to do so, as Ikels so clinically describes it--true story!) And let's not ever overlook the fact that they cage, tie up, and eat cats and dogs. (No, not everyone does this. One instance of it would be too many, but no, it's not everyone.)  These are really great reasons to dislike China, but everyone's too busy tsk-tsking their human rights abuses, which are like most countries' human rights abuses (i.e., they deprive people of their human rights; see, e.g., Guantanamo), but a lot easier to call out in others than in oneself.

You are never going to address human rights issues by making it a competition between nations or acting as if some countries (imaginary lines drawn in the sand) are blame-free. We are all one big global humanity, and we need to act as such when we claim to want humans to live freely and prosper.

But what is divided up country by country is our one big global economy, and for that reason, it's interesting to read books such as The Return of the God of Wealth: The Transition to a Market Economy in Urban China. Although the author's research took place from the late '70s through the mid-'90s, much of it still rings very Guangzhou-true.

Although it would have been nice to get some of her matter-of-fact depictions of the debacle that is a ride on the Guangzhou Metro, but that wasn't launched until 1997, so we'll have to wait for the sequel...

It's a Warren G. thang

now finished:  The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times by Francis Russell
now reading: The Return of the God of Wealth: The Transition to a Market Economy in Urban China by Charlotte Ikels
now also reading: Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West by Dee Brown
now sick of typing: all these overly long subtitles that silly non-fiction books insist on having

THE PROJECT:  Read a biography  of every U.S. president, in order, to see where we went wrong: a project obviously conceived and named during the Dubya administration

THE PRESIDENT:  Warren G. Harding (it stands for "Gamaliel") (no, really), the 28th person to hold the office, in the 29th presidency (because we're post-Grover Cleveland here, so the numbering is all f***** up)

This was a big one! For PREZ BIOS #32, I have completed Francis Russell's tome. Just what exactly is the "shadow of blooming grove"?  I'll get to that in  a moment. (And why have I read 32 books about only 28 presidents? Because multi-volume bios. Thanks for asking.)

Here are just a few topics that I didn't know all that much about before reading The Shadow of Blooming Grove:  Edward Doheny (despite my having lived in and driven around L.A. for seven years), Albert Fall, the international disarmament conference in D.C. during the post-Versailles/League of Nation rejection years, Harding's alleged African-American ancestry and the weird attempts to reveal it to the nation, Harding's affairs (we're talking Bill Clinton levels of womanizing), and the town of Marion, Ohio.

And that's only part of the endlessly fascinating story detailed in this bio. It's a big one, to be sure, but absolutely absorbing. It covers a really interesting lifespan:  Warren (or "Wurr'n" as the author insists Harding's wife pronounced it, all Midwestern-drawl-like) was the first president to be born after the Civil War, but only about five minutes after (well, OK, seven months). And he died in the 1920s. It's mind-boggling to think about the transformation of the nation during his lifetime. And he died kind of early -- probably because the holy hell of his administration was all about to break loose, and I really think his brain just kind of imploded on him.

Fun(?) fact: He died in a hotel in San Francisco, after visiting Alaska, then still a territory.
Fun fact: As a young adolescent, he worked as a "printer's devil" in the newspaper/press office, and after a long night doing an important rush job for a client, his boss gave him a 13-em makeup rule ("the craft sign of a full-fledged printer" according to the book) and he carried it around as a good luck token for the rest of his life.
Fun fact: With friends like his, you most certainly would not need a lot of enemies.

A thankless, sorry bunch. Ohio politics, it has to be said, are possibly the foulest of them all, even more than Buchanan's Pennsylvania politics and the New York politics of Van Buren/Garfield/Cleveland et.al. Or at least the weirdest. From the madhouse, Warren emerged from his small-town newspaper, where he liked to jabber with all the folks and adopt a stray dog to hang out around the office, and ended up in the state assembly and later became a real live U.S. senator. And then, in a particularly insane Republican convention in Chicago (think: the birth of the smoke-filled rooms legend), they finagled a presidential nomination for him by making him everyone's second choice, as the story goes.

Why did Russell choose to put "the shadow of blooming grove" in the title of this book, the "shadow" being the alleged and doubted and rumored Negro/colored ancestry of the Harding family? Granted this was the early 20th century when Harding entered politics, and I think that characterizing "was your great-grandmother or wasn't she?" questions as a "shadow" more or less captures the feeling. But, it just didn't really seem to be that big of a part of Warren's political career. So why title the book that? The author sees this "shadow" hanging over the family's head as something that trailed Warren throughout his life, from schoolyard scraps to scurrilous campaign tracts, contributing to his lifelong insecurity. But I think he just didn't have as schmoozy and ambitious of a personality as the other Ohio politicians with whom he hung around (and who nonetheless propelled him to the top).

Of far more concern seem to be the affairs with a)his best friend's wife ("the long black veil of Blooming Grove," perhaps? except this particular woman wasn't ready to carry the secret to their respective graves) b)a gal who was a high school student in town when she first began to crush on him as he ran for office (ewwwww) (they didn't hook up 'til later, but ewwww).

President and puppy

However, despite his flaws (the womanizing being the main one) and despite his being completely and totally out of his element in the White House (he called it "hell" and a "prison" and asked why he was there and lamented to friends that he wanted out), our boy Warren comes off as oddly likable. He was friendly to pretty much everyone all his life, kicking back in the Marion, Ohio, newspaper office with his feet on the desk and talking to everyone in town. And he liked animals! And even better, he didn't like people who were mean to animals, and he said so. He took in a stray dog that wandered into the paper's office and it became their pet there for years, plus he had "Laddie Boy" in the White House, who was famous and popular throughout the land, and I like to think the puppy remained untarnished in citizens' eyes even as the administration went down in scandal and disgrace for the remainder of the '20s.

