Some books, like some songs, have everything I'd want in them. What the writer wanted to happen aligns perfectly with what I was hoping for. A whole wSome books, like some songs, have everything I'd want in them. What the writer wanted to happen aligns perfectly with what I was hoping for. A whole world, perfectly made, between the beginning and the ending of the song, or the book, within the little work of art that is so contained and so itself, and is yet so big, so expansive. No notes!
Doe, a deer, a female deer Ray, a drop of golden sun Me, a name I call myself Far, a long, long way to run Sew, a needle pulling thread La, a note to follow Sew Tea, a drink with jam and bread That will bring us back to Do
'Pascal's wager' is a philosophical argument by Blaise Pascal which "posits that individuals essentially engage in a life-defining gamble regarding the belief in the existence of God." Believe, because why not? It will only help you in the end if your belief happens to be true. It can only help you along the way to your end. Is there really an end?
This book is its own sort of Pascal's wager. A perhaps pagan version, but still a wager.
I've been wondering for a month about how I'd write a review of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. What could I say other than I loved it completely? And now I give up! This is the rare perfect book for me....more
Heigh-ho, heigh-ho, off to work he goes, the Sorcerer's Apprentice!
Preussler takes the timeless tale of naïve boy versus sinister master and keeps it dark, makes it stranger, keeps it kid-sized, makes it a fable for adults and kids alike. 'Tis an often dull adventure indeed that has young Krabat always drudging away with his (mainly) friendly fellows in a mill, the same-ol' same-ol' day-in & day-out. Plus magic lessons! Magic is enough, for a little while, to keep a boy's attention focused on the good times rather than on the dreary drudgery. Magic is like a bright & shiny bauble that allows boy to turn into raven, to work without tiring, to project his astral self to spy, to send his shy thoughts to the girl he loves. Magic is fun! But crack open the glittering bauble and inside is Satanism; Satan himself is a featured guest in this tale. Fortunately for all, except for the Master, except for the Master's master Satan, there is a power at least as strong as Evil. Let's all say it together: the power of love. Ah yes. Should have been a too-sentimental way to fight Evil but in the case of this classic book, the sentiment is perfect. Fits just right. There is a place that comes before an idea becomes cliché, a place that exists as an original template rather than a tired trope, and this book lives comfortably in that place. Krabat & the Sorcerer's Mill is a re-telling but not a reconstruction. What was the original source code for this book, published in 1972? One would have to consult the long-dead folklorists who once told this tale to their children, hoping to fable them into goodness.
As noted in the WSJ article I linked to above, of particular interest to adult readers is this book's take on the surveillance state. The Master sees all, including into your head. Best not to think, if you come to live at his mill. Best to just enjoy your little rewards, then get back to work!
You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase
[image]
You will now read my story. My story will help you and guide you into Cairo. Every time you read my pages, with every word and every phrase, you will enter a still deeper layer, open and relaxed and receptive. I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Cairo. I say: ONE As you focus your attention entirely on my tale, you will slowly begin to relax. TWO As you consider your role in this tale, your identity as a spy, your body and your mind become warmer, sleepier. THREE The sleepiness becomes a dreaminess. The dreaminess becomes a dream. The dream becomes a story. The story becomes many stories. Are you in these stories? Are you the protagonist? Who is the storyteller? FOUR Who are the characters in this story? Are they spies like you? Are they friends and lovers, are they enemies and conspirators? Their identities are beginning to blur. My stories are beginning to blur. FIVE The blurriness is spreading to the whole of your body, your memories, your reality. What is the waking world and what is the dreaming world? What is this place called Cairo? What is there? On the count of six, I want you to go deeper. I say: SIX You are bleeding now, from your face, from your mind. This is the sleeping sickness, the Arabian Nightmare. Your body is beginning to sink. SEVEN You go deeper and deeper and deeper, you sink into this dream within dreams. Are you lost in this story? EIGHT I am the storyteller and I am dead. Who is telling this story? Perhaps you are now the storyteller. Who are these characters around you? Perhaps they are projections of your own self, splintered and separated. What is this sick dreaming, this dreaming sickness? Perhaps the dream is your reality. With every breath you take, you go deeper into this dream reality, into your sickness. NINE You are dreaming you are awake. You are bleeding your self. You go deeper into these stories, into the Arabian Nightmare. On the mental count of ten, you will be in Cairo. Be there at ten. I say: TEN
This is a lovely book and a wonderful way to close out my year in reading. I felt such an affinity with this author! An odd affinity, as I imagine we This is a lovely book and a wonderful way to close out my year in reading. I felt such an affinity with this author! An odd affinity, as I imagine we are nothing alike, despite both of us being great readers since childhood. Perhaps the connection comes from so fully being able to imagine myself in his life. And that is all due to the author's talent when it comes to recollecting so many of the books he has collected and bookshops he has visited, places he's seen and people he's met, and most intensely, describing his long abiding love for the authors Sylvia Townsend Warner and (especially) Arthur Machen. Russell writes with such precision and nuance; there is a guarded yet palpable warmth and affection in this book, as well as some withering criticisms, but above all there is a clarity in his detailing of past events. Surely the man must be a intrepid diarist, careful to include the most microscopic of details if need be. Much as with Christopher Fowler's The Book of Forgotten Authors, one needs to read this from its start on through, rather than skipping about. This is in many ways a personal narrative: less of a guidebook, and despite its title, less of a series of recommendations, and more - in the author's own words - a "volume of reminisces."
The book made me consider my own life in my 20s, and compare it to the author's life back then. When younger colleagues of that age talk about their lives, what they do for fun, their social circles, their interests, etc., I'll admit that I often experience a bit of condescending pity towards them (kept tightly to myself of course!). That decade for me, and perhaps the half-decade that followed, was such a dizzying and rich experience, full of momentous events, some terrible and many wonderful, and thick with too many people, places, activities, and interests to ever successfully recount. Alas, I have become one of those tiresome older people with an anecdote about everything. I certainly couldn't imagine trading my younger life for another person's - that is, until this book! There's just something about a life that is full of literariness, exploring bookshops and attending readers' conferences, being a part of literary societies and a social scene where discussing often long-dead authors is par for the course... I became surprisingly envious when reading this book. I wouldn't trade lives, but in another reality, I'd certainly like to experience his. Well at least I have his book!
Not all of these books are forgotten, although the title is still a perfect one. The very well-received and widely-read The Loney is included, perhaps only because Russell published its first edition. The last chapter is on Richard Wright's classic of black fiction, The Outsider - a pleasing double to the first entry, Colin Wilson's equally classic The Outsider - which appears to be here to atone for the author mainly reading white writers, and as his rather ham-handed response to the dire racial reckoning of 2020. (That said, his analysis of the book is accomplished and thought-provoking.) Some favorite parts included his insightful chapter on Robert Aickman, his chapter on his wife Rosalie Parker, a visit to a bookshop-in-a-mansion The Lilies, and the comments he weaves throughout the book on his frenemy, the bookseller and publisher and all-around rapscallion George Locke.
