Have you ever been down Salinas way, where Steinbeck found the valley?

I think Steinbeck is our most humanistic writer, and if he were alive I might write to him and ask him to mentor me. His heroes aren’t astronauts or CEOs or generals: he writes of shop keepers, farmhands and, most famously, the displaced. And when he has to let them down, when he has to poke somebody, he does it with such grace that you barely notice what’s happening. And that makes the tragedy all the more poignant.

And yow! What a writer. From The Pastures of Heaven:

“The place was quiet, the kind of humming quiet that flies and bees and crickets make. The whole hillside sang softly in the sun. Molly approached on tiptoe. Her heart was beating violently.”

“No, Miss Martin, he should be allowed to go free. He is not dangerous. No one can make a garden as he can. No one can milk so swiftly or so gently. He is a good boy. He can break a mad horse without riding it; he can train a dog without whipping it., but the law says he must sit in the first grade repeating ‘C-A-T- cat’ for seven years. If he had been dangerous he could have killed me when I whipped him.”

And this, which could be a proud motto for any writer (or reader): “Oh, well, it’s almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.”

There you go. The Pastures of Heaven was Steinbeck’s 2^nd book, I guess. It’s not really a novel, like Of Mice and Men or Winter of Our Discontent is a novel. It’s a collection of stories about the residents of Las Pasturas del Cielo, somewhere in California, near Monterrey and Salinas. The main character in one story may turn up as a supporting character in another (the only ones who don’t are the Lopez sisters, whose story is among the most interesting). None end well; some end tragically. The pastures, the valley, is a character, the main one.

The people live in paradise, but have sad, glad and mundane lives like everyone else. Blah, blah. And blah. That’s not the point. The point is the kindness Steinbeck feels for them, the artistry of the story telling.

You should find it. You should read it. Because, um, you know: it’s almost impossible to read a fine thing without wanting to do a fine thing.

(BTW the title of this entry comes from the third part of the tripartite "California Saga" on Holland, the Beach Boys fine disjointed 1973 past-their-prime album. Great song, nice harmonies on the "water, water"chorus.)

(Perhaps I should sometime share more of my profound insightful criticism of that stuff with the notes and clefs. You know. That music thing. )

Like the moon and the stars and the sun...

One nice thing about this time of year in Omaha, Nebraska, is that the sun is rising right around the time I'm standing on the corner waiting for the bus. Dawn with a few clouds in the sky is probably the most beautiful sight within 500 miles. Well, okay - sometimes the sunset's just as nice.

I thought I had mentioned this before, but maybe not. Some mornings we have the moon bright and hopeful, the stars being mysterious and shy, and the sun rising through soft colors -- all at once, all visible at the same time. Nice.

Something like that almost justifies standing on a street corner on a gusty day with snow soaking your shoes and dangerous wind chills rattling your bones.

Coming soon: The Pastures of Heaven by John Steinbeck.

Agatha

Ordeal by Innocence by Agatha Christie: I figured it out about half way through. The murder being solved is two years old when the book begins, kind of a sedate, mannered and linear Cold Case (Sundays on CBS - time fluid because the Sunday afternoon football game always {always!} goes long and CBS never lets us know by how long or how late it's prime time shows wil start).

I won't give away the ending, but be aware that not all the characters make it through. I do believe most Agatha books end up with at least two murders, and this one actually kind of demands it. It kind of needs it, too: most of the book is people going around and talking to each other. Then they think -- offstage, while others talk. Is it borderline boring? Well, three-quarters of the way in, a deus-ex-machina little boy shows up, and I got excited - something happens! Turns out he just talks, but, cool!

So I've decided the genius of Agatha is to be found in the Poirot books and, to a little extent, Miss Marple. Poirot always amuses me. The books without him or Marple have not amused me, not a bit. This one wasn't awful, but it was sure, um, unexciting.

Bondage. Of Human Bondage.

Thanksgiving has been great, family together on and off all weekend. Yesterday we watched "Brother where art thou", tonight it's "Juno". So I'm feeling warm and relaxed, and probably shouldn't be tackling a mini review of Of Human Bondage. But . . .

The first pages are so sad, and I think the two great early disappointments in his life are what bind Phillip for the rest of his life. He, like all children, have absolute faith in the invincibility of his mother. She dies. Later, he has absolute faith that faith in God can cure his clubfoot. It does not. His infirmity slows him, but it's his sure knowledge that life's point is to smash belief and thwart hope that leads to his calamitous decisions -- maybe even masochistic decisions -- particularly in regard to Mildred. Mildred is a loser, but a loser with a sugar daddy.

Phillip's savior is a guy with a ridiculous name, Thorpe Athelny (or Athelny Thorpe, I forget, and yes, I also forget how to spell it). This is a great character; all the characters are fully developed, unique personalities, an interesting in their own ways, which is maybe the best thing about the book. But Thorpe is the best. He's an extraordinary man in an ordinary life, and it's his daughter with whom Phillip finally finds fulfillment.

By the way, these people are all pretty randy. Yet, that Mildred's a hooker horrifies them beyond belief. Irony? Hypocrisy?

Sky wants to use the PC now to look up something about Wario. And so to bed. NOT!!

True Enough

I've noticed that in the morning the wind always blows from the west, and in the late afternoon it blows from the north. And, it should be noted, in the morning I have to face west to see the bus, and after work I have to face north.

I don't suppose that's scientifically true, but it's true enough.

When you're lightly dozing, words get mixed up and inverted and you're not really sure what you're hearing. Maybe other words were said, and maybe it wasn't just one but many conversations, but this is what I heard today'

"In the puddle."
"No!"
"When that happens."
The Bolshoi?
"Yes I think so."

If I'd paid more attention, of course, I would no longer have been lightly dozing.

So I just finished Of Human Bondage. Now I know what critics mean by "great". I'm not sure yet why it's great, but I know what it is. It may be great, but it's greatness sneaks up on you. More on that, and the book, later.

Election Day 2

3:30pm (CST) You know, it's apparent that the networks are preparing for an Obama win, and that almost everyone expects an Obama win, and that almost everyone wants an Obama win.

It's almost like we've been an occupied country and now help is on the way. I think most Americans -- liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat -- don't want us to be a nation that embraces torture, that allows spying on its citizens, that has a strongman who ignores the legislature and the rule of law in general, that invades countries and starts wars without provocation.

It's an hour till the first polls close. Chris Matthews is saying "Americans want this election to happen, they want hope." So I guess he agrees. Now David Gregory is saying that America knows war but not prosperity, and Rachel adds it's the first time there has never been an inkling that the sitting VP would run. We want Obama.

Now MSNBC is recollecting, the first slaves brought here, the sense of history.

At Fox, no one looks happy. Karl Rove is forcing his smile. Perhaps the day is coming when he will be arrested. He should be. Crimes against the American Ideal.

4:17pm CNN now adds a Funnel of Drawers to its tech collection and, with the Movable Map, is close to becoming totally incomprehensible.

Back to MSNBC. I suppose I am not alone in being surprised to learn that this is not an "election", but an "election cycle".

Meanwhile, I get the cosmic view from the pets. The dog sleeps, the cat wants to eat and go outside. On the surface of the sun, on the pluperfect planet Wouldhavebeen, in the center of the Earth - this election is quite trivial.

5:56pm So I went outside and played with Sky for a long while, because we're surrounded by important things, and playing with a child is right at the top of the list.

But then it got dark.

Two happy things have happened: 1) the "Hateful Pastor" anti-Obama Wright ads are backfiring in Pennsylvania, according to Howard Fineman. Seems it's managed to get virtually every black person in Philadelphia riled up and out to vote.

NBC has given Kentucky to McCain, Vermont to Obama.

The 2nd good news: Elizabeth Dole is evidently going to lose her Senate seat. She ran that horrible, sleazy ad about her opponent's religious faith.

