WILL YOU FOLLOW WHERE I LEAD?
Who wrote it?
A book about the heroic life of
the Maiden of Orleans. Her early life and devotion to Our Lord and His saints.
Her obedience to the hierarchy of the Church and rightful heir to the crown of
France. A chronicle of an innocent’s command of armies and their allegiance to
this naif in the ways of life in the camp. The journal of the disgraceful abandonment and shabby treatment
by people who denied the maiden her fundamental rights under Church law and the
law of belligerents.
If you DIDN’T guess Mark Twain, you
would have been in good company. In fact, you still would. A number of
Twain academics and devotees refuse to acknowledge he wrote it. Mark Twain
submitted The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc anonymously to Harper’s
Magazine with the hope that it would be accepted as a serious work in spite
his reputation as a skeptic and satirist.You don’t have to dig very deep
for his characteristic wit and sarcasm. It is there, as is his affection for
the habits of youth: “It always happened that people who began in jest ended by
being in earnest.”
If you squint while reading, you
can be forgiven for thinking that this or that bit came right out of that Tom
Sawyer novel. This fraud of a biographer plagiarized parts of his own works.
Oh, I recognize this trope from Pudd’nhead Wilson or Following the Equator,
maybe Huckleberry Finn, or . . . well, you get the idea.
Unable to find humor? This injures
the American Master of humor. Read this and see if you don’t catch Twain
winking at you: “At bottom, he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without
any harm in him, if one stops there and does not bite, and it is no harm to be
an ass, if one is contented to bray and not to kick.”
Twain’s description of Joan’s
trial evinces the same outrage he describes as Tom Canty in The Prince and the
Pauper: “a dignified sport, a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a
kitten!” A detestable trap opened by a cleric who has the temerity to ask “Are
you in the state of grace?” Among the sixty-plus “learned” clerics, one sprung
up to denounce the question. She answered placidly:
“If I be not in a state of Grace,
I pray God place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so.” Twain records
that “her solemn answer was met with the silence of the grave.”
Many express amazement that Twain
would write a book about a saint. Not only did he NOT have fun at her expense,
but extolled her virtues. He didn’t mock her naivete, for she was clear-eyed as
Huckleberry Finn in his murky way. – October 28, 2023
EPIC READING
The autumnal solstice occurred this weekend. Here on the
Gulf Coast, this is meant as sarcasm. Who knew God was such a madcap!
During long stretches of idleness I like to take on reading
challenges: Moby Dick, Bleak House, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Les Misérables, and so on
and interminably on. This summer I dove into Middlemarch by George Eliot. You
may remember her from Silas Marner if you survived high-school mandatory
reading. This thing is over 800 pages. Two inches thick. It weighs 1-½ pounds,
if you believe my bathroom scale. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a
ponderous novel, but it’s a paltry one-third. If it were a hamburger, you’d
need at least two to-go boxes.
Why do I do this to myself? With most epics, there are
entire sections that could be ignored without sacrificing the essential story. A
section about sewers? Page after page of cetacean history? Did earlier families
stock these in the outhouse?
But it occurred to me I was asking the wrong question.
Instead, I should be asking, “Why did these writers do this to us?” Clearly,
they expected a literate audience, and one with plenty of time on its hands
with family members reading books aloud or to oneself by the fireside. How
better to pass the time between milking cows and shooting Lee’s Miserables
during the Civil War? So writers of the age from the invention of the movable
press to television indulged themselves and readers with print. The more, the
better, judging from 19th-century literature.
From now on, I won’t call them epics. I’ll call them
page-turners. And so many pages to turn! – September 25,
2023
WRONGING THE OTHER WOMANThe people we most admire, we often learn to our sorrow, have warts that no amount of Compound W could remove. Welcome to reality. People are imperfect. Mark Twain was no exception, although he rose above the rabble of his time he satirized in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain received Booker T. Washington at his home, following Theodore Roosevelt’s “scandalous” invitation to the famed founder of the Tuskegee Institute in 1901. Twain faced his largest audience at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the famed son of Alabama, basking in a three-minute wave of applause before taking his seat next to the honoree. He was no stranger to controversy.
As the personal aide to Mark Twain, Isabel Lyon had a front seat to much of his exploits. The subject of this book enjoyed the personal confidence and access to sensitive domains of the most beloved writer of his time. He was equally devoted to her, joking that anyone who attempted to reach him through Lyon was “tampering with the sentinel.” The author states that Twain relied on her when he didn’t trust his own daughters with certain matters: “She was given carte blanche to control the household accounts, deal with merchants, and write checks. She also read all of Twain’s personal mail and was charged with keeping the curious and adoring public at bay.”
Unfortunately, Twain’s devotion to his daughters stood in the way of his devotion to his confidante. One of his daughters conjured up the fantastic explanation that Twain was hypnotized by Lyon. This, and the reliance of other medical quackery is ironic in light of the hilarious mockery of Aunt Polly’s medical cures in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: “She added hot baths, sitz baths, shower baths, and plunges. The boy remained as dismal as a hearse. She began to assist the water with a slim oatmeal diet and blisterplasters. She calculated his capacity as she would a jug's, and filled him up every day with quack cure-alls.”
Ultimately, Twain not only showed Isabel Lyon the door, but heaped ignominy on her poor head on the way out. For someone who demonstrated such magnanimity towards so many, what a shame that he would stoop to this level at the behest of his own jealous family. - Patrick Hubbell/June 18, 2023
DOCUMENTING A JOURNEY THROUGH HELL
“We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.” –
Rudolf Hess, explaining the most efficient method of extermination
A tome with a wide scope of history like The Rise and Fall of the Third
Reich by William Shirer requires an investment of time. In my case, five years.
After many pauses, interims and interruptions, I reached the end. Okay, I
skimmed a lot. The end was in sight, so I lugged it to work and read 50-60
pages at a time during one week to get it over with.
A huge portion of the book naturally details the smashing initial success
of the armies and Luftwaffe, encompassing much of Europe and North Africa. The fatal
flaw of Hitler doesn’t emerge until four years into the war. He can’t admit
defeat, and refused to retreat, ever. The Battle of Stalingrad is the beginning
of the end, accentuated by Bastogne and Ardennes.
I slowed down near the end as the writer describes in excruciating detail the
New Order Hitler and the Nazis had in mind. The utter depravity and cruelty is
on full display, from the mindless brutality, the utter neglect, “scientific”
experiments, much of it too horrible to recount. Frau Ilse Koch, aka the “Bitch
of Buchenwald,” had a penchant for lamp shades made from human skin, thanks to
the cooperation from eminent and lesser-known medical experts and
experimenters, a demonstration of the poisonous nature of the Nazi philosophy. Entire
villages were wiped out in retaliation for the sporadic uprisings against the
wholesale slaughter.
