Sturdy bench
A joy to use
Made of hope in the wake of tragedy*
Eating lunch outside
in the warm sun
I share the bench with maple leaves
Found under a leaf on the bench:
A brief, leaf-shaped ghost
of last night’s rain
--Julian
*the bench was bought from Ishinomaki in Fukushima after the 2011 earthquake
(Yuya Tamai, Wikimedia Commons)
It was the 3/11 Tohoku earthquake that opened my eyes to the wonder of the supermarket. Whatever we need in the way of sustenance is reliably there, fresh, with choice, and immediately available in return for money.
But life is fragile, a delicate balance. We are one big earthquake away from temporarily losing this essential resource. After 3/11, energy was rationed across the country, the manufacture and delivery of goods to stores was sporadic, and people grabbed what they worried they needed to hoard. The supermarket shelves emptied, item by item. I went from store to store and stood in long lines to buy necessities. I waited outside the local conbini (convenience store) for the promised delivery of bread so I could get my one loaf. Until, in the days weeks and months that followed, the balance of supply and demand was gradually restored.
When I have this in mind, I revel in the absence of worry, and the ease with which we can feed ourselves, and I am truly grateful. Complex capitalist infrastructure has made the feeding of ourselves free of uncertainty. With money, we need never be hungry.
Our hunter-gatherer forbearers would have killed for what we take for granted today.
--Julian
The last maple leaves--like the old year--have already shriveled and blown away. This post, begun in early December, got lost in the year-end bustle. It starts with a bench bought from the Tohoku coastal town of Ishinomaki after the March 2011 tsunami.
Sturdy bench
A joy to use
Made of hope in the wake of tragedy
Eating lunch outside
in the warm sun
I share the bench with maple leaves
Found under a leaf on the bench:
A brief, leaf-shaped ghost
of last night’s rain
--Julian
As everywhere in Japan, Shinto shrines dot the countryside. From the currently most prosperous in the area, 37 heavy mikoshi portable shrines were borne through the night towards the beach where they arrived at first light one after the other in elated festival spirits. Hundreds of local people gathered on the sand to witness this climax. Dozens of stalls sold food and drink. The shrines were paraded through the crowds, weaving and dipping to the rhythm of beating metal and the shouted chanting of the bearers, before lining up to be blessed by the senior Shinto priest.
After the mikoshi converge, they’re usually taken into the sea in a purification ritual, with the teams of men and women porters daring each other deeper, but a typhoon was approaching and the sea was deemed too dangerous. But one of the first mikoshi to arrive wasn’t to be cheated of the experience, and took an unofficial detour into the waves.
This year’s festival was dedicated to the victims of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.
--Julian
Penman, Ian: It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track: Objects & Essays, 2012-2018
Excellent essays about excellent music, Ian Penman’s It Gets Me Home, This Curving Track is the sort of music writing that is all too rare. His starting points are icons like, among a few others, Charlie Parker, James Brown, Donald Fagen, Elvis, and movements like the Mods, and from these he spins meditations that resonate and would repay rereading. Sometimes the critical essay seems like the most exciting writing out there.
Conrad, Joseph: Almayer's Folly: A Story of an Eastern River (Modern Library Classics)
It’s hard to disagree with the critics who have noted that this, Joseph Conrad’s first novel, is not among his best. One actually notices, reading Almayer's Folly, that the prose is, at time’s awkward. This isn’t surprising when one remembers that English was just one of Conrad’s languages, and not his first, or even his second. Having said that, there are passages of real beauty, particularly in the final chapter when we watch the ruined Almayer try to forget the daughter who has deserted him for a Malayan prince. Likewise the story moves along well enough that we manage to make it past the bumps occasioned by the racial orthodoxies of the time: savage Malays, opium-addicted Chinese, civilized whites. In the end, Conrad does seem to call some of these orthodoxies into question in making a non-white woman, Almayer’s half Malayan daughter, ultimately the novel’s heroine.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: The Complete Sherlock Holmes (Volume One)
I decided, as one does, that the time had come to reread the entire Sherlock Holmes canon, not haphazardly, but in order, so my old Doubleday edition came down off the shelf. I’ve now finished Volume One, which contains The Sign of the Four, A Study in Scarlet, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, and Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Taken together, what a grand tapestry they are. Things I noticed this time: how often evil comes from abroad, whether it’s the mystic East or the only slightly less heathen North America, and how often the notion surfaces that “blood” explains people’s character; this must have been a popular notion at the time as it courses through the veins of a great deal of Victorian fiction. It seems quaint now, but I suppose it’s no more naive than the notion so many in our time adhere to that this or that gene directly determines people’s characters.