Please oh please let this be the end of negative advertising.

9:39pm Obama has 207 electoral votes projected), and California and a few other biggies in his pocket still aren't in. It's pretty much over.

Bye to everything George Bush is a symbol of: dividing, demonizing, bullying, arrogance, hate. America is free again.

Still, tomorrow's gonna be another working day, and I've got to get some rest.

That's a line from another great song. Hooray for us.

Election Day

12:55pm I voted a few days ago, and tool today off so I could help others vote in some way. I didn't do much. In fact I did much less than what was done to me.

I was asked a little after nine to pick up a lady, Charlene was her name and I guess she was about 65. She was sitting on her front porch in North Omaha, surrounded by a beautifully trimmed and manicured garden just a few weeks, maybe, past its prime. She told me she went out to empty lots and parks and found plants she liked, and she didn't really know what she was doing beyond that, just gathering what she liked. I said I'd like to see it in the summer.

Her polling place was Girls Inc on 45th Street. The parking lot was full and there were lots of cars parked on the street, and Charlene worried that a Brenda Council sign was too close to the polling place, that she sure didn't want anything to mess anything up, that there be nothing to cause any problems or raise any questions from the people who cause problems and raise questions. I just said I think it's okay.

She brought a chair with her, Charlene did, and it was a good thing. There was no one outside, but inside the line stretched from one end of Girls Inc to the other. There were a few white people, but it was mostly African Americans, and I went to the front of the line and asked what time those folks had arrived. "Eight thirty-five" a guy told me. It was now 9:28. I went back and told Charlene it's be an hour or so.. She knew some people and started talking to them, so I went outside and read a little and talked to a few older guys, and then I noticed how many of the people in line were probably as old or older than me, over 60, and I realized they were being patient and careful and cheerful, like they know someone was waiting to take something away but, goddammit, this time they weren't letting go.

Mari had said we'd probably be crying tonight as the returns came in. Well, I started tearing up about 10am. Here's why.

I had never done much, really: worked a little for RFK, went to Grant Park one night during the '68 Democratic Convention, out campaigning for Ernie Chamber in 1970 or '71, a few other little things. I'm a member of SGI, the world's foremost peace organization. Mostly, back in the day, I sang.

But it was like this was a big relief, a happy ending, a load off the shoulders. I just saw it as a long, long path, a hallway like the crowded one inside Girls Inc., from 1968 to November 4 2008, a light barreling through, people waving along the way, (who they were I don't know) and getting happier and happier the closer the light got to the present.

The past is being changed. It's being vindicated. It's being made whole.

And those songs echoed again.

"How many years must some people exist before they're allowed to be free?"

"Oh what a feeling just come over me,
enough to move a mountain, make a blind man see."

"Sing a song, full of the faith that the dark past has taught us.
Sing a song, full of the hope that the present has brought us.

And from maybe the greatest song ever: "Deep in my heart, I do believe we shall overcome someday."

I heard them all and I wanted to start singing them, but I knew I had no right to do that. The people in line did, if they wanted to, but they didn't want to: they were in the moment only.

On the way out - the weather was gorgeous - I told Charlene I wished I could be in Grant Park tonight -- for Obama's gathering -- and she was horrified. "You want your head beat?" she said. "The beat the heads of people trying to something different. You just vote and be happy."

So there are scars that even electing Barack Obama can't heal. Can't heal, maybe, but damn I'll bet we can transcend those scars so they won't matter so much any more.

One more song. (I'm a sentimental goofball, I know) (and a drama queen) (but, nonetheless:)

Far between sundown's finish an' midnight's broken toll
We ducked inside the doorway, thunder crashing
As majestic bells of bolts struck shadows in the

sounds
Seeming to be the chimes of freedom flashing
Flashing for the warriors whose strength is not to fight
Flashing for the refugees on the unarmed road of flight
An' for each an' ev'ry underdog soldier in the night
An' we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing.

Murder, Life, Bus

Every once in a while now we get a bus that was obviously a charter at one time: retractable arm rests, reclining seats, no back door. It’s strange, but nice. Not so nice has been the selection at Goodwill, which has featured absolute dreck. Nothing like old software manuals and countless “Bible Quotes for Gangly teens” to make you want to gget on a charter bus for far, far away.

Interesting juxtaposition of reading material. I picked up a James Patterson some weeks ago, only because his books are ubiquitous so I thought that to be a member-in-good-standing of pop culture I’d better get a little familiarity with the man. I read Kiss the Girls. It was interesting that a white guy would base his writing career on a black detective; it could be very intriguing. Well, there was no reason for the detective to be black. It had no bearing whatsoever on anything of importance in the novel. Oh, there was an incident where white cops hassled him because he was black, but that was surely inserted only because a good black character has to be hassled by white cops in books by white writers. I suppose that’s the price of trying to write from the perspective of someone you’re not – you don’t really know enough. But I’m glad Patterson makes the attempt (and I understand he’s continued with the character in billions of other books).

It starts with a grisly, sick murder, and revels in further grisly, sick murders. That’s one thing. The writing is atrocious in spurts. The main sin is characters who talk to the reader, noot to the other characters. Example: As the hero‘s girl friend, badly mauled, is rushed to the hospital, a cop tells him “They’re bringing her to the Duke Medical Center. You’ll get some arguments from the university people, but that’s the best facility in the state.” Who among us wouldn’t bring up the rivalry between universities at a time like that?

The book wasn’t as bad as its parts, though. I thought I had the bad guy pegged, and was wrong. That’s good. I made time to read it – also good. But, whew, here’s another guy I think I’m better than. Than whom I think I’m better.

Meanwhile I’ve been studying for an SGI Buddhist Learning Review. So for part of my bus ride I’ve got a sicko destroying life, and for the other part I’m infused with hope and faith in the best of human nature. Buddhism teaches the possibility of self revolution, and the self revolution of others. In fact, the latter is, like, the Main Thing. Buddhism equals altruism equals compassion. I’m reading now about “Bodhisattva Buddha”, how the compassion of a bodhisattva is possible because the bodhisattva lives form the perspective of enlightenment. This is the opposite of Kiss the Girls. It’s also, I think, the opposite of my current reading, Of Human Bondage which bondage is, I gather, metaphysical – and whose eradication is the goal of Buddhist practice.

So it’s an interesting month, so far.

Ella! Ella!

I started writing this 2 days ago, but somewhere along the way hit some combination of keys that erased everything I'd written up to that point. So it gives me a chance to rewrite and improve. Right?

Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine: Isn't An Hathaway too old to play Ella? I just read a review of the movie, and it sounds like it's nothing like the book, and I really liked the book so now I don't want to see the movie. Is that fair? Maybe not (the review was a good one).

Ella is enslaved by obedience -- literally, not allegorically as in most feminist stories. By the way, isn't it too bad, after all this time, that it's still necessary for there to be "feminists"? Isn't it abut time the need for reform end, because reform is just done? We almost had a female president this year; we will surely have one on my lifetime (and I'm almost 60). Who's still dumb enough to be prejudiced against women? Lots of guys, of course, so feminism is necessary. But I'm just saying -- someday, someday soon.

Where was I? Ella is enslaved, but a delightful character, good natured, clever, witty. She frees herself in the end - that is to say, she is not freed by forces outside her own life.

One little question I had while reading it: was there an erotic masochistic interlude? It was necessary that Ella be chained to obedience, sure, but there was that sequence where, for a while, being obedient thrills her, and then she starts fantasizing (under a secondary spell) about a repulsive old man. Both diversions - the liking it and the old man - are dispensed with and not really necessary, as far as I could see.

