Thomas

Not exactly my favorite Cormac, but still a treat to read. About half of the book is sort of non-plot... stuff. I would call it a heavy vibes book. What plot exists is heavily weighted at the start and end.

There were a few things that happened that I thought didn't go anywhere. One of these, on a double check, I realized I had just lost the thread. Some of the others really don't go anywhere and are more about establishing the feel of the characters.

I continue to really love the dialogue that Cormac writes. At no point, EVER, do I bump against a character speaking. It never feels out of true.

Lots of spoilers in here.Yet another Hemingway – and boy, is this one the most racist and sexist that I've read! You can hardly go a page without hearing how bad Cubans are in the story. Also quite a lot of violence, and I don't mean the gunplay that comes up. People are frequently getting smacked in the head. Very early on you get this:* p38 - But I felt bad about hitting him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk.No, Hem, I can't say I do know how it feels to hit a drunk! There's also this ditty:* p144 - “What's the matter with your old woman?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Why don't you smack her?”   “You smack her,” Albert said. “I'd like to hear what she'd say. She's some old woman to talk.”Just some casual domestic violence for everyone to read about. There's a fair bit of that.Around page 40 or so I closed the book and flipped it around because I was sure I'd read, “the dramatic story of Harry Morgan, a good man who is forced...” But that is not what it says, it says Harry Morgan is an honest man. And those are two very different things. I can say quite easily that I'm honest. But good is another thing. Harry Morgan is not especially good. Apart from his racism and his criminality and everything else, he is double crossing and schemeful.I have to say, re-reading the back of the book, some of this stuff doesn't really occur to me. Maybe it's because there are several vignettes of other characters that appear to only vaguely connect to Harry's story.I often think about when Hem's books were published, knowing that his life ends with his suicide. It is clear that Hemingway was depressed his entire writerly career. This book, published in 1937, is full of self-hatred and contemplation of suicide.Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up.p238 - (TB: emphasis mine.)It's 24 years until Hemingway ends his life, but you cannot read this book and not see the evidence of thought. The paragraph above almost savors it.Similarly, he writes about the psychic pain of depression. Two different characters talk about how difficult the nights are. This is the exact same vocabulary as Jake, Hemingway's protagonist in [b:The Sun Also Rises 3876 The Sun Also Rises Ernest Hemingway https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1509802323l/3876.SY75.jpg 589497], uses. Also, one of the vets in this story talks about being able “to take it” and uses these words over and over again. Then:“Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We're worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it's tough to try and do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we're not all like that. There are some of us that are going to hand it out.” (page 206, emphasis mine.)The same language is given to Harry's widow in the ending pages, as she is contemplating how to move on in her life. She has no idea. She mirrors both the nights line, and the taking it line through a few pages of her thoughts:I don't know what to do. It ain't like when he was away on trips. Then he was always coming back but now I got to go on the rest of my life. And I'm big now and ugly and old and he ain't here to tell me that I ain't. I'd have to hire a man to do it now I guess and then I wouldn't want him. So that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes alright. ... I wonder if he thought about me or what he thought about. ... Nothing is any good to wish. ... Nobody's going to tell me that and there ain't nothing now but to take it every day the way it comes and just get started doing something right away. But Jesus Christ, what do you do at nights is what I want to know. ... You just go dead inside and everything is easy.(Across pages 260-261 in various paragraphs, emphasis mine.)Hemingway clearly loves Marie's character. The love between Harry and her seems pure and mutual. They make love, they seem to adore each other. It is maybe the most mutual relationship that I've read in Hemingway so far. Maybe I need to re-read For Whom the Bell Tolls and Farewell to Arms (especially Farewell to Arms) before making that claim. But it feels mature and respectful.There's also the episode in Chapter 19, p176-177, where a writer character witnesses a woman cross a street in tears. He mentally ridicules her, calling her a “battleship” and a “big ox.” He instantly goes home and makes up a whole story for her to work into his book and make her a point of comparison to a “young, firm-breasted, full-lipped little Jewess” (great... yikes...). I read this in fair horror. Then Hemingway gives a sentence to identify this woman and the reader suddenly understands everything (if they didn't already) and you are made to understand just how cruel this little exercise is, and you fairly hate the writer. I think this is no mistake. I think this is Hemingway hating himself, and to an extent, his craft.All in all, I found this very readable. It wasn't until the final two chapters that this went form middling thing to something I really liked. It's all sort of an over-the-top man doing something sort of dumb because he isn't willing to just get a regular job (something which, thankfully, the man realizes after it all goes terribly wrong). But when these actions are given their consequences in the lives of others, and when Hemingway probes the experiences of others in the yachtyard, we get something really special. This is certainly not my favorite Hemingway, but there is some very raw stuff here that I think comes right from his soul and struggles.—Notes/Highlights:* p38 - But I felt bad about hitting him. You know how you feel when you hit a drunk. * TB: No, Hem, I can't say I do.* p62 - “God looks after rummies,” I told him and I took the thirty-eight off and stowed it down below.* p98 - He was mean talking now, all right, and since he was a boy he never had no pity for nobody.. But he never had no pity for himself either.* p107 - Well, I got something to think about now all right. Something to ddo and something to think about besides wondering what the hell's going to happen. Besides wondering what's going to happen to the whole damn thing. Once they put it up. Once you're playing for it. Once you got a chance. Instead of just watching it all go to hell.* p128 - “His goddamn face,” she thought. “Every time I see his goddamn face it makes me want to cry.”* p144 - “What's the matter with your old woman?” asked Harry cheerfully. “Why don't you smack her?”   “You smack her,” Albert said. “I'd like to hear what she'd say. She's some old woman to talk.” * Little casual domestic violence for the vintage Hemingway fans.