Harding's dog: classier than Harding?

I'm sort of proud of Warren for being at the top of the predictions when I type "Warren" into Wikipedia's search box, above Buffett, Beatty, Zevon, Ellis (I had to check who that even was-- a comics author, apparently), and Burger. I mean, Harding's definitely one of the more obscure presidents, and his most famous thing is probably Teapot Dome, which really wasn't even his doing. Truth be told, my memories of the scandal from AP History class were cloudy, so this book was a good refresher. But I think Warren was more oblivious and gullible and trusting than anything.  Albert Fall and Doheny on the other hand...they definitely got up to some stuff, in pursuit of oil and money. Outright swindling and bribery...who knows? Now, I feel a small connection to Teapot Dome, because the rock and oil fields in question are in the land of my birthplace, Natrona County, Wyoming, north of Casper.  It's a little known fact that I was born in Casper, in Natrona County Hospital (we moved to Arizona by the time I was two, though).  So I'm not opposed to anything that brings fame or even infamy to my native land...but unfortunately, as with so many of these mountains and geological formations in the West that "look like" something, Teapot Rock doesn't look all that much like a teapot. Apparently the "handle" and  "spout" have been eroded away or something.  What do you think?

Teapot Rock, of Teapot Dome fame

But it never would have become the greatest pre-Watergate presidential scandal without such a nice ring to the name, of course.

Anyway, I highly recommend this book for those who want to delve into an interesting life while learning a bit of history, indulging in nostalgia about turn-of-the-century Americana, and marveling at what politicians get up to in those smoke-filled rooms.

He was a warmongering Nobel Peace Prize winner before warmongering Nobel Peace Prize winners were cool

recently finished: Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris

This book, the third in Edmund Morris' fine trilogy depicting the life of Theodore Roosevelt, gives a reader the chance to ponder many important life questions, such as: Who have been the best among the 43 (yes, you read that right, 43) U.S. presidents? What makes a man or woman truly great?  and Why ever do we pronounce a word spelled co-lo-nel as "ker-nel"?

Well, like it or not, he is "the Colonel" through much of this third book, after the second volume about his presidency and the first about his pre-presidency life. Volume 1 won the Pulitzer and may be the best of the three in the eyes of many, but I think in the end I enjoyed Volume 3 as much if not more. Volume 2, oddly, was less interesting in a way. The actual stuff that went on during Theodore's (not Teddy!) presidency was fascinating, obviously, but it was as if Edmund had way too much source material to work with. He is at his best, I think, covering the less already documented portions of TR's life, because Edmund is a master of pulling together tidbits from the deepest archives and combining that with incredible feats of personal travel research to complete the portrait of his bio subject.

In Colonel Roosevelt, Theodore is out of the White House, where he has cajoled and coerced and manipulated my boy William H Taft into taking his place, although he ends up abandoning Taft in a totally rude and in my opinion avoidable falling out. Taft did not want to be there, and Theodore was an unnecessary jerk about it, and Taft even asked for TR's help, but Theodore was all high and mighty and hanging out with every king in Europe and, I daresay, realizing that he himself could in fact be president again in 1912, perhaps, and therefore he became unwilling to help Taft. So rude. Well, the plan failed. But it's a fascinating chapter in TR's life (and several chapters in the book).

The other highlights of Colonel Roosevelt are travel and war. Naturally, those are "highlights" in totally different ways, and only one because it happened. The other, clearly, is interesting to read about but in real life avoidable, although no one will ever learn, particularly not when they are giving the Nobel Peace Prize to warmongering presidents. This book starts with TR's amazing African safari hunt (the man is nothing if not bloodthirsty, despite his mid-life epiphany that he maybe shouldn't kill off all of the animals he would like to keep around for future generations) and I actually could have used a couple more of Edmund Morris' fabulously cute little maps that he (the author himself!) draws to show us TR's life journeys throughout the three volumes. Then, later in the book, we get yet another epic journey, again bringing his son along, this time to Brazil and uncharted areas of the Amazon rainforest to map a new river. (Not precisely "new" seeing as one of the animals in their party is felled by the arrows of Indians who may have never seen the white man before, but you know, new-to-the-Brazilian-English-Spanish-Portugese-United States-ian-etc.-maps kind of new. Unsurveyed.)  That there was one trip full of hardships, up to and including death, and also some of the most powerful bonding of human friendship to be found.

World War I is something I and many others should probably know more about. It was good to review the events leading up to it and the ways in which all of the parties (except Belgium! as TR rightly points out) were both partly justified and partly at fault in starting the giant, menacing debacle. There were some sane voices trying to solve problems in a better way, but there were also lots of voices like Theodore's, positively salivating to go to war (despite his being BFFs with the Kaiser and other Germans). Presidents Taft and  Woodrow Wilson both were interested in peace, and took major steps to try to have peace, but boy do I understand what a hard struggle that is in this violence-lusting world of ours. Quite honestly, Wilson might not have really taken the best approach, what with his whole kept-us-out-of-war being so U.S.-centered and all that it really doesn't help bring about world peace. I do wish Taft would have been able to get his world peace body of nations together, but alas, the world started slaughtering in new, ever more advanced technological ways, and TR packed off all of his sons to Europe to join the "fun." Or should I say doom?