Overall, Russell made certain that I now have quite a few more titles to add to the neverending list - and it should be mentioned that the author notes far more than 50 books between its slim 255 pages. Despite my saying earlier that this is neither a true guidebook nor a list of recommendations but rather a book of memories, Russell still writes about books in such an enticing way that by the end of it, I had a handful of post-its filled with suggestions for further discoveries:
there is a little country called Dorimare, a village-country, small and tidy and neat. it has a terrible, wonderful history, of fey and autocratic rulers who would kill a court jester by breaking his heart, of magic and mayhem and wild unpredictability, of a neighboring Fairyland whose influence on Dorimare was not so small. Dorimare had a history. that history has since been transformed, or ignored, or made small and tidy and neat, its citizens now a small and tidy and neat little bourgeoisie, their customs quaint and adorable, all the fear of living in such a place long gone, all of the wonder gone too. such a genteel little village it has become.
change has come to Dorimare's capital, called Lud-in-the-Mist, and to its countryside. there is a strange man in red, he appears at your windows, smiling. the girls at the proper little boarding school have a new dance master, he has enchanted the school's mistress, he will enchant the girls as well, the mayor's daughter among them. they shall eat his apples and off to the border with Fairyland they shall run, the newly crazed things. the mayor's household will have a new stableboy, and he will give the mayor's son an apple, fairy fruit that will drive him mad or happy or sick or newly alive, or some such state. he shall be rushed to convalesce on a farm in the countryside, right on the border with Fairyland. there is a murder that once happened, years ago, was it even a murder? there is something buried on the farm in the countryside, strange motivations to be unearthed, Fairyland's agents revealed, so many mysteries to be solved.
the little mayor of Lud-in-the-Mist dreams: of what, he knows not. perhaps it was a tune from his youth, a strange melody not quite forgotten, a sweet and enticing little song. the mayor tries to wake up, he tries and fails and tries again, until he realizes he has been awake all along, a sleeping dreaming wakefulness. it is only through dreaming that these mysteries will be solved. this stableboy, this dancing master, who is he? these apples, these lures and temptations, what are they? where are his son and his daughter, what dreams have taken them? into Fairyland the mayor must go, across the border, into dreamland. a lesson will be learned, by the mayor and by Lud-in-the-Mist and by all of Dorimare: to repress our imagination, to hide from our pasts, to pretend that darkness does not exist, is to not live at all. fairy fruit is delicious!
An excellent scholarly text that strives for fairness and objectivity but doesn't attempt to hide its pro-liberalism stance. This is an analysis with An excellent scholarly text that strives for fairness and objectivity but doesn't attempt to hide its pro-liberalism stance. This is an analysis with a clear point of view, passionate in its calm and deliberate way. It aims to provide an overview of classical liberalism and its challenges, in particular the metastasis of liberalism into neoliberalism, which in turn encouraged various attacks on the original ideology from both left and right. It counters each form of attack cited, but does not hesitate to show liberalism's challenges, blind spots, and areas of necessary refinement.
This book should be used as a learning tool for those interested in our modern political systems. It should be read by anyone who considers themselves to be a "liberal" (classical or otherwise). I prescribe one chapter nearly every day, spending perhaps a half-hour per chapter, and eventually voilà, genuine understanding of a complex and multi-leveled topic may be achieved in 10 days or less. An excellent and opinionated guidebook, written with clarity and precision, argued persuasively. Highly recommended.
Chapter 1: What Is Classical Liberalism?
It is a pragmatic model that allows diverse societies to function; it "protects human dignity by granting citizens an equal right to autonomy." It is individualist, egalitarian, universalist, and meliorist.
Chapter 2: From Liberalism to Neoliberalism
"...the neoliberal agenda was pushed to a counterproductive extreme. A valid insight into the superior efficiency of markets evolved into something of a religion, in which state intervention was opposed as a matter of principle... Even as it promoted two decades of rapid economic growth, neoliberalism succeeded in destabilizing the global economy and undermining its own success... This led to a prolonged period in which neoliberal reformers sought to cut back state sectors by ending or scaling back social programs, firing bureaucrats, or seeking to offload programs on to private sector contractors... The idea of 'personal responsibility' is a liberal concept that is built around a true insight, but one that been carried to extremes by neoliberals."
Chapter 3: The Selfish Individual
on the problem of extreme individualism within neoliberalism:
"The doctrine's defect was to carry those premises to an extreme where property rights and consumer welfare were worshipped, and all aspects of state action and social solidarity denigrated."
Chapter 4: The Sovereign Self
on the problem of always centering autonomy and self-actualization within liberal societies:
"...belief in the sovereignty of the individual deepens liberalism's tendency to weaken other forms of communal engagement, and in particular turns people away from virtues like public-spiritedness that are needed... [furthermore] Many people will never be content with the individual sovereignty they are told they are free to exercise. They will recognize that their inner selves are not sovereign... but heavily shaped by external forces like racism and patriarchy."
Chapter 5: Liberalism Turns on Itself
identity politics takes its swing against classical liberalism:
"A great deal of critical theory thus goes well beyond accusing liberalism of hypocrisy and a failure to live up to its own principles to a condemnation of the doctrine in its essence... liberal regimes are in fact not liberal at all but reflect the interests of hidden power structures that dominate and benefit from the status quo. Liberalism's association with different dominant elites, whether capitalists, men, white, or straight people, is not a contingent fact of history; rather, domination is essential to the nature of liberalism and the reason why these different groups support liberalism as an ideology."
FUKUYAMA BEGS TO DIFFER!
"But individualism is hardly a 'white' or European characteristic. One of the enduring challenges of human societies is the need to move beyond kinship as a source of social organization."
"The view that meritocracy is somehow associated with white identity or Eurocentrism reflects the parochialism of contemporary identity politics. Meritocracy and standardized examinations have clear roots in other non-Western cultures."
"The charge that liberalism inevitably leads to neoliberalism and an exploitative form of capitalism ignores the history of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this period, working-class incomes rose over several generations... Virtually all advanced liberal societies put into place extensive social protections and labor rights... Liberalism by itself is not a sufficient governing doctrine on its own; it needs to be paired with democracy so that there can be political corrections made to the inequalities produced by market economics."
Chapter 6: The Critique of Rationality
against the postmodernism of Foucault and other connected thinkers as a tool or model for how to construct healthy societies and sustainable ways of living:
"If there are no truly universal values other than power, why should one want to accept the empowerment of any marginalized group, which will simply replace one expression of power with another?"
[Liberal societies] "...cannot survive if they are unable to establish a hierarchy of factual truths."
Chapter 7: Technology, Privacy, and Freedom of Speech
an interesting sidebar:
"The attack on modern natural science and Enlightenment approaches to cognition began on the left, as critical theory exposed the hidden agendas of the elites who promoted them. This approach often denied the possibility of true objectivity, and valued instead subjective feelings and emotions as a source of authenticity. Skepticism has now drifted over to the populist right, who see elites using these same scientific cognitive modes not as techniques to marginalize minority communities, but rather to victimize the former mainstream. Progressives and white nationalists come together in valuing raw feeling and emotion over cold empirical analysis."
Chapter 8: Are There Alternatives?
answer: NO. unless you are looking for a model that does not center fairness, reason, diversity, and individual choice.