Two books earlier I had read You Must Remember This, by Joyce Carol Oates. It was written some 40 years earlier, and is the exact opposite book. It has a teen heroine who is enslaved. But she's enslaved by her own volition, she's ravaged by the older man, violence surrounds their lives (he is a boxer, her father expects nuclear annihilation, she tries to kill herself). At one point the teen's brother's girl friend offers to be his slave, and it's kind of a joke to them; but everyone's oblivious to the fact that the little girl really is her uncle's slave.

It was very well written but, you know, it's about an incestuous pedophile. I hope it's dated, I hope the attitudes that provided the environment for the characters is gone or going.

When I was on the radio with Otis, every Christmas I looked for an opportunity to say "Let's sing . . . a Joyous Carol, Otis." Isn't that the most urbane, literate pun EVER??? Never used it. Don't know why.

Sophocles vs. Bellow (never thought I'd write that phrase!)

I’m trying to read Mr Sammler’s Planet now, but I’m not sure I’ll make it. I read another Saul Bellow last year – More Die of Heartbreak – and I’m not sure I want to go there again. Maybe. Bellow is All That, of course, with the Nobel Prize, writing Literature rather than novels, I get it and appreciate it. But I’m not sure I can relate. Perhaps I’ve chosen books whose characters are too old for me.

I was thinking, on the bus this morning, that Sophocles is easier for me to read than Saul Bellow. Sophocles, no doubt, is more germane, more essential to civilization, more Basic. So, using schoolboy logic, he should be harder to read, more inscrutable, denser. But I could be very happy with no one to read about than Oedipus, Antigone and those Trojan Women. Mr. Sammler, not so much.

More Die of Heartbreak, by the way, took a while to warm up to, but got me page turnin’ by the end. Benn is a wonderful character, his nephew/narrator could be a book himself. To whom we direct our feelings is of more import than, say, to whom we direct our vote, and love affects more people that even a nuclear nightmare could. Quite humanistic, quite true.

Well, I don’t know. I’m currently trying to write a mystery – something I’ve never tried before. So perhaps I should be reading a mystery. I have a book by James Patterson – mystery enough? I don’t know that much about him, except that Goodwill is often inundated with James Patterson novels. The selection at Goodwill lately has been atrocious.

Books on the Bus Redux

What I want to do mainly is write about books I read. I work near a Goodwill where, on a good day, I can buy 10 books for $5. Because it's a Goodwill, of course, I can't intend to buy anything in particular, and I'm at the mercy of whoever it is that donates books to Goodwill.

In other words, it could happen (and has) that I finish Voltaire and start Mary Higgins Clark. David Baldacci follows Turgenev. Winston Groom precedes Mark Twain. It's very random, topsy-turvy, indiscriminate.

Kind of like the bus I'm riding while I read. I started taking the bus over 2 years ago, for environmental reasons, mainly; though it's turned out it saves money, too. (By the way, once in a while I survey the cars going by the bus stop. In Omaha, on the average, 92 out of a hundred cars are occupied only by their driver.)

The bus goes straight down Center Street. I get on near Interstate 680, and the first leg of the ride is through veritable suburbia, with lawns brick houses and access roads. It swoops down a long hill, eases through an area of strip malls past a Walgreens and a supermart, past a cemetery and up into a hospital complex. Emerging from that, we're in a city, an industrial city, with mud on the street, dilapidated buildings, industrial businesses. We massly transit that and are back to a residential area. That's where I get off.

So it's one change after another both inside and outside the bus. The passengers change as drastically as the quality of the books and the scenery. There are only one or two that are there most days; for the most part, it's a mixed and unpredictable lot.

So that's the set-up. I've got a backlog of books to review, which is good:I'm currently reading Ella Enchanted, just finished an Agatha Christie collection, preceded by Joyce Carol Oates and another Agatha. There was something else in there too but I forget at the moment.

Back to books next post.

I'm Really Sorry For Ron Santo

I'm almost 60. Been a Cub fan for as long as I've been conscious. But I'm done with them. No one loses 9 straight playoff games. No one loses because an ardent fan tried to catch a ball in the stands, no one leads a best-of-5 two games to zip and loses, no one has the best and deepest team in the league and gets swept. No matter what they do, or what happens, they will lose in the end. They have proven that -- again.

It will take a while, I'm sure. After all, they've been a major part of my life since I've had a life. There have been times when I've thought that nothing else matters as much as that the Cubs win the World series. So I'm sure that, for a few years, even if I'm not watching them directly I'll be focusing my peripheral vision with a small window of hope in my heart. But I'll get over it as they continue to lose and lose and lose. Done with them.

Wow, that's hard to say, hard to want.

Meanwhile, the holes in the McCain moral fiber have become sufficiently apparent that I don't have to point them out. The idiocy of the Palin phenomenon likewise. So, back to books.

I do an occasional re-blog of my raison d'etre. That will be next as we rejoin book reviews.

A Theory on Lying

Some of us think that a person who lies in order to gain office, will continue to lie after gaining the office. For instance, such a person may start a needless war that costs thousands of American and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives. So if a candidate lies repeatedly in his (or her) campaign, and in unapologetic when caught lying, that alone ought to be the issue that causes us to not elect him (or her).

People (like me)who think that way are perplexed that a candidates lying doesn't seem to faze others -- millions of others.

But maybe I've figured it out.

Historically (recently, anyway), most of the lying and distortion has been done by Republicans. Republicans, of course, are the believers in unfettered capitalism, in the free market, in de-regulation. Competition, they argue, will lead to the greatest good for the most people.

Well, I think they are applying that to political campaigns. Why should capitalism be limited to economies? If, say, allowing hamburger manufacturers to compete freely and without restriction has led to the best possible hamburger, why should we be denied choice in Truth? Will choice not lead to the greatest Truth?

For instance. Say something costs $3.00. In a Republican's left hand is $1.00, and in his/her right hand is $1.00. In the restricted, regulated world of elitist math, 1=1+2 and the Republican is a dollar short. If, however, we subscribe to the competing view that 1+1=3, then things work out the way we want them to, and the Republican can buy the $3.00 product.

For Republicans, competition solves everything! Regulating Truth (demanding, for instance, that 1+1=2) punishes those for whom Truth is inconvenient. By de-regulating truth, all competing views on a subject get their chance to prove their value. It is simply capitalism, which has been the basis for the most successful economy in history; it follows (to Republicans) that it will lead to the most successful Everything Else in history.

So: that Sarah Palin supported the Bridge to Nowhere cannot be the only Truth allowed on the field; a competing truth is justified, because competition allows Sarah Palin to not be a lying sack of fertilizer, and that is the desired outcome. Likewise, the desired outcome in November is for John McCain to be president. For that to happen, it would help if the truth that Barack Obama did not teach sex to 5 year olds were not the only truth promulgated; ergo, the lie that he did want to teach sex to 5 year olds must be allowed onto the field.

That's my theory, anyway: it's just a free marketplace of ideas.

How Has Sarah Helped Kids in Alaska?

I work for the flks who Medicaid in a Republican state, so I understand that Republicans are no friends to Medicaid. That made me wonder about Ms. Palin's statement that parents of specdial needs kids would have a friend in the White House. The NYT did the story for me Here.

(Been having trouble with links, so if that one doesn't work, cut and paste this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/07/us/politics/07needs.html?ex=1378526400&en=2ceb8d1d0cd95388&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Cut funds for the Special Olympics? Really, dear Friend in the White House?

This is the party, remember, that declared war on the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) that all concerned agreed was successful and necessary.

Culture War! What is it good for?

Krugman in today's NYT here,

And here's Judith Warner:


I was particularly struck by this observation from Ms Warner:

"Because the Republicans, very clearly, believe that real people are idiots. This disdain for their smarts shows up in the whole way they’ve cast this race now, turning a contest over economic and foreign policy into a culture war of the Real vs. the Elites."

