Golly, I'm as reluctant to do this blog as I was to sit down and read this book once I got to know Dorothy better. While I did use some of the time since the last post to get through a lot of Cornell's biography, there just isn't the zingers and humors that I expected in this fresh hell.
Dorothy's alcoholism, sense of entitlement, and overall laziness created her self-made inferno. An alcoholic reading this book would be sorely tempted to guzzle bottles of bootleg gin and eventually legal scotch to get through it. It is a story about someone would couldn't write. (Finally on page 400, when Meade gets to 1964, "For the first time in her life, she had a legitimate pretext to avoid writing, 'I can't use the typewriter,' she announced with the triumph of a person who has spent fifty years seeking such an excuse."
Perhaps, like me, you are under the impression that she was a gifted and honored critic and poet. Because Ms Meade does not quote long sections of Parker's short stories, the book contains only publicly recorded quips from the Algonquin round table or quotes from her doggerel verse.
Assuming the book would read like a "you were there" at the round table, the biography noticeably lags as Parker travels abroad, moves to Hollywood, buys a farm in rural Pennsylvania, directing her sarcasm to outright abuse of her two husbands, both of whom she drove into World Wars and both of whom she found attractive primarily as drinking partners.
I don't remember Parker being a significant part of the book I read about Dashiell Hammett and Lillian Hellman but in this biography their love/hate relationship, as well as their association with the film industry's flirtation with fronts for the Communist Party goes on too long. Hellman, who went on to be the executor of Parker's measly estate which she willed to the NAACP, observed "that Dorothy's hunger for love and admiration, a craving that led to intense self-loathing, could only be released by the most violent behind the back denunciations."
After a section in the book that details how all of the round table died young, most before 60, from alcohol related illnesses, Meade recounts a plot line of a play Parker wanted to write about Mary and Charles Lamb "and their friends, a collection of manic-depressive Bohemians that included Coleridge and a hopped-up DeQuincy ...all her characters had comforting habits -- opium, laudanum, brandy, homicide -- that she understood and respected." She must have concluded they were all reincarnated to lunch at the Algonquin..
And in my quest to connect all the biographies together or at least to ferret out some remote link to myself and my surroundings, two points (1) she spent two unproductive months at Yaddo pretending to be sick and not coming out of her room; and (2) she played Botticelli with of all people Zero Mostel. Botticelli is real! not a faint wisp of a memory from 1968, Purchase NY.
Finally, since I chose the book for snippets of her repartee, I would be remiss to not acknowledge that I did come away with one quote I hadn't heard before but wished I had: "Wasn't the Yale prom wonderful? If all the girls in attendance were laid end to end, I wouldn't be at all surprised."
Friday, December 25, 2015
Tuesday, December 8, 2015
S: Bud Shaw, M.D. -- Last Night in the OR
Here is another memoir, sort of like D V, sort of like the Boy Kings of Texas, recalling days and events. But Dr Shaw is more like Domingo Martinez than Diana Vreeland. Bud is king of the OR, not the barrio, but with as much if not more machismo. But it is his family, their dreadfully poor health and his own anxiety attacks that knock you back on your heels to conclude that surgeons go through life like us all despite their mystique.
I have some emotional obligation to read about healthcare given my most recent assignments. I encourage my team to read Five Days at Memorial, not just to learn about natural disaster response, but to read about the superhuman efforts people can do when they have to. Dr Shaw was marked both genetically and emotionally to become a physician: his father was a small town doctor/surgeon and his mother died young from lung cancer. He relates so much about his family's encounters with illnesses: his father's final years under hospice care; his daughter's near-death from MRSA; his own botulism during med school. And he expertly balances (wonder if he is a Libra) the superpowers and enormous egos of the transplant surgeons against the gnawing realities of debilitating, deadly diseases. I think the balance tips to the diseases.
And that makes the memoir so riveting. Shaw is not a god-doctor; he is a man, with a family. A man who jumps off cliffs to hang glide; a man who goes through a bad divorce; a man who watches his surgeon father struggle to open the cellophane around a package of crackers. But a trained and devoted person who sits with his patients' families, who teaches his skills to new residents, who, best of all, always expects the worst thing that could happen will happen post-op, before anyone else notices a symptom.
This really was not the book to read over the past couple of days when a bad blood count turned into gall bladder problems for my husband who will soon need surgery. He is starting to look like our kids old Operation game. Hopefully, this can be put off until spring as no pain has set in yet.
While between paragraphs in this blog entry, I searched to see if I could find Dr Shaw's birth date (couldn't) and ended up watching a video on one of his surgeries. It just couldn't have been real ... there was no blood on any of the team or the floor and the patient initially was conscious enough to squeeze his hand. The film did show a big liver going into an even bigger hold in the torso of some person. How could you not feel like a god.
PS It continues to happen. Dr Shaw while working one summer in Yellowstone Park's small clinic encounters a patient from Queens who lives on Utopia Parkway, the title of my next biography for Joseph Cornell
I have some emotional obligation to read about healthcare given my most recent assignments. I encourage my team to read Five Days at Memorial, not just to learn about natural disaster response, but to read about the superhuman efforts people can do when they have to. Dr Shaw was marked both genetically and emotionally to become a physician: his father was a small town doctor/surgeon and his mother died young from lung cancer. He relates so much about his family's encounters with illnesses: his father's final years under hospice care; his daughter's near-death from MRSA; his own botulism during med school. And he expertly balances (wonder if he is a Libra) the superpowers and enormous egos of the transplant surgeons against the gnawing realities of debilitating, deadly diseases. I think the balance tips to the diseases.