"To paraphrase what Winston Churchill once said about democracy, liberalism is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
ignore the disrespectfully brief summary of this chapter, which seriously addresses and critiques many suggested models presented by both the left and the right.
Chapter 9: National Identity
"...if national identity is based on fixed characteristics like race, ethnicity, or religious heritage, then it becomes a potentially exclusionary category that violates the liberal principle of equal dignity. So while there is no necessary contradiction between the need for national identity and for liberal universalism, there is nonetheless a powerful point of tension between the two principles... National identity is a social construct, and it can be shaped to support rather than undermine liberal values. Nations historically have been molded out of diverse populations, who can feel a strong sense of community based on political principles or ideals rather than ascriptive group categories... Liberals have tended to shy away from appeals to patriotism and cultural tradition, but they should not. National identity as a liberal and open society is something of which liberals can be justly proud."
Chapter 10: Principles for a Liberal Society
1. Acknowledge the need for an impersonal government that relates to citizens on an equal and uniform basis.
2. Economic growth should not be seen as the most important measure of success.
3. Promote federalism; allow devolvement of power to the lowest appropriate levels of government e.g. States' rights.
4. Protect freedom of speech while understanding the limits and norms of speech. Respect a zone of privacy surrounding each individual.
5. Individual rights have primacy over the rights of cultural groups. "People are never fully defined by their group memberships and continue to exercise individual agency. It may be important to understand the ways they have been shaped by their group identities, but social respect should take account of the individual choices that they make as well. Group recognition threatens not to remediate but to harden group differences."
6. "Autonomy is a basic liberal value, [but] it is not the sole human good that automatically trumps all other visions of a good life. Some folks embrace a lack of autonomy and limiting of freedom within certain cultural and religious beliefs and practices. A liberal society will always have room for such individuals and groups....more
into the past, into the darkness. it was a sweet home back then, as sweet a home as slavery could have allowed, a refuge surrounded by cancer. but thainto the past, into the darkness. it was a sweet home back then, as sweet a home as slavery could have allowed, a refuge surrounded by cancer. but that cancer is no benign tumor, to be kept at arm's length, condescended to; it is malignant, always. it will invade, kill the body, each of the parts dying one by one. out of the past and into the present came the cancer, and it made itself a new home. a cancer is not so easily removed, even if the doctors say: the surgery was successful, it was cut out, it is officially no more! it changes shape, it metastasizes into something different. it reconstructs itself. Morrison knows this, so do Sethe and Paul D; it will take generations to cure this sickness.
a child dies, a child is reborn: Beloved. she is the fog of memory, of regret, of violence, made solid, no longer a recollection or abstraction, come from the past to destroy the present. she is what happens when the body and mind are broken down: a symptom of the cancer, not the cancer itself. she will hurt the worst those who love her the most...
the story has no storyline, the movements of past and present overlap, combine, become one. the stories and memories bleed into each other, in the mind and in the flesh, the blood flows in all directions. a tree of scars, a longing for colors, all the tragedies still alive. what was then what was now, what will be, what can be. can the body survive this cancer? one can only hope, or pray. the last few pages of Beloved hint at survival, at a new life, new paths, new hopes. perhaps the prayers have worked? keep praying....more
an imperfect book, made perfect by its imperfections. perfection is cold; this is a warm book, hot at times. complex and flawed and all too human; angan imperfect book, made perfect by its imperfections. perfection is cold; this is a warm book, hot at times. complex and flawed and all too human; anger and mourning and judgment doled out in equal measures. Du Bois' sad and often seething voice rings from the page. surprisingly lush and stylized prose across 14 essays, mood pieces, personal narratives, even a short story. all are complex. an experience both nourishing and scouring, and far from an easy read. but should it be? the book is America's dark night of the soul... a spiritual dryness, loneliness, existential doubts... a guide to the Black Belt, a history of a people kept low... but in the end, the wounded soul will still survive.
PROGRESS NOTES (some adapted from posts in GR group The Readers Review)
Chapter I: "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" - Du Bois' prose is dense and really beautiful. He has such a gift for poetic phrasing and metaphor. I was struck in particular with his description of "the tyrant and the idler... the Devil and the Deep Sea" and his "two figures ever stand to typify that day to coming ages" - the embittered old white man who has lost sons in the war and sees himself supplanted; the enslaved black woman, nurturer and caregiver and victim of constant abuse. - I loved the passage "there are today no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes" and another later that notes that the original American fairy tales and folklore are indigenous and African-American - I was reminded of Albert Murray's writings in his collection The Omni-Americans.
Chapter II: "Of the Dawn of Freedom" - I was unfamiliar with Freedmen's Bank. reading about how its collapse put freedmen so far back - on top of the lie of "forty acres and a mule" - was startling, disturbing.
Chapter III: "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" - an extended critique of Booker T. Washington. I'm very sympathetic to Du Bois' pillars of voting/civil rights/higher education as where the thrust of black advocacy should be (in Du Bois' time). But as a fan of Washington as well, it was also hard for me to fully agree with the critique.
Chapter IV: "Of the Meaning of Progress" - probably my favorite chapter so far. the descriptions of his two summers teaching were so beautiful and the melancholy of his return so palpable. just such gorgeous prose in this chapter. the end of Josie was so heartbreaking. all that said, there was a slight sourness to some of the depictions of the students. overall it wasn't enough to really bother me, it was just a little startling. I suppose Steinbeck did the same when describing the residents of various small towns. but then I actually haven't loved that when reading Steinbeck either.
Chapter V: "Of the Wings of Atlanta" - another impressive chapter. reads like a sermon against Mammon, with Atlanta as a stand-in for all such cities undergoing industrialization at no small cost to its people. - it was interesting how up-front Du Bois is about how some folks are suited for college and others for vocational schools: "that of the million black youth, some were fitted to know and some to dig; that some had the talent and capacity of university men, and some the talent and capacity of blacksmiths; and that true training meant neither that all should be college men nor all artisans, but that the one should be made a missionary of culture to an untaught people, and the other a free workman among serfs." I appreciated that realism when it comes to humans (of all colors) and was reminded of similar stances from current sociopolitical writers, from center-left John McWhorter to far-left Marxist Freddie de Boer, whose Cult of Smart I just read. interesting synergy between the three.
Chapter VI: "Of the Training of Black Men" - I was often bored & irritated by this chapter, although the point being made here is clearly close to Du Bois' heart. I could never disagree with the benefits of higher education, for those so suited, so basically in alignment? - a bit turned off by the snobbery in one part, when describing black college graduates: "they have not that culture of manner which we instinctively associate with university men, forgetting that in reality it is the heritage from cultured homes, and that no people a generation removed from slavery can escape a certain unpleasant rawness and gaucherie, despite the best of training." - very turned off by the classic Du Bois stance that I first came across in college: that the way forward is for a relatively small number of educated to lead the uneducated masses, i.e. "They already dimly perceive that the paths of peace winding between honest toil and dignified manhood call for the guidance of skilled thinkers... Above our modern socialism, and out of the worship of the mass, must persist and evolve that higher individualism which the centres of culture protect." I had a flashback to my college self, an ardent socialist, shaking my head in disbelief when reading that. as if uneducated folks can't understand organizing.