IMHO, the Dems ought to run a series of commercials using the GOP convention as a backdrop. One would have people who are community organizers relating what they've done, inter-cut with Rudy and Sarah laughing at the thought of "community organizers". How will it look when Joe Organizer says "I helped a father of six get a job" is followed by one of those schnooks mocking the concept?

Another would show the clever sniping at the "elites" and the media, then an average guy going "Ha ha, good one", then he looks around and says, puzzled: "But it didn't help me afford college for my kind" or "It didn't help me get a job."

I think if they want to fight a culture war, the thing t do is to keep it focused on the economy, and in fact contrast the culture war to what really matters.

Remove the "L" and It's "McCain-Pain"

"Palin shows star power to match Obama", says Newsweek, here:
http://www.newsweek.com/id/156994

All the major news websites are gushing over Sarah Palin's acceptance speech. A grand slam. Brilliant. Effective. Watch out, Joe Biden.

Might I disagree?

Comparing Palin's speech to Obama's is like comparing a nipping, biting dog to Lassie. When she wasn't downright lying (Obama's legislative record, her own relationship to "earmarks", etc) she was appealing to the small and narrow in our nature: name calling, innuendo, bravado towards the paper tiger that is the media. In comparing her Americanism to Obama's, she is, in effect, saying "His family is, you know, that other race, wink wink." Her speech was cynical, mean, closed.

You may not like Obama's outlined policy proposals. But you can't argue that his acceptance speech was in any way like Sarah Palin's, i.e., small and cheap. His rhetoric soars, he appeals to the best of our nature, he speaks to the concerns of the most vulnerable, the least represented, the middle class. His speech was inclusive; hers was mocking.

After spending days telling everyone to leave her family alone, up they came, Okay, that's fine. But how about asking that special needs mother what the Republicans did to CHIPS? What does the GOP do for sex education to prevent teen pregnancies? Oh, I forgot -- teenm pregnancy is now a GOOD thing.

And, by the way, what was that gluttonous chanting of "Drill, baby, drill!"??? It was embarrassing, watching the Republican base slobbering over the thought of destroying the environment for money.

Time Out

Maybe it's just the usual GOP exaggerations about the media, but they are accusing various liberal websites and/or bloggers of insinuating that Bristol Palin is the real mom of the Governor's 4 month old son.

Look: If Bristol is 5 months pregnant, do you think she could have had a baby in April? September3rd -- 5 = April3rd. Bristol didn't have a baby in April.

Dumb thing to be accusing her -- them -- of. There are enough legitimate concerns without inventing impossible - and I'm sure, hurtful -- crises.

Maver Icky

McCain Campiagn: Ooo bugga klor puft.
Media: Yup, yup, okay, yup.

Current headline at CNN.com: "Palin's Maverick Trail".
Here:
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/09/03/palin.track.record/index.html

" the 44-year-old became known in Alaska as a popular maverick" . . .
"Some similarities between Palin and McCain were clear Friday -- both have been termed mavericks and both have taken on the GOP establishment at times."

She's a maverick. He's a maverick. Every Republican is a maverick!

What is she a maverick from?

Here's my favorite:

"On Fox News Sunday, McCain said Palin knows what it means to lead troops.
'She has been commander-in-chief of the Alaska Guard,' McCain said."

I wonder where she led them? Was there some horrible crisis in Alaska that I missed? Did Sarah Palin scoff at the pleas of her aides that she command from the safety of her command tent, and go out to the front lines to lead the troops to victory? Was it victory against all odds?

Another thing: I thought it was only some Fox chowder head that opined that she's good at foreign policy because Alaska is the closest state to Russia. I was wrong: Cindy McCain said it too. Colbert nailed that one last night - said Mt McKinley is closest point in America to outer space, so Palin's an expert on space exploration.

More cool hypocrisy

Here's a Bloomerg News report, quoting McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt on how poor John is getting some bad press:

" `It used to be that a lot of those smears and the crap on the Internet stayed out of the newsrooms of serious journalists,' Schmidt said at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota."

He could have said "It used to be that a lot of those smears and the crap on the Internet stayed out of the newsrooms of serious journalists until we Republicans encouraged it against any Democrat anywhere in the country."

But he didn't.

To be, or not to be, a hypocrite

I have to agree with Obama, and I'm glad he said it: families sghould be off limits in political campaigns. Faced with the reality, though, that an opponent I hope gets blitzed has got a family problem, it's hard to lay off. But, as I say, Obama is right, and I feel good adhering to a principle.

The kid's pregnancy is just tangential to this, then. Can the Republican base refrain from flushing principles down the toilet?

From cbsnews.com (a story on GOP delegate reaction to the Palin pregnancy)(http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/01/politics/main4405552.shtml):

" 'Like so many other American families who are in the same situation, I think it's great that she instilled in her daughter the values to have the child and not to sneak off some place and have an abortion,' said Louisiana delegate George White."

"Said Madison, Mississippi delegate Walley Naylor. 'Not that it's right, but it doesn't reflect badly upon her. I think that it’s great that even though young children are making that decision to become pregnant they've also decided to take responsibility for their actions and decide to follow up with that and get married and raise this child.' "

So, according to these folks, teen pregnancy is a wonderful thing, as long as there's no abortion. It's "great" that "young children" who "make the decision (!)" to pregnant stay pregnant. Let's hear it for the "values" of teen girls getting prgnant and staying pregnant! Go teens!

Is it principles these people lack, or brains? It's quite a conundrum. If you think about it, it's kind of sad that this is major political party - let alone the one that has dominated our country for 8 years.

As someone said: "Enough!" Don't you think?

Farcical Aquatic Ceremony?

McCain has just picked Palin as his running mate. I think we have a right to know Palin's political philosophy. Here it is, in Palin's own words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAaWvVFERVA&feature=related

Ma Belle

This is supposed to be books on the bus, or so says the mission statement in my brain. But it is important, I think, for this country we love -- if it is to remain the country we love and not some grotesque mutation -- that we do not allow another 4 years of a Republican presidency.

So I'm going to digress from the mission once in a while.

Michelle Obama just addressed the Democratic Convention. And now this has to be said, and I hope it will be said by those with greater audiences than I have: If you persist in hesitating about Obama on the grounds he is "not like us" or that he is in any way apart from what it means to be American, then all you can possibly mean by that is that Obama is black. And that makes you a racist. You are not a racist, are you? You don't possibly believe that "elitist" crap, that "not sharing our values" garbage being spewed by the odious slime that run Republican campaigns.

Find the speech if you haven't heard it. It is important. It is vital. There can't be hesitation; we must eliminate its causes.

I Like Larry McMurtry

Leaving Cheyenne by Larry McMurtry: The story starts in Texas, and I kept waiting for everyone to move to Cheyenne so someone could leave it. No one did. the word "Cheyenne" is never used. No one leaves anywhere. McMurtry quotes the song "Goodbye Old Paint" in the epigram, and implies that "Cheyenne" is youth. Still, it would have been nice if someone had sung that song during the course of the book; as it is, I'm left with the suspicion the title was foisted on him to sell a "cowboy book" -- sort of like the pornographic covers were attached to Kilgore Trout's science fiction.

Anyway, I had to start with the title because it's a smelly guy on the bus with a loud boom box -- somebody's got to say something. And now that it's out of the way, I can tell you that I thoroughly enjoyed the ride. This is just a great book!

There isn't really s plot. It's just three people, two guys and a gal, in love with each other (no, not a precursor to Brokeback Mountain). Each gets to talk a little, to move the story forward through the years, from the spring of their youth to the sad nostalgia of old age. It's so good, I think, because McMurtry pretty much dispenses with other characters and hones in on the three. Even the ostensible "bad guy", the wife of one of the guys, disappears from view fairly early. Two other characters that have a profound influence are the sons, neither of whom is ever present: Molly (the gal) gets pregnant with the first one, and the next time either is mentioned is after they have been killed in World War II.