Wilson, Andrew: Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith wrote a lot of books and had a lot of lovers. This fact governs Andrew Wilson’s biography of the writer, with most of the middle chapters of the book devoted first to the work she was doing during the years with which the chapter is concerned, and then to the relationships she was turbulently moving through. Writers' lives, we are reminded, are seldom as interesting as their work, but because the work is interesting—very!—we read on in hopes the life will, in some way, illuminate the work. I’m not sure that Wilson’s biography does: the work remains perplexing, and so does its author, an odd woman who, one feels certain, would be, in our time, placed somewhere on “the spectrum.”
Lagalisse, Erica: Occult Features of Anarchism: With Attention to the Conspiracy of Kings and the Conspiracy of the Peoples (KAIROS)
I’m happy to have chosen this stimulating work as my first finished book of 2021. Lagalisse does two things: gives a historical account of the hidden religious and occult roots of the apparently atheistic left (that A with a circle around it has its roots in freemasonry) and, having laid that groundwork discusses how those of us who hope for a better world might productively engage with those who endorse more or less outlandish theories of conspiracy. As someone who has little patience with religion and spirituality, and deplores what is popularly known as conspiracy theory, especially because it all seems to boil down to “it’s the Jews,” I found this a challenging (also illuminating) account.
Louis-Ferdinand Celine: Journey to the End of the Night
Disorganized, repetitive, shot through with a careless, toxic misogyny that presumably characterized the time of writing (1930s), this is one man’s jaundiced journey through the depths of human folly, cruelty and degradation. Yet the leisurely bathe in the cesspool of humanity is bejeweled with sparks of insight, empathy, lyricism, and mysticism. Here is shit and wisdom: angry, cynical, profound, and highly readable in a crackling translation. An uncomfortable read, but I'm very glad I did it. It was quite a ride! (***)
Sebastian Barry: The Temporary Gentleman
An engaging tale of an Irishman in Africa with the British army, and a marriage that becomes an alcohol-soaked nightmare. The protagonist is Jack McNulty, brother-in-law of Roseanne in Barry’s "The Secret Scripture". That book was a single; this is an album track. (***)
Ali Smith: Autumn
A fragmented fragment of a book rooted in angst-ridden Brexit Britain. It begins with (to me) too many tedious rants on bureaucracy (in the form of righteous conversations with obdurate officials). But it’s also a pleasant read, with passages about nature, Shakespeare, Dickens (his best and worst of times) and clever puns galore. Finally, it’s about a charming relationship between a precocious girl and a surrogate parent, and there’s another between a brother and sister, and it ends with a rose-tinted view of the 60s, and a glorious riff on the forgotten life of a (real-life!) 60s artist. (***)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star
This book took me back to my youth when I thought about sex constantly, and it was painfully frustrating because you could never get enough, and you couldn’t have the people you desired, and when you did get it, it was often unsatisfying because what you and your partner wanted to do or wanted from it were out of synch. Hollinghurst captures all that with clear-eyed and compassionate veracity, inside a story of a young Englishman’s stay in a Belgian town. It’s beautifully written, with intelligence, insight, and well-captured detail. These assets more than compensate for a few longueurs, and a less-than-satisfactory story arc. (****)
Alice Munro: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
Nine snappy short stories about contemporary North American life and emotions, written with great insight into the human condition. Not a dull word. A master at work. (****)
Sheldon Solomon, Jeff Greenburg, Tom Pyszczynski: The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life
