Sun Under Wood by Robert Hass
In celebration of Hass’s new book coming out next week I reread this one to get his voice in my head. There are some serious poems in this collection. He writes from a deep well of emotion especially in the poems about his mother. His is also a California voice. He says,
“I didn’t know you could lie down in such swift, opposing currents.”
Then,
“And the days churned by,
navigable sorrow.”
Flights by Olga Tokarczuk
A complicated book full of semi connected vignettes and stories loosely connected by travel and escape. Tokarczuk is an original writer and in this book she interweaves short chapters on history, the study and preservation of corpses and human organs, disappearances, synchronicity, loners and travel psychology. This is a hard book to describe but it kept my attention. Her characters on the move really made me think about why I travel. And whether or not I could disappear. Tokarcuzk even claims Moby-Dick is one of the two greatest travel books ever written. With that I would have to agree. A character called Eryk reads it while in prison and it changes him. It gave him evidence that the world made sense.
Another character says, “It just happens that people disappear for a little while, you know?”
A chapter called Whales, or: Drowning in Air is haunting.
Godzone is another heavy chapter that deals with euthanasia.
To Begin Where I Am by Czeslaw Milosz
A collection of essays spanning most of Milosz’s career. I’ve been carrying this book around with me for a couple of months dipping into its deep well of wisdom. Milosz is a poet foremost, but he is also a critic, memoirist, philosopher and teacher. This book is full of great observations and recollections. He writes about everything from his boyhood to his time in Paris and Berkeley as well as critiques of other poets and writers. He thinks a lot about religion and often questions his faith. He writes, “My piety would shame me if it meant that I possessed something others did not.”
In the chapters on the deadly sins he calls acedia, “terror in the face of emptiness, apathy, depression.”
At the same time I have been also reading his last poems which are a great companion to this splendid volume.
And maybe my favorite line, “Man rises above himself only in art.”
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
Ive been hooked on Murakami for a few years now. He flawlessly blends everyday life with surrealism in a way keeps me page turning. His characters are reflective and open to metaphysical waves in their lives. There are two, or more, worlds. This is a story of a runaway cat and a runaway wife. The search for the cat leads Toru Okada, aka Mr. Wind-Up Bird, on a series of other worldly adventures. Some he can almost figure out and some he can’t. Much is left unexplained. So I’ll probably have to read this one again someday. World War Two plays a part in Okada’s life as he tries to navigate the mystery of his missing wife. In a letter from an old solider, Lieutenant Mamiya, he writes, “Hell has no true bottom.” An idea that echos through the entire book. Murakami is a master of his own unique voice.
Traveling Music by Neil Peart.
After the holidays my wanderlust was as acute as ever. I reread his book Ghost Rider last summer and Peart’s voice was still bouncing around in my head/heart. I pulled this book off the shelf and flipped through it getting a feel for Peart’s rhythm of the road. I read a few pages and thought about my next trip.
A few days later the news of Peart’s death from brain cancer hit all of us Rush fans pretty hard. I decided to read all of Traveling Music in his honor. (And play a lot of Rush albums.) It’s as good as I remember it. It is, on the surface, a story about a trip he took driving to Texas and the music he listened to on his drive. This time he wasn’t on his motorcycle but more comfortable in his BMW.
There are also chapters on his growing up in Canada and falling in love with music and drums, living in London, meeting Alex and Geddy, the touring life and his bicycle trips to Africa. Peart has endless and infectious curiosity. He loves solitude, birds, literature, cars, nature and so much more. He’s an adrenaline junkie who constantly is “Workin them angels.”
Twice Peart mentions T.C. Boyle. I’ll have to tell him!
He also has a wonderful take on schadenfreude. Instead of the usual interpretation of laughter and pleasure at the misfortunes of others he thinks of it more as “tarnished joy.” A less spitefully definition without as much malice.
I am hoping that there may have been something that he was working on durning his illness. Because if he was it will be honest and enlightening if it ever sees publication. Peart was alway lyrical and sincere whether writing Rush songs, his travel books or giving interviews.
I consider myself lucky to have seen many Rush concerts starting in 1979 and ending up at the last show they ever played at the Fabulous Forum on 1 August, 2015.
The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.
I’ve been meaning to get back to this one for years. It’s the first Vonnegut book I ever read. I’m guessing 1979. High school. All of his brilliance is on display in this book published in 1959. Vonnegut was already an agnostic and a humanist. His themes that everything is either good luck or bad luck with no rhyme or reason as to who gets what. It’s all a crap shoot. This is a kind of science fiction book but more importantly it’s about the foolishness of war and religion. Then he presents the great story that all of history’s human endeavors are for the sole purpose of contacting and reassuring an alien, Sola, who is stranded on Titan, one of Saturn’s moons, to tell him that help is on the way.
A book only Vonnegut could write. His characters are harsh, odd, selfish, brainwashed, (literally) compassionate and longing for love. The message that God doesn’t care seems to say that we have free will either to be unlucky or lucky. The protagonist, Malachi Constant says, “I was the victim of a series of accidents, as are we all.” I’ve thought about that quote for forty years.
Ahab’s Wife, or The Star-Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund
I stumbled across this book at the Ansel Addams Gallery in Yosemite Valley. At first I was suspect. It couldn’t be about that Ahab’s wife, could it? And if it was, how dare she mess with the great Herman Melville? But, of course, I was intrigued and read the first page standing there in the Gallery and instantly was hooked. And to say this is a book about Captain Ahab is, to use a well worn phrase, like saying Moby-Dick is about a whale. Both books are so much more. Deeper and full of the world.
This is a book about a strong and brave and independent woman, Una Spenser. She lives a life full of adventures both wonderful and painful. She is smart and bold and is comfortable in her own skin. In her travels from her birthplace in rural Kentucky to a whaling ship to Nantucket she meets characters real, like Margret Fuller and Maria Mitchell. Una has a brief moment with Emerson. And she meets a strange veiled preacher in the woods near Concord, possibly Hawthorne? And in Nantucket she becomes friends with Mary Starbuck, the wife of the Pequod’s first mate. She knows of Stubbs and Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo. She is familiar with Bildad and Peleg. But the characters of Naslund’s own creation are the most vivid and vital.
Wonderfully written and historically accurate Naslund is a joy to read. She touches on science and religion and the brutal consequences of slavery. She is a passionate writer and advocate for reason. I really appreciated this book. “We are kin to stars.” She writes, so true, so true.
Selected and Last Poems 1931-2004 — Czeslaw Milosz
Poems about everything. Milosz’s scope is magnificent. I read him over and over. He teaches us to question our faith and make your own peace with yourself. He has a long memory and much of his life is on display here. Milosz sees time for what it is, fleeting with the ability to eventually make things unimportant and forgotten. Even our mistakes. He writes,
If only there were enough time.
If only there were enough time.
Then in a later poem,
Consolation
Calm down. Both your sins and your good deeds will be lost in oblivion.
And I love this one:
Natural history has its museums,
But why should our children learn about monsters,
An earth of snakes and reptiles for millions of years?
Nature devouring, nature devoured,
Butchery day and night smoking with blood.
And who created it? Was it the good Lord?
Something Happened by Joseph Heller
Another book I reread after more than thirty-five years. And it’s a bit different than I remember it. It’s still funny and full of Heller’s dark dark humor. But it’s more misogynistic, racist and homophobic than I thought. Maybe that kind of stuff was funnier in the sixties but, to me, it didn’t age well. Most of this long dense book isn’t like that. I still think Heller’s rambling neurosis and melancholy rants were meant to be more funny than serious. After all, how could anyone be as miserable, conniving, arrogant, frightened or selfish as Bob Solcum.
I remember reading a review all those years ago where the critic said that you could probably cut a hundred pages out of the center of the book and nobody would notice. Not even Heller. A bit harsh perhaps, but the book seemed to drag more than I remembered. I still view Heller as a great writer and plan on rereading some of his other stuff to see if they still have the power to move me.
