July 14th: Three for the Price of One! A Month of Short Stories and Their Authors

now reading: Martin Amis: The Biography by Richard Bradford
in memoriam: Nadine Gordimer, my 'G' author

All right, y'all, today it's three-in-one. I accidentally took the weekend off from reading and posting about short stories. What can I say? It was a whirlwind World Cup weekend and we had a little moving and shaking going on, in addition to soccer-watching. Also, although I missed posting on Friday the 11th, I am totally counting my Thursday the 10th Kafka double duty as two stories, so that takes care of Friday also. Now, it's Monday, and we'll have to do a three-story burst to make up for Saturday the 12th, Sunday the 13th, and today.

Today's StoryStories and AuthorS: 
"The Sock" by Lydia Davis
"Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros
"The Gate-Keeper" by François Coppée
My Ratings:  
C+
B+
A-

In honor of today being Bastille Day, I had to read a French author for my third short story. Turns out, author François Coppée was a totally nationalist anti-Dreyfus born-again Catholic who is sometimes seen as politically controversial, so that seems to be about in the right spirit! (ha)  I think his was the best out of these three particular stories, but more on that in a second.

We'll start with the most underwhelming, Lydia Davis. Now, first of all, I know some people find short stories to just not deliver as much as a novel does, and I don't generally agree with them in writing off short stories as a form, but when I read stories like "The Sock" I completely get where they're coming from. To hear the interwebs tell it (not to mention the PEN/Hemingway Award, Whiting Foundation, and Man Booker  International Prize), Davis is a genius who writes short and ultra-short stories that are masterful, precise, powerful, urgent, and revolutionary. Well, I certainly hope that "The Sock" is one of her weaker efforts, because it was none of those things. It's getting a C+ (as opposed to a C- or lower) only because it managed to get a couple of visuals going despite being an extremely inside-my-head character meditation kind of story and because it moved along. It was definitely short. I won't argue with all the people lauding her for her brevity. But on that note, do we really need short stories that are only two sentences, which she has apparently written? (Not this one -- this one's a couple pages.) I mean, come on. That's the literary equivalent of the artist whose "painting" is a blank white canvas. Yeah, everyone is just pissed because they didn't think of it first--so it's arty. But it tells you nothing about the painter's painting talent. Ditto for a "writer" whose "story" is two sentences. What do you actually know about their writing?  Nothing. As for this, "The Sock," her couple-of-pages story about a woman who finds her now-remarried ex-husband's sock (and some other items) in her house, it is missing a few key things that generally are part of a story, such as plot. And beginning-middle-end. "The Sock" is a fragment, and I look with disdain upon the late twentieth century writers (because I do think that's when it started) who think that every fragment can stand by itself as a short story. Just, no.

On to Sandra Cisneros! I've read her before. In fact, I've read The House on Mango Street a few different times; I'm not sure if you could get out of a mid- to late-1990s English class without being asked to read that book at least once -- in the American West, anyway. I also was assigned her collection of short stories, Woman Hollering Creek, in one of my English classes, and I recently saw that book sitting around in my old bedroom in the house in Phoenix, and I'm terribly afraid I might have blown it off, as I can't remember much -- OK, anything at all -- about its short stories. For example, "Eleven," which I read online today, was apparently in Woman Hollering Creek. Whoops! Not familiar!  Well, now I am. It was a nice little tale, and I immediately wanted to send it to my nine-year-old niece, so it's fun for all ages. Or maybe sadness for all ages. It does have a beginning, middle, and end, though barely; one can argue about substance and depth, certainly, but "Eleven" does show how very little can happen and there can still be a story, unlike in "The Sock" where very little happens and you aren't sure what you're reading -- a letter fragment? a diary entry? a blog entry?  etc.  "Eleven" is just a glimpse at the life of a girl, newly turned eleven, in one brief moment of her school day, and yet you get to know her pretty deeply in that moment, and even her parents, and you get to feel hope (Esperanza!) for her, which is nice. Her life is bittersweet--you know that too, from just this brief glimpse, and she has to face challenges at school, and this day might suck for her right now, but she is learning the most important lesson of all, that she is the sum of all of her years and not just any one day. This is good stuff, if a little light on actual, you know, words and length. I should probably read more Sandra Cisneros than I do. Why have I read The House on Mango Street so many times and so little of her other stuff? (My blowing off of at least some of Woman Hollering Creek notwithstanding.)