Chapter VII: "Of the Black Belt" - brilliantly written and very depressing dirge about Georgia. such hopelessness in this chapter. fucking cotton!
Chapter VIII: "Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece" - Du Bois anticipates modern arguments about systemic racism with these powerful quotes: "Once in debt, it is no easy matter for a whole race to emerge" "The underlying causes of this situation are complicated but discernable. And one of the chief, outside the carelessness of the nation in letting the slave start with nothing, is the widespread opinion among the merchants and employers of the Black Belt that only by the slavery of debt can the Negro be kept at work." - fucking cotton
Chapter IX: "Of the Sons of Master and Man" - one of the most absorbing, rich, yet also uncomfortable chapters so far. I really appreciated how he very specifically lays out the various ways that blacks and whites of the South are divided and how their division exists on all levels: political (particularly in regards to the vote), economic, and perhaps most sadly of all, social. - my discomfort with this chapter comes from what feels like classism e.g. his outrage that "the best" of black people (i.e. most educated and politically/economically/socially sophisticated) are separated from "the best" of white people, in a way that is unique to the South. And that discomfort comes from a certain Leftism in my own political perspective, rather than any feeling that Du Bois is actually wrong in any way. Perhaps I just chafe at this constantly repeated label "the best"... - a quote - and thesis - that is deeply uncomfortable but remains very relevant to today's world: "But the chief problem in any community cursed with crime is not the punishment of the criminals, but the preventing of the young from being trained to crime." Imagine saying such a thing now in regards to black Americans! At worst, a person would be branded a racist. At best, a Glenn Loury.
Chapter X: "Of the Faith of the Fathers" - black faith & spirituality is sketched, from its roots in African religions to its transformation into Christianity, to its use as a tool to engender submissiveness within slavery ("Christian humility") to its ecstatic identification with Abolition as the great freedom finally come, to the post-Emancipation divide between Northern black radicalism and Southern black compromise. - "The Music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which, despite caricature and defilement, still remains the most original and beautiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil."
Chapter XI: "Of the Passing of the First-Born" - this amazing, and amazingly sad, recounting of the short life of Du Bois' son can barely be summarized. how to summarize an infant's death? Du Bois mourns the boy and yet wonders if the child is better off dead, rather than to live and grown in a country that despises him. - from Wikipedia: His son, Burghardt, contracted diphtheria and white doctors in Atlanta refused to treat black patients.
Chapter XII: "Of Alexander Crummell" - the life of a black priest - his three temptations: Hate, Despair, Doubt - Bishop Onderdonk: "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: No negro priest can sit in my church convention and no negro church must ask for representation there." Alexander Crummell: "I will never enter your diocese on such terms."
Chapter XIII: "Of the Coming of John" - childhood playmates Black John and White John both leave their small town to become educated in the greater world. Black John's education drives the joy from his eyes, but he'd rather be unhappy than ignorant. White John's education changes little in the man. the two return to their birthplace. White John is welcomed but bored, oh so bored, by the hick town that is no comparison to the fun and the women of the big city. Black John is welcomed and then shunned; his education has transformed him into someone humorless, uppity, overly concerned with such unattainables as justice and equality. the two crossed paths in the big city once, to their mutual discomfort. and they cross paths again, back at home, to their mutual destruction. - this is a perfect story. I was reminded of Leonid Andreyev's Lazarus in its multi-leveled, parable-like narrative, the awful beauty of its prose, and the depths of its despair
Chapter XIV: "The Sorrow Songs" - “Your country? How came it yours? ... Here we have brought our three gifts and mingled them with yours: a gift of story and song - soft, stirring melody in an ill-harmonized and unmelodious land; the gift of sweat and brawn to beat back the wilderness, conquer the soil, and lay the foundations of this vast economic empire two hundred years earlier than your weak hands could have done it; the third, a gift of the Spirit. Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation's heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst... Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro People?”...more
A book about our broken educational system is basically a book of science fiction to me. I'm not a teacher (although I wanted to be one, once), grade A book about our broken educational system is basically a book of science fiction to me. I'm not a teacher (although I wanted to be one, once), grade school & high school & college are way way in my past, and certainly no kids - that I'm aware of - have broken this committed bachelor's stride. Fortunately, I love science fiction because science fiction is also speculative fiction. This is speculative nonfiction.
The Cult of Smart isn't just about the educational system, it's about how to look at life and how to live a life and how to support other people living their lives. I loved every page (even the exactly two times I disagreed*). This book's outlook on humanity really resonated with me.
synopsis: a little girl is haunted but is she really?
When is a haunted house story not a haunted house story? When it is a Weird Fiction™ haunted houssynopsis: a little girl is haunted but is she really?
When is a haunted house story not a haunted house story? When it is a Weird Fiction™ haunted house story, of course. The old Weird Fiction Masters blood runs through Walton's veins: some Arthur Machen, a little bit of Lord Dunsany, and a lot of Algernon Blackwood. That blood is not interested in classical ghost stories; it doesn't particularly want to scare you, except perhaps on an existential level. It is fascinated by the extradimensional spaces between and beyond, psychic residues and psychic attacks, the natural world's transcendent qualities, the Lessons of the Ancients, the right-hand path and the left.
This will be a difficult and probably very annoying book for some. Hard to recommend. It is eerie and disturbing but it is far from a traditional tale of horror. The poor reviewer Dan was appalled at the lengthy middle section, which is basically conversation and interrogation. I get it; for someone who doesn't love the in-depth yet strangely stylized, chapters-long conversations that dominate many of Algernon Blackwood's books, this will be a slog. But that and so much else delighted me. I love those sorts of things, the reading and often rereading of multi-level conversations, the thought put into each query and response, the respect for the reader who is expected to be just as interested in such contemplative sequences, one who takes their time and is not reading the book simply to turn pages rapidly.
I also love the characters. The four supporting characters (two brothers, a wife, and a child) are all well-characterized, portrayed in varying shades of villainy and victimization. Best of all, the protagonist and the mother who employs him. Dr. Carew comes from a long line of "psychic investigators" like John Silence (Blackwood again) and there is something so compelling about how these types of characters radiate both a calming ease with transcendental mysticism and an innate decency and quiet strength that I suppose can only be called "goodness" if that word didn't come across as so corny. Elizabeth Stone is just as interesting and admirable: an heiress who escaped from a controlling evil and who is forced to return to it, a student of the occult absorbed by the supernatural but never taken over by it, and in the end, a woman whose struggle is basically about not allowing her own will and independent thought to be taken over by any dominating force, whether by an evil aunt's will or a cousin who loves her. Elizabeth resists being subsumed; being her own individual is key to who she is. These are two very attractive characters.
Walton's prose shines. So many surprising phrases and sentences stuck in my mind; she's both a perfectionist and someone who wants to describe things in new and unusual ways. A complex and nuanced writer who trusts her audience. And much like Blackwood (yet again), she has no interest in viewing non-Western spiritual practices with anything approaching condescension. I really appreciated the depth and sympathy in which she portrayed the mystical traditions of other cultures and her ease in imagining some sort of afterlife. As well as how the present world is affected, sometimes infected, by the past.