“An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her
arms, singing and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents
were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a
boy about 10 years old; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to
the sky, stroked his head, and seemed to explain something to him” – sworn
affidavit of witness to liquidation of 5000 Jews in Dubno (Ukraine).
Even the most fanatical Nazi realized in April 1945 that the end was near. A
reasonable leader would sue for peace on the best terms possible. Hitler
envisioned the end culminating in “one vast wasteland. Nothing was to be left
with which the German people might somehow survive their defeat” as the Nero Decree
specified:
“If the war is lost, the nation will also perish . . . Those who will
remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been
killed.”
Presumably, many ordinary Germans weren’t willing to go quite this far.
Frau Goebbel, provides, in a nutshell, the mind of the Nazi to the very end: “They
[her children] belong to the Third Reich and to the Fuehrer.” She left specific
instructions to a nursemaid to help kill her own six children by lethal
injections. A radio announcement pronounced that Hitler died “fighting to the last
breath against Bolshevism.” Shirer puckishly adds that “The Third Reich was
expiring, as it had begun, with a shabby lie.”
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a history made in hell of a
deranged man who dragged a cohort and an entire nation into a pit. Unfortunately,
he was not the last of his kind. – May 27, 2023
DROWNING IN BLUBBER
“[W]e have here an American
masterpiece, a book that rewards constant re-reading; that provides all the
tingling excitement of high adventure and the profounder satisfaction of all
‘deep and silent thinking.’” – Denham Sutcliffe/King’s College
“An epic is a novel that needed a better editor. An
unsentimental grouch would stare at the padding and decide a scythe would be
more useful than a scalpel.” – Patrick Hubbell
If you make a living as a professor
of literature, I can think of no better book to force upon tuition-paying
students than Moby Dick. Constant re-reading certainly rewards HIM. As for the
quote inside the quote, I can’t help wondering if this is intended as irony or
sarcasm.
I have re-read Moby Dick twice –
so, three times in all. I don’t have a record of that fateful first encounter
with the White Whale. Surely it was in the syllabus for my American Literature
to 1860. Melville’s famous work sprang from the depths in 1851, well after “Sinners
in the Hands of an Angry God” and everything else by Emily Dickinson, but well
within time to make me wish I had changed my major from English to history.
Before the saga begins, the reader
is treated to an “Etymology” and “Extracts,” helpfully “supplied by a
sub-sub-librarian,” as Melville recalls. I envision this sub-subber emerging
from a dusty tomb laden with scrolls, croaking to the erstwhile
whaler-cum-author “Be ye mindful that thoust not maculate a single page and
these be returned in two weeks hence lest thou incurst a fine daily of a
hae-penny.”
After my second foray 22 years
ago, I had resolved then, Professor Sutcliffe be damned, I would never read it
again. Why now, then? My beloved wife, having begun the audio book, exclaimed
“How can you not love this!” I sighed a deep sigh, and reembarked on this
logorrheic journey a third time. Maybe I missed something the first two times.
“Call me Ishmael.” I was
entranced, it is true, for the next 35 chapters. In between that and the last
three chapters (there are 135 – you do the math, if you’re bored, as I became),
I wished for a harpoon to impale me. I’m convinced that Victor Hugo and
Melville swapped notes on how to pad an otherwise good story. For every chapter
Hugo wrote about the sewers of Paris, Melville matched him with, well, pretty
much everything from chapter 40 to 90.Here's a rule of thumb. If you’re
reading a book written in the 19th century, you can probably skim ¼-½ of it.
Maybe more if you’re judicious. Don’t skip the chapters on the syllabus,
though. They’ll be on the test. – Patrick Hubbell/November 18, 2022
PLUGGING THE HOLES IN THE DAMN
William Barr served as the attorney general during the last two years of Trump
and the last two years of the elder Bush, making him the only attorney general
to serve two presidents. How does one account for serving two entirely
different styles of presidents? Like many others, he was motivated for love of
country. His memoir, One Damn Thing After Another, chronicles his life and rise
to power in the service to justice.
I sense that I am stuck in a
No-Man’s-Land. Trump supporters will accuse me of being a traitor. Trump-haters
will never forgive me for my support, however tentative. (If you haven’t
followed my blog or previous posts, now’s your chance to catch up.)
Barr lists the positives: tax
reform, deregulation, restored military strength, identified threats to US,
peace deal in Mideast, pulled US out of ill-advised treaties, moved embassy to
Jerusalem, border security, judicial appointments. I would also add that he
kept Nurse Wretched from becoming president.
Negatives? A knack for alienating
people who might have helped: “His rhetorical skills, while potent within a
narrow range, are hopelessly ineffective on questions requiring subtle
distinctions. His main tools are hyperbole and ridicule.” Trump asked Barr
during a meeting, “Do you want to know what the secret is of a really good
Tweet? Just the right amount of crazy.” Ronald Reagan he wasn’t.
“Opportunity for fraud isn’t
evidence of fraud.”
Much has been made of the voting irregularities,
but Barr counters with evidence of his own. The truth is that “Trump
underperformed in key suburban areas in swing states.” In fact, he ran below
other Republican candidates on the same ballot. The writer reminds us that he
was “disgusted by efforts in 2016 to delegitimize” election results, “[b]ut now
the situation was reversed.”
I’m going to repeat two things: 1.
Trump didn’t deserve to be elected, but we didn’t deserve Hillary or Biden
either; 2. Trump has no one to blame for losing but himself. He LOST. – August
14, 2022
PORTRAIT OF A DISASTER/THE ONLY PLANE LEFT IN THE SKY – GRAFF
“Hey, Steve, how’s it going?”
“Well, Frank, we’re not having a very good day down on
earth.”
Aboard the International Space Station, Frank Culberson, the
only American not on earth, held a terse conversation with the flight surgeon
during a pass over ground control hours after airplanes flew into the World
Trade towers.
It is one of hundreds of snippets of remarks, asides, and
observations from Americans most affected by this most singular event. The most
poignant are naturally those left on answering machines by those trapped on the
floors following the deliberate terrorist attacks on US soil and passengers on
Flight 93.
Think of this book as an impressionist painting – thousands
of brush strokes making up a vivid portrait of a day on which more Americans
died than on any other day in US history.
The book follows the time line of the day’s events: people
woke up on a Tuesday in a brilliantly sunny New York for another day of work,
school, housework – whatever. Then a plane crashed into a very tall building.
Then another one right next to it. Then a plane crashed into the Pentagon. By
then, passengers on a fourth plane undergoing a takeover became aware that they
were part of a coordinated attack led by bearded fanatics screaming “Allah u
akhbar!”