And that makes the memoir so riveting. Shaw is not a god-doctor; he is a man, with a family. A man who jumps off cliffs to hang glide; a man who goes through a bad divorce; a man who watches his surgeon father struggle to open the cellophane around a package of crackers. But a trained and devoted person who sits with his patients' families, who teaches his skills to new residents, who, best of all, always expects the worst thing that could happen will happen post-op, before anyone else notices a symptom.
This really was not the book to read over the past couple of days when a bad blood count turned into gall bladder problems for my husband who will soon need surgery. He is starting to look like our kids old Operation game. Hopefully, this can be put off until spring as no pain has set in yet.
While between paragraphs in this blog entry, I searched to see if I could find Dr Shaw's birth date (couldn't) and ended up watching a video on one of his surgeries. It just couldn't have been real ... there was no blood on any of the team or the floor and the patient initially was conscious enough to squeeze his hand. The film did show a big liver going into an even bigger hold in the torso of some person. How could you not feel like a god.
PS It continues to happen. Dr Shaw while working one summer in Yellowstone Park's small clinic encounters a patient from Queens who lives on Utopia Parkway, the title of my next biography for Joseph Cornell
Sunday, December 6, 2015
Reprise: 2016 Will Be Another Year of Biographies
What this woman lacks is discipline. I obviously am capable of doing most things with single focus and compulsion, be it jig saw puzzles, baking holiday cookies, and yes even reading, but need a structure or end game. So thinking back over the Blog and under what conditions were my reading and writing most prolific, it was those years when I anchored the books to the alphabet (I mean I garden that way too) and decided rather than States, it would be people.
With that pledge to myself, I even started already, three weeks before the new year. So here is:
Diana Vreeland, D V
This really was a puff piece or better an amuse bouche to start off with. Thirty two short, chatty chapters that essentially are transcriptions of conversations with George Plimpton! You get the point, there are names dropped all over the place.
So why did D V sound like a good choice? There she was, a picture of the wicked stepmother, introducing all the short term Cinderellas in Bazaar and Vogue once I grew out of Seventeen. How dramatic the profile, how dark the hair, how imposing the figure, how exquisite the wardrobe. Makes Anna Wintour, that devil in Prada, look like a Dutch boy bobbed Brownie.
Her qualifications for the job of editor were simply her ability to be everywhere and noticed. Born a bit of an ugly duckling in a house of swans, as a child she was a late talker, a poor student, and a tad reckless as a teen. She roared or rather tangoed through the 1920s. At least she knew she needed to be fenced in and married at 18, married well, traveled and dressed the part. Met everyone of any accord.
Starting with this dialogue type of life story brought back my two conclusions from my last venture into biogs: first, a biography is always better than an autobiography or memoir; and second, no matter how diverse and apparently disconnected the lives and times of people on my "chosen" list, they have a habit of turning up in each others books. And then there is always the little known, knock me back on my feet surprise: D V lived off State Street in Albany as a young bride, probably the same time my mother was newly-wed. They surely passed on the street although Diana hung out with the scions of the founding Dutch settlers.
I expected there would be lots of tales of couture and designers and there was but was looking for D V's signature. Obviously, who can live by her counsel to have all one's shoes handmade, but her proclivity to paint all her inside doors each a different color made me feel like a dull farmer's wife staining all my new downstairs doors stable reminiscent of fallen walnuts.
Just so I don't forget some of the preposterous encounters she chatted about, I will quote at length from the last chapter: "... There's so much I haven't told you. Have I ever told you about my obsession with horses (I forget who she met at Saratoga) ...I have? About the little toy stall I used to have in my room and about how I used to water my little horses all night long? I have? Did I tell you about Josephine Baker and sitting next to her cheetah at the Mirabar? I did? Did I tell you about the zebras lining the driveway at San Simeon? You believed that, didn't you? Did I tell you that Lindberg flew over Brewster? It could have been someone else, but who cares -- Fake it! Did I tell you about the elephants at the coronation. Of course I did. .... I usually know when I'm repeating myself -- in other words, the inspirations aren't coming. There's only one thing in life, and that's the continual renewal of inspirations ... But where do you begin? The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris. That's how we began our little conversation. After that, everything follows quite naturally."
Even though her conversational, random, anything that pops into her head approach to her life story grated on me, I have to retreat. That's how I tell people about me. Stories, events, anecdotes. A life lived does not come with a script or an outline, just a timeline. When I am feeling vain enough to suppose I could write my autobiography, as I introduced these 2016 blogs above, I force a structure. My preferred reference and organizer would be the trope of a polyhedron, where me, the 3-D center of the story, would have been constructed by the linking together of facets and one dimensional men, predominantly men, who came with a talent or a characteristic that I assumed to flesh my personality out. I still may do that but Diana writes of her life as a collection (well after all, fashion collections were her life). Each escapade, each expedition, each encounter glitters like a favorite brooch in her jewelry box. Trinkets, the shining things that stand out from years of daily duties.
Coincidentally, my next biography is Utopia Parkway, about Joseph Cornell, the Queens artist who made shadow boxes ... collecting things to depict being human.
With that pledge to myself, I even started already, three weeks before the new year. So here is:
Diana Vreeland, D V
This really was a puff piece or better an amuse bouche to start off with. Thirty two short, chatty chapters that essentially are transcriptions of conversations with George Plimpton! You get the point, there are names dropped all over the place.