And I must admit I’ve used his self deprecating humor for my own ends for a very long time now. And I still make myself laugh thinking about Heller’s view about the absurdities of everyday life. He was a master of his own style.
Mile Marker Zero
The Moveable Feast of Key West by William McKeen
A splendid look at Key West, mostly in the seventies when Tom McGuane, Jimmy Buffett, Russell Chatham, Guy de la Valdene, Jim Harrison and Hunter Thompson all hung out there. The book also touches on Hemingway and Tennessee Williams and the fascinating locals who did everything from selling tacos, bartending and drug running. How all these great artists ended up on the tip of Florida fishing and drinking is quite a story and McKeen tells it well. We see McGuane as the cynosure whose friends gather to be near the action. Harrison and Chatham are the ones who live the largest. Everyone is mostly, except Valdene, poor, but that doesn’t hamper their enthusiasms for excess in all categories; food, drink, drugs, women and art. A great window into those wild days that seem even more legendary as time goes by.
A Summer with Montaigne
On the Art of Living Well by Antoine Compagnon
Short chapters explaining snippets from Montaigne’s essays. Compagnon reflects on all manner of ideas and insights. I’ve been reading the Montaigne’s Essays for well over a year now. I’m about half way through. I though this book might be a good companion but I find reading Montaigne to be much more interesting and my meditations at least as interesting as Compagnon’s, but it’s an easy read and a decent introduction if you are unfamiliar with Montaigne.
The Man in the Red Coat by Julian Barnes
A new book by Barnes is always a much anticipated treat. This one is about Samuel Pozzi a doctor and gynecologist in Paris at the end of the nineteenth century. Pozzi has many famous friends and is quite famous and influential himself. Barnes gives many sketches of other famous Parisians such as Montesquiou, Colette, Huysmans, Bernhardt, to mention just a few. You would think a story like this would either be a rehashed biography or just plain boring but Barnes is the rare writer who captures your attention because of his enthusiasm for his subject. With Barnes, for me, it doesn’t matter what he is writing about because his unique inquisitiveness fuels my own. And it doesn’t matter if I’m reading his fiction or non-fiction. I find his books hard to put down and then I think about them long after I do.
Early in the book Barnes tells us that time is on art’s side. (So perhaps there is hope for me.) He writes beautifully about art, dandyism, the good life, love, duels, and so much more. There are great stories within the stories and I’ve already been rereading some of the chapters.
Pity The Reader
On Writing With Style by Kurt Vonnegut and Suzanne McConnell
Pretty much everything Vonnegut wrote or said about how to write. There’s no new material here, at least for me. And McConnell’s contribution doesn’t really add much. Although I give her credit for trying. It’s just hard to paraphrase or add to the master’s ideas. Vonnegut is always brilliant and original. And I felt it was bit much, or maybe arrogance, for McConnell to italicize so many of his great quotes as if we won’t understand the point being made. Maybe I’m just being picky but I think Vonnegut’s words speak for themselves just fine. But I guess if you’re a true fan you’ll prolly wanna read, or maybe scan through, this book.
The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
This is a short novel about the vagaries of memory and time’s mysteries and how we look at history. Including our personal histories.
Tony Webster looks back an his first love with some small amount of nostalgia. Barnes asks if we can also be nostalgic about pain. It comes to pass that he was wrong about some of his memories. The navigating of young love is always tricky. It’s also a book about being older and more reflective. And Barnes contemplates the difference between addition and increase. There is a lot to ponder in this short novel.
Summer Snow by Robert Hass
A new book of poems by Hass. All of his usual subjects are here. Nature, love, death, aging, fleeting happiness and simple daily life.
He writes wonderfully about the beauty of the Sierras as only one can who has looked hard at the trees and rocks and clouds.
Paraphrasing, I believe, Stanley Kunitz he says,
“The more you loved and had been loved,
The worse you’re apt to hurt and be hurt.”
So very very true.
More Die off Heartbreak Saul Bellow
Of course, a reread. Benn Crader is a doctor of plant morphology. A true genius in his field. A scientist first and foremost. His story is told by his nephew, Kenneth. Kenneth worries that Benn is too much not of this world. All he really can focus on is plants. And, well, sex. He has a complicated sex life for a man his age but understands that Romeo and Juliette was written for the young. Somehow he muddles on but worries about real love and flees when things become to intricate. Like always with Bellow there are plots and subplots. Benn saves his true attentions for the science he loves. Kenneth has problems of his own and asks “What good is one thawed heart?”
Bellow’s prose is everything; smart, poetic, illuminating, I could go on and on. He is always hard for me to put down once I start reading. Every few pages there is an idea that awakes my imagination.
Ledger Jane Hirshfield
Her newest collection of wonderful and timely poems. She is passionate about life and all its little wonders. Jane looks at herself with amazement. She’s astounded that we don’t pay more attention to what we are doing to the planet. Her voice is deep and full of wisdom. I read, and reread her poems slowly. Some are dense and I need time to grasp different layers of her ideas. I savored this book treating myself to a few poems each morning. They made me go back to some of her essays from Nine Gates as well as from Ten Windows. Both superb books. My late friend Don French introduced me to Jane about fifteen years ago. So, naturally, I was thinking about Don this past week.
Jane writes;
“I don’t know why I was surprised every time loved started or ended.”
And,
“Closing eyes to taste the char of ordinary sweetness.”
And,
“Say:
We were our own future,
a furnace meant to burn itself up.”
Until The End Of Time by Brian Greene
One of the most interesting science books I’ve ever read. It’s packed with fascinating ideas. Professor Greene also explains the Second Law of Thermodynamics and Entropy so beautifully that even I can almost understand the concepts. I’ve always been fascinated by entropy and this book gives as good of a lesson as you’ll find. Equaling the mastery of Peter Atkins.
The “end of time” Greene writes about is so far into the future that numbers used to describe the distance are almost meaningless. He tells us that to the best knowledge of our most brilliant cosmologists that the universe is one day going to be so expanded that light from other stars will be unable to reach our solar system and, provided that there is anything left of humanity, we will only look out to a cold and dark heaven. Eventually, again in a time span incomprehensible, all matter will eventually dissipate and single particles will be so far apart that they will never interact. Thus bringing on an end to time.
But, Greene lets us know, that just because it’s all going to come to an end is no reason not to find meaning in this wonderful, unimaginably rare and terribly short life. The mere fact that we are here at all is a spectacularly magnificent piece of grand luck. Make the most of it! I’m sure I’ll be gifting this book often. (Cheryl)
Erosion
Essays of Undoing by Terry Tempest Williams
Terry Tempest Williams is a writer whose books burn with a passion for protecting the American West. Her’s is a giant voice. She is an activist and a teacher. Her words are wisdom. She has inherited the mantel of eminence elder and beacon of fierce defender of the wildness of public lands from Edward Abbey. She now owns the singular reputation as the country’s most vocal critic of the BLM.
These essays are sharp, full of truth and personal. She writes from a well of sincere experience. Every chapter in this book is a call to arms. Whether it be to protect the landscape or stand up for our rights or to love one another Tempest Williams writes boldly and precisely. As she says, with a name like Tempest she really had no other choice than to be a storm.
When I read her I’m embolden to act, to commit myself more to helping those in need. Both people and the natural world. Even if only in small ways. She is constantly looking into own soul to see what makes her stronger. And she is strong and her voice resonates with the power of a hero. Yes, a hero!
She sees and feels the pain of how our world works. Yet still she is an optimist, a fighter for what she believes in.
When someone told her she was married to sorrow she said, “No, I’m not married to sorrow. I just refuse to look away.” That give me strength.
The story about her brother Dan moved me to tears and made me think about my own family and loved ones.
It’s time to commit acts of protection before everything erodes away.
Doctor Jazz by Hayden Curruth
Curruth’s last collection of poems before he died. They are the musings of an old man, an “old Yankee” as he called himself. However, there is hope and optimism in some of these verses, but there is much pain as well. The poem Dearest M— about his daughter and her death is crushing in its honesty and acknowledgment of open grief.