By sheer coincidence, I happened to finish this just ahead
of the pullout of troops and the ensuing chaos in Afghanistan, the very same
country which nurtured the fanatics responsible for the attacks. As I write
these words, Taliban victors are already executing collaborators with the Great
Satan. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over
again.” Expect to hear more from them in the near future. – August 19, 2021
FOLLOWING THE EQUATOR TO TENOCHTITLAN"No tribe, however magnificent, and no nation, howsoever mighty, occupies a foot of land that was not stolen." – Mark Twain/Following the Equator
I followed up another of Twain’s travel journals with a book I had read about 20 years ago on the Everyday Life of the Aztecs. As it turns out, many of the observations by Twain made on his trek across Australia may be applied to pre-Columbian life in the New World. Starting with the quote on real estate. All the weeping over the Spanish occupation/takeover of the Aztec Empire by the man-bun protesters pulling down statues of Columbus overlooks the central fact that the Aztecs were unwelcome invaders in the Valle Central of Mexico.
In fact, the only reason Cortez and the Conquistadores succeeded is because they capitalized on the bitter enmity of the client states such as Tlaxcala. The Aztecs had more in common with the Spaniards than the latter would care to admit. Both viewed their world and events, including war, through the prism of religion. Aztecs fought battles and took prisoners because anything less was an insult to their religion. The Spanish naturally took exception to the Aztec pantheon. Oh, and the fact that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice to appease their vindictive gods. 
The Conquest changed the world in profound ways. We can be thankful that ripping out the hearts of victims was replaced by Christianity. Still, it’s worth remembering that “There are many humorous things in the world; among them the white man’s notion that he is less savage than the other savages.” (Twain)
JACK LONDON’S NORTHERN LIGHT
In The Call of the Wild, Buck, a St. Bernard/Collie mix is shanghaied
from the sunny climes of a soft life in California into pulling sleds in the wilderness
of Alaska, enduring treatment as harsh as the climate. After months of abusive
treatment, a kindly prospector named John Thornton rescues Buck. Thornton doesn’t
stay long – he appears two-thirds into the novelette. By this time, Buck has
become attuned to the life of the wild. So the death of Thornton releases his
last tie with civilization:
“He walked to the center of the open space and listened. It
was the call, the many-noted call, sounding more luringly and compelling than
ever before. And as never before, he was ready to obey. John Thornton was dead.
The last tie was broken. Man and the claims of man no longer bound him.”
White Fang, on the other hand, more wolf than dog, begins in
the wild and ends in the same sunny demesne as Buck began. His treatment would
make the hair of any SPCA member stand on end: “The clay of White Fang had been
moulded until he became what he was, morose and lonely, unloving and ferocious,
the enemy of all his kind.”
Making a film version presents a few problems, not least of
which the works follow the development of the animals’ mental development.
Another is the lack of a single human character throughout the works. So,
seeing a recent movie preview of The Call of the Wild starring Harrison Ford
made me wonder if the studio also expected him to narrate the whole thing to
get the most out of his contract. As much as I admire Ford’s work, I’m
ambivalent about this project. I’m sure it’ll be a fine movie, but it won’t be
Jack London’s work. - January 27, 2020
EPIC TALES AND WHALES
An epic is a novel that needed a better editor. An
unsentimental grouch would stare at the padding and decide a scythe would be
more useful than a scalpel.
A month ago I finished another one of those works that would
have been much better with a couple hundred or so fewer pages. You can probably
guess the author if I told you it was a classic. Victorian Era, you say? This
is too easy - Charles Dickens! It’s often alleged he got paid by the word. They
should have paid him by the pound.
As epics go, Bleak House ranked somewhere near the bottom. You
know you’re in trouble when a notebook is required to keep track of all the
characters. Of course, Dickens always had a knack for memorable figures, and
this work was no exception.
Unfortunately, you have to wade through a lot of
glue to find the better parts. It could have been worse. It could have been
translated from Russian.
Maybe I’m being unfair. Some stories need a grand sweep of
time and a cast of characters up to the challenge of carrying the burden of history
and thematic elements. Below is my list of best and worst contributions. In
other words, writers with a gift for erudition, down to the ones afflicted with
logorrhea.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin/Harriet Beecher Stowe – Abraham Lincoln, upon
meeting her, allegedly said, “So, you’re the one who started the Civil War.” True
or not, history records that her book was a huge international success, shining
a spotlight on the savagery of slavery. This should be required reading.
Aeneid/Virgil – Latin is a dead language. Too bad this epic
didn’t die with it. - November 25, 2019
Remembering Miep Gies
“I took out all the papers, placing the little red-orange
checkered diary on top, and carried everything into Mr. Frank’s office. . . I
held out the diary and the papers to him. I said, “Here is your daughter’s
legacy to you.”
Thanks to the diary of a young Jewish girl, the whole
world knows about the struggle of at least one family hiding from certain death
during the Holocaust. But how many people are aware of the selflessness of the
couple who protected the family and friends of Anne Frank? This short
autobiography by Miep Gies demonstrates the pluck and resourcefulness of at
least one woman and her husband who thwarted the murderous Nazis for as long as
possible.
Life in Amsterdam, already hard enough with shortages of
food, clothing, transportation, and so on, became immeasurably harder for those
providing shelter for innocent people. How much easier it would have been to
simply turn in all the Jews and spend the reward for much-needed resources. Instead,
Miep struggles to provide for herself and eight others, in spite of the threat
of punishment for keeping others from certain death.
Gies relates a harrowing incident in which thieves break
into the hiding place. Did they simply steal anything of value? With a touch of
bitterness, she tells that they “could easily go to the police and report the
presence of people in hiding. The Germans were paying hard cash for this
information. A reward was given for each Jew who was found in hiding. The times
were such that a thief was safe and a Jew was not.”
Now and then one ought to take the time to read how
others endured privation and risked so much without recognition. Thanks to the
heroic efforts of Miep Gies, we at least have the recorded hopeful thoughts of
a girl just coming of age amid so much hate.
“Annie’s voice tumbled out of the book, so full of life,
moods, curiosity, feelings. She was no longer gone and destroyed. She was alive
again in my mind.” - June 6, 2019
Friday Football Frenzy
Friday Night Lights is a cautionary tale of what
happens in an atmosphere where nobody sees anything on the horizon past the
football field, unless it’s another football field at a tier-one university.
Add to that a layer of people who have no sense of fiscal restraint making
insane amounts of money overnight, and you have a good idea of the state of
Texas education in Midland four decades ago.
This is not limited to Midland. Everywhere in Texas, a
depressing similarity existed. Economic, social and race barriers are overcome
to make all men equal, as long as they can run 40 yards in 4.4 seconds, throw
or connect with a perfect spiral, or block a linebacker who outweighs you by
35-50 pounds. “Play through the pain” is taken to a whole other excruciating
level as hopefuls endure blown kneecaps, fractured ankles, even a herniated
disc. The only injury that hurts is not making the team.