So why did D V sound like a good choice? There she was, a picture of the wicked stepmother, introducing all the short term Cinderellas in Bazaar and Vogue once I grew out of Seventeen. How dramatic the profile, how dark the hair, how imposing the figure, how exquisite the wardrobe. Makes Anna Wintour, that devil in Prada, look like a Dutch boy bobbed Brownie.
Her qualifications for the job of editor were simply her ability to be everywhere and noticed. Born a bit of an ugly duckling in a house of swans, as a child she was a late talker, a poor student, and a tad reckless as a teen. She roared or rather tangoed through the 1920s. At least she knew she needed to be fenced in and married at 18, married well, traveled and dressed the part. Met everyone of any accord.
Starting with this dialogue type of life story brought back my two conclusions from my last venture into biogs: first, a biography is always better than an autobiography or memoir; and second, no matter how diverse and apparently disconnected the lives and times of people on my "chosen" list, they have a habit of turning up in each others books. And then there is always the little known, knock me back on my feet surprise: D V lived off State Street in Albany as a young bride, probably the same time my mother was newly-wed. They surely passed on the street although Diana hung out with the scions of the founding Dutch settlers.
I expected there would be lots of tales of couture and designers and there was but was looking for D V's signature. Obviously, who can live by her counsel to have all one's shoes handmade, but her proclivity to paint all her inside doors each a different color made me feel like a dull farmer's wife staining all my new downstairs doors stable reminiscent of fallen walnuts.
Just so I don't forget some of the preposterous encounters she chatted about, I will quote at length from the last chapter: "... There's so much I haven't told you. Have I ever told you about my obsession with horses (I forget who she met at Saratoga) ...I have? About the little toy stall I used to have in my room and about how I used to water my little horses all night long? I have? Did I tell you about Josephine Baker and sitting next to her cheetah at the Mirabar? I did? Did I tell you about the zebras lining the driveway at San Simeon? You believed that, didn't you? Did I tell you that Lindberg flew over Brewster? It could have been someone else, but who cares -- Fake it! Did I tell you about the elephants at the coronation. Of course I did. .... I usually know when I'm repeating myself -- in other words, the inspirations aren't coming. There's only one thing in life, and that's the continual renewal of inspirations ... But where do you begin? The first thing to do, my love, is to arrange to be born in Paris. That's how we began our little conversation. After that, everything follows quite naturally."
Even though her conversational, random, anything that pops into her head approach to her life story grated on me, I have to retreat. That's how I tell people about me. Stories, events, anecdotes. A life lived does not come with a script or an outline, just a timeline. When I am feeling vain enough to suppose I could write my autobiography, as I introduced these 2016 blogs above, I force a structure. My preferred reference and organizer would be the trope of a polyhedron, where me, the 3-D center of the story, would have been constructed by the linking together of facets and one dimensional men, predominantly men, who came with a talent or a characteristic that I assumed to flesh my personality out. I still may do that but Diana writes of her life as a collection (well after all, fashion collections were her life). Each escapade, each expedition, each encounter glitters like a favorite brooch in her jewelry box. Trinkets, the shining things that stand out from years of daily duties.
Coincidentally, my next biography is Utopia Parkway, about Joseph Cornell, the Queens artist who made shadow boxes ... collecting things to depict being human.
Wednesday, September 30, 2015
The Train Back from New York
Thankfully my hotel in NYC gave me an umbrella for my taxi ride to NYU and then again as I headed to Penn Station. Getting there when there was a hole in the schedule of trains north, I had a quick lunch and headed to the bookstore. I found a book that I thought would be a variation on Sherman Alexie's stories about life on the "rez." I bought The Boy Kings of Texas by Domingo Martinez.
Domingo was raised in the barrio of Brownsville in a family of five children, two girls and three boys were he was the middle on. Domingo wrote this memoir as psychiatric therapy to heal from the traumas and temptations of his youth and young adulthood. His family is comic and horribly tragic: an abusive father in a culture that fosters that behavior; a grandmother who blends Catholicism with voodoo like talismans who may have contributed to the death of her philandering husband; sisters who assume Valley girl personas to overcome their heritage; a brawling older brother and an emotionally fragile brother who falls into addiction.
How depressing, how well written and insightful, how Texan. As with the rest of my reading habits this summer, I got Domingo's sequel My Heart is a Drunken Compass. Here Domingo's life in Seattle where he moved to get away from Texas. Like other male members of his family, he falls completely into alcohol and drug coupled with absolutely horrible choices in girlfriends, It is a difficult story to read. A talented writer who hopefully will venture into fiction
Domingo was raised in the barrio of Brownsville in a family of five children, two girls and three boys were he was the middle on. Domingo wrote this memoir as psychiatric therapy to heal from the traumas and temptations of his youth and young adulthood. His family is comic and horribly tragic: an abusive father in a culture that fosters that behavior; a grandmother who blends Catholicism with voodoo like talismans who may have contributed to the death of her philandering husband; sisters who assume Valley girl personas to overcome their heritage; a brawling older brother and an emotionally fragile brother who falls into addiction.
