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.

A literary realist, a philosopher, and a crime novelist (walk into a bar?) Or, 2014: So Far

now reading: The Shadow of Blooming Grove: Warren G. Harding in His Times by Francis Russell

Yes, yes, we're back. 2014 is going to be a year full of reading projects. No, this blog was not updated at any point in the latter half of 2013, a fact I most regret. But let's not dwell on the spilt milk, am I right? Let's pour ourselves a fresh glass - soy, if you please - and get cracking on all the books that are fit to read for 2014, which stretches so nicely ahead of us.

2014 reads so far

The trio with which I've opened the year are three oh-so-very different books.

The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James
I've gone on a bit of a Henry James tear of late, not for any real reason other than that I had a collection of his novellas sitting around. I believe I got this packed-to-the-gills edition while I was at USC, but I also believe that I blew off some of my Henry James reading back in the American Lit major day, because I don't recall a thing.  Or is he just that unmemorable? The latter may be all too true. After mildly enjoying a few of the novellas/short stories (espcially "The Aspern Papers") (but that really is a short story, wouldn't you say? I think only Beast and The Turn of the Screw seem long enough to be novellas) I read this Beast last and thought it the most overrated of all. I've been hearing all my life about the homosexual subtext of this thought-provoking masterpiece and I've gotta say, I just didn't see it (neither the homosexuality, nor the provoked thoughts, nor the masterpiece). What on Earth happened between Archer (was that his name? I've already forgotten) and May Bartram?  Oh wait, Marcher. I knew Archer didn't sound right. Well anyway, what was that all about? These two might have the weirdest unconsummated relationship in all of literature, or maybe the weirdest of any relationship. Apparently Mr. James was trying to grapple with/tell us about fate and loneliness. So he has this guy who's convinced something big is going to happen to him and blah blah blah, but how does he get HER to join in with him waiting for this stupid fate? Why can't she wait for her own fate? This book blows me away by how unrealistic it is. Who lives like this? Literary realism, my foot. Anyway, it's over quickly enough, at least.

The Philosophy of Aristotle
Meanwhile, my philosophers project still hasn't really got off the ground, so I've decided to reframe it. I was going to read one philosopher per month each month of 2013, but instead all I did was read a bit about Thales online, then read The Dialogues of Plato (for Socrates) and Republic (for Plato) and then, wouldja look at that, 2013 was over. SO: we'll just say that doing the ancient Greeks was priming the pump, and now that I've done those guys AND Aristotle -- whom, surprise, surprise, I relate to the most (minus the misogyny) -- I will jump into a year of reading 12 philosophers, one per month, as soon as I'm ready to commence that project, which I think will be later this summer. (Because: so many other reading projects to get caught up with in the meantime.) I have to say that reading some of ol' Aristotle's Metaphysics and Logic can be tedious, but Poetics cheered me right up. And really, the guy was a genius. Except for the whole slavery and sexism, ugh, WHY?

212 by Alafair Burke
Aaaaand, a mystery. Mostly because I didn't read my yearly Alafair Burke in 2013 (I didn't set out to make it a yearly tradition, but the last three years living abroad in three different places, I've acquired three of her books on my Kindle for PC (because I have YET to see her paperbacks on sale in any bookstores in Asia; what gives?) and happened to electronically read one in each ESL-teaching-abroad apartment...and though I didn't get to one in China in 2013, everybody knows that even though it was January 2014 it wasn't the new Chinese year yet, so I was still safe. 212 is the third in her Ellie Hatcher series, the spunky Manhattan detective, and there's actually a fourth already out that I will get around to in some future summer. 212 came out a few years ago, I think while I was living in Chicago. As always, reading her books makes me miss living in New York City. This one was all right: interesting banter, really interesting characters (who make terrible choices) (yes, I am judging what some gals choose to do with their lives), and lots of different things going on.  However  SPOILER ALERT!!!   *spoiler spoiler go on to the next paragraph if you don't want a spoiler*  I think that what's-his-name the former cop should have been given more to do --perhaps more banter!--because he was kind of lurking in the background but he was so pivotal, helpful, and involved with different characters in different ways that it made it kind of obvious that he was the bad guy. However to my however, that didn't actually ruin the reading or anything because you still don't quite know how it all fit together. STILL SPOILERING HERE !!!! I also wasn't sure how I felt about the #ambiguousI'mnotambiguous climactic shooting. It was definitely "kind of shady, morality-wise," as Skinny Pete (or was it Badger?) would say. And finally, throughout the novel there are some paragraphs that pop up in which somebody talks too long, uninterrupted.  I often think about this myself, when writing dialogue.  You don't actually write dialogue exactly as people talk, obviously, but you can't cross the line into the place where it's JUST an explanation/rant/showing off of wisdom and no longer resembles real conversation flow. (Are you listening, William Styron in Set This House on Fire?) It might sound like I'm criticizing the book, but I actually just compared Alafair Burke to the great and mighty Styron, so there's that.