* p174 - I guess it was nuts all right. I guess I bit off too much more than I could chew. I shouldn't have tried it. I had it all right up to the end. Nobody'll know how it happened. I with I could do something about Marie. ... I wish I could let the old woman know what happened. I wonder what she'll do? I don't know. I guess I should have got a job in a filling station or something. I should have quit trying to go in boats.* p176-177 - TB: there is a great little scene here where a writer observes a woman crossing the street. He has an internal monologue where he talks about how ugly she is and calls her a battleship. He starts to use her in his writing immediately and constructs a whole little tale to explain this woman that he's seen crossing the street in tears. Hemingway does a great little smash cut at the end in the last paragraph identifying her and the reader immediately understands her tears and there is a new dimension to the mental cruelty of the writer. One of the phrases that Hem puts into this writer's mental scribblings is, “It was good. It was, it could be easily, terrific, and it was true.” Probably Hem's most central piece of writing advice is boiled down to, “write one true sentence.” This is how I know this little two page vignette is an artifact of self-hatred. There are a lot of artifacts of Hem's self-hatred in this book.* p185 - “I was so sentimental about you I'd break any one's heart for you. My, I was a damned fool. I broke my own heart, too.” * TB: this whole paragraph is fantastic. More: “It's broken and gone. Everything I believed in and everything I cared about I left for you because you were so wonderful and you loved me so much that love was all that mattered. Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have. And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like Lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to any more. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknosed love. You writer.” (TB: emphasis mine. Another artifact of Hem's self-hatred. It's no mistake he puts these words in the mouth of the writer's wife.)* p191 - “Well, it's all over, so why be bitter?” (TB: really great emotional stuff from a Hemingway male character... Fuck this guy.)* p195 - The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there.* p202 - TB: there's an exchange with some vets in this area, I guess 201-203 and maybe a little past that. I feel like there is more than what's on the page. I expect I will re-read this someday. But here are parts that stand out to me: * “Let us in,” the bloody-faced one said. “Let in me and my old buddy.” He whispered into Richard Gordon's ear, “I don't have to hand it out. I can take it, see?” ... “I can take it” ... “It's a secret.” “Sometimes it feels good,” he said. “How do you feel about that?” * “First it was an art,” he said. “Then it became a pleasure. If things made me sick you'd make me sick, Red.” * TB: Clearly they're talking about pain, the context is basically taking punches. But it's got to be a lot more than that. I think it's Hem talking about being able to take emotional pain. That “Sometimes it feels good” seems to me like something a ruminator says. I'm a ruminator. Sometimes you imagine terribly dark things and you imagine people you love being very cruel or saying things they would never say. It doesn't feel good. But I understand exactly what he's saying. It feels terrible, but there's something to it. Like smashing in your tear ducts. There's something to it.* p206 Related to previous note - “Because we are the desperate ones,” the man said. “The ones with nothing to lose. We are the completely brutalized ones. We're worse than the stuff the original Spartacus worked with. But it's tough to try and do anything with because we have been beaten so far that the only solace is booze and the only pride is in being able to take it. But we're not all like that. There are some of us that are going to hand it out.” (TB: emphasis mine.)* p212 - As Richard Gordon watched him he felt a sick feeling in his chest. And he knew for the first time how a man feels when he looks at the man his wife is leaving him for.* p221 - What he was thinking as he watched him was not pleasant. It is a moral sin, he thought, a grave and deadly sin and a great cruelty, and while technically one's religion may permit the ultimate result, I cannot pardon myself. On the other hand, a surgeon cannot desist while operating for fear of hurting the patient. But why must all the operations in life be performed without an anaesthetic? If I had been a better man I would have let him beat me up. It would have been better for him. (TB: emphasis mine.)* p225 - “A man,” Harry Morgan said, looking at them both. “One man alone ain't got. No man alone now.” He stopped. “No matter how a man alone ain't got no bloody fucking chance.” He shut his eyes. It had taken him a long time to get it out and it had taken him all his life to learn it.* p229 - TB: line here about a side-character being impotent. Interesting. Hem seems to have a lot of impotent or rumored-impotent characters (do I only think this because I just re-read Sun Also Rises? Maybe). It's relatively interesting given all his affairs and all his characters' affairs and the extreme heartbreak in so many of his works.* p230 - “Didn't you ever notice any difference in nights?” (TB: character talking about how during the day it's hard enough but at night it's another matter. Two characters in this book have this thought and it's the same thought that Jake in Sun Also Rises returns to. Things are harder at night. A lot harder.)* Chapter 24, from page 227 to 247, has vignettes of other characters throughout the yachtyard. Just incredible. I loved all of them. * p238 - Some made the long drop from the apartment or the office window; some took it quietly in two-car garages with the motor running; some used the native tradition of the Colt or Smith and Wesson; those well-constructed implements that end insomnia, terminate remorse, cure cancer, avoid bankruptcy, and blast an exit from intolerable positions by the pressure of a finger; those admirable American instruments so easily carried, so sure of effect, so well designed to end the American dream when it becomes a nightmare, their only drawback the mess they leave for relatives to clean up. (TB: emphasis mine.)* p260 - I don't know what to do. It ain't like when he was away on trips. Then he was always coming back but now I got to go on the rest of my life. And I'm big now and ugly and old and he ain't here to tell me that I ain't. I'd have to hire a man to do it now I guess and then I wouldn't want him. So that's the way it goes. That's the way it goes alright. ... I wonder if he thought about me or what he thought about. ... Nothing is any good to wish. ... Nobody's going to tell me that and there ain't nothing now but to take it every day the way it comes and just get started doing something right away. But Jesus Christ, what do you do at nights is what I want to know. ... You just go dead inside and everything is easy. * TB: emphasis mine. These are from Harry's wife from pages 260 to 261 across several paragraphs of thought.