Some districts are worse than others, but overall the
football gods make a mockery of academic standards, receiving special
treatment, not just candy-laden lockers or candy on two legs. There are answer
sheets, free passes on infractions, even exams.
The most egregious example of skewed values comes courtesy
of Dallas Carter HS where one high-school algebra teacher with a smidgen of
ethics records the grade a star athlete earned, resulting in a train of
panic-driven meetings after the principal presumptuously changes the grade to
improve their chances for a state playoff. The superintendent, TEA officials
and even a state judge become involved. The teacher was rewarded for his
audacity with an “unsatisfactory evaluation rating, placed on probation for a
year, and had his salary frozen.”Fortunately, during my
years as a high school teacher in Victoria, I never had to face problems like
this. In fact, having athletes in my class invariably ran in my favor. If I had
any issues with a student, all I had to do was suggest to the student that the
coach might be interested. They weren’t all perfect, but they certainly weren’t
outrageous. - October 15, 2018
Mark Twain Meets His Match
“Much has been said about their relationship in subsequent years by friends, family, scholars, and biographers, but one certainty can be stated – Livy and Clemens genuinely loved each other.” MARK AND LIVY: The Love Story of Mark Twain and the Woman Who (Almost) Tamed Him, by Drury University (Missouri) Twain scholar Resa Willis, provides a deep look at the symbiotic union of two people who could not be an odder match. Mark Twain, the world-famous humorist and acerbic observer of national mores, was by his own admission a rough, low-minded rustic reared in a relative backwater Southern town. Livy – Olivia Langdon – descended from a genteel, well-heeled, wealthy aristocratic Eastern family. They were abolitionists in act if not sentiment. Her views meshed with Twain’s who scandalized Southern gentility with his own views. This is more than a mere biography; it is a romance. The book details Twain’s first infatuation with her photo he saw on board an excursion with Livy’s brother. His dream of meeting her finally came true, and she was all he could hope for. After a courtship of equal parts desperation and comic relief, they were united in the parlor of her parents’ home in Elmira, New York. From that time onward, she remained on a pedestal. If any woman deserved that place, she unreservedly did, with the approval of anyone who knew her for “unassuming manner that always considered others and placed their feelings and comfort above her own.”
Livy had no illusions about her famous husband. She knew he could be coarse, but forgave him as often as she scolded him. In one incident, Twain littered the yard with shirt after shirt thrown out the window because of missing buttons. A volley of profanity followed the volley of clothing. His eye caught sight of Livy who had heard his salty language. To his astonishment, she repeated the same language, and humphed, “There. Now you know how it sounds.” Now amused, Twain responded, “Livy, it would pain me to think that when I swear it sounds like that. You got the words right, Livy, but you don’t know the tune.” Olivia’s sway over the writer extended to her authority over his works. Willis states, “She was a careful observer of the taste of her times, and she knew what the reading audience would and wouldn’t accept. . . She kept him from publishing certain things that she felt might harm his reputation.” Twain himself admitted that “I don’t always know just where to draw the line in matters of taste. Mrs. Clemens has kept a lot of things from getting into print that might have given me a reputation I wouldn’t care to have, and that I wouldn’t have known any better than to have published.”Together, they endured the heartbreak of two dead children, bankruptcy and extended speaking tours to pay off debts incurred from poor business choices, as well as numerous illnesses and ailments from which they sought relief from what we might charitably call quacks. Toward the end of her life, doctors strictly limited Twain’s visits to two minutes a day to prevent over-exciting her. One visit was charitably extended to five minutes in recognition of their anniversary. Twain assuaged himself by shoving notes under her door. He even pinned notes to trees outside her room, imploring the birds to sing softly while his wife was inside trying to rest.
Years later, Twain paid tender tribute to her as he put his words in the mouth of Adam in “Eve’s Diary”: “Wherever she was, there was Eden.” - September 29, 2018JUDE THE OBTUSE
“The
theologians, the apologists, and their kin the metaphysicians, the high-handed statesmen, and others, no longer interest me. All that has been spoilt for me by the grind of stern reality!" – Jude the
Obscure
Thomas
Hardy wrote a book that appeals to bitter souls lurking in basements, clad in
sweatpants and white tube socks. The idealism is far beyond sadder but wiser.
It’s more like sadder, but without a prescription for Cymbalta and verging on
suicide but determined to live just long enough to bring everyone around him
down. Even Angela’s Ashes had a soupcon of hope as the writer of that
unrelentingly depressing (and therefore perfect) Irish morality tale left the
environment for a better one.
I picked
this up because I’d read Tess of the
d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd and enjoyed
them immensely. The descriptions are beautiful. Hardy writes poetry set in
prose with a philosophical scaffolding. As it turns out, the philosophy in this
work veers away from the Victorian moral outlook of its time; indeed, it rather
crashes headlong into it. Very well, sometimes a writer has to question social
conventions. - July 17, 2018
RETURN TO MY OLD KENTUCKY HOME
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
WILL YOU FOLLOW WHERE I LEAD?
Who wrote it?
A book about the heroic life of the Maiden of Orleans. Her early life and devotion to Our Lord and His saints. Her obedience to the hierarchy of the Church and rightful heir to the crown of France. A chronicle of an innocent’s command of armies and their allegiance to this naif in the ways of life in the camp. The journal of the disgraceful abandonment and shabby treatment by people who denied the maiden her fundamental rights under Church law and the law of belligerents.
You don’t have to dig very deep for his characteristic wit and sarcasm. It is there, as is his affection for the habits of youth: “It always happened that people who began in jest ended by being in earnest.”
If you squint while reading, you can be forgiven for thinking that this or that bit came right out of that Tom Sawyer novel. This fraud of a biographer plagiarized parts of his own works. Oh, I recognize this trope from Pudd’nhead Wilson or Following the Equator, maybe Huckleberry Finn, or . . . well, you get the idea.
Unable to find humor? This injures the American Master of humor. Read this and see if you don’t catch Twain winking at you: “At bottom, he was all right and a good-hearted giant, without any harm in him, if one stops there and does not bite, and it is no harm to be an ass, if one is contented to bray and not to kick.”
Twain’s description of Joan’s trial evinces the same outrage he describes as Tom Canty in The Prince and the Pauper: “a dignified sport, a kennel of mastiffs and bloodhounds harassing a kitten!” A detestable trap opened by a cleric who has the temerity to ask “Are you in the state of grace?” Among the sixty-plus “learned” clerics, one sprung up to denounce the question. She answered placidly:
“If I be not in a state of Grace, I pray God place me in it; if I be in it, I pray God keep me so.” Twain records that “her solemn answer was met with the silence of the grave.”
