Review Date: 9/13/2022

How the hell did we ever make it out of the twentieth century?

This curious book tells the dual story of the atomic bomb, in admittedly abbreviated fashion, juxtaposed with the account of a motion picture production recounting its deployment, and all the fateful vicissitudes involved in bringing a project of that magnitude to fruition. In short: when something of this magnitude emerged, (nearly) everyone and their brother wanted in on the action.

The title of this book, taken from the film, was inspired by a statement made by Truman himself: when meeting with film executives, he reportedly stated, "make your film, gentlemen, and tell the world that in handling the atomic bomb we are either at the beginning or the end," to which the movie executive replied, Sam Marx, "Mr. President, you have just chosen the title of our film."

Most readers will be at least somewhat acquainted with the controversy which ensued over the use of a weapon of this type, one with which, at least when entertainment denizens were bantering about the project, the public was little familiar, and, of those who were, few grasped the full weight of the implications of its development. The scientists, however, were among those who did understand what had just occurred, and many, their role in ushering in a new reality for a world just emerging from one of the most devastating conflicts in history. One even reportedly stated, "this bomb fulfills the third prophesy of the Old Testament... I hope your motion picture can work to avert such suicide. You had better hurry."

Nor were the religious implications, also reflected in the music of the day (check out the series "Atomic Platters"), lost on those involved with its development, if not necessarily its deployment. The book recounts the episode involving a Senator from Connecticut Brien McMahon, who had been informed that Archbishop Francis Spellman who had learned of the Manhattan Project from Roosevelt himself also flew to Tinian Island to bless the bomber crews after the destruction of Hiroshima. He reportedly stated to McMahon that his church opposed the use of a weapon essentially designed to kill innocent civilians, but in a time of war, any weapon that could end the war should be employed to bring a quick end to it. Clearly, the development of such a weapon, was going to cause some controversy.

But how to bring this new technology and the issues it raised to the uneducated masses... and sway public opinion about its use? The scientists seemingly embraced the motion picture project, at least at the outset, acknowledging that movies rather than books and newspapers were fast becoming the primary tool of mass communication (shortly to be supplanted by "television," which entered popular usage in the 1950s). The military was less than enthusiastic, concerned with national security to a greater degree than some other interests, but had to at least acquiesce when the project seemingly earned the approval of newly-installed President Truman.

Some of the book's more profound statements reflect a presciently accurate assessment of modern times, and how quickly mentalities changed. Barron reportedly stated: "it is our belief that only for solid entertainment does the world sit in theaters and listen. They go to school for education and to churches for sermons. We want them to come into theaters and be entertained." But sermons and "education," or re-education, tailored specifically to sway public opinion in wolf-in-sheep's-clothing garb wrapped as entertainment, would shortly become the norm. Films could become quite political, indeed, and leaders capitalized on their potential in short order. Barron's mentality would very shortly fade into history when both movie executives and politicians realized the full potential of the "entertainment" industry to communicate messages to the masses disguised as something else. The 1940s were still a time of great naivety in this regard, but that didn't last long.

To that end: the stories of how some movies get made (or not) are worthy of movies themselves. Projects of this magnitude, scale, and, in some cases, importance, just seem to take on a life of their own, especially when powerful entities attempt to showcase their aims and not infrequently, political aspirations, writ large on the silver screen. This is the story of an ambitious project which ultimately pitted competing interests against each other, which were simply a continuation of what had occurred with the bomb's development itself. That said, it finally ended up as something with promise unfulfilled. One of the major impediments was the efforts of filmmakers to get as many authentic characters involved as possible: Groves, Oppenheimer and some of the other scientists as technical advisers, and even the wife of Tibbets, the airman who piloted the Enola Gay to deliver its payload over the densely populated city of Hiroshima... but how many cooks does it actually take to spoil the broth? The answer? This many.

And then there were the Tinseltown types: this ambitious project, which started out with great promise, just kind of fizzled, ultimately becoming something that just really didn't work. It was a purely Hollywood production: the best example is the statement of one of the players, that in order to be successful, even a movie about the dropping of an atomic bomb and the incineration of hundreds of thousands of human beings wasn't spared from trope, specifically that "everybody knows you have to have sex in there somewhere," so the writers had to concoct some love story element to a story about ... dropping the atomic bomb and the possibility of the destruction of civilization ... ? Yep, it's in there: one even quipped on the difficulty in trying "to figure out a formula for mixing uranium and plutonium with stardust and moonlight." Oy vey.

The book itself is something of an odd mixture of elements. It attempts to combine the stories of the development of the bomb, the major characters involved, and the odd bedfellows involved in this motion picture project, ranging from some of the bomb designers to Hollywood icons to Ayn Rand. It's informative, but rather disjointed, and is somewhat dry at times. The jumping from topic to topic, even within the same chapter, often disrupts the flow. A chronological organization might have been more effective; it would allow readers to know who the players were, what role they had played in the development of the bomb and its deployment, and ultimately, their involvement on the movie project.

With the advent of a technology which would end civilization, if not just yet wipe out all life on earth, the world had become a much smaller place, seemingly overnight. Delphic, indeed. Whether we like to admit it or not, we live in the future World The Bomb Made, to a much greater degree than most are presently aware.

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Review Date: 5/16/2023

After the kill, there is the feast.
And toward the end, when the dancing subsides
and the young have sneaked off somewhere,
the hounds, drunk on the blood of the hares,
begin to talk of how soft
were their pelts, how graceful their leaps,
how lovely their scared, gentle eyes.

This unsettling poem sets the tone for much of this book, which is essentially the autobiography of one of the founding members of the famous FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit. I've read a few of these books in recent years, having inherited them among a collection of books given to me by a colleague who was moving overseas. This wasn't one of my favorites, as it admittedly focused more on the individual than the material, but it was still a worthwhile, if disturbing read.

A former marine, the author kind of went the long way 'round in getting to the FBI, having been in law enforcement previously, albeit in a rather small town. What I think I appreciated most was his candor in revealing his private thoughts about the subject matter, which, without rehashing or sensationalizing the cases, are some of the most horrific imaginable. It also describes how someone can deal with the absolute worst of humanity, and still make it through the day. I was still kind of irked by the focus on the perpetrators, my greatest criticism of books of this type, rather than their victims, whose courage and strength, even in their final moments, is what should be remembered, their lives celebrated, rather than those of the twisted freaks who prematurely ended them.

The twist in this book is the author's later career (calling), specifically a stint in seminary after the untimely death of his first wife from cancer, which is a unique take on how someone can cope with the depths of evil and travesty. Overall, as above, this wasn't one of the most detailed "profiler" books, but it's an interesting foray into a fascinating life, one rich with experiences, even the dark and tragic ones.
------------------
"look at the facts, gather absolutely as much information as was available, digest it all and then apply what he called the law of probability. In other words, the operate question should not be what MIGHT have happened, or what possibly COULD have happened? Instead, it should be In all likelihood, what PROBABLY happened?

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Review Date: 5/17/2023

Big is right! This exhaustive collection of stories, histories and documented accounts of hauntings throughout the Empire state will keep you busy for some time to come, if you're into ghost hunting or visiting the sites of well-known incidents, some of which are apparently still occurring on a regular basis. The author's extensive knowledge of her home state also helps, as the book also provides very informative and engaging local histories of the places in question, some of them quite tragic, which is an unusual bonus for books of this type, which mostly just focus on the paranormal occurrences.

This book was conceived from a reported 130 or so files and cases in the author's vast collection, so the variety is ample. Some of the locales are well known, such as the Vanderbilt mausoleum, New York University's Washington Square Park, where the graves of untold numbers - but possibly in excess of twenty thousand - of Yellow Fever epidemic victims lie, and famous haunted houses, but many more sites are known only to locals. It's an eclectic mix of travel book, local guidebook and ghost hunting guide, which keeps it interesting and engaging. It's also arranged conveniently according to area or region, so you can just focus on those areas you're planning to visit if you're short on time.

This is a fun read even if you're not planning to visit New York any time soon, but it would be indispensable for anyone who is planning a trip there, especially if you're fascinated with the paranormal.

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Review Date: 6/21/2020

Need to do some catch-up, so I'm putting some books on my to-read list which are a bit out of character for me, so to speak. I was going through some old papers recently, and found a box of books I had when I was younger. They almost count as new reads; I haven't read most of them in decades. I also need some lighter material, as what I've been working through over the last month or so has been pretty heavy going.

