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.