Many express amazement that Twain would write a book about a saint. Not only did he NOT have fun at her expense, but extolled her virtues. He didn’t mock her naivete, for she was clear-eyed as Huckleberry Finn in his murky way. – October 28, 2023
EPIC READING
The autumnal solstice occurred this weekend. Here on the
Gulf Coast, this is meant as sarcasm. Who knew God was such a madcap!
During long stretches of idleness I like to take on reading
challenges: Moby Dick, Bleak House, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Les Misérables, and so on
and interminably on. This summer I dove into Middlemarch by George Eliot. You
may remember her from Silas Marner if you survived high-school mandatory
reading. This thing is over 800 pages. Two inches thick. It weighs 1-½ pounds,
if you believe my bathroom scale. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is a
ponderous novel, but it’s a paltry one-third. If it were a hamburger, you’d
need at least two to-go boxes.
Why do I do this to myself? With most epics, there are
entire sections that could be ignored without sacrificing the essential story. A
section about sewers? Page after page of cetacean history? Did earlier families
stock these in the outhouse?
But it occurred to me I was asking the wrong question.
Instead, I should be asking, “Why did these writers do this to us?” Clearly,
they expected a literate audience, and one with plenty of time on its hands
with family members reading books aloud or to oneself by the fireside. How
better to pass the time between milking cows and shooting Lee’s Miserables
during the Civil War? So writers of the age from the invention of the movable
press to television indulged themselves and readers with print. The more, the
better, judging from 19th-century literature.
From now on, I won’t call them epics. I’ll call them page-turners. And so many pages to turn! – September 25, 2023
The people we most admire, we often learn to our sorrow, have warts that no amount of Compound W could remove. Welcome to reality. People are imperfect. Mark Twain was no exception, although he rose above the rabble of his time he satirized in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.
Twain received Booker T. Washington at his home, following Theodore Roosevelt’s “scandalous” invitation to the famed founder of the Tuskegee Institute in 1901. Twain faced his largest audience at Carnegie Hall to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the founding of the famed son of Alabama, basking in a three-minute wave of applause before taking his seat next to the honoree. He was no stranger to controversy.
As the personal aide to Mark Twain, Isabel Lyon had a front seat to much of his exploits. The subject of this book enjoyed the personal confidence and access to sensitive domains of the most beloved writer of his time. He was equally devoted to her, joking that anyone who attempted to reach him through Lyon was “tampering with the sentinel.” The author states that Twain relied on her when he didn’t trust his own daughters with certain matters: “She was given carte blanche to control the household accounts, deal with merchants, and write checks. She also read all of Twain’s personal mail and was charged with keeping the curious and adoring public at bay.”
Ultimately, Twain not only showed Isabel Lyon the door, but heaped ignominy on her poor head on the way out. For someone who demonstrated such magnanimity towards so many, what a shame that he would stoop to this level at the behest of his own jealous family. - Patrick Hubbell/June 18, 2023
DOCUMENTING A JOURNEY THROUGH HELL
“We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped.” – Rudolf Hess, explaining the most efficient method of extermination
A tome with a wide scope of history like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer requires an investment of time. In my case, five years. After many pauses, interims and interruptions, I reached the end. Okay, I skimmed a lot. The end was in sight, so I lugged it to work and read 50-60 pages at a time during one week to get it over with.
A huge portion of the book naturally details the smashing initial success
of the armies and Luftwaffe, encompassing much of Europe and North Africa. The fatal
flaw of Hitler doesn’t emerge until four years into the war. He can’t admit
defeat, and refused to retreat, ever. The Battle of Stalingrad is the beginning
of the end, accentuated by Bastogne and Ardennes.
I slowed down near the end as the writer describes in excruciating detail the
New Order Hitler and the Nazis had in mind. The utter depravity and cruelty is
on full display, from the mindless brutality, the utter neglect, “scientific”
experiments, much of it too horrible to recount. Frau Ilse Koch, aka the “Bitch
of Buchenwald,” had a penchant for lamp shades made from human skin, thanks to
the cooperation from eminent and lesser-known medical experts and
experimenters, a demonstration of the poisonous nature of the Nazi philosophy. Entire
villages were wiped out in retaliation for the sporadic uprisings against the
wholesale slaughter.
“An old woman with snow-white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her
arms, singing and tickling it. The child was cooing with delight. The parents
were looking on with tears in their eyes. The father was holding the hand of a
boy about 10 years old; the boy was fighting his tears. The father pointed to
the sky, stroked his head, and seemed to explain something to him” – sworn
affidavit of witness to liquidation of 5000 Jews in Dubno (Ukraine).
Even the most fanatical Nazi realized in April 1945 that the end was near. A
reasonable leader would sue for peace on the best terms possible. Hitler
envisioned the end culminating in “one vast wasteland. Nothing was to be left
with which the German people might somehow survive their defeat” as the Nero Decree
specified:
“If the war is lost, the nation will also perish . . . Those who will
remain after the battle are only the inferior ones, for the good ones have been
killed.”
A radio announcement pronounced that Hitler died “fighting to the last
breath against Bolshevism.” Shirer puckishly adds that “The Third Reich was
expiring, as it had begun, with a shabby lie.”
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich is a history made in hell of a
deranged man who dragged a cohort and an entire nation into a pit. Unfortunately,
he was not the last of his kind. – May 27, 2023
DROWNING IN BLUBBER
“[W]e have here an American masterpiece, a book that rewards constant re-reading; that provides all the tingling excitement of high adventure and the profounder satisfaction of all ‘deep and silent thinking.’” – Denham Sutcliffe/King’s College
“An epic is a novel that needed a better editor. An unsentimental grouch would stare at the padding and decide a scythe would be more useful than a scalpel.” – Patrick Hubbell
If you make a living as a professor of literature, I can think of no better book to force upon tuition-paying students than Moby Dick. Constant re-reading certainly rewards HIM. As for the quote inside the quote, I can’t help wondering if this is intended as irony or sarcasm.
I have re-read Moby Dick twice – so, three times in all. I don’t have a record of that fateful first encounter with the White Whale. Surely it was in the syllabus for my American Literature to 1860. Melville’s famous work sprang from the depths in 1851, well after “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and everything else by Emily Dickinson, but well within time to make me wish I had changed my major from English to history.
Before the saga begins, the reader is treated to an “Etymology” and “Extracts,” helpfully “supplied by a sub-sub-librarian,” as Melville recalls. I envision this sub-subber emerging from a dusty tomb laden with scrolls, croaking to the erstwhile whaler-cum-author “Be ye mindful that thoust not maculate a single page and these be returned in two weeks hence lest thou incurst a fine daily of a hae-penny.”