Other poems are more buoyant and even humorous. I first read this book when it came out and my favorite one is about Basho.
Basho, you made
a living writing haiku?
Wow! Way to go, man.
And then he writes, “…even on the bad days good things happen.”
The Adirondacks by Paul Schneider
An older book that I read a long time ago. It’s a history of the Adirondack Park from when the first white missionaries crept in to convert the natives right up to the present. Or the present twenty years ago. It’s a very well researched and finely written work. I have a passion for my days hiking around the High Peaks Region of the park and this book reminds me of the beauty of that spot that holds such a big place in my heart. It’s full of characters of all stripes. Investors, priests, woodsmen, trappers and artists. Schneider has an eye for curiosities and the book has a quick pace. The Park is still an experiment in living close to true wilderness and will continue to suffer growing pains as more and more people want to call upstate New York their home. I wish Schneider would write an update. He’s the guy to do it.
Entries by Wendell Berry
Another book I read close to twenty years ago when it first came out. In fact, I saw Berry read from at Campbell Hall. It was a moving and memorable evening of poetry. The poems in this book are about his usual subjects; the love of land, the love of community, faith and just plain old love. The poems about his father stir emotions. Sometimes Berry’s verse can seem simple but they certainly are not. He’s a poet who feels the seriousness of life’s deepest mysteries. I keep copies of his books on both coasts because they make beautiful and encouraging reading in the morning. A enlightening start to the day. In a poem called One of Us he writes;
Must another poor body, brought
to its rest at last, be made the occasion
of yet another sermon? Have we nothing
to say to the dead that is not
a dull mortal lesson to the living,
Orkney by Amy Sackville
A really remarkable and poetic novel. I read it when it was first published (2013) and it has been kind of haunting me ever sense. It’s a story of an older man and a much younger student of his. (Imagine that) They fall in love and marry. They take their honeymoon to a rugged Scottish island. They stay in a humble cabin by the sea. The wife, unnamed, is mesmerized by the wild ocean and spends her days staring out at the water as the professor watches her and muses about his luck and his love. They are living a strange myth. And subconsciously they both know this, almost. And how the story plays out is indeed mythic.
Sackville has a keen feel for the nuances of the old professor’s heart. How could she know?, I asked as I turned the pages. And Amy Sackville has a great vocabulary. I learned some new words. Like aestivate and vicissitude and desideratum.
Beautiful writing
How To Paint Sunlight by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
City Lights has been in the news lately. They are having a hard time getting by during the quarantine crisis. It pains the heart, as so much of the news does lately. That place should be a world heritage site. I’ve made so many pilgrimages there over the years.
Ferlinghetti himself is a national treasure. He just turned one hundred and one. And still writing. I had the amazing chance to say hello to him at a reading in Ojai. I thanked him for his work and he seemed genuinely grateful for my praise. I felt his humility.
He writes,
Love passed slowly long ago
When life was slow
Now time and love are swift
Upon the plane
Time and love go by and I remain
Aslo,
I eat well and drink well
and dream of great epics
Chronicles Volume One by Bob Dylan
Just like his best songs, this book makes you want to move, to discover yourself, to run off and find the world or join a circus. Also to drink wine and read poetry, to meet the most interesting people and to follow your own trail. To grasp every accident that befalls you. To be wide-eyed and humble. Emulate your heroes and dismiss your detractors. Breath as deep as you can.
When he writes, “I could see that the type of songs I was leaning towards singing didn’t exist and I began playing with the form, trying to grasp it—“ is to me pure genius.
The world is still waiting for Volume Two.
A Good Day To Die by Jim Harrison
A book to clear the cobwebs brought on by quarantine and put my wanderlust in perspective. A story of an ill-conceived plan to blow up a dam in the west. Our antiheroes start off in Key West, pick up a girl (of course) get ripped up on booze and drugs and drive across the country. Speeding, both kinds, and balancing an odd love triangle hampers the caper somewhat. Harrison is his usual outrageous self full of lust, wonder, and madness. His energies are boundless. A bit, perhaps, overdone on the macho, but times were different forty years ago. Even as a young man Harrison is already a master of his own style.
Last Night In Twisted River by John Irving
Irving always makes me feel like it’s ok to be as open and honest as you can be. That you should understand as best you can other people’s situations, being as accepting as you can. And not to ever be afraid of or fail to reveal your true emotions. This has long been my favorite Irving book even though his themes are similar to his other novels. It's a world of accidents and we can’t but help to worry about things that might happen. Like all his work once I start page one I can’t put the book down. I read all 500 plus pages in three days and hated when it ended. I wish it went on for another 500. I’m always fascinated by his characters and their reasonings. Irving understand humanity’s foibles. When I read a book ten years apart I come away with many different impressions. And I’d say some of the parts I remembered vividly were overshadowed by passages I barely digested the first time. The first time I read it the character of Danny Angel was the voice that spoke to me. This time it was Ketchum. Maybe it’s because I’m older and I know more people like him (John Sheerin) than I know like Danny.
Anyway, reading Irving is always an emotional experience and I suspect I’ll be doing some rereading this summer. I haven’t read Garp since high school. High time…
Prime Green: Remembering the Sixties by Robert Stone
A memoir, mostly sketches and reflections of different episodes that Stone was a participant. Vietnam plays a great roll and his time there brings the book to a powerful close. He writes about Kesey, Cassidy, and the Merry Pranksters as an insider. So there are some interesting confirmations of tall tales. His insights to society are pretty sharp. Stone can be slightly sober when relating the outrageous. But he’s never boring. The book has a quick pace and I wish there was a bit more. Those were wild times and I couldn’t help thinking perhaps there are stories Stone left untold.
If It Bleeds by Stephen King
I have not read a new King book in years. And for no good reason. I have been a King fan since junior high school. I would devour his books. Growing up in New England he is revered as much as Melville, Frost and Emerson. I guess Emily, too. He is the master of noticing the everyday goings on of small town life. His small towns simply have a darker underbelly than most. The stories in this collection are no exception. I am happy to report that King’s ability to make me squirm remains powerful. Each story is a gem. I’ve always loved his shorter stories and novellas. He packs a lot in to a hundred pages. For two days I immersed myself in his strange world where rats talk and cell phones answer from the grave. The last story even made me laugh out loud at the final sentence. I fear I may go out this week and buy a pile of his books.
Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard
The owner and founder of Patagonia expounds on his business philosophies. Its a great success story and a reminder of all the work that still needs to be done if we are going to, not save the planet,
but save humanity. Ultimately the planet will take care of itself. Chouinard is a true dirtbag and a visionary. His company is the templet for how to be both profitable and still be a steward for the earth. The book came out in 2005 and, sadly, we are still fighting the same battles. I am, like Chouinard, a pessimist when it comes to humanity’s sense of urgency when it comes to protecting the environment. There are flashes of hope but science is now telling us that in all probability it is too late to reverse climate change. The best we can do is try to keep CO2 levels at where they are now. But even that might not be good enough, or possible.
Still, reading this book does offer some solace knowing how hard people like Chouinard and his employees work to leave a slice of the planet better off than the way they found it. And that makes life worth the while. I occasionally reread this book to stir me to activism and it always works.
~~~ Poetry Interlude ~~
I always though that I should edit a book of poetry for my friends. Today I picked some and read what might be a good start.
Snow Geese
I know Someone
Morning Poem
When Death Comes
I have Just Said
By Mary Oliver
Natural Music
Inscription For A Gravestone
Fire On The Hills
By Robinson Jeffers
In Interims: Outlyer
Dancing
By Jim Harrison
Another Spring
The Great Nebula Andromeda
A Sword In A Cloud Of Light
By Kenneth Rexroth
A Patch Of Old Snow
A Time To Talk
Dust Of Snow
By Robert Frost
Two days Alone
Otherwise
At The Town Dump
Things
By Jane Kenyon
All very refreshing during this time of quarantine.
Riprap and Cold Mountain Poems by Gary Snyder.