So it's all focused on Milly, Gid and Johnny. They two guys love Molly, completely and in every way one can love another. The two guys' friendship is one of the deepest and most vivid I've ever read. Molly sleeps with them both, regularly, and they both know it. The friendship and love of all three of them is so strong that it can stand this arrangement. It even survives the marriages of two of them t other people -- people, as I've said, who barely scratch the surface of minor charactership.

The ending is just great. I'd been wondering for days how it could end, was hoping it wouldn't be tragic or maudlin. It ends like it oughta.

I should mention I love language quirks (usually). In this case it's the use of "never" where "didn't" would do.

Puppets

A lot of writing opportunities have been presenting themselves lately, though none offer immediate fiduciary rewards. Mari's been perusing Craig's List and found some interesting things: someone in Omaha seeking a ghost writer, a web clearinghouse for "columns". And I got my short story based on my job posted to Zoetrope, finally.

Then there's this. A few entries ago I mentioned I had purchased a book called Rootie Kazootie at Goodwill. I said I remembered a character with that name as a TV show or comic book, and that was confirmed right on the first page. Rootie was also a puppet, as it turns out. He is not, however, extremely important to the plot of the book that has his name. That's ironic, huh? Rootie is mentioned only once, as an epithet directed at one of the main characters. It is only one of many epithets directed at that character; butI imagine Rootie Kazootie was picked as the title because, let's face it, it's catchy. It hooked me, for one; and as I am The Average American, that means it must have hooked a lot of people. Too bad Lawrence Naumoff (the author - I guess I should mention the author's name, huh?) doesn't get royalties from Goodwill.

So, it's about a love triangle. Caroline and Richard are married, but Caroline's kind of kookie (she's the one toward whom the epithets are directed) and Richard is tired, so he goes off to live with Cynthia. So now Caroline becomes kookie and possessive, manipulative and a little violent.

Richard, in this book, seems not to have a will of his own, just going where it's easiest to go. For instance, when he leaves Caroline, he tells her its because Cynthia wants him to move in. Not that he loves Cynthia, or doesn't love Caroline any more - she just wants him to, so he does. In the end, he's back with Caroline because, obnoxious as she's been, Caroline wants him and Cynthia doesn't. Evidently, it's one or the other and no further alternatives. In other respects, Richard is a good old boy, on his own two feet, running a business, fixing things, knowing stuff. But as far as his romantic life, he's at the mercy of what women want.

I've noticed that this is a widespread notion, by the way. When a guy leaves one gal for another, some women blame the other, like it's all her doing and the guy had little or no say in the matter. Maybe some guys encourage this so that, like Richard, they keep their options open: as long as Cynthia wants me, okay, but since Caroline doesn't blame me, I can still go back to her if it doesn't work with Cynthia. In this universe, guys are like they are in beer commercials: absolute brainless jerks who cannot be expected to resist whatever current is sloughing its way through town.

Rootie Kazootie was written to be funny, and it is. There is even a chapter in which Naumoff makes it clear a tragedy is inevitable, that it's going to happen, that there's no way to avoid it -- and then it doesn't happen. Caroline has moments of great sweetness. Richard does the right thing once in a while. Cynthia is trying. But for all that, it was a let down. Maybe I kept thinking a writer as obviously talented as Naumoff was building to a moral or an ending equal to his talent. Didn't happen, at least to my expectations, and I feel let down.

Awwww.

Pretty Little Policemen In A Row

Goodwill has been stingy lately -- lots of decidedly uninteresting books. Sitting there now are two by Dan Quayle, for crying out loud. I assume they have ghostwriters or, if not, translators. Dozens of Mary Higgins Clark titles too. She's my nemesis at the moment. Every unpublished writer has a nemesis, a "If so-and-so can get published, why can't I?" person.

Yet we read the undeserving published (and fabulously wealthy) authors because they tell stories. MHC conceives interesting stories. They start at Point A and end at Point Z, and all a reader has to do is grope his/her way around the horrendous writing and pathetic characterizations to get to a satisfying end. Subject through predicate to object. Man bites dog. Very satisfying. The only problem is it's "Man, purplish in complexion though Adonis-like in reputation -- notwithstanding that the reputation itself was his own creation - bites, with teeth that needed brushing due to the garlic butter he had put on his pasta at lunch that day, lunch with Trudy who drove him crazy and wasn't buying into the reputation, which he had assumed she would and was shocked when she left him with the tab and a slap on the chops at what he had suggested they do for dessert, dog."

So I just finished Ed McBain's Romance , a "novel of the 87th precinct" I've read others in the series. They take place in Isola, which is New York City, except New York City also exists in the McBain novels, evidently not too far away from Isola. So Isola, I guess, sits on top of NYC but a little askew, with maybe a Northeast River and, who knows, a Painting of Liberty.

McBain (who has many names, BTW) is a much better writer than MH Clark (my nemesis), but he does manage to make reading his stories into a chore. He writes "hey look at me" dialogue, with characters talking over each other and repeating each others words - unreadable, but that's how people really talk -- except that in writing it this way, McBain is saying "I'm writing unreadable dialogue because, gosh, ain't I clever at getting how people really talk?" he also has some sort of clothes fetish, describing how every character is dressed, down to their socks. May I say that, with a few exceptions, "NO ONE CARES!!!"

Romance is a book about the murder of an actress in a play called Romance, which is a play about a production of a play called Romance (I'm not making this up), in which the actress who plays the actress who gets stabbed, gets stabbed (still not making this up). The actress is named Ed McBain (I made that up). The detectives of the 87th solve the case. All in all, a good story. But, as I. Say? Yeah, say.

On the other side of the crime coin, and the dialogue coin for that matter, about a year ago I spent a few weeks on the bus with Elmore Leonard's Get Shorty. Frankly, I was not all that fond of the story -- low level hood makes himself a film producer while outfoxing other low level hoods -- but the dialogue is great. I heard that Travolta flipped when he heard they were re-writing the dialogue for the movie, that he only agreed to the movie because of Elmore Leonard's great dialogue. Good call, Vinnie.

The Idiot, Finally

I think Prince Myshkin and Aglaya could have been okay together, because they were both hippies. Hippies can survive with other hippies. But hippies will be eaten alive by a repressive army of bourgeoisie. And that's pretty much what The Idiot is about.

I don't know if I'll ever read Crime and Punishment or Notes From the Undergound now. I think I got a bad translation, but Dostoevsky wrote a book in which nothing happens for about 600 pages other than people are elated or offended by the way other people look at them. I suppose the theme is the inability of certain types to act. Near the end -- 3 months into my reading --Aglaya acts and it blows up in her face. When Roghozin acts, it destroys 3 lives, including the Idiot's, who is not really an Idiot but is (as I say) a hippie.

Well, after the hard work of reading The Idiot I thought I'd relax with a Dame Agatha. But Dame Fortuna, a.k.a. Goodwill's book section, could equip me only with Passenger To Frankfort. It's a terrible book, published in 1972 when AC was 82. It's not really an Agatha Christie mystery; it's an old woman using the James Bond motif to rail against the Young. Even taken as the ranting of a reactionary on her last legs, though, it fails because the actions of The Young she rails against were old hat by 1972. Don't bother reading it - I'll tell you right now that it has much to do with the possibility of Hitler being alive, because there is no possible explanation for young people not liking opera other than Hitler is secretly corrupting them.

Anyway, I've got a long bus ride tonight - have to go downtown and actually transfer once -- and today Goodwill coughed up Rootie Kazootie by Lawrence Kaumoff, which I'm looking forward to. I remember watching Rootie Kazootie on TV, or maybe I remember reading a comic book with a character named Rootie Kazootie. Either way, there's some childhood association. So I'm rooting for the book. ("Rooting" -- get it?).