This definitely counts as something of a flight of fancy! Apparently there are now sequels to this novel, first published in 1985. I think this is one of the first-run paperbacks from the Scholastic Book Club. Can't count how many of those I had at one time, or how many I still have. Having studied Classical mythology for several years, I see how old themes still resonate, and are reinterpreted time and again. In this delightful read, which hearkens back to ancient times, both in the manner of the story and in its vernacular, a young firebrand, literally, in this case, undertakes a quest, an arduous and dangerous pilgrimage with others of his "people," as an initiation into adulthood. It just so happens that the "people" are unicorns, but humans or any of a vast array of other mythical characters could easily be substituted.

The creator of this world is Alma, an omniscient equid of some descript, at least as imagined by her Creation: another case of a god made in man's (or unicorn's) image, a reflection of our own creation mythology. In this richly imagined world, imbued with the forces of nature, there are many elements we would find familiar: warring tribes (griffins, pans, dragons, the treacherous worm-like wyverns, and the unicorns themselves) (species), with their own languages, traditions, conflicts and alliances, fashioned sufficient to serve as metaphor; quests; kings and princes; seers of dreams, magicians and healers, all of which make for a first rate fantasy tale. I don't want to spoil the ending, so I'll just leave off here. This was intended as children's or adolescent literature, I think, but there's definitely sufficient depth and intrigue for an older audience. Short but worthwhile, and I'm considering checking out those later in the sequel.

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Review Date: 7/29/2019

I've read innumerable books about the Black Death, from just about every perspective and angle imaginable, but I always enjoy those which bring a much-needed personal and intimate view to this tragic area of study. Some scholars have difficulty with this type of history, as, admittedly, a fair amount of it is conjecture, but it imparts a much-needed dimension, and is far more accessible to a more general audience than more academic works with which many people are less familiar and comfortable. It takes the form of a chronological account of the epidemic, which moved across the continent in a slow, unstoppable wave. Some of the most poignant scenes are the accounts of the people/characters who realize that a looming catastrophe is coming, but are seemingly powerless to do anything about it, or to protect themselves or their loved ones. Rather, they stoically await their fate as death closes in on their small village from all sides, like a flood, rendering escape impossible.

This book is a very good introduction to this vital event in world history. Some more in-depth knowledge of the topic would enhance it even more for readers, as there is a minimal amount of background information regarding the plague elsewhere than in England, but that's really the whole point of this work: to focus on one particular area and to provide an in-depth look at how it affected persons spanning the entirety of the social scale, from the wealthiest landowners (who weren't all that wealthy, comparatively, in this case), to the most destitute and landless, whose daily existence was a struggle for survival. When one reads other accounts of the wake of the plague, it becomes more clear and profound just how devastating this event was, and how it shaped the world in which we now live, despite occurring nearly seven centuries ago. This is what many would refer to as "micro" history, rather than macrohistory, of which there are plenty regarding this topic. It's not a novel or historical fiction, which the author eschewed in favor of a more traditional historical narrative, which I think many readers were expecting, but it provides a good balance between illustrating the various characters and the effect this event had on their lives, and providing a fairly thorough account of this specific period in world history.

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Review Date: 5/17/2023

"Sometimes dreams are wiser than waking."
-Black Elk

Black Elk (Dec., 1863-Aug. 19, 1950), was an eyewitness to some of the most important events in the history of the American West. He was born probably near the Little Powder River, modern-day Wyoming, and became a highly revered holy man of the Oglala Lakota. Black Elk was also the second cousin of Crazy Horse, who became a household name after the defeat of Custer at Little Big Horn, and knew him well, spending much time with the renowned warrior in childhood. Black Elk never learned to speak English, so his son Ben Black Elk, who was present during the talks with the editor, and others translated his father's words into English, including another Lakota named Flying Hawk.

The story of the book is almost as colorful as the content. The first book of Black Elk's spoken memoir was published in 1932 by John Niehardt (1881-1973), an American writer and Illinois native who was something of an amateur ethnographer with a longstanding fascination with alternative spiritual and religious traditions. He published his first work, "The Divine Enchantment," about Hindu mysticism, at age nineteen. Niehardt later served as a professor of poetry at the University of Nebraska and a literary editor in St. Louis, Missouri.

In 1901, Niehardt moved to Bancroft, Nebraska, near the Omaha Reservation, then to Branson, Missouri, in 1920. His most famous work, "Black Elk Speaks," was born of his efforts to interview an Oglala holy man who could inform his research regarding the Ghost Dance movement. This widely misunderstood practice was incorporated into multiple Native American belief systems of the late nineteenth century, and originated with a Paiute spiritual leader, circa 1890, with the intent of reuniting the living with the spirits of the dead to seek their assistance in ending westward expansion and to bring peace, unity and prosperity to native peoples.

In the summer of 1930, Niehardt sought and received permission fro the BIA to go to the Pine Ridge Reservation, one of the most famous Lakota reservations still in the present day. He and his two daughters met with Black Elk and some of his companions, several of whom had taken part in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, where George A. Custer and his troops were killed. Black Elk was also a survivor of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre. His oral narrative recounts his early life and youth living on traditional Lakota lands in the last decades prior to what amounted to an almost total loss of their culture and language. That is a recurrent theme in the book, in fact: that the tribe's sacred hoop was and remains scattered and broken. And the account includes not just Black Elk's memories: his friend Fire Thunder and other old friends and companions also made contributions to the narrative, recounting firsthand recollections of multiple encounters and battles, including the Fetterman incident where numerous white settlers were killed, after a convergence of many tribes, including Lakota allies Cheyenne and Arapaho, who gathered on the banks of the river to help them fight.

The account opens with Black Elk's memory of being told as a boy that the Wasichu, the white settlers, described as a people without number, were coming to wipe them out and take their land, and that "we should all have to die fighting." The reason was an all-too-familiar one: the whites had discovered in the sacred Black Hills "the yellow metal that they worship and that makes them crazy," in 1874, kicking off yet another "gold rush" which displaced native people who had inhabited the land for untold generations. In his early account, Black Elk spoke of the belief that all living things are members of one family, referring to two-leggeds and four-leggeds who "lived together like relatives." All that changed when the Wasichu arrived, according to his elders: "there was plenty for them and us until the Wasichu came and made islands for us and other islands for the four-leggeds, the islands ever becoming smaller... around them surges the gnawing flood of the Wasichu; and it is dirty with lies and greed."

Also early in the account, Black Elk recounted the event where he received a vision at age nine while critically ill and in a coma for a reported twelve days. This vision haunted him all his life, and his description of it allows outsiders a window into some of the spiritual beliefs of the Lakota. He remained throughout his life a philosophical figure deeply grieved by the injustice he experienced all around him, remarking on one occasion, "I could not understand this and thought much about it. How could men get fat by being bad, and starve by being good? I thought and thought about my vision, and it made me very sad; for I wondered maybe it was only a queer dream after all." He was frequently beset by self-doubt and great despair, which also persisted throughout his life.

Make of it what you will, but Black Elk's childhood vision, which stated that "all over the universe I could hear the winds at war like wild beasts fighting," is eerily prescient of the unmitigated catastrophe that was the first half of the 20th century. The author Niehardt then noted, "at this point Black Elk remarked: 'I think we are near that place now, and I am afraid something very bad is going to happen all over the world.' He cannot read and knows nothing of world affairs." Recorded in 1930: was this a reference to the Great Depression, which did shortly consume the whole world... or something even more sinister, which would occur a decade later, and indeed did involve a conflagration of the entire world, including "starving camps"?

Black Elk goes on: "Then when the people were getting ready to begin the fourth ascent, the Voice spoke like someone weeping, and it said, 'Look there upon your nation.' And when I looked down, the people were all changed back to human and they were thin, their faces sharp, for they were starving. Their ponies were only hide and bones, and the holy tree was gone. And as I looked and wept, I saw that there stood on the north side of the starving camp a sacred man ... It was dark and terrible about me, for all the winds of the world were fighting. It was like rapid gunfire and like whirling smoke, and like women and children wailing and like horses screaming all over the world."

Some have argued that a lifetime of closeness to nature imparts a unique type of knowledge, almost reminiscent of genetic knowledge or instinct. Some even argue that through meditation, connection with terrestrial energies can be discerned in dreams and visions. Black Elk also reported regarding his vision that long before coming of the whites, a medicine man dreamed of the animals perishing and returning to the earth, and a spider's web woven around the Lakota people. This spiritual leader also reportedly told him that "you shall live in square gray houses and beside them you shall starve."