Verses of the Sierras and then some about zen study in Japan. Also a few poems written about a freight ship on which Snyder worked in the 50s. And then a collection of translations from the Chinese poet/hermit named Cold Mountain or Han-Shan. The poems of the mountains have inspired me for years to sneak off to the backcountry alone whenever I can. And it’s been too long now.
Snyder turned 90 the other day and I was thinking about the time he signed a book for me. It was No Nature. He was very charming and seem to be full of both mischief and curiosity. On the cover page he spelled out No Nature in Japanese characters. And then gave me a koan of sorts. That which I’m still mulling over some fifteen years later.
I forgot that a CD of Snyder reading the poems came with the book and I promptly put them on the iPod in my jeep!
In The Sierra
Mountain Writings by Kenneth Rexroth
A collection of poetry and prose. I carried this book around for a while reading it with attention. I brought it to Yosemite twice this year including the trip when I flung some of Mide’s ashes near the south fork of the Merced. The poems I had read before but they are even more beautiful and meaningful when recited out loud on the top of Sentinel Dome or on a trail five miles away from the nearest human. Rexroth’s verse invites solitude.
The prose pieces are about Rexroth’s back country pack trips. They are also reflections on the correct way to live in nature without doing damage. He was ahead of his time with his insights. In the fifties and sixties he was fighting the exact same environmental battle that we are fighting today. And he felt if we didn’t protect our resources we would eventually disappear from the scene. And, “The cockroaches and the octopuses are waiting.” Said like a true poet!
He writes.
“The holiness of the real
Is always accessible
In total immanence. The nodes
Of transcendence coagulates
In you, the experiencer,
And in the other, the lover.”
I discovered Rexroth after moving to California and his love of the Sierras inspired my own infatuation with the high country. His poems resonate with me as if they were written yesterday. In other words there is a timelessness to his best lines. I get a greater appreciation of my time spent in Yosemite while contemplating his verse. I usually bring his Collected Shorter Poems. It elevates my experience. And as he says, “It is not everybody whose life can sometimes match the most perfect expressions of art.” And “sometimes” is good enough for me!
A Widow For One Year by John Irving.
Rereading any Irving novel brings back so much. I’ve told people you can spend a lifetime studying his work. Every read adds to the enjoyment of the story. Or stories, his books are almost sagas that span a life. This book is (mostly) about Ruth Cole, a novelist whose mother abandoned her and her father when she was four years old. It’s also a story about her father, her lovers, her husbands, and her best friend. It’s also about her mother’s lover, Eddie O’Hare, and his life of missing his one true love, Marion Cole.
Irving knows his territory and that includes grief, tragedy, love, chance and a compassion and understanding of people’s quirks and differences. As in most of his books there are bit characters who capture your attention with their uniqueness. Often times these characters occupy the fringes of society. Or at least polite society.
A side note, Irving quotes two poems by Yeats. I went to his Collected Poems to reread them and found, to my surprise, I had highlighted both.
Wanderlust
A History if Walking by Rebecca Solnit
Solnit is a passionate writer. You can find her work in many magazines including the Patagonia catalog. She is an activist for woman, the environment, health and so much more. Her other books (I’ve only read two) are full of hard, it seems to me, won wisdom. She is a seeker and a teacher and her prose is accessible and she keeps even her digressions lively. This book is about so much more than walking. It’s about modern society, freedom, solitude, poetry and the empowerment of woman and the disfranchised.
She quotes William Hazlitt on why you need to walk alone in solitude. “I want to see my vague notions float like the down of the thistle and not to have them entangled in the briars and thorns of controversy.”
Here are a few other memorable lines to ponder.
“In small doses melancholy, alienation, and introspection are among life’s most refined pleasures.”
“Walking returns the body to its original limits again, to something supple, sensitive, and vulnerable.”
“It’s the unpredictable incidents between official events that add up to a life, the incalculable that gives it value.”
The other book by her that I found wonderful was The Nearby Faraway.
Felicity by Mary Oliver
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve read this book. I can finish it in an hour. And then think about it for days afterward. What a beautiful word felicity is. A one word poem full of expectation!
There is nothing more pathetic than caution
when headlong might save a life,
even, possibly, your own.
Conjuring the Universe by Peter Atkins
I wanted to reread this book as soon I as finished it when in first came out. I knew that there was a lot to absorb and I didn’t get it all the first time. Atkins argues that the laws that govern the universe are much simpler than we think. Chaos and indolence being the guiding forces of creation. It makes nature sound so simple and his explanations of how we came to be are fascinating. His chapter on entropy is brilliant. He loves writing about the second law of thermodynamics. And nobody does it better. I’m still a bit foggy on some of the finer points of Atkins’ teachings and realize I’ll be reading this book again. Atkins is endlessly quotable and his sly sense of humor only adds to his brilliant erudition.
After by Jane Hirshfield
Poems
Whatever direction the fates of my life might travel, I trusted
Even the greedy direction, even the grieving, trusted.
There was nothing left to be saved from, bliss nor danger.
Tool Use in Animals
For a long time it was thought
the birds were warning: Panther! Panther!
Then someone understood. The birds were scavengers.
The cry was: Human! Human!
Goddesses
Mysteries of the Feminine Divine by Joseph Campbell
Pretty much everything Campbell ever wrote or lectured on had to deal with trying to understand our place in the universe. How the mysteries of existence and wonders of Nature are all inside of us if we only stopped to pay attention. This book of lectures examines the powers of the goddesses that are available to us all to tap into so we can better find our place in the world of today. I can’t go very long without reading him. Campbell nourishes the heart.
He says,
“People often think of the Goddess as a fertility deity only. Not at all—she’s the muse. She’s the inspirer of poetry. She’s the inspirer of the spirit.”
“Those who seek their worship out there do not understand at all. Turn inward, and there you will find the footprints of the mystery of being.”
“Of course, trouble comes with life; as soon as you have movement in time, you have sorrows and disasters. Where there is bounty, there is suffering.”
Hunter’s Moon Phillip Caputo
Interconnected stories set the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. The chapters have reoccurring characters but it’s not really a novel. Hunting is a starting point for some of the stories but this isn’t a book about hunting. It’s a look at the people who live in the unpopulated UP and the complications of their normal lives. There’s a bar owner turned PTSD counselor, some old buddies who get together once a year, a widow who buys a B&B and has a yearly affair. This is, believe it or not, the first book of Caputo’s that I’ve read. He has searing descriptive powers that capture the nuances of nature as well as the foibles and travails of human nature. His characters are complex and believable. They seem like people that I know. This book gives much to think about; friendship, evil, pain, love and death. A splendid read.
Sick Souls, Healthy Minds
How William James Can Save Your Life by John Kaag
Shorter than his previous books but no less intense. Kaag, like me, a sufferer of depression and melancholy, turns to the philosophy of William James to confirm that even through the struggles of life there are avenues available for joy and peace. We are more in charge of our existence or the extinguishment of it than we are sometimes aware. This knowledge can give us great strength and the power to look for the zest in life. Despite having a sick soul one can not only endure but flourish. It’s imperative that we don’t let our dreams, or our descriptions of experiences or our thoughts take the place of true experience. Kaag quotes James;
“There is nothing to make one indignant in the mere fact that life is hard, that men should toil and suffer pain. The planetary conditions once for all are such, and we can stand it.”
The Ecstasy of Being
Mythology and Dance by Joseph Campbell
Articles that Campbell wrote over the years about modern dance. Of course, as with everything Campbell writes about, he looks deeply in to how art infuses our desire to see deeper into our unconscious. I was, although I guess I shouldn’t have been, amazed at his knowledge of dance. Of course being married to one of the greatest dancers, Jean Erdman, must have helped him to understand the nuances of the art. The final chapters that are about Erdman’s contribution to dance are fantastic. Campbell is not only passionate about the performances but equally passionate about the amazing talent of his beautiful wife. Like all of his writings, these essays are a pleasure to read.