As usual, a feeling of sadness came over me as I pushed through to the final chapters. All of my presidential bios end the same way! as I like to joke. I could see the end of TR's life approaching, so I poured a glass of wine to settle in for the demise. After three months and three books, I do know him well, and I commend Edmund for this remarkable achievement, although I still can't believe TR's sister got married in an endnote in volume 1 after her personal life, its intertwining with TR's, and her lack of marriage were major plot points for hundreds of pages before that. The endnotes are definitely something to grapple with in this bio series, almost at the Infinite Jest level. (OK, well, not quite.)  At any rate, if you're one of those who has often wondered just why the heck Theodore is carved on Mount Rushmore with those three other biggies, plunge into Edmund Morris' magnificent life's work about a life.  Overall: A -
The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt: A -  Theodore Rex: B+  Colonel Roosevelt: A 

Where Are We On This?

Ahhhh, corporate-speak. As someone pointed out, Orwell's dire predictions of government doublespeak weren't wrong, and they have manifested not just in the military but also in the corporate jargon to which we all so willingly bow down... (Then again, the military is one giant corporation, profiting from violence and death, so there's that.)  Anyway, a favorite corporate line delivered by bosses and managers and "leaders" everywhere is "Where are we on that?"  What a great way to ask someone what the hell is going on, and to blame them without overtly blaming them, which is what corporate-speak is made for.

Well, where we are -- the royal we of this blog -- is a certain country that had me absent without blog behind a certain Gr**t F*r*w*ll for the last few months. Now the issue of access has been mended, we hope for the long haul, and once again I can crank out the bloggage on both Linda Without Borders and on this, its Literary Supplement blog.

But I'm not going to drag you people through tedious posts about each and every book I've read since I last posted -- when was it? -- last October! Um, gulp. Yikes. That can't even all be blamed on a certain country with whom Donald Trump would like to start a war whenever it is most convenient and profitable for him.

Just a rundown, then!

• The End of 2012

After finally reading The Brothers Karamazov down yonder in Mexico (seriously, finally -- I even have a "Finally" shelf on Goodreads now, inspired by that and Cloud Atlas), I spent the remaining time in Mexico reading John Updike's Rabbit, Run (my "U" pick for my Top Half of my A-to-Z Literary Blog Project), Jorge Luis Borges' El Aleph (one of my reading-five-essential-books-and/or-authors-to-familiarize-myself-with-more-literature-in-Spanish project), and Benjamin Harrison  by Charles Calhoun (#23 in my Presidents: Where Did We Go Wrong? project). I spend a lot of time in the projects. No thanks to the Mexican post office/customs/federales that stole my B. Harrison and McKinley books shipment the first time around, forcing me to re-order them. I still like picturing some cartel king somewhere learning all about these random Midwestern presidents of the late 19th century. Rabbit, Run was OK; I wanted something more from Updike but should appreciate it more for its time, perhaps. (Yes, I just called you old if you are an Updike contemporary - sorry about that.) It also has officially eclipsed The Shining for Most Memorable Bathtub Scene. Borges, on the other hand, is an unequivocal genius. Benjamin Harrison is significant mainly for being the point at which we depart from the chronology of presidents matching the chronology of presidencies, and from here on out when you say so-and-so is the twenty- or thirty-whatever-eth president you annoy me because really it's that they are the twenty- or thirty-whatever-eth presidency and you are counting Grover Cleveland as two people.

I then returned to the U.S. on a bit of a Pulitzer tear. I had just finished listening to the audio book The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright, which was all kinds of fascinating and one of my favorite things I've listened to because I just learned so much (the purpose of my listening to audio books at all -- I still hate being read to, but I pretend I'm listening to, like, really in depth public radio features). Back in Arizona, I launched into my next audio Pulitzer winner, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, which I really kind of hated. It's pretty terrible, and the combination of Pulitzer and learning just a few things barely kept me hanging on.  As for actual book-books, I returned to the U.S. reading Gone With the Wind, which seems appropriate, and I of course have to wonder why I never read this before, it being so Atlanta-y as well as famous and Pulitzery, and I just adored it. It's remarkable and misunderstood. Next up were The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz (good!) and the Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson (also good, and even inspiring on the eve of my departure).

• It's 2013!  Let's go read in Asia. 

Continuing the Pulitzer and the Prez Project themes, I spent January reading In the Days of McKinley  by Margaret Leech, a really well done bio and one that made me feel lots of warm fuzzy things for its subject. McKinley just genuinely tried to be nice to people, almost all of the time. Couldn't we all use a bit more of that?! I commenced my new audio book with the advent of my new job's commute: In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror, and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin by Erik Larson, whom you may know as the author of The Devil in the White City. Good stuff. I like German things, and I like learning about what the hell is going on behind the scenes when people are violent warmongers. There's never any excuse for it, of course, but we must try to understand.

• February: Lunar New Year and reading on the beach in the Philippines!

Not the whole month, unfortunately, but we did have a nice vacay and on the trip I was pretty excited to go to Manila and see Taft Avenue and McKinley Drive after just having read all about the beginnings of their unfortunate involvement there. Before the holiday I completed William Styron's Set This House on Fire, my "S" pick for the A-to-Z Top Half, and it was a fun Italian lesson and good for the whole self-indulgent-writer-thing, but kind of a sophomore effort compared to Lie Down in Darkness. I spent my beach time reading The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, volume one of the magnificent (as pretty much everyone says) trilogy bio of TR (don't call him Teddy!)