After my second foray 22 years ago, I had resolved then, Professor Sutcliffe be damned, I would never read it again. Why now, then? My beloved wife, having begun the audio book, exclaimed “How can you not love this!” I sighed a deep sigh, and reembarked on this logorrheic journey a third time. Maybe I missed something the first two times.
Here's a rule of thumb. If you’re reading a book written in the 19th century, you can probably skim ¼-½ of it. Maybe more if you’re judicious. Don’t skip the chapters on the syllabus, though. They’ll be on the test. – Patrick Hubbell/November 18, 2022
PLUGGING THE HOLES IN THE DAMN
William Barr served as the attorney general during the last two years of Trump and the last two years of the elder Bush, making him the only attorney general to serve two presidents. How does one account for serving two entirely different styles of presidents? Like many others, he was motivated for love of country. His memoir, One Damn Thing After Another, chronicles his life and rise to power in the service to justice.
I sense that I am stuck in a No-Man’s-Land. Trump supporters will accuse me of being a traitor. Trump-haters will never forgive me for my support, however tentative. (If you haven’t followed my blog or previous posts, now’s your chance to catch up.)
Barr lists the positives: tax reform, deregulation, restored military strength, identified threats to US, peace deal in Mideast, pulled US out of ill-advised treaties, moved embassy to Jerusalem, border security, judicial appointments. I would also add that he kept Nurse Wretched from becoming president.
Negatives? A knack for alienating people who might have helped: “His rhetorical skills, while potent within a narrow range, are hopelessly ineffective on questions requiring subtle distinctions. His main tools are hyperbole and ridicule.” Trump asked Barr during a meeting, “Do you want to know what the secret is of a really good Tweet? Just the right amount of crazy.” Ronald Reagan he wasn’t.
“Opportunity for fraud isn’t evidence of fraud.”
I’m going to repeat two things: 1. Trump didn’t deserve to be elected, but we didn’t deserve Hillary or Biden either; 2. Trump has no one to blame for losing but himself. He LOST. – August 14, 2022
PORTRAIT OF A DISASTER/THE ONLY PLANE LEFT IN THE SKY – GRAFF
“Hey, Steve, how’s it going?”
“Well, Frank, we’re not having a very good day down on earth.”
Aboard the International Space Station, Frank Culberson, the only American not on earth, held a terse conversation with the flight surgeon during a pass over ground control hours after airplanes flew into the World Trade towers.
It is one of hundreds of snippets of remarks, asides, and observations from Americans most affected by this most singular event. The most poignant are naturally those left on answering machines by those trapped on the floors following the deliberate terrorist attacks on US soil and passengers on Flight 93.
Think of this book as an impressionist painting – thousands of brush strokes making up a vivid portrait of a day on which more Americans died than on any other day in US history.
The book follows the time line of the day’s events: people
woke up on a Tuesday in a brilliantly sunny New York for another day of work,
school, housework – whatever. Then a plane crashed into a very tall building.
Then another one right next to it. Then a plane crashed into the Pentagon. By
then, passengers on a fourth plane undergoing a takeover became aware that they
were part of a coordinated attack led by bearded fanatics screaming “Allah u
akhbar!”
By sheer coincidence, I happened to finish this just ahead of the pullout of troops and the ensuing chaos in Afghanistan, the very same country which nurtured the fanatics responsible for the attacks. As I write these words, Taliban victors are already executing collaborators with the Great Satan. As the great philosopher Yogi Berra once said, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” Expect to hear more from them in the near future. – August 19, 2021
A month ago I finished another one of those works that would have been much better with a couple hundred or so fewer pages. You can probably guess the author if I told you it was a classic. Victorian Era, you say? This is too easy - Charles Dickens! It’s often alleged he got paid by the word. They should have paid him by the pound.
Aeneid/Virgil – Latin is a dead language. Too bad this epic didn’t die with it. - November 25, 2019
Gies relates a harrowing incident in which thieves break
into the hiding place. Did they simply steal anything of value? With a touch of
bitterness, she tells that they “could easily go to the police and report the
presence of people in hiding. The Germans were paying hard cash for this
information. A reward was given for each Jew who was found in hiding. The times
were such that a thief was safe and a Jew was not.”
“Annie’s voice tumbled out of the book, so full of life, moods, curiosity, feelings. She was no longer gone and destroyed. She was alive again in my mind.” - June 6, 2019
Friday Football Frenzy
Friday Night Lights is a cautionary tale of what happens in an atmosphere where nobody sees anything on the horizon past the football field, unless it’s another football field at a tier-one university. Add to that a layer of people who have no sense of fiscal restraint making insane amounts of money overnight, and you have a good idea of the state of Texas education in Midland four decades ago.
This is not limited to Midland. Everywhere in Texas, a depressing similarity existed. Economic, social and race barriers are overcome to make all men equal, as long as they can run 40 yards in 4.4 seconds, throw or connect with a perfect spiral, or block a linebacker who outweighs you by 35-50 pounds. “Play through the pain” is taken to a whole other excruciating level as hopefuls endure blown kneecaps, fractured ankles, even a herniated disc. The only injury that hurts is not making the team.
Some districts are worse than others, but overall the football gods make a mockery of academic standards, receiving special treatment, not just candy-laden lockers or candy on two legs. There are answer sheets, free passes on infractions, even exams.
Fortunately, during my years as a high school teacher in Victoria, I never had to face problems like this. In fact, having athletes in my class invariably ran in my favor. If I had any issues with a student, all I had to do was suggest to the student that the coach might be interested. They weren’t all perfect, but they certainly weren’t outrageous. - October 15, 2018
JUDE THE OBTUSE
I picked this up because I’d read Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd and enjoyed them immensely. The descriptions are beautiful. Hardy writes poetry set in prose with a philosophical scaffolding. As it turns out, the philosophy in this work veers away from the Victorian moral outlook of its time; indeed, it rather crashes headlong into it. Very well, sometimes a writer has to question social conventions. - July 17, 2018
Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis
Years
before Sam Walton launched his discount chain, there was always the icehouse on
Telephone Road in Houston for a peek at the kind of people described in JD Vance’s memoir
of his life in Appalachian Kentucky. I was reminded of something my grandmother
always said: “There’s no shame in being poor, but you don’t have to ACT poor.”
Hillbilly Elegy is a combination of Angela’s Ashes and Tobacco Road. Chapter after chapter portray the kind of people that
can only be charitably referred to as dysfunctional. This is not a sociological
study; this is a memoir of a man who escaped through sheer dint of effort and
study. He joined the Marines thinking the toughest branch would shape him up.
It worked. The worst insults a DI could hurl bounced right off him. His own
mother said worse when she was sober. From there he went on to Ohio State
University then Yale, of all places, to earn a law degree.