In My Mind’s Eye by Jan Morris
Dispatches from the grand ninety year old travel writer. But she rarely strays far from home these days. She teases herself about her mind not being as sharp as it once was. (Whose is?) She, however, is as eloquent as ever. I even learned a few new words. Morris still looks at life with some wonder and curiosity. She is an agnostic optimist and her mantra of “Be Kind” resonates through most of the short, one or two page, chapters. She has an eye for life’s silly daily episodes as well as for its beauty. She stills enjoys books, love, writing and the occasional martini. I appreciate how she can see both sides of issues and somehow reason through her final decisions of where she stands on a particular situation. Her little doses of wisdom make for cheerful reading. I’m passing this one along to Aidan.
Robinson Jeffers Poet and Prophet by James Karman
An excellent companion to Karman’s Poet of California. The former also explains the times and is more a commentary on the poems. The latter is more biographical. The two books taken together form a wonderful introduction to the life and work of one of the great poets of his time and beyond. Kaman has done his research and has a passion and an understanding of Jeffers' work. Both books are a pleasure to read and provide a great resource when contemplating the longer and more complex poems. Kaman notices Jeffers' ability to see and reflect on the wild beauty of scenes that at first glance may appear more frighting or depressing than they truly are. The beauty of the poet’s ideas about inhumanism are a major theme through much of the Collected Poems. And Kaman adds to both the joy and the comprehension when reading that amazing body of work.
Poetry For Young People
Langston Hughes
I bought this book for my friend Juliette and figured I should read it. I haven’t read Hughes in a while and his voice is more important than ever these days. I love his verse. This collection of poems seem simple at first but they are very thought provoking. They are also full of little joys like laughing, dancing and drumming. Reading them out loud, which I did to myself, adds rhythm to the day.
Smokey The Bear Sutra by Gary Snyder
Always a good refresher to Snyder’s particular blend of environmentalism, Buddhism, humor and passion for life. I read it ever so often and it always cheers me up.
The English Major by Jim Harrison
I was looking for a quote for a lovely muse of mine and ended up rereading the entire book. Joyfully, I might add. As always Harrison provides a timely swerve. We were getting complacent around here. Now that’s over.
Cliff is the English Major driving around the western states and attempting to rename them. His other project is renaming birds. He was a teacher then a farmer and is now divorced and wanting his wife back. A former student joins him for part of his trip and she’s a touch crazy. He works on a deal with his shrewd ex to purchase his grandfather’s old farm. Traveling and fishing are soothing.
He renames California Chumash and Massachusetts becomes Paugusett
“I thought about how things get confused with desire.”
“Desire isn’t subject to logic.”
“Everything in our culture seems to be marinating in the same plastic sack and the ingredients are deeply suspect.”
Jim Harrison
The Essential Poems
I’ve read every poem in this book before and bought it as a gift. But once I opened it I had to read them all again.
“It’s very hard to look at the World and in to your heart at the same time.”
“..knowing the world says no in ten thousand ways and yes in only a few.”
House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk
Stories about the strange people who live or had lived in the rural border town of Nowa Ruda in Poland. The book is about lives and dreams, struggles, saints and wolves. Oh, and mushrooms that just might have an effect on everybody without their awareness. But maybe not, it’s only vaguely implied. But the area is populated by an odd mix of thinkers, drunks, wanderers and a wise enigmatic old woman, Marta. So much goes on and some characters are so tenuously connected I found myself going back and rereading chapters to try to figure out the thread and if it was meaningful or just a random encounter. Or if they balance something out or explain a train of thought.
The unnamed narrator ponders, “The fact that I have experienced something doesn’t mean I have understood it.”
Tokarczuk’s books are packed with images and ideas that drift from character to character in subtle ways that sometimes remain unexplained. She is an expansive writer and captures so much in short visceral chapters. Trying to explain her books is like trying to explain all of nature. It’s so much to grasp. She has a style so unique that I find myself wondering how she pulls everything together. Her stories rattle my mind for days after I read them. Intriguingly so.
Monkey Girl by Edward Humes
An account of the Kitzmiller v. Dover court case that pitted evolution and science against Intelligent Design. The Dover school board questioned the theory of evolution and wanted the “controversy” to be taught in school. There is truly no controversy between real scientists about natural selection or the evolutionary process. I followed this case when it was happing. Humes does an excellent job of explaining what both intelligent design is and what it pretends to be. It’s simply a way to teach religion instead of science to junior and high school students. Humes’s research is thorough and he gives the reader a good amount of background on the ID movement as well as in-depth explanations of how evolution works and the science behind it.
There are many instances were Humes exposes the underhanded ways and outright lies perpetrated by the religious right. I’m no stranger to the odd ways that evangelicals will bend the truth to suit their purposes. But it’s alway nice to be reminded that the battle with ignorance is not over. Perhaps it never will be. This is a good book full of ammunition to combat the fallacies that organized religion feeds the public. It’s a very accessible and readable account of the proceedings. I’d also encourage the reading of Judge Jones’ verdict. It’s long, but brilliant and worth the time.
Danger On Peaks by Gary Snyder
Wonderful poems about Mount St. Helens, the Sierras and The Bamiyan Buddhas, among others about simple daily life. Snyder’s voice and vision are unique. To hear him read is a special treat and once you do you can hear his cadence and inflections in your head as you turn the pages.
He writes;
HOW
small birds flit
from bough
to bough to bough
to bough to bough to bough
*
Things spread out
rolling and unrolling, packing and unpacking,
— this painful impermanent world.
Coyotes and Town Dogs by Susan Zakin
A history of the radical environmental group Earth First! The biographical sketches of all the founders as well as other players are painstakingly well researched. Zakin makes every event and wilderness struggle jump out of the page. Characters like Dave Forman, Pete Roselle, Edward Abbey and David Brower (and many others) are treated honestly and their personalities stand out. At times this book reads like a novel and I found myself caught up in the suspense of what might happen next even thought I’m pretty familiar with many of the episodes because I followed the news at the time. Zakin writes clearly and has a good understanding of the environmental laws she describes as well as the workings of the other big groups involved in the struggle to save parts of our planet. She has a great eye for nuance and her description of places, from the deserts to the Rockies to the old growth forests, are sharp and focused. It was extra fun reading for me because I’ve seen Forman and Brower speak and even met Brower once. I ran into him in the aisles of the old Earthling Bookstore. A true hero.
Myths & Texts by Gary Snyder
A short beautiful book full of wildness and raw everyday life. The master poet is always at his best.
“—Truth being the sweetest of flavor.”—
In Condor Country by David Darlington
An older book with timeless reflections about nature and the environment. The condor country referred to is the vast Carrizo Plain and surrounding mountains that is prime condor habitat. But this is less a book about the beginning of the condor trapping program and more about the rancher Eben McMillan and his lifelong lessons he learned living in the arid part of San Luis Obispo Country. It’s about his his encounters with the wild, both flora and fauna. His wisdom is immense from eighty years of living and interacting closely with the land. Eben and his brother Ian are, or were, a vanishing breed. Their way of life now seems even more remote than ever. My rereading reminded me of some things that truly are important. Like how much better the world would be if we all had a closer relationship to the land. A far off dream, I know.
The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
A book I should read once a year but I’m lucky if I get to it every five. It’s considered his masterpiece and that’s understandable. It certainly changed my (already developing) perspective on organized religion when I first read it thirty-five years ago. Almost every word Campbell wrote directs us to look at the messages in the symbols and figure out how they relate to our lives today. We are a part of something that we share with all of humankind and whether we realize or understand it doesn’t make much difference. We are all living some form of myth. And they have nothing to do with historic events. They have to do with our own personal journeys through this one life we have. Campbell explains the universality of our struggles and victories, our passions and loves.
And in this book I first encountered the idea that the world is in need of a new myth because science for the last four hundred or so years has shown us that our old stories could not possibly be historically accurate. Campbell states that it is only the messages hidden away in the heroic tales that are what we need to help us navigate modern life. Often times we have to dig into the stories for the clues to where our personal place in the cosmos is to be found. But the guides are there. Campbell has been my own guide to understanding the inner journey. A journey to where? The here and now!