• In Like a "Finally!", Out Like an A-to-Z Top Half Project

In March I completed two novels, Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, which I came to rather enjoy and which reminded me with so many strong sentimental feelings of Amanda and everyone else at Cambridgeside as well as some other books I have also meant to read since that time (but none more meant to read since Cambridge days than Cloud Atlas), and Creation by Gore Vidal, my "V" pick for the A-to-Z project top half, which was pretty long and rambly but interesting, too, it can't be denied. Then it was back to Theodore...

• April Was Actually Not the Cruelest Month This Year. Go Figure.

...and to be honest, Theodore Rex, volume two, was not quite as good as Edmund's first TR, but it was still really, really interesting and better than a lot of bios. A bad day in the TR trilogy is like a good day in some other books. Including, through no fault of the author but unfortunately in my experience, the audio book I was listening to during April, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1850 by Daniel Walker Howe. The book itself (another Pulitzer winner) is informative and fascinating, and I knew I would enjoy listening about that era, which I have been saying as I read all my prez bios from that era is a massively interesting and under-appreciated time in U.S. history. The narration and splicing together of apparently two different narrators were horrible and nearly drove me batty. Why do I persist with Audible? Sigh. Sometimes it really is great, though, to listen and learn. Anyway, after Theodore Rex I read The Dialogues of Plato because I have another project this year (yes, really) in which I am reading a bit about/by one philosopher per month. I'm actually pretty far behind on this project, which I meant to start in January and then February but didn't until Thales in March (just online reading about him) and then Socrates in April. Notice I said Socrates, as the Dialogues were really about him. In May I am moving on to actual Plato-Plato.

• Which Brings Us to the Merry Merry Month of May

And I squeezed in a novel while we traveled to Vietnam, appropriately (I figured) my annual Nelson DeMille. This year was The Gold Coast. Oh, how hilarious to revisit Long Island and its totally out of touch rich assholes! Worth it for that alone, but of course we all know how much I love me some Nelson DeMille biting wit and sarcasm.

And, there! We are caught up! I am now in the middle of a bunch of books at once, due to a series of unfortunate coinciding factors, but a couple of them are just about China and Chinese learning and whatnot. I am actually read-reading the third Edmund Morris volume, Colonel Roosevelt, as well as The Grapes of Wrath, whose praises I will sing next time I post.

Be sure to check in here with the Literary Supplement blog, posted every Sunday, as we are now back with a vengeance! Or at least with lots of bookmarks!

When Yalom Babbled

finished Sept. 4th: When Nietzsche Wept by Irvin Yalom

Apparently, this book has a subtitle. The whole thing is When Nietzsche Wept: A Novel of Obsession. Well, as I noted on Goodreads when I first finished it, it didn't strike me as a novel of obsession at all, more like a novel of jabber.

I mean, with a title like When Nietzsche Wept I would expect it to be most if not all of the following: dark, literary, intellectual, profound, edgy, dense.  This book has been on my bookstore radar for years, bought by lots of those black-clad young professionals and artists and dark-side-of-preppy university students. I had high hopes. But, Yalom's novels just really aren't like that at all. They're downright lighthearted.

In fact, as I read When Nietzsche Wept, I began questioning myself as to why Yalom even made it to the top half 13 authors of my A-to-Z literary blog project.  The first book I read of his, when I originally chose him as my 'Y' author, was The Schopnhauer Cure, and it was like this in a lot of ways:  oddly frivolous,  pretty contrived, and in many ways not really a novel at all, but forced into the format of one.

Anyway, it's interesting to learn about Nietzsche and the psychologist Dr. Joseph Breuer whom Nietzsche apparently never met but whom Yalom imagines him meeting for this novel. But then, as with all historical fiction, I find myself wondering how much of the imaginings are just distortions that would never have happened but exist only in the author's mind but are now going to be forever associated in MY mind with these real historical figures (and this is why I hate historical fiction, duh.)

But if this book hadn't skipped along quickly like the trifle it is, it would have annoyed me. I am definitely not passing Yalom on to the semi-finals. His books remind me how interesting these philosophers are -- I mean, I totally get his love for/admiration of/desire to write about cool people in Western Philosophy -- but mostly they just make me want to put down his novel and go read the philosophers' actual words, myself.

The Old/Drunk West

(catch-up bloggage--I actually finished listening to this book August 21st)

finished listening: The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral--and How It Changed the American West by Jeff Guinn

I highly recommend this book, but I cannot highly recommend the title, or, I should say, the subtitle. Careful readers of this blog will recall that long non-fiction subtitles annoy me. I would be much more impressed by someone's titling skills if they came up with an actual title that conveyed something instead of calling it basically My Book and then adding :And Now I Will Give Some Indication of What It Is About.

I mean, why not just call your book The Last Gunfight if that's what you want to call it? Sheesh! Meanwhile, it's funny that the subtitle is all "I'm the real story" because the shootout at the O.K. corral, as you will learn when you read the book, did not actually happen at the O.K. corral, but our boy Jeff Guinn is obviously going for name recognition here, much as people did with Wyatt Earp's name after his death, finally giving him the fame he had so craved in life.