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looks like a ghost messed with that hair a bit
also there is a creepy apparition that takes the form of a hare and who doesn't love that?
This book is incredible and was a real paradigm-shifter for me. Way back in the year I was born (1970, I'm old), Albert Murray was mainly a music critThis book is incredible and was a real paradigm-shifter for me. Way back in the year I was born (1970, I'm old), Albert Murray was mainly a music critic. But he was also writing fiery polemics on race and racism, from the perspective of a black man who saw the many flaws in this nation while also celebrating its many strengths. And in a voice that is so acerbic, witty, angry, humorous, empathetic, bitchy, and above all, masterful. The guy knows what he's talking about. His mind is all spikes and spokes, constantly poking and turning, his writing all switchbacks and sudden, surprising connections. Truly enlightening stuff.
I'd heard of him before, as I had read many sociopolitical classics in college. But I had mainly learned of him in the context of being the counterpoint to James Baldwin, a writer who Murray is famous for critiquing. It's telling that while I was assigned many of Baldwin's works, Murray was never on the curriculum. Clearly a dynamic was created between them similar to Booker T. Washington versus W.E.B. DuBois, with Washington often seen these days as upholding a white supremacist value system (spoiler, he didn't).
Murray seethes about the treatment of African-Americans by white America, I do want to make that clear. But he seethes against anyone who would flatten the black American experience, who would turn a complex ethnicity into a race of victims. And so his seething isn't just against clueless, vicious white racists or against the many horrible and familiar examples of systemic racism; he also fumes against sociologists and politicians and cocktail party liberals who turn black Americans into portraits of misery. Just as he speaks out against black writers who he feels do the same. This is not a man who would appreciate much about Ta-Nehisi Coates or Nikole Hannah-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi, let alone Robin DiAngelo or the tenets of Afro-pessimism. If you read this and end up admiring him, I'd recommend modern black writers like the very-different-from-each-other Coleman Hughes and Chloe Valdary and Kwame Anthony Appiah (but not so much Glenn Loury or John McWhorter, both of whom I imagine he'd dismiss as bougie af).
Murray's ideas (and ideals) can perhaps be summarized as:
(1) The black American experience is a layered, complicated experience and anyone who would paint it as solely a history of being demeaned - for whatever goal, positive or negative - well, that person is either a grifter trying to get some clout by trucking in stereotypes about "Negro inferiority" without actually saying that openly, or is just your garden variety stupid asshole with their head in the dirt.
(2) Black people are central to the American experience and what it is like to be an American and what constitutes the American character. He believes that black culture(s) and white culture(s) are often different, of course. But blacks and whites have deeply influenced each other. The impact on one from the other and back again means "American culture" is black, white, all the colors. And so black Americans have more in common with white Americans than they do with people in other nations who have black skin. Murray despised both white and black separatism. To him, there are no "black Americans" or "white Americans"; thus the "Omni-" of the title.
(3) To look at race rather than culture as the central part of identity is to be both a fool and a dullard.
(4) The history of the U.S. is not simply the story of white heroes & white villains with black identity defined by how black people coped or benefited from the various villainous or heroic acts of those white people. Instead, American history is a history of so many white and black heroes, all of whom have one unifying factor: they are each Americans, and should be celebrated as such.
some things that amused/interested me:
- oh how he rails against the reasons behind "the natural look" for black people that was being embraced by hippies and counter-cultural black people and various fashion magazines of his day. all of that was hilarious and eye-opening to me. Murray points out that not only has black American culture often celebrated artifice and flash and stylization as key components of style, he points out that if you really want to be that person looking at African roots as key to black American culture - and he is decidedly not that person - then you need to at least realize that African culture has fully embraced stylization, flash, and artifice - including body modification - since before the U.S. was even a country.
- oh how he rails against sociologists and social workers who would demean black female mastery and, well, the entire concept of matriarchy, by positing that one of the key problems of black culture is the fact that many black kids are raised by single moms. Murray celebrates these women.
- oh how he rails against photographers and "ethnologists" who paint places like Harlem as anything less than complex, vibrant, and full of beauty & joy, and instead focus on the poverty and pain and sorrow that is also - but only - a part of that world. And far from the most important let alone influential part. Such diminishments are often celebrated as "realism" - all the better to earn the acclaim of various white liberals, who can then condescend to Harlem and other black-majority places as hellholes in need of rescue.
- oh how he (more gently) rails against James Baldwin! (who I love.) this was shocking, but he has a point. Baldwin started his career speaking against "propagandistic" books that would flatten the black experience and portray black people as a race of victims. but then Baldwin went to France and... changed. Suddenly he was full of sorrow over the poor, poor black Americans and their supposedly miserable lives that contained no joy or richness, and so that's what he talked about in interviews and that's what he wrote about in essays and in books like Another Country. Murray sees Baldwin as a man who betrayed his own former ideals and his own formerly realistic and nuanced perspectives, a person who once railed against books that transformed black people into victim archetypes, and who then - after he was included in the circle of hip literati & American expats of the day - apparently decided that providing such misery porn was maybe not such a bad idea after all.
(I'm not sure where I land on this perspective and I'd probably need to read a biography of Baldwin to truly form an opinion. but I get where Murray is coming from.)
- he also has, let's just say, some thoughts on Norman Mailer & his essay "The White Negro." I'm less interested in Mailer than I am in Baldwin, so I'm not going to go into detail. But those thoughts are Murray at his scathing best. Haha Mailer, wonder what you thought about that.
an excellent article on Murray by another one of my favorite black writers (and perhaps the one who hews most closely and most explicitly to Murray's ideals), Greg Thomas:
"American intellectuals, like those elsewhere, are profoundly preoccupied with the abnormally wretched predicament of contemporary Western man in general... almost every significant work of art of the twentieth century contains some explicit and often comprehensive indictment of the shortcomings of contemporary society and the inadequacies of contemporary man... As soon as any issue involving Negroes arises, however, most American social science theorists and technicians... seem compelled to proceed as if Negroes have only to conform more closely to the behavior norms of the self-same white American middle class that writers like Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Sherwood Anderson had already dissected and rejected long before the left wing political establishment of the nineteen thirties made it fashionable for even the average undergraduate to do so."
"Most Negroes have always had enough inside information about the history of this great hit-and-miss republic to know that other people have been deliberately writing Negroes out of the history books, even as the same people permitted newly arrived immigrants to write themselves in."