And now for a dead white male. (Things were getting just a little too diverse up in here, wouldn't you say?) (Oh my god, that is a joke. Please tell me you get it, on both levels. Please?)  François Coppée was a French guy in the late 19th century. I love me some 19th century French lit, in general, but I also always want to learn more about it and be exposed to more authors, and I've often thought about just going for broke and getting a master's in French literature because I have an idea for a thesis and everything. Anyway, I don't think I've ever read Coppée  before today. He wrote some plays, some poems, some stories, and also some polarizing stuff like an essay on his (re-)conversion to the Catholic church after a near-death illness and some anti-Albert stuff during the Dreyfus affair. (Another thing I should know more about...hence my reading up on Emile Zola lately, so I'm working on it, thank you very much.)  Anyway, this story, "The Gate-Keeper," is about parenting (!) and not just on the part of the mother (!!) and it throws the wit around, like this: "Her Majesty the Queen of Bohemia -- for story-tellers there will always be a kingdom of Bohemia -- is travelling..."  This is more of a "traditional" story (at least a few pages long, characters actually go somewhere and do something and have conversations, there's a point, etc.) I liked it because it has a cool-ass gate-keeper out in the middle-of-nowhere railroad countryside who schools our young queen about how to be good (but not in the way you might initially think he would) and because it is well written with fun turns of phrase and because it has that kind of Pretty Woman-esque "She rescues him right back" sentiment, but in reverse, I suppose. Apparently our boy François Coppée was known for writing about the poor and the humble and such, before he joined the Académie Française and came to be known as a racist-nationalist (not that those last two things are connected). He definitely lobs a few accusations at cheating, lecherous royals and other wayward spouses in this tale. Sadly, Rimbaud apparently didn't like Coppée at all, but you know, it was hard to please Rimbaud.

Vive le conte!

A Month of Short Stories and Their Authors July 2nd: Franz Kafka, "The Judgment"

now reading: Best Short Stories/Die schönsten Erzählungen, A Dual-Language Book
by Franz Kafka (ed. and trans. by Stanley Appelbaum)
+ like 6 other books at the same time, but it's not as bad as it sounds

Yesterday as July commenced I explained that I have (yet) a(nother) little reading project wherein I shall read and reflect on one short story and/or its author per day throughout July. We kicked it off with Margaret Atwood's "Happy Endings" and my jabber about both my experience reading her novels and how I totally hated/didn't get The Handmaid's Tale upon first reading it. Today, we continue with another author I've read before, the mighty Franz Kafka. Since I have the abovementioned book of his stories checked out from the library right now and it's due back in a week or two, he shall be my story of the day author a few times this month. (By the way, I think the word "erzählungen" is more like "narrative" or "story" than "short story" as we know that term in English; am I right, my fluent German peeps?)

Today's Story: "The Judgment"/"Das Urteil"
Author: Franz Kafka
My rating:  A -

First of all, let's start by saying that the word "judgment" drives me crazy because I never know how to spell it. Everyone has that one word that they can never feel they are spelling correctly (well, everyone except you people who suck at spelling, who presumably have lots of words like that) and mine has always been "judgment" although the thing is that it can also be spelled "judgement" and therein lies the problem. For years I would write one and then the other, but no matter what I wrote, it felt wrong. Only to find out both are right. Argh. However, since this book/translator goes with no 'E' we shall do the same in this blog entry.