Is it interesting that I warned you away from the above paragraph if you don't want spoilers but feel under no obligation to do so, on this blog at least, for Henry James?  Hmmmm.

And now, you ask? Why, I'm reading a prez bio of course.  Stay tuned; in my next post we'll check in with the status of my bio-of-every-prez-to-see-where-we-went-wrong(a project obviously conceived and named during the Dubya "administration").

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!

Trouble With the Karamazovs

now finished: The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

Reading the same book for a month? Wishing I had more time to devote to it? Folding down pages and lamenting my lack of ability to read in the original language? Ahhh, must be time for another Big Russian Novel.

This one was destined to be anti-climactic. I've been meaning to read The Brothers Karamazov for SO long. I kept trying to persuade my Los Angeles book group peeps to read it (L.A.! That's so many cities ago!...although I need to go back there, by the way) when we had our The Books We Should Have Read in High School book group. That being said, they were probably right about not reading it at that time; I guarantee we would not have had a 100% successful finish rate. And, I no longer think of this as a Book We Should Have Read in High School whatsoever. College, maybe, though. In fact, college definitely. It's that kind of book. I probably would have loved it in college. I didn't really love it right now. I thought it was long-winded.

Now, recall that you are reading someone who absolutely loves her some long Russian novels. (And short Russian novels, but aren't there fewer of those?) Who read Anna Karenina (the whole thing! really!) in high school. Who considers reading War and Peace one of the top five greatest life experiences. Who has often pondered how Russia, much like the American South, does it -- how those two places crank out so freakin' much good literature, although they never make readers actually want to live there or anything.  Long is great. Long-winded is quite another thing. I'm not entirely sure that Dostoevsky edited this book at all.

It turns out that The Brothers Karamazov should be even longer; he was planning to write a three-part saga, but he died. This was his final novel. I kind of see him as this old man (even though he was only sixty-ish) with a life's great work behind him so everyone just lets him write and create and do whatever he wants in his art, without trying to stop/edit/finesse him to make it better. Kind of like Clint Eastwood does now. We don't really demand anything of Clint anymore; we just take what he gives us and continue to praise his genius. I think Dostoevsky was kind of rambly in the Brothers but no one cared. Why not? Just let it all wash over you. (No word on whether he kept an empty chair around to stimulate discussion.)

So, there are a few great things about the book. One, he has this crazy ridiculous insight into the human mind. So you can actually get through the book on that alone, marveling at the way these flawed characters are depicted and delighting in some of his pithy summaries of thought processes that are a bit like Kerouac's in the way they make you think, "Wow, he finally said what my brain has been trying to say for twenty years."

But then you kind of want the plot to go somewhere instead of reading five mystical pages about what place love and Christ and death have in our jacked-up world...

Eventually the plot goes places, of course. I frankly think the book got really good around page 500. (I am aware that this is FAR too much to ask of, oh, most readers.) And despite the fact that SO few people read this blog and even fewer are planning to ever read The Brothers Karamazov, I just can't offer up spoilers, which means I can't talk about huge, gigantic, major, point-of-it-all happenings like "whodunnit" and why.

I can say that Alyosha was annoying at first, but then I really got to like him, once I kind of understood him. Dmitri seems like a big jerk, but once you tap into his confusion you start to understand him a little better, too. Ivan is presented as all dark and dismal and atheist but I kind of liked him more in the first place than I did the others.