Vance
does not spare his family. In spite of the unflattering picture, he admits that
he owed his success to a dedicated grandmother who always made sure he was
welcome. He lived with her throughout his high school years. She took a dim
view of his plan to join the Marines because they have a reputation for giving
orders, something hillbillies don’t take kindly to, but she supported him nevertheless.
It’s an
inspiring read, but brace yourself for an unrelenting, depressing view of an
underclass that revels in its hillbillyness. – June 14, 2018
THE PLAINSONG
OF WILLA CATHER
I first
encountered Cather as a college sophomore. We had finished William Faulkner’s Light in August, so A Lonely Lady was like reading a comic book. (Come to think of it,
Faulkner is a little too easy to parody.)
Willa
Cather’s works touch heaven when she matches vivid scenery with memorable
characters. My Antonia captured my
attention and my heart. Next was O
Pioneers! Sympathy for Catholic belief imbues Shadows on the Rock and Death
Comes for the Archbishop. I’m a sucker for World War I, so I naturally
enjoyed One of Ours which portrays a
young man who joins the military to do his part in the Great War. Song of the Lark impressed no less than
H.L. Mencken. The theme of a heroic loner runs through all her works, but the
theme works best when she provides someone who rises to the occasion.
Alas, A Lonely Lady fell short. But it was
better than the forgettable Lucy Gayheart
and Alexander’s Bridge. In between were
The Professor’s House and Sapphira and the Slave Girl. In my
view, Cather provided better work as a literary critic, in the manner of Samuel
Taylor Coleridge. In a preface to the otherwise forgettable Alexander’s Bridge eleven years later,
Cather frankly admits that “it is not always easy for the inexperienced writer
to distinguish between his own material and that which he would like to make
his own.”
“When a
writer once begins to work with his own material, he realizes that, no matter
what his literary excursions may have been, he has been working with it from
the beginning—by living it.” - June 11, 2018
RADICAL CHEEKOnly two people in America could get away with wearing white after Labor Day. Mark Twain’s excuse was, having buried his wife and one of his three daughters, he was sick of black and refused to wear it again. The other was Tom Wolfe, who shuffled off his mortal coil three days ago. If he had an excuse for wearing white, I'm not aware of it. If I were a famous talented smartass, I'd do it to emulate Twain.Wolfe was one of my favorite writers. I’ve read The Right Stuff several times because I’m infatuated with the NASA glory days and test pilot bravado. I’ve also read From Bauhaus to Our House, Hooking Up, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers, and The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. His prose sparkled with urbanity and wit. One phrase in particular stands out from his paean to the Mercury 7: “It could blow at any seam.” In other words, always be prepared for the worst.Rest in peace. - May 17, 2018
Jimmy
Stewart is among the most revered of movie matinee idols, arguably the most
beloved. He was certainly one of the most done by impressionists, with a
stammering voice as ungainly as his walk. He wasn’t a heartthrob on the level
of others of his age, such as Clark Gable, Errol Flynn, Cary Grant, but
everyone pulled for him to win the woman. And he pulled in some good ones, too:
Kim Novak, Grace Kelly, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Judy Garland, and
Ginger Rogers, to name a few.
In
addition to his acting prowess, Stewart also proudly served in the Army Air
Force during World War II, rising to the rank of brigadier general after
earning the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Croix de Guerre. To his credit,
he refused to allow studio moguls to capitalize on his honors.
Stewart
received world-wide accolades. Thanks to a growth in demand for old movies on television,
then videocassettes, then film classes, new generations became exposed to the
mostly underappreciated talent showcased in black and white. In fact, the
negatives for It’s a Wonderful Life, a holiday favorite, almost turned into
powder in the can until it was rescued by more receptive audiences. The movie,
one of the Stewart’s first after returning from combat, did not overwhelm
audiences. Nor did Vertigo, Rear Window, Harvey or even Mr. Smith Goes to
Washington.
Some of
the movie examinations seem overly Freudian. For example, Eliot writes that
Lisa (Grace Kelly) in Rear Window disapproves of Jeff (Stewart) spying on
others as a “perverse form of nothing less than masturbation.” There’s also
something about a gun shooting off likened to an ejaculation. Gimme a break.
Sometimes a gun is just a gun. This is reductionism, pure and simple.
Eliot
describes the ongoing battle between him and father, first because he couldn’t
do anything right, then because he could do no wrong. Alexander Stewart, also a
veteran (World War I), bellowed in indignation in the presence of
studio brass when he learned his son might not get the part of Lindbergh in The
Spirit of St. Louis.
Most
touching is the anecdote related by a member of a tour bus which stopped in
front of the Stewart home. By now, Jimmy Stewart not only did not object to the
gawkers, he knew all the bus drivers by name. One day a bus door opened and a
little girl ran to see him. He picked her up and gave her a kiss. The parents
rushed over to apologize. He responded by inviting them inside for ice cream
and soda. Someone asked them how they felt during this impromptu visit: “Right
at home!”
This is
the genuine Jimmy Stewart. A man beloved even in Hollywood, a town famous for
backstabbers. A man who married once and stayed with his wife to the very end.
When she passed away in his arms, he said, “The only consolation is knowing
that we will soon be reunited. Our love will continue in heaven.” A man with
conservative convictions who stayed as a guest numerous times in the Reagan
White House. And a man who returned to Washington to express his outrage over
Ted Turner’s “colorizing” the classic black-and-white movies. He thundered,
“The colorization idea is a vicious lousy unkind thing to do to a motion
picture.”
Unfortunately,
this biography reminds us that not everyone gets to have his life rendered into
print by Plutarch, Samuel Johnson or David McCullough. At least Kitty Kelly
didn’t write it. But she might as well have. - April 19, 2018
DULL AS A CONVENTION OF CITY PLANNERS
Mark
Twain famously described a classic as “a book which
people praise and don't read.” Here are my top three classics you won’t
miss: Conquest of Gaul by Julius Caesar,
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh,
and Njal’s Saga. The last one is of
Icelandic origin. Dull does not come close to describing it, so I made a sort
of Cliff’s Notes version:
“There
was a man named Grrot, son of Grynngynn the Shaky. He was a powerful chieftain.
On one occasion a tribe of Krysspy-Kryyms crossed the Fjord of Thjord and met
the Hakkyssaks head on. Whereupon Hammer-head smote Flytty the Impertinent and
pierced his shield and shattered his sternum. Following this shtus, he struck a
marriage contract with Pryssy the Pink and her father, Thor the Llowbyddr.
“The
sage now moves to Innaggaddadavydda where Thor the Iron Butterfly and his
comrades valiantly fought the Hwlloskulls and burned their houses. The fire
drew boatloads of Troggs led by Lyr-Lyr-Pants-on-Fyr. They planted their axes
in their heads, then called for their lead arbitrator to lead a council.