I thought this was really good! It is descriptive, not prescriptive, providing a scaffolding that one can use in approaching street photography. I particularly enjoyed the photographer profiles and examples of their work. For inspiration, I bookmarked a lot of websites and followed a lot of folks on Instagram, not to mention added some books to my watchlist.

What a lovely story! If I ever find someone I can be in a kitchen with without one of us spontaneously combusting, I'll know I've found the one.

I found Yutaka's semi-phobia of eating with others kind of relatable. I was born with a significant birth defect that took many surgeries to repair (the most recent only a year ago, and I'm nearly 30...). I've never loved eating around other people. At the same time, I've always recognized cooking for someone as a show of great and deep love. I remember years ago waking up at 4 am to make homemade cornbread for my coworkers, and everyone loved it, but I definitely didn't eat any in the clinic!

I also relate to the feeling of missing my great-grandparent's cooking and the serious crisis that happens when you realize you can no longer remember the taste. Even with the same recipe, it just isn't the same. I always spent Christmas with them, and since their passing a long time ago, Christmas has always had a heavy tinge over it, so a lot hit home in this story.

I am not the best cook in the world, but of the few things I can cook well, I hope someday I can cook them for someone with the love akin to that in this story.

I liked this. A very wholesome story, though one that I really had to work to leave behind my real world perspective as a social worker and former caseworker (though not in child welfare).

This book has a lot in it about “objectivity” and I sort of wish it were explored a little more. Good boundaries really are important in this line of work, but good boundaries doesn't translate to cold, compassionless work by itself. But, I realize this book wasn't written for that. I can solemnly swear that none of my casenotes read like Mr. Baker's reports.

I found a few characters pretty convenient (Helen), but enjoyed basically everyone. I kept thinking about the X-Men comics and the Mutant Registration Act while reading, another story metaphoric to LGBTQ+ experience.

Reading sci-fi from the 1960s can be strange. On the one hand, so many ideas of exploration, social commentary, and discovery are there and fun to see. It's interesting to see how ideas have passed through books, TV, movies, and culture broadly in the intervening 60 years. However, the ultimate cultural lens of the 60's remains, and so you have odd juxtapositions of exploration and discovery with rather unimaginative ideas of race/color, manifest destiny, etc.

Silverberg here plays with the idea of manifest destiny by drawing humans in contact with a similar species of alien that hold the same belief. The manifestations of xenophobia that our protagonists have presents primarily as color-based racism (referring the aliens by their color, “bluefaces” “greenfaces”) which made me cringe. The stratification of color-based division in the aliens (Norglans) and the presentation of what the colors mean is deeply rooted in color-based race systems in the United States, which feels a bit unimaginative. One could say that this is a commentary on our historical race system - but there is no thoughtful commentary to be had. If anything, the author vaguely reinforces old tropes and stereotypes by having the characters remark on the apparent physical differences of the aliens and remark on specialized breeding to purpose. Now, perhaps this is well and good for this alien society — but writing in the 1960s, it felt a little trite.

Additionally, there is a similarity to the other ‘old' sci-fi I read last year - The Star Fox, by Paol Anderson. That is, a book about Manly Men doing Manly Things. Manly Learned Men (the sociologist), Manly Religious Men (the linguist), Manly Pilot/Military Stand In Men (the pilots), Manly Diplomats (the diplomat), Manly Rulers (the technarch). There isn't much difference between the characters - they are Manly Men with Big Hands, all standing “a little over six feet tall” with “rock-hard” faces. There are, in fact, no women at all in this book. Only two women are ever mentioned, the two ex-wives of our main character, the Sociologist. Women get a passing glance at existence when our characters appear stranded and one bloke says “it wouldn't be so bad with some women, but 9 men?”

As a point of order, our Sociologist practices some pretty surface level sociology. Clearly, he has taken a 1960's era appropriate sociology undergraduate course. I don't think he's done much more.

The actual prose is good, certainly nothing to complain about; dated a bit. The plot is simplistic and is “resolved” if it can be called such by a deux ex machina the size of the Andromeda galaxy. The climax results in all of the Manly Men engaging in some Manly Moping until the book comes to a close, with the Manliest of Men doing his Manly Best to hold back a sob in front of our protagonist. God forbid a man shed tears, though it must be said they could be shed for better reasons.

Probably a little closer to a 3.75/5. While very different from DUNE, I found this enjoyable in a different way. This is much shorter, and more interior and cerebral. The cast of characters is a little different with some notable changes and absences, I found myself yearning for characters we don't see. What would X have thought? Why is Y absent? New cultures/species/organizations/what have you are present and these are interesting, though feel a bit shallower than those in the first book. I will say again that I think Denis made a wise decision to leave out all the CHOAM stuff in his adaptations - it was so boring in the first book that even Frank seems to have abandoned it.

Rare for me, I think this may benefit from another 50 pages. A few key things happen and then the final chapter wraps everything up quite quickly, with much happening in exposition describing off-page events. What a loss! It feels a robbery to lose closing moments in this way.

Spoilers follow

Probably because I've breathed the secondhand smoke of the Duneheads, I never exactly fell for Paul as a great hero, and so read the first book not exactly charmed by his maturation. Instead, I thought a lot about him as a somewhat willing victim(?) of his own machinations and prophecy.

MESSIAH carries this on, and makes it quite clear that Paul is not a hero. Not many heroes compare k/d ratios with Genghis Khan and Hitler. Still, for whatever it is worth, we believe that Paul believes he does things for some reason - something he still sees as a terrible purpose. For all his future sight and vision, he seems to have no insight. He willingly steps into his oracular visions and never questions this willingness in forming self-fulfilling cataclysms.

Perhaps the biggest losses in the closing are how Paul and the Reverend Mother are handled in the closing. I am kind of floored by this. What a strange thing to not depict...

I haven't ready many short story collections, so have no idea how to review or critique these. I felt like the collection was uneven. A few stories stood out as enjoyable, or at least graspable. Some were flatly gross and I didn't really get them (the first two, in particular, which are also the most scatalogical).

There were plenty of times when I could detect satire, but knowing essentially nothing of the sociopolitical situation in Indonesia, the punch was lost on me.

This is quite a good contemporary look at chart design and literacy. I've been reading a lot about data visualization and chart design over the past few months, mostly the work of E. Tufte. I've been frustrated by the datedness of Tufte's work and the lack of practical focus.

While Cairo here is more concerned with chart literacy, rather than teaching chart design, there are lessons that can be applied to design and execution. Chapter 1's basic breakdown of “How Charts Work” is great reading even for someone familiar with statistics and the visual communication of data.

Some of Cairo's writing gets a little long-winded and a little too granular, mostly in the second half of the book, but I think these can be forgiven. Some of the topics are political (as they would be!) and it seems like Cairo spends a little too much time trying to state his neutrality and engaging in both-sidesism that is probably not needed.

My copy is an apparently unread 1st edition hardback that comes complete with a stapled trifold press release from the publisher, leading me to wonder if this was an advanced copy or from some event. Regardless, the first edition has a few type issues and more noticeable layout and printing issues. These are thankfully addressed in an online errata by Cairo. The press release happens to be a very succinct summary of the book that would do well as a quick reference sheet for the practitioner hoping to apply the book's lessons.

This is at least my third time reading The Gunslinger. The first was way back in Junior High, with my first attempt at the cycle (I cried off at either Wolves of Calla or Song of Susannah). The second was with the audiobooks a few years ago.