Another great thing about this book is that there are definitely great quotes. Like:

"...you, I, all of us are in a state of aberration, and there are ever so many examples of it: a man sits singing a song, suddenly something annoys him, he takes a pistol and shoots the first person he comes across, and no one blames him for it."   --p. 528, ISBN: 1-59308-045-X

He wrote that line in 1879, kids!

Speaking of the edition I read, I would really like it if the Barnes and Noble Classics edition hadn't told me a major plot point on the back cover. I mean, I guess everyone is just kind of expected to know what the book is about, but I am still of the belief that anything that happens after three hundred pages should not be on the back cover, period.

Basically, this book is really different from Crime and Punishment and Notes From Underground, my two previous Dostoevsky endeavors, both of which I loved. This book is more winding, more overtly philosophical about Big Questions (is there a god? what is family? what is love? death? society? justice? and so on), more pointless in some ways (Ilusha and Kolya Krassotkin....why? just, why?), and definitely more long-winded. Which, I already mentioned that.

However, I will say one thing: this book would be really hard to fake. The experience of it is quite different from its fame and all you hear about it in the world. I think one could fake The Scarlet Letter or Moby Dick or Hamlet a lot more easily. The Brothers Karamazov is really famous, but what do we know about its details in the world? It's about a family. With brothers. It's big and Russian. It's full of ideas and peasants and society. 'Cause it's Russian. With brothers. This, my friends, barely scratches the surface. As much as I think Moby Dick is utterly wasted on high school and college students and has so much more to say to adults who are disillusioned with life in the workplace, I still think the famous ideas about The Whale match the book itself, more or less. Not so with this book. So that's my advice to you: if you are one of the millions who has not read this book, don't try to fake it to impress that potential date at the bar who adores it. You will be called out faster than you can say Smerdyakov.

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.

Ray Zen

finished a while back: Zen in the Art of Writing by Ray Bradbury

He titled the book tongue-in-cheekily, you know. Which in itself says a lot about Ray Bradbury. I learned so much about him by reading this book: about his writing style, his process, his inspirations, his outlook on life. He's good. A true genius, so recently departed from among us.

I was one of those people who had read Fahrenheit 451 and nothing else by him, before I read this book. I am also one of those people (admittedly, there are fewer in this category) who have a Science Fiction Wall (i.e., I tend to avoid it. And call it "sigh-fi.") Mr. Bradbury specifically addresses this second type (me) in one of his pieces in here, lambasting the parents/teachers/critics/literati who mock children's interest in sci-fi. He kind of goes all Margaret Atwood on it, making it seem like real literature again. (Ray and Margaret: were they friends? Talk to me, book nerds. I want to know.)

Let's just say I am definitely inspired to pick up more of his writings, including The Martian Chronicles. But even better, this book did its job by reinvigorating me about my own writing. I am keeping it nearby to reread. Each little vignette offered me insight and I recognized dashes of myself in the need to create, to get those words on the page, to tell all the stories, the need that he so wonderfully evokes.

I can see myself recommending this to several of the smart, thoughtful, creative, interesting, and ever-so-slightly wacky people that I know. You know, the awesome people.

I can read weird things in Spanish now, too

finished September 8th: Aura by Carlos Fuentes

Weird book. Short, meant to be a little spooky and mysterious and sensual and surreal-ish and all that, variously described as "dreamlike" and "complex."  I don't know if I'd really call it complex, although there is definitely a lot going on under the surface. But it definitely does weird narrative things and blurs the lines between reality/fantasy, dreaming/waking, knowing/desiring, etc.

I have been a little familiar with Carlos Fuentes ever since I blew off one of his books that I was assigned to read during college. (Uh...sorry!)  I've never read his biggies, The Death of Artemio Cruz, but my kind Spanish-speaking-and-teaching comparative lit professor from USC who recommended me a few "greatest hits" of literatura en español for me to read during my stay in Mexico, suggested Aura for my Fuentes sample instead, and I picked it up for a mere 80 pesos in a bookstore a couple weeks ago.

Since it's short, I read it quickly, and it was definitely not difficult, though I had to look up maybe a handful of words. It just reminded me of a surrealist painting, really. That is the best way that I can describe it. A little bit of that dark, gothic feel, an interesting narrative structure (second person! that almost never happens), and yet also packing an educational punch by filling us in on a bit of Mexico military history, too. All in all, if you're an intermediate Spanish student looking to practice reading, you can't go wrong with this book! I have no idea if the mysterious feel of the book will get lost in translation -- probably not with a good translator, which I'm assuming there is for the works of Fuentes, so go ahead and read it in English, too.

