A Couple More on the Books

I finished two more books last week. First up was A Good Man is Hard to Find by Flannery O’Connor. Folks, this woman was seriously twisted. This is a collection of short stories and each one of these stories is more dark and depressing than the last. O’Connor is considered one of the founders of “Southern Gothic” literature and I can see why. These stories are full of murder, mayhem, petty evil, and unrelievedly show pretty much the worst of human nature. If material like this was the basis upon which other parts of the country viewed the South, it is no wonder the region was considered so backwards and benighted. That being said, I must admit that the stories are beautifully written. The language is evocative and most of the stories are mordantly funny. O’Connor is an outstanding writer who deserves every bit of her reputation. One other note, as I was going through the stories I was struck by how much her material and writing style remind me of the late Pat Conroy.

Second was a bit of a “palette cleanser” after the serious weight of O’Connor. I finished P.G. Wodehouse’s My Man Jeeves an early (1919) collection of short stories about half of which feature everyone’s favorite rich idiot and his manservant. The other half feature another rich idiot named Reggie Pepper who is fairly similar to Bertie Wooster. What can I say about these? They are pretty much bog standard Wodehouse, the problems of the idle rich solved by a bit of psychology and machination. If you like Jeeves and Wooster, you’ll like these. If you’ve not read any J&W, this is as good a place as any to start.

84 for the year.

Blew Through Another One

I just finished Becoming Odyssa: Adventures on the Appalachian by Jennifer Pharr Davis a fairly standard memoir of the (then) 25 year old authors solo through-hike along the 2200 mile Appalachian Trail. I’m kind of a sucker for AT memoirs so I really enjoyed it. Additionally it was a bit unusual because the author is both a women and a professed Christian and, of course, both of those perspectives inform the book. Anyway, I enjoyed it and if you are into AT literature I think you will too.

82 for the year

On A Roll, Three Books in Nine Days

I just finished three excellent books.

First up was Underground Airlines by Ben Winters is a thought provoking alt-history about a current day US where the Civil War was avoided when Lincoln was assassinated after being elected, but before taking office. In that time-line the revulsion of the country at the assassination was so deep that the “Crittenden Compromise”, a series of Constitution amendments giving slavery ironclad protection wherever it currently existed, was enacted. Fast forward to 2016 and there are still four states with slavery, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and “Carolina”, which includes what had been both North and South Carolina. And robust enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law is now a focus of the Federal Government. The story revolves around “Victor” a slave who escaped many years ago and is being coerced by the US Marshall Service to trackdown and recapture other slaves who have escaped into the Northern Free States, lest he himself be returned to Slavery. The main plot is Victor’s search for an escaped slave (called Person Bound to Labor or PB, in this milleau) who absconded from a textile conglomerate in Alabama (Garments of the Greater South) and is known to be heading for Indianapolis. The book works as both a good manhunt/detective story as well as an exploration of what modern day chattel slavery might look like. I recommend it highly

Next up was Harry Turtledove’s Agent of Byzantium an alt-history collection of linked short stories recounting the career of Basil Argyros, a sort of James Bond for the Byzantine Empire. The book is set in an alternate time-line where Muhammad, instead of founding Islam, adopts Christianity and becomes scholar of the Church and, eventually, a Saint (There is no God but The Lord and Jesus is his Son). Since Islam never rose, the Byzantine empire lasted in all of its power and glory into the 14th century when these stories are set. One interesting feature of the stories is Basil’s appropriation of various premature (for our timeline) technological innovations for the Byzantines. The telescope which was discovered a shaman from a tribe of nomads, gunpowder by the Franks on the Iberian border of the Empire, printing, from Persian political agitator, etc. The stories are all pretty well written and enjoyable even if they’re not great literature. The book was a lot of fun and if you’re at all interested in alt-history, I recommend it.

Finally there was Seven Last Words: An Invitation to a Deeper Friendship with Jesus by Fr. James Martin S.J.. The book is an expansion of the homily given by Fr. Martin at the Good Friday service at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 2015, and encourages us to reflect on Jesus’ humanity by exploring his last seven utterances from the Cross as he endured crucifixion. I liked the book a great deal, as I do everything else I’ve read from Fr. Martin. Potential readers should be aware that while it is not limited to Catholics, it is entirely consistent with Catholic theology and may not be appropriate for (or interesting to) non-Catholics.