This account could almost be called prophetic, not unlike the book of Revelation, in the Christian tradition. Not only did it come to pass in Black Elk's day, when his people were essentially confined to an open-air prison camp in the square gray houses as described, it brings to mind modern-day trailers and the corrugated metal houses and buildings of the Pine River reservation - a description of things that the elder saw but could not yet comprehend. Black Elk reports that he shortly thereafter returned to Mother Earth - it was said that the sorrow killed him.

Black Elk's life was a fascinating, if tragic one. In his 20s, he traveled "across the big water" on a steamship to Europe, touring first with Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, and, then, upon someone becoming separated from the group, with another traveling show which went to Paris and other parts of Western Europe. Black Elk even met Queen Victoria on occasion, and reports that she was a likeable lady who treated them well, even hosting them at her residence. He spent three years abroad, hoping to learn about the ways of the Wasichu, in order to help his people, but it seems that all he gained was an unquenchable longing for home and family. Curiously, he continued to have visions, even once in Paris, where his hosts believed that he was dying and began preparations for his burial, as he was apparently comatose for three days.

The book concludes with the episode of the Wounded Knee tragedy, when Black Elk was in his late 20s. He reported that he was having repeated intuitions that something bad was going to happen: Later in his 20s is involvement with the Ghost Dance movement. As such, he had tried to live peacefully, almost as a pacifist as a Ghost Dancer, but admittedly wanted and intended to take revenge after what he had seen. As he was staying in the area, he and others heard shooting nearby on that fateful day in December, and rushed to see what was happening. They arrived to see the entire village massacred. Black Elk himself reported to have been wounded by a gunshot across the abdomen after the attack when he and his companions were trying to retreat, and displayed the lengthy scar to Niehardt during the interview. Black Elk also reports that he rescued a baby, as did another companion he was with, who had lost their parents, and were subsequently adopted by the tribe, but that trauma seemingly never left him, after seeing women and children slaughtered by soldiers while running for their lives.

I would have very much liked to have known of his firsthand account of his life after this event, and about his later life: marriage and children, where he lived and what he did, and whether he continued his visions. It appears that he became a practicing Catholic, and is buried in Saint Agnes Catholic Cemetery in South Dakota, along with several of his other relatives, so it likewise appears that he continued his spiritual journey throughout his life, also. Black Elk ended his earthly course in 1950, but, largely due to this unique account, his visions and experiences will continue to inspire and move generations of readers.

Notwithstanding its great influence and popularity, the book is not without controversy. Perhaps the most significant issue is that of translation: the book itself was written by Neihardt, a non-Native, and must be viewed through that lens of bias. Black Elk's words were translated by others, sometimes informally, which presents a unique challenge in terms of accuracy. As such, many Lakota people do not consider his statements to represent traditional beliefs and have disputed the book's accuracy as truly reflective of Lakota spiritual practices. In fact, another scholar, an Indiana university professor, published his own book in response, "The Sixth Grandfather," a reference to statements in "Black Elk Speaks," regarding the vision, and argued that Niehardt's account is not historically accurate and probably does not represent the true views or statements of Black Elk himself, owing largely to unfamiliarity with native traditions and linguistic challenges.

For me, that's the missing dimension (and an explanation of the four rather than five-star rating). I would like to have seen the author's discussion of some of these vital issues, or at least an acknowledgement of them. For example: how did he attempt to retain the narrators' original messages, while skillfully translating ideas and concepts into English for an unfamiliar audience? In all honesty, I doubt Niehardt even considered it at length. I would also have been interested in the author's discussion of his own perspectives (and biases), as he had conducted previous research of other religious and spiritual traditions, so it's important to discuss, or at least acknowledge, how his own experiences may have shaped the form of his narrative here. Perhaps, considering the time period and the author's lack of formal training and education, that's asking too much of someone largely untrained in anthropology or ethnography... but it remains a starkly missing dimension in an otherwise excellent work.

Notwithstanding the limitations, "Black Elk Speaks" has become one of the most famous works of early Native American ethnography. In full acknowledgements of its limitations and shortcomings, it offers a unique perspective of a single person who witnessed and participated in some of the most significant events of the latter part of the nineteenth century, which tragically saw the near demise of most indigenous Native American languages, cultures and traditions. It's the small details which really stand out for me: even the manner in which the Lakota kept track of time: years were apparently not numbered, but were based on events. Black Elk mentions, for example, "the winter when the four crows were killed" (1863).

Months were similarly named for phenomena associated with them: The Moon of the Popping Trees (Dec.), clearly a reference to the sound of branches breaking under the weight of the snow; October was the Moon of the Changing Season; August was known as the Moon When the Cherries Turn Black; May was the Moon When the Ponies Shed; and November was known as the Moon of the Falling Leaves, for obvious reason. Even these scant details render this unique autobiography a work of priceless anthropological significance, as it at least attempts to render into English a glimpse into a vanished world, and a sadly vanished culture, whose traditional way of life has all but disappeared. These remnants, imperfect through they may be, are at least a first-generation account and, before widespread use of audio or video recordings, was the only way to see through their eyes, of what was coming and what occurred in this critical but tragic period of American history.

It is also vital to remember: as with the tragic account of Anne Frank - hers, and Black Elk's constitute only ONE person's individual story... one of untold millions, who shared the same fate.

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Review Date: 7/29/2019

The premises of these novels are so ridiculous and absurd, they're genius, and, God, help me, I can't get enough. No one would take this stuff seriously, except, it's Kurt Vonnegut, so, why would you? Enough said. And then some. This particular gem weaves a moroseful tale of woe in the form of a feigned (maybe) autobiography of an Armenian modern artist whose life was ruined, along with his paintings, after an unfortunate turn with newly-developed postwar chemical-based wall paints. The paints destroyed the canvasses they were applied to, along with Rabo's career, constituting, in essence, the acts of a pack of polychromous suicide bombers intent on the destruction of the entire modern art establishment. A-men! Thank you, Sateen Dura-Lux! "The whole planet is now FUBAR with postwar miracles, but, back in the early 1960s, I was one of the first persons to be totally wrecked by one - an acrylic wall-paint whose colors, according to advertisements of the day, would '...outlive the smile on the Mona Lisa.'" Or not.

The novel is named for Bluebeard, a character who kills all his wives, one after another, in quick succession, after they look into the one room in the castle where they're forbidden to go. Curiosity killed the cat. Think along the lines of that scene in the Beauty and the Beast cartoon, where she goes into the West Wing and finds the enchanted rose, not ending so well. The monstrous betrayal occurs when Marilee and Rabo are caught by his patron and her abusive husband Dan Gregory, whose one request of them was to never go into the Museum of Modern Art; little does he know that they have been betraying him regularly, visiting often the institution which he despises. "I don't give a hoot what pictures you look at... all I asked was that you not pay your respects to an institution which thinks that the smears and spatters and splotches and daubs and dribbles and vomit of lunatics and degenerates and charlatans are great treasures we should all admire... and it's not your going in there which is the most insulting. No, it isn't that. It's how happy you were when you were coming out!"

(Some) joking aside: this is actually quite a complex novel, with multiple threads and layers of meaning. Most of the familiar Vonnegut themes make an appearance, including war, anti-war, death, relationships, especially filial estrangement, which seems another common theme (the same appears in Jailbird), human nature, and, chief among them in this novel, an ardent hatred of modernity (or the pernicious children it spawned) and a palpable distrust of technology. One key passage reads: "the Second World war had many of the promised characterstics of Armageddon, a final war between good and evil, so that nothing would do but that it be followed by miracles. Instant coffee was one. DDT was another. It was going to kill all the bugs, and nearly did. Nuclear energy was going to make electricty so cheap that it might not even be metered. It would also make another war unthinkable. Talk about loaves and fishes! Antibiotics would defeat all diseases. Lazarus would never die: how was that for a scheme to make the Son of God obsolete. Yes, and there were miraculous breakfast foods and would soon be helicopters for every family. There were miraculous new fibers which could be washed in cold water and need no ironing afterwards! Talk about a war well worth fighting!"

On the whole, the central theme of war appears again, and frames the whole of the novel. Rabo was eventually wounded in the war, losing an eye, and early on, KV foreshadows this unavoidable event. In the person of a salty newspaper editor, KV speaks: "just remember that the Europeans around you, who you think are so much more civilized than Americans, are looking forward to just one thing: the time when it will become legal to kill each other and knock everything down again. If I had my way... American geography books would call those European countries by their right names: 'The Syphilis Empire,' 'The Republic of Suicide,' 'Dementia Praecox,' which of course borders on beautiful 'Paranoia.' .... I've spoiled Europe for you, and you haven't even seen it yet."