The first of the audiobooks at the time was read by George Guidall, who I came to associate more with Les Miserables than The Dark Tower. I like George's narration, and I loved Frank Muller's narration of a few of the Tower books he narrated. I found myself reading Gunslinger this time in a merge of their voices, fitting perfectly.

This is my first read of Gunslinger after having completed the cycle once. I find it rewarding. There's so much here that echoes throughout the rest of the cycle and it is sweet to feel it all again. I forgot how much Susan Delgado is in this, and every time I saw her name I wanted to go back into Hambry.

I'm excited to be reading through these again. I meant to dive right into Drawing of the Three after finishing this, but my library turned up with Duma Key (one of my all time fav King books), so I'll have to hold off until I can get that one through again.

Quite moved by how much I liked this book. The best I can do is pick up a few lines from it and write some wounded memories around them.

“It is difficult–it is very difficult, to befriend where you wish to consume, to find those who, when they ask Do I have you still, when they end a letter with Yours, mean it in any substantive way.”

As the all-time King of reading too much into words and writing too much into them too deeply, I found this so moving to read. It speaks to the yearning that starts to grow in you when you see their face and think of their voice, and you hang on to everything they say, hoping for some sign, but not trusting yourself enough not to invent it (“I am so good at missing things. At making myself not see.”). How to keep love on a shallow level without drowning yourself to go deeper?

“Letters are structures, not events. Yours give me a place to live inside.”

A place to live inside. Someone once told me they'd written me a letter about what I meant to them as a friend and a person. Months later we were at a crossroads and missed each other, and they said they would mail it. Some months later, on my last gray morning in Chicago, the very last thing I did when all my possessions were packed into an SUV, and my cat sat in its front seat, I checked my mailbox. It was heartbreaking never to receive it, and to wonder about meaning so little on that long drive across the country. Unmoored.


“I hope you can forgive this. To be soft, for me, is so often pretense, and pretense does not come easily while writing to you.”

I loved the anxiety manifesting through the characters being nervous about their writing - and talking about their nervousness in their writing. How many hours have we all spent staring at half-written e-mails, texts? How many to regret what's written and left unwritten?

“But when I think of you, I want to be alone together.”

Just beautiful.

PS: I have some G Lalo paper that the authors cite in the Acknowledgements and can attest that it's lovely to write on. Personally, I prefer Original Crown Mill's Pure Cotton paper, and if you ever get a letter from me, that's probably what it's written on <3.

This didn't really grab me in the way I thought it would. The first third is quite slow, though it picks up a lot on the second and third planets explored. I love stories about space travel and found the time dilation interesting, though executed in a way I didn't expect.

Chambers explores the ethics of space travel, particularly a sort of reverse-Alien consideration - what do we bring to planets, and how may that impact them? (Of course, thinking about the examples throughout our history of colonization and infectious disease...) I liked that. I have some qualms with the closing pages that I'm going to write out in the following spoilered section...

There is a passage in the final third that made me sit the book down and go through some memories though. I write about that over on my SubStack here: https://tbindc.substack.com/p/home-space-travel-and-updates.

Okay - so there is a big focus on not impacting the local environment throughout the book. For most of the story, this as one of the prime directives of the crew makes sense. They seem quite happy to ignore it to escape from Opera as they fry up a few hundred leaching rats on the side of their ship in blasting off the planet's surface (in fact, our main character directly discusses it). They do this to carry on their mission and to survive.Yet, when they are faced with the potential of Earth's (or, humanity's) destruction and wonder what to do, they make some really weird decisions. Ariadne suggests they go to another planet, out of reach but likely to sustain life. Yet, the crew says if they do this - they will have to live on the ship, in orbit. This really baffled me - that's a high fidelity to their value of not impacting the environment!I hesitate to say it's not "realistic" because I don't exactly look for total fidelity to realism in science fiction. I do, however, find it a bit arrogant, and inconsistent with what they said previously in the book, where Ariadne mentioned that if just their presence impacted an evolutionary line, it wasn't that stable to begin with.Sure, their mere presence and their living a life on a planet are not the same thing. That said, 4 people living in an isolated camp is not exactly the stuff of tectonic evolutionary changes. Or, maybe it is. I'll noodle on it a bit more.That aside, I can say pretty firmly that I wouldn't surrender my agency to a distant and potentially destroyed planet. Sorry, folks!

I bought the Picador Modern Classics hardcover of this a week or two ago on a whim. I was trying to find gifts for family and ended up buying this for myself instead. I think this is my third read of the book? I read a lot of Isherwood aroundabouts 2013 when I was fresh out of high school and struggling with being gay. It didn't really matter that the time period was all wrong, or that things were so different. A lot of things weren't different, and it was more or less about reading books that showed relationships and love in a non-heterosexual way.

I remember finding this book very sad, back then. A few years ago I listened to the audiobook but I have virtually no memory of that. This time, I read it basically in one sitting. It is still very sad, but wow do I relate to it on a much different level now, though thankfully not to some parts.

It follows George over a single day. He is mourning the death of his long term partner, and he is casting about in the way we all do when we're lost. He is doing a lot of performance - performing that everything is just so. He is carrying a profound grief, and also anger. His anger is slipping away and he is bouncing between this deep sadness and this strange joy of being alive. He is remembering parts of his relationship, highs and lows, and yearning for them. All while nobody around him really knows what is going on.

“In ten minutes, George will have to be George–the George they have named and will recognize. So now he consciously applies himself to thinking their thoughts, getting into their mood. With the skill of a veteran he rapidly puts on the psychological make-up for this role he must play.”

Those last few words, this role he must play. That hit me pretty hard this read, because I've said words like that a few times recently. On one level, I know that all of us put on a face and engage with people at a distance from underlying emotions. Not in a bad way, but just in the way that comes from dealing with being a human and having emotions. We're not all happy all of the time, but we also don't live in a place where it's acceptable to answer “how are you doing” with anything other than “good.” And you don't want to dump things on people, so you put your face on and you go out into the world. Because that is what is expected of you. Because that mask is the version of you that people know and maybe like.