What this is about

It's again been a while since my last post. And, I don't have much time right now; so I'm re-posting the January 24th explanation of what this blog is all abut. I would only note that I have finished The Idiot, and it took only 4 months to do so.

From Jan. 24th:

What I want to do mainly is write about books I read. I work near a Goodwill where, on a good day, I can buy 10 books for $5. Because it's a Goodwill, of course, I can't intend to buy anything in particular, and I'm at the mercy of whoever it is that donates books to Goodwill.

In other words, it could happen (and has) that I finish Voltaire and start Mary Higgins Clark. David Baldacci follows Turgenev. Winston Groom precedes Mark Twain. It's very random, topsy-turvy, indiscriminate.

Kind of like the bus I'm riding while I read. I started taking the bus over 2 years ago, for environmental reasons, mainly; though it's turned out it saves money, too. (By the way, once in a while I survey the cars going by the bus stop. In Omaha, on the average, 92 out of a hundred cars are occupied only by their driver.)

The bus goes straight down Center Street. I get on near Interstate 680, and the first leg of the ride is through veritable suburbia, with lawns brick houses and access roads. It swoops down a long hill, eases through an area of strip malls past a Walgreens and a supermart, past a cemetery and up into a hospital complex. Emerging from that, we're in a city, an industrial city, with mud on the street, dilapidated buildings, industrial businesses. We massly transit that and are back to a residential area. That's where I get off.

So it's one change after another both inside and outside the bus. The passengers change as drastically as the quality of the books and the scenery. There are only one or two that are there most days; for the most part, it's a mixed and unpredictable lot.

So that's the set-up. I've got a backlog of books to review, which is good: I'm currently reading The Idiot, and it could take me two years to get through it. I'll start reviews with the next entry.

Family

I see us, my siblings and I, coming to this world together as one long, and long-awaited, debut. First I jump through a hoop, and I'm carrying a baton and dressed in some sort of Uncle Sam costume, with the big hat and all. I bow and point the baton and here comes Marybeth, a little girl in this show, with an oversized lollipop (it's for the stage, after all!) There's a pause and then Kathy jumps in, bowing -- everyone knows her already, the applause is spontaneous. Marge is self-effacing, blushing perhaps at the attention; then we all huddle together to welcome Mike, cute Mike, and there we are now, the cast, the ones the people came to see.

Our Mother died early yesterday morning, and I came to work, waiting for the bus under a too bright, almost bleached out, sky, and I felt so lonely. I guess the grass is always green in memory, the sidewalks clean where we played and rode bikes, the stomachs full, the nights restful. Even after you don't need your parents to provide for you any more, they do, they do.
Dad died 4 years ago. I'm almost 60, and only now am I an orphan. I guess that's pretty lucky. But the point is that being able to take Mom for granted, being able to rest my head on the certainty of her existence, has been a comfort, the base comfort, the foundation of other comforts, all my life.

Years ago I had an insight, a jokey insight, that the basis of all philosophy, of all religion, of all yearning is: "I want my mommy." Maybe.

I talked to her Sunday night, hours before she passed. She sounded eager to talk, despite her obvious weakness. She addressed me as "Sweetie" for the first time since, maybe, kindergarten, and was rambling about an intersection near a forest preserve -- maybe there was a favorite restaurant near there, or it's near KiddieLand -- and recipes for Irish dishes. (I don't recall that she ever did any Irish cooking, unless it was corned beef). She said she assumed Skylar was in bed; he wasn't, and I was going to put him the phone but before I could she handed her phone back to my sister and fell asleep.

That night, Sunday night, and for days before, I felt like she was with me when I chanted. I've always been able to commune with (not necessarily communicate, but commune) people (alive or not) when I chant for them. I felt good those days with Mom; she felt okay, happy, full.

Then Monday morning Marge called with the news, and I called Mary in Mississippi and woke her up. She said Tennyson, the youngest great-grandchild, had woken up, disturbed, in the middle of the night, and he was sleeping with her. We talked, Mary was shaken, and I wished she could be here, with us.

Then I chanted and, oddly, I couldn't find Mom. I couldn't. I searched the universe, Berwyn, our living room, Cicero, Ireland. Nothing felt right.

Mari dropped me at the bus stop, and there I was lonely in the sunshine, chanting silently, and I thought about Tennyson and found Mom. She was in Mississippi. Duh. That's when the tears came. There was Mom, at the tail end of the line, with the newest performers in the act, the youngest children in her family -- and most of all with Mary. Mary and Mary, my bookends.

Now that I know that, of course, she's everywhere. We're clinging to each other, and we're both, mostly, happy and curious.

It's wonderful how she affects people, even if the effect at the moment is grief. Mari is the most sensitive and loving person I've ever met, and she went right to where my mother is, felt it with me, maybe even before me. Samie too. It's been years since my mother visited Omaha, but Omaha's not really a place but a family, not a destination but a feeling. We're all feeling now -- each of us is feeling, and feeling is what there is.

I've been fantasizing for a long time about being able to play "Let It Be" at her funeral -- you know, "I wake up to the sound of music/mother Mary come to me". But that's someone else's song. I think instead I'll just whisper goodbye, and I'll address her as what I imagine is the highest title to which a woman can aspire. I call her what I called her in kindergarten, what I called her the first time I knew her real name. I'll whisper: "Bye, Mommy."

She'll answer: "Oh brother."

Trying again

Click here for information about Buddhism

Children in Literature

In that previous entry, I was hoping the link would show up live. It didn't. I'm disappointed. I don't know how to insert a live link here. Let me try another one, though:
sgi-usa.org

We'll see.

The price of gas today was $3.66 at the big Bucky's the bus goes by. That's down from yesterday -- down! Will our kids be riding horses and stage coaches? Are they still making buckboards? Because if they don't soon -- immediately - start being serious about alternate fuel, what choice will be left. (And by "alternate fuel" I don't mean "oil dug up in America instead of in Arabia".)

Let's look at, not children's books, but some books about children.

The Kite Runner by Khalid Hosseini:
This is a very popular book, very famous, much loved -- and, I guess, on the whole, it deserves all that. Anything that introduces Americans to day-to-day life in other cultures is great, and I suspect an awful lot of these incidents actually happened. It's also good to remind ourselves of the utter depravity we, as humans, are capable of. I remember that a few years ago someone was making a movie about Hitler as a youth, and there were objections because the movie intended to portray him as a frail human being, rather than as a monster. But that's exactly the point: criminals aren't born with guns in their hands, society doesn't send some children to school and other to Monster Camp. We, all of us, have the capabilities for both great good and great evil: it wasn't a Space Alien who conceived the Holocaust, but one of us, one of our own. Thus here we have Amir as a loving husband, a good friend, a traitor and a redeemer. We have Amir's father embracing life with an expansive spirit, and the Taliban squeezing life out the earth they tread on. There is Hassan's unbreakable compassion, Aseff's unbridled hatred. All human beings. Which one am I?

I got into a small discussion on a writer's board about my one, huge problem with The Kite Runner. The consensus was that I was wrong. But, I still feel this: Hosseini goes too far in his despoilment of the boy Sohrab. Nothing good happens to this poor kid. Nothing neutral happens to him. Life is often cruel, okay, a valid theme. But the point had been made 50 pages or so before the cruelty stopped. And I don't mean just physical cruelty: the kid's parents are murdered, he's abandoned, he's molested, he gets his hopes up for a better life only to have them dashed by poor timing.... it just goes on. It becomes unbearable. The point was made, and in my opinion the book becomes just a little sadistic before it closes.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles:
From the perspective of 2008, there's an elephant between the pages of this book that may not have been so elephantine when it was written in the 50s. To wit: Gene, the narrator, and Phineas, his roommate are obviously deeply in love with each other. It was a big distraction for me: "Go on, guys, get on with it," I kept saying, expecting on every page that they'd be holding hands on the next page. Well, it didn't happen, wasn't even alluded to. Meanwhile, with the macrocosm of World War II influencing everything, there are misunderstandings and petty jealousies in the microcosm of the Devon school. It ends badly. Of the 3 books I'm doing here, I like this the best. Not crazy about it, though. And it beats out The Kite Runner only because of the prolonged cruelty mentioned above. All in all, The Kite Runner is a better book, but I liked A Separate Peace better. Savvy?

Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Sprawling is what this is. Pat Conroy is an acclaimed novelist (Prince of Tides), so I was happy to find one of his books at the Goodwill. And now, horribly, horribly disappointed.

Prime example of reason 1: At one point one character says to his brother: "My wife, Jean, commutes to Charleston..." If he had just said "Jean" his brother wouldn't know who he meant? The book is very badly written. It's a very long book for a doofus to read, but Conroy must have thought his readers would be doofuses.

Characters keep passing through the Rome airport. Hey, the Rome airport, in the 8os? Wouldn't it be something if there were -- golly, what do you know: there is a terrorist attack!

More egregious (apart from the bad writing and the cliches) is the underlying theme of the book, that the most important moments in a little girl's life happened during her father's childhood. That's right -- the adults in her life (and dad in particular) are teaching her that her life will be worthwhile only if she lives in her father's childhood. Does that sum up us baby boomers, or what??? It strikes me as a kind of..mmm, not quite abuse, but surely neglect.

There we go. Long one today, eh?

Just a test

http://mediamatters.org/altercation

Neverwhere

I didn't realize it's been so long since I last posted. I could pretend I've been busy, but actually my laziness is a direct effect of being not busy. The more I do, the more industrious I feel, the more I want to do. In truth, in late April I finished a short story, and while I was writing it I was blogging, reading, working out, planning, playing the guitar. When the story got finished I breathed a big sigh of relief and just relaxed -- relaxed every muscle, not just the ones working on the story.

There's today's insight into human frailty.

There are new bus drivers, both going to work and coming home. The morning guy is great. He announces loudly "Fifteen, downtown!" to every passenger as we get on, even to those of us who get on every day. One morning last week I didn't go in until noon, and the next day he told me he had looked for me -- meaning, I suppose, he slowed down to see if I might be approaching the bus stop. Not every driver would do that (some blow by when you are at the corner).

The evening guy is good, too. He doesn't say anything, but he drives like a maniac and we make great time. Plus, he's consistently on time to pick me up.

Speaking of public transportation: Neverworld (by Neil Gaiman) is about a secret, almost gossamer society that exists in the London subway system. It's a very violent, very cruel but very ritualized civilization. There's a lot of magic and mysticism going on there, and the hero who gets sucked into it actually thrives in the other world-- against his will and inclinations.


Gaiman includes an interview with himself, which prejudiced me against his book right away. Self indulgent, full of himself, I assumed. You know - when McCartney left the Beatles and issued his first solo album, he interviewed himself for the occasion. So maybe I associate "interviews self" with "The Beatles have broken up". Be that as it may: Gaiman may indeed be self indulgent and full of himself, but Neverwold is a fun, well written book loaded with interesting characters.

Gaiman, it turns out, also wrote Stardust, which was made into one of my favorite movies of the last 3 years or so (the Post Lord Of The Rings era of the cinema).

Goodwill is Loony

I heard, last week, that Goodwill was having a two-for-one sale on books. I didn't go because I had just bought a bunch of books. But now it's obvious why they had it -- today there are 4 shopping carts stuffed to heaping with books (a heaping cartful of books?). There are as many new books as there are books still on the shelves. And by "new", I mean Your 2007 Chinese Horoscope is unbelievably current.

I picked out The Chosen by Chaim Potok, Joyce Carol Oates's You Must Remember This and an anthology of Nobel Laureates' quotes called The Words of Peace. That last one I'll try to send to Soka Gakkai International president Daisaku Ikeda.

I couldn't even get to the bottom of some of the carts. Among the volumes I did see but eschewed were: The DaVinci Code; a volume of Chekov plays; Windows 98 for Dummies; multiple copies of the same Grisham book, The Broker; and a couple of Star Trek novels (by the way, Tek Wars kind of yo-yos on and off the Goodwill shelves; I don't know if one copy keeps getting b ought and returned, or if there are still multiple copies of it loose and roaming the Omaha streets). It appears also that there's been a rash of Barbara Cartland dumps -- at least 2 people must have relinquished their extensive BC libraries.

Speaking of Tek Wars, it's my belief that Denny Crane is a better character than Captain Kirk. We do not bother with the hack TJ Hooker. I don't know if Shatner ever played Hamlet, so we conclude that Denny Crane is his crowning achievement.

Well, the cover came off The Idiot. It was expected, but now I can't impress people on the bus because they won't know what I'm reading. I wonder if other passengers think like me: that the main concern of everyone else is -- me! What hat am I wearing (this has come up as a topic, actually)? What am I reading? How many pages have I read? Will I get off at the usual place?

How boring their lives must be if that's all they can find to think about.

I'm on p. 183 of the Signet Classic paperback edition, and I'm liking The Idiot very much now. It took weeks to struggle past the first chapter, but now, I care. I always have trouble keeping names straight in translated books (for they are foreign to me) and there are a myriad characters in The Idiot. So I'm concentrating on only a few, and just sort of cruising past the others. I'm sure glad I didn't live in 18th Century Russian Society (or did I???) -- the things that "scandalize" those poor, weak creatures -- like the look on someones face. What babies. If your sense of dignity depends on what someone else is wearing, or whom they chose to "receive", then it's fragile indeed. Those Russkies could use some sort of revolution, or maybe a dictatorship of the proletariat or something.

I read Fathers and Sons by Turgenev a couple of years ago. I remember it as being a struggle also -- though it's a much shorter book. But it makes a key point about manners: "Man is capable of understanding everything -- the vibration of ether and the radiation of the sun; but he can never comprehend why another person should blow his nose in a manner different from his own."

That was spoken by the main character, the "Outsider", which is a type Turgenev evidently invented (though it wasn't perfected until the TV show Have Gun, Will Travel).

A Shopping Trip

Traipsed over to Goodwill today - looks like they've gotten a new shipment (at least one!) since my last shopping trip. Quite an assortment: I bought paperbacks of Washington Square, The Natural, The Andromeda Strain, David Copperfield (so I can see what "that David Copperfield crap" means, ha ha), the Pocketbook of Ogden Nash (poetry fix; also, I was once in a band called Ogden Edsl, named in homage to Mr. Liquor is Quicker), Turtle Moon by Alice Hoffman (unfamiliar with that one) and - what I had actually hope to find -- two books by Agatha Christie. I like Dame Agatha because she provides escapism, and is not a mindless hack (more on mindless hacks we love in a future post ((one's name is Winston, another's is Mary Higgins - but I don't want to mention anyone right now)).

I like Poirot better than Miss Marple, but I do like Miss Marple. I don't like those two Thin Man wannabes she plays with sometimes. Quick: Which characters were created by a British Dame, and which by a Yank named Dash -- Tommy and Tuppence/Nick and Nora?

But I digress. Agatha Christie's one of my favorites (As is the Yank named Dash).

Other things on the Goodwill shelves today: a hardcover of Tom Wolfe's A Man In Full, taking up a lot of room - that is one big hardcover; a novelized episode of Knott's Landing; a book of quotations by Louis L'Amour;, about a dozen John Grisham paperbacks;, The Iliad; Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf?; We're Right They're Wrong (I think) by James Carville; Mutiny of the Bounty -- and about a thousand others. Really, at least a thousand.