Although "The Judgment" is weird, it is immensely likable. What do I mean by "weird"? Well, this is Kafka, after all. But it's not absurd-weird or non-linear-weird or magical-realism-weird, it's more like emotional "What just happened?" weird. I don't want to give spoilers, but I will say that when the father gets angry and "judges" I found myself very confused. What is he mad about? Was he pretending not to know the friend, or was he really going crazy? And then there's all the stuff leading up to that: I really had no idea what to make of it, either, namely the relationship between Georg and his friend. Is this supposed to be a closet homosexual thing, and that's why he doesn't want to announce the engagement?  I mean, color me severely confused. And yet! The confusion in no way makes you want to not read the story or throw the book across the room or anything like that. You just keep reading and reading and get right on to the end and you think, "Whoa!" and only then do you ask, "Wait, why did that all just happen? What does it mean?"  (Like life?)

Therefore, confused about what the actions of the story mean on the surface, I happily turn to the symbolic realm, which is where Kafka's real writing genius lies, no? The friend is the true inner Kafka...bachelorhood is Kafka's writing/art/career/life's purpose from which engagement will snatch him away...the father is perhaps a god-like ultimate Judge, perhaps the judge within Kafka himself...the bridge is all that connects two people...

And speaking of that bridge, a cursory "what the heck just happened?" internet search upon finishing reading "The Judgment" leads me to many different literary critics (plus, even Wikipedia goes there) who point out that the German word "Verkehr" can mean both "traffic" and "intercourse, of the sexual variety" and that word's appearance in the end of the story is thus fraught with all kinds of meaning. Which is interesting, but I still see the bridge as having a lot of layers, not just one sexually symbolic point, especially because Georg stares at it in the beginning of the story after finishing his letter.

I do love the German language. German was the first foreign language that I studied, and I'm really sad that I could take only two years of it in high school (there wasn't enough student interest for a third year class my junior year, sadly, as SO many high-schoolers dutifully took the two years that look good on a college application and then bailed) and I'm even sadder that as I then studied French, and began dabbling in other languages, I let my mad German skills slip away. I need to rekindle them. Anyway, in this particular story I loved the word  korrespondenzverhältnis, which describes the relationship between Georg and his friend who is off living in St. Petersburg, so they only communicate by letter these days. Correspondence-relationship doesn't have nearly the same ring in English (not to mention it's not a word), but in my life I have totally had a korrespondenzverhältnis or two. He knows his friend -- they grew up together or whatever -- but now they are living in two different countries so they have a korrespondenzverhältnis. Maybe this just speaks strongly to my expat soul or my adolescent dozens-of-pen-pals soul, but I've had several other korrespondenzverhältnis, too, in which my relationship with a friend or family member became truly richer and deeper through letters, after or in between seeing them in person. I miss writing letters, damn it!!!

Franz Kafka. Just as with yesterday's Margaret Atwood whose famous The Handmaid's Tale was the first thing I read by her, the first Kafka I ever read was his mega-famous "The Metamorphosis," back in the AP English day. I've since also read The Trial, but I *think* that's it for the Kafka and me. (I know -- pathetic. I don't know why people think I could ever qualify as a literary snob, having read so little Kafka, not to mention less than half of Atwood's oeuvre. What the heck, people?) I liked "The Metamorphosis,"  although I kind of recall not love-loving it (it sure beat the hell out of Faulkner, though, I'll give it that!) because I wanted the weirdness to be more wacky and fun instead of darkly brooding and stuff. You have to understand that my sister was two years ahead of me in school and therefore in English literature classes, so she was forever dropping hints about things I would get around to a couple years later (in some cases the hints became major spoilers, i.e, SPOILER ALERT Anna Karenina and her train, while other times the hints just allowed me to be a particularly precocious high school freshman, randomly dropping Beowulf into conversation with other juniors who I knew were in my sister's English class when she wasn't around).  So she had talked up this story about "a guy who turns into a cockroach" and one does not easily forget that, now does one? After two years of interpretation, I suppose in my head it had become incredibly grotesque and cartoonish and spectacular, but really it's kind of sad and drudgery-laden. (I repeat: like life?)

Anyway, "The Metamorphosis" ("Die Verwandlung") is in this library book I have checked out now, so I'll reread it this week and see how it and I have aged since high school. The Trial was also weird, but not absurd-weird or magic-weird or wacky-weird, just more "What's happening here?" with an eerie calm hanging over it all. (Again: government, society, life.) Kafka is one of those authors who is constantly on my to-read-more-of list that I stupidly never get around to reading more of. I'm glad to remedy that at least a tiny bit this month!