This view was probably reflective of what KV was experiencing at the time of writing, during the Cold War, which many believed to be yet another Interwar period between impending cataclysms, the next likely to be the final one, unless one counts the possibility of a fourth world war, involving sticks and stones: "That was an ordinary way for a patriotic American to talk back then. It's hard to believe how sick of war we used to be. We used to boast of how small our Army and Navy were, and how little influence generals and admirals had in Washington. We used to call armaments manufactures 'Merchants of Death.' Can you imagine that?"

As a rule, Vonnegut's works extrapolate in genius form the inane, quotidian things that seemingly irk him, but this one accomplishes this feat to a superlative degree. As in his other novels, he characteristically and assiduously dismantles and ultimately annihilates them, hurling such derision at the things he finds bothersome or absurd that they essentially come to nothing. For example, one will, I wager, never again look at modern art the same way, after reading this - Vonnegut's lighthearted yet scathing treatment couched in seemingly-innocuous farce is more impactful than the pedantic scorn of a roomful of pretentious critics. And a lot more clever, too.

I usually do a bit more analysis and less quoting, but this novel in particular had so many relevant passages, it's difficult to pass them up. I admit, I had fun with this one. The following passage summarizes nicely: "She nodded in the direction of the [Jackson] Pollock [painting]. 'All anybody could do with a picture like that is illustrate an advertisement for a hangover remedy or seasick pills.'" Circe's common sense is sagacious, and terrifying. It threatens an entire house-of-cards world and way of life. The reader is left with the question: is her "kitsch" the more banal, or Rabo's pretentious abstract art? Are they both, or is art simply an intangible, its value held solely in the eye of the beholder? Circe comes into his life in an almost supernatural manner, fate and whatnot. And she hates modern art, as did the artist's hyper-realist master, Dan Gregory, who made Rabo recite, "The emperor has no clothes," which has become something of a mantra to those who hate today's modern art. "I want you to say that out loud and with just that degree of conviction... anytime anyone has anything good to say about so-called modern art.... It's the work of swindlers and lunatics and degenerates, and the fact that many people are now taking it seriously proves to me that the world has gone mad. I hope you agree."

This novel is more Dickensian than many of his others. You get the sense that KV sympathizes with several (but, admittedly, not all) of these characters to a far greater degree, especially the embattled, somewhat pathetic protagonist, what with his enigmatic secret entombed in a potato barn, leading some to speculate that this was KV's autobiography of sorts as well (but I think all his novels are, in a way, as they reveal the episodes of his life in a haphazard, schizophrenic arrangement, typical of his style, that readers have to piece together like a jigsaw puzzle before a comprehensive portrait is revealed). Several other novels of his focus on tragedy as well, but this one is particularly heavy, embodied by the suicide victims and even the survivors, including the artist's parents, who escaped the Armenian genocide, but it also speaks strongly to loss: the loss of Rabo's eye, the loss of Dear Edith, and a surfeit of his friends, and even himself, in some respects.

The message here is, I think: survival is a matter of perspective.

-------------- NOTABLE PASSAGES-----------------

Edith, like all great Earth Mothers, was a multitude.

Judging from your pictures, you hate facts like poison.

My own father would have laughed as hard as anybody when my paintings, thanks to unforeseen chemical reactions between the sizing of my canvasses and the acrylic wall-paint and colored tapes I had applied to them, all destroyed themselves. I mean - people who had paid fifteen- or twenty- or even thirty thousand dollars for a picture of mine found themselves gazing at a blank canvas, all ready for a new picture, and ringlets of colored tapes and what looked like moldy Rice Krispies on the floor.

'Never trust a survivor... until you find out what he did to stay alive.'

Nowhere has the number ZERO been of more philosophical value than in the United States.

All that has changed, in my opinion, is that, thanks to television, we can hide a Great Depression. We may even be hiding a Third World War.

Most kids can't afford to go to Harvard to be misinformed.

Life, by definition, is never still. Where is it going? From birth to death, with no stops on the way. Even a picture of a bowl of pears on a checkerboard tablecloth is liquid, if laid on canvas by the brush of a master.

Who is to be more pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?

A lot of people were opposed to it. A lot of people were for it. I myself think about it as little as possible.

One would soon go mad if one took such coincidences too seriously. One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand.

and, to sum up:

"I think you're talking about TYPING instead of WRITING." -Truman Capote

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Review Date: 12/6/2024

This timeless, coming-of-age novella was the basis of a very faithful film adaptation, which was one of the best movies of all time, in my opinion. It tells the story of four twelve-year-olds who go on a quest to find The Body, that of Ray Brower, a missing boy their age from a neighboring town who disappeared after going to pick blueberries. The Four Friends are from a no-name factory town, no different than countless others across the US, where opportunities are few and poverty is an ever-present fact of life.

Most will be familiar with this story from the incredible movie "Stand by Me," which features an all-star cast, although many of the actors were virtual unknowns when it was released in 1986. It features Wil Wheaton as Gordie LaChance, Corey Feldman as Teddy DuChamp, Jerry O'Connell as Vern Tessio, Kiefer Sutherland as Ace Merrill, the leader of the hood gang, and the late River Phoenix as Chris Chambers.

This was the movie which launched the latter's career into super-stardom, and rightly so, although his newfound fame clearly contributed to his undoing. Corey Feldman also turns in a stellar and convincing performance as a physically and psychologically damaged abuse victim, which is all the more poignant considering his own life story.

The only thing I didn't like about this classic novel is the title. It's just not substantive enough for a book of this caliber. Stephen King isn't one of my favorite authors, but he hit it out of the park with this short story, first published in 1982. It's a real departure from King's standard fare, but it hits home, and hard, for those who grew up in this kind of town in a way that a fictional horror novel never could.

Like some of his other best work, including "The Shawshank Redemption" (another novella, written in 1982) and "The Green Mile," this excellent but heartbreaking story explores the dark side of human nature and the human condition. Set in the transitional year of 1960, it notes in no uncertain terms that change is coming: factories are closing, jobs are being lost, war is yet again looming on the horizon, and life in the highly-idealized small town community has turned sour. Economic strife and social change has pitted neighbor against neighbor, further fracturing the social fabric of this seemingly idyllic community. As such, King accurately portrays the pervasive caste system which is indeed often inescapable for those born on the proverbial wrong side of the tracks.

The rigid social hierarchy characteristic of small town life is on full display. There are the Good Families, such as Gordie LaChance's: not wealthy, but comfortable, he is the son of an older retired couple, but in most respects is an all-American kid who lives in a middle-class neighborhood. Not all is what it seems, however. Tragedy has recently beset his family: Gordie's much-older brother was killed a few months prior in a jeep accident after joining the army. He now describes himself as The Invisible Boy, largely ignored by his devastated parents after his brother's sudden death.

And then, there are the Lower Castes, those unfortunates stuck in a social and economic glue trap few ever escape. Chris Chambers, Gordie's best friend, is decidedly from the wrong side of the tracks. His family is among the lowest of the low. His father is an abusive drunk who goes on frequent benders, leaving Chris's elder brother "Eyeball" Chambers, a member of the local hood gang, in charge of him and his three younger siblings, the youngest of which is two. His mother is no better, as she frequently abandons her five children to fend for themselves while she flees to other relatives when her husband goes on his latest drunk.

Chris's future is all but assured, especially since he's been in some trouble himself, at home and in the community. As a member of the notorious Chambers clan, he is essentially written off as another statistic by everyone in town, despite his intelligence, wisdom and maturity far beyond his years.

Gordie's other two friends are Teddy DuChamp, the son of a war hero who stormed the beach at Normandy, but who returned home with a severe case of combat PTSD, and is now psychotic. In fact, he nearly killed Teddy by burning his ears off when he was a young child. Teddy's father was committed to a mental hospital, so Teddy and his mother try to make out the best they can, taking boarders into their home to make ends meet. Teddy also has very poor eyesight, so his dream of escaping his fate by enlisting in the army is unrealistic at best.

Vern Tessio is also from the lower class, with multiple siblings, one of whom also runs with the local hood gang. Even Gordie's father looks down on him, calling him a "feeb" (feeble-minded) and hates the fact that his son is seen in the company of kids he believes are below his social station. Vern's none too bright, and with his prospects few other than menial factory work, his future looks just as bleak as Chris and Teddy's.

Chris is even aware of this fact, that Gordie may be compromising his own social capital by associating with people below his caste, warning Gordie that: "your friends drag you down... they're like drowning guys that are holding onto your legs. You can't save them. You can only drown with them." Gordie remains loyal, however, and, in a sense, does contribute to Chris, arguably the friend facing the worst fate, saving himself.