“Oh, Kenneth, Kenneth, believe me–there's nothing I'd rather do! I want like hell to tell you. But I can't. I quite literally can't. Because, don't you see, what I know is what I am? And I can't tell you that. You have to find it out for yourself. I'm like a book you have to read. A book can't read itself. It doesn't even know what it's about. I don't know what I'm about.” (bold emphasis mine)

We all act a little differently depending on who we're around. Not in a manipulative way and maybe not in a dramatic way. But there are differences. You play a character to make people laugh by throwing jabs at books or films and making jokes. Because it is nice to make people laugh, but does it have to be done that way? Is that you? Where does the performance end and the self begin. Perhaps it's all crazytalk and there is no separation. Perhaps everything is performance and by that virtue, nothing is.

Then again, Harry Dean Stanton said “there is no self.” I'm not sure I'd go that far.

I think we spend a lot of time trying to figure out who we are, what our identities are. Where do we feel comfortable, how do we express that – is it safe? How deep you can go in your head. I wonder if that exploration is fun for some people, I guess it would be. I don't know. For me it was very fraught and scary and I think it continues to be a bit fraught. But there is a certain familiarity with it that has come, and the understanding of self has oriented more about how to express care to people.

You wonder if things will become easier in time. This is a thing that older people have said to me. I am not convinced they believe it when they say it. I think time makes us forget how hard things were as we went through them, and maybe that is the best gift that time has to offer. It will smooth over the rough edges and leave you with the pleasantness and hopefully the warmth of those moments that bare your heart.

“‘They keep telling you, when you're older, you'll have experience–and that's supposed to be so great. What would you say about that sir? Is it really any use, would you say?'
‘What kind of experience?'
‘Well–places you've been to, people you've met. Situations you've been through already, so you know how to handle them when they come up again.. All that stuff that's supposed to make you wise, in your later years.'
‘Let me tell you something, Kenny. For other people, I can't speak–but, personally, I haven't gotten wise on anything. Certainly, I've been through this and that; and when it happens again, I say to myself, Here it is again. But that doesn't seem to help me. In my opinion, I, personally, have gotten steadily siller and sillier and sillier–and that's a fact.'“

The heavier themes in the book, where George is really mourning the death of his lover and partner, I am glad that I can't relate to. I can empathize with them, but I cannot imagine the pain of that and I do not want to. It astounds me that people could function at all.

Anyway, all this to say, I really like this book, and Isherwood's writing in general. A lovely little book with beautiful prose and emotion that is so raw.

If you haven't seen the movie (rather bizarrely directed by Tom Ford) starring Colin Firth, Julianne Moore, and Nicholous Hoult, I recommend it!

I picked this book up at my LBS over my lunch break. It's been on my TBR for a while but each time there is another wave of controversy, I feel a need to go purchase it and support the author and learn about their experiences. I have a lot to think about after reading this, and I'm going to write out just a little bit of that here and I might develop some of these thoughts for a posting elsewhere. For context, I am a cisgender white male who identifies as bi, though for the past 10 or so years identified as “exclusively” gay.

The book is clearly a work of writing-as-processing/therapy, and Maia uses it to explore eir growth and experience navigating gender and sexuality. Something that I really appreciated about how E described eir “coming out journey” (pg 98). I really loved how this graphic communicated the evolution of our sense of self, our understanding of that sense, and the tremendous confusion that permeates our minds as we develop over our lifespans. I find the cloud backdrop, which E has labeled “clouds of background gender confusion” a nice addition too. I think a process of writing out one's journey like this would be therapeutic. I also really like how E has “ended” the graphic with an arrow – noting (by my interpretation, at least) that this isn't a process that ends.

In this vein, I like that the memoir deals so much with the uncertainty that lives with us over things that are not concrete (and so few things are). There are several places in the work where the use of labels really stands out – every little bit of the author is catalogued and categorized, from zodiac, (Hogwarts) house, Myers-Briggs, kinks, etc. There is certainly a sense of power in being able to identify something about yourself, ascribe a word to a conceptual thing that holds meaning for you, and be able to find community around “common” language. Words make things easier to understand, sometimes easier to communicate (although very much not always, as Maia's interaction with eir aunt demonstrates on page 198). Personally, I struggle a little bit with our want to make concrete things that are not concrete, especially when those things live in a context of uncertainty and ever-changingness. At what level of specificity do labels serve more to alienate than to communicate a shared experience? Where does a label stop being an empowering shorthand for communicating identities and start informing a person's behavior? In essence, does the desire to “fit” into a label create some of the exact stress that Maia navigates working eir coming out and life process? I'm not sure there's an answer, but I think it's worth thinking about personally as we explore how we assign concrete words to fluid concepts when we communicate things about ourselves to others.

I really liked reading this. There were some parts that gave me a pause (is the scale art on pg. 124 really the clearest metaphor – doesn't it sort of reinforce a gender binary?), but overall, I can see this book being a critical entryway for many different kinds of people, and that is often helpful. Yes, it is certainly a manifestation of writing as therapy, and there are some things to think about when reading something like this, but in my mind that comes with the territory.

Speaking of the territory – I found myself thinking a lot about the memoir as a format, reading this. In an extra at the back of the book, Maia writes, “Who wants to read a memoir by someone not yet 30?” I heard a similar thought when I told someone I was going to read this. I don't think a memoir has anything to do with age, I think it has to do with the navigation of a complex thing or idea and charting the process by which the person navigated it – warts and all. Warts most importantly. These are a way for us to relate to one another, see another person's process, and understand the experiences described and build empathy. For the memoirist, the act of writing is intensely therapeutic, and trying to balance authenticity, clarity, sensitivity, and a sense of responsibility for those who may read the work is a significant task. I imagine that those weights were especially significant given how deeply personal this work was, and I think we should be grateful to Maia for sharing, even if there are some areas of imperfection. No one is perfect, and a memoir that reflects perfection is not likely to be worth the paper it is printed on.

Life is deeply uncertain, and navigating uncertainty means we have to be willing to take risks and make mistakes and redress them where and when we can. If we could become more comfortable with uncertainty and with accepting concepts as fluid, I think all of us would be safer, happier, and more able to seek help when we need it.

A nice little book collecting notes on writing from Hemingway over his career and across his publications. It is probably foolhardy to read a book about a writer's habit in search of your own habit, but it is at least interesting to compare and contrast. I thought a lot about Stephen King's On Writing while reading this. King writes 10 pages or thereabouts a day. Hemingway might write 400 words according to this book. Neither is right nor wrong, it's just the work of the writer.

I took a lot of notes and made a lot of flags. Here are some that I particularly like:

Ch 1 What Writing Is & Does
* Then there is the other secret. There isn't any symbolysm (sic).