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.

Don Jerky Juan

finished: Don Juan Tenorio by José Zorrilla

My August book-in-Spanish (I'm actually trying to read two per month in Spanish, but this has proven difficult, mostly for reasons of budget) was the classic romantic play Don Juan Tenorio.  An old college professor of mine (note: not that he's old, just that he used to be my professor) recommended it to me when I asked for a list of five of the greatest hits of Spanish language literature. This play is one of the best-known tellings of the the Don Juan story, and bonus fact: it's performed every year here in Mexico on Day of the Dead. 

You may be wondering, like I was for the first few acts, what Don Juan has to do with Day of the Dead. Isn't he just about conquests and sleeping with all the ladies, you may be asking yourself? Well, yes, there is that. He also kills men by the way, dozens of them, in sword fights and the like. I guess that's supposed to be the equivalent "conquest"? Interesting, Mr. Lover. Anyway, not to be all SPOILER-y and whatnot, but it always seems it's somehow OK to spoil the ending of things from a couple hundred years ago, unless you're specifically asked not to. I mean, does anyone read Romeo and Juliet  and hold out hope for a happy ever after? I'm thinking no. Anyway, in the end, all these ghosts come to Don Juan's house and give him a little bit of what for. Hence the Day of the Deadness of it all. 

I love reading (duh) and reading in Spanish and making my way through lists of things to read, such as this "greatest hits of Spanish-language literature." This one was a little hard to read, because it was all Spain and "os" and "vosotros" and "hablarais" and all that silliness. Some of the vocabulary was a little difficult, so I did a wee bit of translating as I read, which I don't normally do, but there was the added challenge of this being in rhyming verse, which mean that backward ran soooo many of the sentences that I lacked some of my normal context clues for deciphering unfamiliar vocabulary when reading in Spanish. 

When we were in Mexico City the other week at Bellas Artes, in one of the display cases were programs from performances of Don Juan Tenorio in the 1800s! See, so famous, so always performed here and stuff. This was the exact goal of my reading-Spanish-language-literature project: to be more aware of things everyone here is aware of just by having grown up reading in that language. 

No, but seriously. Don Juan is a total jerk. And it's one of those things where there is NO actual reason for these ladies to love him, but they do. Just 'cause. Sigh. 

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.

Sons, Lovers, and Jerks

finished one month ago: Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
now reading: Shalimar the Clown by Salman Rushdie
intervening book, also now finished: Grover Cleveland: A Study in Courage by Allan Nevins

Nothing like not getting around to posting about a book until a full month after finishing it! Sorry, D.H. Don't feel slighted. You know, slighted? Like the way characters in your book certainly ought to feel, based on how they treat one another?

I mean, seriously. The main impression of Sons and Lovers that remains with me, a month later, is: Wow! The jackassery!  I've never met such an unlovable bunch of characters. And I don't mean "unlovable" in that Quentin Tarantino film way, where you kinda totally dig them precisely because they are so unlovable. No, I mean just straight up annoying/mean/whiny/selfish/jerky bastard/some combination of these.

OK, but was the book any good?  Wee-e-e-e-lllllll....it was a bit long. And I'm not usually one to shirk from a lengthy novel; indeed, I love me some massive tomes. But it has to be good. I mean, it's like, a Brady Bunch episode should not be as long as The Godfather. These are different animals. D.H. Lawrence I would expect to be able to fulfill me for four or five hundred pages, because the guy can certainly turn a phrase, and he's more observant than maybe 100 average people put together, but my god did it take forever for anything to happen in Sons and Lovers. Actually, scratch that. It took forever for nothing to happen. Therein lies the problem.

Oh, except when a main character was dying. That was something happening. And it took forever. It is  never good when the reader is thinking, geez, just die already!

I suppose I'm sounding pretty negative. I didn't actually hate it. I may question how on earth it reached spot #9 on the Modern Library's list of the Top 100 novels in English, but I didn't hate it. I just didn't love it as much as Lady Chatterley, which was  my first encounter with ol D.H.L.