As above: the movie is indeed a very faithful adaptation, to the degree that viewers will recognize much of the dialogue from the novel. Some things are different, however, but nothing really detracts: the movie takes place in Castle Rock, Oregon, not Maine, Stephen King's preferred venue, but both are appropriately rural and remote.

The movie takes place a year earlier than the book, as the director seemingly chose to feature the transitional year of 1959 to mirror the kids' last year of childhood before becoming teenagers and entering high school. The movie therefore draws on conceptions of the 50s as opposed to the 60s, when things were considered to be more "wholesome" then the succeeding decade, which was a stark departure from the conservative 50s in which the story is set.

Perhaps the greatest difference is the fate of the characters. The movie reveals that Gordie's other two friends remained in Castle Rock, where they settled down to raise families. Vern has four children and works as a forklift operator, while Teddy, after failing to qualify for the army, seems to struggle to keep steady employment and had served time in jail. Chris's fate is the same, but in the movie he is much older. He did indeed become a lawyer, and was not just a student at the time of his death, but he met his fate in the same way.

However, the book also reveals that both Vern and Teddy died in their 20s, Vern in a house fire and Teddy in a car accident. This is perhaps foreshadowed by the "goocher" the boys draw in the coin toss at the junkyard, and then with Gordie being the only one to flip heads in the second toss (he goes to get the groceries, but also escapes an untimely death and becomes a famous novelist).

This is my first time reading this book, and it's one of King's best that I've read of his work so far. Highly recommended: read the book first and then see the outstanding movie, if you haven't read or seen either.

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Review Date: 7/29/2019

This short but impactful book has received rather mixed reviews, in part because of its admittedly somewhat propagandistic nature, but it's an insightful look into one small facet of the war machine crafted by the US during the Second World War, which did nothing less than save the world. If that in itself sounds somewhat propagandistic and excessively laudatory, bear in mind that many of the other accounts of the war I have spent time reading include the works, or perhaps rather, indictments, of authors and survivors such as Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi.

This is another look at that critical period in history, and how the US viewed its role at the time, through one of the most well-known authors of the era, John Steinbeck. This account almost seems the memoir of what we would today call an imbedded journalist, who experienced a behind-the-scenes view of the training of a bomber crew, specifically that of the B-17s and B-24s, which operated in both the European and Pacific theaters.

I think the most valuable aspect of it is the personal accounts of some of the persons highlighted in their respective roles, such as the navigator, pilot, bombardier, and the gunners. Not only does it provide some detail of military operations, but it also describes the mentality of many in the US, and their experiences immediately preceding the outbreak of the war, coming out of the Great Depression. It's definitely a worthwhile read, if viewed through the lens of both its purpose (which is reasonably still somewhat debated) and the general attitude of the day.

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Review Date: 9/13/2022

This is one of the most uniquely creative books I've read in quite a while. It's geared for young adults, I think, but it's pretty universally appealing! Count me in for any book described as a yarn about an orphan teenage gravedigger who fights medieval zombies!

Ryn is an orphan living with her two siblings, a younger brother and sister, although occasionally with their ne'er-do-well uncle, a drunk with gambling debts, which puts their homestead in danger, impelling Ryn to undertake some drastic action to put things right. The children's mother has died a few years back, and her father, a sometimes-woodsman gravedigger in his own right, disappeared on an expedition to scout out a collapsed mine, which was formerly the source of the town's relative wealth.

But all is not as it first appears: you see, the woods are full of... well, zombies, to put it bluntly. Then appears a mysterious stranger, whom Ryn first encounters (and saves) in the woods, a "mapmaker," who seemingly comes at the worst possible time, for a medieval zombie apocalypse is just about to descend, especially when the town's head official decides to sell off the village's fence for scrap, which is seemingly the only thing which has kept the zombies from attacking the impoverished townspeople.

In some ways, these are traditional zombies, herein termed "bone houses," which is kind of an odd moniker, but in other ways, they're somewhat different. They don't seem entirely mindless, and aren't trying to eat people, per se. They can seemingly choose to engage and disengage, and don't mindlessly pursue at all costs... which makes them all the more terrifying. They have long kept strictly to the woods, but are now seemingly increasing in number, and are starting to venture out into the open: first the fields, and then in to the actual village itself. They also seemingly don't "infect" anyone, with a virus or the like, which is the usual zombie trope in modern stories. The cause for their reanimation in this medieval world is strictly magical. A long time ago, someone brewed up a potion in a magic cauldron, which was inadvertently stolen by people who ostensibly wanted to raise an undead army... but the concoction was accidentally spilled into a lake, which spread the magic throughout the entire watershed, so any time the water comes into contact with a corpse, the body is reanimated. The villagers have seemingly learned to live with these undead walkers, until the present time, but now, they are venturing into populated areas, spurring the village into action.

I don't want to give too many spoilers beyond that, but this highly readable and engaging novel is comprised of a hodgepodge of genres and influences, including both traditional and more modern fairy tale elements. The back story is right out of Disney's "The Black Cauldron," as to why concoctions brewed in the vessel somehow reanimate the dead. I've also seen several reviewers mentioning elements of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," too, a nod to the ax-wielding, teenage-girl zombie slayer! And maybe some "Resident Evil," whereby apparently animals can become undead, too... here, in the form of a zombie... GOAT?! Bring it.

The tale is also replete with connections to Welsh mythology, which gives it an interesting spin as well. On account of my own ignorance of Welsh mythology, I did have to look up quite a few of the terms, such as the pwca ("pooka," I believe, is how it's pronounced, at least in the Irish case), which are shapeshifting spirits - because I was unfamiliar with them, but knowing a bit of background about Welsh tradition and fairy tale elements makes the novel all the more readable. The characters are far more rich and developed than many other novels of this type I have read, and you really find yourself rooting for them in the wake of this zombie yarn from medieval times. I think this is a singular work, but I would definitely read any potential sequels. Enjoy!

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Review Date: 5/16/2023

See phone pic re: this may have been based on an actual event. Johann Schwarzhuber, a concentration camp commandant, spent time at Dachau, Theresienstadt and at Auschwitz Birkenau, before moving on to the women's camp, Ravensbruck. Reportedly, he had two boys who liked to run around the camp at Auschwitz, but when one of them disappeared one day, the commandant was terrified that he had been culled and taken to the gas chamber with a group of other prisoners, undetected. After a frantic search, the boy was reportedly found, but from that day forward the boys wore signs around their necks that read "SS Schwarzhuber's Son."

This is one of those books I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I haven't read until now, despite its immense popularity. On the surface, it's a rather simplistic story, and legitimately light on historical accuracy, so much so that several reviewers have noted that it's almost insulting, but there are some deep themes which deserve adequate treatment. I think having the story in a different setting and locale or even leaving the location ambiguous might have been preferable, but that wouldn't have been as emotionally impactful. In short, it's difficult (for adults) to get beyond the glaring historical inaccuracies, which simply make the story unbelievable, and, yes, perhaps a little insulting.

On the surface, it tells the story of Bruno, a highly sheltered upper-middle-class boy, who lives in Berlin with his family and their bevy of servants, so the title is even a bit of a misnomer. Nor is it really "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas's" story. It's more the account of the son of an army officer, who is transferred to become a commandant at Auschwitz, a rather problematic premise in and of itself. His precocious, bored son, looking for anything to do in the isolated location where there are no other children to play with, and vexed by just about everything, especially his taskmaster tutor who bores him even more with lessons in geography and history, wanders out of the family's garden toward the Camp one day, where he meets a boy his age, sitting by the wire fence. Bruno could see "children" from a distance, from his bedroom window... which likewise isn't really believable. All children were immediately murdered at Auschwitz-Birkenau. In an attempt to parallel the young lives, the author has them born on the same day: April 15. That's just the tip of the iceberg of the somewhat ridiculous premises the reader must accept to get into the story at all.

I get that it's young adult fiction, but it could have been so much more. I read voluminous amounts about the Holocaust - have all my life - and it could have been so much more impactful with some genuine accuracy. The characters, especially the title character, are stereotypical and one dimensional, so there is very little education for readers about what actually occurred in the death camps scattered all over the Third Reich and beyond, which seems a primary goal of the novel: to recount the experiences of two young boys, from different worlds, who are really not so different, but who, through an unfortunate twist, end up sharing the same fate. That message is powerful, but is lost in all the generalizations.

Simply put, the book just doesn't tell it like it is (was), which is frustrating. As other reviewers noted, if a nine-year-old were offloaded from a cattle car at Auschwitz-Birkenau, there would have been only one fate for him, accomplished in less than three hours, typically, and it wasn't wandering around aimlessly, occasionally hiding by the wire perimeter fence (which was electrified with such high voltage, apparently, that even coming within FEET of it would have meant certain death). There are just too many glaring inaccuracies to make this story meaningful, which is unfortunate, because it had great potential.