How depressing, how well written and insightful, how Texan. As with the rest of my reading habits this summer, I got Domingo's sequel My Heart is a Drunken Compass. Here Domingo's life in Seattle where he moved to get away from Texas. Like other male members of his family, he falls completely into alcohol and drug coupled with absolutely horrible choices in girlfriends, It is a difficult story to read. A talented writer who hopefully will venture into fiction
Continuing The Massive Recapitulation
So before reading about octopuses, I had to go to NYC for work, easily the first time I've been back there for years ... just thinking that would predate 9/11 ... when I used to go to WTC quite frequently during my early years in government. This trip was in August, shortly after Bill and Em came up from Texas for their vacation up north. I believe I might have mentioned in the blog before that Em's mother is a pre-publication proof reader of paperback books and Em usually brings several with her for me, but probably also to get her house less cluttered. A couple of years ago, she brought Ahab's Wife which I didn't like that much. This time she brought another Sena Jeter Nashlund novel, Adam and Eve. What a difference.
I just checked Amazon's review and they call the plot preposterous. I tend to see it more a female Indiana Jones adventure, in a setting that harkens to 100 Years of Solitude fantasy. It is the scope and themes of the story that attract me: an astrophysicist's search for alien life, the vested interests of traditional monotheistic religions to hold to a creation theory, and the creation of prehistoric art and how art and family defines man. It certainly was a page turner and kept me reading as many paragraphs as I could cram in between conference sessions.
I just checked Amazon's review and they call the plot preposterous. I tend to see it more a female Indiana Jones adventure, in a setting that harkens to 100 Years of Solitude fantasy. It is the scope and themes of the story that attract me: an astrophysicist's search for alien life, the vested interests of traditional monotheistic religions to hold to a creation theory, and the creation of prehistoric art and how art and family defines man. It certainly was a page turner and kept me reading as many paragraphs as I could cram in between conference sessions.
The Last Five Months
I cannot believe it has been since April that I posted. Must admit, and I have been so reluctant to do so, that work has been a big deterrent, distraction and draining experience. It's not so much that I am writing constantly -- more than I am taxed to be sharp, witty and confrontational all at the same time. Come home with my brain drained, unable to look at a printed page. Of course, from late spring through the summer, I must have put together a dozen thousand piece jig saw puzzles, becoming an even greater believer in using the other side of your brain, yoga like, to gain balance. So referencing brains, let me start reconstructing what books I did manage to read over the past months with one of the last ones, The Soul of an Octopus by Sy Montgomery.
Think I read a review in the New York Times book review and chanced it being available already at the library. It is a small book and a quick and engaging read. Ms. Montgomery is a naturalist, not a marine biologist, who apparently has written several books about her world wide journeys to study animals wherever they are found. Her octopuses were located in the Boston Aquarium.
A side note: in July, I took our older son and his wife who hails from Texas to Boston for a Red Sox game, a visit to the aquarium (she loves penguins) in exchange for my return visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to see the glass flowers again, nigh almost 50 years later. While the weather and seats were perfect for the game, my son re-enacted his own past Fenway behavior, reading non-stop for almost all nine innings. He did rise to the challenge and personally guide Em through the aquarium like a volunteer tour guide.
Back to TSOAO, Sy is interested in finding out how much personality-type behaviors octopuses display, answering such questions as are they curious, do they play, are they attracted or repelled by certain humans, do they remember humans, and if these things do occur, what is there physiology-wise that gives these invertebrates the ability to do so. As she encounters a series of them, the scientists at the aquarium have given them each a name: Octavia, Kali, Karma, Athena. Each has different traits: they're shy or teases or affection-starved.
I loved this book so much, I ordered one for Em as a belated souvenir of our trip. And why did I like it. Sy describes something called octopus time, Even though the animals can be lightning fast quick in either darting away or sending out previously hidden arms to steal a pail of food, the water makes encounters with them languid. There is no fear in Sy or the scientists as they immerse their arms into the top of the tanks to let the sucker rich arms wrap around them as they get to "know" each other. Such engagements extend for long periods of time, so much so that in the silence of the exhibit or back room caring labs, they become something without fixed duration. Zen almost, and that calmness and oneness with all nature resonates in the writing. I too was at peace reading it.
I have another of her more recent books on order at the library, The Good Good Pig. Her writing is for all ages with no attempt to anthropomorphize her observations. She has a message of one world with all species sharing life. I suppose I should also read her books on lions and tigers
Think I read a review in the New York Times book review and chanced it being available already at the library. It is a small book and a quick and engaging read. Ms. Montgomery is a naturalist, not a marine biologist, who apparently has written several books about her world wide journeys to study animals wherever they are found. Her octopuses were located in the Boston Aquarium.
A side note: in July, I took our older son and his wife who hails from Texas to Boston for a Red Sox game, a visit to the aquarium (she loves penguins) in exchange for my return visit to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to see the glass flowers again, nigh almost 50 years later. While the weather and seats were perfect for the game, my son re-enacted his own past Fenway behavior, reading non-stop for almost all nine innings. He did rise to the challenge and personally guide Em through the aquarium like a volunteer tour guide.
Back to TSOAO, Sy is interested in finding out how much personality-type behaviors octopuses display, answering such questions as are they curious, do they play, are they attracted or repelled by certain humans, do they remember humans, and if these things do occur, what is there physiology-wise that gives these invertebrates the ability to do so. As she encounters a series of them, the scientists at the aquarium have given them each a name: Octavia, Kali, Karma, Athena. Each has different traits: they're shy or teases or affection-starved.
