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.
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