So I’m not going to be reading The End of the Affair just now. I started it, but it begins with the guy in the affair kind of mocking the husband of affair-ee. Not in the mood for that. So I tried E.M. Forster’s The Longest Journey. That one is full of 1907 English colloquialisms, references to things probably easily understandable in 1907 England, and what I suspect are inside jokes of 1907 English vintage. Too iconoclastic.
So I’ve switched to something easier to understand: Carlos Castenada’s The Eagle’s Gift.
(That's an inside 2010 American joke.)
Substitute bus driver again this morning. As I got on he asked “Am I early?” “I don’t know,” said I.
No watch. No cel phone. Plus, I forget what time the bus is supposed to arrive. I leave the house at 6:42, and usually wait on the corner a few minutes. Seemed about normal today.
Quite cold still in the morning, but warm in the afternoon. Hard to dress for.
The regular bus driver knows where the potholes are. Just as we approach my stop – 42nd Street for 2 or 3 blocks – the right lane is like the surface of the moon. The regular driver takes it slowly, which I don’t mind, as getting to work is not a big moment in my day.
Today we had a substitute driver. He did not slow down. We all have bumps on our heads from bouncing on the roof.
The Songs of Distant Earth by Arthur C. Clarke: I don’t read much science fiction (at least, not much written after 1900 – H.H. Wells rocks!)
And this did nothing to whet my appetite. In fact, I can’t figure out what the point is, other than to give Clarke a chance to expound on why he doesn’t like religion.
There’s a planet that is kind of like Hawaii, all perfect and everything, on which refugees from a doomed Earth landed hundreds of years ago and established a quite benign civilization. Suddenly, more refugees from Earth, who left after the first ones but in a faster ship, show up on their way to colonize a more distant planet. They pick up supplies – mostly, ice. Then they leave.
Great story, huh?
I expect more satisfaction from my next book: Graham Greene’s The End of the Affair.
"Nothing is more barbarous than war. Nothing is more cruel . And yet, the war dragged on. Nothing is more pitiful than a nation being swept along by fools." --Daisaku Ikeda
For the first time in maybe 5 months, when I walked out the door this morning birds were singing. Not geese honking, but real songbirds, really singing. That’s one of those things you take for granted, I guess, and never think you’d notice so dramatically. But, whew – I noticed it like you’d notice a light going on in the middle of the night.
I would write a song that begins “Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter”, but that would be redundant.
All Quiet On The Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
This book got Hitler P.O.ed at Remarque, so already it’s got s lot going for it. It as hugely popular elsewhere, in its day (c. 1929), and at least 2 movies have been made from it.
It is a powerful, powerful anti-war book.
I suppose the quality of the writing depends on the translation – I thought the copy I had seemed a bit clumsy with language, though I’m not sure there are any pothers – but there is no denying the intensity of thought, action, emotion.
On being sent to war by others: “While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that, we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards – they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they ; we went courageously into every action; but we also distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learnied to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.” (Chapter 1)
On the military perspective: “e were trained in the army for ten weeks and in that time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer.” (Chapter 2)
War’s effect on soldiers: “…we reach the zone where the front begins and become on the instant human aniumals…A column – not men at all.” (Chapter 4)
On the enemy: Paul speaking to someone he’s just killed): “Comrade, I did not ant to kill you. If you jumped in here again I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction…it was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand grenades, and your bayonet, and your rifle. Now I see your wife and your face and out fellowship.” (Chapter 9)
The snow is ugly now, surviving in clumps, some still tightly packed but covered in dirt and exhaust, losing to Spring, jagged pitiful. The newly freed grass, too, in places is ugly, so saturated it sinks at the touch, brown from the great weight it’s carried since December.
The yard is full of dog poop, but it’s way to wet for anyone to start cleaning it up yet.
On top of all that – The Big News – is that the Goodwill across from work is closing!
To refresh: the blog is supposed to be me reviewing books I find randomly at Goodwill, which I read while riding the bus to and from work. The cool thing is that the books are necessarily “random” – Goodwill doesn’t stock by popularity, or by request; it gets what people give it. Hence, you buy, not what you're looking for, but what is there.