Anyway, being from Arizona I am of course equal parts proud and dismayed about my state (the usual, you might say) when it comes to Tombstone and the Earps, because the whole thing is so totally famous and exciting, but it's really quite the violent thug debacle that 1. never should have happened and 2. has historically glorified people who ought to be a little demonized instead.  (I'm looking at you, Wyatt. And Doc.)

Our "we're-so-meta" proof that we were there

 It just so happens that I have actually been to Tombstone, there in my fair state. Tombstone rules! As the author of this book points out, Tombstone was a booming place with actual high society at the 1870s/1880s cusp, but then it fell apart and the railroad didn't go through there (until eventually, decades later) and people pulled up stakes and it was basically going to die and be like that mysterious ghost town the Brady Bunch station wagon passed through on the way to the Grand Canyon but then the movies got a hold of Wyatt's story, and a few books as well, and then the fifties and Gunsmoke  happened, and everyone liked the Wild West mythology, and Tombstone was reborn as a tourist destination. And that is what it is today, and what it was for my drunken poet friends and me during one college weekend trip that will be forever remembered for endless saloon shenanigans and one particularly shattering incident involving a stolen margarita glass. (Not. My. Fault.) 

I look Tomb-stoned

I lost my wallet on that Tombstone trip...well, not lost, exactly, but more like did-drunken-cartwheels-on-the-street-and-my-wallet-fell-out, but some nice Tombstonian picked it up and told the clerk in the Circle K in front of which she had found it (it's Arizona, so there's always a Circle K) and I was able to retrieve it the next morning. So, despite extreme levels of drunkenness, chaos, and a bit of senseless wailing, Tombstone will always be a fond memory for me, which is how I suspect maybe some of the Earp brothers felt about the place, too. Unlike the Clanton/McLaurys who got totally unjustly killed there that fateful day.

Fun fact: A Tombstone city ordinance actually prohibited carrying guns on the streets of town, but if you were a sheriff or marshal or deputy then you could carry one, so that's part of what caused all these problems. That and the fact that you could reclaim your checked guns on your way out of town, and then take a veeerrrrrrry long way "out of town" and maybe carry a gun around for hours, and people certainly took advantage of that as well.

Here's my astonishing fact, though: I have never actually watched the movie Tombstone.  You know, the one from 1993 that everyone, especially everyone I know in Arizona, just loves, and that people argue was Val Kilmer's finest hour, and from which we get this "Huckleberry" business that people are always quoting? Yeah, I've never seen it. I don't know why! It's because I lived in a complete and total movie bubble in 1993!  (That bubble is called "Provo, Utah.") And then I just never got around to it, and...yeah. I really need to Netflix it, though, because I loved reading this book and learning all about the (real) history, and now I am going to forever be watching Old West Tombstone things and pointing out their inaccuracies, except when they watch My Darling Clementine in M*A*S*H, because that is a classic moment in itself ("Horses, cowboys, and horses!") so it doesn't matter that the movie changed, like, lots of things about what went down.

I listened to The Last Gunfight audio book on my MP3 player while I was walking or riding the bus to work, or sometimes when I went running, and I happened to be going for a run when I listened to the actual gunfight part, and it was very dramatic and kind of got my adrenaline going! Poor Frank and Tom McLaury.

Ahhh, Tombstone. This blog entry was less about giving you the facts of the book and the last gunfight, and more about my general experience of the town, as I related my story in a kind of self-centered, bemused, and melodramatic way. Wyatt would have appreciated this approach.

Grover, A Study in Double Project Whammies

now finished (actually, finished a week ago): Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage by Allan Nevins

President #22! The arrival at Grover Cleveland in my presidential bios project is a momentous occasion. It's the halfway point. It's the first bio that spends time in the 20th century: Cleveland finished his second term in 1897, and lived until 1906. And yeah, about that second term? This president marks the point in my project at which I split off from, oh, everybody in that I refuse to call any of the presidents who come after him (not Benjamin Harrison, who comes between him, but the presidents who come after) by the numbers that other people like to call them. You will say McKinley is the 25th president, and Teddy 26th, and so on up through Barack the 44th. But no! Because Grover Cleveland is only one president. He had the 22nd and 24th presidencies, and I will say that, but I can't say that he was the 24th president. Because he was the 22nd president. He was the 22nd person to become the U.S. president. He didn't become another person when he got elected again. This is a pet peeve of mine, and one about which I clearly have no hope of changing anyone's mind, ever. But seriously. There was even talk, later, of him running again, after McKinley started to irk people. So then he would have been the 22nd and 24th and 26th or something? Consider how ridiculous you sound.

Anyway. Grover. Besides his lovable name, what's there to note about Grover? Let's see:

• Like my boy Millard (Fillmore, duh, #13), Grover came from Buffalo, New York,  to the national political scene. Buffalo was so totally important in the 19th century, and I, for one, would like today's Buffaloans (?) to know that I recognize the coolness in your city in all its (well, former) glory.
• He was a lawyer. Soooo many lawyer presidents. He was also really hard working and he made me feel guilty for being such a good young man who worked hard without complaining and helped provide for his family. I totally disagree with him about not liking to travel to other cities/states for work, because he hated it and that is one of my favorite things to do, but I also probably never in my life work as hard as he routinely did.
• He's mainly remembered for being the two non-consecutive terms guy, but it's kind of more interesting that he was the first Democrat in the White House since James Buchanan (#15, right before Lincoln). There was a serious Republican dynasty going on -- you know, back when the Republican party wasn't routinely hijacked by flag-waving-social-moral-conservative-abortion-hysteria freak shows -- and Grover was the breath of Democratic air in the midst of it all. 
• Silver. Oh my god. If you ever want to spend time reading about national currency woes vis-a-vis the gold standard and whether or not there should be free coinage of silver? Grover Cleveland is your man. I personally felt my brain glazing over, and every time I thought we were done with the silver issue it would crop up again, years later. But if you're into that kind of thing -- well, then, actually you probably know all about Grover's role in the silver and currency crises already, if you're into that kind of thing. Right. Moving on.
• Unfortunately, our boy Grover was a little creepy. Back in Buffalo, one of his BFFs died, and Grover was executor of the estate and took care to make sure the wife and young daughter were provided for and doing all right and stuff. Then time passes, Grover becomes governor of New York, he moves to Albany, and pretty soon he's president and heads to the White House. Young daughter of BFF, meanwhile, goes to college. Grover visits her. They're still friends -- until they're suddenly MORE than friends, and they get engaged and married. So. Gross. It's like, really Grover? The creepiness factor just skyrockets at this point. First wedding in the White House, though, so that's exciting. And apparently, it was a happy marriage, I guess? Five kids, contentment, lots of fun times. But really creepy there, Grove. Seriously. 
• Other than that (I know, right? "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?") Grover had integrity. He routinely pissed off people who wanted spoils and favors and insider treats and tricks by telling them where they could go. Which just makes me ask, again, as I so often do in this world, what is up with men? Especially men in positions of power, but really, all men. How can you have integrity that actually differentiates you from masses of your fellow politicians, catapulting you to a position of much needed leadership, and then just be so completely entitled and creepy about a young woman? And you know, Grover also had an "illegitimate" child. I am not one to judge the "illegitimate" part, because obviously I think that is the stupidest way to label a child and I could give two shites about marriage, wedlock, and all that, but I'm just pointing out that Grover in Buffalo had certain proclivities and he did NOT have a relationship with the mother of said child, although he paid for the child and didn't try to shirk responsibility, although he DID question whether he was, in fact, the father...but while he was all about being honest and good in his work, why didn't that carry over into respecting his intimate relations instead of objectification behavior? It's just interesting to consider. 
• But you know, nobody's perfect. (Least of all middle-aged men who date 20-year-olds.) And our boy Grover was honest, a good friend, and boy did he like to go fishing. He's someone that a lot of people liked. His presidencies (there's that plural you love!) are filed under not terrible.

And now, about the book.  Not only was this part of my prez bios project, but Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage is also a Pulitzer winner in the Biography category (1933), so I got to check off an item on another of my little lists as well. However, I'm a little sad to say that I didn't love it. I liked some things about it. For one thing, Allan Nevins, the author, writing in the early 1930s interviewed many people who actually had known Grover Cleveland, so the biography and sources of much information were fascinating in that sense. Also, you could tell that Nevins, coming from a totally jacked-up economic time in the U.S., really felt that importance of the whole 1880s-1890s currency/silver/hard money/economic issues, which, as I mentioned, he writes about for pages and pages and pages and pages. He just had a very immediate sense of his subject, it seemed, which was cool. And he's obviously quite the historian, and there's even an Allan Nevins prize for scholarly historical writing something something...so good for him.

But there were occasional weird choices in the book. Here's one: how do you not mention McKinley's assassination at ALL? I mean, part of the fun of prez bios is reading the post-presidency chapters, when the presidents live to the post-presidency that is. And if something hugely significant happens in that next president's term, of course it is mentioned. And Nevins even talks about Cleveland traveling to my (other) boy Rutherford B. Hayes' (#19) funeral. So, what the hell? How does he not even MENTION McKinley? He talks about Grover and  William getting along famously at the latter's inauguration, and about how the Democrats were dissatisfied with William and thinking of having Grover run again, and then all of a sudden a few pages later President Teddy Roosevelt does something or other and it's like, what the hell?

So that's that. On to president #23, Benjamin Harrison, the one who came between Grover I and Grover II. And then, McKinley, the 25th presidency, but only president #24, who is called president #25. And so on. Sigh.

When in Mexico...(or another Spanish-speaking/reading country)

now finished: El Paraíso en la otra esquina by Mario Vargas Llosa

So obviously I have had Mario Vargas Llosa on my to-read radar (to-readar?) for a while. He's all famous and literary and won the Nobel Prize and stuff, so eventually I would get around to him. But then we showed up in Querétaro and right away I found a book group and they were meeting, like, ten days after I arrived, but hey--why not? I headed to a little bookstore here in the Centro Histórico and picked up a copy of El Paraíso en la otra esquina (translated as The Way to Paradise, more on that in a sec) and plunged into my first Vargas Llosa -- en español! 

Now, I have read quite a few books in Spanish, but mostly young adult books.  I also occasionally read Spanish newspapers. This was kind of a jump in difficulty level, but actually, I could do it! I love reading in a foreign language and I have long since (we're talking decades) known that the way to go about it is not to keep a dictionary there and look up every single word you come across that isn't "Hola" or "agua" or "isla." Just like when you acquire language naturally as a child, you learn things from context and there are many times when at first I am not quite sure what a sentence says, but I read the entire paragraph and then go back and read the paragraph again and the second (or sometimes third) time through it dawns on me. It's as if you can actually feel your brain acquiring language. I love language. This is part of why I enjoy ESL teaching -- and writing, and reading -- language is magical. If humans contributed nothing else to this planet (and at times, this is a premise worth considering), then what we've done with languages is enough to fascinate the eternal universe, I say. 