Potpourri of February/March Reads

Some recent reads, in rough order of worthiness from best to worst:

These were good and/or great
The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins
August: Osage County by Tracy Letts
Lonely Planet's Phuket Encounter

These were meh/suspect
The Crazed by Ha Jin
Coolidge by Amity Shlaes

This one should be thrown across the room
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn

Yes, that's correct. Gone Girl is in dead last on the list. I'll get to that in a second. Oh wait, maybe I should say "I'll get to that in literally one second." Which is not true, because it's going to be more than one second, and the expression "I'll get to that in a second" is FIGURATIVE, but apparently the authors and editors in the publishing industry today (see also: The Hunger Games) don't actually have to know what "literally" means but they can use it over and over and over (literally dozens of times!) in these contemporary please-take-me-seriously novels, jarring the reader (but not literally jarring, because how could an author put me in a jar?) and making it so obvious it's the author's voice coming through. Not the literary voice or the writing voice, but the text message voice. That doesn't really work when you tell a story from the points of view of two different characters, but they both just sound like you replying to an email.

Contrast that with The Moonstone, a gem (see what I did there?) from Victorian England, but not your English teacher's Victorian England novel. It has been called "the first detective novel" (would Agatha Christie and the author of The Invention of Murder agree?) but what's so great about it is the narration. There are a few point of view shifts, and each character's distinct attributes are fun, but the snark of the old servant who tells the first half is an unbeatable delight. I love reading classics for numerous reasons, but the fact that they are better edited than most of the crap on front-of-bookstore tables is starting to become a main one. It's bad enough that we live in a memoir- and blog- and print-on-demand-glutted world where everyone who thinks they write can "publish" their words, but when the actual publishers allow sloppy, comma-spliced "voices" to infiltrate the bookstore shelves, it's the beginning of our decline and fall. And that doesn't mean reading can't be fun. I have found most mystery/thriller page turners to be generally well edited over the years, but I guess that is changing. If you want to read a classic that doesn't feel like slogging through a classic, hie thee to The Moonstone.

I read The Moonstone in Phuket, mostly while lazing by the pool and/or by the sea, and while we were there I also read Lonely Planet's Phuket Encounter. Obviously, I had skimmed that before (on our first trip to Phuket) and used it as a reference, but this time I read the whole thing. It just so happens that we also seriously considered moving to Phuket while we were there (I had a job offer, but didn't take it) and I was  enjoying thinking about getting to know the place more deeply as a resident, but still really enjoying it as a traveler, and the Encounter books are good for that: an enriching taste of a place, with where-to-go and what-to-do ideas plus tidbits and a real feel for the spot and its vibes.

I also sat in one of my favorite Phuket coffee shops and finally read Tracy Letts' play August: Osage County. I can't believe I haven't seen a stage production of it (yet) as it has been on my radar since I lived in New York, but it's gloriously funny and dark and I think it's wonderful. I love the wicked dysfunction when it is done so right. Once we returned to Phoenix, we saw the film, and I think Julia Roberts was robbed of a Supporting Actress Oscar.

On to the incredibly average! Our friends whom we met while teaching in Korea and who now live and teach in Shanghai came to Thailand while we were there so we could all hang out in our third country together, and one of them passed along to me Ha Jin's The Crazed, partly because she gave up on it out of boredom. She had heard quite a bit about it, which makes sense since it's about university grad students and professors in the north of China, kind of the exact life my friend is currently living only without the whole lead-up to Tiananmen Square uprising factor. I've still never got around to Waiting despite the many times I touched it at Borders, so this was my first Ha Jin. The story wasn't terrible -- the main character's emotional meandering was a little weird, as was his inability to focus, but it didn't really devolve into unbelievability until the end-- but the writing itself is, for me, filed under "What's all the fuss about?" The main thing about it is that it feels like reading a translation of Chinese language, even though Ha Jin writes in English. This tells you SO MUCH about language, and it is so interesting (for someone like me, who likes words and language) to contemplate the differences between what-we-call-Mandarin and English, and it opens up fascinating questions about translation of literature, our own personal translations of our inner voices, the neuro-linguistic processes of creating art, and so on -- but I really wanted a novel and not a case study. I don't see how people can fawn all over his writing if it all comes across like this, because it doesn't feel natural or like a native speaker at all. Should published writing have to feel like it was written by a native speaker of that language? Which is worse, that Ha Jin sense of prose detachement and not-quite-being-there in the language, or the Gillian Flynn feeling that someone is "literally breathlessly talking to my best friend!!!" as they jabber in a purposely casually unpolished first person?

