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
Mandel, Emily St. John: Station Eleven
This is a book with elements of science fiction that is absolutely realistic. Some of it chronicles a pandemic and its aftermath; the pandemic is the “Georgian Flu,” and the aftermath is the end of civilization as we know it. But Station 11 is not one of those tiresome surviving the apocalypse novels, not least because central characters, believing that “survival is not enough,” are keeping Shakespeare and symphonic music alive, but also because there are other threads to this novel that take place pre-apocalypse. The threads are woven together with such subtlety that one never marvels at how Mandel manages to keep all the balls in the air until later. Likewise, just as the theater and music that are central to the novel are essentially communal, so one would be hard-pressed to identify the novel’s main character, or even the novel’s central conflict. All of it is just mesmerizing.
Shakespeare, William: Henry VIII (Folger Shakespeare Library)
This seems to me the weakest of the Shakespeare plays named for a king. Perhaps that’s why it’s not usually included when one speaks of the history plays. There’s lots of pomp, though: a trial, a coronation, a royal birth, all with their attendant festivities. Too bad about the Globe burning down after a cannon fired during one performance set the roof on fire.
French, Tana: The Searcher: A Novel
I liked this novel as much as I did Tana French’s last one, The Witch Elm, and I liked both a lot. It’s set in the Wild West of Ireland, a region we experience through the eyes of her protagonist, an ex-cop who hails from North Carolina by way of Chicago. He’s an outsider who, as readers will expect, gets drawn into the dark bog underlying the village to which he’s relocated, and in her quiet way—more a matter of mood and atmosphere than action—French makes every page compelling. I guess I’m a Tara French fan.
William Shakespeare: Richard III (Folger Shakespeare Library)
A play about a hateful deformed tyrant from the past read today calls to mind the hateful deformed tyrant so prominent now.
Tesson, Sylvain: The Consolations of the Forest: Alone in a Cabin on the Siberian Taiga
Sylvain Tesson is an eminent and prolific French travel writer. In The Consolations of the Forest he writes about what happens when he stops traveling to spend six months in a remote cabin on the shores of Lake Baikal. He gets occasional visitors, but for the most part he is alone with nature and his thoughts, and records both in a daily journal of his time on the lake. That he is kept company by cigars, vodka, and an eclectic library make his journal entries more seductive than they would have been if he had fallen prey to the spiritual claptrap that drives some anchorites to become hermits or that those anchorites succumb to when alone with their thoughts but lack booze, books, and tobacco.
Shakespeare, William: Henry VI Part 3 (Folger Shakespeare Library)
Reading through the history plays I can’t help but notice how, read in chronological order rather than in the order in which they were written and published, they remind one of TV as it is now practiced. Many of the acts in each play are episodes, each play a discrete season, and taken together the plays are a series. I look forward to next season—I mean the next play—Richard III, when Tricky Dick will unfold his nefarious plans.
Shakespeare, William: King Henry VI, Part 2
Shakespeare’s history plays were historical even for his contemporaries. They weren’t only historical, though. They were also commentary on his and his audiences’ own times. Reading, in the second part of the Henry IV saga, about the quibbling and ambitious careerists around the king, and the populist firebrand leading the Kentish commoners in a revolt against that king, it’s hard not to feel that Shakespeare was also commenting our times.
Shakespeare, William: King Henry VI, Part 1
The saga continues with lots of reflections on bravery offset by the petty bickering—which will lead to non-petty bloodletting—around the young king. It will be no spoiler to note that Joan of Arc, who Shakespeare presents as actually in touch with supernatural fiends, comes to a bad end.
Cusk, Rachel: Outline: A Novel (Outline Trilogy)
The protagonist of this novel, Faye, is a cypher. Aside from a few mundane details, what we know is what we gather from her few reactions to the stories she hears, and the novel is made of those stories, tales which resonate off of each other to provide hints not only of who the narrator is, but also about ways of living, freedom, pain, divorce, and ennui.
Of life, that is.
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: fine, but not essential reading. (***)
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. (*****)
Paul Beatty: The Sellout
A rollicking fantastic fantasy about race. The subject is contemporary black America. It’s deep, sharp, uncomfortable and most of all hilarious. What a book! Could anyone, I wondered jealously as I read, bring such intelligence, learning and levity to my own gay minority? Because this balance of bitterness, insight and humor is the way to tell the story of an oppressed group that has its own particular and obvious virtues to bring to the table. (Russell Davis, I nominate you. It's a book waiting to be written.) (*****)
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. (***)