Ch 2 The Qualities of a Writer
* The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector. This is the writer's radar and all great writers have had it.
* Good writing is true writing.
* Mice: What is the best early training for a writer?
Y.C.: An unhappy childhood.

Ch 4 What to Write About
* The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life—and one is as good as the other.
* Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to be hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damn hurt use it—don't cheat with it. Be as faithful to it as a scientist—but don't think anything is of importance because it happens to you or anyone belonging to you.
* Love is also a good subject as you might be said to have discovered. Other major subjects are the money from which we get riches and poores. Also avarice. ... Murder is a good one so get a swell murder into [your] next book and sit back.

Ch 5 Advice to Writers
* All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.
* Remember to get the weather into your god damned book—weather is very important.

Ch 6 Working Habits
* Mice: Do you know what is going to happen when you write a story?
Y.C.: Almost never. I start to make it up and have happen what would happen as it goes along.
* The minute I quit trying to write the rest of it is easy.

Ch 7 Characters
* Keep them people, people, people, and don't let them get to by symbols.

Ch 13 The Writer's Life
* ...Had never had the real old melancholia before and am glad to have had it so I know what people go through. It makes me more tolerant of what happened to my father.
* But [Bernard Berenson] I think we should never be too pessimistic about what we know we have done well because we should have some reward and the only reward is that which is within ourselves...
* I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.
* All criticism is shit anyway. Nobody knows anything about it except yourself.

I enjoyed reading this! I haven't read much “weird fiction” before (the only one to mind is [b:The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories 129798 The King in Yellow and Other Horror Stories (Dover Mystery, Detective, & Other Fiction) Robert W. Chambers https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1416873291l/129798.SY75.jpg 954927], which I found rather boring); I appreciated this book's take on “weird” fiction and the modernization of it.The concept of cities as people / living entities resonates. I am originally from a very small town and moved to Chicago when young, and cities certainly have an individualized energy to them that I have always enjoyed. While I'm not familiar with Staten Island, Jemisin's description of a more rural-like, “simple” life and beliefs rings true. The power of fear in these communities, particularly, rings true.I like that Jemisin doesn't bog us down with long, technical explanations of how things work. Even Bronca, our link to this world's knowledge, doesn't bother us with that. We're expected to accept magic at face value because it's magic. I do have some quibbles with powers being inconsistently used, but I think for the most part this can be excused as our heroes don't really know how to use their powers.The elevation of different cultures and ways of thinking elevated the story and provided some A-plus social commentary, without devolving into tweets. I think that's been my #1 criticism of recent speculative fiction I've read - the commentary comes tweet-sized and shaped. Not so for Jemisin's work, where the thoughts are more nuanced, more deeply integrated into the story and characters, and shine the truer for it.I'll talk about more specifics in the spoiler section below - but two things stick out to me in the book that I'm not super satisfied with. I think things come very easily to our characters, all the way through. At almost no point do I see consequences for anyone in the story - what are the stakes? The problem with the main stake in the story being the end of the world is that it is intangible. There are two plot points that go against this, but one of them is rather lost, and the other quite short-lived.Secondly, the pacing of the final third or quarter of the book felt a little rushed. The ending in particular, came all at once and resolved in a really unexpected and bizarre (even for weird fiction) way, that I don't think works very well. I do wonder if the story was more complete at some point before the decision was made to write a sequel. Perhaps the sequel addresses some of my concerns.SPOILERS FOR THE ENTIRE BOOK FOLLOW:I have a lot of mixed feelings about Staten Island's character. We get a lot of good backstory for SI, but the story paints them as irredeemable. I was really surprised that the redemption of SI's character was not the major plot point of the final parts of the book - this would seem natural to me. Instead, Jemisin seems to say that the Island has dissolved itself of the City and is a lost cause. Why would we connect a character who we know lives in an abusive household, who does long for more, who is nearly the victim of attempted rape in this story - does it track that our story would abandon this person? Is the message here that the programming this person has gone through is impossible to reverse? So much of Staten Island's fear, insecurity, and false facades ring true to rural, more conservative-leaning life. And yet, maybe because I know so many people like this, I don't believe that SI is a lost cause. Her father? Yes. Her? No. To add to the above, it seems really strange and totally out of nowhere that Jersey City suddenly appears as a new borough at the end of the story. I guess the commentary here is that what something says on a map doesn't matter, because a City is a concept more similar to a nation - a collection of thought and culture - rather than lines on a map (like a State). Fair enough, but it seemed to me more like the writer making a rapid adjustment to bring the book to a rapid close than something well thought out.

Found this in a little free library and recognized Kotter's name. Yet another Business Fable. The fable is not the most interesting read, but it's better than Lencioni's atrocious writing. Pages 131-134 are the practical parts of the book. I'd guess this was made for people “too busy” to read Kotter's other stuff, but one wonders: if someone can only process change when told a story about penguins on a melting iceberg, will they ever be competent enough to manage it?

Chambers dedicates the book, “For anybody that could use a break.” It's quite a good way to spend a break. I didn't mean to read this in one sitting, but found it read fast enough to about page 60 or so and by then I couldn't put it down. I have marked up a lot of passages that really spoke to me, though I can't say why other than that I can see myself in them. And by seeing myself in them feel connected to the writer and to others who inevitably see themselves in them.

Some of these passages are just short and sweet (“I'm somewhat invested in this now.”). I think my favorite is a long monologue by a character deeply lost that feels like they have no reason to feel that way (page 119 carrying through in dialogue until 121).

Then there is the later discussion of purpose, that elusive thing. Moving goalposts, nothing good enough, not knowing exactly what to do. I thought it was lovely. “So, why, then, do you insist on having a purpose for yourself, one which you are desperate to find and miserable without? If you understand that robots' lack of purpose–is the crowning mark of our intellectual maturity, why do you put so much energy into seeking purpose?” Followed by the closure (or what can be had of it) on page 139.

It is a very sweet story. As always with the great robot stories, there is nothing better with which to examine all of the loves and goods of being human than the inhuman.

All of this positivity does come with my pricklishness around the writing. 98% of it is very good (sometimes verging on saccharine but that is welcome). I find that as much as I enjoy cussing and cursing in my daily voice, I bump on it pretty hard in writing. Something about it so rarely rings true (“whole-ass” please). Anyway I am happy to put it aside and will re-read this book. Probably several times.