The Last Season by Eric Blehm
The story of National Park Ranger Randy Morgenson, his interesting life and the complicated search and rescue mission after he disappeared in July of 1996 after growing up in Yosemite and then being a back country ranger in Kings Canyon and Sequoia for twenty-five years.
I remember at the time seeing the missing posters when I was in Yosemite that summer. It was all over the California news.
Blehm has a really good knowledge of the Sierras and this book is very well researched. He talked to and interviewed everybody involved in the search. You get to understand exactly what goes on in the backcountry. Morgenson’s love of the mountains defines his life. He comes across as a deeply passionate defender of wildness. He is artistic and poetic as well as respected as the inheritor of John Muir’s spirit. It is a sad ending to an amazing career dedicated to the preservation of Kings and Sequoia by someone who probably cared for those parks more than anyone. A great book!
Melville in Love by Michael Sheldon
From Mom. A wonderful book about Herman Melville’s love affair with Sarah Morewood. It’s a side of Melville that is rarely, if ever, seen. But it had to be there. I agree with Sheldon that nothing else, not even encouragement from Nathaniel Hawthorn, could explain the passion behind Moby-Dick. And later the confusing and depressing Pierre. Sheldon shows quite convincingly that it was the illicit romance that burned Melville’s heart toward greatness. It’s a sad story, too. In those times and under the circumstances it was a love that remained discrete until the beautiful and alluring Sarah passed away from tuberculosis. A great tragedy in Melville’s life. He never forgot her. It’s an excellent companion to any Melville biography. And I will never look at The Pittsfield Country Club, Broadhall, in quite the same way.
The Lemon Table by Julian Barnes
Stories about aging and death. Barnes’ forte. Maybe it’s my mood or maybe I’m getting old but I found these stories somewhat depressing. That didn’t diminish my appreciation for Barnes’ colossal talent. I enjoy his insights and outlooks. He has an eye for our realities and he makes the mundane and indignities of growing old seem, at times, tolerable. The afterlife, when brought up at all, is dismissed. I am tempted to be cremated with a lemon in my hand.
Nightmares and Dreamscapes by Stephen King
Over the course of my quarantine I read a story or two a week from this massive collection. Spooky, surreal, sinister, gruesome, it’s all in there. King is brilliant in the shorter form. He packs so much into ten pages. His small town characters are believable as you follow them around. When the real world outside is scary enough King gives you more reasons for staying awake nights. There are monsters out there!
Poetry Interlude Part II
More poems for the book I hope to compile for my friends.
Stella Blue by Robert Hunter
And You And I by Jon Anderson
All These Stories
The Neurons Who Watch Birds
By Robert Bly
Ghazal
Desire
By Faiz Ahmed Faiz
# 118
By Petrarch
A Lover’s Quarrel
Requiem for Kenneth Rexroth
By Sam Hamill
On Raglan Road
By Patrick Kavanagh
Something I Keep Upstairs by Phillip Crawford
A murder mystery set in a small New England town. Coleman Cooper is a patient at a private psychiatric hospital. He is making progress on his many insecurities. People affiliated with the hospital start dying gruesomely. An already nervous bunch become even more so. Coleman is busy, he has a job bartending at a swanky hotel. There is a girl who pretends she is interested in him. He slowly makes new friends, including his therapist, Dr. Haynes, who he respects and admires. Crawford is a journalist, a musician and a bon vivant and he writes beautifully about the life of an insular town. He knows bar life pretty well, too. His prose brought back many memories of my own misspent youth frequenting the taverns of Berkshire County.
To say this is simply a murder caper would be doing the book a disservice. The growth and inner struggles of Coleman also play a major part of the story. And it’s that struggle which elevates the narrative. It’s so hard to write about personal and private pain. Crawford does it effortlessly. You squirm along with Coleman as he lives through his anxieties.
I read this book quickly because the story flowed perfectly. Crawford packs a lot into each chapter. A thoroughly enjoyable book.
Selected Journals
1841 - 1877 — Ralph Waldo Emerson
I feel like I’ve climbed Mount Everest. I have carried this book around for years. At least ten. I’ve read it in Yosemite, Sea Ranch, Mammoth Hot Springs, Pittsfield, Big Sur, Vegas, Avila, San Diego and on numerous other trips. I read a few pages a month just to keep Emerson’s voice in my head. His wisdom is boundless. He is America’s first, and most important, philosopher. In his journals he is every bit as passionate and brilliant as he is in his essays. And at times he is more thoughtful and humorous. He has a remarkable curiosity and seems to take everything in as well as learn from his brilliant friends; the Channings, Bronson Alcott, Thoreau and many many more including his revered aunt, Mary Moody Emerson.
In his musings and thoughts to himself we see the nascent sparks that become his profound essays. His sketches of his neighbors are often worthy of a smile. His big view is one of optimism. He looks to the future with a great confidence that America will soon be the intellectual center of the world. He often comments that he lives in a time of wondrous change.
His interests are almost endless. So much gives him pause for reflection. He is the original transcendentalist worthy of the admiration he instilled, first in his friends and neighbors, and then the world.
What to do now when I look at my night table and no longer see the familiar green hardbound book? I am seriously thinking about just starting over again from page one. Emerson has a thought for every situation. In 1866 he writes;
“I find it a great & fatal difference whether I court the Muse, or the Muse courts me: That is the ugly disparity between age & youth.”
The Abstract Wild by Jack Turner
A collection of essays about what it means to understand the difference between wild and wilderness. It’s about how we look at the natural world and what our part in it may or my not be. Turner is an Exum guide and he spends most of his time in the mountains of the world. He is a sharp and focused writer and his ideas are honed by his time spent in nature contemplating what he experiences. He is terribly passionate in his devotion to wildness. There are wonderful chapters on White Pelicans, youthful treks to the desert and Doug Peacock. This is an extremely important book for anyone who desires a closer relationship to what is wild not only out in the wilderness but also in our own hearts.
Back On The Fire: Essays by Gary Snyder
An eclectic collection of meditations on living with natural fire, poetry, book reviews and journal style reflections. As always, Snyder’s voice is that of the wise thinker/buddhist scholar/trickster. His interests are wide ranging and he is at home reviewing a book about chickens as he is instructing us on how to better live life in the right direction. There’s a soulful essay about Allen Ginsburg’s last days and a heart touching story about he and his son searching for his grandmother’s grave in Kansas.
Snyder’s precise use of words always inspires me to slow down my own thoughts and make sure when I say something important that I say it correctly so that there is no misunderstanding about what I mean.
He has a fine sense of etiquette about how we should treat not only each other but the natural world as well. Nobody thinks or writes like Snyder does. To many he is truly a world treasure and certainly we would be in much better shape physically and spiritually if we paid more attention to his genius. His voice, although calm and reasonable, roars!
Wild Ways
Zen Poems of Ikkyū translated by John Stevens
Ikkyu was a self proclaimed Crazy Cloud. He studied zen but with his own unique vision. He was a monk who occasionally took a drink and was extremely fond of sex. A late in life affair turned in to a beautiful, and famous, love story. His themes were impermanence, love and desire and the great poem Skeletons touches on all of them. In an early poem he writes;
“Memories and deep thoughts of love pain my breast;
Poetry and prose all forgotten, not a word left.
There is a path to enlightenment but I’ve lost heart for it.
Today, I’m still drowning in samsara.”
And from Skeletons,
“The vagaries of life,
Though painful,
Teach us
Not to cling
To this floating world.”
Summer by Ali Smith
The fourth installment of her seasonal quartet. Smith tries to write as close to the present as possible. So we are in the world of Brexit and Trump and Covid-19. Her characters are passionate and thoughtful. There are flashbacks to earlier times that Smith connects to today with an absolute command of her narrative. After reading the previous three books in this series I knew just to wait patiently when I couldn’t follow some chapters or see how they related to the entire story. Series may be the wrong word to describe all four of her last books; Autumn, Winter, Spring and now Summer. The books are not connected by the characters. Each book stands on it’s own. It’s the ideas that reverberate through the narratives that made me see how time flows. Smith writes sparsely but has a wonderful clarity of thought. All her books are searing contemporary views of a specific period of time. And that time is right now.