I loved this book so much, I ordered one for Em as a belated souvenir of our trip. And why did I like it. Sy describes something called octopus time, Even though the animals can be lightning fast quick in either darting away or sending out previously hidden arms to steal a pail of food, the water makes encounters with them languid. There is no fear in Sy or the scientists as they immerse their arms into the top of the tanks to let the sucker rich arms wrap around them as they get to "know" each other. Such engagements extend for long periods of time, so much so that in the silence of the exhibit or back room caring labs, they become something without fixed duration. Zen almost, and that calmness and oneness with all nature resonates in the writing. I too was at peace reading it.
I have another of her more recent books on order at the library, The Good Good Pig. Her writing is for all ages with no attempt to anthropomorphize her observations. She has a message of one world with all species sharing life. I suppose I should also read her books on lions and tigers
Sunday, April 19, 2015
Pagans by James J. O'Donnell
Pagans - The End of Traditional Religion and the Rise of Christianity was a book I started reading on Good Friday, just for the symbolic effect. When I checked the back flap and read that Mr. O'Donnell was a provost at Georgetown and former president of the American Philological Association, I felt like I had a good substitute for missing CAMWS in Boulder this March. Alas and alack, the book is flat.
As an English major, I could not abide trying to memorize the names of the English kings; same deal with the Roman emperors, especially once they tended to come from anywhere but Rome. I was hoping the book would explain the rites and horrors of paganism and the triumph of Christianity (aka Roman Catholicism). What little I took away was philological ... they made up the word pagan. The only quotes that capture the limited gist of this history follow:
"Two things happened to get this word to where we see it now. First, a sharp-tongued Christian used it to make a point. In early Christian metaphor, the true Christian was a "soldier of Christ," miles Christi, which made good sense especially among those communities that were insisting that Christians could not serve as real soldiers in earthly armies. At about this time (call it 200 CE), with a Roman army ... occupying forts and camps ... to protect the borders of the empire against illegal immigrants they called barbarians, the word paganus had become ... something like the everyday word for "civilian" ... and the word wasn't any more kindly meant than its equivalent on modern military bases. You just weren't serious, weren't strong, weren't a fighter; you were just ordinary, tedious, gutless and poor."
"This word isn't an analytical term from philosophy or even sociology. It's a stereotype, a club to hit people with. The speaker has drawn a line of his own choosing between them and us."
The book does provoke thoughts about the evolution of religious needs in history. As the populace evolves, its perspective on the need for ceremony changes. Only towards the end of the book does O'Donnell move to religious philosophy, He starts in a culture that is past making offerings to larger powers who are attributed to bringing good weather, rich crops and prosperity to one where soldiers sacrifice for battle honors. It is an empire where successful generals became rulers because the gods favored them. The pomp of religious holidays were quasi-political rallies supported by government coffers. As the government revenues shrank and as the lower classes became more removed from the ceremonies, other expressions of religion appeared, typically those that expressed the needs and cares of the uneducated masses.
I have mentioned on the blog my intent to read books with one word titles and books that cut across time by everyday topics. I must conclude that it is much more difficult even for a scholar like O'Donnell, to write concretely about a how a concept changes over time as opposed to Cod or Salt or other physical commodities.
Perhaps not a well thought out or composed review, but the library called to dun me to return the book as well as a DVD that has gotten dusty on the nightstand like movies have tended to do the past year or so.
In passing, I will mention I read The Wife, The Mistress and The Maid, a novel interpreting the unsolved murder of Judge Crater in NYC. Sometime ago, I believe I read about this crime before and this version posits a conspiracy beyond politics drawing in the three women as co-plotters.
So here are two books that I read, were somewhat interesting but nothing to recommend. Also should mention that I broke down and went back to book club last month, not because I read the book, but to see my dear friend. A serendipitous encounter has led me to a new friend, one who was planning on leaving the club herself until me and "friend" saved the literary discussion. Since then, I found out she works in my building and we shared a coffee and career counseling. At the March meeting, I fell into old habits and offered to host the June gathering, suggesting we read The Circle by David Eggers. That is what I'm reading now. Bought it last fall and started and loved it but put it aside figuring library books took priority over purchased paperbacks. Now that I have reread the first 100 pages or so, not sure I love it as much as I did back in the fall. Seems more predictable than other Eggers. Hopefully the plot will twist and turn more.
As an English major, I could not abide trying to memorize the names of the English kings; same deal with the Roman emperors, especially once they tended to come from anywhere but Rome. I was hoping the book would explain the rites and horrors of paganism and the triumph of Christianity (aka Roman Catholicism). What little I took away was philological ... they made up the word pagan. The only quotes that capture the limited gist of this history follow:
"Two things happened to get this word to where we see it now. First, a sharp-tongued Christian used it to make a point. In early Christian metaphor, the true Christian was a "soldier of Christ," miles Christi, which made good sense especially among those communities that were insisting that Christians could not serve as real soldiers in earthly armies. At about this time (call it 200 CE), with a Roman army ... occupying forts and camps ... to protect the borders of the empire against illegal immigrants they called barbarians, the word paganus had become ... something like the everyday word for "civilian" ... and the word wasn't any more kindly meant than its equivalent on modern military bases. You just weren't serious, weren't strong, weren't a fighter; you were just ordinary, tedious, gutless and poor."
"This word isn't an analytical term from philosophy or even sociology. It's a stereotype, a club to hit people with. The speaker has drawn a line of his own choosing between them and us."