OK, so back to Vargas Llosa. Famous, always meant to get around to reading him, now I have. They say (I know, who are "they"?) that he's "right-wing" now. I didn't see it in this novel; instead, what I saw was a really fun cynicism about lots of different people in society, with a bit about the seemingly futile struggle to free and liberate the oppressed and also a few sharp jabs at the very wealthy who feel oh-so-entitled to all that they have. 

And then there's Gauguin. El Paraíso en la otra esquina tells the stories of two people, in alternating chapters: painter Paul Gauguin and his quest to find paradise and a return to the "natural" Eden-like state of humanity, notably in Tahiti, where he paints masterpieces but also "marries" several 14-year-old girls, and Flora Tristán, the grandmother of Gauguin, who travels in France, England, and Peru during the 1830s and 1840s trying to raise the consciousness of workers and to unite women and other oppressed classes in a struggle to be free. Also: she realizes that sex doesn't have to suck (as it did with her husband) when she has a wonderful affair with a woman. This book is very sexy, at times. Politics and art and sex. What more do you need? And as a bonus, there are religious hypocrites. Sometimes Flora gets into it with them: priests, rich bosses who exploit their workers, grande dames of society, and the like. "Dedicar nuestras vidas a ejercer la caridad," some rich women tell her, to which she replies, "No, ustedes no practican la caridad. Distribuyen limosnas, que es muy distinto." (-p.64 of ISBN 978-607-11-0763-3)

I think it's great. Gauguin is a jerk when it comes to the way he treats some people (for example: females) but he is a fascinating character, and that's what we ask for in a novel, no? Also, you can relate to him if you're an artist and traveler, so I was definitely hooked even though I knew his struggle to find paradise was doomed to be doomed. The title refers to a children's game that the real life Gauguin likely played in Peru where the kids ask for paradise and are directed to the other corner (does anyone know this game in real life? and I'm trying to figure out if there is a comparable game anyone I know in the U.S. played?) and for this reason it bothers me that the English title is translated as "The Way to Paradise." Although that captures, for the most part, the quests of Paul Gauguin and Flora Tristán, it doesn't really capture the way the game is invoked, described, and revisited at the end of the book to come thematically full circle. Why can't titles just be translated literally?! I don't mean translated literally when the word-for-word translation does not evoke the idea, but I mean translated without creating a new meaning. (See also: my rant about Men Who Hate Women with Dragon Tattoos.)


This book also really made me want to go to Peru. I wanted to go there anyway, but this ratcheted it up a few notches.I think it was helpful for my Spanish for me to plunge into a book in Spanish during my first month in Mexico. I still need to read, speak, and write more in Spanish -- a lot  more -- but this was a good kick-start. And I will definitely be reading more Vargas Llosa in the future. The to-readar grows ever more crowded!
Final grade: A-  (Because I'm such a hard grader. It could be an A, maybe. I'll see how it compares to other Vargas Llosa books and then decide for sure.)

Dragons and Men

now finished: Brother to Dragons by Robert Penn Warren
next up: something in Spanish, as it happens

Another check off the A-to-Z Literary Blog Project Top Half list: W.  Recall that the first time through the alphabet, I read All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren and he more than made the cut for my A-to-Z Top Half phase II of the project (which also includes A, C, D, E, F, I, L, R, S, U, V, and Y).

I was having a bit of difficulty deciding which Robert Penn Warren to read for my sequel, though. One, because he is not just a novelist but a poet, and he won the Pulitzer for fiction for All the King's Men, but also two, count 'em, two Pulitzers for poetry (Promises in 1958 and Now and Then in 1979). Two, because in all my popping in and out of bookstores and libraries whilst I was in Arizona for three months, I never came across anything of his but AtKM. I was definitely going to have to seek something out, but I couldn't decide what to seek out. He also wrote some other novels...should I try one of those since I will eventually read the Pulitzer-winning poetry on my Pulitzer quest anyway?

And then, on my last possible used books errand running day in Phoenix, just before flying to Queretaro, I was trying to declutter and I took some old books to a couple stores to sell/trade and ended up with a bunch of store credit. I already had a few books to bring to Mexico with me, and I didn't want to add more, but since I had just been gifted a bunch of store credit I thought I should at least see what they had, and right there in the Ws was Robert Penn Warren's Brother to Dragons, of which I had never heard. A sign, you say? Maybe.

Brother to Dragons  is a "tale in verse and voices" -- or was it "voices and verse" -- anyway, it is really not a play at all, although it is poetry. It imagines a variety of real figures and a couple of invented people talking about an event that occurred in the early 1800s:  Thomas Jefferson's nephews brutally murdered and hacked apart one of their slaves.  Apparently, Thomas Jefferson did not comment on this in real life, despite his extensive writing and waxing profound and all that, so you know he felt some of the shame and anger and bewilderment and utter despair at humanity that Robert Penn Warren conjures up in this book.

I really like what he does here. It's a quick read; sure there are parts you'll want to re-read to get more than just the gist, as with any good poetry, but it's less of a time commitment than, say, Beowulf. I found it to be a compelling supplement to my other current reading project of reading a biography of every U.S. president in order to see where we went wrong (a project obviously started during the Dubya administration).