Random.
Fortunately, I have a backlog (and I guess I have until June, when the store boards up, to increase the backlog). I’m currently reading All’s Quiet On The Western Front (review in maybe a week or so). And yet to come (note the randomness!):
Empire Falls (Richard Russo) Life of Pi (Yann Martel) Murder at the National Cathedral (Margaret Truman) Villa Incognito (Tom Robbins) Unlearning to Fly (Jennifer Brice) The Last Woman In His Life (Ellery Queen) The Fruit of My Lipstick (Shelley Adina) (probably won’t even actually read that one) Total Control (David Baldacci) The Eagle’s Gift (Carlos Castaneda) The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon (Stephen King) Rabbit Is Rich (John Updike) Nevada (Zane Grey) Giles Goat Boy (John Barth) The Log From The Sea of Cortez (John Steinbeck) The Picture of Dorian Gray and Other Writings (Oscar Wilde) Go Down Moses (William Faulkner) A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (Mark Twain) Miss Marple - The Complete Short Stories (Agatha Christie) Death and the Dancing Footman (Ngaio March) 50 Great American Short Stories Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (Tom Stoppard)
That’s about a third of what’s left right now. So there's probably 3 or 4 years of reading ahead, even without a sourtce of new oldies. And I hope to be done with this hellish job by then anyway.
It has occurred to me that I need a publicist. Not for any selfish reason, but because it seems to me I'm performing something worthwhile here. We have a tendency to let things drop out of fashion and then, out of existence. Where, for instance, are the songs on the album Along Comes...The Association? Why isn't Your Show of Shows rerun on KPTM late at night?
And: what kid today is going to think: "Wonder if there's abook called All's Quiet on the Western Front." Probably none. Also probably not many thinking about Candide, or Winter of Our Discontent, or The Time Machine. Maybe (so I flatter myself) I can remind them such things exist. Sure, they know of Grapes of Wrath, have had Ivanhoe and Huckleberry Finn forced on them at school. But the Second Tier, Steinbeck's and Twain's Others, the little gems -- not a big market, not something they will think of on their own.
I hope I help a little in keeping these things in mind.
Cliches: Beautiful enticing women are called “Sirens”. Come on. A one-eyed giant is – what else? – a “Cyclops”. But the worse thing is that Homer names his main character “Odysseus”. Yep - a guy on an odyssey is named Odyesseus. It’d be like if Mark Twain named his runaway boy “Rafty”, or if Tolkein called his hero “Ringo”. We get it – he’s on an odyssey! No need to name the character after the plot!
So what of this eponymous journey? Well, it takes up only three of 23 chapters (or “Books”, as the author ostentatiously calls them), and even then they’re not really happening. They’re merely related, after the fact, by Odysseus as he’s eating dinner. It’s like that terrible Forrest Gump movie, about a guy sitting on a bus bench, who ruins the story by rambling on and on about stuff that happened years before. Big deal, Odysseus – a six headed dog with 12 feet ate your crew a few years ago. Ancient history! Who cares?
So dude gets home and it turns out every guy in town is hanging out at his place because they all want to marry his wife. Okay – he’s been gone 20 years, so she’s what? Let’s be generous and say 38. On this whole island, there’s no woman anyone wants except a 38 year old mother of a 20 year old whose fierce warrior husband may or may not still be alive and coming home?
Right.
Odysseus comes home, spends a few chapters planning to brutally murder the suitors, and then does so. Not only that, but as one chapter – excuse me, “book” -- heading so succinctly puts it: “The maids who have misconducted themselves are made to cleanse the cloisters, and then are hanged”.
Yeah, there’s a guy worth waiting for. Domestic abuse potential? Nah!
There are other characters running around, most notably “Athena”, who is sometimes a bird, sometimes an old man, sometimes a beautiful woman; and Poseidon, who evidently controls the sea, like Lilo’s fish in Lilo and Stitch controls the weather.