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck.
Ellie Wu had to read this for school so I read along with her. I think I was sixteen when I had to read it, maybe even seventeen. Ellie is fourteen. Heavy stuff. So for the past few days I have been thinking about poor Lennie. And gruff George who at heart is a good man. He took on a responsibility and stuck with it. Even Lennie could see that. George could have been off on his own whoring and drinking and shooting pool. But he’s a bigger man than that. Rereading Steinbeck always offers new insights. The only real bad guy in the story is Curley. He’s an unhappy man who never really grew up. He’ll never be self assured and confident like Slim, or for that matter, George. Even Curley’s wife is not a bad person or as she’s called, a tart. She just made a mistake and is now unhappy. And even worse than that, lonely.
And ultimately it’s Lennie who really does give George a belief in his dream of owning a little place of their own. And that hope is contagious. Candy catches it. And even Crooks catches it. But, as Robert Burns wrote, “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley.” George commits the ultimate act of compassion keeping his vow to always take care of Lennie. Slim is the only one who catches it.
I was also thinking that in these recent hard times there will be a resurgence in the importance of Steinbeck. Time to read again The Grapes of Wrath.
The Smallest Lights in the Universe by Sara Seager.
I saw an interview with Seager about six months ago and she was fascinating so I preordered her book. It wasn’t what I expected. This is more of a memoir than a chronicle of her search for extraterrestrial life and exoplanets. And it’s a very sad story about her losing her husband to cancer. The first chapter starts with her explaining about rogue planets and I found out that like this brilliant scientist I too have often felt like a rogue planet. After the first few pages I could see what a great writer Seager is so I decided to read of her terrible ordeal. There are fascinating chapters on her work but the book is mostly her struggles with coping with life after her love died. It is a brutally honest book and you feel her despair. She is very emotional but full of more strength than she often gave herself credit for. She also had a pretty good support group and she realizes how lucky she was in that regard. But some pains are untreatable. I was shook to tears several times. The chapter on her receiving the MacArthur Genius grant was so uplifting that I got choked up for a different reason. Seager also shares her joys with humility. And I’m glad to say that the book ends with a happy story. I raise my glass to Sara Seager.
The Grapes Of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
The more things change the more they stay the same. To me this book gets more and more brutal and heartbreaking with each new reading. And in these days of tremendous uncertainty Steinbeck’s message is every bit as searing and important as it was seventy-five years ago. The poor, the struggling and the displaced are still here trying to make better lives for themselves. They are still met with prejudice and racism. It still takes a monumental effort to escape poverty. Sometimes I feel we have not come as far as we say we have. Steinbeck quite simply will always be relevant.
Bellow’s People by David Mikics.
Interesting essays on the real people behind Saul Bellow’s stories. Mikics knows his stuff and is an insightful writer and obviously a Bellow fan. I enjoyed the short bios of Bellow’s friends and family.
Very well written and not just for scholars.
Fridays at Enrico’s by Dan Carpenter.
Carpenter’s last novel was unfinished when he died and Jonathan Lethem added a few finishing touches. It reads smoothly. He did a fine job. It’s a story of writers and their husbands and wives and friends. They work in San Francisco, Portland and Los Angeles. There are successes and failures and almost successes. Carpenter knows his characters and their situations. He lived it himself. There is the usual drinking and screwing around. The writer’s lifestyle. (Bartender’s too!)
Carpenter’s characters are, for me, easy to relate to.
Stephen Hawking
A Memoir of Friendship and Physics by Leonard Mlodinow
Mlodinow and Hawking wrote several books together that are masterpieces of blending popular science with deeper ideas. I’ve learned much from their work as well as Mlodinow’s solo books. I reread them all the time. Here Mlodinow reflects on his time spent with Professor Hawking. We see the human side of his genius and are amazed at Hawking’s stamina and determination not to live at the mercy of his handicap. His bravery is astounding. I am reminded of my friend Bobby Brez and my brother Mide. Some people have what it takes to overcome any obstacle. And I walk around in admiration thinking about their strength.
Hawking can be angry and humorous, joyful and a trickster, loving and heartbroken. His humanity, humility and understanding of his dependence is beautiful. This is a great companion to Hawking’s short autobiography.
Collected Ghazals — Jim Harrison
A new edition with all his ghazals in one book. These are Harrison’s most obscure and challenging poems. From couplet to couplet you have make your own connections because the form is purposely vague as to direction. They are more like a series of mind blasts and scattered images. But there is no mistaking Harrison’s original voice. I had to read most of them twice to catch a thread of the ideas that flow with speedy brevity. Thoughts fly at you faster than you can think. I found myself reading a page or two and then trying to put together all the disparate ingots of information.
These losses are final — you walked out of the grape arbor
and are never to be seen again and you aren’t aware of it.
Those poems you wrote won’t raise the dead or stir the
living or open the young girl’s lips to jubilance.
Haruki Murakami goes to meet Hayao Kawai
Conversations about art and Jungian therapy, work and marriage, writing and nature by two of Japan’s cultural icons. Both men are fascinating thinkers and dive deep into their own reasons for their practices and work. Some questions remain just out of grasp. The most interesting dialogue for me was when they talked about coincidences. They happen all the time and probably mean nothing. But maybe we just don’t know enough yet to see the entire picture. Murakami says that he writes novels so he can understand his own thoughts. I can’t think of a better reason for writing everyday.
Red Stilts by Ted Kooser
Kooser’s poems are about everyday things; a road, a grave, a fence, a vulture, time. But he looks deep into those things that most people pass right by without noticing. He uses simple words and his descriptions are sharp. Sometimes nothing happens in his poems, things just are, and I find myself reflecting on how basic and ordinary life can be. Our meditations on beauty or death or love can spring up at any moment if we are paying attention. Because these poems appear so easy they require several slow readings and then small lessons will appear.
Milosz
A Biography by Andrzej Franaszek
A fascinating look at the life of the great poet. I’ve always been moved by Milosz’s poems. This book is weighted on his early life, childhood, the war and exile. There is less on his last years which was when I was reading him heavily. Mostly this book talks about Milosz’s work and quotes liberally from his writings. His personal life is not delved into as deeply. But it’s an overall good portrait of his career. I felt though that there could have been more. It’s still an important book for Milosz admirers.
Mad At The World
The Life of John Steinbeck by William Souder
Mad At The World refers to Steinbeck’s rage at the world’s inequalities and the tendency of the well-off to ignore those less fortunate. Souder looks at all his books through this lens. I see a slightly different John Steinbeck here than I remember from the Benson or Parini books. Steinbeck is angrier and more prone to depression than I remember. Although it was a very long time ago I read those other books. It’s always the right time to consider Steinbeck and I rarely go half a year without reading him. His voice has resonated with me since I read Flight in, I think, seventh grade. Souder does a commendable job looking into what made Steinbeck such a great artist. I always found his last years sad and feel there should have more books. This biography is a fine addition to any Steinbeck fan’s library.
Inside Story — Martin Amis
Part novel, part biography, part memoir and it’s incredible how he blends one form into the others and then back again. He also throws in writing advice which I found valuable. Every time I read Amis I learn something about the craft. He’s endlessly erudite and has a monster vocabulary. He keeps me running to the dictionary. So I added a few words to my own vocabulary. I have already used cafard twice this week.
There are reminisces of Saul Bellow, Phillip Larkin and Christopher Hitchens and they make up the majority of the book. I admire all three of these writers and Amis portrays them with frank honesty. This is also a book infused with sex; its problems, successes, desires, quirks, wives, girlfriends, mistresses. There’s a lot to absorb. Amis’ style is to me so unique as to be, at least in this book, almost a genre of its own. He mostly calls this book a novel but to anyone with even a glancing knowledge of the subjects knows that it is only rarely light fiction. Mostly it is memoir. He writes compassionately about the death of his three friends. Larkin is more of a uncle and friend of Kingsley, Martin’s father. Kingsley is also a presence in the pages.