I almost bought the Knott's Landing. I did pick up a stuffed toy for the dog to chew up -- an M&M character doll. Go boy - bite!

The bill came to about $13. The toy cost $1.99 and was the most expensive item. Go boy!

Sex!

Spring, young man's fancy, etc.

Lady Chatterly's Lover by D.H.Lawrence. Movies based on Lawrence look like they were shot through velvet -- textured and ostentatiously dense. LCL, however, is very accessible, quite transparent in its sympathies. (Lawrence was, evidently, quite sick when he wrote it; perhaps that has something to do with it). Here is another woman (and her sister too!) quite open about being a sexual creature, one who enjoys sex (remember, this was written in the 1920s). And early on the argument is made: "...You are in some way an organic whole with all life. But once you start the mental life you pluck the apple. You've severed the connection between the apple and the tree: the organic connection." The book is not about sex, it's about nature; nature is expressed as sex, and the (tee hee) dirty words are the growls and barks of natural beings n their habitats.

I think. I'm open to the suggestion that it might be about sex. Heh heh.

Running With Scissors by Augustin Burroughs. I can't imagine why, when the manuscript reached an agent, or however many publishers it was submitted to, some supposed adult didn't say: "Call the police -- this is a catalogue of uninterrupted child abuse by a whole lot of people." Instead, they published it, sold the movie rights and made a lot of money. A horrible, disgusting experience all around. Everyone connected with this book is a sleazeball. A horrific experience. I'm very disappointed in Annette Bening (among others). Disgusting.

Idiots

It's actually been a while since I've ridden the bus, due to breaking my ankle and not being able to walk to the bus stop. I'm back now,at least occasionally.

Reading The Idiot has been predictably slow. Myshkin's just gotten off the train. He talked a lot more to his fellow passengers than I do. The bus driver today is loud, yapping at some kid slouched in a seat five rows from the front. I'm trying to read, but phrases are pushed into my ears: steel cage death match, conjugal visits, butter knife. I wonder if I could construct a monologue out of those phrases. Probably, but it would make as much sense as I'm sure the bus driver is making.

I should point out that this is a later bus. The usual, early morning, driver says nothing. I tried to talk to him once, and he grunted his answers. He barely looks at passengers as they board.

What's he up to?????

Riding through the muddy streets of late March brings to mind -- Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. I loved the language in this book, the late 19th C. idioms: riding "the car" (meaning train of trolley) and working for a good "house" -- by George! It was cool to see Chicago being laid out, the suburb where I grew up being much further west than the open countryside Chicagoans would ride out to to get away from the city. And Carrie of course - a gutty girl, and what kind of guts did Dreiser have, placing his main character in his first novel in a series of "sinful" relationships. I imagine this would have been scandalous enough, in 1900, were the main character male. Character, plot, language - I loved everything about this book.

The mud in the streets of Omaha, BTW, is caused mainly by the construction of a mammoth shopping area where the racetrack used to be. I guess 69th and Center is forever meant to be a place to waste money.

Omaha/New Orleans

I have been informed there's a website called "Good Reads", where you can have friends with whom to share reading experiences. I joined it, but I'm doing my reviews here, not there. Here, it's all about Me!!! Bwah ha ha ha!

Two books by respected authors that kind of disappointed me:

Road to Omaha by Robert Ludlum: If not written by Ludlum, this book could not have been published. It's populated by caricatures, the plot is stupid, and the fun isn't funny. I made myself finish it, but it was torture. I doubt Matt Damon will be interested in the movie.

Moviegoer by Walker Percy: I picked this up for two reasons. One, I saw on the Lost website that one of the writers had recently read it, and thought it might hold a clue to the show. None that I can see. Second, Percy was instrumental in getting A Confederacy of Dunces published. So: Of all the books I've read by respected authors, this is the one I've forgotten the most about. I find I've underlined one passage: "Tropical air has seeped into the earth and the little squares of St. Augustine grass are springy and turgid. Camphor berried pop underfoot; azaleas and Judas trees are blooming on Elysien Fields." I don't know why I underlined it, but it's very nice, isn't it? It's set around New Orleans. It's all about "the search": "what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life." But it seems to me it turned out to be pretty much about everydayness -- and the guy didn't actually go to all that many movies. Good writing, I suppose, but not a memorable story.

Scout and Irving

By the way, the Goodwill-Bus thing isn't a gimmick, nor am I trying to make it into more than it is. It just is: it's how I get to work, and what I do on the way.

I should also mention that I've been a Buddhist for most of my life, so Buddhist concepts and experiences influence my perception and preferences.

On to books!

TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD by Harper Lee
I'm kind of starting near the top here. Scout Finch has become my favorite character in fiction (past winners include Hector, Jethro Bodine, Henry V and Sam Gamgee). Here's a story about stumbling upon injustice, recognizing it, and fighting it. It must be difficult, especially for kids, to see beyond ones own environment; or, to recognize that there is an environment, and that you can affect it. It's a Buddhist theme: Gautama, born to privilege, was able to recognize the suffering of others, and realize that it mattered. A central tenet of modern Buddhism is that a change in a single individual can change his/her society, can change the world.

So here's the Finch family, a routine ritual of bigotry thrust upon them, and they (namely, Atticus), refuse to accept it as routine, don't abide the ritual. They suffer for it. They triumph for it. This book, I think, is essential for anyone who wants to understand America. It's got to be one of the top 5 works of American Literature, doesn't it?

I have never seen the movie.

THE HOTEL NEW HAMPSHIRE by John Irving
I've read two books by Irving. In both, he created a wondering, wounded little boy -- and killed him violently. I will never read Irving again.

Books on the Bus

What I want to do mainly is write about books I read. I work near a Goodwill where, on a good day, I can buy 10 books for $5. Because it's a Goodwill, of course, I can't intend to buy anything in particular, and I'm at the mercy of whoever it is that donates books to Goodwill.

In other words, it could happen (and has) that I finish Voltaire and start Mary Higgins Clark. David Baldacci follows Turgenev. Winston Groom precedes Mark Twain. It's very random, topsy-turvy, indiscriminate.

Kind of like the bus I'm riding while I read. I started taking the bus over 2 years ago, for environmental reasons, mainly; though it's turned out it saves money, too. (By the way, once in a while I survey the cars going by the bus stop. In Omaha, on the average, 92 out of a hundred cars are occupied only by their driver.)

The bus goes straight down Center Street. I get on near Interstate 680, and the first leg of the ride is through veritable suburbia, with lawns brick houses and access roads. It swoops down a long hill, eases through an area of strip malls past a Walgreens and a supermart, past a cemetery and up into a hospital complex. Emerging from that, we're in a city, an industrial city, with mud on the street, dilapidated buildings, industrial businesses. We massly transit that and are back to a residential area. That's where I get off.

So it's one change after another both inside and outside the bus. The passengers change as drastically as the quality of the books and the scenery. There are only one or two that are there most days; for the most part, it's a mixed and unpredictable lot.

So that's the set-up. I've got a backlog of books to review, which is good: I'm currently reading The Idiot, and it could take me two years to get through it. I'll start reviews with the next entry.

What I Know/Don't know.

Hi there. I asked someone to help me set up a blog and she snickered and said "Just go to Blogger." So, here we are. I hope she ses this, because what I don't know (despite being on Blogger) is:

1. How she would ever see this. How's anyone gonna know it's here? I don't see anything on Blogger that tells me that.
2. How do you do links?
3. What are "Labels for this post"?

What I do know, starting out, is:

1. All problems will be resolved, because I have smart kids who will help.
2. I'm (eventually) going to be blogging about writing; mainly, I want to review books as a (I think) unique project (which I'll describe later.)
3. I may also write about politics, maybe about Buddhism, possibly about anything else that pops into my mind. Because that's what you do, isn't it?


Until next time: Have fun but don't get caught!