Coolidge was "meh" for entirely different reasons. Amity Shlaes apparently has writing skills and editors, but her structural and philosophical problems outweigh mere questions of storytelling quality. It's exciting to move into the modern presidents in my Prez Bios project, but I didn't know Shlaes was going to usher us in with this In-Defense-of-Reaganomics screed. She is so eager to prove that if we had listened to Calvin Coolidge's thrifty New England budgeting advice (not that silent Cal was discoursing to many people) we wouldn't have ruined our nation/economy/lives that she makes great leaps in both logic and paragraph construction.

Her book feels like this: "So, Calvin and Grace, now a settled married couple on the political rise, gazed with wonderment at the Boston politics Calvin was dipping his carefully scrubbed toe into, and they set up their Northampton kitchen and ordered new drapes that Calvin cleverly found in a catalog sent from his Amherst classmate who now runs a railroad car and why can't you people see that Wilson ruined everything by allowing Democrats to hang things in the White House windows!?! Those Democrats were signalling to all the world our fear, hiding from the economic truths of cost-cutting and good, solid American materials.  Also, you should pray at night before bed. Let's skip now to Calvin becoming vice-president. Oh wait, you mean I'm actually supposed to connect his life's timeline together in this biography? I'd rather show how his son dying clearly reflects the impending doom of our nation, with Franklin Roosevelt lurking somewhere on the White House lawn, poisoning the Coolidge boy himself. Or was that just a fever dream I had?"

In other words, I learned a lot, including how to read a biography/political interpretation skeptically, a lesson Shlaes teaches rather well.

Last, and very certainly least, we have Gone Girl, the book that took bestseller lists by storm. As one of my clearly brilliant Goodreads friends put it, "It is a book for non-readers who 'read' and like to recommend the book they are 'reading.'" The first half is engaging, if not engrossing, although it's only eighty or so pages before the intern who was in charge of removing "literally" from every other page apparently had to go back to class or checking Instagram or something. Frankly, I related a ton to "Diary Amy," which as I'm sure your book group pointed out gives us so much to ponder about relationships, psychology, how well we know people, blah blah blah. That's all well and good, but then the book starts to veer way off course with its (ideologically) flipped-about second half, and seriously, the less said about the ending, the better. Not because I can't say anything more without majorly spoilering (which is true) but because it's so awful and so doesn't quite work, despite how well Flynn thinks she has stacked the deck against one of her characters (get out! get out! get out! yes, you can get out! and by the way, you suck, too!) .... This book is just a big sigh. Also, a deeply troubling symbol of the state of the U.S. publishing industry: Hold me, thrill me, kiss me, kill me, but don't waste time with silly things like editing, syntax, and vocabulary; what do you think we are, writers or something?

Ugh. I literally wanted to throw the book across the room when I literally  finished reading it, but I was literally reading it on a beach, so I literally had to drop it on the sand instead.

True or false: The word "literally" is used correctly in the previous sentence.

(I wouldn't suggest checking your answer with Gillian Flynn.)

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 

Tramplin' out that there vintage

now finished: The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

Fun Fact: John Steinbeck insisted that "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" be printed in the first published edition of The Grapes of Wrath. Upon receiving some galleys/proofs/something, he wrote his publisher or editor (I forget which) saying No, the whole thing! Print the whole song! It's relevant!