Amis crams so much into these stories that I know I’ll be rereading it soon or at least, as he recommends, random passages. Like his last collection of nonfiction he advises not to go at the book all at once. But I did anyway, with both books, and feel the rewards are worth it. This is probably the best book I’ve read all year. I’m in awe of Amis’ talent.
Nothing Serious — Daniel Klein
A novel about Digby Maxwell, a floundering popular writer hired to edit a college philosophy magazine and the mishaps and monkey wrenches that keep him occupied with pondering his own life often with laugh-out-loud consequences. Klein, a philosopher himself, knows his territory. He can skewer both the big famous New York writers and their publications as well as insular small town college life. Maxwell is not a philosopher but a commentator on pop culture and social trends. But he’s losing his mojo when he moves to Vermont. The reason given for his hiring is not quite honest. And it backfires splendidly. We see the advice of the great thinkers sometimes put to use and not always successfully. But life’s random doses of good luck hold long enough to end the story on a positive and feel good note.
More Fool Me — Stephen Fry
While waiting for Fry’s newest book, Troy, to be released I picked up this memoir just to get ready and have his voice in my head. Fry is charming, witty, brilliant, lovable, honest, and so much more. His talent is apparent on every page. Part of this book is excerpts from his journals circa 1993. He was a wild one. And he doesn’t recommend his high performance lifestyle for just anyone. He has a tolerance for booze and cocaine that would be dangerous for one with a less hearty constitution. Still, I find his ramblings and honest reflection inspirational. He’s frank about his addictions as well as his depressions. Like everything else that I’ve read of his this book is a joy.
The Volcano And After — Alicia Suskin Ostriker
These are serious poems that carve into life. They are also infused with NYC’s rhythms. Ostriker has a delicate eye for moments that linger. I was swept up in this collection and felt like I, too, was moving through the city with life’s answers just beyond my grasp. Ostriker is now in her eighth decade and wisdom flows through her. She writes;
He too might have loved beauty but whatever you miss in this life you miss forever.
&
and now shall I make a prediction?
someday one of us
will begin to die
to lean on the other
with horrible need
and passion, passion
will flow again
Bridge Of Sighs — Richard Russo
The story of Lou C. Lynch, nicknamed Lucy, as he looks back on his seemingly simple life. But no life is all that simple. Our past follows us right up to this very moment. Lucy has lived his life in a small town and as I’ve said elsewhere nobody understands the ways of small New England and upstate New York life like Russo. He makes the everyday goings on come alive with importance and feeling. He sees and understands the rhythms of common folk and their struggles against life’s foibles. His characters do this with touching grace. They try to do their best often with results unforeseen.
Lucy is troubled, at times, by the thought that he should do more than just own a corner market that he inherited from his father. But his father, Big Lou, was a happy man, an optimistic man. Grateful for what he had. Lucy usually feels the same way. As Russo writes,
“But this is what happens when we turn sixty. Random stars form constellations full of personal meaning.”
We look back and wonder what could have been different. Often times our choices reverberate for a lifetime. How do we get where we are? Russo says, “Blame love.”
This book builds slowly but is easily as powerful as anything he has ever written. The huge underlying theme of the ugliness of racism struck me hard. We must confront it as best we can. We are better because of our tolerance, limited as it can be at times.
A Place on Earth — Wendell Berry
A story of Port William, Berry’s fictional Kentucky town. The reoccurring characters from his other novels confront the effects on their lives of World War Two and how it touches even the rural parts of the country. Port William is a farming community and things have been pretty unchanged for many generations. Work takes up most of their time. Hard, but satisfying work. Life comes with struggles, floods, births, suicides, moonshine, companionship and the simple act of looking out for each other. Berry’s people are full of compassion and care a great deal about their community. In the course of the town’s stories Mat Feltner loses a son to the war and a brother to suicide and he bears these pains with powerful dignity. A sense of kinship and knowing his piece of land, A Place on Earth, keeps him tethered and able to cope. This book is full of gentle wisdom.
Ethan Frome - Edith Wharton
I finally read this classic novella set in the Berkshires. It was scandalous for it’s time. Poor Ethan, in love with his wife’s cousin. Of course no good comes of it and sadly everyone suffers. I wished, somehow, for a happier ending. Wharton is alway entertaining. She made me homesick for winter in Massachusetts. There is a line in there that compares Ethan and Mattie’s joy at being alone together as being like finding a butterfly in the middle of winter.
Home Town — Tracy Kidder
A snapshot of Northampton, Massachusetts in the late 80s early 90s. All the nuances of of a picturesque New England small town as seen through the eyes of a few of it’s citizens. I worked in Northampton for about a year and certainly have fond memories of its eclectic community. Of course being such a short timer there I learned a lot from Kidder. It’s also a wonderful portrait of Officer Tommy O’Connor. He’s everything you would want in your city’s cops. Not surprisingly he moved on the the FBI. Kidder has a fabulous eye for everyday goings on and he makes them interesting.
The End of Everything — Katie Mack
A popular science book about the several ways that the universe may end. And yes, end it someday will. But I’m not stressing about it. It’s so far in the future that even our solar system will be long long gone first. Mack is a fun writer and lets her sense of humor shadow her shining intelligence. Despite the existential dread of everything; me, you, earth, planets, stars, galaxies, galaxy clusters one day being no more this is a fun and enlightening book to read. I hope Mack can find time to write more.
Notes of a Native Son — James Baldwin
I haven’t read Baldwin since college. Now is a good time. He was a force in civil rights with his simmering anger and fierce intelligence. He writes with considerable grace and honesty about not only the struggles of his race but his personal ones as well. I had forgotten how brilliant he was at his craft. I’m hooked and plan on rereading his other essays. I feel he should be more popular than he is these days.
The Darkening Age — Catherine Nixey
Very informative. The story of exactly how horrible the early christians were when they had the power. And also how ruthless their climb to power was. Quite simply their goal was the destruction of every piece of art, book, statue, shrine, alter, and school of anything before Christ. How could, they ridiculously reasoned, there be any morality before the birth of the savior? This attitude set back science and literature hundreds of years. It was the beginning of the Dark Ages where intelligence and empiricism were shunned.
Nixey has done her research and writes concisely and clearly. This book belongs on the shelf with Hitchens, Grayling, et al. It’s a fascinating read and I learned a lot. It’s always interesting to know that my disdain for organized religion is tame compared to what it could be. I vow to increase my loathing.
Becoming Myself — Irvin D. Yalom
Another wonderful book by Dr. Yalom. This one is much more autobiographical. He is a passionate writer and his stories are honest and sincere. He has lived an amazing life dedicated to helping others understand and find meaning in their own. And from these encounters he learns about his own meanings and strengths, pains, loves and anxieties. And just by reading a book like this my eyes are opened to some of the mysteries I’ve come across while on my own journey.
Troy — Stephen Fry
Fry tells the story of the Trojan War with all the wit and charm that he brings to everything he does. This is history made easy. Fry shows us his knowledge and love of Greek mythology. His insights about the lives of heroes and gods makes us see the same graces and foibles that are easily found in our own selves.
Bear
The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III — Robert Greenwood
All the craziness of the wild ride Owsley took in he sixties. Every Deadhead knows most of the story about this very private man who turned on the world. And you are no true hippie unless you’ve sampled the famous product. Owesly’s mind was wild and unique. He played his game his way. Without him the sixties would have been much tamer and defiantly more boring. Alice D. Millionaire for sure!
Zorba The Greek — Nikos Kazantzakis
A magnificent classic that Ive been meaning to read since I pretended to read it for college English. A wonderful look at how to live purely day by day. Zorba is the wise innocent. He takes it all, the good and the bad, in stride. All we need to navigate life is already inside us. We should all have a life so well lived as Zorba!