The book does provoke thoughts about the evolution of religious needs in history. As the populace evolves, its perspective on the need for ceremony changes. Only towards the end of the book does O'Donnell move to religious philosophy, He starts in a culture that is past making offerings to larger powers who are attributed to bringing good weather, rich crops and prosperity to one where soldiers sacrifice for battle honors. It is an empire where successful generals became rulers because the gods favored them. The pomp of religious holidays were quasi-political rallies supported by government coffers. As the government revenues shrank and as the lower classes became more removed from the ceremonies, other expressions of religion appeared, typically those that expressed the needs and cares of the uneducated masses.
I have mentioned on the blog my intent to read books with one word titles and books that cut across time by everyday topics. I must conclude that it is much more difficult even for a scholar like O'Donnell, to write concretely about a how a concept changes over time as opposed to Cod or Salt or other physical commodities.
Perhaps not a well thought out or composed review, but the library called to dun me to return the book as well as a DVD that has gotten dusty on the nightstand like movies have tended to do the past year or so.
In passing, I will mention I read The Wife, The Mistress and The Maid, a novel interpreting the unsolved murder of Judge Crater in NYC. Sometime ago, I believe I read about this crime before and this version posits a conspiracy beyond politics drawing in the three women as co-plotters.
So here are two books that I read, were somewhat interesting but nothing to recommend. Also should mention that I broke down and went back to book club last month, not because I read the book, but to see my dear friend. A serendipitous encounter has led me to a new friend, one who was planning on leaving the club herself until me and "friend" saved the literary discussion. Since then, I found out she works in my building and we shared a coffee and career counseling. At the March meeting, I fell into old habits and offered to host the June gathering, suggesting we read The Circle by David Eggers. That is what I'm reading now. Bought it last fall and started and loved it but put it aside figuring library books took priority over purchased paperbacks. Now that I have reread the first 100 pages or so, not sure I love it as much as I did back in the fall. Seems more predictable than other Eggers. Hopefully the plot will twist and turn more.
Saturday, March 14, 2015
52 Loaves, Three Continents and Six Daily Calls to Prayer
How did William Alexander have time to bake, let alone travel when he was dealing with renovating the big brown house in the town that time forgot and tending his 22 beds of vegetables. Well, the horticulture does recur in this book when he decides to grow the wheat, to grind the grain, to build a brick oven to bake the perfect loaf of bread. Ah come on, talk about obsessive compulsive. Even rereading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance to not settle him down. It is only when he goes to Normandy to a monastery built around 635 AD does he come close to his perfect boule, actually a more communal bastarde, given that the monks want each of them to have a slice that is equal to everyone else's.
While I laughed by the first few pages of The $64 Tomato, I was tearing up in the last few pages of this book. His critiques from his children who only want him to make croissants, his outlay of huge amounts of money to learn how to make restaurant quantities of bread at Escoffier in Paris, and his side trip to Morocco, all come together to have taught him what he needs to know to reintroduce home or in this case abbey baked bread to the monks. Only to return home to miss the regime of vigils to complines and to receive an email that the monks will vote on whether to continue to use his recipes.
I think I have another one of Alexander's books on reserve but it seems a long time in coming in from the hinterland branches. Will head over tomorrow to return this one and collect another, I hope. Otherwise, I think I will start another alphabet sequence of biographies.
While I laughed by the first few pages of The $64 Tomato, I was tearing up in the last few pages of this book. His critiques from his children who only want him to make croissants, his outlay of huge amounts of money to learn how to make restaurant quantities of bread at Escoffier in Paris, and his side trip to Morocco, all come together to have taught him what he needs to know to reintroduce home or in this case abbey baked bread to the monks. Only to return home to miss the regime of vigils to complines and to receive an email that the monks will vote on whether to continue to use his recipes.
I think I have another one of Alexander's books on reserve but it seems a long time in coming in from the hinterland branches. Will head over tomorrow to return this one and collect another, I hope. Otherwise, I think I will start another alphabet sequence of biographies.
Sunday, March 8, 2015
The $64 Tomato by William Lawrence
The best book so far in 2015. Do not rely on NYT's review ... rely on the Hammagrael kid. When your college roommate says a book reminds her of you, you take the bait. OMG, it's me, it's my yard, my garden, my water bill, and on and on. On a snowy day, a day early in March when I should be thinking about hiring someone to till out the blackberry roots so the deer won't have a maternity ward, this book reminds me that spring will eventually come, with weeding and mowing and vermin control.
As much as I'd like to, I am not about to prepare a 2,000 square feet vegetable garden, although I probably will look to winter over my thyme and find some wild aggressive arugula seeds. I loved this book because it is set in the Hudson River valley, because Mr. Lawrence seems to have all the parallel experiences of a long married couple with two aloof children, a house with never-ending annoyances (yesterday, the newly installed back door knob came off in my hands, leaving the screws in the door and a gaping hole for the drafts to come through. I can relate to inexplicably high water bills, unhandy repairmen, and purslane.
At my advancing towards retirement age, I also chide myself from trying to maintain beds of flowers that are an unending cycle of tending, dead-heading and babying. And like WL, this is a hobby of only one person in the household, me, the rest just enjoying the bouquets and seasonings.
Besides laughing reading whole paragraphs out loud, there is one page worth quoting at length:
"...In short, I am an Existentialist in the Garden. Camus in chamomille, Satre in the salad. How on earth did I get here, and how do I get out? Do I want to get out? If I leave, where to I go? ... What I've been doing is rewarding, nourishing, and reflective of a philosophical belief in self-sustenance and healthy, fresh food -- but how do I make it fun again. This is supposed to be a hobby, not a burden ... a lesson in how quickly novelty becomes ritual becomes chore. The great, terrifying existential question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I've always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses, and do something about it."