"Identity is best defined in terms of culture, and the culture of the nation over which the white Anglo-Saxon power elite exercises such exclusive political, economic, and social control is not all-white by any measurement ever devised. American culture, even in its most rigidly segregated precincts, is patently and irrevocably composite. It is, regardless of all the hysterical protestations of those who would have it otherwise, incontestably mulatto. Indeed, for all their traditional antagonisms and obvious differences, the so-called black and so-called white people of the United States resemble nobody else in the world so much as they resemble each other. And what is more, even their most extreme and violent polarities represent nothing so much as the natural history of pluralism in an open society."...more
spoilers follow. but what is a spoiler? a component revealed. is that component reflective of the whole? is that component the heart of the book or isspoilers follow. but what is a spoiler? a component revealed. is that component reflective of the whole? is that component the heart of the book or is it just another part of its body? is it a totem that represents the book's secret meaning?
the boy goes back in time to visit the girl. into the garden he goes, the changing garden. he feels safe and free in this garden. "there is a safe house at every dream level, which gets populated with the innermost thoughts and secrets of the Subject." he meets the girl in the garden. the girl shows him the clock. the girl will wind the clock. the old woman has wound the clock. "Totems are objects used by the characters to test if they were in the real world or a dream, and they all had specially modified qualities which made them very personal." the old woman dreams. the boy dreams. the brother dreams. they all dream together. you dream, I dream, we all dream together. "...a.k.a. unconstructed dream space existing within untouched subconscious..." the clock strikes the hour. the boy hears the clock and goes through the door, into the midnight garden. there he will meet the girl, again and again. the boy moves forward in time to finally meet the girl, at long last, as they have met many times before. "Inception is the act of inserting an idea in a person's mind which will bloom in a way making the Subject think it was their idea." the girl is an old woman; the boy is a boy. they hug, for the first time, their dreams a reality. a happy ending and beginning are achieved.
An ideal vacation: the isle of Capri, warm and sunny; a community of idiosyncratic expats, amusing and lively; ferocious natives, sardonic and sly; coAn ideal vacation: the isle of Capri, warm and sunny; a community of idiosyncratic expats, amusing and lively; ferocious natives, sardonic and sly; colorfully dressed religious cultists, rustic and merry. Conversation and parties and conversation and art forgery and conversation and natural disaster and conversation and a deadly street battle and conversation and murder and so many conversations on all sorts of fascinating subjects. Art forgery is fine if it becomes a reason for a billionaire to hand money over to a proud friend. Natural disaster is fine if it's only ash to be dealt with; the volcano's eruptions mainly harm those boring mainlanders. A deadly street battle is fine if it's natives versus cultists, plus it gives everyone something to talk about for a little while. Murder is fine if the victim is a swindling louse and the murderess doesn't make a bloody fuss about it. A history is delivered: the island once ruled by an eccentric despot; his eccentricity has become the lifeblood of the island itself. A visitor arrives, an Anglican Bishop of Africa, already shown a different way of living in Africa; now ready and open to new ways of thinking. This rather stuffy but kindly gent finds his mind suddenly opening to all sorts of new possibilities. Now rename the isle of Capri: it shall be called "Nepenthe". The south wind blows hot, dry, and strong in this beautiful place; it causes all sorts of minds to expand in all sorts of directions.
The author was a scandalous man and an expat himself, on the island of Capri and elsewhere. He wrote lauded travel books and was friends with a variety of fascinating people. A suave perspective on the vicissitudes of fortune and life, an exciting interest in exploring all the different ways of thinking and being. Prose that is deliciously descriptive but never overcooked, sophisticated and ironic, pitiless and empathetic, amused and always highly amusing. I think this was his only book of fiction. Or should that be "fiction"? No doubt much of this was cribbed from his own life, the actual people he knew and the actual place he lived. Either way, the book is perfection; why bother writing more fiction if you've said all that you need to say?
This is a dream of a book and I wanted to stay dreaming, so I prolonged the experience as much as possible. The wit, the elegance! It gave me so much to smile at, be shocked at, and above all, to think about. So much food for thought. I love being around smart, individualistic people and I love being around people who enjoy life and I love being in a setting that is warm, breezy, colorful, surrounded by water. Full of things to do, people to meet, and above all, ways to relax. I love when something makes me both think and feel. I want to live in this book.
"Something had been stirring with him; new points of view had floated into his ken. He was no longer so sure about things. The structure of his mind had lost that old stability; its elements seemed to be held in solution, ready to form new combinations."
"They produce a new kind of public, a public which craves for personalities rather than information... Men cannot live, it seems, save by feeding on their neighbour's life-blood. They prey on each other's nerve-tissues and personal sensations. Everything must be shared. It gives them a feeling of solidarity, I suppose, in a world where they have lost the courage to stand alone. Woe to him who dwells apart!"
"That venerable blunder: to think that in changing the form of government you change the heart of man. For surely we should aim at simplification of the machinery. Conceive, now, the state of affairs where everybody is more or less employed by the community - the community, that comfortable world! - in some patriotic business or other. Everybody an official, all controlling each other! It would be worse than the Spanish Inquisition."
"What is all wisdom save a collection of platitudes? Take fifty of our current proverbial sayings - they are so trite, so threadbare, that we can hardly bring our lips to utter them. None the less they embody the concentrated experience of the race, and the man who orders his life according to their teaching cannot go far wrong. How easy that seems! Has any one ever done so? Never. Has any man ever attained inner harmony by pondering the experiences of others? Not since the world began! He must pass through the fire."...more
boy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" aboy falls for older boy while at boarding school. is it a crush, true love, or the relationship that will come to define him? was he "in the making" and then, at the end, finally made, set, his trajectory predetermined? the idea is a dark one.
the imagery is intense; the prose is like honey. very easy to get lost in all of the beautiful sentences, the good kind of lost. a Faulkner kind of lost, with a Jamesian style. the characterization of this boy is so deep and rich, the story must include autobiographical elements.
the first chapter, exploring his world as an often solitary child lost in his thoughts and imagination, finding symbolic meaning in the world around him, was so beautifully written, sensual in its details, and resonant to me on a personal level. later chapters as he finds himself adapting - surprisingly successfully - to his new world outside of his home, at boarding school, were equally resonant. I really saw a lot of myself in this kid. the longest and most important chapter recounts a Halloween party and the moments when the two boys are at their closest. this is one of the most incredibly written sequences I've ever read in any book. layers of meaning meets layers of imagery meets layers of deep characterization. *swoon*
the last few chapters portray the coming apart of their relationship, the boy's fall from grace with the school, his defiance, and then his disinterest in engaging with anything at his school, now that he recognizes this part of his life is over. and yet the last chapter as he leaves this school makes clear his life is far from over. given the time in which this book was written, I really appreciated the assumption that his life will go on, very much changed, but it will still go on, and the boy will continue living in this strange world.
he is no longer in the making, no longer a formless thing reacting to the world, an inchoate shape. he has been made, he has become fully formed: the "patterns of his life were achieved." this is the last sentence; it is a tragedy but also a reality. many of our adult selves were made in our childhood. my wish for this child is that he could move beyond those patterns. but it does not appear as if G.F. Green thought that could be possible.
the psychologist Kazimierz Dąbrowski wrote of "positive disintegration" which is a theory about personality development. it is a potential "third stage" that comes for some, after nature and nurture. a person who strives to understand themselves and the world around them can embrace a temporary form of personality disintegration, where they let go of what they know and what they think they know. if they are truly capable of redevelopment - mainly due to possessing a characteristic that Dąbrowski calls "overexcitability" - then they are open to new inputs, new ideas, new ways of thinking and being. and so a person can remake themselves, they can develop a conscience and an outlook that does not stay chained to nature or nurture. the boy of In the Making experiences this disintegration. it made for the most compelling moments in this book and is why this was a uniquely affecting experience for me.
unfortunately for the boy, his positive disintegration is not a temporary thing. which according to Dąbrowski, is what is key to the development of an open, curious, flexible personality. the disintegration must be temporary and it must be not lead to fixity. the boy's emotionally overexcitable persona indeed disintegrates during this period of openness, but he does not come back from it; all that is left behind is a yearning but essentially loveless pattern that will now be repeated. rather than a new understanding of how life need not be a fixed line. this was instructive and also deeply sad. as are all such fixed states.
the introduction is by Peter Parker. it is a brief but still excellent overview of the author's immaculate prose style, his troubled life, and the writing of this book. it does not explore his suicide in 1977, at the age of 66. it is clear to me, from what I know of his life, that George Frederick Green did not escape the patterns that controlled his own trajectory....more
well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl well at last I have read something that could be considered The Great American Novel, while also being um incest porn? a surprising book!