This might be the most important book I’ve ever read, both as history and self-help. Humans are going to die and, alone among creatures, know it. This terrifying knowledge is kept unconscious through everyday distraction, immortality beliefs and projects, and by bolstering our culturally-derived sense of importance. Unfortunately, we also target cultural and religious outsiders as part of the defense against our unthinkable demise. This has been the story of the human race. The authors use experimental evidence to refine Ernest Becker’s insights into the human denial of death. There is no escape, but I hope I can think on this evidence to better understand my own terror of the inevitable, and its inevitable grip upon my mind. (Oh, and this book is written in a breezy pop-culture style for easy digestion.) (*****)
Ann Patchett: Commonwealth
A series of almost short stories gradually circle and coalesce into a novel about an extended family in California and Virginia, with characters moving from their prime to middle and old age. It’s about nothing more than the vagaries of life, finely and artfully observed. Compelling and satisfying. (****)
Ian McEwan: Machines Like Me
What you get from recent McEwan: a story that centers on a deeply researched and thought-through aspect of life and society, delivered through impeccable writing, interesting characters, and imaginative, life-and-death suspenseful plotting with twists galore. This one, cleverly set in an alternative 80s London (Kennedy survived Dallas; the Beatles got back together, and much more) is about artificial intelligence. While somewhat padded, it’s absorbing, thought-provoking, and, yes, moving. A master at work. I enjoyed it very much. (****)
Elizabeth Strout: Olive, Again: A Novel
Elizabeth Stout is for my money the greatest living writer I have encountered. If you compared her writing to art, it would be hyper-realistic illustration. The insight into human nature and veracity in describing it is extraordinary. Then there’s that her body of work connects with itself, with characters and locations reappearing within and between books for added resonance. I’ve enjoyed to varying degrees everything she’s written, and this collection of stories is way up there at the high end of the barometer. In it, characters face up to life and death, and Olive Kitteridge navigates old age in contemporary small-town USA. (*****)
Scanlan, Kathryn: The Dominant Animal: Stories
This is a book of super-short fiction. Of the 40 or so stories, most are less than two pages. Nothing in the writing here is beautiful or kind, but somehow I whizzed thought it all. Some stories leave out points that would have made them more accessible. What the heck happened? A lot of the stories end on a sudden whim of observation and leave one wanting to read more. Most of the stories focus on a negative experience with a male, with strange detail, and after finishing a story, I often wanted to take a hot shower to get clean. I did enjoy "Design for a Carpet" and "Mother's Teeth." (**)
Woodrell, Daniel: Woe to Live On: A Novel
Confederate soldiers on a journey to fight Yankees in Missouri and Kansas. Woodrell's voice in this novel is similar to Cormac McCarthy's. Lots of brutal killing and torture and the story seems to float along on southern dialog and an internal monologue of fear by the speaker. There are moments of occasional humanity, but for the most part the plot is a thin gruel of spilt blood, wandering, waiting, and revenge. (***)
Munro, Alice: Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage
There are three standout stories in this very fine collection by Alice Munro. She has a real knack for creating a variety of believable characters. The title story was my favorite: two teenagers pull a sour trick resulting in a surprising ending. In the story "Queenie" we see a young woman scrambling to make her way in the world, using a bad marriage as a way to make some progress. The final story, "The Bear Came Over the Mountain" veers off into occasional long-winded reflection, as one man struggles with the loss of his wife to Alzheimer's. Munro is a master story teller. (*****)
Waters, Sarah: Fingersmith
Sarah Waters: Fingersmith
Such a good story: the get rich scheme of a handsome scoundrel twists and turns into... Two women in the story are quite duped into role playing. A lot of playful sex is talked about, but not much happens in the way of happiness or fulfillment. As always, Waters is right on target with the voices and the atmosphere in this London area thriller. (*****)