Fflysswatr made a pact with Smellyyffrt and concluded with a concert performed
by Bjork the Weird.”
Okay, I
made up the part about Bjork. But you get the dryfftt. The only redeeming
quality is that it wasn’t written in Latin so professors can’t torture students
translating it. You can thank me later for saving you the bother of reading it.
My motto is “I read them so you won’t have to.”
ENTITLED
TO A DECENT RESPECT OF THE OPINIONS OF MANKIND
I was
pleasantly surprised to find myself turning page after fascinating page. The
author, a professor at our town’s Rice University, performed a civic duty by giving
a fair estimation of not only Jefferson’s strengths, but his weaknesses and his
constraints. JFK famously remarked at a dinner honoring Nobel Prize recipients,
“I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human
knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the
possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.”
Nothing
escaped Jefferson’s interest. He read voraciously, especially science, then
known as “natural philosophy.” He studied architecture, and used his knowledge
to design his Monticello. He owned patents on a number of items, including the
pedometer. Thanks for keeping track of my steps, Tom. He made improvements in
agriculture. As a statesman, he wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious
Freedom which guaranteed, as the name implies, freedom of religion for all
faiths. He used a fledgling Navy against pirates trolling the Mediterranean
trade ships. When Marines sing the line "to the shores of Tripoli,” they
are paying tribute to Jefferson. As if all this weren’t enough, he found time
to found the University of Virginia, bequeathing his collection of books.
Above
all, Jefferson was devoted to his family. He opened his home to his adult
children as well as some ne’er-do-well relations. He hated to be alone.
Of all
the Founding Fathers, Jefferson elicits the most ambivalent reaction among
historians: “He composed the Declaration of Independence, for cryin’ out loud.
Couldn’t he at least have released his own
slaves?” Regarding manumission, Virginia law mandated that freed slaves must
move to another state. That meant that our third president would have to find
and buy property for them outside of the state in order to survive. He chose to
keep them where at least he knew nobody would maltreat them. It’s not an
excuse, but he thought it was the best he could do under the circumstances. - August 5, 2017
ON TWO WINGS AND A PRAYER
THE
WRIGHT BROTHERS – David McCullough
Wilbur
and Orville innovated bicycle design during the years they also innovated their
aircraft. They endured numerous Jobean obstacles – illnesses, crashes, clouds
of mosquitos – but nothing deterred them from their mission. At last, the hard
work paid off with brief but encouraging proof that it could be done! The
brothers flipped a coin to see who would be first to fly their ungainly-looking
contraption a distance less than a football field.
The
commemorative quarter for the state of Ohio depicts the Kitty Hawk aircraft and
an astronaut with the inscription “BIRTHPLACE OF AVIATION PIONEERS.” Isn’t
Kitty Hawk in North Carolina? Indeed, the aviators traveled there, having
learned that the prevailing winds offered the best chance to test their craft. They
left nothing to chance.
In short
time, air flight has become so routine that living near an airport is less
trouble than living near a railroad line. - July 17, 2017
SMOTHERING NIGHTS
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
I took
on Wuthering Heights for the same reason one takes on reading Moby Dick and
Crime and Punishment, and climbing Mount Everest, and sailing the Pacific
Ocean, and swimming from Florida to Cuba, and . . . well, you get the idea.
Because it’s a challenge. And it’s a classic. As Mark Twain would say,
Wuthering Heights is a book which “people praise and don’t read.”
Well,
that’s not entirely true. Wuthering Heights clings to required reading lists
because, in addition to being a classic, it’s written by a woman, which gives
it sachet in the diversity curriculum, although more recent non-European woman
writers are starting to elbow Bronte aside.
The main
character, Heathcliff, is a thoroughly despicable character with no redeeming
qualities whatsoever who never gets his comeuppance. Chances are you won’t
relish the conclusion.Spoiler
alert: The main character dies at the end. Nobody mourns him, and the rest of
the characters aren’t manifestly improved. In a nutshell, the loathsome
Heathcliff has a dalliance with Cathy Linton, who is already married to another
for all the wrong reasons. Heathcliff, a thoroughly Satanic creature, sucks
Cathy and most of the characters around the drainhole in the eponymously named mansion.
The
novel begins with Mr. Lockwood, an unreliable witness, informing the reader of
the scene and the characters. Most of the remainder is given over to a
housekeeper, Nelly. Somewhere in there Nelly lets someone else take over the
narration. In a more modern novel, a chapter heading would give the reader a
head’s-up who is speaking.
In
modern parlance, the novel is described as a romance. It is indeed a romance,
but not in a Hallmark sense. The book falls in the tradition of
anti-Enlightenment sentiment. The British Romantics, following the path of
Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Blake, John Keats, Mary Shelley, et al, exalted
passion over rational thinking. As such, the novel clearly evinces a Romantic
strain.
Unlike
contemporaneous works as Frankenstein, however, the work does not pretend to present
a moral, unless the moral is to warn the reader not to be an asshole to
everyone around you.In that
case, yeah, this is a magnificent work. - June 3, 2017
ROLLING STONED
This is the genuine Jimmy Stewart. A man beloved even in Hollywood, a town famous for backstabbers. A man who married once and stayed with his wife to the very end. When she passed away in his arms, he said, “The only consolation is knowing that we will soon be reunited. Our love will continue in heaven.” A man with conservative convictions who stayed as a guest numerous times in the Reagan White House. And a man who returned to Washington to express his outrage over Ted Turner’s “colorizing” the classic black-and-white movies. He thundered, “The colorization idea is a vicious lousy unkind thing to do to a motion picture.”
SMOTHERING NIGHTS
Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
I took on Wuthering Heights for the same reason one takes on reading Moby Dick and Crime and Punishment, and climbing Mount Everest, and sailing the Pacific Ocean, and swimming from Florida to Cuba, and . . . well, you get the idea. Because it’s a challenge. And it’s a classic. As Mark Twain would say, Wuthering Heights is a book which “people praise and don’t read.”
So, is it worth reading? I’m certainly in no position to tell Tom Wolfe how to write, but I have to admit that I skimmed a lot. There’s a reason why rational people avoid drug addicts – they don’t make sense. And if your book is mostly recreating the patois of drug-addled Merry Pranksters led by Ken Kesey, well, you get the flavor after a paragraph or two.
This is a despicable book by a despicable man. I found one passage worth recording out of 200 pages of gonzo journalism, if being in a drug-induced stupor is what "gonzo journalism" means. The book purports to be an account of an assignment to cover a car race. All I know is he abused substances I never even heard of, abused people of all walks of life, and abused the English language worse than public-school in-service providers. – November 5, 2013
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