Overall, it didn't make it onto my "books-I've-thrown-across-the-room" list, but I was rather disappointed in it. It was so hyped that I really expected more, even from a young adult novel. It isn't necessary to recount in graphic detail the atrocities of that period to children to make the story believable, but authenticity and accuracy are important, and a more highly-skilled author could have done so much more with the material than simply describing poor, skinny, dirty, ragged people in striped pajamas

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Review Date: 5/17/2023

It's ceaselessly fascinating to read of how authors from different backgrounds interpret the events surrounding one of the most tragic episodes in early American history: the Salem Witch Trials. This young adult fictional account features the actual historical persons as characters, so they have some built-in background, which is hard to ignore if you're familiar with the events and individuals in question. That said, it's always somewhat disconcerting, to me, at least, that the characters were once actual living persons, who are, by necessity, reduced to two-dimensional stereotypes in fictional accounts, which, as a historian, always gives me pause. For that reason, it's helpful to know some of the events and details of the lives of individuals featured, which makes this and other historic novels much more rich and complete accounts, as the description in general is usually a little thin, and this one is no exception.

This short novel is written from the first-person perspective of Susanna English, the daughter of a wealthy shipping merchant, who gets caught up in the events surrounding the fervor which led to the tragic deaths of twenty people, nineteen of them by hanging. Susanna lives with her parents in Salem Town (now Danvers) as opposed to Salem Village, some three miles away, which was much more impoverished and imperiled. Most people don't realize that there were actually TWO Salems, but relations were anything but amicable. As the novel accurately portrays, there was evidently some vicious rivalry and jealousy between the "townies" and the more rural residents of the struggling village, which was constantly under the threat of attack and famine.

The village to a much greater degree also fell under the sway of its ministers, a string of seemingly unhinged individuals who ruled with an iron fist, and whose heavy-handed dictates would shame the most conservative religious zealots of the modern day. As the fictional Tituba notes in this account, "the wolves which howl in the night on the edge of town are more innocent." Not only was there conflict among the two nascent settlements: animosities and jealousies not commonly associated with Puritan values rent the village into competing factions, particularly among the landowning families whose rivalries played out center stage during the trials. The fictional Tituba muses: "Do you know what Salem means? ... 'City of Peace.' But there is no peace in this place. There is nothing but hate."

The author chooses to place at the center of the episode a clique of preteen girls from the village, whose jealousies are on display for all to see when they reject lonely Susanna from their illicit activities with Tituba, who, as a slave from Barbados, conjures folk magic for them to fill their empty lives with some measure of entertainment. Susanna has known for some time that this group of girls has been engaging in secret activities, which at one point she herself sought to join. Because she was considered an outsider, and a wealthy one at that, however, whom some of the girls believe to have flaunted her wealth and privilege by wearing silk dresses and traveling to Boston, she was rejected by them. Sent into the village by her mother to distribute goods to the poorer families as charity, Susanna one day goes to Tituba for fortune telling, to ask whether her missing brother will ever make it home.

There, she encounters one of the villains of the whole account, Ann Putnam (Junior), a twelve-year-old girl whose tender years belie her vicious nature, which may well have been the case. In the fictional account, she actually tells Susanna at one point that her mother has put her up to the whole thing, to take revenge on her neighbors, a claim with at least some historic veracity. Some have openly made the claim, in fact, that the Witchcraze which occurred in this impoverished village was nothing more than an attempt at a land grab by some of the families, the Putnams in particular, who had been involved in an endless series of lawsuits and quarrels with their neighbors for generations. The strife, animosity and rivalries ran deep, and when opportunity knocked, smoldering embers exploded into a raging brush fire that quickly got out of control, consuming all in its path.

And then, there is the very real possibility that some persons were simply mad, including the first "bewitched" child, Betty Parris, along with her cousin Abigail (who was a twelve-year-old at the time of these events, not the teenage temptress portrayed in the most famous fictional account of the Salem Witch Trials, "The Crucible"), who had to have been endlessly terrorized by her fire-and-brimstone, hellfire-breathing minister father, Samuel Parris. This much-maligned figure was universally hated, and was eventually driven from the pulpit, but not before time: nineteen had already gone to the gallows, some at his instigation. Parris is almost certainly responsible for much of the madness: had he injected some reason into the situation and attempted to dispel the paranoia and ever-increasing fervor of his diminutive flock, events would have likely not spiraled out of control.

And then there is the account of the bereaved mother, who accuses women, one Rebecca Nurse in particular, an elderly, charitable woman with eight children of her own, of the supernatural murder of the woman's own infants. It is unclear whether the accusation was out of jealousy and spite, because Rebecca's children had survived, grief which had driven the woman mad - as a plausible explanation as to why her numerous children had died while the offspring of others had lived, or as an opportunity for self-enrichment. In actuality, it was likely some combination of all of the above, but no matter how many fictional and non-fictional books are written, we will never know.

I won't provide too many spoilers other than to state that of course, Susanna's family is accused of witchcraft. The second half of the novel does an admirable job of describing what had to be at least a moderately accurate portrayal of what the family went through, with the terrors and anxieties of their ordeal accurately and poignantly described, through the eyes of the daughter who could only sit helplessly and watch the events unfold. The novel isn't as rich and well-developed as I would have liked, but it is geared toward young adults, so that's forgivable. Overall, it was a worthwhile read, good for anyone interested in this period of history and who wants to get an at-least-moderately accurate portrayal of what the persons who actually survived this incident endured.

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Review Date: 6/5/2021

My favorite GR review of this profound work of whimsy and farce: "A novel is a dead tree with words on it. Breakfast of Champions is a great dead tree with words on it."

Amen. It certainly ain't a waste of dead trees.

The immortal Kurt Vonnegut's seventh novel was a fiftieth-birthday-present-to-self, which is useful to know, as it's written in a style which he himself would like to see, I think, as opposed to his audience, and, I have no doubt, his publishers, as it's also full of his pop-art-style doodles, including the famous " * " one. I'll leave out the translation of that one.

The story herein, replete with the usual Kurt fodder of life, death, sex, war, poverty, industry, and, here, more overtly than in his other novels, racism, chronicles the lives and times of two eccentricities, Dwayne Hoover, a loony Pontiac dealer from Ohio, and the beloved fictional science fiction author, Kilgore Trout, a loony obscure writer who perplexingly achieves the fame which has long eluded him, despite his Isaac-Asimov-like body of work (the latter of which reportedly wrote some 500 novels). Suffice to say, however, the former was certainly NOT based on the latter.

As farcical and fantastical as this novel was, it admittedly wasn't one of my favorite Vonnegut novels. It's an amusing romp through Kurt's head, but it just didn't hit home as some of his other novels have. Perhaps that's due to the general lack of a central theme (other than insanity, it seems), particularity the overarching sense of tragedy and futility which we twisted souls have come to love about Kurt's usual novels. Don't get me wrong: it's definitely worth the read, but it's a bit more lighthearted than the norm, more a crazy-quilt, Jackson-Pollock-esque painting of a novel that meanders all over the place, often into the irreverent, but it's appealing in that it remains ever colorful and full of mystique.

It's also one of the first instances I can recall of Kurt engaging directly with his characters, specifically, the aforementioned Kilgore Trout, who has a Nobel Prize in medicine coming, I'm informed. Maybe the crazy is the point: it is, after all, the story of two thoroughly nutty men whose insanity is compounded by their encounters with each other and the inexplicable circumstances confronting them. That's also something both Kurt and his zany characters have in common.
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"And here, according to Trout, was the reason humans beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: 'Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.'"

"I can't tell if you're serious or not," said the driver.
"I won't know myself until I find out whether life is serious or not," said Trout. "it's dangerous, I know, and it can hurt a lot. That doesn't necessarily mean it's serious, too."

And this book is being written by a meat machine in cooperation with a machine made of metal and plastic, incidentally,is a close relative of the gunk in Sugar Creek.

And at the core of the writing meat machine is something sacred, which is an unwavering band of light.

As three unwavering bands of light, we were simple and separate and beautiful. As machines, we were flabby bags of ancient plumbing and wiring, of rusty hinges and feeble springs. And our interrelationships were Byzantine.