I thought I mentally debated this during my two bouts of cancer and resolved the issue once and for all, Not. My daily life comes under continuous reassessment. Garden is the least of it.
As much as I'd like to, I am not about to prepare a 2,000 square feet vegetable garden, although I probably will look to winter over my thyme and find some wild aggressive arugula seeds. I loved this book because it is set in the Hudson River valley, because Mr. Lawrence seems to have all the parallel experiences of a long married couple with two aloof children, a house with never-ending annoyances (yesterday, the newly installed back door knob came off in my hands, leaving the screws in the door and a gaping hole for the drafts to come through. I can relate to inexplicably high water bills, unhandy repairmen, and purslane.
At my advancing towards retirement age, I also chide myself from trying to maintain beds of flowers that are an unending cycle of tending, dead-heading and babying. And like WL, this is a hobby of only one person in the household, me, the rest just enjoying the bouquets and seasonings.
Besides laughing reading whole paragraphs out loud, there is one page worth quoting at length:
"...In short, I am an Existentialist in the Garden. Camus in chamomille, Satre in the salad. How on earth did I get here, and how do I get out? Do I want to get out? If I leave, where to I go? ... What I've been doing is rewarding, nourishing, and reflective of a philosophical belief in self-sustenance and healthy, fresh food -- but how do I make it fun again. This is supposed to be a hobby, not a burden ... a lesson in how quickly novelty becomes ritual becomes chore. The great, terrifying existential question: If you were doomed to live the same life over and over again for eternity, would you choose the life you are living now? The question is interesting enough, but I've always thought the point of asking it is really the unspoken, potentially devastating follow-up question. That is, if the answer is no, then why are you living the life you are living now? Stop making excuses, and do something about it."
I thought I mentally debated this during my two bouts of cancer and resolved the issue once and for all, Not. My daily life comes under continuous reassessment. Garden is the least of it.
Saturday, March 7, 2015
The Room by Jonas Karlsson
Let me say this yet again: I have been duped too often by NYT review. The Room is not a funny book. Despite being Swedish, it does not rise to The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo.
It is a book about a man who is a delusional paranoid, who unfortunately reminded me of someone at work. Bjorn retreats to a "room" that no one else can see, a room that does not exist, but a mental state where he can produce work that far exceeds his fellow workers.
The NYT said this was funny. It's not. It's a quick read so you won't waste more than an hour should you decide to try it, but I would say not.
It is a book about a man who is a delusional paranoid, who unfortunately reminded me of someone at work. Bjorn retreats to a "room" that no one else can see, a room that does not exist, but a mental state where he can produce work that far exceeds his fellow workers.
The NYT said this was funny. It's not. It's a quick read so you won't waste more than an hour should you decide to try it, but I would say not.
Redeployment by Phil Klay
A couple of Sundays ago, it finally got warm enough to venture out of our igloo and feet of snow to have a late lunch with one of our book club founders. She asked me point blank why I hadn't attended any meeting in months, probably going on a year. She speculated that it was because of one particular member who stiffed my on decorating advise. I said no, but would not admit the real reason why: I cannot stand reading and then talking about books that are either on Oprah's list or the best seller fiction list, essentially books about dis-functional families, frustrated women, or biased views of historical events. So to satisfy my rebellious spirit, I read Redeployment, a recent National Book award winner, written by a former Marine who fought in the Mid-East wars, I believe had graduated from an Ivy and got his MFA from Hunter after the war. I needed to read a "male" book.
While I have suggested to some of the men who work for me that they might want to read it, I can only give it a B-/C+. I am not widely read in war recollections, I feel this was just an updated version, a tad less forceful, than others I have read, Such books almost have to be written by survivors. The lessons they learn are universal, applicable to any war. (I compare this to a memo I was asked to edit this week at work about the difficulty of program managers talking to computer geeks, a topic that echoed all my experiences from the mid-70s). All that was different between Redeployment and Nam was there was no fracking. Thank God for an all volunteer/no draft military.
A collection of stories with different characters, the one I liked best was Money as a Weapons System, a story with MASH-like humor and one that had all the absurdity of governmental best intentions to far from the ground: widows becoming beekeepers, a water purification plant with an overseer on the take and pipes with too much pressure, and a women's health care center that was a success but funding ineligible. Reading it was like a day at work.
I was thinking about telling the book club to read this. At least it did not have "discussion questions" included in the back of the book. But I can't and so my absences continue
While I have suggested to some of the men who work for me that they might want to read it, I can only give it a B-/C+. I am not widely read in war recollections, I feel this was just an updated version, a tad less forceful, than others I have read, Such books almost have to be written by survivors. The lessons they learn are universal, applicable to any war. (I compare this to a memo I was asked to edit this week at work about the difficulty of program managers talking to computer geeks, a topic that echoed all my experiences from the mid-70s). All that was different between Redeployment and Nam was there was no fracking. Thank God for an all volunteer/no draft military.
A collection of stories with different characters, the one I liked best was Money as a Weapons System, a story with MASH-like humor and one that had all the absurdity of governmental best intentions to far from the ground: widows becoming beekeepers, a water purification plant with an overseer on the take and pipes with too much pressure, and a women's health care center that was a success but funding ineligible. Reading it was like a day at work.