Yes, and that brings me to my other consternation. D.H. being my 'L' author for my literary blog project, I first read Lady Chatterley's Lover, which earned him a spot in my A-to-Z top half, and now I've read Sons and Lovers as my second book of his. But I don't know that he's going to advance to the semi-finals of my project! And yet, I know I will end up reading him again someday, because both The Rainbow and Women in Love are ALSO on that dang Modern Library list, which I am determined to get through. So even though he doesn't make the cut now, I will be back to him in the future.

When I was deciding which D.H. to read for my A-to-Z-top-half revisiting, I conducted an informal poll of my friends (i.e., I posted the question in my Facebook status, and whoever happened to see it and pay attention and bother to respond got their votes counted) and Sons and Lovers was highly recommended. I'm so curious: why? If you love Sons and Lovers (and Jerks), do tell. What makes it great?

My final grade: C+

Back to Bill Bryson

now finished: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson 

next up: returning to the A-to-Z literary blog project top half with my second 'L' 

current audio listen: The Last Gunfight by Jeff Guinn

Bill Bryson is one of those authors that I heard about a lot before I actually read anything he's written. Between being bandied about The Savvy Traveler all the time and the many books of his I shelved at Borders, I spent nearly a decade knowing about him before finally (in 2006) reading A Walk in the Woods, which made me laugh out loud, recommend it to a ton of people, and start planning to hike the Appalachian Trail (in roughly that order). I was sold and had high hopes for my next Bill Bryson, which I just completed.

I picked up I'm a Stranger Here Myself at a used bookstore in Phoenix while I was trading in old books to downsize my possessions before heading to Mexico. I thought it might be good for me right now: the whole traveler/returning to the U.S./being unsure about one's home country/quirky observations about life seemed like what I was in the mood for.  It actually took me a bit to get into it because it's a collection of a few years of columns he wrote after moving from England, where he'd spent basically his entire adulthood, to New Hampshire. I think I really enjoyed the fever pitch to which his hilarity can build in a continuous narrative when I read A Walk in the Woods, so I had to readjust myself to the concept of short dose nuggets that wrap up every few pages.

Once I had adjusted, though, I blew through the book, and even laughed out loud (on the Queretaro city bus!) a bunch of times. I had some particular favorites: "Your Tax Form Explained," "The War on Drugs," "Lost at the Movies" (about how much summer blockbusters suck), and without a doubt "The Cupholder Revolution."  Funny story: the car that we are driving here in Mexico a few days a week right now for our English teaching gig (you know, the stick shift?) is actually about as amenity-free as a car can get (I mean, seriously, no radio? No RADIO?!?!!) and several of us have mentioned more than once that if we could add one feature to the car it would be cupholders.  It's just who we are! We as a species have obviously evolved to the point that we expect, no, we need to have our coffee or juice with us to swig while driving. Bill Bryson's essay backs this up. I particularly loved the part about Volvo having to rethink its formula for success when it discovered that what the U.S. consumer really wants is a cupholder.

In the end, though (literally and figuratively the end), his address to the graduating class of such-and-such high school in New Hampshire might have become my favorite. I really, really like his advice! So much that I am going to share some of it here:

• "Nearly all the people you encounter in life merit your consideration. Many of them will be there to help you--to deliver your pizza, bag your groceries, clean up the motel room you have made such a lavish mess of. If you are not in the habit of being extremely nice to these people, then get in the habit now." 
• "There is nothing worse than getting to my age and saying, 'I could have played second base for the Boston Red Sox but my dad wanted me to study law.' Tell your dad to study law. You go and climb Everest." 
• "Don't make the extremely foolish mistake of thinking that winning is everything. If there is one person that I would really like to smack, it is the person who said, 'Wining is not the main thing. It's the only thing.' That's awful. Taking part is the main thing."
• "Don't cheat. It's not worth it. Don't cheat on tests, don't cheat on your taxes, don't cheat on your partner, don't cheat at Monopoly, don't cheat at anything."
  -----from "An Address" pp. 283-284 in I'm a Stranger Here Myself  by Bill Bryson, Broadway Books 1999.

 Awesome, right? That stuff, in the penultimate chapter, would have won me over even if I hadn't already warmed to the book.