The first part of this book—Frankl's exploration of his time and experiences in concentration camps and the impact these horrors had on his psyche and that of those around him—is very good. There isn't really much I can say on it that isn't said better elsewhere.

The second part, his primer on Logotherapy, was not really for me. It is very clearly something of its time and there is much about it that I like as a social worker and someone who works with people. That said, it doesn't resonate anything like the first part which really is a special work.

DNF.

Maybe I shouldn't count this as “read” but I got about 70 pages in, and I've read books shorter than 70 pages so, what the hell?

It's not for me. I lived through the internet lingo of 2009 once and I don't need to do it again. It has a lot of “clever” quips but none are enjoyable for me. I also find it very preachy and it violates my “make your social commentary not be tweet shaped” rule.

I think I'd give this a 3.5/5 if we were being very specific. It is perhaps the most gruesome of the McCarthy novels I've read, including The Road. The gruesomeness is not the same, with the exception of one particularly disturbing scene. But, the level of it is more similar to that in Blood Meridian.

Similar to Blood Meridian, there is an ongoing dread all the time. The co-protagonists wander the countryside. One, looking for her newborn child, encounters varying levels of kindness or at least apathy with a few exceptions. The other, seemingly wandering aimlessly*, encounters varying levels of violence, or at least apathy, with a few exceptions. The second character, Culla, claims at a few points to be searching for his sister, though I observe no evidence of this.

Culla and Rinthy, the co-protagonists, begin the novel in a cabin somewhere in Appalachia (Johnson County, I believe it is written). A tinker appears—I'd not heard or seen this word before and had to look it up: “a usually itinerant mender of household utensils” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. MW also notes that, in Ireland mainly, it is an occasionally offensive reference to Romani. That probably tracks for the setting of this novel. As the novel tracks the co-protagonists, we occasionally interact with three suited men, usually through remnants of their evils.

The leader of these three strikes me as being somewhat similar to Judge Holden in Blood Meridian. Not the same, but a similar incarnation of some sort of evil. Much of McCarthy's work deals with lowercase-e evil, but I think to simplify them as biblical would be a mistake. Clearly, McCarthy works with some biblical allegories, but I think the good and evil stand apart from any religiosity and deal mainly in the realities of human life. There are some evil, depraved things in McCarthy's writing. Yet, none of them is truly otherworldly, at least in my reading. Though, I've yet to read Orchard Keeper or Child of God, and perhaps those would force me to reconsider.

As usual, I love the writing. Particularly the dialogue. I am from Southern Illinois, which is not part of Appalachia. There is a lot of commonality, though, in the language/dialect. Sooo much of the dialogue I could hear in my grandpa or great-grandparents' voices, or in the voices of the old-timers that crowded my grandma's restaurant when I was young (and still when I visit, though my grandma no longer owns the place). This touch of familiarity means that the dialogue always rings true, and always rings warmly to my ear, even when the words are menacing. Perhaps then even moreso.

McCarthy is the best I've encountered at writing that dialect into words. “It's got pitchers”, “Lord god he's kilt hisself”, and poetically: “Mm-hmm. Sorry. Don't need sorry. Not in this house. Sorry laid the hearth here. Sorry ways and sorry people and heavensent grief and heartache to make you pine for your death.” It all rings so true. The dialect is not a sign of intelligence. So many authors write characters that speak this way as a shorthand for stupidity or ineptitude. This is not so. I appreciate McCarthy for this writing.

Another thing I admire about McCarthy's writing is his attitude towards tradesmen and the depiction of work. He clearly liked knowing the steps of a process, and sometimes in my reading I feel as though his writing wouldn't be the worst reference you could consult if you hadn't an official source. His writing reminds me a little of Michael Mann's filmmaking (see: Thief). Take a look at these two paragraphs:

“Yep, the man said. He ran his forefinger around a tallow tin and brought forth the last of it like cake icing and daubed it over the tapered spline of the axle. Holme watched while he eased the wheel into place and while he fitted the nut and turned it hand tight. He gave the wheel a spin and it went smoothly, dishing slightly and whispering as if it rode through water. Where's that wrench now? he said. He was feeling along the ground and Holme thought for a minute the man was blind.
It's under your foot, he said.
The man stopped and looked up at him, then took up the wrench. Ah, he said, here tis. He tightened the nut and then took the cotterpin from the greasecup where he had put it for safekeeping and bent the ends with his thumb and fitted it and reflared it again. Then he tapped the cup into place with the heel of his hand and rose.”

How great is that? Makes you feel like a real teamster back in 190whenever.

All that praise and consideration aside, this did not feel at the same level as that of Blood Meridian, The Road, or the Border Trilogy. It felt like a bit like a canticle, if that makes sense. A series of interactions, but the resolution, if it can be called that, felt incomplete and without form. I almost felt that the last chapter could be removed. But I think I will restrain that judgement until I sit with this a while longer, and perhaps read it over again, because I also feel that the last sentence may be a key theme: “Someone should tell a blind man before setting him out that way.” I wonder who McCarthy thinks that blind man is (all of us?) and I wonder who he thinks should do the telling.

An interesting conclusion to the Border Trilogy, with all the elements a reader would expect from Cormac. The laconic writing, the dialogue written with such care and truth, and the exquisite pain that underlies all of life.

What I like about Cormac's writing is that it understands that life's joys and pleasures are only found in adjacency to life's sorrow and pain.

My sister let me look over a copy of this while I was home for Christmas. I skimmed through all of the little parables / stories that serve as an intro to each chapter and focused on the author's assertions / descriptions. There is a lot of basic behavioral theory here, a lot of CBT. It's packaged in a very approachable way and I like the graphics / tables that are set out. I particularly liked “Goodhart's Law” — the notion that when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.

The book does have the common self-help scaffolding: start with a parable/anecdote/story, move into a basic description of a principle/method, apply the principle/method to the anecdote, then summarize. This makes it feel a little like a textbook but it does make it very skimmable and easy to reference later.

I appreciated the detailed notes section in the back. That said, I think I'm learning that I prefer a bibliography.

It's finally done, I've read everything that Cormac ever published. What a year. I plan to write something about that elsewhere, but for now, Suttree.