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Review Date: 5/17/2023

This was a good-quality example of the kinds of "horse stories" I loved as a kid. It's a bit more well-written than many of the others I've read, and there are some lovely illustrations as well. Robin Forrest has dreamed, as many young girls, of having a horse of her own, and is elated when she finally gets one: with a twist. She decides to adopt a wild mustang from the government's Adopt-A-Mustang program, and, although she's learned about horse care from her 4-H group, she quickly wonders whether she's in over her head. I think it's a good cautionary tale in that regard! Her similarly horse-crazy best friend got a horse before Robin, a flashy, show Thoroughbred, which is stabled at an illustrious show barn where her friend schools with a very preeminent, but prejudiced, trainer, and neither thinks very much of Robin's short, shaggy mustang.

In her struggles to train her new partner, Robin calls on the aid of her former riding instructor, who made a business of training retired racehorses. Robin also befriends a young man who also adopted a mustang, in fact, Robin's first choice, a golden stallion she saw in the paddock the day she chose Breezy. Through many trials, and a few twists and turns, the pair prove themselves, showing that hard work, patience and love pay off in the end. I enjoyed this short young adult book as a kid, and it's still quite enjoyable now as an adult. Highly recommended, and fairly accurate, if a bit outdated, for horse aficionados young and old!

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Review Date: 5/16/2023

I'm not a great fan of poetry in general, but I am of Bukowski, so I wanted to check out some of his more well-known compilations, and I wasn't disappointed. This volume definitely bears its maker's mark: gambling, sex, booze, cats, atrocity, stunning imagery, pink suns, 340 dollar horses and hundred dollar whores... life from below in all its sordid wonder. Like Oscar Wilde and Charles Dickens, Bukowski has a rare and enviable talent for making the gritty underbelly of life, full of drunken escapades, flophouses, violent encounters with a cornucopia of miscreants, impatient publishers and crushing despair simply sublime. Like several nineteenth-century authors I can think of, his writings almost make you feel bad about complaining about your rather mundane misfortunes in comparison.

Charles began life as Heinrich Karl Bukowski, born in Andernach to a German mother and an American soldier father, but that in 1920, so it must have been more than just a passing fling. He emigrated to the US at age three and grew up in Los Angeles, the setting for several of his most memorable novels. His hard living began young, giving him plenty of material from which to draw as a writer later in life. Bukowski himself reported that he was introduced to liquor by a childhood friend, whom he later depicted as "Eli LaCrosse" in the novel "Ham on Rye," who was the son of an alcoholic surgeon. His own hard-living "alter ego," Henry Chinaski, is depicted similarly.

Other episodes which eventually became literary canon fodder included the Great Depression, constant teasing about his heavy German accent by neighborhood children in his youth, severe acne in his teens, and an arrest by the FBI in his early 20s during WWII, on suspicion of being a draft dodger. His ethnicity did nothing to help his case, but he was passed over for service upon failing the psychological examination portion of his mandatory military entrance physical. Apparently inspired, he published the short story, "Aftermath of a Lengthy Rejection Slip," at age 24.

CB moved to New York City to become a writer in his youth, but gave it up after failing to get his material published, which kicked off a decade-long hiatus which consisted of little more than a string of odd jobs, ostensible debauchery and heavy drinking, eventually resulting in a bleeding ulcer. These experiences, along with a difficult childhood, formed the foundation for his best-known works. He worked at a pickle factory, then as a letter carrier with the US Post Office in Los Angeles, and frequently lived in cheap boarding houses like the one depicted in "Ham on Rye," the likes of which he had quite extensive experience with. He also frequently lived as a vagabond, traveling around the US, working his way from place to place with the little money he was able to earn.

In short: Bukowski lived life - raw, gritty, unwashed, unabashed life - and then wrote about it. During his convalescence from the ulcer, CB apparently began writing again, which met with far more success than his previous efforts: he is credited with penning thousands of poems and short stories, and six novels, including "Hollywood," "Ham on Rye" and the immortal "Pulp." He only began writing poetry later in life, he reports, at age 35 - his first book of poetry was published in 1959.

Bukowski died in 1994 of leukemia, in San Pedro, CA, shortly after completing his last and perhaps most iconic novel, "Pulp." Ever one for irony, his funeral obsequies were performed by none other than Buddhist monks. He's interred at Green Hills Memorial Park in Rancho Palos Verdes, under a simple flat, gray marker which reads, "Henry Charles Bukowski, Jr. HANK. Don't Try." This last apparently refers to advice he gave to someone in a letter to aspiring writers: when asked "What do you do; how do you write, create?" he reportedly responded, "You don't... You don't try... you wait, and if nothing happens, you wait some more... you wait for it to come to YOU."

This volume is actually an anthology of work from different periods, which allows readers to discern the evolution of his work and outlook on life. Bukowski transforms from a carefree if rough-around-the-edges young man to a cynical, jaded recluse whom one can easily visualize sitting at his desk in a dark, oak-paneled, windowless room, a cigar smouldering in an ash tray at his right hand and a whisky bottle at his left. His poems are vignettes of real life, but he definitely sees things differently as life passes. The first section includes poems from the period 1955-1968, and the second from 1972-1973, with other periods encompassed in different volumes.

What was his creative process like? In one case, he describes it himself in a revealing foreword, specifically that when his publisher "Joe," became "downright unlaced if I didn't have a handful of poems," he would go to a friend's place and stay all night: "we'd take pills and drink and talk." Whatever his creative process, Bukowski is immensely relatable if one has experienced life from below, but paints his portraits with such vivid color and life that even life's downers don't seem so insufferable.

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"nothing matters
but flopping on a mattress
with cheap dreams and a beer"

"and all around me are the lovers,
the two-headed beasts
turning to stare
at the madness
of a singular self;
shamed..."

"a 340 dollar horse and a hundred dollar whore"

"and then I got up and looked in the mailbox
and there was some kind of warning from the
government
but since there wasn't anybody standing in the bushes with
a bayonet
I tore it up"

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Review Date: 6/21/2020

Like the history of science, the umbrella under which this genre likewise falls, the history of medicine is a sub-specialty all its own. Many works are rather technical and difficult to access for non-specialists, but this one a fascinating read, comprised of engaging prose and imaginative description. I always appreciate learning how we got from "there" to "here," and this is a particularly striking topic. It's a thorough history of nineteenth-century medicine, as much as the story of one Joseph Lister, not to be confused with another renowned surgeon, Robert Liston, who has a knife named after him (which was mostly famously used by Jack the Ripper, apparently).

I'm something of an admitted Anglophile, and anything Victorian is certain to catch my attention, so this unique study easily caught my eye. A word to the wise, however: the material pulls no punches, and tells it like it is (was), so be prepared to encounter some absolutely gruesome scenes throughout. It's a wonder that anyone emerged alive from their date with the knife in bygone centuries: indeed, many simply didn't. Still more died shortly thereafter from infection, so surviving the surgery certainly didn't mean that someone was going to recover. And, then, there is the, well, just inexplicable: Fitzharris recounts, for example, the story of one of Liston's famous "speed-amputations," whereby he amputated the limb, but also inadvertently cut into one of the attendants, and in his haste to, even slashed the coat of a nearby observer. Reportedly, the patient eventually died of infection, but so did the attendant, after being cut with the knife; the unfortunate observer had apparently died on the spot of a heart attack resulting from the shock of his encounter with Liston's gleaming blade. So, this procedure is apparently the only one in documented history which had a 300% mortality rate!

I think one of the most apt descriptions of the book in general comes from reviewer Erik Larson, who said that the author "becomes our Dante, leading us through the macabre hell of nineteenth-century surgery to tell the story of... the man who solved one of medicine's most daunting and lethal puzzles." Macabre hell is right: eighteenth- and at least early-nineteenth-century medicine, and particularly surgery, was in some ways not even as advanced as that of the ancient world, at least in practice. Some of the flawed Classical paradigms, such as the "humours" theory, were still being promulgated in the nascent medical schools of the day, which were little more than a shop of horrors, where doctors were ill-trained (and, in some cases, since most learning simply occurred via a form of osmosis and observation rather than direct instruction) and rarely taught much of anything.

The story of the main character's life and quest to find a cause and cure for infection is a meandering journey through the medical history of the nineteenth century, the period of luminaries such as Liston, Florence Nightingale, David Livingstone and Louis Pasteur, who developed many of the procedures we take for granted, and not before time: as the author notes, "hospitals were known by the public as 'Houses of Death,'" with few surviving them. The survival rate was much better just about everywhere, including at home, but only the very wealthy could afford house calls. One gangrenous limb could take out an entire floor of patients, such was the lack of sanitation. All that changed, on account of the efforts of a handful of people, which changed the practice of medicine forever.