The only problem is how often he refers to the United States as "America" (including, you will have noted, in the title).  Ugh. Such a pet peeve of mine. He has several wistful moments in this book about "small town America"/Main Street and the like, plus a bunch of times where he contrasts "America" with England. You could argue that those are two of the less invalid ways of applying "America" to the U.S., but still. No. Anyway, that's just the minor flaw I feel compelled to point out. (I'm well aware many of you won't notice/won't care.)

I particularly liked the New Englandness of this book, by the way. I have spent a lot of quality time in New Hampshire, right where his little tales are set. I miss my life in Boston, even though I needed to change some things about it, and I did, and it wasn't a mistake to do so...but still, I had a great life those years in Boston. So, Bill Bryson made me think! And laugh! What more could I ask?
Final grade: B+  (Appropriate, methinks, for Bill Bryson)

In which I eventually get to the point about Alafair Burke

now finished: Angel's Tip by Alafair Burke
now also reading because Angel's Tip was on my Kindle for PC and I need to have a real book with me: I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Notes on Returning to America After Twenty Years Away by Bill Bryson

Here's my recommendation for you: Alafair Burke. Now, please recommend a mystery author to me.

While it has been said that I refuse to read genre fiction, that is not actually true. I avoid genre fiction, which is quite different. However, of the genres, mystery is obviously the one that I'm most likely to read and/or enjoy, and I do so from time to time. My favorites, the ones who have inspired me to go out and devour their entire oeuvre, have been Sandra Scoppettone and Nelson DeMille. I have enjoyed mysteries from several other authors, too, but there are two main problems with reading mysteries:

1. Buying them when they are brand new really is cost-prohibitive for the amount you would want to read. What I mean is, they go by a lot faster than some "literary fiction" or non-fiction, so if you're going to go spend 30% off of $24.95 on a hardcover, really, which book is more worth it? The one that you'll still be reading in a few weeks, obviously, not the one you can finish on the bus ride home from the bookstore. This is why a.)libraries are awesome and b.)so are used bookstores and book swaps and c.)the Genres (mystery, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, horror) do so well in mass market - they're cheaper that way! This is also why I immediately bought Alafair Burke's 99-cent downloads for Kindle for PC when her publisher offered the limited-time sales, because that's an awesome way to buy mysteries.More should be done, I think, to make the suck-you-in-stay-up-reading genres cheaper when they are new, and then there would be more new book sales, at least to me.

2. It can be intimidating to choose a new mystery author, because unlike, say, my A-to-Z- Literary Blog Project, in which I chose a book from 26 different authors I had not previously read, one for each letter of the alphabet, and I did not feel particularly compelled to read their other books first or all at once (or, in the case of 'O,' any other books of hers at all, ever ever ever) but with a mystery you might be browsing in the bookstore and come across some mystery that looks quite good and you're about to go ahead and get it when you notice that it is "Sammy Sleuth #3" or whatever, and then you decide to start with #1, but the bookstore has the whole series in stock except the first one, and so you make mental note to look for the Sammy Sleuth series next time you are in a bookstore or library, but then the other 900 books on your to-read list get in the way, and life happens, and then you find yourself a decade after deciding to read Sue Grafton's A to Z Kinsey Millhone series (being clearly fond of A-to-Z things) still stuck on 'E'...or was it 'F'?...and really meaning to catch up but you couldn't just buy them all in one fell swoop. Or is that just me?  (But you still have big plans to catch up by the time Sue Grafton's Y comes out, and then you can anticipate and await and maybe even buy Z all brand new hardcover like. With a coupon.) (Although, recall that I have a major problem with people who make the letter X "stand for" something it doesn't stand for, like in a kids' book that doesn't want to do xylophone or x-ray again so it tries "X is for eX-treme" or whatever. No. Just, no. If Sue does that, I retract everything I've ever said in support of her A-to-Z series and I'll stop at K, or wherever I am when that happens.)

Oh yeah, and I also read a few more  mysteries when I worked for Borders and had a.)an employee discount b.)check-out privileges for those new hardcovers c.)advanced reader copies galore. That's when I read one each from Harlan Coben, Michael Connelly, James Lee Burke, and a few others...but even then I would feel, like, really really compelled to read, say, all of the Dave Robicheaux novels in a row, although of course I didn't, and then I felt guilty about that. Christ. This is the problem mysteries present to a devoted but kind of weird, obsessed-with-planning-things-out reader.