RPW is basically asserting and grappling with his belief that Thomas Jefferson had all these ideas about the nobility of humanity, or even just mankind, and that an evil act such as this pre-meditated murder and mutilation really destroyed some of Jefferson's theory. It is philosophically compelling and filled with interesting poetry. The one weird part about this book is when the slave who nursed the murderer nephew as a baby speaks to him and he spits on the ground as if to spit the very milk he drank from her -- it's weird because they talk, like, really crudely about sucking the teat and whatnot. Other than that jarring section, the book was just good. I heard that RPW revised it and issued a new edition decades later, but I read the original version.

It's such a unique thing to read -- and a few weeks ago I didn't even know it existed! Give it a whirl!
Final Grade: B+

Is a war best served cold?

now finished listening: The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman

next up (audio): The Last Gunfight: The Real Story of the Shootout at the O.K. Corral--and How It Changed the American West by Jeff Guinn

Speaking of not starting the fire (which I did in my last post on this blog), after several months of listening during walks and hikes, I completed my latest audio book, The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy.

This is a perfect example of the non-fiction subtitles I used to make so much fun of back when I first started working at Borders. It's like, people! You get ONE chance to title the book, OK? Why should you get to title it one thing and then go ahead and put all the things you were trying but failing to convey in your title in a second, sub-title? That bugs me for some reason.

Anyway, I realize that people do not necessarily know what The Dead Hand is, so I am here to tell you that it refers to the Soviet plan to build a facility way below the earth with automated systems that could launch nuclear retaliation in the event that the U.S. wiped out the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons. That is, instead of a hand on "the button" launching a nuclear weapon to attack the U.S., all the Soviets would actually be dead but it is like a dead hand holding down the button, launching the Soviet missiles as revenge to the U.S. I am fairly certain that the author is appalled at this very notion, based on the way he talked about it and chose to use it for the title of the book. However, I think that's unfair. This is something that specifically would happen IF and ONLY IF the United States first wiped out the Soviet Union and there are no leaders left alive. I mean, if you're going to be all wtf?!! about it, you might want to at least consider that the U.S. is the truly dastardly one in that scenario.

This book isn't biased in a Fox News way, but it has a hint of that assumption of U.S. rightness that bothers me because I feel it caters to people who accuse anyone who criticizes the U.S. of being a commie or terrorist or whatever. I do give major kudos to David E. Hoffman for pointing out that Mikhail Gorbachev is truly awesome, a smart, even brilliant, leader who deserved major accolades for all he did in history. I love my boy Gorbie! This book also offers a bit of a glimpse at Ronald Reagan's fretting that bordered on paranoia and the fact that Reagan's use of phrases like "evil empire" didn't help matters any.  (Reagan himself reconsidered and later regretted using this phrase, especially once he got to know more and more Russian people.)

Alas, like so much of our public discourse in the U.S. among squawking heads and on the interwebs and whatnot, no one ever considers that the U.S. could actually just be a bad guy, or, even, an average guy who is equally responsible for the stupid-ass nonsense that is war and/or cold war. And that pretty much seems to be David E. Hoffman's position in this book: that the Soviet Union was horribly sinister, secretly making biological weapons and plotting to destroy the world.  He seems to pretty much miss his own (well documented) point that the people who were working in those factories and labs were completely and totally under the impression that the U.S. was also manufacturing biological weapons in violation of international conventions. (Convention as in "signed treaty," not as in "mannerly custom.")  Hoffman spells out how many of the scientists and other workers were decent people and hard workers who were often uninformed and at worst misguided, and even points out how Gorbachev was in the dark on some of this. So why can't Hoffman acknowledge that the U.S., too, occasionally does horrible things because of a few power hungry people who force, cajole, or brainwash others into doing their bidding?  (Exhibit A: Guantanamo. Exhibit B: Iraq. Exhibit C: Taxi to the Dark Side.  Exhibit D: Vietnam.  I could go on...)

And then there's the possibility that the U.S. in fact was also secretly testing and experimenting with various sorts of weapons over the last few decades.... Who, us?! Never, right?  Give me a break.

That said, you can totally learn a lot from this book and it is really, really interesting!  It might be particularly useful for children of the 80s such as myself who came of age as "communism" "fell" and whose introduction to the world of news, government and power was filtered through now-iconic images of Reagan and Gorbachev doing their thing.  Many of the individual Soviets' stories are also fascinating, as are the bits about the "mysterious" anthrax outbreak in the Soviet Union, the off-course Korean passenger airliner shot down because Soviets thought it was a U.S. spy plane (why? because a few months earlier there HAD BEEN an incident there with a U.S. spy plane going over the line, even though we are all innocence and goodness and light of course), the defectors, the flock of geese mistaken for a missile, the George Bush (I) administration that threatened to undo all the good of Reagan/Gorbie, and the tours of the U.S. in the early 1990s in which Soviet verifiers would insist on stopping on some random highway in, like, Kansas or Alabama to check a water tower that they were sure must be holding some biological weapons....but nope, just a water tower.

The Dead Hand is a fascinating book and it won the Pulitzer in 2010 for General Nonfiction. I highly recommend reading it, but I can't highly recommend listening to the audio. I know I am finicky about my audio listening (I have only recently started being able to listen to audio books, while I walk or exercise, and even now I can't listen to fiction -- I hate being read to) but I really didn't care for this narration and it made the book less compelling of an experience for me. I couldn't wait to get back to my favorite narrator (yes, I do have one, and I am pretty much choosing all my audio books right now by only getting ones that he narrates, which unfortunately did not include The Dead Hand.)

Hey, how about we all give peace a chance and stuff?