81 for the year

Five More Done

Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon is a wonderful lyrical description of a road trip made around the US in the late 1970s. The author lost his job and marriage at roughly the same time and decided to just hit the road. I read the book when it first came out while I was in college and I enjoyed it even more this time. If you’re at all interested in these sorts of road books, I think you’ll like this one.

Raise the Titanic by Clive Cussler is the fourth installment of the adventures of Dirk Pitt and pal All Girodano. This time the US has a ground-breaking new national ballistic missile defense system which only needs a supply of an extremely rare radioactive element to begin operation. The first problem is that the entire world supply went down on Titanic, the second problem is that the Soviets (the book was written during the Cold War) want it too. Anyway, as I’m sure you know, our hero and his pal sort out both the current action and unravel the historical puzzle. If you like other Dirk Pitt books, you’ll like this one.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien is a sort of semi-stream of consciousness memoir of the author’s service in Vietnam. Each of the episodes is kind of self-contained, but they do come together to form a more or less coherent whole. I was quite edified by it, but I don’t know if I’d say that I enjoyed it. It struck me as being in rather same vein as Marlantes’ What it is Like to Go To War as an insight into the emotional reaction to participation in combat rather than a straight narrative of events. A great book that I’m sure I’ll read again.

Forever Rumpole by John Mortimer is kind of two books in one. It includes the seven stories that Mortimer selected as his personal favorite in the 1993 compilation The Best of Rumpole a Personal Choice, and also includes seven new stories (in fact the last seven Mortimer wrote before passing away) of the adventures everyone’s favorite Old Bailey Hack. If you like Rumpole, you’ll enjoy these.

Lastly, was Dogging Steinbeck by Bill Steigerwald. This was a weird and ultimately unsatisfying book. Steigerwald a long time journalist from Pittsburgh took a buy-out from his paper and decided to replicate John Steinbeck’s epic journey around the country that was the basis of Travels With Charlie. While doing research before the trip, Steigerwald discovered that huge swathes of TWC were, apparently, made up out of whole cloth. For example, early in the book, Steinbeck describes meeting an old Yankee farmer on a certain date, in a certain place, and discussing Khrushchev’s banging his shoe on the table at a UN meeting. The problem is, that K didn’t bang the shoe until two weeks after Steinbeck says they had the discussion, and, in a letter home to his wife with the same date as the discussion, Steinbeck describes himself as being in a totally different place. And there are A LOT of this sort of discrepancies. Enough to pretty much prove that TWC , rather than being a non-fiction account of Steinbecks travels, was in fact, more or less a novel. OK, fair enough. Good catch. That would make an interesting magazine article.

The problem is that Steigerwald, for some reason decides to go ahead and try to replicate the (bogus) journey anyway, so we get a more or less constant litany of:

“I’m in Bugtussle Iowa, and Steinbeck says he drove here on the 12th and slept in his camper in a peach orchard, but according to a letter to his wife (or agent) he drove straight-through Bugtussle and stayed in a tourist court in Next-town-over. I slept in my Rav4 parked in the Wal-Mart parking lot”.

Since he’s not as good a writer as Steinbeck, he never really manages to make me care about his travels.

Finally there’s the third issue I had with the book was Steigerwald’s Right-Wing/Libertarian slant which he insists on inserting into pretty much every page of the book. As in:

“When I stayed in the Bugtussle Wal-Mart parking lot, I didn’t see any poor people or sign of the Great Recession so government intervention clearly isn’t needed”

I get his politics, and he’s certainly entitled to them, but if he had sub-titled his book “A Libertarian take on TWC”, I wouldn’t have read it.

Anyway, there’s three stories here: the expose of TWC , which I quite enjoyed despite being a huge fan of the book, the Steigerwald travelogue (which I found rather boring) and his Libertarian assessment of John Steinbeck which I thought was irrelevant. Oh, and there’s a bonus. After exposing the fictive nature of TWC , Steigerwald apparently expected the world of Steinbeck scholars to laud him and reward him for his effort and insight. When that didn’t happen he seems to have become quite petulant and vindictive. The final quarter of the book consists largely of extensive quotes from his correspondence (both public and private) with various people he thinks don’t take Steinbeck’s sins seriously enough. Anyway, now I’ve told you that TWC was mostly fiction, Penguin has put a disclaimer of sorts in the intro to their latest edition of TWC , so you can save your time and skip this book.

Readers who are interested in Steigerwald case against the veracity of TWC can find a pretty good summary of it here: http://reason.com/archives/2011/04/04/sorry-charley

78 for the year