The book is well-researched, and is comprehensive in its treatment of the subject, but, as above, it's still very accessible to the non-specialist, and would be appropriate for history buffs and those interested in the daily life of this period as well. As much as this period is romanticized, I'm certainly glad that the practice of medicine has changed, at least for most of us!

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Review Date: 5/16/2023

I'm still working my way through this admirable series, which, as I've said before, every American school-aged child should read in its entirety, as it's such an accessible introduction to the major features of American history. Dated though they may be (which offers an opportunity for discussion and critique) they offer so much more detail and insight into the topics than can be found in a dry textbook, as they usually also focus on the lives of individual people, which humanizes the events and makes the material more interesting than a recitation of facts and figures. To that end, I wish the series had continued, as many more volumes should be added to address events in the (more) modern-day.

This volume was decidedly less sophisticated than several others I have read, but I would still highly recommend it as a part of the series. As I have stated previously, the strength of these short, easily accessible books is that they provide a good overview of the subjects they address and hopefully spark readers' interests to further research and explore related matters more deeply on their own. This one in particular also provides something of a guidebook for locations throughout northern California, so residents can visit many of the locations as a field trip!

For this particular volume, as a native Californian, it was fascinating to (again) read of the prominent figures and events which led to statehood in 1850, largely because of the Gold Rush. As stated, California went from being a backwater with a population of a few tens of thousands, to an economic powerhouse with a population nearing half a million only a DECADE later. The town where I was born was named for a prominent figure who immigrated to the area in the wake of the Gold Rush, for example. The state also remained a cosmopolitan, multi-cultural promise land largely because of the influx of persons from all over the world, many of whom stated and built lives here, bringing their languages, foods, cultures and traditions with them.

Not all that glitters is gold, however, and the book also spells out some, but not all, of the consequences of sudden, radical change. Small, sleepy towns almost overnight were overrun with populations bent on striking it rich at all costs, leading to runaway inflation, crime and vice beyond description. As it's a children's book, the material is rather tame in light of what it actually was like in mining boom towns. What the book didn't include, however, and should have, was the devastating effects on the environment, especially after commercial mining operations took over as the dominant type for gold extraction, which led to environmental degradation the area has yet to recover from, and likely never will.

It also glossed over some of the more unpleasant aspects of labor relations in norther California, especially in the wake of mass immigration particularly from China, and the horrific treatment these settlers in particular were subjected to. Nor does the book at any great length address the plight of native peoples who were pushed off their lands in the ever-expanding search for riches. Most California school children know the story of Ishi, of the Yahi people, who were nearly wiped out in the decade following the '49 gold strike. Not only did miners push the natives off their ancestral lands, but mining operation also severely damaged waterways and killed the fish and animals native peoples relied on for food, clothing and shelter. Settlers from all over the world also imported deadly diseases such as smallpox and measles, which took a heavy toll, as did the bounties set on native peoples in subsequent decades, who were even attacked and killed in their sleep. As a result, many native tribes, including the Yana group, to which Ishi belonged, were pushed to the brink of extinction. This subject, especially the story of Ishi and his people, are deserving of a volume all their own.

Notwithstanding the shortcomings, however, this and the other books offer a good introduction to the major events which shaped American history, and are highly recommended to anyone who is just learning or, like me, hasn't been exposed to the material since grade school, in some cases, and needs an accessible and enjoyable refresher.

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Review Date: 6/21/2020

This is another in a box of old books I came across recently, which I haven't read in decades, and I thought I would give them another once-over before I pass them on to new homes for new generations of readers to enjoy. This was also another I purchased from the Scholastic Book Club, although, having read it on several occasions previously, I'm always a little surprised that it's marketed as a book for children. Yes, it's about a dog, sort of, as the people in the lives of Jack London's animal characters are as significant as their four-legged co-stars, but the brutality of much of his writing seems a bit beyond what I would recommend for children.

That said, some of my earliest memories of living in the San Francisco Bay area were of trips to Jack London Square, so it's not surprising that I've read many of his books, even in childhood. Most of the things I read under about age ten were "animal stories" in any event, mostly horse stories, which I still love. London was something of a radical, part of the literary group "The Crowd" in always-hip San Francisco, who, in addition to the more rugged, outdoors-oriented novels that brought him worldwide acclaim, he also wrote several dystopic novels and stories, including The Iron Heel and non-fiction works such as The War of the Classes.

The Call of the Wild, arguably one of his more famous adventure novels (which is somewhat surprising, considering that he became more well-known for his science fiction), started life as a serial published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1903. It was later published in book form, although the book is fairly short. It's since made the rounds on celluloid as well, having endured several theatrical renditions, but none as successful as the novel. London hit upon the idea after spending a year in the Yukon, so he probably witnessed many of the events described in the book first hand, as one who endured the harshness of that unforgiving land, which carried off many soft Southlanders, man and beast. He reportedly stated on one occasion, "it was in the Klondike that I found myself," including at his residence in a temporary encampment where he holed up all winter, reading the likes of Charles Darwin and John Milton. After an illness, however, he decided to return to California, by rafting 2,000 miles down the Yukon River.

The primary character is the 140-pound St. Bernard cross, Buck, who was stolen from his owner, Judge Miller, in California's Santa Clara Valley, by the gardener, who sells him to a broker, who first takes him to Seattle and then to the Yukon territory of Canada. Brutalized from the outset, this unfortunate pup shortly learns the law of kill or be killed, and, there's a lot of killing in this story, which is often billed as a children's book, more for the length than the content. There's a veritable parade of characters, both man and dog, in the book, which include Buck's fellow sled dogs, and a succession of owners and drivers. When his last beloved master is killed, Buck heads off into the wild, forsaking human contact forever to take up with a pack of wild wolves. It's narrated from the dog's point of view, though not in the first person, unlike stories such as Black Beauty, another highly successful, realistic portrait of the plight animals in the late 19th century.

Buck was reportedly based on an actual St. Bernard crossbred, owned by friends of London's who lived in Dawson City. There is an actual surviving picture of the dog, taken during London's stay in 1897, so if you're really invested, you can see the real Buck, which is now housed at the Beinecke Library at Yale. Although not one of my favorite adventure stories, it's a quick and entertaining read, although many will doubtlessly find the incessant incidences of animal abuse disheartening.

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Review Date: 6/5/2021

I was just a couple of years old when this book was first published. It may be more well known from the 70s movie of the same title, featuring Walter Matthau, about a hard-luck kid, his ne'er-do-well father, and an orphan colt he raises from birth.

Inside the cover of my edition, which is a first edition, is a stamp which reads "Snooper's Barn" 1101 Garrison Ave., Fort Smith, AR. This old-school used bookstore is one of my dad (and my!) favorite places, and I remember when he came to visit me when I lived there as a kid in the mid-80s, going to this bookstore to browse, and he bought this book for me. I had seen the movie on TV, so I was familiar with it.

It's about a trainer who comes across the opportunity of a lifetime, when his son purchases, on behalf of one of his clients, who is none too thrilled, an old mare bred to a great champion running Quarter Horse. The mare dies giving birth, so his youngest son, Casey, raises the colt. Lloyd's other two sons, Buddy and Randy, make up the family of men, and all are involved in the Quarter Horse industry, barely surviving, until this colt comes along. It had a rather sad, and unsatisfying end for me as a kid, but it also leaves the reader to somewhat write their own ending, and, because of all the misfortunes of the perpetually down-on-their-luck characters, you really find yourself pulling for them.

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Review Date: 7/29/2019

As several other reviewers have noted, this book is a masterpiece of English literature, but it has been sadly overlooked. M.R. James is a savant storyteller: he provides ample opportunity for a reader to employ their imagination, based on their own memories and experiences, while simultaneously weaving a rich tapestry of imagery that transports one to another time in another world. Taking great pains to describe his scenes, he scrupulously constructs a detailed backdrop against which to set his subtle, yet disturbing, tales of the supernatural and bizarre. He celebrates the sublime of the everyday and ordinary (in the author's own mind, as well: he is clearly an avid golf enthusiast!) while suggesting ever so gently that even the mundane can be horrifying, in ways not expected.

I can understand how a handful of reviewers have commented that some of the stories are rather "slow;" to me, however, this method lulls the reader into a sense of (false) security, rendering them unaware that all the while, James is masterfully building momentum, which makes the quotidian all the more horrifying and disturbing. Even a seemingly-innocuous prayer book, along with other familiar, even banal objects, can betray and deceive with terrifying results. I highly recommend this collection to ghost story aficionados who love a good tale well-told. I also think that only a light reworking would render some of these stories into adept screenplays! Enjoy!

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