I was thinking about telling the book club to read this. At least it did not have "discussion questions" included in the back of the book. But I can't and so my absences continue
Sunday, January 4, 2015
The End of Normal by James Galbraith
Surprise, this is not yet another Lasher review. I actually read, understood and enjoyed a book about economics! Galbraith debunks the mathematical model rigor of collegiate and post-grad courses and puts economics back where it is often missing, asking such questions as what happens to buying and selling when resources are scant or disappearing; is the value of every dollar spent by a government worth the same amount; and how can capital investments in production increase coincident with a shrinking need for human labor?
His questions, which I have probably paraphrased into kindergarten-like simplicity, certainly merit serious discussions between individuals and by those who aspire to elected government.
the best chapter in the book is called "The Fallout of Financial Fraud." If I were to quote at length, I would be retyping pages. Let's just start with control fraud:
"... control fraud is fraud committed on organizations by those who control them ... building the problem of crime into the study of organizations ... organizations that are most vulnerable to being taken down from the top, through devices that transfer funds to persons who are in control ... from the simple device of overpaying top executives ... left unchecked, fraud grows to the point where self-dealing exceeds the amount the amount that the corporation can extract from its environment ... stock options ... diluting shares or otherwise stealing from investors ... separating the top executives from operating management ... and no reason to care about the firm's long term prospects ..."
"... looting as the fourth phase ... just beyond Ponzi .. by this time, criminal misrepresentation has already occurred .... legal exposure is already there ... the executive has nothing more to lose ..."
"... in financial firms, the temptation to loot must be ever present ... the Gresham dynamic: selling good securities is excellent training for selling bad ones .. looting has its impresarios who can take a firm that has not yet doomed itself to failure and drive it over the edge ... develop an entire repertory of skills to enhance and prolong their success."
Galbraith is describing the housing crisis and the firms that lent mortgages to people without means to pay them. These passages nonetheless resounded with me as I learn of firms coming in to "manage" organizations through bankruptcy and from control frauds and looters I find even in governmental positions.
Well, these are thoughts to digest and use as arguments before falling asleep. Still reading Lasher for entertainment and exposure to great writing. Also trying to get through Empire of Cotton which was reviewed by the NYT today and which I snatched off the library new books shelf before someone put it on hold. Otherwise, a wonderful day to read, dark, dank and 5 hours of football pending. Will rouse myself from the recliner only to make chicken in mole sauce.
His questions, which I have probably paraphrased into kindergarten-like simplicity, certainly merit serious discussions between individuals and by those who aspire to elected government.
the best chapter in the book is called "The Fallout of Financial Fraud." If I were to quote at length, I would be retyping pages. Let's just start with control fraud:
"... control fraud is fraud committed on organizations by those who control them ... building the problem of crime into the study of organizations ... organizations that are most vulnerable to being taken down from the top, through devices that transfer funds to persons who are in control ... from the simple device of overpaying top executives ... left unchecked, fraud grows to the point where self-dealing exceeds the amount the amount that the corporation can extract from its environment ... stock options ... diluting shares or otherwise stealing from investors ... separating the top executives from operating management ... and no reason to care about the firm's long term prospects ..."
"... looting as the fourth phase ... just beyond Ponzi .. by this time, criminal misrepresentation has already occurred .... legal exposure is already there ... the executive has nothing more to lose ..."
"... in financial firms, the temptation to loot must be ever present ... the Gresham dynamic: selling good securities is excellent training for selling bad ones .. looting has its impresarios who can take a firm that has not yet doomed itself to failure and drive it over the edge ... develop an entire repertory of skills to enhance and prolong their success."
Galbraith is describing the housing crisis and the firms that lent mortgages to people without means to pay them. These passages nonetheless resounded with me as I learn of firms coming in to "manage" organizations through bankruptcy and from control frauds and looters I find even in governmental positions.
Well, these are thoughts to digest and use as arguments before falling asleep. Still reading Lasher for entertainment and exposure to great writing. Also trying to get through Empire of Cotton which was reviewed by the NYT today and which I snatched off the library new books shelf before someone put it on hold. Otherwise, a wonderful day to read, dark, dank and 5 hours of football pending. Will rouse myself from the recliner only to make chicken in mole sauce.
Friday, January 2, 2015
Lasher Bridging 2014 to 2015
Falls the Shadow was probably my least favorite Lasher mystery so far. It must have been written during the height of that stupid tee shirt craze where all that was written on them was Bob. Bob is a personification of six degrees of separation, the dentist to all the main characters, but also the source of good intentions gone bad. Maybe Victor Carl looks heroic because he is surrounded by such nasty supporting characters. In addition to pain inflicting Bob are his thug of a dental assistant, a corrupt defense attorney from the convicted killer who Victor is representing in his retrial, that "killer" Francois who makes porno movies, his wife who was the victim and her best friend who were party girls at a club owned by another disreputable slug. Oh and I left out the three drug addicted teenagers.
A cast of thousands of intertwining stories is what Lasher orchestrates the best, well, maybe a close second to his masterful nuanced humor. Even a bad Lasher is better than 99% of the mysteries on the library shelves.
On to Past Due, speaking of libraries.
A cast of thousands of intertwining stories is what Lasher orchestrates the best, well, maybe a close second to his masterful nuanced humor. Even a bad Lasher is better than 99% of the mysteries on the library shelves.
On to Past Due, speaking of libraries.
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