Who was Earl Thompson? This portrait of America during the Depression, and its author, were complete unknowns to me. I actually have no recollection of how my mildewed and battered, torn and tattered paperback even came into my possession. The book was apparently A Big Thing when it came out, yet I've read nothing about it. Why is that? The author's talent with the prose is amazing: as poetic and as earthy as Steinbeck, with an interest in the same themes, the same era; but Thompson is somehow more empathetic, more alive in how writes about people, places, and times. There is no remove, no distance between author and subject, of the kind that I've experienced with Steinbeck. Thompson is right there in the dirt with his characters. The book feels beyond lived-in; it reads like an autobiography that was written while events were actually occurring, rather than being reminisced about when older and wiser. There is a palpable energy in this book, a livewire sort of aliveness that makes every description sing and sting, every person both Dickensian grotesque and fully recognizable, every horrible occurrence feel like something out of a rural gothic horror and also like something the author personally experienced, full of the kinds of details and character traits that make each and every scene feel completely authentic.
On top of all that, despite all of the despair on display, all of the broken lives and crushed dreams, this book is really, really funny. Sometimes the humor is meanly sardonic, other times warmer, based on recognizable human foibles and physical flaws; never in a way that feels like the author scorns who he is writing about or even the repulsive places where they struggle to eat, let alone get ahead. To me, the ability to illustrate the tragically humorous folly and smallness of life, while not actually being contemptuous of those lives, is the mark of a truly brilliant book.
...and yet, this masterpiece is impossible to recommend. Just have to get this out of the way: besides the over the top sadistic violence that occurs frequently, I'd say fully a third of this book details the extremely explicit fantasies or actions of our pre-pubescent hero and his sexual desires for his mother. Emphasis: extremely explicit. Wild to imagine this book being reprinted in our modern times. Jack alternately hints, begs, pleads, and demands the satisfaction of both his curiosity and his needs. He's constantly ogling her or finding ways to place his hands or mouth on her belly, breasts, groin, anywhere, when she's awake, when she's asleep, most usually in the twilight state in-between. He guilt trips and scolds her, molests her when she's out cold, he practically assaults her on more than one occasion. For a period of time he sleeps with an oversize makeshift pillow that has been fashioned into a pretend-person, fucking it furiously whenever he can as he imagines it as his mom. At one point, his degenerate step-father aids him in his goal (an especially grueling sequence); more frequently, stepdad gets in the way of young Jack's dreams, much to the boy's chagrin.
SPOILER ALERT: lil' Jack's dreams come true.
...and yet, the boy is indeed the book's hero, not just its protagonist. Take away his demented obsession with his mother (a hard thing to subtract, I know) and we are left with a portrait in pragmatic courage, dogged individualism, and the refusal to be cruel despite the cruelty surrounding him. This is a boy who is at first abandoned by his mother to the care of his grandparents, then taken up by her and her ne'er-do-well alcoholic husband in the second half of the novel as they traverse America, a boy with no education, very little in the way of guidance (his grandparents do try; they are the book's most genuinely positive and kind characters), constantly neglected and abused and lied to and barely fed and forced to not just survive with next to nothing, but often to support his parents... and yet he retains his intelligence, empathy, strong opinions, an ability to see beauty in life when it does appear, and most of all, a drive to achieve happiness throughout it all. "Scrappy" does not begin to describe him. "Ferocious" is a better adjective, but it is still one that makes him sound harder than he is. I'd use "spunky" but that is just a little too cutesy for a kid who makes it with his mom before he even reaches his teens.
One is tempted to see the relationship between mother and son as an allegory for America at its lowest point. Say, the boy representing the stubborn optimism of an American people that will always cling to its hopeful dreams in the face of their struggles, despite those ambitions being, essentially, the longing for the obliterating comfort of a return to mother's embrace, to the womb itself? Perhaps that would make the incestuous activities so fervently described easier to handle? The author places their actions and the many depredations occurring around them within the specific socio-political context of farmers-turned-itinerants living in the heartland of a supposedly liberal country; a country that dehumanizes its own people, reduces them to beggarly recipients of public welfare or scorns them as deplorable trash, but never deigns to view them as actual human beings. Certainly the portrait of an America hopelessly divided between an elite minority and everyone else, where everything is commodified including the smallest of spaces and especially the bodies of women - an almost Marxist analysis that upbraids the flaccid "good intentions" of liberalism while detailing the evils of capitalism at every turn - all of that critique is front and center. Often coming directly from the mouth of Jack's pro-union yet anti-New Deal grandfather. The story may be the story of America trying to find itself and failing, writ small. Mom & son could very well be metaphors for all I know. But I'm not a particularly deep thinker, so I didn't spend a lot of time trying to see them or their story as such.
Instead I saw a portrait of a woman both weak and strong but mainly weak, a kind-hearted person whose unrealistic dreams of a better life than her parents lead her on an inexorable path to larceny and prostitution, and finally into the arms of the only person who has persistently declared his undying devotion, her son. Instead I saw a portrait of a boy who refuses to buckle under the yoke of a society that embraces fixed identities and destinies, a boy who sees through all of the bullshit, who refuses to be fooled, and yet who maintains his own secret idealism at his core, insisting to himself that he will create his own destiny - society and those who would stop him be damned. The narrative of the book is teeming with human insects, praying mantises eager to mate and to kill, but the book itself is teeming with human life and the need to be alive, the struggle to survive, making a life wherever and however one can make it. The book despairs but somehow, magically, does not depress. It is too busy being alive to be depressed....more
Moody, dreamy, playful, mordant, creepy, soulful, sublime. If this musing on the nature of life and death had been written by a French existentialist Moody, dreamy, playful, mordant, creepy, soulful, sublime. If this musing on the nature of life and death had been written by a French existentialist writer, it would be a cult classic. It certainly has the style, ambiguity, and themes of such novels, while also bringing a deep compassion for the human condition, for people wrestling not just with the questions of life but also with their feelings about transition and death. But instead Companion was mismarketed as some kind of thriller about a deadly caregiver. One can only sigh and roll eyes, alas. Greenhall was a sorely misused writer.
Do 5 stars require a lengthy review? A long-winded review seems to be ignoring the example set by this book, which packs so much into so little. Still, 5 stars to me means this is now a favorite book and I want to explain why I love it.