The Grapes of Wrath. An evocative phrase that says so much while being admirably just out of reach of those who don't want to think too much ever in figuring out what something means. Another Fun Fact: Steinbeck was slaving away on the novel and really trying to get its essence right and his dutiful wife (who typed his freaking manuscript - ugh! - but also made corrections and suggestions, so there's that) suggested the title! And then he rejoiced and was thankful and told his editor that Wife had come up with the genius title. Who knew?

OK, maybe some people knew. Just like maybe some people -- by which I of course mean "thousands upon thousands" -- knew all about how totally, incredibly awesome The Grapes of Wrath is. This is one of my finally-finally-dreadfully-late-to-the-party-finally books that defies all finally books.  Earlier this year, while the particular blog you are now reading was still taking its Great Firewall break, I posted elsewhere my list of Seriously-I-Have-Meant-to-Read-These-Forever books, which inspired me to get off my reading a** and go out and acquire one of them, and so I finally got The Grapes of Wrath, thus enabling me to check off a book on many a list: the Pulitzers, the Modern Library's Top 100, the Nobel winners, etc., and most importantly the oh-my-god-why-haven't-I-ever-read-this?! list.

One of the astonishingly good things about Grapes is that every time Ma or not-preacher Casy or Al or the couple they meet by the side of the highway or just about anyone in the book opens his or her mouth, you just get to ooze with delight at the wonderful things they say. How anyone's heart can not be warmed is beyond me.

Tragedy. Americana. One heck of a  road trip. Observations. Disaster. Avoidable disaster. Greed. Selflessness. Poverty. Compassion. Mistakes. Togetherness. The desire to be productive, which must be tempered by the equally important desire to not be wasteful. It's all in there.

Should I get spoilery on here?  The ending is something to behold, undoubtedly. I think for the moment I won't spoil, but I'll just say that it stunned me as it has stunned many a reader over the years. And I do mean the ending-ending, as in, the last paragraph. Perhaps I'll do a future, spoilery post about the ending.

Basically, I revamped my approach to life while reading this book. I now want to ask everyone I know to read it. If they haven't read it, I want to give them my copy that they might do so immediately if not sooner. If they have read it, I want to rejoice over it with them (and also maybe ask them why they never checked to make sure that I, too, had read it).

I think that if you have read it and don't like it, maybe you're kind of a jerk. I'm just sayin' ... It's just really, really enjoyable, while simultaneously being soul-crushingly devastating and heartwarming. How does he do that?!

And of course, the obligatory early 2000s comments: my, how history repeats itself! The more things change...! When will we ever learn?  And so forth.

Stop reading my blog and go read The Grapes of Wrath.  (But then come back here and we'll talk about it.)

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!

Awesome Quotes From Shalimar the Clown

finished a while ago, and loved: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

I didn't even mean to read Shalimar the Clown, as I have mentioned, but it turned out to be wonderful and magical and awesome. My boy Salman Rushdie is such a writer, and he weaves and spins the language and characters into far-flung locales that feel close to home, serious whimsy, and really personal tales that resonate globally. This book, even more than The Satanic Verses, made me just LOVE how Rushdie's brain works. I will offer up a few sample quotes from the book, to try to convince you of its perfect truth:

"Religion was folly and yet its stories moved her and this was confusing." ( p. 22) 

"Again with the religious imagery. New images urgently needed to be made. Images for a godless world." (p.23)

"He tried to believe that the global structures he had helped to build, the pathways of influence, money and power, the multinational associations, the treaty organizations, the frameworks of cooperation and law whose purpose had been to deal with a hot war turned cold, would still function in the future that lay beyond what he could foresee. She saw in him a desperate need to believe that the ending of his age would be happy, and that the new world which would come after would be better than the one that would die with him." (p.24)

"They don't make no glass slippers no more. They already closed the factory." (p. 46)
(and everything else that comes out of the mouth of the Russian landlady who says this)

"The Ass, by contrast, is a coward and runs from danger; however you must remember in mitigation that he is an Ass, just as a jackal is a jackal and a leopard is a leopard and a boar has no option but  to be boarish one hundred percent of the time. They neither know nor shape their own nature;  rather, their nature knows and shapes them. There are no surprises in the animal kingdom. Only Man's character is suspect and shifting. Only Man, knowing good, can do evil. Only Man wears masks. Only Man is a disappointment to himself." (p.113-114)

An entire passage making fun of military-government "reasoning" about dissenting citizens: the integer/fraction/integrity/India/Kashmir bit on p. 119.