I think this is Cormac's longest novel at nearly 500 pages. It is episodic in nature and the episodes are presented without a lot of scaffolding to let you know. Cormac provides you with the changing of the seasons and that is the major progressive force of the novel. There is little plot other than Suttree's sort of underboiling search for self. I think you'd have to read it a few times to really mine it, and I think there is something there to mine.

I'm not sure this will be one that I re-read yearly like The Road. It is a little too long for that and parts of it a little too unpleasant. Not unpleasant in the way that The Road can be unpleasant, but I'll get to that.

There is, as usual, a lot to love in Cormac's prose. The characters are compelling and they do ring true. There is the somewhat biblical nature of certain events, questions, etc. I continue to find those big existential questions that Cormac's characters struggle with compelling, even if they are all somewhat wrapped in a system of faith that I do not hold.

There were a few things that stuck out to me. First, published in 1979 and set in the early 50's, I found the discussion of certain characters pretty interesting. There is a character that presents as trans, and my first read of Suttree and his conversation had me pause. There was an actual discussion of pronouns in search of the right one – it was NOT perfect and far from it, but for the scope of that conversation the identified pronoun was respected. I found this really interesting. I went back through the book after and it turns out the pronoun is not exactly respected throughout, and Suttree refers to this character by a different name at points – I didn't track this for a while because I got confused and thought they were different characters. So, complicated and not ideal. But that a book published in 1979 – by Cormac of all people – has this discussion and it didn't turn into a joke or scorn was fascinating to me. The character recurs several times and is a sort of duplicate in some ways for Suttree, and they clearly respect each other. Very strange. There are a couple of articles written on this that I found really interesting, too.

Still, there was a fair bit of the writing that I bumped against pretty hard. I saw a statement somewhere that the women characters in this book exist to fuck or cry and that's about it. That's about how it feels. There are exceptions, but they are at best one-page characters anyway. The men in this book revile women and talk like it, and I found it really unpleasant. I found myself wondering if this was an intentional thing because this is how people (men) in this era and in this region talked, or if this is just Cormac's pen. I think it's a little of both, really. Cormac has exceedingly few if any complex female characters and it is one of his great failings. What I am frustrated by is that the dialogue still rings true. I can imagine people speaking like this. It bummed me out.

Similarly, there is a relationship between Suttree and the teenaged daughter of another character. Apparently this character is 18. Yet, they are frequently described as child like in a way that I found extremely unpleasant. It is possible that the recent Vanity Fair article exploring (in a very poorly written way, and in a very man-defends-Cormac way) Cormac's essentially predatory behavior around a 16 or 17 year old that he (as a 40 year old) began an affair with. Maybe I'd have read this differently if I didn't know about that. But I don't think so. I think I am not all that interested in “childlike” being anywhere near a sex scene. Just stop.

Race is similarly handled as gender. There is a lot of racism in the book, mostly from other characters and in a way that I would expect for the time period. That said, there are a number of visual comparisons to apes and such and those weren't coming out of the mouths of characters, they were in the text as description. Surely we could have done without that. Suttree is not a character that demonstrates racism in the book, but he is surrounded by people and a narrator that use a lot of either directly and maliciously racist language. Again, if it lived solely in the mouths of the riverdwelling characters, it could to an extent be understood as true for the time, place, and characters. But it's in the narration, the author's voice! No thanks. It undermines the characters of color that are players in the story.

Those things aside, I found much of the book spoke to me. All of those big questions, the statements. I'm just going to write out some quotes I liked in closing.

* “... I'm not like you.. I'm not like him. I'm not like Carl. I'm like me. Don't tell me who I'm like.”
* You told me once you believed in God.
The old man waved his hand. Maybe, he said. I got no reason to think he believes in me. Oh I'd like to see him for a minute if I could.
What would you say to him?
Well, I think I'd just tell him. I'd say: Wait a minute. Wait just one minute before you start in on me. Before you say anything, there's just one thing I'd like to know. And he'll say: What's that? And then I'm goin to ast him: What did you have me in that crapgame down there for anyway? I couldn't put any part of it together.
Suttree smiled. What do you think he'll say?
The ragpicker spat and wiped his mouth. I don't believe he can answer it, he said. I dont believe there is a answer.
* He sat with his back to a tree and watched the storm move on over the city. Am I a monster, are there monsters in me?
* There is no one to ask is there? There is no...
* Sometimes I dont know what people's lives are for.
* Jesus wept over Lazarus, said the goatman. It dont say it, but I reckon Lazarus might of wept back when he seen himself back in this vale of tears after he'd just done been safe and dead four days. He must of been in heave. Jesus wouldnt of brought one back from hell would he? I'd hate to get to heaven and then get recalled what about you?

There are several characters that intend to have some direct conversations with their makers on their way out the door. All of them wondering why they've been subjected to all of this. I think we've all had sad or angry questionings like that to the empty air, whatever our beliefs.

Bouncing between 2 and 3 stars for this. A lot of it doesn't work that well for me. I think it's because I have the benefit of seeing McCarthy execute many of these themes with much greater strength both before and after the publication of Stonemason. There are great individual lines — including a reference to fathers weighing in ledgerbooks, which will show up again in The Road. Altogether, though, it is a collection of threads that do not really form a fabric for me.

I don't think Cormac's narrative voice is at its best in stageplay format. There is too much dialogue, and too many monologues. When this type of writing is in his narrative/novel works, the lines between dialogue and internal monologue are often blurred. This works really well. Having a character stand on stage and speak these things doesn't translate the feeling perfectly.

I am also puzzled by Cormac's decision to write this story. All of our main characters, and I believe every character, are Black. Cormac is not Black. I don't think that writers can only write their own identities, that'd be crazy. But I am not 100% sure that Cormac was the best equipped to write a story of entirely Black characters navigating dynamics of Louisville, KY in the 70's. Apparently Cormac based this on a family he spent “many months” working with (according to Wikipedia, though this is uncited). I would like to know more about this.

I went to a waybackmachine chronicle of the Cormac McCarthy website (it appears to be offline at this writing). This line is in the precis for the work: “Oddly enough, except for one or two passing references to social issues, the issue of race is hardly relevant to the play's plot.” I do not actually agree with this line, but it is in a bizarrely uncovered place in the work. Especially considering a few of the events within, which could be taken to some odd places.

Not bad, but not Cormac's best or probably in his top 10. I wouldn't recommend it outside of folks trying to be McCarthy completionists like myself.