ANYWAY. Alafair Burke. (And why yes, they are related, but their books are totally different, so don't be all stupidly reviewing her on Goodreads by saying, "Two stars -- she is  nothing like her father" because that is just dumb. Drew Barrymore is not like Lionel Barrymore, but they entertain in different ways. What is wrong with people?)

So Angel's Tip is the fourth Alafair Burke book I have read, which is not bad! for me! -- although this is her New York-set Ellie Hatcher series and I did leave Samantha Kincaid hanging, note to self, must get back to those --but, see, I had this extra motivation of sort of knowing the author. Careful readers will recall that I first read Alafair Burke during law school because she was my Criminal Procedure professor and as usual during the law school semester I missed reading my book-books so terribly much and then I hit upon the idea that I could justify reading an Alafair Burke thriller as studying for her exam. This was not as much a stretch as you might imagine, because she does drop some procedure in there, thank you very much. 

I had no idea what an Angel's Tip is before reading this book. Turns out  it's a drink. A little too sweet and chocolate-y for my tastes, I think. Reading this book made me super-duper nostalgic for living in New York, and although normally when I contemplate moving back to the U.S. and "settling" somewhere I usually dismiss New York as too a.)expensive b.)full of New Yorkers (specifically, those who say New York is the greatest place in the world without having lived in the rest of the world), this week I just was all like, "Oh, Manhattan! I sure did like living in Brooklyn and being in the city all the time and riding the subway and seeing historical things and the actual Macy's on 34th Street and McCarren Park and Chelsea Piers and Central Park and Roosevelt Island and lots of food and bars and sports and art and whatnot..."

One of my favorite things about Alafair Burke's books is when her characters say snarky things. Alafair likes the clever, incisive snark (to wit: she recognizes Entertainment Weekly as the genius magazine that it is) and she's rather good at snark herself, and I like it when her characters bust it out. She also weaves pop culture references throughout her novels. I have this vision of some literary archaeologist a hundred years from now reading her books and commenting on how they decidedly capture turn of the (21st) century New York, but who was this Zac Efron fellow?

One of my favorite things about this Alafair Burke book in particular is that it makes a little fun of the whole cluuub scene, particularly in the meatpacking district, where people are paying $400 for a bottle of liquor so they can get bottle service and feel special or rich or something. I do recall my minimal experiences with bottle service at the dance club (clearly, I was hosted by other peeps) and I don't think I will drop that kind of money on alcohol even when I have it one day. I have never been fond of standing in line to get into a club or bar, and I liked that this book revolved around that scene, which is fun to mock a little bit . I was also exceedingly happy to find in this book a petulant law student, a hideously unethical lawyer, and a philosophical conversation about whether one should go to law school.

I'm not going to say much more about the plot. I half believe that mysteries shouldn't even have anything on the back cover besides blurbs and an author bio. I don't want to know anything about a mystery before I start reading it. (This may be another slight problem in my whole finding-mysteries-to-read thing.)  But I will say that I do recommend Angel's Tip and it totally sucked me in. I was reading it on Kindle for PC, having downloaded it all cheaply, but I don't take my laptop everywhere so I had to go away from it a lot and I would be itching to get back to it and find out what happened next. Oh, and also?! I actually had a suspicion of whodunnit, and this absolutely never ever ever happens for me, so that is weird. Finally, I must tell you that I enjoyed Angel's Tip more than the first book in the Ellie Hatcher series (Dead Connection) but of course I can't recommend that you start with Ellie Hatcher #2, so... yeah. You'll just have to read them both. If you are capable of plunging in with #2 in the series, you are a better different reader than I!