"'You can know a man for fifty years,' he said, 'and still not know what he's capable of.' Harbans shrugged in self-deprecation. 'You never know the answer to the questions of life until you're asked,' he said." (p.354)

"General Kachhwaha despised the fundamentalists, the jihadis, the Hizb, but he despised the secular nationalists more. What sort of God was secular nationalism? People would not die for that for very long." (p.373)

"He named the Los Angeles River after the angels of Assisi and their holy mistress and twelve years later, when a new settlement was established here, it took its title from the river's full name, becoming El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciúncula, the Town of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels of the Very Small Plot of Land. But the City of Angels now stood on a Very Large Plot of Land Indeed, thought India Ophuls, and those who dwelt there needed mightier protectors than they had been given, A-list, A-team angels, angels familiar with the violence and disorder of giant cities, butt-kicking Angeleno angels, not the small-time, underpowered, effeminate, hello-birds-hello-sky, love-and-peace, sissy-Assisi kind." (p.416)  
Note: This last one may be my favorite L.A. quote of all time. Definitely up there, anyway.

This is a sample of what you have in store when you read Shalimar the Clown.  So much wonderful!

quotes taken from mass market edition ISBN: 0-8129-7698-3

Highly recommended alert: Shalimar!

now finished: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie

I hadn't really planned to read Shalimar the Clown. Careful readers of this blog(and even some of the half-assed ones) will recall that Salman Rushdie was my 'R' author in my A-to-Z Literary Blog project, wherein I read a book from each of 26 new-to-me-but-famous-and-I-always-meant-to-read-them authors, one for each letter of the alphabet. (Mostly. Sorry, Gao.) For my first Rushdie, a few years back during the project, I read The Satanic Verses. (Um, it was weird. Good, but weird. And anyone who wants to kill an author for writing a book is a stupid worthless stupid dumb jerkity jerk, end of story, but no, I did not see anything in that book worth getting outraged about.)  Now, I am deep into my A-to-Z Top Half project, wherein I chose my 13 favorite authors of the 26 and am reading a second book by each of them. I have only a few left! So, here I am in Mexico, with less access to the books in English than I normally would have, so I asked some of my fellow expat reading peeps around these parts if they had any Salman Rushdie, because that's a pretty likely thing among travelers/English teachers, unlike some of my other A-to-Z top half authors (I'm looking at you, Warren-Styron.) I pretty much just assumed someone would have Midnight's Children, but instead, I was loaned Shalimar the Clown.

Well, guess what? It's awesome. I mean, seriously awesome. Its awesomenes sneaks up on you, too, so you're going along about page 350, 360 or so, and you've been caught up in these characters for a while, and you've learned a lot, and you REALLY want to go visit Kashmir because it just sounds heavenly, and you really like what he did with his descriptions of L.A. in the first chapter, and you totally dig lots of the characters who live in these two villages, and you are starting to think about big global issues because you see how its all coming together, and - wow! It hits you. This is going to a really awesome place, isn't it?

Of course, it's horrible, what happens. Because revenge is horrible, but specifically, death as revenge is horrible. And no, I am not spoiler-ing, because said murder happens in the first chapter, but then you learn more about it for the rest of the book. And you learn about a million other things besides. Among them: on what grounds would you, yourself, kill. To save your own life? Your family's? Your country's?  What about to save those entities' honor? Ahhhh, the lines we draw.

Salman Rushdie is, of course, awesomely equipped to write about this subject, being the object of the horrible stupid horrible nonsensical violent murderous horrible fatwa and all. But he doesn't hit you over the head; like I said, the awesomeness of the big questions sneaks up on you.

As I mentioned in my Goodreads review, this book should be required reading for everyone in the post-9/11 world, but unfortunately, so many people just would not get it.

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.)