Barry, Sebastian: The Temporary Gentleman: A Novel
What a sad story. This novel takes place on the Gold Coast in Africa, where an Irish soldier/engineer recounts his life growing up near Galway and Sligo. Back and forth we go between Ireland and Africa. Like an unseen shadow, in Ireland, what slays the characters in this novel is alcohol. Back in Africa, the memories of the homeland, and the attempt at living again are equally daunting foes. Excellent story telling. (****)
Donna Tartt: The Little Friend
Donna Tartt's second novel does not disappoint. The story of a young girl, Harriet, who seeks to revenge the death of her brother, Robin. The backdrop is a small town in Mississippi, and the goings on of 4 or 5 sisters, whose lives all changed with the murder of young Robin; hung from a tree. Harriet wants to solve the mystery. Who killed him? She gathers clues, and encounters the wrath of the local druggies. Quite a page-turner, and like Tartts' other two novels almost nothing is left out or glossed over. There were times in the novel where I felt her writing fell short; places where I couldn't actually see what was happening from the writing, as is the case when she encounters the villainous brother, Danny Ratliff on top of the water tower. The writing perspective seemed off (who was where and when?) as a battle ensued. But one is so caught up in the narrative we read on and on. Also, who is the little friend who is suggested in the title? Harriet? Hey? Robin? I don't think it is the best title she could have thought of for such a wonderful and awful story. (****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive, Again: A Novel
A wonderful sequel to an earlier collection of stories, Olive Kitteridge. Clearly, Strout is a masterful writer; each of the characters in her stories I can see clearly in my mind. These stories span Olive's life from middle-age to old-age, with thoughtfulness, kindness, reflection, and regret. In a general way of summing up, this collection tells us that life sends us problems that are most times not of our own making-- and that we do our best with what we have to work with, and what we think is best to do at the time. The prevalence of loneliness that comes with old age is a dominant theme in the later stories here. Read this book. (*****)
Strout, Elizabeth: Olive Kitteridge
It's been more than a few years since I first read this wonderful collection of stories. As a prelude to reading her next collection, Olive, Again, I read these stories again. Wonderful insight into a community in Crosby, Maine and how they encounter each other. Henry and Olive Kitteridge function as the main characters, and each story includes them if in even a small way. Prior to my second reading, my favorite story was The Piano Player, but this time I enjoyed Incoming Tide most. Her stories can veer into a local gossipy mode, yet there is always tension lurking in the next sentence. (*****)
Alan Hollinghurst: The Folding Star: A Novel
Edward Manners goes to Belgium to teach English to two boys who are getting below average marks in high school. When not teaching, he helps out at a museum focused on a Jewish painter who was hidden from the Nazis during WWII. Manners falls in love with one of his students, and a lively adventure ensues as Manners undertakes to seduce him. The narrative is fun, at times cynical of gay life, and there is a lot of sex. One also learns a good deal of personal history of growing up in post-war England and Belgium. Hollinghurst is a brilliant writer, and I learned many new words. (*****)
Alison Moore: The Pre-War House and Other Stories
After reading the Booker Prize nominated The Lighthouse, I was excited to read this earlier collection of 24 short stories from Alison Moore. They are a little underwhelming; as if written by a grad student. Moore is great at creating tension and awkward scenes. She is an artist when painting a picture of place and atmosphere. Some stories are creepy, and one longs for a hot bath. However, I found them to be a bit formulaic. By the third or fourth story, I was keeping my eyes open for the one clue in the narrative that I would return to in climactic ending sentences. I like Moor's sparse style, and I will read more of her work (written after The Lighthouse) in the future. (***)