And now that I have recommended Alafair Burke to you, bring it! Who is the mystery/thriller author that I should be reading? Remember, I love Sandra Scoppettone and Nelson DeMille, I enjoyed Tell No One as much as the next bookseller, I really dig the interviews I've read/heard with Sara Paretsky and Karin Slaughter although I've never got around to reading their stuff, and I freakin' hated Men Who Hate Women, or, as you know it, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

Final Grade for Angel's Tip: B

Thornton, Luis and the Pulitzers (not the name of my new band)

now finished: The Bridge of San Luis Rey by Thornton Wilder

next up: I'm thinking Bill Bryson

Some of the early Pulitzer Prize-winning novels have disappeared into out-of-print obscurity. I mean, really, Lamb in His Bosom? Scarlet Sister Mary? And what can you tell me about the very first winner, Ernest Poole? Oh, but then Upton Sinclair won the Pulitzer in 1943...no, silly, not for The Jungle. For Dragon's Teeth.  Sure, everyone loves Dragon's Teeth.

OK, so while The Late George Apley may not be on your bedside table right this moment, there are some winners from those first two decades of the Pulitzer that are still well known, probably because they had Oscar-nominated films made out of them. Examples: The Good Earth, Gone With the Wind, The Yearling, The Magnificent Ambersons, and -- the subject of today's discussion -- The Bridge of San Luis Rey.

In fact, I do believe that The Bridge of San Luis Rey is more famous as a book than as a book by Thornton Wilder. Yes, that Thornton Wilder, the man who brought us Our Town, for which he also won a Pulitzer, by the way. In fact, he won two in the Drama category. Is he twice as good a playwright as he is a novelist? Maybe.

Let's get one thing clear right away: The Bridge of San Luis Rey is short. Really short. So if you have any inclination to read it, you might as well just go do it and you can probably finish before happy hour. I must say, though, that this book was not at all what I expected. The problem is, I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting. More action? More like The Bridge on the River Kwai?  Or maybe just a plot. Yes, I think I was definitely expecting a plot.

Instead, The Bridge of San Luis Rey is more of a meditation. There's a bridge, it breaks, and five people plunge to their deaths. (This is not a spoiler; it happens in the first sentence.)  The book proceeds to examine a bunch of questions, such as: Who were those five people? Why did they die instead of five other people? Were they connected? What does it all mean? Is God just messing with us? (I paraphrase.)  Some of these questions are answered, but most of them aren't.

So, if the questions aren't answered, then what does happen in The Bridge of San Luis Rey? Well... that's hard to say. There's a marquesa, an actress, and two twins that nobody can tell apart. (I know, it sounds like the start of a joke, but they don't walk into a bar. They're never all in the same place at once.) You get to know the people, sort of. You ponder love. You ponder life. I suppose these aren't bad ways to spend a couple hours. Have I mentioned that the book takes place in Peru?  This was interesting to me because I just finished reading Mario Vargas Llosa's El Paraiso en la otra esquina, which also spends time in Peru, and it's all kind of making me want to go there really quite a lot. But, yeah, Peru. Now, the Pulitzer criteria of course is that the award must go to a "distinguished work of fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life." It never actually says this has to be United Statesian, and careful readers will recall that I dig it when we remember that this whole big ol' land mass of ours is "America." But the Pulitzers are on top of that, because for the History category they do specifically mention "the United States" whereas for fiction, poetry, and biography it's more broadly "American." Which is in itself interesting (and also why The Tiger's Wife didn't win this year).

Obviously, I have never watched the film of The Bridge of San Luis Rey or maybe I wouldn't find it to be as random as I do. It's not just Peru, or the characters who aren't really connected until they are forced to be connected, but more that when I finished this book I just didn't feel satisfied.  Maybe as it sits with me for a few weeks or months I will come to look back on it more fondly. I certainly support lines like this:

"For what human ill does not dawn seem to be an alleviation?" - p. 57

And this:

"He was willing to renounce the dignities of public life, if in secret he might feel that he looked down upon men from a great distance, knowing more about them than they knew themselves..." - p. 75And I definitely relate to lines like this:

"...a rather pinched peasant-girl, dragged from the cafés-chantants and quite incapable of establishing any harmony between the claims of her art, of her appetites, of her dreams, and of her crowded daily routine. Each of these was a world in itself..."  -p. 84

And this:

"He was contemptuous of the great persons who, for all their education and usage, exhibited no care nor astonishment before the miracles of word order in Calderón and Cervantes." - p. 77

But something left me wanting. It's not that the whole wasn't greater than the sum of its parts. On the contrary, I think the sum of these parts is much less than the whole, and I found that frustrating. But I wouldn't say it's not worth it. It's short, remember?  So is life. This book will make you think about that.