Things that made The Companion one of my favorites:
- the restrained tone and the elegant prose. despite the potential drama of the narrative, the book is decidedly not melodramatic. it is nonchalant, sly, and subtle. Greenhall writes with an irony that shows a bemused appreciation while analying the trials and tribulations of fallible but still mysterious human beings.
- the interesting characterization. this is a story about a death-dealing caregiver lacking affect, having no allegiance to social norms and a supreme disinterest in shallow interactions, and who barely bothers pretending to be anything other than what she is. she travels with her blind father, a musician and former faith-healer, blinded by the wife he abandoned. the two find themselves mixed into the tense relations that exist within a rich and very divided family, a group that is dominated and often manipulated by one of two twins. the bad twin himself is a striking creation in his malice and mixed motivations. Greenhall dissects proscribed gender roles, misguided parental focus on the gender identity of their kids, and how gender essentialism can create a kind of sickness, a toxic mental state that can control how a person perceives other people and the world itself, a toxicity in the mind that can reshape the body itself.
- the dialogue. it is by turns polished and witty, surreal and absurdist, prosaic and realistic, sharp and acerbic, and best of all, at times quite stylized and layered with meaning - as if the speakers were players on a stage discussing the vicissitudes of existence with the remoteness of aliens discussing the human species. the dialogue is often surprising and always fascinating. dialogue to reread.
- the heart of the story. namely, its contemplation of death. this is a topic of particular personal and professional importance to me, as I work in a field where many of my agency's clients wrestle with the possibility of death coming soon (elders, people with life-threatening illness). I found this book to be a thoughtful meditation on how death can come as a release and as a blessing. something not to always be feared or fought against; something that can be sought out, even embraced. the old women who find themselves in this companion's care are women who are making decisions for themselves - decisions that will end their pain, decisions that actually empower them. their companion is a partner in this journey. I've felt and thought many of the things that this companion feels and thinks when hearing the stories (and wishes) of those in her care; I've been a witness to the lives of those who wanted to make this decision for themselves. despite the ambiguity and strangeness of this not-really-a-pulp novel, its story is one that is very much grounded in my reality. it resonated deeply with me....more
This is a fantastic book. Clearly and cleanly written, well-sourced, full of both sense and sensibility. The thesis: lack of understanding of the tribThis is a fantastic book. Clearly and cleanly written, well-sourced, full of both sense and sensibility. The thesis: lack of understanding of the tribal instinct will inevitably lead to disaster both abroad and at home. I appreciated the logical construction of this book: it moves from external to internal. First, the author spends much time detailing how American interventions - portrayed in a number of examples (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Venezuela) - have started from a place of complete misunderstanding, an arrogant misreading of how American intercessions will impact the countries in question, a refusal to recognize let alone analyze the tribal demarcations within countries where we have forcibly placed ourselves. That lack of understanding and analysis has led to catastrophe; most frustrating of all, these are catastrophes that could have been avoided, if willful arrogance disguised as idealism was not such a foundational attribute of American foreign policy.
After reviewing what went wrong abroad through the lens of how tribalism dictates the power structures within many (most? all?) countries, Prof. Chua turns her assessment inward, towards the U.S. itself. The last two chapters of the book are where extremists on both the right and the left may find horseshoe unity in disregarding or rejecting the author's illustration of how the U.S. itself is a tribalist nation - to its ongoing harm. Her vaccines against this virus are holistic ones, and fairly simple and straightforward: recognize the tribalism that exists across the political spectrum; deploy genuine empathy; and do not revert to binary thinking, no matter how tempting, no matter how good it feels to be a part of a wave of righteous group-think. Every tribe and every individual has their reasons, their rationales, their contexts. These should be understood, not demonized. Us versus Them solves nothing in the long run and is not sustainable; a body in constant opposition to itself is a body that will inevitably fray and then decay.
I often consider tribalism to be a kind of toxin: a harmful substance produced within a living organism. Specifically, a harmful outlook. One that damages the bodies that come in contact with that toxin and one that damages the body where the toxin itself is generated. The tribalistic perspective can be promoted by the individual, by the group, by the nation. The final and key chapters of Political Tribes portrays the harmful impact that tribalism continues to generate within the American body.
And that said, despite the toxin & virus metaphors... I don't want to necessarily demonize tribalism either. Who am I to condescend to those whose tribalist way of thinking is their way of life - their community's way of life, for generations? I want to be able to recognize tribalism and to disengage myself from a tribalist mode of thinking when I see it coming from within. Not a joiner over here. But one of the great points of this book is that if change is to be promoted outside of the U.S., it must come from a place of understanding and respecting those whose ways of thinking and whose experiences are radically different from our own. Tribalism can't be ignored or dismissed. It is a natural part of the human condition. Chua's point is that tribalism - as dangerous and regressive as it may often be, and as much as it should be seen as something to be overcome - cannot simply be handwaved aside as a minor issue. But that is exactly what we have done in many a nation.
This book is important to me on an intellectual and political level because not only did it coalate information both known and unknown (to me) about American misadventures abroad, it establishes a roadmap to avoiding those mistakes in the future. Well, we'll see if those lessons land at all with the powers that be.
More importantly to me, on a personal level (and thus the 5th star), Political Tribes helped clarify my own thoughts about the toxicity that has been raging in this country of mine, and has helped me to stay on the track I've set for myself. I'm an old school progressive, and to me that means we must always progress, as individuals and as groups and as a nation. Binary, tribalist group-think is an inhibitor to actual progress in the United States and should be a relic of the past, despite how strongly we may cling to that and other relics. This country is a collection of cultural identities and each cultural identity is married to an overall American identity; neither identity needs to be subsumed by the other. The ability of each of us to hold multiple identities simultaneously, to recognize that we can be a person of many tribes and no single tribe, and to not be ashamed of any of those different identities, is exactly how we can check our own reductive, tribalist instincts. I do not equal one thing nor does the person whose perspective that is diametically opposed to my own way of thinking equal one thing. As the saying goes: we are large, we contain multitudes. (hide spoiler)]
I've read two works of nonfiction this year that resonated deeply with me: Political Tribes and The Great Chain of Life (the latter a reread of a favorite from college). The lessons of both are central to my own guiding principles, my own personal logic model; namely, that the tenets of empathy and of individualism must be combined and centralized for humans to move forward, together.
❂
Today's purveyors of political tribalism, on both left and right, may think they are defending American values, but in fact they are playing with poison. America will cease to be America... if we define our nationality in terms of "whiteness," "Anglo-Protestant culture," "European Christianity," or any other terms not inclusive of all religions and ethnicities. But it will also cease to be America if enough of us come to believe that our country and its ideals are a fraud. There is a world of difference between saying that America has failed to live up to its own ideals, with egregious injustice persisting today, and saying that the principles supposedly uniting us are just smoke screens to disguise oppression.
The peril we face as a nation today is not only that America might fail to live up to its promise, but that Americans might stop believing in that promise or the need to fight for it. The increasing belief on the left that this promise was always a lie, or on the right that it has always been true - and has already been achieved - are two sides of the same coin.
What holds the United States together is the American Dream. But it must be a version of the dream that recognizes past failure instead of denying it. Failures are part and parcel of the story line of a country founded on hope, a country where there's always more to be done....more
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